b captioning spoponsored newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening, i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight, the virus on the rise: infection numbers reach new highs as the administration urges a return to schools this fall. then, e view from abroad-- a look at america's place in the world, in the face of a spiraling covid- crisis. and, powering the future-- how the promise of electrihicles is driving a new demand forer lithium batts. 25>> by the time we're in 70% of the demand of lithium will come from electric vehiclee nd. >> woodruff: all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour.

>> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> supporting social entrepreneurs and their solutions to the worost pressing problems-- skollfoundatn.org. >> the lemelson foundation. committed to improving lives through invention, in the u.s. and developing countries. on the web at lemelson.org. >> supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org

>> and with the ongoing support of these institutions: >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to yoom pbs station iewers like you. thank you. s >> woodruff: tmer surge of covid-19 is raising more and more questions about reopening schools this fall. that issue was at the forefront today, even as daily deaths nationwide rose to nearly 1,000, the most in weeks. white house correspondent yamiche alcindor begins our coverage. >> it's time for us to get our kids back to school.>> lcindor: president trump and federal officials are stepping up pressure on schools to push them to get back to in-person clses. niday, vice president pence and several top admistration officials repeatedly stressed

that students need to school this fall. pence called it "essential" to nationwide learning. education secretary betsy devos joined in: >> it's not a tter of if schools should reopen. it's simply a matter of how. they must fully open and they must be fully operational. >> alcindor: and, labor secretary eugene scalia argued the economy cannot fully recovch ifls stay closed. >> it's very iortant as wellme to keeand women across the country who need to be able to structure their workdays in apr ictable manner in the expectation that schools will be op.>> lcindor: the briefing came hours after esident trump tweeted a threat to to cut off federal funding for schools that do not reopen. the vice president said he was just trying to incentivize schools. president trump also criticized the centers for disease control. he tweeted he disagreed with the agency's "very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools"e laims the c.d.c. is requesting schls do"

impractical things." the c.d.c. rules include: enforcing masks for students and staff; cleaning and disinfecting frequently touched sur and, spacing des six feet apart when possible. at today's briefing, vice esident pence said the c.d.c. will be issuing new guidance as a result of the president's criticisms of the current ones. >> the president said today, we just don't want e guidance to be too tough. that's the reason why next week, the c.d.c. is going to be issuing a new set of tools, five differt documents that will be giving even more clarity on the guidance going forward. >> alcindor: critics say esident trump pushing to reopen schools too quickly could be dangerous: >> if you don't get this right, if there's an oops here, it prably means somebody died >> alcindor: meanwhile, local officials are making theirs wn plr the upcoming school year.

today, new york cityayor bill de blasio announced that starting this fall, most schools in the city will open rt of the week. >> two or three days in the classroom, in the school, the other days, remote lea of course we understand some families will choose remare ng as the only option. eg>> alcindor: at the colliate level, harvard and the massachusetts institute of technology sued the trump administration over its decisioo eport international students who study at universities that are offering online-only schooling. or even the goal - to createt -- as much chaos for universities and international students as all of this, as infections are still rising in 36 states, including tes, which had a record 10,000 new cases as of tuesday. another hotspot, the state of florida, reported almost that many. but at the same time, labs nationwide are reporting testing backlogs and supply shortages. officials warn the backups may

increase as more states lift restrictions. still, vice president pence said >> we're actually seeing early indications of a percent of positive testing flattening in arizona and florida and texas. >> alcindor: around the world, infections across africa have now topped half-a-million, with south africa confirming it has 100,000 cases. officials say a shortage of testing supplies means the actual numbeof cases are like higher. fo yamiche alcindor. i'm >> woodruff: t nation's top infectious disease expert, dr. anthony fauci, was not at today's coronavirus task force briefing. he told cbs that he was told not to attend.id on tuesday, prt trump rejected fauci's view that the country is still "knee deep" in the pandemic's first wave. the white house said the president values his advisors, but does not always agree with them.in he day's other news, the

u.s. supreme court upheld trump liadministration rules that birth control coverage under obamacare healthnsurance. by 7-to-2, the court affirmed letting some employe out of providing free contraception on moral grounds, as well as religious ones. the government estimates that as a result, up to 126,000 women could lose insurance coverage in any one year. we'll get into the details, later in the program. the city of houston today republicans to hold an in-person convention next week. officials cited the ongoing coronavirus surge. but, the white house said the g.o.p.'s national convtion is still set for jacksonville, florida, in late august. >> we're still moving forward with jacksonville. it will be a safe ev it will be a good event and it will be up to the r.n.c. as to how those details are hashed out. >> woodruff: several republican

