captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening, i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight, ending the longest war-- the biden administration announces an unconditional withdrawal of u.s. troops from afghanistan, as questions linger about the war and its effects. then, reopening schools-- we discuss the risks and benefits of a nationwide return to in-person classes with u.s. secretary of education miguel cardona. and, policing in america-- the killing of daunte wright in minnesota highlights the urgent need for law enforcement to address the sometimes disproportionate use of force against black americans. >> when you start to sit down and you get to know people and you start building trust, you

can respond better. you can come up with better solutions. >> woodruff: all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us.

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the fateful day that led to the >> woodruff: today president biden formally announced the united states would withdraw all troops from afghanistan by september 11th, 20 years since the fateful day that led to the u.s. invasion. john yang begins our coverage. >> yang: after nearly 20 years of war, today the president set the end date for the u.s. presence in afghanistan. >> i have concluded it is time to end america's longest war, it is time for american troops to come home. >> yang: he said the u.s. would still work to fight terrorist activity in the region and ensure the taliban sticks to its commitments. >> but we will not take our eye off the terrorist threat. we will reorganize our counter terrorism capabilities and substantial assets in the region to prevent the reemergence of terrorists. we will hold the taliban accountable for its commitment not to allow any terrorists to

threaten the u.s. and its allies from afghan soil. >> yang: the announcement was met with international endorsement. the secretaries of state and defense met with nato allies in brussels to brief them. germany's defense minister said the alliance, which has been there since the start, would also likely withdraw its troops later this year. >> ( translated ): we have always said: 'we go in together, we go out together.' i am in favor of an orderly withdrawal. >> yang: afghan president ashraf ghani tweeted his support after a phone call with biden today: adding that “afghanistan's proud security and defense forces are fully capable of defending its people and country.” in response, the taliban threatened to boycott the peace process and resume attacks on foreign troops if the u.s. did not withdraw by the original may first deadline. while the taliban continue attacks throughout the country, the new director of c.i.a., william burns, said today neither al-qaeda or isis in

afghanistan have the capacity to carry out heightened attacks. i think it is also clear that our ability to keep that threat in afghanistan in check from either al qaeda or isis in afghanistan has benefited greatly from the presence of u.s. and coalition militaries on the ground. >> yang: may 1 was the withdrawal date that the u.s. and the taliban agreed to in february 2020, under president trump, so long as the taliban talked peace and prevented al qaeda from having a safe haven in afghanistan. >> yang: violence has been unrelenting. nearly 2,000 afghans were killed in the first three months of the year. some war-weary afghans still think u.s. troops are leaving with promises unfulfilled. >> ( translated ): the americans have not fulfilled their responsibility to afghanistan. their responsibility is to ensure a strong government, the rule of law, and democracy in afghanistan. >> yang: one issue of major concern: what happens to

progress made for women and girls, who've flourished since escang the taliban's austere interpretation of islam. but today on capitol hill, senate majority leader chuck schumer praised biden's decision. >> it's time to bring our troops home. america does not need to fight forever wars. >> yang: minority ader mitch mcconell said it could lead to increased violence in afghanistan. >> apparently we are to help our adversaries ring in the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by gift wrapping the country and handing it right back to them. >> yang: shortly after setting the schedule for ending america's longest war, president biden visited arlington national cemetery's section 60, the final resting place for many of the nation's dead from afghanistan. for the pbs newshour, i'm john yang.

>> woodruff: in the day's other news, the former police officer who fatally shot daunte wright outside minneapolis was charged with second-degree manslaughter. kim potter resigned yesterday and was arrested this morning. the wright family's attorney reacted in new york. >> in less than a week, the district attorney made the decision that we will charge this officer and the family of daunte wright will get to have their day in court. so we say, "justice for daunte wright!" >> woodruff: potter's former boss has said she grabbed her gun by mistake, and the charge against her involves negligence, not intent. she could get 10 years in prison. meanwhile, the trial of former minneapolis officer derek chauvin continues, in the murder of george floyd. we'll have that story, later in the program. the u.s. capitol police officer who shot and killed a woman

during the january assault on the capitol, will not be charged. federal prosecutors cited insufficient evidence today. the woman, ashli babbitt, of san diego, was part of a pro-trump mob. a scathing new report blames the leadership of capitol police for a raft of failures before january 6th. in widely reported findings, the force's inspector general cites equipment shortages and expired weapons; riot shields that shattered upon impact as police battled hundreds of rioters, and, a lack of intelligence tracking and training that left officers unprepared. the nation's public health >> woodruff: a panel made a decision on resuming the use of johnson & johnson's covid vaccine. the group asked for more data on rare blood clots and will reconvene in a week or ten days. at the same time, public health leaders insisted there's plenty of other vaccine to go around. >> we have more than

