captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. >> cornish: and i'm audie cornish. >> woodruff: on the newshour tonight: >> i listened to a bunch of stuff last night on television that was disgraceful. >> woodruff: president trump defends his immigration ban, as it's fate hangs in the balance of the courts. >> cornish: also ahead, judy sits down with house speaker paul ryan to talk about how he is working with the trump white house, and the fight over immigration. >> this isn't a muslim ban. if it were, i'd be opposed to it, but the rhetoric surrounding it makes it look like a ban or a religious test. >> woodruff: and, debate over one of the president's cabinet picks leads to a rare vote in the senate to silence democratic opposition. we talk with senator elizabeth warren about the decision.

>> cornish: plus, after her doctors told her she had just a few months to live, how one woman fought her cancer with help from a novel treatment. >> i think it actually took a day or two to fully sink in that my calendar had expanded. instead of the coming demise that we expected, i was feeling fine. and the cancer was retreating. >> cornish: 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. >> xq institute. >> supporting social entrepreneurs and their solutions to the world's most pressing problems-- skollfoundation.org. >> the lemelson foundation. committed to improving lives through invention. in the u.s. and developing countries. on the web at lemelson.org. >> supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org >> 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 legal fight over president trump's travel ban remains unresolved tonight. a trio of federal appeals judges spent this day considering whether to uphold a lower court judge in seattle who blocked the order last friday. meanwhile, the president wasn't holding back. john yang reports from the white house. >> reporter: today, president trump escalated his war of words with the federal judges considering challenges to his immigration order. >> i don't ever want to call a court biased, so i won't call it biased. but, courts seem to be so political, and it would be so

great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what's right. >> reporter: what's right, both mr. trump and justice department lawyers say, is that immmigration law gives the president the authority to bar any foreign citizen from entering the united states if it's in the national interest. >> you don't have to be a lawyer. if you were a good student in high school or if you were a bad student in high school, you can understand this. and it's really incredible to me we have a court case going on so long. >> reporter: two state attorneys general say the order is unconstitutional because it discriminates against muslims. the president said they don't realize the risk to the nation's safety. >> i think our security is at risk today, and it will be at risk until such time as we are entitled and get what we are entitled to as citizens of this country. terrorism is a tremendous threat, far greater than people

in our country understand. believe me, i've learned a lot in the last two weeks. and terrorism is a far greater threat than people of our country understand. we're going to take care of it. we're going to win, folks. we're going to take care of it. >> reporter: hours later, he followed up with a tweet: "big increase in traffic into our country from certain areas, while our people are far more vulnerable." at a house democrats retreat in baltimore, leader nancy pelosi called the president's order "dangerous" and "immoral." >> as long as the president continues down this path. there's nothing that democrats can work with him on. to protect the security of our nation, to protect the working families, and the sanctity of our constitution, democrats will fight this administration every day, with every fiber of our being. >> reporter: also today, an oval office announcement the white house says advances another signature campaign promise: creating u.s. jobs. standing next to the president, intel c.e.o. brian krzanich

announced plans to build a $7 billion factory in phoenix, which he said would create up to 10,000 new jobs. white house officials said the plant had been in the works for four years. >> it's really in support of the tax and regulatory policies that we see the administration pushing forward, that really make it advantageous to do manufacturing in the u.s. >> reporter: krzanich opposes the immigration order, but white house officials said it didn't come up in his meeting with mr. trump. mr. trump's attacks on federal judges has now drawn a response from his own supreme court nominee. an administration official who's working on the confirmation process confirms that in a meeting on capitol hill with the senator, neil gorsuch said the attacks are demoralizing and disheartening and mr. trump took to twitter to attack i in nordsm for dropping his daughter's

line. he said they treated her unfairly, asking about the propriety of a president or father getting involved in a child's business affairs, it was said mr. trump had a right to stand up for his family. >> cornish: in the day's other news, the senate wrapped up an all-night and all-day debate to confirm jeff sessions as attorney general. democrats charged the republican senator from alabama is too close to president trump and hostile to minorities. republicans defended him as a man of integrity. we'll look at the confirmation fight, later in the program. >> woodruff: this was the first day on the job for betsy devos as secretary of education, and she used it to try to rally the troops. it took a tie-breaking vote by vice president pence yesterday to get devos confirmed. the michigan billionaire faced criticism over her lack of experience with public schools. today, she appealed to department staffers for unity.

