captioning sponsored b newshour productions, llc dr >> wf: good evening, i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight, another looming deadline-- negotiations to keep the government open stall as lawmakers disagree oveh number of beds to provide for detained migrants. then, collateral damage. nearly a year after russian agents poisoned a defector with a nerve agent, t british city of salisbury is trying to attract tourists back. and, to kick off our new arts," series "canve speak with actress amy adams and director adam mckay about their film "vice." the dick cheney biopic is ynominated for eight acad awards. >> ihink there's a moment where lynne and dick almost become the same person. when you really go to that vice presidency, he's totally

internalized her ambition and her smarts. and they really are the me person. >> woodruff: all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our ecomy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us.

>> the william and flora hewlett foundation. for more than 50 years, advancing ids and supporting stitutions to promote a better world. at www.hewlett.org. th >> and witongoing support of these institutions: and individuals. >> thiprogram was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

>> woodruff: with five days to go before another potential government shutdown, funding talks on capitol hill have hit rough waters. a group of bipartisan lawmakers met again late this afternoon to try to revive the stalle negotiations. meanwhile, the president continued to throw barbst democrats. lisa desjardins begins our coverage. >> it's not going to work without a wall. >>teesjardins: leaving the w house today for a rally in el, paso texas, president trump weighed in on the prospect of a second shutdown, just weeks after the longest in u. history ended. >> at issue: who and how many ndople should be detained by u.s. immigration austoms enforcement agents. amocrats specifically want to cap the number w apprehended and detained inside the country to 16,500 at any one time. california representative lulle roybal-allard, a democratic member of the border security conference committee,n

saidstatement that the cap "will force the trump administration to prioritize deportation for criminals and people who pose real security threats, not law-abiding immigrants who are contributingt to our cou." but republicans insist capping ice detentions is dangerous. >> they want to cut i.c.e. they take outs. 1357bd others by the thousands,. ca >> again, you ot take a shutdown off the table. >> desjardins: on sunday, actinh e house chief of staff mick mulvaney indicated many outcomes are possible, including another shutdown, a compromise or a declaration by the president of an emergency. >> you cannot take 5.7 off the table. but if you end up somewhere in the middle what you'll probablye is the president saying yeah okay and i'll go find the money somwhere else.n >> desjardins:last ditch effort today, four members of the bipartisan group met again this afternoon. two democrats, house

appropriations chair nita lowey and two republicans: senate appropriations chair richard and house can agree on, and one the president will sign, beforet friday at midn >> woodruff: we turn now to lisa and our own white house correspondent yamiche alcindor. hello to both of you. lisa, where does everything stand now? >> right. i just came from the tocaand the conference committee meeting. they broke up and said we'rek. coming ba they should be back, restarting .hat meeting any minute no that's a good sign. they met for an hou hour and 15 minutes and still think it's useful for them to be talking tonight and an even better sign, they didn't tell us anything about what was said inside. that's usually a sign of projbt. let's talkt the interior detentions the democrats want to deal with. they want to cp the interior detentions, that is people defined tanned while inside thir co not people detained while crossing the border ore seeking asylum. charges can range from u.i.s, violent crimes and gang related but can also be

visa overstays. that's a very wide group of people. in this group a a wide people with no offenses. democratwant to limit the number of detention for that group to 16,500, a per-day detention number. currently, there are aut # 0,000 to 22,000 people detained in the interior detention category. >> woodruff: so 1/6 thousand per day. >> an average per day. yamiche, what's the white house's position on the number of beds. >> the white house doesn't want a limit hon i.c.e., tey don't want a miment on the number of people that can be held as interior or ex tore yore attests. they want no cap any beds because they say i.c.e. should be able to do their jthout thinking of the number of people in custody and want to keep t

20,000 to 22,000 people arrest eds inside the country. they say its because these people have already run out e.eir stay her they're people who have overstayed visas and have committed violent crimes, domestic violence or drug offenses, and they say the president wanta budgets of 52,000 beds total, including people aested inside the country as well as crossing the border. i talked on a i.c.e. ofiaf today. the person said they don't make the distention between intio and exterior. they want to say anybody here shoulde considered criminal. because they're not making the distinction, they say there are 48ople total in i.c.e. custody currently and they're making that number because they say 52,000 is a little bit above that and they're ithe crisis here. the more people arrested, they need more be as. thso say 21 family units, people coming not justhildren but also parents included in that number, and their officia

