captioning sponsored by newshour productions, ll >> woodruff: good evening, i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight, on day 27 of the shutdown, the tug-of- war between the white house and capitol hill heats up, as president trump cancels house speaker nancy pelosi's overseas trip. then, president trump announces plans to build up missile defense systems to stop possible missile attacks launched against the u.s. and, we sit down with colin o'brady, who completed a record 54 day solo crossing of antarctica. oi my entire sort of personal project was to push the limits at human potential. and i thought whetter way than to see how far i can go in a single push to finish. >> woodruff: all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour

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>> woodruff: the partial government shutdown is looking like a personal showdown tonight, between president trump and house speaker nancy pelosi. this afternoon, mr. trump rescinded approval for a military plane to fly pelosi and a congressional delegation to afghanistan. in a letter to the speaker, he cited the shutdown, and said, bl'm sure you would agree that postponing this pu relations event is totally appropriate." it came a day after pelosi called for postponing the state of the union address. she defended that stance today. >> the date of the state of the union is not a sacred date, it's not constitutionally r tuired, it's n president's birthday, it's not anything it is a day that we agreed to. it could have been a week later, and it could be a week later if government is open. >> wdruff: meanwhile, more federal employees are being called back to work. the state department today abdered u.s. diplomats here and

ad to return to their jobs. it said it found money to pay them, but gave no detas. overall, more than 450,000 federal employe now working without pay. congressional correspondent oisa desjardins me to help break down today's events. i, lisa, first of all, wh the congress saying about this announcement from the state department? >> right. so the first thing to think to say is that there are some questions about how exactly this is working. and we saw from the leading democrat on the foreign relations committee, bob menendez, he calls it a scheme and he said he's not sure this funding is actually appropriate. he's also-- he's not saying he will do a hearing yet, but he said tais political move. prd this is a new precedent. this is thident changing the riewstles the shutdown in a oay and we still have to figure out exactlyw he's doing this. everyone says we want people back to work, but is he changing the rules for his benefit. >> wdruff: and now the

president's surprise announcement before the delegation was to take off f the middle east, the president announced in a letter to speaker pelosi, which the white house released, that the trip wasn't going to happen, thaant the e wasn't going to be allowed to fly. what are they saying on capitol hill about it? i want to show a picture that conveys the situation. the members who were going on codele-- >> woodruff: the term for congressional delegation. >> exactly. there you see the members of congress had been on the bus ready to go to the airport for this trip overseas. there's you see adam schiff, the chaian of the house intelligence committee-- getting off the bus. this was actually, obviously, very late notice and what schiff said is-- he said it was inappropriate, first of all, to reveal this trip existed. these are highly secure events. anotherlo membeaine nawria, a navy veteran from virginia, she said it was an insult that the president called it a public relations move. if yk talto the republicans, the chairman of the senate armed services committee said the

president has the power and i ink the speaker should not have planned to go on this trip during this time. but the rest of the republicans, judy, they're having real trouble with this. f e question to them, should a sitting president y party be able to cancel a trip for a leader of congress for any party? i asked senator pat roberts that and he said, "i'm not sure." those senate republicans, when i talked to them, had just come from their retre, at todayich was at a local baseball park here in washington. what did theyear? they heard from people that republicans' problems is with suburban women, especially married woan. we polling that shows those suburban women, 73% of them have a more negate opinion of the president because of this shd. that is pressure that is on republicans right now. >> woodrf: fascinating. at about the-- whether this is unprecedented or not, people were talkingbout that today. has this ever happened before? >> we reached out to the senatea hists office and several other of the white house's historical office, and no one knows yet for sure, but

democrats say and one other kind of self-acclaimed historian i spoke to at the congress, believes that this is unprecedented. that's what ad shim said, that nothing like this has happened befo f. >> woodrufally, the most important thing, any policy thvelopments towards reaching an agreement to gegovernment back open again. >> i'm so glad we're coming back to that. there is such frustation here. there is such a disconnect. i askede speakersi, she and i, i asked her today, do you favor al stee-slat fence, which many thought was the end game? they don't want a call, called it a fence. and she said it doesn't matter what i think. it matters if the presint thinks it's a wall. meaning she's not even really engathng in what it is democrats want and it's all a bit of politics and gaming out the president's thought. but meanwhile, judy, house democratic freshmen, i spoke to one, said yes, we would accept a fence. under leadership the's discussion of the reality of the

policy, but at the leadership , vel, both at the white house and at congre is nothing but politics now. >> woodruff: andthe horion shows nothing in terms of a breakthrough. s no, right now, we don't expect congrck until tuesday. >> woodruff: remarkable. meanwhile, federal employees, as we're reporting in the program, continue to feel consequences. lisa desjardins, thank you. >> woodruff: in the day's other tnews, comments by presid trump's personal attorney raised new questions about whether his 2016 campaign colluded with prssia. rudy giuliani haiously dismissed the idea. but on cnn last ni rt, he seemed erse himself. >> i never said there was no wellusion between the campaign, or b people with the campaign i have no idea. i have not. - ve said the president of the united stateere is not a single piece of evidence that the president of the united states committed the only crime you can commit here, conspiring with the russians to hack the d.n.c. >> woodruff: today, giuliani sought to clarify the comments. in a statement, he insisted again there was no collusion of any kind involving mr. trump.

