captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight: behind the hack-- a u.s. intelligence report finds russia's president putin "ordered" the campaign to influence our election, with a "clear preference" for donald trump. also ahead: the latest on the deadly shooting at the fort lauderdale airport. then, i sit down with secretary of state john kerry to talk about u.s.-russia relations in the aftermath of the election hack, and diplomatic challenges ahead for the trump administration. >> it's going to take a lot of work. it's not going to be easy, and it has to be done in a way that is real, verifiable without giving up american values and principles in the process.

>> woodruff: and it's friday. mark shields and david brooks are here to analyze the week's news. all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us.

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and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: the f.b.i., the c.i.a. and national security agency are out tonight with a final report on russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. they say they're confident that russia's president vladimir putin personally ordered it, with a "clear preference for president-elect trump." before he was briefed on the findings today, mr. trump said it was all, "a political witch hunt." afterward, he said it was a "constructive" session, but noted the agencies found "absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election." in fact, the report says officials did not assess the effect of the russian efforts. we'll look at all this, after the news summary. the day's other major story is in florida. panic erupted at the fort lauderdale airport, when a

gunman shot five people to death and wounded eight more before he was captured. william brangham picks it up from there. >> reporter: the shooting set off an afternoon of chaotic reports about exactly what was going on. steve mort of feature stories news is at the fort lauderdale airport. he joins me via telephone. steve, i understand you were there soon after this attack came to an end. can you tell us what you first saw? >> yes, we were here very soon after it took place, maybe about 20 minutes to half an hour or so and, as we got to the airport, we tried to find a vantage point to establish our camera. we managed to find a vantage point on the parking garage that was overlooking terminal two where the shooting took place, of course, in the baggage claim area, and what happened was there were subsequent reports of a shooter inside that parking garage, and that prompted the s.w.a.t. team to move in.

they moved us as well as other passengers, members of the public that were in that parking garage out and into one of the other terminals here at the fort lauderdale airport. it was a very surreal situation. we had to duck behind cars as s.w.a.t. team members spotted an unidentified individual within the parking garage which of course triggered multiple rumors there were other shooters, a very common phenomenon in mass shooting incidents, as many of us who have had the misfortune to cover them know well. eventually we managed to reach the terminal. we saw several groups of people who had been asked to clear areas by police, many running, screaming, not sure what was going on. it was a pretty chaotic scene. >> brangham: we understand there is a suspect named esteban stantiago who has been apprehended and believed to be the only shooter. what do we know about who this man is? >> that is correct. we understand at this stage that

he did act on his own. we understand that he boarded a plane in alaska. woe understand that esteban stantiago then flew to fort lauderdale, where he unpacked from his checked baggage a firearm. we understand he flew wit, checked it into his checked luggage. of course, you're allowed to do that. you can put them in your checked bags. he took a gun out of his checked bag, went to a bathroom adjacent to the baggage claim area in the terminal two here at the airport, when he loaded the weapon, then went back out into the bag an claim area and opened fire. in front of the prospect themselves, santiago -- we're getting patchy details about his background. he suspected to be a former u.s. army soldier from the new york area. we know that esteban's brother

says that he had been receiving psychological treatment while living in alaska and that esteban's girlfriend had alerted the brother to the situation after the shooting had unfolded. now, of course, the main point now for authorities will be to try to figure out exactly what the motivation here was in this attack. we don't believe at the moment according to authorities that there was a terrorism motivation here, but certainly f.b.i. officials are going to be questioning him intensely over the coming hours and days, trying to find out exactly why he carried out this attack. >> brangham: steve mort of feature stories news. thank you very much. >> woodruff: in the day's other news: the election of donald trump as president was certified when congress tallied the electoral college votes. vice president joe biden presided, as a number of house democrats objected, but none had the support of a senator, as the rules require. >> even as people waited hours

in georgia... >> there is no debate. there is no debate if there's no signed by a senator. the objection cannot be entertained. >> mr. president, the objection is signed by a member of the house, but not yet by a member of the senate. >> well it is over. [laughter] >> woodruff: mr. trump finished with 304 electoral votes to 227 for hillary clinton. she won the popular vote by a margin of about 2.9 million. the president-elect was busy on other fronts today. in a series of tweets, he disputed reports that u.s. taxpayers will pay for a wall on the mexican border, under a plan his own advisers shared with congress. instead, he insisted mexico will reimburse the cost, later. and he mocked arnold schwarzenegger's low ratings as his replacement on "the new celebrity apprentice" television show. mr. trump wrote: "so much for being a movie star." job creation in the u.s. slowed

