PBS News Hour - Full Show - September 1, 2025 – PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

Monday on the News Hour, an earthquake in eastern Afghanistan strikes a nation already in dire need of humanitarian aid, killing hundreds and injuring thousands more. A judge halts planes set to return unaccompanied immigrant minors to Guatemala. Plus, how medical advancements have evolved to aid some children with a rare chromosomal disease. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Good evening. I'm Jeff Bennett. Amla Nabaz is away. On the news hour tonight, an earthquake in eastern Afghanistan strikes a nation already in dire need of humanitarian aid, killing hundreds and injuring thousands more. Roads have been blocked. Landslides have occurred, and it is becoming extremely hard to reach those who need the support most. A judge halts plane set to deport unaccompanied minors back to Guatemala. We speak with a lawyer representing some of the children. And how medical advancements have evolved to aid some children with a rare genetic disease.

Welcome to the News Hour. A 6.0 magnitude earthquake hit Afghanistan late Sunday night, devastating entire villages. Thousands are believed to have been killed or injured with hundreds feared trapped under the rubble. The quake's epicenter was in the eastern province of Kooner, over 100 miles from the capital of Kabul. William Brigham has our report. In a matter of seconds, a multi-story building in eastern Afghanistan reduced to rubble. Through the night, people searched for their loved ones, often with their bare hands. The morning revealed the scale of devastation.

Entire villages vanished, smashed into debris. This is my village. It's all collapsed now, he said. A wounded man walked out after being trapped for hours. A child inconsolable over the loss of his family. This was my brother's house. and he, along with three of his children, were martyred. My other brother, together with his sons, was also martyred there. This is the condition of our home.

Our dead are lying there on the ground. Children are trapped under the rubble. The elderly are under the rubble. Young people are under the rubble. We need help here. But getting help to them is very difficult. This is rough, unforgiving terrain, challenging to access even in the best of times.

The quake was shallow, barely five to eight miles down, and the shaking collapsed, unreinforced mud and brick homes, leaving a wide trail of destruction. Since there are no emergency workers, villagers carry the wounded out on bamboo beds. The Taliban government has sent helicopters, but resources are scarce and the tragedy overwhelming. That's just a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed. in order to get people to safety and to normalize and stabilize the thousands of people who have been impacted by the earthquake. Shereen Ibrahim is the country director for the International Rescue Committee in Afghanistan.

She spoke to us from Kabul. Roads have been decimated, roads have been blocked, landslides have occurred, and it is becoming extremely hard to reach those who need the support. most. Many of these communities have been partially or completely decimated, which actually means that it may be too late for us to get to a place and to a point where we are able to save lives as quickly as we would like. Four years of Taliban rule has left Afghanistan isolated globally, and foreign aid has largely disappeared. Even as the country endures a severe drought, along with widespread hunger and poverty.

23 million people, nearly half the country's population, is in need of aid. The humanitarian actors are on the ground. We are ready, we're prepared, we are responding as of today. However, the resources, given the multiple crises that Afghanistan faces, the resources are quite stretched. My appeal is to set aside the politics and clearly, to support the humanitarian effort that is currently underway in Afghanistan.

For a country that's already endured so much, this earthquake has left yet another landscape full of loss. For the PBS News Hour, I'm William Brangham. Start the Day's other headlines overseas. China welcomed leaders of some of its closest allies to an annual security summit today. Member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO, for short, presented a show of unity aimed at offering a counterbalance to America's role in global affairs. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi were all smiles and even held hands as they were welcomed by China's president Xi Jinping. In his remarks,

Xi called on countries to reject Cold War thinking and laid out his vision for an expanded SCO. At present, the international landscape is marked by intertwined changes and turbulence. China is willing to work with all parties to take this meeting as an opportunity to jointly promote the SCO in entering a new stage of high-quality development and high-level cooperation. She announced plans to speed up the creation of a development bank run by the SEO and pledged more than a billion dollars in loans. China also invited most of the

leaders to stay through Wednesday for a massive military parade to mark 80 years since Japan's surrender in World War II. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is also due to attend. The European Commission is blaming Russia for jamming the GPS signal of the Commission President's plane. The flight carrying Ursula von der Leyen was on approach to a city in southern Bulgaria yesterday when the incident occurred. Authorities say the pilot and air traffic control were eventually able to land safely using backup navigation aids. Bonderlyan is an outspoken critic of Russia's president and the war in Ukraine. The flight was part of a four-day tour of EU nations that border Russia, which continued today. Russia has not commented on the incident. In Gaza, health officials say

Israeli strikes killed at least 31 people today across the territory as Israel's military pushed on with its plan to seize Gaza City. Blasts have echoed across the area since it was declared a combat zone last week. Today, Palestinians and northern parts of the city packed up and fled after Israel ordered them to move south. Many Gazans say they're now facing violence and hunger at the same time.

