geoff: good evening and merry christmas. i'm geoff bennett. amna nawaz is away. on the “newshour” tonight, in one of the war's deadliest nights, an israeli airstrike on christmas eve kills more than 100 gazans. two months after the state's deadliest mass shooting, maine's deaf community works to rebuild in the wake of tragedy. and a unique way of combating loneliness in britain -- chatty

cafes and chatty benches help build connections across communities. >> people walk along with their phones and earphones in. they don't want to converse. they don't want to have even eye contact. so the art of conversation is an awful lot less than it used to be. ♪ >> major funding for the "pbs newshour" has been provided by. the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions, and friends of the "newshour," including leonard and norma klorfine.

>> actually, you don't need vision to do most things in life. yes, i'm legally blind, and yes, i'm responsible for the user interface. data visualization. if i can see it and understand it quickly, anyone can. it is exciting to be part of a team driving the technology forward. i think that's the most rewarding thing. people who know, know bdo. >> the william and flora hewlett foundation, for more than 50 years advancing ideas and supporting instituations to promote a better world. at hewlett.org. and with the ongoing support of these individuals and 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. geoff: welcome to the “newshour.” the death toll in the israel-hamas war surged higher today as israel ramped up its strikes on gaza. health officials there reported 250 palestinians died, and another 500 were injured, in the last 24 hours alone. all this comes as israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu vows to intensify the fight. william brangham has our report. william: gaza woke up to one of its deadliest mornings of this war. an entire residential block in deir al balah, a city in central gaza, bombed into rubble. survivors at the maghazi refugee camp dug through the debris with their bare hands, searching desperately for all that they've lost. on friday, they were told by the

israeli military to move here. and now it is the site of death and devastation. om ahmed was one of those who came here thinking it was safe. >> for the love of god, have mercy on us. for the love of god, have mercy on us. we're dying and no one is paying attention to us. we've lost our children, our homes, everything. we don't know where to go. william: there is grief and pain. shock and disbelief. tears and heartache. at the al aqsa hospital, their loved ones arrive in body bags, one after the other. their loss is crippling. a father mourning his child. and a son struggled to let go of his father. as gazans prayed for their dead, egyptian officials reportedly proposed an initial plan to the end war. it includes a ceasefire, a phased release of all hostages,

and the creation of a loosely defined palestinian government of appointed experts. hamas and its allied militant group the islamic jihad rejected the proposal of relinquishing control of the strip, according to reports. and israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu, who was heckled by families of hostages, vowed to continue the war. >> we are not stopping, and we will not stop until victory. because we have no other country, and we have no other way. william: in vatican city, pope francis pleaded for peace in his christmas message. >> may peace come in israel and palestine, where war is devastating the lives of those peoples. i plead for an end to the military operations with their appalling harvest of innocent civilian victims. william: in the occupied west

bank, bethlehem, where the bible says jesus was born, resembled a ghost town. a far cry from what a normal christmas here looks like. at the church of nativity, residents marked a somber day with a prayer for peace. for the “pbs newshour”, i'm william brangham. geoff: in the day's other headlines, an israeli airstrike in syria has killed one of iran's top generals. iranian state media said the attack happened in a damascus neighborhood. the general had been a longtime adviser to iran's revolutionary guard in syria. his death comes amid clashes between hezbollah and israel along the lebanese-israeli border. ukraine's air force says it shot down two russian fighter jets overnight, along with two cruise missiles and dozens of drones. kyiv says the attacks were aimed at central and southern ukraine, and reported no casualties.

meantime, ukrainians observed another wartime christmas. but it was the first time the country officially broke from the orthodox date of january 7, which is observed by russia. >> i feel that we are united as a family as we celebrate christmas on december 25 in ukraine now. we are together with the whole civilized world in this christmas celebration. i hope that this prayer will be heard by god and bring us victory. geoff: ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy signed legislation in july to officially move the observance date and further distance ukraine from russia. jailed russian opposition leader alexei navalny has been located at a prison colony above the arctic circle. his lawyers had lost contact with him for three weeks. a spokesperson for the kremlin critic says he's now being held in the town of kharp, about 1200 miles northeast of moscow. his attorney was able to visit him. navalny is serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism. police in serbia say they've detained at least 38 people protesting last week's

