Sponges out of a Kitchen Store loaded them in homemade syringes that we made, put them in a model and they expanded and worked. Woodruff and its friday, mark shields and david brooks are here to analyze the weeks news. Those are some of the stories were covering on tonights pbs newshour. Major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by moving our economy for 160 years. Bnsf, the engine that connects us. 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. Woodruff the u. S. Economy created another 214,000 jobs last month. That makes nine straight months that employers have added more than 200,000 positions, the longest stretch since 1995. And, the october Unemployment Rate fell, to 5. 8 , the lowest in six years. President obama welcomed the news today at a cabinet meeting. All this is a testament to the hard work and resilience of the American People. They have been steady and strong digging themselves out of the worst economic crisis since the great depression. And what we need now is to make sure we build on this momentum. Woodruff the president also acknowledged that Many Americans still arent feeling the recovery, a factor that played heavily in tuesdays election wins by republicans. Well return to the economy, as paul solman reports on parttime workers, later in the program. Reports swirled today that the president will name the u. S. Attorney in brooklyn, new york, to be the next attorney general, Loretta Lynch. Several news organizations said lynch is the choice to replace eric holder, whos stepping down after six years in the post. The white house said the president has not yet made a decision. The u. S. Secretary of veterans affairs, robert mcdonald, is ready to announce a sweeping shakeup. In a cbs news 60 minutes interview, airing sunday, mcdonald says he will dismiss or demote up to 1,000 staffers, and order the largest reorganization in v. A. History. Its a response to this years scandal over inadequate treatment and long wait times in the v. A. Medical system. The president has authorized 1,500 more noncombat troops to go to iraq, doubling the number already there. The pentagon said today some of the teams will move into Anbar Province to help train iraquis fighting Islamic State militants there. A spokesman denied the election outcome influenced the announcement. Instead, he said the overall u. S. Commander, general martin dempsey, and the regional commander recommended the move. There was no political angle to the timing here. It was really driven by a request from the government of iraq and general austins assessment about this being the right thing to do. And i would add that was an assessment supported by not only dempsey but the secretary who formally made this recommendation to the president that this was not only the right thing to do, but it was the right time to do it based on where we are in the campaign. Woodruff the president is also asking congress to authorize 5. 6 billion to fund the effort. The last person to come in contact with ebola patients in the u. S. Came off monitoring today. Theyd been around a liberian man who died of ebola in dallas or one of two nurses there who contracted ebola and were later cured. An american doctor who caught ebola in west africa remains hospitalized in new york, but is improving. The japanese airbag maker takata now faces accusations that it hid a deadly defect, going back a decade. The New York Times reported former employees at takata secretly conducted tests on 50 ruptured air bags in 2004 but were ordered to delete the data. Four deaths and 30 injuries have been linked to the defective air bags, and automakers have now recalled 14 million vehicles. Woodruff japanese authorities have approved restarting a Nuclear Power plant, under new safety rules, for the First Time Since 2011. Nearly all of japans 48 working reactors were taken off line after an earthquake and tsunami destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi plant. With todays announcement, two reactors at a plant in southern japan are expected to go back online early next year. Ukraine charged today that russia has sent major new military forces across the border to help prorussian rebels. That came amid continued fighting around the separatist strongholds of luhansk and donetsk. Ukraines National Security spokesman spoke in kiev. translated supplies of military equipment and enemy fighters from the Russian Federation to the antiterrorist Operation Zone are continuing. In particular, yesterday from the movement of military equipment consisting of 32 tanks, 16 d30 howitzer artillery systems, and 30 kamaz trucks carrying ammunition and fighters was reported. Woodruff russia has routinely denied allegations that it is helping the rebels, or that it has any forces inside ukraine. An art installation lit up the city of berlin tonight, as germany marks 25 years since the fall of the berlin wall. Heliumfilled light balloons stretched nine miles, and traced the exact path the wall took, dividing east from west during the cold war. The balloons carry messages and theyll be released into the air on sunday, the actual anniversary. Back in this country, the u. S. Senate race in virginia was finally decided today. Republican ed gillespie conceded to democratic incumbent mark warner, who led by just over 16,000 votes, out of more than two million cast. That gives republicans at least 52 seats in the new senate, to 44 for the democrats, with two independents. Races in alaska and louisiana are yet to be decided, and could give the g. O. P. Two more seats. On wall street, stocks failed to get much a boost out of the jobs report. The Dow Jones Industrial average