ed captioning sponsor by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening, i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight, questions emerge for the president-- a new report contains questions it says special counsel robert mueller wants to ask mr. trump about his ties to russia and whether he obstructed justice. then, the second part of my interview with former f.b. director james comey. we discuss the hillary clinton emails, the role played by former attorney general loretta lynch and hard decisions th f.b.i. faced in 2016. pinlus, retg community college: how one school is making it easier for low-income ss tude stay on track and graduate. >> it amazes mthe things that i didn't know, that i needed to know, to be successful, simple things, like setting out my calendar, and scheduling everything around school. >> woodruff: all that and more

ourn tonight's pbs newsho. >> major funding for the pbs newshour habeen provided by: >> knowledge, it's wher innovation begins. it's what leads us to discovery and motivates us to succeed. it's why q ask the tough uestions and what leads us to the answers. at idos, we're standing behind those working to improve the world's health, safety, and efficiency. leidos. >> kevin. >> kevin! >> kevin.

>> advice for life. life well-planned. learn more at raymondjames.com. >> babbel. a language app that teaches real-life conversations in a new language, like spanish, french, german, italian, an'smore. babb0-15 minute lessons are available as an app, or online. more information on babbel.com. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions: >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public brnddcasting. ay contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruffthe trump administration has given itself another 30 days to decide whether to imposeariffs on

foreign steel and aluminum from key u.s. allies. it granted the extension last night to the european union, canada andmexico, amid ongoing trade negotiations. ut in a statement today, the european commission criticized the reprieve, saying, "as a longstanding partner and friend ol f the u.s., we wt negotiate under threat." the united nation's nuclear watchdog confirmed today it's found no evidence of iran having a nuclear weapons pgram after 2009. but the agency says iran did have a coordinated nuclear pgram before 2003. comes a day after israel prime minister benjamin netanyahu accused iran of ctiing to pursue nuclear weapons development, and breaking the iran nuclear deal. he provided no direct evidence that iran violated the 2015 agreement. today, tehran pushed ba

>> ( translated ): we accepted to suspend our nuclear program on a condition of canceling all sanctions. and if the u.s. economic here would beurn, no justification in front of the iranian public opinion and the irani this deal.t to stay in >> woodruff: meanwhile, the white house says a "clerical error" leto a drastic change in a statement it issued yesterday, following netanyahu's claims. the initial release read "iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program." the white house later corrected it to read that iran "had" such a program. today, white house press secretary sarah sanders said iran's nuclear weapons program was much further along at the time of the 2015 iran deal. >> we immediately corrected it. but again think the biggest mistake is the fact that the u.s. ever entered in iran deal in the first place. that to me seems to be the biggest mistake in this process. n a simple typo that was immediately corrected.

the problem is thm the deal was e on a completely false pretense, iran lied on front end. they were dishonest actors. and se o al that was made was made on things that were inaccurate. >> woodruff: sanders would not answer today if iran is currently in compliance with the deal, as the nuclear watchdog has repeatedly confirme syrian state media and a watchdog group said at least 23 civilians were killed by air strikes ihen one ofountry's last remaining islamic state- held enclaves today. nearly half of those deaths were chidmren. the bombt struck a northeast province where the u.s.-led coalition d kurdish forces are fighting to drive out isis. it wasn launched the strikes.o in nigeria, aair of explosions killed at least 28 people at a mosque in the noreastern town of mubi today. one witness said a suicide bomber detonated a device during morning prayers, blowing the

roof off the building. second blast killed worshippers as they fled. lelocal officialsved the militant group boko haram was to blame. armenia's opposition leader wtiarned of a "pol tsunami" today, after parliament voted down his bid to become e country's prime minister. nikol pashinian ran unopposed after leading calls for armenia's last prime minister to step down last month. tens of thousands of pashinian's upporters protested the result in the streets of the capital -- and they vowed to keep up their fight. >> ( translated ): people are upset. but this is not the end, this is nly the beginning. people will unite. more people will join in. nthikol just said thae will be so many people that it will not be possible to count. we will definitely win. >> woodruff: armenia's constitution requires its parliament to hold another vote for prime minister next week. south korea'sresident moon jae-in has asked the united

nations to verify the north's planned shutdown of its main nuclear test site. orth's kim jong-un agree to close the site at a historic summit last friday. as part of eir agreement, both the south and the north also dismantled dozens of large speakers today along the shared border that had been used to blare propaganda. australian cardinal george pep leaded not guilty today to decades of sex abuse charges, setting the stage for a trial by jury. pell appeared in court in melbourne. he's the highest-ranking vatican official to be charged in the catholic church's sex abuse scandal. the allegations stem from the 1970s to the 1990s, when pell was archbishop of melbourne. back in this country: california and 16 other states are suing the trump administration over its plan to roll back vehicle emissions and gas mileage standards. the environmental protection agency decided to scrap an

