captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight: >> its going to be very, very important, the biggest in 50 years. the biggest change in 50 years. >> woodruff: president trump announces new efforts to overhaul legal immigration. a look at the details of the proposal that would cut in half those allowed in the country. then, a breakthrough. scientists edit out a disease-causing gene mutation from a human embryo. plus, the growth of superbugs. how our use of antibiotics are fueling the spread of dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria. >> we are seeing patients with infections that cannot be treated by any antibiotic on the market. and we're having to tell patients, "we don't have

anything for you." >> woodruff: and, a battle in the mediterranean. as migrants continue to make the deadly journey into europe, the sea has become ground zero for political clashes. all that and more, on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us.

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>> woodruff: it is a call to overhaul immigration. president trump endorsed today new legislation from republican senators david perdue of georgia and tom cotton of arkansas, that would cut in half the number of people allowed in the nation legally, marking a profound shift in policies that have been in place for half a century. >> for decades, the united states has operated a very low skilled immigration system, issuing record numbers of green cards to low wage immigrants. and is has not been fair to our people, to our citizens, our workers. >> woodruff: the president's senior adviser, stephen miller, fiercely defended the policy change at a white house briefing today. >> this is a reality that's happening in our country. maybe it's time we had compassion, glenn, for american workers. president trump has met with american workers who've been replaced by foreign workers.

and ask them how this is affecting their lives. >> woodruff: with us now to explain the proposed legislation is alan gomez, reporter for "usa today" who covers immigration. he joins me now from miami. alan welcome back to the program. so how does this proposal differ from current law? >> basically, what this proposal would do is completely upend the way that the u.s. accepts immigrants. right now, about 63% of green cards that are given to foreigners are given based on their family ties. in other words, they have somebody here in the u.s. that sponsors them, and they're able to get that green card. what they want to do, what president trump and senators cotton and purdue are proposing is switching to a system more like canada, where it's more based on their economic contributions and how they can contribute to the economy of the country. in canada it's the complete opposite. about 67% of the green cards given there are based on those economic ties. so they want to implement a

points-based system, where we rank would-be immigrants based on their education, their technical experience, their job experience, and make our immigration system more focused on what they can do for this country rather than just having family tieing. >> trevor: and practically what, would the changes be. >> practically, it would be incredibly-- it's hard to overestimate just what a drastic change this would be. so right now, if you're a u.s. citizen, you can sponsor your children, your spouse, your parents, your grandparents, your grandchildren, your cousins, your brothers, your sisters. what this program-- what this proposal would do would limit it to only your spouse and only your minor children. so that would drastically reduce your opportunities to bring your relatives into the united states. and again, on the economics, so all those folks could still be eligible to come in, but they would have to pass that test. they would have to go through that screening process that examines their ability to contribute immediately to the u.s. economy and favors people with higher educations, with

ph.d.s, with master's degrees and those kinds. >> what are the prospectes of this becoming law? >> not very good. senator cotton introduced this bill back in february. it hasn't even gotten a committee hearing. and we heard opposition today from immigrants, from democrats, and even some republicans who thought it went too far. >> alan gomez with "usa today." we thank you. thank you. >> woodruff: in the day's other news, researchers have successfully repaired a disease-causing gene in human embryos, a scientific first in the u.s. the embryos were never implanted, but the breakthrough is a step toward preventing a list of inherited diseases. the research team targeted a heart defect best known for killing young athletes. we'll explore the scientific and ethical ramifications of the development, after the news summary. president trump has signed a bill into law that imposing new sanctions on russia, but he made clear his distaste for the

legislation. it punishes moscow for its 2016 election meddling, and sanctions iran and north korea. in a statement, mr. trump said that the bill is "seriously flawed, particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch's authority to negotiate." he said he signed it "for the sake of national unity." we'll examine how the move impacts the president's relationship with congress, later in the program. the white house is knocking down news reports the justice department is considering lawsuits against colleges over affirmative action. citing an internal document, the "new york times" said the d.o.j. was taking steps to investigate and sue universities over "policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants." but at the white house, press secretary sarah huckabee sanders dismissed the story.

>> the "new york times" article is based entirely on uncorroborated inferences from a leaked internal personnel posting, in violation of department of justice policy. and while the white house does not confirm or deny the existence of potential investigations, the department of justice will always review credible allegations of discrimination on the basis of any race. >> woodruff: the supreme court has repeatedly ruled race can be used as a factor in determining college acceptance. two u.s. service members were killed in an attack on a nato convoy in afghanistan today. the taliban-claimed suicide bombing happened near the southern city of kandahar. a local official said a suicide bomber drove a car full of explosives into the convoy. the pentagon gave no information on the number of troops wounded. the trump administration has told congress it has all the legal authority it needs to battle the islamic state group in iraq and syria. it says the law passed after 9/11 to counter al-qaeda is