stance is we don't want to immediately release anybody into society. that means if we get the num capped, we'll have to put the people somewhere and that meanst backthe community. >> woodruff: given the split, what are the prospects we'll see the government shutdown again? >> the sigof hope is lairts are talking now. the problem is we're seeing politics of the base come to have placement with democrats make this newew kind of n demand here, republicans are starting to say, well, maybe if there is a shutdown ateill be blamed on democrats. who knows if that's the case, but epublicans starting to s an advantage to the shutdown is bad thing for government workers. democrats want something for their base who does not like i. ie. >> woodrufthe middle of all this, yamiche, how far is the president willing to go? he's already com compromised so much. how much is he willing to compromise further? >> last week the white houseet said we'll the hill figure

this out.da was different. mulvaney always running around the white house making the case the shutdown is still on the table and says the government wants a compromise. e democrats are saying we want to give you a little wall money but we want so much more in return. so the white house is signaling the president will take lss than the $5 billion he shut down the government for last time but they haven't come up with an exprt number. thesident has changed his mind. they can slow 2.6 or $2.5 billion for a wall o the president can say i want all 5 billion because lis makes mele bad. we'll have to see. >> woodruff: they're still talking >> they may still be talking friday. we'll see. >> woodruff: yamiche alcindor, lisa desjardins, thank you both. in the day's other news, house democratic leaders condemned freshman congresswoman ilhan omar for a tweet accusg a

powerful pro-israel lobbying group of paying members of congress to support israel. the democratic leaders said the anse of anti-semitic trope prejudicial accusations about israel's supporters is deeply" offensiv later, the minnesota democrat took to twitter to "unequivocally apologize." a democratic delegate fromvi inia backed down on his threat to begin impeachment proceedings today against the state's lieutenant governor, justin fairfax.fa fax faces two allegations of sexual assault. he's denied them both. meanwhile, virginia's embattled democratic governor ralph northam acknowledged he hinsidered resigning after a racist photo fromedical school yearbook surfaced. but, he told cbs he'll remain in office to help the state "heal." >> it's been a difficult week, and again i'm fine it's been mainly difficult for virgia and this country. so yes, i have thought about resigning but i' also thought

about what virginia needs right now and position where i can take virginia to the next level andpo it will be vertive. >> woodruff: northam also said in will spend the rest of his term in office focon "race d equity." more than 4,000 denver teachers went on strike today after they failed to reach a deal to inease wages. it's the city's first teacher- led strike in 25 years. they hope to change their bonus- pay structure and tie raises to education and training. we'll take a closer look at what's at stake later in the program. the pacific northwest is digginu out fromally heavy snowfall after a winter storm battered the region over the weekend. in tacoma, several hundred residents organized a mass snowball fight. nearby seattle has been blanketed in more than 14 inches of snow this month, making itth e snowiest february there on record. washington governor jay inslee raised concerns about the homeless population, after at

least one person died of sposure. >> we don't havetem to handle this problem in the state. it kind of drives me nuts. when a state that has enormous pockets of wealth towh have a systee we can take care of homeless people and they're not dying of exposure. i hope that's lesson we can take from this snow storm this year. >> woodruff: the national weather servicsaid seattle received as much snow in one day as the city usually getsean an entire a new winter storm is nown bearing downe region and could dump several more inches of snow. in iran, tens of thousands of people rallied in the streets of tehran today to mark the 40th anniversary of the country's islamic revolution. crowds celebrated in the snow, waving flags, and carryingay pictures of ollah khomeini, who came to power after ousting the u.s.-backed shah in 1979. the revolution turned thtides of u.s. relations with iran from allies to stark rivals.

u.s. led coalition warplanes i syria struck the country's last islamic state stronghold in the eastern part of the country. that triggered fierce fighting between u.s.-backed syrian forces and isis in the baghouz gion near the iraqi border. the head of the syrian democratic forces' media office reported some 1500 civilians were forced to flee. back in this country, there's word cigarette smoking ratesic among young ams have stopped falling. new data out today ffom the centerdisease control and prevention said the popularityof e-cigarettes was most likely to blame. over the last year, the of high school students using tobacco products increased by around 38%. and nearly 21% of high schoots studroughly three million, admitted to vaping in 2018.om that's up 2% the previous year. stocks were xed on wall street

today. the dow jones industrial ainrage lost 53 to close at 25,053. the nasdaq rose more than nine points, and the s&p 500 added nearly two. the music industry is celebrating a string of historic wins at last night's 61st annual grammy awards. cardi b became the first solo woman to win best rap album, while kacey musgraves' "golden hour" took home album of the year. childish gambino, the stage name for donald glover, made history as "this is america" became the first rap-based track to win both record and song of the year. and a passing to note: north carolina republican congressmanr waones died sunday on his 76thirthday, after suffering complications from a fall. jones served in congress since 1995, and gained a reputation for being a polihecal maverick. as initially a passionate

sisupporter of the 2003 in in iraq, but later became an outspoken critic. jones wrote letters to over 11,000 families ofrsallen soldie as a form of penance. still to come on the newshour: new reporting details decades of sexual abuse committed by southern baptist church leaders. almost a year after a chemical weapons attack, the british city of salisbury struggles to regain its footing, and much more. >> woodruff: 20 years and 700 victims. that's just part of the shocking revelations contained in a joint investigation by the "houston chronicle" and the "san antonio express news" into sexual abuse, assault and cover-up within the southern baptist church, the lanest protestant denominat in america.

