SUMMARY: Longstanding rules that prevented an individual or company from owning broadcast stations and newspapers in the same local market have been abandoned by the FCC. The sweeping changes come amid wider transformations in the media and digital landscape, and have raised concerns about their impact. Hari Sreenivasan talks to Keach Hagey of The Wall Street Journal.
SUMMARY: President Donald Trump ran on a campaign promise that he would “put America first” by pulling out of multilateral trade agreements. But for many top industries, outsourcing in the global market is essential for business, not to mention vital to Americans’ standard of living. Is it feasible in the 21st century for America to go it alone? Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports.
SUMMARY: Gwen Ifill, an essential member of our NewsHour family, our journalistic North Star, a leader both on-air and off, died one year ago Tuesday. We remember her with a conversation she had with friend and journalist Michele Norris in 2014.
SUMMARY: Amy Tan was going to write a book about writing. But what came to her mind instead were memories of childhood, reflections on family treasures, photos, documents. In “Where The Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir,” Tan explores revelations about her family and how her experiences steered her toward a life as an author. Tan joins Jeffrey Brown for a conversation.
SUMMARY: At an after-school STEM Club in Rhode Island, students are working on an engineering challenge -- because they want to be. The low-stakes, fun environment offers time for exploration when resources or hands-on activities may be in short supply during school hours, and can help sustain interest as classes get harder. Special correspondent Lisa Stark of Education Week reports.
SUMMARY: Senators raised concerns about President Trump's power to launch a nuclear war in a hearing on Tuesday. U.S. law has long dictated that only a President should carry the responsibility, but that singular authority is now being questioned. Nick Schifrin takes a look at Congress’ worries and the history of the nuclear command structure.
Nick Schifrin (NewsHour): The President has the sole authority to launch nuclear weapons. But that doesn’t mean he can launch a weapon for no reason, whenever he wants, said Duke Professor Peter Feaver, who studied nuclear command for 30 years.
Peter Feaver, Duke Professor: Where the military wakes up the President and warns him that there is about to be an attack, or that we’re experiencing an attack, he alone would have the authority to make the decision.
But in the other context, where the President is waking up the military, maybe in an extreme funk, saying, I’m angry and I want something done, in that setting, he requires the cooperation of a lot of people.
Nick Schifrin: That cooperation wouldn’t be forthcoming if his order were illegal, said retired General Robert Kehler, the former head of U.S. Strategic Command.
Gen. Robert Kehler: The United States military doesn’t blindly follow orders. A presidential order to employ U.S. nuclear weapons must be legal. The basic legal principles of military necessity, distinction, and proportionality apply to nuclear weapons, just as they do to every other weapon.
Nick Schifrin: Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin-
Sen. Ben Cardin: Do you believe that under — because of legalities, you retain that decision to disobey the commander in chief?
Gen. Robert Kehler: Yes. If there is an illegal order presented to the military, the military is obligated to refuse to follow it.
(1) violates or fails to obey any lawful general order or regulation;
(2) having knowledge of any other lawful order issued by a member of the armed forces, which it is his duty to obey, fails to obey the order; or
(3) is derelict in the performance of his duties;
shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
(Aug. 10, 1956, ch. 1041, 70A Stat. 68.)
SUMMARY: The Senate's top Republican Mitch McConnell told reporters that he believes the women who have accused Roy Moore of inappropriate actions and that Alabama's GOP candidate must step aside. While the former state Chief Justice insists he is innocent, McConnell’s condemnation comes as another woman has spoken up. Lisa Desjardins reports that voters appear to have mixed opinions.
SUMMARY: Another woman came forward on Monday to accuse Senate candidate Roy Moore of assaulting her when she was 16, sparking additional political backlash from his own party. But allegations of sexual misconduct against teenage girls haven’t seemed to shake Moore supporters in his home state. Judy Woodruff gets an update from Don Dailey of Alabama Public Television.
SUMMARY: GOP lawmakers have called for Roy Moore to step aside from the Alabama Senate race amid allegations of sexual misconduct toward teens. How does that tension fit into a larger party rift? John Yang talks to Matt Schlapp of the American Conservative Union and Karine Jean-Pierre of MoveOn.org, about what’s at stake with the special election and how the GOP tax reform plans are shaping up.
SUMMARY: Seven years since the financial crisis shook Greece, many young people lack opportunity or hope for the future. Austerity and financial insecurity have pushed the birthrate to all-time lows, and members of the younger generations are leaving Greece for better opportunities elsewhere, leaving experts worried about Greece’s very existence. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports.