sufficient for the anti-isis fight. some lawmakers say it should be revised. it comes the same day secretary of state rex tillerson and defense secretary james mattis were on capitol hill, briefing senators on isis. it was a milestone day on wall street. the dow jones industrial average closed above 22,000 points for the first time, thanks to strong earnings by tech giant apple. in all, the dow gained 52 points to close at 22,016. the nasdaq fell a fraction of a point, and the s&p 500 added one. there's word that turnout numbers in venezula's election for an all-powerful constituent assembly were manipulated. a company that helped with country's voting technology says official estimates that eight million people participated in the vote are off by at least a million. the head of the country's opposition-controlled national assembly said the legislature

will call for an investigation. >> ( translated ): the national assembly is changing its agenda so that the main point of discussion becomes this fraud. what has happened in venezuela is not only a fraud, it was a crime that starts at the top of the electoral system, who read a report knowing that the results they were reading were absolutely fraudulent. >> woodruff: the freshly-elected body is expected to hand embattled president nicolas maduro sweeping new powers. president trump's claims about a pair of phone calls are coming under question. mexico's government says president enrique pena nieto did not phone mr. trump to compliment his immigration policies, as he said monday. and, the boy scouts denied that its leaders called mr. trump to praise his recent speech before the group. in fact, the chief scout executive apologized for the political rhetoric in the president's remarks. and, britain's prince philip stepped away from public life today.

the 96-year-old, who has done more than 22,000 public engagements, made what officials are calling his last solo public appearance, greeting royal marines at buckingham palace. but the u.k. hasn't seen the last of the duke of edinburgh: he will still accompany queen elizabeth from time to time. still to come on the newshour: a breakthrough in gene editing; the scientific and ethical implications. the tug of war between congress and the white house. efforts to stop superbugs in their tracks. and, much more. >> woodruff: now, more on that breakthrough in research announced today. the first time that a human embryo has been successfully edited in the u.s. to correct an inherited condition.

the milestone could open the way for future treatments, but it also crosses a line that many have opposed. hari sreenivasan has more from our new york studios. >> sreenivasan: the work was done with a technology known as crispr. essentially, a team of scientists snipped out the gene that causes a heart disease known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. researchers at oregon health and sciences university showed they could erase the mutation not just from the d.n.a. of the embryos, but also made sure the disease would not be passed on to future generations. that's known as germ-line editing, and there's been a major debate about whether that could lead to genetic engineering going too far. researchers point out it's not ready for clinical use. yet it could lead one day to treating some inherited diseases. we examine the breakthrough with jessica berg, dean of the case western reserve law school and professor of bioethics. thanks for joining us. tell us, how significant of a breakthrough is this that's just been published? >> so in one sense, it is simply the continuation of a line of

research which we've been doing for a while about the use of crispr in genetic editing in a variety of settings. in another sense, it was a pretty significant advance. so this was the first study that avoided two fairly significant concerns that we'd seen in earlier studies. one of theme them was that the g didn't always hit just the spot you wanted to edit. so, of course, you might be concerned that you changed other part of the genetic code. and the other being that you couldn't necessarily get every cell to take up the edit you were trying to achieve. both of those things are important before you move to a clinical setting. >> sreenivasan: so they addressed both of those in this particular experiment. >> this study was successful in not having either of those two things happen. >> sreenivasan: okay, so, who stands to benefit the most here? i mean, in this particular case, we are talking about a heart condition. but could this be applied to the 10,000 different diseases that are on a single gene somewhere?

>> so, in theory, this could be applied to any kind of a single-gene dell fect. you know, so certainly, this would be, you know, an important thing, an important advance for any kind of a clinical trying trooil that you'd like to do correcting a single-gene problem. >> sreenivasan: now, that's where kind of if you can modify a single gene, i think people are going to be concerned, could you mott modify it not just to get rid of the bugs, but to add features if there were, say, eye colors or freckles? >> most of the rest of the stuff is much, much harder. very few things that we code for genetically, that we think of designing or change regular things that are controlled by one gene. most of them have many genes involved and have gene environment interactions. so we're pretty far away from being able to do anything where you pick and choose the characteristics to add in. the other concern is this was designed specifically to look at

a problem part corrode code, remove the problem part, and insert the correct part. inserting something else on top-- so, for example, not taking something else out or trying to take something else out that's correctly coded could lead to all sorts of, problems and we'd be very, very cautious before we'd want to try anything like that. >> sreenivasan: one of the big concerns here was that this is not just editing the genes of the specific individual but that this could change the inherited trait that goes on generation after generation. i mean, the national academy of sciences met earlier this year and said we really should reserve this for the absolutely most serious and important conditions, right? >> yes, and i think part of that concern is we don't know yet all of the implications of what we're trying to do. so in those situations you might want to be cautious and only change things that affect one generation. on the other hand, if you're thinking from a clinical standpoint, the idea that you'd have to correct the same genetic

