john: tonight on pbs news weekend, the state of healthcare for children of low-to-moderate income famlies in florida, and what a federal lawsuit could mean there and the rest of the country. then, how vaccine hesitancy and misinformation are playing into rising rates of measles and covid. and the story of a black midwife who served the community where she'd been enslaved. >> if somebody needed help, granny was going. black and whites alike. it made no difference to her. she was fearless.

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this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your p station from viewers like you. thank you. >> good evening. i am john yang. donald trump's decisive victory in yesterday's south carolina primary -- in nikki haley's home state -- moved the former president that much closer to the republican nomination. with nearly l of the votes counted, trump leads haley by 20 percentage points. and he's won at least 44 of the state's 50 delegates, bringing his overall total to more than 100. despite the loss, haley told supporters last night that she's not giving up. >> i'm an accountant. i know 40% is not 50%. but i also know 40% is not some tiny group. there are huge numbers of voters

in our republican primaries who are saying they want an alternative. john: the next primary is michigan on tuesday -- it's the last major contest before more than a dozen states vote in march with more than a thousand delegates up for grabs. in israel's war with hamas, there are signs of slow progress toward a deal for a cease-fire and release of both israeli hostages and palestinian prisoners. an egyptian offici tells the sociated press that the deal that's emerging from talks in qatar would call for a six-week pause in fighting, increased aid deliveries to the gaza strip, and the release of 40 israeli hostages, and hundreds of palestinian prisoners. in israel, protesters are keeping up pressure on the government for the hostages' return. on cbs's "face the nation," israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu said getting an agreement was up to hamas. >> i can tell you that we're all working on it. we want it, i want it. i can't tellou if we'll have it. but if hamas goes down from its delusional claims and goes down- can bring them down to earth, then we'll have the progress

that we all want. john: that in yahoo! set a cease-fire deal with delay but not cancel an offensive in rafa where more than half of gaza's 2 million residents are taken refuge. a man set himself on fire outside the israeli embassy in washington. the man was taken to the hospital would lives earning injuries. the times of israel reports no embassy staff was involved. still to come, how misinformation about vaccines is contributing to a rise in some preventable diseases and a black midwife's story is told by her granddaughter to her great-granddghter. ♪ >> this is pbs news weekend from weta studios in washington, home of the pbs newshour on pbs. john: the end of pandemic-era

protections for medicaid participants has meant the end of coverage so far for more than seventeen million low-income americans. and states are still checking to see if more recipients are no long eligible -- a process known as "unwinding." now the federal government is raising questions about that process, especially when it comes to children. in december, the department of health and human services sent letters telling nine states with the highest numbers of children losing coverage that they must do more keep children in the program. one of those states is florida, which is considering other changes to the way it provides health insurance to children from low to moderate income families, expanding access for some, limiting it for others. ali rogin has more. ali: since the medicaid unwinding began last spring, florida has removed 420,000 children from the rolls of both medicaid and chip. the children's health insurance program. chip insures children from families with modest income, but that make too much money to qualify for medicaid. florida is also challenging a

federal law that went into effect at the beginning of this year, requiring states to provide children with 12 months of continuous medicaid or chip eligibility. but florida also took steps to expand chip eligibility vong last year to increase the amount of income a family can have before they no longer qualify for children's health insurance programs. daniel chang is a correspondent based in florida for kff health news. here to break it all down for us. so daniel, we have the medicaid situation. we have florida's chip situation. can you tell us broadly what is the state of health insurance for children in florida right now? and if you can, how does it compare to what's haening in other states right now? daniel: so florida has a children's health insurance program like pretty much every other state does right now. and last year, it had about 120,000 children in its program for low and moderate income families.

and ah what florida is doing is it's it's contesting the federal -- and what florida is doing is it's contesting the federal govement's authority to essentially change the rules of how kids stay enrolled in the program. what florida is saying is that, it should be allowed to dis enroll children from the children's health insurance program if their parents don't pay premiums. they get a 30 day grace period after that. vaccines have proven to be an effective weapon against many diseases. you can only require them to pay the first month. after that, if their parents do not pay, you have to leave them on for at least another 11 months. florida says that is not fair and we have always been able to disenroll ki from chip if their parents did not pay their premiums. we need that money to fund the program and it is accusing the feds of basically not following the process that is required for creating new rules like this. ali: are there any other states who are bringing up the same concerns as florida is or are they out on their own on this

one? daniel: florida is the only state as far as i am aware that has challenged the federal government's new rule although there are 18 other states that do use the same process, meaning that they will disenroll children from chip if their parents don't pay the monthly premiums. though those 18 other states will have to decide if they want to follow the new federal rules or join florida in its lawsuit. ali: how is the biden administration responding to florida's suit? daniel: they filed the first response in this week and essentially what the biden administration is saying is that the consolidated appropriations act of 2023 changed the rules in two fundamental ways. ali: that is the bill that established this 12 month continuous eligibility period. daniel: that is correct. the new rules under that law went into effect on january 1 and essentially what the biden administration is saying is that the law no longer allowed

