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

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

Tuesday on the News Hour, President Trump rails against immigration and efforts to combat climate change during a speech before the UN General Assembly. A man arrested for trying to assassinate Trump at his Florida golf course last year is convicted on all charges. Plus, we sit down with the first bishop in the U.S. appointed by the first American pope to discuss issues facing the nation. 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. I'm the Navazas on assignment. On the news hour tonight, Your countries are being ruined. President Trump rails against immigration and efforts to combat climate change during a speech before the United Nations General Assembly. A man arrested for trying to assassinate the president at his Florida golf course last year is convicted on all charges. And we sit down with the first bishop in the U.S. appointed by the first American Pope to discuss some of the greatest issues facing the nation today. There's great hope, and it begins with us. It begins as we are and how we live out our lives. Welcome to the News Hour.

President Trump announced a dramatic shift in U.S. policy on Ukraine today in New York City. He previously suggested Ukraine would have to give up territory to make peace, but today he said the country could win back all its territory, which has been occupied or annexed by Russia since 2014. The president made the announcement on social media after delivering the first speech to the United Nations of his second term. As Nick Schifrin reports, the president's speech focused less on U.S. leadership and more on what he believes the rest of the world is getting wrong.

Today, to an international community that doubts but still desires U.S. leadership, President Trump delivered a dark disparagement of global priorities. I'm really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell. With that broadside, President Trump took his closed border vision global, and U.S. officials tell PBS NewsHour the U.S. will push to change 75-year-old international refugee laws. Asylum seekers would have to claim protection in the first country they entered. Asylum would be temporary, and the host country would arbitrate the asylum case. We have to solve the problem, and we have to solve it in their countries, not create new problems in our countries. And President Trump combined that criticism with the denigration of decades of efforts to combat with the scientific community judges an existential threat to the planet. This climate change, it's the greatest con job ever perpetrated.

on the world. I love the people of Europe, and I hate to see it being devastated by energy and immigration. This double-tailed monster destroys everything in its wake, and they cannot let that happen any longer. But much of Europe is more focused on war in Ukraine, and today President Trump announced a major policy shift. He wrote on true social, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back in its original form.

The original borders from where this war started is very much an option. Russia's also been escalating inside of NATO. Last week, three Russian jets flew within 10 miles to the Estonian Parliament. And the week before that, an unprecedented number of Russian drones flew deep into Poland, whose Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, vowed not to let it happen again. We are ready for any decision aimed at destroying objects that might to pose a threat to us. For example, Russian fighter jets, if they violate, for example, fly over our territory. But I also need to be absolutely certain, and I won't elaborate on this point,

that all allies will treat this in exactly the same way as we do. Today, President Trump agreed. Mr. President, do you think that NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft if they enter their airspace? Yes, I do. The other war that has dominated this week's discussion, is Gaza, where today much of Gaza's city is a shell of itself and mostly a ghost town. After an exodus of Palestinians ahead of an Israeli assault. Today, President Trump met with Arab and Muslim leaders to discuss the day after the war in Gaza. This is my most important meeting. I've had important meetings. I don't want to assault anybody that we met with. We met with 32 meetings here. But this is the one that's very important to me because we're going to end something.

could have probably never started. President Trump always mixes the policy with the personal, and today said despite targeting Brazil with tariffs would meet President Lula for the first time next week. He liked me. I liked him. But if you, and I only do business with people I like, I don't, when I don't like him, when I don't like him. President Trump did not like that he and the First Lady had to walk up a broken escalator

or that his teleprompter was at first not prompting. I can only say that whoever's operating this teleprompter is in big trouble. After those jokes, he blasted and blamed the U.N. for migration. The U.N. is supposed to stop invasions, not create them, and not finance them. But with U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, President Trump tweaked his tone. Our country is behind the United Nations 100 percent. I think the potential of the United Nations. United Nations is incredible, really incredible.

But the UN champions global cooperation and human rights, and tonight the White House called the President's speech, quote, a powerful rebuke to the destructive globalism that has fueled endless conflict and chaos around the world. Jeff. And Nick, take us back to the President's statement on truth social about Ukraine. How different is that from what he said, and why is that so significant? It is very significant. In fact, President's the land. Zelensky was just speaking to reporters, including our producer, Sonia Kopolev, and Zelensky said, quote, this is a, quote, big, big shift. And I want to take you back to that message that the president

posted because he talked about that Ukraine will, could, could win back all of its original forms. So let's look at the map. In 2014, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, which still is U.S. policy as part of Ukraine. After that annexation, they then invaded eastern Ukraine. And, of course, 2022, the full-scale invasion has pushed farther into eastern Ukraine and southeast Ukraine. So look at that map. You've got not only Crimea, but all the way up to parts of Harkiv in the northeast of Ukraine, some 18 to 19 percent of the country. Up until today, President Trump has been very dismissive of the idea that Ukraine could somehow resease all that territory or, frankly, even get back any of that occupied territory, let alone its original form.