parliamentary elections. the governing populist party was declared the winner, but opposition groups and international observers cited widespread irregularities. demonstrators tried to break into belgrade's city council last night, until riot police responded. today, students blocked the street outside a government building in the capital, but were mostly peaceful. and beijing has recorded the most hours of below freezing temperatures in december in more than seven decades. a bitter cold wave and heavy snowfall have frozen northern and central parts of china. the snow totals were so high in northeast jilin province that a local resort was able to make an army of 500 identical snowmen, each towering around 6.5 feet tall. still to come on the “newshour”" paramedics in the israel-hamas war struggle to save lives under harrowing conditions. a unique antidote to isolation and loneliness across britain.

and american troops spreading christmas joy through song. >> this is the "pbs newshour" from weta studios in washington and in the west from the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. geoff: with only a few weeks until the first votes of the 2024 presidential campaign, one republican candidate is on the rise while another's campaign seems to be fading. our politics monday team is here for a check-in on the race. that's amy walter of "the cook political report with amy walter." and tamara keith of npr. merry christmas do you both. let's talk about 2024. nikki haley is looking for an upset win that could derail donald rumsfeld to the nomination. new hampshire could be her best to only chance. and she's 30% of donald trump's 44%. that poll does not show that support has doubled for her since the last poll while donald

trump is looking steady. amy: this is exactly as you pointed out. a state that is really right for an upset in the mold of someone like nikki haley. new hampshire is a state that has the opportunity for independent voters or people who do not identified by party to participate. more independent leaning and more moderate. this is also a state that is overall a little more trump skeptical than many of the other states. especially those that come early like iowa or even south carolina. the challenge though for nikki haley is that once you get past new hampshire, finding opportunities for that coalition of hers to expand is really difficult. some primaries don't allow independence to vote. places like california, for example. with a lot of delegates at stake. and the kinds of moderate,

college-educated voters who are attracted to nikki haley, those voters thin out a lot when she get past new hampshire. geoff: is that something nikki haley can even do right now, fan her coalition beyond the college-educated professional, mostly suburban voters? tamara: that is a real challenge for her. certainly if someone like chris christie were to drop out, those voters who currently support him would likely move to a nikki haley. but if someone like ron desantis were to drop out, those are voters who are much more trumpy. those are voters were looking for a message that is about isolation from the world, that is about eldon walls along the southern border. a message that is much more like trump's message and not as much like nikki haley's message. those voters are more likely to go towards trump.

the challenge for her really is expanding her coalition. given the divisions in the republican party, the republican party is more trumpy than it is like this traditional, more moderate, fiscally conservative republican in a traditional mold than nikki haley represents. geoff: you mentioned ron desantis. the newark out -- the new york times as a deeply reported peace looking at his failure to launch despite all the early height. his longtime pollster and one of his closest advisors has privately said to multiple people that they are now at the point any campaign where they need to quote, make the patient comfortable. a phrase evoking hospice care. is there any coming back for ron desantis? amy: his only hope right now is what we are seeing in the polls is not actually correct.

especially iowa. and there is the possibility that nikki haley comes in second in iowa and not ron desantis. that is not out of the realm of possibility, especially right now. when you talked about broadening her coalition, how she does in iowa and where she does better or worse is going to tell us how likely it is she can put a coalition together that is a little more regionally creative, let's say. can break her out of this new hampshire mold. for ron desantis, the challenge has been that he, too, is having a sealing problem. he is unable to find this mix of voters who both want somebody like donald trump also want to move beyond donald trump. he has never been able to really capture that. the other thing this campaign did early on was decided would basically outsource all the things a campaign traditionally does. doorknocking, interacting with voters. all of that went through a super

pac, not through the campaign. why does that matter? you never really got the sense there was a grassroots movement for ron desantis. these were paid canvassers, people that they found not because these people said i love ron desantis, but because the super pac was paying them do it. so that peace really got to the heart of the sell of ron desantis being a big part of the challenge. geoff: drawing on your biden world sources, how are they responding to this colorado supreme court ruling that disqualifies donald trump from being president again on the grounds that he was involved in the insurrection? also removing him from that state's primary ballot. how is the biden campaign thinking about addressing this moving forward? tamara: you are getting radio silence from them on pretty much anything that involves donald trump's legal challenges.