as for the campaign, he said, "i pcoe thousands of people who worked onhe campaign." mr. trump himself has repeatedly denied there was any collusion with the russians coe president's former lawyer, michaen, now admits he paid a technology company to piost mr. trump's standing in two on-line publicon polls. the rigged polls appeared before the trump presidential bid began. cohen tweeted today, confirming a "wall street journal" story. he said he acted at mr. trump's direction. a judge in chicago today pquitted three current and formice officers of a cover-up in the killing of laquan mcdonald. shot 16 times, by a whi officer, in 2014. the defendants listened today as judge domenica stephenson ruled ncere was not enough evidee to prove conspiracy, misconduct and

obstruction of justice. former officer jason van dyke has already been convicted of mcdonald's murr. he's due to be sentenced tomorrow. in syria, e u.s.-led coalition unleashed intensive new air strikes today agnst islamic state fighters. they targeted deir el-zour province, the last isis stronghold in the country's east. just yesterday, an isis suicide bombing killed four americans in syria. last month, president trump announced u.s. forces will be leaving syria. spain reports a new surge in migrants crossing from africa. more than 472 were rescued in the last two days. many were brought to malaga, where they were screened by the red cross. attempted crossings to europe as a whole, are at a five-year-low back in this country, michigan state university ousted its interim president today, after he said some sexual abuse victims at the school, enjoyed e spotlight.

john engler was dismissed a week befo rre hignation would have taken effect. the chair of the university's trustees said today that engler's comments don't reflect the school's values. >> m.s.u.'s been working hard to make needed improvements regarding the prevention of and the response to sexual l sconduct and relationship violence, as w enhancing patient care and safety. but none of our work wtter if our leaders say hurtful things and do not listen to survivors. >> woodruff: hundreds of girls and womehave said former sports doctor larry nassar molested them at michigan state and usa gymnascs. he is now serving what amounts to life in prison. republican congressman tom marino of pennsylvania will step down next week, to take a job in the private sector. today's announcement came two months after he sily won a fifth term. marino was an early supporter of president trump and was nominated by him to be the

administration drug czar. he withdrew after reports that he played a key role ing it easier for drug companies to distribute opioids. or wall street, stocks rallied on r the trump oministration might consider scaling back tarifchinese goods. the dow jones industrial average gained 163 points to close at 24,370. the nasdaq rose more t points, and the s&p 500 added nearly 20. and, a major american poet, mary oliver, has died. she passed away today at her utme in florida. oliverred more than 15 poetry and essay collections, and was known for her odes to nature. she won a pulitzer prize and the national book award, ahong many others. mary oliver was 83 years old. still to come on the nr: the president announces a plan to boost missile defense, includinssibly in space. inhow the shutdown is affe

the availability of food stamps. the "curse of bigness": making sense of industries dominated by a few, giant companies, and much more. oo >>uff: the president went to the pentagon today and announced the united states would improve its capability to defend against missile attacks against the homeland and allies abroad. tck schifrin has the story. >> schifrin: sin end of the cold war the u.s. built missile defenses primarily to counter rogue states. today the u.s. expanded the program's ambition. >> our goal is simple: to ensure that we can detect and destroy any missile launched against the united states, anywhere, anytime, anyplace. >> my llow americans. >> schifrin: president trump's wrds echo president reagan's from 36 years agn he launched the strategic defense tiitiative, that imagined

sh down nuclear weapons from space. >> we could intercept and desty strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that o sour allies. ifrin: today's missile defense review calls for space- possibility of space-basedthe interceptors, like lasers aboard satellites. u.s. officials sayhe new policy responds to new russian technologies, including a hypersonic missile a russian animatioshowed speeding around missile defenses. china is also pursuing hypersonic and advanced cruise missiles, said acting secretary of defense patrick snahan. >> these new threats are harder to see, harder to track, harr to defeat. to our competitors, we see what you are doing, and we are taking action. >> schifrin: in order to counter north korean or iranian missiles, the review reiterates plans to build 20 additional u.s.-based interceptors.