last month, as the unemployment rate ticked higher. the u.s. labor department reports the economy saw a net gain of 156,000 jobs. the jobless rate edged up to 4.7%, as more people started looking for work. hourly pay rose nearly 3%-- the most in more than seven years, as employers paid more to attract and keep workers. from president obama today, a challenge-- on repealing obamacare. he says republicans need to present their alternative before they repeal the existing law. in an interview with the news website "vox," he acknowledged the "affordable care act" has flaws, but he challenged critics to come up with an improvement. >> i am saying to every republican right now: if you, in fact, can put a plan together that is demonstrably better than what obamacare is doing, i will publicly support repealing obamacare and replacing it with

your plan. but i want to see it first. >> woodruff: republicans have yet to agree on their own plan, but they say they hope to enact repeal-- and vote on a replacement-- this year. russia announced today it's withdrawing some of its forces from syria, starting with an aircraft carrier and other warships. the carrier-- the "admiral kuznetsov"-- was deployed in november, as russia intensified air strikes on eastern aleppo. the city fell to syrian government forces on december 22nd. the long-running search for malaysia airlines flight mh370 is finally ending-- in two weeks. malaysia's government says it's calling a halt, as teams finish searching more than 46,000 square miles in the indian ocean. the airliner disappeared in march of 2014, with 239 people on board. debris has washed up in eastern africa. back in this country: states

across the deep south declared emergencies today ahead of a winter storm, and atlanta braced for the worst. a 2014 storm paralyzed the city and stranded thousands of people-- overnight-- on jammed highways. officials said plans are in place to avoid a repeat. wall street closed the week on a high note. the dow jones industrial average gained 64 points to finish at 19,963 after flirting with 20,000. the nasdaq rose 33 points, and the s&p 500 added nearly eight. both the nasdaq and the s&p closings were new records. and, michelle obama had her final, formal event as first lady today. she spoke at a white house event for the school counselor of the year, and she spoke directly to the nation's youth. >> lead by example with hope, never fear and know i will be with you, rooting for you and

working to support you for the rest of my life. being the first lady has been the greatest honor of my life and i hope i've made you proud. >> woodruff: the obamas have two more weeks in the white house, until inauguration day, january 20th. still to come on the newshour: a first look at the intelligence report on russian hacking, secretary of state john kerry's view of russia and the state relations with the rest of the world, mark shields and david brooks analyze the week's news, plus, much more. >> woodruff: we return to the report issued this afternoon by the u.s. intelligence community on what it calls "russian activities and intentions in recent u.s. elections." the report is a public version of a highly-classified assessment given to the president and other top officials.

it alleges that russia used covert operations to steal material from the democratic party, and others, and disseminated it through media organizations it controls, and through third party groups. it called the campaign "a significant escalation" of russian efforts to "undermine the u.s.-led liberal democratic order." for more on the report's findings and its effects, i'm joined from capitol hill by: california representative adam schiff, who is the top democrat on the house intelligence committee. and, for the record, we called every current republican member serving on the senate and house intelligence committees, and none was available. adam schiff, congressman schiff, thank you very much for joining us. now, this report says it has high confidence that president vladimir putin personally ordered this campaign to interfere with the u.s. election. it doesn't say how it knows that, but after you were briefed and have read the classified

report, are you confident that that's what happened? >> i am very confident, and i think all the members to have the intelligence community, democrats and republicans, are confident in the conclusions about the russian involvement. i have been on the committee now almost ten years and this is among the best documented, most iron-clad, i think, intelligence reports i've seen on any major issue. if this doesn't persuade donald trump about the facts, nothing will. >> woodruff: the report, also, congressman schiff, says the russians developed what they call a clear preference for donald trump. how so? >> well, there are many reasons why the russians prefer donald trump. i think, in the first instance, they wanted to tear down secretary clinton. i think they despised their remarks about the flawed 2011 elections in russia. they fear she would be very tough on russia in terms of sanctions. donald trump, on the other hand, had every reason to want.

