captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for saturday, july 22: renewed focus on jeff sessions and what he may have discussed with the russian ambassador during last year's presidential campaign; and in our signature segment, bail reform. most defendants awaiting trial in one state no longer need to pay to get out of jail. next on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. the anderson family fund. rosalind p. walter, in memory of abby m. o'neill. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided

by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: good evening, and thanks for joining us. president donald trump is defending his constitutional power to grant pardons for crimes. as part of a series of statements on twitter today, mr. trump said: the word "complete" garners attention as only two days ago the "washington post" reported the president and his legal team have discussed his power to pardon aides, family members and possibly himself. the president also lambasted yesterday's "post" report that former russian ambassador sergey kislyak told his superiors in

moscow he had discussed campaign related matters with attorney general jeff sessions last year, something mr. sessions has denied under oath. that article, based on electronic surveillance of kislyak's communications, said kislyak claimed he had" substantive" discussions with then-senator sessions about candidate trump's positions on russia-related issues. mr. trump said: a sessions spokeswoman declined to comment on what she called "" wholly uncorroborated intelligence intercept," but added sessions stands by his testimony that he: today, in norfolk, virginia, mr. trump helped commission a navy aircraft carrier honoring the only president to pardon another. the u.s.s. "gerald r. ford" cost $13 billion and took eight years to build. ford pardoned richard nixon after nixon resigned over the watergate scandal.

the president's son and the president's former campaign chairman will talk to congressional investigators in private. donald trump, jr. and paul manafort will meet with the senate judiciary committee next week as part of its probe of russian meddling in last year's election. the committee is also negotiating for trump jr. and manafort to turn over relevant documents. they face questions about a trump tower meeting with a host of russians who had boasted of having negative information about hillary clinton. the president's son-in-law and senior adviser jared kushner, who also attended that meeting, has again revised his financial disclosure forms which is required of top administration appointees. in the paperwork filed yesterday, kushner reveals 77 previously undisclosed assets worth between $10 million and $50 million. his art collection alone is worth between $5 million and $25 million. kushner, who runs his family's commercial real estate company, said the assets were "inadvertently omitted" before. his wife, first daughter ivanka

trump, submitted her financial disclosure forms for the first time on friday. the report shows assets worth $66 million and earnings of $13.5 million last year, including more than $2 million from the new trump hotel near the white house. congress appears to have reached a bipartisan compromise for tougher sanctions on russia and preventing the president from easing them on his own. the bill would impose new economic sanctions on russian industries and individuals. it is scheduled for a vote tuesday in house of representatives. the trump administration has considered returning diplomatic properties in maryland and new york to russia and asked for flexibility to deal with russian president vladimir putin. the bill also adds sanctions on anyone involved in iran's missile program and blocks north korean ships and goods from entering the u.s.

>> sreenivasan: tomorrow, u.s. immigration officials are expected to begin four days of nationwide raids targeting teenagers suspected of belonging to gangs. the plan is outlined in a department of homeland security document seen by reuters. reporter julia edwards ainsley broke the story and joins me now from washington. what's the plan and how is this different? >> the document outlines several key demographic groups they want to be targeted in these raids by i.c.e. agents. the one that was the most striking departure from policy that we saw under the previous information is the targeting of 16 and 17-year-olds suspected of gang activity. u.s. immigrations told me that they can meet two or more criteria. those criteria could be things like a gang tattoo, wearing gang apparel, or just hanging out in an area that's frequented by gangs. so of course there are a number of immigration lawyers and civil rights and civil liberties lawyers who are saying that is

not enough to find someone -- to make someone a target for deportation, especially a minor. >> sreenivasan: how different is this from the obama administration's interests? what was the threshold there versus what this is? >> so it's interesting, as i went back and read the november 2014 priorities for deportation that obama set out. that did mention 16 and 17-year-olds, but they were people convicted of a gang-related crime. that was his way of saying although these people are minors, they've entered another category by committing a crime, like when we see a juvenile gets an adult kind of sentence in court. this changes that, of course, because these are people just suspected of gang activity. >> sreenivasan: if you are in the neighborhoods, because if you live there, that already kind of checks off one of the boxes, right? so basically you can't escape the neighborhood and move somewhere else tomorrow to get