u.s. senators have said in recent days that they will skip the national convention. a key impeachment witness against president trump is leaving the u.s. army. lieutenant colonel ale vindman announced his retirement today. his lawyer accused thedent of blocking his promotion. vindman had alrey lost his job with the national security council. more than 150 academics, artists and writers are warning about growing threats to free speech. in an open letter in "harper's," they support anti-rasm protests, but they also denounce "intolerce of opposing views" and "public shaming and ostracism". the group includes gloria steinem and j.k. rowling among others. a two-year audit commissioned by facebook has cited what it calls "serious setbacks" in the company's efforts on civil rights.

it cites a hands-off approach to hate speech and misinformation from president trump and oers. now ycotting facebook over the issue. two more big companies are moving to cut their pandemic losses. y united airlines says it y off 36,000 employees, nearly half its u.s. work force, unss enough take early retirement. and, brooks brothers is filing for federal bankruptcy protection, after 200 years in siness. w wall street today, the jones industrial average gained 177 points to close at 26,067. the nasdaq rose 148 points, to another record close, and the s&p 500 added 24 points.

and, the "ivy league" conference sports, including college football, for its eight members. the move was widely reported the ivy league is the first division one conference to take that step. still to come on the newshour:g understande testing shortages plagng the country. north carolina's lithium boom and the future of electric transportation. confronting bias-- a look at racism in america and the conversations needed to end it. and much me.

>> woodruff: since the firstna corus cases were detected in china in december, the united states hasecome the world's worst-affected country. case numbers in florida, arizona, and sou carolina are growing faster than in any other country. and of the 25 top lotions in the world for new cases, 15 are u.s. states. the u.s.' coronavirus response has reignited the debate over american exceptionalism, and its role as a leader on the global stage. nick schifrin has the story. >> schifrin: in seoul's nightclub district robots serve drinks in re-opened bars. this was once a covid hotspot. the governme snutbed out an ak. in paris, the louvre reopened with mandatory reservations and face masks, a sign of france's relative success. and in thailand, thousf students returned to school,

are re-opening andng casentries numbers low. but in the united states, cases are accelerating and eclipsing en countries with large outbreaks such as brazil, russia, and india, as the u.s.'t top epidemiolo dr anthony fauci acknowledged this week. >> we went up, never came down to baseline, and now we're surging back up. >> schifrin: acrars europe there fragile success stories. greece has one of the continent's lowest infection rates. the public face of its response has been not a politician but an epidemiologist: doctor sotirius got his own cartoon.ular he denmark was the second count to issue a lockdown, before its first case. last month, it re-opened its borders to most european countrs. but those and almost all european borders are still closed to ameran visitors. meanwhile in asia, vietnamese soccer fans pack stadiums after the country stamped out the vis with contact tracing a

strict quarantine measures.wa and in t sports bars and baseball are back. >> when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be dowto close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done. s ifrin: but in the united states, experts fault president trump's early denial, some states' failure to impose stric, lockdown measuuick reopenings, and a lack of testing and tracing, even ough president trump wants less testing. >> if we did half the testing, we would have far fewecasesbu people don't view it that way. >> schifrin: today secretary of state mike pompeo insisted the u.s. was still a global leader. >> whether that is the technical, scientific solutionso both tto stop the spread, whether that's therapeutics or vaccines, the world turns its eyes to thbest scientists and researchers. it's the united states that the world looks to.n: >> schifriut china and foreign ministry spokesman zhao lijian have tried to get tthe world to turn its ey beijing, to argue its communist system is superior.

>> ( translated ): china has achieved mor strategic progress and brought the virus under control within a short period of time. then when we look at the u.s., we couldn't help but ask what and how the us has done, and when it will stop shifting the blamto others? >> schifrin: so how is the us the pandemic? during we now get three views from three parts of the world.e jostaneda was mexico's foreign minister from 2000 to 2003. he's the author of several books, including most recently, "america through foreign eyes." réka szemerkenyi was hungary's ambassador to the u.s. from 2015 to 2017. she's now a nonresident senior fellow at the center for europeanolicy analysis, a think tank in washington, d.c. and maina kiai w u.n. special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association from 2011 to 2017. he's a human rights and anti- corruption lawyefrom kenya.om weall to the "newshour", and maina kiai, let me start with you.