someone who belittled n.a.t.o., praised putin, would be more amenable to the policy in syria where they bomb civilians, so there were a lot of reasons for them to prefer donald trump. it was their aspiration, as the report makes clear, to help him and to hurt her. >> woodruff: the report also points out that the russian -- how the russian military intelligence passed along this information to wikileaks, the so-called transparency organization. we know julian assange, the founder of wikileaks, say they didn't get it from the russians. what evidence is there in the report that there was collaboration between the russians and wikileaks? >> you know, i can't go into that evidence because that's really the heart and soul of the classified report, but i can say i think the case is very powerful. wikileaks was a useful medium for the russians. they had a little more distance or denight club with wikileaks than with their other cutouts, so they made ample use of it.

i think julian assange knows this or is affirmatively trying to stick his head in the sand, but, nonetheless, it was a very useful platform for the russians. >> woodruff: before this report became public and, in fact, before president-elect trump was briefed, he said that this whole thing is a political witch hunt -- the findings by the u.s. intelligence community. what's your reaction to that? >> my reaction is this, we need democrats and republicans in congress to work together to fashion a very comprehensive push-back to russia, not just the cyber hacking, but their bribery of officials in europe, their social media campaign, their overt media campaign. all of the dirty tricks, basically, the russians employ to tear down their democracy, we need to work together on a bipartisan basis and need the new president's help. we can't do it alone, and that has to begin by his acknowledgment of the facts. we need him to lead the liberal

democratic order around the world. no other nation can do that the way we can, and it's going to be very hard for congress to do it over his opposition. >> woodruff: well, one of the comments he made after the briefing was he pointed out and emphasized, he said he appreciated the breeching, but he emphasized that the alleged russian action had, in his words, absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election. now, my reading of what was made public from this report is that they didn't examine whether the hacking affected the outcome of the election. >> that's exactly right and i think that was very misleading of the president-elect to suggest this report or the presentation said there was no outcome, no effect on the election itself. there is true -- it's true there is no evidence the tampering with voter ma venus or registration or anything like that affected the counting of the votes, that's true.

it's not the same thing as saying there is no impact on the outcome. clearly, the daily dumping of information that was damaging to secretary clinton and helpful to donald trump is hugely consequential and it's not the intelligence community's place to say whether this was determinative and it's unknowable but that claim was unsupported by the report or briefing he got today. >> woodruff: we know, congressman schiff, that president obama took measures against the russian intelligence community just in the last few days. yesterday, i interviewed vice president biden. he said other steps have been taken that are not publicly known. is it your sense that the u.s. is responding appropriately? should more be done? what should the united states be prepared to do as a result of this? >> i think what has been done so far by the current administration is a first step. it is by no means, i think, sufficient.

we need a working congress on a bipartisan basis. we've reached out on a democratic side to senators mccain and graham on a package of broader sanctions to make the russians pay a price, but even beyond that, we need a comprehensive approach to what is a very successful, well-funded, russian effort through a variety of vectors, through, as i mentioned, bribery of people, their media platforms, their hacking, the publishing of fake news, of bogus documents, we need to push back against all of that. it's a threat to the german elections coming up, our french and n.a.t.o. allies, and we need a comprehensive and hard push back. it's the only things russians understand and will deter them. >> woodruff: congressman adam schiff, ranking democrat in the house intelligence committee. thank you for talking with us. >> thank you.

>> woodruff: and you can read the full declassified intelligence report on our website. that's at pbs.org/newshour. >> woodruff: now to my interview with secretary of state john kerry. i sat down with him earlier today at the state department, before the public release of the intelligence report on russia, but i began by asking: now that we have confirmation russia interfered in the election, does that fundamentally change washington's relationship with moscow? secretary kerry, thank you very much for talking with us. >> thank you. >> woodruff: so now that it has been confirmed that the russians interfered aggressively in the u.s. election, does this represent a fundamental change in the united states' relationship with russia? >> well, that remains to be determined. it certainly represents a major challenge in that relationship. it's a hostile act.

it's -- it has serious consequences, and we're going to have to work that through. i say we, the united states, the next administration will have to approach russia very clearly, understanding what has happened. >> woodruff: do you think more needs to be done to retaliate, as of now? >> well, i think that president obama made it clear that we would retaliate at a time of our choosing and ways of our choosing, and that means some of them -- the public will know about some of them, some of them they will not know about. obviously, with two weeks left, i think that the administration coming in will have to make judgments of its own about what the next steps will be. >> woodruff: it's reported the russians were celebrating the election of donald trump. why would they be celebrating? what do you think? >> i'm not going to speculate. i think it's too important. i'm just not going to speculate. i think there have been a lot of news articles. you all have been covering this for some period of time.