>> let us set aside any preconceived notions and let's recognize that while we may have disagreements, we can and must come together, find common ground, and put the needs of students first. and when we do disagree, let's set an example by being sincere and honest, passionate but civil. >> woodruff: devos has championed charter schools and other alternatives to public education. >> cornish: in afghanistan, an ambush by suspected islamic state militants ended in the deaths of six afghan workers for the international red cross. the red cross team was trying to deliver supplies to a northern town paralyzed by snow storms. after the attack, the agency suspended operations in afghanistan. >> it was a region we knew very well, and it's really very experienced colleagues, and knowing that they have been killed, attacked directly is the worst possible news. and of course, the shock is first to realize what it means for our actions in afghanistan, what it means for afghans, for

the family, for the colleagues. >> cornish: the taliban denied it had anything to do with the attack, and promised to help find those responsible. >> woodruff: a united nations report warns that more than 120,000 people in nigeria will likely face "catastrophic" famine this summer. more than half live in borno state, where the islamist militant group boko haram has disrupted food supplies. overall, the u.n.'s food and agriculture organization says 11 million nigerians face severe food shortages, in a nation of more than 170 million. >> cornish: once again, a russian court has found opposition leader alexei navalny guilty of fraud. an earlier conviction had been overturned by the european court of human rights. this new decision formally disqualifies navalny as a candidate for president next year. he says the kremlin engineered the verdict to sabotage his bid: >> ( translated ): what we saw now is a sort of telegram which was sent from the kremlin,

saying that they believe that the people whose views i voice are too dangerous to allow us to take part in the election campaign. nevertheless, we don't recognize this ruling. i have every right to take part in the election according to the constitution, and i will do so. >> cornish: navalny was convicted for the embezzlement of $270,000 worth of timber, and he was given a five-year suspended sentence. >> woodruff: back in this country, a north carolina court temporarily blocked a state law that stripped the new democratic governor of some of his powers. the republican-controlled legislature passed the measure after the november election. it requires state senate confirmation for cabinet members. the court still has to rule on the merits of the law itself. >> cornish: former republican secretary of state james baker went to the white house today. he wants the administration to embrace a carbon tax to combat climate change. baker and another former secretary of state, george schultz, wrote in "the wall street journal," "there is mounting evidence of problems with the atmosphere that are growing too compelling to

ignore." other former reagan and bush administration officials back the idea, but it's not clear republicans in congress will join them. >> woodruff: on wall street today, the dow jones industrial average lost about 36 points to close at 20,054. the nasdaq rose eight points, and the s&p 500 added one point. still to come on the newshour: my interview with house speaker paul ryan; senator elizabeth warren on recent clashes over the president's cabinet picks; using the body's natural immune system to fight cancer, and much more. >> woodruff: now to my interview with the speaker of the house of representatives, paul ryan. we sat down at the capitol, and i began by asking about his relationship with president trump, after some tension in the campaign. >> we're doing fine. we're getting along very well.

we speak fairly frequently. mike is coming up for lunch today. so we spent a lot of time together -- >> woodruff: the thiept. yeah, the vice president. so we get along well. >> woodruff: do they consult you not just on the routine things like legislative calendar but, for example, did you know ahead of time about the immigration ban? >> we decided on a go-forward basis that we'll have more consulting and make sure no one's caught by surprise on things. we basically mapped out what 2017 looks like from a legislative perspective. >> woodruff: already. absolutely. that's what you do when you're running a legislature, you plan your year. senator mcconnell and i walked the president through basically what we see 207 looking like. there is a lot of deadline driven events, statutory deadlines you have to meet, and minty other priorities we're working on. just the planning process gets you talking about the big issues, the big picture and all the things we're trying to get done and when we're trying to get them done.

>> woodruff: i want to stay with the immigration ban. former c.i.a. director michael hayden joined a legal brief with a number of other national security experts saying not only do they don't think this will make the united states safer, they don't see a threat from these seven countries but they think it will make the country less safe because it makes it easier to attract terrorist groups saying the u.s. is anti-muslim. >> after the paris shooting, we brought the department of homeland security and f.b.i. up to capitol hill so say what's happening? could this happen here in remember at the paris shooting, there was an infiltration of i.s.i.s. among the syrian refugee population into europe. >> woodruff: but turned out there were not refugees involved. >> but that was the issue at the time. homeland security and f.b.i. said they can't vet these people. so what we discovered was there

was a hole in the vetting process to guard against people trying to infiltrate the refugee population. that is why we passed legislation then about a year ago. the bill passed the house but got phil busterred in the senate. so it never went into law. we have been long on record on a bipartisan basis that we need to get these vetting standards right and take a pause in these programs to make sure we have the vetting standards right. the reason these seven countries which were identified by the obama administration are listed is because we have a hard time corroborating the veracity of people's claims coming from those countries. those countries in particular, we have a hard time discerning who exactly these people are that are coming into the country. that is why it's totally reasonable and rational to have a pause in this program so that we can update and upgrade our vetting standards so that we can be better secure to make sure that we don't have somebody trying to infiltrate the network. >> woodruff: but there haven't been terrorist incidents