the report is called "abuse of faith." william brangham has more on the findings. >> brangham: this series makes for very difficult reading, and frankly this conversation might not be appropriate for everyone. after a six nth investigation, the two papers have documented about 700 victims being sexually abused, assaulted or raped by southern baptist leaders and volunteers. many of the victims were children, some as young as three years old. in addition to these violations, dult victims and were then shunned by their church, others were told to have abortions. the papers also detail church officials brushing aside repeated warnings of trouble. some leaders whoere convicted of sex crimes and officially listed as sex offenders, were later able to return to the pulpit. one still works with teens in houston today. the "houston chronicle's" robert downen is one of the three reporters on this series: robert, thank you very much for

doing this, and just kudos toth really remarkable and horrifying bit of reporting that you guys have done. i don't wato dwell too much on this, but i wonder if you could gist us more of a sense of the types of crimes we're talking about here? >> we looked into 20 yearswo hov allegations, a lot of those involved sexual assault of minors, solicition of minors online. the many caswe found, among them involved youth pastors using the tchnology they have to groom victims in youth groupe mes for sex, other times for, you know, sending them nude photos. we found many cases in which people are convicted fo chi porn. so, really, as far as the scope of crmes, it's pretty broad what we found. >> reporter: and how did you go about comling all this evidence? >> for a while, now, there have been a number of bloers and

activists, victims, suvivors who have been tracking this stuff, who have been compiling it, so that initely made for the first leg of finding theseth casings, madt a lot easier, but after that we started usingp court ts, doing any kind of search we could of online civil court records to find civil suits that also made reference, convicons. ally, you name it, we try to define these, which kind of speaks to th broader issue as well as that, these cases and the people accused in them are sometimes very, very hard to locate. >> you document about 220 offenders, and i believe it was 380 who were accused. you also detail, in veryf chilling partsour reporting, how church leaderst were warned abis kind of trouble. the victims would go to them and say, this is going on, you have t. how did they respond? >> in 2007 to 200h8, we'ree

loudest calls for this. as i mentioned, there have been all these bloggers and peopler who have been ars, now, saying, hey, this is an issue and you guys need to do something about it, and, in 2008, the leaders of the southern baptist convention or at least the executive committee had that opportunity, and they declined to implement a lot of the reformse in part bec of the denominations' quality. the southern baptist convention is less a do de nomis tion than it cooperative of 47,000 churches, each of which is independent and self-governing, so, therefore, the executive members, the "leaders" of the convention don't necessarily have the same authority to you know, implement change top-down in the way that you would seei in, ke, the catholic church. >> reporter: but it does seem at least from your reporting that church leaders did not actively respond to it. in some people's words, they

seemed to have dodged the issue. >> that's a setment shared by people pressuring them and other survivors and victims. i think it's a fair critique to say, obviously, after years of them being made aware of this issue, the fact thaeft no rorms were ever undertaken or seriously considered, i think that it's a fair critique from the people who were voalizing this problem for years. >> reporter: how has the leadership of the southern baptist convention responded recently to your reporting?nt >> the cureadership, current president j.d. year as well as russell moore, who heads coe s.p.c.'s ethics and religious libertmission, they have been generally responsive. they definitely see this report as opening a lot of eyes and really laying on the tabnt the exf the s.p.c.'sexual abuse problem.

