captioning sponsored by wnet on this edition for sunday, march 18: >> thompson: president trump's eclatest push back on the l counsel's russia probe. in russia, president vladimir putin is re-elected to his fourth ter what's at stake now. and in our signature segment, artists who've done time getting a second chance. next on pbs newshour weekend. >> "pbs newshour weeken is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. ls the cheryl and philip in family. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. the anderson family fund. rosalind p. walter barbara hope zuckerberg.

corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual ro and group retirementcts. that's why we're your retirement company. >> additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for byblic broadcasting, a contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. whank you. from the tist studios at lincoln center in new york, megan thompson.d >> thompson: gening and thank you for joining us. up until now, president trump wd his legal team have said they are cooperatih special counsel robert mueller. but now, the president's lawyer and the president himself are rectly attacking mueller investigation into possible russian interference in the 2016 electi. although president trump has a,ng denied his campaign colluded with ruse's refrained from directly attacking mueller or the investigation.

"ut today on twitter, the president said, "e mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and therwas no crime." he also asked in a tweet why the mueller team has "13 hardened democrats, some big crooked hillary supporters and zero republicans?" this follows friday's dismissal of the former f.b.i. deputy director andrew mccabe, who has reportedly handed over mhios of conversations with trump to mr. mueller. the president says mccabe is lying-- that mccabe never took notes when they met and asked if he could call them "fake memos." all of this getting a sharp response from some m of noe president's own party. >> when you are nt-- if the allegations of collusion with the russians and there's no evidence of that and you're innocent of that-- act like it.u >> i'm jusled as to why the white house is going so hard at this, other than they're very afraid of what might come out. ondon't know how you can have any other conclu senator lindsey graham was asked if he thought the pralident was sig he would try to fire mueller.

>> well as i have said before, if he tried to do that, that would be t beginning of the end of his presidency, because we're a rule of law nation. i pledge to the american pliple as a repn, to make sure that mr. mueller can continue to do his job without any interfence. >> thompson: officials in miami say the bodies of five people who were crushed in cathat horrific bridge collapse have now been recovered, and they believe all victims are now accound for. >> the search for the bodies took more than two days. workers struggled to reach vehicles trapped under the rubble of the 950-ton bridge. a sixth person, a worker on the bridge, died in the hospital. investigators do not yet know or why the bridge failed. there was an effort in late 2016 to forcibly commit the shooternt in last s florida school massacre, but that didn't happen. the associated press report the recommendation in september 2016 came from two school counselors and a sheriff's deputy. had nicholas cruz been involuntarily committed, he would have had a much moreul difftime legally obtaining

a gun. the war of words over a nerve agent attack on a former russian double agent and his daughter is escalating. the poisoning happened in the u.k., foreign secretary claimed that russia is not only responsible for the attack but also has stockpiles of the deadly chemical weapon, "for the purposes of assassination." >> thompson: russia has denied any responsibility in the nerve agent attack and suggested the nerve agent came from a british lab. the president of syror took a victlap of sorts today, visiting his government's troops on the front lines in newly captured areasoun eastern gh, near the capital of damascus. the soiers were shown cheering, pumping their fistin the air, and even taking selfies with their president. hso today, turkish forcese taken over the city of afrin, a kurdish outpost along turkey's border with syria. troops raised flags in city center, destroyed a kurdish statue, and may now expand t offensive to other kurdish controlled regions. this could raise tensions

between turkey and the u.s., since the u.s. has partnered wi kurdish fighters in the struggle against isis in syria. while the investigation into russian meddling in our 2016 presidential election continues in this country, russia was holding its own presidential election today.t even before the final votes are tallied, the outcome is already clear: president re-elected to w his fourth six-year term. as of 9:00 p.m. time in moscow, the turnout was just over 60%,tu and early rerns show putin received more than 70% of the vote in a field that technically had eight candidates. for more i'm joined by neil macfarqu for "the new york times," via skype from moscow. so neil, since there's been no real question about who is going to win thison eleci understand that there has been a lot of emphasis on the number of people who would actually turn out to vote. can you talk a little bit about

