tonig on "kqed newsroom," san francisco has a new mayor. we'll hear from london breed and tc first african-amerin to hold the post. also from the at&t mega merger from time warner, a look at this week'sme develos in tech. plus a new book on fateful meeting convened by robert f. kennedy more than 50 years ago and how that conversation continues today. ndello welcome to "kqed newsroom." i'm thuy vu. we begin with the new mayor elect london breed. san francisco waited as votes for counted in tight race for mayor. either of the t topwo candidates promised to be a first for the mark leno would be the first

openly gay mayor. while london breed would be the first african-american woman to lead the city. finally on wednesday morning he conceded to breed. the new mayor elect grew up in the western addition neighborhood and was first elected to the boardce of offs in 2012. she sat down with editor scott schafer. >> thanks for ofming in. >>course. >> when you walked through the doors of city sll and yd my name is london london breed, what went through your mind? >> ilicouldn't bee it to tell you the truth. it almostelt like a dream. it's amazing and i'm excited to be here. >> you did a llout to your grandmother, ms. brown. >> yes, i'm sure sheld wouave been happy. >> what did you learn from her? >> i learned from her that you take care of each other. she took care of the community. we didn't have much, but it was important that, for example, my grandmother would cook all the

time. and people would come over and we would feed other people. i would ask why are we giving aoa she our food, you be quiet would say. being part of a i community what you do. >> living in public housing, you must see and hear and all kinds of things most people don't. i'm wondering wharhow do you approach dsues? >> tire to make sure that even though i have been the exception coming out of that environment and even going to college and doing welln life, i don't want -- i want this to berhe >> what was an example as mayor that you think you can do to make a difference? >> one of the things i want to do as mayor is provide paidp interns opportunities for all high school students.

not necessarily that the city would pay for everyt, but we have incredible companies here in the health care sector, the tech sector, all these incredible destroindustries rig the backyard. and i want them to be exposed to what's possible in life at an early age and part of that is paid internships because we're talking about young people who comerom single family homes where their grandmothers are raising them. i want to make sure they're able to generate a little bit of money in the process so they stay out of trouble so that they don't do many of the things my family members did growing up breaking into cars, selling drugs, t doingngs that would land you in juvenile hall, or things that wereaturally a part of your environment were easy to do. >> homelessness, a big issue. voters told you. do you think the city is on the right track right now?

>> so i think that the city is somewhat on the right track.f i think part is we have oystems in place help address the issue. but the problem that we have are people who struggle with mental illness. and i think that's really why's th going to be my focus, is making changes to our laws and providing optionsor those who we can't get housed, those who we can't in some cases we can get them housed but we can't keep them housed. >> one of the things you were clear about is housing. you said it again on wednesday afternoon. we don't build enough it was very clear. there are things also that make it more expensive to build inan francisco. and you know what they are, the cost and time of permitting fees, review. what would you be willing to do to speed up the const ction of homes and bring down the costs? >> i ultimately want to cut down

the time to develop any new housing in half, especially when you talk about 100% afforble housing. and it takes years to build. even when you have fin a project it should not be the case, and i'm committed to analyzing the process aif making sicant changes so that there is a difference. otherwise we are not going to get anywhere with housing production in this city. >> being mayor is a big job. it's a tough job. what do you feel like you need to learn t in ordebe successful as mayor? >> i think i need to len patience to be successful as mayor because unfortunately it is a city, there's bureaucracies, there's process, there's layers. but i think unfortunately the process more layers of and bureaucracy than we can stand. it is crippling us in our ability to be an effective cvey to de for our residents. >> why do you think you're

impatient? >> it's a natural part of my personality. if i see a pothole, for example, i want thehole fixed, like, now. and if ins fixed the next day, we have challenges like that all over the city. it's just taking time to get to everything. it's a large city and there's a lot of work that needs to be done, but we always got t as far as i'm concerned work at getting it done and making progress for our residents. >> one of the things you pushed for on the board was safe injection sites to get addicts off the streetnd get, sir -- needle off the s ereet. >>, fample, now nonprofit organizations we work with that provide services around detox an nedle exchange, they receive state and sometimese fl funding and there are