obama-era rulvrequiring new icles to get 36 miles per gbyallo025. in sacramento, california ernor jerry brown insist easing emissions standards will do more harm than good. >> we're losing the battle on climatchange. we've got to step up our efforts or thingsill get dramatically worse, irreversibly so if we don't make a big turn. and part of that big turn will be in the combustion engine, zero-emission vehicles and all the other things we're trying to do. >> woodruff: the states named in the lawsuit argue that the e.p.a.'s effort to loosen emissions rules violates the clean air act. two top aides to embattl e.p.a. chief scott pruitt stepped down today, amid federal ethics investigations. albert kelly, a former banker who ran the e.p.as superfund program, and security chief squale "nino" perotta submitted their resignations. pruitt gave no reason for their

departures. but both men's names had been mentioned in ongoing probes into pruitt's ethics and travel. and stocks were mixed on wall se treet today. dow jones industrial average lost 64 points to cse at 24,099. t4 he nasdaq rosein, and the s&p 500 added six. still to come on the newshour: more of my interview with former fct.b.i. di james comey. what's next for the caravan of iigmmrants that has reached the u.s., mexico border. end rethinking what it means to be a college st and much more. >> woodru: special counsel

robert mueller has a list of almost 50 questions for president trump, as part of the investigation into possible ties tfo russia and obstruction justice. that's according to a "new york times" report out today. mr. trump's legal tpm has not ublicly confirmed if he will down for an interview. but the president did weigh in on twitter, calling release of the questions "so disgraceful" and repeating the probe is a "russian witch hunt." we breakdown it all down with former federal prosecutor matthew olsen. he also served as senior counsel to mueller in 2005. matthew olsen, thank you for being back with us. >> thanks for having >> woodruff: we appreciate it. so what do you make of those questions overall in "the new york times" said they were rad by the special counsel's investigators to the president's lawyers who then compiled them into a list. do they seem authentic? >> well, my initial reaction is ialt's a little unu actually quite unusual for a prosecutor to give a witness a list of

questions written out or even very verbatim in the way these questions. are it does strike me as unusual. m would be more common to give a witnessbe a couple of top uk areas or subjects, but these are very specific questions, so it strikes me as odd. >> woodruff: so ofse it raises the question, what concern what was the genesis of this and if "the new york times" hasn't said of course who the source was, but if the source believed them to be accurate, then it leaves one wondering how this all came about. >> it sure does. at some level regardless of how we got them or how "the new york times" received them, they offer a really fascinating look reinside whe special counsel's investigation is at this stage. for one, itid shows how ranging the scope is. it extendobs ously from whether there was collusion during the election all the way to the obstruction of justice potential charges. so it's a wide-ranging scope. >> woodruff: i wanted to ask bout that. so what are the signposts that

you see here, because they range, there are questions about... in fact, there are questions that point to possible collusion. the president teted they move that's not what mueller is after, but one of the questions was aboutyou know, did you know that your former campaign manager, paul manafort, was ahepproachingussians for some sort of assistance? >> exactly right, judy. least a dozen of the questions go directly to this question of coordination or collusion between the campaign and the russians, and i particular they specifically go to the president'owstate of mind, what did he know about whether paul manafort andthers were cooperating with the russians. at what point did he learn about that? what was his reaction to those events as they were playing out during the first year of his presidency. so the signposts are that they're very interested in, the special counsel is very interested about learning what the president knew and when he

knew it, very reminiscent of watergate. >> woodruff: and there were questions of the president's close friend roger stone who was advising him at different points during the campaign. there are all different points where there could have been a russia connection. >> absolutely. if you look at the questions as reported in th times," it talks about what the president was doing and what he knew about people like general dynn, jim comey, you know, and at each stage wh the president know about those individuals during the time f that they were actually involved in whether in flynn's case being fired and in comey's case being fired, as well. >> woodruff: it seems to point to questions of obson of justice, the firing of comey, the flynn situation, and a number of others. the treatment of jeff sessions, the attorney general. is that how you see som of these questions? >> that's exactly how i see it.

if you look at what happened during the first year of the trp presidency and basically what the president was saying and what he was doing, nsthese questo to what was in his mind, what was his intent, and he in any criminal probe, the critical question is what was the intent of somebody who is suspected of wrongdoing. very hard to prove, often proved circumstantially by incidents or events around those, a but in this casesthe qns go directly to asking the president what was in his mind, and, youno apparently in order to understand whether his intent was corrupt or not. >> odruff: and there were also a couple questions around the president's business dealings with russia, financial connections with russia. what would that say to you? >> potentially again, not knowing exactly, but potentially that would say to me,hat was the motive here? does the president or does the campaign have a motive to curry favor with t russians. what was behind some of the actions that were taking place dyersburg the campaign or during the last year that might explain why the president took some of

e steps he did. >> woodruff: we're in such a realm of speculation because we don't know what's going onle inside the mu investigation, but if these questions were provided, you said it was unusual, but if they were provided to the president's lawyers, could it have been part of an aempt to make the president feel more comfortable about cooperating, sitting down for an interview? >> absolutely. it is unusual. of course, the president is a highly unusual witness. so itri wouldn't su me if there was a high degree of collaboration and cooperation betm en the mueller td the president's lawyers to ve some ground rules where there would be a degree of comfort for the president to sit down and engage in this kind of conversation. i would expect that to occur at the tail end of an investigation. nt this isat some p going to wrap up, and at thate point, int at which you would talk to somebody like the president in these circumstances, would be as you were finishing and getting close to the end of the investigation. >> woodruff: we don't have a sense of where they are. >> no, but we know the mueller investigation has a lot of

