ptningpo by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for sunday, october 2: revelations about donald trump's tax history, as the presidential candidates battle for undecided voters. in our signature segment, the changing demographics of the latino vote in florida. >> our staff is very much aware that the work that we do is going to impact this election. i mean, our work is going to determine who the next president is. >> sreenivasan: next, on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. judy and josh weston. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the citi foundation. the john and helen glessner family trust. supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided

by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: good evening and thanks for joining us. presidential candidates hillary clinton and donald trump are focusing almost exclusively on the closest battleground states in next month's election. clinton campaigned in north carolina today and talked about gun violence at a predominantly black church in charlotte, telling the congregation: "protecting all of god's children is america's calling." clinton supports stricter background checks for gun buyers. trump does not. and speaking to supporters at a rally in pennsylvania last night, trump promised to protect the second amendment right to bear arms. he later mocked clinton's

stamina, including when she fell ill with pneumonia last month and needed help leaving new york's 9/11 anniversary ceremony early. >> but here's a woman. she's supposed to fight all of these different things, and she can't make it 15 feet to her car. give me a break. give me a break. give me a break. >> sreenivasan: trump's running mate for vice president, indiana governor mike pence, and clinton's running mate, virginia senator tim kaine, face off in their one televised debate on tuesday in virginia. trump and clinton meet on the debate stage again next sunday in st. louis. donald trump is the first major party presidential candidate in 40 years not to release any tax returns for public review. but that has not stopped investigative reporters from digging through the candidate's financial disclosure forms, court records, casino commission filings, and other available

documents to figure out trump's net worth and his income. today, the "new york times" published an analysis of part of one trump tax return, from 1995, where the billionaire declared business losses so large, the return suggests, trump may have avoided paying any federal income taxes for 18 years. joining me now to explain all this is one of the article's authors, david barstow. this is a team effort at the "new york times," three or four people worked on this. how do we know from you just have basically three documents that you've made public. how do we know that he declared this loss and it could have impacted his income going forward. >> well, we took a number of steps, first of all the documents were mailed to us anonymously, and so we spent an awful lot of time and effort trying to authenticate the documents. we finally succeeded in doing that and we were able to present them to donald trump's tax accountant at the time, the man who had spent 30 years or more doing donald trump's taxes.

and after talking to him at length and doing some additional reporting, we came to believe that these were indeed the real thing. and also, today i believe, the trump campaign has effectively confirmed the validity of these returns. haven't challenged any of the members, in fact his surrogates are saying that this shows his genius at figuring out how to avoid paying taxes. but in looking carefully that these three pages which to be sure are just a tiny portion of what a donald trump tax return would look like, we're able to see that he showed this enormous loss of roughly $916 million in 1995, and that under irs tax rules then in effect, he could use some important provisions of the code to apply that loss

against another $916 million in taxable income. one of the tax experts explained to us if one of his clients brought him a tax return that looked like this in 1995, he would be saying to him congratulations, you can make $916 million and not pay a single nickel in taxes on this. it's not to say that donald trump did anything illegal or improper, it's really about him, the tremendous tax advantages that apply to a wealthy father like donald trump. >> reporter: he considers it smart as he said in the debate, he figured out a way to stay within the rules and minimize the tax as much as possible. >> yes >> reporter: so there's nothing in at least three these he three pages that indicate any illegality. >> correct. what it looks like happened here is in the early 1990's, donald

trump came perillessly close to complete disaster in his business affairs. what it appears happened is that the losses that his businesses were suffering through the various tax provisions that we describe today, allowed those losses to effectively flow on to his personal income tax form. which then would allow him for up to 18 years under irs tax rules to apply as a way of wiping out any potential tax debt for say, for example, him hosting the apprentice. he didn't pay 50 to a hundred thousand dollars per episode, that could be canceled out. made another $45 million running his casino companies. that could tax free >> reporter: the trump campaign in their statement and i want to read this out fully says

mr. trump is a highly 1keu8d businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his family and employees to pay no more tax than legally required. that being said mr. trump has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in sales and excise taxes, city taxes, state taxes, employee taxes along with various charitable contributions. he knows the tax code than anyone ever run for president and he's the only one who knows how to fix it. so when you talk to the tax experts is this true business acumen on his part. >> talking to donald trump'station accountant the man who prepared this tax return is he explained donald trump understood very well the way the tax code could be used to protect his wealth and help his wealth grow. and he said as well that the way donald trump used various tax

