captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc i'm judy woodruff.evening. on the newshour tonight, saudi arabia sentences five to death for the murder of journalist jamal khashoggi.th ...out! after deadly crashes and repeated delays in fixing theit problemsthe 737 max, the c.e.o. of boeing loses his job.r and, cutting ce. moved by the trump administration allowing states to reduce health coverage for children. >> they said it would take severamonths to have him reinstated, but you don't have several months with this type of child. >> woodruff: plus amy walter and mara keith are here to analyze the state of the democratic primary in the last full wk of

the year, as the u.s. use and senate continue to fight over the impeachment trial. all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour. di >> major fng for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years.bn , the engine that connects us.

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>> woodruff: president trump and congress have left washington for the holidays but the fight over an impeachment trial goes on. republican majority leader mitch mcconnell and minority leader witnesses and documents.ay over mcconnell spoke on "fox news" and schumer to reporters in new york about the best way to proceed. >> to gohrough the opening arguments. to have a written question period and then based upon that, deciding what witnesses to call. we haven't ruled outsses. we've said let's handle this ca just like we did with president clinton. >> it's hard to imagine a trial not having documents and witnesses. if it doesn't have documents and witnesses, it's going to seem to most of the american people that it is a sham trial, a show trial not to get at the facts. >> woodruff: while that argumenu continues, speaker nancy

pelosi has so far declined to send articles of impeachment to the senate. meanwhile, house democrats said today that additional chars could arise if a feder jue orders testimony from former white house counsel don mcgahn and gives them access tom grand juerial from the russia investigation. an american soldier was killed in afghanistan today, in a roadside bombing. the u.s. military says it happened in northern kunduz province. the taliban claimed respsibility. the attack came amid ongoing peace talks to end the nearly 18-year war. 20 u.s. soldiers have been killed in action in afghanistan this year. in iraq, political leaders missed another deadline for naming a new prime minister in the face of new mass protests. thousands turned out across the country onunday and again day. they rejected any candidate belonging to ruling cal groups. in baghdad's central square,

demonstrators wrote out memories about the months-long unrest. o they said nothe existing parties represents them. >> ( translated ): we have entered a constitutional vacuum and consequently, there is no government. they want to appoint a prime minister, paying no heed to the people who have been protesting against them. we don't want anyone the political parties nominate. we, the people, are the biggest block. at least 400 protesters have been killed since october, many of them at the hands of government surity forces. and in neighboring iran, there is word that some 1,500 people were killed during a crackdown on protests there last month. reuters reports the count from three unnamed officials in iran's interior nistry the report says supreme leader edatollah ali khamenei ord security officials to do whatever it took to stop the protests. christmas week in australia has beguwith no relief from a

wildfire disaster. re than 200 fires burned across four states today, andfe fes that climate change is causing longer, fiercer fire seasons.n, that, in tocused new criticism on the prime minister. rupert evelyn of independent television news has our report.> listering heat attend a dryland scape and destruction on a huge scale. dozens of homes destroyed as the bush fires rage. the searing flames engopulf ty and possessions. fighti these fires is a battle agait the elements. it seems to conjure up images of safety of people is paramount, some rescued with a few belongings they could cab as the fiosed in. >> i seen a number fires come and go, you know, but nothing like this.

>> reporte less than 50 miles west of t sydney e how bleu mountains, a mssive mass of charred metal is all that remains of a home. >> everything is melted. just took everything in its path. >> reporter: the community of balmoro hit peatedly on alls. side exhausted firefighters relentlessly defending the village ran out of the one commodity they needed, water. >> we ran out oft waer, homes were going everywhere, the bush was burning. that's an horrific feeling. >> reporter: australian prime minister scott morrison, under fire himself for taking a holiday in hawaii when, 5,000 miles away, his country burned. bant in the bush on the fro line and the front foot, defending his country's dependence on the coal industry and climate change. commentaries ont what thoses

outside aualia thinks we should do. to'll do what we need o for australia. >> reporter: one thirsty koala saved from the blaze.av temperaturesdropped, but with a forecast of yet more intense heat and wind, christmas for many will be simply about survival. >> woodruff: that report from rupeel ev of >> woodruff: that report from rupert evelyn of independent television new a japanese government ministry is proposing to gradually release or evaporate radioactive water athe wrecked fukushima nuclear plant. the water cools melted-down reactor cores, and is kept in tanks so it does not leak into the ocean or waterways. but now, the site is running out of storage space. the fukushima plant walargely destroyed by a 2011 tsunami. back in this country, boeing's d c.e.nis muilenburg was forced out today, in the fallout from the 737 max debacle. h the plane been grounded worldwide since march, after crashes in indonesia andop

et killed 346 people. a we'll taut the company'sn troubles latere program. and, on wall strt, the boeing news pushed the company's stock higher and helped blue chips in general. the dow jones industrial average gained 96 points to close at 28,551. the nasdaq rose 20 points, and the s&p-500 added two. still to come on the newshour. the killing and the kingdom. s five atenced to death for the murder of journalist jamal khashoggi. out!e. the of boeing steps down amid turmoil on returning the 737 max to flight. cutting coverage. washington efforts allowing states to reduce children's health care. and much more.

