PBS News Hour - Full Show - September 4, 2025 – PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

Thursday on the News Hour, Health Secretary Kennedy is scrutinized by a Senate committee over his controversial vaccine policies and the shakeup at the CDC. The legal and diplomatic questions about military strikes on boats suspected of carrying drugs bound for the U.S. Plus, the parents of a Texas flood victim open up about their loss and the state legislature's plans to avoid future disasters. 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. And I'm Omna Vaz. On the news hour tonight. Do you think the vaccine did anything to prevent additional deaths? Again, I would like to see the day. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is scrutinized by a Senate committee over his controversial vaccine policies and the shakeup at the CDC. A new war on drug cartels, the legal and diplomatic questions, about military strikes on boats suspected of carrying drugs bound for the US.

And the parents of a Texas flood victim open up about their loss and the state legislature's plans to avoid future disasters. Camp is wonderful and fun, but just like most places we send our children, there has to be training, know what to do in the event of an emergency.

Welcome to the NewsHour. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was grilled during a contentious three-hour hearing before the Senate Finance Committee today. Senators pressed Kennedy on his stance toward vaccines, questioning whether his actions have restricted access and undermine trust in longstanding public health data and institutions. The hearing turned combative at times with Kennedy clashing directly with several lawmakers. The confrontation came just a week after his controversial decision to fire the director of the CDC. Lisa Desjardin leads our coverage now from Capitol Hill. In a small Senate hearing room, you are a hazard to the health of the American people. High stakes fireworks. I never said, you're making it.

I'm twisting. Yeah, you are. Secretary Kennedy. You are being dishonest right now. As health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. faced his first hearing since being in the job. And since Kennedy upended the Centers for Disease Control, firing his own choice as director and triggering senior resignations. What we're going to do is reorganize CDC,

but also we've already righted the ship at NIH and FDA at CMS. And we are going to end the chronic disease epidemic. It was perhaps the most combative hearing of Trump's second term so far. You are sitting as Secretary of Health and Human Services. How can you be that ignorant? You're so wrong. You're interrupting me, and, sir, you're a charlatan. That's what you are. Kennedy argued he's remaking a broken agency, particularly lashing out at pandemic recommendations.

The people at CDC who oversaw that process who put masks on our children who closed our schools are the people who will be leaving. But senators from both parties sharply rejected parts of his premise, saying Kennedy is the one breaking the system, pushing him on his understanding of basic facts. Do you accept the fact that a million Americans died from COVID? I don't know how many died. You're the Secretary of Health and Human Services. You don't have any idea how many Americans died from COVID? I don't think anybody knows. Do you think the vaccine did anything to prevent additional deaths? Again, I would like to see the data and talk about the data. Kennedy later said it was possible that millions were saved by the vaccine, but mostly he displayed deep skepticism of

vaccines, a belief now having direct consequences around the country. Some national drugstores limited or blocked access to COVID shots after new federal guidelines came out. Florida's trying to end vaccine rules for school kids. Three states are forming their own vaccine pact and many other states are in limbo. Senators, including Republicans, expressed alarm about the lack of data they see. to support Kennedy. You said you're going to empower the scientists at HHS to do their job. I'd just like to see evidence where you've done that. I've grown deeply concerned. The public has seen measles outbreaks, leadership in the National Institute of Health questioning the use of MRNA vaccines. If we're going to make America healthy again, we can't allow public

health to be undermined. Kennedy and senators used the same words, but often spoke confusingly different languages. I'm not anti-vaccine. Saying I'm anti-vaccines, like, saying I'm anti-medicine. I'm pro-medicine, but I understand some medicines harm people. Some of them have risks. GOP Senator Bill Cassidy, himself a doctor and the key vote who confirmed Kennedy, raised a specific example of concern from a friend. My wife has stage 4 lung cancer. She is one of the people that COVID vaccine actually helps. Thanks to the current mess at HHS, CVS is unable to get her vaccine. I would say effectively we're denying people. Democrat Elizabeth Warren pressed on this.

I'm not taking them away. Everybody can get access to them. No, they can't walk into a pharmacy the way they could last month and get access to a It depends on the state. Another flashpoint, Kennedy's decision to fire the entire board which makes vaccine recommendations known as ASIP. Kennedy said he made the move to reduce what he calls conflicts of interest. You replace them with non-experts.

skeptics and conspiracy theorists. As a result, this critical advisory panel has lost scientific credibility. What we did is we got rid of the conflicts of interest when we put, we de-politicized and put great scientists on it from a very diverse group. Through it all, the secretary remained defiant and insistent. You are citing data that you won't produce to the public. You're just making things up. You're making things up to scare people. And it's a lie. But multiple Democrats said Kennedy is so dangerous, he must resign. I'm asking the questions for Mr. Kennedy on behalf of parents and schools and teachers all over the United States of America who deserve so much better than your leadership.

