PBS NewsHour; September 12, 2018 3:00pm-4:00pm PDT

(Opening bit) Bay Area, Thursday night at 7.30. (Opening Music) Judy Woodruff: Good evening, I'm Judy Woodruff on the NewsHour tonight. We are on the ground as the Carolina's braced for hurricane Florence. Then we take to the sky. Miles O'Brien flies with scientists into the eye of the storm to better understand destructive hurricanes. Miles O'Brien: With this aircraft, being able to fly right through the storm, getting into the storm environment, actually sampling the atmosphere, not just looking at it from afar, you can't get that quality of data anywhere else. Judy Woodruff: And campaigning on Kavanaugh, abortion politics and the Supreme Court nomination, become central issues in the race for an important U.S. Senate seat in Missouri. (?): Yeah, because always she's trying to figure out what the winner is for her politically. There is none. No matter what I do, there are downsides to it. Judy Woodruff: All that and more on tonight's PBS NewsHour. (Opening music) Funder announcement: Major funding for the PBS NewsHour has been provided by, BNSF Railway, Consumer Cellular, Financial Services Firm. Ryn McJames.

(Music) Supporting social entrepreneurs and their solutions to the world's most pressing problems. Skool Foundation.org. The Lemelson Foundation, committed to improving lives through invention in the U.S. and developing countries on the web at Lemelson.org. Supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information at Macfound.org. And with the ongoing support of these institutions. This program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. Judy Woodruff: Hurricane Florence has more than 10 million people across the southeastern U.S. asking tonight which way all it go.

The target area moves south and west today, even as sustained winds drop some to 120 miles an hour. P.J. Tobi begins our coverage from Wilmington, North Carolina. P.J.Tobi: The storm's enormous mass is clear enough from space, but its path is shifting, meaning growing uncertainty. Florence is now projected to slow near the North Carolina, South Carolina line, then make landfall on Saturday. From there it could turn south and west across South Carolina. The changes could endanger new areas, forecasters are calling it the storm of a lifetime. The emergency management agency officials warned today was the last chance to get out of danger. (EM Official?) If you're in an area where you know what's going to flood or if you're in a mandatory evacuation area or you just don't feel your home is safe, now's the time to evacuate. P.J. Tobi: Thousands heeded the warnings and major highways were jammed. That left gas stations with shortages and drivers crowding to fill tanks. In North Carolina, local buses were pressed into long haul service, taking people from

Wilmington and other coastal towns to shelters in Raleigh, some 150 miles inland. George Osberg is 103 years old. He's seen many hurricanes before. This is the first that's made him evacuate his home. George Osberg: I've never had occasion to think about it before, this time it's, I think it's obvious. P.J. Tobi: In South Carolina, eastbound lanes on Interstate 26 were reversed, with all traffic moving away from the coast. Those who stayed, labored to board up windows and fill sandbags. But the mayor of Mount Pleasant South Carolina, near Charleston, said there is only one way to be safe. Mayor: When you choose to leave and get out of its way, you have more control over your destiny than you do if you choose to stay here. P.J.Tobi: Civilian and military leaders alike were gauging the potential of 30 inches of rain, hurricane force winds, and power outages over wide areas. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper warned the state is in for a sustained battering. Governor Roy Cooper: Plan to be without power for days, understand that the rain may last for days and not hours.

And this may be a marathon, not a sprint. P.J. Tobi: On the front lines, local officials said there is ready as they can be for what's coming and what comes next. (official) The worst of the storms not here, we think we've got a good evacuation plan, a good shelter plan in place, but we're already planning for what happens after Florence makes impact. P.J. Tobi: Meanwhile, many of the evacuees face the prospect of days in shelters. (evacuee): It's coming right for us, literally right for us, so we were just like, you know what, let's just do this. Let's just go to the shelter. I know we've never done it before. It's kind of scary. P.J. Tobi: Staff at senior care facilities are also having to make tough choices about whether to evacuate the most vulnerable. Ted Goens is president of Lutheran Services, Carolinas. He says keeping clients at this senior living facility in Wilmington was the right choice. Ted Goens: This building should be able to stand up and not be in any surge or flood zone. So it was the right decision to make when you consider the problems that you have when

you try to transport 100 or almost 100 very debilitated folks. P.J. Tobi: He jokingly told me that the facility had a big enough generator to power the entire city of Wilmington. He very seriously told me that they had enough food and of course medicine socked away to last for days in case Florence knocked them off the power grid. Judy, Judy Woodruff: So PJ, we heard you say that the nursing homes are making the decision, some of them not to move. What about the elderly senior citizens who are not in nursing homes? What are they saying about them? P.J. Tobi: Folks at that facility and others who take care of vulnerable and elderly populations said the best thing that folks in those populations can do is be with their community, get with family, get with friends or neighbors. Don't try and ride out this storm alone because even if you're in a secure house, the power can go out, a tree could fall on your roof and when bad things happen, no one will be there to help them out.

Judy Woodruff: And PJ, tell us about the shelters that are operating there in the Wilmington area. What is going on at this point? What are they handling? P.J. Tobi: Sure, just in the four o'clock hour, the Red Cross released a statement that about 1600 people spent last night in shelters in North and South Carolina. But today is really the day that most folks in this region made their way to shelters if they were going to go to shelters. We visited one shelter where over 100 people had come, many were streaming in as we were in there talking to the director there, so many that they were actually out of cots. There were still plenty of space for folks to stretch out. They even had a space for pets, which as you may know is a reason that a lot of folks don't want to go to a shelter because they're afraid that their pet won't be allowed in. But hundreds of people in this area have made their way to shelters over the last 24 hours. Judy Woodruff: And finally, we know we're getting close to the hour when people have to get out for their own safety. What are you seeing there in Wilmington? P.J. Tobi: Well, things are closing up here, pharmacies. Are basically, have basically started shuttering today, grocery stores, gas stations are running

out of gas. Earlier today around 10 a.m., we went to a home depot. They were closing early within that hour. There was a line out the door. So if the time is getting, it's getting to zero hour, where if there's anything you need to do to prepare, it's getting to be too late, awfully quickly, Judy. Judy Woodruff: P.J. Tobi reporting for us from Wilmington, North Carolina. Thank you, P.J. The president has said the federal government is, quote, totally prepared for hurricane Florence, but there have been questions in recent days about that in light of the response to hurricanes Harvey and Maria last year. We get an assessment from two people who have watched this closely. Craig Fugate was the administrator of FEMA during the Obama administration. He now consults in that world. And Chris Curry of the U.S. Government Accountability Office or GAO. He oversaw the agency's recent report on FEMA's response to disasters in 2017. Gentlemen, we welcome both of you to the program.