defect in each subsequent generation, or, for example, that anybody choosing to have children knowing they could potentially pass on the genetic flaw might say, "well, if you can cure this, why not cure it through all generations in? >> sreenivasan: right, so what are the ethical concerns here? >> so the ethical concerns relate at various levels. on the first level, if you have concerns about the use of an embryo in a research setting, you will be concerned about this type of research. the embryos in question will be destroyed, discarded, or stored indefinitely, and for this somepeople that alone will be a reason to be very concerned. the other concerns raise read going to be ho how do you get ts from a research setting to a clinical setting? as soon as you start to move forward, you involve other entities. so to actually have this result in the birth of a baby without

the genetic flaw, you've got to implant this in a woman. as soon as you do that, you're doing research with pregnant women. what are you going to do when things go wrong? what are you going to do if the developing fetus does not develop normally? that's going to raise a variety of other ethical questions. and then there's the very interesting question about what happens after the baby's born? is this just they've signed up for a research trial for life, since we've got to follow the child to see what else is going to happen? >> sreenivasan: these are all pretty big and important questions and i'm sure people will be tackling for quite some time. jessica berg from case western reserve university, thanks for joining us. >> sure, thanks so much for inviting me. >> woodruff: now to what appears to be a growing tug of war between the white house and capitol hill. today, we saw the divides highlighted on two fronts: health care, and sanctions

against russia. for a closer look at both, we're joined by our own lisa desjardins and nick schifrin. and we become both of. so, lisa, to you first. there does seem to be bipartisanship break out gee, that's right, the death of a partisan-led has led to the birth of bipartisanship in both came bers. in the the house, we saw a group of 40 members, called the problem solvers caucus, propose a health care compromise to stabilize the markets, essentially add more funds, but also limit the mandate on employers so fewer businesses would actually have to pay for insurance for their employees. that's the house. on the senate side, judy, the entire ball game rests with senator lamar alexander of tennessee, the chairman of the health committee, and his democratic ranking member, patty murray. talked to both of their staffs today. the efforts on both sides, judy, are narrowly tailored on

stabilization. >> woodruff: if they were not to agree what would that mean for these insurance markets and for the cost of premiums? >> that's right, for all of us, and especially those on the individual market. we got some new data yesterday from the department of health and human services. let's look at states that might get hit the hardest by increasing premiums. this is what insurers are forecasting they would have to do-- increase premiums by 30% in these five states, judy. notice what they have in common, they were won by president trump. these are red states. that's the high end, but most states expect premium increases, for example, 12% in new york. it's something that say concern. >> woodruff: to get to, i guess, the politics of this, how much of these premium increases are due to the affordable care act, which is what republicans argue, and how much is due to the instability of the markets and so forth, which is what the democrats are saying? >> this is the conversation and it centers around the insurance subsidies, the $7 billion this year that insurers are counting

on getting. good policies or not, they're expecting it. but president trump hasn't yet said if he will let that money go all the way through for next year. that creates risk, and some people say that's why these i'm prooemium increasecreases arein. let's hear from senator john cornyn. he said republicans have nothing to do with premium increases. >> the idea that premiums are going to go up 30% next year unless something changes is a product of the failure of obamacare. it's nothing that this administration has gone d.n.a. or will do that has caused that. >> and that flies in the face, though, judy of what we've heard from states. let's go to idaho. the republican director of insurance put out this statement exactly saying the opposite: that is the subsidys. that is why they have at least

some of the premium problem in that state. >> woodruff: quickly, where is this headed? >> right. there is a huge divide between it looks like senators, republican senators who want to fund these insurance subsidies and a president who hasn't declared what he's going to do but who senators i talked to today very nervous that he may not fund these subsidies. >> woodruff: and we'll see how many days are left for congress to be around and then we'll find out how they work this out. so, while we're talking about a division here, nick, to foreign affairs, there's also a split that burst into the open today taid when it came to these russia sanctions. what's going on with regard to that? >> yeah, this is the first major foreign affairs legislation passed by the congress, and not only was it passed over the president's objections but it was also passed as a way to handcuff the president's ability to lift sanctions on russia. no president is going to like that inspect that sense this is part of a centuries-old tug-of-war between legislative and executive branches over who controls foreign policy. and president trump released an initial statement this morning that really speaks to that

history. he said, "my administration will give careful and respectful consideration to the preferences expressed by the congress, and will implement them in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations." and the congressional staffers i spoke to today said that is language that presidents obama and bush could have used, a president trying to keep control over foreign policy. >> woodruff: but he went further,s -- you and i were discussed, and he issued a second statement, much more personal. >> oh, yes. this is a president who has a book called "the art of the deal," who thinks he is the best deal maker and does not want congress to impede that. and the second statement he released simultaneously did go more personal toward congress. he said, "congress could not even negotiate a health care bill after seven years of talking. i built a truly great company with many billions of dollars. that is a big part of the reason i was elected. as president, i can make far better deals with foreign countries than congress can." on the hill you have some

initial shrugs today. a democratic staffer told me, "can you quote me rolling my eyes in? senate foreign relations committee chairman bob corker said, "it doesn't matter to me what the president's statement says." and that's tha accept theiment was actually taken a lot further by russia in its response. prime medvedev said that trump was, "weak" and had been "outwitted and humiliated by congress." which just goes to show, judy, that it's not just america that is watching this tug-of-war between the president and congress. >> woodruff: ouch, ouch. so divisions over domestic and foreign. thank you both very much. nick schriffrin, lisa desjardins. >> woodruff: stay with us. coming up on the newshour: an interior department official helping alaskan natives with climate change speaks out.