This hearing is adjourned. The hearing ended with none of the fire quenched, few questions resolved, and Kennedy returning to the job. At the Capitol for the PBS NewsHour, I'm Lisa Desjardin. In that hearing today, Secretary Kennedy made a number of questionable or misleading claims about vaccines, COVID, and the health of Americans. Joining us now to unpack some of those is Dr. Richard Besser. He's former acting director of the CDC and the Obama administration, now president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. And for the record, we should note the foundation is a funder of the News Hour. Dr. Besser, welcome back to the show.

Thanks for joining us. Great to be here. Thank you. So Secretary Kennedy made a big claim in the hearing I want to ask you about. He said that America is the sickest country in the world. Take a listen to how he put it. If we don't end this chronic disease, we are the sickest country in the world. That's why we have to fire people, the CDC. They did not do their job.

This was their job to keep us healthy. Dr. Bester, the U.S. spends more than any other nation on health care. Is it accurate to say we are the sickest country in the country. the world? Well, I don't think I would say we're the sickest country in the world, but I would agree with the Secretary that we're not getting the return on the investment. And a lot of that has to do with where we're spending our money. We're spending our money on health care services rather than on public health and other approaches to prevention. He cites as part of the argument there. What he says is a huge spike we've seen in the country in chronic disease. He actually

made the claim that CDC data shows some 76% of Americans have a chronic disease. That number caught a lot of people's attention. Is that true? Well, I would have to go back and look at that number and see what he's putting in there. But we have real challenges in America related to chronic diseases. It's one of those areas where I think if the secretary were someone who really believed in using science and evidence to address chronic diseases, we could make progress in the area of nutrition. That's an area where our WJF, our foundation, has done a lot of work. There's a lot that could be done to make sure that children in our schools were eating

healthy school lunches, that schools had kitchens so they could actually cook real food for kids. But that's not what I'm hearing the secretary talk about. Could that number be as high as 76 percent of all Americans, though? What are we talking about when we're talking about chronic diseases? Well, I don't know what he's talking about there. You know, when the secretary was being confirmed, one of the things he said is that he's not a scientist and you shouldn't look to him for scientific information.

This is one of those situations where I would need to fact-check that statistic. But I wouldn't argue that we have real issues in America with chronic disease, and it's something where if you pull together the best and the brightest around science, we could make real progress. There's another heated moment. You heard Lisa report on there in the tape when Democratic Senator Mark Warner asked Secretary Kennedy about how many people died from COVID. And Kennedy answered, I don't think anybody knows that. Do we know the answer to that, Dr. Besser? We do. You know, when it comes to public health and data, you use all kinds of different tools to try and estimate what those numbers are. And we know that in the United States, over a million lives were saved. due to the COVID vaccines. And we know around the world, millions of lives were saved. So for him to say we don't know, well, you may not know an exact number,

but when you're talking about millions, that's pretty incredible. And it's one of the big accomplishments of the first Trump administration was how quickly we got so many safe and highly effective vaccines to the people here in the United States, as well as due to the research from the National Institutes of Health for people around the globe. Just to underscore that point on the efficacy of the vaccines, because the secretary was asked repeatedly about whether or not the COVID vaccine saved lives. He wouldn't say definitively, and he said he wanted to see the data and take a look at the data. What do we know about the efficacy of the COVID vaccine? We know that the COVID vaccine is extremely safe and extremely effective.

You saw differences in effectiveness based on which vaccines. The MRI vaccines, the technology that the secretary is putting an end to, were extremely effective. And one of the beautiful things about those vaccines is how easy it was to manufacture them at a very large number and how those could be adapted very quickly when there were new strains of COVID that were coming on the scene. So very safe, very effective. No vaccine is 100% protective, though. And that's why I'm so deeply concerned about the climate, the secretary's, is creating. We just saw in Florida, the Surgeon General, say that vaccines for children going to school

are optional. That creates a terrifying situation, and it is because of the climate that the Secretary is creating in our nation. Dr. Bester, say more about that climate you mentioned. Big picture here. We just saw probably the most contentious hearing for an administration member so far this term, even Republican senators expressing some concerns about what evidence, what science, backed up some of Secretary Kennedy's decisions. What does all of that say to you? Well, you know, one of the things that gave me some hope in that hearing was that we were seeing bipartisan condemnation of some of the things that Secretary Kennedy is doing.