thus far, alost all the reactions are people who are shocked or grateful that this was finally coming to light in a way that can't be ignored anymore. >> reporter: there are two more installments of yor reporting to come out in the coming days. robert downen of the "houston chronicle," thank you very much. >> thank you for having me. >> woodruff: stay with u coming up on the newshour: denver public school teachers go on strikover compensation. amy walter and tamara keith join us to discs the growing field of 2020 presidential candidates. a conversation with amy adams and adam mckay about their film "vice." and poet erica dawson shares her take on individuality. but first, it has been almost a year since kremlin intelligence officers tried to kill a russian defector in the british city of

salisbury by poisoning him with a nerve agent. that attack, and subsequent death of a british woman last summer from the nerve agent, scared away tourists and shoppers. as special correspondent malcolm brabant reports, british authorities and the town's people are working hard to get salisbury's economy back otr k. >> reporter: at salisbury's twice wely market, lively sales patter and cheap prices are an irresistible lure. >> pound a punnet, strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, seedless grape. pound a bowl. pound a punnet. >> reporter: stall holder shane gilkes is keen to coign the poisoning to history and projects an image of confidence annormality >> took three months to pick back up. but wee okay now. people are a bit more confident back out in the town, so here we are as you can see. >> reporter: these two officers from the kremlin's.r.u. intelligence agency intelligence agents are blamed for the sharp decline of salisbury's economy. this is c.c.t.v. footage of them in the city last march.

according to the british authorities the two agents tried to kill russian defector sergei skripal and his daughter yulia, mount of ag a tiny nerve agent called novichok on the door of their home in salisbury. the skripals survived, just.bu the deadly nature of the assassin's invisible weapon scared visitors away. in the market square, at a stall selling indian street food, ny dokhpanjan singh is still suffering from the fear factor. >> we lost at least 60%. 60% losses. when it happened. then slowly, a little it picked up. now it's like, i'd say, it's down about 30%. i'm down 30%. a lot of people are struggling. >> reporter: iorder to prevent cal businesses from going under, the county administratioe establisan emergency fund and a task force under pauline church. >> we keep a close eye on our businesses and some of the investment we put into businesses whether it was

helping with grants or with business rates etcetera, that sswas to help prevent busi from making staff redundant or closg down. and you have to ensure the local community remains buoyant and confident. what we really want to do is to bring visitors back toatalisbury and starting to happen. >> reporter: the restaurant where the skripalsined before collapsing was closed for eight months. it has been spruced up and i now open for business. but close to the place where the skripals were found comatose, these shops are having a disastrous time. staff didn't want to talk on camera, but described sales as being almost non existent. other retail workers talked about customers still being terrified. sausage maker jim martin thinks that terror is misplaced.us >> ithink it seems a bit ironic that the city's got, i n't know how many people living in it, two people in the whole of that city got it. >> reporter: colonel hamish de bretton gordon is a chemical weapons expert and a senior advisor to britain's ministry of defense.

he's spent battlefields around the world, assessing the impact of chemical warfare. >> i am pretty certain that 99% of the contamination has been identified. i mean we've buried over 37 vehicles already. hundreds of bags of coaminated material have either been incinerated or buried. and the skripals' house in salisbury is still being decontaminated. apart from that it's all gone. >> reporter: the skripals may have survived. but 44-year-d dawn sturgess d not. she died last july, days after sprayinghat she thought was perfume on her wrists. the bottle conined novichok and had been thrown away by the assassins. her ath shattered public confidence. >> this is the ultimate terror weapon. people are fixated by it and terrified by it. because the messaging, particularly, from the british government has been particularly anor. salisbury is safopen for business.

i have absolutely, i probablyor knowthan most people about this, i have no qualms at all of going to salisbury and have no fear that we will have any more casualties.or >> rr: ten miles north of salisbury is stonehenge, theye 5,00 old prehistoric stone circle that's a world heritage site. >> for many people, stonenge is iconic. they've traveled all the way around the world. they want to go and stand by the stones. >> reporter: stonehenge had 1.5 million visitors last year, 400 thousand o america.e from north normally many would have visited salisbury. but last year, because of novichok they stayed away, causing financial problems for the museum and staff like louise tunnard. >> we are an independent charity and so the majority of our income comes from our visitors, from our ticket sale from pople coming to use the cafe and the shop and so the impact has been big. >> reporter: the museum is intensifying efforts to win back stonehenge visitors with improved displays.

the two russian intelligence agents claimed salisbury's famous attractions weronly reason they visited the city. >> ( translat): our friends have been suggesting for quite a long time that we visit this wonderful city. >> salisbury? a wonderful city? >> yes. >> what makes it so wonderful? >> ( translated ): it's a tourist city. they have a famous cathedral there. salisbury cathedral. it's famous throughout europe and in fact throughout the world i think. >> reporter: there's very little prospect of ever bringing the russians to justice, but their legacy lingers. the authorities in salisbury may be putting on a brave face about how business here is improving,e but almostear on from the novichok attack, it's clear that some traders are still orffering. the worry for tem experts is that salisbury has become a template for rogue governments or extremists who want to cause maximum impact with a similar deadly invible weapon. memories of attacks at the