it calls for the advand f-35 to be able to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles, and for arming drones with lasers. president trump call it a dramatic policy shift. b schifrin: so are president trump's plans ld up missile defense capabilities necessary and realistic? we get two views. joe cirinciones president of the ploughshares funds, a foundation that seeks toid the world of nuclear weapons. and rebeccah heinrichs is a stnior fellow at the hudson ute. welcome to the newshour to you yoth. >> than >> joe cirincione, i want to start with you. i want to separate the report, which we have here, from what the president said.pr thident said, "we will ensure that we can detect and destroy any mis lsiaunched against the united states anywhere, anytime, anyplace. that a good policy? >> no, it's not. and it's very different from what threport said. the report itself is fairly modest. that's because it doesn't have ch to build on. the existing system we have, a few dozen interceptors in the frozen tundra of alaska doesn't

work, and the rest of the consheerptz are just viewgraphs and ideas. but what president trump said dramatically expands the scope of this program, and that makes it dangerous. it turns it from regional program todesigned to defeat a few primitive missiles from a small nation to one that's global in scopto defeat any missile anywhere launched by anybody. that would take major technological breakthroughs, decades of work and trlions of dollars. and the worst part is it stimulates the very thing it's supposed to prevent-- a new arms race. what's the response of china and russia? to cower? to retreat? no. they doll what we do. they will build more weapons to overcome our defense. that's dynamics of an arms race. >> schifrin: rebeccah heinrichs, there's a lot there, but, one, is it dangerous, and, two, does it create an arms race? >> no,missile defen is stabilizing. the president laid out the right policy today. the mifessile se review takes

more modest steps in that direction, but it does take care of the regnal threats from russia and china. we have two options-- the russians, the chineses, the north koreans, and the iranians are moving towards increasing their capability in the area of missiles. missiles give them a coercive ability in rel otive times peace and a military advantage in the event war breaks out. two choices: do we defend against those threats or don't we? it get the country moving in the right direction to have a more muscul missile defense architecture. >> schifrin: joe cirincione, there is new advanced crui ssile technology from both these countries. what's wrong with creating nissile defense to defend the united states ag this? >> so ask yourself why they are pursuing those progrelams? i'llyou what vladimir putin said a year ago when he introduced these programs. he's doing it because of the missile defense program. he told u.s. officials in the bush administration thatf you pull out of the antiballistic missile treaty-- which bush did

in 2001-- he was going to be forced to develop weapons to counter any defenses. it takes decades to develop those weapons. that's what he did. is that unusual? no. that's what e did when the soviets deployed missile defenses in the 19ows around moyou know what we did? we deployed more weapons to overwhelm their system. that is the dynamic of defense and offense. and you knowhat? the offense always wins because it's easier and cheaper to overwhelm the system than to build these complicated pie-in-the-sky systems that never turns out works. >> schin: rebeccah, you are shaking your head. >> missile defense has broad bipartisan support. it's now being integrated into our offense-defense mix. so the idea that they don't work is simply silly. we deploy them today in the regional context. the ground-based midcourse defense system that protects homeland against ballistic missiles, there's great confidence in or combatant commanders that oversee that. so five out of six of the la

tests have been successful of the kind of ballistic missile inplrceptors that are doyed today. so this is a system that protects americans. the russians dey missile defense because they want to protect themselves. the united states' response should be to protect the american people, our deployed forces and our allies. >> schifrin: i wane to get to ace aspect. >> yes. >> schifrin: of this review. and what the pentagon announced toy was a study into space sensors to detect mi over the world. bd, also, research into space interceptorssically shooting down missiles from space. so, one, has technology advanced since 1983? and is this something the u.s. ehould pursue? >>or technology has. we already have systems to detect any launch anywhere. we've had it since the 1960s. and sensors are getting better and smaller. that's great. st interceptors, putting something up inpace that would be able to maintain in space for decades and work on a moment's notice? no, that is still out of reach. what?u know we don't have to just have this

debate on here. what the congress shouldo is commission an independent technical assessment of these technologiest' let's see wreal. the technology-- the independent assessments we have so far warn that these things won't work, an'll be extremely expensive. just to defend against north korea, from space, for example, the national academy of sciences thought that tt would cost $330 billion for a simple regional defense if it could be made to work. let's have the facts on the weground, and thean decide whether we want to buy any of these weapons. ca>> schifrin: reb heinrichs, is space technology too expensive, and would it actually work? >> no, it's affordable. and there are two different things you have toake a look at. first first, space sensors. we do not currently ha in place space sensors that can provide birth to death tracking. et can't populate the plan with enough ground-based and sesea-sensors. and so we need to have space sensors. that's going toive us our

biggest bang for our buck in terms of improving the overall system we currently have in place. the other piece of the puzzle io controversial, and that's sere the president was talking abouace-based interceptors. if we're going to intercept missiles, you have to hit it in its boost phase. the best place to do that from is from space. so we're going to take a look at this. the report says we're going to study it. we're going to see what we need to do to move the technology in that direction and see if we can move in that direcd tion, think that's a realistic option for the american people. >> schifri you both.ds for in missile defense were to work, if is it a gooea? >> i would love to have an fensetive missile system who wouldn't. but i would also love a cure for cancer. i'd like a reallgood light beer. but some things are beyond our capability. missile defense against i.c.b.m. is one of those things. >> it's stabilizing, gives the nited states ieased deterrence credibility, and it should be part of how the united states thinks about deterring our adsayers in the event that

deterrence fails to give us the ability to fight and win. >> schifrin: okay, i think we'll have to leave it there for both of you. thank you. joe cirincione from ploughshares, and rebeccah heinrichs from the hud institute. thank you so much to you both. >> thanks, nick. >> thank you. >> woodruff: with thrnment shutdown now in its 27th day, many federal programs have been affected, including food stamps. so far, there is no major lapse in benefits used by nearly 39 million people each mont that's because the u.s. department of agriculture found a way pay snap benefits, as they are called, earli than normal. february benefits, awarded through a debit-style card used at stores, are being paid out this week. several states, including california and florida, are warning users to be careful and make sure th manage to make the money last longer.

