PBS News Hour - Full Show - September 21, 2025 – PBS News Weekend full episode

Episode Date: September 21, 2025

Sunday on PBS News Weekend, tens of thousands of mourners attend a memorial service for conservative leader Charlie Kirk, whose assassination earlier this month stunned the nation. Why the planet is drying out at much faster rates than before, according to a new study. Plus, how a new food dye ban is changing what’s on West Virginians’ dinner plates. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Tonight on PBS News Weekend, a memorial service in Arizona for Charlie Kirk, the young conservative leader whose assassination earlier this month stunned the nation. Then a critical threat to humanity, why the planet is drying out at much faster rates than before. And how a new food die ban is changing what's on West Virginia's dinner plates. I've started seeing even recently, like at, Walmart, that they are offering die-free options, that they're offering non-GMO and organic options. We're voting with our dollars every time we go to the grocery store. Good evening. I'm Ali Rogan. John Yang is away. A massive crowd gathered today in Arizona for the

memorial service of Charlie Kirk, the conservative political activist who was gunned down 11 days ago. Tens of thousands of people are in attendance inside a football stadium with a heavy security presence. The memorial called Building a Legacy is mixing music and prayer with a call to action. Among the attendees and speakers are President Trump, Vice President Vance, and many members of the administration. In the wake of Kirk's assassination, a debate has waged over polarization, political violence, and the limits of free speech. Colleagues of Kirk's took different tones in their remarks. We will miss your words of wisdom.

Your high-pitched laugh. It was kind of awkward. And the way your voice would always soften when you spoke to Erica and your children. Eleven days ago, my friend was martyred for using his voice to engage in peaceful, dialogue. Charlie's assassin thought that he could steal and silence his voice by putting a bullet in his neck. For more on Charlie Kirk's legacy, we turn to Kyle Spencer, a journalist

and the author of a book about the conservative youth movement in the U.S. called Raising Them Right. Kyle, thank you so much for joining us. This memorial service is ongoing. We still have yet to hear from several major figures, including President Trump and Charlie Kirk's widow, Erica. But what is your impression of the memorial service as it's gone on today? So thank you so much for having me. I'm very glad to be here. I would say, first of all, that it is always very sad to witness a moment like this. And I think the first thing that struck me was how many people have come out to celebrate Charlie Kirk. And then also to see so many of the people that worked closely with Charlie Kirk's telling personal anecdotes about how good he was to them. Charlie, I spent a lot of time

Charlie and the people who worked with him. Everybody who worked with Charlie felt very, very bonded to him. And you saw that. So far, you've seen that in this memorial. And tell us a little bit more about what he was like. You spent a lot of time with him going to his events. Tell us about him as a person. Charlie was really a lot of the ways that you're seeing right now, people talk about him. He was incredibly charismatic. He was very driven. He had a very strong sense of the way he wanted this country to go. And he was able to articulate it very succinctly to share that vision with other people and to encourage them to go and share it with more people. Charlie was very generous to the people who worked for him. He was somebody that they looked up to.

Every time I ever spent time with him, he was in a good mood. He was interested in talking, willing to talk, always interested in discussing ideas. I never got, sometimes you get the impression with people that they're sort of one way with you, but they're not really like that in real life. I didn't get that sense with Charlie. I got the sense that the way Charlie was in public was the way Charlie was in private. And in terms of his position in politics, what was his place in this conservative movement? Charlie was a seminal figure. He arrived on the scene in 2012 and shared with donors a vision of the Republican Party that would be more youthful, that would be energetic, exciting, and that would be diverse. And what we know is that a lot of that has happened. And I think

that this service is a sign of that, the number of people that are there and that are watching online and who have really accepted and been invigorated by Charlie's vision for the Republican Party. His widow, Erica, has been tapped to lead a turning point in his absence. What do you think her role is going to be compared to Charlie's? And is there anybody else in the wings that can take up this mantle? So I would like to say that I think that Erica is incredibly driven as is Charlie and has grown as a spokesperson over the last couple of years. She has a kind of ministry that she does, an online Bible program that she does

that has become very, very popular with young people. And she and Charlie together were able to share their kind of personal vision about what a family should look like, how a family ought to be the roles of people on a family. And she was doing that more and more. And I think doing a really good job of sending that message. So I think she's going to continue to grow

and continue to be a representative, particularly for young women. I'm not so clear whether she will be as effective for young men. The thing about the Turning Point USA movement that Charlie Kirk started and the way that Charlie Kirk worked was to keep bringing people into the movement, whether they were social media, stars that he helped develop, he helped grow, or whether they were people that just worked inside the movement, inside Turning Point, to make real the dreams and the ideas and the plans that he had. There are many, many people who are inside that movement who work inside Turning Point USA. It's got a very, very big staff, a very competent staff, and a very, a very, very ambitious staff. And I think you see that at the ceremony, how many people worked for Charlie. And a lot of those people, I think, are going to be able to step in in various different spots.

