captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> sreenivasan: good evening, i'm hari sreenivasan. judy woodruff is on assignment. on the newshour tonight... >> it stuns me that a member of congress would listen in to that conversation. >> sreenivasan: ...the white house chief of staff who lost a son in combat defends president trump's call to a gold star family. then, president trump meets with puerto rico's governor on the island's recovery-- a look at the devastating damage and why relief has been so slow. also ahead, "troubled water"-- the teacher and students behind a documentary that looks at communities across the nation that have challenges getting access to clean water. plus... ♪ ♪ keeping new orleans music alive. jeffrey brown talks with trombone shorty about his latest album and how he hopes to inspire the next generation of artists. >> i'm not expecting you to keep

a certain style alive, but just to learn what we do here, and then you can be creative and take it to the next part. >> sreenivasan: all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> collette.

>> and by the alfred p. sloan foundation. supporting science, technology, and improved economic performance and financial literacy in the 21st century. >> carnegie corporation of new york. 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.

>> sreenivasan: the white house moved today to put to rest the controversy over president trump's outreach to the families of servicemembers killed in action. chief of staff john kelly, himself a gold star father, and former marine general, made a remarkable appearance in the white house briefing room. white house correspondent john yang reports. >> yang: with president trump under fire, white house chief of staff john kelly, a retired marine general stepped forward. >> so i just wanted to perhaps make more of a statement than an explanation, give more of an explanation. >> yang: mr. trump ignited fury yore monday claiming he did more to console families of the fallen than his predecessors fmpleghts you look at president obama and other presidents, most of them didn't make calls, a lot of them didn't make calls. >> yang: the next day the president tried to bolster his case by invoking kelly's son

robert a marine killed in afghanistan in 2010. >> now, as far as other representatives, i don't know. i mean, you could ask general kelly, did he get a call from obama. >> yang: today, kelly gave the answer. >> i can tell you president obama who was my commander-in-chief when i was on active duty did not call my family. that is not a criticism. >> yang: his advice to president trump? >> my first recommendation is he not do it because it's not the phone call that parents and family members are looking forward to. in my case, after my son was killed, his friends were calling us from afghanistan telling us what a great guy he was. those are the only phone calls that really matter. >> yang: kelly sought to explain what mr. trump was trying to say in his call to the family of david johnson killed

two weeks ago. >> i'll tell you what my best friend told me, who was my casualty officer. he said, kelly, he was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. he knew what he was getting into by joining that 1%. he knew what the possibilities were because we're at war. when he died, he was surround bid the best men on this earth, his friends. that's what the president tried to say to four families the other day. >> yang: he sharply criticized democratic representative frederico wilson who disclosed the details of the president's call. >> it stuns me that a member of congress would have listened in on that conversation, absolutely stuns me. and i thought, at least that was sacred. >> yang: he also appeared to

criticize the candidates, the families of a muslim soldier killed in iraq. >> gold star families that left the convention over the summer, i thought the selfless devotion that brings the man or woman to die in the battlefield, i just thought that might be sacred. >> yang: and a parting thought for reporters who was of whom who have not served in the military. >> we don't look down on you who have never served. in fact, we're sorry because you never experience the wonderful joy you get in your heart when you do the kind of things our servicemen and women do not for any other reason than they love this country. >> yang: a retired warrior and grieving father battling a political fire storm touched off by his boss. for the pbs "newshour", i'm john yang.

>> sreenivasan: in the day's other news, former president george w. bush warned today of a slide toward bigotry and isolation in president trump's america. mr. bush spoke in new york city. he did not directly name the president, but warned that the nation is losing its identity. >> bigotry seems emboldened. our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication. we have seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty. at times, it can seem like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together. >> sreenivasan: the speech echoed the words of republican senator john mccain earlier this week. he urged the rejection of what he called "spurious nationalism." russian president vladimir putin defended president trump today. at a foreign policy forum, putin complained of what he called a "lack of respect" for mr. trump. he said it is a "deplorable element of the u.s. political system." taliban fighters nearly wiped out an army base in afghanistan today, killing at least 43 soldiers. attacks elsewhere killed 13 more troops and police. the attack on the army camp came