people will draw their own judgments but i'm not going to add to that speculation. >> woodruff: what do you think vladimir putin wants? you have been dealing with him for a long time. what do you think he's after? >> well, he's after a lot of things. there are a lot of motivations. he obviously has agreed with us on some things and disagreed with us on others, and we managed to find common ground and work together effectively in the iran nuclear agreement, where russia assumed major responsibilities to try to get the agreement done and make it work. so i can give you a long list of things where russia and president putin have found common ground and worked with the united states. but on ukraine, on the implementation to have the minsk agreement, on syria, we have obviously not been able to find the same kind of common ground, despite good efforts, and those are problems that are going to continue into the next administration. my hope is the next

administration will approach russia strategically, with a clear purpose of trying to find more common ground but without giving up on fundamental values and principles that are at the core of the united states foreign policy. >> woodruff: well, are you concerned that could happen? you have talked with your successor designate, rex tillerson. does he have the same view of russian intentions that you do? >> well, he and i are going to sit down, actually, i think next week, and have an opportunity to really debrief and to go into these subjects, so i can't comment on what his approach is going to be or what he's thinking at this moment about that. i can tell you that i think there is an opportunity here, still, for president-elect trump and then president trump to try to reach out to russia and see whether or not they can put to

test the proposition that we could find things in which we can agree. perhaps on some things we will agree to disagree, but, nevertheless, put the world in a better place. >> woodruff: but at this moment, you're not worried the incoming administration will be naive? >> i have questions like everybody has questions, judy, but as secretary of state, it's inappropriate for me to start speculating publicly and get caught up in the day-to-day back and forth. i don't want to do that, i think it's inappropriate. i think there are clear strategic possibilities that, if the new administration pursues correctly, could open up avenues of cooperation and reduce tensions and perhaps put to test whether or not there could be, you know, a more improved day-to-day relationship between us i. syria, i happened to sit

down yesterday with vice president biden and asked him if that represented a failure of the united states. he said no. my question to you is, if it's not a failure, does it at least, beyond being a humanitarian disaster, represent an enormous missed opportunity of the united states to shape events in that part of the world? >> well, we did shape events to a certain degree. it is certainly going to be debated whether or not they were shaped enough or whether certain options that might have shaped them differently were taken or not taken. but i agree with the vice president that the fact that we were not able to, which is a disappointment, clearly, to push the parties into a place where they made a different set of choices, that's disappointing, but i don't think it represents, you know, some sort of, you know, failure on our part. you can try and try and push people. the old saying, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. and here we led people to water.

the water of peace proposition, the water of geneva, a process. we laid out through our leadership the international syria support group. we brought iran to the table. we brought russia to the table. we had assurances that the -- that assad would do certain things. he didn't. he chose not to. so the russians failed, actually, to deliver assad in a way they said they would. the iranians failed to deliver the process they said they would, because they continued to prop him up in ways that went way beyond the agreement that had been reached in the geneva agreement to try to come to a political resolution. so, look, did the whole process fail? did the international community fail to solve it? yes, profoundly. but was that a specific failure of the united states?

history will debate whether some choices may have been made or not made that may have altered that, but i don't think it falls exclusively on us that this problem hasn't been solved. >> woodruff: are u.s. interests advanced with the way things stand today in syria? >> with the way they stand today? no. nobody's interests are served by what's happening in syria today. it's a catastrophe. it's the worst human catastrophe since world war ii and, as i said just now, it represents a failure of the entire international community to come to grips with solving it and it's a tragedy for the people who have been caught in the middle, but i am proud of what our administration has done, of what we did day to day to try to get a cease fire in place. i am proud we are the largest donor of humanitarian assistance for refugees. i am proud of what we did with the i.s.s.g., and i regret that we were not able to be

successful in getting the parties to geneva, but i deeply believe that we are on the cusp of seeing that happen over the course of the next months and that it will be the framework that we put in place that is ultimately going to be the structure around which peace in syria is built. >> woodruff: several other countries i want to mention quickly. israel, you got a great deal of attention with the speech you made about israel's policy, talking about the settlements. right after that, israel announced they're expanding the settlements. we know the attitude about israel, of the incoming president-elect, mr. netanyahu. so my question is, were you as secretary of state shouting into the wind? >> no, i don't believe so. i don't believe so at all. every administration through our history has said that the settlements are an obstacle to peace, and they do not have legal validity.

