Transcripts For KQED PBS NewsHour 20180207

Major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided b babbel. A language app that teaches reallife conversations in a new language, like spanish, french, german, italian, and more. Babbels 1015 minute lessons a are availaban app, or online. More information on babbel. Com. Bnsf railway. Consumer cellular. And with the ongoing support of these institutions this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. And by contributionto your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Yang they are breathing just a little easier on wall street t, onigter another dizzying day. The Dow Jones Industrial average plunged 500 points in the opening minutes, th rallied to ecover nearly half of mondays huge loss. In the end, the dow closed up 567 points, 2 , to finish at 24,912. The nasdaq rose 148 points, and the s p 500 added 46. At a house hearing today, treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin played down the market volatility. The stock market is up significantly, over 30 , since President Trump was elected. Were monitoring the stock markets. Theyre functioning very well ainnd we co to believe in the longterm impact of the s yang stock markets in asia and europe also took a hit in othe wake of mondays se on wall street. Well get more perspective on thetecent market turmoil, ri after theews summary. The days other big story is the latest deadlinego avert a new overnment shutdown. The house and senate moved on separate tracks today, while President Trump dared democrats ncoot terate. Lisa desjardins begins our coverage. Reporter in washington, a tale of two issues, immigration and spending, colliding around one magnetic deadline to fund the government by thursday night. My guess is, they dont want a government shutdown. Onwe dt want a government shutdown. No one wants a government shutdown. Reporter first, spending. They must stop using our troops as politics. He game of reporter republicans like Speaker Paul Ryan want to erase Defense Budget cuts, known as budget caps. Their case was bolstered by the defense secretary. Appearing on the hill today, he also decried temporary spending bills, or continuing resolutions. Our Competitive Edge has eroded in every domain of w larfare aid, sea, cyber and space. Under frequent continuing resolutions and sequesters budget caps, ouonadvantages cnue to shrink. Report bill to avoid a shutdown proposes funding the military through september 30 with a 30 billion increase to avert spending cuts. The rest of government would get a temporary six weeks of funds. But this partisan funding bill ings a whop15 pages long, full of other policies and roposals, many of them meant to jam, or pressure the senate. Conservative Freedom Caucus member dave brat t mean, i would love to j see the senate have to vote on something. Reporter but in the senate, a wholly different idea. Both parties, both leads epublican Mitch Mcconnell and Democrat Chuck schumer working toward a bigger, bipa budget deal to increase funds for defense and nondefense. I think were on the way to gnget an agreement, and on the way of getting an agreement very soon. We support an increase in funding for our military and our middle class. The two are not mutually exclusive. Reporter one budget breakthrough democrats like schumer seem to be separating the immigration debate from this weeks spending debate. Thats issue number two, immigration, now mostly behind closed doors as senators try to work out a deal, with mixed optimism. In terms of immigration, i think its great that Little Pockets of senators are meeting, but what counts is whether 60 can agree. Reporter in a reverse, today iict was the repu white house that connected the immigration debatsto a possible tdown. President trump spoke at a round tab centralamerican gang, ms13. Frankly, if we dont change tt he legislation, if we dot rid of these loopholes, where killers are allowed to come into r country and continue t kill if we dont change it, lets have a shutdown. Well do a shutdown and its worth it for our country. Id love to see a shutdown if we dont get this stuff taken care of. Reporter the white house later said that the president is not advocating a shutdown. Yang lisa joins merom the capitol, along with Yamiche Alcindor at the white house. Let me turn to lisa first. Lisa, developments and events moving very fast up there. The house is poised to pass its spending bill. Whats the state of play in the senate . Right. The house any minute could act. The senate a very different track. What we expect is the house to ss spending bill. It will go over to the syndicate, and they will take ant the legislative scissors probably cut out most of that bill, replace it with their own version, which we expect could be this twoyear budget deal, perhaps erasing spending cuts for defense nondefense. Staff is in talks on that right now, john. At happens after that, they send that new bill over to the house, andheres a question mark, john. Its not clear if that will get the votes in the housing. There are criticisms of this of this spending cap bill from both the right and the left in the house tonight. Yang you mentioned in your taped spot that the president iw ttaching immigration to this issue. How is that playing toirn shoes and whhe state of play on immigration on the hill today . There is some confusion over the president s remarks. Its not clear what he meant, because migration does not seem to be attached to a possible shutdown this week, at least not at this point, but where immigration is, i just walked passed a meeting and talked to conservative senators coming out of Mitch Mcconnells office, and Mitch Mcconnell is a person to watch on this isjohn. He told his republicans he does plan to move forward with a ful debatee senate floor next week, and thats why democrats are stepping back this week on forcing a shutdown over immigration. Essentially, john, they are trusting Mitch Mcconnell. Theyre taking him