And I should say at the outset, we invited FEMA to participate today, but they were not available. But Craig Fugate is somebody who knows that agency very well. How prepared are they for this hurricane that's coming, do you think? Craig Fugate: Well, they're in better shape. I mean, think about what we were facing when Maria was the third major hurricane to hit. So I mean, they're busy. They're in Guam. We got Hawaii. We got wildfires. But at least on the East Coast, this will be the first significant landfalling hurricane. They're moving a lot of resources. The other thing is, you're going into an area. These states have quite a bit of resources and capability themselves, local governments who have been faced with hurricanes before. So you got a pretty good spread from local to the federal government working on this. But it all comes down to people evacuating and heeding those evacuation orders. We can always rebuild communities, but rescue operations in the height of the storm are impossible. And if you look at this threat, 88% of deaths are related to the water, not wind. So the evacuations' key. Judy Woodruff: So Craig Fugate, you would say they're better prepared than last year?

Craig Fugate: I say they got more stuff because this is the first hurricane. When you got to Maria, you were on your third major hurricane. And three hurricanes back-to-back of Harvey, Irma, and Maria. It's going to stretch us any, every time. But this being the first one on the East Coast major hurricane, they have more resources available that they had literally run out by the time Maria got here. Judy Woodruff: So Chris Curry, your agency GAO, the report you put out last week, looking last year at the response to Puerto Rico and the other storms, you did point out that there were many factors including the particular situation of Puerto Rico. But you also looked very closely at FEMA, and among other things, you said they were overwhelmed. They were not prepared to deploy enough qualified staff. How would you sum that up? Chris Curry: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. You summarized it very well, Judy. By the time, and I think Craig summed it up pretty well too, by the time Maria hit, you had had three sequential hurricanes.

Remember, Harvey, Irma, and Maria happened within 26 days of one another. So by the time Maria hit, supplies and resources and people were already allocated to other parts of the country, which made it very, very difficult to marshal the resources in Puerto Rico. Judy Woodruff: Because when you read some of what you reported, you spoke about it colloquially being down to the barrel that more than half of the staff they were using were not qualified for the jobs that they were holding. Chris Curry: Yeah, what I was referring to was the numbers of FEMA personnel. They had already deployed thousands of people to Harvey, to Irma in Florida. And also remember, I think at the time, FEMA had over 600 open disasters throughout the country. So very, very difficult to marshal both the numbers of people you need, and you needed in Puerto Rico, but also a lot of their highly qualified staff are in other places, which made it very difficult to fill critical positions in Puerto Rico. Judy Woodruff: Craig Fugate, does it surprise you, did it surprise you to see this assessment?

Craig Fugate: No, and again, quite honestly, we face the same challenges in the Obama administration. We'd oftentimes be running so many sequential disasters, we were pulling people out of active disasters to go to the next one. We had to do it when Sandy was threatening. We had to do it numerous times. And this kind of goes back to how FEMA is resourced and our dependency at FEMA on reservists who, quite honestly, we only pay them when we're working disasters. We don't really have good incentives. We've made recommendations to give them status to apply for career jobs as an incentive. We've asked for opportunities to pay them when we're not doing disasters similar to the military for the reserves, but again, we're depending upon a workforce who may or may not be available when disasters happen at a scale of, we're talking 10 to 16,000 people, that's not sustainable with the current workload we're having. And I think Congress needs to go back and look at how do you build and maintain a staff for these types of events in the frequency we were seeing, because the current system wasn't built for it.

Judy Woodruff: Chris Curry, what about that? I want to ask you about that point, and also, I mean, just looking at this, we know there was no way anybody could have forecast that we're going to be three major storms within the course of one month, but does it reflect a lack of planning on the part of FEMA last year? Chris Curry: I think it reflects a lack of planning in terms of the scale of disasters. You're correct. I mean, nobody expected to have three sequential disasters, just like that. And four, if you count the California wildfires afterwards, but if you look at the Atlantic Ocean right now, we have three disasters of maybe even four looming out there. So these rare events are happening every year. So I think, as Craig mentioned, we have to start planning and preparing for these types of things routinely. And having the workforce and the numbers of staff we need to do that every year for this potential number of disasters is part of that. Judy Woodruff: And Craig Fugate, how does that happen? I mean, there's politics involved, obviously, when you talk about Congress, when you talk about appropriating more money, where does the, where does the change need to come from?