>> woodruff: a court in saudi arabia sentenced five people to death for their involvement the killing of columnist jamal the proceedings took nearly a year, were shrouded in secrecy, closed to thpress and public, and only open to a select group of diplomats.ne thhour's william brangham has details on the proceedings and a review of khaghoi's murder. >> ( translated ): in the case of the kling of the citizen jamal khashoggi, may he rest in peace, the attorney general has finished its investigation. brangham: the announcement came nearly 14 months after the murder of jamal khashoggi, the saudi dissident and journalist. a spokesman for saudi arabia's public prosetor read out the guilty verdict andhe punishments state tv. no names were released.

>> ( translated ): the death penalty for fiveosand they are who directly participated in his killing. >> brangham: three others received a total of 24 years in prison for covering up the killing, one that sparked a global outcry. >> reporter: saudi arabia admitted missing journalist jamal died in istanbul this month. >> in october o last year "the washington post" columnist walked in the consul in tukey to pickum documents for his planned marriage but nev came out. security camera footage leaked by turkey showed the team of saudi agents who allegedly killed khashoggi and then reportedly dismembered his body inside the consulate using a bone saw. those team members worked foram crown prince md bin salman. the saudi leader has denied any direct involvesent, though in ember, he signaled for the first time some accountability.

>> ( translat): when a crime is committed against a saudici zen by officials working for the saudi government, as a leader i must take responsibility. this was a mistake. >> brangm: the kingdom maintains the murder was part of a rogue operation to bring khashoggi back to saudi arabias the prosecutid his killing wanot pre-meditated -- but rather a "sn decion". that conclusion directly contradicts a united nations report released in june, which found khashoggi had been avi im of a "delibate, premeditated execution." the saudi court also cleared two of the crown prince's senior aides of organizing the murder. "washington post" ceo and publisher fred ryan called it a "sham trial." la criticized the kingdom' of transparency in its months of clos-door court proceedings. khashoggi's fiancee hatice cengiz also rejected the verdi as "unacceptable." but khashoggi's son salah, who lives in saudi arabia, said justice had been serve

for the pbs newshour i'm william brangham joining me now from france is agnes callamard, the united nations special rapporteur for extrajudicial, sumtrry or ary killings. she is the author of that june report which found saudi arabia responsible for the premeditated execution of mr. khashoggi.ca dramard, welcome back to the newshour. first of all, we saw your reaction right after this verdict was announced. you cat the antithesis of justice, a mckery. why? >> well, the most important is the fact that only the hinchmen have beent he obj the trial, the masterminds have not been included in th proceeding and, therefore, the outcome, we have the loest level of the

mmchain of cod to be sentenced to death, while those that odered them,hose that commissioned the crimes, those that turned a blind eye to the crimes, none of those people have been concerned, worried or indicted. >> woodruff: the judge found it was a spur of the moment thing and not premeditated. how do you kow that's wrong? >> the killing of mr. khashoggi included dismemberment. e that cannot be don the spur of the moment. it requires plaing. if only to clean up the crime do with the body parts.what to two hours before the killing, the doctor and the head of the d tescussed the two hours later.nd it happened it cannot be a coincident. cannot be an accident.

the doctor was includein the team, in the killing team at least 24 hours before the murder. that, too, i think, is indicative of a very high level of planning and organization. witnesses to the killing have been asked to leave the consulate before the peocoe d be present. there is absolutely no indication that, when mr. khashoggi was killed, that those present attempted to revive him. as you would expect, if it had been an accident. >> woodruff: do you have any idea what happened to that evidence and why it wa not considered, not presented, evidently? >> well, i don't know if it was not presented. i o knw that the prosecutor argued that, at least for the first eight hearings, that the crimes had been premeditated.