information that we don't have,i so that's whehink there is a high degree of risk for the president. >> woruff: nice to have yo matthew olsen, thank you very much. >> thanksor hang >> woodruff: as we just heard, james comey is at the center of many of w robert mueller's questions for the president. i sat down with the former f.b.i. director yesterday before their release. we aired the first part of the interview last night. t, onightwe delve into the 2016 election, the investigations he led and why he went around then- attorney general loretta lynch,a inouncing the end of the hillary clinton email investigation. comey has been promoting his new memoir, "a higher loyalty." you write about the emeounter on fattorney general loretta lynch's plane, she had with former president bill clinton. if they had not had tha meeting, if she had refused to solee him, would yourin all this never have been? >> might have been very different. yeah. because that was the capper for me, when she in the wake of all the controversyver that meeting, she-- someone i respect

and like-- but she made an announcement that was strange, where she said i won't recuse myself, but i'll accept jim ommendation and that of the career prosecutors. that was the capper for me in deciding i have to sty to protect the integrity of the institutions. had that not happed, maybe we'd be in a very different place. maybe you and i would not have met today, much as i've enjoy meeting you. that might have been a nice place to be. >> woodruff: in a larger sense, was there a huge disconnect between giving more attention to the clinton emails than to whether there was a trump-russia connection? >> i don't think so, because of the nature of the two itinvestis. the clinton email investigation was public almost from the beginning. the subject of it was the secretary, the candidate herself. and we closed it publicly. the russia counterintelligence investigations had just started ithe summer of 2016. we didn't know whether they had anything. trump was not the subject of o at investigation. and actually never seriously considered making a statement, in part because what

winould we say at that poin time. we didn't know whether we had anything at all. ao nd so i think the them are very distinct. i also understand why people ask that question. ef>> woodruff: you'vered multiple times to classified information about former attorney general loretta lynch that leaves the impression that she was compromised by her personal loyalty to hillary clinton. yisou say she was not compr but you can't explain why not. friends of both of yoare saying that you've been very unfair toer. can you resolve this once and for all? >> i can't. and look, i gethat. i like loretta very much and respect her. and i saw no evidence at all that she was compromised or feeding information to the clinton campaign or something like that my worry was-- and i had to write about it because it was a key factor in my desion to step away from her in july and announced separately. my worry was th information as about to become public that would allow people to reasonably question whether that was true. whether she really was acting--

>> woodruff: but wasn't that, excuse me, wasn't that information known to be false? >> no. now, this is a tricky thing. the information was legitimate. now, whether what it said was true about loretta was a very different question. >> woodruff: that's hard to understand. >> yeah, i know. i'm stuck, because i've gone as far as i can go in the book in describing classified material. beoute have said, you know, it was forgeries, or bogus. not true. but whether the substance of the information was accurate or not, i saw no reason to believe that. >> woodruffso that leaves her hanging. >> it does. and i get that. bi ut i couldn't-- and this in my testimony, i was asked what the reasons were you made your decision-- th was a significant factor. and i f lsporetta in a tigh. but it's the truth that it was nt important factor. >> woodruff: you ned you might not be sitting here. do you have concerns at this point in this long public tour, with your, what is perceived as umur, very tough critiques of president whether they're in the book, you've said them in

interviews, sharing detailsf your interactions with him? all this has the effect of m iaking it look the f.b.i. has it in for the president of the united states. and this is at a time when robert mueller is conducting an inestigation doesn't this, in effect, undermine the credibility of the entire bureau and what the department of justice and what mr. mueller is doing? >> i don't think so for two reasons. first, my testimony, if it's ever needed, has been locked down since last summer when i testified under oath. and even before that, i wrote detailed memos, so what i have to say, unless i lose my mind and start making stuff up, has been set in concrete for many, any months. but more importantly, i would actually turn it around. the president of the unit states is attacking the justice department and the f.b.i. as partisan organizations, as corrupt. and i think i have a role toin play in tto explain to the american people, that's nonsense. tnohis organization i politicized, it's being politically attacked. and so i think i can do shiom useful that won't have

any reasonable prospect of hurting the special counsel's operation. >> woodruff: but you've attacked ok.r criticized him b you've said he's untethered from the truth. you've been very critical of him, not st in the book, but in interviews. my question is the perception that the man who ran the f.b.i., was formerly the number two person in the department of justice, is so critical of the united states, the president of the united states.e how canust what anybody associated with the department of justice is doing? >> yeah, i would hope folks would read the book, because you'll see, yes, i'm critical of president trump. i'm also critical of self. and i'm trying to tell the truth, and i couldn't telthe ruth about what ethical leadership looks like without telling the truth about donald trump being unethical. but again, the facts are sticky and stubborn thgs. and so i lay out the facts of my encounters with president trump in the book. wrote them down at the time. and so i do think they fairly support the characterizations that i'm offering. people can disagree, but i don't think you can walk away from this saying either that i'm, in