in kandahar province and began with two suicide car bombs and lasted for hours. >> ( translated ): the enemies of our country attacked one of our camps in maiwand district. in total, there were 60 personnel in that camp, all the vehicles and equipment have been destroyed. we have the corps commander in the camp to investigate the incident. >> sreenivasan: two days ago, another wave of taliban attacks targeted police compounds and government facilities, killing at least 74. the government of spain served notice today that it will move to strip catalonia of its autonomy. prime minister mariano rajoy called a cabinet meeting for saturday, to trigger the process. that came after the catalan president warned his region will formally proclaim independence, unless madrid agrees to negotiate. back in this country, the u.s. senate moved toward passing a $4 trillion budget. it paves the way for a republican tax cut plan that's expected to add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. as debate proceeded, democrats decried the approach, while most

republicans defended it. >> to those of you on the republican side who've been claiming we need tax cuts and a simpler tax code, this is your chance. if we don't succeed now we're going to fail for the next, the entire term of president trump, that will be the end of us as a party. >> america is strongest when the middle class is prospering. what is on paper today is just an enormous gift to the top of the top, the most fortunate special interests. >> sreenivasan: the house of representatives passed its own version of the budget last week. it's now estimated that damage from the wildfires in california will top $1 billion. the state insurance commissioner made that estimate today, and predicted it will rise. the spate of fires destroyed nearly 7,000 homes and other buildings. white nationalist speaker richard spencer appeared today

at the university of florida, and drew hundreds of protesters. he'd spoken at the university of virginia in august, and violence erupted that left one person dead. today, hundreds demonstrated on the gainesville campus, as hundreds of police kept watch. inside, spencer was repeatedly interrupted by chanting protesters. general motors agreed to pay $120 million in a settlement over defective ignition switches. it involves 49 states and the district of columbia. the switches are blamed for at least 124 deaths worldwide. and wall street had a quiet day. the dow jones industrial average gained 5 points to close at 23163, the nasdaq fell and the s&p added a fraction. still to come on the newshour: we check in on hurricane recovery efforts in puerto rico. the court battle over an undocumented immigrant in texas who wants an abortion. what food says about our economic status, and much more.

>> sreenivasan: we turn now to the rebuilding efforts in puerto rico. both the local and federal governments have faced criticism for their actions after hurricane maria. it slammed into the island on setpember 20, killing at least 48. today, the president met with the puerto rican governor at the white house. mr. trump was asked how he'd grade his administration's response to the crisis, on a scale of one to 10. >> i'd say it was a 10. i'd say it was probably the most difficult-- when you talk about relief, when you talk about search, when you talk about all the different levels, and even when you talk about lives saved, it hit right through the middle of the island, right through the middle of puerto rico. there's never been anything like that. i give ourselves a 10. >> sreenivasan: for his part, the governor, ricardo rossello, declined to put a number grade on the response.

but he did praise the federal government. >> what's going to keep this going is knowing that we have the backing of the white house, and knowing that we're going to have the backing of congress, so that we can have the resources appropriate to attend to the storm, and then be smart about it, be innovative, and restore puerto rico to a better position than before. >> sreenivasan: some 80% of puerto rico remains without electricity, and president trump addressed the task of repairing the island's devastated power grid. >> there's never been a case where power plants were gone. so this isn't just like-- you know, as i said, i don't want to just fix poles. you can't just fix the poles. there's never been a case where power plants were gone. so it's going to be a period of time before the electric is restored. >> sreenivasan: for more on the efforts to repair the island's power grid, i spoke a short time ago with jose sanchez. he's the director of the puerto rico power restoration task

force, for the army corps of engineers. he joined me from san juan via skype. i began by asking about the president's assessment that the power plants were the significant problem, not the transmission lines. >> it's all tied together. if you have the transmission lines up, the generation of power cannot be put in place. in other words, you can't just fire up a generator hoping to be connected afterwards. it's a demand signal. so you have to have the demand that comes from the homes and businesses back into the generator itself. >> sreenivasan: so give us an idea of the scale of repairs that are necessary. well, when we got here, the first assistance we got from the local power authority was that they have about 80% of the system was affected, not necessarily destroyed but affected, and that would be from

lines down to trees touching the lines and so on and so forth. there are crews out there right now. last we heard, about 20% of the generation of power has been now energized. >> sreenivasan: we're a month out and we're still talking about 20%. this is an area the size of connecticut. this would be much faster if it was back on the mainland. give us an idea why this is so challenging. >> there are two factors to this. the topography in puerto rico is very challenging. we're talking a central ridge that goes up a thousand feet and comes back down. there is also an issue with the wind speeds. the amount of devastation that we've seen of towers and lines is incredible.

