captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening, i'm judy woodruff. gwen ifill is away. on the newshour tonight, the u.s. supreme court will take up a challenge to president obama's executive orders on immigration, which shields up to five million immigrants from deportation. then, we will get a behind the scenes look at the iran prisoner swap from brett mcgurk, the lead american negotiator. and, the first in our series on understanding autism-- a history of how it was discovered, and why we may have higher rates today. >> i spoke to older parents who had been told by their psychiatrists to quietly remove the pictures of their children from the family album and never speak of them again. >> woodruff: all that and more

on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> bnsf railway. >> 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. supreme court has set the stage for a major, election-year decision on immigration policy. the justices announced today they'll consider whether president obama overstepped his

authority when he allowed millions of people to avoid deportation. we'll explore this in full, right after the news summary. there's word that three americans who disappeared in baghdad last week, were kidnapped by a shiite militia. reuters reported that today, citing iraqi and u.s. sources. it said the group is backed by iran, but that u.s. officials don't think iran was involved in the abduction. iraqi civilians are being killed at a "staggering rate" since the rise of the islamic state group. a u.n. report now says at least 18,800 iraqis died from violence between the start of 2014 and last october. and in geneva, the u.n. human rights office said today the toll is even higher when you count other factors. >> it does not include those people who have died as a result of malnutrition, as a result of lack of access to medical care and as a result of lack of

access to basic facilities that they need for the vulnerable population, for people with disabilities, for the elderly. so this is really the tip of the iceberg. >> woodruff: the u.n. agency also said islamic state militants are holding some 3,500 iraqis as slaves many of them, women and children. in economic news, china announced today its economy met fourth quarter projections, but for the year, it grew at the lowest rate since 1990: 6.9%. in turn, the international monetary fund announced in london that it's revising its global forecast down, again. >> turbulence in financial markets has returned amid renewed concern about risks to global economic growth. china's slower growth and rising financial market risks, the fall in commodity prices, notably the price of oil; and asynchronous trends in monetary policy mainly between the u.s. and most other advanced economies.

>> woodruff: we'll take a closer look at the chinese economy, later in the program. new estimates have growth in the u.s. slowing, too, as federal deficits start rising again. the congressional budget office said today it expects this year's deficit will top $540 billion, $100 billion more than last year. the main cause is congress' decision to make a number of tax cuts permanent, and increase spending. at the same time, the economy will grow 2.7%, down from an earlier estimate. in the presidential race, republican donald trump has won the backing of former alaska governor sarah palin. she was the party's vice presidential nominee in 2008, and has since become a major voice in the tea party movement. and, wall street struggled today. the dow jones industrial average rose 28 points to close at 16,016.

the nasdaq was down 11 points, and the s&p 500 added just one point. still to come on the newshour: the supreme court to review president obama's actions to block deportations. the lead u.s. negotiator on the iranian prisoner swap. dark clouds on the horizon for the global economy. and much more. >> woodruff: it's official: the supreme court will hear a case this term that could decide the fate of one of president obama's major immigration moves. it would defer deportation for more than four million undocumented immigrants and permit them to work legally in the u.s. lower courts have sided with the 26 states that sued the federal government over the program, and those courts have put the

program on ice, for now. but the white house said today the administration is confident the high court will rule in its favor. >> the kinds of executive actions that the president took a little over a year ago now to try to bring some much needed reforms, and greater accountability to our broken immigration system, were clearly consistent with the precedent established by other presidents, and clearly within the confines of his authority as president of the united states. >> woodruff: but that is the issue that 26 states dispute. texas is one of those states, and its attorney general, ken paxton, said today in a statement, "there are limits to the president's authority, and those limits enacted by congress were exceeded when the president unilaterally sought to grant lawful presence to more than four million unauthorized aliens who are in this country unlawfully." for more on the case, we turn to our regular, marcia coyle of "the national law journal."

and marcia, welcome. > >> woodruff: so some background first. this older the president made has been challenged almost from the very beginning, hasn't it? >> it was. the executive action came in november of 2014,. less than a month later, 26 republican-led states challenged it in federal district court. >> woodruff: what was the basis? >> the states are making a number of claims here. one, they claim that the action violates the take care clause of the federal constitution. that's in article two, section three of the constitution. it says the president must enforce -- i'm sorry. the president must faithfully enforce the laws. they also claim that his action is arbitrary and capricious. his action violates the notice and public comment requirement of the administrative procedure act. that's a law that governs how agencies go about making rules and regulations.