continuous eligibility to be optional. it is now mandatory for medicaid and chip. what the biden administration is saying is essentially that states were never allowed to disenroll people from medicaid r nonpayment of premiums during a continuous eligibility period and now the same has to apply to kids in chip. they have to have that same protection and that is essentially what the biden administration is doing. ali: at the same time, this chip stuff is happening, florida has also come under scrutiny from the federal government for disenrolling what the hh s says is a very high proportion of children from the medicaid rolls. why is florida coming under specific scrutiny for this and does it have anything to do with the fact that it is one of 10 states that did not expand medicaid coverage during the affordable care act? daniel: florida has disenrolled a large number of children from its medicaid program. it's close to 460,000 as of the

report from january and hhs secretaries sent a letter to florida and the governors of eight other states exposing concern about that and suggesting measure strategies these states could take to keep their kids covered. one of them relates to just eliminating premiums in the chip program. others involved in persuading states to take up with the federal government calls flexibilities for this unwinding process so for instance, allowing states to just determine a kids eligibility and reenrolled them in therogram. there is a large number of disenrollment's during florida's medicaid unwinds that are due to procedural reasons which is when people do not respond. medicaid expansion is another strategy that the secretary cited in his letter to governors as helping to improve coverage for children because when parents have health insurance, it is a lot more likely that

their kids will also be insured. ali: the florida legislature voted to raise the family income limit to qualify for kid care which is basically the children's health insurance program in florida so what is the status of those efforts and how many children would that state legislature action potentially provide coverage to? >> governor desantis decided that she cited that she signed that expansion into law in june and it raised the income eligibility level so about another 40,000 or so children would be newly eligible once that ship expansion takes effect but it has not yet because there is a complicated process for states tdo this and it involves having state and federal public comment periods in florida has not done that and now they have to. the state wanted to start the expended population for chip this year. if they do, it would have to be much later in the year. right now, they just started

recently the public comment period. >> people hearing this might wonder to themselves florida is taking some measures to expand eligibility vis-a-vis income but choosing other options that would effectively keep other children disenrolled. >> what florida is claiming is that those premiums help fund the chip program and they are counting on it to fund the coverage for the expended population. florida collects about $30 million a year in chip premium payments and they are estimating that the first full year of this program under the expansion would cost about $90 million so that remainder would be paid between the state and federal governments and you know, about 3000 kids in any given month are disenrolled from chip for their parents not paying the premium so part of what cms wants to do with this new rule of continuous eligibility and continuous coverage is to reduce what is called churn, kids falling in and out of coverage, having interruptions in our coverage

which is never good. ali: daniel chang, thank you so much for your time. >> thank you for havinme. ♪ john: vaccines have proven to be an effective weapon against many diseases. measles, for instance, was declared eliminated from the united states in 2000. and, more recently, vaccines have helped curb the spread of covid. but this year, both of those diseases are on the rise: the centers for disease control and prevention says there've already been 35 cases of measles so far this year, compared with 58 in all of 2023. newshour digital health reporter laura santhanam has been looking into this. let's take the case of measles. there has been an effective measles vaccine for decades. why are cases climbing?

laura: it boils down an answer an epidemiologist gave me recently which is a vaccine is nothing if it is not administered and that is what we are seeing right now. the pandemic and misinformation have combined to sort of releasee this decline in vaccines for both of these infectious diseases. thinking about just sort of that chaos that the pandemic you gave us, you know, a lot of people were not getting, you know, scheduled childhood vaccines for their kids. people were afraid to sit in waiting rooms and exam rooms and we saw that and we are still sort of working our way out of that. and then thinking about the role that misinformation has played in sort of undermining people's confidence in that we are still dealing with that mess. >> some vaccines have been with us for generations but looking back at history, when they were first introduced, was there the same sort of misinformation then or is that a new phenomenon? >> it is kind of wild to think infectious disease has been something humanity has been dealing with students before we

were able to record history and some of these diseases, you know, we are just starting to wrap our arms around. take polio, for example. the ancient injections were dealing with polio and it wasn't until the 1950's that dr. jonah started to deploy a vaccine starting in a school in pittsburgh and that campaign went around the country, around the globe, and generations later, medical school students are more likely to learn about polio in history books than they are in lenox here in the u.s. and that is because of that work. it did not just go away because we wished it away but because of these vaccine campaigns. >> how did all the disinformation spread and the mistrust that spread around the covid vaccine, how is that affecting other vaccines? laura: we have been dealing with misinformation for quite some time when it comes to vaccines. starting in the late 1990's, you know, thinking about the measles, mumps, bella vaccine. to this day, there are people who withhold that vaccine from their children because they

