captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight: a firestorm heats up around donald trump jr., as details emerge of his contacts with highly-placed russians who offered "dirt" on hillary clinton during the presidential race. then, the second chapter of our week-long series inside putin's russia explores the country's propaganda machine and the information war against the west. >> instead of offering communism as an ideological alternative, they are waging a kind of hybrid war against their enemies. with a new kind of soldier: hackers. >> woodruff: and, as senators work to overhaul the affordable care act, we continue our look at how health care affects the people who need it most, with a

trip to west virginia, where medicaid expansion proved crucial. >> i put my faith in those people that they would make this place better, not take away the only things that were helping this area. >> woodruff: all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions: >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

>> woodruff: for months, a big question confronting official washington has been: did the trump campaign collude with the kremlin to undermine hillary clinton? tonight, president trump's eldest son finds himself at the heart of the matter-- after he released a potentially explosive e-mail chain. john yang begins our coverage. >> reporter: the emails show donald trump junior eager to hear dirt on hillary clinton, said to be offered as part of russian government support for his father's campaign. the chain begins with message from rob goldstone. he's a british-born music publicist. the younger trump met him at the 2013 miss universe pageant in moscow, which president trump then owned. goldstone said a client's father-- a real estate developer who teamed with president trump for that pageant-- had been told of "official documents and information that would incriminate hillary and her dealings with russia."

goldstone said it was "part of russia and its government's support for mr. trump." donald trump junior responds: "if it's what you say, i love it." in a four-day flurry of emails, donald trump jr. and goldstone set-up a meeting at trump tower in new york with russian lawyer natalia veselnitskaya. also attending: trump son-in-law jared kushner and campaign chairman paul manafort. veselnitskaya told nbc news today she has no ties to russian government and knew nothing damaging about clinton. >> ( translated ): it is quite possible that maybe they were looking for such an information. they wanted it so badly that >> reporter: today, donald trump jr. said he thought he was being offered "political opposition research". the president's son says he put out the e-mails to be "totally transparent." on capitol hill, the release generated more questions than answers. >> i know donald trump jr is new

to politics, and i know that jared kushner is new to politics, but this is gonna require a lot of questions to be asked and answered. >> if you look at donald trump jr.'s own admissions. these are his words. not mine, his. this was an attempt at collusion. and so now the question is really was it successful? >> reporter: at an off-camera white house briefing, principal deputy press secretary sarah huckabee sanders read a one-line statement from the president. >> "my son is a high quality person and i applaud his transparency." >> reporter: sanders said the president only learned of his son's meeting in the last several days, but wouldn't say whether he knew of the apparent russian offer to help his campaign. for the pbs newshour, i'm john yang. >> woodruff: and to mark mazzetti, washington investigations editor for the "new york times." he's been leading the team of reporters that broke today's story. mark mazzetti, welcome back to

the program. so tell us what th the latest information is that the "times" is reporting on connections, contacts between the trump campaign, family and russian officials. >> last night the "times" reported the existence of an email that showed that the meeting that was brokered in june of 2016 showed an email to donald trump, jr. showed that the offer of damaging information about hillary clinton came from the russian government or was purported to come from the russian government and that donald trump, jr. very eager riresponded that he was very interested, and it seemed to raise the stakes because it was no longer just private information from a lawyer, but something that seemed to come from moscow and the kremlin. this morning, we reported on the actual e-mails themselves, what the e-mails contained that show the long thread that led up to the june 9th, 2016 meeting

between these various players, and at the same time right as we were about to publish, donald trump, jr. put out the e-mails himself. >> woodruff: again, striking language in the e-mails, at one point referring to this is part of russia and its government support for mr. trump. when your reporters reached out to donald trump, jr. toorksd what happened? >> we reached out to his attorney in the morning, notifying him we were planning to publish the contents of the e-mails and gave them a deadline, and right around the time of the deadline, when we were waiting for their comment, donald trump, jr. put the e-mails themselves out on twitter, and that's when we published our story. >> woodruff: was what donald trump, jr. put out on twitter exactly what the "times" had? >> the e-mails that he put out are consistent certainly with what we saw. >> woodruff: and the "times"

was prepared to publish them whether he had done that or not? >> well, we were not planning to publish actual e-mails. we had a story ready, describing the e-mails with word-for-word language in the e-mails and the word-for-word language we were going to quote from in our story lined up with what he put out on twitter. >> woodruff: is it fair to say donald trump, jr. and others involved in the story had been cooperating? because the sense one gets from reading the stories over the past few days is the explanations you have been given by donald trump, jr. and others has changed from day to day. >> yeah, it's been evolving over about four days. saturday, when we were publishing our first story about this meeting, we got a response from donald trump, jr. that the meeting was about primarily adoptions which is a big issue for the russian government relating to the sanctions the united states has imposed on the