you know, there was a team of 18 saudi officials that came after the killing, supposedly to investigate the killing. in fact, we know no that t they did was to clean the crimeu scene,, presumably, they'd also, in the context, in the process of the cleaning of the crime scene, gathering some form of evidence. none of that was presented at te trial, as far as i am aware. >> woodruff: and that gets to my question, who should have been held responsible, who was not? >> well,ook, at the minimum, those who were irchlcated and directly involved in the killing, that includes the deputy dirtor ofntelligence and who was present and who was a member of the team. it includes the personal advisor to the crown prince who was

known to have incited, to spoken to the killing team just before it left for turkey. those two individuals, one of them were initially c, argd the other was not even charged. the prosecutor apparently attempted to interew him but was never able or willing topr eed with that interview. >> woodruff: do you believe there was ever a chance that justice would be done in saudi arabia? >> look, you know, i'm not knee eve, it's not going to happen overght, not even a fe years, probably. that means that we need to lookt for e elsewhere. we need to look for justice in thunited states, where the f.b.i. has a mandate to undertake an investigation. we lok fr justice with the u.s. congress that has made that specific raquestt week, for the director of the national

intelligence services to issue a report on who ordered thlle g. ehat will be a very important test for th independence of that director and his ability to provide us with the truth of who at ordered the crme. so i think there are other ways for the truth to be delivered d for some form of justice to be rendered. woodruff: agnes callamard, thank you very much. u.n. special rapporteur for extra judicial ex cogs. thank you. >> thank you. >> woodruff: boeing is not likely to look back fondly on 2019. in october, lawmakers grild now-former chief executivenn muilenberg at a hearing into the company's response to the disastrous 737 max crashes.

last week, the company took theu rare step ofing down production of that aircraft, selling plane ever.'s fastest- on friday, a new space capsule boeing designed for nasa failed to reach the correct orbit. and finally today, announcing muilenberg's firing, the boeing's board of directors said it was time for a change. john yang examines the company's turbulent year and what's ahead. >> yang: judy, even though boeing's directors sd muillenberg of his title as chairman in october ahead of hia congresstestimon as recently as last friday, they a backed hc.e.o. so what happened between then and this morning? phil lebeau covers the aviation industry for cnbc. he joins us from his base in chicago. phil, grtht to see you. ks for joining us. so muillenberg and boeing have been in the shot seat since march since the second 737 max

crashed. what was the lat straw? what brought this event today about? >> john, it's greato be with you. i would say the last straw really happened within the laek two it is when dennis muillenberg was lled to washington, d.c. for a face-to-face meeting stth e dixon, the head of the faa. make mo mstake, this wasn't a friendly discussion. in very straightforward waysout that boeing was no longer calling the shots or should not be expected to call the shots in terms of when the 737 max would be recertified. this was aublic dressing down. th was boeing middle east afterwards saying weake back any gins we had previously issued that the max mht be recertified this year, that it might be in commercial service the end of janauary and t, remember, it was just four days later that boeing made the decision to completely suspend 737 max production starting in

january. that is a mondeumentaision. something the company has never done, and those two -- those two events toether, going to washington, being dressed down by the head of the faa, along with suspending 737 max production, that was the final they realized they had to make a change, and they did. >> and what brought us to that point? was his departure inevitable from march from the second crash when he defx ended the 737 ms being a safe aircraft, or could something have been done differently? >> well, it was a culmination of things and, reak,lly, loof they had gotten the max back in the airttstrikes it recertified and they got regulators around the world to say, look, we thk we've identified the problem right away and let's get it back into operation with a few changes, i think dennis muillenberg might have survived this crisis. but as the weeks turned o months, turned into constantly pushing back dates when we might see the max recertified, s

credibility went away, john. he lost his credibility not just with aline customers, the key to boeing's cash flow, but also regulators on capitol hill. i mean, there was nobody you could turn to who would say dennis muillenberg is the oneo see boeing through this crisis. >> he's going to be replaced ina january byid calhoun who is currently chairman. what can he do to repair those relationships? you caulked about the regulators, the airline customers and also the confidence of the flying public? >> i call it the three rs and that's what he d tay. his first day after being named incoming c.e.o., but he doesn't take over his janua 13, but make no mistake, he's putting his fingerprints alover reshing boeing. the three rs are rebuild the relationship with the faa, completely broken. what did he do this morning? one of the first phone calls after he's going to be c.e.o.,

