captioning sponsor by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for sunday, january 20: shutdown day 30 and a new offer from the president on the wall. troubling findings at the darmaceutical company beh the prescription painkiller oxycontin. and in our signature segment, a 3d-printed wheelchair, giving newfound adventure for people withisabilities. next on pbs newshour weekend. >>ee pbs newshournd is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. sue an eseton melvin.im iii. the cheryl and philip milstein family. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. rosalind p. walter. barbara hope zuckerberg

corporat fby mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your rerement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for an public broadcastingby contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: goan evening and you for joining us. the partial government shutdown continues and so does the war of words from all sides. day 30 began wh president trump in theex white house anging tweets with house speaker nancy pelosi. yesterday, mr. trump made an offer which senate majority leader mitch mcconnell says will be introduced as legislation this week. democrats say it will not get the needed 60 votes. house speaker nancy pelosi said that a democrat-sponsored bill will be introduced in the house. on another front, the president responded to speaker ps suggestion that the state of the

union address be postponed until the government reopens. he tweeted that he is "still thinking" about the speech and" there are so many options." and the t.s.a. reported that 8% of its workers had "unscheduled absences" yesterday coared to 3% a year ago. the agency said many workers were "not able to report to work due to fil nancmitations." shutdown, stalemate, and hundreds of thousands going without paychecks what's next? newshour special correspondent jeff g from santa barbara.now jeff, we're talking about possib the first move by the president openly to kind of negotiating in public, if you will, to try to serays a deal, it's on the table, this can restore the government. but before, i don't know, maybe ten minutes before he esven ke, there is already reaction from the democrats that say no keal. >> look, what s this so difficult is that you are ssueing about an i

immigration and the wall, that is central to the base now of bo parties. we should remind ourselves not that long ago that both parties talked very differently. presidents clin talked about cracking down on illegal, not undocumented but illegal immigrants. president reagan embraced amnesty, president bush a braced path to citizenship. but think back the first worsed of candidateonld trump were this very harsh words about rantcans and imm and even any move that looks like movingomway the "build the wall"ause line of his campaign baprings acplcusations he's quitting. he already has taken some heat om his more zel supporters for that for democrats now anything approacihing endo a sall sounds like nativism, hostility towa immigrants and llything other than protecting all 1.8 ion daca folks on a possible path to citizenship is unacceptable. and that's why even what looks like a move towards it some kinc promise immediately gets clob erred from both sides.

>> thisseems much more intractable but the government can't stay shut down indefinitely, what is a way out r instance, republicans control congress and say okay, we don't want to keep this going any more. we're going to find some compromise. right now because donald tr is still so popular with the republican base and because as i said immigration is so central to that base, any move by republicans to move away from trump is going to be perilous for thelitically. so unless they begin to feel real political heat or show if the public opinion changes and democrats are blamed, it's very rd to see what will change. and i don't mean to be grim but what with realve the needle is if something really awful happened like foinstance the complete shutdown of the transport system if all the tsa workers go out.ir ac >> yeah, you know, this is also coming, in the next couple of

weeks we're tateing about s of the union address that is supposed to be delivered it is kind of in question now, a we harkening back to the days of the 1800st where there were no televised speeches, no address to the nation. >> well, it is anoernce unthinkable norm that has just begun by the wayside. i was thining that 20 years ago, close to the day, president clinton gave a state of th union speech to dong a month after the house of representatives had impeached hem and he was treated defer recommendationally with respect. and now you have a situation dhere the speaker, nancy pelosi can thino i really want to give the president this forum, this pageant where he is the head of stateo make this case against us, maybe not. because her argument that security was the reaso, i'm sorry, that just doesn't pass the who are you kidding test. look, for my money this paj ent has long since outlived its usefulness. the only good thing about it is if you are the president's party, you get aerobic exercise because you have to stand up and wn and cheer 40 times during