a partisan way, trying to attack the president, or that i somehow let the f.b.i. down. i actually see it as the reverse. >> woodruff: so in connection with all of this, you've said ise it's part of the prem the book, you'd love to keep p.,olitics out of the f.bnd yet you're very open in saying it was the polls, that, in part, you were watching the polls, hasillary clintono far ahead, you ended up being influenced by politics. so did you end up doing the exact thing you didn't want to do to the agency. >> i don't think so. in factwhat i say in the book is, i actually don't remember consciously thinking about the polls, andried very hard to push that out of my thought process and make the decisions without regard to it. wist i do in the book, mayb a mistake in a washington book, but i try to be introspecelve and ask myhard questions. could it have influenced me? and the answer is, of course, it could ha the whole world was assuming hillary clinton would be elected. but the bottom ne doesn't change. i had two choices. one was bad. one was catastrophic.

i could speak in october or i could conceal that something was no longer true, that i and the attorney general have said during the summer was true. ith have to choosbad option over the catastrophic. >> woodruff: do you think he would've done the same thing had trump been well ahead the poll? >> yeah, i think so. i think so. again, because you can't choose the catastrophic option. forget the july press conference, we told the american people and congress, wbeing the leadership of the f.b.i. and the justice department. this was done well. there's no there there. move on. and now we know that's not true in a huge way. what do you do? ak about that, which is a bad thing. you could conceal that, which is a nightmare. catastropc. and so i think no matter where the polls stood you would still have to choose the "speak" offion. >> woodi'm asking in part because even your very good friend benjamin wittes, editing "lawfare," has written, "the eps one takes to keep th bureau out of politics in such a situation - however sincere, however open - become politicization." he was analyzing the decision you made.

>> yeah. and that's fair, because you're tuck in the middle of an election that is uniquelyrtnd viciously an. you've conducted a criminal investigation one of the two candidates for president, and now that investigation is restarting. there is no good outcome. if i had made the oosite choice and concealed, probably different groups of people would hate me. but the storm over that would be enormous. and i knew that going in, that there was no good option for me and for the f.b.i. and in a way that's freeing, because that frees you up to just say, you kn right thing to do here and make that call. >> woodruff:sw how do you the nonpartisan critics out there who say that, in trying to describe ethical leadership, which is what you say the theme of your book is, you failed yourself at your own moment of testing. that at the precise moment when shyold have let the professionals do their work, let the chips fall where they may, you decided, jim comey, to step up and take an action. in other words, you insertedy

ourself into the process very publicly, thus undercutting what you say is your is your mission, your goal. >> look. people, if they read the book, can walk away with whatever good faith conclusion they want to reach. that's up to them. but i really do think it's hard to say, if yolook at the facts that the f.b.i. and i-- it wasn't just me alone-- chose to bthe involved i situation. we were stuck in the middle of a ou-win situation. and i hope whatee, and the reason those stories are in the book, is they illustrate the hallenge of making hard decisions in the middle of a partisan environment. what do you think about? iwhat are your north sta that situation? and there, i think we thought about the right things. and it wasn't about us. it was about us doing our job in the middle of a tremendous storm where we were screwed honestly ides? are coming from bothour >> no, because i could still be wrong. i mean, this is an old saying, if everybody hates you,ghou must be not necessarily. i could still be wrong.

bisut i to me, it's a depressing illustration of our polarization that the clinton people think i'm on trump's side, the trump people think i'm on clsiinton'. those two things cannot both be true. the truth is we're not on abody's side. reasonable people might have made different decisions. got it. and i respect that. but it's not fair to say that we at the f.b.i. made these decisions because we are on anybody's side. >> woodruff: james comey. toy book is "a higher lalty: truth, lies, and leadership." >> thanks for having me. >> woodruff: thank you. thank you very much. >> woodruff: we turn now to the group of migrits seeking potical asylum in the u.s. this is the so-called "caravan" from central america. john yangas our update. >> yang: judy, tonight, more than 100 central americ migrants remain on e u.s. bordein tijuana, mexico.

some of them celebrated when told that overnight u.s. officials admittedtight of them o an immigration checkpoint to apply f asylum, spurring hopes that more will be allowed to follow. separately, the justice dd epartment char people believed to have been part of the group with entering the country illegally. for the latest, we're joined by npr's carrie kahn, who is back in mexico city after leaving tijuana last night. carrie, thanks for joining us. what's the latest on this group of people and how many are being allowed into the united states to apply for asylum? >> as youaid, there were eight last night, and at about noon local time in tijuana they let in about six mor so it's a trickle of asylum claimants they're allowing into the port ofen ty. >> yang: carrie, what are the conditions you saw at the porty? ofen >> you have 140-some from the caravan, mothers, children, laying on blankets on the concrete with tarps. but what also happened is word

dwowt out that the central americans were, there and these migrants also started showingh up, and were very upset because they had been in tijuana more thana week waiting. they had an informal list who would be able te walk into th u.s. facility. i said, how many people are on this list, and the man told me there were 300, twice as many of the central americans. and they began starting to form tents and tarps th so you have this huge encampment of 450 some claimants waiting to get into the u.s. to ask for political asylum. it is an incredibly dire scene at the bord. one woman i spoke to, her 15-year-old daughter was kidnapped by gang members and held for days and gang raped. as soon as she was able to secure her release, she fled h home with that daughter and another daughter. another woman that i talked to, hheed me scars on her child's head that she said was beaten unconscious in retaliation for ur hand's actions with gang members.