I want to find a place where I can stay with my sons and daughters. I don't know. know where to go. Moving out requires money. I can't even find something to eat. It's been two months without food. I don't know where to go. Meantime, the world's largest professional organization of scholars who study genocide said today that Israel's actions in Gaza fit the legal definition of genocide. Israel strongly rejects the accusation. Here at home, the Labor Day Holiday saw unions and other groups holding what they called workers over billionaires' protests in cities across the country.

Billionaires have got to go. Hey, hey, hey, ho. Billionaires have got to go. The outcry was especially vocal in Chicago, where President Trump has threatened to send in national guard troops and federal agents to crack down on crime. Organizers aim to have protests take place in every U.S. state, roughly 1,000 gatherings in total.

At one event in Chicago, union leaders spoke out against policies that favor corporate greed and the consolidation of power. power. Whether it's Tesla or Target or Valor, what has happened in this country is that the billionaires don't understand that this country was created in protest and in resistance to fight off a king, not to recreate a king. Ahead of the protests, White House press secretary Caroline Levitt, defended the president's record on labor saying, quote, we finally have a president who fights and delivers for the American

worker every single day. President Trump says he'll award Rudy Giuliani the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. On social media, Mr. Trump called him the greatest mayor in the history of New York City and an equally great American patriot. The president's announcement comes just two days after Giuliani was badly injured in a car accident in New Hampshire. He suffered a fractured vertebra and other injuries. Giuliani was once considered America's mayor, but more recently was disbarred and faced criminal charges related to his actions following Mr. Trump's 2020 election loss. Wall Street was closed today for the Labor Day holiday, but it was a big day for the crypto market with the launch of the Trump family's digital token. Traders could buy and trade some of the cryptocurrency issued by World Liberty Financial, which was co-founded by Trump's sons, Eric and Don Jr., among others.

Eric promoted the token as recently as Friday at a Bitcoin conference in Hong Kong. Today's launch reportedly means a windfall of billions of dollars for the family. The White House has often denied any conflict of interest for the president. And longtime White House correspondent Mark Nuller has died. Over a five-decade career spent mostly with CBS, he covered multiple presidents and was regarded for his encyclopedic knowledge of the presidency. He gladly and generously shared that wisdom with fellow journalists, myself included, and even White House officials when they came asking. CBS called him the hardest, working, and most prolific White House correspondent of a generation.

A cause of death was not disclosed, but Noler had reportedly suffered from diabetes and was in poor health. Mark Nuller was 73 years old. Still to come on the news hour, Tamara Keith and Amy Walter break down the latest political headlines. Actor David Duccovney discusses how his life and career influenced a new book of poems, and 50 years after Jaws, the science that's dispelling some long-held myths. This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubenstein studio at W.E.A. in Washington, and in the west from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. Tonight, dozens.

of Guatemalan migrant children are back in federal custody after a late-night court order temporarily halted their deportation. The ruling came after the unaccompanied minors had already been boarded on planes bound for Guatemala. Lawyers filed an emergency motion overnight, prompting the judge to be awakened at 2.30 Sunday morning to intervene, saying, quote, I have the government attempting to remove unaccompanied minors from the country in the wee hours of the morning on a holiday weekend, which is surprising. For now, a temporary restraining order blocks the deportations of hundreds of such children for at least two weeks. We're joined now by Kika Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, which is representing some of the migrant children. Welcome back to the program.

Thank you for having me. So the U.S. has deported unaccompanied migrant children before. So what makes this case in particular stand out? What makes this case stand out in the most egregious ways is that our government in the dead of night ordered the shelters to wake these children up between 2 and 4 o'clock in the morning, to put them on buses so that they could be transported to Texas, the airport, loaded on planes, and deported to Guatemala without making sure that these kids avail themselves of the legal protections and the constitutional rights that they have. Now, understand none of these kids had received the final deportation order. These are kids whose cases are going through the system. And our government decided that they were going to simply yank away

these legal and constitutional protections and send them to Guatemala. The youngest kid that we spoke with is seven years old. These are all unaccompanied children who are particularly vulnerable. That is what makes this case so outrageous. And what's the argument? that you're presenting on behalf of the children that you're representing? Our argument is really quite simple, right? It is that the government is engaging in lawless and reckless behavior, and it is stripping these kids of the constitutional protections that they have and the laws that our country has in the books to make sure that these kids