we didn't break new ground with that except that we reiterated and reaffirmed that we are not going to sit by idly and watch a sort of extreme element within the current government move in a direction that we believe is dangerous for israel, redes the possibility of peace, prolongs the potential of conflict, and is completely contrary to american values and interests which have been expressed by republican and democrat administrations alike throughout history. >> woodruff: final question. you're seen as the most shoulder-to-the-wheel secretary of state we've had in a long time. you have been to virtually every global -- or you have been dealing with virtually every global trouble spot around the world. you've given this job long hours. you've traveled non-stop.

what are you the most proud of? what is your greatest disappointment as you walk away? >> well, you know, i'm going to duck you slightly here in the sense that i honestly don't dwell on the disappointments. there are some, and we've talked about a few of the things that are undone, but i am very proud of the department. i think we are more engaged in more places in the world simultaneously dealing with more crises and with greater effect in those more places in the world than at any time in american history. i think the world is safer without iran with a nuclear weapon. the world has got the potential to bto be safer if we fully implement the paris agreement. so, yes, i think, all in all, the obama administration that president obama has focused on has lived up to our need to protect american interests, to

live our values and assert our values, and to stand up for future generations. >> woodruff: secretary of state john kerry, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> woodruff: that brings us to the analysis of shields and brooks. that's syndicated columnist mark shields and "new york times" columnist david brooks. happy new year, gentlemen. >> happy new year, judy. >> woodruff: good seeing you in 2017. so let's start talking about the intelligence report. mark, the entire intelligence community is behind it. they're saying without a shadow of a doubt, in so many words, they are confident the russians tried to interfere in the u.s. election and developed a clear preference for donald trump. what are we to make of this? does it change the way we look at this election? >> i don't know if it changes the way we look at it, judy.

it certainly changes the way we look at the united states' relationship with russia, i think, and, in this sense, that the intelligence community said it made these findings with high confidence. ever since the weapons of mass destruction era and decision on invading iraq, the intelligence community has been very, very careful to avoid high confidence. that's saying we really believe this to be true. they have been more tentative. there's no question they were uneequivocal and emphatic, every american ought to be angry and concerned that an unfriendly nation, a nation that has cooperated with us certain places but does not wish us well sought to sabotage american democracy, american confidence in our own democratic institutions and to influence the outcome of the election. that's a cause of concern, and worry and anger, and i would

hope they would respond not as democrats or republicans but as americans to make sure it never happens again. >> woodruff: david, how should americans look at this? >> i agree with that, with anger, with shock. we've sort of gotten used to the idea because to have the news leaks before this report, but the idea that russia felt emboldened and apparently fearless to go into our election and manipulate our own election process, whether succes successr not, is a sign they are outside the norms of normal society. this is a step up that russia feels completely free to do this, putin feels free to do this without fear of penalty and so far paying little penal. partly it's motivated by animus toward hillary clinton as we heard early in the program about what she said about them in 2010, 2012, partly because a feeling donald trump will be tougher on i.s.i.s. but the thing that should concern us is a shift in american foreign policy. we have had a bipartisan foreign policy that believed in a

democratic global world by russia and the soviet union has been seen as hostile to. donald trump and vladimir putin and maybe marie le pen do not believe in this basic structure of the world, have no respect for the institutions created after world war ii, and see a potential alliance of populous around the world that would fight islam and restore a certain semblance of american values. so this is a piece of the larger shift. >> woodruff: mark, donald trump, the president-elect does have his own reaction to this report. i mean, you know, joining in with the what david's saying. i mean, he started out by calling it a political rich hunt and then after he was briefed about it, he made a very short comment and they did in so many words that, well, it didn't

affect the outcome of the election. >> as usual, he takes the big picture. in other words, i won. anything in any way diminishes or tarnishes my personal victory, i reject. his disparagement, make that disdain, openly, for the american intelligence community and its work is damaging to national security. i mean, the intelligence community, for the security of our nation, for the well being of our nation, for the economic prosperity of our nation, the competitiveness, depends on sources in other places and other nations depend upon our intelligence, and here we have the president-elect dismissing, disparaging, disdaining openly because it somehow, in his way -- his perspective, diminishes his victory is just astonishing. >> it's happening on three

levels, this story. there is the big strategic level which i descreened, then the donald trump ego level, and his ego is like a comet the size of super tuesday traveling through the solar system and we all have to be affected by its gravitational pull so all american foreign policy has to remind us donald trump did win this election all by himself and nobody else could have helped and it's all me me me, and that seems to be the center of his views. third is this is a guy who's going to be taking over a public office, president of the united states, he will have a system built around him, he will have employees, and he as a public servant will work with other public servants, presumably, the intelligence community, but seems completely uninterested in being part of this system our founders set up, so he seems to still be a lone wolf insulting his future employees and bringing woe to you who insupport the president, he seems to be on purpose alienating the resources he's