>> we have more than enough supply of pfizer and moderna vaccines to continue the current pace of vaccinations, meet the president's goal of 200 million shots by his 100th day in office, and continue to reach every adult who wants to be vaccinated by the end of may. >> woodruff: also today, new federal data showed drug overdose deaths began rising again before the pandemic, and accelerated once it hit. the c.d.c. said more than 87,000 americans died in the year ending in september 2020, mostly from opioids and methamphetamine. that's up 30% from a year earlier. the biden administration has proposed endina trump-era ban on federally funded clinics referring women for abortions. planned parenthood and others argued the ban obstructs access to birth control for low-income women. the trump rule stays in effect until the new regulation is finalized.

tes republican congressman kevin brady announced toy he's retiring after next year. he's served 25 years and once chaired the house ways and means committee. so far, four house republicans and two democrats are not seeking re-election. the u.s. senate today confirmed gary gensler to chair the u.s. securities and exchange commission. he's expected to push tougher regulations for wall street, and most republicans opposed his nomination. on wall street today, the dow jones industrial average gained 53 points to close near 33,731. but the nasdaq fell 138 points, and the s&p 500 lost 17. the digital currency exchange "coinbase" made its trading debut. it closed with a market valuation of $86 billion. and, bernie madoff, who organized the largest fraud in wall street's history, died

early today. stephanie sy has our report. >> sy: the scope of the scam shocked the world. >> this is one of the biggest fraud schemes ever. >> sy: the victims numbered in the tens of thousands. their losses were recently estimated at between 17 and $20 billion. the man behind the con: financier bernie madoff. he rose through the ranks of wall street, riding the image of a self-made financial guru, eventually becoming the chairman of the nasdaq stock exchange. the ruse was in full swing in the 1990s, run from the 17th madoff fabricated profits, attracting new investors, while paying bigger returns to old ones, the biggest ponzi scheme ever. he swindled major charities, universities, and celebrities, from actor kevin bacon to film as of last year, about three quarters of the cash, some $14 billion, had been recovered by a court-appointed trustee and returned to victims.

journalist diana henriquez, author of “wizard of lies,” told newshour's jeffrey brown in 2011 how madoff pulled off such massive deceit. >> so you would never doubt your judgment about trusting madoff because madoff made you feel like you were a genius, too. he had that magic, it really is amazing. >> sy: but in 2008 his “magic” was revealed for what it really was-- “one big lie”. his own sons turned him in. >> what do you have to say to the public? >> sy: in march 2009, he pleaded guilty to securities fraud, and other charges and was sentenced to 150 years in prison. bernie madoff died today in prison in butner, north carolina. he'd been battling the final stages of kidney diseasebut for the pbs newshour, i'm stephanie sy. >> woodruff: bernie madoff was 82 years old. still to come on the newshour: the biden administraon announces an unconditional

withdrawal of u.s. troops from afghanistan. secretary of education miguel cardona discusses the nationwide return to in-person classes. we talk about republican resistance to the infrastructure bill with senator shelly moore capito. plus much more. >> woodruff: we return to the president's decision twithdraw from afghanistan by september 2021. for that we get three views: retired lieutenant general doug lute served in both the george w. bush and obama administrations focusing on afghanistan. he also served as u.s. ambassador to nato during the obama administration.

annie pforzheimer had a 30 year career in the foreign service and was the deputy chief of mission in afghanistan from 2017 to 2018, and was acting deputy assistant secretary of state for afghanistan until 2019. and david sedney was deputy assistant secretary of defense for afghanistan, pakistan and central asia during the obama administration. until recently he was the president of american university of afghanistan. and we welcome all three of you to the "newshour". david sedney, i am going to start with you. today, we heard president biden say that the threat against the u.s. over the last 20 years has spread around the world, in his words it'metastasized, and it just doesn't make sense to keep troops in one country -- afghanistan -- at a cost of billions of dollars. what is your response to that? >> i think he is dead wrong. the threat from al quaida and