which would include Crimea. And senior officials have repeatedly said that there is no military solution that Ukraine can even dream of to try and get back that territory. So the fact that he is saying that after a meeting with Zelensky, after meeting Europeans today, that Ukraine could achieve that back on the battlefield is really a fundamental shift. We don't know the specifics, but it's a fundamental shift. At the same time, Jeff, the message ends this way. I wish both countries well will continue to supply NATO weapons to NATO for what they want to do with them, quote, good luck to all. President Trump at the same time is suggesting he's a little bit washing his hands of this conflict.

We'll see how the policy evolves. Jeff, you saw President Trump there still promising to send American weapons to NATO via NATO to Ukraine, but the bottom line, a fundamental shift for how President Trump at least sees the future of Ukraine itself and what it can achieve on the battlefield. Jeff. Nick Schifrin, reporting from the U.N. General Assembly, Nick, our thanks to you. Thank you. In the day's other headlines, President Trump scrapped a planned meeting with the top two Democrats in Congress as a potential government shutdown looms. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffreys were set to meet with the president this week to discuss their demands for health care funding in any deal to keep

the government open. In a lengthy post online, Mr. Trump called those demands unsurious and ridiculous, and that a meeting couldn't possibly be productive. He did leave the door open to future talks, but only if Democrats, in his words, get serious about the future of our nation. Later in the day, Senator Schumer said if it comes to a shutdown, President Trump is to blame. Donald Trump has shown the American people he is not up to the job. It's a very simple job. Sit down and negotiate with the Democratic leaders and come to an agreement. But he just ain't up to it.

He runs away before the negotiations even begin. If the GOP-led Congress and the president can't agree on a spending plan by next week, much of the federal government would then shut down starting Wednesday, October 1st. Dozens of the nation's historically black colleges and universities are preparing for an influx of funding after a massive donation from billionaire philanthropist McKenzie Scott. She's giving $70 million to UNCF. That's the nation's largest private scholarship provider to students of color. The donation is part of UNCF's ongoing effort to raise $1 billion to equalize funding disparities that HBCUs face in comparison to other universities. UNCF says Scott's donation will be used for a pooled endowment, which aims to provide $10 million to each of the 37 UNCF member colleges.

In southern China, authorities closed schools and businesses and flights were canceled as the region braces for the impact of Super Typhoon Ragasa. Local weather officials say the storm is packing maximum sustained winds of 120 miles per hour as it moves west across the South China Sea. It's due to make landfall tomorrow local time. Workers in Guangdong province stacked sandbags to protect homes and businesses. State media is reporting that around 370,000 people have been relocated. In Hong Kong, shelves were emptied as residents and businesses prepare for the storm's arrival.

All the elderly today have moved out of here. I couldn't. I'm a business owner. I am younger and I am here to protect my shop. It's my property. try all I can to minimize the loss. I'm betting on luck. This typhoon is coming directly to us. We have to be careful. Ragasa is one of the strongest typhoons in years and has already left a trail of destruction in its wake. In the Philippines, at least three people were killed

and more than 17,000 have been displaced amid flooding and landslides. And in Taiwan, 30 people went missing after heavy rain caused a barrier lake to overflow. Dozens of others were injured across the island. On Wall Street today, stocks ended lower following a recent winning streak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 88 points on the day. The NASDAQ dropped more than 200 points. The S&P 500 also ended lower. And Major League Baseball says that robot umpires will be in regular use next season. Humans will still call balls and strikes, but teams will be able to challenge two calls per game. They'll get more for extra innings. Those challenges must be made by a pitcher, catcher or batter, and teams will retain their challenges if a bid is successful.

The automated ball strike system, or ABS, has been tested in the minor leagues for the past few seasons and appeared in major league spring training games this year and at the All-Star game. And scientists revealed details today about a new type of dinosaur that was found in the hills of Patagonia, Argentina. The Joaquin Raptor Casale is part of a group of dinosaurs known as megaraptors. They roamed across what's now South America, Australia, and parts of Asia some 70 million years ago. The 23-foot-long predator appeared to have died with an ancient crocodile bone snared in its mouth. And that discovery could help scientists understand the creature's diet and where it falls on the timeline of evolution. And they named it Joaquin after the son

of one of the team members who found it. Still to come on the news hour, but the Antifa movement is and is not, President labels it a terrorist organization. Why some TV stations are choosing not to air Jimmy Kimmel's return to late night. And a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist weaves together a personal and historical take on gun violence. This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubenstein studio at WETA in Washington and in the west from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. Ryan Ruth, the man charged with trying to kill then presidential candidate Donald Trump at his Florida golf club last year, was convicted on all five charges by a jury this afternoon.