going to have to draw on. >> woodruff: the world is a more complicated place than maybe it's ever been as we heard from john kerry. he talked about the number of different places that the u.s. now has to worry about its relationship with and, right now, we're at a critical point where we're changing from one administration to the next. it's always a fraught time, but it just seems especially so this time. >> it does, and i think, in part, because of the reasons david announced, observed earlier, that the changing, sort of organizing principle of postwar world and the united states, and we know, i think probably more keenly and more acutely, the limits of our power. if i could just add one thing to david's observation earlier and that is, judy, i've lived through an awful lot of transitions from election to inauguration. it is a period during which

president-elect follow a pattern. they become more popular. what they do is they submerge partisanship, they reach across the line, they do all sorts of symbolic things to unite the nation. this president-elect has done the opposite. he continued his rallies, apparently for self-gratification. he fired up his true believers, he continued to disparage and belittle his defeated opponent openly, and toward what end? there's been no similar polk reach. he's had interviews with heidi hide camp, the democratic senator from north dakota. there's been no strategic sense of where the country is going or where it's about. tweeting about arnold schwarzenegger's ratings on "the apprentice," making twelve calls into ohio to defeat joh john kasich's republican committee

vote. this is pettiness and shows no largeness of vision and is really distressing. >> woodruff: and yesterday, david, in conjunction with this, he tweeted a criticism of chuck schumer, called him the head clown in talking the way the democrats are handling obama. i did interview the vice president yesterday who looked right into the camera and said, grow up, donald. you know, is that the kind of comment that's likely to make a difference, you think? >> the vice president? yes, i'm sure donald trump is growing and maturing as we speak. we've gotten used to analyzing. le statements in a certain way, like what is the policy implications, and we take them all very seriously because when a president speaks, as mark said a couple of weeks ago, that usually means a lot, but i've come to think we have to treat donald trump's tweets like snapchat, it's going to go away, and it flies out of some region of his brain and goes out into

the ether and usually in the realm of media. in tweets of russia, he was attacking cnn and nbc because of their coverage. he's a media commentator, even with schwartz snakier. so like snapchat, it will just go away. so until he can give us something real, it's sometimes best to let them go with the wind. >> so when he calls chuck schumer the head clown, mark -- >> how does it possibly help? he's going to need chuck schumer. chuck schumer is a proud and able and dedicated and skillful leader, and you don't want him as an opponent, as a sworn adversary. he's a formidable figure legislatively. why do it? it's gratuitous. on the joe biden interview, of all sad words of tongue and pen, these are the saddest that might have been. in the election we had the two least liked nominees in the

morning history of american polling, and you could not watch the interview -- i commend you for it last night -- with joe biden without saying i like this guy. i mean, he is a thoroughly likable man and when he says, grow up, i mean, there was nothing mean about it. it was absolutely what a grownup would say. this was a grownup talking. the way i thought he talked about democratic values was missing in the campaign of 2016 sorely to the democrats' disadvantage. it was a marvelous -- i commend it to anybody who missed it for any reason to watch it online. >> woodruff: one of the things i talked to the vice president about, david, was obamacare and what the republicans are going to do about it. the administration is saying they're afraid they can't make any changes unless they make bad changes to it. what do you see going on with it? >> first, on the interview, i was struck by the way he kept emphasizing the democrats and not campaigning on the working class. the policies of the democratic

party have been in cultural consonance with the culture and he was very honest. he has been in governance since he was 27 and when you're in governance you understand the limitations and complexities of governance, it's hard. obamacare, i'm not sure the trump administration has thought in any complex way about how to repeal and replace. repealing first and then replacing later doesn't strike me and a lot of the republican healthcare experts i talk toe, doesn't strike them as a workable thing to do. you repeal maybe some of the premium supports in obamacare and then replace them with something later, that seems to create the sort of death spiral and destabilization we're all worried about. so it seems to me and to a growing number of republican senators including corker and mccain, they have to repeal and replace at the same time, you have to have a plan, or else