from i.s.i.s. in afghanistan has not gone away. the pledges by the taliban to combat that have been shown by a recent united nations report to have been lies. so trusting the taliban, which what this administration is doing with the future of american security and counterterrorism, is a very bad idea. >> woodruff: ambassador doug lute, is it the case, as we're hearing david sedney say, that there's still very much a live threat there from the taliban and that pulling out is the wrong thing to do? >> well, judy, i don't think anybody claims that al quaida is dead, but al quaida in that region, afghanistan and pakistan, is decimated compared to 10 or 20 years ago, and actually the al quaida franchises elsewhere. so somalia, yemen, syria, parts of africa, are much more severe threats and much more imminent thats to the united states homeland than the branches in

afghanistan and pakistan. >> woodruff: on that point, let me turn to you, annie pforzheimer, that this argument that the threat that was so present and so e-forms inside afghanistan has spread around the world, in other words that the taliban is weaker than it was. what is your sense of that? >> unfortunately, the taliban will be emboldened by what has just happened. a conditionalless withdrawal with a date is removing the leverage that we've had and, at this point, i don't believe that they have any reason to sit down to negotiations with the afghan government nor to fulfill any of the promises that they have made regarding fighting terrorism. >> woodruff: and why do you believe that? >> i believe that they can simply look at the calendar and also use the psychology of appearing to have kicked us out of the country the way that the

soviets left to portray themselves as winners, and afghans, unfortunately, will have to make their decisions based on the idea that the taliban could come back to power. >> woodruff: coming back to you, ambassador doug lute, what about that, this notion, the administration argument that the united states can manage whatever taliban threat there is from the outside, that we don't need to have boots on the ground? >> judy, i think it's really important here to be crystal clear about who the enemy is. nobody likes the taliban, but the taliban have never threatened or harmed an american outside of afghanistan. their goal is to have a voice in the governance of afghanistan itself. these are afghan citizens fighting for afghanistan in their own way. that does not suggest that they are not repressive islamists and so forth, but they don't

threatened america directly. they're distinctly different from al quaida. now, the two have linkages, and it's those linkages between taliban and al quaida which have been promised to be broken by the u.s.-taliban agreement and which now have to be verified and confirmed and overwatched. but the two are very different. >> woodruff: david sedney, what about that? >> that's unfortunately not at all accurate. the taliban with a host to al quaida, the taliban supported al quaida, and even though, at the agreement that ambassador halizad signed for the united states a year ago, the taliban promised to break ties with al quaida, they have not done so. the united states has never had a good mandel on what al quaida's presence are in the u.s. a few years ago, a number of people in the obama administration including general lute said the same thing, that al quaida has been dec decimate, but two years later the u.s. found a large al quaida training

camp outside kandahar that took us completely by surprise. any claim that the a taliban doesn't have ties with al quaida, is not sympathetic or allied to al quaida is plain wrong, and any belief that al quaida is decimated as general lute said is, unfortunately, not reliable. >> woodruff: ambassador lute? yeah, judy, if i may, what i said is al quaida in this region, afghanistan and pakistan, are decimated compared to what they were previously. i just go back to david, i mean, what's the evidence of an al quaida transnational terrorist threat? the last one by my survey of that history is 2005 in london. so the presence of a few al quaida fighters doesn't constitute a threat to the american homeland. >> woodruff: let me come back to you, because i do want to bring you back into the conversation, annie pforzheimer, and that is about what's going to happen to women inside

afghanistan. i know you were part of a conversation today with a number of women -- afghan women leaders. tell us about that, how are they reacting? what are their concerns? >> thank you. they are reactinwith horror and grave concern, and if i may actually link the two for a moment, al quaida and i.s.i.s. are present afghanistan. if there is a civil war, which is the deepest fear of the women that we speak to, in addition to the taliban taking power, the threat of militias that are arming themselves, people who will defend against the taliban, could result in a civil war, which provides a power vacuum that i.s.i.s. will be more than happy to take advantage of, and i think the women are right to be concerned about this. >> woodruff: ambassador lute, how do you respond? >> my response is that afghanistan's already suffering from civil war, and the women and children of afghanistan are