at his word. Dick durbin said this today. They believe he will come through and allow an open debate on the senate floor, but, there are Big Questions over what that debate look like, how many amendments does senator mcconnell allow . Is it a truly open debate . And of course,ue bigion is even with all of that, can the senate come up with pla with 60 votes . Senator Lindsey Graham said hes more pessimistic today over a wider deal. This there is trouble on the topic of family migration. Very hard to find an agreement on whether or how to limit yth. G Lisa Desjardins, thank you very money. Yamiche in the White House Briefing room we heard the president talking about he would love a shutdown. Why is he t about this . The president is talking about a shutdown for several reasons. The first is he misunderstood what was going on on the hill today. The hill and lawmakers there are talking out spending bill including military and nonmilitary spending. This is not like the lastsh down where people were really focused on immigration. Democrats were saying they werent ing to vote for the bill if it doesnt include something to do with the daca kids, the drears, those undocumented kids that were brought here as young people. This time around, thats just not the case. President trump, however, really saybe didnt understand that he was sitting in t immigration this ms13 roundtable when he made that remark, so maybe thats why immigration was on his min the second thing is that he likely thinks he won the immigration messg war and the shutdown messaging war the last time the government shutdown. Feels good about the fact that when the government was heopened, the democrats still didnt have fix to immigration, and as a result, it seems as though he doesnt really think a shutdown is going to hurt the republicans, which is the only reason i can thinkof hy he would president that on the table when his party was not interested in talking about yang and in the white house meeting we saw where he made those comments, there was an interestinexchange between the president and representative aarbara comstock of virgi tell us about that . Well, in that meet, represtative comstock was saying that there really doesnt need to be a shutdown. Ere doesnt need to be this gridlock over immigration. She thought they could actually get it done. The president actually interrupted her. So this is a republican president interrupting a republican lawmake, and he said, no, the republicans need the stand hard and the democrats, theyre probably not going to get it together. Ee weto have a shutdown. Lets have a shutdown. A pretty remarkable exchacae, e his party, the Republican Party is not talking about shutting down the r vernment, but this president is pushing. I think part of that has to do, some of the reporting i have been doing is it shows thatns vative groups are really upset about the president s offer to have 1. 8 millioneople have a path toward citizenship. Tere are a lot of conservative people thits amnesty. Breitbart has been calling him iamnesty don. Hink the president is feeling pressure from his own base to look really hard on so as a , you have this suis. Ms13 roundtable where hes talking about immigration and crime. You also have chief of staff john kelly going to the hill, and hes saying to lawmakers, dreamers might have been lazy, that might have been why there arent as many people on daca, so there is this idea thahi white house wants to feel as though they are taking hard ne, that theyre drawing this line in the sapped and forcing democrats hands so whego the rnment is back open or if it doesnt shut downthe president can say, well, you know what, i saved the day. Yamiche alcindor at the white house, Lisa Desjardins on capitol hill, thanks very much. Busy days ahead for both of you. In the days other news, white house officials said mr. Trump was joking yesterday, when he ted democrats might have been treasonous not to applaud his state of the union speech. Press secretary Sarah Sanders today the president was clearly jokih his comments, but what isnt a joke is that democrats refuse to celebrate the accomplishments of last year, that has helped all americans. Democrats are going to have to make a decision at some point really so they hate this president more than they love this country . And i hope the answer to that is no. Yang a number of democrats strongly objected to the president s words, and some re senator jeff flake of arizona spoke on the senate floor i have seen the president s most ardent defender use the nowweary argument that the president s comments were meant as a joke just sarcasm, only tongue in cheek. But treason is not a punchline, mr. President. Yang the president himself did not mention the criticism of his comments, at his lone public event today. The white house declined to say today whether President Trump will agree to be interviewed by the special counsel in the russia investigation. The new york timeeported mr. Trumps lawyers are concerned tt the president could be charged with lying to investigators. The times reported that some on his legal team are recommending he decline to be rviewed by special counsel robert mueller. The president of turkey has aimed a new warning at u. S. Troops in recip Tayyip Erdogan accused the nsu. S. Today of working ag turkish interests by supporting Kurdish Militia fighters. Turkeys military is n attacking the kurds around afn, in northwest syria. U. S. Troops are near manbij, eless than 100 miles to tt. In ankara, erdogan warned the americans to leave manbij. translated why are you stanng around . Go ahead and leave. And you are still telling us not to come to manbij. We will come to manbij to deliver the la to its true owners. This is our difference. Yang turkey insists the kurdish fighters in syria are allied with kurdish rebels inside turkey. Meanwhile, russian and Syrian Government forces launched heavy new air strikes on a rebel area near dascus. They blasted a string of towns in