captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> nawaz: good evening, i'm amna nawaz. judy woodrufis off. on the newshour tonight, the pardon power the president issues another round of controversial pardons while complicating congressional efforts towards a new covid relief bill. then, at the last minute, negotiators fromhe united kingdom and the european union finalize arexit trade deal, four years in the making. plus, the time of an economic crisis, a crucial time for giving and what it means to organizations that serve those in nd. and, a nation divided-- we step back for the long vihow the u.s. is being transformed by the pandemic. one of the striking things about this year is that the partisan divides that have shaped our politics for so long clearly also shape our culture and our way of processing reality. >> nawaz: all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour.

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education, democratic engagement, and the advancement of international peace and at carnegie.org. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions: and individuals. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for blic broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> nawaz: this christmas eve has been anything but quiet in washingt, after president trump's surprise announcement that he does not support the covid relief bill passed by congress. the u.s. house of representatives met briefly today and rejected two proposed revision to increase direct

checks for individualso remove foreign aid. without trump's signature, fomillions of people hopin economic assistance this holiday season will be lefurwaiting. on sy, pandemic unemployment benefits are set to expire. and on monday, the government will run out of money. the house and senate will return early next week for a planned override of trump's veto of a defense bill. meanwhile, president trump is spending christmas eve in florida, but he continued his flurry of pardons late yesterday. just this week, he has more than doubled his acts of clemency from the previous four years. william brangham picks up the story. >> brangham: that's right amna. president trump added 29 newan pardoncommutations last night and ere were many familiar names, including charles kushner, the father of the president's son-in-law jared. there were also pardons for two major figures connected to special counsel robert mueller's russia probe-- former campaign chairman paul manafort and trump confidant roger stone. those two joined three others

from that investigation pardoned the last month.ac for on, i'm joined by andrew weissman. r was the lead prosecutor for special cousert mueller's investigation. andrew weissman,ery good to have you on the "neshour". we how five individuals who you and your colleagues help convict who were all guilty of lying or obstructing thisat investn, and now they have been pardoned by the president of the united states. i mean, this has got to be a relatively dark period for you. understatement. an i spent 20 years at the department of justice, and career pele there are trained to apply the rule of law, and what we're sing is the pardon power being used undermine the rule of law. and with paul manafort, he didn't just lie to the government, he engaged in tens of millions of dollars in bank

fraud, tax fraud, money laundering,he objected justice by tampering with witnesses while he was out out on bail in a criminal case. so this is not an upstanding citizen, and i would ask viewers to think about, if you were exercising the pardon power and trying to meet out jtotic the most diserving applicants for a pardon, are the the people you would choose? you know, corrupt politicians,rr t law enforcement officials, pple who have committed murder, healthcare fraud defendant who committed billions of dollars in healthcare fraud? these are lly sort of outrageous exercises of therd power by the president of the united states. >> reporter: i mean,s has any future specialel, some way,

special prosecutor who is trying to investigate the president or allies of the president, this has got to make my job in the future incredibly difficult if i simply know that with a nudge nudge and wink wine president can signal to people, have to worry about what these prosecutors do to you? >> absolutely. that, i think, is exactly the right point, which is to focus on what the precdent is here, as bad as it is inerms of what is president is doing now. we had to deal with the dangling of pardons, and that is trying to thwart thiincentives people have to cooperate. the way that investigations are mat is people come in anl you the truth and they know that if they don't do that and they lie, they have committed a crime, and they could be prosecuted. but if you dangle rdons and then, as we've seen in the last two days, make good on that dangling, it really undermines

the ability of a nation that upholds itself as a nation of laws to actually say the present is not above the law because de facto he'ews nng the pardon power to make himself above the law. >> reporter: you have suggested recently that these pardons could, in fact, backfire on president trump.yo ca explain, how would that happen? >>ell, you know, it's an interesting phenomenon because, while the pardon power in the constitution is incredibly broad, one thing that is not clear is whether the president himself can pardon himself. so whi p he canardon paul manafort nd roger stone, it's not at all clear whether he n do that with respect to his own past crimes. and what you can look at today inerms of the various pardons as sort of the final act of his obstructing justice.