have the right to go before a judge and have the right to legal representation. Some of these children are on the cusp of turning 18, and the Guatemalan government welcomed the return of these children, partly out of concern that once they turn 18, they'd be transferred to ICE detention, and the Guatemalan government says it's ready to receive as many as 150 children a week, arguing that that's better than seeing them transferred to ICE detention here in the U.S. Is that an acceptable resolution in your view? it is not an acceptable resolution in our view let me share what we have learned from the kids that we spoke to and we have affidavits from these children each and every one of these children did not want to be returned to Guatemala they feared the possibility that they would be once again threatened with violence some of these kids received death threats some of these kids have been neglected by their parents. Some of these kids have faced tremendous amounts of trauma and abuse. And our position is really simple. These kids have legal rights

and they want to veil themselves of legal rights. The government's position is furious and quite frankly ridiculous. And what I will say is if these kids did want to return to Guatemala to be reunited with the parents. That is a decision that the judge makes, not the federal government. What can you tell us about the nearly 2,000 migrant children who are in government custody, HHS custody? A large percentage of them are from Guatemala. Is that right? Yes, my understanding is that many of these kids are from Guatemala. These kids are from Central America. They're from South America. They're from all over the globe. And they're all, what unifies these kids is that they're all uniquely vulnerable, and they all

have the rights to protections, legal protections that our government is meant to afford them. Stephen Miller, the architect of President Trump's hardline immigration approach, blamed the migrant's predicament on the lax immigration policies of the Biden administration. He said, these are smuggled minors orphaned in America by the Biden administration that Democrats are refusing to allow back home with their families. What particular concern do you have about the migrant children in federal custody given the Trump administration's overall approach to immigration enforcement? Well, let's remember that Stephen Miller is the architect of the family separation plan under the first Trump administration. It's galling to us and now they're wrapping their

defense of what is indefensible by saying they were concerned. about these kids and they want to ensure that they're reunited with their families, but what the government was, in essence, doing was yanking away the legal protections that these vulnerable kids have. It should shock the conscience of all Americans that our government in the dead of night was targeting vulnerable children and trying to strip them of the protections that they have. And the final thing that I would say is this really exposes the hypocrisy of our government right now, because for the longest time, they were saying we're going after the most outrageous criminal immigrants and that too we're targeting for deportation, when in fact

this weekend shows us that they know no bounds. And their intention was to yank away their rights and send them to a country where they feared for their lives. Kike Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center. Thanks again for joining us. this evening. Thank you for having me. As another part of the Trump administration's mass deportation push, immigration enforcement officials have conducted arrests outside courtrooms as people show up for hearings with immigration judges. The detentions have led to sometimes dramatic scenes with families pleading to let their loved ones go

and confrontations with officers. We spoke to one photojournalist who spent weeks documenting arrests at federal facilities in Manhattan. Folks who immigrate here to the United States from their home countries believe deeply in the promise of this country, a promise of America.

And to watch their faith in that promise kind of suddenly whisked away from them as they're carted off to detention is one of the most surprising and one of the kind of the most bracing things to witness. My name is Victor Blue. I'm a freelance photojournalist. I'm based in Brooklyn, New York. I've been working on immigration coverage pretty much since I kind of started my career over two decades ago. I got my start in Central America. I was able to kind of gain a real

understanding of the context and the communities and the dynamics that people were leaving to immigrate to the United States. We will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of the United States. It became obvious pretty quickly. This new administration was going to have quite a different posture towards immigration enforcement. I spent the better part of July and a little over the first week of August attending court every day. Early in the morning, there's a long line of immigrants who arrive for their court appointments. The agents are waiting outside. The agents usually are carrying a kind of sheaf of papers. They include a photograph of their target, the person that they're looking for. When the immigrants leave the courtroom, if they're on that list of

targets, they kind of quietly, you know, ask them to come with them. Maybe, maybe take them by the elbow and kind of lead them. Maybe not. Oftentimes, they don't even need to. The immigrants just go with them into the air of the bank of elevators or a stairwell and then kind of head down to the 10th Florida detention center. That was the thing that was most surprising to me. Of course, we've seen footage of kind of aggressive, violent, kind of tense, detentions, but the vast majority of them are kind of deceptibly quiet. They haven't really realized yet that whatever decision the judge has made really doesn't matter at that point, that the agents have their marching orders and that they are going to be detained. I remember