>> woodruff: well, we know justices don't ever give a reason for taking up a case, but why is it thought they're doing this? >> well, i think it was understood that they probably would take this case. you have a federal court, a federal appellate court blocking a major federal government program. the top lawyer for the administration in the supreme court, the solicitor general of the united states, went to the supreme court after the injunction was issued and said, please take this case and resolve these legal questions. and i think it was a given that the court would step into it. >> woodruff: so you mention that this is... they're looking at the take care clause, which i read today is something the court hasn't done in 70 years. so this has historic consequences presumably. >> it has potentially major consequences. the take care clause really would go to the relationship

between the executive branch and congress. so what the court says, if it deals with it, and it doesn't have to, even though it asked the parties to address it, it could rule narrowly or address the take care clause, but whatever the court says could affect all kinds of executive actions that the white house would take beyond immigration. so that's a potentially very broad question. also there's a very important threshold issue, and that is whether texas even had the right to sue the united states. the obama administration claims it did not have the kind of concrete injury that is required for standing to sue. this action, the government says, does not require texas to do anything or not do anything. however, the lower court said texas would have the cost of issuing driver's license, which is under texas law, and that was the injury to texas. >> woodruff: mar sharks it's

also clear from reading this that the court added the threshold of constitutionality to what they're looking at. what's the significance of that? >> the take care clause question was in the lawsuit to begin with. texas had raised that. it may be that the justices want to get all of the issues out on the table when th3y sit down to finally make a decision. it may be that certain justices were interested in the take care clause issue. or it may be that certain justices had read a harvard law journal article by a former clerk and current presidential candidate -- guess who -- who wrote all about the take care clause and talked in that article about the egregious overreaching by the obama administration on immigration and other issues. >> woodruff: you're telling me this is senator ted cruz. >> that's correct. >> woodruff: who has a legal background. >> i think that's the least likely reason they took the

case, but since this is becoming a very political kind of case, he did write about it. >> woodruff: and presumably not a coincidence, but on the timing of it, it is an election year. what about the timetable for the court deciding? >> the court will probably hear the arguments in april, and there would probably be a decision by the end of june. that's the regular schedule at the court. if there is a decision in june, as you well know and we all know, that's in the middle of the election cycle, and immigration is already a huge contentious issue. the court itself now becomes a player in that very contentious debate. >> woodruff: marcia coyle, we thank you. >> my pleasure, judy. >> woodruff: now, for two opposing perspectives on this case. marielena hincapie is the executive director of the national immigration law center. and josh blackman is associate professor of law at the south texas college of law. both have followed this case closely as it moved up through

the federal courts. we welcome both of you back to the program. marielena hincapie, let me start with you. is this something you welcome or you worry about, that the court is finally taking this up? >> thanks, judy. we definitely welcome this decision. we're very delighted that the court decided to hear this case, because it has the potential life-changing impact on over four million parents of u.s. citizen children and most importantly it really has the ability to bring much-needed stability to five million u.s. citizen's children whose parents would benefit from these programs. so definitely this is a welcome day. >> woodruff: josh blackman, posing the same question to you, is this something you look forward to or are you concerned? >> well, the separation of power dispute between the president and congress is fairly rare, but i think it's quite significant, as my good friend marcia mentioned a moment ago, that the court chose to address the take care clause issue. she mentioned this hasn't been

reviewed in 70 years. i went back to look at the youngstown case in 1954. it barely mentioned the take care clause there either. by my cursory research, this may be first time the court has ever asked for briefings on the take care clause. to make the point more clearly, they didn't add this question just to tie up loose ends. even if the court rules in favor of the obama administration on administrative grounds, that still leaves the constitutional issue lingering, so they really need to resolve this question once and for all so texas doesn't just sue right back in the same court once the president goes through the proper administrative channels. >> woodruff: marielena hincapie, how strong is the argument from the administration that the president was acting within the constitutional... his constitutional role when he issued this order saying that these four million plus immigrantses may not be deported? >> judy, the legal precedent is pretty well established, and the

majority of legal scholars agree with the president as do we at the national immigration law center, and as marcia mentioned it's a precedent, as well. every single administration since president eisenhower has exercised very similar executive actions. so i think the administration knew what it was doing. it took its time. and it acted both on historical and strong solid legal ground. >> woodruff: in that case, josh blackman, what is the strongest argument that these 26 states have in saying the president overstepped his bounds? >> well, with respect to my good friend marielena, we've done this a few times before, i don't think the precedents going back to eisenhower are that clear. the action has often been used at a bring to get a person from one status to another. so if you're a student at tulane university in new orleans and hurricane ca degree that hits, you lost your status. president obama used a bridge.

