captiong sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for sunday, august 9: estions about the president's powers after his executive orders. the risk of spding up the census count. six yearafter ferguson, the legacy of michael brown's killing. and what may be the end of an era for political conventio. next on "pbs newshour weekend." >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: sue and edgar wachenheim iii. the anderson family fund. bernard and denise schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. barbara hope zuckerberg. charles rosenblum.

we try to live in the moment, nto not miss what's right front of us. at mutual of america, we believe taking care of tomorrow ocan help you make the mo today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and investments. >> for 25 years, consumer arcellas been offering no-contract wireless plans, designed to help people do more of what they like. our u.s.r -based custorvice team can help find a plan that fits you. to learn more, visit wwv.w.consumercellular additional support has been provid and by the corporation for spublic broadg, a private corporation funded by the american people. and by contributioyour pbs station from viewers like you. thank u. >> sreenivasan: good eveningr nd thank you ining us. the day after president trump signed four different documents on covid-19 economic relief, th critics and supporters are trying to figure out what is possible and what is legal.

democratic leaders called the executive actions unconstitutional and said they n't provide necessary relief to americans. senate minority leader chuck schumer criticized the president's plan to provide $400 in weekly emergency unemployment benefits-- $200 less than the benefit that expired one week atago. s would also have to pay 0 of those dollars. >> this is an unworkable plan. most states will take months to implement it, because it's brand-new. it's sort put together with spit and paste. and many states, because they veo chip in $100, and they don't have money, won't do it. >> sreenivasan: yesterday, the e esident said one of the orders would providtemporary payroll tax cut, which he said could become permanent after the election. >> if i'm victorious on november 3, i plan to forgive these taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax, i'm going to mak them more permanent. >> sreenivasan: the executive order mr. trump signed defers payroll taxes, but does not cut them, meaning emplors and workers could still be

responsible for paying them later. payroll taxes help fund social security andedicare, and today white house economic advisor larry kudlow tried to clarify wh ht the president meant wh said the cut would be permanent. >> when he referreto peanent, i think what he was saying is that the deferral of the payroll tax to the end of the year will be made permanent. it will be forgiven. nancy pelosi said she hopes that the white house will come back to the negotiating table and did not commit to a legal challenge. >> right now, we want to address the needs of the american people. my constitutional advisers tell me they're absurdly unconstitutional. >> sreenivasan: i spoke with politico reporter caitlin emma when we saw the president lay's out his executive orders yesterday, one of the first

questions was what is within his and his powers to do versus congress that apndproves spg. >> these executive orders, and i think it's worth noting that actually only one of them is an executive order, the rreest mem dumbs, in a sengs they carry less weight in that way. lybut certa think we're already seeing some of these ords, memos, kind of in the legal crosshairs. so it is certainly, there are definitely a lot of questions about the legality of some of the things he is proposing. >> sreenivasan: in one of the q & as with reporters he said we have plenty of money we vn spent yet. how much money are we talking about and can it fund all of the things that we're tryingget funded? ab the states have only spent t a quarter of the money that they received through the cares act which was out $150 billion. that's become a popular republican talking point in knees negotiations and arguing that more state and local aid

isn't necessary. look, all these states have all this money that they haven't spent. but that really varyies wildly across st a lot of the money that hasn't been spent is alady spoken for in thhaat ibeen allocated for a specific purpose. so asking governors to pick up for part of the tab unemployment benefits is going to be a very difficult ask, especially when they say they are already grappling with inadequate levels of federal aid. >> sreenivasan: finally, regardless of what negotiato in washington agree to or not, what that check level iswhen does it actually get to people who right nmiowght really need that $600 to pay rent or pay fo food? >> it's really unclear when the supposed payment was go uout. it'slear how many states would be able to pick up the ta for the rest of the $400 a week payment. this is a very uncertain

situation at the moment both in terms of legality and when some of these thing was actually take effect to potentially helppe le. >> sreenivasan: caitlin emma from "politico," thank you so much for join us. >> thank you. >> sreenivasan: as political leadeicrsrapple over econ relief, the united states reached a grim milestone in the coronavirus pandemic. therare now more than five million confirmed infections in the u.s.-- by far the most in the world. the death toll is now more than 162,000 according to researchers at johns hopkins university. the number of daily infections is falling, on average, from highs experienced in mid-july globally, the number of confirmed cases is approaching 20 million. t the virus is not spreading everywre. today, new zealand marked 100 days without a domestic transmission of coronavirus. prime minister jacinda ardern warned against complacency, even as many in new zealand have retned to normal life. mark, but again, we still need to be vigilant regardless. >> sreenivasan: five days after a massive explosion in beirut, inte prnational donodged