The counts include attempted assassination, assaulting a federal officer, and possession of a firearm. Ruth could face life in prison when he sentenced in December. Reacting to the verdict, President Trump thanked the judge and jury and said Ruth was, quote, an evil man with an evil intention. and Attorney General Pam Bondi said the prosecution, quote, illustrates the Department of Justice's commitment to punishing those who engage in political violence. David Fisher has been covering the trial for the Associated Press and joins us now. David, thanks for making time for us. So Ruth never fired at President Trump and was stopped before he could.

So walk us through how this plot was disrupted and how that fact shapes not only the charges, but the jury's verdict. Yeah, so he was camped out along the fence line of Trump's doll force there. in West Palm Beach. The former president, future president, was making his way. He was going from the pit hole to the sixth pole. The Secret Service was a hole ahead of him. And as they were doing their sweep of the area, one of the Secret Service agents spotted Mr. Ruth in the bushes. A confrontation ensued. Mr. Ruth ran away while the Secret Service agent fired three or four times at him. And as we understand it, he tried to stab himself as the verdict was read. He was quickly restrained. What do we know about that incident and how that

behavior could affect his sentencing? Yeah, so the jurors took about two hours to deliberate before they came back with a guilty verdict on all five pounds. You know, as the jurors were being escorted out of the courtroom to leave, Mr. Ruth grabbed the pen and began to make a stabbing motion at his neck. It didn't look like he punctured the skin. There was no blood. or anything, but Marshall's in the courtroom, rushed him almost immediately, grabbed him and took him out. And at that point, his daughter, who was also in the courtroom, who's been in the courtroom for the past two weeks, she began yelling first at her at her father to, you know, not do anything, to not hurt himself. Then she started yelling at presumably the marshals or even

the judge, not to hurt him, not to do anything. She called the entire trial, and that it wasn't fair and that he never hurt anyone. And then eventually she was exported out of the courtroom as well. And before that moment, I think it's worth noting that this trial featured an unusually lopsided presentation. Prosecutors called dozens of witnesses while the defense only called three. And Ruth chose to represent himself. How did that self-representation shape the way the trial unfolded and the evidence that the jury

saw? Yeah, I mean, the prosecutors called a total of 38 witnesses over seven days. days, you know, I mean, hours and hours of testimony there. Meanwhile, since Mr. Ruth was representing himself, the cross-examinations were relatively short compared to what an experienced attorney might do. And then when it was time for Mr. Ruth to present his case, he had three witnesses that took about three hours to get through. One witness was a firearms expert, and the other two witnesses were character witnesses. And as we said, sentencing is set for December. David Fisher with the Associated Press joining us tonight from Fort Pierce, Florida,

outside that courthouse. Thanks again for your time. We appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. follows a weekend memorial for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed at a college campus event less than two weeks ago. Top Republicans have been calling for increased scrutiny of Antifa since Kirk's assassination, even though so far the man accused of shooting Kirk has no publicly known link to the movement. We're joined now by Luke Baumgartner, a research fellow with George Washington University's program on extremism. Thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me. So what exactly is Antifa? How do you describe its core beliefs and tactics? So simply put, Antifa is just short for anti-fascist. If you want to get more

simple than that, it just means the opposition to fascism. Now, their belief system has a fairly wide range of encompassing ideologies, mostly on the political left, and they encompass anarchists, socialists, communists, and a lot of people in between there. So how is it organized, if at all, are there actual leaders or networks for the administration to target, or is there that just a misconception? No, it's a widely held misconception, especially those who are looking to try and target this idea of Antifa. There is no hierarchical organizational structure. It is primarily a movement and an ideology. And there are no leaders, there are no assets, there are no bank accounts or revenue streams to go after either. Given all of that, is it a genuine security

threat? Is it a political scapegoat or something in between? I would classify it more. more as a political scapegoat, honestly. There have been incidents of political violence linked to far-left extremists in the U.S. in recent years, but the overwhelming majority of the data points towards far-right extremism being a much more serious threat to national security. Tell me more about that.