watching that young woman enter the court when she walked out and was initially stopped by the agents. Her face just fell and she immediately banned a cry before they were able to completely slammed the door, the stairwell. I was positioned to make a picture and she kind of looked back at me. I think that her expression there, the fear and the kind of realization that the journey she'd been on had in large part come to a close was dawning on her. For much of the time that I was going into the courts, there was a real reluctance on the part of the agents to detain parents of young children. That's definitely changed over the course of my time and there. And now it's not uncommon at all to see the detention of parents of young children, to see the families separated

right there in the hallways. And of course, that's an unbelievably wrenching experience for the families, right, to have their family pulled apart right there in front of everyone. My goal, as a photojournalist, I'm not there to demonize or to celebrate anybody in this dynamic. I'm there to further understanding. We know that it affects the agents. They tell us. It affects them. Many of them tell us they don't like what they're doing. We've had someone tell us it's the worst job they've ever had. It almost feels kind of like a historical anomaly to have a front row seat to it to be able to go in day after day after day with this kind of unprecedented immigration enforcement. And I think that in the end is really going to be the value of our coverage, right? That we didn't just show up for the most sensational kind of moments that were there day in and day out to kind of show folks the volume of what's happening. And you know, Even if an arrest is quiet and isn't particularly sensational and isn't a particularly impactful photograph, every one of those arrests represents a real crisis for a family, a real crisis for an individual immigrant, a real break in their journey towards hopefully a better life and their journey towards joining the society that they fought so hard to be a part of.

It's a federal holiday, but things are about to get very busy this week, with what appears to be a looming federal takeover of Chicago and more political fights over congressional redistricting. Joining us now for Politics Monday is Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR. Thanks to you both for laboring on this Labor Day. You're welcome. Good to be here. All right, so let's start with the story we mentioned first. President Trump is again threatening to send troops into Chicago with the Pentagon

reportedly preparing a deployment from a nearby Navy base as soon as this week. The governor, J.B. Pritzker, says that Trump is using the military to invade the state. Tam, this appears to be a calibrated escalation of the limits of executive power. What's the White House saying about it? Well, the president has said that he can do anything. He's the president, and he was specifically talking about this. But in that same breath, he also said he wants to be invited. He wants the governor to ask.

And the fact is that there are more limits on what he can do in a state where the governor has not invited the National Guard than, for instance, Washington, D.C., where the president has much more control. What we know about the request so far is that it seems to be limited. Now, that obviously could change, and President Trump has been known to say things and then change where he's headed. but the Department of Homeland Security requested help from the National Guard for limited support in the form of facilities, infrastructure, and other logistical needs to support Department of Homeland Security operations. That's a lot of words to say they're not talking, at least in this request, about National Guard patrolling the streets in some sort of law enforcement capacity. This would be much more limited, perhaps more similar to Los Angeles, where

and that is still being litigated whether that was a proper use of the National Guard without the blessing of the governor or the mayor, but where National Guard troops were there in support of federal agents doing their thing. In that case, ICE. And, Amy, the story the president appears that he's trying to tell is that these democratic strongholds, whether it's L.A., New York, Chicago, Baltimore, that they are dangerous, they're lawless. their leaders are ineffective and that he is the one that needs to come in and impose order. Is that a message, a story that's resonating? Well, we haven't seen a whole lot of polling on this, but the one poll that has come out recently

from Quinnipiac last week showed that overwhelmingly majority of Americans do not like what they are saying for what's happening in Washington, D.C. with the federal enforcement there and federal troops there. Now, not surprisingly, Republicans, very sort of. in this poll. Very, very supportive of it. Democrats hate it. But it's independence that break probably about 60%. I think the number was 61% against it. And what that says to me is this feels very familiar. It feels like the first term, too, where the president does things, takes actions that galvanize the base, that anger the opposition, but also really aren't appealing to the folks who are independent leaning.

And that becomes a problem politically in the future because if those voters don't believe that what the president's doing is actually helping them or dealing with the issues that they think are important or if they think that he's doing something that they find that is out of bounds, those are the folks who could turn out and vote against Republicans next time around.

