♪ john: tonight on pbs news weekend, why middle east nations are taking steps to normalize relations with syria. then, some conservative politicians take aim at no-fault divorce. and with a spotlight on border security this election year, we

look at the dangerous path some migrants are taking to enter the united states. >> if the current pushes you against that fence, that's a dangerous situation because you can't get off of it. so the fence is dangerous, the current is dangerous, the surf can be dangerous. ♪ >> major funding for pbs news weekend has been provided by -- and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. and friends of the newshour. ♪

this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from the was like you. thank you. -- from viewers like you. john: good evening, i'm john yang. president biden remains in isolation tonight -- and not just because he has covid-19. the list of democrats calling for him to get out of the race grew longer today, as california representative mark takano added hs name. mr. biden and those speaking publicly for him insist he's in it to stay. in today's daily medical update, presidential physician kevin o'connor said mr. biden's symptoms "continue to improve steadily." the president was at his delaware beach house, while at the white house a group calling on him to "pass the torch" held a rally. meanwhile, the new republican ticket of donald trump and jd vance is to hold a rally this evening in grand rapids,

michigan. it's their first since the convention and trump's first since the attempt on his life. airports, hospitals and offices are still trying to get systems fully online after yesterday's global tech outage. microsoft put out new numbers, saying that more than eight million windows devices were affected, or less than 1% of customers. but many big, hub airports are in disarray for a second day. accordng to the tracking site "flightaware," there have been more than 1600 canceled flights today, both foreign and domesticand more than 4000 flight delays. israel said it carried out airstrikes in yemen in response to houthi attacks, inluding yesterday's deadly drone strike in tel aviv. yemeni officials said israeli fighter jets hit fuel storage facilities and a power station in the port city of hodeidah, which is a houthi stronghold. a houthi spokesman called it blatant aggression. israeli defense minister yoav gallant said his nation has the right to defend itself.

>> the houthis attacked us over 200 times. the first time they harmed an israeli citizen, we struck them. and we will do this in any place where it may be required. the blood of israeli citizens has a price. john: earlier in central gaza, israel struck refugee camps. palestinian health officials said at least 13 people were killed, three of them children. and longtime texas congresswoman sheila jackson lee has died. in the nearly 30 years she represented her houston district, lee played a key role in expanding the violence against women act to specifically address native american, transgender and immigrant women. she also was the lead sponsor of legislation making juneteenth a national holiday. she said just last month that she'd been diagnosted with pancreatic cancer. jackson lee was 74-years-old.

still to come on pbs news weekend, why some social conservatives are now turning their focus to divorce. and, the life threening journey some migrants take to enter america. >> this is pbs news weekend from weta studios in washington, home of the pbs news hour, weeknights on pbs. john: for 14 years, the authoritarian regime of syrian president bashar al-assad has wad a bloody war against the syrian people, killing and displacing millions. as a result, other arab states and the west had shunned syria, making it a pariah. but, as ali rogin tells us, relations with the syrian dictator are beginning to thaw. and we want to warn you, you may find some of the images of this report disturbing. ali: in 2011, protests against shar al-assad spurred a civil war now in its second decade.

early on, the u.s. led global condemnation of assad. in 2013, barack obama and president erdogan urged him to step down. >> we both agree assad needs to go. he needs to transfer power to a transitional body. that is the only way we will resolve this crisis. ali: but the crisis only worsened. assad repeatedly used chemical weapons against his own citizens. obama called that a redlin that opted mitary response, but one that never came. the regime arrested, tortured, and forcibly disappeared tens of thousands of civilians, including thousands of women and children. the civil war has claimed several hundred thousand more lives. as rebel groups thought assad -- fought assad and his russian backers. more than 14 million syrians have fled their homes. more than half remain internally displaced. another 5.5 million are

refugees and surrounding -- are refugees in surrounding countries. despite this, assad received a warm reception last year's meeting of the 22 member arab league, hosted by saudi arabia. his first invitation back since 2011. and now president erdogan, once joined a u.s. preside calling for assad to step down, is now calling for a reset. >> amid my call to mr. assad -- i made my call to mr. assad two weeks ago. god willing we want to start a new process by overcoming this resentment and discontent. ali: for more on the ongoing normalization of bashar al assad, i'm joined by charles lister. he directs the syria program at the middle east institute, which is a nonpartisan think tank dedicated to the study of the middle east. thank you for being here. there has not been much in syria that changed in the past few years in terms of territorial control. so why are all these countries pursuing normalization right