Whether there's someone who's going to be able to take the charismatic, front-facing role of Charlie, I'm not sure. And do you think very quickly his death is going to shape the conservative movement in the Republican Party in meaningful ways? Yes. I think that it is a very real thing that Charlie Kirk, who was such a brilliant spokesperson for the cause, is no longer with us. However, he has his handprints all over the new Republican Party. And for those who really believed in what he believed in, they ought to find that to give them a lot of solace. Kyle Spencer, author of Raising Them Right, thank you so much for your insights. Thank you so much for having me. In tonight's other news, four Western nations formally recognized a Palestinian state today, a decision denounced by their ally, Israel.

Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Portugal said the recognition could help revive efforts to stop the war in Gaza and release the hostages. British Prime Minister Kirstarmer said the move is not meant to reward Hamas. We are acting to keep alive the possibility of peace and a two-state solution. That means a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable Palestinian state. At the moment, we have neither. The move spurred Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to say a Palestinian state will not happen. More countries are set to recognize Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly this week.

Hours before that announcement, Israeli strikes pummeled Gaza City. At least 40 people were killed, including children. Israel did not comment on the strikes, but has previously called Gaza City the final Hamas stronghold. President Trump plans to nominate a senior White House aide and loyalist to be the new top federal prosecutor in Virginia. In a social media post, the president said he wants Lindsey Halligid for the job. She served as one of Mr. Trump's lawyers during the classified document. investigation. If confirmed, Halligan would take the place of Eric Siebert, who resigned on Friday. He was investigating New York Attorney General Letitia James, but did not bring charges

against her. The Trump administration is canceling the federal government's annual report on hunger in America. For decades, the survey informed policymakers' decisions on food aid programs, which the president has also cut. The USDA called the reports, quote, subjective liberal fodder. It is expected to release the final report next month. California has become the first state to ban law enforcement officers from wearing face coverings while on duty. Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill yesterday. It forbids local and federal officers, including immigration enforcement agents, from wearing neck gaiters and ski masks. The law makes an exception for undercover agents and tactical gear. The bill comes after

immigration raids in Los Angeles and protests that followed earlier this summer. Still to come on PBS News Weekend, how the continents are rapidly drying out and putting Earth's vast freshwater resources under threat. And a new ban on artificial food dyes in West Virginia, part of the larger Make America Healthy Again movement. This is PBS News Weekend from the David M. Rubenstein studio at WETA in Washington, of the PBS NewsHour, weeknights on PBS. The planet is drying at an unprecedented pace, presenting a critical threat to humanity. That's according to a new study published in the journal Scientific Advances.

Researchers found that continental drying is having profound global impacts that threaten water availability across the globe. For part of our tipping point coverage, I spoke recently with Abram Lustgarten, Climate Investigations editor at ProPublica and began by asking him why so much of the earth is drying out. It's a mixture of climate change and a massive overuse of water resources by people that appears to be drying out the continents, according to a new study out of Arizona State University. And it basically found that rising temperatures are leading to less precipitation in certain places and faster evaporation from both the soil and from rivers and surface waters. at the same time that over pumping of groundwater aquifers is quickly depleting the resources that are

held in those underground reservoirs. Who's driving this problem? It's difficult to parse out the difference between climate change as in effect and the human over pumping of groundwater, but those are the two factors. And of course, you know, it's the emissions from the burning of fossil fuels that is driving the rising temperatures on the planet. And so that is really contributing to a water loss or a water reportion. across the globe. And the groundwater pumping is driven by individual use, by farmers, by

corporations, by cities around the world. It is becoming the fallback kind of bank account, if you will, of water resources that people and groups are turning to as their surface waters are diminished or as droughts deplete those surface waters for a shorter period of time, people are looking to those underground reservoirs and pumping more, pumping faster, exploring deeper. And the study uses NASA satellite images over the course of 20 years to track the evolution of land that's drying out. Can you walk us through mechanically how that works, how those satellite images were able to capture this change? It essentially measures changing mass in the spinning Earth, changes in the Earth's rotational orbit. So it can measure how much volume is in the ice caps on the poles and how much water is underground and then changes in that mass.

