captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> nawaz: good evening. i'm amna nawaz. judy woodruff is away. on the newshour tonight: attorney general william barr fails to appear before the house judiciary committee, and risks being held in contempt of congress. then, a disturbing report from the pent the number of reported sexual assault cases in the military. and, the ride-sharing service uber provides millions of trips per day, which translate into millions of users' data sent to' the coteam in san francisco. >> you have a bit of this image of silicon valley, that somebody's sitting there, you know, thinking of a brilliant idea, you know, alone in a room. but actually, the real innovation that happens, especially for the largetech firms, is just lots and lots and lots of incremental innovation. >> nawazall that and more, onto

night's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ >> kevin. >> kevin! >> kevin? >> advice for life. life well-planned. learn more at raymondjames.com. >> bnsf railway.ll >> consumer ar. >> babbel. a language program that teaches spanish, french, italian, german, and more. >> and by the alfred p. sloan. foundati supporting science, technology,

and improved economic performance and financial literacy in the 21st century. or and with the ongoing su of these institutions: and individuals. >> this program was madeco possible by thoration for public broadcasting. and contributions to your p station from viewers like you. thank you. >> nawaz: a fight over attorney general william barr is heating up tonight. he boycotted a house judiciary hearing today on the russia report, in a dispute over the questioning. majority democrats left a prop chicken in the witness chair. and, they threatened to hold barr in contempt.

house speaker nancy pelosi cited barr's pvious denial that he knew his summary of the report had bothered the special counsel's team. >> the attorney general of the united states not telling the truth to the united states congress-- that's a crime. if anybody else did that, it would be considered a crime. nobody is above the law, not thn presof the united states, and not the attorney general. >> nawaz: in turn, the department of justice called pelosi's allegation "reckless, irresponsible, and false." we'll get into the details of all of this, after the news summary. conservative commentator stephen moore withdrew today as a potential nominee to the federal reserve board. president trump announced it et.a t a short time earlier, moore had told bloomberg news that the president was "full speed ahead" with the nomation. moore had lost republican support in the senate over pasta writings disng women. the senate today upheld president trump's veto of a asure to end the u.s. military

role in yemen's civil war. the legislation would have halted logistical and intelligence assisnce for a saudi-led coalition. that force is fighting rebels aligned with iran. in venezuela meanwhile,es ident nicolas maduro declared today that he h l the militaryalty, and he urged soldiers to stop those he called "traitors." the country's military school hosted an early-morning ceremony for maduro, after commanders had ignored opposition calls to revolt this week. >> ( translated ): the troops were not afraid to say "no" to the traitors, "no" to the participants of an attempted coup. what path were the coup plotters attempting? a civil war. that is the alternative they propose to venezuela, to assault th that cannot be the path, military brothers. nawaz: meanwhile, in washington, president trump accused maduro of "brutal repression," and reiterated his support for the opposition led. by juan guia a huge crowd, perhaps hundreds of thousands, protested in sudag

today, demandihat the military hand over power to civilians. marchers waved flags and chanted in khartoum, adding to the pressure on military leaders. their negotiations with civilian opposition figures have deadlocked. dudan's armed forces ous president omar al-bashir last month. israel brily came to a standstill today, for holocaust remembrance day, mourning the simillion jews killed in t nazi genocide., nationwidestrians stood silent and cars pulled over on major highways, as sirens blared for two minutes. later, prime minister benjamin netanyahu led a ceremony at the iayad vashem holocaust mem officials in eastern india rad today to evacuate more than one million people as a tropical cyclone headed toward the coast. the storm swept across the bay of bengal, and is expectedl o make landfiday, with sustained winds of 124 miles an hour. conditions onshore were worsening byhe hour, with thousands of local people and tourists taking buses, trucks and trns to get out of harm's

way. >> ( translated ): we are evacuating because of the cycle. we were going to stay till saturday, but now we are leaving. i came here with children, so it was a bit problematic. azw we are going. >> nforecasters warn this could be the worst storm to strike eastern india in 20 years, when a cyclone killed some 10,000 people. back in this country, the u.s. interior department is moving to rslax oil drilling rules put in place after the offshore spill in u.s. history. they took effect aftat b.p.'s "dee horizon" rig exploded in 2010.pl it killed 11 p and spewed more than three million barrels of crude into the gulf of mexico. the trump administration says it wants to ease regulatory burdens. environmental oups fiercely oppose the changes. e administration has als issued a rule to protect health care workers if they refuse to ouovide abortions and other services on religrounds. the department of health and human services says it reaffirms existing "conscience protection"

laws. most of those laws address procedures such as abortion, sterilization and assisted suicide. the mayor of baltimore, catherine pugh, resigned today, amid investigations into sales of her children's books. at issue is whether the sales disguised kickbacks from companies doing business with the city. pugh had been on leave for a month, citing ill health her lawyer read her resignation statement. >> "i am sorry for the harm that i have caused to the image of the city of baltimore, and the credibility of the office of the mayor. baltimore deserves a mayor whoca move our great city forward." >> nawaz: the city's acting mayor will succeed pugh. s coloraator michael bennet announced today he is joining e crowded 2020 democrati presidential field. the two-term senator is 54. he becomes the 21sdemocrat in the race. the delayed his announcem while he was treated for neostate cancer.