whether that be the various indictments and court cases or these challenges to even appearing on the ballot. the biden campaign feels that those sorts of stories are getting a huge amount of attention. in fact, they worry those stories are getting all of the attention and sucking the oxygen out of the campaign, not allowing opponents of trump in the primary to really gain footing. and also not allowing voters to learn about the things trump is saying out on the trail or the things he is promising he would do as president. so what the biden campaign is doing is trying their very best to draw attention and contrast to things like the former president's position on the affordable care act, or language he has used describing his opponents as vermin, or that he wants retribution. that is what they are trying to draw attention to and they are sort of letting the natural order and the news cycle put

attention on trump's legal challenges, whether that be the colorado case or others. geoff: in the time that remains on this last politics monday of 2023, i would like to ask you both for a story or a theme this past year that affected our politics in a new or significant way. amy: we're talking about the courts here, the supreme court's role in the presidency and what that election could look like. it is not just the presidency. it is also control of congress may come down to what the courts decide. the supreme court being one, also some state courts on redistricting. when you have a five state majority as republicans have, any single movement could be the difference between republicans staying in power or democrats gaining power. tamara: what amy said dovetails to but i was thinking about, which was this past week the wisconsin state supreme court

made a decision throwing out the state's legislative district lines. that is likely to be appealed to the u.s. supreme court. but what stands out to me at this moment is there was a race first-rate -- state supreme court, for a position on the court earlier this year. and abortion was a huge issue in that race. because there was this old-time abortion law on the books that could go before the state supreme court. and so there was a race that was pretty much entirely focused on abortion. a little bit about redistricting but mostly about abortion. and that election had consequences. the judge who backed by democrats, who aligned in favor of abortion rights, ended up winning handily in a state that is pretty closely divided. and that could affect the balance of power in the state legislature and other things.

what stains out to me is that, again and again throughout this year we have seen examples of abortion being on the ballot. whether that is literally or just in typically minor races that people normally wouldn't pay attention to. and pretty much every time it has fallen towards voters wanting to continue to have access to that health care procedure. geoff: thank you so much for joining us on this last politics monday of the year. we will see you back here next monday for the first politics monday of 2024. amy: merry christmas. ♪ geoff: the israel-hamas war has put first responders, like ambulance drivers and

paramedics, on the front lines of the conflict. "newshour" special correspondent martin himmel has this look at the lives of medics in both gaza and israel, who do all they can to help save lives. martin: fadi afana is a senior medic. he's seen three wars in gaza, but this is like no other. the casualties are many times higher in this conflict. and most of the hospitals have been shut down. there are nowhere near enough facilities to treat the wounded. working for now out of the al aqsa martyrs hospital in khan yunis, southern gaza, he is racing toward the scene of an israeli airstrike. trying to save the wounded and gathering the dead is a daily, even hourly job for fadi. >> my leg, my leg. >> i will count. one, two, three. >> oh god.

martin: fadi and more than a 1.5 million other gazans have been forced to leave their homes and find refuge in the south. >> we lived very close to the sea. the entire neighborhood was shelled, the house no longer exists. since the start of the war, we have been scattered, and i haven't returned at all. i haven't seen my children except on the street. i haven't seen my wife at all. i saw my mother for the first 15 days, and until now, i haven't seen her at all. my sisters as well, because each of us are in a different place. martin: in israel, american israeli medic moishe paskesz and his colleague yehuda are heading to kfar aza, a kibbutz on the border with gaza. to come to terms with what they experienced here during the hamas attacks. moishe and yehuda are volunteer medics in the united hatzala ems. on october 7, moishe risked his life as part of a medical team trying to save the lives of

others as hamas slaughtered men, women, and children here. yehuda came to the embattled israeli border towns shortly after. >> people's personal lives, just sprawled everywhere. the upended wheel of a bicycle. somebody's broomstick, you know? like they say, it's worst massacre of jewish people experienced since the holocaust. this is another house of what was apparently a musician. we went inside, we saw a drum set and guitars, keyboard, sound system. possessions waiting for their owners to come back and use them. we set up sort of a field hospital, a triage center if you will. this one is not so urgent, he can go in a car. this guy is more urgent, he needs an ambulance. this one is so urgent, he needs a helicopter. martin: the flood of dead and wounded was overwhelming for the first responders.