you go back and forth between d.c. and nie robey. you haen to ben d.c. now. how to you and your colleagues response to the pandemic given that you're here now? >> well, a lot o people in kenya and africa have been quite shocked, really, about how the united states has been dealing with this pandemic, the fact that it's elevated politics before lives, before science, and that this is a response that you would pect really from almost a third-world country, the lack of ldership at the national level and the fact that things areoing from bad to worse as a relative improvement, and the sparkle that the united states has been for so many people h faded in a very dramatic way. >> reporter: i'm wondering from your perspective was this just about the question of the administration's response to covid, or is this about btrger ds about the united states that perhaps began beforeov? >> i think it's deeper trends,

things i describe in my book, eign eyes,rough f for example, the end of american exceptionalism, or the increased sensitivity of the united states to what happens abroad, sensitivity or vulnerability or dependency, efichever you . the united states in the pandemic should be seen, i think, as one more country that is affected by it. some years ago, we would have thought the united states is never sensitive, is ver dependent on what happens abroad except every now and then -- pearl harbor, 9/11 -- but the pandemic has shown that, on the one hand, the united ates is as sensitive to these things as every other country in the worln secondly, the united states is not exceptional in that matter. it is dealing with the same pandemic, it is dealing with a threat from abroad pretty much like other countries are. >> reporter: reéka szemerkeenyi,

we heard two arguments about how this is the end of american exceptionalism, but there are suropeans who still believe the u.s. i indispensable and who support the trump administration's policies even if perhaps not the rhetoric. >> absolutely. questions that raised concern in the sight of the europeans were more the tweets coming out of the blue and that wereot helpful to strengthening the transatlantic relationship but the policies outweighed the messages and the policies plemented so far have been very positive and strengthening, this cohesion, support for ukraine, support for stronger cooperation and inside n.a.t.o., the emphasis on the 2% as a fair and equitable contributiono the defense are all seen as strengthening the alliance. >> reporter: maina kiai, the

idea the sus dpensable from some perspective, do you believe the u.s. can hold that despite a the medica financial crisis it faces? >> the u.s. i always seen as some place we can learn from and i suppose there's a different between learning from the u.s. states as differentiated from the government to have the united states. so, for example, withinhis matter" has had a lot of resonance in africa and a lot oa peop talking about it and are seeing american people, multi-racial, young,specially, out in the streets demand ago continuation to have the dialogue toesolve the question of discrimination and racism as has been systemic and structural for hundreds of years. it's one thingay the people look at the people of the united states as opposed to the. go now, how this government and this regime is responding to

this wholessue of black lives matter, fo one issue, i one that erodes the soft power of the united>>tates. ll right, jorge castaneda, you write about how these longer trends did not start with covid, but to the point just made, do you see evidence that the u.s. is confronting some of those challenges and, as we americans say, trying to craft a more perfect union? >> well, i think that the point here is that the united states really does look and acts increasingly like oth rich countries. administration in ackets as anp anomaly. if the united states looks like most other countries, it has to act like most other countries, and then it will become like most other countries, and t perhaps whas pandemic is buffett would say is that when

the tide moves out, every financial crisis, everyone ss who's not wearing a bathing suit, well, the united states is not wearing a bathing suit.oo it like just about everybody else. >> reéka szemerkeenyi, the trump administrati points out this isn't about only how it has responded internally in theut united states what happened in the beginning in this pandemic and the fact c thatna silenced some doctors as well as scientists in the early days. >> defineely. i think ctions of china have revealed the real nature of their regime to the generation that has never seen o authoritariani dictatorship. there is a very strong needf leadership and cooperation on lye two sis of the atlantic. we actuhave to see through the current immediate reactions and have to see that, strategically, it is far more important now than ever to think

ofhe transatlantic relationship as a real priority for both sides of the atlantic. >> maina kiai, i wonder how you se the china challenge and whether you see the u.s. as leading the challenge or whether you see it as a challenge at all. >> many people do not see a difference in how the united statesornd china and see both of them are interested in their own self-interest andos that's the important thing for both. so it is a false narrative, a false choice to talk about chi versus the u.s. as far as many people are concerned. the chinese are givingquite a t of loans that are quite painful, in many ways, africa. the americans are wanting their own piece of the pie to do insnrements their own ways. so ting to pick the world in this wholworld as china versus the united states is a false narrative and i think many h ee beosed in many parts of