for 2,500 retailers, the problem is already here. w at's because those stores needed to relicense for the electronic benefit transfer, or e.b.t. - debit card program fod failed to meet a deadline the shutdown. rsose renewals, required every five yare on hold. sarah jackson is an employee at one store in northern arkansas. >> we have been completely unable to take any form of snap e.b.t. payments. grocery stores need a license to rsocess e.b.t. payments, and xpired and was unable to be renewed on schedule because of the government shutdown. because of an argument about a wall, i have to look people in the eyes every day and tell them they can't pay for tood. for their children's food. to woodruff: we reached ou the u.s. department of agriculture for a responsp. esperson wrote back: "over t % of snap retailers are able

to accnefits as usual... there is a small percentt e of stores tiled to complete a required reauthorization process that was due on decemb s ese stores can take steps to update their stace funding is restored." >> woodruff: stay wi us, coming up on the newshour: a new government report details family separations a border. an historic trip crossing the antarctic continent. burden trey oliver gives his brief t spectacular take on life at a jail in mobile, alabama. but first, these past couple of years have been a kind of turning point for public attitudes about some tech and social media giants. 's led some to ask broader

questions about monopolies, power and competition. at his confirmation hearing this week, william barr, the nominee for attorney general, told but, he said, "a lot of people atnder how such huge behemoths ow exist in silicon valley have taken shape under the nose of the antitrust enforcers." that's part of the focus of tonight's report from economics ndent paul solman, for e.r regular feature, "making se >> reporter: you want to do what to facebook? >>reak them up. >> reporter: break up the company and thus the fk monopoly law professor tim wu was saying, in the trailer we shot for tonight's sto >> i think that if you look carefully at facebook it is in some ways the poster child for the curse of bigness in our time. >> reporr: "the curse of bigness," is wu's new book. -te curse: that america has abandoned anst enforcement and left us with an economy dominated by de facto monopolists like faceboo google, and amazon.

and things used to be differt. john d. rockefeller's standard oil trust was broken up because of its vast power. over a century later, many think facebook's tolerance for disinformation and its invasion of privacy are similarly sinister. but facebook proceeds unchallenged. >> the u.s. government allowed them to buy their two main competitors: instagram and whats app. so there's been no real smpetition in social networking for the la years. and so i think they felt in some ways above the law, above wmpetition. >> reportet about google? >> yeah. so you know google has proven itself willing to destroy all of its competitors over the last ten years or so. >> waze. the mber one real time navigation app. >> reporter: waze was this promising israeli company that could have been a platform for other competitors and they just bought them. you know that online maps, that's important to ce. that's where people often start. google has extinguishemany

industries that might possibly compete with it vertically by giving its own products preference right when you search. >> reporter: and amazon? >> what i'm concerned about witt amazon is the hat they have become the only real place online where you can sell things. >> reporter: but it's just amazing what amazon does right? >> there's good amazon, there's bad amazon. the good amazon in my view is the one that has made it easier to get a lot of products relatively easilbu maybe you invent a better mousetrap. they make the amazon version and thenhey own that market. >> reporter: but they're super convenient right? >> reporter: in our times the path towards a dangerous fate is ved with convenience, and it's taking us closer to this structure that we had in the gilded age where you had one great monopoly per industry. >> reporter: or industries dominated by just a few firms; not monopolies but oligopolies that still control price and service. a people may like amazon and google b people how they

feel about the airlines, ask people how they feel about their cable company, and ask people how they feel about esarmaceutical bills. are areas where the competition has shrunk. we're left with just a few choices. ar reporter: the classic ment against monopoly that i learned was thatwihe monopolist be able to charge higher tices because she or he is the only game n. >> yeah, that is the classic argume thin an argument. too and it turns out that the damage done by mopolies is frankly much greater than just higher prices. >> reporter: fst, says wu, the dustry tends to stagnate. >> a monopolist has no real need to innovate, no real need to improve things. you know, like at&t by the 1960s or '70s. their idea of improvement was three-way calling. >> wansomeone else on the line? that's easy too. just click the switch button then dial a code number and th number you want and presto. >> didn't believe in answering machines for regular people.

