tonight on kqed newsroom. from health care to civil rights democratic presidential hopefuls got to make theirpitches. also shocking detention conditions for migrant children emerge as appeals for humanitarian aid at therder divide democrats. and the supreme court ends its term.' look at how key rulings this week could affect california. hell and welcome. we begin our show with the democratic debates. this week millions of viewers tuned in for their first extended look at the crowded democratic primary field. the debate featured 20 candidates. last night senator kamala harris attacked former vice joe biden for his comments on

bngsing and wor with segregationist senators s on wednesdaator elizabeth warren who is the only candidate polling in double digits on stage held strong in the first partof the debate. many are calling julian castro the breakout star of the first night. joining me is the senior political writer f the "san francisco chronicle" and los angeles political timesin write g us. much anticipated two nights of debates. we're going toet into the details of those heated exchanges in a moment. f,first do you think the fundamental tenor of this race has changed this week? absolutely. i think we saw some exchanges between these candidates,r cularly between kamala harris and joe biden that this is a pivotal momentt i race. there's such a long time to go. we have more than 200 days until the iowa caucuses. l did thst two nights

determine anything? no. did it decide who the nomineeis going to be? no. but these exchanges,cu parrly the heated exchange between kamala harris and joe biden over race is goi to be one of those pivot points in the race. >> i feel like there was very low expectations in some ways. it does seem like more happened on the second night than maybe we thought might. >> i got a text from aformer colleague who said biden is aging in the ring as we speak. this could be the beginning o a tough spot for biden. he has to defend a lot of thin s s that were opened up thursday night. also on his age. eric swalwell went at him on ths age on. >> i think that kamala harris really had a standout night. joe, you and i have followed her for a long time. the biggest moment was when she went after joe biden about

working with those segregationist senators. let's listen to part of th exchange. >> we've also heard and i'm going to now direct this at vice president biden. i do not y belie are a racist, but i also believe and it's personal and it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two united states senators whobuilt their reputations and career on theat segrn of race in this country. >> i don't know. what do you think?th i feel like might be the best i've ever seen kamala harris. >> everyone declared her the inner of the two nights of debates. she had such a breakthrough moment. one of the things voters are looking for is who can take on the president on theebate stage. also with joe biden, everyone knew he came intohis as a front runner with a target on his back. then swalwell went after him on the age ng, he sort of smiled

and brushed it off. when kamala wt after him, his reaction was a little stilted. the coverage has been dcontinuig al today. i think she scored major points last asght. >> itort of both. it was the fact that kamala harris seemed so authentand clearly prepared but also but a that he didn't seem to solaxed. have a response for something he should have known was coming. >> terrible debate n.preparat also she did something that was she wassual in that able to combine a very personal anecdo anecdote, her childhood in berkeley talking about race, which is very difficult to talk about. and then she went into prosecutor mode and said, do you still support bussing. it was all faces of kamala. this was a kamala thatwe did not see when she was running for a.g., senate and district attorney. we have watched her mature before our eyes. >> we're going to have to talk about the other candidates.

before we do,at do you think about how joe biden has dealt with this in the aftermath of the debate? seems like he's digging in. >> yeah. rd>> we haven't h him apologize or find a way to kind of get past this issue which brewing nkly has been for more than a week since he made those comments. >> today you see thewh statemen e he's saying of course i believe the federal government should have a role in these things and no states can't just decide. it completely contradicts his record. secondly since new audio came out today from npr has him s sang he would support a constitutional amendment to ban forced bussing. seems like he would say i've had a long career over 40 years and maybe he's changed his mind. i don't understand how he's digging in his heels, but he is. >> there were 18 other candidates on stage. i thk on the first night

elizabeth warren was really the one to watch. she really helder own. what impressed me on both nights about her andanders was how much they as the progressive wing of this party seem to be really pushing the debate. there were more moderate candidates trying to push back a little butit was kind o on the progressive terms. >> absolutely. someone who was cheering that it was on the progressive terms was president trump, especiallyhe they said everyone put up your find if you support giving health be to undocumented immigrants, everyone hand went up. > on thursday night. >> on the first night and the second night, who supports taking away private health nc insu which is not popular? bernie andamala put their hands up. second night warren and bill de blasio on the first night. elizabeth warren, if she's the nominee, just cut her first attack ad when she said i'm with