the lo jestics in the middle of the island presents another factor to add to this. plus there's also manufacturing constraints here. we have irma, maria and joseé that impacted portions of the united states that are actually the closest in proximity to puerto rico and, you know, getting materials for those sectors and georgia have also depleted some of the supplies to manufacturers. so when you're competing against them, and the virgin islands which have been impacted beyond repair. >> sreenivasan: mr. sanchez was joining us via skype and even in the middle of our conversation, the power oant out. >> we just had a problem with power here as we speak about power. >> sreenivasan: i think we're set here. how much is this going to cost and is there enough money to fix it? >> there's a question in terms

of how much it's going to cost. we're installing at the same time we're repairing. we don't have time to plan and design. we're going at it as fast as we can. so as we're doing repairs, we're seeing what the burn rates of the materials are and at the same time we're seeing the speed we can fix this. so i think as we go into about a third of the way of the repairs, we'll probably have a better idea of what the overall cost is going to be. we already are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. we awarded a # $40 million contract already plus last night we awarded a $40 million contract on that. we already put an order for $148 million of materials. so we have already been in the e range. >> sreenivasan: is the army corps of engineers charged to rebuild the infrastructure as it

was or can you improve it? a lot of people are asking whether renewables can be a greater part of the mix. the island was almost exclusively powered by oil and diesel oil that they have to truck in. you're literally on an island, you have tidal power, sunshine, offshore wind. >> yeah, i would say -- by the way, we are on the mission assignment which is about emergency repairs. this is a situation where we're just fixing things around the island. of course, as we fix, we're not going to put this without the current standards. we're replacing things that are older age with newer things, and that's how the system -- in a way, even though we are under assignment to basically just repair the system, there are going to be some improvements with that. >> sreenivasan: jose sanchez

with the army corps of engineers. thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you for having me. my pleasure. >> sreenivasan: we turn now to a dramatic legal case making its way through the federal courts, over whether a young, undocumented immigrant has a right to an abortion. our correspondent lisa desjardins has more. >> desjardins: last month, u.s. border officials apprehended a 17-year old girl at the texas border, crossing from mexico. pregnant, she asked to get an abortion and obtained a court's permission. but due to a policy change by the trump administration, u.s. officials detaining her refuse to take her to her appointment. her abortion is currently on hold pending an appeals court hearing tomorrow. for more on this, we're joined by renuka rayasam. she covers healthcare for politico and joins us now from austin. thank you so much for joining us. this young woman known as jane doe, she's 15 weeks pregnant

now. can you tell us more about her precise situation? >> sure. thank you for having me, lisa. this girl is from central america. she crossed the border into the u.s. in september, and had an initial health screening as all minors do when they cross the border and found out she was pregnant only when she arrived in the country. so she had an initial follow-up appointment today, the first time it was actually confirmed she was 15 weeks pregnant and here in texas abortion is banned pretty much after 20 weeks, so she's in a bit of a tight situation here. >> some people might be surprised that unaccompanied minors in this country are overseen by the department of health and human services. why is the argument by h.h.s. and the trump administration for blocking the abortion of this woman? >> they said we're not blocking her right to have an abortion but we're just not going to facilitate it.

they said, we don't have to process the paperwork to let her out of our facility. she could easily go back to her home country in central america or find a sponsor in the u.s. they said as long as she's in an h.h.s. shelter, a federally funded shelter under contract with h.h.s., she has to play by our rules and our rules are we don't want her to have an abortion. >> you mentioned our rules, this is a chain in how h.h.s. administers policy for these young undocumented immigrants, right? >> absolutely. so what came out in court documents is that, sense march, since the trump administration started taking over this department, they've put in place a new policy and basically blocked all abortions for unaccompanied minors in federally-funded shelters and gone so far as the director of the office of refugee settlement, the department responsible for these minors has

sent these girls to crisis pregnancy centers. the director has personally gotten involved in one case in san antonio. he visit add girl in a shelter and tried to talk her out of an abortion. i heard from sources he's made many phone calls to these girls and basically tried to talk them out of getting an abortion. >> the right to an abortion is something established by supreme court in this country. what are the lawyers for these young women saying and how does it fit into court peres tent as we know it? >> the aclu is arguing the administration is placing an undue burden on this woman's right to have an abortion and the supreme court upheld that right several times and said that the government can't place an undue burden here and they've said, you know, just because she's an undocumented minor doesn't mean she doesn't have constitutional rights such as the right to an abortion. >> but the argument is because she's undocumented, she doesn't have the same rights as the rest

of people in america. >> oral arguments lasted about 45 minutes and the federal judge pressed the administration on this and asked trying to out do you think that undocumented minors have constitutional rights? and the administration lawyers weren't really clear on that point. the supreme court said undocumented minors have constitutional rights but the administration lawyers weren't clear on whether they agree with that statement. >> renuka rayasam, thank you so much joining us from austin, texas. >> thank you for having me. >> sreenivasan: a slightly offbeat conversation this week from our economics correspondent, paul solman. it's about a new culinary history and kind of biography that ties to class and socioeconomics. let's have paul connect the dots, part of our weekly series, "making sense." >> reporter: so you see everything through the lens of food. >> absolutely.