and, right-wing activists forcing refugees to turn back in the middle of the mediterranean sea. but first, we are beginning a special series on the growing concerns around antibiotics. why there is more resistance to the drugs, from so-called superbugs that can be dangerous and even fatal, and why it has been difficult to create a newer class of drugs to solve this problem. it is a story that involves the worlds of science, medicine, business and economics. so we asked our science and economics correspondents, miles o'brien and paul solman, to team up. their coverage will continue over the next couple of weeks. we start with miles' report, part of our weekly series on the "leading edge" of science and technology. >> every sunday night, i put up the pills for a week at a time. >> reporter: 30 times a day... >> amlodipine, that's a blood pressure medicine. >> reporter: each and every day... >> prednisone for rejection. >> reporter: ...jane tecce takes a pill.

>> this is hydralazine, that's another blood pressure medicine. >> reporter: no complaints from her-- she's just grateful to be alive. >> i'm grateful. i wouldn't have gotten to see my grandkids being born and, you know, just see life. so you sacrifice things and so that's how i look at it. it's a tradeoff. >> reporter: in 2011, after years of battling a rare genetic disease, jane received the heart and kidney of an 18-year-old man at tufts medical center in boston. her daily pill regimen is designed to stop her body from rejecting the organs, but it was another drug, an antibiotic, that fueled an infection that nearly killed her. a month after her transplants, she contracted pneumonia. >> they put me back in and i was very sick. i knew i wasn't doing well at all, and a lot of pain. i had pain as if the ribs were affected and things like that, so they started pumping me through the i.v. with a lot of the antibiotics, and i think that was the beginning.

by february, i had been diagnosed with the c. diff. >> reporter: c. diff, or clostridium difficile, is a so-called superbug, meaning a bacteria that is not easily stemmed by antibiotics. in fact, it thrives in people taking the drugs. each year, superbugs infect more than 2.25 million americans, killing at least 38,000. >> the first thing you do is you put on your yellow gown... >> reporter: at tufts, doctors who come in contact with patients infected with superbugs like c. diff must take great precautions. as the list of antibiotic- resistant bacteria grows, this has become a much more common routine. >> hello, i'm here to do tru-d. >> reporter: so have some extraordinary efforts to prevent the spread of infection from patient to patient. here, they bombard rooms with ultraviolet light, which causes genetic damage to bacteria, rendering them unable to reproduce.

shira doron is the physician director of the anti-microbial stewardship program at tufts. >> we are seeing patients with infections that cannot be treated by any antibiotic on the market. and we're having to tell patients, "we don't have anything for you," and so that makes it really scary and really concerning. >> reporter: antibiotics are organic compounds that attack and kill bacteria. they are often derived from microbes found in soil and from mold. that's where scottish scientist alexander fleming discovered the first true antibiotic, penicillin, in 1928. it, and a host of others developed in the decades that followed, revolutionized medicine. but it was no surprise that these miracle drugs would eventually lose their potency. in fact, when dr. fleming received the nobel prize, he warned of: "the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself, and by exposing his

microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug, make them resistant." doctors began using penicillin to treat patients in 1942. only three years later, they encountered the first resistant bacteria. helen boucher is a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at tufts. >> resistance happens naturally. so, bacteria have various mechanisms to survive. >> reporter: it is survival of the fittest. evolution, at warp speed. bacteria adapt very quickly in the face of the assault. they can learn to strengthen their cell walls to repel the antibiotics. they can develop pumps to expel them. or they can make enzymes that destroy them. >> so they figure out ways to evade the effect of the antibiotic. and this happens in nature, and it happens faster in the presence of antibiotics. >> reporter: you sort of make it sound like bacteria are smart.

>> they're very smart. >> reporter: and they are adapting very fast, creating a big public health crisis. >> unfortunately, these bugs mutate faster than we can come up with new drugs. so the only realistic strategy is to use the antibiotics that we have, better. >> reporter: kirthana beaulac is the pharmacist director of the anti-microbial stewardship program at tufts. we met in the central pharmacy where they store the vast majority of their medications for patients. here, they see themselves as a last line of defense. prescriptions for antibiotics are carefully scrutinized, particularly the drugs that attack a broad spectrum of bacteria. >> it requires constant evaluation of the way we do things, and constant reminders, and really, a critical assessment of everything we do every single day, to really make any headway on this battle. >> reporter: you sound like