now? charles: the answer lies in your question. the fact that the syrian crisis has been frozen militarily for as many years as it has since around 2019, 2020, is precisely why regional states wanted the tried to move on something to make progress on the political front. it is no secret that the u.s. and europe have been pretty disengaged from this area for a long while. and our policies are essentially policies of containment from, you know, at an arm's length to the region wanted to take matters into its own hand and give a go to the only other option on the table, other than isolation, which was re-engagement. since the region reengaged, and since syria was allowed back into the arab league, every single symptom of the crisis has rapidly deteriorated. everything that the region was concerned about refugees, drugs, terrorism, instability, the humanitarian crisis, it has all worsened. this was all completely predictable, of course. the region gave the regime

exactly what i wanted. a place at the table, some international standing. but it gave it everything before it managed to, you know, coerce the regime into giving something back and return and in so doing it has weakened the credibility and it's weakened the leverage that the whole international community has to try to actually move syria diplomacy forward one day. ali: let's talk about turkey specifically as president erdogan, there seems to be the latest making these overtures to assad. why is that happening now? charles: much the same reason. turkey doesn't see a lot of movement from, the international community writ large on syria. of course, turkey stood by and watched the rest of the region attempt re-engagement with the syrian regime just over a year ago. and also watch that more or less fail. but turkey sees itself as a major player in the syrian crisis, and it is rightly so. it plays host to the biggest population of syrian refugees. it continues to de facto occupy large swathes of northern syria in concert with a variety of different syrian opposition forces. so it has real leverage, in a way that, frankly, most of the rest of the region didn't have. and so turkey's playing around with the idea of trying to utilize that leverage for its

own interests, not the interests of syria and syrians, i should say. and it is trying to play along with that game. but frankly, damascus, so far at least, isn't playing ball. ali: meanwhile, what is the humanitarian situation like in syria right now? charles: to put it bluntly, the humanitarian crisis in syria has never been worse than it is today, and the humanitarian needs are simply unprecedented and continue to increase at the same time, more than half of more than half of syria's entire population is displaced and the displacement crisis persists. but at the same time, the international community is donating less and less money to deal with that humanitarian crisis. in fact, as of today, only 6% of the needs that the united nations has assessed need to be met this year has been funded by the international community. 6%. there is a 94% deficit. it's absolutely catastrophic in terms of meeting those very basic humanitarian needs. and that has a number of spillover effects.

it is already creating more and more displacement. so the rate of syrian refugees fleeing towards europe over the past 12 months has gone up by over 300%. and on top of that, of course, it creates instability. and these are the conditions that the likes of isi for example, have thrived upon in previous years. and so there's a great deal of concern about the humanitarian crisis and how it continues to spiral. ali: here in the u.s., there are several pieces of legislation meant to hold assad accountable. there is the caesar bill, which is named for a whistleblower who photographed bodies of torture victims. and that bill sanctions individuals and institutions who support or work with the regime. it is set to expire next year. then there's the assad regime anti normalization act, which would extend the caesar sanctions to 2032 and punish countries seeking normalization. that bill passed overwhelmingly in the house, but it's stalled in the senate. what is the state of play there? charles: it's stalled in the senate because the biden administration intervened, and essentially used its influence, on the democratic side, to be able to push it down and to squash any move to push it

through the senate. so the administration has directly got involved here. the biden administration came into office not wanting to have to deal with the middle east, obviously, october the 7th and the crisis around gaza has changed that equation somewhat. but for a long running, long standing crisis like syria, which we're now in the 14th year of the syrian crisis. this is not a kind of problem that the biden administration wants to get knee deep involved in. if they were to introduce or allow congress to introduce this much more aggressive anti noalization legislation, from the administration's perspective, it would force them to get much more involved in the diplomacy around the crisis in terms of justifying much more aggressive sanctions. and it doesn't want to do that. congress here in washington is in a place where syria is almost one of the only issues that still has a bipartisan consensus. and that is precisely why i think the administration felt the need to step in in the way that it did to push that

legislation aside. but now we're in this very worrying position where if caesar isn't passed, there's going to be an enormous vacuum in terms of leverage over syria policy and in terms of just simply doing the right thing, given the enormity of the crimes that have been committed by the regime over the past 14 years. ali: charles lister, director of the syria program at the middle east institute. thank you for joining us. charles: thank you. ♪ john: right now, couples in all 50 states who want to end their marriage can get what's called a no-fault divorce -- neither side has to prove that the other did something wrong, like committing adultery, abandoning their spouse or treating them cruelly. but some republican lawmakers in a handful of red states want to get rid of it. they say it makes divorce "too easy" and is unfair to men since it's estimated that 69% of divorces in the united states are initiated by women. joanna grossman teaches family