russian government. the next day when we were publishing our second story, we knew that the meeting was about proposed damaging information about hillary clinton, we got another statement that said yes that's true, however it was something anyone would do, any one part of the campaign would look for damaging information about their opponent. yesterday we told them we were planning to publish the email that -- pub lier the existence of email that indicated government support, so yet another answer. so has evolved over several days. >> woodruff: and mark mazzetti, what is the white house saying about the president's involvement this the? what has donald trump, jr. said about that? >> well, what the president knew about this is still unclear, that the white house has said the president did not know of the meeting, and there has been some, i'd say, conflicting accounts coming out of the white house about just how to handle

this story and how it should be spun and how to handle the damage that was coming out of this story. but the question of -- and there has been blame going on internally about it. but the main question, of course, we are still endeferring to find out is what now president trump knew about the meeting at the time. >> but as you say right now, the white house is saying he had no involvement? >> that's right. >> woodruff: mark mazzetti, washington investigations editor for the "new york times." thank you very much. >> thank you. >> woodruff: for more on the latest documents in the russia investigation, we turn to the vice chairman on select committee on intelligence, mark warner from virginia joins us from capitol hill. what do you make of this latest story? >> well, judy, i've said this a couple of times, that you can't make some of this stuff up, it's strange credibility.

this bothers me on a variety of levels. one, it bothers me that this is a continuing series of individuals affiliated with the trump campaign, the trump administration who say they have no meetings or contacts with russians until there is proof of those meetings, then they have to recant or in the case of general flynn the national security advisor, he got fired, or the attorney general had to recuse himself. what's particularly i think significant about these last 48 hours is this is the first time the public is seeing now in black and white what we've heard from the intelligence community that there was an organized effort by the russian government to interfere, to help one candidate donald trump, to hurt another candidate hillary clinton, and what is so particularly disturbing is we've now got the president's son, son-in-law and the president's campaign manager at the time all being willing to take the meeting that this so-called

russian agent at least has been represented as part of this russian government effort to discredit clinton and they were anxious to receive this kind of information. and there would be folks like special counsel mueller who has to determine whether that meets a legal standard of criminality, but it sure does make it very important that we in the senate investigating committee get a chance to talk to all three of these individuals, which we plan the to do. >> woodruff: you used the word "collusion," you said that's what this investigation has been about. one of your democratic colleagues on the intelligence committee, senator wyden of oregon, said today this proves there was at least an attempt at collusion. is that how you see it? >> well, judy, i feel like my job in this investigation is to keep this investigation bipartisan, looking along with chairman burr, i'm going to reserve my final judgments until we get a chance to talk to all of the witnesses, get all of the information -- all of the information we're continuing to

collect. it shows me there is this continuing pattern from individuals from the trump campaign and administration denying these discussions with the russians and when the truth comes out, they dodge or dance or amend their filings. in this particular case we're asked to believe the president's son and son-in-law had information that was part of a russian effort to discredit their opponent and that was never shared with their father or father in law. i accept that until we get a chance to talk to them in person. >> woodruff: how do you interpret their evolving explanations? >> frankly, it's strange credibility that this administration continues to say there's nothing there, but we've seen this pattern with close to a dozen individuals that have been either affiliated with the information or in a case certain

spokespeople that said, for example, james comey was fired because of his bad performance with handing the hillary clinton e-mails only to be corrected by the president himself when he called james comey a nut job in front of the russians and said it was all about the russian investigation itself. so we have this constant pattern where this administration does not come clean on these items involving russia until the proof comes out, and then we hear fairly feeble excuses. >> woodruff: i hear you saying, senator, you're not prepared to say whether there was collusion or illegality, but you have been around politics for a number of years, how do you judge or weigh, at least, the facts on the table at this point? >> judy, i've heard some of the people coming to the at the fence of the president's son, that this was a rookie mistake. i don't accept that. i think anyone -- any kind of

basic knowledge would know that you don't take information from a foreign power and particularly a foreign power that's an adversary like russia and, clearly, what was laid out in the email in black and white was this part of a russian government effort to help then candidate trump. you see not only was there no pushback on that, but in terms of reading the email, donald trump, jr. said that's great, wouldn't it be great if we got that information late in the summer, and, if you follow the time line, and i'm sure all your audience hasn't followed this as closely as i have, but it was late in the summer more and more d.n.c. e-mails were released wheren confidant roger stone said it would soon be john podesta's turn in the barrel and, sure enough, john podesta's