bataclan club in paris, and berlin's christmas market fade with the passing years, chemical weapons expert hamish de bretton gordon fears a new terrorist outrage inspired by salisbury. >> the impact of this tiny amount of agent, you know, it's fixated the world for ten months, the jihadis, the so dacalled islamic state, th web, people running it at the moment are tellingihadis around the world to use chemical weapons be it in the uel., the u.s. owhere, so that has had a profound effect, and of course we' seen the jihadis use chemical weapons frequently in syria and iraq. >> reporter: de bretton goon believes mainland europe is th most likely target because jihadis are able to move across frontiers more easily than in britain or america. >> what i would say to the erican people is that they should not worry unduly. i've recently run a conference and an exercise with the mayor of new york's office looking exactly at this sort of thing and actually the u.s. is better

prepared than any other country in the world to deal wh this sort of thing. >> reporter: nearly one year after the attackstaff at salisbury cathedral hope pysitors will start flocking back to see its f the magna carta, the 13th centuryoc human rightsent which paved the way for democracy in britain. salisbury's sense of resilience is embodied by the museum's louise tunna. >> it was a dreadful attack on the heart of our society, on human beings, real people, that was quite devasting. but there reaches a point wherek you have to ourselves up and carry on. we live here. we are bring up children here. ov're growing old here. we're falling inhere. that's how we have tepcarry on. >>ter: and with that attitude, the novichok attack will eventually become another footnote in thousands of years of rich history. for the pbs wshour, i'm malcolm brabant in salisbury.

>> woodruff: the wave of teacher strikes and activism that'been spreading around the country over the past couple of years keeps growing. the strike in denver is especially focused on wages and compensation. surrounding education, funding and academic performance tionally. amna is back with that. >> nawaz: teachers hit the picket line in denver today for the first time since 1994. schools were open today and partially staffed by substitutes. but the walkout and standoff over pay affecd some 70,0000 students. s this was tne in one high school this morning as the strike got underway. much of th a pay system, known as procomp,h involves a complicated merit and bonus system. teachers say it's vastly outdated for all kinds of reasons.de ne will of our partner, "education week," is here to help fill in the pictu.

welcome to the "newshour". >> thank you for having me. >> reporter: so ths system procomp, a lot of other place looked to denver asan example and tried to put in their own systems of linking performance and pay. did it have an impact and did it lead to other places putting into place the same system? >> it tid. there's a federal grant progr where the idea performance pay was at the heart o other school districts even the distric distf columbia started implement ago similar model. >> reporter: is it a trend in education these days? >> it's less of a trend these days. we have been tracking governorwh governorhave included teacher pay proms and their -- in their state of the stay dresses. only one offered the idea of merit raise. others have just across the boaraises. >> reporter: denver teachers are comparatively paid higher

what's the problem here. >> denver teachers make an average of $63,000 ear, higher than in other places, but teachers say that the housing prices in denver have gone up so dramatically over the years that they can't afford to live wheeae they and they could make more going to a school district in nearby areas. >> reporter: when we look at other areas, some strikes took place in contaservative tes. in los angeles, now denver, we're seeing this take place in big cities now and potentially moving into blue states. is that a try end we're lik see moving forward? >> it will be interesting to see. it's important to note that teachers in colorado, last spring, they closed schools across t state to protest the state swlaimpt for more funding. teachers are looking at their state legislature o see how they're investing money into education. >>eporter: some of the recent strikes we've seen in the last year, arizona,

west virginia, oklahom you give us a sense of what they were able to get out ofse tho strikes? is that a sense this is what we'll see in denver, potentially? >> for the most part, teachersvan successful with the strikes. l in strikst year teachers got a pay raise in. l.a. teachers got most of what ey asked for, signing teachers are kind of inspired bout what's happening before them. >> reporter: some of the ples that were on strike before could go on strike again? >> it's interesting, the west virginia teachers uons said their members authorized another statewide labor action, so we're not sure exactly that would look like, but if they're not pleads with what the legislature is doing, they could potentially go on strgaike in. >> reporter: day one in denver. do we have any idea how long it will go on? >> the two sides go to th bargaining table tomorrow. we'll see. >> reporter: we'll be following it. madeline will of education weeks thor being here.

>> thank you. >>oodruff: we're less than year from the first primary votes of the 2020 presidential election, but many of the democratic candidates are already hitting the campaign trail. two u.s. senators officially joined the field this weekend. >> announce my candidacy for president of the united states. >> woodruff: in heavy snow and freezing temperatures on the banks of the mississippi river, minnesota senator amy klobuchar threw her hat into the crowded 2020 race to take on president trump.e' the fifth senator and fifth woman in the democratic field, out of the nine candidates who've announced so far. klobuchar touted her ability to reach across the aisle and made her case to midwesteorking- class voters, many of whom voted for trump in 2016.