>> dozens of patients, literally, without exaggeration, dozens of patients came through. ambulance number 71 is on its way to you, with four severely injured patients, one shot in the head, two shot in their limbs and one shot in the abdomen. martin: back in gaza, fadi drives for a rare rendezvous with his children. apart from the dangers of being killed in combat or by airstrikes, there is also the risk now of being arrested by israeli forces. hamas is alleged to have used ambulances to move its men and

materiel around. now all medics are suspect. fadi and his brother mohammed were picking up wounded when the israeli military stopped them and arrested mohammed, who is also a medic. >> so, what more can i tell you? they stripped my brother in front of me, abused him, covered his eyes, and took him to the tank. for 13 days, i have no information about him. martin: fadi afana and moishe paskesz are on opposite sides of this conflict. but they both share a powerful motivation to save lives in this war. they also share common traumas from what they have witnessed in the fighting. moishe lives in jerusalem. he often serves as an ambu-bike medic. moishe usually gets to the scene up to 10 minutes before an ambulance and gives a life saving first response.

>> we at united hatzala we try our best to be at serious calls within 90 seconds of being dispatched as much as possible. there was a soldier who was attacked by a terrorist. you are talking about someone who is losing blood. so every second counts. the sooner you can get there, the sooner you can put on a tourniquet, the sooner you can save someone's life. martin: this is the nerve center of united hatzalah ems. moishe often volunteers as a dispatcher. he recalled the horrors of october 7. >> on that screen over there we have a thing that alerts us to every single red alert in the entire country. the rocket sirens. a volunteer responded to a rocket attack, that basically went right down the core of the building and landed on the roof and went right down the stairwell and it killed three people and it wounded easily

more than 10 other people. when i say wounded i mean like, you know, dismembered limbs and stuff. my first clue that things were going to be really bad was when i overheard them discussing how many victims they could fit into one ambulance, and one of the most senior guys was saying, i think eight. and i said, you're going to put eight wounded people into an ambulance? and he said, not eight wounded people, eight dead bodies. just people getting mowed down one after another in cold blood, just for the sole crime of being jewish. martin: in gaza, three ambulances emerge in the darkness from the north. fadi checks out the staff and the patients. he discovers all the drivers are civilians. the israelis told them to drive the ambulances because they arrested the medic drivers. >> they arrested everyone.

our four colleagues, mohammad al-kurd, ala' muammar, mohammad nahhal, and sharif bayouk. we brought all their cars to use them. we will bring our cars and move with the european hospital cars. martin: there is no time to get frustrated over the arrests. these wounded need to be transported. fadi is taking them to the europa hospital. it is of course totally inundated with the sick, the wounded, and the dying. arriving at the hospital, the parking lot has been transformed into an emergency ward. so for now they are turning the adjacent school into a makeshift hospital. but there are no beds and there are dwindling supplies of medicine and equipment. >> what's your name? what's your name? your full name?

>> i hope the war stops, and the bloodshed we are experiencing comes to an end. i also hope the displaced people can return to their homes because, honestly, we are living in camps and in other places. the situation of the displaced is tragic, and we don't know where they will go once the war is over. martin: there is great uncertainty how and when this war will end. in the meantime, both fadi and moishe brace themselves for more casualties as the fighting rages on. for the "pbs newshour," this is martin himel on the israel-gaza border. ♪ geoff: today marks two months since a gunman opened fire on a bowling alley and a bar in lewiston, maine, killing 18 people and injuring 13 others. it was the country's deadliest mass shooting this year, and one

community was hit especially hard. the shooting is believed to be the deadliest for deaf people ever in the u.s. laura barron-lopez looks at how the deaf community in maine is rebuilding in the wake of tragedy, and how the community there is coping with this holiday season. >> our wedding day, our celebration. laura: megan and stephen vozzella were married on november 12 of last year. >> he always told me he loved me every day. it didn't matter if we were having an argument or what. he said he loved me. he'd give me a kiss goodnight. laura: but just weeks before what would have been their first wedding anniversary, stephen was killed by a gunman at schemengees bar and grille along with seven others. >> they said steve got shot. and i, you know, i just shut down. i was gone. i can't describe any more than that. laura: megan says he was a devoted father who loved traveling, camping, and cornhole. he died playing with his cornhole team. >> that's what he was doing wednesday nights. you know, sometimes a lot of