in other words, he's edr through, as you mentioned, with the dangling by saying, you know what, if you just keep quiet, you will get a pardon, and now we're seeing it done. so the new attorney gen heral, whor she is named and confirmed, is going to be on hi or her plate the issue of whether toold the former president to account in the way that, frankly,ther nations around the world hold their leaders to account. so it wouldn't be unusual do that. >> i mean, there is a big "if" embedded in there as to whether orot whomever joe biden selects as attorney general choose to go down that route. if you were still in the d.o.j., do you think knowingthe political and sort of psychic turmoil that the country went wt through, would you encourage the new a.g. to pursue this, to ep

this case going? >> i think i would. i by no means say this is an easy decision, but we're supposed to be a nation that believes in the rule of law, and if the president of the united states is allowed to obstruct justice and the are no consequences, as you mentioned, it's not only unfair with respect to this president, but thbut -- but the precedent set s i have thian eke dolt which is important for people to know which is, when paul manafort was convicted by a jury in the eastern district of virginia, the one juror who spoke out said it would be a huge mistake t pard him, and she said, i voted for the president, but i left my maga hat in my car because i understood that i had taken an oath to upholthe law and follow the facts and render a true and faiverdict, and i think that is a real lesson for

all of us, including the next deattorney general, to ide on how to deal with the kind of corrupt behavior that we have seen, and i really don't think, in many ways, that you can move til you do deal with what's happened andepdon't swe it under the rug. >> reporter: lastly, in just the short time we have left, it's hard not to notice that attorney general william barr'st ay was yesterday now we have a deputy attorney general for the remainder to have th president's term, do you think these pardons had anything to do with that timing or not? >> i don't kw the answeto that question. i suspect the answer is no, and i would hope that the new attorney general, in the very few days that he has remaining to him, acquits himself well in

the honor of the department of justice. >> reporter: andrew weissman, veryood to haveou. thank you very much. >> nice to be here. >> nawaz: following nine monthst se final negotiations, britain and the european union have at last hmered out a post-brexit trade deal. the agreement will ensure that britain and the 27-nation bloc can continue trading goodsta withouffs or quotas, after the u.k. leaves the e.u. on new year's day. and it paints a clearer picture of britain's future four-and-a- half years after its residents voted to exit the bl. >> we've taken back control of our laws and our destiny. >> nawaz: in london today, british prime minister boris johnson celebrated the breakthrough. >> we have today resolved a

question which has bediled our politics for decades and it is up to us, all together, as aan newltruly independent nation to realize the immensity of this moment and to make the >> nawaz: the trade deal between britaiand the e.u. averts a caotic and costly break-up on new years day-- the deadline tot comple separation brits voted for in 2016. in brussels, european commission president, ursula von der leyen, marked the moment with relief. >> it was a long and winding road. but we have got a good deal to show for it. it is fair, it is a balanced al, and it is the right and responsible thing to do for both sides. >> n through the night, with last- minute wrangling over fishing rights in britain's coastal waters. the deal sets the terms for more than $900 billion dollars in trade,ree of quotas and tariffs. but, it will also mean layers of

new bureaucracy, with paperwork and inspections for every item sold across the border. both sides still need to ratify the deal, anall 27 e.u. countries will need to sign off. in germany, the oc's largest economy, chancellor angela merkel said a decision would come quickly. >> nawaz: and french president emmanuel macron tweeted that" european unity and firmness have paid off." if approve today's agreement will end the years-long divorce, disentangling economies still dependent on each other. for more on the breakthrough between the united kingdom and the european union we turn to robin niblett, the director of the british think tank chatham house. robin niblett, welcome back to the "newshour". we should say many people have failed to reach a deal.d and what was it about right now? how are they able to get this across t finish line? >> they were able to get across the finish line because they had to by the 31st of december, otherwise, the. uk. would have dropped out of thema

et arrangements from a year ago and we would have had chaos at the borders, which would have been bad for the u.k. but also for the rest of the european unioand the many countries that rely on the u.k. market. the u.k., in a way, becomes one of the e.u.'s biggest trading partners outside of the single market. so they had to get the teal done. -- deal done, which is why most analysts reckon some compromises will be made and we get th. >> reporr: deadline is a powerful force indeed but what does this mean in practical terms foritizens of the e.u., british citizens, everyday life there, what do the deal mean? >> for most british citizens, it will make no difference whatsoever, they won't notice anything. the part of the world in e u.k. that will be affected by this will be business and, inos particular, businesses that export to the europeannt union, to ental europe, that includes particularly the car business, for example, 75%