Senator Cassidy, who chairs the Senate committee that oversees the department, really called out Secretary Kennedy around his unwillingness to celebrate the achievements of the first Trump administration in creating such effective COVID-19. vaccines. He lifted up the experiences of people in his state who were having trouble getting vaccinated. And he said, this is not acceptable. And we need to see more of that because it really falls on the Republicans to say that this is unacceptable. And the actions this Secretary is taking are not going to respect state borders. They're not going to respect political party. They're going to hit everyone in our country in a very serious way. And is the president of the Robert

Johnson Foundation, Dr. Richard Besser, joining us tonight. Dr. Besser, thank you. It's always good to speak with you. Thanks very much. The day's other headlines begin in the nation's capital. President Trump's nominee to fill an open seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors said he would not resign his position at the White House if confirmed to the role. Stephen Myron told the Senate hearing today that he would instead take an unpaid leave of absence from his post as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors. He also pledged to uphold the independence of the Fed.

If I'm confirmed to this role, I will act independently, as the Federal Reserve always does, based on my own personal analysis of economic data, my own personal analysis of the effects of economic policies upon the economy, and act based on my judgment of the best economic policy possible. His refusal to step away from his White House job raised sharp criticism among Democrats who were already concerned about his ability to stay free of the president's influence. Every claim he makes and every vote he takes

will be tainted with the suspicion that he isn't an honest broker, but instead is Donald Trump's puppet. Administration officials are hoping that Myron is confirmed in time for the Fed's next meeting on interest rates later this month. That comes as the Justice Department has reportedly opened a criminal investigation into Fed Governor Lisa Cook. President Trump has been trying to fire Cook for cause amid accusations of mortgage fraud, which she denies. The criminal investigation was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. In Florida, a federal appeals court paused a lower court's order to wind down the Everglades' detention.

Center known as Alligator Alcatraz. In a two-to-one ruling, the judges said it wasn't in the public interest to close the facility while the Trump administration appeals. Last month, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered the center closed by the end of October. Separately, an appeals court is pausing restrictions on President Trump's use of force in Los Angeles. Earlier this week, a separate judge found Trump's deployment of military forces to the city was illegal and barred them from doing police work in the state. The administration appealed that ruling. Today's decision maintains the status quo in L.A. as the appeal plays out.

The District of Columbia is suing the Trump administration to end its deployment of the National Guard in the city. Washington, D.C.'s Attorney General, Brian Schwalb, said the deployment of more than a thousand troops amounts to an illegal military occupation. A White House spokesperson fired back, calling the case, quote, nothing more than another attempt to undermine the president's highly successful operations to stop violent crime in D.C. It comes as President Trump threatens to send federal forces to more American cities, including Chicago and Baltimore. The Trump administration is taking its tariff fight to the Supreme Court.

Officials want the justices to reverse a lower court decision that ruled most of President Trump's tariffs are an illegal use of emergency powers. That ruling left the tariffs in place for now. But the administration argues the decision, quote, casts a pall of uncertainty upon ongoing foreign negotiations that threatens the president's trade agenda. Government officials are hoping the High Court will take up the case and hear oral arguments by early November.

The president of Northwestern University, Michael Schill, is stepping down amid ongoing tensions between the Trump administration and the nation's elite schools. In April, officials slashed nearly $800 million in research funding for the Illinois-based school, citing claims of anti-Semitism. A year earlier, Schill was criticized by House Republicans over Northwestern's response to pro-Palestine demonstrations on campus. In a statement, he acknowledged those challenges, writing, it's critical, quote, to protect the university's research mission and excellence while preserving academic freedom, integrity, and independence. In Gaza, health officials said today that more than 64,000 Palestinians have now been killed in the Israel-Hamas war.

The latest strikes killed at least 28 people, mostly women and children, as Israel intensifies its operation in Gaza City. Israel's military says it already controls 40 percent of the area. This follows a statement from Hamas, saying it would free all 48 hostages, still holds both dead and alive, but only if Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza and in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, among other terms. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office dismissed the offer as a spin, saying the war would continue until Israel's own conditions are met. Turning now to Afghanistan, the Taliban government says that the death toll from this week's

earthquake has spiked to more than 2,200 people. Hundreds more bodies have been recovered since the 6.0. magnitude quake shook a remote eastern part of the country late on Sunday. The quake leveled villages in the mountainous Kunaar province, where many people lived in simple homes of mud and wood. The treacherous terrain has hindered relief efforts, requiring the deployment of helicopters and airdrops to reach survivors. French President Emmanuel Macron says 26 Western nations have pledged to send troops

to Ukraine the moment the fighting ends with Russia. France hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky today for meetings with European leaders and U.S. Special Envoy, Steve Wickhoff. President Trump dialed in for a virtual meeting of what's known as the Coalition of the Willing. It's a group of more than 30 of Ukraine's allies. Afterwards, Macron said that a post-war presence by land, air, or sea would serve as a lasting security guarantee for Ukraine. This force does not have the will or the objective of waging