among the most suffering. over the last several years, each year has featured 10,000 afghan civilian casualties to the war that's ongoing today with our troops present. on the top of that 10,000, another 10,000 afghan security forces have been casualties to the civil war that's going on today. the best outlook for ending that civil war is not with 2,500 additional troops or sustaining 2,500 troops in afghanistan, but by way of negotiating the end of the civil war between the two primary afghan parties, the afghan taliban, and the afghan government. >> woodruff: annie pforzheimer, what would the women you're speaking to say to that? >> i think they will say this has not been a civil war. this has been a series of attacks on civilians by taliban, by the hakani network and by i.s.i.s. civil war would indicate that

the people are taking up arms against other people, that's not the case. and, yes, it hasn't stopped because there have been international forces, but the idea is to push the taliban to a real peace negotiation, not to give up our leverage. >> woodruff: doug lute. okay. so, first of all, i think annie and david and i would agree that the war happening in afghanistan today is basically afghan's taliban versus the afghan government. fend mental definition, that is civil war, afghans fighting afghans. >> it's not a civil war. can we settle on, without that term, can we settle on afghans fighting afghans? >> no, a government is enforcing its laws. >> i'm sorry. and there's been a lot of problems here, doug. for example, under your leadership i helped negotiate a

strategic partnership with afghanistan. we should be keeping the terms of that strategic partnership agreement, not giving priority to an agreement with the taliban that has failed in every respect. so, therefore, i think it's very clear that the united states is losing credibility in afghanistan and losing credibility around the world. this agreement doesn't make us safer, it's what makes the world more dangerous to the united states, makes us weaker and allows our adversaries in china and russia to claim the united states is weak and can be outlasted. this is a real strategic loss for the united states. >> woodruff: this is a conversation -- >> i just simply disagree. >> woodruff: we hear you, and this is a conversation that i know we are going to be continuing, but we thank the three of you, david sedney, ambassador lute and annie pforzheimer. thank you very much. >> thank you for having us.

>> woodruff: more than half of public schools around the country are back to full-time in person classes. but many school districts still are using distance or hybrid learning. and there are many questions ahead about what it will take to reopen more fully in the coming months. amna nawaz looks at those questions and more with the nation's top education official. >> nawaz: judy, the biden administration wants to expand the map of schools that are fully reopen nationwide. and the president has pledged to address racial and economic inequality in education, which widened in the pandemic. the latest covid relief bill includes $130 billion for schools to help reach those goals. for a closer look now at these critical issues, we're joined by the secretary of education, miguel cardona. i want to begin by asking you about vaccines and kids. more than 30 states have now opened up eligibility to kids 16 and older. some colleges are now requiring students to get the vaccine

before they come back to school. do you support those kinds of requirements? >> thank you for having me. first of all, i'm happy to see that we're able to provide more and more vaccines across the country. ultimately, we know that they're effective and helping us reduce spread and ultimately get back to some sense of normalcy. we're working very closely with our partners at c.d.c. to make sure we follow the guidance. >> reporter: but do you think schools should require vaccinations for kids coming back. >> unless it's a requirement coming out of c.d.c., i don't want to jump the gun. i know they're looking at the issue and we'll be able to support efforts made by the health experts. it's a pandemic, it's an emergency but we'll always follow the lead of the health experts. >> reporter: it's a pandemic, cases are rising in many parts to have the country. do you think that schools could face mass closures again if cases continue to rie? >> you know, that's a great question. i think it's really important to

know that we are still in the middle of a pandemic. there are still so many positive signs that we are able to recover, however, i've seen this before in my time in connecticut. once we relax a little bit too mu in the community, we see higher numbers of covid in our schools, not necessarily because they're spreading in schools, but because they're spreading in the community and our students go into the schools. so it's critically important. if we want to keep our schools open which we need to, we need to make sure we follow the mitigationtrategies in the communities as well as the schools. >> reporter: let me ask you about the racial and socioeconomic inequities that existed long before the pandemic but made worse over the last year. we have a related question from a member of our student reporting labs network. this is a question from 17-year-old janice aragon, from new york. >> my high school is one of the biggest in new york state with over 5,000 students. many who are low-income and

minority. what will you do to help bridge the gap in education qualities for disadvantaged communities like mine. >> reporter: mr. secretary, what would you say to janice. >> that's a great question. i'm serving as education secretary to address those issues. as janice pointed out, many of these issues existed long before the pandemic. we need to be bold, as we reopen our schools and reimagine learning, to make sure that we don't go back to a system that had the same inequities that existed before the pandemic. we have an opportunity now to hit the reset button, the american rescue plan provides funds and support and guidance around what practices we should be following, and we need to be bold about addressing inequities that have existed in our system and have been exacerbated by the pandemic. >> reporter: what kind of specific steps do you think you might take with some of these funds that you just mentioned? >> sure. so ensuring that our students have robust summer learning experiences, ensuring that we have social-emotional support