it's some horrific violence that we ar acted. >> yang: and this trickle that are being allowed in to begin the process of asking for asylum in the united states, what's the ace now?they >> the first point that they have to do is they have to tell the first imigration officer that they see, they have to tell them they have a credible fear, d it's up to thatficer to decide whether he believes that they have a credible fear. if theyeyo, then t begin the asylum process. that could be being in detention for an indeterminant amount of timh or it's up toe officers and the administration at the time whether they want to allow them to be released. they can be released to family member of a s sponsoetimes with a monitoring apparatus around theieyankle, or tl be kept in detention throughout the entire process. that's another discrethat we'll have to see what the trump administration is doing with these particular asylum claimants >> yang: of course, president trump was saying no one would be allowed . they ar allowing this trickle.

on the other hank they have arreed 11 and charged them with entering the country illegally. isat message do you think the administratioending? >> they have singled out these 11, and they're definitely agtrying to send a me back to the caravan and migrants trying to cross illegally that they will be prosecuted under the full extent of the law. >> yang: carrie kahn of npr, thanks so much for joining us. >> you're welcom >> woodruff: now, how educators are trying to make sure students from lower-income families are ggeetting a colegree. as we move into graduation season, we're going to look at innovative programs helping students climb the ladder of college and economic stability. to kick it off, we look at the , anging profile of many college studend how schools may ne eed to ctheir approach. hari sreenivasan is our guide for this special series on "rethinking college," which will

bthe airing oe next few weeks on our weekly segmegr, making the. >> sreenivasan: at laguardia y college in new york, administrators want the first day for new studentsfeel like a welcome home party. >> students need to feel like this is a home. i'm gail mellow president of the college. >> sreenasan: president gail mellow is well aware that for many students, making it from this first day to sraduation is uggle. >> tell me what you're going to study? >> sreenivasan: nationally, only 25% of new full-time community college students will earn a degree in six years. >> your entire life pivots around your ability to complete college, and more than that, so does your whofamily. me>> sreenivasanow says the best way to educate community college students like these, is to understand who they arend where they came from. community colleges educate the majority of the n income students. in fact, at laguardia, 77% of

students here come from households making less than $25,000 a year. >> often they were not well served by the urban public high schools, which are so underfunded, and so crowded. and so they come to us, really, for that second chance. >> sreenivasan: 26-year-old r udent diamond stanback says she's grateful second chance. >> i didn't make a lot of good decisions in i lifed to start all over, learn how to be more self-sufficient. >> sreenivasan: a single mother of two, stanback was living in a homeless shelter just two years ago. now, she's earned 33 credits and is working toward an associates degree in business. >> ixa have to lead byle, basically. because of my kids. i can't expect them to strive to do better if i'm doing the bare minimum in my life, and collecting>elfare checks. sreenivasan: gail mellow points to laguardia undergraduates like diamond stanback tbring attention to

what she says is a misconception of the nation's college students. your average student, isn't what most americans think of as a college student. is there a gap here in our perception of what a college student is, and the reality of what you see everyday? >> there's such an enormous gap between who goes to college in the united states, and our very old and stereotyped imag more than half of all american college students, undergraduates, go toommunity colleges. more than half of those can't go full time. about a quarter of our students a 3re working more thhours a week to make ends meet. mor living at home with parents. so, the idea of college as being this time away, right after high school, it's not true. >> sreenivasan: here's diamond stanback's morning. >> i wake up around 4:30. i have to get up, shower, get dressed before i wake up the

kids. i'm making breakfast. at 5:30 i get isaaoc dressed, pt his shoes, eat, and everything. >> sreenivasan: each trip to laguardia college can take several hours. >> we walk. we get on the bus, to go to my daughter's school. after i drop her off,alk and i drop off isaac. then i get on a train. >> sreenivasan: in fact, theco lex lives of community college students like stanback are often the reason students drop out. nireta seals is vice president of laguardia student affairs. >> not having food, enough money for books, those things can derail you. it really is the simple things. financial aid and pell will pay for tuition, but it is the extra the additional costs. >> sreenivasan: president mellow says extra costs are mostly ked by higher education policy makers. are the consequences of this perception gap between how we think about college students, and then how we fund the education system? >> the gap between our policies,

and the realit is enormous. what happens when we don't have a good idea of who goes to cy ollege, and ey're going to college, is that we don't fund the things that, from my wperspective, i wiwould fund. >> sreenivasan: to fill in the g, laguardia's charitable foundation has raised more than $20 million for student sycholarships and emerge funds. administrators hope the money will keep more students on track. laguardia graduation rate for full time sdents is 30%. tanback is enrolled in a program at laguardia called college dis very which assigns her an advocate to help her navigate both finances and academics. student luis ramos is enrolled in a program laguaresa calls the ential society which, in addition to supplying extra funds, teaches student skills. >> it amazes me all the things that iidn't know, that i needed to know, to be successful, simple things, like setting out alendar, and scheduling everything around school. >> sreenivasan: before entering