it was against the fax machine, the modem. the internet, all this kind of stuff, forget it. >> reporter: so i remember films about general motors and how they prevented electric cars from coming in and how they wiped out light rail trams in atties. as all true? >> that was all true and it's cest a long line of discussion where monopoly in a tech industry is there they tend to want to suppress what's coming next or control it or make sure it doesn't hurt em. >> reporter: i'm thinking about silicon alley here in new york eror silicon whatever all he country in various cities. and i woulhave thought the last thing we need to worry about is too little innovation in technology in america. bu you know you would think that. amazon and google are the new faces of new york ennovation. if you talk tore capitalists in silicon valley they say, "well, go anywhereor near facebook nywhere near google you're finished. that's the kill zone." >> reporter: 20 years ago, as we reported back then, the kill

zone wasround microsoft. silicon valley anti-trust lawyer gary reback had represented nearly all of microsoft's major rivals. >> they can take a product they want, bundle it into the operating system, and put competition out of business. >> reporter: that's what microsoft had done with its internet browser. >> when you click on that internet icon, you're going to get what microsoft considers the best way for you to get to the internet, which is the internet explorer that's produced by microst. >> reporter: by bundling explorer into the windows operating system for free, microsoft, according to netscape, was competing fairly with netscape's browser, called navigator. >> microsoft was the power of convenience, 1990s version. and i think there is this courageous moment where the government said we don't buy it. we think you just want t monopolize this industry. we think you want to control the future of the internet b controlling the browser. and so microsoft's control is and you had all these other companies emerge. that's when google, amazon,

cebook got their start, so i think it's a cycle. i thk you constantly need to keep your eyes on the big guys and break their capacity to control the future. >> i know that when ress these challenges, we'll look backnd view helping people connect and giving more people a voice as a positive force in the worl >> reporter: another curse of bigness, you won't be surprised to hear: outsized political influence. >> the more concentrat industry and extreme the nopoly is, the more easily able to influence government to get what it wants. >> reporter: so what an example? >> 2003 you know, debating new prescription drug legislation. the pharmaceutical industry decided that the best thing it could do was to prent medicare, which of course is the biggest buyer of drugs, from negotiating for lower prices. the lobbying effort was over $100 million. but the investment paid off to the tune of 10 to $15 billion a year. t reporter: now imagine the

cl a facebook, an amazon, a google. but even higr prices, stagnation and political influence, says tim wu, dot exhaust the list of bigness downsides. there's also economic inequality. >> a growing number of economists when you have most industry concentrated to three or four firms the tendency is towards wage stagnation, towards higher profits for shareholders and executives and certain professionals but the rest of the population making less. >> reporter: consider health care, wu says, the fastest growing sector of the economy. >> it'very difficult to bargain with a monopoly hospital for a higher wage if you're a nurse. what's your leverage especially if there's only one hospital in town becauy bought all the other hospitals. >> reporter: finally, tim wu cites one more danger, phaps the most ominous of all. you've written about the dangers of the cnection between monopolies anduthoritarianism. >> there's a history and a track

record of an economy domated by monopoly flipping into an authoritarian form of government. and i don't think it's crazy to start becoming concerned about possible re of fascism in our times. >> reporter: but you're not aying facebook and amazon and goog in cahoots with the revernment in the way that companies ith hitler in germany. >> i'm not saying anything like that. i think we need to be very careful about making superficial comparisons. but i do think we need to be aware of the dangers of a union of private and public power. imagine facebook cooperating with an authoritarian regime. they know everything about us. they know what we do. they know how to influence us. if you imagine these two units working together i think it's a very scary prospect. >> reporter: f pbs newshour, this is economics correspondent paul solman, reporting from new y

>> woodruff: a report issued ternal executive branch watchdog paints the most detailed picture to daout the trump administration's actions to separate immigrant orfamilies at the southernr. it comes from the inspector general at the department of health and human services, the agency responsible for undocumented children in federal custody, who are separated from their guardians. d day's report runs 24 pages, na nawaz joins me now to share some of the details. so, hello. this is a story, amna, you have been following for many months. tell us what's new, what'st signific this report. >> judy, this report laysr be the sheer scope and enormity of are trump administration's family sion policy. they formally announced that. in 2018. when challenged in court, they had to say how many children they separated. they said arod 3,000.

une findings in this report fothey were separating children long before the policy was announced, almost a year before the policy was announced, and they may have separs ed thousa more children than we previously reported. it also convefirms that we' known for a long time-- there was never any centralized way to entify, track, or reunite these children. ote bottom line is, judy, we still do know how many children were separated under the trump administration's tlicy at the border. >> woodruff: sy literally have no way-- there is no accounting of the children of the families, the children in these families that were taken from their parents? >> we have had hints along y the the many months we have been reporting on this just how bad the bwakkeepe. we didn't know exactly how much until thireport. when we first had a given number they said around 2600 and over the next few months they revised it up. they said they had more information that came into their knowledge. s remember there are two agencies. d.h.s. does the separating at the border, anthen they han over the children to h.h.s., who receives them for care and

custody. i got a look at that shared database that they were trying to use to track children. there was never a checkbox that says, "this child separated," or space to put information about their parents. it was up to the d.h.s. officers to choose or remember to put that in the comments section. and they found that in this report just how bad that bookkeeping was. . en h.h.snoticed there was an uptick in separated children coming they tried to formally track. they said: judy, when they tried to bring people back together they had to go through 60 differ databases, sometimes just cross-references last names to, try to figurei out if kds were separated or not. >> woodruff: so what about what happened to these c do they have records, information about whether they ended up with their families or did they end up going somewre else? >> alarmingly, this report doesn't detail it.