perpetrated by people from these countries. >> from these countries or through the refugee population? from these countries, absolutely. the point is we know i.s.i.s. is trying to infiltrate refugee populations. that information has been unclassified. we're doing everything to guard against that. this isn't a muslim ban. i would be opposed to that. but the rhetoric makes it look like a ban on religion or religious test and that rhetoric is inflammatory and doesn't help us. >> woodruff: and that raises the question because the president himself and others around him have talked about -- >> i disagree with that. >> woodruff: are you confident -- >> i disagreed with it now and then. that's not what this is. >> woodruff: i understand that. are you confident this administration is not ever going in the direction of a muslim ban? >> yes, because i and many others around here would oppose that. >> woodruff: more about your relationship with the white house. we know that you are good

friends with fellow wisconsin-ite chief of staff reince priebus. >> he's my constituent. >> woodruff: that's right. the question is how is your relationship with steve bannon? when he was at breitbart, took a special interest in you, called you the enemy after you became speaker. >> yeah, i don't really know him. gotten to know him two or three times. we've had a few meetings. we get along fine. he's not someone i have a history with. i didn't know him when he was opposing me all those times. we're different kinds of conservatives, that's something i can safely say, i think, but we're serving a purpose which is to get this agenda passed. on this agenda we've ruled out that we ran on, on that we agree. so i see a person with which i have a common cause and purpose with. we're different kinds of conservatives, we really don't know each other but we're all trying to get this agenda enacted and that's why i don't see a problem here. >> woodruff: russia. you said on a number of occasions you want to see the

sanctions against russia continued. president trump made not just conciliatory but even complimentary comments in the last few days about president putin. were you shocked by that? >> yeah, i don't see it that way. i see it differently. first of all,io subscribe to relativism whether in political policy, foreign policy or in life. i don't think there is a moral equivalency here at all. so i just disagree with any kind of notion of a moral equivalency. there's a gaping difference between the united states of america and putin's russia. that's point number one. point number two, i think what the president is trying to do is not unlike what the past two presidents did with russia. i just don't think it's going to work. remember when george w. bush said i can see through his soul or something like that. >> woodruff: trying to get close to -- >> yeah, trying to get close to russia and putin. george bush did that. i don't think it worked. hillary clinton with barack obama tried to smooth things out

with russia. new administrations do. this it's logical as to why they want to do this. there are instances where our interests align with russia and those where they don't. the question is can we help steer russia to being something that doesn't conflict with our interests and something in a country that alliance with our interests. i'm not going to hold my breath on that. >> woodruff: if this president were to relax sanctions -- >> i don't support that. >> woodruff: -- against russia, would you support legislation to prevent it? >> no, i think the advantages were overdue. i think president obama should have done them a year ago. >> woodruff: so you support them to keep them strong. >> yes, i support sanctions on russia. turning domestic, a subject close to your heart, tax reform. it has been your top legislative agenda. >> i love tissue of tax reform. we haven't done it since 1986. we think it's a once in a generation opportunity. >> woodruff: here we are, however many years later d31 years. >> i got my driver's license the

last year we did tax reform. >> woodruff: will the individuals in corporate tax cuts in the house be permanent and will the cuts be revenue neutral or require offset? >> yes, to be revenue neutral, they require offsets. we're planning revenue neutral tax reform which means you have to take away loopholes and special interest deductions to lower tax rates. that's what the house blueprint we ran on. it affects the individual and business side of the tax code. we propose it on a revenue neutral basis. we also propose permanent tax reform. when we did the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts in the bush administration, those were only individual tax cuts which you can actually make those temporary. you can't do that on the business side of the code. it actually doesn't work. it produces a lot of uncertainty for businesses. you can't completely redesign the budget tax system for nine and a half years and then flip it back in ten years.

it doesn't work like that. so it has to be permanent. so we do envision revenue neutral tax reform that is permanent. with good comprehensive across-the-board tax reform, we believe we can get the kind of economic growth we need which will solve so many problems we have in this country and fundamental tax reform is critical because now we have the worst tax code in the industrialized world bar none. >> woodruff: no domestic spending cuts? i ask because the republican study group last year was talking about $7.5 trillion --. that's to balance the budget. >> woodruff: i understand, but the public, the voters will look at this as connected. >> we have a budget problem which is we have a big budget deficit and a debt crisis in the future because of spending. so you have to reduce spending and reform the spending programs in and of themselves. tax reform aside, there's no way -- it's mathematical. we won't be able to raise the kind of tax revenues to chase the kind of spending coming in the future. so you have to get spending in