bernie. that may work well in the primary. it may work well in but it may cause them problems in the general election. >> i'm curious t what younk about this. what we're hearing from republicans is that this is exactly what thewant, this is the socialist democratic party. you iknow, but think there's obviously a lot of excitement around these candidates as so that's a balance they're going to have to weigh in the comingmonths. >> clearly this will create excitement among one wing of the democratic party. bernie sanders, savannah guthrie presence eds pr him on will your health care plan raise taxes. he saideah it will. any politician when you're ad t t your plan is going to cost middle class taxpayers more money, that g clearly ising to be in some attack ad along the way. >> he was asked how are you going to implement this with a divided congress, he said well

there's going to be a political re lucia revolution. what if there isn't? >> let's talk about eric swalwell, congressman from the east bay. he's been polling very low.or this was an onity for him to stand out. he came in with some zingers. he came after biden for his age. he talked strongly about guns. i don't s i don't see this is going to change the raceor him. >> he used the zinger about biden ing old twice. he basically took one for the eam in terms of the other democrats byising the specter of biden's age which is very difficult. >> bernie sanders later called it ageism. >> he called it ageism and he s said it depe on the virility of your ideas. i don't know if swalwell stood out. remember, in september he's gog to have twice as many donors and he's polling 2%. it's going to be a challenge.

he better sharpen up his swalwell for congress sign. >> the other person that did break out, however,as julian castro from texas. we really saw him go after some of the other folks ontage around immigration. do you think this is aile bit of gas for his campaign? he has been somebody that is exciting someparts of the democratic party but not getting that attention >> absolutely. after wednesday night he went after his fellow texan beto o'rourke and he got the better exchangin that the thing is, then we have thursday night and the kamala/biden show. i have to think that sort of took all the action out of the room. if he had been maybe the second night i think he might have been able to better use whatever momentuhihe got. >> speaks to how important it is to how the line-up is ovee the debates in july. >> right. >> so quickly what do you

expect next? >> well, in terms of biden, i expect af lot op research into his very, very long career. he was firstlted before i was born. we're going to have a fund-raisingdeadline or disclosures coming up soon. that will tell us a lot about how these candidates are doing and who has the resources the long haul. people are talking about the win knowi i winnowing of the field. at someoint toward the end of the summer people are going to have to make some decisions. >> joe, who do you thin has the most momentum? >> i thinve evenight we're seeing kamala harris has a little bit of spike. fund-raising has spiked for julian castro. i think warren is going to be definitely helped by this. i think biden, you're going to see that big lead he has whittl downnd down and then the

narrative becomes biden's losing his lead and that kind of stuff feeds on itself. you know, who knows. >> we're going to leave it there. thank you both for being here. >> thank you. now to immigration. a team of lawyers revealed shocking conditions at a border facility in texas they visited last week where hundreds of migrant children have been detained for weeks on the lawyers interviewed dozens of children there. they reported seeing up to 50 children confined in a single room withed ed ttoddlers being for by older children. many of them hadn't bathed and were wearing dirty clothes. also yesterday the house passed a $4.6llion border aid bill backed by the senate despite objectio from some democr democ who say lacked protections for migrants held in shelters.

joih you both for joining me. bill, i want to start with you. you were in clint, texas, you were one the inspectors for plaintiffs in this flores settlement, decades old legal case. it really requires certain unditions for children. can you tell a little bit about what you aw, maybe pick couple stories to tell us. a what i saw was heartbreaking. children as you 2 years old ho are left to take care of themselves. they were confined to rooms, sizes for 20-50 people. you're right, the younger the child that i saw, the dirtier were. i interviewed a 5-year-old and a 4-year-old. their clothes were filthy. their hair was dirty. wn i walk into a large conference room to use a printer and one end of thed room

another interviewer was interviewing a 7-year-old girl who started crying. and that interviewer walked her across the room to what i thought was maybe her mother becaote it was r older teen with a 2-year-old in her lap. that 7-year-old went over there to be comforted. i found out later on this teen was not a mother. the teen had just out of the kindness of her heart taken care of the 2-year-old and the 7-year-old and they had bonded. it's unbelievable. i've been doing this work for decades and i've never seen anything like this.e act that they were left to take care of themselves was just heart wrenching. >> we've heard stories that some of these kids maybe came across with an adult but were aparated. w kids this young alone without a legal guardian or parent with them?ep >> theation is separating any child at the border who coming with a non-parent. so the vast majority of kids that i interviewed came with theirun and uncles or older