the Eastern Ghouta region. Activists and a war monitoring p say at least 45 people were killed. A top u. N. Investigator said the attaount to international crimes. The president of poland signed a law today that makes it illegal to blame the polish nation for holocaust crimes. Israel and the u. S. Argued the law whitewashes polish collaboration with nazi invaders orld war ii. But president andrzej duda joinh farright nationalist groups, insisting poles were not responsible for what the nazis did. translated this is my k cision. I this is a solution which, on one hand, secures polish interests our dignity, historical truth, that we are judged fairly in the world and that we should not be blamed as a yang the measure would impose prison sentences of up to three years for using such phrases as polish death camps. Back in this country, the u. S. House of representatives voted to revamp how it handlme sexual hara claims. From now on, house members themselves, and not taxpayers, will have to foot the billo settle harassment cases. In addition, employees no longer have to undergo counseling and mediation before pursuing a claim. And, spacex scored a coup today, launching the Worlds Largest operating rocket. The falcon heavy blasted off from cape canaveral, florida on its very first test. It carried a tesla roadster toward a solar orbit. On mk ownst tesla and spacex. Well have a full report, later in the program. Still to come on the newshour whats behind the roller coaster stock market. How houston could prepare for the next big flood after hurricane harvey. And, the plight of puerto rican students after hurcane maria. And, much more. Yang the past three trading days have been a roller coaster rideor global markets. At this mornings opening bell on wall street, the dow jones inestrial average plunged m than 500 points, and ended the tradg day up more than 500 points a 1,000 pelnt swing. Tous understand this, we are joined by neil irwin, senior economics correspondent for the New York Times upshot. Neil, thanks for being here. This morning you wrote that the key to keep in minds to keep the long view in mind. So having said that, what do we take from the last three days . Well, i think the era of extreme low volatile may be over, at least for a while. I think it might come back,ut for now this period we had, all of 2017, not a single day of thement to losing more than 2 . Thats very unusual. And weve now had two of those days out of the last three trading sessions. This is clearly a more vol vile environment. This is clearly a time when stocks are going crazy. Were stilonly at middecember levels. Were down only a it will bit for the year were losing 10 in stock value. This isnt a crisis. This isnt something to worry about too much. At the same time, its certainly teethchattering when you watch the daily stock marketicker. Yang there was a return to volatility. We hadnt seen this volatility in quite a while. Why do you think it came back this way . Thereeems to be some selffulfilling cycles happen. A lot of investors are betting against volatility. There is also some news behind this. This there was a jobs report that suggested wage growth is stnger than it appears. That suggestion maybe the Federal Reserve will have to raise Interest Rate faster than they have been. Thats good news for american workers. Bigger paychecks might be bad for corporate earn, but its no bad the youre earning a paycheck. So there is a reversal of these long building effects that were depressing volatilty in the market. Yang not only volatile, but the velocity of the movement. , the downward movement yesterday in particuar. Does that suggest that there was some programrading pushing that, driving that in it does. You have institutions that have billions of dollars in assets that are making these hugeug decisions, trades based on what computers want to do. No humans touch hem. That can create these selfreinforcing cycles. One clue that might be part of whats going on, if you look at other markets, the bond market, the commoditmarkets, they havent moved nearly as much. They havent been nearly as volatile. This is confined to the stock market. That says Something Weird is this isnt about fundamentals and people reassessing the view of the economy. Yang much was madeat yesterday he gains of 2018 had been wiped out, but if you take the l view, as you counsel in your column this moring, talk about the lar trend were seeing in the stock market. Fundamentally weve had this is ta recovery t dates back to 2009. We havent had a butt of instability since early 2016. So two years, you know, this is an unu calm time, you know, part of the tradeoff of igstocks, they haver longterm returns than other assets, but the price is volatility some this is the price you pay for longerterm return, and now were kind of experiencing it all at ome instead of in a more kind of gradual race. Yang wt we saw the last three days really had nothing to this with the fundamentals of the economy. Well, the thin is, you look at the economic data. There are no signs of problems. The weekly jobless claims, the employment reports, anything you want the look at, industr production, those numbers are all very solid. All the things you look to as a leading indicator that we might have a recession or a downturn, those arent showing up in the data so far. Unle stock market knows something that isnt showing up, things look good in the economy far. Yang and the market had been soaring at a high altitude. There had been a lot of talk and a lot of people saying the stock market was overvalued compared to the price earnings raischors we were seeing. But this wasnt a correction. Technically a correction is a 10 drop. Even after mondays cse, oy down 8. 