>> reporter: and i see everything through the lens of economics. >> every food story is an economic story. i mean it starts with affordability, but it's also, it's about class, it's about social standing, there is always a money story behind every food story. >> reporter: and if ever there were a story of food and economics as "class" or "social standing," it would be one of the several tales in laura shapiro's new book, "what she ate": that of rosa lewis, with whom pbs diehards may be familiar. >> the duchess of duke street which was a pbs series that ran in the '70s, was loosely based on her life. rosa lewis was born into a working-class family in london. she went out to work at the age of 12 as a scullery maid and she cooked her way up the ladder. she saw that the lords and ladies noticed good food and you had a way to kind of reach their level or so she hoped. >> degoutant. >> disgusting. will you please go to the scullery and help wash up.

>> no i will not! i did not come here to wash up! >> she managed to learn french cooking in the highest style, the escoffier style, which was what was going on in the kind of downton abbey type households of the time. and, she became one of the best- known caterers in london of that era, late victorian, early edwardian era. she became so rich that she bought the cavendish hotel in london and she prided herself on having the most noble titles in the land as her friends. >> reporter: so, she's an example of mobility or the beginnings of mobility in otherwise stratified to the point of petrified class england? >> well, this was england during the industrial revolution and there as here it was a time of social mobility. you could be born poor and you really could change your class in those days. rosa was flying high in her new

class identity with the rich, with this beautiful food right up until world war i, and then the whole structure came crashing down for everyone. >> reporter: the next war, the next vignette in shapiro's book. so, eleanor roosevelt. she becomes infatuated, in fact, with the movement of home economics, right? >> yes. >> what is home economics? >> the idea was that women could be trained to function like modern managers and if they cooked right and cleaned right and lived right, and raised their family right, they will be making this enormous contribution to the welfare of the country. >> reporter: and this is the same time as scientific management is happening. these were time motion studies that were done in factories in the 19-teens, and '20s. >> exactly. they were doing these same kinds of scientific time motion studies in home economics departments. eleanor roosevelt sees this

stuff in action and she falls in love with it because she felt that she'd been failure as a wife and mother. her husband had strayed, her children were really more comfortable with their grandmother than they were with her. home economics was going to present a definition of femininity that someone like eleanor roosevelt could glom onto and really believe in. >> reporter: and the book after all is called, what she ate. so what did she eat and what did she force her husband and then everybody who came and visited the white house to eat? >> the food in the fdr white house was renowned for being the worst in the history of the presidency. people would sit there and sort of, you know, shove the food around on the plate, and you sort of drop your napkin over it so you don't have to-- you don't have really touch it. it was the depression, remember? and then it was war, and it was rationing. she did not want the white house to be known as this place of

luxury and extravagant eating. she wanted plain, simple cooking that didn't cost very much. >> reporter: the polar opposite of her contemporary enemy counterpart: hitler's first lady, eva braun. it too much of a stretch to read economics into her story? >> there's always an economic story and it's also true at hitler's table where eva braun used to preside at hitler's side during the weeks and months that he spent at berchtesgaden, which was his bavarian mountain retreat, it was really his favorite place to be. it was a fantasy built around the dinner table. outside, germans were on rationing, they were not eating white bread that they prefer, they were not getting butter, there were short rations of meat, sugar was in short supply. none of these rules were followed at berchtesgaden. >> reporter: the fantasy of a 1000-year land of plenty.