away from these raids. >> i know, i think this was the most striking thing on the list, was hanging out in these places notorious for gang activity. i mean, that could be a at could be a parking lot of a grocery store where your family would frequent. for a lot of people there's no way to get around that. and as i was told, there are a lot of people, particularly those who have fled violence, in places like el salvador with the ms-13 gang, with strong roots in the united states, a lot of those people come here, live in other communities of el salvadorans, and have no choice to get a tattoo or their lives could be threatened. >> sreenivasan: apparel, this goes back-to-back when this conversation was between the crips and bloods in l.a., the colors, what's the uniform. >> right. i do remember being in the public schools where there was a rule in my public school against wearing all blue or all red, because those were days where that was seen as a gang

affiliation. some of this could have change. a number of gangs that aren't as overt. the bottom line is these aren't legal definitions of what makes someone a gang member, and it's not illegal to be a gang member. at this point immigration and customs enforcement can write the rules over who they want to target because it's already a crime to be in the united states illegally, so therefore they can come up with different categories of who they want to target that really isn't based on u.s. criminal code in any way. >> sreenivasan: all right. julie edwards ainsley of reuters, thank you so much. >> thanks for having me. >> sreenivasan: when a person is arrested and charged with a crime, the idea behind bail is simple: someone who posts cash to get out of jail before trial is more likely to return to court than to forfeit the money. but liberal and conservative critics of the system say it unjustly incarcerates non- violent defendants-- especially the poor-- before they're

convicted of any crime, and that it wastes taxpayer dollars to detain them. this week, two u.s. senators, democrat kamala harris and republican rand paul, proposed federal grants for states to devise a new system. the senators pointed to new jersey as one of the most exemplary bail reforms in the nation. in tonight's signature segment, newshour weekend's megan thompson reports on how it's working. this story is part of our ongoing "chasing the dream" series on poverty and opportunity in america. >> yes, coming from the store, on the way, you know, to my grandmother's house. you know... >> reporter: one evening in 2010, mustafa willis was walking to visit his grandmother in newark, new jersey, when police stopped him on the street. >> "put your hands up." i put my hands up. he said, "don't move." checked me, placed me under arrest. the sergeant said, you know, "tell me whose gun this is, and we'll let you go." and i said, "officer, i don't know nothing about no gun. i'm not from around here." >> reporter: he was arrested for having a stolen gun, a charge he denied.

he says bail was set at $50,000, which meant he had to come up with $5,000, or 10%, for a bail bond in order to go free. but at the time, he was making only about $1,200 a month after taxes as a truck driver's assistant. could you afford to pay $5,000 to get out of jail? >> no, ma'am. >> reporter: how long did you sit in jail for? >> three months. >> reporter: during those three months, willis lost his job, missed the funeral of a cousin, and developed high blood pressure, he says, from the stress of being in jail. >> i just wanted to be home with my family. like, that... that was really it. like, it was just hell for me. >> reporter: willis got out after the judge reduced his bail, and, eventually, prosecutors dropped the charges. but willis and his family still had to pay back the $3,000 bond. >> bail was originally set for, i think, $200,000 or $250,000. >> reporter: in 2015, james lumford spent eight months in jail in newark because he couldn't make bail after he says

he was falsely accused of armed robbery. >> being locked up into that situation, you never know what you can get into in there. an altercation can happen at any point in time. >> reporter: while he was in jail, his partner and her children were evicted from their apartment. desperate to get out and support his family, he pled guilty to a crime he says he didn't commit. he now works as a plumber but says other jobs may be hard to get. >> a decent paying job, i can't pass a background check because that's going to pop up. >> reporter: across new jersey, nearly 40% of the people held in jail were there simply because they could not afford bail, according to a 2013 study. across the nation, black and latino defendants are often the least able to pay. >> i found probable cause. it's provable. >> reporter: at the same time, potentially violent people who had money easily posted bail and walked free, says new jersey superior court judge ernest caposela. because the state constitution used to require bail for most cases, caposela says judges did