e-mails were subsequently leaked as well. so the time line of what donald trump, jr. was hoping and what came to pass was curious. >> woodruff: how do you view the likelihood that the president himself did not know about this, the white house is saying he tid not know. do you take them at their word? >> i would take them at their word at this point but the idea the president's son and son-in-law has an outreach from what appears to be the russian government and there was a russian government knowledge effort to help candidate trump, i'm surprised at least that this wouldn't come up over dinner conversation at some point in the ensuing months. >> woodruff: can we assume that's a question you will be asking? >> you can assume darn right that's a question i will be asking. >> woodruff: senator mark warner, vice chairman of is senate committee on intelligence, we thank you. >> thank you, judy. >> woodruff: and in the day's other news: the u.s. military

confirmed 15 marines and a navy corpsman died monday when a tanker plane crashed in mississippi. the plane's last stop was the cherry point marine air station in north carolina. it went down in a soybean field, 85 miles north of jackson, mississippi. thick smoke billowed from the wreckage for hours after the crash. the f.b.i. joined the investigation, but officials said they do not suspect foul play. in iraq: scattered new fighting erupted in western mosul, even after the government claimed "total victory" over islamic state fighters. at the same time, "amnesty international" accused isis militants of summary executions and using human shields. it also blamed iraqi forces-- and u.s. coalition air strikes-- for civilian casualties. but the coalition disputed that claim. >> i would challenge the people from amnesty international or anyone else out there who makes these charges to first research their facts and make sure they're speaking from a position of authority. i would argue that this is i

believe this is the most precise campaign in the history of warfare. >> woodruff: much of western mosul has been laid waste by fighting that began in february. secretary of state rex tillerson traveled to qatar today, trying to resolve a rift with its persian gulf neighbors. four arab nations have slapped sanctions on the oil state over charges that it fosters islamist extremism. tillerson signed a counter- terrorism agreement with the qatari foreign minister. his next stop is saudi arabia, one of the nations demanding that qatar reject militants and limit its ties with iran. back in this country, fire crews in the western u.s. made more progress today, but in some cases, they were too late. in northern california, at least 36 homes burned down near oroville over the weekend. that fire is still burning in places, keeping some 4,000 people from returning. fires are also still burning in

southern california and several other states. new york city officialdom turned out in force today for the funeral of a police officer killed last week. a gunman attacked miosotis familia as she sat in a mobile command center in the bronx. today, hundreds of n.y.p.d. officers packed the church and turned nearby streets into a sea of blue. mayor bill de blasio led the mourners, condemning violence against police. >> we've watched with horror these attacks on our police here in this city and all around our country, and it sickens us. and we know that it cannot be tolerated. >> woodruff: familia was the first female police officer killed in the line of duty in new york city since 9/11. president trump's election fraud commission now says that states don't have to provide detailed

voter information just yet. the panel put that word out in an e-mail, as a federal judge weighs a legal challenge to the commission's actions. a number of states have refused to hand over data on voter names, birth dates and partial social security numbers. and on wall street: the dow jones industrial average gained just half a point to close at 21,409. the nasdaq rose about 17 points, and the s&p 500 slipped two points. still to come on the newshour: inside russia's propaganda machine, a view from west virginia-- how changes to medicaid could affect people with addictions. what's next for mosul-- the iraqi city once held by isis, now in ruin. changes coming to student loans under the new education secretary, and much more. >> woodruff: we return to our

week-long series, "inside putin's russia." for years, the kremlin, and the media it controls, have waged a multi-faceted information-- and disinformation-- campaign both inside russia, and pointed at its perceived adversaries. and last year, that effort crescendoed here, during the u.s. presidential campaign. tonight, we look at the information war. with the help of the pulitzer center on crisis reporting, special correspondent nick schifrin and producer zach fannin begin their report in moscow. >> reporter: in russia, whoever controls the media controls the country. and saturday nights are sergey brilev's. the 44-year-old is an anchor for russia one. it's the country's most popular channel, and it's state-owned. do you think that that means you have a russian perspective? >> well of course there's a russian perspective. there is a perspective of your country in any reporting. >> reporter: brilev says he doesn't feel pressure to push the government's line.

during the show we saw, he challenged a government minister about police jailing a former theater director who's a government critic. >> i imagine that tomorrow-- tonight-- after the broadcast, i may have some security agencies, and saying, "what does he think he's saying?" >> reporter: russian state media have long delivered the government perspective and rallied the public behind it. brilev denies that's his job. but he hints at whose job it is. >> the sunday program, which is quite conservative in western terms-- ultra conservative, i would say. >> reporter: aggressive perhaps? >> well, fox news style. >> reporter: sunday night anchor dmitry kiselyov is part sean hannity, part stephen colbert. he's crass and entertaining, and widely believed to reflect the kremlin's thinking. >> ( translated ): the american press is driving trump into a bullfight with no rules. the aim is impeachment. no pretext? it will be created, invented, engineered, exaggerated.