THE JACKSONVILLE SHERIFF’S OFFICE issues hundreds of pedestrian citations a year, drawing on an array of 28 separate statutes governing how people get around on foot in Florida’s most populous city. There is, of course, the straightforward jaywalking statute, barring people from crossing against a red light. But in Jacksonville, pedestrians can also be ticketed for crossing against a yellow light, for “failing to cross a street at a right angle,” for not walking on the left side of a road when there are no sidewalks, or alternatively for not walking on a sidewalk when one is available.
The sheriff’s office says the enforcement of the full variety of pedestrian statutes is essential to keeping people alive in a city with one of the highest pedestrian fatality rates in the nation. The office also says the tickets are a useful crime-fighting tool, allowing officers to stop suspicious people and question them for guns and or drugs.
However, a ProPublica/Florida Times-Union analysis of five years of pedestrian tickets shows there is no strong relationship between where tickets are being issued and where people are being killed. The number of fatal crashes involving pedestrians, in fact, climbed every year from 2012 to 2016, the most recent years for which complete data is available.
What the analysis does show is that the pedestrian tickets — typically costing $65, but carrying the power to damage one’s credit or suspend a driver’s license if unpaid — were disproportionately issued to blacks, almost all of them in the city’s poorest neighborhoods. In the last five years, blacks received 55 percent of all pedestrian tickets in Jacksonville, while only accounting for 29 percent of the population. Blacks account for a higher percentage of tickets in Duval County than any other large county in Florida.
Blacks, then, were nearly three times as likely as whites to be ticketed for a pedestrian violation. Residents of the city’s three poorest zip codes were about six times as likely to receive a pedestrian citation as those living in the city’s other, more affluent 34 zip codes.
Tickets for some of the less familiar statutes were issued even more disproportionately to blacks. Seventy-eight percent of all tickets written for “walking in the roadway where sidewalks are provided” were issued to blacks. As well, blacks accounted for 68 percent of all recipients of tickets issued for “failing to cross the road at a right angle or shortest route.”
John Fitzgerald Kendrick, a truck driver, got out of his truck after encountering Jacksonville sheriff’s officers in April of 2015. Once out of his truck, he was immediately ordered to the ground by an officer, who pointed a Taser gun at him. He was arrested and issued a ticket for “walking in the roadway where sidewalks are provided.” Kendrick fought the ticket and it was dismissed by a judge.
Brianna Nonord, 13, wound up in handcuffs and detained by an officer that same month in 2015 after she walked away from an officer trying to write her a ticket for having “failed to cross in a crosswalk” on her way home from school.
Maurice Grant, a lawyer with the federal public defender’s office, was walking near the federal courthouse in May of 2016 when he was cited for crossing against a red light.
The ProPublica/Times-Union analysis also found that the sheriff’s office had issued hundreds of erroneous tickets for crossing the street while not in a crosswalk. The mistakes, identified by a detailed ProPublica/Times-Union review of the locations where the tickets were given, appear to have resulted from a misunderstanding of the statute on the part of the sheriff’s officers. The often misapplied crosswalk statute accounted for more tickets than any other, and again, blacks were over-represented in that category of ticket.
In interviews, the sheriff’s department’s second-in-command, Patrick Ivey, said any racial discrepancies could only be explained by the fact that blacks were simply violating the statutes more often than others in Jacksonville.
“Were the citations given in error?” Ivey asked. “I have nothing to suggest that. Were they given unjustified? I have nothing to suggest that.”
In response to the ProPublica/Times-Union findings, Sheriff Mike Williams said, “Let me tell you this: There is not an active effort to be in black neighborhoods writing pedestrian tickets.”
Ivey said stopping people for pedestrian violations as a means for establishing probable cause to search them was also fully justified.
“Shame on him that gives me a legal reason to stop him,” Ivey said.
Lots of police agencies across the country in recent years have been found to have improperly targeted African Americans and other minorities. The New Jersey State Police profiled minority drivers on the state’s highways. The New York Police Department’s policy of stop-and-frisk was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge after statistics showed minorities, while making up half the city’s population, accounted for 83 percent of all such encounters with police. Similar issues with stop-and-frisk practices have surfaced in Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.
SUMMARY: Syndicated Columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including accusations that Judge Roy Moore pursued relationships with teens and had sexual contact with a minor decades ago, a wave of Democratic victories in statewide elections, including the Virginia governor's race, and the larger trends facing both parties.