what putin's peoplhave been doing today to make sure that there was adequate turnout? >> well, they tried to unit the whole thing into a kind of carnival or festival and left local authorities how best to do it the general theme was like putting other things on the ballot like hool issues to get parents to turn up or making career days at schools. some of it was fun stuff, like there was one clown at a polling station in moscowhouting out questions about russian history and if you answered them correctly you got a chocolate bar. >> what do we foa about how many people did turn out and whorn tued out. >> the exit polls indicate that the voters skewedrds the older voters, young didn't turn out which was kiped of expectedded. when you talk to them they kind of say you kno, we know what the outcome is going to be and who we vote for is going to hae no effect on our lives so why bother. >> did putin have any real opposition? >> not that he allowed to run.ma

thn candidate who sort of tried to set up a national organization run was alexa who was th anticorruption campaigner and the most vocal critic of the krmlin. and he was barred due to various fraud convictions that everybody thought werelitically motivated. it is the kind of funny thing because put ven if he had run a genuine election he probably would have won because he's very popular but he has always sort of mistrusted elections ever since he was the campaign manager for the mayor of st. petersburg in 1996 and the rare lost the race. so he has had this sort of inherent distrust of the surprise of elections and never really lik them. >> here in the u.s. there is obviously no shortage of newst abssia between the nerve agent attack and britain and the meddling in our elections. i mean how are all those issuesn stories playing out in russia. >> you know, they sort of play t

in narrative that putin likes to press that you know, russia is this beseiged fortres with peoying to attack it from all sides and for all reasons. i yoan name the poisoning attack, for example, there has been zero acknowledgment and there will be none that russia might have been responsible as always, like you know, the west set this up trying to make putin look bad right before t election. it's always this sort of idea thatussia is a scapegoat and whenever russia tries to get up off its knees the world is thero waiting to it down. >> i know that putin didn't really campaign much but did he promise anything for this next term? >> i think he actually attended one campaign rally.t and he joesn't really like the process. and he did, you ow, he sort o laid out what could be called his vision for his nt secretaries years and he spent a alt of time talking about soci programs which, of course, people want to see improved in terms of penicgses, med care,

et cetera. but he didn't specify how he would pay for it an then he famously spent ynow the second half of the speech just talking about all these incredibleeapons that russiasi nuclear krz mis and the like that could override anything the americans have. so it's all out sort of national security and rallying around the flag. >> all right, neil mcfarquhar from "the new york times," thank you so much. >> any time. >> thompson: in washington, major reforms to the criminal justice system are being debated by members of congress and the white house. but it's not just political partisans taking part in this conversation. hoping to bring public awareness about some of the many issues associated with incarceration is tegroup of artists who know the criminal justice sfrom the inside. pbs newshour weekend specialnd correst alison stewart

reports. >> reporter: it took artisthr jesse krimes years to make a 30-foot wide mural out of bed sheets called "apo67luptein 1638 the work was re-created at a former penitentiary philadelphia that is now a museum. the tie of the work means apocalse and includes krimes' inmate number. he made the piece while serving erur-and-a-half-years in f prison. >> this work in particular is kind of a culmination of that event. and knowing that i made it thugh that situation and didn't end up conforming to the idea that i'm a criminal, or the idea that i'm something other. >> reporter: in 2009 he was arrested for dealing drugs shortly after graduating from college with an art degree. >> i think like most americans, i had a veryifferent conception of what going to prison was like. and so when i went in there and i began to notice that, oh wow, these-- everyone's just a normal person just like i'm a normal person who made a bad decision.

and so it made me really angry. so i needed to do something with that fstration and with that anger, and artwork is one of the main ways that i know how to speak and communicate. reporter: communication about imprisonment is at the heart of an experiment.al it'sd the right of return fellowship. jesse krimes and six otherra formerly incard artists from across the country are the first recipients of the award, which gave them each 20,000 dollars to create art about the criminal justice system. it was funded by the philanthropy project, whose mission it says is to improve lives, and "to give as effectively as we can and share our findings openly that anyone can build on our work." grant officer chloe cockburn focuses on criminal justice reform. >> a lot of our grants are about predicting a particur decarceration impact, and working back from itand saying how likely is it that this grant