siblings. the policy the tru administration is doing is if you're not coming with your parents, you're goi to be separated. this 2-year-old, this 5-year-old that i interviewed that come with an aunt and uncle. >> i can't imagine the trauma. i also understand there were some incideits this their teen mothers, is that right? >> i einterviewed th teen mothers with infants as young as 5 months old. two of the children had experienced diarrhea, vomiting, chilled. they were rushed to the emergeny room and staye there for three or four days until they recovered. they were not sick when they rived. >> jus heartbreaking. you have been ated boardeder in calivernia. what hou seen? >> we know that customs and border protection especially and this is something the agency themselves will tell you, t they're equipped or resourced or designed to deal

with the kinds of migrant flows that we're seeing these days cpared to what we saw earlier like in the '90s or 2000s it was mostly mexican men coming to the u.s. looking for work. and nownhe c is mostly central american families with children, child en who cometh relatives but are still separated because it's not their parents. we're seeing a lot of migrants that are just in border towns in mexico and the administration implementing this metering policy where they only allow a few people in at a time to request asylum, which is why we're seeing more people turn across the border between official points of entry and unfortunately seeing the cases of the deaths of migrants. >> the heartbreaking photo ofer the fand the young child. to get to the point where you're trying to cross the rio grande

with your 23 month old kid as that father was where you're willing to go into these situations, i mean they must be fleeing heartbreaking situations. frida, can you explain to us briefly why peopley'ay th willing to take these risks? >> this is a very dangerous trek thatal people in cenmerica are taking through mexico. and every potential asylum seeker i've spoken to on the mexican side of the border says they're fleeing crushing violence, extreme poverty and impunity and corruption in the government because people don't even have the basic -- they can't go to school, they can't go to work, they can't start a buavness. >> we seen congress this week attempt to respond. they passed this humanitarian aid bill. quickly, what's in it? and bill, i want to talk to you about whether you think it's going to make a fdence. >> so the bill that the senate

approved first and then the house approved just recently, it gives more about $800 million to expand the capacity of customs and border protection to be able to handle t surge of migrants. and also gives money to health and human services so that they can open up more space at shelters for kids that the government halabels as an unaccod minors but many of them really came with relatives. there's also other provisions in there that sort of like scratchf the surface trying to get these agencies to meet their own standards they have already in the treatment of migrants. but of course it doesn't have as manyestrictions as the house bill. >> do you havede any cone that this will make a difference for these children? >> i don't. it's not addressing the problem. the problem is the separation of the kids at the border from their relatives.

they don't need to be in detention in the first place. yes, it's true that o.r.r. is running out of bed space, but there slowing processing of those children that are in their detention ght now. there's this term that's become pejorative, catch and release, but it worked before. it's you process them, youend them on their way to wherever they're headed and there was a 98% appearance rate. ense folks are not absconding. they have every ive to pursue their asylum claims. >> do you think anything will happen in the c florese that could change the situation on the ground? >> i do. given w what saw, children way beyond 72 hours were kept for three weeks. >> that was the agreemente government had made. >> exactly. that will end, i'm pretty confident, soon, within the next

month, i hope. what won't end is detention, because the money th the senate and congress appropriated yesterday is to build more bed space. >> and frida, i mean, given the fact liberal democrats are pretty angry over this compromise, do you think that this bill is sort ofhe end of the story in congress for now? it's such an taintre issue in d.c. >> i don't think so. i think this was a lot of more liberal and hispanic caucus saw this bill as an opportunity to put more strings on that, on those funds eyat re approving, like billions of dollars for this aid. so i don't think it's going to be the last we'llear of this. and i also wanted to point out that someawmakers like california lawmakers just introduced a bi yesterday to ry to put more attention on the root causes of migration