something problematic-- setting bail extremely high in order to keep some defendants behind bars. >> so, you know, $500,000 bail, $1 million bail. if i set a bail on you and i know you can't make it, that's an excessive bail. that violates the eighth amendment of the constitution. it violates the presumption of innocence. it... it wasn't, in my opinion, an honest, intelligent system. >> reporter: in 2014, spurred by judges and criminal justice reform advocates, new jersey changed its pretrial justice system in two ways. one, voters approved an amendment to the state constitution giving judges the power to detain without bail anyone who poses a threat or a flight risk. two, the new jersey state legislature passed a bill to abolish cash bail for most nonviolent defendants. it also set up a new system to monitor released defendants, and required prosecutors to try cases more quickly.

the bill passed with bipartisan support, was signed by republican governor chris christie, a former federal prosecutor, and went into effect in january. >> we now have a criminal justice system that will permit our judges to keep the truly dangerous sociopath behind bars, but will release those non- violent offenders who have only remained in jail because they are poor. >> this is a detention hearing, all right? they used to be called a bail hearing, but we have a new system now. >> reporter: judge caposela presides over the passaic county court in paterson, new jersey's third-largest city. it's a low-income area with one of the state's highest crime rates. in the new system caposela helped devise, judges and attorneys now rely on a public safety assessment, or p.s.a., to predict the risk a defendant poses. a computer algorithm evaluates nine risk factors, like whether defendants have prior violent convictions or failures to appear in court. john harrison oversees the new pretrial services program for passaic county. >> now, if someone fails to

appear in the last two years, it goes up. >> reporter: defendants receive two scores, from one to six. >> she results as a five, four. >> reporter: the scores predict the likelihood the defendant will fail to appear and commit new criminal activity. the lower the scores, the better the chance the p.s.a. will recommend the defendant be released. >> all rise. >> reporter: later, when the defendant appears in county court-- in this case, by video from jail-- the judge uses the p.s.a. score to decide how she'll be monitored after release. >> you have to report one time per week to pretrial services. once by... one week by phone, one week in person. >> reporter: if there's a serious crime or a high p.s.a. score, the prosecutor can file a motion to detain. that triggers a second hearing, held within about a week. lawyers present evidence arguing whether the defendant should be jailed or let go. >> there was a pair of silver scissors covered with what appeared to be blood. >> reporter: this man, charged with aggravated manslaughter, had a high p.s.a. score of five

and five, and he's flagged as being prone to violence. >> so, for all those reasons, he will be remained detained. >> reporter: this man was accused of drug possession and has a history of other charges and failing to appear. he got the highest p.s.a. scores possible-- six and six-- but judge caposela has the discretion to weigh other factors. >> i'm also sensitive to the fact that he's working, and he's supporting four children. so, i'm satisfied that i'll release him on level three. condition of your lease, though-- and i very rarely do this-- you have to be employed, all right? we're going to monitor you now. you all right? all right. >> reporter: he will have to check in regularly with the court before his trial, part of the new monitoring system. >> don't let me down, mr. lighty. >> i won't. >> reporter: the most high-risk defendants get electronic bracelets. defendants also receive phone

calls, texts and emails to remind them of court dates. before, under the old system, did you have the option to just... to waive bail? >> the problem with that was, we didn't have monitoring back then. so, now, when we do it, there's a... a great comfort level because we're going to be monitoring those folks. >> reporter: since new jersey ended cash bail, 17,550 defendants were charged with state crimes during the first five months of this year, almost three quarters were released with monitoring, close to 10% were released with no monitoring, and 13% were detained in jail. the state jail population has dropped by 19% since the start of the year due to bail reform and also the fact that police are issuing more summonses with no arrest for some low-level crimes. >> i think the new system is working. >> reporter: passaic county public defender daniel palazzo says cases were harder to win when his low-income clients sat in jail because they couldn't post bail. the new, speedy trial requirements weren't in place, and prosecutors had leverage to