you're at war. >> yeah, this is. we call it the "arms race." >> reporter: in her laboratory, dr. boucher and her team are constantly analyzing cultures of bacteria from patients in the hospital, always on the lookout for another mutation, another superbug. >> so the infection preventionists come to our meetings every day at 11:30. and they are tuned in to be looking for anything, any one case, that's new, that requires them to go do investigation. and that's how we prevent anything from becoming a bigger problem. >> reporter: the longer bacteria see an antibiotic, the more likely they are to develop resistance. it poses a conundrum for doctors as they weigh the health of an individual patient versus society as a whole. >> i think there has been a general feeling that it's better to err on the side of caution, and that caution equals prescribe. and i am trying to impart the message that caution might actually be not prescribing. >> reporter: the hunt for new

drugs to prescribe is not easy. scientists say they have already picked the low-hanging fruit: new microbes that lead to new antibiotics are no longer easy to find. >> so, we are running out of antibiotics-- quickly. >> reporter: my colleague, paul solman, met with a woman in london who could be the poster child for a post- antibiotic world. eight years ago, emily morris was hospitalized with a e. coli superbug, the first of eight serious bouts with resistant bacteria. >> so, i could have had antibiotics when i didn't need them, and also because i had so many. >> reporter: when she was young, she was prescribed antibiotics frequently because of a hereditary condition that makes her prone to urinary tract infections. >> i was just very lucky, very lucky that a last resort antibiotic did work. a lot of the time it doesn't work, it kills thousands of people a year. and these superbugs, i've been told, are going to kill more than cancer by 2050. >> reporter: after we finished

shooting, i sat down with paul solman to compare notes. emily's story, that's a tough one. and i think our heart goes out to her, anybody watching that, thinking, "this could happen to any one of us." and as i was shooting the story, i was thinking an awful lot about how close i was getting to these nasty bugs. were you thinking the same thing? >> yeah, i'm a little hypochondriacal to begin with. i was now becoming germophobic, washing my hands all the time. i mean, seriously. >> reporter: as a good american, i assumed going into this series that there had to be some kind of silver bullet solution that will get us out of this. but, it's not as simple as that. the drugs just aren't there, are they? >> you would think there's enormous, essentially insatiable demand for the product, so obviously the market is going to provide it. but, it turns out, it's not anywhere that simple and that's what the next installment of this series is about. >> reporter: all right, we'll go to the dismal science next time. for the pbs newshour, i am science correspondent miles o'brien. >> and i'm economics

correspondent paul solman. >> woodruff: president trump's new chief of staff, john kelly, is just three days on the job, and expectations are already high for him to stop the recent churn at the top in the white house, and mend fences with congress following the failure on healthcare. we explore how the administration can bridge these divides, with: karine jean-pierre, a veteran of the obama administration. and, barry bennett. he was a senior advisor to the trump presidential campaign. and welcome to both of you. thank you for being with us again. general john kelly, he's been on the job three days. has everything changed? >> well, i think three days is not a pattern for donald trump. i think maybe in three weeks, then we can look back to see if john kelly can hold up to his distinguished career and being that general that he is and

bringing everything together. but i don't have a lot of confidence in that. many people have tried. before john kelly and have failed. and you really just can't change the man by changing staff. it just is not going to work with donald trump. he doesn't want to be managed. he wants to be his own chief of staff, his own communications director, and his own chief counsel. >> woodruff: what do you see, barry bennett? >> well, i think that if his mission were to change donald trump that would probably be a failure in the end. i think his mission, though, is to make trump better. every player needs a coach. this white house team has needed a coach for six months, frankly. and i hope that he is that good coach that they need-- an enforcer, systems, rules, processes all matter. and he seems-- the first three days-- i know it's a short time to judge him, but i'm pretty excited about those three days. >> woodruff: well, ther there aa few reports coming out, apparently the door to the oval office open to everybody, or many, is now closed. there's some discipline there. and we're also noticing the

president isn't tweeting as mup. now it's only three days. >> three days. >> woodruff: but maybe he's having some effect. >> we have to see. i mean, three days is pretty low bar. he is the president of the united states, and we're-- we're saying, "oh, yay, three days." it just doesn't-- it just hasn't been donald trump's pattern. we haven't seen that in the past. there's been many pivots. even when reince priebus came into the office as chief of staff, people thought, oh, there's there goes a pivot. when his family moved into the white house, oh, there goes a pivot. that is going to calm him down, and it never has worked. so we'll see. >> woodruff: is there some secret formula that we haven't seen staff try or someone try? i mean, barry bennett, one of the things that was said about general kelly is he's closer to being a peer of president trump's. >> yeah, yeah. >> woodruff: he's a general-- >> great accomplishments. >> woodruff: had a great career in the military. >> you know, i think that the-- my time in the campaign, if you give him a plan that he buys