Well, it needs to come in the appropriations process, something that, you know, we've had a challenge with Congress, just passing budgets. It seems they can always come up with the money after the disaster. But the key part here is if we're going to change these outcomes, we need to be spending more money before disasters happen. We're going to have to grow and sustain that workforce. And unfortunately for FEMA, they tend to get resources after we've failed in a disaster. And then when we don't have a lot, they cut the budgets again. I mean, we went through sequestation in the Obama administration, and I will tell you that had an impact on FEMA's ability to respond last year. So it goes back to, we can either pay for a lot of cost after disasters very inefficiently, or we can make investments and build a team for the, for the top of a disaster if it happened in support of the states and local governments. But it is a resource issue. If you don't have the resources and funding, hard to build a team. When you have that many disasters, you're going to run out of qualified people as a result of that,

the response suffers, and we put our citizens on the wrong end of what we are capable of doing. Judy Woodruff: Chris Curry, as someone who is serving right now in the federal government, do you see the pieces in place to make these changes happen in time to make a difference? Chris Curry: I agree that funding is a really important part of this. You know, a GAO, our responsibility is to provide independent, fact-based oversight, and we've been looking at these issues for years and years, particularly after Katrina. And we've made a number of recommendations to FEMA over the years. I think there is a responsibility on the agency to plan for the workforce it needs, and then to train that workforce with the abilities they need to perform the mission. So funding is important to build up your numbers, but once you have the people, you also have to ensure that you train and you retain those people, so they're ready to go when something like this happens. Judy Woodruff: Well, all of this is really important to think about as we confront yet another major hurricane. Chris Curry with the General Accounting Office, GAO, Craig Fugate, formerly the head of FEMA. We thank you both.

(Chris and Craig) Thank you. Judy Woodruff: And in the day's other news, Tropical Storm Olivia brought heavy rain to the Hawaiian islands. It lost some punch as it neared Maui with winds at 45 miles an hour, and then continued on a track southwest. The islands could get 10 inches of rain with a storm surge of up to three feet in places. Pope Francis will meet bishops from around the world next February to discuss sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. Today's announcement came ahead of a Vatican meeting tomorrow with U.S. church leaders. It also came as Francis is facing new criticism over the long-running abuse scandal. The refugee crisis in Syria is getting even worse. The United Nations reported today that the country's war has uprooted a record one million people this year, several hundred thousand have fled to Idlib province in the northwest. And now they face an impending government offensive. But France warned today that Syria's president must back off. (in French with English voice over translation) 'But there is the crime de guerre des pas excruits.'

The hypothesis of war crimes cannot be ruled out. That's what France is is saying. When you carry out indiscriminate bombing on civilian populations in hospitals, we know that Assad can only see a military solution. We only see a political one. We need to be active if the worst is to be avoided. The worst isn't for certain yet, if everyone acts responsibly. Judy Woodruff: The U.S. and Turkey also have troops in Syria, both have warned the Syrian regime against an assault on Idlib. In eastern Afghanistan, the death toll from the suicide bombing climbed a 68 today. More than 100 others were wounded by Tuesday's blast in Nungahar province. It was the latest in a string of recent suicide attacks. The Taliban has denied any involvement. Russia's president Vladimir Putin has rejected claims that two Russian men poisoned a former double agent in Britain. Last week, British authorities charged Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Bushiroff and identified them as part of Russia's military intelligence.

In Moscow today, Putin said the two are actually civilians, and he dismissed the British allegations. (Russian with English voice over translation) We have looked at who these people are. We know who they are now. We found them. I hope that they show up and speak for themselves. That would be better for everyone. There is nothing special or criminal here. I assure you, but in time, we will see. Judy Woodruff: Britain accuses the two Russians of using a nerve agent in the attack, but there is virtually no chance that Moscow will ever extradite them to stand trial. European Union's parliament issued an unprecedented rebuke to Hungary's far right government today. Lawmakers accused Budapest of subverting democratic values by mistreating migrants and curbing press freedoms. The vote could lead to suspending Hungary's EU voting rights. Back in this country, President Trump signed an executive order that authorizes sanctions against foreigners who interfere in U.S. elections. The president would have the final say on imposing the toughest penalties.

Several senators in both parties said the order does not go far enough. Medium household income in the U.S. rose last year for a third straight year. That puts them where they were just before the recession. The Census Bureau reports a gain of 1.8 percent in 2017, topping $61,000. But for the poorest one-fifth of Americans, incomes increased just a half a percent. And women still earned 82 cents for every dollar that men make. CBS News has fired the executive producer of its long-running Sunday night news program 60 Minutes. Jeff Fager had been under investigation for allegedly groping women and fostering an abusive workplace. CBS said the dismissal was not directly related to those allegations. Last Sunday, CBS chief executive Les Moonves was forced out after allegations of sexual misconduct.

And on Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 27 points to close near 25,999. The Nasdaq fell 18 and the S&P 500 added one point. So to come on the News Hour, we follow Hurricane Hunters into the eye of the storm. How abortion politics are playing out in Missouri's closely watched Senate race. Why the FDA is cracking down on a so-called epidemic of teen vaping and much more. (music) Naturally, we and most news organizations are spending a lot of time this week trying to alert people about the power and trajectory of Hurricane Florence. But how is it that meteorologists and scientists are able to make these projections? That is the focus of tonight's report from Miles O'Brien. He joined a crew of scientists that flew right into the eye of the hurricane just as it

was starting to develop into a major storm a few days ago. Buckle up for this week's story on the leading edge of science and technology. Miles O'Brien: Another beautiful morning in Hamilton, Bermuda. The crew of a WP3D Orion inspects, preps and briefs. For an eight-hour mission, straight into the worst weather nature has to offer. They are Hurricane Hunters, and on this day Florence is their quarry. The aircraft brims with three powerful radar systems, sensors to analyze clouds, and tubes for dropping probes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration offered me a seat on this airborne science laboratory so long as I could buckle my belt and harness in a hurry. No small feat for your humble, one-armed correspondent.

But I passed. And soon the craft they call Kermit was airborne. (airplane radio chatter) Heading 800 miles to the southeast and the developing eye of the storm, then on the cusp of Hurricane status. (airplane ration chatter) Essentially mission is from Bermuda, down to tropical storm Florence. You can see on this map, these are our initial sweep of points..... Miles O Brien: Our flight director is meteorologist Mike Holmes. Mike Holmes: So we are going to do a circumnavigation. And then we are going to do a series of legs that bisect the storm starting with end points 90 miles into the center, 90 miles nautical out rotate that we are going to do that 3 times ......Miles O Brien: The plane is filled with scientists, engineers and technicians. Much of what they do depends on how well things go here. (scientist): We call this station five.