some war against Russia, but it is a force that must guarantee peace and provide a very clear strategic signaling. It will be deployed within the framework of a ceasefire, but it aims to prevent any new major aggression. It's unclear if and how the U.S. will participate. Both Macron and Zelensky say they're working with Washington to finalize a plan. On Wall Street today, stocks ended higher ahead of tomorrow's closely watched monthly jobs report. The Dow Jones Industrial average jumped 350 points on the day. The NASDAQ rose more than 200 points. The S&P 500 also ended with solid gains. Still to come, on the news hour, the parents of a Texas flood victim advocate for better safety at summer camps. The fashion world honors the

life and legacy of the late designer Giorgio Armani. And a tiny chef leaves a big impression online. This is the PBS NewsHour from the David M. Rubinstein studio at W.E.T.A. in Washington. And in the west from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. The Trump White House is signaling a new war on drug cartels. Today, the U.S. designated two Ecuadorian gangs as foreign terrorist organizations. And on Monday, the president released video of what the administration says was a strike on a drug-running boat off the coast. of Venezuela, where the U.S. Navy and now has ships deployed. Nick Schifrin takes a closer look at what happened and at the administration's case

for both the policy and the legality of this renewed focus on drug trafficking. In the Southern Caribbean, a new war on drugs. What has for years been a law enforcement mission, now a military operation, that President Trump calls the most effective deterrent. They were hit, obviously. They won't be doing it again. And I think a lot of other people won't be doing it again when they watch that. The Trump administration has deployed to the region warships and thousands of sailors and Marines that are actively pursuing drug smugglers, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said today.

But this time, we're not just going to hunt for drug dealers with a little fastboats and say, let's try to arrest him. No, we're going to, the president has said he wants to wage war on these groups because they've been waging war on us for 30 years and no one has responded. For decades, the U.S. has responded to the region's supply of drugs through interception. I'm not going to go! The Coast Guard has legal authority to pursue and arrest smugglers. And the Drug Enforcement Agency and other civilian agencies work with regional partners

to target supply routes and production in remote drug labs. But the Trump administration argues fentanyl alone has killed nearly 200,000 Americans in the last three years. More Americans killed in war over the last six decades. And the Trump administration has labeled drug cartels foreign terrorist organizations. And Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the leader of a specially designated global terrorist cartel. The Trump administration says this week's strike killed 11, quote, narco-terrorists who belonged

to Trendaragua, which the administration says is connected to Maduro. But today, Venezuela's justice minister called the strike unjust. What the United States presented as a strike against drug traffickers was nothing more than an illegal massacre in international waters. violated international law. And to discuss this shift in U.S. policy, we get two views. Retired Rear Admiral William Baumgartner commanded U.S. Coast Guard operations in the southeast U.S. and Caribbean, and before that was the Coast Guard's Judge Advocate General Chief

Council, the service's top uniform lawyer. And Michael Brown had a 32-year career as a special agent at the Drug Enforcement Administration, where he operated in Latin America. He's now the director of global counter-narcotics technology. at Rigaku Analytical Devices, a company that makes devices that can identify unknown chemicals and precursors of drugs.

Thanks very much. Welcome both of you to the news hour. Michael Brown, let me start with you. This new approach at the Trump administration to use the military to target these fastboats and these cartels in the region, is that the right approach? Well, I think given the escalation in the use of fentanyl,

which is now killing an estimated 100,000 individuals a year, roughly 200 individuals a day. The threat by the cartels has been a terrorist threat for some years in my opinion. I think now we have an administration that understands that threat, that it surpasses criminal activity of a criminal organization and that they are now acting as a terrorist organization. So, you know, the implementation of the kinetic strike to combat maritime go fast traffic, I think now is an appropriate reaction to the threat that the United States faces. Admiral, do you believe this is an appropriate response?

to the threat that cartels pose? I think the military can certainly supplement law enforcement efforts. We've been doing it for decades and decades. In the Caribbean, it's worked very effectively when we've had enough platforms in the coordinated law enforcement method. Enough platforms is what we need. If we're going to commit more platforms with the military, let's do that, but let's do it within the bounds of the law.