the speech stvment an archaic process that think we could all be well served if we went back to the 19th century and just had written state of the unions. >> and finally the stories that you like to point out that were sort of undercoverred this week? well, let's take this pesky economy issue. the council of economic advisors said we undtimated the cost of the shutdown. right now it looks like a five week shuown will take roughly $1 trillion out of the economy. yohave the question of whether the trade war with china will or will not happen. ahina seems to be saying we're going to le lot more goods, american goods into china but if he they bdon't, the cination of the shutdown, a trade war and that trilliodollar deficit is going to mean that this now robust economy takes a itable. and unlike other recessions which happened for cyclical reasons, this would have been all preventible but for the political chaos we seem to find ourselves in. >> all right, jeff greenfield from santa barbara, so much. >> thank you.

>> sreenivasan: millions of americans are digging out from a weekend snowstorm that stretched from the plains to new england. the national weather service issued winter storm warnings or advisories for part or all of at least 15 states. a polar unge of brutally cold air is expected to follow the winter storm in the midwest and northeast tomorrow. while much of the country was dealing with snow and cold, a tornado hit the city of wetumpka, alabama yesterday afternoon.25 omes and the police station received major damage. there was only one minor injury. tens of thousands of greeks rioted in athens today against a proposal to officially acknowledge the name of neighboring macedonia as the republic of north macedonia. eks object to the use of e name macedonia which they say is a part of greece. mrmacedonia split from the yugoslavia in 1991 but it's name has ner been formally ecognized by greece. the greek parliament is scheduled to vote on the name chans week. if the new proposal is ratified, greece will drop its objections to it's neighboring country joining natand the european ion.

the democratic republic of the congo's constitnfional court med the election of felix she'sakadie as president today. the court found no evidence of runner-up martin fayulu's claims of fraudnd turned down his request for a vote recount. fayulu called for npron-violent ests against the court ruling but there were no demonstrations today. yesterday, we aired a story out iraq's forgotten war heroes and stated that an estimated 30,000 iraqi soldiers died in the war between 2014- 2017. we should haveaid an estimated 30,000 soldiers died or were wounded in the war during that time period. a catholic school and its diocese apologize for the behavior of some students toward native americans at the lincoln memorial. see our extended conversation about it, including some of your questions on the newshour facebook page.iv >> srean: according to the world bank, one billion people, that's 15% orlf the s population, experience some form of disability, with one-fifth experiencing snicant disabilities.

as the population continues to age, this number will rise, and so willno demand for tegy that allows the disabled to live es they want to live tonight, the story of one canadian outdoorsman shows thasa sometimes th person who has lost a physical ability is the one who creates a machine or device to find it again. pbs newshour weekend's christopher y.oker has his >> re tporter: thrail in the canadian rockies is known to locals by the name "bragging rights" see why.s not hard to riding it takes a mixture of stamina and creativity and a tiny pinch of crazy doesn't hurt either. the trail is nearly two heart- pumping miles of rocks, roots and narrow passages thugh the foothills of the canadian rockies just outalde of calgary, berta. bufor christian bagg, riding these trails is something else entirely: aleedom. and itl because of his basement-born invention that he calls the boeareach. >> i could exercise every day, like i could go to a gym and

exercise, i could get exercise, but i struggled findingas something thatust fun. >> reporter: as a young man, the alberta native toe full advant the outdoor wonderland that is the canadian rockies. summ spent biking, winters spent snowboarding. then came a catastrophic day during e winter of 1996. >> i was in a big air competi ati i landed the wrong end up in banff. i knew instantly that i was paralycozed. dn't walk, i couldn't feel anything. >> reporter: the fall had broken three of christian's vertebrae and par severed his spinal cord. >> the nerves were connected in su a way that-- like, my legs, my legs thought things were going t on. hey would spasm, like, wildly all the time, like, to thhepoint it would pull my hips out of their sockets. it was horrible. so for about two years after i broke my back i lived a life that no 21-year-old should live. like, i couldn't work. i was on tons of drugs. i ha position.in the fetal otherwise, my legs would, like,