And over the last 20 years, it's allowed researchers to be able to tell the difference between one type of changing mass and another. So now, really, for the first time, these researchers are using that gray satellite data to get a sense of the Earth's total water supply and then to distinguish between how much of the loss of that water supply is from melting glaciers from climate change, for example, and how much is from something like groundwater depletion. What are we talking about here in terms of total water loss? And also, how has this accelerated over the past 20 years? So the researchers caution that they don't know, you know, where the bottom is, so to speak. So we don't have a precise measure of how much fresh water there is to work with. But what we do know is that the accounts that we're working with are quickly being withdrawn. So we can see that the rate of drying that they measured has quickly accelerated just over the last 10 years or so since 2014.

They've been measuring for 22 years. They've seen that rapid depletion from the very beginning, but it has intensified and accelerated just in the last 10 or 12 years. And so that's particularly alarming. It's something that led them to write in their paper that this issue is a critical and emerging threat to humanity. What do we know about where this is affecting the globe? Is it happening more in certain parts of the world,

or is it pretty evenly distributed? The study found that drying places are getting dry. faster than wetting places are getting wetter, and it found that those drying regions are much, much larger than the places that are getting increasingly wet. And those drying regions are spread across every continent. There are substantial drying regions, which the researchers now describe as mega regions that constitute much of the southern United States and into Mexico and Central America. There is a mega drying region that they identified that covers pretty much the whole of Europe and into the Middle East and includes parts of North Africa.

Africa. And again, a large swath of South Asia is also part of these mega drying regions. And what those mega regions constitute is the merging of places that already were known to be losing water or suffering from drought, but they used to be finite or distinct places. We used to think, for example, of the southwestern United States as being particularly dry, which it is and suffering from climate change, which it is. But until recently, we didn't understand that that drying region was spreading across the whole southern part of the country and is extending down into Mexico and into Central America and that it's becoming one large drought plagued or drying out region. How much are we able to connect this phenomenon we're seeing around the world with the impact

on the inhabitants who live in these parts of the world? Are we seeing this play out in real-world implications right now? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the water loss that this research identified is mainly occurring in mid-latitude regions, which is where most of the population of the planet resides. And the researchers identified water net loss in 101 countries. And those 101 countries happen to be home to about 75% of the planet's population. So about 6 billion people live in the regions that are on balance losing access to fresh water. Abraam Lustgarten, climate investigations editor at ProPublica. Thank you so much. Thank you. Earlier this year, West Virginia became the first of a number of politically conservative states to ban artificial food dyes.

It's part of a larger movement known as Maha, or Make America Healthy Again, an effort championed by health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. We went to the Mountain State to see how this new law is playing out. Hey, E.B., do you want to help me? At Danielle Ellis' house, dinnertime is a family affair. And here's your coconut aminous, okay? Five-year-old Evie works the skillet, dad Josh serves, and all the kids clean their plates. Mealtime at our house can be a little crazy, but it's fun. We try to keep the kids' foods interesting and fine and healthy.

The small business owner and mama four prepares meals that are healthy, homemade, and full of color, just not artificial ones. That's particularly important for six-year-old Nathan, who loves trucks and dancing and has Down syndrome. For Nathan, having Down syndrome makes him more susceptible to toxins in general, and I can't control the medical ones that he has to receive throughout his lifetime, so I make sure he has a good base of nutrition. That good base of nutrition at home is tested at school, where it can be hard to resist all the tempting treats in the classroom. There's always all these celebrations where they're bringing in cupcakes, and there's all kinds of food dye in that.

And I didn't want Nathan to be exposed to that. The governor of West Virginia, Patrick Morrissey, doesn't want anyone in his state to be exposed to it. Let's start with no more dyes and dangerous additives in the schools. This past March, he approved a ban on seven artificial dyes. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., attended the official announcement and credited supporters of his Make America Healthy Again movement, or Maha, for helping to pave the way for the new law. I want to thank the Maha moms who got me into this office, and President Trump was giving me free reign to do anything I need to do to make America healthy again. Kennedy said he believes food dyes are the root cause of many of Americans' health problems.