will produce that impact. i don't have that type of ca with this grant, it's more like a sense. formerly incarcerated artists coming together, networking, could be a rlly interesting jumping off point for intervention in this cultural conversation, let's try something there. so i can be kind of entrepreneurial, experiment witl ittle bit. >> reporter: one fifth of cockburn's $25 million budget goes to trepreneurial projects like this one. the combination of art and criminal justice reform as a catalyst for changmakes sense to cockburn, who is an artist herself and a harvard trained lawyer. >> what art is pushing towardsus is this idea of culture change, getting pele to kind of see something they didn't see before, become exposed, and proximate. >> reporter: the theory is to bring people with first hand experience with the justice system into the conversation about what issues need to be addressed. >> this fellowship is differento in that it's people, and not laws and policies, about

specific individuals investing in their leadership to connecth to eher, and to tell powerful stories, as formerly incarcerated people, and as artists. >> reporter: the fellowship was proposed and administered by the soze mediagency, an advertising firm co-founded by michael skolnik. it was mentioned on twitter and a few blogs. no one expected what happened next. >> we were hoping that we would get maybe 40 entries for the fellowship. we had 327 in a month, in four weeks, with no advertising, no billboards, no, right, no mass marketing to get folks to respond, it was really word of mouth. >> reporter: are there any benchmarks the artists need to meet? are there any parameters? >> they do have to create a piece of art that is connected to a criminal justice reform campaign. somebody may make a video for a prosecutorial race in indiana, somebody might make a billboard,

or a dance piece, or a poem. >> reporter: the introductions m began atdatory fellows workshop in new york city. the artists met with a variety of potential collaborators including editors from the marshall project, a fit news organization covering the u.s. criminal justice system. never one of those people that actually sat down and gave it too much thought other than doing things that other people thought were creative.n >> reporter: jtiz was jailed as a teenager for taking part in a car theft. h he is now 42 years old w masters in public policy and t. >> artwork was just the tail end of me trying to do something. for mea large part of it coalesced around problem- solving. like having an idea, an emotion, something i wanted to convk. through artw >> reporter: as a young man ortiz saw many young l people enter the illegal drug trade. some went to prison.ie some from his perspective growing up on the u.s. mexico border, the

american appetitfor drugs is part of the problem... as he depicts in this drawat he submitted as part of his fellowship application. >> the painting shows uncle sam injecting heroin and saying," this is war, let's do our part." and kind of money falling out of his pockets. and using the border wall as a tourniquet. >> reporter: his actual fellowship piece uses the wall as a call to unity. it's a mural at the u.s. mexico moting cooperation. as a part of the fellowship, the artists were given a tour of the whitney museum's biennial w exhibich featured several works that showed the power of artistic expression about difficult subjects. something these artists are t hopiaccomplish themselves.el th his fwship piece, krimes plans to document violence at new york's controversial rikers island prison. he wants the piece to be a mobile public artwork so it can reach as many people as possible. >> i think one of the main dthings that art is able that other mediums are not is

it'such more effective in winning over hrts and minds, and also elevati issues that maybe go unaddressed without some kind of tangible, visible thing for individuals to interact with. >> reporter: seven people, that's a small number of people, what difference can giving seven talented people a nice sum of money, what difference can that make? >> i would always tell people, when you give a speech, wh i give a speech i'd be afraid nobody would show up. if one person shows up, that one person could change your life. you don't know w that person is. so these seven people, that one piece art could change one person's life. so we don't know what the reverberation of the inspiration of this art will do, and that's the fun part. learn more about how women contributed to world war i on our website: www.pbs.org/newshour.