In the last five, six, seven years, or the last 10 years more broadly, we have seen a rise in left-wing or left-aligned political violence. You can look at the shooting at the Congressional baseball game as one or the recent attacks on a ice facility or the CBP station down in Texas. But data bears out time and time again

from the University of Maryland, from the Center for Strategic International Studies, as well as my own work at the program on extremism, that political violence in the US has overwhelmingly been attributed to those on the far right end of the political spectrum. President Trump signing an executive order designating Antiphany

as a domestic terrorist organization, a label that doesn't exist in U.S. law, what legal weight, if any, does that carry? Not much, to be honest. Like you said, there is no codified prohibition for domestic terrorist groups in the U.S. that does not exist in U.S. Penal Code the way it would for foreign terrorist organizations

like al-Qaeda or ISIS. So the full brunt and the full weight of the U.S. government and law enforcement agencies can exactly come. come down on it like they would for others. And as I mentioned before, there's no bank accounts, there's no revenue streams, and there's no well-known or at least well-documented

proof of funding. So does this move then give the administration cover to brand and prosecute virtually anyone it opposes as Antifa? I would say so, and it's been, and that label's been used in the past, any time there's been any sort of resistance to far-right extremism.

or any of the administration's policies, you know, the 5150 protests, the No King's protests, the Black Lives Matters protests, that was all always labeled as Antifa. And it's this nebulous concept that's been, you know, put into the minds of the administration that these are the enemies. Luke Baumgartner with George Washington University's program on extremism. Thank you for being with us. Of course. The Trump administration moved ahead today on its overhaul of H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers.

A 30-day public comment period is now set to begin on the president's proposal to require a $100,000 fee for anyone applying for the visa. The move is sparking concern, as employees and companies that rely on the workers, especially those in the tech sector, race to understand the consequences. Our William Brigham has more. That's right, Jeff. More than half a million people are currently living and working in the U.S. on H-1B visas. They work in so-called specialty occupations that require at least a bachelor's degree. The president argues that by increasing the cost of these visas,

companies will be incentivized to hire more American-born workers, though some economists worry will stifle innovation and cut off a vital supply of new talent. For more, we turn to two different perspectives on this. Justin Wolfers is a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, and Roneal Hira is an associate professor of political science at Howard University. Gentlemen, thank you both for being here. Ron, to you first, before we talk about the efficacy of what the president is trying, I want to talk a little bit about the pros and cons of this visa program.

I know you support what the president is doing here because you believe these visa programs. This one in particular is flawed. Explain why. Sure. The first thing to understand is this is a guest worker program. And these folks are guests in the as long as they're working. And like any guest worker program, they've got to be really tightly regulated, so controlled, to ensure that workers are protected.

So the workers are, it can be easily exploited because they can be paid left. And they're also indentured to their employers because the visa is actually held, their work permit and legal status in the U.S. is held by the employer, not by the worker themselves. So they're really cheaper and indentured workers competing for a head-to-head with U.S. workers. That distorts the labor market. It's bad for those guest workers who are being underpaid. but it's also bad for the U.S. economy and for U.S. workers who are competing with them.

Because it drives down the wages for U.S. workers, and it also eliminates many job opportunities for those workers. And Justin Wolfers, what is your response to that? I mean, this is what the president argued in his EO. It said that the H-1B program has been deliberately exploited to replace rather than supplement American workers with lower paid, low-skilled, Do you believe that that's true? Let's just look at the rules of the program. You can't bring in the guest worker at lower wages. You have to pay them according to what they call the local prevailing wage for that occupation.

So if there are reasons to have concerns about this program, and I think there's always ways which we can improve things, it's about actually making sure we enforce the rules. But this program, let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. This program has a lot of benefits. Let me explain it this way. economics is like baking a cake. You put a whole lot of ingredients into the mixing bowl, and we bake our economic cake. Sometimes, though, in America, we discover there's a particular ingredient we don't have enough of.

And so what we do is we instacart that ingredient, which is we offer an H-1B visa, so we can keep baking that beautiful cake. If you can't bring in someone who has that ingredient that we need, what are we going to do? We could quit baking. That's going to hurt Americans. You could keep baking, but if you can't get the ingredient, you need, you could use an inferior ingredient. Well, that means we're going to bake worse cake. Or instead of baking the cake, we could just buy it, which in this context would mean importing

it from abroad rather than making it America. So the point is, if this program works as it's meant to, it helps all of us bake the economic cake that keeps all of us productive. Ron, what is your response to that? That there is a fairly well-documented shortage of STEM workers in particular, and that the American tech sector does want to keep growing and innovating, and it needs these workers, and sometimes those workers have to come from abroad. So part of the problem with the discussion here is that even very bright people don't understand what the actual rules are. Now, in terms of wages, the prevailing wage sounds like a market wage, but it's actually artificially set by the labor department. And it's set

way below what an American worker would earn. And so what happens is employers can hire these workers at below market wages, bypass the U.S. labor market. They're not doing after they can even replace their U.S. workers, which happens quite frequently. There's a huge business model around that. And so what you're doing is you're really undermining everything that Professor Wolfers says is in the program, but isn't actually in the program if we actually look at the rules. and the facts that are there. And so this isn't really about innovation. They're certainly very talented people who come on, the H-1B.