into, he executes. i just don't think that they were very successful at creating a plan that he was willing to buy into and execute. >> woodruff: when you say "they" you mean? >> the staff. for instance, if i were general kelly-- and i'm not, thank goodness-- but give him some things to tweet about. have a plan about what happens after you tweet. here's an idea, tweet the white house-- switch the congressional switchboard number. turn the calls on. there are all kinds of things they could be doing that they're not. >> and hope that general kelly, you know, orchestrateaise new plan. >> woodruff: well, meanwhile, careen, what we were talking about earlier with lisa desjardins and nick schriffrin, is about the divide between the white house and the congress over some pretty important matters. lisa was talking about health care, how the president has said just let the affordable care act implode. some in congress are trying to do something to regenerate health care reform. and then nick schriffrin talking about the divide over the russia

sanctions, the president hates it. he signed it, but doesn't like it. >> i think, judy, if you are a republican sitting on the hill in the house or the senate, or if you're a republican sitting in any red state, you would look and expect that you have the control of three branches, that you would be able to get things done, major piecees of legislation. and that just hasn't happened under this white house. so i think that's pretty troubling for republicans and anybody who is following all of this and cares about their country. if you're, you know, in the republican party. so that is troubling. and, also, on the bipartisanship, i think it's great. i think it's a great start for them to try and figure out a solution. but if the leaders aren't there, if mitch mcconnell and paul ryan aren't there, it's just not going to happen. and they still have on the table full repeal, and you can't get anywhere if you're still talking about talking away health care from millions of people. >> woodruff: one of the questions this raises in my mind, barry bennett, is how much

clout does this president have? >> uh-huh. >> woodruff: with this-- with his party in the congress. after the failure of the health care reform bill, they spent months trying to make this happen. it hasn't worked yet. >> yeah. >> woodruff: are they-- do they-- do they care what the president says to them? >> well, the congress, i have no idea. unfortunately, for the congress, they proved all the trump voters were right about congress, right, that washington is broken, and they can't do anything. congress hasn't solve aid serious problem in quite a long time. so to that extent, his base, the republican party pretty much as a majority, was proven right, that congress is broken. you know, as the problem escalates-- we're now seeing, you know, rates as you just reported, rates are rising across the country. there are 19 counties in ohio that don't have-- don't have a provider. california is coming down. as the problems get bigger and

bigger, hopefully more and more people will get serious and we can come to some kind of bipartisan solution. but until now, there's been a total unwillingness for the two sides to work together. and, you know, frankly the republican caucus in the senate couldn't even come together. >> woodruff: well, congress did come together to pass these sanctions against russia, which the president is unhappy with. >> well, i think any president would be fairly unhappy with the congress not giving him his right to-- taking away the ability to lift sanctiones after some kind of negotiation. so, you know, as someone who believes in the power of the office of the presidency, i have a problem with that. i understand-- i understand politically why they did it. but i don't think that it helps the power of the presidency to do that. >> woodruff: i was going to ask you about something else the president said this week, and that is handling police suspects. karine, we are just about out of time, that has caused a lot of push back. the president saying don't worry about the suspects when you

shove them into the car, don't worry about their heads. >> it's very troubling and concerning what president said. he has to understand as long as he's in the oval office his words are going to have a the love weight. if you've been watching donald trump for the last two years, for decades, you know that he was not joking. you know that he was very serious about what he was saying. >> woodruff: all right, we're going to have to leave it there, karine jean-pierre, barry bennett thank you. >> thanks, judy. >> woodruff: now, what do you do when your job changes, but you don't agree with the change? for one government scientist, it forced him into the role of a reluctant whistleblower. william brangham has our conversation. >> recently, joel clement had been working as a senior policy official in the department of interior. his work included the arctic and the draws climate change posed. but in june, he was reassigned, along with several dozen others,

to a completely different position, unrelated to his previous work. last week, clement went public in a "the washington post" op-ed alleging that he was reassigned because of his work on climate change. he said he was now, "a whistleblower on an administration that chooses silence over science." joel clement joins me now. welcome to the newshour. >> thank you. >> so you were one of several dozen people were reassigned, and you allege that this was because of your work on climate change. and i'm curious, let's talk a little bit about what that work was that you were doing before you were reassigned. what did you do? >> year, i was-- here in washington, i was the director of the office of policy analysis. i had a team of analysts and economists and scientists. and we were looking at a lot of cross-kit cutting issues, one of which, in particular, we spent a lottive time on was addressing the risks that climate change poses for the alaska native communities in the arctic. they are on these very narrow

islands, barrier islands, that are in a very dire situation. because the arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, the perma frost that locks those islands in place is starting to fall apart. and the sea ice that used to protect them from the oncoming storms and floods during the season of harsh weather has receded during that season. so now these bits of land are not only falling apart under their feet and buildings sliding into the sea, but they're at the mercy of these storms that come through. and each episode can be quite dramatic. and, honestly, we worry very much that one super storm and one or more villages could be wiped right off the map. >> you argued in your piece that you believed upper reassigned for raising concerns about these communitys. you wrote, "the trump administration clearly retaliated against me for raising awareness of this danger." what evidence do you have that that's really why you got moved? >> well, it's clear that there's been an ongoing effort to