for students because we know if studentsics especially students who deal with the effect of a trauma we address as a country, especially those in underserved communities have experienced it worse. we know the data behindblock and brown mortality rates with covid 19. so when we reopen the schools, making sure we're providing social-emotional supports but also the academic enrichment our students will need. many of these students have to be looking at a screen for a year. we have to make sure that we have a better interventions, smaller class sizes, that we have the academic enrichment and support our students need, not only thespring and next year, but for years to come to close whatever gaps were worsened due to the pandemic. smaller class sizes for the students that need it most, our students with disabilities need additional support. we know that zoom learning isn't the same for students that require that one-to-one support or that require hand-over-hand manipulation if there are students who have sensory issues.

so there's a lot of work to be done and i know our varieties es are up for the challenge. >> reporter: my next the question is about standardized testing. your predecessor in the previous administration allowed the standardized testing to be canceled because t have the pandemic, there were concerns the data would be flawed, the disparities to access are so great. a number of people are asking you to cancel the standardized estthing this year because the data wouldn't be reliable but you've refused to do so, so far. why? >> so i think the previous secretary was absolutely correct in canceling last year. as a matter of fact, i was one of the first states that applied for that because we knew coming right -- you know, the pandemic happening in march and we weren't prepared. a year has passed, and our learners, when we're talking about addressing achievement disparities, there are some difficult decisions that we have to make, and one is making sure that we do everything in our power to "seases which students have been affected and how much

they have been affected so that the policies and resources coming out of the american rescue man can be aimed at the students who need it most. now there's no teacher in the country that needs a standardized assessment to tell them how their students are doing, but in order for policy makers and leaders make sure the funding goes to students impacted the most, every bit of data helps. it's good to make good policies and make sure the resources go to students who need it the most. >> reporter: gun violence, are you worried about more mass shootings like the one we just saw in knoxville? >> as a father, it always crosses my mind. i have children in school. as a former principal, especially during the sandy hook massacre, i was a principal, maybe 45 minutes away, and, of course, it crosses my mind and it's something that reminds me, the important work that we have to do not only to ensure

physical safety of our students but that emotional safety of our students and our communities. so it does cross my mind. i want to make sure, you know, it's very clear that our schools have adapted to the realities out there, as unfortunate as they are, and they do have safety processes. they have protocols for visitors. i want to let the audience know that as we reopen schools, the emotional safety of our students is going to be something you're going to be hearing a lot about but the physical safety is something as educators has been engrained in the way we do business. >> reporter: at the end of this year, among the people exhausted are teachers. they are stressed, many leaving positions or taking early retirement. what can you do from your role to address teacher burnout. >> first we have to acknowledge what educators have been doing since last march, i think march 11 or 12, they went from one way of teaching or serving as a paraeducator or school

counselor to a totally different way the next week, and they did it without missing a beat. yes, we had to learn together as a country, but it happened from one day to the next, literally. and they worked twice as hard to try to make it so that they're serving those students? front of them and serving the students on the computer at the same time. i visited schools and i saw that happening across the country. so we have to acknowledge that. we have to make sure that we're taking care of our educators. they're motional well being is also taken into account as we think about reopening schools. we have to make sure that, i think, in general, we pay our educators what they should be paid. i think parents recognize -- i know they appreciated our teachers before, but they recognize the challenge it is to serve as an educator and i think we need to continue to honor the profession but be realistic that as we come out of a pandemic, there are supports that they're going to need to be successful as well. >> reporter: secretary of education, miguel cardona, thank you so much for joining us.