control if you're going to avert a debt crisis down the road. >> woodruff: you've committed to repealing-replacing obamacare. one of your colleagues jim jordan said, it's so bad, congress has to get rid of "every bit of it, every tax, every regulation, every mandate, it all has to be eliminated." given that view which a lot of republicans share, would any piece to have the current affordable care act stand? >> yeah, so the reason jim jordan says that is because the architecture is just so wrong. i think that was in reaction to some suggesting we should sort of tinker around the edges and try to refine and repair the existing law. it is collapsing and that's not viable. so what we propose -- we ran on a replacement plan, by the way, so we've had -- we've long had a replacement plan for obamacare and that's what we're focus on now is building a replacement plan to repeal obamacare and replace it with patient-centered

healthcare which we are convinced will give us a better system. remember the promises of obamacare, lower prices, more choices, those things didn't happen. we believe we can make good on those proms which is improve access to affordable healthcare coverage. right now people aren't getting affordable healthcare coverage. so with we believe to get this right, you have to repeal and replace this law with something better and that's exactly what we -- >> woodruff: including pre-existing conditions, not something called continuous coverage which isn't the same thing. >> no, there are different ways of achieving pre-existing condition res form. we think obamacare we want about it the exact wrong way to guarantee people with pre-existing conditions get good affordable coverage. the goal is can a woman who got breast cancer when she was 45 still afford her health insurance? that's a goal we absolutely share and we think there is a better way of achieving that goal than obamacare, which just so you know, judy, five

states only have one plan left to choose from. one out of three counties in america have only one plan to choose from. those monopolies. 70% of counties in america have one or two. massive price and deductible increases, the law is collapsing while we speak. >> woodruff: you stalked about a split ben a there will dollar infrastructure, between the government and private sector. 50/50? >> that's something we have to develop. we've asked our transportation committees, elaine chao who got sworn in as secretary of transportation who has a long history in experiencing transportation to figure out how best with we can maximize private sector dollars and leverage private sector dollars with public money to get the best bang for our buck on building out our infrastructure. so that's something we're trying to figure out how best we can do for part of our legislative agenda later this summer. >> woodruff: to the extent you're counting on the private sector to get involved, it's known, we talked to the experts,

they say private business people don't get involved in something like this unless there is an incentive, a tax break. >> absolutely. that's what we believe. we believe instead of just having a drar of taxpayer money to go to pay for a dollar of road construction, why don't we take a dollar of taxpayer money to try to leverage many dollars of private sector money so we have more money, federal, you know, taxpayer, private sector money combined to have more impact on upgrading and modernizing our infrastructure. the point is how much bang for our buck can we get to have the best impact on modernizing american infrastructure? that's what we're trying to figure out. >> woodruff: couple of questions about you in this position. michael gerson, conservative thinker, writer -- >> we used to work together for jack kemp, old friend of mine. >> woodruff: -- that's right -- admires you, has written positively about you for years. he wrote yesterday that with your acceptance of president trump he said you've embraced what he calls a

faustian bargain with open eyes, a chance to enact legislation important to you as long as you occasionally ignore your conscience. >> oh, that's just a bunch of bull. first of all, acceptance, the man got elected president of the united states. we live in a constitutional republic, so what's the suggestion here, that we should ignore democracy, the will of the people, the electoral college and not work with who was elected president? i worked with the last president, barack obama, didn't agree with him on much but i worked with him. now i have a president who agrees with and embraces the agenda we ran on in 2016 who gives us a great chance of fixing really big problems in america. have we seen eye to eye on everything over the last year? of course not. no two people do. so i reject the premise of this notion that the head of the legislative branch of government should just reject the duly elected head of the executive

branch of the government. that makes no sense to me. i think what people want to see happen in government is people work together to solve problems. people work together to iron out their differences, to make good on making a difference in people's lives and fix this country's problem, that is what i believe i was elected to do and i'm doing. what came through to me and michael gerson wrote is he doesn't sense you're standing up to this president on things that michael gerson thought you believed in. >> i'm not going to comment on the tweet of the hour, the comment of the day. i'm focused on getting an agenda done and making congress work and making good on our promises that we made when we ran that i'm trying to implement now that the election is over. so i'm just not going to spend my days focusing on things that are outside of my control as speaker of the house. i'm going to focus on my days on making progress on the issues that cared to people and not on the random comment of the day. >> in connection with that, your great mentor was the late new york congressman jack kemp,

described himself as a big-tent republican. a lot of people look at donald trump, they don't see a big-tent republican. how do you reconcile? >> yeah, well, i think he is. he's a different kind of big-tent republican. i am nor of the jack kemp aspiration inclusive. i believe in his floss anify and style of politics. but donald trump brought a whole bunch of blue collar -- he won wisconsin since the first time since 1984. that's expanding the republican tent. he won michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin, that's expanding the republican tent. we used to call them reagan democrats. now they're trump democrats. these are people i grew up with, went to high school, worked at the g.m. plant that's gone in jasonville, blue-collar, union household that voted for a republican for president. that's expanding the tent, i would say. >> woodruff: finally, the only thing i am told paul ryan of wisconsin might like as much as tax cuts and the republican