deaf people were there at the cornhole tournament just to get together and enjoy time together. that wednesday night of october 25, stephen was one of four deaf people killed. stephen vozzella, joshua seal, billy brackett, and bryan macfarlane. a loss felt acutely throughout maine's small and tight-knit deaf community. >> our friends, you know, and our husbands who are gone with him. it's not easy. my friend liz, i mean, we grew up together and josh seal, i grew up with him. i mean, it's too difficult to talk about because, you know, we both lost our husbands. laura: kyle curtis was stephen's best friend and cornhole partner. he was at the bar that night and was shot in the arm.

>> my mind was racing with, where are my friends, and what has happened. and it was a tragic night. it's the worst night i've ever had in my life. and there's nothing that can compare to that. laura: what has your recovery been like? >> seeing that we have one another and the support has been very strong, that has helped to be able to get some healing and processing the process has been slow. i know it will take more time, but it is a wonderful, connected family. laura: richard morlock, another survivor, also recalled the shock he felt that night. he didn't realize what was happening until he saw the shooter. >> there was this loud boom and then it continued. there was a second and third strange sound. and after that, i don't know how many more after that, we saw man start shooting. i was essentially in a corner. so i went to the ground. i dropped and played dead, i mean, and just laid there and tried to just wait it out.

laura: curtis, morlock, and a few other survivors from that night often gather at sliders just down the road. morlock says he is grateful to have a place to get together and enjoy the game they all love. >> we cannot give up or let this stop us. we need to stay strong and support one another. you know, it allows us to have fun. if we didn't have this, i think it would be very difficult. laura: do you feel as though the deaf community has had enough resources to recover from the mass shooting? >> so far, i feel like they've had support, but it's going to be a long process to be able to heal. there's going to be counseling that's needed and all of that. so i know they have a long way to go. you know, we can't have any of these resources end. laura: the deaf players who survived the shooting here at schemengees are still trying to rebuild a sense of community. they hope their experience brings attention to needed resources for deaf people

everywhere. >> what took place in maine is just illustrative. one isolated example of what can go wrong anywhere in this country. laura: howard rosenblum is ceo of the national association of the deaf. he says the shooting in lewiston highlighted systemic issues that leave deaf people more vulnerable during and after traumatic events. >> there was no way to access whatever services were being provided. the deaf and hard of hearing community historically have thought long and hard about how we get warnings and information. and often we're at the end of the communication loop and we are the last to know. indeed, in the lewiston shooting, this is another demonstration of the problem rooted in the system itself. laura: rosenblum says deaf people are also forgotten in the aftermath of a disaster. in lewiston, interpreters were left out of the initial press briefings and kept out of hospitals in the hours after the shooting. >> the community has been hard

at work with law enforcement, clinical hospital staff, governors offices, to get changes moving. and i remain ever hopeful that even though it's a terrible tragedy, what happened in maine, that it will lead to better system-wide changes. >> we're working on it right now. we are really struggling with accessibility, for sure. laura: megan vozzella hopes the deaths of her husband and his friends can bring about life-saving changes for deaf people in times of crisis. >> there's nothing we can do about the situation that happened that night. and they're just going to have to fix the system. we don't need to lay blame, but we need to work together and really work to improve it. we need to move on from here. laura: but moving on is difficult, especially this time of year. with photos of stephen everywhere, megan holds on tight to memories with her husband. >> he was always asking me to

make the cookies every christmas. laura: what are the holidays like now that it's the first year without him? >> it's been hard. it's the first time setting up the christmas tree. the one behind me. that's a new one. it was a wedding gift. i struggled with that. my daughter didn't want to help with it. she didn't really want to have anything to do with it. so i did it alone. very hard, because steve was always there every year. he loved the christmas tree and decorating. so this year, it's not the same at all. laura: for the "pbs newshour," i'm laura barron-lopez in maine. ♪ geoff: mental health experts are convinced that one of the