This is where we deploy all of our expendables from. Miles O Brien: Aerospace engineer Nick Underwood is releasing drop signs, tubes filled with sensors that fall to the sea under parachutes, with precise timing, (three, two, one, release combo.....) dictated by the scientific objectives. (Combo away, sound is on channel 4) They beam back temperature, humidity, pressure and wind data to make forecast models more accurate. (scientist): The more accurate data, the more up-to-date, the more precise data they have, the better that those models are going to be. So with this aircraft, being able to fly right through the storm, getting into the storm environment, actually sampling the atmosphere, not just looking at it from afar, that you can't get that quality of data anywhere else. Miles O Brien: Much of the data they gather is beam back in real time to forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. People like flight recon coordinator Warren Madden. When we met him a few weeks before my flight into Florence, he was monitoring the same aircraft

as it flew into Hurricane Lane, as it bore down on Hawaii. Warren Madden: What you're looking at right now, we have a variety of screens up so we can keep track of the whole situation. Miles O Brien: He flew Hurricane Hunter missions himself for 14 years. Warren Madden: The aircraft is flying and sending us information through a satellite connection and so we can track where the aircraft is, we can bring up various plots about wind speeds from instruments that we drop out at the bottom of the plane and that float down to the surface that can measure the wind speed and the pressure and the air temperature floating down. Miles O Brien: All that data is entered into complex computer models that try to predict the path of the storm and its intensity, the blind spot in the forecasts. Michael Brennan: Forecasting Hurricane Intensity has been a big challenge for many years. Miles O Brien: Michael Brennan is a senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center. Michael Brennan: One of the big investments that the U.S. has made is through the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project where Congress provided a big infusion of money to focus research and computer modeling development on the intensity forecast problem and in particular trying to forecast these

rapid changes in intensity where we see storms strengthened by 30 or 40 miles per hour in one day. Miles O Brien: He says predicting sudden shifts is a kind of holy grail, some progress is being made but it's painfully slow. Michael Brennan: We still have difficulty forecasting it accurately because we're not sure exactly when it's going to start or how long it might last but in 2017 for example we had 39 instances of rapid intensification in the Atlantic basin and we forecast six of them correctly. Now it doesn't sound like a lot but 10 years ago that number probably would have been zero. Miles O Brien: There are a lot of factors at play and forecasters struggle to identify the triggers. Aboard Kermit they are focused on vertical wind shear, a sudden change in wind direction as altitude changes. Wind shear causes cyclonic storms to tilt, reducing their ability to gain strength. So a sudden decline in wind shear can lead to rapid intensification. They spend a lot of time on the westward edge of Florence sampling the environment where

the storm is headed in addition to plowing through it. Heather Holbach is a meteorologist at NOAA's Hurricane Research Division. Heather Holbach: One of the main goals of our research is to try and collect data that we can use to understand this process which is why this flight is really interesting because we're potentially catching the beginning of the organ, reorganization of Florence before it begins to intensify so that we'll really help inform us about the whole process that Florence will undergo in the coming days. Miles O Brien: Hurricane forecasting has come a long way since the early days of airborne storm hunting. (older clip?): They are presently reporting 45 to 50 knots of wind in the storm. We expect to hit more than that. Miles O Brien: John Zawizlek is a scientist at the University of Miami. John Zawizlek: It's a real combination of having more satellite measurements and then the aircraft measurements such as we're taking today and just generally we're seeing improvements in computing power and such and so we can get higher resolution models, better parameterizations of certain

things like clouds, processes happening near the surface and then also maybe even including how the ocean may interact with the atmosphere as well. Miles O Brien: But even as forecasts improve, the hurricane center is focused on how best to communicate all the complex, often misleading data to the public. It's a new kind of weather front where physics, math and meteorology meet the social sciences. For example, while we all tend to focus on the most likely path of a storm, the so-called cone of uncertainty, it doesn't tell the whole story about who is at risk. Kenneth Graham: You can't sit there and say, well, now I'm outside the cone. Miles O Brien: Kenneth Graham is director of the National Hurricane Center. Kenneth Graham: It's not a cone of impact. So I think we still have some work to do to really talk about what some of these things like the cone mean and get people to understand the impacts could be hundreds of miles away from the cone. Miles O Brien: Case in point, Hurricane Irma last year.

The storm left downtown Jacksonville inundated, even though it was not anywhere near the cone of uncertainty. Aboard Kermit, scientists and engineers are trying to put more certainty into the cone. Satellites using radar can measure how rough the sea is, and that correlates to wind speed. But how accurate are they? Data gathered by the aircraft is used to calibrate the satellites and thus refine the models. Engineer Paul Chang leads the ocean surface wind science team. Paul Chang: Our objectives are, you know, both to calibrate and validate and improve like current satellite sensors that are up there and also investigate new remote sensing technologies. As new satellites are launched, you know, we try to conduct these flights to validate the measurements in the extreme conditions. Miles O Brien: Eight hours and 19 drops on later, we find ourselves on final approach to Bermuda. The data is good and plentiful, and the crew is tired, but happy. (laughing)

In the days that followed, Florence intensified rapidly, just as they suspected. They hope missions like this will help make it possible to one day turn those suspicions into predictions. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Miles O'Brien in Hamilton, Bermuda. (music) Judy Woodruff: Now campaigning on Kavanaugh, we traveled in Missouri where the contentious confirmation of the next Supreme Court justice looms over a competitive U.S. Senate race. Lisa Desjardins reports on how one of the most divisive topics in politics has taken center stage in the campaign. Lisa Desjardins: It is 8 a.m. cold and raining at an abortion clinic outside St. Louis, Missouri. Ragan Barkledge: We just want to let you know that we're here for you.