Or they're the ones who may be voted for a Republican in the last election, but feel less excited or less interested in doing it now. Yeah. Well, let's shift our focus to the Senate map, because I have been waiting since last week to ask you about Senator Joni Ernst's decision not to seek re-election. This all along had been thought to be a tough map for Democrats. What does her decision not to seek re-election mean? So it is a tough map. Democrats would need to net four seats. And to do that, they've got to hold on to two very vulnerable seats of their own in Georgia and Michigan. The next, if they do that, the most likely opportunities for them are two states that are blue and purple, Maine and North

Carolina held by Republicans. Then they've got to find two more. And that's where it gets tricky, because the only states left on the board are deeply Republican, ones that Trump won by double digits. Now, I think it's the lotto. I can't remember who has the slogan of, if you don't play, you can't win. Yeah, you got to play to win, which is kind of what Democrats are doing here. Yeah, it's an uphill fight to win in those states. But right now, Iowa is on the map. And there were, there have been a number of special elections held in that state this year, including one last week for a state Senate seat where the Democrat has outperformed what a Democrat had gotten there two years earlier. So Democrats feeling hopeful for what they see there. And open seats are

harder for the party that's defending it to hold on to because a new person has to come in and introduce themselves. And there could be a difficult primary. So Democrats are putting more seats in play. Most recently was Ohio, before this was Ohio where Senator Sherrod Brown said he's running to try to get his seat back. So still uphill, but there are now candidates and opportunities. If the winds are blowing the right way next year, it could work. Well, on this Labor Day, we should mention that President Trump was elected on promises he would fight for workers. Many labor advocates say, in fact, it's the opposite that he's consistently put corporate interests ahead of labor. And just last week, the president said he was

not going to recognize the collective bargaining agreements with the unions representing five agencies to include NASA, the National Weather Service. You see the others there on the screen. Tam, how does the White House account for all that? President Trump has made little secret of his distaste for labor unions. He feels that they are a tool of the left. And the fact is that most labor unions have been aligned with Democrats for a very long time. So the fact that they are going after unions failing to recognize collective bargaining, that's not a surprise.

The way the White House portrays President Trump's policies is that they are pro-worker. They describe the tariffs as pro-worker, an effort to onshore jobs and really targeted at blue-collar workers, which are the very people where Republicans and President Trump have been able to make up some ground. So, you know, whether Trump is pro-worker or not, I think, depends on whether it's the White House telling the story or whether it is Democrats and labor unions telling the story. And, Amy, what about the Democrats? Because it was President Biden who bailed out the Teamsters' pension. and yet the Teamsters still didn't endorse Kamala Harris. And there are many union members who voted for Donald Trump

based on cultural issues and not because they thought, you know, Biden had the backs of labor. Yeah, there's been a disconnect for some time now between rank-and-file members and the leadership. Leadership, I think, being much more Democratic-leaning than many of their members are. At the same time, I think one of the reasons that the blue wall,

the so-called blue wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin continues to be so competitive and where Democrats obviously won it in 2020, Biden did, Kamala Harris narrowly losing those states, is that they still do have a pretty heavy labor influence. And while Harris did not do as well there as, say, Joe Biden did, she still won labor union, people who are, who say they are part of a labor union. So we know we have a great reshuffling in this country of our political coalitions. Democrats were long seen as the party of the working class. It is now Republicans who are winning over many more of those types of voters. But labor unions in and of themselves

don't necessarily represent just all, they don't represent all working class folks. And their influence continues to wane as fewer and fewer people are part of union. I think now it's less than 10 percent of Americans are a member of union. Union. Amy Walter and Tamara Keith. Thanks so much. We appreciate it. You're welcome. Now to the story of a rare genetic condition that is often fatal in the extraordinary efforts by parents and doctors to extend the lives of affected children through intensive interventions. Alongside those advances come some difficult ethical questions. Our Stephanie Sy has more.

It's an agonizing diagnosis for parents and families. Trisomy 18, also known sometimes as Edward's syndrome, is often fatal within weeks after a baby is born. But advances in medicine and research have extended survival in some cases raising questions about how to approach this rare chromosomal condition in and outside the womb. Dr. Sherry Fink recently chronicled in the New York Times what happened to a young boy named Noah through the enormous efforts of his mother, Dr. Jacqueline V.Dash, an intense treatment. Sherry Fink is also the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Five Days at Memorial, which is about patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital after Hurricane Katrina, and she joins me now.

Dr. Fink, thank you so much. This is a tremendous piece of reporting you did, and you've been following some of these cases for years. Tell me, what has changed the outlook for kids born with this disorder? Thank you. I think it's actually been the families. For many years, this was considered a diagnosis that was too lethal to treat. When I went to medical school, that's what we learned. And these families found each other. They formed support groups when a child, they would have a child, a child might survive against the odds.