kick out and shake. >> reporter: this agony last two years, until a surgeon made a dramatic suggestion: he could sever thremaining part of bagg's spinal cord, the procedure would d the muscle spasms, but also eliminate any chance, however small, that the young man might ever walk again. >> he really got me, like, really understood me as a person and what i wanted to do with my life, which was just be a normal 22-year-old at that point. so we did it and i woke up and no spasms and i started life, my new life that day. all at was wrong was me was that-- was that i was paralyzed. s, like, amazing >> reporter: bagg spent his new life much as he did the old. outdoors. mersing mself into the world of adaptive sports. he learned how to cross country sit-ski, he went sky diving and became an avid rock climber. but he says he longed to be back movin trails on his own.in >> i would be supported by people, inevitably-- so that we could get to do these crazy

things and i-- like, i was just getting tired of-- i didn't want that. it is a less raw sort of experience and i wanted that raw experience. i want able to venture and adventure, as opposed to knowing that something was ways going to be okay for me. >> reporter: athe time of his jury, bagg was training to become a professional machinist, learning how to build custom parts for the university of calgary's engineering department. but he also brought these skills home, setting up his own personal workshop in his basement. >> i could have been a multimillionaire and that wouldn't have helped me as much as having a niill as a mach. there was nothing to buy. >> reporter: so when did you start thinking about th bowhead? >> reporter: pretty early. like five years after i was injured i started thinking about how to get back mountain teking. >> rep for years, he built different iterations of what would becomehe bowhead reach. nearly 25 different versions of the bike, all performing with

limited success. but two years ago, his basement experiments took a gianttheap forward he arrival of a 3d printer. it dramatically accelerated his ability to prototype and test new components; what used to take weeks to build byw and, could no printed in a matter of hours. all these pieces here have been 3d printed? >> everything black, yeah, which is everywething. we put these just for some contrast. we threw the orange on there just so could sort of see. >> reporter: and is this mat-- is this a carbon fiber? is that-- >> yeah, so it's-- it's-- a carbon filled nylon. >> reporter: day and night, bagg's basement serves as a printing facility - using spools carbon fiber, his thre printers translate computer drawings into useable, three- dimensional parts. but the real breakthrough wasn't printing, it was design. for years, the problem had been flexibility. tenre the mountain terrain, the bike had to be rigid, but hitting rocks and stumps wh a stiff frame, christian often ended upside down. developing what he calls an

articulating framework, something that allows the bike to lean as the rider moves their torso, the front wheels function like knee joints. so if one area of the ground is higher than the other, the bikea mains its balance, so ifou hit a tree stump or rock the bike won't tip over. coupled with a battery and small drive motor, bagg's bike was now ready for the mountain terrain. was the eureka momen and when i had that breakthrough of it working, then other people started to sort of recognize that this was cool and neat. >> reporter: one person who noticed, was j.p. middleton. amst march, middleton went skiing in the very mountains were christian had crashed all those years ago. >> i went off a cat track at pretty high speed and there was ow, co feel my legs, i, you me anymore, so. >> reporter: the 36-year-old v e.m.t. andolunteer firefighter had shattered parts of his vertebrae and severed his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

>> first couple of weeks were, you know, really, really tough. you knowi could see the mountains from my hospital room, and i thought, "there's just no way i'm going to b bable to make k there." you know, "i'm in a wheelchair. how can i possibly live in the mountains?" >> reporter: but one day, while looking out his hospital window, middleton saw something. it was christian bagg, who had gotten a job at the very same hospital and was commuting to work on his now entirely functional bike. >> th morning i was in rec therapy and i said, "hey, kim, there's this amazing bike i saw." and thhe goes, "oh's christian. he just works downstairs in the hospital. i'll have to connect you guys."e >>porter: with the help of a gofundme page middleton was able to reakmodel his house, mg it wheelchair ready, and to purchase one of christian bagg's bikes. >> when i saw the sticker price on the bike, it's--t's high. it's an expensive bike. it's cuerstom made. e's a low production run right now. it's the cost of a toyota corolla, basically. but it was worth eve ry penny of it. it has been the most amazing tool i could think of having. when i came home for a visit back in may,ck was in our rd. and evan, my three-year-old son,