facebook today b"nation of islam" leader louis farrakhan, far-right firebrand alex jones and several ot extremists. their accounts are permanently barred from facebook's main seice, and instagram. the company says they violated its policy against promoting dangerous individuals an organizations. and on wall street today, oil prices sagged, and helped push the broader maet lower. the dow jones industrial average lost 122 points to ct 26,307. nde nasdaq fell 12 points, the s&p 500 slipped six. and, t world video game hall of fame has welcomed four new inductees. they includemortal kombat," the arcade fighting game that triggered congressional hearings over its violence back in 1993. also inducted today: "super mario kart," "colossal cave adventure," and "microsoft solitaire." the museum is in rochester, new york, for those that want to

visit. still to come on the newshour: attorney general william barr refuseto testify to the house judiciary committee. a rise in the number of reported sexual assault cases in the u.s. military. aking sense" of how theng ride-shaervice uber uses data from its app. and, much more. >> nawaz: the attorney general's handling of the mueller report and refusing to appear before the u.s. house has sparked a fierce politic but what legal and constitutional questions do his actions raise? m joined by david rivkin. he served at the justice oudepartment and the white counsel's office in the reagan and george h.w. bush administrations. and, former acting solicitor general neal katyal. he drafted the special counsel regulations under which mueller was appointed. welcome to both of you david rivkin, i want to start with you. you told my colleague earlier au believe coming is overstepping itshority right

now, but the mueller letter that was sent to barr made clear that there were concerns over how barr was summarizing the report and there's a conflict there.r who otan congress can get to the bottom of that? >> congress is entitled to form a policy judgment as far as who is entitled to make a fal decision about the presentation of the mueller report under regulations that neal put in place. thathe department of justice submitted a report to the attorney general. the attorney general has beenly incredort right and fort coming in producing the full report. i wish we could take partisanship and mud slinging off the table if somebody disagrees, let's have a serious discussion about it. everamerican canook at the summary and the redacted report. there's no reason to get into

the mud slinging. >> mueller himself raised concerns about the sum the way bar was presenting the findings. isn't congress within their findings -- >> it's not clear given theon conversabetween mr. mueller and barr what's transpired. i spent nine glorious years in the executive branch. there are always cleangial disputes along senior officials not involving malfeasance or politicization. so if there were some disagreement between mr. mueller and mr. barr, happens every day and i'm suren congress as well. >> the letter froiam sp counsel robert mueller to barr was sent in march. on april 9 thl attorney gene testified before the house appropriations committee and hae thchange with congressman charlie crist. >> reports have eerged recently, general, that members teof the special counsel'm are frustrated at some level with the limited information included in your march 24t

march 24th letter, that it does not dequately or accurately, necessarily, portray the reports' findings. do you know what they're refereing with that? >> no, i don't. i think -- i suspect that they teprobably wan you know, more put out. >> nawaz: speaker pelosi accused barr of lying to congress, breaking the law enforcement could there be consequences to the attorney genel as a result of the statements? >> there will be consequences, definitely. first of all, i disagree with my friend david entirely. the ideahat the mueller letter was something that happens all the time, not. i served in two administrations high in the justice department. i never saw anything even close to this. mueller didn't have, like, some minor disagreement, he went to paper. he outlined his concerns and even quoted the end of the special counsel regisulation whh alk about the need for

public disclosure to congress. so i think my friends also tely wrong about the special counsel regulations being all about an executive branch investigation. the whole idea of them was to investigate and, particularly if you're talking about ting president who can't be indicted, to provide that fact finding to ngress. now, you asked about pelosi's comments and barr's testiny, and i 100% agree with the spirit of your question, which is there's no way to watch that interchange and to watch that barr said yesterd and at mueller said in his september, in histh march etter and conclude anything but that the attorney general was misleading the american public. maybe it was unintentional. i don't know. t this is not the standard of an attorney general from either party in our lifetimes. this is despicable behavior. >> david rivkin, let me ask you about something else the attorney general said in yesterday's previous hearing. said the president can

basically terminate any investigation if he believes its baseless. senator schumer sent aetter today to the attorney general and said this -- this was the firstime i heard you articulate as attorney general this starkly extremist view. if tse truce are trly your views, you do not deserve to be attorney general. does a view like that, saying the presidt is free to terminate whatever investigation he likes, does that undermine attorney general barr epees ability to do his job? >> not at all. let me associate myself with very bar's view. in our constutional system, e president is the chief law enforcement officer. the president can initiate, cane inate or can impact the course of any investigation as a constitutional matter. as a policy matter, as a matter i political property, it would not be tweezeor f a president to do that. but it is not the same as constitutional justice. we're going to have a ser you dialogue about t issues. but it's regrettable mr. schumes