what the u.s. can do to try to slow down this flow of migrants in the home countriesre to a the issues that are making people ee. >> thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you. yesterday the supreme court ended its term with two big rulings. the court ruled 5-4 that federal courts can't hearll cges to partisan errymandering where the party in the majority draws voting district maps unfairly favoring their candidates. also chief justice roberts sided with the liberal wing inec reng the reason given by the trump administration for adding a citizenship question to the u.s. census form. professor, thanksoi forng us. can the trump administration now include or not include this question on the 2020 census? >> it's actually unclear because e court remanded this to the

district court for further explanation from the commerce department as to why they want th question. i think as it stands right now, they could not print the forms with that question on it. but they're just not going to print the forms and we're going to see what happens in the trial court in the couple weeks. >> the trump adarnistration's ment for asking the supreme court to weigh in quickly was they needed to stiart pr those forms by this coming monday. will that uercut their argument with the court if they sort of do a reverse course on that? >> it definitely undercuts their aheument. court said this is a pretext, it's not real. there's a disconnect between the evidence and what you said. if they then y, well, actually we don't need to print the forms on july 1 like w said we had to, that's going to further undercut it. there's probably a huge fightpe hng right now in the white house and the solicitor

general's office as to what to do to not further lose credibility. >> one of those cases we're going to get toin in ae was gerrymandering. there was a trove of-mails on a deceased gop strategist's hard drive that revealed the origins of the citistnship quens and sort of indicated that it was a political consideration. do you think thated influeow this court ruled? >> well, they read the newspapers and we know they read the newspapers. they're beings. they didn't mention this at all, this further evidence that suggests that actually there was a racial motive, a biassedti to under count latinos and undocumented that evidence has come out in the last 30 days but it wasn'te mentin any court opinion. chief justice roberts, though, i many people may have changed his socievote in the la days. i thie it has s impact.

>> they do know what's going on in the real world, notust the courtroom. in this other gerrymandering case the court said it could not overrule districts drawn by politicians for political purposes. were you surprised by this ruling? >> i'm very surprised and disap oppone disappointed. justice kagan said with deep sadness i dissent. they say it p aitical question that is beyond their competence or beyond their proper role of authority, which is just not consistent with the last 60 years of jurisprudence. they review all sorts ofio que that are sensitive questions, difficult questions. to say there's no standard to do gerrymandering when they already do racial gerrymandering. >> i guess within that context does this likest impact p court decisions around gerrymandering or are we just talking about moving forward? >> well, i think it's not going

to impact anything that'sinal ut if there's pending lawsuits -- th took these two cases from maryland and north carolina yesterday and ordered the district crt to dismiss those cases. this impacts a lot of litigation. and by the way, these same states, maryland and north carolina, they could go back and startnalyzing was there actually a racial motive behind this. >> so there could be further challenges based on these same exact districts? >> i thin there could be. in north carolina there have been other challenges based on race. >> in california we haven independent redistricting commissi h. does thisave any impact here? >> it h doesn'tve any direct impact because we do have this o nonpartisaission that does the job for the last 20 years or so. first of all, that could be repealed if one party decided hey wanted to. second of all there's an indirect effect if other stdees gerrymso their legislatures are dramatically

overpowered by one party, there's kind of a ripple effect back to california. >> or what happens in congress obviously. we've been watching chief justice roberts closely since jvatice kugh was confirmed. what do these rulings tell you about where he sits on the court? >> i have a lot of respect for chief justce oberts. he is a conservative. there's no doubt about it but he doesn't always play directly to that band. remember the health care decision, he washe vote that actually upheld obamacare. some conservaties now call it robertscare. this was another vote wheree said i'll go so far with the conservatives but i'm not going to take a retext reason in the census case.gerrymandering he d we're just not going to get involved. he's not a liberal but he's the

center justice in a nine justice court and he's exerting that power. >> he seems to be very aware of whatt means both politically and legally. finally justice kavanaugh, what are your take-aways with this fst term? he voted with the chief justice more often than any other justice.th 's pretty normal for your first term just to vote with the boss. the other is he's definitely conseteative. he v conservatively in a number of cases but he also split with gorsuch a couple of times. so they're not twins. they're not voting exactly the same. and he did a couple of opinions that were actually pretty liberal, the flowers versus mississippi, he ruled for a capital defendant, vacated the death penalty. i guess i'dse say don't l hope yet.

people evolve. that will fo it us. you can find more of our coverage at kqed.org/newsroom. thanks for joinin ♪

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