rom our backyard into th woods. and he said, "daddy, come play." i look beyond, and there's stumps and roots and grass and rocks.sa and there and-- you know, a tear rolled down my eye. and i thought, "there's just no way i can get out there." when the bike arrived, the first thing i did is i put evan on my lap and i bombed out the backyard through the woods, over the stumps. and it was just the most phenomenal eling. you know, when you're first in a wheelchair you think, "this is my life until i'm gone. lci'm going to be in a whir. it's going to be tough, but with the bike i can get out and about. it has given me freedom. >>st reporter: this trail is right behind your house? how often do you come out here? >> every day. yeah, with evan. he loves it. >> reporter: so every day you are out here with your son? >> everyday i am out here with my son, yeah you bet. >> reporter: as a local, middleton was lucky, able get his bike in just a few months. bagg's bikes, having only been on sale for the last year, are still constructed by hand in his basement. he currently has six orders to fill. if this had existed when you were injured, how do you think it would've changed the way you viewed recovery and pfeost-injuy

>> i don't know. i-- i-- i was dying for something like this, to the point where i dedicad my adult life to trying to create it. so it would've-- i would love to go back and have it. like, i took a 20 year hiatus from doing what i loved. >> reporter: does it still feel strange to be-- be out here? >> no. no, it doel sn't feestrange anymore. i'd say,ike, it's pretty easy to fall back into because it's so amazing and it's-- and i think it's prettyl, naturalike, for-- from being a human, wanting and-- and needing this. you can't overdose on this.

>> sreenivasan: one of the drugs at the center of the ongoing opioid crisis is the prescription painkiller oxycontin. be drug's manufacturer purdue pharma, controllthe wealthy sackler family, began selling oxycontin in 1996. now, there are new revelations about how the company and specifically family members pushed the marketing and saleshe ofrug. it is part of a case the state of massachusetts has broughtag nst purdue pharma, alleging the company and its executives misled prescribers and patients about oxycontin's ngers. this weekend, i spoke with patrick radden keefe, a staff writer for the new yorker who habeen covering the oxyctin story for years about new details being revealed in that case. >> purdue narm pharma has long ld a story which is essentially that the sackler family which owns the company has a real ar-length relationship, is not actually all that involved. and the sacklers has deloped this reputation as great patrons

of the arts and universities, never really have to talk about the family business, which is the source of all their wealth. wh is fascinating about th filing in massachusetts is that you have hundreds of pages of documentation from inside the company showing very, very active involvement for multiple ers of the family who a members of the board but not members of the board who are at some distance, members of the board who are very actively directing purdue pharma in afterng oxycontin eve this epic public health crisis that we're all experiencing now. give us an example. >> well, so richard sackler who is really the most active of these various family members who is the son of one of the founders of the company, one of the three brothers who originally took it over, y would regula asking for sales reports. he would be coaching people on how they should go out and push oxycontin to doctors. ofen you started having people

dyinoverdoses, he was very involved in emails saying look, the way we'll spend is is it is about drug addicts, these people are criminals, this is not our problem. >> blaming the victims. >> blaming the victims, absolutely. and he really comes across in, mail after, mail afinter email these various accounts as somebody who was almost obsessed with the sales of the drug, to a point where you g to a stage just tay few years ago where sales of ontin start to level off. and there's an obvious reason for that which is the enctors have wp to the fact that this drugs is killing people and opioid-- opioids are killing ople, we have something like 200,000 people who have died ofb rve yoit related deaths in the last two decades. so saleses are leveling off and this drives him nuts. e is saying we need p coo pushing, we want bigger doses of the drug for long periods of time. which is what anybody looking at this soberly will tell you is a recipedifor ionnd a dangerous state of affairs. >> an were there