law at southern methodist university's dedman school of law. what is the history of no-fault divorce? where did it come from and why did it come into being? joanna: california was the first state to adopt no-fault in 1969 after about 200 years of every state using fault-based divorce, and it came about because california studied it and found something that probably most people in the field already knew, which is that the system didn't work. that fault-based divorce is often involve perjury and fabrication, that people were fleeing their jurisdictions to get divorced and that it did very little to sort out between good marriages and bad marriages. joanna: -- john: and what's been the result? what, what's changed because of it? joanna: so the when no fault was first adopted in california, it then sort of started a revolution and within 15 years, every single state had either switched completely to a no fault system or added at least

one no-fault ground. we saw some early effects, one of which was that the system of divorce became less trouble. there were fewer cases of obvious perjury and fabrication, etc. there were people who got out of marriages where they had been stuck, and then we also saw some real impacts on women, the female suicide rate went down dramatically. the female homicide rate by intimate partners went down dramatically and the rate of domestic violence went down. those were somewhat unexpected results, but very, very clear impacts of the change. john: now among the critics of no fault divorce is jd vance, who is mr. trump's new running mate. now here's what he had to say about this in 2021 and this video is from vice news. jd: this is one of the great tricks that i think the sexual revolution pulled on the american populace, which is this idea that like, well, ok, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy and

so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that's going to make people happier in the long term. john: shift spouses like they change underwear. what do you say to that? joanna: i mean, it's a pretty odd comparison since of course most people have at most 2 or 3 spouses in a lifetime and hopefully changing their underwear a little more often than that. but i think it really misses what no-fault divorce is. it did make it easier to get divorced, but for the most part people were getting divorced anyway. it's just they were jumping through hoops to do it and what we have found is that no fault is a better fit for our society's ideas about marriage. people actually want to get divorced because they think so highly of marriage, and if the marriage is disappointing, they want to be able to get out and often go on to a new marriage. so i think it's just sort of missing the point about the relationship between divorce law and people's happiness or even the stability of marriage. john: what he make the argument

that no fault divorce deprives men of due process, because more divorces are initiated by women? joanna: so divorces have always been initiated more often by women going back all the way to the very first divorce laws in -- after the revolution, and that's by and large because marriage is an institution that works less well for women than it does for men. the idea of a due process claim is pretty weak because what they're really saying is that a man has a right to stay married to someone over her objection. there is no recognized support in the law for that kind of a concept. so i think what they're frustrated with is this feeling that maybe women have too much autonomy and too much power and that changing the divorce laws might be a way to pull that back, but i think there's really very little relation between the two. john: why do you think this focus from from social conservatives on this now? joanna: i think part of it is it gives some good talking points

at a very abstract level, right, to suggest that the republicans are in favor of traditional conservative values. theyare about families. they care about children, and so they can use those sorts of claims about this, even though as i have said there's really not that much relationship. i also think it's part of the sort of the culture wars that are trying to bring back a more patriarchal society. i think most of the people who have abdicated for repealing no fault in the current era are really interested in having men have more control again. john: what would be the effects of getting rid of this, f repealing -- of of repealing no-fault? would be affected? joanna: the most obvious effect would be on family courts, which are already backlogs and -- backlogged and dealing with high numbers of litigants who don't have lawyers. no fault makes divorce quicker and it makes it cheaper in addition to what other effects

it has. i think in terms of individuals, the impact would be on people who some people would be stuck in marriages as they were before the adoption of no fault, but mostly people wouldn't be stuck. they would just have to pay more or jump through more hoops to get the divorce that they wanted. so i don't think it would have any impact on the average divorcing couple beyond cost and expense, and it would really backlog the family courts even more. the one thing we know historically is there's no relationship between how tough it is to get a divorce and whether a marriage is happy, so there's no reason to think that making divorce more difficult would somehow make marriages happier. john: joanna grossman from smu. thank you very much. joanna: you are welcome. ♪

john: last year was one of the deadliest on record for migrants crossing the southern u.s border. experts say tougher enforcement is pushing migrants to take more dangerous risks, like using the pacific ocean to try to get from tijuana, mexico, to san diego. as gustavo solis of kpbs in san diego reports, the result has been a spike in drownings. gustavo: the sound of crashing waves and children playing along the tijuana coastline looks like a normal day at the beach. but at the u.s.-mexico border, there's more happening underneath the surface. here the wall sticks out more than 200 feet into the pacific ocean. >> the current is very powerful. it pulls you out into the ocean. in the united states they call it a rip current. gustavo: tijuana lifeguard captain luis hernandez says the