you can go to another university and keep your status. it was used on a case-by-case basis. what's unprecedented is the size and scale done. on a scale of five million people, you have a standard that's very, very vague that basically everyone who applies will be granted. from is no precedent to justify this scope of executive power and granting deferred access to so many aliens. >> christa: marielena hincapie, you're shaking your head. >> absolutely not. josh says deferred action is adjudicated on a case-by-case basis. there is nothing the administration is saying is there is categorical eligibility and approval for. individuals will have to come forward and voluntarily, a parent of a u.s. citizen will need to make that risk and cost-benefit analysis of coming forward to the federal government, paying a fine, going through a national security and criminal background check, and then providing the evidence that they meet the criteria. an individual agent from the u.s. citizenship and immigration

services will determine whether that individual is eligible or not or deny them. so this isn't... this is exactly what the president did in 2012 with the deferred action, for example. interestingly texas and 25 states did not sue the president over that. >> woodruff: what about that, josh blackman? >> so the grant rate for the 2012 program was over 97%. the government has not been able to find a single instance where a person is denied for discretionary reason. there is not a single instance being denied for discretionary reasons. if the president wants to wage its case on how discriminatory daca was, they're going to lose i think. this is a case about congress versus the united states, not texas. the president has decided he didn't like the law congress gave him. congress didn't vote for the law he wanted, so he kept as much as possible that he could. one point i'd like to stress, even if this decision is rendered in july 2016, president obama cannot possibly execute

this on his watch. this will fall to the next president to implement. in many respects it doesn't matter what the court does here, right? if the court rules for texas, then the issue is over. if the court rules for the president, then next presidential election will continue, because a republican president will not continue this policy and a democratic president will and maybe achieve legislative reform. no matter what happens in july, this will be a matter for the mesh people to vote on. >> woodruff: marielena hincapie, do you agree that either way it's something that will be up to the public? >> definitely. i think i disagree with josh in terms of the implementation of it. the administration was ready to start implementing the expansion of daca the day after the judge issued its decision and it was blocked, so they will be able to start implementing that very quickly and it will probably take weeks, maybe a couple months, but i do think this is going to be part of the thinking of u.s. citizens who have immigrant family members.

u.s. citizens will go to the ballot and vote for their family's interest. they will vote for a president that will continue president obama's executive actions, especially if they are given the green light by the supreme court. >> woodruff: watching it closely. we thank both of you. josh blackman, marielena hincapie. thank you. >> thank you, judy. >> thank you. >> woodruff: for the past 14 months a small team of americans from the state department, intelligence community, department of justice and other agencies met their iranian counterparts. today we started to hear from one of those who was released. former u.s. marine amir hekmati emerged today in landstuhl,

germany, and said he feels "born again." >> i was at the point where i um i had just sort of accepted the fact that i was going to be spending 10 years in prison. so this was a surprise and i just feel so blessed to see my government do so much for me and the other americans. >> woodruff: hekmati is being evaluated at a u.s. military hospital, along with a christian minister, saeed abedini, and "washington post" reporter jason rezaian, who was seen for the first time today with his wife in video from the post. it was reported their release was delayed sunday, when iranian officials blocked rezaian's wife and mother from boarding a plane in tehran. "the new york times" said secretary of state john kerry had to make a phone call to put the exchange back on course. as soon as we got out of iranian airspace, the champagne bottles were popped and the swiss were amazing, their hospitality. chocolates, veal was served.

>> woodruff: still to be resolved: the fate of american robert levinson, who disappeared from a resort in iran nearly nine years ago. meanwhile, iranians, too, are celebrating as international economic sanctions end under the terms of the nuclear deal. but, iran's supreme leader ayatollah ali khamenei made clear today, he remains suspicious of u.s. intentions. in a letter to president hassan rouhani, he said: "i reiterate the need to be vigilant about the deceit and treachery of arrogant countries, especially the united states, in this (nuclear) issue and other issues..." at the same time, white house press secretary josh earnest pointed to the nuclear deal-- and the prisoner release-- as examples of "principled diplomacy." it's now clear that the prisoner swap negotiations proceeded on a secret and separate track from the nuclear talks.

