captioningponsoredy wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for sunday, september 27: the partisan fight over the confirmation of supreme court nominee judge amy coney barrett; the next stop in our roads to election 2020: the state of georgia; and puerto rico's renewed push for statehood. next on "pbs newshour weeken" >> 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. the leonard and norma klorfine foundation. charles rosenblum. we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's right in front of us. at mutual of america, we believe taking care of tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and investments. >> for 25 years, consumer cellular has been offering no-contract wireless plans, designed to help people do more of what they like. our u.s.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you. to learn me, visit www.consumercellular.tv. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public badcasting, a private corporation funded by the american people. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> sreenivasan: good evening and thank you for joining us. within hours of the official

announcement of president trump's nominee to the supreme court, republicans announced their fast-track schedule for senate confirmation hearings beginning october 12. at the white house yesterday, the nominee, federal appeals court judge amy coney barrett, said she is prepared for what is already a contentious, partisan debate over her nomination. >> i have no illusions that the road ahead of me will be easy, either for the short term or the long haul. >> sreenivasan: senate judiciary chairman lindsey graham said after hearings in his committee, the senate should be able to take up a vote on barrett's confirmation before november 3. >> we'll start on the 12th. we'll have four days of hearings. then we'll hold the nomination for a week consistent with the rules of the judiciary committee. hopefully it will come to the floor around the 26th. >> sreenivasan: the republican- controlled senate needs only a simple majority vote to confirm barrett's nomination, and president trump said again last night he thinks the vote will come before election day. this morning the president claimed that the affordable care

act would be replaced with a" much better and far cheaper alternative" if overturned by the supreme court. mr. trump has claimed to have such a plan since he was a candidate in 2015 and is yet to present it. democratic presidential nominee and former vice president joe biden quoted the president's tweet today and warned that it signals that healthcare protections guaranteed under the a.c.a. are at stake if judge barrett joins the court. >> it should come as no surprise that on saturday that trump would nominate amy coney barrett and on sunday lay out clearly what his objective is: to terminate obamacare. the judge has a written track record of disagreeing adamantly with the supreme court's decision on two occasions upholding the a.c.a. >> sreenivasan: tuesday night, donald trump and joe biden meet

in the first of their three scheduled debates. they're being billed as potential "game changers," potentially decisive events. but is that what history says? we asked special correspondent jeff greenfield to answer that question. >> the evidence as far as it can be discerned is that the debates don't have that much of an impact. they may have an impact for a day or two, but generally speaking, it's marginal at best. it's a very shaky assumption that these debates do more than move marginal votes. but as we saw four years ago, even a marginal shift can sometimes make a difference. >> sreenivasan: so, why do we think that people watch these if it ultimately doesn't matter as much to them? >> yeah, i think you have to make a distinction in primaries when voters may not be familiar with candidates. they may begin to form real impressions during these endless debates, but by general election, a month before the election, most people know who they're voting for. polls today show that 90% of the voters have already made up their mind. so, the sense is that they're

watching more like sporting events, you know, where you eer on your candidate, and you boo the other ndidate. and if your candidate has a bad performance, it's like your team loses a game. you don't leave the team. and that's kind of where i think we are with a lot of these debates. >> sreenivasan: you know, it seems almost like the financial markets, so much of this is managing expectations. and, in a way, the president's attacks on joe biden, his energy level, et cetera, are they setting the bar too low? >> well, let's see, the president has suggested that biden is in the early stagesf dementia. he's proposed a drug tt because he says the only explanation for when biden does well is that he's on drugs. so you might think that if biden shows up for, you know, for the debate and does not begin speaking in tongues, that'll be a victory. now, just in the last 24 hours, trump has said, well, you know, he has been an experienced debater for all those years in the senate but it's fair to point out that

in the primaries, in which we saw very uneven performances by biden, you know, he was up, he was down, maybe the better measure is that in the two vice presidential debates he had against sarah palin and paul ryan, he was better. but i do think that if you see where the polls are, they've been utterly kind of almost static with biden having a substantial lead and a reasonable lead in the battleground states that president trump will do anything and everything he can. and as we've seen for five years, if you try to predict what donald trump is going to do, you know, you're in for a fool's errand. >> sreenivasan: all right. jeff greenfield joining us from santa barbara. thanks so much. >> thank you, hari >> sreenivasan: for more on the presidential debates and other national and international news, visit pbs.org/newshour. >> sreenivasan: healthcare is almost always a top issue for voters, and this year, as the u.s. remains the center of the coronavirus pandemic, access to