you're creating a recipe for chaos. it's not clear how either the house or trump administration has thought through exactly how that works. >> woodruff: ten seconds, mark. >> what's the big rush, judy, on the healthcare plan? it's been eight years. so they've had a lot of ideas. paul ryan said that. they've got ideas everywhere. they have no idea what they're going to do. repeal is low-hanging fruit. they've done it. they've done it 60 times. they'll do it 60 more. they have no plan. >> woodruff: mark shields, david brooks, thank you both. >> woodruff: now, the latest story in our series about food in america, a collaboration between the newshour and npr. tonight, our focus is on seafood, and specifically, a movement to ensure sustainable seafood. that means fish caught domestically and locally-- and

not fished to extinction. despite the vast expanse of shoreline in this country, more than 90% of the seafood americans eat is imported. many conservationists, fishermen and foodies are out to change this. special correspondent allison aubrey of npr news has the story. >> reporter: cape cod massachusetts, named for the cod, but that's not what fisherman jamie eldredge is catching today. cod's been overfished in these waters. now, he's laying his lines for a fish that most american's have never even heard of-- it's called dogfish. was it a good catch? how much did you land? >> it's a daily limit of 6,000 pounds, and i'm probably just a little shy of it today. >> reporter: that fish ends up here at this processing plant just up the road. so this is dogfish here, kind of a long sharky lookin' thing? >> yes, it is the most plentiful fish we have on the east coast right now.

>> reporter: owner, brian marder says the chatham fishermen will bring in six million pounds of dogfish this year. his operation turns that spiky shark into long white fillets. who's buying this fish? >> this is all being packed for the european export market. >> reporter: i'm told that the french love it, they call it salmonettes, which sounds kind of fancy. >> yup. >> reporter: are you telling me that everything being processed here is just going to be shipped out? >> yes it is. >> reporter: 99% of it? >> 99%. >> reporter: while all this dogfish is shipping out to europe, where's the fish that americans like to eat coming from? turns out it's being flown in from countries around the world. arriving at warehouses like this one we visited. santa monica seafood is one of the largest distributors on the west coast. this year, they'll distribute 42 million pounds of it, much of it imported. lots of fresh caught seafood going out and tons of seafood coming in from overseas. it's a swap that plays out across the united states,

according to jennifer dianto kemmerly. she's director of seafood watch at the monterey bay aquarium, they track and rank environmentally responsible fisheries. >> over 90% of the seafood we consume in the u.s. is actually caught or farm raised overseas, and the majority of the seafood we catch in our u.s. fisheries doesn't stay here in our local market it goes to other countries. >> reporter: does that make sense? >> we're kind of missing out on the bounty that we actually have here. we're not celebrating the local fisheries as much as we probably should be. >> reporter: and that bounty is so plentiful that the environmental defense fund has launched a campaign to get american's eating these lesser known species from our own coastal waters. >> eat these fish is a campaign to celebrate the comeback of america's fisheries. >> reporter: like new england's overfished cod, fisheries around the u.s. were being depleted. after environmentalists sounded alarm bells, congress passed an act in 2006 that required

fisheries to set quotas by 2011. now fisheries have rebounded. nancy civetta is with the cape cod commercial fishermen's alliance. she's been trying to promote the story of dogfish. she says even with all the demand from europe there's plenty of dogfish left here for americans to eat. >> there's so many out there that we don't even catch the quota the government allows us. >> reporter: but here's the challenge. >> we don't eat dogfish in this country. we import salmon, tuna and shrimp. we do not eat the food we're bringing to shore right here. >> reporter: civetta says importing most of the fish we eat could have consequences down the line. >> if we continue to import and buy from other countries, then our fishing industry could wither away. if we're going to maximize the potential of this fishery then we need to create markets so that the fisherman can fish for it, they can better their bottom lines and we can have a sustainable coastal community. >> so what they do is they lay

down on the bottom of the ocean. >> reporter: sean dimin runs a company called sea to table, that he says is doing just that. >> we come out here to places like chatham, fishing communities all around america's coasts, and we figure out how to get the best directly to chefs, universities, distributing directly from the point of catch to the point of consumption. beautiful photos of fish we can now sell directly to consumers. >> reporter: back at sea to table's brooklyn headquarters, dimin explains that his operation is a complete departure from the traditional model. >> a big thing that we do is sell fish that fishermen are catching. not necessarily what american consumers and diners think they want, and that's a big part of what we do is supporting american fishing communities. >> that's beautiful! >> reporter: and the model aligns perfectly with a big push at university dining halls to source their foods from more local and sustainable sources. >> on the count of three say dogfish!