It's very clear the dies that Governor Morrissey is banning. All of them are linked in very, very strong studies to ADHD and to cancers. Dr. Asa Bradman co-authored one of those studies focusing on the effect of food dies on the behavior of children. The overall findings from these studies support an association between intake of artificial food colors and changes in behavior in the children. What gaps, though, still remain in our understanding of the link that you just laid out? I think where we need to have more research is to better understand the impacts of exposure on changes in neurodevelopment. It may be that children, for example, that are already diagnosed with. with ADHD that an additional exposure to a chemical that impacts, say, brain function could

exacerbate that. But the data on that is not clear. West Virginia's food die ban went into effect for schools in August and will extend statewide in 2028. That's when the FDA is also aiming for a nationwide phase out of these same dyes. The trade group representing the country's biggest food and beverage makers told PBS News weekend, its members are planning to voluntarily cut dies before those deadlines. But in West Virginia, the food challenges run deeper than dies. West Virginia is also one of the hungriest states in the nation, and some experts say that it's not a bad thing to ban some artificial dies, but that it shouldn't distract from more underlying problems like inequitable access to safe and healthy foods.

I think that the state is really looking to do a lot of things to make food healthier for folks. But I think it's a little bit misguided. Rhonda Rigombe is a health and safety net policy analyst with the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. There are a lot of food deserts and a lot of other things that make preparing healthy meals really difficult.

And in a lot of places, foods with guys are the ones that are accessible to people. And so I think that this may harm food security in the short and long term as we focus on what's in food rather than accessibility to food itself. Cindy Kirkhart helps West Virginians access food every day. She's the CEO of Facing Hunger Food Bank, which serves people across Appalachia. You see the big variety of cars. Every one of those cars has a story, and it has led them to sit in line and wait for food.

We met her at a mobile pantry event about 45 minutes from Danielle Ellis's house. Here, drivers lined up hours in advance to receive free groceries, including fresh meat and produce, along with some shelf-stable goods containing preservatives and food dyes. How would you characterize the level of need right now? Very high. Folks who are food insecure operate from a position of not so much thriving, but surviving. Indeed those high needs, Kirkhart says she's lost critical federal support since President Trump returned to office.

Reductions to the Department of Agriculture's Emergency Food Assistance Program, which helps low-income Americans cut deep. When the initial cuts were announced, in April, we were expecting 16 truckloads of food. Eleven of them got cut. That's 330,000 pounds of food. We're picking up the three famous. those one in the back seat or the chum. Back seat. All right. Kirkhart says the new food die ban will make it harder for her to help people, especially those without access to full

kitchens. Microwaveable meals and frozen foods often have artificial dyes. If Kirkhart has to remove them from her list, she'll have less to hand out to folks who are in desperate need. I love the movement toward healthier food, but let's bring everyone along with us. Yes, let's make that move, but let's figure out what we can replace those items with. 61-year-old Bill Bell agrees. He was among those lined up for groceries. I mean, it's just didn't to the point of where the dyes and the food, the sugars. I mean, they're just getting into telling basically what you can eat and what you can eat.

It's getting to be ridiculous at the grocery stores and other thing, and so just, needs a little extra help. I'm ready. Danielle Ellis's family has also felt the economic pinch. She says feeding her family high quality, artificial dive-free meals takes creativity. I even had a friend that would give us eggs, and at the time I was actually a nursing mom, and so I donated milk to her baby. So we traded milk in my saying.

She understands not everyone can put that much effort into buying and bartering for their food. The food is out there, and it breaks my heart that not everybody has the resources or connections, for lack of a better word, to know where to find additional food choices that are healthy. But she says West Virginians are starting to demand better options, and the food die ban is an important sign of that. I've started seeing even recently, like at Walmart, that they are offering die-free options, that they're offering non-GMO and organic options. We're voting with our dollars every time we go to the grocery store. And at the grocery store, those dollars tend to be in the hands of moms. The Maha movement has largely been driven by moms. Yeah, yeah.

Would you say you were Maha before? Yes, I've been on a Maha journey for about the last 15 years. Just didn't label it. She says she's all in when it comes to healthier foods, but she's not sold on all of President Trump's agenda. You know, my son has Down syndrome. I've seen him cut funding to some of the programs that would help Nathan, an adult and that scares me but I support the make America healthy again movement like all parents Ellis knows her children will face plenty of challenges on their

own but for now she's helping to guide them through the food that goes on their plates and that's our program for tonight I'm Allie Rogan for all of my colleagues thanks for joining us Have a good week.