And with the advent of the Internet, and social media. Parents who had kids who did survive found each other and started to, in some cases, request the same kinds of treatments that other children would get who didn't have the diagnosis. Then research was done and more and more there was evidence that accumulated that in some cases the medical treatments could extend life. I read in your piece that the treatments had initially been providing comfort or even palliative care, and that there was a paradigm shift to interventions that could extend kids' lives, sometimes even into adulthood. And those were existing treatments that were already out there? Yes. Well, I think the field of medicine at the

start of life, neonatology, and the kinds of interventions that children who are, say, born early, that whole field has really developed. So it's really those types of interventions, for breathing if a baby is born and has difficulty breathing, interventions like heart surgery on the smallest babies. So that has evolved over the years. And I think comfort care very much is still an option for these babies. And many of the doctors, even though there has been this paradigm shift in terms of offering families, the choice of interventions in some cases, depending on the child. But they also feel that comfort care is appropriate. That Some families will want to pursue that, will feel that the burdens of treatment, for example, might be too great, or because the children do have a lot of medical complexity and they will have many disabilities.

The big change in the last few years has been the wider acceptance among the medical community, that disorder that was considered lethal, that was considered not treatable. Now, to some extent, the idea now is that it was a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, if a baby is born, has lots of medical needs, and doesn't get treatment, then of course they will pass away. And now it's known that in some cases, those interventions could actually help the child to live longer, but still with significant medical complexity and disabilities. Yeah, and you describe this four-year-old Noah. in detail, the deliberations, first of all, that went into it, even when Noah was still in

his mother's womb, it was one step at a time. And there's this part of the piece where you say the mother wanted to see if he was going to be a fighter, but he comes out of the womb and he stops breathing. So describe that case and what it illustrates. Well, Dr. Vodash, Jacqueline, she was like any other doctor. She was an obstetrician and had learned that this was a lethal fatal diagnosis. She said that she warned when she received the prenatal, because this is typically diagnosed with prenatal testing, about a thousand babies a year in the U.S. And so slowly she had to make decisions about what to do. When Noah was going to be born, as Jacqueline found a support group called Soft, the support group for trisomy 13, 18, and associated disorders, found a lot of

medical information there, started reading the medical literature. She and her husband decided at the time that they were going to give Noah what any other child who might be born and need some support. They were going to give him a chance to kind of see if he would stabilize, see if he could survive, see if he was a fighter, as they said. And so they went in. initially thinking they wouldn't do any sort of medical interventions to accepting this idea of giving him breathing support when he was born. And he did respond to it. But yes, he would have passed away if he hadn't had that when he was born. And then there were many other choices that they then faced that resulted from that first choice to give him a chance of survival.

Dr. Fink, what do you think after all these years of reporting on this disorder, are you, your main takeaways? And what do you think the main takeaways should be for parents and families that may be looking at this diagnosis? Well, I've spent time with children like NOAA and other children. And I think one of the big changes was also research into the families themselves. I think there's often an assumption that if a child is severely disabled, cognitively disabled, In this case, most of these children, almost all of them are nonverbal, that, you know, these deep questions of, you know, what is a worthwhile life? Or is that child happy, for example? And what is incredible about these kids is that their families talk about them as being, you know, a very happy disposition that they communicate, that they engage.

So, whereas they might not have the words that we have, they might, they, they still. can meet developmental milestones, they laugh, they hug their families. It sounds like such a scary diagnosis, something so profound that could affect the child's health and their ability to develop. But in fact, there's something so beautiful about the devotion of the families that do decide to try to offer their children the best chance of surviving. And also, I think we really need to respect families who say that this doesn't meet their value. or that they feel like in their child's case, you know, that that wouldn't be the right choice to choose heart surgery,

for example, to repair the heart or to choose a ventilator, a tracheostomy. So to me it really comes down to speaking to different families who've made different choices and understanding and empathizing with all of them and also just being blown away and impressed by the love that all of these families that are faced with a diagnosis that is unexpected, and, of course, you know, very, very difficult that they go on and can have amazing lives when they're offered choices. So that is my big takeaway. Thank you so much. That is Dr. Sherry Fink joining us.

Actor, writer, musician. Poet, David de Coveney, known to audiences for his roles in Californication and The X-Files, turns his attention to something more intimate. Poems that wrestle with love, loss, memory, and the passing of time. It's a meditation on what it means to grow older, to look back, and to wonder what still lies ahead. I spoke with him recently about his book, About Time. David DeCovine, welcome to the News Hour.