export-- experts that they had that were doing this kind of prescribing? >> well, they had-- part of the story of tkler family and part of the reason that even though oxycontin is ju one of many observe yoids it was one that parked the opioid crisis, this say company when it spirs broa dueced the drug consciencelyet out to change e mind of doctors. the doctors to that point had been reluctant to redescribe strong opioids for pain conditions that prrnltf life, palliative care, cancer treatment. >> they wanted want didn't wanto be prescription. >> rate, it was going to be prescription here but they were looking to expand international leigh and the sacklers star wondering can we have it be a noncontrolled substance, like aspirin, like walk in and buy it over-the-c. there is a back and forth in these documenteds between richard sackler and the invenr of octobery con tin of the drug says i think it would be pretty dangerous, that would ad idea. and richard sackler said but what would it do to the bottomline, to the number of

sales we could get. >> give us a scale of how b the crisis t, how bad the prescriptions got. >> well, you get to a point where you have thousands of people dying, really left and right in regardios regions across the united states and it's actually the crisis at this point,part of what is interesting about it is that it is everywhere, is that almost any american will know people, it doesn't discriminate in of class, race, geography. and part of what was striking to me abt this massachusetts filing is that you have all this internal documentation that suggests that even in the face of this knowledge, the sackler family is still pushg and wondering you know, how can we get out there. how can we be selling more why are sales slowing down. we have this documentation that not just in 2008 and 9 but in 2016, 2017 when the country is reeling fr this epidemic, inside purdue pharma they are still thinking how can wepush this drug.

m hear more about >> sreenivasan: hee about how purdue pharma and the sackler family have influence in academia and hospitals at pbs.org/newshour. there wets of the filing that included them trying to have an influence on academia how did they do that? >> well, this has been part of the strategy for the company, i shoulday not just purdue but many companies, purdue really has excelled at it and the sacklers have, first of all, influencing doctors so there are all kinds of relationship the have with doctors. they realized early on that a doctor is more likely to prescribe a new orug if it is another doctor recommending it. i thought it is almost like putting anate lead on a box of wheaties, you listen to the people you trust, your peers. so they stacted paying s be funded research. so you get this crazy situation where you are a physician and i'm a physic i come to you to tell but this new drug, i'm paid by the drug compaw y. i su a study done about the drug which was also paid for by tomhe drug cny. we have this conversation over an expensive steak dinner at a nice resort in florida.

and we're all getting sent there by the drug company. one of the statistics in this filing is th purdue's budget just for food bought for physicians who prescribe opioids every year was $9 millioa year. >> sreenivasan: that is a lot of nice steak dinners. what happens neifxt? becausthe company has been sued once, what the ag is filing and the evidence that she is laying oat does that do to other lawsuits that might be in play? >> there are dozend dozens of lawsuits right now ongoing across the country. more than half of the states in e united states are suing purdue pharma. i think the interesting thing for the sackler family is that what this massachusetts case has l.ne is kind of pierced the corporate vai it's no longer just purdue pharma and the sacklers are show at a distance, now the sacklers have all been named and it sd seem that there may be some real liability on the parts of these individuals who were clearly directing the company. >> patrick rad enkeefe, thank

you so much. >> thank you. >> sreenivasan: finally tonight, the ather may be a bit frightful in some parts of the u.s., but there will be a chance to see an array of lunar events wherever you are in the world. a super moon, also called a blood moon, will be visible eryere. and in north and south america, northern and western europe, and northwest africa you'll also be able to see a total lunar eclipse. the next one won't be until 2021. 's all for this edition pbs newshour weekend. i'm ri sreenivasan. anks for watching. have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by medi aaccess.wgbh.orgt wgbh ho

>> pbs ne weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. sue and edgar wachenheim iii. seton melvin. the chery afamily.ip milstein dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. rosalind p. walter. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. ditional support has been provided by: and by the cor rpublic broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

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