today to help the city recover, even as lebanon descends into a deepening poli acal crisis. emergency donors tele- conference today, attended by president trump and dozens of oterher le french president emmanuel macron sd world powers must pff aside their ences and support the lebanese people with financial aid. a top arican official says the u.s. will provide $15 million in assistancef the pledgessistance come a day after huge prosts in beirut. yesterday thousands set fires and stormed government buildings carrying nooses and banners saying "resign or hang." protesters accuse government officials of negligence and corruption, which they blame for the explosion that injured thousa 160 people.d more than in belarus today, the president is projected to have won in a landslide after an unusually contested election. president alexander lukashenko-- called europe's last dictator--n faceof the biggest challenges to his 25-year rule. svetlemana tikhanouskayged as a surprising rival, deciding to run after her husband was

barred from being a candidate and jailed. international observers have not deemed this a free and fair election and there are allegations of vote-rigging. for the latest on the elections in belarus and other internatonal and national news, visit pbs.org/newshour. >> sreenivasan: six years ago today, michael brown, a young unarmed black man, was st and killed by a police officer in the streets of ferguson, missouri. though questions still remaipp about what ed that day, the protests and the movement that it sparked have changed the course of civil rights i the u.s. brittany ferrell is a st. louis- based activist and organizer for the political advocacy group, black futures lab. newshour weekend correspondent ivette feliciano spoke with her about the ferguson protests and about how the killing of michael brown led us to where we are today. >> reporter: so, first off, i want to ask you, you know, to take us back to 201 how did the shooting of michael brown initiallympact the ferguson community and how did

it change your life? >> i was actually in new york on a vacation withi ome peers that s currently at the time in undergrad with. um, i found out about mike brown's murder when i opened up twitter and another peer of mine who was here had tweeted, "ferguson police department just shot and killed an unarmed black boy." and it was that moment that i was just instantly glued to myph one. even from hundreds of miles away, the grief and the pain and the anger that the community was feeling was palpable. like, it was so strong, you kn, e response that folks had to such an atrocious act of violence. that is what urged me to book my tripe he very next day.

it rocunked our coies. it rocked our communities. and when-- when people here gath folks were met with violence, the response tcothat from the unity, the response to the police violence from the community was that we're not going to let you kill us in the street and then can't grieve. and it was that response that sent this ripple effect around the wod where this civil living in has emerom.we are now >> reporter: what are your thoughts about how the media covered the protests? you know, many people outside of ferguson saw images of fires and destruction to property and viewed the protests largely as riots. you know, how is that different andm what you sa experienced on the ground? >> you know, the framing of our movement, the framing of our uprising at that time, it really

put-- it-- they needed to control the narrative. so, in order to do that, they pit the protesters, peaceful trators, folks who were having vigils, who were met with violence, as-- as the rioters, as the looters, as the dangerous ones. nd the police were framed as being heroic, trying to save the community, trying to save the commoyunity from desg their own community. it was very clear what they were trying to do. we see it today, right, when donald trump, um, he calls the protestersioters and looters-- looters. important part his message because it gives validation to the fact that federal agents get to snatch one should be concernedd no about it. heme, it's a repetitive that i believe the mea in the past has used a lot, and that people get to hold on to, to this narrative that police are

necessary, violence against otesters is necessary because all they do is riot and loot, there's no purposen-- for them being out in the streets. and that's just inaccurate. and i'm actually very happy to see now, six years later, that people are beginning to see how inaccurate that actually is. >> reporter: back in 2014, former officer-- police darren wilson was not indicted for michael brown's killing and he was cleared of any civil rights what impact did that have on your activism and on the national movement that was sparked by this incident? >> i-- i felt like a sense of rage and anger and deep sadness and grief all at the same time. and it was in that moment that i knew for the rest of my life my work was going to be ared towards fighting for the justicd ignity and power for black communities.