certain laws that come with at funding. and so we are working to try and figure ouo whatuld potentially work, a pop-up site or some way we can protect those organizations and still host a site of this nature for the pposes of addressing th issue. what we're doing now clearly isn't working. movingeaning it up and people around doesn't solve the problem. i think this could be a possibue sn to that issue. >> one other thi that ha ban statewide issue, a national issue and it's related to the trump administration is sanctuary citypolicies, sanctuary state policies. are you comfortable with the policy that san francisco has right now in terms of levels of cooperation between the sheriff and the jails and other enforcement officials and the federal government? are you comfortable with it? >> i'm comfortable with the lawe we now. and i think, you know, what we should do as a city is continue to protect all the residents who are a part of our city. so i think in terms of the way that our laws exist, the goal is

to treat our immigrant communities the same as they are real part of our community whether they are a citizen or not, and that's the whole point of sanctuary city. >> could you do what mayor lip atbby shaff did, warning the community about ? >> i could, yes, and i've made that clear that what i will do as mayor is "s" protect all of doresidents and i would exactly what mayor shaff did. i applaud her for her efforts. she's takenf a lot heat for that, and i just continue to be a supporter and an advocate for what is right as mayor of san francisco. >> one of the issues that's going to come before you before too long is these scooters. have you ever ridden one of those? >> i have and i like the scooters. i think they're great alternative mode of transportation just like bicycles. the city is growing and

changing, but i don't like the fact people are riding their bicycles and scooters on the sidewalks. so we need definitely enforcement and we need t make sure when they roll out again there's appropriate regulations so ae share the road in a fair andwa constructive >> mayor london breed, i think i speak for all san franciscans when i say good luck. this week a federal judge approved an $85 billion merger deal between at&t and time warner. theasead been closely watched as a bully weather after are other big corporate deals. it ownsdi ctv. time warner owns cnn and hbo. the ruling was a blow to the justice department hich has sued last november to block the merger saying it would hurt competition and lead to higher prices for consumers. also this week, electric car maker tesla cut its workforce by 9%, the ceo said layoffs would

help the company be more profitable. joining me are market watcec t editor and bureau chief jeremy owens. chief technology correspondent ina freed. a federal judge has cleared the way for the $85illion purchase of time warner. >> there's a huge fight for content out there. netflix and all the original content it's making and all these places are trying to get more content and that is a huge expense for a place like at&t which owns directv and is paying for those channels they put on directv. when you look at comcast which purchased nbc universal. to compete well it felt like it needed to get that same deal. >> programming that'spvery ular like "game of thrones," cnn, the harry potter movie franchise.

so this begs the question, and a lot of people are pointing to this, does this mean that we will nowee a big wave of other imilar corporate deals after this green light from the judge. one day i the at&t decision comcast announced an all ca offer for 21st century fox. >> that's the big obviousone, but this will open the floodgates. basically the court gave its approval to this idea of horizontal mergers, to buy schls content as they want. that ethos will be applied more broadly. i think everyone from a drugstore can buy an insurance company. will be very broad. in the tech area it's going to force consolidation, deals like this bidding war over fox, comcast said they wanted to enter the fray, but had the at&t time warner ruling not gone its

way, comcast would hav made a narrow bid. >> will the trump administration challenge any of these deals? this is a huge blow. or do you think the justice department will s away from challenging any of these? >> i certainly learned not to totally predict what the trump administration will do. that said, the judge was careful about this is a ruling this deal and very clearly didn't want to say all such dealsbe should get a r stamp. so there is room for the doj to come back with another deal and say this one isn't okay. i think they may be more cautious. certainly there's vertical deals, so sprint is trying to merge with t-mobile. will the doj or any of the competition authorities step in there? >> i don't tnk they would go after the cvs aetna deal, but something like sprint andre

t-mobile w those are two there are only four wireless carriers and two of them are trying to merge. and they've aeady tried before and have been told no. that's the one that we'll see. did this make the trump administration think maybe we shouldn't go after these deals, thst's the real te >> i think sprint and t-mobile, their legal casee got stro because they're going to say we're barely competing in wireless and now o two big rivals are out there buying oodles of ntent. i think in some ways we may just see another wave of mergers. >> that bundlinguc is a big thingan because youundle your home internet, cable, everything, and give you deals how does sprint and t-mobile as independent companies compete with that if they're able to bundle and charge less? >> will you get s,dehough? or could it in the long run lead to higher pric for consumers?