of u.k. car exports go to the e.u. pharmaceuticals, agriculture,sh ies. for those folks, you will have lots more border restrictions, even with this new deal, even with zero tariffszero quotas, you will have all sorts of standards and regulations that will not be automatically. accepted so exporters will feel some pain, and consumers may feel a price. bit of the impact of the i think the other part is anyone taking a holiday. gointoto spain, you're goin have to have a visa waiver and you will have to worry about health inrance, all sorts things like that. obviously, if you want to work in the e.., yu can't do it as a brit. you can't go over there and look for a job as e.u. citizens could do in the u.k. up until now. all of that is over. you won't feel it day to, day but it will be a different relationship. >> reporter: so this still needs to be atified by both the european parliament, the british

parliament. i have to ask, historwhat it is, is there any chance this falls apart? >> i don't think so.it the h parliament, you know, went through the agony of being unable to come to any alternative other than brexit, despite, in else sense, taking over -- in ese,taking over control from the thera e government a year ago. they failed. even the labor department is desperate to get this done and get it out of the wayand stop banging on about europe. the e.u. has bigr fish to fry. they have to worry and covid, russia, the new relationship with the biden administration. they do not want the brexit hanging over into 2021. so i am 98% confident there deal will get done by both sides. >> reporter: 98%, we wilkl tae that indeed. robin niblett, director of the british think thank chatham

house, thank you. >> my pleasure. >> nawaz: in the day's other news, the covid-19 doll in the u.s. topped 328,000, as california became the firstat to surpass two million infections. even so, millions of americans are traveling this christmas in spite of warnings from public health experts. delta and united airlines announced passengers flying to the u.s. from the u.k. must present a negative covid test before departing, to prevent the spread of new, highly contagious those airlines don't have. similar test requirements for flights within the u.s. a powerful winter storm in the midwest is barreling toward the east coast today, bringing heavy snow, damaging winds, and dangerously low temperatures. blizzard conditions in minnesota, nebraska, and the dakotas closed highways andts grounded flighn this busy holiday travel day.

forecasters warned parts of that region could see wind chills plunge to 40 degrees bero. k ethiopian forcled 42 armed men accused of massacring a village in the western part of their country yesterday. state-affiliated media reported the military also seized bows and arrows as well ar weapons from the attackers, who had torched homes and killed more than 100 villags yesterday. the government also deployed more troops to the area to re- establish calm amid rising ethnic tsions. at least 20 african migrants trying to reach europe by boat have died off the coast of central tunisia. their boat sk in the mediterranean sea while en route to italy. crews rescued five survivors. the tunisian navy is searching fogas my as 20 other miss passengers. a provinal court in pakistan has ordered the release of the key suspect in the 2002 murder of american jonalist daniel pearl. ahmed omar saeed sheikh, a waitish-born pakistani man acquitted of killing pearl earlier this year.

but he was held while pearl's family appealed at ruling. the family's attorney said sheikh will rern to prison if his acquittal is successfully overturned by pakistan's supreme court next month. back in this country, stocks managed modestreains on wall in today's shortened the dow jones indu average climbed 70 points to close at 30,200. the nasdaq rose more than 33 points, and the s&p 500 added 13. and, a number of traditional christmas eve religious services and celebrations were far more subdued this year, due to the covid-19 pandemic. at the vatican, pope francis celebrated mass in the nearly empty saint peter's basilica with some 200 faithful; a much different scene fr the thousands who usually attend. and in the west bank, a lockdown in bethlehem muted festivities at manger square in thebi hoaditionahplace of jesus. >> christmas is day that

renews hope in the souls, and therefore, despite all the obstacles and challenges due to the coronavirus and due to the lack of tourism, the city of bethlehem is still lookingto forwarhe future with optimism and will celebrate christmas in all its human and religious meanings. >> nawaz: some churches around the world were forced to hold their midnight masses earlier in the day to abide blocal pandemic curfews. still to come on the newour: a crucial time for giving and what it means for groups that serve those in need.pi st back to consider how overlapping crises.ransformed by despite the pandemic, the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well. d much more. >> nawaz: this time of year is a

critical one forn-harities and ofits thately on a surge of holiday giving to make ends but this year we've seen the need for their services dramatically grow, especlly at od banks where lines are stretching longer than before. for more othe state of giving in america, i'm joined by stacy palmer, the editor of the chronicle of philanthropy. the "newshour".come back to i think it's fair to say the pandemic has had devastating economic impact on the country and flan pis are no exception. we fond in the mt dire enario nearly 120,000 charities could close. how badly has the pandemic hurt philanthropy? >> philanthropy is fairly strong. people are giving jeferls bu that's not enough to help nonprofits. many have laid off their employees, they can't keep up with theemand for services, so it's a really rough time in th nonprofit world no matter how