>> as your president i will look you in the eye, i will tell you what i think, i will focus on getting things done. >> woodruff: in her home state, massachusetts senator elizabeth warren made her campaign official, sticking to familiar refrains. campaigning later in iowa, the frequent target of mr. trump responded with her sharpest attacks on his presidenciaand the poteoutcome of the ongoing russia investigations. >> bthe time we get to 2020, donald trump may not even be president. (applause) in fact, he may not even be a free person. >> woodruff: other democrats are criss-crossing the early states and makingheir case to key groups. new york senator kirsten gillibrand spoke outside a church in south carolina, a state where more than a quarter

of residents are african american. >> i believe that president trump is tearing this country apart at the seams dividing us at every racial, religious, and socioeconomic background he can find and i want to fight for the >> woodruff: the palmetto state is also where new jersey senator cory booker, one of two black democrats running, campaigned this morning. >> and, people in my community don't care about political posturg. they don't care what i am >> woodruff: and that brings us to politics monday. i'm joined by our regular team, amy walter of the "cook political report" and tamarapr keith of hello to both of you. so they're off and running. there are nine and we expectmy more to come, . >> yes. >> woodruff: what do we see here? amy klobuchar, clearly not in southern california, you know, in a driving snowstorm in minnesota. how is she setting herself apart is this. >> it was really interesting watching and listening to. >watoelizabeten one day and

the next to listen to amy klobuchar. elizabeth warren is saying the only way to make change is to make significant structural change. she says over and over again, i'm not talking about going around the edges here people, i'm talking about blowing the system up and reforemanning it, talking about the system being riggng and brig it back to structurally reforming it for regular, middle class people. amy klobuchar talked about overcoming obstacles, not blowing up the system as much as trying to fix some othe observe stacks also within the system. so this is the cerchg growing now which is cub can you be a dynamic capt. and also price tag -- candidate and alsoo pragmatic,erate and also progressive in your policies? and warren is on the side with

benders, certainly of the we needto shake it up and be aggressive in our change and -- you know, changing the structural ways in which we do things in this country. klobuchar for into the camp of doing it in a much moe rderate way, although they have pretty liberal voting records. so is it more about tone and style, tam, than it is about bstance at this point >> you know, in a lot of ways, all of the demrac candidates, more or less, agree on the big ideas, and it's, you know, small things arou th edges where they disagree on policy. but they have taken ver different approaches to president trump and tsort of the case that they're making for themselves. some of these candidates are not mentioning trump by name. like, cory booker talks about the president. he doesn talk about trump, he's not attacking trump. cory booker is doing sort of the, you know, we need to heal

america idea, whereas, you know, elizabeth warren certainly went after the president in a way that almost seemed designed to get his attention and to get him to go after her again. so -- >> woodruff: and he goes after her. >> right. and then you have someone like sherrod brown who isn't officially running for president but who is campaigning orst ing in new hampshire this weekend, whatever it is before you're actually a candidate, and he's talking about himself, talking about, you know, valuing rk, and he an klobuchar are both in the category of potential candidates or candidates who are saying, hey, looki'm from the midwest. that blue wall that donald trump knocked down, i'd like to bui it back up again. >> woodruff: speaking of taking on the president, amy, beto o'ourke, who ran and lost to knock off ted cruz, the senator from texas, is having a counter rally while the

president is in el soonight. >> right, and beto o'rourke has set himself up to be int beween those two counties -- inspiring but also unifying. o m not going tmake this ability donald trump, he ran this campaign in texas for th senate. i'm not going to go negative on ted cruz, i'm going to make it about voting for rather than against something. but here he's taking a significant stand against the president, athe president has a rally in el paso, this is a counterrally, and also goes to show yu that beto o'rourke is very serious about his potential 2016 -- 2020 candidacy. >> woodruff: but we now have to have note cards to keep up with all the candidates and the fact there are five women and four men. deeaking of diin the party among democrats, tam, we saw

day what happens in the aftermath of this freshman congresswomano congresswoman ohm minnesota, today you had the democratic leadership in congress reprimanding her and she apol aapologized. this is an important issue about being close to israel. >> this com in the wake of a significant controversy over antisemitism among the organizers of the women's march. in some way the ground was plowed for this conversation. a quote from a statement that adam schiff put out kind of sus up where democrats are on this.