africa as not much difference, they just want a piece of africa's resources, they want af piecthe pie to continue. in that case, then, that, foeor very manye in africa, the u.s. was always the beaconf hope, the beacon of democracy, the beacon of tun that people could come out and get to somewhere, but that has eroded dramatically. >> jorge castaneda, e overall grade, perhaps, you give the u.s. at this moment compad , as you pointed out earlier, other rich countries? >> i would put o it so in the the best and the worst. between u.s. welfare state or american society clearly comes out as failg in the sense that it is not dealing withde the pc, with the virus the way, let's say, germany is. we can see i with the american healthcare system. we have seen it with the federal orgazation of the united states, where some towns and

some states do one thing, othern and other states do other things, the federal government is in the middle, doesn have enough money. so you look at all this, you see the united states and an american society that really needs to overhaul its social protection safety net. >> reporter: reéka szemerkeenyi, last word to you. do you believe these challenges at the u.s. face, the u.s. can overme them and continue to play the role that you believe the u.s. shoul play in the world? the leader of the free world, it has to be a completely new type of leadership that it has to exercise. it's a leadership that has to be s aed on cooperation, i leadership that has to be based on engagingrs partand having delicate messages about the positive messaging about the cooperation, the values o international cooperation, it can be a leader, but it has to be a new te of global leader,

a new type that is based on respectti and coope and engagement along common values in the long term. >> reporter: reéka smerkeenyi, jorge castaneda, maina kiai, thank you very much to all of you. >> thank you very much. . woodruff: public health exthrts have sai having an efficient system for wide-scale testing was key to bringing the outbreak under control. yet, as lliam brangham reports, testing in this country has consistently missed the mark. >> brangham: that's right, jud six months into this pandemic and the u.s. still cannot test evyone who needs a test. m day, a new orleans testing site opened at 8:00 a.m., but had to close minutes later because the line was so long. in sacramento, california, five testing centers were closed in hardit areas.

they'd run out of supplies. in arizona, the state with the highest number of new cases nationally, people waited in their cars for eight hours in the sweltering heat get a test. while the u.s. has ramped up testing considerably, the country ran 15 million tests last month, by all measures, we e still falling short. to understand how and why this is happening, i'm joined now by dr. jennifer nuzzo. she is an epidemiologist and senior scholar at johns hopkins center for health security. . nuzzo, great to have y back on the newshour. help us understand why we are seeing these shortages. is it demand? is it equipment, is it supplies, manpower? what is it? well, we think it's likely all of the above. the situation that we're now in wis probably different frre we were in march when testing was severely constrained initially. then it was a problem with rolling out test kits to plic health laboratories and then initially private labs. what we're seeing now is there are many more laboratories who are participating in testing

outpaced of supplies that they have and also they're having a really hd time sourcing the things like the chemicals that they need in order to perform the tests. but the truth is, we't actually done sort of a national assessment of what the testing bottlenecks are. and that's really important for us to do in order to figure out how best to solve them. >> brangham: months into this process and we still haven't done a real diagnostic of where >>o, we haven't.e? and mostly the approach to testing in the u.s. has been let every state or in some cases every city figure outem lves, which has been really inefficient and it's been basically put a situatiowhere you have 50 states competing against each other for access to need.lies that they all that's really no way to run a national response.ar and partic since this is a global response, we also have states and cities basically competing against othere countries for act same materials. >> brangham: could you remind us again why testing is s central tool in epidemic control?

>> so testing is the process by which we find cases.ed if you're infewe won't know if you ve covid-19 unless you get a test. and particularly with this virus, it's very difficult to just diagnose on symptoms alone. some people never develop symptoms. and so a test is important tond undersho has the infection and who doesn't. and that information is the critical start of a process that should lead to isolating people ato have the infection so they don't transmit it to others. but if we don't know who has it, then we can't intervene to stop the spread of the virus. that we've been seeing is delays in people geing their results. i have been looking at some of e big labs, like that qut diagnostics every week. it seems like they make ance annont that the quicthe turnaround of the results goes from couple of days to four five days to five to six days. why does that delay matter inro thisss? >> delays are really unfortunate. n first of all, d to know as soon as possible when people are infected so that we can know who

needs to be isolated and not be out and about spreading their infection. if people don't find out until it a week or more later whether they have the virus, then they may not know to stay home. that doesn't then give us enough time to try to find people who they may have exposed. that's a process called contact tracing. we need to go out and find people who may have been exposed to the virus and tell them so that they, too, can ome, so until we know for sure that they're not contagious, but that process can't happen unless weti gely test results back. and in some cases, we're hearing that it's taking multiple week for people to get their test results back. everyone they've exposed likely has already developed ann infectd is potentially contagious and exposing others. so we're really missing critical opportunities to slow the spread. i brangham: lastly, on a somewhat differeue, the president has kept arguing that it's only because we are testing so many people that we are seeing so many cases. the implication being that it's only because we're loong more