obtain a guilty plea. >> and the case just sits, and it gets longer and longer and longer. and eventually, somebody says, "i give up. i want my freedom back." >> reporter: just like what happened to james lumford, who pled guilty to a crime he says he didn't commit. but the new "no bail" system has vocal opponents. bail bondsmen say it's putting them out of business. and in may, after complaints from law enforcement, new jersey state courts changed the p.s.a. algorithm to automatically recommend detention for an expanded list of crimes, like gun possession and for defendants who re-offend while on release. >> i've not heard one chief say anything positive about this bail reform. >> reporter: joseph walker is the police chief in ringwood, a town in passaic county. >> it treats offenders as if they were victims. they have no concern for the victims that we are sworn to protect and serve. >> reporter: walker says police officers are frustrated seeing suspects they arrest back out on the streets so soon. >> it's a shame that we waste time arresting people over and over again, and they keep on

releasing them. i mean, our officers feel like it's a slap in the face because they're working hard to do a good case, whether it be drugs, or car burglaries, or whatever. they get down there, and they get released. then, they're out probably doing it again. >> reporter: under the old system, that person could've posted bail and also been released, right? >> yeah, but if he was released and re-arrested, the bail that he was released on would be revoked. so, there's a monetary penalty right off the bat. now, they don't have to post anything. they don't have to secure anything. they just walk free. >> reporter: walker points to news reports of freed suspects committing crimes, like the case of a released man who allegedly murdered his girlfriend before committing suicide. the state has no data yet on how many people have committed crimes while out before trial. there have been instances of people who've gotten out under a bail reform and committed some very serious crimes. >> that's right. >> reporter: is there a risk to public safety? >> the answer is: no more than the monetary bail because, one,

we're monitoring these folks. and we hope that the public, once they start to understand it, will, you know, approve of it and become accepting of it. we did not institute criminal justice reform to put bail bondsmen out of business and to clear out the jails. it was to respect the presumption of innocence, to design, you know, a system that was fair and honest. >> sreenivasan: a new investigative series from propublica called "bombs in our backyard" looks at the disposal of military waste and how it's affecting communities around the united states. yesterday, i spoke with the author of the series, abrahm lustgarten, from the newshour studios in washington, d.c. give us an overview. how significant is the problem

of military waste disposal in the united states? >> starting at world war i, every bomb, every bullet, every weapon that we have developed for defense purposes has been developed, designed, manufactured, through industrial processes, then tested, and eventually in many cases dispossessed of as they get old and expire on american soil. >> sreenivasan: aren't there already environmental regulations from the epa or other places to protect water or air quality? does the military have an exemption from those? >> yes, there are regulations, some of which apply to the pentagon and some don't. in the case of open burns, the pentagon's essentially burning what's defined as hazardous waste. the epa regulated the burning of hazardous waste back in the 1980s. so 30 years or so years ago. explosives were admittedly difficult to deal with. so at the time they created a little bit of a loophole that said the pentagon and other specialized companies that deal only in explosives can continue

to burn that stuff if that's the only way they can get rid of it, but only until they improve technology, figure out a better way to deal with it, at which point they would be required by the regulations to move to those alternatives. those now exist, they have for a long time, did you but the department of defense relies on burning. >> sreenivasan: how widespread is this around the country? you have a map. how many different sites are doing this that could be of concern to the neighborhood they're in? >> so we obtained a list that had been compiled internally within the epa, and it listed just about 200 sites. 197 sites across the country, where burns had been documented. not only those are still operating now. there are about 60 sites still operating now, about 51 of which are operated directly by the department of defense or its contractors as opposed to nasa and a couple of other private companies. those sites still today burn anywhere from a couple hundred thousand pounds of explosives a year up to 15 million pounds of