the effort was led by brett mcgurk, special presidential envoy on fighting the islamic state group since 2015. i sat down with mcgurk earlier today, and began by asking him what it was like to be the first to see the released iranian- americans on the plane when they landed in geneva. >> it was just overwhelming. that's really the only word i can use. we've been working on this in secret for 14 months, an i've been in regular contact with families. it was an incredibly difficult process until the last moment that the plane took off from tehran and actually left iranian air space, you never really knew. the night before we had an episode in which jason rezaian's mother and his wife could not be located. we finally located mary rezaian, jason's mother, at about 4:00 a.m. geneva time, very early morning in tehran time. i spoke with her on the phone and told her to stay where she was. we worked with the swiss to pick

her up. but until they were on the plane and actually left iranian air space, nothing was really certain. so in geneva when they landed, they were greeted by the swiss state secretary because switzerland, the swiss government was critical for this entire thing, but i got on the plane and welcomed them out of iran, told them that your country, the united states, is going to do everything we possibly can for you and can't wait to get you hope. but it was an incredibly emotional moment. i honestly will never forget it. and to see them all together, it's hard to even put it into words. >> woodruff: how difficult was this process? i mean, some people have looked at this and said, well, the iranians really were planning to release them all along but they just weren't going to say so. >> well, not quite. hekmati was sentenced to death in 2011. amir hekmati's sentence was later reduced, but he was going to be in prison threw about

2022. you have saeed abedini sentenced. jason rezaian's trial was over. his sentence was going to be in a period of decades at least. so i completely disagree. it's contrary to all the information we have. i think had we not been able to find a way forward here, i think these americans were looking at a very substantial, many, many years in prison. >> woodruff: why do you think you were successful? what were the forces inside iran that made this work? >> this process came out of a nuclear negotiation, but in the nuke lower negotiations primarily the ministry of foreign affairs and some other elements of the iranian system that don't have the decision-making authority over the security apparatus and the people that actually hold the keys to the prison cells. so we had to open up a parallel track and begin negotiations with those elements of the

iranian system, who we've really not had any engagement with. so one reason it took a long time is that this is the first substantial engagement we really ever had with that element of the system. i think my iranian counterpart, it's safe to say i may have been first american they've really ever met. and for many months it was just a lot of back and forth about historical narratives and competing visions of what had actually happened between our two countries. of course, we didn't give any ground about their history of hostage-taking and support for terrorism, and they would go through their narrative. eventually i said, look, we can do this for months or we can decide whether there is a way to actually get something done. we wanted our mesh citizens home. period. that's why we're there. if there was no way to talk about practicalities of how to do that, then there's no reason to have a discussion. eventually really after the nuclear agreement came to fruition, things started to accelerate a little bit.

>> woodruff: who were these people you were dealing with, and were they the people who the u.s. can do business with in the future and get productive things done with in the future? >> i mean, we'll have to see. this was so tough and even in the last 72 hours it was literally some real shouting matches. we did this all bilaterally, but the swiss were always there and sometimes we would bring the swiss in to mediate because it's just incredibly difficult. we have agreed to have a process, a channel, a consular channel to continue discussions should that be necessary. the case of robert levinson, of course, was the topic of conversation every single round. as we said in 2011, we believe he's being held in iran, so that's another case. >> woodruff: there is another iranian american still being held. how cruel is it to leave them behind and let them out?

>> any other cases i can't discuss in detail for privacy reasons or things, but i would just say we're going to continue to work every day. >> woodruff: in terms of what happened, there are critics in this country who are saying this swap should never have happened, that these people were... should never have been held in the first place and the u.s. shouldn't have done anything in return to win their release. >> i think the reality is if you take that position, then jason rezaian should have stayed in prison for decades. amir hekmati would have been in prison through 2022, and saeed abedini until about the same time. so that was the reality that you face. there was no way to simply say, they have to be released. release them. of course they're wrongfully detained and we made that clear consistently. these were totally unjust detentions and imimprisonments. however, to get them out, you can't get them out by just saying, hey, get them out. so we had to figure out a

formula. i think if you really look at it, in terms of on the iranian side, you're looking at a non-violent individuals, all... system of them quite elderly, people who in some cases their sentences were about the run in less than a year anyway. most of them would have been out of prison before even first of the americans were to be out of prison. given the category of cases we're talking about, of sanctions violations, three of them had been convicted, three of them were pending trial and one was about to plead his case. so only three were actually in prison. i think if you look at that and you consider what the stakes were if we could not find a way forward here for these americans in prison, at the end of the day i think the president made the right call here. >> woodruff: you said there is no way to know whether this deal, these deals, will lead to something productive in the future between the u.s. and iran. but specifically, do you see

something, some movement on their part when it comes to syria? >> we have this vienna process which the iranians and the saudis are at the table for the first time since the syrian civil war broke out about five years ago. that's encouraging, but that's a very difficult process. i think iran is a country that's undergoing some fundamental questions about its future. it has elections coming up here in about a month. for the first time in the history since the iranian revolution, they have parliamentary reelections the same day as they're electing their assembly of experts who will elect the next supreme leader. already you see what's happening with the supreme reeder trying to ban a number of reformist candidates some within iran there is this big competition for the reins of power, and how that plays out i think will say a lot about what's possible. but that's something the iranians have to figure out. the united states will continue to protect our interests in the region. we define our interest based upon our own national security interests. when it comes to americans sitting in prison, that's something we have to look at