that we're finding more cases and that so that the risingse number of is actually a good sign that we're diagnosing more cases. how acrate is that? >> well, it's not accurate. it's true that the united states is testing more people than we've ever tested before. but one ofhe metrics that we look at is the percentage of tests coming back positive. and the fact that thatpe entage is rising tells us that we are finding more infections because more pele are getting sick. if finding more cases was just an artifact of surveillance, we would expect to see positivity stay about the same or decrease. but what we're seeing is surging positivity in states across the u.s. and it's really alarming because it means that they, despite efforts to expand testing, will have to even more testing to cast a net and find those infections. >> brangham: all right. dr.er jennuzzo of johns hopkins university, thank you very much. >> thanks for having me.

court is wrapping up the final week of its session and today revisited the dispe over coverage of women's access to birth control under therd afle care act. as john yang reports, it'sar famiround for the s stices. >> yang: judy, ts the third time the court has considered the question of whether some employers could opt olt of providing birth con coverage based on their beliefs. marcia coyle is chief washington correspondent of the "national law journal." marcia, what did the court decide in this case today? >> john, the court in a 7-2 ruling written by just chance thomas decided that t trump administration had leaul ority to issue new rules. actually, they date back to 2017. rules that expanded an exemptiou

for religious from the birth control coverage reexirement. thnded rules would allow religious objections as well as moral o objections and would cor just about every nongovernmental employer in the united states, t allowim to opt out of that coverage as r:ll. >> repor so, in this final two weeks we now know is the final two weeks of this court's term, they have had three decisions dealing with religious freedom, this o today on birth control coverage, another one today in wch they said essentially that church-run schools don't have to worry about antidiscrimination claims when they dealea withers who teach their faith and then, last week, a decision in whi they said that montana could not exclude a sool from a scholarship program simply because that schoolas church-run. so what does this tell us?ee

take these t decisions, casing to, what does this tell us about where this court is on the question of religious freedom? >> john, i think it's a continuation of a trend in the roberts' court since at least 2005ti when chief j john roberts took the middle seat on the bench. the court appears, in most its decisions, to favoring those who are claiming religious discrimination either by a state statute like last week's decision or a state conitution like last week's decision in montana, or as the little sisters of the poor case here involving the accommodation for religious and mal objections. so, again, it's a continuation of a trend. and if the person bringing the case is claimg, in particular, that his or her free exercise oi on under the first apple is being violated, the court

appears to be favoring those claims with a very strong belief in the free exercise clause of the first amendment. >> reporter: a little personnel and medical call note, we learned that chief justice john roberts, two and a half weeks ago, was taken to the hospital after falling and cutting his head. this court only announced this because "the washington post" asked them, after they got tip about this. what do you make of this? the court sdhat the chiefleast justice was suffering from dehydration, and he became dizzy, and that's how he fell. i should say, too, that 1993, i believe, and 2007,uf hered a benign ischemic strokes, whict strokes, that also caused him to pass out and fall. so we have to take the court at

its word and, certainly, the court was relying whatever the chief justice said was the cause of the problem. but it is unftunate that it takes a tip to a newspaper which then has to go to the court's information office to find out something as important as a justice going to the >> reporter: marcia coyle of the "national law journal," thank you so much. >> my pleasure, john. >> woodruff: it may not be quite the rush to ake a claim that drove old prospectors into early american mining camps, but mes o'brien reports on the intensifyinguest to find and produce lithium, a metal that is becoming morcentral to our daily lives. it's the latest in our series ngeakthroughs on the lea edge of science.