Lisa Desjardins: Twenty-six-year-old Ragan Barkledge aims for a soft approach, but she is here to try to intercept women and talk them out of an abortion. Ragan Barkledge: When women pull up to the driveway, we can go up to the vehicle and just say, hi, how are you? How can we help you? We're here to offer free resources today. (?) Are you ready? Lisa Desjardins: Barkledge, who works at students for life, an anti-abortion group, is part of a highly motivated community that wants two things. Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court and more anti-abortion Republicans in the U.S. Senate. Ragan Barkledge: My faith tells me that I need to do something to end the injustice. So for me, it's not a religious issue, it's human rights issue. Pamela Merritt: So that's two buildings over. Lisa Desjardins: A few hours later, in downtown St. Louis, Pamela Merritt is also incredibly motivated in the opposite direction. Pamela Merritt: Missouri is teetering on a brink, the likes of which I have never seen, and I've been doing this for a while. Lisa Desjardins: She organized a conference this weekend for progressive campaign activists after building her own nonprofit to advocate for abortion access.

Pamela Merritt: The women who are overwhelmingly impacted by restrictions and also by criminalization are poor women of color and who look just like me and who deserve access to abortion without limits and without restrictions. Lisa Desjardins: The two women with counter campaigns share a current focus. How a potential Justice Kavanaugh could impact the future of the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 decision to legalize abortion, Roe V. Wade. Pamela Merritt: It means everything, you know, right now, despite our best efforts, we are looking at a nominee who would cement a five-judge, all-male conservative court that is opposed to abortion. Ragan Barkledge: This Supreme Court nomination is huge because this will determine history and it could reverse what's already been done. Lisa Desjardins: You want it overturned?

Ragan Barkledge: I would love to see Roe V. Wade go back to the States and have go back to where people can vote on it. Josh Hawley: I'm Resolute. Lisa Desjardins: So would it seems Missouri's Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Josh Hawley. Josh Hawley: We believe that every person is created in the image of God, that every person has inherent dignity and value, that every person deserves the right to life. Lisa Desjardins: Hawley, the state's attorney general, has called Roe V. Wade one of the most unjust decisions in U.S. history, and he's centering part of his campaign against two-term Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill around the court. Recent polling shows Hawley and McCaskill are neck and neck. (?election spot) The eyes of the nation are on Missouri. We decide which values control the Senate and the Supreme Court. Claire McCaskill wants liberals in charge. That's how she votes. Lisa Desjardins: Kavanaugh privately met with McCaskill last month. She has not announced how she'll vote. She got an overflow crowd in rural Franklin County Saturday, a group of Democrats that want her to vote no on Kavanaugh.

The former prosecutor explained the pressures coming from both sides. Claire McCaskill: She goes, oh, she's trying to figure out what the winner is for her politically. There is none. No matter what I do, there are downsides to it. Lisa Desjardins: Missouri has been a hotbed of debate and court action over abortion since the 1970s, and a factor in McCaskill's last race six years ago. Her opponent then, Republican Todd Aiken, sparked outrage when he said, Todd Aiken: if it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. Joe Manas: McCaskill really exploited that, and that helped her have a huge victory that fall. Lisa Desjardins: St. Louis Public Radio's Joe Manas has covered Missouri politics for almost four decades. She says this year stands out for the dollar signs. Senate groups have poured over $27 million into Missouri the most of any Senate seat this year. One conservative group launched a statewide bus tour about Kavanaugh. Others are blitzing TV screens. (election clip) President Trump has nominated another fair, independent justice. Will Senator McCaskill stand with us?

Or them? Lisa Desjardins: The fight has soured some voters on both Senate candidates. (voter) I'm not too thrilled about either of them because not necessarily about them personally, but neither of them are interested in what I'm interested in. Lisa Desjardins: But in others, you see the states sharp divide. (voter) I am a pro-choice woman, so I really don't like the idea that my government can tell me what to do with my body. (voter) The fact that I don't believe in abortion is a big deal for me. Lisa Desjardins: McCaskill also has a geography problem. She needs some moderate voters from the suburbs, and she also needs more liberal voters in the cities to pour out for her. Joe Manas: She has to keep the progressives energized. Some of the abortion rights activists in the state who are telling her she needs to be one more upfront on the issue. Lisa Desjardins: Like Pamela Merritt. Pamela Merritt: On the issue of abortion in general, I think Senator McCaskill is too timid. Lisa Desjardins: Merritt is tapped into key campaign groups, like the abortion rights group Neyrol, whose office she visited to plan an upcoming demonstration. Pamela Merritt: Nice.

Perfect. I'm not a moderate. I'm an unapologetic lefty, and the one number one reason why I elected or voted for Claire McCaskill was because the Supreme Court is on the line. Lisa Desjardins: Merritt also lives in the city of St. Louis. She's the kind of fiery progressive McCaskill needs to excite out in the suburbs. Ragan Bargley: I like having this shade open. Lisa Desjardins: Reagan Bargley is precisely the kind of Republican Josh Hawley needs, conservative and motivated. Ragan Bargley: If Josh Hawley were elected, I definitely think that he would confirm Kamenaz's Supreme Court. And I don't think McCaskill will confirm him to the Supreme Court. And their vote matters. This is a battleground state. Lisa Desjardins: And pressure over Kavanaugh is mounting now. The Senate is expected to vote this month, meaning McCaskill will have to make her decision soon. McCaskill: And I'll just stand here and take pictures with people. Lisa Desjardins: And come down on one side of this heated campaign issue. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Lisa Desjardins in St. Louis, Missouri. Judy Woodruff: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today issued its toughest crackdown yet on the makers

of electronic cigarettes. These vaping devices have become increasingly popular with young people. And as William Brangham reports, the FDA told manufacturers they have two months to prove they can keep their e-cigarettes out of the hands of miners. William Brangham: In announcing its action today, the FDA said the use of e-cigarettes among young people had hit, quote, an epidemic proportion. It's illegal for anyone under 18 to buy any tobacco or nicotine product, including these e-cigarettes. In a moment, I'll talk with the head of the FDA, Dr. Scott Gottlieb. But first, to give you a sense of what these e-cigarettes are and how kids are using them, here's an excerpt from a report special correspondent, Kavitha Cardoza, of Education Week, did two months ago at a high school in Connecticut. Fran Thompson: A lot of jewels that remain in... Kavitha Cardoza: Fran Thompson, the principal of Jonathan Law High School, opens what he calls his vaping drawer.