5 by the s p 500 an rebounded today. So were even closer to the high. This is not yet technically a correction. It still could get ther we might have a few more days of volatility. Who knows. T the reality is in the grand scheme of things, this is not the biggest correction, and were onck to middecember levels. As long as youre a longterm investor, youre onng fine. Its only if you put money in early, midjanuary that you may have seen some loss. Yang if the market fell out of bed and finished up technical factors and algorithms. A lot of money sloshing around very rapidly without human hands touching it often that creates unpredictable swings. Will we go back to the old normal of low volatility . I dont know about, that but all signs are we might have another few sticky days before its all over. Yang a few more sticky days perhaps. Neil irwin of the New York Times, thanks for being with us. Thank you, john. Yang we return to our series on the state of hurricane Recovery Efforts in houston, five months after hurricane rvey. In our first reports, we profiled two sets of homeowners who are still trying to get their lives back to normal. In his final report on life after the storm, Hari Sreenivasan explores what changes leaders say are needed to avoid another disaster, and who pay for them. Reporter in northeast houston, jwhite and her husband michael are repairing their home, which flooded during harvey. This is the second time theyve gone through all of this despite being outside the federallydesignated floodplain. Jaies holding out hope th government will buy her out, so she can moveome place safer. If i had that choice, i would be happy to se it and walk away, because it would give me a peace of mind. Reporter meanwhile, on the other side of the city, in the southwest neighborhood of meyerland, kathleen and nat pacini flooded as well. This was our den. It had beautiful wood paneling in here. Reporter they loved their midcentury home, but with kathleen fighting breast cancer, theyve decided to take their insurance payout and sell. So our contract currently is with a builder, who will come in and tear it down and build a millionplusollar house. Reporter that new house uld be elevated, to keep it from flooding. This is a house that looks like its in the process of being lifted. Reporter we drove around the pacinis neighborhood, where many homes are now for sale, with architect brett zamore. He designs homes in this area, and in fact, he says he wont even take on clients unless theyre thinking long term. E been in houston since 95, and its flooded so many times. Its getting worse and worse every year. The past three years, weve had three severe f tax day flood, memorial day flood, and then harvey. And harvey has just he one that people have realized, weve got to wake up and do something about this. Reporter the city and county say they are enacting building codes that will require ne homes to be elevated above not the 100 but the 500ear floodplain. And yet, elevating old homes is expensive, even with a federal subsidy. So in some cases, it will mean buying out old homes like jackie whites, says Harris County executive ed emmett. Like it or not, we cannot keep paying people to rebuild in places where theyre going to keep flooding. Reporter bouts take money. The county will move forward with a large bond issue, and 5 billion from the department of housing and urban development is on the way, some of which will go towards that. Theres been a huge disconnect, i think, betwe the builder of these developments and the home buyer. Reporter texas a m professor sam brody says better information will help drive market changes moving forward. Using fema data on homes that have flooded before, he created buyersbwhere, so when people are looking to buy a home in houston or galveston, they can he flood risk, too. You know, we talked to a woman this morning. Shes g back to a house that is kind of being, you know, bandaided together. If she had her choice, she wouldnt go here. She survived allison. She doesnt want another harvey, right. But shes like, i dont have the money to anywhere else. I hear stories like tha every week, and buyersbwhere was created in response to peopleoming in, saying, i wish i knew. Im trapped. Ill never be bought out because theres so many people who want to be bought out. Reporter in addition to moving people out of harms way, brody says there are my structural and large scale changes needed, and that after harvey, now is the time to ph for them. I was here for Tropical Storm allison, which had similar impacts. At that point, they said, this will nev happen again. That was in 2001. 16 years later, it happened again, this timeore widespread. I think its a real window of opportunity to think about meaningful change. Reporter houston is known as the bayou city. It was built in a lowlying area only about an hour from the gulf of mexico. Many of its streets were built to convey storm water into the bayous, which snake throughout the city. Thme, in turn, take water f the streets out to the gulf. Harvey was so catastrophic, not because of its winds, but because it dumped more than 50 inches of rain on this region. Flood control measures were simply overwhelmed. The two reservoirs, the barker and addicks, whith were built in 1940s and lie in the west, look like fields on a dry january day. Harvey fille to the brim, and the u. S. Army corps of engineers, which controls them, feared a breach, s opened their floodgates into buffalo bayou, flooding tens of thousands of additional homes. We dont want to be standing in the same place when the next storm comes. Reporter mayor Sylvester Turner and others are calling for a Third Reservoir to be built in the northwest part of the city. The continued widening of the bayous to help carry more water to the gulf, and in the gulf, the construction of a coastal spine a massive gate that would protect the region during a storm surge. One thing we do know of, the rains will continue to fall, and there will be flooding in 18, 19 and 20. So, we have to be stronger, and we have to be more resilient. Otherwise, just putting people back in their homes the very way they were before is just funding failure. Reporter but of course, these ideas