c.i.a. staff hackers are hiding behind another name. for example, behind the so- called russian hackers. >> reporter: kisleov started targeting russia's opponents in 2012-- after massive protests threatened president vladimir putin, says journalist and author mikhael zygar. >> ( translated ): russia is the only country in the world that is realistically capable of turning the united states into radioactive ash. >> reporter: until 2015, zygar was the anchor and editor-in- chief of tv rain. in a sea of state media, tv rain was an independent tv island. >> reporter: in 2014, tv rain accused the kremlin's chief political strategist of corruption.

>> reporter: within one month their audience dropped from 20 million to 60,000. protesters fought to keep them on the air. but targeting critical media is nothing new. in the last six years, the kremlin targeted 12 critical newsrooms. zygar says state tv tries to convince russians to support their government by replacing reality with a carefully crafted message. >> ( translated ): putin is universally accepted as one of the most qualified heads of state on the planet, if not the most qualified. >> reporter: but this isn't only about shaping russian opinion. kiselyov considers the news a weapon aimed at russia's enemies, as he put it in an interview on his own channel.

>> ( translated ): if you can persuade a person, you don't need to kill him. let's think about what's better: to kill or to persuade? because if you aren't able to persuade, then you'll have to kill. >> if the politics of defending your country's interest is pro- russian, then probably we are pro-russian. >> reporter: margarita simonyan is the editor in chief of "r.t.," formerly known as "russia today." she says the network reaches 35 million viewers a day in six languages-- including american and international channels. it's state owned and aimed at foreign audiences as an alternative to channels simonyan calls pro-western: cnn and bbc. >> if you look at any station, you will see that what people are reporting comes from what they believe in, where they stand, their background, what their countries believe in. let us be one of the voices in that choir because when the choir sings just one song, awful things happen, like the war in iraq.

>> reporter: critics say "r.t." isn't just another media voice. it highlights conspiracy theories. >> the article basically accuses the u.s. of manufacturing this ebola outbreak. >> reporter: it describes a holocaust denier as a human rights activist. >> russia is a threat to the u.s.' hegemony. >> reporter: and a neo-nazi as a german expert. >> germany is a country which supports violent islamism for example, in syria. >> reporter: the criticism is that you're trying to confuse rather than inform. >> now that's absolutely a lie. we're never trying to confuse, we're informing. if we do have people appear on the air live, that are later found out to be holocaust deniers or anything like that, we immediately put them onto a list of people who are forbidden from the air. you are telling me that people in the west are seeing us as a threat. believe me, most of the people in russia are seeing the us as a threat, and that's what we really don't like.

>> reporter: for the west, the biggest threat when it comes to information is actually this building. this is the f.s.b., the successor to the k.g.b. during soviet times, the k.g.b. ran deliberate disinformation campaigns, like when it planted the idea that president kennedy was killed by the c.i.a. today western governments accuse the f.s.b. of doing the same, except instead of selling communism as an ideological alternative, they are waging a kind of hybrid war against their enemies. with a new kind of soldier: hackers. over the last two years, the russian military ran online recruiting ads where soldiers put down their guns to fight a cyber war. in a january report, u.s. intelligence agencies accused russian military intelligence of hacking democratic national committee and hillary clinton campaign e-mails and leaking them to wikileaks to fuel russia's propaganda campaign. it was designed to "undermine public faith in the u.s. democratic process, denigrate secretary clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency." it worked. >> the clinton campaign has now had to deal with more than a week of embarrassing daily

revelations thanks to wikileaks. >> now these wikileak releases have rocked the campaign. >> wikileaks has released what appears to be transcripts of paid speeches by hillary clinton to goldman sachs. >> reporter: hacked emails became anti-clinton talking points. and many of those talking points were spread online by russian trolls believed to work in this st. petersburg building. 42-year-old marat mindiyarov used to be one of those trolls. >> reporter: everyday, mindiyarov would get a document that instructed him what to write. on christmas eve, 2014 he was told to "create a negative attitude about obama's foreign policy." so he posted photos comparing obama to hitler, portraying the u.s. as a fish about to eat the planet and an eagle sharpening his talons. he posted under the headline "can the u.s. take russia out?"

on 50 websites in 23 cities. and fellow trolls "kiril ivashkin" "gennady orlov" "mike brandon" expressed the exact same thought. 600 posts from 70 fake accounts in 12 hours. just one battalion in a sock puppet army manufactured by a handful of trolls. how many identities will the workers be expected to pretend to be? >> reporter: u.s. intelligence says the likely troll financier is evgeny prigozhin, a businessman with catering companies. he's dubbed putin's "personal chef." mindiyarov left the factory because he didn't believe in its product. but he says it's effective because the stories are succinct and echoed widely. >> reporter: russian propaganda is actually very predictable and relatively simple. and i think of it as the 4 "d"s, which are dismiss, distort, distract, and dismay.