Fran Thompson: These are some of the items that we have confiscated this week. Kavitha Cardoza: The items are all e-cigarettes. The most popular brand by far is called Jewel. Fran Thompson: This is a jewel. I know it looks like a flash drive, right? So the liquid goes in here. Kavitha Cardoza: Basically, there are devices that heat up a liquid, often nicotine, and you inhale the vapor. Fran Thompson: And then they smoke it. They vape it. Kavitha Cardoza: Kids can hide them anywhere. (?) Their socks, their backpacks, their pockets, their wallets, their bras, backpacks everywhere. Anywhere. Kavitha Cardoza: Jeweling, as it's called, has spiked all over the country among youth. But unlike alcohol or cigarettes, often parents aren't even sure what it is. Parent Liz Goodwin has two teenagers in the school. She found nicotine liquid pods in their pockets while she was doing laundry. Liz Goodwin: When I found the pods, I googled it and looked for it, and I couldn't find anything. I just had a photo of it and tried to describe it and what is this. And then I saw the amount of nicotine. It's the equivalent of one pack of cigarettes. I also understood some of my adult friends used e-cigarettes as a way of getting off of smoking.

So I didn't know how dangerous it was. Principal Thompson: I'll show you what was going on. Kavitha Cardoza: Principal Thompson says his aha moment was in the bathroom. Principal Thompson: So your typical high school bathroom, right? Just like watching Greece, right? But what was happening was you might have five or six kids hanging out in here with the door closed and vaping. Kavitha Cardoza: So Chetra Krishnan-Saran runs the Yale Tobacco Center's regulatory science at Yale University. She says the flavors are a big part of e-cigarettes popularity. They sound playful and harmless, mango, mint, cotton candy, blueberry pie. Chetra Krishnan-Saran: These products come in over 7,000 different flavors, and they can also mix and match to create their own, which again introduces a sense of novelty. Kavitha Cardoza: But the vapors inhaled have been found to contain lead, zinc, chromium, and nickel. And Krishnan-Saran says nicotine, the main liquid in these devices, is extremely addictive

and can cause memory and attention loss, especially in the developing teenage brain. William Brangham: That was from a report by Special Correspondent, Kavitha Cardoza. In its warning today, the FDA told the four main manufacturers of e-cigarettes that if they can't prove within 60 days that they can keep these devices out of the hands of kids, the FDA would consider taking them off the market totally. The FDA also sent over 1,000 warning letters to retailers that sell them, places like drug stores and gas stations. For more on today's action by the Food and Drug Administration, I'm joined by the head of that agency, FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb. Commissioner, thank you very much for being here. Could you just explain to me this clearly seems like an escalation on the FDA's part today? Why today? Why now? Dr. Scott Gottlieb: Well, what we have access to right now is data that demonstrates us that there's nothing short of an epidemic of use among teenagers. We knew use was rising among high school teenagers, among young people, kids.

But we now have access to some preliminary data that we'll make public pretty soon. That shows that this is nothing short of an epidemic of use. And we feel we need to step in with dramatic action to try to curtail that use. You know, unfortunately, we do see these e-cigarettes as a viable alternative for adult smokers to migrate off of combustible tobacco onto products that might not have all the risks associated with them of smoking. But unfortunately, in order to close the on-ramp for kids, we're now going to have to take some actions that we think are going to narrow the off-ramp for adults. And that's a trade off that we have to make based on what we're seeing in the market right now. William Brangham: So, you mentioned this an epidemic level of use among kids as a physician and as the head of the FDA. Can you just sketch out for me what do you see as the main health problems with kids using these products? Dr. Scott Gottlieb: Well, there's multiple problems. First of all, we know that nicotine has direct effects on the developing brain. So nicotine in a child is not harmless. It's not a benign substance.

But also, if we see the trend in use that we're seeing right now, that's creating a massive pool of young people who are becoming habituated on and addicted to nicotine. And some component of those young people are going to migrate onto combustible tobacco products. So, if you believe, as we do, that no child should be using any tobacco product. And we certainly don't want to see a new generation of young people and kids become addicted to nicotine and start smoking. This pool of users of e-cigarettes, and it's a pool that's growing very sharply based on the data that we have, represents risk for the future that some component of these kids are going to migrate onto cigarettes and ultimately become long-term smokers with all the health effects that come from that. William Brangham: So you have told the manufacturers, you guys have 60 days to prove to us that you can keep these out of kids' hands. Let's say the manufacturers fail to meet that test. What happens then? Dr. Scott Gottlieb: Well, what we said today is we're actively looking at removing from the market the flavored products. We believe that one of the aspects of these products that makes them appealing to kids are the flavors and some of those flavors come in fruity flavors and other kinds of flavors