explosives a year. >> sreenivasan: so one of the places that you profiled actually had an elementary school not too far away, people on adjacent farms. what are the kind of health consequences they're having? >> it's really difficult to know what the direct consequences are of the burning. what we know is that in the place that i looked at in virginia, colfax, louisiana, another town, in other places, there are people who appear to have unusually rates of illnesses. they're concerned about what's causing those illnesses. they suspect it could be tied to the pollution. on the other hand it's well documented, and disclosed, that there is substantial pollution, that the pollution poses a substantial health threat. part of what we focused on in the story this week is the lack of an effort to try to bridge that question and that answer. there's really been remarkably little attention paid to trying to determine whether people are actually getting sick from these operations. >> sreenivasan: all right. abrahm lustgarten from pro

publicca joining us from san francisco today. thank you so much for your time. >> thank you. >> this is pbs newshour weekend, saturday. >> sreenivasan: a week after the fatal police shooting of a yoga instructor from australia, minneapolis has a new police chief. janné harteau resigned from the job yesterday, saying last saturday's shooting of justine damond-- and other similar incidents-- do not reflect the way she trained officers over the past five years. an officer shot her as she was walking toward their squad car after damond called 911 to report a possible assault outside her home. investigators say they've spoken to a witness who saw officers perform c.p.r. on damond. the pentagon is expressing condolences for an errant air strike by the u.s. military in afghanistan yesterday. it killed a dozen friendly afghan security forces. the air strike happened in the middle of the day during a joint operation against taliban fighters in helmand province, in southern afghanistan.

the provincial governor says the offensive killed 70 taliban fighters. the taliban has reclaimed control over roughly 40% of country. israeli security forces have retaliated for yesterday's fatal stabbing of a jewish family in their home in the israeli- occupied west bank. today, israeli soldiers raided and planned to demolish the west bank home of the 20-year-old palestinian attacker. he killed a man and his two children, and wounded the man's wife. the attacker was shot and detained by police. the attacker's father says his son was upset over the deaths of three palestinians earlier in the day, during violent protests in jerusalem. those protests were over metal detectors the israeli government has installed at the entrance to the plaza were the al aqsa mosque stands. palestinian president mahmoud abbas says he is freezing ties with israel until the metal detectors are removed. for more on the resignation of minneapolis police chief janné harteau, visit our web site at www.pbs.org/newshour.

>> sreenivasan: south african golfer brandon grace shot a 62 at today's third round of the british open, the lowest 18-hole score at a major championship in 157 years. but he's seven shots behind american jordan spieth heading into tomorrow's final round. that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. thanks for watching. i'm hari sreenivasan. have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. the anderson family fund. rosalind p. walter, in memory of abby m. o'neill. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

steves: the dramatic rock of cashel is one of ireland's most evocative sites. this was the seat of ancient irish kings for seven centuries. st. patrick baptized king aengus here in about 450 a.d. in around 1100, an irish king gave cashel

to the church, and it grew to become the ecclesiastical capital of all ireland. 800 years ago, this monastic community was just a chapel and a round tower standing high on this bluff. it looked out then, as it does today, over the plain of tipperary, called the golden vale because its rich soil makes it ireland's best farmland. on this historic rock, you stroll among these ruins in the footsteps of st. patrick, and wandering through my favorite celtic cross graveyard, i feel the soul of ireland.

>> each california channel island has its own heartbeat. each island has its own dynamic -- its own size, its own orientation, its own very intimate personal history. >> well, this is the final frontier of our continent, at any rate. >> well, there's eight islands off the coast of california. the four northerly ones are kind of in a line just off of santa barbara here. >> the southern four islands are more widely scattered. but to just say that they're a group of islands is to completely misrepresent what they are. they are the trace of a vanished world. >> i do this interview with a little hesitation, and i'm a little nervous about what we're doing here. if you love this island, for god's sakes, don't come here.