we don't know if it's because we don't know what happened to the children. they say many of the children were released. we don't know if that means they were released to an aunt or an uncle or a 'cause nin the u.s., or if in many cases -- which we heard was happening it's children would beg to be reunited with the parents, and go back to their home country. there is no insigitht, and noted in the report, why these kids were separateed in the first place. as we ned before, h.h.s. said they saw an uptick in kids coming in and we know that overland in the time period the government was test running policy of family separation. judy, it's worth pointing out, that was eight months before they officiay announced the policy, 10 months before the homeland security secretary tweeted this, "we dov not hae a rolicy of separating families at the d. period." we now know that was not true. >> woodruff: they had be doing it for months. >> many, many months. >> woodruff: at that point. finally what, is the trump adminiration, what areederal agencies saying about this? >> both h.h.s. and d.h.s. issued

responses. h.h.s. said we welcome the ndings, we improved the database. edere is now a checkbox if the child is separ where someone notes that. there is staff to figure out if there are kids in tystem who need to be reunified. more worrying they discoverein this report, long after the policy ended, separations continued. july to november of last year arct least 118 more separated kids came into their custody. and h.h.s. defers to d.h.s. to dake that call when they meet the chnd parents at the border. d.h.s. said if the child seems to be in danger or the parent is fahdulent or there's criminal totivity we will continu separate because that's our policy. it's worth pointing out criminal activity is a pretty broad base for discretion. we found one case i which a parent had a burglary charge in their home country 10 years agto never resulted in a conviction. ayd still had his child taken rom him. so this is very much ongoing. and it's very much a livee. is >> woodruff: still going on

months after the courts said stop this. >> many, many months. >> woodruff: amna nawazgreat reporting. >> thanks, judy. >> woodruff: on the day after christmas, an american endurance athlete, colin o'brady, completed a 54-day solo trek across more than 930 miles of the vastness of antarctica. the past century and th some, there have been many expeditions across the frozen ntinent since roald admundsen first went to the south pole. ernest shackleton tried to crosr y afterward. generations have frslowed those ts as equipment has abanged and the routes have changed consid. part of the path, for example, is now flatter. but o'brady became the first to complete such a difficult trek with no supply drops and no kites or the like toelp him. william brangham talked with him and his wife about his journey and enduring thetiorst of

anta. >> brangham: with a final 32- ho, 80 mile push, colin o'brady became the first person to cross antarctica alone, without y assistance. the 33-year-old celebrated with a post on instagram, writing: "i did it!" this was 54 days after setting off on this brutal 930-mile trip. upon arrival, o'brady tearfully called his wife, and expedition manager, jenna besaw. o'brady started the treacherous journey on november 3rd, at the ronne ice shelf on the continent's eastern side. he set off at the same time as is-year-old louis rudd, a brarmy captain who's also trying to make the historic ceip. the two men each other for nearly two months, passing over mountains of ice and snow and across the south pole. then, o'brady made it to the finish-- the leverett glacier at ane ross ice shelf, where rctica's land mass ends, and the ice sea begins.

others had made the crossing before, but they had assistance with supies or kites that helped pull them across the ice. o'brad most days, he trekked 12 hours, pulling roughly 400 pounds on his sleds. he climbed up ice ridges, pudied through bl snow and 30- mile-an-hour headwinds and had w endure temperatures as minus-80 degrees farenheit. o'brady nsumed around 7,000 calories a day to ensure he had enough energy trr the grueling . still, his legs were emaciated by the end. he dubbed his attempt: "the impossible first," which i certainly would have seemed just a decade ago. that's when an accident burned nearly 25% of o'brady's body, primarily his legs andeet. doctors warned him he might never walk normally again. but after a lengthy rehab, he went on to become a professional triathlete, and eventually climbed mt. everest.