Thank you for having me. You know, I couldn't help but laugh at the way you open your book. You write, I know what you're thinking, just with the way. world needs now a bunch of poems from an actor. What drew you to poetry at this point in your career? Well, I've been writing poems my whole life, really, and just stuff in them in drawers. And so this collection really represents probably at least 20, 25 years of just writing poems when they come to me. The preponderance of the poems are more recent, but there's some old ones in there. So it's just something that I've always done and been interested in.

And you also say that poetry is not useful, and that's exactly why we need it. Why? Well, you know, this idea of use or utility is, it's interesting to me, and especially educationally. We want to get educated to be able to work, to have a job of some kind, but, you know, which is great and it's necessary, but we've lost sight of educating a mind how to think or a soul, how to feel. And the disciplines like English literature, I feel, and philosophy are the disciplines that educate the soul. So that's not useful. That's not considered useful anymore to learn how to think. Yeah, and poetry often asks so much more of a reader, slowness, attention. You find utility in that. I find mystery in words. I find mystery and expression.

the more mysterious you can make your words, not intentionally, but just because it's so difficult to put your finger on the deepest truths and the deepest emotions that we have, then the truer that it is. You know, so the mystery that you're talking about, I think, is inherent in the poetic enterprise, which is, how do I say what can't be said? What are the central themes that tie this book of poetry together? You know, like I said, they encompass like 20 years of my life, so there's the death of parents. It's not going to sound like a real joyride when I go over it, I think. You know, obviously the death of my father, the death of my mother as well, the birth of my kids, the raising of my kids.

And then, yeah, it's, you know, life, death, birth, all the big ticket items, you know. 25 years is there a specific poem that feels most personal to you I mean they're all very personal but that to me that's not the the allure is not what is personal to me with the allure of writing a good poem is how can I make what's personal to me personal to you how can I I write something so personal objectively enough so that you feel like it's about you there are poems that are more in this collection more tied to times in my life maybe that are feel more emotional to me like the birth of my children or when they were young and trying to figure out how do I teach them, how do I reach them, how do I raise them? There's Carbon Canyon, that poem which I like very much,

which is where I'm walking with my daughter who's about three or four years old and we come across a carcass of a field mouse and start talking about life and death. Being a young father, I think, oh, this is a great opportunity for me to teach her about death and impermanence and all those things. And I start to, but she doesn't see it that way. And then as I lean down further, I see all these ants going in and out of the carcass. And it's terrifying to me, it's gross. And now that I'm in this conversation and now I've got to tell her about the way, you know,

We're all eaten and worm food, and it's just, it's too much, I know. And so I go to take her away from the spectacle of it, and the end of the poem goes, she says, Daddy, look, the ants, there's so many of them. I say, yes, I see. Maybe we should let the mouse sleep, let her sleep. I take her hand to lead her, though I don't know where. I know I am blind and unprepared, a child leading a child, and the little one stops and smiles and points back. to the carnage. No, the ants, daddy. The ants. Look how much they love her.

How does your creative process in writing poetry differ from writing novels or music, which you've done, screenplays, even acting? Poems, I mean, ideas come from anywhere, and they kind of announce themselves, and it's up to the maker to figure out what's the form, what's the best form for that thing, that idea, that feeling that came. So that's something I'll ask myself, like some big ideas or like plot ideas. I'm like, oh, that's a movie or that's a novel. Some smaller ideas are just thoughts or feelings or even a phrase, a turn of phrase that catches me.

And I'll go, well, that's a poem or a song. You know, that's, it's a, it's like a strobe light. It's just one moment. It's not an epic poem. It's not the Iliad or the Odyssey. It's really just a small shot in the dark. Having written these poems over the last nearly three decades, what has it taught you about yourself? That I keep trying to figure certain things out.

I think in the introduction, I say, you know, a poem is very optimistic because it's setting out to say something that can't be said and hoping that maybe this time I'm going to say it right. So I think I remain kind of committed to seeking and committed to try to say things right. to try to figure out myself or the world around me. So I would say that maybe I don't appear to be the greatest optimist in the way I present myself, but I would say that the fact that I continue to write poetry or believe in it is optimistic.

The book is About Time by David DeCovine. Thanks so much for speaking with us. We appreciate it. I appreciate it. Thank you. This year marks the 50th anniversary of Jaws Stephen Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster about a ravenous straight white shark. The film, which drew big crowds during a special re-release this weekend, terrified audiences back then, packed theaters and left behind a lasting fear of sharks. But while many Americans remain afraid of them, shark attacks are rare, and the species itself is widely misunderstood.