>> thank you. >> woodruff: president biden has proposed a $2 trillion measure titled "the american jobs plan" to improve the country's infrastructure and take care of other needs. as negotiations on that get underway in washington, i'm joined by a senator who's deeply involved: ranking member of the environment and public works committee, republican shelley moore capito of west virginia. senator, thank you very much for joining us. first of all, you've said it is the american jobs plan and you've said that you're interested in the classic infrastructure part of it, the roads, the bridges. does that mean you can pretty much accept the 115 billion that this bill would set aside for that? >> i think probably. i think what i have been interested in looking at is where the job creation aspects

of what we consider traditional infrastructure is, and that is roads and bridges, but it's also broadband now. it's also our waste water and water -- safe drinking water facilities. and, so, it's boader than just a roads and transportation. 115, i haven't looked at it specifically, but it's probably within the ballpark of where i could probably be supportive of that, yes. >> woodruff: you mentioned increasing access to broadband but what about the power grid. >> we saw over the storm we had certainly what happened in texas and we know in certain instances in california and other states that we have grid problems, bleeding a lot of energy off the grid. i think modernization of the grid is something we could look at if we went a little broader in the infrastructure pakage. it's not something that i think of as a traditionally formulated every five year infrastructure package that we've done in the past biptisan, but i think it

certainly bears looking into and i would keep an open mind there as well. >> woodruff: there's also money in here, senator capito, for retraining workers who are dislocated in manufacturing, in the energy sector, also money for home healthcare aides. where do you stand on all that? >> this is where we begin to separate on our visions of where infrastructure can and should be and where, i think, as a united states under the unity pledges of the president, i think we're going to fall apart. when you look at workforce development, we have numerous workforce development programs. we have a lot that we funded in covid. you know, let's deal with those where hashed -- where they should properly be dealt with under labor and other appropriations. same with home healthcare. yeah, i'm a great believer in home healthcare but that's not what i consider traditional job

creating infrastructure packages where we're modernizing, moving people and goods and really modernizing our economy. >> woodruff: snrkts i'm sure you're familiar that wit president biden's arguments around this, he said the nation is always, in his words, evolved to meet the aspirations of the american people and their needs. he says he need to see infrastructure through its effect on ordinary working people in america and what the future working needs are going to be of the american people. what about that? >> that's why i thighed probed is a -- that's why i think brbd is a part of infrastructure now. i think when we look at what happened during the pandemic, when we see so many people commuting to work, children learning online, delivery of tele-health, that to me makes the argument i have been trying to make very vociferously over the last five years that we have a great digital divide in this country and that to me is an infrastructure gap that want needs to be closed. so i think that we have some like identities on this, he

talks about some high-speed rail projects, those are things i think are well worth looking into, but let's not go away from where we are able to really, i think, do the job creation, boost the economy and get a lot of people back to work at the same time, and then have our modernization of our airports, our waterways, more broadband. these are where i think our core functions should be foced at the moment. >> woodruff: there is some reporting today in politico that the group of senators who met with president biden early on back in january, you were one of them. >> yes. >> woodruff: have come away, frankly, feeling that you were burned, that he wasn't really serious about wanting to work with republicans. where do you think he stands right now? >> i was in a meeting with a group of 10 and the president was very engaged in that meeting and very much pledging to, again, come together in an area that we've had great consensus on which was covid relief. but the next day, leader schumer

is talking about reconciliation, which is a nonstarter for all of us republicans for the most part. so we did feel, i wouldn't say burned, i think lessons learned here. i think you see a little bit of tiptoeing on our part in terms of how aggressive is the white house actually going to negotiate, and i always thought when you negotiate you come from two different positions and both people move. that didn't happen. we moved as a group of republicans. the president never moved and bsically left us in the dust. >> woodruff: let me finally ask you about how to pay for this because as you know the president is saying let's bring the corporate tax rate back up. president trump lowered it from 35 to 21%. president biden is saying let's get it back up higher. would you be willing to see any increase in the corporate rate? we know corporations earn something like $2 trillion over the last year. >> i voted for the job, the tax cut and jobs act in 2017, and we

got much to have the desired results during those years before the pandemic. we had more people in west virginia working, higher wages, more minorities, more women, younger people working, and, so, we were on a trajectory, i think, of fully realizing the effects of those tax cuts. we had over a trillion dollars come back into this country that was repatriated because to have the lowering of the corporate rate. so i don't want to see us go back to raising taxes to where we're going to stagnate possibly the progress that we've made, but the big t question is how do you pay for it? we know the gas tax is a declining resource. let's look at things like vehicle miles traveled or ways electric vehicles would pay for their fair share fr use to have the roads. i think we'll have to get creative and i think we can, but i don't want to see us raise taxes on small businesses, i think that's a nonstarter for most people. >> woodruff: you're ruling out any increase in the corporate?