SUMMARY: Protests in South Africa over a statue of a 19th century diamond magnate and colonial conqueror set off a national debate two years ago about the remnants of apartheid? As part of his ongoing series, Culture at Risk, Jeffrey Brown reports on the symbols and monuments in South Africa's past that are still being fought over today.
SUMMARY: After 10 years as an Air Force combat photographer, Stacy Pearsall sustained an injury that ultimately ended her career. While receiving medical treatment, she picked up her camera again in order to capture the diversity of the nation's military service members. Pearsall shares the healing process she experienced in creating the "Veterans Portrait Project."
SUMMARY: When journalist Anjan Sundaram traveled to Rwanda in 2009, he encountered a repressive government that targeted and imprisoned the journalists he worked with. His experience opened his eyes to the courage needed to report on the stories and people that can easily hide from the world's collective consciousness. Sundaram offers his Brief but Spectacular take on covering the forgotten.
SUMMARY: As attitudes toward meat-eating shift and climate-conscious consumers experiment with alternatives, investors are throwing their money at mock meat startups that are replicating the smell and texture of a meaty burger. Economics correspondent Paul Solman explores the emerging technology that might help Americans wean off of their meat habit.
SUMMARY: Alec Baldwin first played then-candidate Donald Trump in October 2016 and assumed the parody would last until the election, but the actor continues to be a recurring guest on Saturday Night Live and an outspoken critic of the President. Baldwin sits down with Jeffrey Brown to discuss his book, “You Can't Spell America Without Me,” a memoir in which he takes on Trump's voice in a different way.
Jeffrey Brown (NewsHour): You’re not shy about your own politics. You’re sort on of the opposite of him on almost every issue. So should we see this as kind of a political act?
Alec Baldwin, actor: That’s a fair point, if we were doing a lot of writing.
Trump is the head writer of “SNL” himself. Nearly 90…
Jeffrey Brown: In what sense?
Alec Baldwin: Well, nearly 90 percent of what we say and do are verbatim transcriptions of what Trump has said. We don’t really have to go very far to find the material. Trump himself is just spewing it out on a daily basis or a weekly basis.
So it’s not about politics meaning I’m misstating or misquoting things that he said and did. That’s one of the jokes we told is that Trump would say how he hates the media, and he hates NBC and he hates “SNL,” because I say things, and they repeat it right back to the public, he would say. They repeat all the things I say.
Of course he’s tormented by the fact that we repeat all the things that he says.
SUMMARY: Republicans pushed ahead on their plan for a tax overhaul, with two major developments. The House Ways and Means Committee passed its sweeping tax bill, while the Senate released their own version. Lisa Desjardins sits down with Judy Woodruff to discuss how the two bills compare, which GOP senators aren't yet convinced and how Democrats are reacting.
SUMMARY: IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has been a lightning rod for Republican lawmakers who have called for his impeachment and criticized the agency he's been running since 2013. As one of the last Obama administration holdovers, he'll complete his term this Sunday. Koskinen sits down with Judy Woodruff to discuss the strains on the IRS and President Trump's controversial tax returns.
SUMMARY: New information about the Texas shooter's past behavior reveals he was able to bypass a patchwork of gun laws and purchase the weapon he used to kill 26 people on Sunday. William Brangham breaks down the complicated landscape of our nation's gun laws.
SUMMARY: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn) has been one of the most vocal advocates for reforming gun laws since the Sandy Hook tragedy in his own state. As more becomes known about the man behind the massacre at a Texas church, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are looking at the background check system, which critics think is broken. Murphy joins Judy Woodruff to discuss reforms.
SUMMARY: The First Baptist Church in the small town of Sutherland Springs was the site of the largest mass shooting in Texas history on Sunday. Twenty-six-year-old Devin Kelley opened fire during services, killing 26 people and wounding 20. John Yang speaks with Joey Palacios of Texas Public Radio and Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) about the how the community is reeling and the investigation into the shooter.
SUMMARY: The man who shot and killed dozens at a Texas church had been convicted of assaulting his wife and a child, and he may have been motivated by a "domestic situation," say officials. The latest tragedy underscores a link between mass killings and domestic violence. John Yang talks with Deborah Epstein of the Georgetown Law Domestic Violence Clinic and James Fox of Northeastern University.
SUMMARY: The victims of a deadly church shooting included a grandmother who shielded her grandson from the attack, a cancer survivor and a couple who were visiting the church for the first time. We remember eight of the victims through the words of their loved ones.