at the calls steve dixon, head he says during the conversation, we welcome rigorousover sight and we want to b regulated. those are two quotes we heard with thersation, so that'sar the beginning of changing the tenor and tone of boeing. also a reset of the 737x ma. not just the stripping up and twn to fix the plain, but sitting down wie engineers, with all of the people involved in getting this plane back in the air and sareing where we? what real estatecally can wepe ? what steps need to be completed? company much more focused ona increasing production, increasid cash flow an, really, as much as possible, taking this company to a new level of manufacturing. well, you can only go so far if the basics are not being covered, and the basics were not being covered, clearly, with the 737 max. so you will se mmure of a

reset, if you will, in terms of let's focus on safety, then we can start rebuilding our relationships with ours, supplind that's the last one, the last r, which, is you know, rebuding those relationships with airline executives, key stakeholders in washington, d.c., members of congress who are really furious at boeing.en to tha, calhoun and his management team were on the phone with members of congress, theyere on the pho with c.e.o.s of airlines. i talked with one executive who said we haven't heard from dennis muillenberg in weeks.ts calhoun gn the phone today. that's an indication that, at a minimum, he realizes the copany s to change its public stance in how it deals with people when it comes to the37 max. >> phil lebeau of cnbc in chicago, thank you very much. >> woodruff: stay with us. coming up on the newshour:

amy walter and tamara keith analyze the week's political headlines. and an invesgation into how our mobile phones track your every move. more than a million children have fallen off public hlth insurance programs since december 2017. for some of those kids, their parents may have new jobs that come with health coverage. but researchers also see a troubling rise in uninsured children and say the trump administration's effortso vet problem. is a big part of the as special correspondent sarah varney rorts from tennessee, qualify for medicaid are getting knocked off the rolls because of red tape and errors. our story was produced in collaboration with partner, kaiser health news. >> reporter: seven-year-old harrison relies on routine and orr to make sense of his world.

>> reporter: this morning, that world is a mess. >> no. down here. not the phone. >> reporter: heather hantz sayst fr son's ruggles intensified after he was cutrom medicaid and missed five months of autism therapy. last summer, hantz called the state medicaid office to change her mailing address and found ouadthe state of tennessee h canceled harrison's health insurance. at first, she didn't understand why. >> they said it was a renewal packet. but, um, we never received a renewal packet. >> reporter: and they, have they ever tried to come back to you since then and, and try and makm ds? >> no. >> they said it would take several months to have him reinstated, but you don't have several months with this type of he was very stresshe started crying a lot, and... that's not him.

>> jump! >> reporter: harrieds physical, behavioral, speech and language therapy-- indispensable care that is hard to come by in rural cleveland, tennessee. >> reporter: legal advocates waded through the paperwork to sign harrison back up for medicaid. but then he sat on a waitlists until providuld see him again. the disruption caused problems at s >> we had to bring him to a new school where he could calm down and slowly, gradually, bring him back into general education. >> reporter: as it turned out, it wasn't just harrison. the state's medicaid agency had canceled health coverage for more than 130,000 children. it was part of an effort championed by the trump veadministration to closel medicaid applicants and safeguard the integrity of the tax-payer funded program those are top priorities for seemverma, the administrator of the centers for medicare and agency that pays for medicalon care for low-income people and seniors. a close al of vice president mike pence from indiana, verma

has vowed to tighten medicaid's eligibility rules. >> we have an obligation to the people that qualify for the programs are participating. t and we also wamake sure that the programs are sustainable over the long term. i think there's a balance s between makie it's easy for people to apply, but we also have to make sure that we do the appropriate work to make sure that they qualify for the programs. >> reporter: but those efforts have led to pandemonium in chattanooga, tennessee, where mayor andy berke and his staff have rushed to help rents fill out forms and send iappeals. aides in the mayor's office say one in eight kids in his county. mayor berke says the widespread cancellations across tennessee's rural outposts and b cities are part of republican efforts to reduce public, benefirriers put in place to disenfranchise the poor. and berke wrote to tennessee's

top officials asking for help. >> the response that we ..t back from tfrom the governor and from the lieutenant governor is, well, the economy's improved, and therefore are fewer kids on the... on the rolls. and that conflicted, of course, with the experience that we were having on the ground, which is, you know, these families still, still qualify, we know that they do, and there's no reason why they should be gting kicked off of medicaid. >> all of those qutions and rising frustrations led back here to nashvilles teans have been demanding answers from those in charge of their state's medicaid program how is the new computer dave roberts oversees medicaid in tennessee. he says after the act went into >> reporter: gabe roberts oversees medicaid in tennessee. he says after the affordable care act went into effect in 2014, tennesse like many other states, spent its time and money building a new medicaid computer syem. while that work was underway, the obama administration allowed states to suspend medicaidti verifi a the numbers of covered tennesseans swelled.