long-term consequences of lockdowns during the covid pandemic is an increase in loneliness. in britain, communities are trying to combat people's isolation by introducing so-called chatty benches and chatty cafes. special correspondent malcolm brabant reports from kent. malcolm: this bench, overlooking the north sea, has a poignant backstory. if you sit down here, you're inviting a conversation, or perhaps making a cry for help. >> my husband took his own life in 2019. malcolm: rachel stone is ben's widow. >> and at the time there was so many young men in the area, one after the other, who was struggling, who had taken their own lives. and i wanted to do something to help. because you feel a bit helpless in a situation like that. malcolm: while left to raise two small daughters and her older stepson, rachel strove to create a legacy for her husband, who was overwhelmed by depression. just in case no one stops to chat, there's a discreet reminder of a suicide hotline.

>> if you're feeling desperate and you've got somewhere like this. come and sit tight, said one person, to stop and just say, are you ok? and if he genuinely had something like this and it could have delayed him taking his own life on that day. malcolm: 20 miles to the south are sheer drops where, over the years, several people have leapt to their deaths. the cliffs no longer have such a grim reputation, thanks in part to a neighborhood regeneration scheme, including the benches. i've come to ramsgate, a seaside town some 80 miles southeast of london. this is a chatty bench. it's a glorious sunny day, a real change from the miserable winter that britain's having. people are out and about. let's see if anybody wants to talk. the sad truth is, i was studiously ignored until david barber turned up. he's one of the community leaders behind this chatty bench project. >> life is pretty, it's pretty dark, isn't it?

it's not exactly a happy place at the moment, the world. and so loneliness spreads, i think. malcolm: exacerbated, barber says, by an internet full of remote opinions, that people post, but rarely share in person, face to face. >> technology hasn't helped. people walk along with their phones and earphones in. they don't want to converse. they don't want to have even eye contact. so the art of conversation is an awful lot less than it used to be. >> i don't want fame. >> if you're good at your art or whatever it is, you've got to let the people see you. >> i'd like the money. but i don't want fame. malcolm: among those who frequent this bench are lorraine hudson and gareth cox, who come to shoot the breeze. >> i think community spirit has died. there was a time 20, 30 years back, neighbors spoke to each other. that doesn't happen now. partly, i think, is the internet. people have all of their needs in the house, so they don't need to go out and communicate. they don't really go to pubs as much. and that's just isolated everybody. and it's become the norm, which

is, it's sad, but we all do it. >> i agree. yeah. everyone's on their phones. they're on the computer, busy working. so it's nice to have places like this where you can sit down and just chill. malcolm: given britain's inclement climate, the boom in chatty cafes is outpacing chatty benches. besides conviviality, whitstable's revival cafe offers a low-key mental health safety net. >> i think it is a worrying trend in terms of, we know the impact of loneliness and isolation isn't good for people's mental health. malcolm: deborah haylett runs the revival, which mind, the mental health non-profit, established as an innovative social enterprise. >> we are social animals. that's what we are here for. we are part of families. part of villages, part of tribes. that that's who we are. research shows that social interaction is one of the main ways that you can support your wellbeing. >> have an omelette. malcolm: frances burtenshaw is a

regular at the chatty tuesday sessions. >> if you sit indoors and you don't talk to anyone or you're on your own, you go bonkers. malcolm: recent surveys conducted since the covid pandemic show a consistent rise in loneliness. overall, one in three britons feels lonely. but the surprising thing is that people who are suffering most are young people. a survey conducted in 2023 revealed that amongst those aged between 18 to 24, three out of every five felt alone and isolated. >> i think that particularly has to do with covid. i think they had a lot of disruption in school. they stopped going to after school clubs. they stopped going seeing their friends outside of school, and all of their education was on screens. their interaction with friends was on screens. and it's naturally just progressed that they carried on in that way that they've become used to those patterns. malcolm: back along the north kent coast, rachael stone decorates her bench with the

international symbol for mental health awareness. >> particularly coming up to christmas, i think people suffer even more. so it's heightened, isn't it, because you think everyone around you is having such a lovely time. social media influences. having somebody to speak to and just off light is so important because bottling everything up is one of the worst things you can do because you're just alone with your thoughts. malcolm: rachel's message is simple. don't walk on by. you might make a small difference. you might even save a life. for the "pbs newshour," i'm malcolm brabant in kent. ♪ geoff: 50 years ago this month, president richard nixon signed the endangered species act into law. one of the first on the endangered list was the black footed ferret, north america's rarest animal.

