PBS NewsHour; May 25, 2019 5:30pm-6:01pm PDT

I'm out. Me too. Guys. Crystal Geyser alpine spring water always bottled at the mountain source. On this edition for Saturday, May 25, another roadblock in funding for a border wall. President Trump kicks off a state visit to Japan and in our signature segment, tackling maternal mortality in a state with one of the highest uninsured rates in the country. Next on PBS NewsHour Weekend. PBS NewsHour Weekend is made possible by Bernard and Irene Schwartz, Sue and Edgar Wackenheim III, Seton Melvin, the Cheryl and Philip Milstein family, Dr. P. Roy Vagelos and Diana T. Vagelos, the J.P.B. Foundation, Rosalind P. Walter, Barbara Hope Zuckerberg, Corporate funding is provided by Mutual of America, designing customized, individual and group retirement products.

That's why we're your retirement company. Additional support has been provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. From the Tisch WNET studios at Lincoln Center in New York, Hari Srinivasan. Good evening and thanks for joining us. President Trump's plan to divert billions of dollars from the Defense Department to fund construction of barriers and walls on the U.S. Mexico border is partially stalled after a federal court ruling in Northern California last night. U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr. granted a preliminary injunction halting the redirection of military funds to two projects that would add 51 miles of barriers in Yuma, Arizona and El Paso, Texas. Gilliam is overseeing two lawsuits filed shortly after the president declared a national emergency at the border. That followed a two-month standoff with Congress and a partial government shutdown over funding to build a barrier wall.

In his ruling, Gilliam wrote that the issues raised in the cases are, quote, not about whether the challenged border barrier construction plan is wise or unwise. Instead, this case presents strictly legal questions regarding whether the proposed plan for funding border barrier construction exceeds the executive branch's lawful authority. Late this afternoon, President Trump tweeted a response to the ruling, saying that, quote, we are asking for an expedited appeal. On day one of a four-day state visit to Japan, President Trump led off with criticism of what he called the trade imbalance between the two countries. Japan has a $70 billion trade surplus with the United States. Shortly after arriving in Tokyo with the First Lady, the president addressed the issue at a reception with business leaders. The United States and Japan are hard at work negotiating a bilateral trade agreement, which will benefit both of our countries. I would say that Japan has had a substantial edge for many, many years, but that's okay. Last week, the Trump administration announced it would delay new tariffs on Japanese and

European auto imports for six months while they negotiate trade deals. During the visit, the president will be the first head of state to meet Japan's new emperor. We'll have more on the President's trip in the US and Japan's relationship after the news summary. Another mountain climber attempting to summit Mount Everest died today, bringing the death toll to 10 from what is being called a traffic jam on the world's highest peak. A record number of people are trying to use short windows of good weather and are frequently stuck waiting for their turn to the top in the last narrow stretch of the climb known as the death zone. Nepal's tourism ministry issued permits to a record 381 climbers this season amid concerns expeditions are to loosely regulated. According to government officials, 17 people have died during 2019's season, one of the worst death tolls in decades. South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was sworn into office today for a five-year term following a tumultuous election in his inaugural address, Ramaphosa, promised that he and

his ruling African National Congress party will fight corruption and work to end poverty in a generation. The unemployment rate in South Africa is more than 25 percent and half of all South Africans live in households where income is less than $90 per month. A major real estate title company admitted that a security lapse exposed bank account numbers and other sensitive information in its 885 million personal files. The data leak at first American financial of Fortune 500 company was first reported on the blog Krebs on Security, a flaw in an internet application allowed anyone with a web browser to see confidential customer data in files that dated back more than 16 years. First American Financial says it has now blocked all outside access and is investigating to see if the data was taken by outsiders. If it was, the security lapse will rank as one of the biggest data leaks in internet history. For more on the Japan-US relationship and the president and first lady's state visit,

we turned to Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Japan Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She's also the author of Japan Rearmed and she joins us now from Washington DC. This visit the first by Donald Trump to see or actually any major world leader to see the new emperor. How big of a deal is that in Japan? It's a huge deal, Harry. This is the coming of age of the new emperor and empress and it will be their first international state visit. It's also important for Japan to show that the relationship with President Trump and with the United States is the priority for them. There will be a large G20 meeting next month in Japan, so lots of state leaders will be coming to the country. So this really sets the stage for the Japanese to say, this is an alliance that matters to us. One of the pressing concerns in that region right now is North Korea and the missile test that they've been having and really the U.S. is posture on what we consider to be a problem and what we don't.