it to put forward thoseti alles. i do not believe the notion of lying by attorney general br the the question is whether somr meof mueller's staff were disenchanted. he said no based upon the fact he has not spoken with memrs and mr. mueller has not told him that. >> nawaz: at that te he hadletter in which mr. mueller and his teams said we have concerns about the way you summarized the report. >> these are concerns about presentation, the pace of release, important to have entertainment release of a summary of a report. >> that's not what our letter said. >> it's regrettable a unworthy of what we're dealing with to throw those kinds of false accusations around. >> nawaz: neal, go ahed,ad. dahat's not what the letter says. the letter says because of barr's non-summary-summary hete distthings and the public was left with the wrong imrerks and your whole complairks which

i just heard by astounds me which is, o, the question was about the staff, anthat boomerangs on you because barr's explanation yesterday was i thought the letter was written by tstaff. so by your reasoning, he would have had to disclose that. i understand you're a great ichyer but the lengths to wh you are going to defend this attorney general who will go down in history as one of th most misleading people to hold that office, maybe the most, is very sad. >> can i just make one point? what is the point -- think about the plausibility of someone who's a distinguished public servant, a good friend who misleads the america public for a couple of weeks knowing full well that they will releease th entire report with tiny redocks, how does it make any see, forget morality, a matter of pragaztism -- >> n a few seconds left, there are a number of ways abo

which the attorney general answered questions in testimony people thought he was evave and parsing words, has he loster credibility to as a chief law enforcement officer? >> not at all. the fact we are fighting now over unusual format for his testimony to the house judiciary committee where for the first time in history you're going to have a 30-minute discourse byco outsidnsel doing court drama-style inquisition tell us how far we've gone down this ro as a country. >> nawaz: neal katyal, what do you see happening next? >> i think there are going be these 30-uminutestions. barr will have to testify and face them just as in waterwater -- whitewater, nas iran contra, it's all going to happen. and if barr plays chicken, as he has been, he's going to get

subpoenas, he's going to be held in contempt, and i think there will be otheronsequences as well. the democrats will cut out funding for the office to have the attorney gneral and -- office of the attorney general and target this lawless attorney general. >> nawaaz: nealyal, david rivkin, thank you very much for being here. >> good to be with you. thank you. >> nawaz: as our society continues to struggle with thel issue of sexrassment and assault, the u.s. armed forces show they are also not immune to these crimes. as william braham now reports, a new study released from the department of defense today shows a troubling rise in assaults. >> brangham: the study from the pentagon today says that reports of sexual assault went up by 13% last year, but indicated the problem could be far rse. this rise comes after numerous efforts by the different military branches to stem these

attacks.e udy, which was based on the pentagon's most recent anonymous survey, indicated that more than 20,000 service members-- mostly female-- experienced some kind of sexual assault last year. the greatest reported increase were assaults against female serve members aged 17 to 24, and they were most often attacked by similarly-ranked rvice members. among the branches, the marine corps saw the biggest increase, with a 23% rise. and overall, only a third of the alleged victims filed a formal report. joining me now idemocratic senator tammy duckworth of. illino she is a former lieutenant s lonel in the army, she s the armed services committee. senator duckworth, thank you very much for being here. i wonder if you could just give initial reaction when you saw these numbers. >> well, my initial reaction is that they shwed both success and failure on the part of the military leadership. i think that the numbers reflect militarying that t

has been increasing so more troops can identify what actually is sexual assault. so i think that their responses to the survey that increased --i that 5,0creased actually shows that the troops better understand what is sexualul as so that's a success on the military's side that their educational program is working. what really bothers me, though, is that the percentage who se sexualreported the assaults to their leadership, to the mechanismshat the military has put into place remains at a very low 30%, and that shows a very still distrust in the ranks of the military establishment er reporting and thre's a sense, perhaps, maybe they don't trust they will get jutice they don't trust they won't be retaliated against. whatever iis, there's still a problem. so the education piece is reflectein the increase in numbers showing more people understand what sexual assault is but stillhe same w percentage are actually reporting it and trying to seek justice and that is a problem. >> let's talk a little bit about that. if a victim of a sexual assault

in the armed services feels that they areot going to get justice or, as you say, they're going to get retaliated against, sw do wetrengthen that system so that people who are legitimate victims of crimes feel they will get justice andus actually gettice. >> well, this is where as a member of the senate armed rmed services committee and someone who worked on tissue a long time, i wonder if it's time for us to take control.e litary leaders have been saying time and time again, give us more times, we've put in more ways for victims of sexual csault to be able to report, that we're going ange the culture. i think they have beepartially been successful with changing the culture and successful atin educpeople so they know what sexual assault is especially among the younger troops burk they have not been successful in terms the establishment and perhaps it is time to fully remove the investigation, the crie minal justrt out from under the command of the military leadership in that come mand