and the fantasy of food ushers in shapiro's last vignette. so, the most explicitly economic chapter of the book is the last one. that's helen gurley brown, woman who created essentially a publishing empire, right, all by herself. >> she said, ¡'i always knew that i wanted to marry money." and in fact, she did. but, she ended up becoming money. >> reporter: it all started with her 1962 mega-seller, "sex and the single girl." >> the book was a how-to on how to be just like me, how to be helen gurley brown: how to be thin, most important; how to be young forever. how to be sexy always under all conditions in any circumstance. >> reporter: and that's what she sold to turn around the then- failing cosmopolitan. so what does she tell her readers to eat or not to eat? >> cosmopolitan was full of food stories, and there was two kinds. "here is a classy little buffet dinner you can make for your

friends," and it would be a bunch of recipes not that different from what you'd find in any other magazine. then, there would be dieting stories, each more crazed than the last, and all of them packed with diet pills and chemical sweeteners. she once said, 'i think maybe you have to have a little touch of anorexia to be really beautiful.' with that one word, just tossed off somewhere, she has probably done as much damage as a, you know, the whole hollywood- modeling-dieting industries put together. >> reporter: to laura shapiro, food tells these women's stories. to me, so does the economics of food. for the pbs newshour, this is economics correspondent paul solman, reporting from new york.

>> sreenivasan: we all remember the water crisis in flint, michigan, that led to a federal state of emergency in 2016. a project at the walter cronkite school of journalism and mass communication at arizona state university asked students to identify other "flint, michigans" around the country. the result is a 26 minute documentary, "troubled water," that focuses on a number of one cause students found was coal ash, a byproduct of coal- fired power plants. judy woodruff is in arizona and spoke to a few of those behind the film. let's start with this excerpt. >> the reason i wanted to show you this neighborhood is there is 279,000 tons of coal ash that is buried. you know, we live so close to these massive pits that are mind, that do get in our water and we have wells that are

pumping the water from the ground. >> all of these neighbors are receiving bottled water. >> our state toxicologist called me, and i'll never forget that day, he's, like, i don't want you cooking with your water, i don't want you bathing in your water. he goes, i wouldn't even give my dogs or animals this water. this is our first time, expecting our first child. we're very excited to start our new life. we got in touch with someone from duke and asked them about the plant, that we're living here. they were, like, oh, you know, you don't have to worry about anything, it's environmentally tested and we're your neighbors, we care about you. so i want to say naively we believed them. >> everything that's happened with these neighbors, nobody's done more to care for them than duke.

like you would see under any industrial type facility, you could see impact groundwater, we have been transparent about that, but there is an enormous body of evidence that tells us groundwater from ash basins are not impacting neighbors' wells. e.p.a. looked at coal ash over and over and over again, the scientists studied it, and determined it is not toxic. >> there is no doubt in my mind that coal ash is hazardous. there were no studies and the amount of contaminants coming from coal ash is alarming. it should be considered as hazardous waste. however, in the process of looking at the effect of the coal ash, we realize that chromium is naturally occurring. it doesn't not mean it won't hurt you because it's naturally occuring. at the same time, we see evidence of coal ash

contamination and leaking into the environment. so there is a time bomb and it's ticking and it's coming. >> you don't have to be a doctor to take common sense to see why this is happening. all the deaths in the six or seven hours houses, i mean, think about that. too many cancers. my husband has cancer. when somebody you love and you see them suffering and you can't do anything about it, it's hard. and i feel that it's due to the ashes. when we move here and you can see an actual blow like snow in the air, duh. >> when we started receiving letters from the state that said don't drink the water, we really got concerned with that. i know it's naturally occurring but a normal sample would not be as high as it is in our well water. >> didn't have all the facts

right, but i just want things fixed. i just want things done right. >> woodruff: i'm here at arizona state university in the studios of the cronkite school with three people who work very closely on this documentary starting with professor jacquee petchel who has a member oversaw the project and jasmine spearing-bowen who is a graduate student of the cronkite school and claire caulfield, a recent graduate of the cronkite school. professor petchel, people tend to think this happens in some places but not all over the country but you found it is everywhere. >> we wanted to look at places like flint both in big cities and small cities and in rural communities and urban

communities and native american lands. the project very much was focused on water but the sort of underlying theme of the whole thing also involved environmental justice and whether poor communities or color or poor or rural communities had more likelihood of having contaminated water which appears to be the case. >> woodruff: jasmine, did you find in the places where you all travel people in those communities knew what was going on? were they learning about it? what did you find? >> specifically in beaumont, north carolina, and there are several communities in north carolina that are actually affected and what you see is people becoming advocates for themselves and trying to work with the government, working with these advocacy groups to make sure people understand what's happening and to try and effect change. so it was really inspiring seeing how these people are not just for themselves but they want people everywhere to understand you have to understand where your water is coming from and what could be in