So within the bounds of the law, Mike Brown, you just heard the Admiral say, what's wrong with keeping this within a law enforcement approach? just with an addition of military presence, not necessarily these military strikes. Well, you know, I've been doing this for 32 years, and I worked in Central and South America, I've worked in the Caribbean. You know, this is about degrading the abilities of the major cartels who are working in conjunction with Madero in Venezuela, who's also been designated as a head of a narco state. So these mitigating efforts are to break down and destroy the drug supply chains,

the cocaine supply chains that fund the operations. of the Sinalo cartel and the New Holiesco Generation Cartel. So this is just one part of a much larger kinetic action, asymmetrical approach, which needs to be taken to counter the growth and evolution of narco-terrorism that we are now facing. So, Admiral, what's wrong with that? If, for 30 years, the U.S. has taken a law enforcement approach,

why not add this military kinetic action? All we did with this military kinetic action is blow up a boat. We don't really know what was on it. We don't have a clear, legitimate reason for attacking this particular vessel. In a law enforcement approach, we obviously do. Plus, we get prisoners that provide us intelligence so that we can further develop what's going on. Here, this vessel was on the high seas. It wasn't close to the United States.

We didn't have any legal justification for acting on that particular vessel. We didn't use any of the frameworks that we've developed over the last 50s. years to approach this in a lawful manner. Let's take a listen on the question of whether this was legal to Secretary of Defense Pete Heggseth. Every boatload of any form of drug that poisons the American people is an eminent threat. And at the DOD, our job is to defeat eminent threats. A foreign terrorist organization poisoning your people with drugs coming from a drug cartel

is no different than al-Qaeda. And they'll be treated as such. So Mike Brown, are these boats imminent threats? And should foreign terrorist organizations as designated by the Trump administration be treated like al-Qaeda? Well, that's the whole purpose between the president's new designation of FTO's foreign terrorist organizations, in which he outlined the top narco threats to the United States. And if these organizations are so engaged in that activity supplying narcotics, which are poisoning American citizens, then those actions need to be taken.

We took the same actions against al-Qaeda and against ISIS. I spent a year in Afghanistan, and they were very effective in degrade. the drone strikes were very effective in degrading the capability of those organizations to threaten America. You know, we don't want the narcotics to get to America. That's the whole point. Strike them when they're in international waters, when they're in the jungles of Colombia, and preventing them from coming to the United States. Admiral, could you respond to Secretary Hex-Seth statement? Every boatload of any form of drug that poisons the American people is an imminent threat, and they will be treated like they are al-Qaeda. Well, first of all, they're

not al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda set forth to kill American citizens. As much as we despise what the Karkal are doing and what their narcotics may do when they get to the United States, they are providing something that is being demanded by the American public. And we should be addressing demand. We certainly should be doing that. But to liken this to al-Qaeda and what Al-Qaeda wants to do to our people, it's just not the same at all. And the designation is a foreign terrorist organization is not to start it does not justify lethal force against them wherever you find them whenever you want to find them it is to cut off material support to those organizations it's a very well-defined statute as to what it means and it does not mean open season and kill

anybody you think might be a member of one of those organizations michael brown you're not a lawyer but can you respond to that do these authorities really allow the u.s. military take the strike? I think absolutely. You know, in terms of, you know, the trafficking organizations, especially to send a little cartel, they have weaponized fentanyl. They know that fentanyl is killing thousands of Americans every, every year. And yet they continue to distribute that narcotic. And so, you know, we have a very short time to act within the U.S. to mitigate this threat in order to save more American lives. Admiral, you were the top uniform lawyer in the Coast Guard. If you had the ability, or if the military had the ability in years past, when you were in that

position to take this strike, what would your advice have been? Well, first of all, I'll tell you, I was the commander in charge of doing these operations in the Caribbean. That's what I did in my last three years in service. So forget about whether my legal advice would be. I was the commander that would have taken charge and directed the law enforcement action in the Caribbean. We absolutely would not have launched a lethal strike on a vessel when there was no warning to the vessel. We didn't even know for sure who was on the vessel. We didn't know the destination of the vessel and hadn't enacted any of the multiple procedures that we have for interdicting, identifying, and appropriately addressing the

vessel. Michael Brown, do you have faith that the intelligence was good enough to take that strike? Well, based on my understanding of the investigation and what I've obtained from my own source is this was a targeted strike. The information was specific. They knew the vessel was carrying narcotics, the video of the vessel. I've seen thousands of these videos. This vessel was definitely carrying a large sum of narcotics to somewhere in the Caribbean. You know, DEA has sources of information which could identify hundreds of these vessels. We just didn't have the resources to interdict them. Now we do. And this sends a very clear message to anyone who's willing to transport narcotics from Venezuela to the Caribbean or to the United States that once

you enter international waters, you will be seen as a terrorist organization and you will be treated as such. Admiral, just take on that last point, the point of deterrence. The president has made this point. It does this deter future drug smugglers from trying to go from Venezuela or the Caribbean up to the United States? Well, I think what it deters, it deters the rest of the international community from cooperating with the United States. The United States has been a leader in building coalitions. We've done that on legitimacy. We've done that on the rule of law. This will deter all of those nations from cooperating with this and will do great harm to our ability to address this problem. Will it deter an individual vessel from launching and trying to make a trek?