once he'd set this record for crossing antarctica, o'brady stayed put, setting up camp near the ross ice shelf, where he waited for louis rudd to cross the finish line and join him, a little more than 48 hours later. colin o'brady is back in the u.s. now, and i recently sat orwn with him and his wife jenna, in necity, to talk about that trek. this story has a happy ending. home safe and soun we know the ending of this story now. but diyou have any reservations ahead of time before you set out on this journey? know the stakes are rea but at the ame time you know it's part of the preparation that goes into it. to prepare the body mind soul for the journey but it also makes it a great adventure and a great goal to set out for is that it's not guaranteed. >> brangham: jenna, how do you el about this? i mean you find the idea of sending your husband on something called the impossible first. >> i really understand the risks that were there and then fall e trust that colleen was a manage them. and again the training and prep that went in and the preparation and whatnot i was pretty

confident that we haeast tried our best to manage their risks. >> brangham: can you give us a e e knows how to push me hard. tespe risks. >> i think of it as encouragement. little more sense of w was like day to day? >> full blowing winds, i mean there's lots of times where i would spend you know 12 to 13 hours pulling my sled per day and couldn't even barely see the next step in front of me. i mean complete white out all just staring at my compass the entire time. and th the average temperature, yeah you know minus 25 minus 30 degrees 30 40 50 mile per hour winds were not uncommon throughout this journey. so that jacks the wind chill up into minus 70 minus 80. then camping at night. so two hours to set everything >> man. that was really intense. up two hours take everything down and 17 hours only leaves a few hours for sleep and do it again. i did that 54 days in a row without taking a single day off.

hem tired now. >> brangham: conditions are really i think like what almost any person watching this has ever experienced. what are you wearing on your body to stop yourself from freezira to death? >>ham: i had full face mask on ery day. gloves, mitten no part of my skin exposed, you probably saw from some of t photos, you know, tape on my ne and cheeks because that's where little pieces of wind seemed to be penetrating my mask even. s i was getting little tra frostbite in little sections. and so you know rely, one tiny little corner of your skin exposed you know that's frostbite in a few minutes with th level of wind. so, yeah, it was very intense. >> brangham: how oft are you hearing from him on this trip? >> anywhere from you know a five minute to sometimes longer if we needed to go over anything specific. but every day. i did get to check in with him every day. >> brangham: people are obviously just awed by the physical nature of what you did, but obviously the mental aspect of this is a huge part of it, maybe even bigger than the physical. i just wonder what is it like to live alone like that in that

environment doing that kind of physical work every day? >> i would say you know 10 or 20was the physical. being a professional athlete preparing but really the success of this project hangs in the balance or the mental teparation really 100% and the resilienre. i have a kind of avid meditation practice. every ye i get to a 10 day silent meditation retreat no reading or writing no eye contact. we've both times, just as part of just our aon w say to rethflect.atever but that ultimately prepared me so well to be in solitudlike this. and that was sort of the more positive elements of it, but also so much time for your mind to wind you up andake you down into a sort of a negative place. >> i'm kind of down in my mind right now, even though i'm s close, day 48. it's the first time in the project i'm feeling like i just odsh i could quit. oh, my git's only day 17. winds 50 mph. i'm freezing i just got blown over off my skis. am i going to make it? i mean all of a negative and you know thoughts of course.

i mean i'm only human. >> it's going to be a windy one! the headwind! you are locked in a prison of your own brain. so fortunately i likwn company, i suppose. >> or he learned to like it. >> it was a great lesson though, just so many profoun kind of personal lessons have come from that experience and toit journey ofng so deep into my own mind my own memories. it was really beautiful in the lld. >> brangham: i rcan't imagine being so remote. i me literally there is probably no more remote place on this earth and more dangerous place for human. bebut then at the same timg able to talk to your beloved thousands of mes away. that's got to be an unbelievable sort of contrast. >> yeah. it is a strange corast. i'm grateful to be able to do that, but it's not as if i was sort o different people at the same time. so it was kind of like this little bubble betweethe two of us. jenna had to read between the lines just in my voice, literally that's why we had that call not just because i wanted to but also to for her to be

lid, ok, you know, ask me k of a series of questions. >> but then again it was reading between the lines and kind of discerning what i was hearing and making sure that it was headed in a positive direction. >> brangham: on christmas morning you get up and by your schedule, the pace you've been running, you're two, three days from the finish line. but you decide, i'm not going to take two or three days to do it. what i'm going to do iin one g push. why? >> i woke up that morning and i just felt great. my entire sort of personal reason for going and doing this project was to push the limits of human potential. d i thought what better way than to see how far i can go in a single push to finish. so i kept going. unfortunately the weather declined it got horrible. i also ran out of water becausen i only meltegh generally for about 12 or 13 hours so by anur 18 i had run out of water >> brangham: all hwould say, i'm going t now. >> instead, i get in my tent, boil the water. give jenna a call, she's like, oh my god, i saw you went almost 50 miles. incredible. get some rest.