Maybe that's an aspiration, but in fact, that part of what the proclamation, the executive order that was issued, what to fix that prevailing wage, to raise those wages very significantly, to be much more selective, to ensure that these workers are actually, that are being important,

the guest workers are actually filling real labor market gaps. where there aren't U.S. workers available. The idea that there's a systemic or a broad-based shortage of STEM workers is just false. It's pretty straightforward to look at if you have a shortage of any good or service, let's say we had egg shortages a while back. What you would do is you would see the market prices going up, so the price of eggs went way up. You'll get wages for STEM workers, for scientists, engineers, technologists.

In fact, wages are flat or declining. They've actually been doing worse than many other professional occupations. And so we have record numbers of domestic students who are graduating in engineering and computer science. And by the way, their unemployment rates are at record levels. The vast majority of H-1B workers are coming in either at entry level or junior-level positions, competing directly head-to-head with our American graduates who can't find. jobs right now. Justin, a question about the efficacy.

Do you believe that raising the fee for these visas will have the intended effect, meaning more American workers are hired? So the White House's theory of the case is you charge a high price for something and people do less of it, which is to say fewer firms will apply for H-1B visas. There'll be fewer skilled workers into the United States. The question is, what next? One way to think about this is maybe those skilled workers from abroad are a substitute who take the jobs of Americans. That's the White House's theory.

A different theory is when I work at my computer, I'm working with a machine. That machine makes me more productive. It's a compliment. Maybe if I were working with a high-skilled STEM worker from abroad, that would make me more productive. And that would actually lead to greater employment of Americans. Look, this isn't a question of economic theory. What we can simply do is look at the data. what has happened in the past when the government has cut back on H-1B visas.

The very best available research says it has almost no effect on the employment levels of Americans. But the more that we allow foreign scientists to come in and help turbocharge innovation, in fact, it turns out that the wages of college educated Americans tend to rise and the wages of non-college educated Americans tend to rise but not as much. The idea here is if you get enough of the right skills, you can make everyone in the firm collectively more productive, and therefore they get paid a bit more. All right. That is Justin Wolfers and Ron Hira. Thank you both so much for being here. A pleasure. Thank you. Jimmy Kimmel returns to late night.

tonight. The reversal comes less than a week after ABC suspended Kimmel's show following his comments on the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. But two of the largest station ownership groups that Sinclair and Nexstar say they won't carry the program on their ABC affiliates nationwide. Their boycott had been the driving force behind Kimmel's initial suspension, which had sparked protests and concerns about free speech, including hundreds of celebrities signing on to an ACLU letter supporting the late-night host. For more, we're joined now by Dylan Byers. He's senior media correspondent at Puck.

Dylan, welcome back to the NewsHour. Thank you for having me. So before we get to this decision by some affiliates to preempt Kimmel's show, help us understand what ultimately convinced Disney CEO, Bob Eiger, to bring Jimmy Kimmel back. Well, the short answer here, Jeff, is extraordinary pushback.

Extraordinary pushback from the creative community in Hollywood, from the political community, ranging from former President Obama to Senator Ted Cruz, even from Disney CEO Bob Iger's own predecessor, Michael Eisner. So it was internal. It was external. And look, we should add the caveat here. From the beginning, Disney was telegraphing to me, to other reporters, that they had every intention of finding a resolution and bringing Jimmy Kimmel back to the airwaves. But I think the speed with which they did it had a lot to do with the pressure that they were. were receiving for this decision because it really did become an issue of free speech for a lot

of people. It became an issue about whether or not Disney was going to capitulate to pressure from the FCC or at least pressure on its affiliate partners who would then pass that pressure along to him. At a certain point, that became untenable for Bob Eiger and it became untenable for Disney and its brand. So even though Disney has returned the show to the airwaves, you've got these two major broadcast groups, the conservative-leaning Sinclair broadcast group. This is the country's largest ABC affiliate owner. They say that they're not going to air Kimball's show. Next star, another affiliate owner says it will continue to preempt it. What are their stated reasons? And based on your reporting, what are their real reasons? Yeah, well, look, there's stated reasons are that they