party is the packers. so after the sunday super bowl, do you now acknowledge -- >> this is the hardest question. >> woodruff: -- tom brady, best n.f.l. quarterback ever? >> look, the lombardi trophy is what you get. i will concede bill belichick is the best coach ever. ask me when the two of them are done with their careers. >> woodruff: you're not ready tto concede that? >> no, because neither are done with their careers, but i will concede belichick. >> woodruff: speaker of the house paul ryan, thank you. >> thank you, judy. >> cornish: moving over to the senate, where the debate over the nomination of jeff sessions ran deep into the night. and partisan tensions spilled over. lisa desjardins starts us off. >> reporter: she was midway

through her speech opposing attorney general nominee jeff sessions... >> coretta scott king also wrote to the judiciary committee about the session nomination in 1986. >> reporter: when massachusetts senator elizabeth warren turned to a decades-old letter by the widow of martin luther king jr., opposing session's nomination to a judgeship. mrs. king called his record on race at that point, "reprehensible." warren read out loud: >> mr. sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge. this simply cannot be allowed to happen. >> reporter: warren was interrupted multiple times... >> is there objection? >> reporter: --told she'd broken a rule.

>> is there objection? >> i object. >> objection is heard. the senator will take her seat. >> reporter: the rarely-invoked rule bans senators from criticizing one another directly in the chamber. republican leader mitch mcconnell: >> the senator has impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from alabama. >> reporter: this led to an unusual vote over whether to silence warren-- she lost, and now cannot speak again during sessions' confirmation debate. senator mcconnell later told reporters: >> she was warned. she was given an explanation. nevertheless, she persisted. this was the latest in growing rancor here. the rare vote to silence a sitting senator came as democrats have forced two overnight debates in a row. it is their protest of sessions, now-education secretary betsy devos and other trump nominees, and those overnights may continue into the weekend.

president trump weighed in on it all last night, on twitter. he tweeted: "it is a disgrace that my full cabinet is still not in place." trump's critics point out, several of his nominees did not complete their paperwork quickly. labor nominee andrew puzder submitted his final ethics documents to a committee today. for the pbs newshour, i'm lisa desjardins. >> cornish: i spoke with senator elizabeth warren a short time ago to get her take on this 11th-hour drama in the senate. i began by asking if she believed jeff sessions would use his power as attorney general to work against minority voters. what i know is what jeff sessions has actually done, and i think it is an important part of the record. i was shut down for saying exactly that sentence, repeating it out of coretta scott king's letter. but i urge everybody, read the whole letter because what it talks about is, when jeff sessions was u.s. attorney for alabama, he prosecuted civil rights workers for doing what?

for trying to help elderly african-americans vote, and when he came up, then, for a federal judgeship, both senator ted kennedy and coretta scott king said no, and coretta scott king sent a letter to the united states senate which was republican-controlled, and ultimately that republican-controlled senate said no to his nomination to the federal bench. i assume at least part of the reason for that was the information contained in coretta scott king's letter. >> cornish: but the republican-led senate is planning to say yes, right? this is the discussion you're locked out of. what aspect of the attorney general's power do you think jeff sessions could use against the voters? what are you most concerned about? >> i'm -- i'm concerned about every part of it. the attorney general as the ultimate law enforcement official in the united states is the one who decides whether or

not you prosecute violations of the voting rights act. he is the one who ultimately will have the one on how our immigration laws are carried out. he's the one who will make the decision whether or not the justice department is there for african-americans, whether it's there for latinos, whether it's there for women, whether it's there for people whose rights are being violated, or whether it's a justice department who just stands on the side of the rich and the powerful. >> cornish: recently speaking before progressive activists in baltimore, you said that democrats who are focused on just kind of changing the party message need to grow a backbone. what do you mean by that and are you seeing them grow that backbone now? >> look, i think we have to get out and fight for what we believe in. i get it. we don't have the tools in the senate to be able to stop the nomination of jeff sessions to be the attorney general unless we can get some help from the

republicans. we don't have the tools to be able to stop someone like betsy devos who does not believe in public education to become the secretary of education, and i could continue to go through the list. so what we've got to do is we've got to get in there and make our case, we've got to make our case for the fact that -- you know, i get it that donald trump and i are not of the same party, we don't see the world the same way, but he is not nominating people who are just conservative republicans, he's going out to the way fringes. he's bringing in someone to run the e.p.a. who doesn't believe in climate change, someone to run the treasury department to made money by foreclosing against families who had been cheated on mortgages. we've got to make our case and, ultimately, this one's going to be about democracy, getting enough people around this country to say, i'm watching, i care what happens in washington,