it was once thought to be extinct. but thanks to the dedicated work of conservationists, it's making its way back. john yang has a look at some of that work in this story, which originally aired on "pbs news weekend." john: there is a lot riding on these squirming, squeaking newborns. they are black footed ferrets, and whether they thrive will go a long way in determining whether their species will survive. >> the black-footed ferret has a lot of pressures out in the wild. they're a flagship north american carnivore species. they absolutely have a critical role to helping maintain the balance of the ecosystem. we try to look at each individual kit every day if we can. john: adrienne crosier is in charge of the breeding program at the smithsonian conservation biology institute. her goal is to produce enough of this rare member of the weasel family to help stock breeding programs around the country and reintroduce them into the wild. >> every enclosure either has a single adult or a family group.

so, for example, there's stink pot and she has seven babies. john: we visited crosier during birthing or whelping season. she introduced us to all ages of baby ferrets, which are called kits. and we can see some of the babies. >> they're peeking out. they're getting really big now. they already look like little adult ferrets. john: and is stinkpot not coming out because she wants to protect the kits? >> so that's her box. that's her territory. she keeps all the kits in there. john: each day, the staff carries out a carefully choreographed routine to separate the kits from their mothers for inspection. after they've been checked out and placed in a fresh, clean box, the kits are returned to their mothers, who sometimes give the caretakers a piece of their mind. we helped check out ciri's six kits, just a few weeks old. they're unable to see until they're about 35-days old. >> we just look at them each, every day to make sure that everything looks normal, their eyes look normal.

there's no swelling or scabbing or crustiness around the eyes. make sure everybody is nice and vigorous. these guys seem very sleepy. john: yes. i was just going to say, this one is just curling up to go back to sleep. when it was over, this mother quickly moved her kits from one box to another, doing her own maternal headcount. nestled in the foothills of the blue ridge mountains, the conservation campus in front royal, virginia uses reproductive technology to breed species from cheetahs to black-footed ferrets. crosier says the ferret's size requires them to do some improvising. >> because they are so very small, we really have challenges finding tools and instruments that we can use on what may be only a 700 or 800 gram female. so we have to get really creative and we've bought some special tools that are actually

made for pediatric surgery so that we can try to improve our success in artificial insemination in the species. john: black-footed ferrets were first put on the endangered species list in 1967. and then in 1979, when the last known member of the species died in captivity, they were declared extinct. but two years later came a surprising discovery, made by a wyoming ranch dog named shep. he took a dead black-footed ferret home to his owner. that led to the discovery of 24 black-footed ferrets alive and well in northwest wyoming. all members of the species known today are descendants of that group. >> this is one of the kind of historic mementos representing the pedigree of the first couple of years of black-footed ferrets in the breeding program. john: paul marinari knows the family tree like the back of his hand, all the way back to the original, mom. >> actually, that is mom right there.

you can see the reason why she was called mom is because this was a litter that she had in the wild. so when she and her offspring were captured from the wild, we had to make certain assumptions of who the dad was. that was scarface. he was actually the last black-footed ferret to be captured. he was quite prolific when it came to breeding, very overrepresented in the population. john: marinari is the keeper of the smithsonian's black-footed ferret stud book. most of his career has been spent studying the species. for 16 years he was director of the u.s. fish and wildlife service's black-footed ferret conservation center in colorado. >> we have a very stable breeding population, around 300 individuals. the wild population is precarious in places.

there are several populations that are doing really well, and we estimate that there's between 300 and 400 black-footed ferrets living in the wild. it's kind of the perfect species to deal with, with a breeding program and a reintroduction program because they don't live that long. they are very quick to produce offspring. they produce a fair number of offspring. that's the simple version. saving the species is much more complex. john: that complexity comes in part from the black-footed ferret's relationship with prairie dogs, which make up 90% of their diet. >> they require prairie dogs to thrive. they require prairie dogs for their burrows, for their homes, and also it's their primary prey source. the prairie dogs are not very popular with the farmers, especially because they do so much damage to the farmland. and so the prairie dogs are actively removed from farmland, which means the ferrets don't have a home. the ferrets don't have prey. john: prairie dogs are a