structen it comes to sexual crimes. >> i know that's been a subject of great debate amongst the service members and other members of the senate and house have said we can't simply have a victim reporting to her directca supervise e that person is often potentially a witness to or part of the culture in that crime occurred, but there's great resistance on the military'sart to taking the direct leaders out of that process. >> right, because there are -- ook, i was a military commander, i was introl of my unit and i want the abity to instill discipline. the problem is the mechanisms we have put in place including allowing victims to report through a separate change, not necessarily their own cain of command, but there's still a problem because even though more victims recognize that were still victims of sexual assault at least increase in numnobers, a percentage of those who actually used the system, the new system in place has not increased, so we've got to fix

that. >> more broadly, i'm curious what you do you think this is increased problem of sexual assault, is this ait mily problem or is this a civilian problem? because as we were just reporting, a large number of the victims and the perpetrators are very young people. they are coming right out of their homes andi cties and lives and are only in the service force a year or two, maybe jut enlisted. so if this a civilian issue or a military issue? >> i thim this is a cobination of cultural issues. remember, what i want to maksue is i don't know that the number of sexual assaults in the eilitary has increased. what thisport says is that more people worn asked were you victims of an assault reported that they were, and i think this is more an educational piece, where more of them understand what sexual assault is, wo maybe two or three years ago would have said, oh, i was drunk and had sex with someone i didn't want to have sex with and

passt out. norethey understand two or years later, no, that was sexual assault, you did not give consent. i don't know if the number of increase has been more sexualul as in the military, i think more people understand and are acknowledging they we victims. however, the number who reported through the chain of command that this is a problem stll remains very low, so the report shows me that there's a lack of confidence in the system for reporting and prosecuting these crimes. this is important because what it shows is there's also a systemic and culture issue in our nation with these young people that they're coming in and i think if you had the same kind of education system in college campuses, for example, you would probably see a larger number of people say, hey, you knowi was a sexual assault victim myself who maybe right now are colege freshmen and who would not have recognized the tuation they were in. >> i wonder, senator, how much you think, if there were more and more women in senior

leadership roles in the ditherent branches, wouldt help address this? >> oh, very much so andi i thnk you're seeing some those changes happening now. with more women in command positions, especially as women enter in combat fields acrossit the miy, you're going to see a real better understanding and their handling of this issue. this is from my own experience when i was a company commander and i s the only female commissioned officer in my , forlion for a long ti example, and i actually had young women from other uni come to me and say, ma'am, i want to report something to you, you're the only female officer i know and i'm going to come to you because i didn't trust to report or ask for help through c my ownain of command. so more women in leadership across the military will help the situation. >> tamera keith, thank you so much for your time. >> thank you. 's

>> nawaz: ubmpending initial public offering, which is expected to be one of the largest ever, possibly creatingm an initiket value of close to $90 billion. our economics correspondent pa solman recently visited the headquarters of the ride- hailing service platform, to better understand what happens when the san franc eco company punomists-- and their close analysis of data-- in the driver's seat. it's the latest installment of "making sense," our weekly economics series. ll we're in 65 countries, and we see about 15 n trips a day. >> reporter: uber: these days, literally all over the map. >> you'll see the biggest circles are where we see thepe most trips hapng on our platform. >> reporter: uber data scientist cory kendrick can track every ride, worldwide-- and there have >> about ten billion trips since we started. >> reporter: here at uber's san francisco headquarte, the resulting data is analyzed by a team of in-house economists. >> my guess is, ov aall, between 30 ph.d's. >> reporter: jonathan hall is uber's chief economist. his mission? >> writing papers, publishing them, and trying to establish ground truth on tric issues like the value of flexibility to

the workforce. >> rorter: of course, uber's economists nd to protect its bottom line, help it stay ahead of the competition. but uber presents an unusual opportunity, the realization of many an economist's dream: perfect markets. case in point: surge pricing. >> economists really don't like the idea of the price not being able to change when supply or demand changes. we have this algorithm, called the surge algorithm, whose purpose is to identify imbalances between supply and demand, and solve them in a way that maximizes the efficiency of the market. >> reporter: so when more passengers demand rides, prices go up, to entice more drivers tt suppm. or, take uber's controversial, oft-criticized labor model: >> the drivers are independent contractors who can choose to work whenever they want or wherever they want, withll essentno restrictions. and that's very exciting to an economist who believes in open markets and competition. >> reporter: so you are thewh

embodiment oat economists would like an economy to look like?>> laughs ) i think we strive for th. >> reporter: so hall's economics auad is mining the vast d collected by the uber app to wederstand driver and passenger behavior, and to it. >> women, on average, tend to do fewer trips per unit of time than men. >> reporter: one study analyzed data from over a million drivers to find a 7% gender earnings gap. >> we know it's not discrimination. there's a formula that determines how much they make. >> reporter: stanford economist paul oyer, who did the research with uber, ss women make less for a less obvious reason. >> they drive slower. so, the faster you drive, the more revenue you're generating, because you're getting more rides in per hour. >> reporter: and since men give more rides, they get more experience. >> so if you go out and get in an uber right now, and there's a man driving, and then you go out and get in an uber with a woman driving, on average, that man

will havhad more experience driving for uber, and thereforee he will be bat it and he will earn more money. >> reporter: while we were there, the uber team explored one possible tweak. >> having this per-mile component essentially mechanically rewards for speed. what this intervention considers is wghting less heavily on this per-mile and more heavily on this per-minute.>> eporter: data is the driver. about tipping, for example, introduced in 2017? >> we consider the rollout of tipping to be an important experiment and opportunity that, to get it right. >> reporter: does this make people more generous towards drivers, or less inclined to use uber, or both? >> both. >> reporter: but, using the key metric of economics,nghe cost of loustomers was outweighed by the benefit of more motivated drivers.

stanford economist susan athey says many tech comnies employ economists to run the numbers. t you have a bit of this image of silicon vallet somebody's sitting there thinking of a brilliant idea alone in a room, and then putting it into practice. but actually, the real innovation that happens, especially for the large tech firms, is just lots and lots and lots of incremental innovation. randomized controlled tests, tousands of them a year, to improve algorithms, to try to improve systems to make them better. >> reporter: "better," which hetimately means more profitable, whconsumers are on board or not. jonathan hall and i took an er with hayley mcgonigle, who says the algorithms keep her busy... haily busy. >> i think a lot of the improvements lately have b keep drivers constantly busy. anytime you don't have a rider, that's of course lost wages, ght there. >> reporter: mcgonigle was provided by uber. she works morning rush hours,

says she makes $35 an hour. but for some san francisco drivers, the economist's dre can be the worker's nightmare. >> they've been decreasing how much money they pay to drivers, year after year. >> reporter: mostafalad hasbe driving for almost four years. >> instead of working like 40 hours a week, i'm forced to work at least 60, 70, 80 a week in order to pay my bills and pay all my expenses. >> reporter: bay area drivers for uber and rival lyft have been protesting low pay with no befits. meanwhile, the i.p.o.s of both companies will make many of their actual employees rich. >> there's a lot of frustration out there. >> reporter: michael martinez drives for uber about 20 to 25 hours a week. >> if you include all of theco s, and you also include the constant rate cuts that have been going on over the last four years i've been doing it, i'm probably getting pretty close t just whan francisco's minimum wage would be, to be

honest. >> reporter: uber says there have been rate changn both directions. but that doesn't mitigate the impotence drivers feel in the hands of a faceless, forever- tweaked algorithm. >> whenever they do any changes, we are forced to accept and agree to their terms in order to go online and start driving. >> we have absolutely no power whatsoever. uber does as they will, and we have no choice but to accept it. >> reporter: but despite their gripes, both maklad and martinez continue to drive. >> the main draw is the flexibility. >> to be honest, it's ly job that i can do while going to school. >> reporter: unsurprisingly, uber economists like libby mishkin studied the value of flexibility. >> drivers worked more as a hsult of this flexibility, because they done to commit to doing something that they might not want to do later. ey can just choose to wo whenever they feel like it. >> reporter: the economists also use data to answer criticsn a

myriad of issues, like how uber increases congestion in cities like new york, where the map is lit up with uber rides. >> there's reall evidence. and so one thing we're trying to do is make sure there's more rigorous research out there,ng tro get at this question. it's really hard to study for a number of reasons. one is that there has bemi a lot of ecogrowth in the last ten years, and there's more traffic when that happens.or >> rr: suppose you did a study and found that uber was the main contributor to congestion problems in new york, san francisco, and elsewhere. wouldn't you be constrained from telling everybody that that's the case? >> congestion's bad for uber, too. our cars will be going slower. we also have bikes and scooters, which are new modes on the platform that are trying to get people out of cars and into active modes. >> reporter: in short, more tweaking, with the da from

mega-millions of customers leading the way. and that's the new world of economics, says susan athey. >> right now, it's the googles the amazons and the uber but it's going to be the banks and it's going to be other manufacturing firms. so really, a parts of the economy are going to digitize and start optimizing in a more scientific way. eventually, it will all get routine. >> reporter: because of the information you and i provide. from san francisco, this is pbs newshour business and economics correspondent paul solman. nawaz: after taking a month of leave tied to a personal scandal tarnishing the city's image, former baltimore mayor catherine pugh finally resigneda the city, as the "baltimore sun" put it, has long dealt with a history of wrongdoing by politicians. all of that on top of s problems with crime, violence and a lack of economic

opportunity. we look at this moment now and whether presents a larger opportunity. alec macgillis is a reporter for propublica, who is a longtime resident of the city. he wrote about the city's underlying concerns extensively, in a piece called "the tragedy of baltimore." it was published by the "new york times" and propublica. alec macgillis, welcome to the "newshour" let's just start with this moment right now. how important is it for baltimore that catherine pugh is gone? >> it's very important. there's a real sense of relief here in town. it was a very strange few weeks here to have a mayor who was on leave, completely visible, no k one realew where she was, completely in limbo, no one kne what was going to happen, so now we finally have some real clarity. we know who our mayor is for the next year. the city council president has stepped up to be mayor, andwe l have an election next year to give us a new permanent mayor. so there's real chance for kind of a treasure from start and reckoning n.w

>> you're a resident and have been covering this a long time. what is the path forward for baltimore? >> the path forward takes twoen diff tacks right now, i'd say. one is there has to be further reckoning with what ned in this particular scandal, the scandal involving these children's books that were being sold by the mayor to all sots of people with -- companies with interests in city government, all exposed, thanks to greatby reporting he baltimore sun, lnd there needs to be ful accountability for agevolved in dae sc it's important to keep in mind catherine pugh was elected with the support of a loof big business interests here in town, and, so, there needs to be an accountability for all those folks who supported her and who were involved in the scandal. more broghadly, ththere needs to be a competitive, healthy election next year thata gives us a cnce to find new leadership for this city, the kind of adership that we should have gotten three years ago in the 2016 election following all t protest and

crisis after freddie gray's death. that was a key moment we could have moved forward and rebuilt the city, and the city missed that opportunity. three or four years later, we'll get the opportunity again. >> nawaz: one state sen tor sae entire episode has been hurtful for the city. te me how deea hole the city is in now. how do they gain back trust? >> what's happened more broadly in the city in the last few years is general inunravelling of government and ordinance. baltimore was actually headed in a good dt rection nothat long ago. the homicide rate had dropped quite a bitarly tis decade. population was even growing teain which was qui remarkable, but then following the death of freddie gray from injuries and police custody and all the unrest that followed that, theally kind of fell apart in the city. the homicide rate surged to jusi

recordbr levels. we've had this massive police corruption cairks oneice commissioner after another being turned in and out of office and we had cll and the rest of the government going all the way up to goverr, governor hogan, failing to respond to this real crisis of governance. 'vso that's what weseen in the city. it's not a general economic collapse. it's a breakdown of order andrn goce. it has been quite terrifying and sad to behold, and thehope now is we've kind of hit bottom in a sense and can have this ment of clarity and real recd koning rebuild from here. >> nawaz: hopefully better days for the people of baltimore. alec macgillbe, thanks for g with us tonight. >> thank you. >> nawaz: the newly-elected president of ukraine has been sparring politically with ruinian president vladimir p over the fate of those trapped by a war.

since april 2014, russian-backed separatists have been fighting the ukrainian military in two districts along the ukraine- russia border. the war has killed more than 3,000 people. and as nick schifrin reports, civilians are trapped in the middle, and the most affected victims are children. ( hammering ) rin: along the front lines in eastern ukraine, mattresses become shields from shrapnel. tand the only safe space basement. w ann ten-year-old oleg is cold and scared, his grandmother aleksandra sings him an d lullaby, to distract him from the war above. ♪ don't lie down on the edge of the bed ♪ >> schifrin: but there is no escaping this war.or

on and off five years, after the sun goes down, ukrainian soldiers fight these russian- backed separatists. the u.s. and ukrainelame russia for giving them funding and logistics. at one point, russian soldiers invaded eastern ukraine. today, the front lines are. froz and the film, "the distantin barkg of dogs," shows how residents are caught in the middle, and children can suffer the most. it was directed and filmed byt. simon wilmon >> children like oleg, and oleg himself also, has been forced to grow up waivtoo fast. he in a place where he's now able to tell, by the sound of mortars, roughly how far they are away. and no child should have to be able to do that. >> schifrin: it wasn't always that way. their village runs along a stream where oleg and his cousin yarik grew up swimming. a thre best friends, and evenin on the front, boys find time to be boys.

but at school, the camera lingers on oleg's face as classmates talk about what to do if they find mines. elementary school students practice escaping to the school basement. r d oleg gets caught out of the house too late, afe nightly shelling begins. it wasverwhelming and scary, he told us in an interview earlier this year. >> ( transled ): each time we went to the basement, i was afraid. i was scared that shells would fall somewhere near. was hoping that our house and school would remain unharmed. it was very scary to me. i was worried for everyone in my family. ( making gun sounds ) >> schifrin: as ti goes on,it especially whis older friend kostya, oleg's innocence a aporates. he pretends to be ldier. when the kids are in an old industrial warehouse, they're fascinated by the tools of war.

and oleg beginto lose his fear... not for the better. anslated ): we're men we have to be able to endure everything. like fear. and everything else. >> one of the very severe efcts it has on them psychologicay, is that they t desensitized, and that might lead to depression in a lot of cases. that kind of overload of fear i think makes them witwithin emselves, and lose that interest in life and lose that appeti for life. >> schifrin: that's what oleg's grandmother says she tried to shield him from. >> ( translated ): we need to do everything we can to make sure they're not broken by this war. we have to teach them, help them.

d we try our best to raise our children so they will pay less attention to what's happening. but it's very hard when you live under stress every day, all the time, it makes you crazy. we are just trying to protect our children. >> schifrin: the conflict hassp t many families. but for oleg and alexsandra, it has helped provideutual protection. >> it's not only the bad. there's also the good and theau ful in the film, and that is the relationship between oleg and alexsandra. they lean upon each other and they feed each other strength, so they can both get by. it's a mutual dependency. >> ( translated ): we support each other. and when he sees that i am stressed and panicking, he always finds the words that calm me and that support me. so we support each other, and that's why it's easiers tosu rvive. >> schifrin:nd she helps him maintain his humanity. toward the end of the film, egged on by kostya, oleg shoot a frog with a b.b. g, for no reason.

( gunfire ) >> schifrin: his grandmother tries toeadjust his moral compass. >): one shouldn't take weapons into one's hands. never do that again. later on you may be tempted to take a real gun intohands. >> oleg is a unique kid, very lucky kid, no matter wha because he has alexsandra. and one of the reasons why he's not traumatized to a more severe degree is that he has alexandr and that he does everything right to take care of him. >> ( translated ): you shouldn't leave me, ever. >> ( translated ): oh, oleg.t i woen think about it. >> schifrin: the last scene shows the two of them looking out over the valley, and suggests there is hope for the future. oleg says he wants to be a chef. but during the credits, aleksandra films on her cell phone as the bombs erupt in the

distance. >> the reason why i took the last clip is to say, "listen, people, no matter how strong these peop are, it's still a conflict that's raging. it's still claiming civilian live we need to be looking at this."t >> schifrithis day, oleg, yarik, and alexsdra are still living along the front, still suffering the trauma of living, in the middle of war. for the pb newshour, i'm nick schifrin. >> nawaz: the narrative of native american life has taken many shapes, often with a focus on defeat and tragedy. but aseffrey brown tells us, a new work of history and rerertage urges us to see a complex and living culture. part of our "canvas" series on arts and culture. >> brown: december 29, 1890.

u.s. army soldiers killed more than 150 lakota indians, perhaps even twice that many, more than half of them women and ce ldren. unded knee massacre marked the end of the war against the plains indians, and more broadly, became a symbol of the end of an entire culture. bo the number one story, the dominant narrative american indian people is that we were once great, and we are great no more. and if there's a history written about us, history is only that we endured, and maybe somehow survived. and nowhere in those accounts does it suggest that we are actors in our own lives. >> brown: david treuer, an ojibwe, grew up onhe leech lake reservation in northern minnesota. his mother, a native, who became a lawyer and tribal urt judge. his father, a jewish immigrant who'd escape the hol and taught on the reservation. in college in the 1980s, he read dee brown's "bury my heart at wounded knee," first published in 1970, a best-selling and

hugely infential book on american indian history. >> on one hand, when i r, d it in collewas incredibly happy to be noticed in a book. a book was concerned about me, and my life and my tribe, my family, indirectly. and so i felt elevated, and i felt respected. and on the other hand, i felt completely silenced and gagged. >> brown: because? >> because on the very first page of that book, h something to the effect of, "i start in 1860 and i end in 1890 at the maacre at wounded knee," and now i'm quoting, "where the culture and civilization of the american indian was destroyed," full stop. >> brown: right. "the end." >> the end. >> brown: now, treuer, author ok five previous including four novels, has written "the m artbeat of wounded knee: native america f90 to the present," telling the story of a changing and living in culture. >> i think we often get ourselves wrong. growing up, i kind of bought that story about us, too. i saw the place i -ps from as a ce, where nothing happened-- nothing good, anyway,

and i couldn't wait toouet to ge i bought that story, too, for a period of my life. this book is about my attempt to try and see my own life differently, to see the life of people i love differently, and to provide an alternative for us, as well. so it's not just for non-native people. it's for native people, too. >> brown: did you know the history yourself? owas it something you had discover? >> some. i don't start any project knowing everything. i start every project because i know next to nothing. but i knew where to look, and i knew who to talk to. and i get asked often, surprisingly, questions like, "well, what's native american life like?" and my response is, "well, what's white life like?" you can't answer it, it's an impossible question to answer. and my point is, always, theg 's no such ths "native american life," there's only "native american lives." and that's one thing, at least, that i hope the book communicates, is the radical diversity-- we had diversity fore europeans came here. we kept it. >> brown: astounding diversity,

right? >> right. and we kept it during theon process of cation, and we have it today. >> brown: treuer tells of reservation life and urban migration, economic change and political movements, aiming for a more one example: the forced removalf oung natives from their a homes end boarding schools. ag kids were prevented from speaking their lan. they were punished for practicing their religions, they were forcibly christianized. those things were painful. on the other hand, you took al those native kids from all these different tribes spread across the country, you shoved them ine school tog and these kids formed relationships and friendships, romantic relationshs, networks, and then they carried those out into the world when they left school. so if you told the story ofdi bo schools as only a tragedy, well, you would miss quite a bit. you'd miss lot. so yeah, i'm not interested in the tragic narrative. i'm not interested in the story of hope.