and i'm going to be pushing back on any of my senators, representatives and on the president of the united states if they do not represent the values of the people of this country. >> cornish: what do you think the next step should be? there are going to be votes on tom price to be health and human services secretary, steve me mnuchen as press secretary. >> part of it is why i wanted everyone to read coretta scott king's letter. it's a deeply moving letter. it lays out the facts about jeff sessions, but it also reminds us of a moment in history when people came together and said, i don't care how many times you knock us down, we're going to get back up and we're going to fight for what is right, we're going to change this wasn't country into a better country, a country that works not just for

those at the top, a country that works for all of us. i think that's what we have to do now. that's what we're called on to do, to use every possible tool that we can to do that, and that means, for example, with jeff sessions. right now, i hope everyone will go read her letter. i put it on my facebook, i tweeted about it. but i hope that, even if the republicans lock arms and go ahead and confirm him as attorney general of the united states, that everybody stays involved, that we are there every day to look over his shoulder, to look at every judgment made by the department of justice and make sure that this government works, not just for those woof already made it bush wh -- notjust for those wht but this government works for everybody. >> cornish: thank you for speaking with us. >> thank you.

>> woodruff: stay with us. coming up on the newshour: a massive crack in an ice shelf forces antarctic researchers to evacuate. but first, the emerging field of immunotherapy, and its potential to help fight cancer in some patients. hari sreenivasan has a conversation about its promise and limits, in a minute. we begin with the story of a cancer patient who was told at one point that she only had six months to live. she has now lived several years beyond that, thanks to her novel treatment. those kind of treatments are the focus of our weekly segment, "the leading edge." >> my name is melinda welsh. i'm a writer, and was editor of the "sacramento news and review" for around 25 years, and when i was diagnosed with cancer, it

just came naturally, i suppose, to write about it. i was shocked to hear. i felt stunned. it is squamous cell carcinoma. after we learned that the cancer had metastasized, we went to see some specialists. i asked each of them how much time i had left, and that's when they told me, you know, six to nine months, months to a year, a year-ish. you know, i started writing again, and i felt i had something to say that might mean something to other people. the enormity of the news didn't sink in fully, not at first, even after my doctor uttered the words, "i'm sorry, we did find cancer." i have turned my attention to the question, how do i best spend the time that i have left? my answer is writing, family and friends, the pleasures of small things. i was told, don't skip dessert, so we don't. we've taken to getting up a few

early mornings and driving out to see the sunrise, over the flatlands of our mostly rural county. i take solace in thinking that once gone i will occupy a small place in the hearts of the people who loved me most, and perhaps from there i will be the source of a few simple reminders: time is limited, life is miraculous, and we are beautiful. i always loved my life, i felt very lucky for so many reasons in my career, and my meeting up with dave, love of my life and best friend, so having cancer, it just made me want my life, but more so. after that first piece was published, we had a breakthrough. i started immunotherapy and dr. algazi, who is my oncologist, surprises us by showing up in the infusion room. and he says, "i just talked to

the radiologist, the neck tumor has vanished." >> my name is alain algazi, i'm an oncologist. i specialize in head and neck cancer, and melanoma. i work at the university of california, san francisco. melinda presented with squamous cell cancer in a lymph node. it was metastatic, but she was diagnosed at a time where we had access to several new drugs that and those drugs turn the immune cells back on, that are in the tumor, and allow them to fight more effectively against the cancer. so basically, we caused the tumors to regress and go away. >> i think it actually took a day or two to fully sink in that my calendar had expanded. instead of the coming demise that we expected, i was feeling fine. and the cancer was retreating. so, on the anniversary of all the doctors giving me a year to

live, i wrote part two. in the weeks that followed my public coming out about the grim news, a benevolent tidal wave of emails washed over me, from friends, coworkers and thousands of strangers. now, when i run into friends on the streets of my hometown, they hug me, and tell me i look great, but i can see it in their eyes, what they really want to say is, "aren't you dead yet?" well, no. as it turns out, i became a terminal cancer patient at a time of sea change and research on the disease. what changed? immunotherapy. a new set of medicines that helps patients like me use our bodies natural defenses to fight cancer. >> basically there are brake pedals on immune cells, so when you turn off the brake pedal, you allow the immune system to function, you allow it to fight. but i think the cancer is always there, and it's a battle between the immune system and the cancer. >> nobody knows how long the good news will last for me, or other cancer patients who are responding to immunotherapy.

like me, they probably feel a miraculous gift, unanticipated time of unknown duration, has been dropped into their laps. >> it's like working for nasa in the 1960s. you know, can you imagine? that sense of discovery, that sense that you're changing the world, or at least there while the world is changing, and you're able to really help. >> unfortunately, many people have cancers that there's no immunotherapy for, they can't get access to trials, or the drugs are very expensive. also, a lot of people who do qualify for immunotherapy simply don't respond. >> melinda, in a sense, is an example of both the potential and the limitation. it's gotten cancers to get smaller, tumors go away completely, but, the cancer didn't go away. a few years ago, she would not survive. now, she might survive. we don't know what's going to happen for certain, but there's this enormous potential.