>> the government's top witness in this case was forced to admit it would probably lead to lower prices for at&t customers, at least in the short term. what they were saying is long term we may see this kind of come downo basically just at&t, comcast, and verizon cooeting against eacher and eventually that could make prices atse if we get to point. but they couldn't prove we would get to that point. >> i think it's also an ise of not just lower prices or higher prices in the short and long term, which are obviously all important issues, but also content choice and the issue of is at&t going to give preference to the content that it owns. and then they said the simplicity reason for this merger is so they can serve up more advertising. facebook and google already have targets ads but at least they're giving me their service for free. i'm paying online to at&t or verizon for my cell phone bill.t

>> you ju touched on something i want to ask, that is the question over who contro content. the at&t decision came on the heels of the end of net neutral this weekend. those were the rules that required at&t to treat all web traffic equally an not prioritize their content over others. what does this landscape now mean? we have the at&t merger approved and the end of net neutral. how does this all affect consumers? >> we'll have to if at&t chooses to prefer its own content, it's going to against the ethos of net neutrality. does that hurt netflix? but consumers still have the choice. if at&t funnels hbo really fast, a netflix fan can just go to . comca if we do end up with very fewi os and you can't hop as easily from company to company, locked into contracts, that's where we run into an issue. >> i agree, jeremy.

i think the b issue is going to be fewer choices. these are a small number of bigm nies, so your choice is going to be do you want to go with at&t, which is bundling and giving you the best deal on time warner content, do you want to go with verizon that's pushing its bundle of content? netflix is likely to stay ney isndent and d entering the fray. there are choices butahere are cenly fewer. >> there's been so much concern from advocates in terms of this deal. but he flip could also happen that many times tech merge ry mergers don't always take off. look at time warnernd aol. >> that was another point we raise that was a double whammy. one of my editor's points was ey made this struggle just to integrate the deal. these are tough deals and they

talked about the culture challenge, a media company is really different than a pipe company. at least at&t ceo is saying the right thin, we're going to leave them alone, we get it's a differe'l business. see. certainly aol didn't leave the time warner people alone and it was a big, ugly divorce. >> there's no telling what's going to happen when yo try to merge two large companies. if disney ends up owning fox, they're going to have to bring in t very different media companies and try to merge them. what's going to happen with that is it's impossible to say ahead of time. >> but it opens theoor to a facebook or google acquiring other companies, message services, data ancos, right? >> or even content companies. apple just signed a deal with oprah winfrey to provide content for them and they'll be looking for content.eo a lot ofe thought they were going to go for the fox deal and now you have different

buyers. it's going to be an interesting thing to chwa if all content ends up being owned by t service providers as well. >> i want to talk quickly about tesla as well. news this week that it's laying of ki% of its workforce trying to get the model will this be enough to get the company to profitability, and also get the model 3 out there on a timetable that consumers expect? >> i don't think it's going to help them get it out any faster. i don't know that it will haveug negative impact in the sense that, as you mentioned, it's not the workers building them which is the bottleneck. it's growing pains. it's a sign of disciplineki they're l to turn profitable, yes, that's a growth sign, but layoffs a rarely a panacea for problems, so i don't think so 's going to make it better in terms of getting shipments out the door. >> and then elon musk today

announcing a deal with chicago o'hare to have these underground people movers to take people from downtown chicago to o'hare minutes. doesn't tesla have enough on its plate? >> yeah, it definitely does. h elon been known to overpromise the ability to do things. the model 3 should be at 10,000 production rate right now and it's not. he said he could build this for under a billion dollars, and case. see if that's the >> he does make a lot of promises. jeremy owens, thank you for being here. 15 years ago this month, then democratic candidate robert kennedy was killed in los angeles.

his thinking on race evolved after an intense meeting in 1963 with writer james baldwin including lina horn and harry bell upon the tay. dyson writes about how more than 50 years later america stillg stes to have an honest conversation about race. joining me is writer and georgetown university professor of sociology mark zbliecwason. >> i to ask you about what happened in san francisco. we have the the first african-american woman to be mayor of this city. she grew up in the housing project, now has the city's top job. what is your reaction to that? >> it's extraordinary. sheer lost sister to drug overdose, an incredible woman who feels the heartbeat of the people, who understand that there are tremendous oddsi at her, thinking about cleaning up the streets of san francisco, talking about the homeless problems, talking about gentfication. speaking about the diminishing

numbers of people of color, especially african-american people in the city. but she is an incredible leadsh. did a great job as a commissioner. she o takes the hethis city at a point of crisis after the ath of a beloved mayor, but she has fresh thinking on the citynd joini different part of the city to overcome the problems. >> she's definitely rising. want to take a step back in history and talk about the prem of your book,hih is the 1963 meeting between then-u.s. attorney general robert f. kennedy and james baldwin. it was supposed to be a friendly gathering but it became very bitter? >> initially they met over breakfast the day before. and bec ause it was rush meeting, baldwin's plane was late when he got to d.c. then