health insurance has taken on even more importance. georgia has had more than 300,000 confirmed coronavirus infections and 6,900 deaths. it's also a statwith one of the highest rates of uninsured people in the country. in response to so few people being covered, state officials are trying to change the way georgians find health insurance under the affordable care act or obamacare. but will the proposal, which needs approval from the federal government, help more georgians get covered, or have the exact opposite effect? as part of our ongoing "roads to election 2020" series, newshour weekend's christopher booker has the story. >> reporter: when steven crayne thought about starting his own web design business seven years ago after a career in merchandising and marketing, one of the biggest concerns was health insurance. >> and i was always deathly afraid of it because, one, you know, you know, i need healthcare benefits. >> reporter: over the past four years, the 62-year-old, who lives in gainesville, georgia,

s had skin cancer removed from his fa twice. he's on routine medication for underlying health conditions and he provides health insurance for his wife and son. so when crayne launched his business in 2014 he eventually started looking to get insurce on his own. he turned to the federal marketplace created by the affordable care act, or a.c.a., the 2010 healthcare law commonly known as obamacare. he was nervous, though, since all he had heard were negative things about the marketplace. >> so, when i called a.c.a., i was like, wow. they were really, really helpful. we went through the deductibles and everything. and together we found the right plan. >> reporter: so it came as a shock to crayne when he found out via a tweet only last month that the state of georgia was trying to change how people access health insurance under the a.c.a. >> when i first saw it, i was like, what? i didn't hear anything about it. i was, like, completely blindsided, okay. and, you know, that was scary,

okay. and i was like, well, what is it? >> reporter: what it is is a set of two proposals that were submitted to the federal government in july for approval. the proposals would, one, create what's called a reinsurance program to help offset the cost of policyholders with high medical bills. the second and more contentious initiative would eliminate access to the federal healthcare marketplace healthcare.gov. instead, georgians shopping for healthcare coverage would be steered to private brokers and insurance webses in what's called the "georgia access model." georgia governor brian kemp's administration declined pbs newshour weekend's interview request. but in the states' application, it contends that moving to this more decentralized model could increase enrollment in health insurance by 25,000 people in five years, through "improved customer service, outreach, and education provided by the private market." >> the estimates that the governor's plan will increase the number of georgians who

choose to enroll in private health insurance are, frankly, a little unbelievable. >> reporter: laura colbert is executive director at georgians for a healthy future, a non- profit consumer health advocacy organization. >> the transition from one system to another is going to b difficult, even for consumers who know it's happening. we know that not all consumers will know that this change is taking place. so, some of those consumers are going to need to catch up. some of them may not get through the process at all. it's much more likely that consumers are going to become uninsured in this process rather than having more consumers brought into the private insurance system. >> reporter: the kemp administration's proposal argues that moving away from the federal marketplace will give georgians more options for healthcare plans at lower prices. but opponents argue that the cheaper plans that georgians may be steered to by a broker or insurance website may not cover pre-existing conditions and all of the essential health benefits

that the a.c.a. plans do. >> nearly all of these plans exclude pregnancy care. many exclude mental health. some exclude prescription drugs. >> reporter: tara straw is a senior licy analyst with the center on budget and policy priorities. >> consumers have become accustomed to the idea that their health insurance is going to cover pre-existing conditions and important health benefits. and so, consumers don't know that they may have been hoodwinked into plans that don't offer comprehensive coverage. >> reporter: straw authored a report earlier this month that estimates that tens of thousands of georgians could lose access to health insurance under the kemp administration's proposal and that ending access to the a.c.a.'s exchange will also reduce access to medicaid. >> just during open enrollment in 2020, 38,000 people started at healthcare.gov and then received medicaid coverage. so, we can expect that many of those people would just never find their way to medicaid

because brokers, web brokers and insurance companies, have no incentive to enroll them. there's no financial benefit to them to help see people through that process. >> reporter: straw and others point out that expanding medicaid, which the state ha not done, could provide health insurance to as many as 500,000 low income georgians. but it is perhaps the exclusive use of brokers and insurance websites that has critics most worried about the plan. under the affordable care act, consumers can already use brokers and insurance websites. in fact, for the 2020 enrollment period, close to 90,000 georgians us this approach to sign up for individual insurance. but about 380,000 georgians used healthcare.gov. steven crayne worries about what it might mean to go directly to a broker working on commission. >> i would be concerned about their impartiality, okay. and am paying additional costs for that broker? >> reporter: tara straw says there's a reason to be concerned. she points to an audit released this month by the nonpartisan