he says, if we don't raise the e arm when members of our own party use anti-semitic language we fo forfeit to criticize whene her party does so. democrats have taken that stance on a lot of issues, scwarmt, #metoo issues, governor ralph northam, the govnor of virginia, democrats want to be able to say we don't think this is right and, so, theyre saying it about their own. >> that's a good point but also goes to show th diversity of the democratic caucus, which the say on one sid a plus -- look at our caucus we're so diverse, we have all the members from so many differentli ous backgrounds and different race and ethnicity -- but the more diverse you get, the harder it is to kee everybody on the same page, especially some of these issues. and the issue of the b.d.s., which is the boycott divest sanction israel movement, has been picking up a lot of steamal

espe on the democratic side, and we saw this came to a head in the senate where you ha a numof democrats voting against a bill that they agreed with in principa principle on cg the president's.yria moves actually, they liked the idea that the president is pulng troops out of sir. i can't what they didn't like about the bill sit included sanction -- is i included sanctions on people who aork with the b.d.s. movement. that shows once a the balancing act democrats have to have between keeping, as you said, their traditional relationship with israel, the jewish community very big,em supporters ofratic candidates, but also a growing group of voters within their caucus, especially younger voters, who see human rights as a very significant issue, and who see israels abusive of human rights, keeping that balance is going to be something that the leadership is going to

be dealing with, not just in the house but also in this presidential cam >> woodruff: that was my last question, is this going to have some sort of lasecting eff is it going to have repercussions inside the campaign? >> you kno i think that the 2020 candidates are going to be asked about this, but whether it remains salient months down the line is not really clearight now. the other thing is there are divides among the americaty jewish commubout how they feel about israel, very big divides that are playing out among democratic lawmakers. woodruff: and you saw that in some of the reaction today as to what was going on. >> yeah. >> woodruff: although some of what the congresswoman had tog say brought her people. >> it's one thing awbt talking about the policy, another thing when it's about making personal attacks. >> woodruff: amy walter, tamera keith, thank you very much. >> you're welcome.

>> woodruff: our reporting and f coverage of a wide rangets and culture have long been a hallmark of the pbs newshour,ng daack to the very earliest days of the program. tonigh are expanding that coverage each week with a new series, "canvas." we'll continue to profile the exciting and emerging work of arassts, writers and creator we always have. but we'll be working to feature even more voices, new talents and provocative ideas on the broadcast and online. we're starting this week withf somee artists and performers who have been honored with oscar nominations this year. jeffrey brown launches our 'canvas' sers with a conversation about one of this year's most-nominated films, "vice," the story of dick and lynne cheney. m i want you to be my v.p. i want you, you'vice. >> brown: part comedy, part tragedy, all raw politics: "vice" is a film for our own politically divided times.

>> different understanding, maybe i can hand some of the more mundane jobs, overseeing bureaucracy, managing military, energy, foreign policy. c that sounds good. >> brown: "vice," rse, is dick cheney. and here we see his rise from yale dropout and wyoming lineman to washington power playertr rdinaire: chief of staff for gerald ford, congressman, secretary of defense under george h.w. bush, halliburton c.e.o. and finally george w. bush's vicpresident. it's a portrait created by director adam mckay. >> we went into it with an open mind and-- >> brown: you did really? >> oh absolutely. the whole idea of the movie wa "who is this guy?" how did he make the decisions that he made. >> brown: mckay, whose last

film, "the big short," took on the 2007 financial crisis,ecakes ret of his own liberal politics. >> my mom is definitely right wing and i told her i said mom maybe don't see this one. >> brown: christian bale, in a remarkable physical transformation, plays cheney,am while adams plays his wife, lynne. >> can you feel it dick? half the room wants to be us, the other half fears us. i know george is next in line, but after that who knows. >> brown: but while recent events and real people are the focus, adams says she approachek itany other film. >> i looked at it as a characteh study anway that the characters evolved from their, you know, early and the way our relationship evolves and mae way that a iage evolves. for me the script was so unique and so individual, i found mylf forgetting and until

started talking about the moviea with the presswe had made something that had a political point of view. >> brown: still, she says, lynne cheney presented a unique challenge. >> people have a lot of opinions about her and about her politics and so stepping aside from that and just really diving into e truth of who she was and where she came from and how-- not who is lynne cheney but who was lynne cheney and how did that create this story that then beme what we know of her today. >> brown: does that mean divorcing yourself from the real lynne cheney, who is still alive, who is out there? >> to some degree. it's always tricky. you know when u're playing someone who is real and alive because everyone i mean even if someone were to play me, it's not the me that you see in fnt of you. it's a curated public persona. you know she's on book and doing interviews. it's not-- i'm not in bed with lynne cheney you know. so i have to kind of figure out