it. >> woodruff: picking up on jazz pin's point, claire, people shouldn't feel helpless in a situation like this because often i think people think it's this big industrial or government issue, but what you're saying is people really do have the ability to do something about it. >> they did. that's one great takeaway from the documentary. when i was in montana, there was a tribal community and a grassroots effort to deliver water coolers and free testing kids. these were all place where is they're on all own well water, economically disadvantaged so they didn't have all the resources, so people stepping up and taking their initiative to bring clean water to kids because it can hurt children if they're drinking contaminated water and they live with that the rest of their lives. >> woodruff: dr. petchel, do you think this documentary will make a difference when people see this? do you think they will take matters into their own hands? >> i certainly hope so. i think it helps people -- not only are you seeing the importance of water nationally

but you're seeing the faces of people in other communities, some who are like you and some who are not, so you see that it's somewhat -- it's not particular to a certain kind of person or place. it can affect yip one. >> woodruff: jasmine, how much uh trouble did you have getting people to talk? >> we in beaumont and the north carolina people are very willing to tell us because they've learned it's about bringing attention to the issue. we had issues with other places, tar creek, for example, people have been dealing with it. >> woodruff: in oklahoma. yeah, that was in oklahoma, it's been so long they have been fighting the fight they're just done with talking about it, sounds like. >> woodruff: this comes at a time when there is a lot of questions about journalism and whether journalists are honest and whether journalists are doing work people can believe in and trust, what does this say to you about that having worked on this? >> it's important for journalists to spend time in their sources and spend time in the communities they will be covering, especially if the

communities are different. in ring wood, new jersey, i worked with an indian community there and after talking to them a long time explaining how journalism works, how we will be filming and that we did our research and wea we were going o uphold the highest standard, they trusted us and they realized it's important to talk about their issues because nothing will change. >> woodruff: jasmine, when you finish graduate school in journalism, do you feel it's more important for you to do this kind of work? >> i do. it's important to take a deep dive on an issue like this. these are the stories people believe you have done your homework and know what you're talking about because if you talk to hundreds of people and spend time with people from all different areas of the country, it's hard for someone to say it's not real. >> woodruff: it's such a treat to see this work you are doing at the cronkite school up close. thank you so much for the work you did on the documentary and thank you for talking with us.

>> thank you. >> sreenivasan: an old new orleans art form is winning over new audiences on the international stage. jeffrey brown visited one of the crescent city's music royalty recently to discuss his latest album and why training the next generation is so essential. >> brown: this, troy andrews, better known as trombone shorty, told me, is how he grew up in new leans: with music all around. ♪ ♪

we'd driven to his treme neighborhood, he pulled out his horn, others joined in, and suddenly it was just like old times-- an impromptu "second line" parade-- a quintessential new orleans art form in which a band marches while onlookers join in. ♪ this is what you were telling me about when you were a kid, you'd just run into people? >> that's right. everybody's a musician, yeah. neighborhood is even though some of the people that i grew up under doesn't live here anymore, there's something about this neighborhood that we can't let go. these people come over here and hang out because it's that much embedded in their soul and heart that they have to be here. it's a special place, magical. >> brown: he was a 'shorty' when he first played on these streets at age four, with a trombone larger than he was, and the name stuck. andrews was born into a musical family-- his grandfather was singer-songwriter jessie hill. he led his first band at age eight and was a touring musician by 10.

he played with bo diddley, and got a new orleans- style education, with a variety of local greats, including wynton marsalis and the neville brothers. >> in my neighborhood it was music 24/7, so i just wanted to be like the people that i saw, that took me and put me on their side. >> brown: what was the most important thing you learned from older musicians? >> the older musicians always wanted to make sure i understood where everything started before i can be good at it, or understand where i need to be later on in life, so they taught me to respect the music that came before, and make sure that i pay attention. but the most important thing they all drilled in my head was to be open-minded, and to learn all styles of music. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> brown: years later, at the

ripe old age of 31, with a grammy and an international following, andrews is a performer who's absorbed different styles by playing with a variety of musicians, including rock stars like the foo fighters. ♪ ♪ his new album, with his band "orleans avenue", is called "parking lot symphony", featuring the sound he calls "supafunkrock". >> it's basically a high energy funk music, basically a big mardi gras party wherever we go. a lot of rock, a lot of soul, hip hop, jazz is in there-- it's just a big collective of new orlean's music. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> brown: andrews told me he thinks of himself as a kind of 'rock guitar' trombonist. but back at his rehearsal and

recording studio he got down to basics, beginning with how hard the instrument is to play. >> so playing something fast like that, if you're not really accurate, it would be like-- ♪ it would be like that. >> brown: you're missing the note, or in between >> on the valves, can't hit it, but then there's some growling things, trying to imitate off of guitar and also here there's a thing we call 'tailgating'-- just outlining the melody without playing it with the trumpet player. >> brown: playing around the melody? >> yeah, so we'll take, for instance we'll do when the saints go marching in and it will be like the melody will be like-- ♪ then a trombone will be-- ♪