think it might cause problems that just evidence, studies conducted over so many years and so many countries, just they continue to debunk that since retracted study but that has laid the groundwork for some of the disinformation campaigns we are seeing about the covid vaccine now whether it is talking about how quickly it was deployed or when politics are getting involved in some of those campaigns, it makes it a mess to disentangle. and i talked to clinicians about this, they recommend people ask their doctors if you have questions about the covid vaccine, measles vaccine, any of these vaccines that are recommended that are approved infected by the cdc, by the fda, you know, have those conversations with your doctors, but also, you know, equally importantly, doctors should be ready to have those conversations. i had a conversation with a doctor in south alabama who was saying, you know, physicians should be welcoming these conversations. they should be ready to answer questions and should not discourage patients from having

them in the first place. an expert told me that people are going to miss information for a number of reasons but some of that is because they were not able to get answers when they needed them from their health care proders in the first place so just be ready to have these conversations and welcome them. >> what are the fears that you have heard from doctors and public health officials about this, about diseases that we thought we had conquered but -- that have been wiped out like measles? >> in the u.s., we have seen vaccination rates among kindergartners decline to 93% and it is supposed to be 95%. that is the recommended threshold to prevent community transmission and a lot of suffering and harm. two percentage points might not sound like a lot but according to the cdc, that translates to two junta 50,000 kids who are left at higher risk for developing measles. they could become death as a result, develop encephalitis, and in most tragic cases, died. physician, pediatricians who

have talked to in my reporting, they are very concerned that we will give it will give an opportunity for preventable death to rise in this country. john: tnk you very much. you can read more of laura's reporting on the rise in measles cases in the misinformation around the measles vaccine at pbs.org/newshour. for black history month, our partners at story corps are amplifying black voices with conversations about activism, love, joy, and leadership. tonight, the story of mary stepp burnette hayden. she was born into slavery on a plantation in black mountain, north carolina. after she was freed in 1865, when she was 7, she remained

there, going on to become a midwife. at storycorps, hayden's granddaughter, mary othella burnette, told her great granddaughter, debora hamilton palmer, about their family matriarch. >> she probably weighed not more than 110 pounds. she was about fo ft 11in tall and her hair hung well below her waist. she had deep set eyes and a fierce look, as if she were looking right through you. what was your relationship with her like when she delivered me? -- >> relationship with her like? >> she delivered me. a few minutes after it was mine. by opening my eyes and turning my head to look around the room and she said, god, look at that. my grandmother loved to talk. and most of our stories were bad, but granny stories were real life stories. she didn't know anything about hansel and gretel. here was this woman, a former

slave, walking around delivering babies and helping people. you have to understand that back when granny started, there were no hospitals for black people to go to, and poor people had no money to pay for professional medical care. so if you had a disease that could not be treated by a midwife, you died at home. houses could be several miles apart, and bears commonly roam the neighborhoods. but what if somebody needed help? granny was going. black and whites alike. it made no difference to her. she was fearless. you know, she never boasted about what she did, but she probably caught several hundred babies, if not more. how old was granny hayden when -- >> how old was granny hayden when she stopped her practice? >> she was about 90 years old. she was a very strong little woman.

you know, when people think about slavery, they think about hundreds of years ago, not about somebody who died in 1956. she was a pillar not only in our family but in our community, and i assumed she would always be there. like when you're child. you assume everything's going to be there. but i'm very proud to have descended from someone like my grandmother. very, very proud. ♪ john: and finally tonight, what could be the brightest known object in the universe, estimated by scientists to be emitting light that's a mind-boggling 500 trillion times more intense than the sun.

according to a paper published this past week in the journal "nature astronomy," it's a quasar produced by a msive and voracious black hole that devoured the equivalent of one of earth's suns every day - a cosmic star destroyer. quasars are whirlpools of matter being sucked into black holes - swirling like water circling a drain. the light is the result of the glowing heat created by the friction of all that matter rubbing together. the black hole at the center of this quasar is more than 17 billion times more massive than our sun - which itself accounts for 99.8 percent of all our solar system's mass. christian wolf of the australian national university and the study's lead author, says it's the most violent place in the known universe. and it's so far, far away, that the light scientists are studying now took 12 billion years to reach earth, and the black hole stopped growing a

long time ago. and that is pbs news weekend for this sunday. i'm john yang. for all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us. have a good week. >> a proud supporter of public television. on a voyage with us, the world awaits. a world of flavor, diverse destinations, and immersive experiences. a world of leisure. an british style. all with our white star service. >> 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.

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