Exactly. The Japanese have watched very closely the president's diplomacy with Kim Jong-un, the leader of the DPRK. He, Prime Minister Abe, has been very supportive of the president's engagement with Mr. Kim. But he has also continued to advocate maximum pressure, in other words, not releasing or relieving the North Koreans of the sanctions that the United Nations has imposed on them. So those recent missile tests, there was a little bit of a question in Tokyo about the American response to them. Do they matter? Do they not? And I think you saw already National Security Advisor Bolton making very clear an oppressed conference that yes, they violate U.N. sanctions and therefore they do matter. Yeah. On the one hand, we are very concerned about missiles that can go all the way across the ocean, but the Japanese and everyone in the region is much more concerned about anything that can strike them. Exactly. And the arsenal of North Korean missiles in the short and medium range, with short range of course being able to hit South Korea and the more medium range reaching all the way across Japan, those are the ones that our allies care about. And there are a lot of them, and the North Koreans in 2017 set off barrages of these

missiles to demonstrate that our allies in the region were vulnerable to the North Korean arsenal. Let's talk a little bit about trade as well. Right now, as the United States tries to basically renegotiate NAFTA on the one hand, there's also the possible tariffs and the existing tariffs that are happening in China, but kind of it's hanging in the air whether or not we're going to do something about how we deal with the auto industry and a huge impact on the American consumer if we did something with Japanese-made cars. Exactly. And Prime Minister Abe has set up this visit to be a very diplomatically warm welcome for Japan. But hovering not far under the surface, of course, is this bilateral free trade talk, the talks that are going to reach an agreement between the United States and Japan later this year. There's a lot of friction. As you pointed out, the President's use of tariffs has not, you know, Japan has not been immune to that, the steel and aluminum tariffs that were imposed on our trading partners also affected Japan as it did Europe. But it's really the auto industry, I think, in Japan that would face the largest setback

if the United States decided to go in that direction. Just a day or two ago, the U.S. announced it would postpone that decision. So that leverage on the part of the President is still hanging out there for Japan. And he landed and immediately met with Japanese business leaders in Tokyo to say, your trade deficit with us is a problem, and we're going to correct the problem. And where is Japan's economy right now? Where is the kind of their overall health when it turns to trying to shore up this relationship with the United States, especially as the United States has more trouble negotiating with China? Well, Japan's finally back on a growth trajectory, as you know, for almost all the way through the 1990s, the Japanese economy sputtered, in fact, was in recession for much of it. So Prime Minister Abe, through a very aggressive focus, both on monetary, fiscal, and policy and, to a certain extent, some structural reforms, has attempted to jump-start Japanese growth slow, but nonetheless positive for the Japanese economic future. Whatever happens in the global economy, of course, the Japanese are very vulnerable, too.

And so any kind of distortion, such as the trade conflict between the United States and the PRC, any kind of conflict in the Middle East, the conversation today about Iran, those would all be tremendously important for Japan. But the bilateral trading relationship and economic partnership with the United States is really vital to Japan. It's not just that they export and import from the United States, but there's also foreign direct investment here in the United States that creates somewhat just a little short of a million American jobs. So Japan is deeply enmeshed in our national economy as well. All right, Sheila Smith, Senior Fellow for Japan Studies in the Council on Foreign Relations. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, Hari, for having me. If you're an American woman, your chances of dying from pregnancy-related causes are higher than someone who lives in Sweden, Poland, or Libya. In an historic move this past December, President Trump allocated $50 million in funding to decrease maternal mortality over the next five years.

Texas inadvertently became an emblem on the health crisis when it mistakenly overstated the number of maternal deaths in their state, but the error drew attention to the number of African-American women who still had higher maternal death rates than other populations. NewsHour Weekend special correspondent Kierci Johansson traveled to Texas to meet the woman who helped put this issue in the spotlight and is fighting for change across the country. Things in the Thierry household are like those in many other American homes. Shawn Thierry, a single mother is getting her daughter Claire ready for school and has a jam-packed day herself. Thierry tries not to take any of their time together for granted, remembering sage words from her grandmother. She would always say, I remember when I was a little girl, well, when a woman has a baby, that's the closest she's ever going to get to death. That was true, back in the, as they say, the old days, women died in childbirth. And so I find it just boggling that in 2019, we're still having this conversation.