us americans have been. >> reporter: is there a difference between larger and smaller groups? >> groups ofll sizes are struggling, but it's those small and mid-size groups we count on in many communities. they barely have any reserves. some have one to two weeks of reserves. whenth financial cushion plays out, they have to cut back so it's scary for nonprofits. >> reporter: we've see inequality in america grow during the pandemic and millions of americans are truggling th lost wages and jobs but they' counrichest, over 600 billionaires, added almost atr lion dollars in total net worth in the pandemic. halls that fueled additional giving from the richest americans?am >> we have seeing gifts from some of the very wealthiest people. mckenzie scott, frmer wife of jeff bezos, has given $6 billion this year. so it's amazing thing. jeff dorsey of twitter has given

very generously, so we're seeing those amazing gifts, but, even still, it's not h to make up for the losses that they depend on government like a lot of us, the reason they're suffering is because they t their money in so many different ways and this they're not availae anymore. >> stacy the need is so great but that need will extend far beyond the holidays when people are more likely to give. when folks are struggling,io trying to prtize where and how to give, what would your advice be is this.e >> almost nonprofit needs money now, so you should make the choice of youare about most in your community. those have is getting smulus checks maybe don't need them have a little bit of extra mo ty. it's a greng for us to try to give to the people in our communities who are suffering the st, but think about other causes, mental health groups, arts group, other kinds of groups we don't think about with the food bank lines, they alsone your help, so they'll appreciate anything you can give. >> we know that need will ber there ny weeks and months to come. of philanthropy, thank you fore

joining us. >> thank you so much. wa >> nawaz: now, w to take a step back, for a long view of revealed.toric year has in a conversation recorded yesterday, jy woodruff is our guide. it woodruff: 2020 has been a year, unlike anyn living memory and one that exposed some of our deepest divides, the pandemic has now killed more an00 people in the u.s. and left millions in financial distress. america's race problem erupted anew this summer after the killing of george floyd and the deaths of other african americans. all of this happening in the midst of a national election. to take a look at ast yeareople and look ahead. dr. ooch blackstock is an

emergency medicine physician and the founder of advancing health equity, which is focused on addressing racism in health care. yuval levin, editor of "national affairs" magazine and a director at the american enterprise institute, a conservative research center in washington. jill lapore is a professor of american history at harvard, universistaff writer at the "new yorker" and an awardd f the department of african-ic am studies at princeton university and an author himself.el and weme all four of you back to the news hour. we norlly at the end of the year, look back at the highs and the lows. but dr. blackstock, i think it's fair to say is year it's been a year of low and lower. but let's focus first on the pandemic. what is it said to us, do you think, about america's leadership and about who we are as americans?

>> so as we head into this, i would say this dark winter with cases at record highs that's increasing, i would say that there was a social contract that was broken between this country's leadership and its people. the fact that we have a virus that can be mitigated and other nations have done that much more successfully than we have, has ally shown the degree of the lack of leadership here. i've witnessedhis firsthand as an emergency medicine physician. i cared for probably up to this point, thousands of covid-19 patients.i' never been scared to go to work, as i have been this year, my patients and also scared of what would happen to me and my family. and so i think that's a result of lack of investment in ourth heare infrastructure as well as our public health infrastructure. and that's why we're seeing what

we're seeing currently. >> woodruff: yuval levin, what would you say this pandemic has said about our leadership and about us? >> well, i ctainly agree with dr. blackstock. what we've seen as a failure ofd leadershipltimately a failure of leadership is a failure of responsibility.up i thinnd down the chain. that is what this year has shown us. and one thing that i've certainly learned as someone who's ied to observe the american system of government for a long time, what's been clearest this year is that the president's responsibility, the respsibility of our leaders ultimately is an obligation to deal with reality. and i think what we've seen again and again this year is a desire to avoid dealing with reality and instd to create alternative realities that might allow our leaders to ignore an deny their obligations. but we face a reality that didn't care what we thought about , right? that wasn't going to be swayed by whatever a president might have to say. the virus was what it was, and it required leadership that was willing to deal with it as it was to respond to problems, to