>> reporter: so we're standing on some lithium now, right? >> it's there, you just can't really tell it on the surface. it's just a lot of red clay and dirt. >> reporter: it's not "gold in them thar hills," but lamontat leherman is convinced it's as go as it. we're in the piedmont region of north carolinaetween charlotte and the appalachian mountains. it was february 2020 before e shutdown and the covid precautions. leatherman was laying the underf groundwo a lithium mine. >> this is the spodumene, this greenish gray mineral here. >> reporter: spodumene; the mineral is an important source of lithium, the lightest metal on earth. it's all over the place here, and leatherman's company, piedmont lithium, has the cores prove it. >> yeah there's a real nice crystal, you can see it's quite coarse >> reporter: the crystals in these cores are powering a volution in electrification that began in 1991 when sony

product powered by lithium ion batteries: a camcorder. it's easy to forget what lifeli wa before these light, energy-dense batteries existed. >> scenes like this are becoming commonplace in cities where cellular is available today. >> reporter: demand har the metagrown as fast as the devices have shrunk, a six-fold increase since 1991. but lamont leatherman's boss keith phillips is among those who say we haven't seen anythi yet. >> demand is growing 20% a year for the next two decades for lithium. that's the consensus equitation. so, a world would need a lot of lithium from a lot of different places. i'm just wildly bullish. >> reporter: the driver of this steep demand curve? >> we're building the cars as fast as we can. >> reporter: electric vehicles. so far, they have not surpaed internal combustion cars and trucks on cost and performance but that inflection point appears to be around theorner.

>> by the me we're in 2025, 70% of the demand of lithium will come from electric vehicle demand.ep >>ter: glen merfeld is chief technology officer at the albemarle corporation, one of the largest thium producers in the world. electrified transportation energizes demand for lithium batteries by many orders of magnitude. >> you need thousands of these you know. i think tens of thousands of cellphone sized battery toe fequivalent to the amount energy storage that you would find in an electric vehicle. >> reporter: albemarlear headrs sits near the site of one of the earliest lithium mines; kings mountain,nly ten miles from where we met lamont the quarry is closed. albemarle now mines lithium from rock in australia, and separates evaporation ponds in nevada and chile. mining lithium at the old quarrr is mexpensive, but demand is rising so fast, there is talk of

taking it out of mothballs in the coming years. meanwhile, the company is trying to wring out more efficiency in its processing facility. so what's the airlock for, why do we have it? >> it's to keep moisture out of throom. lithium reacts to moisture. is breathe on lithm metal anddo it oxidizes, making it useless to manufacturers. superintendent of the metals department ke miller laid out their deliverables. >> this would be a lithium ingot directly cast from primary metals. >> reporter: so, that's the main thing right there? >> yes, yes. t? reporter: can i touch i >> yes, yes, as long as you have gloves. and you'll see how light it is. >> reporter: it's amazingly light. wow! >> that's one of the great properties of lithm. you could see this right he, about how easily it bends. >> reporter: t first lithium boom in the '50s was all about booms-- it is used in triggers for nuclear bombs. it is also used to make tougher

glass for cell phones, exotic aerospace alloys, and drugs for people with bipolar disorders. it's ideal for batteries because it is light and highly reactive. near chicago, at the argonne national laboratory they're pushing battery tenology to the limit-to make them safer and more efficient. george crabtree is director of the joint center for energych storage rese >> lithium will react within almost anyand it will give up its electron so easily. it reacts with everything under the sun, including the things that you don't want it to react with. one of the things that reacts with is ordinary water. throw lithiuinto a pan of water and it will catch on fire. >> reporter: this is why the f.a.a. banned lithium batteries in the cargo holds of passenger airliners. despite the shortcomings scientists say lithium is still by far the best material for

batteries. but that doesn't stop them from looking for something better. venkat srinivasan is director of the argonne collaborative center for energy science. >> so, batteriesre all about finding new materials. we have to go and check and see if these materials is going to setting.lly eful in a battery so, what we would do is, we will make these small devices. itooks a lot like these ar the coin cells that you might have seen used in your watches and things of that nature. >> reporter: then, new small batteries are tested to e how well they perform, how fast they charge and how many times they can be discharged before they are exhausted. the prising ones are scaled up to consumer size. >> we make large forma batteries, so that we can start to look at cells that lookike what real-world the mpanies would make. >> reporter: all this work h led to many years of steady increases in battery performance and reductions in cost. this could change the face of transportation. but will there be engh lithium

to fuel a new electrified era? >> if you ask the question, "is there enough lithium in the world for 50% of the cars in the world to become electric?" the m answer ibe surprisingly, no. there isn't unless you recycle. >> reporter: unlike lead acid batteries, there is no practical way to recycle those made of lithium. working on that problem as well. as demand for electric vehicles rises, so will the need for a recycling solution. but in the meantime, the lithium rush is on here in the spodumene-laced hill charlotte. for the pbs newshour, i'm miles o'brien in bessemer cirt carolina. >> woodruff: protests over the ahmaud arbery and breonna taylor