but in 2016, the state began cleaning out the backlog, canceling coverage for children like harrison when paperwork was missing. >> we're extremely concerned about those comments, those allegations, those criticisms, seriously.them extremely >> reporter: roberts says the volume of cancellations was in line with his expectations, notd evce of widespread failures or nefarious intentions, and in fact, enrollment has once again picked up. >> our message has been nnnsistent-- if you're eligible for medicaid in see, we want you on our program. t a child does come off the program, we can em back on the program and, in a lot of times, can get them back on the program with no real break in their coverage. >> reporter: but front line workers at hospitals and clinics around tennessee are explanations, wherrate of uninsured children has increased 43% since 2016. that's one of the highest in the nation. at vanderbilt university's children's hospital in nashville, pediatricians like

dr. shari barkin continue to with the improved rket., even >> i think what surprised us towards the end of 2018 and then through this year, 2019, is that the numbers went up to the degree of 15 to 20 patients a day coming to our clinic and not knowing that they no longewere enrolled. >> reporter: barkisays that's led parents to make agonizing decisions when their children are ill. but some children have vanished from medical clinics altogether... >> there's a real reluctce to reenroll if the children ors their paree non-citizens. >> reporter: brian haile is the c.e.o. of neighborhood health, a nonprofit group of clinics serving nashville's poorest residents.ny re new immigrants. tennessee's efforts to reconcile its medicaid backlog came at the same time that the trump administration adopted a punitive immigration policy that withholds green cards to legal immigrants who use public benefits, including medicaid.

federal judges have temporarily blocked the rule from taking effect, but many families working in nashville's booming construction and entertainment industries remain fearful that enrolling theikids in public health coverage will endanger their legal status. e these are still eligible individuals who titled to the benefit, but they hear so much anti-immigrant rhetor from washington that they feel really insecure. >> reporter: whatever the reason, researchers at georgetown university found that after ars of gains insuring children in the u.s., the number of uninsed kids jump to four million in 2018. the states with the highest uninsurance rates include texas, nevada, arizona, oklahoma, alaska, gegia and florida. administrator verma says it's not the trump adnistration's medicaid policies fueling thed rise in uninsuds, but the outrageous cost of health care. she says more parents are earning too much to qualify for government support but can't >> and that's what the president

is focused on. his healthcare agenda isn't just about putting out more subsidies and having the government pay more and more and creating unaffordable programs, but it is about addressing the underlying cost drivers in healthcare. that's why he's focused on prescription drug pricing, he's focused on transparency, price transparency, so that there'son more competitin the market. >> reporter: while president trump has put forth a number ofp health care als, few have taken effect. omthat all seems far away he world harris inhabits. in east tennessee, he's finding moments of delight, riding a friend's aging py. >> reporter: heather hantz says when harrison is vetted for coverage in the new year, she will keep a watchful eye on the state and on her son's future.pb for the newshour and kaiser health news, i'm sarah varney in cleveland, tennessee. >> woodruff: we have sah's full interview with medicaid chief seema verma online where the two discussed heal

coverage, the uninsured and how the trump administration wld respond if obamacare is struck down by the courts in the future. >> woodruff: in the final days of 2019, t democratic presidential candidiates hit the campaign trail, hoping to head into 2020 with new momentum from last week's debate before votins ben just six weeks. >>,oodruff: the crowded fie crisscrossing the country. this is a campaign of t working class of this country, >> woodruff: vermont s bernie sanders was joined by new york congresswoman alexandriat ocasio cortez st, where >> the history of change in

america always takes place from the bottom on up. >> woodruff: while senator elizabeth warren returned to oklahoma city, where she was born and raised... >> hello, oklahoma!>> oodruff: riling up her supporters with calls for cleaning up government corruption. >> and when you see a government orat works great for those with money and is notng so well for everyone else, that is plcorruption, pure and sim and we need to call it out for what it is. ( cheers and applause ) >> woodruff: and a late edition to the race, former new york mayor michael bloomberg, headed to pennsylvania.gi >> i can't i another four years of donald trump. we just have to find a way to beat him in november >> woodruff: jumping in just a month ago, bloomberg has shot up in recent polls after spendingmi ions of his personal fortune on campaign ads. the others in the race spent a lot of timin iowa, hoping to sway voters who remain largely