learn from failures. and it has to be said although we're ending the year with some light at the end of vaccine, which certainly is a triumph and in part an american part seen failure after failure this year when it comes to our leadership class. >> woodruff: a professor eddie i know you've spok written then a lot about what this year has revealed in terms of our economic inequality hand in hand with the inequality in our health care. >> yeah, so some ways, you can we can echo dr. blackstone here in the sense that that the social contract habeen broken. but it's not just simply, i think, about the leadershi class. in some ways, the leadership class reflec what's happening in the body politic itself, in our sense of community, right? our relationship with each other, our sense of oblition to each other has broken and in some ways is broken, primarily

because i think of what can be described as selfishness and greed.so hat has been revealed for me really quickly is that the last 40 years of particular political and economic ideology has revealed itself to be bankrupt, that it has transformed us from citizens and community with each her to individual persons in pursuit of our own self- interest, in competition and rivalry with others. so there's no robust conception evidences itself with liberty becoming a synonym for selfishness. it evidences itself and beingmo concerned about their moral one case or their stockth portfolios tha are with their fellows. and so there's a sense in whichh very ideological frame of the last 40 years has collapsed searching and grapfor and we're different way of being together. >> woodruff: and jill lapore thinking about that, and that is someone who looks at the arc ofe history, howthis pandemic fit into america's story?

>> well, i think we really won't know until we get tohe other side of it, but i think an intesting question is when d this historical moment begin? 40 years ago ia really reasonable point of departe. we can think about 1980 as a re turning point in americ politics and in american economic structures. but i think actually, if you look at the quantitative data, we need to go back a little bit further to sort of 1968 to 1972, because there if youon a graph, you see income inequality begins to rise in that moment and so does political polarization, both of which have been increasingly increasing consistently since the late so what we see now, of course, with the pandemic is there is light at the end othe tunnel, but there's also a great deal of light been cast on inequalities and asymmetries in american economic and political life that have been getting worse and worse and worse for decades. so how we will remember this moment le whether we rise to the che at all or not. and i guess there's just one more thing i might speak to than

beeraised yet, coming last year. and that is the degree to which this is a disease that affects the human family, all of us across the planet earth. and i thk there's a way in which the hope that we can find here has to do with, youbinow, that senty that that there is such a thing as a public good and there's the good of humankind d there's the good of our environment and the good of the planet as whole, that maybe there's a way in which that one of the ways to rise to the challenge of this moment, of course, is to think about the massive failures of our federal government and the lack of ership that everyone else has pointed to, but also to think about this as an portunity for a kind of spiritual renewal as a human family. >> woodruff: and dr. blackstock, i mean, picking thinking about asymmetry and the human spirit into all this, in the midst of the pandemic, we have the killing of george floyd of other black americans. brianna taylor, how has that changed the way we've not only

looked at this pandemic, but is this a is this another is this another civil rights movement in this country? how do you see it? >> you know, it's interesting, i think that it took a black man being murdered on video by a poce officer to wake up a sizable proportion of the u.s. population. it took a pandemic to revealea racialh inequities that have always been there. and obviously, we're having conversations and a candid, more public way that was had before. i think what we really need to see is policy change. i think we need to see what we call the social determinants of heal, jobs, housing, education, a legislative policy focus on reinvestment in black communities. that would be action. if that esn't happen, then we'll just continue on with the same structural inequities that we currently have.

>> woodruff: we talk yuval levin, abo having a national conversation about these things, but we are a very divided couny right now. some of these conversatis are not being had around every workspace, every dinner table.fe how does that , do you think, our ability to move forward to take advantage of this moment? >> one of the striking thingsr about this y that the partisan divides that have clearly also shape our cultureg and our way of processing reality so that whether it is talking about the pandemic or whether it is talking aboutus racialce and some of what we've seen on our streets this year, you've seen real two sorts of political conversations happening alongside each other, very rarely engaging each other, two realities that have had to face each other. we can hope that the challenges we face this year, the enormous deprivation and insecurity that so many americans are facing, might force us as people, as

citizens and force our leaders c front these realities as one whole. but i have to say, so thr, and even iwake of the election, we've seen thehe persistence of two separate, distinct tracks to separate realities that make ft so difficu us to really come to terms with the asderlying problems that w country are going to have to face. >> woodruff: professor glaude, what about that? how possible is it truly for us to tackle these issues that you're all describing when we are so split?ve >> we o tell ourselves the truth. that these t parallel worlds, these two parallel realities, one is rooted in this assumption that white people ought to be valued more than others, that there's a way in which a sense of one's own precarity, a sense of one's own economic insecurity, is being displaced onto these others who are in some ways the recipients of a tyrannical government that's