with the it most seriousness. and other than the families, we did not tell anybody about this channel because had it not been secret, it would have been impossible to make any progress. >> woodruff: special presidential envoy brett mcgurk, thank you very much. >> judy, thank you. >> woodruff: stay with us, coming up on the newshour: rethinking autism: what's really behind the seemingly sudden rise in diagnoses. and very early learning. healthcare and education that starts before birth and continues after. but first, worries over global economic growth, falling markets, and china's connection to what's happening. jeffrey brown zeroes in on the china piece of the story. >> brown: 6.9% annual growth

sounds much stronger than in most countries. but it's lower than what was expected, the slowest pace of growth there in 25 years, and a sobering warning sign to some as the government tries to shift its economic direction. let's get perspective from two who watch this closely. ken lieberthal is a senior fellow at the brookings institution, where he and, eswar prasad, an economist from cornell university. how much of a slowdown, downturn is it. how do you characterize china's economy? >> i would say a significant slowdown, but let's keep in mind they wanted the g.d.p. rate to slow down. >> brown: they wanted it? >> they wanted it. the question is can they use this slowdown to transition to a different economic model. and they're having a rocky time doing that. that is in progress, but it's a tough balancing act, and i think it's not going quite as smoothly as they had hoped. >> brown: we'll get to the larger model change, but eswar

prasad, first the big question: how much of a slow down? what do you see many. >> china's economy has been powered by the manufacturing sector. there has been a lot of ininvestment, not all good investment. china is trying to shift toward a model of growth that is largely driven by the services sector, which is much better at generating employment. they'd like more consumption in society, and they're making very gradual progress. it turns out that in 2015 private consumption did contribute a little more than half of g.d.p. growth. the services sector now accounts for more than half of g.d.p. so this is a big ocean liner. it's very difficult to turn around, but they're very gradually turning it around in the right direction. the problem is that slowing growth makes it harder to put in place the reforms to get the ship staying on the right road. >> brown: the numbers themselves, though, first, how accurate are they? do we believe the numbers that are coming from china on their g.d.p.? >> it's very hard to tell. keep in mind that their

statistical system was really quite good at capturing what's now the old economy, the industrial economy, the export economy that eswar was just talking about. that economy is not doing well. they're now trying to grow the service and consumption economy. the statistics are not collected as effectively on that part of the economy. so there's a fudge factor here that frankly makes it hard to be very precise. >> brown: so this is the model you're both talking about, this change from a manufacturing to a more consumer. >> oriented or service economy. >> and also more of an innovative economy where they end up not being the assemblers of high-tech things produced elsewhere, where they bolt them together in china for export or domestic consumption. they want to become an innovative, higher value-added kind of economy. that's a difficult transition. >> brown: would you agree part of that is inevitable as the economy becomes... well, as ken was saying, that they want to in

part, some of this has to happen, right? >> it has to. if it doesn't, there is going to be a huge cost on china because the model that has been in place so far, investment-driven, industrial-led growth, it's led to a lot of very inefficient ininvestmentful and china is living with the consequences to this day. there are lots of loans taken by state-owned enterprises that are not going to be paid back, and somebody will have to pay the bill. this isn't likely to lead to a financial crisis, but it's still a big bill for chinese citizens. plus the environmental consequences of this industrial-led growth have not been great, and it's not been that great at generating employment. so in terms of g.d.p. growth, it's been a great model, but in terms of the environmental, human consequences and consequences in terms of the benefits for the average chinese citizen, not so great. >> brown: part of those human consequences an aging population, the workforce. >> that's a result in part of their one-child policy, and they're really now paying the

price for that because they have had a large number of people entering the workforce for years, and a large number of working age. now the number of people of working age in china is beginning to decline every year, and it isn't being made up by kids too young to work, rather they have an explosion in the number of people who are now retiring and, you know, getting much older and therefore have a lot more demands for health care and all kinds of other things that tax the system. >> brown: so to the extent that you both say it's about managing this change, where do you see the country, the government doing well? where do you see it doing poorly? >> over the last year there have been some reforms put many place, but largely in terms of the financial system, they started getting some changes instituted in the banking system. they're trying to make the currency float more freely. but the real reform, the reforms to liberalize the service sector so it can grow faster, generate more employment, take on the