I'm going to go get your clothes, Claire. Texas is one of the most concerning maternal mortality rates in the country, estimated at 14.6 per 100,000 live births. For black women, it's even worse, 27.8 per 100,000. Shawn Thierry almost became one of the state's statistics herself while giving birth in 2012 to Claire. I started to tell the doctors in the room something's not right. I asked them to put me under to give me full anesthesia, thinking that if somehow I wasn't conscious and awake of the level of pain that I was in, that maybe I could survive. And they said, well, the doctor's not even in the room, he has to make that order. And I just scream, go get him. Thierry doesn't remember much else other than waking up and finding out she had given birth. She says her doctor never explained what had happened. Later, I found out a couple of nurses came in and they said that I had what's called

a high block epidural. And that can be an adverse reaction when I believe it's put too high in your spine. And the medicine goes through a heart instead of down to your leg. So it was paralyzing my heart. She believes her nurses and doctors didn't take her pain level seriously. She says a University of Virginia report may hold the key as to why. They surveyed medical students who actually believed that African Americans have thicker skin. They revealed that they thought that African Americans had a higher pain threshold. And so findings are coming out that blacks are less likely to receive pain medication in the ER. As a black woman in Texas, Thierry knows all too well how big the problem is. She's a Texas house representative. Her district includes three of the zip codes with the highest maternal mortality rates. Driven by her personal ordeal, she's pushing the state to study maternal mortality. An issue that Dr. Carla Ortique says has become a crisis.

At least 50 to 80% of these deaths are preventable. Ortique is vice chair of the Texas maternal mortality and morbidity task force, which was established in 2013 to study the state's maternal mortality rate. We know that for every maternal death, there are approximately 100 severe maternal morbidities. In other words, bad things that happen, near misses, near death instances. And so it's really important that we recognize that the mortality is just that it's the tip of the iceberg. Ortique says 55% of women who give birth in Texas are covered by Medicaid, most lose that coverage 42 days after delivery. And so it's likely not a coincidence that you see a higher incidence of death after that 42 day mark.

Texas has the largest uninsured rate in the country. In part because in 2012, the state legislature rejected billions of dollars in federal aid to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Dr. Ortique says that decision coupled with poverty, obesity and increases in opiate abuse has served only to further marginalize those in need. She was always experimenting with hair. Cheryl Perkins' daughter Cassandra had insurance when she gave birth to twins Camille and Catrile now four years old. She already had an older daughter journey who is now six. But even with insurance, doctors missed early signs of trouble. She had went to the ER 22 times with no resolution, which that never should have happened. Because it would seem like the doctors would say, why is this person coming back here? We're not doing something.

Cassandra was eventually diagnosed with an infection. Her labor was induced just six months into her pregnancy. Her twins weighed only two pounds each. She died a week and a half later after her liver failed. Her mother is now raising three young children alone. Catrile, meanwhile, has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy and needs 24-7 assistance. That's life. It is so hard. Three years after Cassandra's death, Dr. Ortique's Task Force, found that the rate of racial disparity had not changed. Mortality among black women was more than double that of white women. But though the state has since developed a better method that focuses on tracking numbers, white still does not include women who die outside the 42-day Medicaid cutoff.

Now this room here, this is our obstetric room. Shawn Thierry has also proposed a maternal mortality in morbidity data registry bill, which would require collecting health data at the time a pregnant woman is admitted for delivery through 364 days postpartum. Under the bill, data would be collected on a daily basis and would include the most high-risk conditions such as hemorrhaging and pregnancy-induced hypertension. One of the reasons Thierry wants to introduce the data registry is so broad as statistics can reinforce the severity of maternal deaths and set a new standard for states across the US. Thierry is also trying to pass two more bills. One would extend Medicaid coverage for eligible women up to one year after they deliver or experience a miscarriage. The other would require cultural competency training for medical professionals to remove bias and treatment of African American women, something the task force recommended. Physicians like Dr. Carla Ortique say that's fine, but only as long as it's voluntary.

While I did say I absolutely support having training, I can't say that I totally support mandates. Meanwhile, the state has already made some changes to address maternal health issues. Texas Children's Hospital Women's Pavilion has its own intensive care ward within the Labor and Delivery Unit, the first of its kind, in the country. And the Texas Department of State Health Services introduced maternal safety bundles, which detailed treatment policies, safety equipment, training programs and internal reviews that every hospital should have, so far 85% of birthing facilities in the state have rolled out the program. You're putting three bills forward. What happens if they don't pass? I'll be very disappointed. That's the first thing that's going to happen, but then after that I'll have to wait two more years.

In fact, this month, her data registry bill was passed by the Texas House, but her two other bills were not granted a committee hearing, but she vows to keep up the fight, even if she has to wait, for the next biennial legislative session. Can Texas wait two more years? I have, one of the things I said in the very beginning is the time is now. We can't wait because we have a list of names of women that have lost their lives behind this. The study of climate change is no longer limited to laboratories and scientists. Citizen scientists are helping with research, including a look back through centuries-old ships log books. Rachel Becker, Environment Reporter for Cal Matters and formerly a reporter for the Verge, joined me recently via Skype from Sacramento for more on what these handwritten histories are telling us. It's pretty big, so far about 200 log books have been transcribed so far. And these are people who are actually tasked with keeping track of the weather on a daily

basis. These ships, there'd be somebody who had to go test the water temperature, the air temperature, the barometric pressure, and write it all down. So these log books are coming from all sorts of different ships. There were merchant ships traveling from the UK and Scandinavia down to trade with New Zealand and Australia. There were exploration vessels traveling all the way down to Antarctica. There were wailing ships, hunting whales in the waters around New Zealand and Australia, all the way down to Antarctica. And they were marking down these measurements through sometimes horrendous conditions to write down temperatures, air pressure, the things that are key to sailors, but also now are useful to scientists who want to know what the climate was like 100, 150 years ago. They haven't mapped, they haven't sort of translated all these or digitized all these books yet, but have they found anything interesting so far from some of the observations? So there's still processing the data. One thing that they'd like to do, I was speaking with a scientist at New Zealand's National

Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, named Petra Pierce, who's part of this project. And one of the goals she told me is to basically be able to tie extreme impacts like flooding to what the weather was doing at the time. Maybe there was a storm or something strange going on with the weather. So that's one goal. Another goal is to ground climate models in measurements from the past. And so if these models can kind of ground truth their projections with past, what we know was actually going on historically, they can potentially better predict what's going to happen in the future. So those are some long-term goals. Right now they're still processing the data, but they have had some interesting observations of icebergs further north in warmer water than they may be expect, observations of wildlife and the aurora. And Pierce, the scientist I spoke with, told me that one of the really interesting log

books, several of the interesting log books that have been analyzed, came from Robert Falcon Scott's expedition to Antarctica in the early 20th century. And these explorers raced to the South Pole and on their way back, they died. But they were keeping their measurements right up until the end. And Pierce told me that you can see the measurements get more sporadic and infrequent. And eventually the log books were rescued. And she told me it was very inspiring to see these people doing what they could and taking the measurements they could and taking the observations they could, you know, right up until they couldn't anymore. To watch our full interview on how centuries old ship logs may help us learn about climate change, visit pbs.org slash newshour. How does citizens get involved in something like this large research project? So citizens can go to a website called Southern Weather Discovery.

And they can see pieces of old ships logs from the mid 1800s through the 1900s that recorded things like air temperature, water temperature, air pressure, what the wind was doing, whether there was sea ice nearby. And they can help by looking at this difficult to decipher, curly, you know, sometimes illegible handwriting and transcribing the numbers that they see. And so this website gives people little guides to make sure that they can tell, you know, if that little squiggle was a seven or a four. And these measurements are really key and the public's help is key to get these measurements from the page into computers where they can be put into climate models and they can be used to help understand what the climate was like in the past in order to understand what the climate could do in the future. What about sort of the quality control in this? What if I think it's a seven, am I the only person that's ever going to see that and then are we going to have bad data?

That's a great question. So they have multiple people transcribe each entry to weed out the outliers. So, you know, maybe it really was a four, but I thought it was a seven. But if everybody else thinks it's a four, then my data will get weeded out. So they don't accidentally get propagated to the climate models. Right. And what's their end goal once they get all these books finished? What are they hoping to find? They're hoping to fill in these gaps in the historical weather record for the water surrounding New Zealand. You know, because to understand how the climate has changed over the long term, you need a starting point. You need to know what the climate was doing in the past. Yeah. All right. Rachel, back here from Cal Matters. Thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks so much for having me here. Finally tonight, a hiker lost in a dense forest on Hawaii's Maui Island for more than two weeks was found alive yesterday with only minor injuries. A volunteer search team in a helicopter spotted Amanda Ellen, a 35-year-old yoga instructor

and physical therapist in a creek bed between two waterfalls miles away from where she had left her car and her cell phone on May 8th. The volunteers were elated, but they did have some advice for those heading into the wilderness. Don't go without your phone, without your friend, or a plan. That's all for this edition of PBS NewsHour Weekend. I'm Hari Srinivasan. Thanks for watching. Good night. PBS NewsHour Weekend is made possible by Bernard and Irene Schwartz, Sue and Edgar Wackenheim III, Seton Melvin, the Cheryl and Philip Milstein family, Dr. P. Roy Vagelos and Diana T. Vagelos. The JPB Foundation, Rosalind P. Walter, Barbara Hope Zuckerberg, corporate funding is provided by Mutual of America, designing customized, individual and group retirement products.

That's why we're your retirement company. Additional support has been provided by and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. Be more PBS. KQED thanks our members and community partners for their support. Mansonys Labor World Featuring, Temporepedic. Tempor memory foam can provide personalized comfort to enhance a healthy night's sleep by reducing motion transfer and responding to a user's unique shape, weight and temperature. Learn more at sleepworld.com. It's the 30th anniversary of the National Memorial Day Concert. Join me, Joe Montaña and my co-host Mary McCormick with Sam Elliott, Patty LeBelle, Allison Kraus, Dennis Hayesburg and General Colin Powell.

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