will take time, political will, and money. The state of texas has an llion Rainy Day Fund that turner and emmett want to tap into but the state legislature wont return to session until 2019. Then theres an 81 billion funding package making its way through congress. The house has passed it, but the senate has yet to vote on it. In a year that helthe most expensive natural disasters on record wildfires in caia, hurricanes in florida and puerto rico that money will have to be shared between the affected areas. We need to ith the greatest degree of urgency. The state has indicated repeatedly tha nthey are probot going to come back into session until 2019. Were waiting on the feds. Reporter so whats the ldup, and why . I mean, youre in a position of power. Youve got members of congress in the majority, youve got a white House Majority today. Today, it is illegal for me, as a member of congress and t appropriator, get the money to a geographically specific project. Reporter u. S. Presentative John Culberson represents houston, and says because of a house ban on earmarks, he cant send money directly to these flood mitigation projects to get them moving ickly. That makes no sense. It handicaps me as a representative, and it prevents me from frontloade funding. By frontloading the funding, it expedites everything. By cutting the permiing time, you give the local authorities the ability to build these things much moidly, if theyve got the cash on hand to get it done. Reporter President Trump has said he supports bringing earmarks back, but a bipartisan bill now moving through the senate would permanently ban them. In the meantime, with the help of federal funds, people like jackie white are returning to their homes, resigned to the fact that they may go through all of this again. I have no choice. This is home. Reporter the question brody and others ask, is whether the nation continues to pay for Disaster Recovery afteorm, or for flood mitigation before one, saving both money and live many would say that were setting ouelves up in houston and miami and chicago for continuing chronic and repetitive flood losses, as the conditions change, its just going to get worse unless we real rethinking the way we measure and conceptualize risk. Reporter reporting from houston, im Hari Sreenivasan for the pbs newshour. Yang stay with us. Coming up on the newshour the gang thats become t focusic of a pol debate. And, the most powerful rocket to launch in 45 years, lifts off. What it means for human space travel. O but first, lets another part of the United States affected by last years hurricanes puerto rico. Many of those who have left the island for the mainland since Hurricane Maria hit last september are young students. Officials say that over the next four years, they expect more than 50,000 students to leave. Puerto ricos governor says he wants to create Charter Schools as part of a plan to overhaul of the debtridden islands Public School system. Special correspondent Monica Villamizar has oort, as part of our weekly look at education, making the. Reporter 18yearold rocco torquez just arrived in orlando to pursue his drealay baseball at Lake Howell High School. Baseball mes everything to me, because when i play baseball, i forget asc of this thol, the problems, everything. I just play baseball and have fun. Reporter hes not a touted prospect brought to the mainland toroom for a professional career. He is one of 25,000 students who ft puerto rico in the wake of Hurricane Marias devastation. I want to be a big baseball player, and the kids look at me like, i want to be like him. He does a great job, he always s to do his best and nev give up. Reporter when you saw maria, what did you think . Hen maria arrived, it was my birthday september 20. So, couple days later, i told my mom, mom, i think i have to go, because here we dont have baseball. They dont know when baseball is going to start; or even the school, everything. My mom said, okay, if you want to, im going to help you. Reporter roccos mother came with him to orlando to get him settled at school and on the baseball team. Now, his success depends on his own efforts. Baseball practice is a daily routine in schools across a, but for rocco, this sport is his life, and he has made many sacrifices to get here from puerto rico. Rocco is one of about 30 students who came to Lake Howell High School after maria displaced them. Like many schools in florida, lake howell has given extra attention to puerto rican students. The school gives extra counseling and academic support, provides Financial Assistance when needed, and has to be flexible about accepting trpts from schools in puerto rico that follow different systems than on the mainland School Counselor janibelle jackson stuart, who is also puerto rican, helps students transition. We have to ally look at the bigger picture, of what is it that were trying to do with all these students that are coming in, and play to their strengths, because they have strengths, its just a different Education System. An you have a trickle, its one thing, but when you have a flood, its a whole different thing. Reporter how does their shortterm future look like . Do you think some of them are just going to try to settle here . These students that have come were not planning on leaving the island. They were going toh their education on the island, in their mind, and they were going they never intended to live here they never intended to go to universiere. So theyre just going to get their diploma and head back home. And theyre hohat, come summer, the island is more stabilized and they can go back and resume tepir lives. Ter the consequences of this mass exodus of Puerto Ricans are being felt on the island. More than half a Million People have moved to the u. S. Mainland since maria, and the Education System han in the balance. The u. S. Appointed secretary of education in puerto rico, julia keleher, anticipates the closure of at least 200 of the 1,300 Public