keystone species, the glue that holds a habitat together. but many ranchers and farmers in the west consider prairie dogs pests to be eliminated. in the early 1900's, widespread poisonings were commonplace. if you don't have prairie dogs, you won't have ferrets. and if you don't have ferrets -- >> so it's a balance. and they're all occurring naturally -- and they should all be occurring naturally -- and keeping each other in balance. but if you take out one piece of that, which is usually caused by humans, then everything falls out of balance and then we have complete loss of species. any time you have an extinction event like that caused by human intervention, obviously we're doing something really catastrophic to the ecosystem. john: the prairie ecosystem once covered one-third of north america, stretching from canada to texas. but since the late 19th century, it's shrunk by 62%. >> if we can save the black-footed ferret, our thought and all of our partners thought is that we can save the other 130 unique plants and animals that are native to the north american prairie. and it's a pretty special ecosystem, one that's often

overlooked because of the riches we have in our country. john: another threat to the black-footed ferret? a bacterial disease called sylvatic plague. both black-footed ferrets and the prairie dogs they eat are highly susceptible to it. it's transmitted by fleas and has been known to infect humans. black-footed ferrets are nocturnal, spending daylight hours in burrows dug by prairie dogs. their lives there have largely been a mystery to scientists. but this summer, field biologists in montana began the first-ever tests of electronic devices to track prairie dogs underground. they're like fitbits, mapping their movement, providing researchers with a wealth of data they hope will give them a better understanding of how the two species share the networks of tunnels, called towns. >> for the first time we'll be able to map that and know how deep it is, what are the densities of the animals, what is the space that one black-footed ferret is actualing

using out of that town and what is the overlap between those ferrets so we can know what would be the carrying capacity of a prairie dog town. john: and cryogenic technology is allowing scientists to freeze black-footed ferret dna in state of the art genome resource banks. in 2020, researchers used the frozen cells of a black-footed ferret that had been dead for 30 years to produce the first-ever cloned member of the species, elizabeth ann. so, adrienne, this is your breeding board? >> yes. john: most of the mating comes naturally, but some ferrets need a little encouragement. >> we try to mix and match younger, naive males with older proven females and vice versa. john: as a new generation of black-footed ferrets weighs in, the staff at the smithsonian conservation biology center feels the weight of what's at stake. >> so you go from a species that's thought to be extinct to

all of a sudden, holy cow, we have the species we have to take care of. the fate of the species is in our hands. that's a huge responsibility. people can make a difference. and i think that is something that is important for people to hear. john: exceptional measures to save a small but vital piece of our ecosystem. for the "pbs newshour," i'm john yang. ♪ geoff: we close tonight's program, on this christmas, with a "newshour" tradition. each year, the pentagon produces a holiday song with members of the military singing. tonight, we share again what first aired last friday, their rendition of "o come, all ye faithful." ♪

>> ♪ o come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant o come ye, o come ye to bethlehem come and behold him, born the king of angels o come, let us adore him o come, let us adore him o come, let us adore him

christ the lord >> ♪ sing, choirs of angels, sing in exultation glory to god glory in the highest o come, let us adore him o come, let us adore him o come, let us adore him

christ the lord >> ♪ come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant >> ♪ o come ye, o come ye to bethlehem >> ♪ o come and behold him, born the king of angels >> ♪ o come, let us adore him o come, let us adore him

o come, let us adore him christ the lord ♪ ♪ geoff: and that is the "newshour" for tonight. i'm geoff bennett. thanks for spending part of your evening with us. and have a merry christmas. >> major funding for the "pbs newshour" has been provided by. >> architect. beekeeper. mentor. a raymondjames financial advisor tailors advice to help you live your life. life well-planned.

>> the kendeda fund, committed to advancing restorative justice and meaningful work through investments in transformative leaders and ideas. more at kendedafund.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. john: i am terribly excited to be the anchor of "pbs news weekend." we have become known for independent fact-based reporting. we are challenging the viewers to understand the world a little better. we present all sides of the

story. we take the time to put them in context. when viewers watch "pbs news weekend," i hope they come away informed, with perhaps a different perspective than they had thought of before. good evening. i am john yang. tonight on "pbs news weekend" -- [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.]

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