aamnd i have been on that s trajectory since then. ever since thecon-indictment e out in november of 2014, folks he and, i would-- i would feel safe to say around the globe have not-- have not stopped mobilizing, have not stoppemoving in pursuit of justice for black people in this >> reporter: we're once again in a period of widespread protests surrounding the killings of unarmed black people by the police. you know, six years later, why are we back here again? is there anything about this moment that feels different to you? >> yes. this moment, it feels different, we have shifted in how we interrogate power over the past six years and we have also begun to reimagine justice. it's no longer, "arrest the cops that killed breonna taylor." invest money into communities that need that type of

investment, black communities. invest in things to help black people thrive." >> reporter: how do you sustain a movement such as black lives matter? what more needs to happen to truly shndift licyeople's >> i believe that this movement is going to continue moving forward because we-- we have to. we he to. we know that the only other op, tion at this poiat it looks like, is we are on the pathy to a dictorship. americas falling into fascism. is that what we want for our country? absolutely not. i think that we have no other choice but to organize around the message black lives matte because we know that if black folks have justice in this count, everybody has justice in this country. >> reporter: brittany ferrell of much for joining us. >> thank you.

>> sreenivasan: this past week the u.s. census bureau suddenly announced that it will end all counting for the 2020 census on september 30, a full month earlier than scheduled. the critical count requires that all people living in the u.s. be counted and efforts to get responses g are beowed during the coronavirus pandemic. i spoke with npr reporter hansi lo wang earlier this week about the census count and the decision to move up the inadl hansi, what does a shortened amounof days that the census s reau will knock on doors mean? >> tans the census bureau has even less time than it was trying to really finish the count of every person living in the country. now, righnow, roughly four out of ten households nationwide have not been counted yet. and these remaining households are what the census bureau considers the hardest to count. these are populations that have been historically uercounted.

they include people of color, renters, rural residents, groups that are not likely to filout a form on their own. and that's why this do knocking, that's about to roll out nationwide nexr week, that doknocking is so critical to making sure that no one is left out and no resident is left out of the count. >> sreenivasan: now, that's hard s it is. lay on top of that, a pandemic within a few feet of oneto be another. >> door knocking is the largest, most expensive operation because it is really hard work and trying to do it while sociay trying, trying to keep social distance, that's very hard. and, i mean, the p.p.e. and trying to overcome people, people's public health concerns. but now to do that in a short amount of time, in the middle of weeks after the trumpwell as administration, after president trump issued memo calling for unauthorized immigrants to be general, but specifically from the census numbers used to

reapportion seats t' congress, tcausing a lot of confusion. a lot of outreach campaigns are sayingng confusion aolks, even though the constitution says that c wounting of tle number of persons in each state, that's the number that should be used to reapportion seats in congre. federal laws that say a person's personally identifiable inn formatnnot be used against them by any federal agency or in court. >> sreenivasan: so, you know, you have been following this beat f and there was this sort of drama about t qhe citizenshstion. then, obviously, came the pandemic. and here we are thinking about apportionment. what kind of power does that leave in the hands of the president, even if he were to lose this election? >> first thing i think it should be very clear, there is no citizenship question on the 2020 census. the federal courts have blocked that from being added to the forms. however, the trump

administration has moved forward wthith this memo calling fo commerce secretary to try to figure out a way to exclude unauthorized immigrants in the apportionment count. and, you know, here's one thing to keep in mind here: by not extending the counting, by not extending the deadlines for reporting the census results, what this means is ofat by the enhis year, under federal law, the president will receive thlatest state population counts. that is what the census bureau and those are the states, those state population counts, those are the numbers that presides trump, who mo says he wants to exclude unauthorized immigrants from. t >> sreenivasa census s to be completed by a certain time, right? so, if thisoes not go well, is there some sort of statistical threshold where the census takers n just say, look, we picture of who's in this country beyond a reasonable doubt and we kind of need a do-over. >> that's a big open question at

this point. the census bureau doesn't have necessarily deadlines to set-- doesn't have set legal deadlines for ending of counting, but it does have reporting deadlines. and december 31 is that key deadline. and the question is, does the census bureau have enough time to finish a count and also have enough time tprocess all those results to make sure that there aren't duplicate results and d any type of cleaning necessary to make sure this is the most accurate data set possible. and the big question is also is, are there going to be enough indicators and metrics for the census bureau as well as outside researchers to really make that assessment of how good is the 2020 census? how good are these results? >> sreenivasan: npr's hansi lo wang joining us from new york. tha ynks so much. ou're welcome, hari. >>as sreen: before the coronavirus pandemic changed everything, the summer of 2020