some a different aspect of her rsonality. here's my plan, either you stand up straight and you get your meck straight and you have the courage to become e or i'm gone. >> brown: mckay says he came to see lynne cheney as the lynchpin of the movie. >> a l of people in their hometown, in casper wyoming, to this day still say that whoever lynn vincent would've married would've become president or vice president. so it was hard to ignore that that lynne was rlly the engine wof dick cheney and i agrh i think there's a moment where lynne and dick almost become the sameerson when you really go to that vice presidency. he's totally internalized her ambition and her smarts and they really are the se person. >> brown: critics have praised the acting performance but a number have raised questions about mckay's portrait of cheney

as a man devoid of any conservative beliefs or political ideology beyond the quest for power. >> the question coming into itw was d these people end up in this circumstance where theyn were advocfor torture or you know tweaking the intelligence to invade iraq, which we now know is a fact that that happens, so coming into it, we were open to the idea of who are these people. and in the research we did wedi not find a core ideology. and so there are some people that interpret the actions of cheney through an ideological lens. i just don't agree. i don't see that kind of istency. >> brown: you tell us at the top of the film that it is mostly true and you say, or as true as we could make it, and you say we tried our best. but what does that mean? >> anything we're showing hast been fecked. we're not putting it out there lightly. a but what we'nowledging is there's just a lot about dick cheney you're never going to know. he's a secretive guy.

he kind of prides himself on it. so we just wanted to acknowledge dat matter within the movie the head of the movie and make a little bit of a joke about it. i definitely have a lot of faith in the audience that you can feel the history when it clicky >> brown: mcid he spoke with his actors during filming about the partisan bwback the movie would likely face in today's political climate. amy adams adds this. >> it's unusual for me. what's interesting is that i have close family on both-- i have close family on one side of the aisle and close family on the other. these are conversations that we have around the table all the time and it's something that i think is really important. and so whether or not i talk about it a lot outside of my own dinner table i-- i think the conversations are going to move us forward so i'm happy to be a part of something that again created the conversation. >> brown: "vice" competes for best picture and seven other oscars at the upcoming academy awards. for the pbs newshour, i'm

jeffrey brown in los angeles.>> oodruff: in our national conversations on politics, race or entertainment, we often group people together, but when we use shorthand like african-american voters, we often overlook the diverse viewpoints of any given erica dawson is a poet and professor; and in her humble opinion, it's tith to recognize individual, not just the group. e> last fall, i was fortunate to travel all over tcountry to provide my new book when rap spoke straight to god. i know i lovhe few tings more than meeting new people, but i was surprised when alost after every reading i was met with the same question and and again. it struck me. so i wrote a poe try towns. so i did this reading the other day, riht? after, in the q&a, somebody raised their hand and asatked,

s it like for you to be tasked with the job of speaking for the black experience? as if there's only one, like somewhere there's a single stacr of or a single story spun on a single tongue.he the night, somebody asked, i black poetry back? we penned one verse and it got lost at seor slipped inside a big old crack inside a big od effort and then we returned like there was yay chaos, like here we are and it's us, and we're feeling concerned and all political. we never went way. we don't only deserb the stage in tumultuous times, we aren't just rage, we're not a fla torch, a blaze and proud to save your ways to have the world, a guide to help you gauge what's rights and wrong. look at the page. i lovode to i love phyllis wheatley's hymn to evening. langston hhes does more

than sing america. he hears the dim, sweet-song of the rain. let it pour and flow like currents. teach that in clsrooms, too. learn every verse. lift every voice off of the flat white page. get up. rehearse. recite. remember every phrase. black poets aren't a passing phase. ask me about the part where i say the ocean always finds it way. >> woodruff: on the newshour online right now, we look at how social media bots spread viral, pottical memes after presid trump's state of the union address last week, and why users share them. read more on o web site, pbs.org/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. join us online and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been prided by:

babbel. a language app that teaches real-life conversations in a new language, like spanish, french, german, italian, and more. el's 10-15 minute lesson are available as an app, or online. more infortion on babbel.com. >> and by the alfred p. sloan foundation. supporting science, technology, and improved economic performance and financial literacy in the 21st century. >> supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. mmitted to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org >> and with the ongoing suort of these institutions

or this program was made possible by the coion for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

hello, everyone, and welcome to "amanpour & co." here's what's coming u yes, it is spike lee, the celebrated director is nominated for best director and best picture for "blackkklansman." he'll join me on set. plus an exciting new literary voice, leila slimani on her deep explorations of modern womanhood. and the scottis first minister nicola sturgeon on how her country is being betrayed by brexit and how scotland will go for second referendum on their own indepeence. unor