metal posts from the border wall create a permanent rip current that pulls swimmers out into the ocean. these waters are unforgiving, says hernandez. it's t like swimming in a pool where you can just grab onto the ledge when you need to catch your breath. >> there is no ledge here. there is nothing to grab onto when you are tired and need to catch her breath. gustavo: this stretch of ocean is particularly dangerous to migrants trying to swim around the border. over the last few years, tijuana lifeguards have seen a record number of deaths. they track rescues and drownings on a whiteboard at the main lifeguard tower. just 5 rescues in 2020 and only 7 in 2021. then 59 in 2022 and 41 last year. hernandez says migrants cross in one of two ways. the first is to just swim around the border. but fighting that powerful current is exhausting. >> they use the wall as a staircase and wrap their arms around the rails. gustavo: the second is to wrap your arms around the wall's

metal beams and use shellfish growing along the bottom of the wall as little ledges. but those shells are very sharp. lifeguards often rescue migrants with cuts throughout their body. >> they are like little knives. we risk all -- we rescue people with cut wounds all over their chest, arms, and legs. gustavo: most rescues happen on the san diego side of the border when exhausted migrants swim against the powerful rip current while trying to get back to shore. whenever that happens, u.s. lifeguards respond. jason lindquist is the head lifeguard in imperial beach, south of san diego. >> if we get a call from the border patrol that they're watching someone hang on the fence or trying to swim around the fence or in distress, we try to respond no matter what because it is in our city limit. if you look at an ib map, it goes all the way to the border. gustavo: lindquist says most rescues involve migrants who are not strong swimmers. they often jump into the ocean with all their clothes on and

carry their belongings in heavy backpacks. >> if the current pushes you against that fence, that's a dangerous situation because you can't get off of it. so the fence is dangerous, the current is dangerous, the surf can be dangerous. gustavo: imperial beach lifeguards also noticed more migrant drownings around 2019. after the border wall was replaced with a taller one. >> we've had i think in the last two years way more fatalities from here to the border than we've ever had. and it's usually due to migration. gustavo: a study published by researchers at uc san diego confirms what lifeguards are seeing in the water. drownings increased from just one in the four years before the wall was changed to 33 in the four years after. the study didn't establish causation or attribute the drownings directly to the new border wall. peter lindholm is a professor of emergency medicine at uc san diego. >> i think it is important for the lifeguardsthe emergency response systems and the uc health system to know if we have a lot of drowning-related accidents coming in.

it's something that the healthcare system needs to handle. gustavo: lindholm co-authored the study with anna lussier, a phd and medical student in san diego. she became interested in migrant injuries during a rotation at a trauma surgery unit where she saw a lot of injuries from people who fell from the border wall, and wondered whether anyone tried to swim instead. >> drowning during migration is one of the leading causes of death during migration around the world, especially around the mediterranean area. and there hasn't been a lot of scientific investigation into that. so i'm hopeful the work that we do can lay a framework for other researchers and other people who care about this sue. gustavo: both researchers called this a preliminary study. they would like to analyze more data on drownings and rescues from both sides of the border. >> i think that we are still missing a lot of information and as a scientist it's interestg to see if we can find information and contribute with that information. gustavo: in the meantime, lifeguards expect the drownings to continue. and the work is taking a toll. >> it is not just people from

mexico and south america, we see russian, yemen. we see a lot of people. gustavo: jason lindquist says some stories are difficult to forget, like one migrant who tried to dig a hole under the fence. >> he dug under at a time in lower tide and he got stuck and the tide was coming in. he was basically underwater every time a wave would come in. gustavo: that incident resulted in a successful rescue. for pbs news weekend, i'm gustavo solis in san diego. ♪ john: now on our instagram page. more on the life, career, and accomplishments of texas representative sheila jackson lee. all that and more is on the newshour instagram page. and that is pbs news weekend for this saturday. i'm john yang. for all of my colleagues, thanks

for joining us. see you tomorrow. >> major funding for pbs news weekend has been provided by -- >> consumer cellular, how may i help you? this is a pocket dial. well, somebody's pocket, thought i would let you know that with consumer cellular you get nationwide coverage with no contract. that is kind of our thing. have a nice day. ♪ >> 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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