have sparked a renewed dialoguei on racism in a. advocates for reform want policy and governmental changes. but there are also questions about what we can do as individuals to recognize our own inherent racism, and work to change that. as part of our race mattersna series, awaz spoke earlier with two scholars to explore racism in amica and the thncept of anti-racism. ibram x. kendi iauthor of "how to be an antiracist," and p isfessor of history and the founding director of the boston university ceor antiracist research. robin diangelo is the author of ane book "white fragility, is a consultant and educator on racial and sial justice issues. >>awaz: welcome to you bot thank you so much for joining us. let's jump right in because wordmatter. when we have this discussion, then i want to talk about definitions.ib

som, let's start with you. a lot of people will say, look, i'm not racistbut in your book, you argue that's not enough. you have to be antiracist. so what exactly does that mean?e what'sifference? >> so i define anti-racist as someone who is expressing an anti-racist idea or supporting an anti-racist policy with their action. and very quickly, an anti-racist ea suggests that there i nothing wrong or right, superior or inferior, about any racial group in an anti-racist policies or policies thatre leading to equity and justice. so t people who are expressi those types of ideas and supporting those types ofos policies in moments, they're being anti-racist. isand part of being anti-ris having the willingness to admit the times in which we're being racist. while to be not racist is always to say, even after we just said something that's racist, i'm not racist >> nawaz: so just to clarify

that, even though your book is entitled how to, this isn't soma status yieve, right. once you're anti-racist, you're always anti racist. >> no, anti-racist isn't a fixed category. so i don't urge people tbecome anti-racist. i urge people to be anti-racistn y ways, being anti-racist is almost like overcoming anad ction. in the first process of overcoming an addiction is first admitting that you have an addiction to racism, and then secondly, spending every day ori your life en that you're no longer going back to that,en ring that you're being anti- racist. about white fragility.et's talk can you talk in your book about the need to embrace acism? how does white fragility fit into this conversation? ly we've been taught to think about racism as ccurringat but enial sets us up to be

consciously and intentionally mean to harm other people and as long as we define it trat way, the a white person is not going to see themselves as complicit. when you understand that it's actually the system thate' when you understand that it's actually the system that we're in, that it's infused across the society, that changes your question from if you are not racist to how am i either upholding or challenging racism? but that denial sets us up to be incredibly defensive and the defensiveness functions to repel any challenge to our complicity. ta we're fragile in our inability to wit those challenges. >> nawaz: it's fair to say there'been a surge of interest in both of your writings. do you think that that surgef interest means that people are ideas to reflect in a way that they haven't before? >> certainly there is an

openness. there's a sense of urgency. it's very clear that this idea that we are post-rac been stripped away, and if we don'tpu support around us to keep our attention on this, we will inevitably slip back into comfort with the status quo. let me just say it. the racist status quo comfortable for white people. i move through a society in which racism is the norm, not a. aberrati >> nawaz: ibram, you're very specific in your language out the need to address racist pocies and racist institutions. wondering on the grassroots are molecular level, what does that mean? how can i be antiracist in my everyday interactions? >> so i think you have people who are reading our work and who are policykers and can recognize they have the power to

chan policy within their neighborhoods, within their institutions. thenou also have people who manage policies as they are almost like middle managers, and they can thwart policies that they know to be racist.e and then you hery single one of us who can join local organizations that arera challengin policy. we can fund local organizations and the centers that are uncovering and challenging racist policies. we can figure out ways to contribute to at local movement for anti-racist policies.ng every one of us has something to give. out what we're going to give to this larger movement. >> nawaz: robin, i wanted to ask you. i talked to a lot of people who are white people in particular, who in this moment say, youci know, i'm not . but i'll tell you one thing. i am not going to be made tofe guilty for being white. >> well, the first thing i wou

ask someone, a white person who lives their life in segregationi which most people do, is how do you know that you are not cist? one that is never put to the test. you know, again, it's not a comfortable examinion. but i am clear that as a result of having been raised in this society, that i have internalized racist ideologies ctand biases and that i don those in various ways. i didn't choose thatabout that. socialization. what i feel is responsible for the outcome. >> nawaz: ibram it's worth einting out that as you w writing this book, you yourself were diagnosed with a veryou se very late stage cancer. how did that inform how you did the work?so and you raw a parallel between cancer and racism in america. >> when we diagnose individuals as being racist, they typically