redistributing wealth from hardworking folk to lazy folk. ourselves the truth, it seems to me. and that is in some ways we may very well be experiencing the last gasp of a particular understanding of the country. the demographic shifts that are that have happened arting certain kinds of pressures. we're seeing those pressures ced themselves in the bo politic as well as in our cultural lives. w re in some ways, we're at a crossroads to invoke a blues metaphor. and the question is, what kind of choice will we make? and i think we're wasee we're waiting to see what the answer will be. >> woodruff: jill lapore, does any cluesry give u about that? >> i think our history would suggest that there needs to an n fact, the history of the last year as well, suggests there needs to be a lot of action at the local level. i mean, each of the speakers has talked about the failure of leadership on the part of the federal go'vrnment. but seen a lot of tremendous leadership by

governors and even by state legislatures. and i think in local communities providing food relief and doing their own efforts to address racial injustice and begin som of some long overdue steps. i do think you see evidence in different moments of crisis in the american past where some conversations that needed to be had were reallnever going to be national conversations. >> woodruff: dr. blackstock, do you see ingredients in the coming political leadership,he biden administration or elsewhere that you think will show show us a way to work through some of these enormous >> i definitely see some prom science of focus on health, equity and racial equity, but i think that we have to, as usual, hold our leadership accountable and make sure that they keep g

working on thels of racial look, racism has essentially made black people and other people of color sick in is country by putting them at risk for own illness for this virus. and we really need our federal leadership, but local and state, to start working on efforts to address this. >> woodruff: yuv levin. so now two of you have brought up the importance of localoo leadershipng away from the center. what would you add to that? >> well, i very much agree. and bethink that if you want t hopeful about america at this point, you would do better to look at our couny from the bottom up than from the top down. there are a lot of promising signs of communities coming together to try to address the course of the pandemic and that have become clearer in the course of this year in other ways around race and policingd her things. we also have an incoming administration that will come in with very naow congressional jorities.

it's not clear yet if the republics or democrats will control the senate. democrats will narrowly control the ho that whatever their ambitions, the new administration is going to have a lot of challenges and willve o find ways to make incremental progress through various kinds of bipartisan compromises. that's no easy thing now. >> woodruff: professude, is this a time for compromise is, as we just heard from mr. levin, from yuval levin, or is it a time for standing one's ground? >> well, it all depends on what e nature of the compromise is, it seems to me that the scale of the problems the country face require quires a major interventi, transformative leadership, bold vision. america is broken, in my view, even though we may we y be able to point to pockets at the local level where people are trying to imagine diffent ways of being together. i think fundamentally how we

imagine ourselves as living together has kind of come apart. and so we need, i think, a bold vision, transformative vision right now that i will not put my faith in the fact that it's going to happen in washington,d d.c., but we n. it seems to me we have to figure out a different way of being together iamerica is going to survive. that sounds like an old jeremiad. i know a professor lapore recognizes the nature of the language, but it seems to me that we have to we have to kind of describe the nature of th crisis at that scale. s and ms to me we need both and not either or in terms of the response, both local and national response, not tinkering around the ees that. >> woodruff: and i s you yoiling, professor jill lepore. i'm going to givthe last word. >> i couldn't agree more that we need that bold vision and i nink we do need it at the national level, d a new moral platform on which people can stand.

i mean, i would like to just hear, eddie,gihat, you know, that jeremiah to the american people. i mean, i just don't see i agree entire with where we began. the social contract has been broken. how do you repair that? that that's an obligation that falls to each and every one of us. >> woodruff: well we could go on and on. but we are going to leave it at that.ne and thank eachf you. jill lapore, professor eddie glaude jr., yuval levin and dr. uche blackstock. thank you, each one of you. >> nawaz: with the pandemic raging and the nation's economy teetering, this might seem like a strange time to start a business. but is it? paul solman considers this question, as part of his regular series, making sense. florexil, deaf since birth,ida

working at a hothouse for startups in florida. >> my company is imanyco. advocates for communication accessibility, and delivers a live transcription technology to help people who are deaf and hard of hearing withn. communicatio >> reporter: in short, an app that transcribes conversations in real me, tells you who's speaking. orexil lipreads easily. but how do you lip read a group? >> if my head is still that way. and then this pern started talking... somebody has to tap me and say, 'saida i'm talking this way!' reporter: and of course... >> the pandemic right now with covid, everyone wearing face sks, i don't even know if you're talking or if you're not talking! >> reporter: surprising, at least to me, is that florexil is one of several million americans who've tried to start a business since the pandemic hit, despite the economic anxieties of covid. from april to june: 900,000 government applications to start a business. from july to september: a