Schools. Theres toobuildings, and theres not enough students. At one point, we had 750,000 kids. So buildings arent filled to capacity. And that was part of the reason, why were going through the consolidation. Last year, we closed 167 schools tond right size. Reporter about 20 schools damaged in the storm are not expected to reopen, but the policy to close or combine schools started before Hurricane Maria. It was part of an ausrity package imposed on the island to counter its debt. Edwin morales, head of the teachers union, was arrested with other teachers as they broke into the Education Department in december to try to speak with secretary keleher. He says the storm is being used as a pretext to replace the public system with Charter Schools and introduce private investment to education. We are talking abou vouchers, we are talking about Charter Schools, we are talking about e possibility of firing teachers that. For us, as a union, doesnt hel land to recover. Repr and recovery will be long. In the caguas slum of morales, damaged furniture and debris sits in corners. Collapsed buildings remain. In this Public School, teachers. Have not received any he the community got it up and running again. They have relaxed the rules. Uniforms are now optional, since some students dont have power or water in their homes. Eightyearold ashley dreams of life in the u. S. Mainland. translated there is a lot of gunshots here and robberies, i want to leave. Reporter her neighborhood is notorious for Drug Trafficking gangs. Principal Amalia Ramirez says the school needs to stay open to offekids opportunities and tools to stay away from crime. translated i askemy dad if we could leave puerto rico. He agreed and said we must go to michigan, because we have relatives there. My aunty is there. Reporter when her house flooded, ashley lost her cloth and outfits that she wore in beauty pageants. She now walks around clutching a miniature rabbit she found, hoping it brings her good luck. In san juan, roccos mother Gini Marxuach is also hoping for good luck, for rocco in florida. Stayed to continue her work as headmaster of an Alternative Education School she founded. After maria, we sat with the students, and they were very affected, too. Eporter the private school has managed to stay afloat through donations. But now, its future o unclear. Onefifth of the students left e after rricane, including rocco. It was really difficult because rocco is so helpful, at home. Hes always there, whatever you need. Hes a happy, smart. So, it was hard to just, in ve days, it was not something that we planned. So, he just, okay, there. Were here. So, it is still hard because we ta a lot. Were a very close family. Reporter everyone here remembers what they wererioing the day came. It was a birthday rocco wont forget. The family relocateda small apartment in the capital and have put their home up for sale. The father, stephan marquez, a chef, says rocco may be far from home, but he knows how to cook puerto rican food. He has taught all of his boys well. Rocco is staying with family frdoiends in orlbut is otherwise independent. Makes his own food, and got a car to drive to school. Hese new friends, including the catcher on his baseball team. translated what i really miss is my family, sharing with them, seeing them every day, it is really tough to wake up and not see your mother in t kitchen. Reporter they say they all miss rocco too, but have high thhopes for his new life o mainland. Its a new reali for thousands of families like theirs, which are now sepated, and trying to move on. Across from the balcony, a giant banner with the puerto rican flag says fuerza, strength. For the pbs newshour, im Monica Villamizar in puerto rico. Yang to puerto ricos southeas nation of antigua and barbuda, hao. Hit by the hurricanes, our frequent partners at the Pulitzer Center on crisis reporting recently traveled to barbuda, where a communal way of fe faces the hard task o rebuilding. You can watch and read about that on our website, www. Pbs. Org newshour. Yang now, lets take a closer look at the deadly gang President Trump has been highlighting in his effort to change immigration laws ms13. As we re earlier, it was the topic of a white house meeting today. The Trump Administration says as 10,000 members in 40 states. In a moment, willingham gets a breakdown on whats known about ms13. But first, from our coes at frontline, an excerpt from a helm airing next tuesday, gang cradown. In the state of the union address, President Trump talked about the murder of two girls from long island by the notorious ms13 gang. Here tonight are two fathers and two mothers. Their tw teenage daughters, kayla cuevas and Neesa Mickens were Close Friends on long island. These two precious girls were brutally murdere while walki together in their hometown. Six members of the savage ms13 gang have been charged with kayla and neesas murders. Tonight i am callis on congr to finally close the deadly lop lop loopholes that have allo13 the murder has been used by immigration in its fight for tougher immigration policy. On september 26, 2016, the two girls were brutally attacked next to an Elementary School in redwood, long island. Two girls found dead in this and neighborhood last night. I was in my den. I remember where i was sitting. We first received a briefg sheet on it, because the injuries were so horrifi that the first hypothesis was that its a Motor Vehicle crash, a hit and run. The victims were kayla q cuevas and Neesa Mickens. They were run over by vehicles. Theyook it to a level i don any anybody was ready for. I just figured one was found in the street and the other behind some homes. There was no motive other than they might be known or be friends with members of some other gang. Theywere looking to settle the score with somebody. They didnt find that person. And then they encountered these girls. One of them had apparently taunted them on facebook, and so they killed her, an they kied her friend