that we think are increasing the appeal of these products to kids. And so right now those products remain on the market because the agency allows them to remain on the market under what we call an exercise of enforcement discretion. We haven't required the manufacturers to file applications to prove that those flavors actually have a net public health benefit, but we have the ability to do that. We have the legal authority to do that. So what we would do is tell the manufacturers that the flavors need to come off the market. And if they want to reintroduce the flavored products onto the market, they'll have to file successful applications with the FDA to demonstrate that the existence of flavors provide a net public health benefit, that the benefits of flavors in terms of helping adult smokers quit combustible tobacco outweigh the risk that it's going to also appeal to young people and get a kid hooked on an a cigarette. William Brangham: So the FDA wouldn't be necessarily taking these products completely. Maybe taking specifically the ones that have fruity flavors, candy flavors, dessert flavors that seems to me you're arguing those appeal particularly to kids.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb: Well the bottom line is all options are on the table. And if the trends in use that we're seeing right now continue, we're going to have to take even more dramatic actions. We think right now we can step into this market with a combination of enforcement actions against the places that we know kids are getting access to these products, which includes retail establishments that are selling them without putting proper restrictions in place or without carding minors, as well as the online sites where we think that there are straw purchases being made where someone's going online, buying a lot of these products and reselling them to kids. But the other action we would take immediately is look at removing these flavored products from the market. If we don't think that those actions are sufficient to try to curtail the scope of use that we're now seeing among kids, we're willing to step into the market and take even more dramatic action. Now I will say, we do think the e-cigarettes offer a viable alternative for adult smokers. So we don't want to extinguish this opportunity entirely because we do see some potential benefit from having these products on the market as a way for adult smokers to get access to nicotine without all the harmful effects of combusting tobacco.

But it's going to have to come, I think, going forward with some additional limitations on the availability and the types of products being marketed in order to stem what we're seeing as an epidemic of use among kids. William Brangham: Jewel Labs, which is one of the main manufacturers of these e-cigarettes. Several months ago, they said we're going to put $30 million into a campaign to keep these cigarettes out of kids' hands. They said that they supported the idea of raising the national age to 21 for these products. They put out a conciliatory statement supporting what you did today. But clearly, you don't think the manufacturers have done enough thus far. Dr. Scott Gottlieb: Well, look, I'm measuring what the manufacturers are doing and, frankly, what we're doing based on the results, based on the data that we're seeing. And the data that we're seeing is showing that the proportion of teenagers and high school students using these products is growing at a very fast clip. Ultimately, that's going to be the measure that I judge the manufacturers and I judge our own success by.

That's what I'm looking at. William Brangham: All right. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Commissioner of the FDA. Thanks very much. Dr. Scott Gottlieb: Thank you. (music) Judy Woodruff: As part of our ongoing race matter solution series, tonight's special correspondent Charlene Hunter-Gault looks at how lessons from a successful interfaith effort may be used to bridge racial divisions as well. Charlene Hunter-Gault: Learning common ground while respecting differences is what brought these 450 college students and educators together from across the country. They're spending part of their summer vacation at this Chicago hotel, learning how to bridge the toxic divides in our society. The trainers are part of the interfaith youth core. An organization aimed at helping people of all religions, ethnicities, and beliefs. The nonprofit was founded on the notion that the United States was the first country built on the promise of shared values rather than shared heritages.

And that a 21st century democracy can thrive only if its citizens have the skills to successfully navigate divides of all kinds. (?): And then you're going to become all the different groups you're a part of. Charlene Hunter-Gault: Ebo Patel is the founder and president of the organization, the largest of its kind in North America, started in 1998. Patel is Muslim, born in Mumbai, India, and raised in middle class suburban Chicago. There are chapters on nearly 500 campuses now, focusing on service in the community, pressing issues on campus, and making meaningful cooperation with others a normal part of the college experience in and outside the classroom. Amanada Jialo of Susquehanna University is a student coach who helps jumpstart these sometimes difficult conversations. Amanada Jialo: So in the training rooms, we are the eyes and ears of the trainers. If there are students who are just like, I'm stuck, I don't have a story where they

want to kind of like turn the engine and get them going, get them some ideas. Charlene Hunter-Gault: During the conference, I sat down with Ebo Patel to ask why, after studying sociology of religion as a Rhodes scholar, he decided to set out on this challenging path. I want to go back with you a few years. You had just gotten your PhD at Oxford. You came back to America and you started this program. What caused you to do that? Ebo Patel: Mandela, 1999, South Africa. I remember seeing him speak and he begins by pointing out into the cape and saying, I spent 27 years of my life on that island in prison and I wouldn't be on this stage today if it wasn't for the interfaith movement in South Africa that brought down apartheid. And at that time, if you had told me the word interfaith work, I might have kind of rolled my eyes.

I didn't realize that people from different faith backgrounds coming together had built this stunning movement in South Africa and so I thought to myself, you know, going into the 21st century, are we going to forfeit our societies to religious extremists or are we going to try to build an interfaith movement that helps all of us build diverse democracies where everyone can thrive. And I thought to myself, I want to be a part of the next chapter of history. So many powerful interfaith movements have been about articulating, reconciling language that undoes racism and that builds new societies. Charlene Hunter-Gault: So then what did you start to do? Ebo Patel: So I was a big part of both the diversity and the service learning movements in college and part of the intersection of that movement was the idea that you bring people from different racial and class and geographic backgrounds together to do service. So the way interfaith youth core gets its start is to say, why don't we bring young people from different religious backgrounds, each of whose religious traditions has an inspiration

to serve. Charlene Hunter-Gault: Did you find that there was a better age than another one to reach these young people and what was your selling point for them? Ebo Patel: American college campuses are a treasure of our civilization. It's where so many young people get a sense of their calling, their vocation. We thought to ourselves, let's partner with US college campuses to educate and inspire a generation of college students to be interfaith leaders. The American ideal is deeply intertwined with interfaith cooperation and we need a new generation of interfaith leaders to write the next chapter. Charlene Hunter-Gault: How does the racial divide that we have today compare with when you was starting out? Ebo Patel: We are living in an ugly time, part of what interfaith work has to be about right now is calls for justice with reconciliation, building a new community where we can all thrive. And I think part of the power of religious language and the bridges that people from