gained 19 points to close near 17,574. The nasdaq fell about six points to close at 4,632. And the sandp added just a fraction, to finish near 2,032. For the week, the dow gained 1 . The sandp was up more than. 5 . The nasdaq was virtually unchanged. Still to come on the newshour the Supreme Court takes up a new challenge to the Affordable Care act; president obama meets with congressional leaders to plot next steps; why some parttime workers are counted as fulltimers by the government; detroit gets the green light for its grand bargain to emerge from bankruptcy; a New Invention that can save soldiers lives on the battlefield; and mark shields and david brooks on the weeks news. Woodruff the Supreme Court today announced it would take up a controversial case that could have major implications for the health care law. And after the court had decided not to take up samesex marriage, the hotbutton issue could very well land before the nine justices after all because of a decision yesterday in a lower court. Here to make sense of it for us is marcia coyle of the national law journal. Welcome back. Thanks. Woodruff what prompted the justices to take up this challenge to the healthcare law, another one . Usually, the court waits for disagreement in the lower federal Appellate Courts before it takes a case. Thats one of the criteria for review. Technically there is no division right now, but the court will also step in if the issues of National Importance or if its an issue that could likely recur and, certainly, there are other cases pending that are challenging this particular provision in the Affordable Care act. Woodruff so what do you think prompted this . I mean, the assumption is that the four more conservative justices who were not on board with the 2012 ruling that upheld most of the Affordable Care act were behind this. Whats the thinking . Well, we really dont know the votes, who voted how to take review of this particular case. We do know that you only need four votes, and the speculation is that, at least among whoever did vote, there were the four dissenters and perhaps they wanted another shot at the Affordable Care act. Woodruff what could this what this is all about is the authorization for tax subsidies for low and middleincome folks. Right. Woodruff and it has to do with the state exchanges, and the question is whether the Obama Administration truly have the authorization to set up the federal exchanges, to allow these subsidies under the federal exchange. The first challenge to the Affordable Care act was a constitutional challenge, if you remember, to the individual requirement that you have Health Insurance or pay a tax penalty. That is very different type of challenge. This is going to involve interpretation of the language in a particular provision of the act, which says that subsidies can be paid to certain individuals if they buy their Health Insurance on and this is on exchanges, the exact language exchanges established by the state. But the Internal Revenue service issued a regulation saying the subsidies are available not only on statecreated but also federalcreated exchanges. Only 16 states have created their own Insurance Market places. The federal government has filled the gap with 34 other exchanges. So roughly 5 million americans have been able to purchase insurance on those exchanges because of these tax subsidies. Woodruff cheiral, this is one thats going to be watched closely. The other question that is before that may be before the court is samesex marriage. The court had said were not going near what Appellate Courts have been ruling around the country, but then yesterday you have a threejudge panel in the sixth circuit in cincinnati. Right. Woodruff so whats the significance of this . What happened here is this sixth circuit ruling which affected four states michigan, ohio, kentucky and tennessee actually creates a disagreement among the lower federal Appellate Courts on the constitutionality of samesex marriage. We now have one circuit saying its constitutional for the states to define marriage, and four federal circuits saying its unconstitutional to say that marriage is only for one man and one woman. So we have that split, which does make it more likely that this Supreme Court will step in to resolve the division and have uniform law. To me, judy, the real question here is timing. Now, there are lawyers involved in those cases that were just decided yesterday who lost who said they were going immediately to the Supreme Court. Theres a tight time frame here. The Court Accepts cases for the current term until about mid january, and then anything else is going to be pushed over to the new term. They probably can do it, these lawyers. Theyre very skilled. Well just have to wait and see if they can meet the time schedule and if the court is really ready right now to resolve the disagreement. Woodruff well know soon whether theyll take it up. I believe so. Woodruff masha coyle, thank you. My pleasure, judy. Woodruff the white house has just confirmed president obama will announce that Loretta Lynch is his pick to be the next u. S. Attorney general. If confirmed, she will be the first africanamerican woman to hold that post. She is now a u. S. Attorney in new york. Weve reported a few minutes ago that this has been reported by different news organizations. Now were learning the white house has confirmed it. I mean time, for the first woodruff for the First Time Since tuesdays elections, president obama met with more than a dozen congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle at the white house today. But despite the pleasantries, whether both sides can get