laguardia, ramos twice dropped out of four-year universities because the stress of balancing work and school became overwhelming. >> i couldn't always be like running to work, running to class, running to work again. >> sreenivasan: at laguardia, ramos gets free food from the school pantry and professional cth. >> they just bought me a suit, which is my first suit that i've ever had. so it's good to know that when i leave here, i can go to a job interview, and i know, i already have exactly what i need wear. >> sreenivasan: but perhaps one of the most crucial extras he receives is a free metrocard. ramoses lith his family in flushing, new york and takes p hublic transportation or each way to classes. >> it's such a relief, if i had to ptray $130 card every it adds up, so it makes a huge difference. enivasan: and then there student christian ortiz, 22- years-old and a father. ortiz credits his seconduphance to a ge joined at laguardia called fatherhood academy. soe lot of students have s serious challenges, like yoursel about having to take

care of a kid, having a job, how does college fit in with all that? >> priorities. it's a sacrifice that comes with college. >> sreenivasan: on the fay we visitherhood academy, sacrifice was the topic of the day. >> once i make this sacrifice, eventually i know my goals, and i know my purpose. >> sacrifice comes before >> sreenivasan: once a high z school dropout, orys he's now convinced he'll earn an associates degree. how long is it going to take you to finish? >> my goal is four semesters. tntngs happen but i'm resil so i'm going to get it regardless. >> sreenivasan: diamond stanback hanopes to get a job in hum resources. and, after graduation this junem luis r plans to pursue a bachelor's degree. in a recent nking from stanford university, students lik se ramos,tanback, and ortiz havear helped place laa community college 5th in the nation for moving low-income families into the middle class. for the pbs newshour, i'm hari sreenivasan. ee

>> woodruff: last investigators in california aested a man they believe is the golden state killer, a serial murderer and rapist whose crimes terrorized the st ae in the 197 '80s. as william brgham reports, the arrest is considered a huge success for law eitorcement, but lso raises questions about the unique method used to find the suspect. >> brangham: this is the man accldused of being the state killer: 72-year-old former police officer joseph degelo, as he appeared in a sacramento court last friday. >> do you have a lawyer mr. >> brangham: the golden state killer has been linked to at least 12 murders, 50 rapes and a string of burglaries throughout california. variously known as the east area rapist and the original night stalker, these were brutal, meticulously planned crimes that spanned numerous california

counties between 1976 and 1986. >> police say lock up tick, sacramento's east area pist may still be in town. >> brangham: as the crimes escalated, and police couldn't find a suspect, californians grew increasingly terrified. iesgator paul holes, who tracked the golden state killer for decades, described the r telief many felt wis arrest. i right now the biggest rewards that i have gotti called the handful of victims that i've had some relationship with. very rewarding to at least hear t the relief ir voices that they can now relax in a way that this guy is behind bars. he is never getting out. i think some of them thought he was going to come back and get me so they lived in that fear. >> brangham: deangelos arrest has been cause for celebration, but it's also raising questions over how he wasocated and whether law enforcement has opened a pandora's x with new

d.n.a. technology. rovestigators took d.n.a. of the suspected killeran old crime scene and uploaded it to a kublic geneology database called g.e.d. match, thind that people use to track down distant relates or trace their ancestry. on that site, investigators were able find what seemed to be a distant relative of the suspected killer-- a great, great, great grandparent from the 1800s. then, investigators followed the dozens of family trees branching off this one grandparent, and using census data, old newspapers and death records, were able to home in on two men who were in california at the time of the attacks. a final d.n.a. test, done on a discarded piece of trash, confirmed that the second man, joseph deangelo, was the spect. sacramento county district m attorney anie schubert cheered the technique used to identify the suspect. the d.n.a. would be-- would always be the answer.

>> brangham: deangelo returns to court on may 14th. htoe has yenter a plea. for more on how the golden state suspect was apprehended, i'm joined now by the woman who'll prosecu him: anne marie hubert is the district attorney for sacramento county. welcome to the newshour. >> thank you for having me. i appreciate it. >> brangham: so this is obviously an enormous moment for california ansacramento i particular. i wonder if you could take us back for people who didn't live through it or weren' in california at the time, just what it was like in the late '70s and early '80s for people living with these conrant fear of these cimes going on. >> sure. i think it's almost difficult to explain to folks what it was like. i mea i know it because i grew up here at the time and i was 12 when it firsttarted to happen. and for really anybody that lived int sacramentoe time, it was... it changed us. it changed our community. it went from a very i would say innocent town where people left

their doors unlocked, they left their windows open, they knew nothing about self-defense, to a time when it happened soten and it was so much on the news that it wasn't a matter of if ig was go happen again, it was a matter of when. and so it really terrorized this community. it's almost difficult to explain. it's almost like livg through an earthquake and trying to explain that process of what it's like to go through that. but it really did change this community in many, many ways. >> angham: obviously you used a very unique technique to al identify him. i explained how you went about this beforehand. but can you tell us more aboutu how did yme up with this idea, how did you execute this? >> well, i don't want to take credit for the idea. there was a team of folks that uerked on it. so my credit i is just kind of making sure that we have a team approach going into this. but, you know, it was essentially using innovative technology. i think everybody knows now that it was using some genealogy

sites and usingn. the to the best of our ability. and as i said, a group of folks building the trees of this genealog which was very, very labor intensive, very, very long process, but ultimately it led to mr. deangelo. >> brangham: obviously everyone in california seems very grad if he is in fact the killer to have this man in ctody, but some have raised concerns that law enforcement dipping into ese bign.a. databases is some form of overr i wonder, what do you say to that concern? e> well, i think what's important for peoto remember th that this is and has been one o most significant unsolved serial rape/murder cases of all time here in california. and the level of violent crime, the number of crimes, you know, i understand there's a conversation folks want to about privacy and things like that, but there is a balance

here, and there's what i would call the public safety balance. i'm sure that this process will play out not only in publicat dand also in a courtroom, and ultimately we're confident that at the end of the day, when the sample was collected from as i call it a discarded sample that then matches,r. deange that we're going to prevail. >> brangham: obviously again in this cas it proved incredibly useful and it seems to have pulled a very dangerous man into police custody, bt do you understand those concerns that people raise, that perhaps when i give my d.n.a. tone of these web sites, i don't really ever expect it to be part of a police investigation that mccay not for years down the line, and you understand the concern that peopise e that, i don't want my d.n.a. in a drag nut somewhere down the road. >> i understand thec onversation. i actually do. i also understand what, you

know, the company ged match put out after this occurs, that folks that put their information in there were on notice. i understand tha again, i will say that this particular situation wasot atter of solving a car theft or a burglary. this was aagnitude of this case was extraordinary. and law enforcement did what they felt was necessar to ultimately, and it did, in fact, lead us to the conclusion. >> brangham: one question about thepecifics of this case.wh people upload their d.n.a. to these sites, usually you're uploading your own d.n.a. or the d.n.a. for someone you are the guardian for that. was not the case ihis case. are you concerned at all about the legality of the evidence in this particular instance? >> well, i'm quite confident this will play out in a courtroom, and everything that was done was put into an open source site. ged match.

i understand the public conversation, but i'm confident this is going to play out in a courtroom. >> brangham: lastly before you go, i'd like to shift to another case. there is still a greal of concern and outrage in sacramento about the shooting death of stephon clark by two police officers. a lot of people in the community have been argue thank you need to acker to prosecute the police officers for that shooting. can you tell us where that shatands? wh't that happened yesterday? >> well, the short answer is tt we have noteceived any case from law enforcement yet to hat.ew on as i've said many, many time, esese cases take... when it d get received in our office, it will take a period of time. my job as the distri is to do a full, fair, and independent review. so one, we don't have the case, and, two, when weeo have case, along with the attorney general, i'm quite confident we're going to do that. but i understand people's frustration, but i was elected b, do a n i intend to do that. >> brangham: ale right, ann

marie schubert, district attorney for sacramento county. thank you very much. >> you're welcome. thank you very much. >> woodruff: from the firing of a secretary of state to possible talks between the president and north korea's dictator, the last year in american foreign policy has been momentous and chaotic. in his new book, "war on peace: the end of diplomacy and the decline of american influence," the journalist ronan farrow, w worked in the obama state department, argues that this is part of a much bigger and darker trend. i recently spoke with farrow, and began by asking him if he really thought we were watching the end of american diplomacy. >> you know, i think we're at an infection point, judy, where we can make important choices about that. this is in the news right now. mike pompeo will be coming in. iwill the will be on his should ers. he has a track record as hawk, a

track record for sabe haggling on large-scale diplomatic deals e iran deal. but the whistle blowers who share tir stories in this book are hopeful that he may pull out of the nose dave that i right now triggering a transformation of america's place in the world, wheree are gutting our ability to negotiate and make peace and increasingly shootinfirst and asking questions later. >> woodruff: one of the things you start the book writing about is so-called "mahogany massacre," where people who played key long-time roles in the state department were just summarily dismissed, a lot of them in the very early weeks of the trump administration. i guess the pushback on that is doesn't every new president, every new secretary of state have a right to come in andut their own people in? >> absolutely, and this was done in a very different way from that normal scenario you just described where non-political appointees, career officials who

had decades of expertise in important subject matter areas related to our most important challenges around the world were just shown the door. and, you know, at whistle-blower after whistle-blower told me is they feel there is a culture of denigrating expertise. and as we barrel into, fo instance, the north korea crisis and this latest effort to tackle it, the experts who have been embedded in that crisis for decades say time will tell what a meeting between leaders in that situation will achieve or not. we could get played.ha we do know is we need it to be embedded in strategy, built by diplomons, and we have them anymore. >> woodruff: welk you amongth o things were one of the very few people to get access to sit down with formesecretary of state rex tillerson. he told you in that conversation, he admitted some mistakes were made. what did he say to you>> ou know, every living secretary of state went on the record for war on peace, and i think they were each candid in different and surprising ways.

rex tillerson to his great credit gave a lot of access, and for the first time in this interview really did say, look, maybe it was just too inexperienced. he said when he defended these very deep cuts to te state department budget, he was in the early days of the job, and that over time he learned a little bit more, but atnt that poie didn't understand that running a government agency, you're supposed to advocate forore money, not push back on congress's efforts to fund you. i will say other secretaries regarded that posture with some degree of astonishment, but he was at the very least frank and he lot of blame on this white house, judy.> > woodruff: well, and of oourse, ronan farrow, ter part of that argument is you're saying that put too much emphasis on defense, on military sg. their argument, of course, is that this follows years of cuttinghe defense budget, not spending enough, letting the pentagon grow we. you now have the defense secretary james matting this sizeable increase is what we must have.

it's what we need to get us back o a position of primacy. so they have pushback. >> i'm very forthright abo saying, lookis trend is not linear. there are ups and downs, something like sequestration led to cuts across the board, but what we see is that at the times when we gut the state department spending, it has devastatineqg conces. this happens under administrations in both parties. you look back at the clinton administration and the early days after the cold war where the mana was, it's the economy, stupid, we did similarly deep cutting to the state department, and itr esulted in the closure of two government agencies on important priorities. t resulted in the closure of embassies around the world, and it resulted in a scenario where after 9/11 we didn't the diplomatic capacity we needed. and we're seeing hiory repeat itself in that respect. right now it's a much more ixtreme version of that, and would also point out that mattis has been one of the first to say, if y don't spend on diplomats, i'm going to need to get more bullets. >> woodruff: you mentioned

nort akorea a minute. as you know, people are watching that effort to make a ordifference, get the to denuclearize.nt presirump initiated that. isn't it possible that as a result of what the president has one there could be a good result on the korean peninsula? andin fact, theesident is still talking to world leaders, you know, you mentioned the french leader, mr. macron w in washington. so it's not as if diplomacy has stopped. is it? >> it is absoluty the case that this curveball of a leader-to-leader meeting coulduc havessful results, but i think what everyone who has ever been involv in north korea diplomacy agrees on is this is one of the most wileyiplomatic opponents in the world. they lie a great deal. the promises they're making now they have made before and backed down on. and you run a very real risk with this kind of a meeting that you'll justegimize them as a nuclear power. >> woodru: you are relatively new.

relatively young at all. this i think i read you're 30 years old. you worked at the state department from a very earl ge. there are those who are saying, wait a minute, it's going to take time, some of these things just don't happen overnight. so isn't it... i guess the argument is, don't we all need to take a breath, see what happens? >> so we talk at length in "war on peace" about the response of wor leaders to all this saber rattedling from trump about north korea. nd across the board for the most part it's a fair amount of despair. ou know, and the same is true, of course, with respect to the iran deal. there isat g concern about the possibility othe united sates abdicating its will leadership in some of our greatti diploc confrontations. you see an example of macron t,ming in and saying, all ri let's look at an alternative deal to salvage some of the accomplishments. that's absolutely a productive conversation to bhaving, but

this is not the way that diplomacy has to work. it doesn't erve to be leadship by tweet, and i think that what you hear from a lot of the anguished voices in this book, including richard holbrooke, my mentor of many years, in his final days before his death is the system doesn't have to be that way and we lose a lot when it sacrifice our diplomacy and the people who do >> woodruff: ronan farrow, thank you. the book is "war on peace: the end of diplomacy ad the decline american influence". >> thank you, judy. >> woodruff: later this evening oren pbs, "frontline"nts an investigation with npr into the federal response to puerto rico following hurricane maria. i it delvo the island's complicated relationship with the.,ainland uts financial struggles and the reasons why seven months later, more than 100,000 residents are still without power.

"blackout in puerto rico" airs tonight on most pbs stations. and that's the newshour for tonight. iwo'm judruff. join us online and again here tinomorrow eveng. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> babbel. a language app that teaches real-life conversations in a new language. >> the ford foundation. working with visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide. >> carneg york.oration of new supporting innovations in education, democratic

engagement, and the advancement of international peace and security. at carnegie.or >> and with the ongoing iupport of thestitutions and individuals. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers ou. thank you. captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

phil rosenthal: if something's good, i want to share it with you and you. i'm going to hong kong. i've loved every single bite. the gateway to asia and maybe even the new center of the world. you get a lot of nature's and maybe even the new center it's home to the best dim sum. one bite, you want another one. idsome questionable liqu and spicy szechuan that does not kid around. ve i mighotten a little extra chili in that bite. all the thrills this delicious mash-up of a city can dish out. whoa! can i take it? it's all next on... - i'll have what phil's having. rosenthal: there were things i never tasted growing up, like food with any flavor. in our house, meat was a punishment. when i went into the real world, i was like a man coming out of the desert. i thtarted writing comedy and traveling to other lands to eat.