different faiths have built in the past in the civil rights movement, in the struggle against apartheid is they did exactly that. Charlene Hunter-Gault: You know, one of the things I found interesting in your general session was the question, how many of you all talk to strangers, how many of you all talk to someone who doesn't share your politics? And I was just wondering where you were going with that, do you work on that? Ebo Patel: So we've got this really thorny set of problems and I think that one of the ways that we address it is with the kind of interfaith partnerships that create spaces where it's easier for people to cooperate. That doesn't mean we're going to agree on every election, that doesn't mean we're going to agree on economic policy, but we can start a baseball league together. We can help make the school play successful. We can participate in disaster relief efforts together. There's all kinds of things that are central to our civil society and our civic culture in the United States that I feel are now being shredded because of a poisonous political

environment. If we're not willing to do the work of citizens with other citizens, you can't have a healthy diverse democracy. Having said that, we can't paper over the problems of marginalization. We can't paper over historic, ugly injustice, especially around race. So how do we address that without making some group of people feel like the enemy? Because I think that the great lesson of Lincoln and Jane Adams and King and Mandela is for every stitch of hate or distrust that you put into the fabric now, you're going to have to unstitch at a later point. Charlene Hunter-Gault: That all sounds really wonderful. And yet we look at college campuses that are very distressing to me where you have such hostile, racial divisions. How do you account for that and what do you do about it? Ebo Patel: I'm on 25 college campuses a year. I've probably visited something like 130 in the past eight or ten years.

It's not like things don't ever get tense, but what I read about in the news on college campuses is foreign to me, right, which is to say it is by definition sensational. Charlene Hunter-Gault: So are you in the end optimistic about our country now and its future? Ebo Patel: How am I not going to be optimistic? Really, right? I mean, I feel like if I wasn't optimistic, I would be ungrateful to the work that Martin Luther King Jr. did to bring me to this country. And I'm serious about that. The beautiful thing is there's lots of us that feel this way. There's this whole growing network of college student interfaith leaders on American campuses, basically saying, where's the divide? Let me bridge it. That's the future of America or we have no future at all. Charlene Hunter-Gault: Ebo Patel, thank you for joining us. Ebo Patel: It's a pleasure to be with you. Thank you so much. Judy Woodruff: And this note, Ebo Patel, is also just released a book titled Out of Many Fates, Religious

Diversity and the American Promise. You can find more about that work along with six additional books he recommends for people wanting to better understand or find faith. All of that is online at pbs.org slash NewsHour. And that's the NewsHour for tonight. On Thursday, I sit down with Bob Woodward to discuss Fear, his explosive new book on the Trump White House. I'm Judy Woodruff. Join us online and again here tomorrow evening for all of us the PBS NewsHour. Thank you. And we'll see you soon. (funds credits) Major funding for the PBS NewsHour has been provided by "Consumer Cellular understands that not everyone needs an unlimited wireless plan. Our U.S.-based customer service reps can help you choose a plan based on how much you use your phone. Nothing more. Nothing less. To learn more, go to consumercellular.tv" B-N-S-F Railway, financial services firm Raymond James. And with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. (music)

This program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. (music) You're watching PBS. (KQED programming interstitials.) A new Check, Please Bay Area. Somebody could take over the reins of the show for a second. I don't know what it is. It's magic. A mom and pop bakery satisfying neighborhood needs. A traditional Greek place that treats diners like family.

A Punjabi Mexican spot creating delicious confusion fusion. Cheers. The reviews are in on Check Please Bay Area Thursday night at 7.30. Ken Burns came bursting into my room and posed the question if we would be willing to do this film about the Mayo Clinic. It was almost 150 years ago that three country doctors were brought together with a group of Catholic nuns. After a tornado, sister Alfred Mose helped W.W. Mayo provide care to the seriously injured people in the town, rising out of that was this partnership. It grew into one of the largest and most prestigious medical institutions in the planet. The statement that the Mayo's live and breathed by is the needs of the patient come first. We felt so much empathy and compassion at Mayo Clinic.

They were not afraid to look at your suffering and to empathize. We filmed over 120 days at the various campuses. Filming the operations was such an eye-opening experience. We had to scrub in. The nurses would say in the surgical rooms. If it's blue, don't touch it. I had never filmed surgery before. I equated with a ballet. It was pretty amazing, pretty fascinating. What a privilege it was to see such skilled people open up a human being, stop a heart, repair it, and then have it comeback and beat perfectly. I think this film has an opportunity to convey to people that health care is about care. Join KQED at the Asian Art Museum for KQED Member Days. Discover the bold artistic vision of contemporary artists from provincial India. In painting is my everything, art from India's Methila region. Traditional paintings address topics that are at once local and global, personal, and universal. Admission is free on September 28th and 29th to KQED members who show their current KQED member card.

Details at KQED.org slash member day. You're watching Community Supported KQED. Become a member today. KQED thanks our members and community partners for their support. He gets a lot of compliments. He wears his army hat, walks around with his army shirt, looking all nice, and then people just say, thank you for serving our country, and I'm like, that's my dad. No one deserves a warmer welcome home. That's why we've hired more than 13,000 members of the military community since 2010. I'm very proud of him. Comcast. Hello everyone, and welcome to Amanporan Company. Here's what's coming up tonight. Was Serena Williams, a victim of sexism at the U.S. Open, was Naomi Osaka's first

Grand Slam victory ruined? How it is all still playing out in the United States and Japan. Tennis legend, an equality activist, Billie Jean King joins me for her first interview since the controversial match. Then former Secretary of State, John Kerry, has seen one diplomatic accomplishment after the other, bulldozed by Donald Trump. I ask him how it feels to see his legacy dismantled before his eyes. So ahead, our Walter Isaacson talks to Ginny Rometti, a CEO of IBM. She is just one of a handful of women running a Fortune 500 company.