>> brown: these days, troy andrews is one of this city's leading musical ambassadors, given the honor of closing the new orleans jazz and heritage festival, known as 'jazz fest'... and he takes the role of educator very seriously, as well, through his now six-year- old "trombone shorty foundation" and its music academy. it's an after-school, after band practice gathering for high school musicians from all over the city. a chance to meet new friends and learn from older, professional players. andrews, constantly on the road touring, stops in whenever he's in town. asia muhaiman, a high school band director by day oversees instruction at the academy. >> they come in already able to play, but i think it's that camaraderie, they're learning from those professional

musician, they don't get in school. most music teachers, we're not out in the street performing and we're not flying all over the world performing, but being able to work with trombone shorty, the different gentlemen from the brass bands, it's something just totally different from what they're used to. >> brown: 17 year old clarinetist whitney winford is in her third year at the academy. >> it's amazing to have, to know that i'm somewhere close with like something that far out there, and where i want to be. and him being there can help me get myself out there, and he also gives me confidence that i could be him one day. >> brown: that's where you want to be, where he is? >> yes, i want to be where he is. >> brown: christopher plummer, also 17, spoke about the power of mentorship. >> a mentor doesn't tell you what to do and how to go about it, they guide you mostly, they lead by example, you see them in

>> brown: back in treme, troy andrews' aunt debra waved us over to see how he looked as a teen, playing with the rebirth brass band, and showed us an old cracked photo that survived katrina. >> that's my mom there. >> brown: i'm wondering if a young kid could grow up now like you did, and be surrounded by that community of musicians. >> i may be the last person in the treme to grow up like that, but there are kids out there that's getting the culture, and starting to be friends with some of the musicians, and they just take them in and teach them. what i wanted to do was just give the kids an opportunity, and if i can affect them in any type of positive way to keep the music alive or, like i always tell them, i'm not expecting you to keep a certain style alive, but just to learn what we do here, and then you can be creative and take it to the next part. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> brown: for the pbs newshour, i'm jeffrey brown in new orleans.

♪ ♪ >> yeahhhhh. >> sreenivasan: you can find more of our conversation and trombone shorty's performance on our website. >> sreenivasan: finally, another in our brief but spectacular series. over the past two weeks, women have spoken out about being sexually harassed after accusations were made public against hollywood mogul harvey weinstein. tonight, we hear from jess ladd, the founder and c.e.o. of callisto, a company that aims to combat sexual assault and empower survivors. >> so, when i was in high school i started been reading romance novels in my local library and i read every single romance novel that the branch had, and i came

into college being very excited about this thing that everyone talked about and i read about called sex, and then when my first time happened it was against my consent, it was without my consent, it was with a friend, and it felt like not just the loss of trust in this individual but also the lose of that kind of first experience which everybody says you will remember forever, to be something that i don't want to remember forever. i went through the reporting process over a year and after my assault. and actually found the process of reporting to be more traumatic than the assault itself. i felt doubted, i felt like i wasn't believed, the policemen told me there is two sides to every story and he handed me a brochures on couple's counseling. with sexual assault, the person on trial is often the survivor, to see if people believe them

that a crime actually occurred, and what people then ask is not who did it but are you sure that it happened? for a lot of survivors there's a big fear that you won't be believed, only 6% of assaults report at that police and with the assailants spending a single day in prison and that's not because survivors don't know their assailant, 85% of college survivors know their assailants, it's really that it's hard to meet the standard of evidence that we need in sexual assault cases to make a conviction. right now at a lot of college campuses, the way a interview will go, is you'll come in to report your assault, you sit down and the investigator title ix coordinator across the table will write down your account of what happened to you. it's likely that it's somebody else is writing down your story for you. they're going to get something in it wrong and it's going to end up being used against you, because now you change your story, when actually all you did was change who you're talking to. callisto is an online sexual assault reporting system for