hurteally badly and they typically view us as attacking them, attacking who they are. by contrast, when i was diagnosed is as having sge four colon cancer, you know, it was devastating to hear, but i didn't viethat doctor is seeking to attack me. and so i tnk that's the first parallel for us to realize when when you're being did as racist, the purpose is to help. and then when we think about the y in which we go about treating cancer, particularly metastatic cancer, that's how we can treat metastatic racism, particularly within a society. and so there's typically a local treatment in which doctors go in and surgically remove the tumors in the way we can go in and surgically remove racistli es.do

doctor systemic treatment, which they flood the body with e chemotherapy, which is oduivalent of flooding the with anti-racist policies that have been proven to reduce racial inequity, i thinkt's critically important for us to to recognize that this nation has metastatic racism. and in order for us as a country to be heal, there's going to be pain and there's goingo be a tremendous amount of pain. but we recognize, like when we go through the pain of healing from a serious illness, that there is joy, that there is equity on the other side. >> nawaz: there is a lot of work to be done and hopefully joy ahead. hoat is ibram kendi, the a and robin diangeloauthorist. of white fragility. thank you to you both. >> thank you. >> thank you.

>> woodruff: tonight, newshoures ts "china: power and prosperity," an hour-long, primetime documentary. it is the prodt of more than a year of work, two trips to -china, and more than 70 camera interviews. nick schifrin begins the documentary at the top, with ase singular chieader. >> in beijing's great hall of the people, the people clap in unison for one man. xi jinping, communist party general secretary, commander in, chresident of the people's republic of china, says he's making china great again. >> ( translated ): the chinese nation has achieved a tremendous transformation: it has stood up, strong.ich, and is becoming and it offers chinese wisdom and a chinese approach to solving the problems facing mankind. >> not since mao zedong, communist china's foundings

father, chinese leader suggested so clearly the world could emulate china. not since mao has china had a leader as powerful as xi jinping. last year we traveled to china twice and reported from eight countries, to try and understand today's china and its relationship with the u.s. we wanted to return but the paemic grounded u.s. and changed the world. and in this global crisis, the two vernments are engaged in less collaboration than confrontation. in march, xi jinping flew to wuhan, the epicenter of vid- 19, to declare success. he congratulated health workers and the public for winning the "people's war" against covid-19, another phrase borrowed from mao.ry from jano march, the government restricted the million citizens.than 760 thousands of neighborhoods, locked down. state plners mobilized, and built two hospitals in less than

two weeks. >> ( translated ): we have the confidence that we will eventually control the outbreak and win the battle, because we have very strong leadershit under presid jinping. >> even xi jinping admitted covid-19ested that leadership. and the virus that has killed hundredsf thousands worldwide, brought u.s.-china tensions to their worst point in half a ntury. >> woodruff: nick is back, and joins me now. so, nick, how are those tensions playing out? >> reporter: across every single aspec of the u.s.-china relationship, judy. justta today sec of state mike pompeo spent most of a press conference disparaging beijing. he called it bullying and a repressive regime. in a documentary, we cover tensions over trains, trade, technology and, of course, over coronavirus which has really become an ideological confrontation. there is simply less collaboration and more confrontation in this

relationship, and when i talk to the officials in charge of u.s. policy towudd china, they actually welcome the tension because they say tha an administration that is confronting china is overdue.f: >> woodrnd, nick, tell us a little bit about what it was like to make the documentary. >> reporter: yeah, the government was willing to facilitate some but not all of our interviews reque inside china, judy, the government had a minder in mostf those interviews. to interview one historian critical of xi jinping, we had to communicate through iaan interm and not be seen in public with him, and that's just a sign of howtl l space there is to criticize xi jinping or anything about the communist partyod in china. during covid we had to conduct final interviews remotely. i can only hopntat this p we reflect china and its relationship with the world and the u.s. >>uff: very much looking forward. 10:00 tonight. thank you, nickschiin. >> reporter: thank you. >> woodruff: and th is the

"newshour" for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. >> woodruff: and tt'the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. newshour, thank you, stay safe, and see you soon. >> major funding for t newshour has been provided by: consumercellular.tvo >> when the world gets complicated, a lot goes through your mind. with fidelity wealth management, a dedicated advisor can tailor advice and recomurndations to ife. that's fidelity wealth management.

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♪ ♪ friends and family call me hubert or just "chef." i grew up in france, alsace to be exact, in ribeauville, a beautiful medieval town with less than 5,000 people. we lived on the top floor of my parents' patisserie. can you imagine what i ate as a child? i love cars, bikes of any kd and music, but my first love, besides my wife chantal, will always be cooking. ♪♪ this love i have followed to many different cities: