captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening, i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight, president trump and the facts: checking some of the president's statements at a rally. then, broken justice-- two innocent brothers are wrongfully convicted of the same crime, but they take separate paths after a plea bargain. and, the innovation hub-- how a program is building a new generation of inventors of color. >> what we see is that there are a lot of talented kids who seem like they have the right stuff to become inventors but yet they don't follow careers of innovation. >> woodruff: all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour.

>> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> supporting social entrepreneurs and their solutions to the world's most pressing problems-- skollfoundation.org. >> the lemelson foundation. committed to improving lives through invention, in the u.s. and developing countries. on the web at lemelson.org. >> supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org

>> 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. >> woodruff: north korea's top diplomat arrived in new york this afternoon, for talks on reviving a summit between president trump and kim jong-un. the official, kim yong chol, was spotted overnight in beijing, before boarding an air china flight to new york. he arrived this afternoon at j.f.k. international airport, and plans to meet with secretary of state mike pompeo. the white house says president trump is still concerned about whether the f.b.i. planted a "spy" in his 2016 campaign. that's after a top republican congressman said today there's no evidence for the claim. representative trey gowdy, of

south carolina chairs the house oversight committee, and was briefed by the f.b.i. last week. >> based on what i have seen, i don't know what the f.b.i. could have done or should have done other than run out a lead that someone loosely connected with the campaign was making assertions about russia, i would think you would want the f.b.i. to find out whether there was any validity to what those people were saying. >> woodruff: gowdy also said he understands the president's frustration with attorney general jeff sessions for recusing himself in the russia investigation. "the new york times" reports mr. trump asked sessions to reverse his recusal in march of last year, which sessions declined to do. today, the president said on twitter that "i wish i did," pick someone else as attorney general. china warned today the u.s. will regret its latest threat to impose tariffs. the two nations agreed this month to put new tariffs "on hold."

but the white house said yesterday it's moving forward with levies on $50 billion worth of chinese products. in beijing today, a chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman argued the u.s. is only hurting itself. >> ( translated ): a country harms and squanders its own national credibility every time it suddenly breaks its words and contradicts itself. if the united states insists on being capricious, china will resolutely take strong and solid measures to safeguard its own legitimate interests. >> woodruff: meanwhile, u.s. commerce secretary wilbur ross and trade representative robert lighthizer met with top european officials in paris. friday is the deadline for a u.s. decision on imposing tariffs on imported steel and aluminum from europe. there's a break in a barrage of fire across the israel-gaza border. the militant group hamas says it has accepted a cease-fire, brokered by egypt. the israelis say they expect a return of calm. militants fired rockets into

southern israel on tuesday, and israeli warplanes blasted dozens of sites across gaza. india and pakistan have agreed to stop trading artillery fire in the contested kashmir region. relative calm prevailed today after months of flare-ups that killed dozens of soldiers and civilians. kashmir has ignited two wars twina and pakisn nce 1947. in afghanistan, the u.s. military says an artillery attack killed more than 50 taliban leaders last week. it happened in helmand province in the south. the overall u.s. commander, army general john nicholson, says it struck at the taliban's illegal drug revenues. >> this group in helmand in particular are very involved in criminal activity. they seek to continue instability so they can profit from the drug trade. because of the money they derive from drugs, this has been one of the more well-equipped paid

taliban networks, but by killing leaders we will achieve a disruptive affect in helmand. >> woodruff: separately, afghan security forces beat back an attack on the interior ministry in kabul today. the ministry says all 10 attackers died, along with one policeman. a bizarre tale of espionage and faked murder in ukraine today. police reported tuesday that dissident russian journalist arkady babchenko had been shot and killed in kiev. but this morning, he showed up alive and well, and said it was all a sting, to expose a russian plot to assassinate him. >> ( translated ): all these months we were in touch, and we worked on the details. as a result of this operation one man is arrested. i'd like to ask that you excuse me for all that happened in the past, because i have attended funerals for colleagues and friends many times and i know this feeling when you have to bury colleagues. i am sorry for this. >> woodruff: ukrainian authorities said they've arrested the alleged organizer

of the plot. russia dismissed the operation as "obviously calculated propaganda." back in this country, the republican governor of texas, greg abbott, rolled out a 40- point plan on school shootings. it calls for armed marshals in schools, more mental health screening for students and a handful of gun safety measures. an attack this month in santa fe, texas, left 10 students and teachers dead. president trump will meet with the victims' families tomorrow, in houston. the federal reserve voted today to relax the "volcker rule" that bars banks from risky financial trades. it's the latest move by the trump administration to deregulate the industry. the change still needs the approval of four other agencies. and on wall street, stocks recovered as a political crisis in italy appeared to ease. there'd been fears that the turmoil could undermine the euro currency. the dow jones industrial average

gained 306 points to close at 24,667. the nasdaq rose nearly 66 points, and the s&p 500 added 34. still to come on the newshour: fact checking the president's claims at a tennessee campaign rally. broken justice: two innocent brothers and the consequence of a plea bargain, and much more. >> woodruff: the white house weighed in today on the controversy surrounding the now- cancelled abc tv show, "roseanne." the network made the announcement yesterday after its star, roseanne barr, wrote a racist tweet about an adviser to former president obama, valerie jarrett. the c.e.o. of abc's parent company, robert iger, called jarrett to apologize, while yesterday's controversy was playing out. today, president trump

criticized iger. in a tweet, the president said iger never called him to apologize for what mr. trump said were, "horrible statements made and said about me on abc." white house press secretary sarah sanders elaborated, this afternoon. >> the president's simply calling out the media bias. no one's defending what she said. the president is the president of all americans, and he's focused on doing what is best for our country. the president's pointing to the hypocrisy in the media saying the most horrible things about this president, and nobody addresses it. where was bob iger's apology to the white house staff for jemele hill calling the president and anyone associated with him a white supremacist? to christians around the world for joy behar calling christianity a mental illness? >> woodruff: and our white house correspondent yamiche alcindor was in today's briefing with sarah sanders. so, yamiche, a sore spot, a, a

sensitive spot was touched for the president in all of this. >> that is right, and president trump had tweeted about this, as we said, and sarah sanders was deflecting, though, a question directed specifically at how president trump has been handling this tweet that was blatantly racist by roseanne barr. sarah sanders, when you ask her a question she doesn't want to answer, she says i'm not going to answer the question but will attack the media, which is president can done. i'll read the actual question. the specific question was why did he, president trump, choose to address the abc policy instead of underlying issues of concern about a racist comment that she tweeted out. that was, again, all about roseanne's tweet and sarah sanders said we deserve an apology for all these other criticisms. while there is back and forth about whether abc should

apologize, these are two separate issues completely. >> woodruff: this brings to mind some comments that came up last night at the president's rally. he went to tennessee to campaign for marsha blackburn for what will be the vacant senate seat there. what happened was he made a long speech, made a lot of comments about ms. blackburn, talked about his own administration, but also made statements that turned out to be demonstrably not backed up by the facts. let's listen first to one of them. he was talking about immigrants, deportations. he specifically singled out this central american criminal gang called ms-13. listen to what he said. >> have you seen what they've done? have you seen what they're doing to us? and we're taking them out of our country be by the thousands -- out, out by the thousands! (cheers and applause) we have borders down 40% and it's tough because our economy

is doing so well, more people try and get in, so it makes it even tougher. >> woodruff: so what about that? >> well, that claim is basically false. he is lying when he's talking about those things. the first thing is it's almost impossible for thousands of ms-13 gang members to have been removed by the united states. i also want to read facts from the custom and border protection. they say illegal border crossings are up this year, a 2% increase from march. that's lately important because the president is essentially saying we're taking out more people than any other administration, we're here getting these things done, and that's just not true. what's important here is the president has repeated these claims over and over again. we'll get to more now. it's really important for people to understand that he has been saying this for months and this has been proven to be false time and time again. >> woodruff: so another in relation to deportations and immigration, the president talked about the border wall, something he's been talking about since the campaign.

here i'm going to quote. we know he wants this, what he calls a big wall built along the southern border of mexico. he said last night "we're going to get the wall. we've already started doing it, so we've already started ." >> in 2016, the president promised to create a wall that's 1,000 miles long. he traveled to california to look at the prototypes but has not started construction on the wall. he essentially said he's going to replace old barriers with new, he's going to fix existing fence, but there is no evidence at all the wall he promised on the campaign trail is being built at all. >> woodruff: at least they haven't started, which was his comment. different subject, the president brought up tax cuts he proposed which congress passed for individuals and corporations last december. here's what he said about that. >> we've already accomplished more than anyone ever dreamed possible.

a year and a half. that's all it is. we have not let you down. i'll never let you down. (cheering) we've passed the largest tax cuts and reform in american history. (cheering) larger than ronald reagan many years ago. >> woodruff: so, yamiche? this again not true. the joint committee on taxation, a mutual arbitrator of tax analysis for congress, said that the tax cuts he passed in december would add about $1.5 trillion over ten years, that's how much it would cost. that even ranked through different analyses are a lot smaller than ronald reagans tax cuts in the 1980s. historically, people said these probably rank around third or fourth, but some said even eighth. this is something he said over and over again because it's a big talking point for republicans, a big victory for them. he could have gone on the campaign trail and said we had this big win.

instead he started talking about things that are not true. >> woodruff: so, yamiche, in connection with that, the president talked about how he created more than 3 million jobs on his watch, and at one point he said wages for the first time in many, many years are going up, wages are going up. >> wages have been going up since 2014, so that again is something that's not true. h president claimed he and his administration jump started that. what happened was, after the great recession, when things hit a record low, things started getting better. one thing you can say is wages can be calculated by hourly or yearly, so you could see a grey area. economists across the board said that's false and that's another thing the president repeated over and over again. for people sitting at home, we're not saying he doesn't se serve to be president which is what the white house is often saying, we're saying the president could have talked about all the victories and tell

the truth, instead he chose to say a lot of things that are lies. >> woodruff: i think we see our role of holding the president accountable whether they state the facts or say something else, part of our role is to hold them accountable. yamiche alcindor, thank you very much. as we wrap up with yamiche outside president trump's rally last night, his supporters shrugged off questions about whether some of his claims were not factual: >> i don't think he's lied to the american public. i think that just like anything, i think there's times that you have a situation where all the facts are not presented at one time, and you make an assumption on some things, and that happens, with every president. >> he gets the job done and he's not just all talk. he does what he says he's going to do. >> woodruff: president trump has been called out before for not sticking to the facts. the author gwenda blair examined that in her book, "the trumps:

three generations of builders and a president," which was originally published in 2000. blair is also an adjunct professor at columbia university's school of journalism. welcome back to the program. it is the case, and you've written about this, that over time the president has been called out for exaggerations and for saying things that could not be borne out by the facts. >> yes, he has. he's -- but he's made his brand -- you know that phrase exaggerated hyperbole, he made that into a brand. he made that into a symbol of success. the whole idea of excess, you know, of bumping everything up, saying it was the biggest, the best. it's always a superlative, and, so, he is well established, i think, in the public eye,

certainly by the time i started my book, even, and that was a long time ago, the beginning of the 1990s. he made it his job to establish himself as someone who could stretch the truth, an that was part of his stretch, whatever he said, that was part of who he was, and i think that that has turned out to be very shrewd. he has been always a performer, always selling himself, and part of that sales job is to, you know, that superlative thing, to push the boundaries of everything and to get away with it. >> woodruff: we should say, reporting and writing about him, he was a real estate developer, a business person, so he had a different career, a different line of work. but what we're looking at now is president. but you identified a pattern of how he would talk about things. give us some examples of what you found and what you wrote about. >> from the start, he was a

fabulous -- someone who pushed things, you know, to the extreme. early on, when he was -- one of my favorite examples was when he was building trump tower and doing a marketing strategy for selling the condominiums in trump tower. he had someone do a scale model of trump tower, of the projected trump tower and the streets behind it. lo and behold the g.m. building was taller than trump tower was going to be and it's illegal to market real estate and lie about it. so he couldn't make trump tower any taller. so what he did instead, had the model builder lop a few stories off the g.m. building. it was okay to make the adjacent building shorter than it was, in fact. so the adjacent building was

shorter. trump tower was the accurate height but looked like it was the tallest building. >> woodruff: there's also the story about phone calls he made on a few occasions to reporters writing about him or writing a story for a tabloid. you had a couple of examples of that, as well. >> he, in part of that building the brand, building himself into a known name, you know, a supername that really would be the icon for success, part of that was getting as much press crch as he possibly could, and that included calling the press at every possible opportunity, sometimes calling and saying that he was someone else, that he was john barron, a press agent for trump, and then telling some positive tidbit about trump, things like prince charles was looking for a condo in trump tower. and the funny thing was not just that but that his father did this. his father would call up

reporters decades before and say he was mr. greene and he was calling for fred trump. so donald trump's sister, mary ann, who was the federal judge, told me that she and her husband used to kid about sending a summons to john barron at trump tower and to see how long -- whether john barron disappeared, which i always thought was pretty funny. it's also interesting to me donald trump named his youngest son barron, and i don't know what was in his head when he did that, but he already had a son named donald trump, jr., so he couldn't name another kid after himself, so he named his youngest son barron. i don't know what he was thinking, but i just think it's interesting. >> woodruff: in half a minute or to, gwendoly gwenda blair, ie something about new york and something that's acceptable in business in new york that made

people accept what the president, then businessman and now politician and president president trump was able to do and say and get away with? >> well, he was a salesman. he was selling real estate. salesmen are performers. they target their market. what does the market want to hear? they tell the market what it was to hear. he would tell the market, in his first project, which was the grand hyatt, a hotel, he told people it was the biggest ballroom in new york. it wasn't, but people liked that idea. in trump tower, he had -- also in the grand hyatt -- a very innovative system of floor numbers. by conventional numbering, the top floor of trump tower would be somewhere in the '50s. he started the numbers at what he said -- he started the numbers with, i think, the 12th floor. so the top floor is 468. if you look directly across, it's in the '50s in

adjacent -- in the 50s in adjacent buildings. >> woodruff: gwenda blair, watcher and author of the trump family for many years. thank you very much. >> my pleasure. >> woodruff: it turns out that trials are increasingly rare in today's broken justice system: about 95% of all felony cases end with guilty pleas. defendants take deals to avoid risking more serious charges and penalties at a trial, even if they didn't commit the crime. as john yang reports, plea bargains can have long-lasting consequences. this story was produced by students at the university of maryland's capital news service in collaboration with injustice watch of chicago. >> this is the block i grew up on. >> yang: juan johnson is back in his old northwest chicago neighborhood. >> and this is the home right here is where i grew up at.

>> yang: where he and older brother, henry, were raised. >> where i was weak he was strong. where i was strong he was weak. >> yang: by all accounts, juan was the better student; henry, the better athlete. and when juan got involved in a gang, henry followed. >> he was always the good guy, not me. i wasn't a murderer but i was no angel. >> yang: they both dropped out of school and started families, but stayed close to home, until the police arrested them. after leaving this house, juan and henry would soon again be living under one roof: a maximum security state prison. they'd been convicted of the same crime that they didn't commit. their story is the tale of how, 30 years after being wrongfully imprisoned, juan is an innocent man in the eyes of the law, and henry is an admitted murderer. it began in 1989, when henry was 21 and juan, 19. >> i was sitting on the porch with my girlfriend when a friend

of mine came running down the street from that way and that's he just asked me come down and break up a fight. when he told me what was going on, i thought it would be a simple thing. go down there five minutes and come right back. it turned out not to be that. >> yang: juan and henry had tried to break up the street fight, but they gave up and went home. they didn't know it, but a man was brutally kicked and beaten to death that night. >> i came out the next morning. and that's when they came to me for a lineup. i was actually shocked when i heard someone died that night. >> yang: when henry showed up to get juan out on bail, police detained him too. they looked nothing like the witness descriptions of the killers. >> they said 5 foot 7, 5 foot 9, light-skinned hispanic males at first and then they changed it up. >> yang: but they were picked out of the lineup, convicted of first degree murder, and sentenced to 30 years in prison. >> i couldn't believe this. it was like a truck hitting you in the chest. >> yang: on their very first night, juan and henry faced the harsh reality of a maximum security prison: inmates were on lockdown.

a prisoner had been killed. >> someone else gets stabbed. they put us on lockdown for three months. we come out of lockdown. in less than one hour, someone gets hit in the head with a pipe. >> yang: to this day, henry is unable to talk about his time in prison. over the years, juan and henry's mother nilda moret saved money to visit as often as she could. >> it was a nightmare al. because i knew they were innocent. >> yang: determined to get their convictions and prison terms thrown out, the brothers changed attorneys, firing the one who represented them at their trial and hiring dan stohr. stohr found witnesses the first lawyer never even looked for and began filing appeals. >> i had this wealth of material, all these witnesses, but the judges weren't listening. >> yang: even though the money ran out, stohr kept pressing their case. >> they were innocent and they were trapped. they were buried alive and they had nobody else to turn to.

>> yang: the brothers sat in prison for more than a decade. two courts rejected their appeals before a third threw out their convictions based on the new witnesses. juan and henry would be released on bond while awaiting a new trial. stohr called with the news. >> he says, "you're coming home. you and your brother are coming home." >> yang: a friend broke the news to their mother. >> i jumped up and started screaming and hollering, trying to get both of them, hug them. and i say, "you knew they were coming home?" he says yes. i said you should have told me i could have cooked for them. >> yang: the wait for a second trial gave them a taste of freedom. >> we started becoming human again. >> yang: and then, as the new trial was about to begin, juan and henry faced an excruciating decision. prosecutors offered them a deal: plead guilty to the lesser charge of 2nd degree murder, and they could walk free.

juan and henry knew they hadn't killed anybody, but they also kn they wanted to be home. >> just plead guilty and you can go home with your family, you can live the rest of your life. don't worry about it, it's done. and that's hard to turn down. >> so it seems crazy that an innocent person would plead guilty. but when you have been pushed around and ground down that may seem like the best choice. >> yang: juan and henry had to choose quickly: certain freedom, but as a convicted felon, or risk going back to prison. >> i looked at him and told him i love you, but you've got to make that decision on your own. i can't live with that decision. he says, "i'm gonna take the deal. i'm sorry i'm gonna take the deal." he started instantly apologizing to me. i said, "henry, you don't have to apologize to me." >> yang: juan turned to their lawyers. >> and i told them i wasn't going to take the deal. henry tried to tell them instantly right after that, "i don't want to take the deal now too." i said, "no, no, no, no, no.

you already told them you're taking the deal. don't change it up because of me." >> so these two brothers were crying. this was the first time they had not done something together. >> yang: juan had no faith in the system, and no doubt that he'd be convicted again, and that he and henry would be separated. >> i'm worried about my brother being free without me. he's worried about me going to the penitentiary without him. because i knew what the penitentiary did to him. he can hide it from a lot of people. he can't hide it from me. >> yang: with henry now a free man, juan's second trial got underway. his lawyers focused on the cop who investigated the murder.. >> we actually argued that the brothers were framed, that this was not a case of mistaken identification, that they were framed by the chicago police detective, reynaldo guevara. >> yang: juan's trial helped expose a cop who could prove to be one of the most corrupt in chicago's history. >> on the advice of my attorney,

i assert my fifth amendment rights. >> yang: in the last two years, at least 11 others have had their convictions tossed out. many others are pushing for the jury got juan's case after hearing four days of testimony. >> when the jury was out at the second trial, juan melted down. >> i still didn't trust the court. i didn't know these people. they don't know me. >> they were they were out for about two and a half hours. >> they say it was pretty quick but in my mind it was like a lifetime. and they came back not guilty. >> he put his head down on the table and he started crying. >> and i looked at the jury and i looked over at them and i just started mouthing, thank you, thank you, thank you. these total strangers believed me. >> yang: enter jon loevy, a top chicago civil rights attorney. he took the city of chicago and guevara to federal court to get damages for juan in a wrongful conviction suit >> the criminal justice system is imperfect and when it does make mistakes, the stakes are very, very high.

>> yang: it was big news when a jury awarded juan $21 million, at the time, the largest payout in chicago history. >> it's not an unfair amount of money to lose, to lose your 20s and your 30s like that, and spend it in a place that can really only be fairly characterized as hell. you wouldn't trade $20 million for what happened to him. >> yang: the story might have ended here-- both brothers reunited with their families. juan spending time with his daughter and grandsons, healing through therapy, help henry declines. >> everyone knows that i gave him some of the settlement. they think he should be happy i should be happy. money can't heal my brother. money can't heal it. we tried, i tried. money can't heal it. >> yang: he didn't want to be on camera. why is that?

>> henry doesn't think it's good to do any good. he says i'm the dummy that took the deal. you always been the smart one i've just been a dummy. he says i am the dummy. over and over and over. >> oh henry and henry going through hell now. he comes over here. he'll sit there, he'll just literally start crying. so juan told him, i say juan told him, you've got to talk about it. >> yang: now, seeing all the exonerations connected to guevara, stohr is preparing an appeal to overturn henry's conviction. >> yang: what do you hope the exoneration will do for henry? >> he doesn't think that people believe that he's innocent. and he's weighted down and an exoneration would take the weight off his back, and it >> while i have a little bit of hope in the system working, my brother has no hope. he believes that the people are going to hear a sad story, feel bad and go back about their lives and not do nothing. i'm trying to what got me through the penitentiary.

stand up. even if it hurts. i don't want to do this myself. i'm hopeful it might help. do i believe it is? to be continued. >> yang: two brothers, imprisoned for a crime they didn't commit. one cleared by the courts but unable to rest until the other is, too. for the pbs newshour, i'm john yang in chicago. >> woodruff: researchers found key factors in determining who becomes an inventor are socioeconomic. location, race, gender and income. jeffrey brown travels jeffrey brown traveled to arkansas, to explore what was behind that troubling trend, and an effort that could help it's part of our weekly series on "the leading edge" of science and technology. >> brown: outside the arkansas

regional innovation hub in little rock: a line of curious 5th graders. >> good morning! how's it going? ready to make something? yeah? >> brown: their school, booker arts magnet elementary, is majority african-american and low-income. it's just minutes away from here, but most of these students are visiting for the first time. the innovation hub, which opened in 2014, is a "maker-space" where people in the community and would-be entrepreneurs can find tools, technology and expertise for their businesses, products or inventions. it also hosts regular programs for kids, the next generation of "makers." they made t-shirts and worked with clay, but also got a look at more complex technology: laser tools to cut wooden keychains, and 3-d printing computers. in another room: an engineering

challenge, to build a tall p.v.c. tower capable of holding a bowling ball. you don't hit them over the head with, this is what engineering is? >> no we let them feel, touch, make, build, and from there go and say, "did you enjoy it? that was engineering." >> brown: chris jones is the new executive director. >> we're really about providing the tools necessary to create the innovators, the makers, the tinkerers, the thinkers, and the entrepreneurs of the future, particularly in the state of arkansas. >> brown: this is personal for jones. he grew up some 45 minutes from here, in pine bluff. a lifelong lover of science, he went to morehouse college on a full scholarship from nasa. he studied math and physics, before heading to m.i.t. for a masters in nuclear engineering and a phd in urban planning. as an assistant dean, he led efforts to double minority enrollment in m.i.t.'s graduate programs. now, he's back home, with a

mission. who do you see as your main target? >> low income, women, people of color who often are not seen as innovators, inventors entrepreneurs and makers. our question is how do we reduce those barriers, how do we merge because you know if we do that then i think we unleash all power in the state in the country that is right now being dampened down. >> brown: and the numbers point to the urgency. as part of a larger, ongoing study of inequality in america, researchers used patent data to focus on innovation. among their findings: children from high income families are ten times as likely to become inventors as those from low income families. white children are three times more likely to become inventors than black children. and just 18% of inventors are women. harvard's alex bell worked on the study. he met us at the national inventors hall of fame museum in alexandria, virginia.

>> what we see is that there are a lot of talented kids who seem like they have the right stuff to become inventors but yet they don't follow careers of innovation. this is concerning because it seems like we're leaving a lot of innovation on the table and innovation we really think is the fuel for a long run economic growth. >> brown: the study also confirmed that place matters: kids growing up outside traditional innovaon hotbeds, ke slicon valley, are at a disadvantage. in fact, little rock had one of the worst inventor rates of all u.s. metropolitan areas. >> we tinker around the edges of innovation and entrepreneurship. we want to provide different policy mechanisms that make change. and they're saying through evidence which a lot of us knew already that if you expose a student at an early enough age you change the trajectory. >> brown: while the study focuses on patents, jones prefer a broader measurement of innovation.

>> so here at the hub it's not just about high tech innovation it's about low tech innovation. it's not just about making things but it's also about art and entrepreneurship and together i think that's what creates a larger swath of innovation. >> brown: 11-year-old naomi mkandawire personifies that range. >> i either want to be like an artist or an inventor or an actor, but i haven't figured it i like making like robots and animate objects that like move and stuff. >> brown: you like making robots. have you had to chance to make robots? ture!t yet but i will in the >> brown: tyeisha dupree is a teacher at booker elementary is >> i'm hoping that this experience will light the fire in them to bring out whatever science, engineering whatever it is that they like to do and let them be creative. and it lets them know when they see someone like the director that i too can be great. >> brown: do you see yourself

that way, as a role model? >> now i do. and i think that part of what we're trying to do too is create a diversity of role models for all sorts of kids. >> brown: one such role model for jones is 83-year-old raye montague. a native of little rock, she's credited with the first computer-generated rough draft design of a u.s. naval ship in the 1970s. denied a formal education in an engineering program, montague started as a clerk, but eventually became the navy's first female program manager of ships. she fought discrimination early and often. >> most engineers were white men. okay. so when i walked in they thought i was a part of the help. and a guy looked to me and he said, "i'd like a cup of coffee." and i said, "so would i, make sure mine has cream and sugar please." >> brown: when president nixon ordered the navy to design a new

ship in two months, a process that normally takes two years, the job went to montague. she finished the work early. >> people say you were the first black woman to do this. no. they say, you're the first woman. no. i was the first person. and that makes a difference. everybody had to overcome obstacles but you got to do it in spite of the system not because. if somebody says you can't, bull. you can. >> brown: for its part, the arkansas regional innovation hub has a new tool: a mobile "maker- space" to reach students in schools too far from little rock for an easy field trip. it's called the "steam-roller," using the acronym for science, technology, engineering, art and math. we followed its maiden voyage, a trip to pine bluff and watson chappel junior high, which happens to be the school chris jones attended.

>> i really wanted to go off to see all the exciting things that were happening in the world. and always wanted to come back home. >> brown: the steam roller brought laptops, a screen printer, and a tool for 3-d printing and laser cutting. the plan now is to take it all around the state. you said to them, "i sat right there." what do you see when you're looking at them? >> i see me. you know. i see me, i see the folks who were my classmates, a lot of which went on to do really cool things, some of whom were much brighter and smarter than i am, who didn't because they weren't as exposed. you know, i see future problem solvers, i see innovators and what i love about bringing the hub to them is that i can tell even from today, the spark in their eye grew. >> brown: jones hopes that spark will ignite change, and innovation, in his home state. for the pbs newshour, i'm jeffrey brown in little rock, arkansas.

>> woodruff: next, an effort to revive a famous movement of the sixties focused on reducing poverty, inequality and tackling social justice. but with such a broad agenda, will it find enough support at a polarized time? let's start with a look at the campaign that began 50 years ago. shortly before his death in 1968, dr. martin luther king junior expanded his civil rights campaign to include calls for economic justice. he called for an economic revolution that included protection and services for the poorest americans. he would call it the poor people's campaign. >> this campaign we're coming to get our check. >> woodruff: the campaign would bring together poor people from across the country, and from across racial, ethnic and geographic lines, including poor whites, for a march on

washington. >> even if you have to bring your whole family, we are going to have in washington facilities and we're going to have food and we're going to demand the government do something about these conditions. >> woodruff: the first step was to construct a shantytown called resurrection city on the national mall, housing thousands of participants in a form of nonviolent civil disobedience. dr. king himself would never make it to the march on washington. he died that spring. but weeks after his assassination, 50,000 people gathered in solidarity, demanding economic reform on the steps where dr. king had professed "i have a dream." >> we come with an appeal to open the doors of america to almost 50 million americans who have not been given a fair share of america's wealth and

opportunity and we will stay >> woodruff: half a century later a group of religious and moral leaders are planning a wave of civil disobedience in washington, a revival of the poor people's campaign. it's being led in part by the reverend william barber, who's the co-chair of the campaign. he led demonstrators at a rally in front of the u.s. capitol this month. and he was arrested, alongside the reverend jesse jackson, a key figure in the 1968 movement. i spoke with reverend barber recently when he was in washington, dc. reverend william barber, welcome to the "newshour". thank you very much for joining us. when the original poor people's campaign took place, it was 50 years ago, dr. martin luther king was involved. after he was assassinated, it continued, but what is the connection between then and now? >> well, thank you so much for having us, and on behalf of the

campaign -- the poor people's campaign and my co-chair reverend dr. harris. let me say the connection, first of all, it did continue. people realized dr. king was right. racism, poverty and militarism were interconnected. the connection is today is we commissioned a study with the institute for policy studies and also had some help with urban institute, anecdotal and empirical data, and we did something called the souls of poor folk, auditing america 50 years after the poor people's campaign. what did we find today? 140 million poor and low wealth people today. there are 250,000 people that die every year from low wealth. we have less voting rights today because the gutting of the voting rights act than in 1965.

we have 2 million people who work less for the living wage and 14 million children in poverty. >> woodruff: those numbers are overwhelming, they're daunting. you're not proposing to do away with poverty, are you? >> we are saying there are five interlocking injustices that america has to face because they continue to cause policy violence -- that is, systemic racism particularly seen through the lens of voter suppression where people use voter suppression to get elected and then pass policies that hurt the poor, mostly white women, children and the working poor. the wore, economy and militarism and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism that say you don't have to address those issues, we are saying, yes, america will have to face these five interlocking injustice and change them. >> woodruff: why can't you work to elect political figures who agree with your agenda?

>> well, several reasons. number one, we had 26 presidential debates in the last presidential election on the democratic and republican side. not one hour was spent on poverty. not one hour was spent on voter suppression and restoring the voting rights act. not one hour on the war economy and militarism. so if we're not even having the conversation -- the first thing we have to change is the attention violence. we have the attention violence when it comes to the poverty and the poor and we must change that before you can change the agenda, and there must be a movement of the people from the bottom up. >> woodruff: reverend barber, i've talked with folks that agree with what you want but that you're asking for too many things, that you narrow your chance of ambitions and you will get a better chance of getting thing done. >> the constitution says

domestic tranquility, justty, narrow the moral call of the bible that says you're supposed to care for the stranger, the hungry, the sick, the left out, the lonely, the imprisoned. why is it that wealth and greed gets to ask for everything? they want tax cuts, they want to block healthcare, they get that. but then we tell poor people you have to ask for one thing. 37 million people without healthcare? we have to fight for healthcare. millions of people without living wages, we can't just ask for one thing because they are systemically interlocking injustices. >> woodruff: if there are so many you define as poor in this country, why aren't we seeing more people rise up and make this argument? right now,ettes left to you and a relatively small group of people making this argument, having the march, having your demonstrations and so forth. >> i don't know if i would say relatively smooth. we have organizing committees in 40 states. we have people organizing in the last two weeks. we've had thousands of people

attend over nearly 2,000 people do civil disobedience, more than ever in the history of this country simultaneously doing nonvinyl moral civil disobedience, there is a rising. what we're doing is launching a movement. we're not ending a movement, we're launching a movement and calling people to action. many people do not know how bad it is and many people who are poor and low wealth have been broken and ignored. we're going from west virginia to alaska and finding there are thousands of people saying it's time for us to stand up and refuse to be silent. >> woodruff: you've said the nation's problem is not that we don't have enough money, you said it's we don't have the moral capacity to face what ails society. what did you mean by that? >> that when you look at our deepest moral framework of the constitution and the deepest moral values of rush hour religious tradition, too often we have a political conversation at the talks about left versus

right, military or middle class, that's too narrow. 43.5% of this country is poor and low wealth. people are dying. even an economist said america has to face the cost of inequality. what i'm saying is we can't just have a left-right argument anymore. we need to have a deeply moral argument that says this is not just about democrats or republicans, this is about america. what kind of democracy do we want to be? you cannot haveday mock si continue to exist when 400 people make an average of $97,000 an hour and you lock people up who simply want 15 in the union. >> woodruff: does either political party come close to your goals? >> i think they can. the extremists who have taken over the republican party have gone so far extreme. you know, they are more focused on tax cuts to the wealthy, they want to blame poor people for their problems. democrats, on the other hand, are willing to talk about, say, the affordable care act and talk

about the middle class. but the reality is neither party is willing to put right in front of america the issues of systemic racism and systemic poverty and ecological devastation and war economy and say the word poverty. it's almost as though we've tried to remove even saying the word poverty, when, in fact, the majority of the poor people in this country are white women and children, working people and the disabled. so we have to change our narrative in this country, and the only way you can change the narrative is to change the narrator. that's why this campaign is focused on three things, breaking through the narrative, massive voter mobilization among the poor and power building from the bottom up. >> woodruff: rev. william barber, co-cha of he poor people's campaign in 2018. thank you very much. >> thank you so much. thank you. >> woodruff: finally, a newshour shares. many coastal communities in the

u.s. are feeling the effects of climate change, including norfolk, virginia. from the newshour's student reporting labs, ariyail banks and a team from granby high school shows us one program helping to raise awareness. >> what is the name of that program that we do when we go into the community and we put the little things. what is the name? >> the medallion program. >> the who? >> reporter: these students are part of the south east care coalition, an environmental conservation organization in south east newport news, virginia. annual flood damages from coastal storms are expected to triple by 2060, according to a study by the virginia coastal policy center. the south east care coalition is teaching local school children adaptation and survival strategies to live with the rising water. >> we owe the children. >> reporter: angela harris is a community activist and one of the founders of the coalition. >> it's our responsibility to

get more involved and more engaged. when you know the water coming! what you going to do? >> reporter: harris has worked to make community members aware of the threats that sea level rise and climate change pose. she pioneered a program where youth check the drains to see if they are working and mark them with medallions. >> this area used to flood. so you come off that interstate down buxton ave and you in the water. but one of the things we found was that a lot of the drains were clogged up to the top. >> reporter: dr. erica holloman, a marine scientist, is the former coordinator for the coalition. >> our medallion program for us it also became an opportunity to work closely with the city in

>> reporter: sea level in the tidewater region has risen 80% higher than the global average in the last 140 years, according to the world resources institute. >> part of our problem is that the land is sinking as well as the water is rising so it complicates, it accentuates that rise. >> reporter: ray toll is the director of coastal resilience research at old dominion university. he studies the different effects of climate change on the region. >> i look at this as a glass half full problem in that there are opportunities here to come up with new solutions. that is an integrated regional approach. >> reporter: while city, state, and federal efforts to implement water adaptation policies have stalled, some communities fear >> this hampton roads region, is really second with regards to feeling the impact of climate change after new orleans. unlike katrina, the hampton roads region has an opportunity

to be proactive instead of reactive. the biggest challenge comes on the side of really local and accepting intergenerational >> reporter: for the pbs newshour's student reporting labs, i' ariyail banks in norfolk, virginia. >> woodruff: and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> consumer cellular believes that wireless plans should reflect the amount of talk, text and data that you use. we offer a variety of no- contract wireless plans for people who use their phone a nsumercellular.tvoything in

>> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and individuals. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

♪ ♪ >> bamboo -- in china, we called it [speaks chinese]. in sichuan and yunnan, we find bamboo forests spreading far and wide with towering plants reaching for the sky, but they do much more than giving shade. bamboo is also a reliable building material that inspires art and poetry. the many faces of [speaks chinese] next on "yan can cook." ♪ ♪