>> reporter: ben nimmo is an atlantic council senior fellow studying how russian media, russian hacking and russian trolling combine. >> you get your own people to write this, but then you pretend it's not your people, it's just some do-gooders in russian society. all the different parts of your machine then amplify it, and what you're doing is you're pushing out in a dozen different languages, on all the different platforms there are, one story. and what that story is, is what the kremlin wants it to be. >> reporter: in january 2016, it was a fake story that a russian- german teenager had been abducted and raped by muslim migrants. >> the russian state tv apparatus repeatedly reporting false claims after the german police had come out and said there was no abduction and there was no rape. >> reporter: the fake story helped spark real protests against german president angela merkel, a frequent putin critic. but even though it was fake, foreign minister sergei lavrov used it to criticize one of russia's top adversaries. >> the motivation behind the campaign as a whole was

precisely to weaken merkel by amplifying this very personalized story about crimes committed by, inverted commas, "merkel's migrants." >> we cover the stories the mainstream media doesn't. >> reporter: last year, the russian propaganda machine exploited a research psychologist who argued google was manipulating its results to favor clinton. >> so this is a gentlemen called dr. robert epstein. he came out with a paper which said that by altering the results of a search engine, you could potentially alter people's voting choices. >> and google support for clinton is really very strong. >> reporter: it was quickly debunked. but the different parts of the russian propaganda machine echoed the story, from "r.t.," to state-owned website sputnik, to russian trolls. >> this is a classic example in which the different parts of the machine were amplifying each other. what you then had was the claim being picked up by a number of largely conservative media in the u.s. >> it look like google is in the tank for hillary.

>> there's no question about it. >> and there you've divorced the story from the source. >> reporter: you've literally laundered the source. >> and in that sense, the source has been laundered. then candidate trump said words the effect of google was rigging its results in favor of clinton. >> google search engine was suppressing the bad news about hillary clinton. >> now we don't know where he got that from but we know that the ultimate source for that, the insertion point for that story into the media space, was a kremlin disinformation outlet. for any purveyor of propaganda, your dream is to have some high value amplifier amplifying you, especially if you can contrive that in such a way that you are divorced from it. >> how about that? how about that? >> reporter: for the pbs newshour, i'm nick schifrin in moscow. >> woodruff: tomorrow, we travel to russia's southern border, and ask why so many young russians have joined isis?

>> woodruff: but first, with congress back from their independence day break, the pressure is on for republicans to broker a deal on healthcare, in addition to other high priorities like tax reform. all of this as the august recess looms just weeks away. in a minute, john yang will be back to talk to lisa desjardins, but first, lisa has the current state of play on capitol hill. >> it's difficult to dispute the >> reporter: with the health care fight unresolved-- and no action on the budget or tax reform-- utah senator mike lee and nine fellow republicans asked today to cancel the august recess. >> at this time it doesn't make sense for us to take the month of august off. >> reporter: majority leader mitch mcconnell partially obliged. >> we will be in session the first two weeks of august. >> reporter: that buys a little more time to tackle a daunting

agenda, topped by replacing obamacare. >> we'll be on healthcare next week. we'll be laying out a revised version of the repeal and replace effort, the text of that, on thursday morning. we hope to have a c.b.o. by the >> reporter: muliple republican senators told newshour this is what's in the latest plan: it restores an investment tax and a medicare tax on the wealthy. plans to cut those taxes drew criticism as helping the rich. more subsidies or tax credits for lower-income families. and billions more for opioid treatment. but indications are there will be essentially no changes to the medicaid section. that would cut the number of people on medicaid by millions. and one unusual twist, republicans are still mulling an amendment from texas senator ted cruz that will allow insurers to offer just one obamacare- compliant plan and avoid its regulations in the rest. that general idea could bring on cruz and other key votes like lee.