we turn now to new allegations about a data firm tied to president trump's 2016 presidential election. the firm is called cambridge- analytica. and on friday, facebooks suspended rent company. the reason given by facebook: it said cambridge-analyied when it said it had deleted information about several 100,000 users. but multiple reports, including aninnvestigation by channel- the u.k. suggest that the scope of what haened here is far oader. a former research director for cambridge-analica has come forward to say that the firm harvested data from more than 50 million facebook users. cambridge-analytica denies that it violated facebook's rules and says it legally uses the data it collects to create detailed profiles that are then sold to third parties. for more on this complicatedne story, i'm jvia skype by molly wood, host of marketplace tech on public radio. so what is

caridge analytica what dhey do. >> it may not be a surprise to fientd out, they are a data analysis firm. they gathers much data as they can from various sources and they use that data to offer consulting in terms of advertising strategies, other kinds of sort of targeting strategies and they primarily focus on election research. >> so what exactly have they been accused of doing. walks through it. >> cambridge analyst ka is the u.s. offshoot of a u.k. company that was trying to do an election-based data gathering and analysis and ty would consult with various campaigns to offer advice on how best to reach, particularly undecided voters. in order to pull this off they needed a lot of data quickly and it can be very epensive and difficult to that information. so they like so many other data brokers turned to fac around 2014 and got a lot of users toll insn app that was

a quiz app so you know thrk is actually pretty common behavior on facebook. will you see some kind of a quiz, your freands are sharing it, it pops newspaper your news feed and in order to take if you have to install a little app ana it pops screen that says this app will gather your public profile information and your list of friends. and it sounds pretty innocuous. cambridge anytica said we are conducting academic research with this app. facebook apparently said okay and didn't do a lot of dill against. and through that, becau they were able to get sort of the direct access and from the people that installed the quiz app and then gther all the information from the friends of the people that had installed the app and that includes likes, you know, their various posts, the pages that they sub to, just a ton of information, they were able to gather really detailed profile information oni 50 m americans. >> so then what did they then do ith all that information. >> so then whatthat information does is let a company go to a

campaign and say tss how you should target these users. the are the kinds ofigital ad strategies that you should use, these are the ads you should buy, this is the language that you should use. and you know, they refer to it themselves as sort of psychological warfare. the way that they employ the messages is really emotionaan ilation because they have such detailed information. it's not necessa who you are an where you live and who you are friends with, although it is also all of that, it's how receptive you are to certain kind of messages. whether you go to church. whether you are a conservative-leaning or liberal leaning. very, very detailed sort of behavioral analysis and then they can target thngs very u rectly to what feels like just you. ow, messages that are really effective in terms of manipulating your emotion. ut i wanted to ask aboow this is different from what a lot of us had just kind of come ect. we know that faceback collects a lot of data. we know that it shares some of

it we are used to seeing targeted ads. so how is this different? >> they're operating on a much higher level in terms of weapon easing the data that they illect. using this really efficient way which is not about getting you to buy som is about geght you to potentially change your vote or stay home and not vote. 't vote based on an issue that you maybe diealize you cared so much about. and it really is based on this idea that your emotions, that you are sort of psychology is up for grabs if somene h enough data and they use it properly. >> how has facebook responded to all of this? >> faceboo way that we're sort of getting used to from facebook which is first to sort of significantly downplay their role anden eventually acknowledge that some things happened. and what they have done in the short term is banned these researchers. and this company f am being able ess its service. they band these researchers from

facebook. 've also said that they're going to try to track down and delete thia s datwhich have i to say is extremely unlikely. you know, the data is prob leigl ady resold or repackaged at this point and they don't necessarily know who has it any more. so their response has been pretty muted anin fact, you know, one of the researchers who is workingn the u.k. arm of this company now works at elyebook so it's very lik frankly that facebook is itself trying to replicate some of these chniques. >> all right, market place techs mollywood, thank you so much for joining us. >> my pleasurete >> rep tomorrow on pbs newshour, president trump lays out his plan to combat the opioid crisis.et we'll unpackails.or and that's allhis edition of pbs newshour weekend.

i'm megan thompson. thanks for watching. have aood night. captioning sponsoredy wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. mi the cheryl and philitein family. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. the anderson family fund. rosalind p. walter barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- nd designing customizedidual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for

public broadcasting, and by cont bstation from viewers like you. thank you.

female announcer: today's show is brought to you by: pure encapsulations, dedicated for nearly 3 decades to delivering hypoallergenic nutritional supplements free frofigluten, gmos, and aral ingredients to help all people achie optimal health. and by natural factors. dr. mark hyman: is at body confused about w eat? raise your hand. i want to take you through a typical day of what i eat and show you how simple and straightforward