President Donald Trump has once again misused the example of Chicago to make a case against gun regulations.
Despite what the president claims, Chicago does not have “the strongest gun laws in our nation.” It once did, but the laws that gave it that distinction have since been rescinded. And a spike in homicides occurred after those laws were changed.
Trump also called Chicago “a disaster.” That's an opinion, but it's worth noting that other cities – some with less stringent gun laws – have higher rates of gun violence.
Experts also warn against cherry-picking cities to score political points, as examples can be found to fit arguments on either side. They also note that Chicago, which has stricter laws than most cities, is bordered by states that have relatively lax gun laws. And there is some evidence that most of the guns confiscated from crimes in Chicago come from out of state.
Finally, as we have written before, there is no evidence that gun control laws result in higher murder rates. In fact, studies suggest the opposite: States with a higher number of firearm restrictions have lower firearm deaths. But there is only an association between gun control laws and firearm deaths, not a causal relationship, studies show.
Trump's latest comment about Chicago gun crime came when he was asked if he would consider any gun control policies in the wake of the mass shooting at a Texas church on Nov 5.
“I mean, you look at the city with the strongest gun laws in our nation, is Chicago, and Chicago is a disaster,” Trump said during a press conference in Korea on Nov 7. “It's a total disaster.”
This is a longstanding talking point for Trump, who tweeted in July 2014:
Trump made the same point during the third presidential debate, saying: “In Chicago, which has the toughest gun laws in the United States, probably you could say by far, they have more gun violence than any other city.”
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders made a similar claim during a press briefing on Oct. 2 after the Las Vegas mass shooting. “I think if you look to Chicago, where you had over 4,000 victims of gun-related crimes last year, they have the strictest gun laws in the country,” Sanders said. “That certainly hasn't helped there.”
Here are some facts about gun violence in Chicago and what they say, and don't say, about the role of gun control.
Does Chicago Have 'the Strongest Gun Laws in Our Country'?
Chicago used to have what some considered to be the toughest gun laws in the country. But not anymore.
In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Chicago's handgun ban. In the year before the court's ruling, Chicago's murder rate in 2009 was 16.1. The city with the highest murder rate that year was New Orleans at 51.7 murders for every 100,000 people.
And in 2013, Chicago also abolished its requirement that gun owners register their weapons. The move was made to come into compliance with the state's court-mandated concealed carry law.
“Chicago does have strong municipal laws, but we wouldn't say it has the strongest gun laws in the country, because the strongest regulations in Chicago have been largely implemented by entire states, including New York and California,” Hannah Shearer, a staff attorney and Second Amendment litigation director at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, told us via email. “In contrast, the state of Illinois has significantly weaker laws than New York and California, including a shall-issue concealed carry permit system.”
The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gave a B+ grade to Illinois in its latest “Gun Law State Scorecard.” Seven states had a higher grade.
'Disaster'?
It's true that the total number of murders in Chicago spiked in 2016. The number of murders recorded that year — 764 — was nearly 58 percent higher than in 2015. In raw numbers, that was higher than any other major city in the U.S., according to data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association.
But the murder rate in Chicago wasn't the highest.
The per-capita murder rate in Chicago – the number of homicides per 100,000 residents – was 27.9 in 2016. That's half the rate recorded by St. Louis, at 59.3, which saw 188 murders in 2016. Among major cities, Chicago's rate was eighth highest in 2016. (Ninety-three percent of the murders in the city that year involved firearms.)
And again, those high tallies in 2016 came after Chicago did away with its gun registry and ban on handguns.
It should also be noted that the number of homicides in Chicago is trending down so far this year. According to the Sun-Times, there were 580 homicides in the first 10 months of 2017, down 10 percent from the 644 homicides recorded during the same period in 2016.
Shootings and homicides in Chicago “are still high by urban American standards right now, but the trend appears to be downward,” John Pfaff, a professor of law at Fordham Law School, told us via email. “There's still two months in the year, but that pushes back against the 'disaster' story.”
Guns Coming from Outside Chicago
Shearer also notes that “Chicago is vulnerable to guns coming in from neighboring states. A few states bordering Chicago, such as Indiana, have extremely weak gun laws.”
A 2017 gun trace report from the Chicago Police Department found that since 2013 the “overwhelming majority” of recovered “crime guns” that were traceable “were originally purchased outside of the city limits and brought into Chicago.” And the majority were from other states.