suppress this climate change stuff, right. we didn't worry about that as much at interior, because we work on climate adaptation and resilience,right. we're addressing the impacts that we know are coming, that are baked into the system, no matter what we do about mitigating greenhouse gases so i guess naively we thought that the focus would be on greenhouse gases and e.p.a., but really, in i think it was may, president trump rescinded an executive order from last december that set up a tribal advisory council and some other boards that would help get this work done. that's when we realized it doesn't matter whether it's resilience adaptation or mitigation, they're coming after anything that has the scent of climate change to it. >> and what were you doing specifically to raise awareness about this issue that you think put you in the crosshairs? >> well, i spoke very publicly about the issue. i raised it to leadership at the department of the interior. i raised it with leadership at the white house. i spoke on several occasions to

the public about it, and just the week before i received the reassignment letter i spoke about it at the united nations. >> now a spokesman for the interior department said this move, transferring you from "a" to "b" was completely appropriate. they said it was-- interior secretary zinke said he was going to reorganize the department on day one, and they argue you signed up for this job knowing that this was likely going to happen. so what is your response to that? >> we absolutely know that the senior exclusive service is a mobile workforce. anyone who becomes an s.c.s., senior executive, know they can be reassigned, even involuntarily. what it does not allow, however, is for the administration to retaliate against employees by reassigning them or to coerce them into quitting their jobs. and it was very clear to me based on the job they put me in that that was their intent. >> but they never said to you, "we didn't like that you were

talking about this or raising this issue." they simply said, "we think you're better positioned to do this other job." >> yeah, they actually never said anything. i didn't talk to anybody. no one reached out before the reassignment, and nobody reached out after the reassignment except to male me where my new office is, and my notice office is in the accounting office that collects royalty checks from the oil and gas companies. >> that's your current job now. >> that's where i sit now. it's not really a job. i'm a senior adviser so it's a job title with no duties, so i think it's understood i would quit the job before moving. >> do you see some irony there, that you were working on climate change, largely driven by the consumption of oil and gas, and now you're cashing checks from the oil and gas industry? >> year, the irony is not lost on me. nor is the very clear intent of that reassignment. >> you have filed a complaint now with the u.s. office of special counsel. what is it you hope comes of this? >> well, i'm going to trust the process. they'll do an investigation. i certainly hope that they will

then ask the department to reinstate me in my old job so i can get back to work looking out for these alaska native communities, looking out for the health and safety americans. that's what makes this work meaningful. and, of course, i hope to be able to do that. i also, though, hope that others that are contemplating speaking out realize they do have rights, and they do have a voice, and there's an opportunity if they need to. if they're told to do things they don't approve of or not to do their job, that they should speak out. >> all right, joel clement, thank you for talking with us. >> thank you very much. >> woodruff: italy's parliament today approved a plan to send a naval task force to libya to crack down on smugglers who send thousands of migrants across the mediterranean into europe. italy has demanded that

charities operating rescue ships in the mediterranean comply with a new code of conduct. amid this, a ship containing anti-immigrant activists is heading towards libya on a mission to return migrants to non-european ports. from sicily, special correspondent malcolm brabant reports. >> reporter: at trapani in western sicily, the routine rarely varies. survivors of a disaster off the libyan coast disembark from a charity ship. the injured and traumatized make landfall first. and then, shielded from the living by a line of hearses, come the dead. save the children spokesman rik goverde: >> they probably died of drowning, in combination with chemical burns, which is when sea water and fuel, when they react, i mean, some bodies were just without skin. it was terrible. >> reporter: the migrants were lifted from a deflating dinghy by rescuers from the spanish charity pro activa. >> i am pregnant, i am dying. >> reporter: so far this year, almost 2,400 have drowned in the mediterranean.

last year, the death toll was 5,000. >> there is ten dead bodies at the boat, ten dead bodies. three jump inside the water, the rest are inside the boat. >> it's a cemetery, it's a place so full of dead people. is a place that is a shame for the european union. we cannot say we don't know what is happening in front of our eyes. >> reporter: at city hall in sicily's capital, palermo, mayor leoluca orlando is exasperated by europe's reluctance to share italy's burden. >> what is sure that today, some european states, first of all are responsible for what is happening. >> reporter: but this new right wing organization vehemently opposes the mayor's open borders agenda. it is militant about what it sees as the threat to europe's racial identity from africa. >> every week, every day, every hour, ships packed with

immigrants flood the european border. an invasion is taking place. >> this massive migration is changing the face of our continent. we're losing our safety, our way of life. and we will become a minority in our own country. >> reporter: they call themselves the identity generation. trailed by police and opponents in sicily, they quietly traveled to cyprus, where a supporter filmed them. they believe europe can stop the influx by emulating australia's military strategy of intercepting migrant boats and returning them to the point of departure. they've chartered a ship called the "c star," and it's reportedly heading from cyprus towards the libyan coast. they say they will return any migrants they rescue. italian lorenzo fiato: >> since when the n.g.o.s started operating, the deaths in the sea increased. and the illegal immigration became more, more, more a problem. so breaking the narrative of the n.g.o.s that are literally a