are going to continue to monitor the situation and continue talking to Disney because they are uncomfortable with what Jimmy Kimmel had said on air, which is ostensibly the cause for all of this in the first place. But you cannot extract the broader context here, of course, which is that by Brenden Carr, by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr going out and saying what he said initially, putting pressure on these affiliate groups to then put pressure on Disney, they all, they have a vested interest in appeasing the FCC, right? Next Star has a $6.2 billion acquisition on the table that requires FCC approval. Sinclair, as you mentioned, is conservative leaning and does want to stay in the good graces of this administration. Now, at the end of the day, it's their

business, and they can run it how they want to. But I think it's pretty clear how transactional this has been for all of the businesses involved. And what does it reveal about the balance of power between the networks and the affiliate station groups that carry network programming? Well, it reveals a lot. I mean, if you look at Next Star and Sinclair taking Jimmy Kimmel off the air despite, despite Disney doing what is doing, you're looking at basically a quarter of the markets in the country, 25%, give or take, of the markets in the country where ABC is broadcast, where Jimmy Kimmel's show will not be broadcast. That is significant influence on the balance sheet for Disney. So that is a significant amount of power. Now, I would say in terms of what leverage the FCC has over Disney, you know, in many ways, the most vulnerable media organizations are the ones with broadcast licenses, because that is where the FCC can exert its leverage. That is where it can, you know, wield not just carrots but sticks. And that's not true for the broader media environment, generally speaking. So we as a country, I think right now, are reckoning with this

intense pressure campaign from this administration against legacy media outlets. But the ones that are really vulnerable here, again, are those ones with broadcast licenses? You have other media outlets that have been sued by the Trump administration, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, they have far more power to stand up against this administration in a way that if you're Disney and you've got theme parks that you want all Americans to go to and you've got, you know, streaming services that you want every American with a kid to sign up for, you're just a lot more exposed to this pressure by virtue of the FCC's control over broadcast licenses. And with the late show with Stephen Colbert being canceled by CBS once his contract expires in May,

now Jimmy Kimmel facing preemptions, as we've discussed, what does this all signal about the future of late night and broadcast television more broadly? Yeah, well, look, the dirty little secret here is that broadcast television generally is not on a strong foot. And I don't think that the future of media, if you just look at the rise of digital platform, social media platform, streaming services, whether you're talking about the YouTube's or the TV, TikTok. The future of media, news, satire, whatever you want, that future does not necessarily exist on broadcaster cable television. So there is a degree to which this entire conversation, we can't ignore the backdrop, which is that late night television is in decline. You look at

Jimmy Kimmel, a Jimmy Fallon, a Stephen Colbert. That is unquestionably the last generation of sort of marquee names, celebrity names, who are hosting late night shows if late night exists at all. But less that sounds like a dire future for anyone, I would also suggest that there will be plenty of satire out there in the media environment. It just might not be happening on television. Dylan Byers, senior media correspondent at Puck. Dylan, thanks again for your time. Thank you, Jeff. Bishop Michael Pham, recently appointed by Pope Leo as the first U.S. bishop under his papacy, has emerged as a new voice of the Catholic Church.

Through his own story of survival as a child refugee from Vietnam, he stepped into the national spotlight, showing up at immigration courts to support families caught in legal limbo in the current crackdown. Amman Nawaz spoke with him earlier this month and provides a closer look at how he's turning his ministry into a mission. It's a role Bishop Michael Pham says he never expected to fill. All I wanted it to be was to be a good priest, to serve God's people, to serve the people in our society today. And that's what I wanted the most is to be part of people's lives. And it's so fun and joyful.

Now leading the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego and its 1.3 million members, FAM was the very first bishop in the U.S. appointed by Pope Leo. But his path to this post was an unlikely one. Fleeing communism in 1970s Vietnam, he and his siblings landed in a Malaysian refugee camp when he was just 13. I'm there in Malaysia, walking along the beach, thinking, this is it. This is the way I'm going to live without my parents around. That was an emotional for me to realize that.

Years later, through an American refugee charity, the family was reunited in 1981 during winter in Minnesota. I went out of the house, didn't realize that it was a cold winter. I had my short on and my t-shirt, and with a bicycle outside, I went out, I hop it on, and I was riding it within five minutes. It was so cold. I said, that's it. That's the initiation into a new country. Eventually settling and studying in San Diego, FAM was ordained as a priest in New York.

FAM was ordained as a priest in 1999, serving a diverse community that shares a 140-mile border with Mexico and commissioning this statue to reflect that. This is who we are. A multicultural church. That matters to you. Oh, yeah, very much so. And that's who we are here in this diocese. But who we are as a nation, he says, has changed.

I know you've recently said the climate today in America is very important. different to the climate that you arrived in as a child back then. What did you mean by that? When I came in as I grew up in the 80s, there's so much of openness to welcome to me and to people that I've seen and known. Today it's a challenge. People live, look at you at different eyes, in a sense, how much they're willing to welcome to. This summer, as immigration enforcement ramped up, part of President Trump's promise of mass deportations, FAMM decided to act, leading clergy to the San Diego federal courthouse, where immigrants were often arrested by ICE agents at their hearings.

We continue to walk with the people, accompanying with the people, and whatever we can do as the law allows, we will work with the people. We are called to journey with the people and to care for the people from the periphery. And these are people are in need. And we need to act upon what we say. I just can't sit and not doing anything about it. about it. So long is the value of God or the lives that people had opposed to the gospel values,

then we need to speak up. And do you see some of these policies as going against your moral values? As a church teaches that every country has the right to set up their borders, and rightly so. But how they treat the people by deporting them or without the respect and dignity of the human person. That is really against the values of the gospel. Pope Leo, who's been described as the first modern immigrant pope, has urged the public to see migrants and refugees as messengers of hope. And he's been criticized by supporters of President Trump

for post-teammate before he became Pope, critical of the president and vice president's policies. The church today, FAMM says, must act on its beliefs. So he's convening bishops to discuss how to respond to the administration's immigration policies. And we want to learn from different diocese what we've been doing and what work and how it can be effective and moving forward.

And when you say effective is the goal to change. policy to change minds? We hope the policy had reformed immigration. It would be lovely. As Bishop, he's also still reckoning with the sexual abuse crisis that's rocked the Catholic Church. Many survivors are still seeking accountability, and I know the diocese was put into bankruptcy proceedings

by your predecessor. Back in 2007, there was a nearly $200 million settlement for over 140 lawsuits. 140 lawsuits, but there are new lawsuits since California law changed to reopen the statute of limitations and new claims have been filed. How do you, as the leader now, how do you ensure accountability? Well, first of all, I feel for the survivor just to sit and hear from the cyber survivors shared their experiences is very painful and we recognize that and it was

terrible things that what the church had done and how do we move forward from this can you pledge to people who came forward for some of these hundreds of new claims that there will be accountability that they will see justice well as the church you know we had set a policy that's zero tolerance we want to make sure that people trust us and believe in us. That trust, he says, can only be restored through the actions, not just the words of the church he now helps to lead. And I think there's great hope. And it begins with us. It begins as who we are and how we live out our lives. and it will trick or out to others, certainly at work and at home and in our community.

There's great hope, but we need to do more. toll of violence and inequality. In his new book, the MSNBC contributor blends deeply reported journalism with personal narrative to show how racism, trauma, and violence cut lives short and how families can carry that loss across generations. I recently spoke with him about the book A Thousand Way to Die, the True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America. Tremaine Lee, it's great to see you. Likewise, thanks for having me. Of course. You begin this book in a deeply personal place, your own heart attack at the age of 38. Why decide to start there and really frame this narrative through your own brush with mortality? Before the heart attack, which was seven

years ago this summer in July, I was writing a book about the true cost of gun violence in terms of actual dollars as a way to speak to the broad cost that families and communities touched by gun violence pay every single day. But that day when I had my own brush with death with that heart attack, it really began a journey to really widen the aperture on what violence really is. And so I describe in the book, you know, a blood clot and a bullet are very different things, but both have the ability to take, twist, and shred a life. And both come from these impulses, these very American impulses, in the way we've experienced trauma and the way we continue to carry it,

especially the way violence manifests in our bodies. On that point, I mean, you also write about your uncle's murder and the long shadow it cast over your family. How did that loss really capture the generational reality of how trauma can get carried forward? Yeah, I think in one way, it was wild for me to really get my arms around the idea that I exist because of an act of gun violence. My great-uncle Cornelius was 12 years old when my great-grandparents and my grandmother lived in rural Jim Crow, Georgia. And his murder sent my family into the waves of the great migration, where later on, my grandmother would be my grandfather and the rest would be history. But the idea that we've carried this burden of violence from the Jim Crow South and the kind of violence we saw from white supremacists and Jim Crow segregation that followed us up into the north with the hope and expectation that we'd be beyond the specter of violence, but time and again we'd find it.

And so I think my family, just like so many other families in this country, hoping and seeking better days and better opportunities, have still had, you know, violence and the bullet nipping at our heels. Well, tell me more about that, the ways in which trauma and violence really imprint on the body. Yeah. So there's this thing called epigenetics. And the idea is that when you experience certain kind of violence and trauma, that it recodes a little bit of your DNA and you pass it on. And so there is a lot of research being done around that idea. But I also think there's a psychic residue, how we respond to trauma and also pass that trauma on. It's inherited. The way you raise your kids, the way you move through society, your hyperveillance. your expectation that around any corner that violence could strike again. And what does that do in limiting your dreams and your possibilities, the imagination of what life can be, and for black people in this country who've experienced it again from kind of the white supremacist violence to the violence of community, but also the violence that's requisite, the systemic violence that's required before a trigger is ever pulled?