>> that's one way to get me to yes on the bill. >> reporter: but democrats-- like senator jeanne shaheen-- voiced a concern some republican moderates share. >> our republican colleagues haven't had just six months to put together a healthcare bill, they've had seven years and six months. and the cruz amendment is not the answer. it would roll back coverage for preexisting conditions, it would cost more for consumers. >> reporter: all said, it is not yet clear if a revised plan will get the 50 votes it needs. mcconnell wants to hold that vote next week, and many republicans say it's time. win or lose. >> in my judgment, it's time to vote. >> reporter: these are unusual times. the senate historian's office tells me that only once in modern history has the senate cut short its august recess. and that was in 1994. the topic? democrats were trying and failed to pass a health care bill, john.

>> yang: senator mcconnell said thursday they see a text. how will they handle the cruz amendment? >> think of it as a bill a and b. the same tax, one will have the cruz amendment, one will not. the big moment to decide which goes forward will be monday, probably, we'll expect the congressional budget office to come out with the score saying does the cruz amendment help the markets, what does it do for premiums and pre-existing conditions, that will be the moment. >> yang: will they continue to tweak it to get the votes they need? >> i think that's why we saw certain framework and vice president pence trying to mas camming people into this but, honestly, coming out of the meeting some warmed it to like bob corker. lisa murkowski asked was there progress made on things important to you? she turned to reporters and said

no. >> woodruff: so still work to go for someone like that. they have two extra weeks. are there other things they have to get done before they get their reward by going home for recess? >> if they take the vote on health care next week, many think it will fail and mitch mcconnell will let it fail. at that point, they have a decision to make -- do we try a different republican bill, or do we work with democrats, come up with an entire different approach to health care to try to fix the obama markets, do we try to fix that? conservatives want to do a debate on spending cuts rather than having it all dropped at once. >> yang: lisa desjardins, a lot of work for them and you. >> thank you. >> woodruff: and speaking of the

efforts to replace the affordable care act, let's continue hearing how some citizens and health care providers see it. producer jason kane visited a pair of clinics in the heart of coal country. last night, we took you to the town of wise, virginia, in a state that opted not to expand medicaid for low-income residents. just across the border in west virginia, the affordable care act and its medicaid expansion meant the rate of uninsured residents dropped from at least 21% before the law took effect to 9% in 2015 nearly a third of families in the state get medicaid. more than 83% of mingo county voted for the president in the election. and the state has been ravaged by the opioids epidemic. but at the williamson health and wellness center, nerves are now on edge as patients recount their personal stories. >> my name's rebecca hicks and i'm from chattaroy, west

virginia. i'm 37 years old. when i was younger, i was raped. i guess i got on drugs to cope with it. i did regular pain pills. first it started with you know, snorting the pills, then it led to shooting the pills. >> hey, rebecca. >> and i've always struggled to have a doctor, and this place kind of takes care of all of it. my access to medicaid has helped me pay for medicines that i would never been able to pay for. and to see specialists that i wouldn't be able to see if i didn't have that medical care. >> my name's jerome cline, i'm a family nurse practitioner. let's listen to your heart. with the passage of the affordable care act, the state had an expanded medicaid

program. right now, i think about, it's just under 50% of our patients, >> my name is vicki hatfield, i'm a certified family nurse practitioner and a certified diabetes educator. once we started seeing more patients qualify for medicaid, they were able to come in and we were able to start getting them caught up on their preventive screenings and health promotion activities, and just be able to treat their chronic illnesses that had been neglected. the increase funds for medicaid services brought more revenue into the clinic, so that allowed us to hire more people here. it also allowed us to do some other things in the community to promote healthy living. >> we have a farmers' market every saturday. >> we also had a community gardens start. we see more people growing their own vegetables. >> and then we have a community 5k almost every month.

>> now as we watch what's happening with possible repeal or replacement of the affordable care act, it's very concerning. i know patients are concerned, particularly patients who had chronic diseases. >> i've got a head injury, i've got a sleeping disorder, i've got back problems, i've got knee problems, i have panic attacks. my name is connie sue mahon. we need the medical. and if they take it, it's gonna hurt a lot of families in west virginia. president trump promised us a better plan. and we all voted to get him in there, 'cause we thought he'd do this country better. if we ain't got that medical, we ain't gonna have nothing. and that's how people in mingo county live. >> my name is jerinel taylor. i'm 58 years old. i have diabetes.