I don't really know if it will. Admiral Bill Baumgartner and Michael Brown, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. It's been two months since at least 135 people were killed when flash floods roared through the Texas Hill country. Last night, state lawmakers passed the first round of legislation in response. The bills, which focus on improving camp safety, faced opposition from some Texas camps who said the new safety requirements would put them out of business. But among those killed at Camp Mystic during the July 4th floods was eight years. year old Virginia Hollis. I spoke with her parents, Lacey and Lars Hollis, yesterday ahead of those

votes. It's a very challenging time for our family. Sleep is very hard to come by. Weeks after losing their firstborn daughter, Lacey and Lars Hollis remain haunted by the night that flooding claimed her life and 26 others at Camp Mystic. What these sweet little girls had to go through that evening is just very painful, and we're taking it day by day. Eight-year-old Virginia, Big Sister to Sienna, was spending her first summer at the camp on the banks of the Guadalupe River. She was so excited to play her, her, for the talent show at camp to get to play her, the piano song that she composed.

She was like, Mommy, I bet nobody else. whose eight has a piano song that they've written themselves. You know, thinking about, she says a little girl of eight, you know, how brave and strong she could be playing piano for strangers just because, like, she wanted to share music with them. At least for me personally, it's really given me the strength to testify, to drive Austin, to meet with people and tell them, you know, about her and why this is important.

On July 4th, storms pounded the Texas Hill country. Some 550 campers were at Camp Mystic, many asleep in cabins in high-risk flood zones. The National Weather Service reportedly sent a severe flood alert at 1.14 a.m. Campers weren't evacuated until at least 2 a.m. No child should be sleeping in a floodplain, detection. We're an incredibly advanced civilization, and we're a incredibly advanced civilization, and we need backup redundancy with our technology when there's thousands of lives at stake.

Training, you know, camp is wonderful and fun, but just like most places we send our children, there has to be training, know what to do in the event of an emergency, know where to go, not necessarily, not shelter in place in a flood, but where are we all going and the campers and the counselors need that type of training at camps? These things that we thought were in place because they're in place in our schools. They're in place everywhere that has the care of children except apparently summer camps.

She was eight. She was barely 50 pounds. I think she was 48 pounds. And in her sweet 18-year-old counselors, You know, they did their best. I know they did. I know they did everything they could. Virginia's body was found more than a week after the floods.

Hundreds in her hometown of Belleville, Texas, lined the streets to say goodbye. My daughter, Virginia, our first child named for me and for my grandmother, died sometime after the rain and river flooding that happened in the early morning hours of July 4th. We don't know when she died. We don't know how. We really don't know anything. We may never know. Lacey and Lars turned their pain into purpose. Just 47 days after Virginia was killed,

testifying before a Texas Senate committee. My anguish is as infinite as the stars in the sky and equally as unfathomable, searing, blazing, exploding, a black hole of pain. Watching you both testify before the Texas Senate, I was in awe of your strength and your grace. And it really stuck with me, Lars, when you chose to play a clip of a piano song that Virginia wrote. She composed herself. It's called Virginia's song.

You said it was the last song she ever composed, and you played it so everyone could hear. And I just wondered why, why you wanted people to hear that song? A wise person once said, when someone you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a treasure. And I believe that was a treasure that Virginia left us all. And it was a gift that we could all enjoy. I felt compelled to share it with me with the world. For me, hearing her song sometimes is difficult because she was working on other compositions.

She just never got to finish them. And she wanted so badly to be a composer and a pianist and also a cowgirl, a teacher and a mom. But it just really brought home to me, like, every single one of them had wonderful things to share with the world and all of those things were snatched away from them

and from the world you know and I'm so grateful that we have that song but also part of my heart breaks for all the other songs you know that all the music that died with her

and it's just like it just one little snapshot of what we're missing for the rest of our lives. It's a challenge, but that's what we're here today to advocate on behalf of these 27 beautiful souls that needlessly lost their life. And we want to ensure that there's not a 28th child next summer We've got folks in the audience who's girls died at Camp Mystic. Thank you for your patience. This bill has been expedited, but less than two months from the date of the occurrence, because we want to make sure that another camper, another child will not go to sleep,

subject to the horrors that you've had to endure. With that, members, urge passage. 122 eyes and 8 nays, Senate Bill 1 passes to third reading. Their message was heard. Hours after we spoke, Texas legislators passed Senate Bill 1, known as the Heavens 27 Camp Safety Act. Among other things, the act will ban camp cabins within 1,000 feet of a floodway border, require camps to prepare to evacuate after a National Weather Service flood warning, and require evacuation routes be displayed in youth camp cabins.