government accountability office. g.a.o. had undercover agents call 31 insurance brokers posing as customers with pre-existing conditions looking for healthcare coverage. >> now, this is going to cover my diabetes, right and my insulin and all that i need? >> yes. yes, absolutely, because you have that prescription coverage in there. >> reporter: the agency concluded that a quarter of the brokers, "engaged in potentially deceptive marketing practices," including this one, which signed the undercover agent up for a plan where "pre-existing conditions and prescription drug costs were not covered." >> this is definitely an issue that's been flying under the radar, but it is a real threat to the a.c.a. and could serve as a model for other states that have been trying to dismantle the a.c.a. through the courts and that have been trying to, to, you know, attack the a.c.a. in death by a thousand cuts. >> rerter: as the u.s. reached another grim milestone earlier this week with the death toll from covid-19 paing 200,000,

laura colbert worries that this proposal couldn't come at a worse time. >> this plan would roll out next fall. hopefully at that time, the country is going through kind of a massive vaccine campaign. hopefully we're all, you know, kind of, you know, getting back to work and the economy is kind of accelerating again. and there's a sentiment expressed in some of the comments that, that feel like this would really just pull the rug out from under families at a time when, when hopefully people are getting back on their feet. >> reporter: the trump administration, otentially a brand-new biden administration, will decide on georgia's plan by feuary of 2021. >> sreenivasan: for more on the political state of play in georgia where both senate and presidential races are heating up, i spoke with senior correspondent for georgia public broadcasting rickey bevington.

rickey, a couple of months ago it would have been impossible to think of georgia being a hotly contested state, but that's where we're at now. >> three different high quality polls this week put the biden- trump presidential race pretty much in a dead heat, which is extraordinary. trump won georgia by just under five points in 2016. biden and the democrats announced that they're adding georgia to their 12 state strategy in terms of spending millions of dollars in ad buys. biden is here this week targeting african-american men. and trump is here this week also with the same message for the black vote. >> sreenivasan: what about when it comes to getting people to trust the process, especially in light of the fact that the president for the last several months has made unsubstantiated claims of massive mail-in fraud? >> just on friday, hari, t

secretary of state, unveiled a web site where people can actually track their absentee ballot. this is significant. more than a million georgians have requested an absentee ballot so that they can eier drop it off at a drop box or mail it in. and now we're seeing that this, of course, trust issue is important for people. and so, the secretary of state among many efforts to secure people's vote and provide confidence that it will be counted, has now published this web site. >> sreeniv: considering the long lines that we saw in georgia during the primaries, what have georgia election officials learned and what can people expect in november? >> there's currently an effort to recruit 20,000 tech savvy poll workers for georgia. they're at about 15,000 right now. georgia rolled out $100 million new voting machine systems so that the machines are w to voters and to poll workers. >> sreenivasan: besides the presidential election, i mean, we have a tendency to put focus

on that, but we've got an important senate race as well. >> we sure do. and those same polls that i mentioned also put the races very, very close. we have two republican senators running. kelly leffler was an appointed senator and david peue is running for just reelection standard. it's essentially a three way race for the kelly lefler seat. there are 20 candidates, which is extraordinary. there's no primary. it's called a jungle primary. the top two vote getters, if nobody gets 50%, will go to a runoff regardless of party. congressman doug collins is her republican challenger and newcomer, democrat reverend raphael warnock. collins and leffler will split the republican vote on election day. there's enormous pressure on other democratic candidates to drop out to consolidate the democratic vote behind reverend warnock and potentially win outright on election day and avoid a ruff altogether.

now, david perdue faces democratic also challenger john osoff. president barack obama endorsed osoff. and that is promising to be a potential fight as well for that senate seat. >> sreenivasan: a lot to look forward to on election night. rickey bevington from georgia public broadcasting, thanks so much. >> thank you, hari. >> sreenivasan: because they are residents of a u.s. territory, when puerto ricans head to the island's polls on november 3, they will not be able to vote for the president. what they will be voting on is a referendum for puerto rican statehood and whether they should be admitted to the union. in the last four years, puerto rico has had a $72-billion debt crisis, devastating hurricanes and earthquakes, and half a million puerto ricans have left for the u.s. mainland. all these factors are forcing a