Pfaff added the caveat that police could only trace 12,500 of the 28,000 guns seized during the study period, so the origin of most guns could not be determined.
Still, the report suggests that many of the guns used in Chicago crimes come from outside the city — watering down the effectiveness that any local gun laws might have. And so experts warn it would be unwise to draw definitive conclusions, as the president did, about the effectiveness of gun control efforts in Chicago.
“That is a silly argument,” David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, told us via email. “That would be similar to someone arguing that pest control doesn't work with an example where only one kitchen is treated in an apartment complex filled with cockroaches. Chicago is surrounded by easy places for criminals to get guns. … There are lots of places where gun control (and pest control) has a much better chance to work and does work.”
Do Stricter Gun Laws Lead to Higher or Lower Homicide Rates?
As for the President's implication that stricter gun laws either don't work or lead to higher rates of homicide, studies suggest that's not the case. In fact, they show an association, but not a proven causal relationship, between strict gun laws and lower rates of gun violence.
According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence scorecard, seven states graded as having the strongest gun laws also were among those with the lowest gun death rates.
And as we have written before (on several occasions), several studies have shown that states with a higher number of firearm restrictions have lower firearm deaths. But there is only an association between gun control laws and firearm deaths, not a causal relationship, studies show. In other words, the studies do not prove that the stricter laws are responsible for lower homicide rates.
It's misleading for Trump to cite Chicago as evidence that gun control laws don't reduce gun violence. Chicago no longer has “the strongest gun laws in our nation,” and it doesn't have nearly the highest homicide rate among major cities. Most traceable guns recovered from crimes also come from outside the city limits.
When the world looks at the United States, it sees a land of exceptions: a time-tested if noisy democracy, a crusader in foreign policy, an exporter of beloved music and film.
But there is one quirk that consistently puzzles America's fans and critics alike. Why, they ask, does it experience so many mass shootings?
Perhaps, some speculate, it is because American society is unusually violent. Or its racial divisions have frayed the bonds of society. Or its citizens lack proper mental care under a health care system that draws frequent derision abroad.
These explanations share one thing in common: Though seemingly sensible, all have been debunked by research on shootings elsewhere in the world. Instead, an ever-growing body of research consistently reaches the same conclusion.
The only variable that can explain the high rate of mass shootings in America is its astronomical number of guns.
What Explains Mass Shootings
The top-line numbers suggest a correlation that, on further investigation, grows only clearer.
Americans make up about 4.4 percent of the global population but own 42 percent of the world's guns. From 1966 to 2012, 31 percent of the gunmen in mass shootings worldwide were American, according to a 2015 study by Adam Lankford, a professor at the University of Alabama.
Adjusted for population, only Yemen has a higher rate of mass shootings among countries with more than 10 million people — a distinction Mr. Lankford urged to avoid outliers. Yemen has the world's second-highest rate of gun ownership after the United States.
Worldwide, Mr. Lankford found, a country's rate of gun ownership correlated with the odds it would experience a mass shooting. This relationship held even when he excluded the United States, indicating that it could not be explained by some other factor particular to his home country. And it held when he controlled for homicide rates, suggesting that mass shootings were better explained by a society's access to guns than by its baseline level of violence.
What Doesn't: Crime, Race or Mental Health
If mental health made the difference, then data would show that Americans have more mental health problems than do people in other countries with fewer mass shootings. But the mental health care spending rate in the United States, the number of mental health professionals per capita and the rate of severe mental disorders are all in line with those of other wealthy countries.
A 2015 study estimated that only 4 percent of American gun deaths could be attributed to mental health issues. And Mr. Lankford, in an email, said countries with high suicide rates tended to have low rates of mass shootings — the opposite of what you would expect if mental health problems correlated with mass shootings.
Whether a population plays more or fewer video games also appears to have no impact. Americans are no more likely to play video games than people in any other developed country.
Racial diversity or other factors associated with social cohesion also show little correlation with gun deaths. Among European countries, there is little association between immigration or other diversity metrics and the rates of gun murders or mass shootings.
A Violent Country
America's gun homicide rate was 33 per million people in 2009, far exceeding the average among developed countries. In Canada and Britain, it was 5 per million and 0.7 per million, respectively, which also corresponds with differences in gun ownership.
Americans sometimes see this as an expression of deeper problems with crime, a notion ingrained, in part, by a series of films portraying urban gang violence in the early 1990s. But the United States is not actually more prone to crime than other developed countries, according to a landmark 1999 study by Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins of the University of California, Berkeley.