undecided with just six weeks before the state's firn thecu nation caus. former vice presidt joe biden traveled across the hawkeyest e, knocking on doors and talking to voters at a local speaking at a town hall, he focused on the importance of unity. >> our democracy is in trouble. we are at breaking point, we need a president to rise above the personal attacks and heal, >> woodruff: south bend, iiana mayor peteuttigieg, who is leading recent polls in iowa, picked up the endorsement ofha more200 reign policy and national security professionals, a policy area that biden has long touted as his areof expertise. >> some fos on tv starting to use the word frontrunner t describe our standing right here in iowa. >> woodruff: fellow midwesterner, minnesota senator

amy klobuchar, who talks about rural voters, a has also seen a surge in iowa as she prepares to finish her tour of the state's 99 counties. low polling numbers kept new jersey senator cory booker off the debate stage last ek. instead he took his bus tour across iowa, hoping to take age of the lack of a cle front runner in the state's ever-changing field. >> my whole campaign is based on this idea that we need a revival of civic grace in our country. that we need more courageous empathy for each other. >> woodruff: meanwhile, president trump was also out speaking to his supporters at a conservative conference in palm beach, florida. >> generations of patriots before us did not work, fight, and sacrifice so that ld surrender our country to a rang left-wing mob. they don't know if they're down the middle, if they're far left. they're fightir. with each ot >> woodruff: the 15 democrats weeks left to make case to few voters. and now we turn to politics with amy walter of "the cook

politil report" and public radio's "politics with amy walter." and tamara keith of npr. she also co-hosts the "nprst politics pod hello to both of you. >> hello. >> woodruff: it iay"politics mo and let me just say it for the third time, we are six weeks away today from the iowa caucuses. so here we are, amy, christmas is right around the corner. where does this democratic race stand? >> it seems incredibly volatile and stable at the s be time. we gk to the beginning of this year, but let's say this spring when all the candidates were in the race that we nowal have essen. joe biden was ahead, bernie sanders was in a close second plac we went though the summer, elizabeth warren was on the ascendancy, biden and sanderste stto drop, buttigieg came up, seemed to have plateaued, harris popped up at one point, looked like she was clo to

taking a frontrunner mantle. we're close to christmat and ih bernie sanders at two, joe biden at number one. although, when we look at iowa and new hampshire, bernie sanders doing better than biden in those states. pete buttigieg could wi in iowa. so things are scrambled. add bloomberg and his millions and millions of dollars. no one knows what to make of this. political professionals are intrigued by this and we don't m know what e of it. amy klobuchar, who is trying to get into a lane somewhere in iowa for a ticket out. >> woodru: so what does it all add up to, tam? >> well, it all adds up to there are still a lofto people who haven't made up their minds.is there's roup of iowa college students who i text with every once in a while just toh takeir temperature and, you know, every time i check with th, they have different candidates who they feel like

they might be willing to caucus for, and, today, i texted and said, what are you thinking about? d each one said, well, if i had to caucus today, i might caucus for either buttigieg, sands or warren, rt of a variety. buvethey said we hat really decided yet. and we are six weeks out. they haven't reallyided yet, and when you have a race where so many vots, iueding the ones i text with, say electability is so important to them. then you get the dnamic tt amy described, which is sort of this escalator to a cliff, where you notch up, and then you start taking incoming, as buttigieg did at the debate and people y, oh, well, are they as t ectable as i thought they were when they were j the ascendancy? >> woodruff: how unusual is it, amy, at this stage of themp gn for this to be this much in the --

>> it does feel like usually we have a sense of who the obvious frontrunner is. ido thnk joe biden the take that title of frontrunnerw ight mply because he's been ahead in national polls and really hasn't lost that lead, t but evough he's not ahead in iowa, you can still someone r trunner if they lose iowa and new hampshire. i think what's new for us right now, judy, is the sense that thn peho wins iowa and new hampshire may not get enough moment fm those two to go ahead and win nevada and south carolina, which are the next two they look demographically very different from new hampshire and iowa, and then to htgo rgfrom south carolina, couple days later,nto super tuesday, which are these big in terms of number of delegates but big expensive states like texas and californio where erg is spending money. >> and he has money to spend. >> woodruff: and folks leading in the polls in nevada and south carolina nay may bedi erent than south carolina

from the ones leading in different demographics. >> yeah. >> woodruff: so meanwhile, we have this other thing going on, tam. a drama of impeachment playing out. a little new information came out over the weeke in terms of a timeline in terms of what the president wasoing about withholding aid from the ukrainia today. there's a couirtling where the democrats may file additional charges against the president, although we don't know what that could mean. but the democrats are saying in the hose, nancy pelosi is saying we're not gng to turn over ts hose artic impeachment to the senate just yet. so where does this stand? >> it's at a little bit of a standsti a. while peope eating cookies and drinking hot chocolate and spenng time with their families, there has been a fair bit of noise about it today, with a tweet from pelosi, some tweets from trump, chuck schumer having a prenss coference. in essence, the negotiations between the senate leaders, the democratic and republican senate leaders are at a standstill. they are at an impasse at the