deductions provisions etcetera isn't different from the way other really wealthy real estate developers in new york might have used those deductions. the difference is his just had a few more digits. >> reporter: david bar toe part of the "new york times" team published three pages of donald trump's tax terms for 1995. thanks for joining us. >> you're welcome. >> sreenivasan: as usual, florida is the battleground state with the most electoral votes up for grabs in this presidential election. while north florida, anchored by jacksonville, leans republican, and south florida, anchored by miami, leans democratic, central florida is considered the swing region, particularly the swath running from tampa to orlando known as the interstate-4 corridor. one constituency there getting a lot of attention from the candidates are latino voters, who comprise 15% of registered voters in florida.

in tonight's signature segment, newshour weekend's ivette feliciano reports on their top issues. >> reporter: on a tuesday morning just south of orlando, in kissimmee, florida, these canvassers are registering voters outside the unidos supermarket, on behalf of "mi familia vota," or "my family votes," a civic engagement organization focused on increasing latino political power in the united states. jeamy ramirez has been working to educate her fellow latino voters since moving to the city from puerto rico four years ago. >> here, you can vote on election day, or you can do early vote which is like seven or ten days before the election. you can mail in your vote. many ways to participate. >> reporter: latinos account for half of florida's population growth since 2010, and are one quarter of the state's 20 million residents. the fastest latino growth has occurred in the counties along the i-4 corridor, from orange, osceola and seminole, around

orlando, to polk and hillsborough counties, around tampa. esteban garces is "mi familia vota's" state director, on this day, leading a registration drive at valencia college. >> the october 11 deadline is now just a few days away, so it's all gears, all systems running. >> reporter: only 74,000 votes decided florida's 2012 presidential election. garces says because about 500,000 eligible latinos are not registered to vote in the stat"" mi familia vota" is in the field every day. >> our staff is very much aware that the work that we do is going to impact this election. our work is going to determine who the next president is. >> reporter: since january," mi familia vota" has registered more than 27,000 new latino residents. 44-year-old army veteran eric peguero embodies the ambivalence many latinos feel toward the presidential candidates. a registered republican who calls himself a moderate conservative, peguero voted for marco rubio in the republican presidential primary, but says

that support does not extend to donald trump. a son of immigrants from the dominican republic and married to a woman from guatemala, peguero says immigration reform is his top concern. but he rejects trump's call to build a wall along the u.s.- mexico border, and track down and deport undocumented immigrants. >> i don't agree with obamacare, or anything like that, but going to the republican nominee is ludicrous. simply, you can't count on anything he says. one, i do believe in immigration reform, but i don't believe we can built a wall. two, we can't deport 11 million people, and not all of them are criminals. >> reporter: peguero says he plans to vote for hillary clinton, because he sees her as more diplomatic and better equipped to handle the economy. >> we have to see that the economy is working, and i think someone like hillary clinton that's been running for 30 years has that kind of experience, and can make something happen realistically. i don't think just because you have business experience, that

translates into government experience, because you don't tell the congress what to do, you have to negotiate with the congress to get it done. >> reporter: peguero's views are typical of clinton supporters, and help explain why she is preferred by the majority of florida latinos, according to a recent "univision" poll, which also found her with wider leads among latinos in the latino- heavy battleground states of arizona, colorado, and nevada. luis martinez fernandez, a cuban immigrant who grew up in puerto rico, is a history professor at the university of central florida. >> as far as a bloc, i've been saying for many years that there's no such thing. for one, a bloc is sort of solid and immovable. however, when it comes to the hispanic vote in florida, we see that it sways from election to election. >> reporter: for decades, cuban- americans in south florida were the face of the state's latino vote, and they were reliably republican, supporting ronald reagan and both presidents bush. yet by 2012, barrack obama split

the cuban vote with mitt romney. >> we're talking about a generation that continues to die off, and that makes them weaker. weaker, in terms of their political presence. >> reporter: fernandez says a younger generation of cuban- americans and new waves of cuban immigrants less wedded to anti-castro, anti-communist sentiments has eclipsed the older generation, and are increasingly supportive of democrats. adding to the shifts, about 1,000 puerto rican families, u.s. citizens with an automatic right to vote, arrive in the i-4 corridor region every month-- leaving the island's economic and debt crisis that has driven the unemployment rate there to 11%. more than half of orlando's latino population is puerto rican. >> if you look at all the hispanic subgroups, the one that leans democratic at the highest rate are puerto ricans. >> reporter: fernandez says while immigration reform is a