closer look at the relationship. newshour weekend's ivette feliciano has more. >> reporter: resident commissioner jennifer gonzález- colón represents puerto rico in congress and is the first woman in history to hold the position. >> why we are fighting for equality and democracy around the world, but you still do hav in your backyard the oldest colony, and that's puerto rico. >> reporter: her party, the new progressive party, currently holds the governorship on the island, and organized the referendum for statehood. >> and it will be the first time we will have a direct question using the same model, the same ballot that was used in alaska and hawaii. and that should trigger a movement in congress. >> reporter: trigger a movement because currently, gonzález- colón has limited voting power in congress, which she says serves as a metaphor for how the island's government operates under its current political

status. cause puerto rico is an unincorporated territory, congress can override the island's laws. and puerto ricans receive disparate medicaid and nutritional assistance funding. >> more than 47% of the island is under the poverty level line, most of them women and children. and many of the reasons for this is that there are different kinds of formulas for allocating funds to the territories. >> reporter: and like the >> reporter: in 2018, in response to the island's debt crisis, a congressionally appointed fiscal control board announced sweeping austerity measures in puerto rico that slashed the local government's budget by a third. in july the board suspended those cuts for one year, as the territory struggles to recover from hurricanes, earthquakes and the covid-19 pandemic. verónica noriega rodríguez and amira odeh are two climate activists in puerto rico.

>> ( translated ): this relationship stops us om making our own decisions about what affects us as puerto ricans. we feel powerless,nd i'm speaking from my perspective as a youth. >> like, they always talk about poverty or corruption or in general just how bad things are here, but they never explain the historical causes of why that is. >> reporter: representative gonzález-colón has co-sponsored a bi-partisan bill that calls upon congress and the president to take action next year if puerto ricans vote for statehood in november. it will be the sixth time in history that puerto rican's vote on the question regarding the territory's relationship to the u.s. >> it's not going to have any impact whatsoever. >> reporter: pedro caban is a professor of latin american, caribbean and u.s. latino studies at the university at albany who researches what he calls puerto rico's status as "" colonial state." caban says this year's status vote will t lead to a change

for the territory, just like previous referendums. >> i would argue that the fundamental objection to granting puerto rico statehood is the idea that puerto rico would attain remarkable political power. i think it would rank 16th among the 50 states. >> reporter: with statehood, puerto rico would get five members in the house of representatives and two senators. caban supports a different idea introduced in congress last month by democratic congresswomen alexandria ccasio cortez and nydia velasquez. they propose addressing puerto rico's political status by way of a constitutional convention. >> there's nothing sacred that says that puerto rico has to be within the territorial clause of the constitution. >> reporter: in june, the department of justice declined to provide funding it had set aside for a puerto rican status referendum back in 2014, arguing the results of this year's referendum would favor statehood, since no other status

options, such as independence, will be on the ballot. although they are both critical of what they see as the island's colonial status, youth climate activists odeh and noriega rodríguez say the referendum is money wasted, and a distraction from much more urgent matters in need of attention. >> we're in the middle of a pandemic with hundreds of people dying. thousands sick. and they're wasting millions in asking this question over and over again. >> ( translated ): right now, we youth are calling attention to the fact that puerto rico's landfills are being closed, and by 2022 we will have no place to put our trash. three years after hurricane maria and you still see people with blue tarps on their homes. this is not the first time we've had a referendum on the colonial status, and it hasn't made a difference. we should be spending this money on necessary things, like fortifying our electrical system, which we need so desperately. >> reporter: why spend the money

on this referendum vote right now? >> because aually that money is going to be an investment. this is like a gatekeeper for many other federal funds that we are not accessing now that can help with, not just e environment, but many other areas. and when you are dealing with civil rights, it is not a money amount. it's not a dollar amount is about rights to the people. and that's, you cannot measure that. >> sreenivasan: finally tonight, yom kippur-- a day of atonement and reflection-- begins at sundown, marking the end of the jewish high holidays. for those observing, may you have an easy fast. that's all for this edition of" pbs newshour weekend." for the latest ns updates visit pbs.org/newshour. i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching. stay healthy and have a good night.

captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> 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. the leonard and norma klorfine foundation. charles rosenblum. we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's right in front of us. at mutual of america, we believe taking care of tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and investments. additional support has been provided by: consumer cellular. and by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, a private corporation funded by e american people. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. (relaxing music)

- [jeff] scenic beauty exists everywhere on this earth. you just need to look. (relaxing music) often, the places you'd never think of finding it turn out to be the landscapes you never forget, places that will forever draw you back. for us, the owens valley of california