college sexual assault survivors. they can use it to just a time stamped record of their assault so they can preserve evidence even if they don't want to report yet. with the ability to create this time stamped records, we can get far more accurate information from the survivors themselves to be using the investigation later, and we can shorten the time between when they're assaulted and when they actually document the details of what happened to them. 90% of sexual assaults are committed by repeat assailants who on average commits six assaults each, and that's just before they graduate college, but as a survivor you have no real way of knowing whether or not you're the only one, if they know that it happen to someone else too they feel like wow, maybe that wasn't all my fault, maybe all of those excuses that i've been building up in my head as well, i did agree to go home with him so maybe it's my fault or well i did flirt earlier, so maybe it's my fault or well, i was the one who got myself drunk so maybe it's my fault, start to fall away when you realize that that same thing happen to

somebody else and you don't blame them. i like a recent victim to know that i believe them and that there is life after this, that life keeps going and you will find people who love you, and while you might feel very, very alone, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try trusting the people around you, and a lot of them will probably surprise you, a lot of them will have your back and if they don't, i will. my name is jess ladd and this is my brief but spectacular take on empowering survivors of sexual assault. >> sreenivasan: you can watch more brief but spectacular series at pbs.org/newshour/brief. now to our newshour shares, something that caught our eye that may be of interest to you, too. one massachusetts restaurant is leading the way for families dealing with autism, alzeihmers and other cognitive disorders. it's not through research or fund raising, but a routine dinner reservation. tina martin of pbs station wgbh

explains. >> sam sexer and her mother julie are enjoying a healthy lunch in a beautiful setting at the red raven restaurant in acton. >> i always give her the best seat so she can look out the window which she likes. >> it may seem like nothing out of the ordinary, but it means the world to sexer. her mother was recently diagnosed with alzheimers, so going out to eat has become more difficult. >> i tried to look for other restaurants and i had kind of given up a bit so to hear about this place and the reservation was great for us. >> the reservation is called purple table, created by the restaurant owner jennifer apazidis, and now available at a handful of restaurants in greater boston. >> someone can call up make a purple table reservation and that reservation flag basically tells us that someone is coming in that may be living with alzheimer's, living with dementia, have a child with autism so basically someone in

that party might need a little extra care and attention and patience while we are serving them. >> that means seating families in a quiet area of the restaurant, and patience to repeat menu items more than once. >> so the staff have been trained to approach the table a little differently to speak patiently to not clang plates at the table. >> apazidis says the idea came out of her own experience. >> my mother was diagnosed with alzheimer's in her late 50s and one of her favorite things to do was go out to eat we found that as her disease progressed it was really difficult for her to go out to eat and communicate with the servers. >> apazidis and her family stopped going out as a result but she didn't believe that was a good solution for her family or others, so she started the reservations. one of the specially trainer servers is jackson scholtz. >> its just any folks that might need a little extra amenities when they go out to eat whether that's time attention, caring explaining you know whatever it may be so working with them its just going the extra mile.

>> scholtz says the biggest part of his training is patience and it goes a long way the families. >> so usually they are very happy to go out and be able to do something that some people might find normal and mundane but for them it's a little bit special. >> for liz gross and her husband dennis who suffers from dementia, the extra attention makes going out to eat fun again. >> its nice to be catered to because it doesn't happen all the time. >> for liz gross and her husband dennis, sam sexer and her mom julie, and for many other families with members who have challenges, the restaurant provides a safe and secure atmosphere to enjoy a meal. and the trend is catching on, there is now a purple table reservations app for smartphones. for the pbs newshour, i'm tina martin in acton, massachusetts. >> sreenivasan: online right now, what's causing an ongoing hepatitis-a outbreak in parts of california? dr. amber robins, our health and media fellow, joined william brangham on facebook live to take your questions about that and how to prevent its spread.

her advice? washing your hands and getting vaccinated. >> as a family doctor, i could not get away without saying vaccinations are a great way to prevent getting viruses like hepatitis a. since they have come out, in the mid '90s, the hepatitis a vaccine has decreased the amount of hepatitis a that we've seen by 95%. that is a huge number. >> sreenivasan: you can watch more of their conversation on our facebook page: facebook.com/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm hari sreenivasan. join us online, and again here tomorrow evening with mark shields and david brooks. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and see you soon. >> 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. captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> glor: welcome to the program, charlie rose is on assignment, i'm jeff glor of cbs news. we begin tonight with a look at the constitutional crisis in kenya. >> kenya is a very outgoing, democratic, open society. democratic except at election time. and for the region as a whole, if kenya goes, so goes the region. >> glor: we continue with mike wallace, his latest book is called "greater gotham" this was a period when new york became a recognizably modern city that we're familiar with now. it also moved from 1898 when it merged with brooklyn and manhattan and the outer boroughs, so called, to 1919 when it was an established megalopolis. >> glor: kenya, an histor qual-- historical look at new yo