out to virginia. the attorney general said tomorrow i'll be in new yoro let's getther. they got together he s od bring soyour friends. they also brought a student activist who wasof onethe most storied activists, freedom they got to the meeting. kennedy wanted to black people to be grateful for what he and i see brother were doing. and they were having none of it. they said we'ref tiedthis. the young man, jerome smith, said't dworry about it the voice of rage. me who'sned about willing to take up a gun because i'm tired of o athis. he tried to pivot away, robert kennedy, to the responsible they saidle, but wit the only person you need to listen to it got nasty and bitter. kennedy was angry.

at the end of theeeting he went back to his office and sicced the fbi to the people who were there. he eventually said if i were black, i would be angry too, maybe i should calm down and talk about race as a ml issue the way they wanted me to and it .hanged his whole li by the time he died he became as the most trusted whan in america for black people. >> that brought out the tension between the policy making and the moral center and how it evolved about race relations. and that conversationt is over. where does that conversation stand today? >> when hillary clinton met up with black lives matter people and they said how has your heart changed aboutbl p policy? if you have no policy that changes we'll be here0 ears from now talking about the same thing. it's not what i feel, it's what we d in terms of policy. that's still a clash. she has a point. kennedy had a point.

but the point of baldwin and black lives matt is equall important. it's on the books that you shouldn't kill unarmed black people,but it keeps happening. that's the wayn which people feel about and think about the other. so we need both social witness and public policy together so that we can makehingsetter in this society. >> you write in your book that as bigotry resurfaces, you write the lie is put to the belief that this is not american. this is not us. when indeed it truly is. hasn't a lot of progress been made, though, since 1963? >> malcolm x said if you stick a knife in my back and pull it out six inches, that's not progress. you're still killing me. yes, there's bee enormous progress. first black president, but look how he was treated. if he followed up with a bigot

like the president who makes no designations between bigots and people who are racists and those who challenge that. la>> african-americans he's >>ing that and rising in the polls. the man who put the plunger up the behind was dating a black woman. sleeping back doesn't mean you utow black. you try to talk a systematic problem that creates injustice in the first place that puts black peopl in prison. butk god, i'm glad for that that doesn't address systematic issues. >> you make a surprising comparison in the book between donald trp and bernie sanders. essentially saying they are mirror images ofach othe can you explain that? >> i'm not suggesting that in any way that bernie sanders holds the offensive owedous views. the egregious views o donald trump. but they're both older white guys who took a long time for

them to understand about race. bernie sanders was equally cantankerous. he was very fussy and bitter about it, he was like, i don't need to learn anything. it's a janet jackson world, what have you done for me lately. both of em are mirror images of each other in the sense that they don't understand the centrality and necessity o in such a progressive fashion. bernie sanders to his credit i grappling with that and grasping hold of that in a way donald trumphows no indication that he's willing to do. >> we just have about 30 seconds you write that president trump is treating the entire nation as lack. >> that's right. >> what do you mean by that? >> what black have said to white america about hnfowtunate and tragic it is to be i espected, to be talked about, this is what donald trump is doing to most of america now. eve morning he rises to excrete the feces ofal his m drivety. he's calling people out my

names, ttnarcissistic, no what people, do he treats them the same way. that's what it feels like to be black in a racist and bigoted country. >> always interesting to have a conversation with you. your newook is "what truth sounds like" and you'll be we commonwealth kmub monday 6:30 in san francisco. >> that will do it for us. you can find more for our coverage at kqed.org/newsroom. i'm thuy vu. thank you for joining us.

robert: president trump infiltered, from singapore to the white house, he is, as ever, combative. i'm robert costa. t ho trump doctrine is battling intrarge order and an f.b.i. report quickly becomes a political flashpoint tonight on "washington week." president trump: we haven't given up everything. i think the meeting was every bit as good for the unite states as it was for north korea. robert: after ato hisry-making hand shake and sned agreement, president trump declares north korea is no longer a nuclear threat. but some in his own party remain skeptical. >> this is the beginning, i arink, of a long,g l process. robert: there e bipartisan concerns about the president's decision to suspend joint military exercises wh south korea. >> i think the exercises are important. i'd like to