>> for me, yes. and this is i think, another thing, that, strategically, if this is the direction the president wants to go, put that in his reconciliation package if he has the vote and let that fly. i think that, if we could just find a big and robust bipartisan effort here, which we can -- i know we can because we're working it true my committee right now -- i think it will give the american people the confidence that it's not broken there, you know, they're on their way to working together like we know they can do. woodruff: senator shelley moore capito, republican of west virginia. senator, thank you very much. >> all right, thank you, judy. >> woodruff: the defense team for former police officer derek chauvin pushed back today with the defense has been making the

case that chauvin's kneeling on floyd's body was not the crucial factor in his death last may. its own expert testimony about yamiche alcindor has our report. >> alcindor: today, the defense called to the stand dr. david fowler, former chief medical examiner of maryland. the defense expert witness spent much of his testimony directly contradicting earlier testimony from the prosecution's expert witnesses. fowler testified that george floyd died of sudden cardiac arrest caused by his underlying conditions. he listed those conditions as heart disease and drug use. he also cited a lack of bruising on floyd from chauvin's restraint. >> all of his injuries were in areas where the knee was not. >> alcindor: prosecution expert witnesses have testified that chauvin's knee restraint directly contributed to floyd's inability to breath and his ultimate death. meanwhile, fowler also said that carbon monoxide coming from the

police vehicle could have affected floyd. he suggested an object, possibly drug-related, could be seen in floyd's mouth and could have also contributed to heart failure. >> in the back corner of mr. floyd's mouth, you can see what appears to be a white object. >> this object right there? >> alcindor: fowler also said floyd's speech, heard in video evidence, suggests he was breathing normally. prosecution expert witnesses have said it is wrong to make that assumption. instead, they have testified that just because floyd was talking doesn't mean he was breathing adequately. >> how would you classify manner of death? >> so this is one of those cases where you have so many conflicting different manners-- the carbon monoxide would usually be classified as an accident, though someone was holding him there. so some people would say you could elevate that to a

homicide. you've got the drugs on board. he's got natural disease, so he's got a mixture of that and he's in a situation where restrained in a very stressful situation. and when you put it all together, it's hard to put together. so i would fall back to undetermined. >> alcindor: the prosecution cross-examined fowler, attempting to pick apart his testimony on what exactly caused floyd to die. one prosecutor also suggested that fowler's statement on a substance in floyd's mouth was leading the jury. >> so you are not then either telling or suggesting to the jury that the white substance was a pill are you? >> i never said it was a pill. i carefully said that i could see a white structure in his mouth. >> alcindor: for the pbs newshour, i'm yamiche alcindor.

>> woodruff: as the nation's eyes are on the trial of derek chauvin in minneapolis, we return to the debate over "defunding the police" that george floyd's death ignited last summer. special correspondent charlayne hunter-gault spoke with current and former law enforcement officers about what reforms they believe are needed to improve relations between police and the communities they serve. it's part of our ongoing series, "race matters." >> our conversation about solutions is with three veteran police officers. wanda gilbert is a retired miami police officer. she was fired for blowing a whistle on a string of dubious arrests, but was handed a legal victory by a miami jury that agreed she was unjustly fired. eric blake is the chief of police in oak bluffs, massachusetts, a position he's held for 18 years and delrish

moss was the police chief of ferguson, missouri appointed two years after the police killing of michael brown. he's currently a law enforcement captain with the florida international university police department. and thank you all for joining us there have been studies and even a presidential task force making recommendations aimed at a national reckoning over policing. what's gone wrong? >> what's gone wrong is that the community now is asking for accountability, and they're also asking for a redress, and now is an completion of really looking into a systemic racism within policing. >> reporter: there have been so many studies that say this is how we fix things. why haven't they been fixed? >> i think part of the issue is that the priority on diversity training or unconscious bias training or deescalation hasn't

been as important as the standard trainings that everyone's been doing, and that's -- you know, there hasn't been accountability in a lot of states. you need law enforcement leaders to consider the issues that are going on in the community with their police officers as important as anything else. >> what's your thought about why haven't these studies that have been serious studies about what was going wrong, i mean, why haven't they made a difference? >> well, i think there are a number of issues. we shift as a nation constantly, you know, at one point it was terrorism. the priorities shift and, as a result of the shift, we also get kind of variables in what happens. we also need to be looking at consistency because we've got 18,000 police departments across the country, not all built the same with regard to training, resources and even priorities. >> we're in the midst of intense, sustained political divisions in the country, and,