was goiheng to be the time of traditional days-long national political conventions. but as newsho weekend special rrespondent jeff greenfield reports, the conventions were already faotng from the ght and their historic role years before covid-19. >> the strangest sound you will be hearing this month is the sod silence. there will be no throngs of democrats cheering the nomination of joe biden in milwaukee; no crowds of republicans celebrating presiden nt trumparlotte, north carolina. nor in jacksonville, florida, where the republicans planned to decamp, the better to hold a more traditional convention. the persistence of the covid-19 pandemic has forced both parties to abandon an event that has been a mainstay of american politics for close to two centuries: the nationalna nong convention. but in a larger sense, conventions have been something close to life support for decades. from the first gatherings in 1831, through civil wars and world wars, through prosperity

and depressions, this is how america's politil carties have chosen their candidates, and battled over the most significant of issues. it's where in 1912, former presentheodore roosevelt challenged his successor, president william howard taft, for the nomination, then led his supporters into a third party.i s where, in 1924, democrats battbeled for 103 ballotre choosing a candidate-- and where they fought over prohibition, immigration and whether to condemn the ku klux klan. w itre, in 1948, democrats embraced the cause of civilou rights after ang speech by hubert humphrey. >> e time has arrived in america for the democratic party to get out of the shadows of state's rights, and twalk forthrighy into the bright sunshine of human righ. ( cheers and applause ) >> and where southerners walked out, and launched a segregationist third party that almost cost harry truman the white house. but it was the arrival of

television that brought conventions into millions of american homes, complete with physical.onflicts rhetorical and in 1952, with fights over dueling delegate slates, and an angry denunciation by republican senator ev dirksen of the party's last nominee, n york governor tom dewey. >> and we followed you before, and you took us down the road to defeat! >> or the 1968 democratic convention in chicago, where iolent clashes in the streets led to a frontal blast at chicago mayor richard daley. >> and with george mcgovern as president of the united states, we wouldn't have to have gestapo-style tactics in thest eets of chicago! ( cheers and applause ) >> and where a press crroential was noction. >> but don't push me. take your hands off of me unless you plan to arrest me! >> and even without ch high drama, conventions were often filled with political suspense. would george mcgovern get to keep all his delegates from california i1972, the key to

his nomination? would ronald reagan four years ter succeed in unseating president gerald ford? his nomination hopes alive with a parliamentary maneuver? but that 1980 convtion washe last gasp of anything approaching suspense. the primaries had already become the way the great majority of delegerates welected. no more brokers in smoke-filled rooms picking a nominee; no second or third ballots where alliances were formed or broken. there hasn't been a second ballot for a presidential nomination since 1952. and every four years, pundits proclaim that, this time, there wille a real contested convention, only to watch e nomination wrapped up weeks or monttihs before the convenon begins. that fact, in turn, has made conventions much less appealing to audiences, and to tv networks. the multi-million investment in sky rmbooths, and anof reporters and technicians, has been scaled back in recent years, and the major broadcast netwotorks dless than an

hour a night to the proceedings. there are no challenges to the rules or the platform, or the credentials of delegates. about the only chance for surprise figure suddenly emerges into prominence; like this keynote speaom 2004. >> there is not a liberal america, anama conservative ica, there is the united states of america! ( cheers and applause ) >> four yearsrego, the only tel when senator ted cruz did not endorse donald trump, and was roundly booed r it. wa>> freedom matters, and part of something beautiful. ( mixed crowd reaction ) >> now, the pandemic may have answered the question many have been raising r decades: do we really need four days of micously scripted pageantry? is there a point to an event that-- like main street at diey world-- creates an essentially artificial reality? or do we need to keep the

conventions alive on the chance that some year, some decade, an unresolved primary fight will have to be resolved on the convention floor? >> sreenivasan: that's all for weekend."ion of "pbs newshour for the latest news updates visit pbs.org/newshour. i'm ivhari srean. thanks for watching. stay healthy and have a good night. ptioning sponsored by wnet amedia access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs wpossible by:d is made sue and edgar wachenheim iii. the anderson family fund. ernard and denise schwartz. the cheryl and philip milsin

family. barbara hope zuckerberg. charles rosenblum. we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's rightfrn t of us. at mutual of america, we believe taking caref tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and investments. additional support has bee provided by: consumer cellular. and by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

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