you probably going to finish this project tomorrow. i was li, well, actually i'm just melting water for an hour. i'm about to take my tent down in this crazy storm that i'm experiencing and get back out and finish this thing. and so another 12 plus i finished, in that 32 hour push, 77 miles to finish and you know i think it was a really fun way to finish. >> brangham: what were you heinking? >> i meaounded better than he had sounded almost in the t evious 53 days. course we made sure like you know did you stop him boil water, wch of course was the reason why he had stopped. and have in all the calories pruterly today, asking him a his memory, could he remember everything that happened up to that point? >> brangham:hen you're asking those questions you're checking to see if he's... >> ...thinking properly. >> brangham: ...if he's doing all the crucial steps to survive. l totally doing the criti thinking necessary to really you know maintain a safe crossing. and so at that point you know i just heard in his voice, he didn't soundrazed or insane. he sounded like he, and i've

athletic career, he sounded like he was quote unquote in the zone. and he sounded like he was in the perfect place to high perform. >> brangham: so many people are obviously inspired by what you and followed you as you went. does any part of you worry that other people who are nab nearly as c of doing this kind of thing might try to emulate you?o >> i mean if s wants to cross antarctica and there's someone dreaming about that i hope they do he proper training and i would love to see somebody else do that. that would be amazing and i would be cheing their success. but more so hopefully they can take sort of the universal principles of this into their isn life and dare to dream whatever in their own life that they can actually turn the s possible dreams and their life into something thassible and beautiful and rich. >> brangham: all right, colin o'brady, jennaesaw, thank you both very much. >> thank you. hanks so much. >> woodruff: william is currently on his way to antarctica and we' bring you those reports soon. he's not going to be crossing solo.

>> woodruff: last week, brief but spectacular cused on mental health from the perspective of a parent, whoseed son was fay legal and mental health systems in washington state. tonight,e hear from the warden of metro county jail in mobile, alamaba, to get his take on how the mental health crisis affects his operation. >> with we look at inmates sometimes and say listen, life here is notgr t. this is not a resort, it's not a hotel, it's not a retreat, it's not burger king, you don'tanet it your wawe do not want you to come back, so we preface erything by saying this is less than ideal situations. the difference between a prison and a jail is essentially, in a prison you are serving out your sentence that a judge has handed wn. for the most part out population

is here awaiting to to trial. the average stay for an inmate here at metro jail would b about 17 days, now that is misleading when you first consider it because we have inmates that literally have been here for four and half yearss awaiting triald typically that would be facing a murder trial.g enrk any jail this size is a very hostile worronment, i would put it sometimes worse than a prison, because in a owison, the inmates are settled, and they're lockedall the time, we have court appearances, visitation, church services so there's a lot of activity. this facility was originally designed for less than 1200 intes. however, on a daily basis likepl today for exwe'll have way over 1500. sometimes we'll have four or five, six or seven inmates in a cell designed for two people. we see inmates returon a very regular basis. recidivism is probably about 50 to 60%.

i try to at least on a weekly basis just walk throthe jail. they want my time, ty want my attention, and they will flag me down and ask me questions. >> in some places you have seven minutes a cell. >> absolutely. >> consider yourself lucky. obviously in a hostile work environment like this, we don't have people knocking down our doors to work for us so we always are short-staffed, and sometimes you're looking at onel oor officer will be responsible for anywhere from 150 to 300 individuals. the mentally ill poses a number problems for us. we feel very strongly that anyone suffering from a serious mental illness should not be in a county jail. however, that happens on a regular basis because the state hospital is so backed up, there's no place for these people to go.ba when a closed our only regional hospital, we saw an immediate doubling of our mental health population. r 'll see the same mentally ill

person arrested e same charge in the same location by p the saice officer three four and five times. this is not a problem that we can arrest ourselves out of. they need to be in a fac city where th receive around- the-clock care. whoever was behind the closing of the mental health hospitals, that they thout that was a good idea, i challenge them on that. they werconcerned at the time that the mentally ill were being warehoused, in these hospitals. well i got news for everybody. the mentally ill are now being warehoused in county jails across this country. my name is trey oliver, and this is my brief but spectacular take on life here at metro jail in mobilelabama. >> we thank you for that perspective. >> woodruff: tonight's brief but spectacular was produced in collaboration with jasonhn n, a reporter for lagniappe, a weekly paper in mobile, alabama. you can find a special episode with johnson on our website at pbs.org/newshour/brief.

ourpdate before we go o lead story, the stalemate over the government shutdown. aftecancelling the congressional delegation scheduled to head to afghanistan today, president trump canceled his own team's travel plans as well. the white house announced that his cabinet and staff ld not be traveling to davos, switzerland, to attend the worlm economic fo the first lady, however, was traveling tonight aboard a government plane en route to florida for some prescheduled personal travel. and as the shutdown continues on this 27th day, we've learned thatleenate majoritader mitch mcconnell is meeting this evening with vice prkesidet ence and jared kushner. the president's senior adviser and son-in-law. on the newshour online right now, a research teamade 300 million-year-old fossils come to life in order to see how animals predating the dinosaurs evold to walk on dry land.

see how they did it on our web site, pbs.org/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. itin us online and again here tomorrow eveningmark shields and david brooks. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and see you soon. pr major funding for the pbs newshour has been ided by: >> babbel. a language app that te real-life conversations in a new language, like spanish, french, german, italian, and more. babbel's 10-15 minute lessons are available as an app, or online. more information on babbel.com. s> and with the ongoing support of these instituti

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