William Brangham is back with more. On one hand, I mean, it makes perfect sense why many of us fear sharks. But the fact is, the general public really doesn't know all that much about these ancient creatures. So to sort out some common misconceptions, we are joined by Keith Cowley. He's a shark historian and conservationist. Keith, thank you so much for being here. Thanks to movies like Jaws and more recent shark movies, as well as the Discovery Channel's seemingly ubiquitous shark week,

it is no wonder that Americans view sharks as these ravenous, bloodthirsty killers. Overall, though, when you look at the species, how accurate a portrayal is that? Well, I don't think it's an accurate portrayal at all. Of course, you know, we all fear that which is primal, whether it's lions, tigers, or bears, or sharks, you know, we have a visceral reaction to this idea of a toothy predator in a domain that we can't control. Historically, you know, we've always been very intrigued. I think as different networks and different programs continue to produce content that taps into that, sharks are always going to be a topic of conversation worldwide. But I don't think this is the right message to send.

in the majority of cases. But it can be a gateway to talk about the actual science and the real life behind the sharks. I mean, a lot of your work is about helping us understand sharks better to understand them, even demystify them. What do you think that the most of the rest of us don't quite get yet? Well, I mean, I'm guilty of this too, especially as a youngster when you cherry-picked that one animal

that really excites you and you pull it out of its analysis. environment mentally, you know, and in your heart, of course, when you're really passionate about it, it's easy to forget that they're actually a core member of a complete ecosystem. And without the rest of the organisms in that ecosystem, the shark doesn't survive. And without the shark, the rest of that ecosystem doesn't survive. So I think in order to better understand the shark and sort of shed our fear of it, you know, we start to get to learn the environment that the shark lives in and demystify it. if you will. Sharks are also at risk now with nearly a third of the species that are currently

threatened with extinction. What is it that is threatening sharks today? Yeah, the biggest threat facing sharks today, unfortunately, is overfishing. That's what the data shows for us. And that means it's a human threat. So the issue is that there are lots of improved types of fishing gear being utilized all over the world. And there's a lot of different types of indiscriminate fishing going on as well. So sharks end up as bycatch, sometimes in places where sharks are not protected. They're being overfished. And unfortunately, they're being overfished to the speed that we're not even ready to study all these different species. And we're just scratching the surface, really getting to know them. People always want to know, is there something that they can do in their

own consumer behavior that can protect sharks? Is that oftentimes that's like what kind of fish they buy or eat, is there anything that you would counsel people to do who care about shark preservation to change about their own habits? Yeah, I think as a whole, it's probably a healthy, you know, good practice to read the ingredients on everything we consume. It's really important to know where our food comes from. You know, we do a relatively good job in the United States with that, but sometimes things get renamed or mixed in with other ingredients that we think are one thing. and happen to be another. You know, sharks are a white fish that tends to get lumped in with fish and chips in other countries.

Sometimes you see it as a fried bite. You know, obviously shark fin soup is a major issue in other countries, shark liver oil and other products. But as far as the consumer is concerned, I think it's just important that, you know, you know where your food is coming from. We prefer you don't buy shark products or anything that's related to shark. just because we are trying to protect them as a species overall. Unfortunately, we had hunted them down to near extinction around the world after Jaws in 1975. We know that sharks, generally speaking, are not that aggressive towards people. I think it's roughly 100 attacks per year compared to the millions of people that get into the ocean every year.

But let's just say someone does encounter a shark. What are they supposed to do? I always tell folks that come into the museum that asked me this question, that anything I tell you to prepare yourself for an interaction with a shark, you're going to forget immediately when it happens. So, you know, there's a lot of folks out there trying to give some great advice about interacting with sharks. You know, there's a lot of different conditions that can occur when sharks might be in our proximity. And unfortunately, there's no foolproof answer to that question. I think what's more important to take away from that is that the odds are extremely slim. And you think, be aware of your surroundings.

There's a lot of communities that are doing some great public outreach to help people become more educated in the situation that they're putting themselves in. For example, in Cape Cod, in the waters off Cape Cod, where sharks, great white sharks in particular, are, cruising in seven to ten feet of water all day long, you know, there are some scenarios where you don't really need to put yourself at risk. But in most oceans, you know, in the United States, this is not an issue that you have to be concerned with. All right. Keith Cowley, shark historian and conservationists. Thank you so much for your time. Welcome. Thank you for having me. And there's a lot more online, including a look at President Trump's order that

aims to end cashless bail and what it means for people charged with crimes. That's at pbs.b.org slash newshour. And that is the Newshour for tonight. I'm Jeff Bennett for all of us here at NewsHour. Thanks for spending part of your evening with us.