>> we don't want to hope for too much. we don't want to go into denial that i've got this deadly disease that's trying to kill me. i do. but, i'm making milestones that i didn't think i would make. i didn't think i'd be alive to reach my 60th birthday. i didn't think i would make it to my 35th wedding anniversary, which is coming up in april, which i assume i'll be here for. i want to live fully in the present, at the same time, just a little bit of future is awfully wonderful mixed in with that. >> people come to me, and they have low expectations. people think, "i'm going to die." and my thought is, it doesn't have to be that way. we have, now, ways of keeping people well, not just for a few months, but for potentially years. so this is a time of hope. >> i am still coming to terms as best i can with my own unequivocal transience. but no, i'm not dead yet! when people are surprised to see me, i tell them, i am among the early fortunate. facing death has heightened my awareness that our time on earth

is finite but quite unexpectedly, it has also made me a living, breathing advertisement for humanity's hopeful new edge on cancer. >> sreenivasan: let's get a broader look at what these treatments may offer, and their limits. jeffrey bluestone is a leading researcher in this field. he is the president and c.e.o. of the parker institute for cancer immunotherapy. he's also a professor of metabolism and endocrinology at the university of california, san francisco school of medicine; and matt richtel is a science writer who has covered this extensively for "the new york times." i want to start with you before all our viewers start to call their oncologist ifs they're facing this. this is still not at the phase where we're seeing it effective in lung cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer and the major cancers so many people face? >> actually, we've made a tremendous amount of progress, for instance, in lung wants cancer. these so-called immune drugs,

checkpoint inhibiters are treating a lot of non-small cell lung cancers with great success and 30 to 40 to 50% response rate as in melanoma and head and neck cancers. a lot of cancers we have a long way to go but in some you mentioned we've made tremendous progress. >> sreenivasan: great to hear. matt richtel, you've chronicled people who have had cancers and had immunotherapy work and some who haven't. what are shortcomings and limitations? >> first of all, that was a marvelous piece that captured how remarkable this science is on the very edge of life and death and you've asked a great question and the answer is the very thing that makes this therapy so potentially powerful or powerful also causes some challenges and that is this, when you soup up or unleash the immune system, you have an opportunity to have it attack healthy organs, healthy cells.

so sometimes you see very challenging stories where a cancer -- a tomb already disa-- a tumor will disappear but the person will become sick with the equivalent of an auto immune disorder and we have with dr. bluestone an amazing authority to elaborate on that. >> sreenivasan: go ahead. absolutely true. the immune system is an incredibly powerful force. it's designed to recognize everything foreign. in the process of doing that, when you unleash it the way these new drugs so, you can often, not often, rare compared to the response rate get the auto immune diseases. we've had several cases of patients who developed type one diabetes, causing destruction of the insulin-producing cells, and trying to understand how to control these side effects is one of the key areas for the parker institute, uscf as well.

so the goal is to have the unleashing of the immune system which is key to eliminating the cancer while moderating this unwanted attack on your own tissues. >> sreenivasan: matt richtel, the all different scientists you've spoken to, where are we in this arc? some of the people who have been profiled in your story says this is almost like where n.a.s.a. engineers were in the '60s. >> i love that comparison and i've heard various ones along the same lines. i can't tell you how wide the breadth of potential is. it's somewhere on the continuum from, you know, marvel of science to change the world. here's what i mean, and then i'll answer your question directly. absolutely, we are seeing at least a marvel of science in that people who were not previously savable from cancer are being saved. that alone is marvelous. on the change-the-world end of the continuum, we're certainly not there yet, but the potential

exists to attack one of the biggest killers in the world. we've done away with a lot of the low-hanging fruit of what kills us with things like antibiotics, so now cancer which many people never survived to get is the second-leading killer in this country. it could change the world if this hangs on. why are we just still at the beginnings of that? because as dr. bluestone underscored and as lots of scientists have told me at this point, we can't yet tell if more people will either suffer side effects or relapse ultimately than we know of now, and it's so early on that we can't answer that question and probably won't be able to for a decade or so. >> sreenivasan: jeffrey bluestone, is that about the right timeline? there are still hurdle also we heard of in the piece that the drugs are still expensive, still lots of non-responsive patients and, as you mentioned, how do you calibrate the immune system

per patient so that it doesn't go overboard and attack what we need to survive? >> yeah, we're certainly at absolutely the change inflection point. the world changed for cancer therapy with immunotherapy. it's hard to even explain how different this approach is, instead of using poisons to kill cancer or to wipe out the cancer cell, we're actually using our own body to do this. so in this kind of transformational science, we have to know how to modernize the way to maximize effect cay si and minimize tock sissy. i think in the next ten years we'll see a dramatic survival rate in patients. in melanoma from 5% to 40% survival, we've seen it in

certain lung cancers. we're right at the beginning but we're already seeing a dramatic change in a lot of these patients and i believe this new science and it truly is bringing together the science of the immune system and immunology and science of cancer in ways we could never believe we would be at at this point. i'm optimistic, excited. every day i go to work, i can't believe we're in this world we live in now. >> could i just underscore something dr. bluestone said, you mentioned patients. when dr. bluestone says treatments have changed. let me tell you a quick anecdote that underscores how much. a friend of mine jason went through the traditional chemotherapy over years and it ate him alive as chemotherapy can do because you're giving someone toxins. over the course of literally weeks when he took an immunotherapy drug, you could watch what was like a

pumpkin-sized tumor in his back disappear by the day in picture after picture, and, so, that's the kind of quantum leap. now, ultimately, my friend succumbed. but that's the kind of quantal change dr. bluestone is describing. >> sreenivasan: matt richtel, jeffrey bluestone of the parker institute for cancer immunotherapy, thank you so much. >> thank you. >> cornish: now to our "newshour shares:" something that caught our eye, that might be of interest to you, too. for more than 60 years, british researchers have monitored changes in the world's atmosphere from a remote lab in antarctica. now, for the first time ever, the facility will temporarily close to ensure the safety of its residents. the newshour's julia griffin explains. >> reporter: at the bottom of our planet, on top of more than

400 feet of ice, sits a state- of-the-art research station, called halley six. >> it's an extraordinary place to be. sitting in what feels like a large ship on the ice, looking out across the vast expanse of essentially nothingness. >> reporter: david vaughan is director of science for british antarctic survey, which runs halley six. >> the science that we do at halley isn't just about pitting yourself against that extreme environment. it's actually about making measurements that inform how we interact with our planet, about the risk of severe space weather storms that might knock out our satellite gps systems, about it's about looking at the emissions of carbon dioxide and methane at the last place on earth that see those emissions. >> reporter: to do that, halley six is a feat of engineering in one of the most extreme environments.

its eight interlocking pods shield up to 70 researchers and support staff from freezing. special hydraulic legs lift the pods as snow accumulates, and when the time comes, the pods can be towed on their ski-like feet. >> the reason to be able to move halley station is because the ice sheet itself moves. so if we're going to maintain a certain geographical position, we have to move the station across the ice. >> reporter: another reason to be able to move? should that ice shelf threaten to become an iceberg. this summer-- yes, it's summer in the southern hemisphere-- halley six was already being towed 15 miles inland to avoid this decades-old chasm-- when a new, nearly 30-mile long crack opened suddenly on its other side. >> the crack that you are seeing goes all the way down to the ocean. and if you can look deep enough in there, you would see sea water in there. really, it is the interaction between these two cracks and then how this ice shelf would respond as a whole, that we

actually find very unpredictable. >> reporter: the agency has decided to vacate the station altogether before winter. >> in the summer, we have the opportunity to remove people relatively rapidly from the station, but during the winter when it is cold and dark and stormy for many months at a time, that's the point at which we would find it quite hard to get people out. >> reporter: while other ice shelves on the antarctic peninsula have been impacted by climate change, vaughan thinks this may be part of a natural cycle. >> maybe the ice shelf will go back to a new equilibrium in time, but at the moment, we just can't predict with any certainty how long that will take. >> reporter: this marks the first time scientists will be removed from a halley station. british antarctic survey hopes they will return next november. for the pbs newshour, i'm julia griffin-- slightly warmer in arlington, virginia.

>> woodruff: on the newshour online right now, our job hunting columnist weighs in on why you should always try to make a personal contact with a hiring manager. all that and more is on our website, www.pbs.org/newshour. >> cornish: and that's the newshour for tonight. on thursday, making sense of how the trump presidency is affecting the trump brand. i'm audie cornish. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. join us online, and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you, and we'll see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> bnsf railway. >> xq institute. >> supported by the rockefeller foundation. promoting the wellbeing of humanity around the world, by building resilience and inclusive economies. more at www.rockefellerfoundation.org.

>> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and individuals. >> 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 >> you're watching pbs.

tonight on "quest" -- all living beings share a common ancestry. today, this is a basic idea. but when charles darwin published it, he transformed the biological sciences forever. in celebration of darwin's 200th birthday, "quest" follows california academy of sciences beetle expert david kavanaugh. can darwin's principles on evolution, coupled with modern dna analysis, help him prove the existence of a new california species?