high priority among latinos iority for puerto ricans, who are u.s. citizens, and cubans, whose legal residency applications are fast tracked. >> now, that doesn't mean that they're not sensitive to these issues; that doesn't mean that we're not offended when fellow latinos from mexico are called frightening names and are insulted. so it doesn't mean a lack of sensitivity. what it means is that there are different priorities. >> reporter: the top priorities for florida's latino voters are the economy and jobs, followed by immigration, education, terrorism, and healthcare. after losing his job in puerto rico, 34-year-old jezreel zapata-moreno moved to the orlando area in july and now works as a cashier at kissimmee's melao bakery, a popular puerto rican restaurant. >> ( translated ): sadly, the situation in puerto rico has been very difficult, and that's why so many of us are moving here. we're in search of a place where we can prosper economically and where our kids can receive

quality education. >> reporter: economic prosperity and upward mobility are the talking points of the conservative latino political group "the libre initiative." the group's volunteers are phone banking daily to identify and urge conservative-leaning latinos to vote. daniel garza is the organization's executive director. >> you have an influx of puerto ricans that are leaving that economic condition in puerto rico, not because they want to, but because they have to. what you see in puerto rico is starting to happen here. we're on an unsustainable path, a fiscal path here that is going to ruin the next generation. it's important for us to drive that conversation within the puerto rican community here in orlando, because they can make a difference. >> reporter: the current republican nominee has said some pretty controversial things about immigrant communities latino communities. >> to say the least. >> reporter: are you worried at all about what that means for conservative candidates?

>> look, we are part of a long- term effort. we focus on ideas. we don't want to see our growth rise and fall based on personality. so we stay away from associating to personalities who we feel there's a lack of enthusiasm around by the latino voters. we see a lack of enthusiasm around both candidates, to be honest. >> reporter: president obama carried florida in both the last two elections. one reason: he won 57% of the state's latino vote in 2008 and 60% in 2012. clinton's support is not as high, around 53%. but she has a built-in advantage-- 38% of florida latinos are registered as democrats and 26% as republicans. independents are the fastest growing contingent, and make up 33% >> when we came from puerto rico, i did not understand the ideologies of the party. i did not understand what it meant to be a republican or a

democrat. >> reporter: brooklyn-born and puerto rico-raised bob cortes registered as an independent when he first moved his family to florida 27 years ago and founded a towing company and airport passenger shuttle service. he's a republican now, and the first puerto rican from his district to win a seat in the state legislature. >> a lot of my fellow puerto ricans lean with the ideology of republicans because we're fleeing an island right now that is $70 billion in debt. with a size of government too big. the republican party is fiscal conservative and wants a smaller government. we have of course the pro-life issue-- i'm extremely pro-life. >> reporter: cortes believes candidates like him with socially conservative values can improve republicans' standing with latinos, who are predominantly catholic and evangelical. as a businessman himself, cortes also supports trump for president, whose message aligns with his own platform promoting job creation and

entrepreneurship. >> when i go out to speak to somebody, whether they're puerto rican, hispanic or from south america, central america or mexican, i can relate to their stories of what brought them here. because i came here 20-something years ago, looking for the same things that they're looking for, the american dream, and i actually can give them some insight on how i did it and where i am today. the messaging has to come from the candidate themselves, to make sure that latinos vote for candidates, not necessarily for parties, which is why we're such a swing voting group. >> sreenivasan: for more analysis of the presidential race in florida, i am joined from tampa bay by susan macmanus, a political science professor at the university of south florida. so, what do these cap dates have to do to win that giant prize looking in the tampa bay area. >> the corridor is 44% of the

register voters of the state and orlando and tampa media markets together do control or can have 44% of the voters. but it's also true that those two markets are almost evenly divided between the percent registered democrats and republicans and a little bit above average percentage of no party affiliation. the no party affiliation people in florida now make up 24% of the electorate. so it's just a very very competitive geography. we call the i4 corridor the highway to heaven or haedes no matter whether you win or lose but if you traverse it you're not going to win florida. >> reporter: i think the rest will be fine with just the campaigning happen thing there and just take the campaign ads off. does it come down to the economy as it is in so many parts of the country as the number one issue. >> it's a huge issue, yes t the polls here still show that's the concern of most people. and there have been a number of studies recently which show the high percentage of floridians