Rather, they found, in data that has since been repeatedly confirmed, that American crime is simply more lethal. A New Yorker is just as likely to be robbed as a Londoner, for instance, but the New Yorker is 54 times more likely to be killed in the process.
They concluded that the discrepancy, like so many other anomalies of American violence, came down to guns.
More gun ownership corresponds with more gun murders across virtually every axis: among developed countries, among American states, among American towns and cities and when controlling for crime rates. And gun control legislation tends to reduce gun murders, according to a recent analysis of 130 studies from 10 countries.
This suggests that the guns themselves cause the violence.
Mass Shootings Happen Everywhere
Skeptics of gun control sometimes point to a 2016 study. From 2000 and 2014, it found, the United States death rate by mass shooting was 1.5 per one million people. The rate was 1.7 in Switzerland and 3.4 in Finland, suggesting American mass shootings were not actually so common.
But the same study found that the United States had 133 mass shootings. Finland had only two, which killed 18 people, and Switzerland had one, which killed 14. In short, isolated incidents. So while mass shootings can happen anywhere, they are only a matter of routine in the United States.
As with any crime, the underlying risk is impossible to fully erase. Any individual can snap or become entranced by a violent ideology. What is different is the likelihood that this will lead to mass murder.
In China, about a dozen seemingly random attacks on schoolchildren killed 25 people between 2010 and 2012. Most used knives; none used a gun.
By contrast, in this same window, the United States experienced five of its deadliest mass shootings, which killed 78 people. Scaled by population, the American attacks were 12 times as deadly.
Beyond the Statistics
In 2013, American gun-related deaths included 21,175 suicides, 11,208 homicides and 505 deaths caused by an accidental discharge. That same year in Japan, a country with one-third America's population, guns were involved in only 13 deaths.
This means an American is about 300 times more likely to die by gun homicide or accident than a Japanese person. America's gun ownership rate is 150 times as high as Japan's. That gap between 150 and 300 shows that gun ownership statistics alone do not explain what makes America different.
The United States also has some of the world's weakest controls over who may buy a gun and what sorts of guns may be owned.
Switzerland has the second-highest gun ownership rate of any developed country, about half that of the United States. Its gun homicide rate in 2004 was 7.7 per million people — unusually high, in keeping with the relationship between gun ownership and murders, but still a fraction of the rate in the United States.
Swiss gun laws are more stringent, setting a higher bar for securing and keeping a license, for selling guns and for the types of guns that can be owned. Such laws reflect more than just tighter restrictions. They imply a different way of thinking about guns, as something that citizens must affirmatively earn the right to own.
The Difference Is Culture
The United States is one of only three countries, along with Mexico and Guatemala, that begin with the opposite assumption: that people have an inherent right to own guns.
The main reason American regulation of gun ownership is so weak may be the fact that the trade-offs are simply given a different weight in the United States than they are anywhere else.
After Britain had a mass shooting in 1987, the country instituted strict gun control laws. So did Australia after a 1996 incident. But the United States has repeatedly faced the same calculus and determined that relatively unregulated gun ownership is worth the cost to society.
That choice, more than any statistic or regulation, is what most sets the United States apart.
“In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate,” Dan Hodges, a British journalist, wrote in a post on Twitter two years ago, referring to the 2012 attack that killed 20 young students at an elementary school in Connecticut. “Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”
SUMMARY: Last year, Bana Alabed sparked a worldwide following for tweeting from Aleppo in Syria while it was under attack amid a years-long civil war. Now, the 8-year-old is authoring a book about surviving and escaping the conflict. NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Marcia Biggs talked to Alabed and her mother in Ankara, Turkey, where they are living today.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including the Virginia governor's race, suggestions by Donna Brazile that the Democratic primary race was rigged for Hillary Clinton, the GOP tax overhaul plan, and the Russia probe indictments.
Judy Woodruff: (NewsHour): A different kind of economics, David, and that is taxes.
The Republicans did come out this week, yesterday, with their tax reform, tax cut proposal. What does it say to you about what the Republicans in Congress and the president want right now?
David Brooks, New York Times: Well, they have a vision for what business taxes should be, which is to lower the rates. And I think there’s a — our corporate rates are super high. And to attract capital to this country, it would help to lower the rates.
They have no vision of what individual tax rates should be or how we should tax individuals. Their bill is sort of a hodgepodge of moving rates the rates around randomly. They have no vision of how to protect families. There could have been a much bigger child tax credit.