just because she was there with her. This set off a chain reaction, because for the very first time youre not seeing rival ga members being murdered. That usually i what was happening. Now you have two lygirls vicio and senselessly beaten and murdered, and thats when the Suffolk County police went into overdrive. These two teenage girls, there is an active investigation. Theyre asking for the publics help. Relations between theun immigration coy and the Suffolk County police have been fraught. Theres a 5,000 award leading to an arrest. Getting the communitys help would allenging. The Police Department in Suffolk County had created a imate of fear. People in the country who were latino felt intimidated in going tohe police. People were afraid to come forward. People said that they had been mistreated by the police and they were very frightened that rather than take their claim seriously she would simply dismissed or maybe suspected of being in a rival gang. Em fourrs of the ms13 gang were charged in connection to the september slaying. It would take six months for the police the find theusct killers. In march Law Enforcement officials announced they had found them. Among those arrested was a young salvadoran who was one of the leaders of a local bgroup of ms13 known as a clique. They called themselves the westside sailors. He went by the alias funny. Most of the suspects arrested in these recent cases were in the country i for the ps twoearsms13 has been on a ram page on long rcland. Law enent believes there are anywhere from 200 to 400 active ms13 members and around a dozen cliques. Brangham so lets look a little more at whats known abowt ms13, its origins and this all ties to the politics of immigration. Jonathanlitzer has been reporting on it for the new yorker magazine, and he joins me now. Welcome to the news hour. So tell us, just how big of a problem is ms13 nationwi it is a problem. Theres no denying it. I dont know how new it is of a problea so the dment of justice is estimated there are about 10,000 minutes13 living in the u. S. That number has essentia steady over the last decade. So the number itself hasnt grown. There have been cycles of violence, occasional spikes and ebbs in the violence, and therei are als of complex factorses that account for why thhe has been. Aturrent moment, were definitely seeing a spike in violence, theres no question. But its hard sometimes to assess the best waysto approach the gang because its very sort of loosely organized. There are these sort of local clicks that tendnt to pre themselves in individual community, but there isnt some sort of obviouserve center where if Law Enforcement goes after a certain leader there will be a kind of consequent reduction in crime. Its a hard problem to combat precisely because the gang itself is so diffuse, so dopily entrenched in individual commhaities. Bra it seems if you wanted to pick out an example to drive the pushor tougher immigration law, theyre almost the ideal boogieman. It makes sense why the president s talks about them so much. I talking point that writes itself from the president s andpoint. The acts of violence, the acts themselves are horrific. Victims are killed with baseball bats, machetes. , eyre gra gratuitoinous acts of violence. If youre a president trying to push a law and order message and try to yolk that to immigration reform, you have a problem generally because immigrant communities tend to see much lower levels of crime of communies than are full of american citizens. Immigrants tend to commit crimes at lower rates than american citizen, but this is one example whercrimes themselves are kind of outliers in terms of whh trend is, but the example is so dramatic and so bracing that they tend to dom the debate rather than the actual facts. Yang . Brangham the president keeps talking about them as monsters and animals and talks about how our streets are running with blood because of them whether this changes the debate or whether it changes actual federal immigration atlicy, is the impact with regarded to ga its definitely making the gangs stronger jo strger . Yes. Its counter productive to demonize the gang in such a public way because the gang enesnt discriminate bet positive and negative publicity. The more threatening the gang sounds, the easier it is for them to recruit, to intimidate, to get away with cries because people are scared to report them. Brangham the president out there ms13, ms13, they love that . Yeah. It helps the at the same time it makes the victims of their criminal activity all theore scared to come forward. For the most part the president only talks about these gang members as savages and victims as precious and beautiful people. Whats striking about the situation is most of the victims drnd to be immigrants themselves or the chi of immigrants. So the president discriminates between the victims and the perpetrators of the crime, but he tars the entire immigrant community by usg this talking point the way he does. People legitimately scared to come forward. If youre undocument, youre coming forbard to report gangrelateed problems, butou dont know how the immigration officials will respond. The crackdown on communities where gang members and victims live side by side, the crackdown is so indiscriminate, that a lot of victims are trapped between the Gang Violence on e hand and Immigration Enforcement on the other, and the president is lar wly driving thatedge. Brangham the president had said that ms13 is a perfect example of why he wants to change the three main issues on immigrtion reform. He wants to bui a wall. He wants to end family migration, and he wants to get rid l the visatery. Duds your reporting indicate whether any of those things uld address the problem of ms13 . Im glad you asked. Its a total baitandswitch. None of those issues have anything to do with ms13. The things the president is pushing in terms of reforming aspects of the legal immigratsyn em, thats his own separate area of