who only make an average or below average wages in terms of the average salary for this state. and polls are also show that a large percentage still say that they are feeling some stress in their lives financially. i often look at when gauging people's opinion about the economy simple things like how are you doing and they'll say so-so instead of say you notice any increases in things that really affect your bottom line and almost always a very good benchmark is groceries and grocery prices have gone up. a lot of other thing are important too besides the economy. the environment we've had the zika episode, we've had the algae bloom, we've had problems with lake okeechobee and the everglades and sea level rises in south florida. and of course the climate and the environment itself are absolutely closely linked with

florida's economy. so this state is one where even though we've recovered on paper there are a lot of people that really personally don't feel that they have benefited from the changing economy. >> reporter: all right. susan mcmanus from the university o thanks so much. >> thank you. >> sreenivasan: hurricane matthew, the most powerful atlantic hurricane in a decade, is closing in on haiti, jamaica, cuba, and the bahamas with winds peaking at 150 miles an hour. as cuban president raul castro oversaw preparations on the island, today the u.s. military ordered family members at the naval base at guantanamo, cuba, to evacuate. officials in jamaica urged residents to take refuge in government shelters, as people crowded supermarkets to stock up. hurricane matthew could make landfall in jamaica and haiti tomorrow. national transportation safety board officials say the signals were working properly at the hoboken, new jersey, train

station where a commuter train crashed last thursday. one person died, and more than 100 were injured when the train barreled into the terminal. investigators say they have interviewed the train's engineer and are analyzing one data recorder with speed and braking information recovered from the rear locomotive. british prime minister theresa may says she'll trigger the u.k.'s formal exit from the european union by the end of next march. may told her conservative party's annual conference today by then she'll invoke article 50 of the e.u. treaty to set in motion what will be least two years of negotiations. the u.k. voted to exit the e.u. in a referendum in june. a catholic church in normandy, france, where two islamic extremists killed a priest last july, re-opened for worship today. after a procession and special ceremony to restore the sacred nature of the church, the archbishop of rouen led a mass for the returning parishioners. the two extremists, who held nuns and parishioners hostage during their attack, were killed that day by police.

this is pbs newshour weekend, sunday. >> sreenivasan: millions of colombians voted in a referendum today, on ending the government's 52-year war with the marxist rebel group known as farc. columbia is expected to approve the peace accord, signed last week by president juan manuel santos and the farc leader. it calls for farc's 7,000 fighters to turn in their weapons and lets farc form a political party to try to win power at the ballot box. the u.s. has long considered farc a terrorist group, for funding operations through the illegal drug trade and kidnappings. the syrian army says they are offering safe passage out of the besieged city of aleppo to any rebels who lay down their arms and agree to evacuate the city. no word yet on whether any rebel groups have accepted. simultaneously, syrian government soldiers, backed by russian warplanes continued their offensive today in eastern, rebel-held aleppo. the united nations says some

275,000 people are trapped there with food and water in short supply. the u.n. also says at least 320 civilians in aleppo have been killed over the last ten days. secretary of state john kerry and russian foreign minister sergei lavrov discussed the situation today, as british foreign minister boris johnson said the airstrikes against hospitals in aleppo are war crimes, that make peace talks impossible. in ethiopia, a massive religious festival turned deadly today when police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse anti- government protesters. the resulting stampede killed more than 50 people. it happened 25 miles south of the capital. witnesses say people were crushed trying to flee the chaos. a government spokesman blamed, "people that prepared to cause trouble." protesters demanding greater freedoms have been killed in repeated clashes with ethiopian police in the last two years. african-americans are using d.n.a. tests to learn about their heritage, long obscured by

slavery. visit our website at www.pbs.org/newshour. finally the end of an era in major league baseball. vince skully play-by-play announcer for the past 67 years called his last game tonight. the 88 year old skully called northermore than 9,000 games. and dick called his last game winding opposition decades as a sportscaster. on the field boston red sox david ortiz played his last season home game considered the best designated ever. he hopes to lead the red sox to another world series. on tomorrow's newshour, how the lives of vice presidential candidates mike pence and tim kaine begin in similar places but ended up on very different tickets. that's all for this newshour weekend. i'm hardy captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh

access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. judy and josh weston. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the john and helen glessner family trust. supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.