moment and until that breaks, nancy pelosi says she won't send over the articles. id leads to all kind of interesting rhetoumcal argts about, you know, about if democrats were in such a hurry, why are they slokiw wal it now? and then democrats say, well, why don't replicans want these witnesses and this testimony? ey must be covering up for something. it gives them something to fight out the two weeks when they'r out. if there isn't an agreement on january 6 when they come bek, this couldinteresting because a senate trial may not happen that quickly, and then you get into the caucuses. >> woodruff: so some risk here. >> definitely, for the democratic can>>date. nd it's a process argument, right, and those are very difficult for voters to understand, and most folks tend to tune out these process arguments. i mean, the challenge, i think, in this entire impeachment process have been, and i think it was andrew yangwho said it

at the debate the other night, who said voters alreadyeel like they know what the outcome of the game is even though we're only in the fifth inning. we have notee sn republicans break, enough republicans say publicly that they would vote t convict the president, so this just sounds like a whole bunch of noise that, again, seems lik we're back into, as i said, the political process debate. the one thini will say, though, in the house, republicans in the minority were trying to t those vulnerable mostly freshmen it in trumpess, districts or competitivedi ricts, in a bind on this issue and talking about the process, meaning it wasn't going to be fair, they're railroading the president, rushing this process, it's so partisan. democrats are trying to do that on the senate side. they're in the minority, but there are handful of senators in blue or purple states who are what democrats are hoping are going to be put at risk either

by a long, drawn-out trial or having to take votes on things that could come back to rt them in a campaign. >> woodruff: so a lot of cal qulaitthn. >> a lot o. >> woodruff: and meantime, the president responding to all this, tam, by making sure that trade great, usmca. >> new nafta. >> woodruff: was passed, a ending bill was passed, essentially the white house got a favorable court rling on healthcare. it was put off for a while.ou it have been uncomfortable. so the president is pushing back in several ways. he's going out to rallies, beint very angry, also saying i'm getting work done. >> right, and all of those ethings youscribed actually required democratic help. those were all bipartisan agreements and deals that led to aese policy victories that president trump e to claim, and this message is taking hold inn is campad you're going to see a lot more of this, which is you may not style, you may not like myy

tweets, but i get things done, and that is essentially president trump's message going into recollection. >> woodruff: just a. -- going into reelection. >> woodruff: just a few nutes. >> i think healthcare is a very a big deal especially forbl reans who could be put on the offensive for much of the 2020 cycle if the healthcare case makes it to the supreme urt during 2020. >> woodruff: it puts pressure on them. >> to say what is your an if they were unable to pass one in 2017. >> woodruff: we wish you a wonderful holiday ansee you in the new year. >> you, too. >> woodruff: amy walter, tamera keith, thank yo >> thank you. woodruff: as the decade draws ipto a close, our relation with technology is more dependent and interwoven into

our daily lives than ever. but our comfort with that technology and the private data it collects and shares about our lives may be changing. that's especially true with smartphones - evens their growth has soared. just over a third of american adults owned one in 2010. now, more than 80% do. lliam brangham is back with a look at a new investigative series about how far that datack can be t and to what end. your smartphone is probably sending your precise location to companies right now. that's the first sentence in one of a series of investigative stories by the "new york times" that reveals just how often our phones track our whereabouts and how many largely unknown compans capture all that data. here's just one of the remarkable examples in the series. one data set of 12 million cell phones acrims several m wage cities was leaked to the "new york times." these are all the smartphone

hits around central park in new york city. that one dot there i just one phone, and here are all the places ttt phone went win a certain period of time. stitch those location togher, and reveal a map of a person's daily life. the time series is called "one nation tracked," and it examines the serious implications for personal privacy, for free speech and for national security. charlie warzell is one of the reporters on this series and joins me now. this is such a revelatory piece of reporting. well know our privacy in some ways h been given up but toe in this detail was pretty azing. i think people assume their phones, when using google maps l or somethie that, that it does follow where they go, but you are reporerting thereo many other ways our phones can track us. >> that's exactly right. there are certain services that