taxi service from libya to europe is the most important thing to do now. >> no borders, no nations, stop deportations. >> reporter: the left wing campaign group avaaz signaled its opposition to the extremists by symbolically blocking the sicilian port of catania, from where the "c star" had originally been expected to begin its mission to libyan waters. spokesman luca nicotra: >> we know they are trying to show their best face. some even call them the right- wing hipsters. we know they are coming from the worst far-right movement all around europe, some of them with neo-nazi pasts. we know that in may, they tried to literally stop one of the boats here in the port. >> reporter: that was the "aquarius," jointly operated by sos mediterannee and doctors without borders. many volunteers insist the presence of rescue ships does not entice migrants to make the desperate journey. they claim the push factors of conflict, intimidation or poverty in their homelands are

stronger. dr craig spencer, a public health specialist at columbia university hospital in new york, has just spent three months on the vessel. >> for me, the question is, is it acceptable to you, is it acceptable to anyone, to let someone drown? i hope everyone would answer no. that "no, it's not acceptable" to allow humans, children, even your worst enemy to drown unaccompanied in the middle of the mediterranean. >> reporter: in an attempt to impose more control, the italian one sicilian prosecutor is investigating allegations of collusion with smugglers. this week, in an attempt to impose more control in the rescue zone, the italian government has ordered the n.g.o.s to sign a code of conduct. marcella cray leads the doctors without borders team on the "aquarius." one of the accusations that's sometimes leveled against organizations like yours is that you are in cahoots with the smugglers, that you're

communicating with them so that you can pick these people up at sea. what is the situation? >> well, what i can say is that in no way, shape, or form have we ever been in contact with any traffickers or anything like that. we are patrolling the international waters north of libya, looking for boats in distress. we work with the maritime rescue coordination center in rome, and they're the ones that direct where we go, which rescues we do, and where we go afterwards to bring the people. >> reporter: so there's never any communication whatsoever? >> none whatsoever. >> reporter: the "aquarius" sailed for the rescue zone before the code came into force. doctors without borders has refused to sign. it objects to having an armed police officer on board, and it claims lives could be lost by a new rule demanding ships return to italy immediately once they've rescued migrants. previously, they could transfer survivors between ships and spend more time in the search and rescue zone.

the internationally recognized libyan government asked for help to crack down on traffickers responsible for sending 600,000 migrants to italy since 2014. the european union has just pledged to give italy $120 million to help ease the migration burden. but the president of the european parliament has warned that the e.u. is underestimating the scale of this crisis. antonio tajani is predicting that millions of africans will try to come to europe in the next five years unless urgent action is taken. he says that the way to discourage them from coming is for there to be a massive program of investment in africa. this center for unaccompanied minors gave a taste of italy's problems to the man who wants to replace angela merkel as germany's chancellor. martin schulz, the former president of the european parliament, now leads the social democratic party as it heads towards september's german general election. italy's interior minister marco minniti:

what do you think of the suggestion that there should be an australian solution to try to stop the wave of migrants coming across the mediterranean? >> what we need are systems of legal immigration to make the distinction between attempting to join the territory of the european union outside the legal framework and the legal frame which is giving hope, not a guarantee, but hope and that's what's missing, lacking in europe. >> reporter: but do you not think that it's worth taking away all the vessels because they're acting as a pull towards europe? >> i think there's a lot of activity of the security forces, but at the center of all our activities first of all is humanitarian aid. >> reporter: at the memorial for those drowned in the mediterranean, another question for the man campaigning to be the most powerful figure in the european union. is there anything more that europe could do to stop the deaths? >> that's the reason why i'm here. we need a fair share of the responsibilities. >> reporter: but much of europe isn't listening.

and isn't softening, either. for the pbs newshour, i'm malcolm brabant in sicily. >> woodruff: on the newshour online right now: meet a filmmaker who spent two years criss-crossing the state of alabama, asking people to recite an iconic poem by walt whitman. what was her goal? to find the threads that tied them, and us, together. find her story our website, www.pbs.org/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. join us online, and again right here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you, and we'll see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> bnsf railway. >> supported by the rockefeller foundation.

promoting the wellbeing of humanity around the world, by building resilience and inclusive economies. more at www.rockefellerfoundation.org. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and individuals. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin tonight with phillip rucker of "the washington post" and the story in the newspaper about how president trump coached his son in how to respond to a meeting he'd had with a russian businesswoman and others. >> president trump personally overruled the advice of his attorneys and his advisors to dictate a statement that would be issued in the name of his son donald trump, jr. to mislead the public, to intentionally conceal key fact about that meeting in an attempt to spin the story in sort of a less damaging way. >> rose: we continue this evening with "indecent," the tony-award winning play. we talk to director rebecca taichman, one of the stars of the play richard topol and producer daryl roth. >> the story of the play is one that kind of