Another bill, House Bill 1, also passed last night, requiring overnight kids camps to develop emergency plans and submit them to the state. Both bills head to Governor Greg Abbott to sign into law. I, for one, have that hope that that will be what happens and that there won't be a 28th child that suffers a preventable death at a Texas camp in the future because there wasn't enough. preparation. There wasn't enough training, that there wasn't a big enough or the right response. That there wasn't detection. That won't. I have that hope now. The world of fashion has lost one of its greats. Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani has died at the age of 91. He's credited with elevating a quintessentially Italian aesthetic in his clothes

and making red carpet affairs cultural moments. Joining us now is Robin Givon, Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic and former senior critic at large at the Washington Post, where she worked for more than 20 years. She's the author of Make It Ours, Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Ablo. It's great to see you again. Nice to be here. So let's talk about Armani.

He really defined the look of understated elegance. How did his minimalist approach redefine luxury fashion? Well, I don't think we would have the vocabulary to really talk about what we now call quiet luxury without Armani. And, you know, what he really did was apply this, his sensibility for, you know, very streamlined, minimalist, neutral palate to both men's wear and to women's. But first with the men's, where he really made an impact, where he just kind of took the stuffing, like literally and figuratively, out of men's suiting. He took out the sort of the inner structure and allowed the suit jackets to have this kind of

ease and flow over the body. And, you know, it really started to kind of epitomize an era of self-made men and wealthy men. And then when those clothes appeared in American Gigolo, like, it was everything, the jig was up. Yeah. How did he reshape Hollywood's red carpet culture? You know, I think it's kind of hard for people to believe that there was a point where the stars would show up, pretty much left to their own devices. You know, in the very early days of the Oscar red carpet, most of the celebrities were sort of dressed by the costumers from the studios. And then they were kind of left to their own devices,

and there were some pretty outrageous moments. And then Armani hired a woman named Wanda McDaniel, who came in and sort of created almost a system. And Armani started dressing a lot of the celebrity. who, you know, really, I think, felt, you know, indebted to him for doing it because it allowed them to get a bit of, you know, support when they're out there on the red carpet being photographed. And he dressed them in his sensibility. So it was all about sort of the classic tuxedo and elegant evening gowns, not a ton of skin, not a lot of sheer, but very much the Armani aesthetic. At a time when so many fashion houses have been absorbed by conglomerates, Armani was still a privately, is still a privately held brand.

What was it about Armani, the man, who refused to sell? He loved his brand. He loved working. He loved being able to control the aesthetics of it down to, you know, every detail. I mean, there definitely was a period when he considered selling. I mean, he doesn't have children. And he, you know, considered selling to the large French conglomerate, LVMH. And sort of at the last minute, he decided that he couldn't do it because he really wanted to maintain the authority over sort of the destiny of the company.

And, you know, it was a really attractive company to purchase because, you know, unlike a lot of the big fashion houses that make most of the most people, of their money through accessories, shoes, handbags, fragrances, you know, all of those things. Armani was really a fashion house that sold clothing. And as odd as it sounds, like that's pretty rare. Is that why Armani, the brand, has endured in this moment of fast fashion? I think that has something to do with it. But I also think it's because the brand had such a clear and distinct vision.

that it really represented the singular point of view of one person. That, of course, is also unusual in fashion in many ways because so many houses have gone through many, many designers who try to take the so-called brand DNA and, you know, bring it to a younger and younger audience. Armani, you know, ushered this brand from its beginnings until his death. And so it was very distinct, and it also broke out of fashion to have a place in popular culture. And the other thing I think is it didn't just resonate with the 1%.

If you shop at Uniclo, if you shop at costs, if you shop at any of those sort of mass market brands that traffic in sort of elevated basics, you owe a debt to our money. Robin Gavon, always a pleasure to speak with you. Thanks for being here. My pleasure. He's a little guy with a huge following online. Tiny Chef, the Instagram sensation, who also happens to be animated, has gained millions of fans of all ages while whipping up vegetarian meals with the side of heart. Stephanie Sye has our report. It's part of our arts and culture series, Canvas. He makes a mean vegan taco without missing a beat. His DIY projects are legendary. And he loves to share beachside snaps while on vacation. In many ways, he's like any other social

media influencer, sharing the minutia of his daily life and occasionally. bearing his soul. At home. But Tiny Chef, a furry green six and a half inch tall puppet who lives in a tree stump, strikes a different cord in a sea of noise. It's not hard to see why. Don't blame yourself, Ruby. He's not cynical.

He's just so genuine and optimistic and he sees good. He just sees good. Tiny Chef is the brainchild of co-creators Rachel Larson and Oslam Ocktirk. We made it actually like we made it for us and every time we laugh about a topic or want to do this, it's because we tested on ourselves. Yeah, it kind of is true, like you kind of make something to your own taste and like you're going to hopefully speak to people who have similar taste or like the same humor and kind of get it. A lot of people get it. The Tiny Chef Show Instagram account has almost 6 million followers. Today, a team of 11 in this Los Angeles studio work to bring his universe to life.

Everything in the stop motion animated videos is custom made from the tiny sets built and designed by creative director Jason Kowalski. Everything is purely functional, you know, doors open for chef, windows open for chef. to his belongings. The first video we ever shot of Chef, this was the banjo he's playing. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It's a labor of love that started as a hobby, say Larson and Okturk. The creators met in London working on the animated film Isle of Dogs by Wes Anderson.

We're a pack of scary, indestructible alpha dogs. Larson worked on the stop-motion animation, a process which involves painstakingly manipulating physical objects to be photographed frame by frame, creating the illusion of movement. Okturk was part of the film crew. We became really good friends and we were just like, we should do our own project at some point. So that's where the seed kind of got planted. That seed sprouted in 2018, when Larson started sharing images on Instagram of tiny food

she sculpted for fun. That gave Okturk an idea. She remembered a green puppet Larson had shown her years ago. Now it's like he has to be the chef. He's perfect for it. I have to contact her and tell her we need to do a stop motion cooking show. And she loved it. And in an instant, we figured out the name, the tiny chef. Credit for the pint-sized performers' pipes is due to Matt Hutchinson, Larson's brother-in-law. He sent them his rendition of a classic by Queen. Once he sent the song, it all came together, and we were laughing and we were like, we have to animate it. So we just, like, animated him packing up a pie to that voice, which was on his phone. It was so low-fi.

Their early animations, created in a makeshift studio in New Zealand, where Larson was working at the time, took off on Instagram. We went from like zero, you know, to 20,000 or something. It was like, it was 50,000? Was it? Okay. Yeah. When Penguin offered the duo a book deal, they decided to work on their tiny green character full time. Since then, his followers have watched Chefie move to Los Angeles and score his dream job, hosting a kid's cooking show on television.

But Chef is more than that to his fans. We get a lot of messages from fans who have kids with speech impediments and say that chef has given them self-esteem. chef has made it not a bad thing and that is like very meaningful to us because we just always felt like chef is from a different place and this is his second language and we shouldn't try to hide that or fix him or do anything to him he's perfect he's relatable perhaps never more so than in this clip from June when he learned that his cooking show on Nickelodeon wouldn't be renewed Can you kill? Bloody of me?

Bye. Who hasn't felt that? The moment when he starts trying to go back to work and then it hits him? Yeah. I honestly feel genuinely bad for chef. We have more practical, logical, like, okay, what's next? Like, how do we keep going? You know, when I think of his experience of someone who just wanted to have this cooking show for so many years, it's like that would break his heart. The cancellation made headlines and the video inspired an outpouring of care and donations from his worried followers. Dionne Warwick was downright livid. Are you proud of making this thing cry? Who's in charge over there? I want a name, she posted. As for Tiny Chef, he's taking things one day at a time, playing his trusty banjo and meditating.

He's currently on a road trip, finding himself and doing an occasional interview, but only with blilly blig news organizations. Chef, I know this is your first TV interview since your show was canceled. How are you doing? Well, some not going to be. Why, things were a wee little tough day for a while, but sometimes you've got to pull yourself up by the moot-swabs, look around, little of multiple things bring your wife. But they're going to find a mixed adventure.

What did you think about the huge outpouring of support you got from your fans? But I'm just, frankly, but I don't really have to pose. Well, how much that's support from the fans made to me? I don't even call it the fans, really. They're just friends, but I haven't met you. Well, Hollywood can be tough. Do you have any advice for anyone going through similar hard times? Number one.

Seal, you know, fails. Number two, have a while. Number three, find your flesh. Number four, then don't buy you. He looks, red, thank you. Who knows what you is? If I sure don't wish us a big. While they cook up his next adventure, Larson and Okturk say chef's not going anywhere.

I think what's really important to us is really taking the next step sort of slowly, just in really making sure if we bring in another partner, that that's what we want. Right now we're just enjoying just focusing on social media, but I think chef's best chapter is coming up. I just feel really strongly in my heart that the best a chef is to come. In the meantime, the joys of Tiny Chef continue to capture our hearts. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Stephanie Tsai in Los Angeles. Bligh, Bligh. Tiny Chef has one more follower. I just followed them. What a delight.

What an absolute delight. Find your friends and on to your next adventure. Great advice for us all. Indeed. And that is the News Hour for tonight. I'm Jeff Bennett. And I'm Amman Navaz. On behalf of the entire News Hour team, thank you for joining us.