million and a half. but really launch a company now? >> i wou argue as someone who started nine companies myself, that a recession is actually a fantastic time to start a business. scott galloway.rial entrepreneur >> i've had winners. i've had losers. as i look through all of them and try and determine the signal from the noise as to what iswa the best f-looking indicator of success. simply put, it was where in the economic cycle i started the >> reporter: booms go bust and busts recover, says galloway, now a rketing professor. during the busts, startup costs are low, the unemployed arep, chnd so is commercial real estate. >> this buildich used to be a ch built in, i believe, the early 1940s.n >> reporter:neta, oregon, annie molnar gave me a tour of" the emporium," a brand new marketplace for local artisans. >> right here is my product nane... >> reporter: mol who sells soaps, partnered with aida camalich lough, who sells artisanal foods and bakeware. they rented this building for

less than half its price, pre- covid. >> the building had been vact. and we came in. it was pfect timing.us >> reporter:down the road, amy wells, her husband cameron, and business partner chris archer are turning this abandoned site into "arable brewing company". at $870 a month with an option to buy, and crucially, no overhead.>> e aren't up against the sae struggles that a lot of the other businesses out there are up against right now because we don't have to serve the public currently. we don't have to worry about any of the lockdowns. >> reporter: and of course they're being on a post-bust upswing, says cameron. >> if everything works out well with the vaccine, i don't think it could work out any better because people are going to be, you know, tired of being socially distance in their house for a year andsome. >> reporter: in other words, pent-up demand for bellying up to the bar.

now you're thinking it's a long shot for folks who've never run a business to start a brewery or a crafts store during a pandemic, how about thesa hurdlea florexil has faced, since childhood. >> i've never thought that one day i'll be able to do something like this. i was not like other ss. i had to spend extra time at home leaing how to write, learning how to speak clearly. i spent hours, years going to eech therapy and how to pronounce my name. >> reporter: florexil is saddled wi student loans, car payments. but with so many lips impossible to read because of masse days, she's hopeful. d in addition... >> one thing i've learned is that a lot of big companies started during the recession, ha why not takeopportunity? >> reporter: on the other hand... >> oh, my gosh. i still think i'm crazy for doing this. >> reporr: now some would say florexil is crazy. pandemic aside, h nalf businesses fold within five years, and starting a business

in america has becommore and more dicey for decades, as even scott galloway acknowledges. >> over the last 20 or 30 years, it's actuay a very difficult time to start a business. >> reporter: reasons? one is the increasing market dominance of mega-companies like amazon, apple and google, says >> it is very hard to get funding in an environment that is controlled by huge, dominantn sive species. so i would argue that it's thise contmarch of monopolies, thatif you will, is taking all the oxygen out of the room forne small bues. >> reporter: there's a second reason entrepreneurs often balkt there's more re these days, says entrepreneurship researcher sameeksha desai, and so... >> t complexity of navigatin the business environment and the business process can contribute to peoe making specific decisions not to grow or not to expand in a certain wa >> reporter: but many would-be entrepreneurs are shrugging offr these co because the pandemic has left them no other

choice. molnar and lough opened the emporium because, with t usual venues shut down, they desperately needed somewhere to sell their soaps and keware. and florexil started her app because she was a substitutehe teacr before the pandemic forced schools to close. and when they reopened, students were required to wear masks, which obscured their lips. >> so i knew that was going to be very hard for me with communation, and i couldn't do it. >> reporter: scott galloway, asa puts it bluntly: for entrepreneurship, he says... >> there's nothing like desperation. there's thing like need to create a certain level of innovation, a certain level of hunger. >> reporter: of course, deeration doesn't mean success. but entrepreneurs are optimists: they have to be. and thank goodness, wrote the famous 20th century economist, k john maynanes, because..." if spontaneous optimism l falterving us to depend on expectation, enterwillical

fade and die." florexil knows the risks but along with her optimism... , i'm scared of missing o you know, not doing it. that's my biggest fear. so i feelike now is the right time. you can't buy time. >> reporter: no you can't. for the pbs newshour, this isma paul s year, with particular challenges for parents of small children and those fronine workers who deliver mail and packages. but still, we look for moments of delight.. here's stephanie sy with a story of just that. >> sy: social distancing may have defined 2020, but it didn't stop spontaneous moments of joy from springing up and making us feel connected. one of those moments was

captured on video. avelina whitlow, a toddler inrt nd, oregon, and her neighborhood mailman dance e togethry day while separated by the window in her family's living room.ha it's a videohas gotten millions of views, including the thirty times i watched it. and avalina, her father, david, who made the video, and ian mon, their mailman, joins us now. what a beautif sight. thank you all so much for being with us. hey, avelina.