And then, finally — and this is what everyone — the point everyone is making, but it happens to be true — they have no vision about the fiscal health of this country in the long term.
I personally think there are some pieces of this legislation that I like, capping the mortgage interest deduction. There are some things I don’t like. I don’t think cutting the rates the way that they do is super important. But it’s all dwarfed by the $1.5 trillion hole they’re going to blow in the deficit.
And until they can solve that problem, you’re not really dealing seriously for this country.
(CROSSTALK)
Mark Shields, syndicated columnist: I agree completely about the $1.5 trillion deficit, Judy.
And it is going to be financed, as we know, from the Republican votes in the House and the Senate, by cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, the very constituency that Donald Trump pledged to be the champion of.
And, no, it’s — I would say it had its biggest day yesterday. I really do. I mean, I think it’s not something that stands the daylight very well or scrutiny. It starts with 25 percent approval support in the country. That’s the lowest that any presidential initiative since George W. Bush’s ill-fated attempt to privatize Social Security in 2005, which died after 10 months.
Judy, what these people forget is the 1986 Tax Reform Act began in 1982 with Bill Bradley and Dick Gephardt and Bradley-Gephardt. And it includes people of the talent of Jim Baker and Dick Darman at the White House.
Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn are not Dick Darman and Jim Baker. And it had 430 witnesses before the House Ways and Means Committee and 26 days of markups.
These people think they’re going to do it on the fly, on the run? They’re absolutely delusional.
Judy Woodruff: So, both of you are saying…
(CROSSTALK)
David Brooks: Dan Rostenkowski. There was a lot of serious talent.
Mark Shields: Dan Rostenkowski, Bob Packwood.
David Brooks: But what’s — it’s not going to pass.
Like, they punish people in the blue states. You’re going to get rid of state and local deduction, and that that is going to create massive opposition. The realtors, philanthropies, student debt, there’s all sorts of things that are politically mine fields.
The question to me is, does it completely die or do they fall back to some limited tax cut, just so they can say they passed something?
Judy Woodruff: They passed something.
David Brooks: And I would bet — I don’t know if I would bet, but I suspect they will try to fall back to something plausible, maybe just the corporate rates. I don’t know what else. But they will try to fall back to just simple, smaller tax cut.
SUMMARY: What does it take to walk alongside another human being over time? Writer Dani Shapiro set out to explore the beauty and the troubles of enduring love. Shining a light on her and her husband's life course together, Shapiro offers her humble opinion on keeping the flame alive.
SUMMARY: As President Trump departs for a lengthy trip to Asia, how does North Korea view its weapons programs and the Trump administration's approach? Judy Woodruff gets insight from Thae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat and defector, about Kim Jong Un's mindset, President Trump's rhetoric, the dangers of military escalation and what American diplomacy should look like.
SUMMARY: Kodiak, Alaska, is not only home to abundant fishing grounds, but also to one of the most innovative power grids in the country. As the cost of diesel rose a decade ago, a local electric co-op decided to aim for 100 percent renewable energy by harnessing the wind and water. Special correspondent Rachel Waldholz of Alaska Public Media reports on their engineering feat. This report comes from Alaska's Energy Desk, a public media collaboration focused on energy and the environment.
SUMMARY: Superstorm Sandy flooded coastline communities and led to billions of dollars in damage. Five years on, the city of New York has tried to mitigate the impact of a future disaster, from raising houses to building seawalls. But turning ideas into reality has been slow and complicated. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports on how the city is building resiliency and the hurdles that remain.
SUMMARY: Millions of Chinese workers have poured into urban centers as their economy booms. But opportunity has come with costs for their children, home alone in rural areas without parental care. Nearly 9 million so-called “left-behind” children see their parents only a few times a year. Special correspondent Max Duncan reports in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Editor's Note: This story was produced in cooperation with ChinaFile, an online magazine published by the Asia Society, and with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
SUMMARY: In declaring a public health emergency over the opioid epidemic, President Trump called for the creation of a national media campaign to reduce drug use among young people. As part of our “America Addicted” series, William Brangham speaks with Gary Mendell of Shatterproof and Jonathan Goyer of the Anchor Recovery about what should be done to prevent addiction.
SUMMARY: At least eight people are dead and more than a dozen injured after a rented pickup truck plowed into a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center Memorial in Manhattan on Tuesday. A 29-year-old male has been taken into custody and Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed that they believe it to be an act of terror. Special correspondent Marcia Biggs talks with Judy Woodruff from New York.