burden of growth, the reform of the state-owned enterprises, all of those are real supplied-side reform, including the reforms to increase innovation, as ken mentioned, those are not going so fast. if those reforms don't supplement the financial sector reform, this economy is not going to go in the right direction. >> brown: what would you add to that? and, of course, we're talking about inevitably the political system's impact on the economy, right? >> yes. in china local levels of the political system, you know, province, most provinces are as big as countries are in europe, for example, a province on down really have a huge role to pray in this system. they have been generators of the kind of g.d.p. growth that we've seen over the years. the way this is being approached now has the heads of these local political systems running very scared, unclear what will be rewarded and what will be punished, afraid of being tagged with corruption, not getting the kinds of rewards they used to

get. and so the way they're pursuing this is in some ways making it very difficult to implement some of these headline programs that you see announced at the top. so kind of hidden story that, in fact, i think it's having... it's slowing down the real economy reforms quite a bit. >> brown: we just have about 30 second, but we have been talking on this program and everywhere, talking about the impact of all this on the rest of the word, markets and all kinds of things that. will continue. >> there's a lot of bad news coming out of china. the stock market hasn't been doing well, the currency is plunging, but all of this doesn't mean that the real economy is collapsing or even stalling. i think there is decent momentum in the underlying economy and what we should all be looking for is not how fast china grows but how it grows. and i think it's slowly moving in the right direction, but there's a lot of work to be done still. >> brown: a lot of changes to come that will impact us. >> indeed. eswar prasad, ken lieberthal, thank you both very much. >> thank you.

>> woodruff: now, the first of two looks we're taking at the history of autism. there seem to be more and more instances of it, but in this edition of the newshour bookshelf, science writer steve silberman argues that the rise of autism is not some mysterious by-product of the modern world. but instead a result of our growing understanding of the full range of the disorder. william brangham spoke with him recently in new york. >> brangham: the most recent data shows 1 in every 68 american children is diagnosed with autism. 15 years ago, it was 1 in every 150 children. in his book "neurotribes," steve silberman explores the history behind this dramatic increase. it's been lauded as one of the best scientific books of this past year. it won the 2015 samuel johnson prize for non-fiction, and made

the "best-of" lists for over half a dozen newspapers and magazines. silberman says the genesis of the book came more than 15 years ago, after he wrote this story for "wired" magazine about autistic kids in silicon valley. after it ran, silberman was swamped with emails from others who were struggling with the disease. >> people were wrestling with very profound day to day problems with finding healthcare, with finding employment, finding schools for their kids. meanwhile, the entire world was having a conversation about autism, but it was a completely different conversation. it was about whether or not vaccines caused autism. and that dominated virtually every mention of autism in the media. certainly if there was an article about autism that didn't mention vaccines, the comment thread on the internet would be about vaccines. so i started to think there was a disjunction between the problems autistic people and their families were dealing with every day of their lives and what the whole world was talking about.

>> brangham: silberman's deep dive into the world of autism took him back to the very first researchers who tried to define and diagnose the condition. >> the true discoverer of autism was a guy named hans asperger in vienna in the mid-1930s, and he and his colleagues discovered what we would now call the autism spectrum. it was a very, very broad condition with many different manifestations ranging from kids who couldn't talk at all and would need help every day of their lives to one of his former patients who became an astronomy professor actually, but he was still autistic. >> brangham: so asperger saw those people at this end, and at that end, and said "they all share something similar." >> they all share a very distinctive constellation of traits. and he had no illusions that he would cure them or whatever. he just wanted for them to take on the challenge of living in a world that was not built for

them. so one of the things about hans asperger was that he believed that autism was very, very common. that once you recognize the distinctive traits of autism, you would see them everywhere. >> brangham: asperger and his colleagues documented the range of patients they classified as having autism, but as adolph hitler came to power and invaded austria, the work ceased and several of asperger's colleagues fled to the united states. >> they had to leave. otherwise, they would have been sent to a concentration camp. they were rescued by a guy named leo kanner in baltimore. leo kanner was one of the first child psychiatrists in america. kanner framed autism very, very differently than asperger had done. whereas asperger saw it was common and a lifelong condition, leo kanner saw it as a very, very rare form of childhood psychosis. later he was quoted in time magazine saying that parents caused autism, by being too caught up in their own careers

and too unloving and he called them "refrigerator parents" basically. by blaming parents, that opened the door for psychologists to come in and say "well actually, we know what to do with these children." and the recommended course of treatment for autism for most of the twentieth century was institualization. >> brangham: take the kids away from their families? >> exactly, because the families were considered toxic in a sense. and so they were put in mental institutions, psych wards, state schools where they were subjected to very very brutal treatments. you know kids were subjected to shock treatments, lobotomies, kept in straight jackets. they were also put in wards with people who were not like them. they were often put in wards with adult psychotics. so those children did not thrive. so leo kanner eventually had to admit that, a: parents didn't cause autism, which created a terrible nightmare for families for decades. >> brangham: sure, i mean imagine being a parent who is