anything done on thorny issues like immigration remains to be seen. If more executive actions are taken, that would make it difficult for us to always work together. We think we should start with a fresh start. Weve got a lot of bills in this house, a lot of bills in the senate on economics, on jobs creation, and thats really where our focus should be. They are saying give us a chance to pass a bill. Well, we could take up the senate bill next week and that would be good, but we have been waiting a long time for that, and i hope that we do have a bill. Woodruff joining us now are newshours chief Foreign Affairs correspondent Margaret Warner and our political director domenico montanaro. So theyre talking about i want congratulations but, margaret, i want to come to you first about the news today, the white house announcement of these 1500 additional noncombat troops theyre saying to go to iraq. Why did they make this announcement today when they had other sort of related business to talk to these leaders about . Judy you saw the pentagon spokesman say it was unrelated to the election. Ill leave it to mark and david to decide. It couldnt have been helpful to democrats running in tuesdays election. But its been running a while. Weve had 1500 joint advisers in these Operational Centers working with strategists and commanders of the iraqi forces and the peshmergas and came to the recognition if theyre going to roll back the i. S. I. S. Advance instead of just stalling them, they will have to get out there more closely to this sunni heartland which is in the big area tha that i. S. Really contr, western iraq and eastern syria. They also came to believe that the iraqi troops were a little more capable and it was time to move to the next stage. That said, i think theyre putting u. S. Troops in a more difficult and potentially dangerous position. Woodruff theyre saying noncombat. Right, and theyre saying noncombat, but whats new here is there will be a whole new geographic reach. They will go to expedition gnash sites, quote, unquote, where they will be training and advising fighters on the ground. Woodruff this is new not at all. Erbil and baghdad are pretty safe. All they needed was air strikes. These will be much more exposed areas, they havent chosen by. Fallujah, i. S. Controls, the pentagon made a point of saying, yes, we understand, half of the u. S. Forces wont be advisors, they will be force protection units, and the same with all the other new sites theyll establish to do training. So at least maybe as much as half of them may not be combat troops but will have to be ready for combat. Woodruff on the question of authorization, the administration saying we have legal authorization to do this, but in the meantime theyre having this conversation with congress about additional authorization in iraq and syria. Whats the connection . The connection is they say they dont need congressional authorization for this except they want that extra pot of money before the end of the year. Were in a current budget year. But it points up a need for what the president has come to believe is an updated authorization for all these operations. They have been operating under the 2001 authorization directed after 9 11 against bin laden and al quaida and 2002 and 2003 against iraq, george w. Bush authorization. Legal scholars says it doesnt fit the fight against Islamic State which split after al quaida. That was the purpose of this meeting originally, and i think what you will see, senator menendez, big differences between republicans andderms on the limits they want to put around it and will have big hearings next week about it. Woodruff domestic front, domenico, some of the reports says there wasnt much agreement. There wasnt much agreementt all. Were talking about immigration largely again. As margaret brings up on foreign policy, a lot of the discussion went on a lot longer than was that it originally intend to go because they were talking about the Islamic State group and what was learned later on and ebola. But on immigration, the one domestic issue where the two sides had a little flareup in the meeting disputed on both sides now, republicans are saying behind the scenes that during the meeting president obama cut off Vice President biden because Vice President biden said how much time do yall need to john boehner, on what could be done on immigration. President obama feels like hes run out of patience and time because two years republicans havent acted on immigration. Democrats said that never happened, very much like the foreign readouts. You get very different readouts from washington than the kremlin, right in and were getting that a lot of times from these congressional talks from democrats and republicans. Woodruff we can all assume reporters will be continuing to nose around on that. Anything else, domenico . Because there were the other subjects. They were going to talk about trade, the administration has talked about Early Childhood education. Infrastructure, Early Childhood education and trade was three of the things the president wanted to talk about but got derailed and the democrats call them steal talking points, things the president has brought up three years and hasnt done much on anyway and was lumping this into a discussion. One republican aide on immigration sand well never do comprehensive Immigration Reform, that its dead, obama care killed that. They said if the president does anything on executive action, not even stepbystep immigration will happen. So the election happens, we think maybe they will come together, not much has changed. Woodruff in three days, looks like its gone away, whate