captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> yang: good evening, i'm john yang. on the newshour tonight, president trump welcomes egyptian president abdul fattah el-sisi to the white house as the administration signals new u.s. priorities. also ahead this monday, as the trump family's role expands in the white house, a look at ivanka trump and jared kushner's places in the new administration. >> the bush white house-the obama white house, were stocked with experienced people who had careers as public servants. now, the trumps came in with the promise to change that paradigm. >> yang: and, combating india's trash problem: how one company is trying to reduce the huge landfills that are wreaking havoc on india's most populous cities. 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. >> our tradition has been to take care of mother earth, because it's that that gives us water, gives us life. the land is here for everyone.

>> and the william and flora hewlett foundation, helping people build immeasurably better lives. >> supported by the rockefeller foundation. promoting the well-being of humanity around the world by building resilience and inclusive economies. more at 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.

>> yang: good evening. judy woodruff is on assignment tonight. the stage is now set for what's likely to be a bitter showdown on the senate floor-- over supreme court nominee neil gorsuch. he cleared the judiciary committee today, but it came as democrats secured 41 votes against him. that means republicans can't get the 60 needed to break a filibuster. republican lindsey graham warned his side will change senate rules to allow confirmation with a simple majority. >> senate traditions are going to change over this man, based on the times in which we live. i find it ironic and sad we're going to change rules over somebody who's lived such a good life, who's been such a good judge for such a long time. >> yang: democrats, like patrick leahy, said gorsuch is pro- corporation and too conservative. >> i cannot vote solely to

protect an institution when the rights of hardworking americans are at risk. because i fear the senate i would be defending no longer exists. i must first and foremost vote my conscience today and later this week. >> yang: republican leaders say a confirmation vote will come by friday. president trump welcomed his egyptian counterpart, abdel fattah el-sisi, to the white house today. the obama administration had kept el-sisi at arm's length over human rights abuses. today, mr. trump hailed the egyptian leader, and the two men talked about fighting terrorism and helping egypt's faltering economy. we'll have a full report, after the news summary. in st. petersburg, russia, a subway bombing killed at least 11 people and injured dozens of others. a second bomb was defused nearby. investigators treated it as a terrorist attack, possibly linked to islamist militants.

amateur video captured the scene moments after the blast, with people rushing to safety. witnesses told of chaos and shock. >> ( translated ): when we were climbing out, the train carriage collapsed, all of it. everything went black. when i turned back and looked there was a huge number of people lying there, there were dead bodies. it was scary. and when we left they took out several people covered in blood. >> yang: russian president vladimir putin was in st. petersburg at the time, and laid flowers at the scene of the blast. in washington, president trump called the bombing an "absolutely terrible thing." in colombia, the death toll from a devastating flood and mudslide has risen to 262. it happened late friday in the southern city of mocoa, after more than five inches of rain fell in one night. workers are using heavy machinery to clear the thick mud and debris, so rescue crews can search for victims. officials say deforestation helped cause the disaster.

back in this country, a new wave of severe weather threatened the deep south, from mississippi to south carolina. the same system generated tornadoes and torrential rains in louisiana and mississippi on sunday and killed at least four people. in augusta, georgia, storms forced the suspension of a practice round for the masters golf tournament. facebook, mozilla and others have announced a $14 million initiative to fight fake news. it follows allegations of rampant russian disinformation during last year's campaign. judy woodruff spoke today with facebook c.o.o. sheryl sandberg. >> woodruff: how concerned are you about the russian use of facebook and other social media >> there are investigations of what happened in the u.s.

elections that i think will be going on for a long time. false news is a problem across the board and it comes from all different sources and is bad for everyone. >> woodruff: is it fair to say facebook underestimated the ability of a foreign government to do something like this? >> we nosing accurate news on facebook is really important to people on all sides, no matter who you are, seeing the accurate story and seeing the diversity of opinions is really important. we know we have a responsibility, along with news rooms and classrooms and academic and other companies, to make sure people see accurate news so we're working on a lot of different levels. >> woodruff: is it fair to say facebook was caught offguard about the magnitude of this? >> as we've grown, so much has changed in the world. so much has changed about the way people share with their friends, so much has changed about the way people share with their families and the way people share articles and the kind of articles people are

writing has changed, and it's up to us to work with everyone involved so that we can make sure people see accurate news on facebook because that's what they want and that's what we want. >> woodruff: when you say you're moving to disrupt the financial incentive, how are you doing that? >> a lot of false news is financially motivated. people are trying to make money off this, and, so, we are making sure that people who are doing false news can't participate in our advertising network so they can't get money from our ads when doing this and we want to make sure people who cause fake news can't advertise and get more traffic. >> yang: facebook's initiative on fake news will be based out of the city university of new york. president trump is donating his first quarter's salary to the national park service. a check for $78,333 was presented at today's white house briefing. it came as the president's budget calls for cutting overall interior department spending by more than $1.5 billion.