i'm interested in the story of complexity and depth. >> brown: why is that the narrative? why does that continue? >> i think it's a way of dealing with national guilt. i think, you know, america always takes her own temperature by looking at what it thinks of as the native american corpse. but the fact is, we're still alive, and we're doing much mori than suf. in many ways, native lives are hard. we suffer from access to health, to education, to capital, to credit, to power. so all those things are real, probler sure. but, you know, we're more than just a sum of a number of conditions. we're more than just a collection of problems. but people don't really tune into that all that often. >> brown: there are ices emerging to tell their own native american stories, including writers tommy orange and mary kathryn nagle, recently profiled on the news treur ends his book with a chapter tied "digital indians," and with us, raised recent political progress, such as the election of the first two

native american women to congress, including sharice davis of kansas. >> someone asked me recently if sharice davis was proof that there was hope for native people. and i said, sure, it's good for native people, but i'm more excited for all the people of kansas. she, as a native american woman, understands what it means to be on the pointy end of policy. she knows what structural inequality does a community, and to people, as a native american woman. let'face it, middle american many millions of americans living in what coastal peopl think of as fly-over states? increasingly suffer from the same problems. who better to lead middle america than a native american woman? so i'm not just happy for native people, i'm happy for kansans. i think they're lucky to have her. >> brown: okay, "the heartbeat of wounded knee." david treuer, thank you very much. >> thank you very much. >> nawaz: frank rich is a writer and producer whose career taken

him from the "new york times," as theater critic, to hbo, as executive producer of "veep," now its in final season. in tonight's "brief but spectacular," rich looks back on his life in the arts. >> i grew up in washington, d.c. the theater became a kind of obsessive passion for me, as an escape, i think, from a childhood i wanted to escape from. ( claps >> when i was growing up eit was the ta of what we now think of as the golden age of new york theater, thcareers of tennessee williams and arthur miller, the burst of edward albe there was a theater called the national theer, which was a tryout house, as they called it then, for broadway shows. i went there so often, usually buying standing room, that the manager took pity on me and hired me as a ticket taker. and frankly, it was my entire education in the theater, and-- and really, in retrospect, in television producing that i do

now. because you'd see a show like "hello dolly!" come in that seemed to be a hit, but you would watch david merrick work on it and make it better. you'd see "the odd couple," directed by mike nickels, come in, and you'd see neil simon,e aywright, keep tinkering with it. i started writing theater reviews when i was in college, on the "harvard crimson." i reviewed plays that were trying out in boston. one of them was a new musical by stephen sondheim. years later, i'd find out thatf the producer othshow had d me to the "times" as a potential drama critic. i am really against journalistse ming friendly or chummy with their subjects. i never went to the tony awards. indeed, to this daen i've never o the tony awards. i feel the lesson is applicable to washington.p it doesn't h be chummy with the people you're covering. i'm very m house correspondents' dinner, for that reason. but even at a more profound level, if you look bace,

at a story like watergate, woodward and bernstein got that story because they were not going to georgetown dinner parties and being told by john mitchel or henry kissinger that this is a non-story, and forget about it. in 2008-ish, i had start working as a consultant for hbo, and one of the things they were actively looking for was a washington show. i saw "in the loop," armando iannucci's film about essentially the run up to the iraq war, and i immediately felt, "this is the guy." very early on, before we shot anything, he sent a memo about production design for "veep." "here's the thing," he said, "going to these offices in the-- the e.o.b. or the white house,he they--look terrible. there's the detritus everywhere. the chairs don'tit with the desk; they're government issue. everything is a mess. the people dress ten years behind new york. wa"veep" captures d.c. in that i've been waiting for my

whole li it reminds me of what i fantasized about the theater growing up: being with a shoou of town, rewriting it, fixing it, making it better. it's great to so of mix it up, and come up with these crazyt stories abese horrible characters whom we love. my name is frank rich, and this is my "brief but spectacular" take on all the theater in my life. >> nawaz: and that's the wshour for tonight. i'm anma nawaz. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you, and we'll see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> babbel. a language program that teaches spanish, french, italian, german, and more. >> consumer cellular. >> bnsf railway. >> financial servicefirm raymond james.

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

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