SUMMARY: After a deadly truck attack killed eight in Manhattan on Tuesday, multiple news networks have identified the driver as Sayfullo Saipov of Tampa, Florida. John Yang speaks with Lorenzo Vidino of George Washington University about how the latest incident may fit into recent acts of extremism in Europe.
SUMMARY: The suspect in the deadly New York attack, Sayfullo Saipov, was charged by the federal government for providing support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. Special correspondent Marcia Biggs reports on how investigators are piecing together a clearer picture of what led to the attack, and Hari Sreenivasan talks to retired FBI counterterror official Jeffrey Ringel.
SUMMARY: Social media giants Facebook, Twitter, and Google came to Congress on Tuesday to admit publicly that their platforms have a political dark side, and that Russia used them to try to manipulate how Americans voted. Nick Schifrin offers a recap of the hearing and Judy Woodruff takes a deeper look with Thomas Rid of Johns Hopkins University and Tim Wu of Columbia University.
SUMMARY: Facebook, Twitter, and Google were back on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to testify before congressional intelligence committees on whether their platforms were used by Russia to impact the 2016 election. All three companies admitted fault, but they do not yet know the full scope of foreign interference on their platforms. Hari Sreenivasan reports on the unfolding investigation.
SUMMARY: The Russia investigation entered a new phase Monday with indictments for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates, and news of a guilty plea from a former Trump advisor for lying to the FBI about his connections to Russia. Lisa Desjardins reports and Judy Woodruff gets a breakdown of today's indictments from Carrie Johnson of NPR.
SUMMARY: Money laundering, tax fraud and lying to the FBI are some of the charges revealed Monday as part of Robert Mueller's probe. Two former federal prosecutors experienced in handling high-stakes investigations -- Peter Zeidenberg and former Justice Department official John Carlin -- join Judy Woodruff to offer a deeper look at the legal details and what they mean going forward.
SUMMARY: Since the unsealing of criminal charges and pleas as part of the Russia investigation, the White House has distanced itself from Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos. But how did President Trump and White House officials react behind the scenes? Judy Woodruff learns more from Ashley Parker of the Washington Post.
Sen. Rand Paul misrepresented two studies supported by federal grants, while advocating legislation he introduced to change the federal grant funding process.
In both cases, Paul, a 2016 presidential candidate and Republican from Kentucky, confused the means the researchers used to conduct their experiments with the studies' ends, or purpose. Paul also ignored the broader implications of the research.
- Paul characterized one study funded by the National Science Foundation as “bad science” because it looked at “shrimp on a treadmill.” But the scientists developed the treadmill as a means of studying how bacterial infection affects shrimp respiration during activity.
- Paul also left out the broader goal of the shrimp research: To understand how the recent decrease in water oxygen levels where shrimp and other seafood live might affect how they handle infections.
- Paul said it's “absurd” that the National Institutes of Health provided $2 million for a study on whether “kids don't like food that has been sneezed on.” But that money went to a six-year project, composed of multiple studies, on children's reasoning about foods. One study used a video of an actor sneezing on food as a means of understanding if young children can pick up on subtle cues about contamination.
Paul, who worked as an ophthalmologist before entering politics, made his remarks on Oct. 18 during a hearing on federal support for research. A day earlier, Paul introduced the BASIC Research Act, which, if passed, would make a number of changes to the way federal agencies fund basic research.
- Paul also ignored the ultimate aim of the NIH research: To contribute to developing ways to nudge kids to make safer and more healthy food choices by understanding why they make certain choices to begin with.
Paul mentioned his legislation multiple times during the Oct. 18 hearing, arguing it would help take the “bias” out of the grant review process.
Among other things, the bill would require grant review panels to include a “taxpayer advocate.” The bill defines this person as “someone whose main focus is on the value proposed research delivers to the taxpayer.”
Paul's bill would also require panels to include a least one person who is an expert in an unrelated field to the proposed grant project and hasn't been affiliated with any academic or research institution for 10 years.
To be clear, we take no position on whether or not the federal government should have funded these two research projects – that's a matter of opinion. Paul has the right to his opinion that the government shouldn't have funded them. But in advocating his legislation, he mischaracterized the purpose and scope of the two research projects.
An anomalous space in Donald Trump’s head, now known as the “President’s Giant Void,” has shown up on imagery produced in a scientific study. The scientists were able to track concentrations of subatomic particles called “Morons” as they zoomed in on the president’s hair piece with special equipment.