you have to have the medication to keep the diabetes down. if you don't, you lose your eyes, your kidneys, and all this stuff, so i try to keep up with it. i started receiving the medicaid after the obamacare, the affordable care act or whatever it was called. with the care i receive here, my numbers have come down and my blood pressure, and they keep everything pretty much took care of when i need the mammograms and all the cancer screens that i need. the affordable care act has helped me, but it has hurt other people, especially people like my brother, it's hurt him and he works hard and then they take it out of his taxes because he doesn't have insurance, he can't afford the insurance under the affordable care act. so it has hurt him. so if they drop me, they drop me. >> thinking about the possible changes to the healthcare system and the drive to save money with, with medicaid. i'm not sure if there's an accounting of these people, now seeking their primary care through the e.r.s. you know? when they can come here and the visit, and pay a small co-pay,

versus going to the e.r. and all of a sudden, it's a $2,000 bill. >> about two years ago i had been in the hospital, like in the mental ward for my mental health at least 25 times. and now i've hadn't had to you know, be hospitalized for two years because of all the doctors here that has helped me so much. >> especially now with the drug epidemic around here. what are we gonna do with the people who have found an improved quality of life, and they've moved beyond, you know, a life of addiction and we've got them into recovery? if we curtail that treatment, what potentially happens to those patients? >> i would tell the politicians

i think there are good parts of the programs. there are also things that do need improvement. >> i would tell the politicians that they might want to think real hard about it and go away from it a bit till they know more about it. because what they're dealing with is they take you know, healthcare away from somebody that's an addict, they're going to resort to worser things. i chose those people. i put my faith in those people that they would make this place better, not take away the only things that were helping this area.

>> woodruff: iraqi leaders and the top american military commander in iraq proclaimed the liberation of mosul yesterday. but what's the next step in the war torn country? does the iraqi government have a plan to prevent isis from returning and rebuild the iraq's second largest city? for some answers we turn to feisal istrabadi, a former iraqi diplomat, now the director of the middle east center at indiana university bloomington. feisal istrabadi, welcome back to the program. how much of a blow to i.s.i.s. was the retaking of the city of mosul? >> well, it's a huge blow because one of the ways in which i.s.i.l distinguished its brand from al quaida before was it was able to conquer and hold territory, erase an international boundary, declare a caliphate and engage in the fight against forces that regard

it as infidel, and it distinguished itself in that way. now it is retreating. i lost the largest city it occupied. there are plans to make it lose raqqa an in syria and slovi to expel it from iraq. it's a huge blow to i.s.i.l. >> woodruff: what capability does it still have? >> your own reporting earlier in the program was it still is able to put on sort of the skirmish attacks, although, last week, it was able to manage to conduct an attempt at a counterattack which was repelled, of course. but the main fear that i have now is that i.s.i.l becomes a classical terrorist organization as al quaida was before, able to pull off, you know, attacks of

varying size in baghdad and other places, and we're already seeing it is metamorphosissing into that kind of organization and that is deeply disturbing. >> woodruff: how equipped is the government of iraq to deal with that? >> it's very difficult to repel those sorts of attacks. you have to have perfect intelligence and a perfect ability to respond and, unfortunately, knighter the iraqi government now nor the americans when they had a large -- when the u.s. had a large presence in iraq have been able to control that. the ultimate solution for this problem has to be political. it has to be a situation where the sort of the underlying disease which has allowed at least enough people to fail to participate in the political process, that sort of disease has to be treated rather than continuing to treat the symptoms

of the disease, and that we have collectively, the iraqis, the international community, we've collectively failed to do that over the years. >> woodruff: you're referring to the sectarian divisions in iraq that led to one group prevailing over the other. do you see any improvement in the shia-sunni divisions in iraq in the last several years since the larger war ended there? >> i see hope that the future need not be what the past has been. i think that, in distinction to his predecessor, the current prime minister of iraq has good intentions. what we don't have, however, is a plan. good intentions will not get us past this sort of impasse that we have been in since after 2003. there needs to be a coming together of the iraqi political class, and a sort of sorting out of what our priorities are and

how we prepare a mo disaventedy -- modis avendi, what we're trying to do in a democratic framework and that unfortunately we haven't done and now we have to do it at the same time as we have the reconstruction of the country at hand as well, of course, as providing immediate humanitarian reliefer froreliefer from -- foe refugees fleeing the city that are being liberated from i.s.i.l. >> woodruff: when you are speaking of "we" having to do this, are you referring to the united states or the iraqi government? >> all of us. i think that is something the international community, the united states, of course the iraqis in the first instance, there has to be an iraqi project in the first instance, but the united states is a part of the process, the international community needs to encourage

these three tracks, sort of the immediate humanitarian relief, the physical rebuilding of the country and, more importantly, the political rebuilding of the country, that is going to be sort of a multipronged effort that has to occur simultaneously, and the iraqis will need the support of the international community. >community. >> woodruff: and very, very quickly, you see the will of the international community to do that? >> i hope so, because the failure of the iraqis to do this, the failure of the international community to support this effort will mean that just as al quaida left i.s.i.l, the incarnation will lead to i.s.i.l 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, and that's condemning the middle east region and perhaps the world to an endless cycle of violence. >> woodruff: sobering message, feisal istrabadi, thank you very much. >> thank you. it's a pleasure, as always.