collect location data that you consent to every day, and you're very ware of exactly what's happening and why. example, you obvioeed that for g.p.s. data, you need to share that location, and you're getting a service that's very helpful and handy in return.bt here are plenty of apps out there that collect this at thatr purpes that it's not quite clear that you necessarily need them, and they have secondary businesses that aren't fully disclosed. they may be buried in the long-term service agreements, but it's not exactly clear to the user, ande they have th secondary business of selling this location data to other third parties, so then repackage and sell it, and once that information is gone, it's gone for good.n' you get it back, and those companmis, thesddlemen, so to speak, of location data, they can be, you know, big, trsted companies, or having small startups with security that we

don't know and employees who, you know, it's not clear if they have the r permission structure or not to view your information. >> and are there rules that govern this kind of monitoring? i mean, i think it's one thi if some company has got ths collected, but we would assume there is theorically rules about how quickly they have to purge it,hathey can or can't do with it,hat are the grund rules? >> we hear this phrase, it's the wildest. the online advertising industry is still very young. it has grown exponentially over this past decade, and it is such a complex system, the people who work in it don't actually really understand how the whole things, wohey say. you know, we understand what we do, and we know maybe where it es, but we have no idea where the information goes after that. so that's aystem by design. like, this is a system that is made purposefully to be difficult to regulate for consumers to understand, for even the participants in the system to understand.

thethis loion data doesn't contain a name or address on itn but ourvestigation shows it's really easy to deanonomyze this so the rules don't fit with the sneaky loopholes this idustry has created. >> devil's advocate question, what do i care if a company gathers the mundane details of my life? what are they really learning i would be woried about? >> that argument gets put out a lot. i would say, first and foremost, we have to start thrig about ivacy as a collective concerns s -- collective concerna soavment it's not just your privacy when you're in a public place and broadcasting your ylocation. u're at a protest, say, you could be broadcasting your

locayoon in a way that link to somebody who really has a lot to lose if they are exposed there. when you have such large swath of surveillance, you're seen acting ways you wouldn't necessarily know. you bringing your phone to a place of worship, that's a data point and if information like this is being surveilled or if it leaks, you know, you're associated with that. the other thing, too, is that,kn yow, this ends up being sort of a corrosive mentat ty. we s think that we deserve this. you know, we built this whole alism system cap not too long ago, and we have a chance to actually do something about it. we can govern how this works. we don't have to just accept what larger companies tell us. >> reporter: you also detail in another story in the series that there are some real national security implications about this. you saw from thitone daa set phones pinging all over the

white house, owl over the pentagon. but tell us about the one more rspecific vignette youll into? >> early on in our reporting, we decided to look atar-a-lago, house" in bau palm beach, and it became cler that some of t devices were moving to the trump golf course there and to one of his other properties. and when wre comthat with the president's public schedule, we realized these were the exact movements. so we zoomed out on the device and were able to actually see that that person was believed to be a secret service agent and, u know, we were able to follow that person to their home. we were able to from there tota unde who that person's spouse was, you know, see trips to a sch per se, which was, ou know, supposedly dropping off theirild, things that no normal person should be able to see, especially, you know, a

journalist 3,000 miles away. a secret service agent who is not securing the device, is not thinking about the way in which they mig be tracked is actually giving up the location of the president of the united states. >> reporter: for the people who are troubled by this and genuinelalarmed as i am by your reporting, are there things that we can all do collectively eto protect our own prsonal phones? >> yes. there are some things, bu i think it's really important, we've, on the "new york times" web site, published a list ofan things youo to wrote protect yourself that's in the hope people will look at it and take some of the steps. but one of the biggest things to remember about this ih tat, until we have some real regulations and someeal enforcement and that's enforced transparcy in this dustry, that's enforced disclosure of where this information is going ow, we're not going to be rid of this because you can't

fully opt out of this without objecting out of, you know, modern society, without throwing your phone out the window into e ocean. so i think more than anything what we're hoping from this piece is peopldunderst what's on the other side of this tradeoff. you get those directions, u get that coupon, that personalized news alert, butyo re giving up a piece of yourself when you do this, and, so, if people understand that, that's actually a really huge step in having this conversation and figuring out the norms around it. >> all right, the series is called one nation tracked, charlie warzell of te "new york times." thank you very much. >> thanks for having me. >> woodruff: fascinang. and that is and that's the newshour for tonight. on tuesday, the culture that defines the decade just about to end. i'm judy woodruff. join us online and again hereow tomovening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs

newshour has beeprovided by: >> consumer cellular. >> and by the alfred p. sloan foundation. supporting science, technology, and improved economic rformance and financial literacy in the 21st century.up >>rted by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org >> and with the ongoinsupport of these institutions >> this program was made possible by the corporation fo public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you.

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