reform. Ri the gang were talking about has to do with mostly people who are living as undocumented immigrants already in the country. Th gangs, as i said earlier, have existed in this country for itars and years. Egan in this country. Building a wall isnt necessarily going to prevent the gang from continuing to exist where it has since the 1980s. And so hes kind of heaping al these things together. And then the idea is to create such aense of fear and anxiety about immigrant crime and about immigrants generally thatl y feel like, okay, we have to buy ndto this broader reform agenda. But the reform a is not even notionally tailored to respond to this particular problem. Brangham john dhan Jonathan Blitzer of the the new yoer magazine, you can see all the reporting. There and on frontline you can see the report. Its called the gang crackdown. Yang and finally tonight, we simply cant leave without a longer look at todays liftoff of a huge new rocket from spacex. Three one. Qcathe worlds most powerful cheers and applause yang the worlds most powerful rocket, the falcon heavy, took off froedy space center in florida. Thats where nasa has long launched spacecraft from, but today, it was fromhe private Company Started by elon musk. At least two Million People were watching it on the companys livestream on youtube. Our own science correspondent, nt space expert, miles obrien, is here, naturally. And of course, ite focus of our weekly segment on the leading edge of science and technology. Mits, welcome. Get the serious stuff out of the way. What is the goal of this effort . Well, elon musk was to go to mars and colonize mars. Thats the top line goal. This is one of the big, inportant steps along the way. But part of ge to mars and making that a practical idea is making it more easy to get to space. And this is a lot cheaper. Its a fraction of the cost of anything na has built. We used to say in the shuttle days, it was about 10,000 of pound of any pf anything you put into space. Elon musk is down to about 1,000 a pound. Were talking about an improvement on cost, and that has to do with with the reusability of the boosters. Yang so these boosters relanded after take two made it back. They landed in perfect sink nisty. It almost looked like animation. It was rather spectacular. Those are fullybl reue boothsers. The shuttle tried to do reusability. But because of compses in bullets along the way, it was onlier partially reusable and ultiman expensive craft to fly. Yang and elon musk, what is he using for aayad . Sreenivasan nasa probably would have put in bricks fur weight. He put in a tesla roadster with a dummy sitting in the seat with his arm on the within doe, and on the screen of the tesla, it says, dont panic. David bowieco playing, ose. You have to appreciate the cross marketing, tesla, his company,mb and two, just the good, plain fun of it. Yang bsolutely. You covered the Space Program for a long, long time. What was it like for you t watch this today . It caught me by surprise. I wasnt. There i couldnt geret. But just watching it, i really got emotional. I miss that event, seeing the shut lts lach from those launchpads. That launchpad was where apollo 1 launcd from. Lots of history there. And theres something very moving and emotional about it i got into covering space becae its one of the few events that binds us altogether in an uplifting way. A lot of things bring us together and bring our focus together in a negative way, but space has a way of literally and figuratively taking us abe the horizon. Yang and the beaches and the stands at Kennedy Space center full of people. It was reminiscent of the moon shots or theore celebrated shuttle launcheswe where ther a huge amount of people on the beaches an the hotels sold out and the enthusiasm, and the enthusi tasm se young people. We have Mission Control in hawthorne, california, for spacex, 20 somethings. It we minded me we got to the moon on the backs and through the brains of 20 somethings. On. S a new generati its their grandkids. They have taken the torch. Theyre carrying the torch. Efully theyre taking us to mars. Yang and elon musk has already booked a commercial flight with this . Two unnamed people, apparent ly unname people, that is to say a lap around the moon aing the falcon heavy way to get them there. So stay tuned for that. I can tell you its not me. But im available if spot number three comes er. Yang was people may not know this, but there was a journalist in Space Program, an you were supposed to be part of it or you may have been part of it . In my days at cnn we worked out a deal for me to fly on the shuttle to the international spacstation. Unfortunately we lost columbia right about the time we were going to nounce, that and that was the end of that. So its a longheld dreamof mine to have reported from space. Im tan, rested and ready. Yang so elon musk, if youre looking for the third, here he is. And for a fourth, ill carry your notebook. Im in, brother, lets go yang great. Miles obrien, thanks a lot. Youre welcome, john. Yang if yout get enough on newshour online right now, you can watch the full rocket launch. Thats at pbs. Org newshour. And a news upd before we go. The house of representatives has just approved a new shortterm spending bill. As weeported earlier, it would fund the federal government until rch 23rd and the Defense Department for the enti fiscal year. The bill now goes to the senate. And thats the newshour for tonight. Im john yang. S online, and again here tomorrow evening. For all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you, and see u soon. Major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by babbel. A language app that teaches reallife convertions in a new language, like spanish, french, german, italian, and more. Babbels 1015 minute lessons are available as an app, or online. More information on babbel. Com. Bnsf railway. Consumer cellul. The ford foundation. 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