>> reporter: this group runs the dining halls at the university of massachusetts. they serve 55,000 meals a day. they've made a commitment to bring this dogfish and other underloved fish back to their campus. it's at university dining halls like this one where thousands of people eat every day that you might be able to shake things up. these students are used to trying new things and a lot of them love the novelty of it. so what's the appeal here, why go out of the way to buy dogfish? >> being in western massachusetts we love to support the western massachusetts' fisheries. and that it tastes great. >> reporter: university of massachusetts chef bob bankert is grilling dog fish fillets, he's lathered them in a spicy seasoning to make tacos. at another food station, dogfish becomes an asian flash fry. it's drizzled with wasabi mayo on top. the students are curious. a display tells them where the dogfish comes from and who

caught it. selina fournier is manager of this dining hall. >> there's students that may have never heard of such a fish, so when they saw the fish here today and then got to taste it, the whole association really creates that story and bringing it to life. and hopefully creating something exciting that they'll want to order even when they're not at umass. >> reporter: is that your hope that you're setting a new generation of eating habits here? >> definitely. we are setting the standard for the way these students hopefully continue their health and wellness once they graduate umass. >> thank you. >> reporter: ruth crawford and ana yrazusta went for the asian flash fry. so give it a try, tell us what you think. >> oh my god! >> so good. >> amazing! >> reporter: what's the biggest appeal to you here? >> it's new, local, fresh, so healthy. >> reporter: sea to table already has about a thousand customers, including dozens of large universities and restaurant chefs, and they're

also planning to roll out direct to consumer delivery so people can get fish delivered right to their door. and are you hoping now that ten years from now, most americans know what dogfish is? >> well we hope so. >> reporter: fishermen like jamie eldredge are eager to see if companies like sea to table can capture the taste buds of the next generation. i'm allison aubrey of npr news for the pbs newshour in chatham, massachusetts. >> woodruff: finally, professor christopher edmin teaches at columbia university's teachers college. he explains why there are so few african american males teaching our children in tonight's "in my humble opinion." >> when newshour asked me to write and deliver this essay about why there are so few black male teachers. i was excited, i agreed. i then realized that i needed to discuss this issue by presenting

it in a way that exemplifies the problem. the problem is that no one's really listening. so, for this essay, you're going to have to listen, but do so in a little bit of a different way. like some other black cultural values and modes of expression that black male teachers and their students share and have in common, hip-hop is demonized by the public and devalued in schools. so what are we talking about? whether its dance, dress, slang, or entertainment, these forms of culture need to be accepted-- with some limits-- in schools to engage students and retain teachers. when they are not accepted, students underperform, teachers get frustrated, and then teachers leave! black youth drop out get suspended at higher rates schools react about the facts so they hire a black face black male went through hell dodged the cell

got a degree schools excited he got hired they gave him some mentees now these mentees breeze through p.e. with ease at best see c's if the course talks degrees or ratio, proportions cause class is boring the language is anguish they languish in their performance frustrated they updated they thug image stuck in the sewage cultural irrelevance created poor instruction boring structures that i'm called in to rupture and i'm overwhelmed yeah, i'm black the kids are black too but what i know is right to do means breaking the schools rules so we leave the profession in every major city 40% in chicago 19 in philly really. we cant stand being the teachers that we hated but they made us suspend 'em and punish 'em with bad grades and the school system is more diverse than ever but i never see myself among the faculty and whether i do or not doesn't make much of a difference if you hire me, retire me, and do not change the system.

listen, like 50% of public schools are youth of color-- right 82% of the teachers are of the other-- white less than 2% 'o those who teach are black males. one in every 15 of these same males end up in jail schools criminalize and society despises us for the black male teacher frustrations rise in us now students respond in anger and hate schools then teachers respond and start tightening up the rules test prep begets yet even more frustration i prep 'em for a test, they detest so they fail it then i get blamed the teacher gets nailed to the cross as if he's the cause of it so of course-- he feels he's forced to quit the source of this often sits at the precipice of pessimists who get to spit a less legit hypothesis about my grit and those that i teach so i quit!

>> woodruff: tune in later tonight on "washington week:" an in-depth look at the ongoing power plays between president- elect donald trump, the republican-led congress and the obama administration over national security, health care and immigration reform. that's later tonight on "washington week." on pbs newshour weekend saturday: how health insurance under the affordable care act may change in one state. and we'll be back, right here, on monday. that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. have a great weekend. thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: lincoln financial is committed to helping you take charge of your future.

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