What does it mean to have lack of access to quality health care or food or water, right? What does it mean to every day have that, that pang and the anxiety and anxiousness? That's a whole form of violence, born often from the bullet. That in many ways is the most provocative part of this book. You trace the ways in which the gun has long been used to keep black communities in control. Walk us through that history. Yeah. I think one of the biggest discoveries that I made in writing this book, and it could also be a book in of itself, is even before enslavement.

the relationship between black people and guns goes back to the time of enslavement in Africa. And so many of us understand that enslaved people were some byproduct of wars and that Europeans just took advantage of this waiting labor force. When in reality what we see, what the research shows is that as gun technology is rising, European powers were applying regional African powers with guns and munitions to foment more unrest and create more war to create the enslaved. And so the idea that our bodies, our physical selves, were bartered for weapons, bound to them in some pretty real ways,

and that we were forced out of Africa with the muzzle of a flint-locked rifle our backs, and then we enter the Western world where there will be more white men with guns, where in certain communities, in certain counties, but white men were required to be gun owners to patrol black people, and these were the earliest predecessors of the police department. And so bound to the gun from Africa, the psychic residue of what that means to be forced out of your homeland, to arrive in an alien foreign world, right,

and experience the violence that keeps this society bound and keeps us in our place. There's zero way to me that we haven't carried that on. How did you come to understand through your reporting for this book, acts of violence, not as isolated incidents, but as part of a systemic crisis? Yeah, I mean, in some ways,

when you look at the nature of the way we've been forced into certain communities, and I think this is probably how we arrive at the modern context of gun, violence in urban communities is that as people were fleeing the South, generations, millions of people into the waves of the great migration, finding solace in Baltimore and Chicago and D.C. and New York, cordoned off in specific communities that were drawn, they have red lines drawn around them. So decreasing the value of your homes, decreasing the opportunity to build

wealth, who you could buy and sell from. In certain places, there was these things called a deed of covenants, that it was written into the deeds that if you were a white person, you could not sell to a black person. So all this compounding violence of economic dispossession, creating the perfect ecosystems for violence to occur. And it wasn't just in Chicago. It was in D.C. and Baltimore and Camden, New Jersey, throughout this country.

And that level of disinvestment, again, creates the perfect formula for folks to not just experience the violence of the gun, but all that turmoil within. What do you want readers to take away from this book in terms of the connections among generational trauma, systemic racism, health outcomes? I think look no further than the president's words in discussing the threat of occupying certain cities.

And he said, it doesn't matter if it's five years or ten years. These people are born to be criminal. There's this idea that black Americans are somehow inherently violent. And to me, that means inherently other, right? And so I think when we look at the news and we see another young black man shot and killed in the news, and we see their family members crying and wailing and pleading for Jesus or a policy or someone to help them, them, that we understand this is part of a broad continuum that we've experienced from the beginning.

But for black people in particular and families who've experienced this, I think it's important to name the trauma and point to the trauma so we can begin to unpack it ourselves. Because without the information in this book and with those gaps in history and the gaps of understanding, I think some of us also fill in the blanks and say it must be us, but it's so far beyond us. You know, Tremaine, I believe, and I know you do too, that any conversation about black trauma has to make space for its counterbalance, which is joy and resilience.

And you shine a light on resilience in this book. Where do you find the most hope in the communities that you cover? You know, I think it's with the youth. On one hand, it's so sad that we use so many young people to gun violence. But when we have the precarity of life in one hand and the preciousness and joy in the other, that's a very difficult balance. But the pain hurts so bad because of the joy

and because of the opportunity and possibility. This book really began when my daughter asked me after my heart attack, Daddy, how and why you almost die? And I chose to be vulnerable and open and honest with her. And in telling that story to her, it's giving her the agency to write our own narrative. And while there are a thousand ways to die, there are even more ways to live. And so I'm hopeful, even though we lament the condition that young people find themselves in and the violence they experience, I do believe that they will carry us through. And it's like, it's a wonder of how many of us were killed in this country as black people. But it's even more of a wonder how many of us survived and what it takes to survive.

And so even though this book is weighty, it shines a light in a very dark place. At the end of the day, I think it's empowering that we have the agency to tell our own stories. Tremaine Lee, I always enjoy speaking with you. The book, A Thousand Ways to Die, the True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Jeff. And that's the NewsHour for tonight. I'm Jeff Bennett for all of us here at the PBS NewsHour.

Thanks for spending part of your evening with us.