>> woodruff: since her nomination as education secretary, betsy devos has become one of the more polarizing figures in the trump cabinet-- often over school choice. but her early tenure marks a big departure from her predecessors when it comes to higher education and student loans. and that's the focus of our "making the grade" conversation tonight. jeffrey brown has more. >> reporter: late in the obama administration new rules were established to allow student borrowers to have their debt erased if they'd been victims of fraud by for-profit schools. but as the new rules were set to take effect this month, the new administration called for a freeze. with secretary devos saying they were created in a "muddled process that's unfair to students and schools." days ago, 18 states and the district of columbia responded to that with a lawsuit challenging the education department. the freeze is just one in a series of moves by the new administration that take a different approach to student loans from its predecessor.

anya kamanetz covers education for npr and joins us now. so, anya, first, remind us the extent of this problem, of students on the hook with loans to for-profit colleges and the criticisms of predatory practices. >> so for-profit colleges at their height enrolled about one in ten students nationwide, and they're not just your old cosmotology school. these are national and in many cases online programs that targeted working families. without painting entire sector with the same brush, we saw over the last decade many, many different actions against for-profit colleges, accusing them of predatory and fraudulent treatment, and there were two large colleges that shut down in the last two years, corinthian and i.t.t. tech, with collectively tens of thousands of students. >> brown: so i mentioned the obama administration put in rules to address the problem and

they created a so-called borrower defense. explain that. >> so borrefense to repayment had been on the books for a while and it was sort of a case-by-case ability or pathway for a borrower who had been defrauded by a college to be able to escape their loans. what happened was, with tens of thousands of students affected by the i.t.t. tech and corinthian showdown, there was a real need to clarify and to simplify that regulation and, so, after a very long, negotiated public process, borrower defense to repayment was put in place and basically said that students could have their repayment automated, they wouldn't have to apply case by case, and it included an important clause that students wouldn't have to agree to wave their rights through arbitration so that when, you know, many of these for-profit colleges had a rule on the books that when you apply said i'm not going to sue you and i agree to arbitration,

that's something that borrower defense included as well in here. >> brown: that was supposed to go into effect july 1. betsy devos put that on hold. what was our argument? the states jumped in with a lawsuit, so what's the counterargument? >> we should mention that in addition to pressing pause or little reset on defense to payment, betsy devos rolled back gainful employment and gainful employment regulates for-profit colleges and other career programs based on the debt-to-income ratio with their students. so with those two in mind, the lawsuit essentially says that it's a violation of law for the education department to yiewn rarltly strike down the rule after the long and public negotiation process. and with the reset button being hit, what we saw this week is consumer advocates and students once again taking to the podium to testify and tock about theirex persons and why they

believe that these two rules should stay in place. >> brown: i want to expand to generally look at the overall student loan problem. where do you see the major differences and major plane flat with the new administration? >> we saw with obama taking office around the financial crisis the consumer financial protection bureau which became a major straw against students and also against student lenders in general. there's been a real atmosphere of i'd say crackdown in regulation and consumer advocacy and the tenor certainly changed in terms of the announcements coming out of the devos administration. she hired former for-profit college executives to advise her as well as putting in charge of federal student aid the c.e.o. of a private student loan company.

she made a lot of announcements on things that will save taxpayers money and lead to less burden on colleges and universities including for-profit colleges, so it was made clear she doesn't intent to impose owners regulatory burdens on for-profit or other types of colleges as well as the student loan industry as well. >> brown: anya kamanetz of npr, thank you very much. >> thank you, jeffrey. >> woodruff: and thanks to jeff and to anya. and that's the newshour for tonight. on wednesday: our russia series goes to the country's southern border, and asks why so many russians have joined isis? i'm judy woodruff. 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: >> the ford foundation. working with visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide.

>> support also comes from carnegie corporation of new supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement, and the advancement of international peace and security. at carnegie.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

(instrumental music) >> everything we do with our hands, when we put passion behind it, creates a craft and crafts have a tendency to ignite our souls. >> hi, i'm jim west and i'm gonna take you on a journey to one of the most exotic destinations around the world, the island of bali. (instrumental music) >> we'll experience the sights, the food, the people, and the traditions, but even more exciting, we'll explore the heart and soul of bali as expressed through the hands of its master crafters, artisans who have been taught by their own family members for hundreds of years. we're traveling with a small group of crafters who will be learning firsthand from master artists. it's a connection with a master crafter that you just can't find in any other way