# >> i think it means everything. lot.someone else, it means a it a lot to me and my family and it certainly means a >> reporter: can you tell me how the last nine months have been for you and your famil >> it's been an incredible struggle. i think just like everybody else, our whole -- all of our daily activities were -- kind of came to a halt. i ist the business that had. i was at the end of some pretty major schoolorg. i didn't for five months, and, you know, now i'm back to work three-quarter time and things seem to be looking up a little bit. a lot of positivity has come out of this video and, so, hoping to keep that goreg. >> rter: and ian, what about you? what's been your personal ruggle throughout all ofis? >> i have been pretty lucky that i still get to wor everday. i work a lot, six, sometimes ven days a week.

can't work, our son's autisticfe me withs got to stay ho him and do the laptop schooling, try i to keep him focused. >> david, i thinany parent would want to capture this on video but you also put together a montage of erent days when you say avalina dancing wih ian. what inspared you to put the video out to e wold? >> throughout the pandemic, i actually made a lot of videos of my daughterso i have a ton of these videos, and some of them are pretty sweet, ots are just kind of fun. this one was too sweet not to share, and i kind of thought this would really make some people cry because it made u cry when we watched it together, my wife and i. wo i thought thed needed something to feel good about, and ian was a hugpart of that, obviously. that's how it made me feel ppy and i'm really glad that everybody else felt so happy when they watched it.

i think they feel how i feel when i watch her dance. you?eporter: and what about what kind of reactions have you gotten since the video has been nst there? it's gotten millf views. >> i get messages from people all over the world, thanking me. it's very inspiring. one lady started doing meals-on-wheels, and he were first week route she started dancing the food up to the door. i know a lot of the messages, i tear up, so heart warming. >> reporter: i just wanted to thank you guys for sharing tt video and bringing joy to all of us that have been blessed to see it. ian simon and david and avalina itlow, thank you so much and happy holidays. >> same to you. thank you so much.o >> thank youch for putting it out there. bye.

>> nawaz: finally tonight, we continue a newshour tradition. each year, we have askedhe department of defense and its defense media activity ancy to spread a little holiday cheer and record service members singing a ristmas song. from members across the services, here is little drummer boy. they told me rum pum pum pum ♪ a new born king to see pa rum pum pum pum ♪ our finest gifts we bring pa rum pum pum p ♪o lay before the king pa rum pum pum pum, ♪ rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum♪ so to honor him

pa rum pum pum pum ♪ when we come pa rum pum pum pumtoo ♪ i have no gift to bring pa rum pum pum pum ♪ that's fit to give our king pa rum pum pum pum, ♪ rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum ♪ shall i play for you pa rum pum pum pum

♪ i played my drum for him pa rum pum pum pum ♪ i played my best for him pa rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum ♪ then he smiled at me pa rum pum pum pum ♪ me and my drum come they told me >> nawaz: and that's the newshour for this christmas eve. i'm amna nawaz. join us online and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you, please stay safe, and see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:

>> architect. bee-keeper. mentor. a raymond james financial advisor tailors advice to help life, well-planned. >> consumer cellular. >> the ford foundation. working with visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide. >> the alfred sloan foundation. driven by the promise of great ideas. >> and with the ongoing support

of these institutions: and friends of the newshour. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by newshour productio, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> you're watching pbs.

from cows that graze lush, green grass comes the taste of kerrygold. from our farmers' hands to yours, th k is the true taste ofrygold. christmas can be a challenging time for the cook when most of us are expected to prepare food in greater quantities than we do for the rest of the year. there's also the question of tradition and how to stop our favoris from becoming too familiar. christmas gives the enthusiastic cook a chance to add new twist to some feive flavors. i'm going to start with a good, nutritious broth. almost a mead in a bowl to use an old-fashioned phrase. both comforting and nourishing, this makes wonderful use of the tuuck or goose bones that you may have left over.