on wall street today, the dow jones industrial average lost 13 points to close at 20,650. the nasdaq fell 17 points, and the s&p 500 dipped nearly four. and, the university of south carolina is celebrating today, after winning its first-ever national championship in women's basketball. they beat mississippi state, 67 to 55. south carolina took home the title, despite mississippi state's stunning upset over the university of connecticut, snapping the huskies's streak of 111 wins-- a record for men or women-- and four straight national titles. still to come on the newshour: a sign of changing relations-- president trump meets with the head of egypt. who are the kushners, the first family turned presidential advisers? our politics monday duo looks ahead to the upcoming battle over supreme court nominee neil gorsuch, and much more.

>> yang: president trump gave a ringing endorsement to the president of egypt today. chief foreign affairs correspondent margaret warner begins our coverage. >> warner: in a sharp departure from his predecessor, president trump today did what president obama never would-- welcome egypt's president abdel fattah el-sisi to the white house. >> you have a great friend and ally in the united states and in me. >> warner: mr. trump made it clear he's rebooting the u.s.- egypt relationship, to focus on fighting terrorism. >> i just want to let everybody know in case there was any doubt, that we are very much behind president el-sisi. he's done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation. we are very much behind egypt and the people of egypt and the

>> warner: the egyptian leader, facing an islamist insurgency in sinai, welcomed the president's words. >> ( translated ): since we met last september, i've had a deep appreciation and admiration of your unique personality, especially as you're standing very strong in the counter terrorism field. your excellency, very strongly and very openly, you will find egypt and myself always beside you in this, in bringing about >> warner: then-commanding general el-sisi first became president in 2013, when he ousted elected president mohammed morsi after mass protests against morsi's rule. a harsh crackdown ensued on the now-banned muslim brotherhood, opposition figures, journalists and others, leaving more than a thousand dead. tens of thousands, including some americans, were imprisoned,

and many n.g.o.'s have been banned. el-sisi won his own election in 2014. but president obama shunned him, freezing military aid to egypt for two years. today, mr. trump made no public mention of human rights today, noting only that there are "a few things" washington and cairo don't agree on. and, in a break with mr. trump's track record so far, they did not hold a joint news conference, precluding any unwelcome questions on the subject. later, white house press secretary sean spicer would not say whether human rights came up during the private discussions. >> that's best discussed privately in terms of how we address areas that need to be discussed like that in order to make progress on them. i don't think that should be a huge surprise. >> warner: egypt current receives $1.3 billion in annual u.s. military assistance. it's unclear if that will survive the white house call for

deep cuts in foreign aid. for the pbs newshour, i'm margaret warner. >> yang: so how much of a foreign policy shift does today's meeting represent? for that we turn to michele dunne. she has had a 17 year career at the state department where she focused on the middle east. she's now director of the middle east program at the carnegie endowment for international peace. michele, thank you so much for joining us. by deemphasizing human rights and trying to, as the administration officials are saying, reboot this relationship, what is president trump trying to accomplish from this? >> well, i think what president trump wants is to construct kind of an alliance of sunni arab leaders because sisi is one of several. the prime minister -- after presidenciesy will be the king of jordan.

so i think president trump has the idea of rallying sunni arab leaders to be used in various ways whether against i.s.i.s., iran, possibly in some sort of peace effort toward israel. so i think that's how he sees egypt fitting in. >> yang: is he trying to defamily size the public comments and rhetoric on human rights to focus on this fight on i.s.i.s.? >> well, yes, clearly, that's the case, but i want to point out, john, that's really new, when i think back to the beginning of president obama's presidency when mubarak was still in power in egypt, obama did something very similar. obama thought georg george w. bd been too critical on mubarak, on human rights and that he wrecked the relationship. so obama reset the button with mubarak at that time. it's not unusual for a new president to do this. what i think president trump will figure out in time is that the situation inside egypt, hiewrtle abuses at a higher

level, much higher than under mubarak, political pressure and a disastrous economic situation, always of these will affect what kind of ally egypt can be to the united states and what kind of things we can do together against these regional problems such as terrorism. >> yang: last weak, administration officials in preparation pore this visit were telling us they felt it was better to talk about human rights questions privately and discreetly. they said that was the way they felt they could get the best chances for success. what do you think about that? >> well, we'll see. i'll say it's been tried before and that the two previous administrations did try raising things privately and eventually, out of frustration, went a little bit more public and even, in both of the last administrations, they ended up withdrawing, withholding or suspending certain kinds of aid specifically out of concerns about human rights issues because they saw, at the end of

the day, that wasn't separate from the stability of egypt or egypt's role in the region, that it was tied together. >> yang: senators lindsey graham and john mccain talked about reasteriskstrictions on aid to egypt because of human rights. do you think congress will step in and maybe tie the president's hands a bit? >> well, yes, absolutely. congress has a lot to say, particularly when it comes to assistance, and some of the senators you mentioned an others have already sent a signal. they put out a resolution shortly before si si's visit and some of them have made press statements about there's a big crackdown on n.g.o.s in egypt and so forth, but they indicated they will continue to seek conditions on aid and possibly even a cuttle of aid. by the way, swron, i felt one of the most interesting things that happened today during this visit was an unnamed administration officials told a news service that presidency si, you know,

has come seeking an increase in aid and he's going to be disappointed. >> yang: what is president el-sisi looking for out of this relationship? >> president el-sisi faces a difficult situation. inside of egypt, he's much less popular than he was. people are starting to talk about whether even the military leadership is pleased with him, whether they'll want him to run for president again next year when his term ends. i think he's looking to show the egyptians and the egyptian military that he can keep the relationship with the united states solid, he can keep the aid coming in. but as we saw from the trump budget, they're considering cutting a lot of this aid or converting it to loans instead of grants, so that wouldn't serve is i is i's purpose at all, and the trump administration is putting out hints it may be going in that correction. >> yang: michele dunne, thank you for coming in and talking with us about this. >> thanks, john, it was a

pleasure. >> yang: thanks. >> yang: jared kushner, president trump's senior advisor and son-in-law, was in iraq today. invited by joint chiefs chairman general joseph dunford, the trip marks kushner's first visit. joined by tom bossert, the president's homeland security advisor, the trio met with iraqi and american officials to assess the fight against isis. the trip highlights the expanding west wing role of both kushner and his wife, ivanka trump. the trump white house is a family affair. senior advisor and son-in-law jared kushner emerged as a key west wing figure. this week his ever expanding role is on display. he's a key plarcher of president trump's upcoming summit with president xi jinping. his wife ivanka trump is now an official member to have the white house staff and assistant

to the president. white house officials say she'll focus on issues like women's economic empowerment and getting more women into science and technology. earlier she said she would pass up an official role. >> people think you're going to be part of the administration, ivanka. >> no, i'm going to be a daughter, but i've said throughout the campaign that i am very passionate about certain issues and that i want to fight for them so there are a lot of things i feel deeply strong about but not in a formal administrative capacity. >> reporter: married in 2009 the couple were key members to have the campaign's inner circle. >> jarrejared is a very successl real estate person but i think he likes politics more than real estate, i'm excited, and he's very good at politics. >> reporter: their increased visibility comes as the administration has run into significant hurdles. >> the reason why i can think are starting to increase their footprint in the west wing and east wing is simple, everything

so going wrong and there are a lot of power vacuums. the question is what do these new yorkers bring to the table? both ivanka and jared are not people who have had a lot of experience, they don't have a lot of passion for public policy, they just don't have a history of that. >> reporter: ethics watchdogs say their unpaid government service may be filled with conflicts. newly released financial disclosure forms show ivanka trump has a stake in the hotel in washington, d.c. of as much as $25 million. the couple still benefits from their $740 million real estate and investment business. her jewelry and clothing lines are currently held in trust. in a statement ivanka trump said i have been working closely and if good faith with the white house and my personal council to address the unprecedented nature of my role. former associates say kushner would be a secret weapon for plump. >> one of his greatest strengths

is how much people underestimate him. not only is he young, soft spoken, polite and very good looking, but he also carries himself in a way that sort of allows people to think they're going to potentially get something over on him, and then the next thing they know, he's done just fine for himself and his stakeholders. >> reporter: even before last week's announcement, ivanka trump was granted a high-4r *e68 security clearance and had a seat at the table with world leaders. the couple and their three children live in a presented $5.5 million d.c. mansion where their neighborhoods include former president barack obama and secretary of state rex tillerson. like his father in law, 36-year-old kushner was born into a real estate family and took the business into manhattan. he took over his family's company after his father was jailed for tax evasion and other offenses. he graduated from harvard and got a joint law and business degree from new york university. he also owned a new york

observer. when he joined the administration, he resigned from all professional roles and announced he would sell the paper to a family trust. like her father, ivanka trump, 35, graduated from the university of pennsylvania's school of business. after a brief stint as a model she joined the trump organization becoming an executive vice president. this is their first forreinto public service. >> the trumps came in with a promise to change the par time diem and make the white house function more along the lines of a business but these are not enormously successful business people. >> reporter: as their profiles and influence rise, so to reports of tensions with chief strategist steve bannon and some of the populist conservatives in the west wing. white house officials deny friction calling kushner the ultimate team player.

outside critics noted ivanka and kushner were on a family ski trip when the president's repair and replace the affordable care act faltered. kushner's also been caught up in investigation of ties twin the trump sickle and russia and agreed to meet with the senate intelligence committee about arranging meetings with russian officials during transition. whether president trump's bet on his family pays off is an open question, given how close to they are -- they are to mr. trump, the white house says they are crucial to the president's success. >> yang: stay with us, coming up on the newshour: solutions to india's growing garbage problem. in search of a fairer america, a selection from the newshour bookshelf. and we visit an irish poet's monthly variety show. but first, for more on jared kushner's role in the white

house, the fight over supreme court nominee neil gorsuch and the week ahead for president trump, it's time for politics monday with amy walter of the "cook political report" and tamara keith of npr. so we just heard a discussion about the role jared kushner and ivanka trump are play manager the west wing. what do you make of the increased role for this very young couple? >> and jared kushner as an amore fuss and growing portfolio. he's liaising with the mexican government, preparing for a visit for president xi from china, off in iraq and supposed to lead this task force s.w.a.t. team to potentially completely reshape the federal government and find deficiencies, that's a lot and it's a unique role, but, you know, unlike other advisors who are jockeying for a position in this white house, it's hard to fire your son-in-law. >> it would be a little awkward.

he probably still could do that. but, you know, every president does get to come in with someone or multiple people who are the closest to them who they trust to only be looking out for them. this is a vicious town, a lot of knives are out, you need someone who always has your back. president obama had valerie jarrett who came from "chicago," was for him and stayed throughout the entire course of his presidency. she didn't have a portfolio quite as big as his but it was pretty diverse. you would see her show up in places that were important to the president, always looking out for the president's interests. the question in my mind is not so much what are they doing but can they do something. are we going to see success or any change or anything come out of this portfolio? that's where i would be spending a lot more time focusing not so much the fact that he went to iraq but is there going to be a change in the way that the administration deals with iraq? is there going to be a way that is going to be different about what happens with china or these

other measures of this portfolio, that is more significant than the fact he's actually sitting there. >> and he was invited by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff which gives an indication the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff might feel this is a good way to get a message to the president, if he can deliver information to a person who has the president's ear, that is a way of getting into that inner circle. >> reporter: and having him go out there, he could have him serve as the president's eyes and ears. >> yes. remember, the joint chief gets to sit with jared kushner the person closest to the president for 16 straight hours. that's a lot of time to lobby. >> yang: so now that neil gorsuch cleared the senate judiciary committee, but we've set the stage for the fight over filibusters, over how many votes it takes to get a supreme court nominee, how ugly will this get? >> this is on the path to the nuclear option. they started open that path when

harry reid and the democrats decided to do the nuclear option for other presidential appointees and judicial nominations up to but not including the supreme court. they said they had to do that because to have the observationn of mitch mcconnell who was then a minority. we are headed here and this is collision course whether he get there over this or another nominee, a collision course set far before 2013, the hollowing out of moderates in congress, the fact there are no longer southern democrats, northeastern republicans, folks willing to cross the party lines, the 60 vote threshold, going easy on that was to build consensus. through there is no reward you get as a politician to crossing party lines to being a bipartisan dealmaker. it brings you two things -- one, a likely primary challenge from

your left or right, and it ensure you have a harder time raising money from the donors who are excited about the polarization and the partisanship. i totally agree we were headed her anyway. if not with gorsuch, in the next few years if we had another supreme court opening, we would have seen that fight there, so i think all bets are off. >> yang: is this going to change in the senate or is this where the senate has been? >> i think this is where the senate has been going. the real change is if we see more and more opportunities for getting rid of the filibuster in traditional legislative business, and it feels as if we're headed there, too. >> that it started to snowball. a lot of institutionalists in the senate. senators who are very sad about this but there is a tiny effort at a nuclear disarmament and it really didn't go anywhere. if you want to know what this can do look at president trump's cabinet picks. this is the first president

post-nuclear option to name his cabinet, and someone like betsy devos simply would not have been confirmed if there had been a filibuster. someone like scott pruitt at the e.p.a. would not have been confirmed. there would not have been 60 votes for those people but the president did not have to find consensus candidates because he knew he only needed 51 vets. >> yang: in the tradition of friday night document dumps we got the financial disclears forms for the trump administration. what did we learn? >> already really wealthy people in this administration. you pointed out the connection of the kushners with the trump properties. but i think for folks who already believe that there is too much of a connection between the trump business and trump administration, those came true in this. but i think at the end of the day for democrats and those who are opposed to donald trump, the

idea that just because you have wealthy people in your administration is going to make people fear those folks will not look out for the interests of non-wealthy people is unmarked. we have to wait and see what their policies will do for people who don't have all this money. if at the end of the day we find the policies trump are putting forward only benefit the wealthiest americans, then that argument will hold water. if they pass middle class tax cuts and do things to help lower-income americans, it will be harder to make that argument. >> and people who wanted to make the argument could point to the health care bill that would have cut taxes to be the wealthy. people would say the president ran for the pop lis what is this health care bill. >> yang: there were a lot of big paychecks in the last administration, one got a free

wedding dress from a reality tv show. yong i don't know if there are any grand policies that you can glean from , this there are nuggets about people whey's chosen to be in the chows. >> this is an administration like no other. what supporters of president trump will say is that the what he ran for and said. he said, i'm a super rich guy. other people ran for president before and they ran away from their wealth and didn't flaunt it. he said i'm a rich guy, i'm going to bring my rich friends and we're going to change the government. >> yang: we'll see how they do. amy walter, tamara keith, thanks joining us for "politics >> yang: now, a look at how the world's second most populous country is trying to deal with pollution. special correspondent fred de sam lazaro looks at how delhi, india is trying to cope with tons of municipal waste in a city of more than 20 million.

fred's report is part of our "breakthrough" series. >> reporter: in india's capital, new housing sprawls as far as the eye can see: a symbol of the world's fastest growing major economy. there also are towering symbols of the environmental cost of all this. just look for the birds. under thousands of hovering vultures are the city's landfills. this is one of three-covering some 70 acres, in a low income area called ghazipur. i'm standing near the top of the ghazipur landfill, now 10 million tons of municipal waste and more than ten stories high, towering over the skyline behind me. all around are trucks that add 2,000 tons of fresh unsorted wastes, every day. >> you can't dump more in that mountain there. >> reporter: mahesh babu heads

an infrastructure company that's ben contracted by delhi's government to tackle a trash problem that he says is a crisis at many levels >> keep in mind delhi is in the seismic zone. >> reporter: so if you have an earthquake you will have that mound sliding down. and even without an earthquake, he says the festering garbage is toxic. methane from the dump explodes daily in dozens of spontaneous fires that spew toxins into the air, while a stew of heavy metals and organic and inorganic pollutants washes into the soil when it rains, and into delhi's main river >> this is the leachate. >> reporter: babu showed me a sample of this so called a leachate. >> what we do is basically treat it so that it removes all the toxic impurities. >> reporter: but of the millions of tons that are not treated yet, this is the stuff that's going into the yamuna river.

the centerpiece of his company's approach is a year-old $60 million power plant that converts waste to energy, which is sent to the electric grid. it is ramping up to burn 2,000 tons of trash per day, which means the city may not need to add to the landfill-- though it won't immediately reduce its size. >> india has close to 50 cities that are more than a million people. so waste energy of this kind makes a lot of sense in those kind of settings. >> reporter: this isn't the first attempt at creating energy from waste and previous ones haven't worked, says delhi based environmental activist sunita narain. >> the key reason for failure has been the inability to sort and segregate the waste which has then been used for incineration. now if you don't sort and segregate adequately you both have very toxic emissions that come out of the plant but you

also have very poor quality of fuel that is generated. >> reporter: ideally that kind of sorting should happen in homes: organics, metals, paper and plastics. but narain says there's a cultural hurdle: waste has been the domain of people on the lowest rung of the age old social hierarchy or caste system, not the middle classes who generate most of it. >> we are a caste-ist society and we would like to treat waste as somebody else's problem. you get it out of your home and then somebody else deals with it. the state is never asking us to segregate. it doesn't put the onus and the responsibility on households. >> reporter: instead, the government pays a higher rate for electricity coming out of the ghazipur plant so workers can be hired to segregate the refuse when it gets here. but once sorted, babu says there's plenty of added value. >> we're looking at converting biodegradables into fertilizer, the combustibles we convert into

so the idea is really to glean as much value as possible like this. >> reporter: in time, he says, there are plans by his company and others to chip away at the landfill and actually reduce its size, re-purposing some of the waste as road construction material, for instance. at the plant, combustible trash is dried and incinerated, babu says the effluent passes through sophisticated filters and scrubbers. >> the particulate matter is less than 10 parts per million which is the standard in europe. because we're located so close to the houses here the goal is to ensure that whatever comes out of our stack is clean and pure. >> reporter: neighbors invited to the power plant say they've already seen an improvement since it became operational-- a massive buffer between their homes and the dumpsite. >> ( translated ): before, you got out of the house and looked at a huge pile of garbage. now we look at this.

>> ( translated ): it really was unbearable during the rainy season. it was so smelly and dirty. now we can even have the door open and sit outside. >> reporter: but for another nearby community the power plant represents a threat. hundreds of so-called rag pickers forage for plastics, glass and any reusable items they can sell, risking their health and the wrath of authorities to eke out a livelihood. they're not legally supposed to be here. for them, the company has set up a pre-school and an arts and craft center. the petals of discarded flowers from a nearby florist are used to create greeting cards and other artwork. mahesh babu hopes more rag pickers will choose the new alternative, he says helping these marginalized people is in his company's interest. >> we believe that unless they are mainstreamed, the profitability of the main project is always under a cloud. everywhere possible we have tried to integrate people into the mainstream project itself so they have a sense of ownership.

otherwise we are a thriving democracy so we have a number of people who will try to bring the project to a halt but if they are part of the project the chances of success increase exponentially. >> reporter: in the long term, he and environmentalist narain agree that projects like this will have to succeed and that will require a broad cultural shift. the country has no more room to bury its trash, babu says, and runs of risk of being buried by it. for the pbs newshour, this is fred de sam lazaro in new delhi. >> yang: fred's reporting is a partnership with the undertold stories project at the university of st thomas, in minnesota. >> yang: now, a new book by the one-time manager of john f, kennedy's 1960 campaign in west virginia, a founder of the peace corps and the editor of the storied "washington monthly"

charles peters takes on modern america in "we do our part: toward a fairer and more equal america." here again is judy woodruff, who sat down with peters recently and asked him why this book and why now? >> i was terribly concerned about the things that had taken us apart from a country that was relatively together during the time i was growing up, the franklin roosevelt era, i would say, lasted roughly until 1965. not only were incomes becoming more equal, but the country was becoming more equal in the sense that blacks were achieving legal rights that they had never known, and our jewish prejudice was radically diminished by the mid '60s and our catholic prejudice almost disappeared. so it was a country that seemed to be coming together and then

just a few years later the vietnam war began to split us apart. >> woodruff: you launched a magazine in the late 1960s you said because you wanted to look at what the federal government was doing right, wrong and how it could do better, but you soon expanded that to look at the whole country. >> we felt we had to get into those broader cultural issues, but the main thing that happened was the jobbery that began with the anti-war movement. that was, i think, one of two bad things that happened to divide the country. the other was the growth of greed and the conspicuous consumption that fueled the greed. >> woodruff: snobbery. yeah. >> woodruff: not a word that's thrown out a lot. what did you mean by what happened? >> in the anti-war movement, there was a feeling that the

people who were against the war were morally superior to those who were for the war. well, i was against the war, but i understood there were an awful lot of good people who believed in the war. that's when i began to worry about what was going wrong with the anti-or war movement even though i was part of the anti-war movement. >> woodruff: you point out a number of ways the country has gone downhill and you cite the greed you say crop up among people in washington who came here to do public service, but then that changed. >> even though it contained that element of snobbery, that was a beautiful element of idealism in the idea of the anti-war movement but that gradually changed in the '70s. i think part of it was simply these people were getting older. the vw beetle was no longer the adequate car. they had to get the station wagon, then the house.

but then they had the house, and it had to be a larger house, and it had to have a workout room, a home office, walk-in closets and state of the art bathroom and kitchen and suddenly people were into thinking they needed a lot of money, and then they forgot about the wages paid to the worker. they became concerned with increasing their dividends, meaning increasing profits, and when they read about a plant closing, well, that might increase profit, you know, and we've got to watch those wages because wages take away from profit. >> woodruff: you see rung through this -- running through this entire book, charlie peters, a cautionary tale especially for democrats who argue they are the party to have the working people, that they are the party of equal rights, equal access, of tolerance, but you're saying something was eating away at that from the

inside. >> yes. yes, the shame of that is, in many ways, the democrats were becoming more inclusive, more generous, they were including the causes of gays, they were including the cause of immigrants, and, so, they're far nor generous towards those people than the republicans in general. so there was much that was going on that was in the best of the democrats, but this failure on wages, the failure to concern themselves with the interest of the worker, this is where the liberals failed. >> woodruff: much of the theme of the book, it seems to me, is how the democratic party has let you down, that you thought there was -- that the party could do better than it's done. >> it's let the country down in that respect, but i am still a democrat, proud to be a

democrat. i, on the whole, on the right side, but in these two ways of getting too involved with making money ourselves, too involved in thinking we're a little bit better than the other guy. when they were environmentalists, they didn't think whose jobs will this cost? if they voted for a certain trade policy, they didn't think who is this going to cost and what can i do to help the people this will hurt? >> woodruff: it's an indictment of hillary clinton. >> unfortunately, yes. the key symbolic thing that will happen now is what barack obama decides to do with the rest of his life. if he decides to just concern himself with getting rich, it will be terrible. we need a symbolic leader to say, stop, i want to get off the greed and conspicuous consumption that are sinking this country. >> woodruff: you're 90. the book is a story of the last

half century or more in washington and this country. we do our part toward a more fair and equal america. charlie peters, thank you so much. >> thank you, judy. >> yang: next: it's called a "picnic," but instead of hotdogs and balloons, this one features poetry and music. jeffrey brown met up with its creator and master of ceremonies, poet paul muldoon. ♪ ♪ >> brown: there was music from the irish musical duo the lost brothers. ♪ ♪ storytelling from novelist nicholson baker. >> i was at a laundromat. it was a laundromat in marseille, france. marseille. do you hear that? it's a mattress of a word. >> this one's basically talking to my computer. >> brown: and there was poetry by eileenmyles. >> you.

after all these years, you should know my font. you should know the numbers go in the middle. what'd i say? >> brown: muldoon's picnic is an old-fashioned variety show, the brainchild of poet paul muldoon, held monthly at the irish art center in manhattan. >> while our drugs of choice were run from istanbul through a girl called joyce, whose real name was mule. >> brown: so what's your role here? you're sort of the impresario? >> sort of impish impresario. >> brown: impish, yeah. >> everyone is stuck in their own little world these days. this has to do with people making their own amusement, or at least opening themselves to the possibility, i suppose of amusement being of a somewhat more direct nature. you know the poem, the short story, the song. >> brown: muldoon is an irish-

born, renowned pulitzer prize winning poet. princeton professor, poetry editor of the "new yorker," and front man for the band, rogue oliphant the picnic revives a popular new york vaudeville variety show from the 1880s. but it begins with an even older tradition-- of poetry as an oral art form, to be performed. >> it's certainly part of the irish tradition, there is no distinction, for example, between the poem and the song. many of the great poems in the gaelic tradition were, coincidentally, songs. >> brown: what's the difference between lyrics for a song and writing a poem? >> they're akin as activities but they're distinct. they're both using words, obviously. now the song lyric is missing something. it's missing an element, which

will bring it to its, what it most may be in the world. and that's the music. so to try to write a song lyric is difficult for me, and i think many people, because when i'm writing a poem, my impulse is to be perfect, is to achieve perfection. >> brown: which means what? >> which means that it is unassailable. it is... there is not a word out of place in it. >> brown: and it doesn't need music to complete it. >> it doesn't need music because some wise wag once said it brings its own music. >> brown: muldoon's own poetry is famously filled with its own music, metaphors and allusions. a new "selected poems" was recently published. i asked what effect he strives for. >> contrary to what i think many people feel, many people feel art is about, salve, about, about peace. myself am looking for something quite different.

i'm looking for trouble. i'm looking for-- >> brown: not rest. trouble. >> well, you know, trouble is the mode of the world. it's the mode of the world. and to be equal to the mode of the world, i think in a strange way to be able to represent unrest. and to be able to bring together the elements, the chemical components that when they combine do have some kind of combustion. >> while i bought up from finley... >> brown: and at muldoon's picnic, you can get your poetry with a musical performance. from the irish art center in manhattan, i'm jeffrey brown for the pbs newshour. >> i'm going to put my name above the door. >> yang: the next performance of "muldoon's picnic" will be held in new york a week from tonight, on april 10.

>> yang: now to our newshour shares, something that caught our eye that might be of interest to you, too. an image of a man listening to a gramophone in his bombed-out aleppo home recently went viral, captured by agence france presse photographer joseph eid while on assignment in syria. we recently spoke to him via skype about the photo and the man at its center. >> well, mr. muhammad-- his full name it's mohammad mohiedine anis. and they call him abu omar. we saw that this is a very educated person, he speaks five languages, he studied medicine, five years of medicine in spain. he inherited a great wealth from his parents and that his house was a big house, one of the richest, very wealthy people of aleppo. mister omar has a very strong inclination to collect old and vintage cars, especially

american made ones from the '40s and '50s. and he talked to us about how he lost everything now and how he's willing to restart again from ashes. how a 70-year-old man that he is willing to go back again and reopen his firm and to restore his house and to fix his cars that he calls, they are injured and they are crying now, weeping and we went also upstairs to the master bedroom. and when we were there, we could barely put our work amongst the rubble there inside. and we asked him, he's still living there, he's still sleeping amongst the rubble. it's amazing, i couldn't believe. yusef, the videographer, asked him, the phonograph is still operating? he said well it's the only thing that still operates here. so he said wait, i will show you, i will let you listen to one of my favorite discs.

when he went explaining about the song, he was transferred. he was puffing on his pipe and looking out from the window and he put his one leg over one another and just like he was by himself listening to the music and without taking notice that we are around him. that moment, i was like electroshock. and he didn't notice that i was taking pictures of him. he was like another era. he went back to his old good times, i think. the destruction, the rubble, the windows, and the light even, which struck from the left... it was so dramatic, you know? so it touched me, and i took the image. people are fed up from violence, from killing, from beheading, from isis. they've been hearing it on a daily basis. so i think this image that it shows the human being in syria. and it gives also a message of

hope. he told us that "no matter what happens to me or to syria, i'm not leaving here." that's the strong thing about it, is determination to live. >> yang: tonight on pbs, "independent lens" presents a film about the horrific 2012 mass shooting at sandy hook elementary school in connecticut that took the lives of 20 school children and six educators. "newtown" uses never-before- heard testimonies from parents, siblings, teachers, and first responders as they talk about their grief, anger and disbelief in the months and years after the media left their small town. >> we just kind of waited, and then they brought the children out, and it was heartbreaking to

see them. they were all holding hands in a line. and i saw michail come, and true to his personality, i think he was skipping and holding somebody's hand, and he said, mom, i didn't cry, i didn't cry. and his teacher came behind, and she had a wild look on her face, and he said, they heard it all. she said, they heard it all. they heard the guns. they heard the screaming, but they heard it all. >> yang: "newtown" premeries tonight on most pbs stations. on the newshour online right now, we recently caught up with bill nye the science guy, ahead of a major conference of science teachers, to talk about

encouraging students' passion for learning, and much more. you can watch that interview on our web site, pbs.org/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. on tuesday, we'll have a look at the legal and ethical issues surrounding the use of cameras in the classroom. would they better protect special needs students and teachers? i'm john yang. join us online and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> it's hard not to feel pride as a citizen of this country when we're in a place like this. >> and by the alfred p. sloan foundation. supporting science, technology, and improved economic performance and financial

literacy in the 21st century. >> 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. captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org ♪

-today, on "america's test kitchen," dan shows julia a game changing roast turkey recipe, lisa reviews oven thermometers, bridget and julia share clever thanksgiving shortcuts, and becky uncovers the secrets to foolproof boiled corn. it's all coming up, right here on "america's test kitchen." "america's test kitchen" is brought to you by the following -- fisher & paykel. since 1934, fisher & paykel has been designing