obviously struggling with the difficulty of having a child struggling with this condition and then let alone having the world think you were to blame because you were cold-hearted. >> exactly. i spoke to older parents who had been told by their psychiatrists to quietly remove the pictures of their children from the family album and never speak of them again. >> brangham: silberman reports that it wasn't until the early 1980s when asperger's contribution to autism research was re-discovered, when a british psychiatrist named lorna wing-- herself the mother of an autistic child-- began taking a census of autistic kids in a particular suburb of london. >> and so she and her research assistant called judith gould went to special schools, they went to clinics, they were digging through medical records and what they found was yes, and what they found a bunch of kids that fit kanner's strict criteria but they found a bunch of other kids who clearly had autistic traits but didn't quite meet kanner's criteria of diagnosis.

she didn't know what to make of her data until she came across a reference to hans asperger's 1944 paper she read it and said yes, this is it. this is exactly what i'm seeing. and so she worked behind the scenes for several years with the people who were developing the definition of autism in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, the bible of psychiatry, to broaden the criteria of diagnosis, which we now call the autism spectrum. >> brangham: silberman argues it was this broadened definition of autism, coupled with better diagnostic tools and better public education, that explains the dramatic rise in the number of diagnosed cases, not the repeatedly-debunked theory that vaccines cause autism. in your book, you argue that we should think of autism as a disability, but don't we already think of it in that way? >> i think we tend to think of

autism not only as a disease but as a historical aberration. so if it's not vaccines, it's wifi or it's pesticides or it's antidepressants in the water supply. it's some factor in the toxic modern world. but once we realize that autism and autistic people have always been part of the human community. that there were always autistic people there, but they were hidden away either behind the walls of institutions or behind other diagnostic labels, not getting the help that they need. we understand that autism is a very, very common disability as hans asperger believed. it's not some rare form of childhood psychosis caused by parenting as leo kanner believed. and because we thought of it as the toxic byproduct of our modern world, we haven't thought about making accommodations for instance, for the many autistic adults that are out there. >> brangham: steve silberman, thank you very much. >> thank you. it's great to be here.

>> woodruff: we'll continue our "understanding autism" series tomorrow with a conversation with two reporters about the challenges facing adults with autism. >> woodruff: next, a look at a political rarity-- an expanding health program supported by both democrats and republicans. special correspondent cat wise reports. >> i have a book for you today. >> reporter: in aurora colorado, registered nurse kimberly hirst, is checking in on 19-year-old sinai herrera and her two-year old son, caleb. >> 1, 2, buckle my shoe, 5, 6 pick up sticks. >> reporter: the visits are part of a rapidly expanding program - called the nurse-family partnership. the partnership combines old- fashioned social services with

the latest brain science - all to help low-income first time mothers and their children. >> time and time again, i see these young girls drop out of school and then they're at risk for living in poverty forever. >> reporter: the regular visits begin in pregnancy and continue until the children are two years old. nurses offer advice on health, parenting, and self-sufficiency. >> it's really so much more educational rather than clinical. and so i feel like sometimes i'm like a life coach. >> reporter: improved outcomes-- like 48% reduction in child abuse and 82% increased employment for mothers-- have been so significant that congress recently voted to infuse home-visit programs with 800 million dollars. but while the nurse-family partnership is focused on health and poverty- another outcome is catching the attention of early learning experts.

kids from the program are showing up at school better prepared for learning. david olds, the project's founder and a professor of pediatrics at the university of colorado's school of medicine says the educational benefits are no surprise. >> nurse-visited mothers are spending more time talking to their babies. guiding them. >> where does the a go? >> a go right there. >> all of that earliest process that gets set in motion, sets in motion a positive cycle of interaction that leads to significant reductions in children's behavioral problems when they enter school. significant improvements in their language development. >> reporter: on this day, hirst uses simple props to explain the importance of talking to caleb long before he can talk back. >> so, way before caleb could talk, he was learning how to talk by hearing you talk. all of these things added to him

having language when you read to him every night, when you told him you loved him, it bubbled over into language. >> bab ball. >> baseball? >> yea baball. >> it seems so simple but if he only hears 500 words an hour verses 3000 words an hour, it makes a huge difference and it's a lasting difference. >> reporter: clinical trials show a 50% reduction in language delays by age two and a 67 percent reduction in intellectual problems by age six. such results bolster a growing area of brain science that looks at a baby's early environment. here at the laboratories of cognitive neuroscience at boston's children's hospital, researchers are studying how a child's early learning experience can shape their developing brain and impact early learning.

>> what many of us are starting to argue is that to foster success as children make the transition to school, you need to invest in what's going on in those first few years. >> reporter: charles nelson is a professor of pediatrics and neuroscience at harvard medical school. the general architecture of the brain forms in a way that sets it up for the rest of your life. >> reporter: at the nelson lab, researchers use non-invasive sensors to pick up communication between brain cells. >> millions and millions and millions of brain connections are being built. and so as we build the scaffolding for subsequent learning in those first few years, that scaffolding enables learning that occurs over the lifespan. >> reporter: what are we looking at here? >> we're presenting babies with images of different facial expressions, we want to determine at what age, are they able to discriminate different emotions, so the baby sees the different emotions, each time

the picture comes up we're looking at brain activity, >> reporter: nelson believes emotions play a big role in brain development. when parents are depressed, afraid, or stressed - their babies' brain development can suffer. >> if you look here, she's clearly angry. she's afraid. infants who grow up in an environment where mom is depressed react very differently. development is seriously impacted. and more importantly, if they don't get them in the first two or three years, development probably is derailed permanently. >> reporter: nelson says high poverty homes, like the kind targeted in nurse-family partnership are vulnerable to stress, depression, and abuse. in these homes, he says, early intervention can make a big difference in brain development. when sinai herrera discovered her junior year of high school that she was pregnant, it was a

tough time for her. >> she was struggling with some depression. and trying to figure out what, what her life was going to look like. >> reporter: hirst directed herrera into mental health counseling, and ultimately back to school. >> with that counseling i know i'm a good mom now. >> reporter: for stormee duran, who went through the program with her first child sophia, the issue was an abusive relationship. duran says her nurse gave her the strength to move on. >> she really helped me through that deep dark place that i was in. i've always had low-esteem issues and i didn't want my daughter to grow up like that. >> reporter: the home visits are not cheap. each family-nurse two year partnership costs on average $10,000. but a rand corporation analysis found the investment actually saves money. every dollar spent today prevents another five dollars of social welfare spending in the future.

>> this is work that is not just somebody's good idea, but has been developed and tested and retested using rigorous approaches. >> reporter: the nurse-family home visits have expanded to 43 states and recently became part of the obama administration's push for early learning initiatives. for the pbs newshour, i'm cat wise. >> woodruff: tonight on frontline: an investigation with the new york times and the canadian broadcasting corporation that raises troubling questions about the booming vitamins and supplements industry. "supplements and safety" explores how vitamins are marketed and regulated, looks at cases of contamination and serious health problems, and examines how it's often hard to know what's really in the bottles you buy.

>> reporter: it's estimated there are 85,000 dietary supplements for sale in the united states today. >> right here i have a vice bin b. >> this is an herb that would be great for older individuals. >> essential nutrients like chromium. >> reporter: with so many pitches and promise, you might assume that some government agency has approved them before allowing them on to the market. >> the f.d.a. does not do any review of dietary supplements before they come onto the market, and i think that all consumers need to understand this. >> reporter: no testing, no obligation to provide any evidence a product is effective or even safe. the one thing manufacturers do have to show is that they follow good manufacturing propractices. the f.d.a. conducts inspections

for that, but it's limited by resources and by information. >> we actually don't know the total number of manufacturers that we mead to be able to inspect because there is no formal registration system that is required of manufacturers that make dietary supplements. and so if we do inspections of the ones that we know about. >> woodruff: frontline airs tonight on most pbs stations. on the newshour online, making good financial decisions is a challenge for a lot of people, but it becomes even harder in the face of poverty. how does being poor actually affect people's spending? behavioral economist dan ariely explains how mental depletion plays a role in succumbing to temptation. that's on our home page. pbs.org/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. on wednesday, we get an update on the water crisis in flint, michigan. i'm judy woodruff. join us online and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs

newshour, thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> 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. captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and sue herara. >> in transition, growth in china the world's second largest economy, may be slowing now, but does the pause pave the way for future expansion? >> silver lining. why it's the best time in a long time to be in an american consumer. >> and don't get duped. the irs warns of an age old tax scheme finding new victims. all that and more tonight on "nightly business report" for tuesday, january 19th. good evening, everyone. i'm sharon epperson in tonight for sue herara. >> and good evening from me. i'm tyler mathison. it was the rally that wasn't. just when it looked like the market might have a chance for a triple digit gain, things