so, sometimes even the pushback comes from police unions. how do you even deal with that? how do you respond to that. >> i think one of the things that has to be the focus is that unions, they have their responsibility, their responsibility is to protect their membership and to protect the people they are designed to serve. but police chiefs have to remember your job is to be sure they're giving the citizenry the best job. so even when you get pushback from the unions and political stuff, you have to fire people where they need to be, arrest people who need to be arrested and make the changes that knead to be made. >> how do you put that into practice where we've got a situation where black people are being killed by police at a rate that's much greater than their population? chief blake? >> you need to hold people accountable. i think leadership across the

country needs to spend more time looking at the individual officers that are having complaints against them and, again, police chiefs need to focus on making sure that their police departments are well trained, not just in defensive tactics or firearms, but in community policing and understanding who their community are and making sure that they are held accountable every single day for what they do. >> let me ask you what you think about the defund idea. what does that mean to you? >>ell, i think what has happened with that particular statement of defunding the police, it has gotten caught up in the political ramifications that have gone on in this country the last five years, but i think the real essence of it, and i think defund has been

co-oped where the real meaning is it really just needs to be real accountability. when you talk about implicit biases, those are not the thing with they can be trained and come to one training session for a week and then to go back out. there should be some community involvement, there should be some redress, some follow-up. >> some people are using the narrative of abolish the police. i'm not a proponent of abolishing the police but defund te police, in a local community like ours, we went ahead and reached out to the mental health community, the women's support services community and actually engaged them and said is the relationship that we have with you what you want? are we doing a good job? could we go a better job? is there something we're doing that you want to take from us? our personal conversation was no we lake our relationship.

what i'm trying to get across the officers is don't be afraid of the narrative. it doesn't mean people are trying to get rid of you. for years, we have complained as police officers that we've gone from being servers and protectors to everything from mental health advocates to homeless advocates to to support advocates. they keep throwing everything on our plate and now that they want to take stuff off our plate, we're saying, no, don't take anything off our plate. you can't have it both ways. for my community, it doesn't mane a reduction in personnel. it means help, you know. we need to do this together. we're not going to solve the problems by law enforcement. >> director moss, let me get your take on defund. >> well, i think it all has depended on who we've had the conversation with, people who want ouright abolition of police and people who have talked about some of the things police chiefs were calling for when we're saying you can't

throw police at every single problem that exists. a homeless situation, you can't throw the police at that when you don't provide services. mental health, when you don't provide services for people andd they become a police problem and the only thing we're doing is throwing things at police problems and we don't do it well. so i think there's common ground in terms of where we're trying to get, we have to sit down and figure out how to get there. >> what is your big solution at this point? is there a big one? >> well, i think there is a big solution, and it goes back to police accountability, and one of the big things that i think in this new change is we do not respond to a situation first before you investigate with your gun drawn because, already, you have escalated the situation. >> and captain moss, what, in your view, is the biggest

solution thacan address these issues? >> look, when i took over the ferguson police department, one of the first things we did is we went door to door, introducing ourselves to people and talking to them about what their priorities were, and that had a number of effects, but one of the effects was they got to know me, they got to know my staff, and they got to know -- we've got to know who they were so that the next time they responded to a place, it wasn't the first time we were meeting someone. i think when you sit down and fete to know people and start building trust, you can respond better, you can come up with better solutions and you're more legitimate in whatever you find because people have already built a certain relationship with you. >> and finally, are you hopeful that this can be resolved, given all of the issues we have right now in this country? >> i'm very hopeful that we will solve all of our problems because i think, you know, the brain trust, the heart, all of that stuff, all of offthat is there to solve problems, and i think our problems are ever evolving.

we've got to be ready to adjust and adapt. even with the problems that we're having today, rather than thinking we're going to get to a destination, we have to realize the work is continual and it requires continual change and continual adjustment to the new realities that exist. >> thank you. chief blake. >> i'm actually very hopeful. this is my 34th year in law enforcement, and i remember when rodney king happened, there was ris and call for change and were there any real changes going on? not really. you know, so now, this past year, with the protests and -- i mean, we're talking national changes going on from the white house, not oly just the states, from the white house. so i relly am hopeful that we get to a better place. >> thank you, wanda gilbert. yes, i'm very hopeful and, as you can see, this happened even internationally where the world is changing and also, too, if you look at our young people, we have to have hope because what

are we going to leave? and we often talk about what we want to leave for our children. you just can't have and we, we just going to have a training and say, we got rid of the implicit biases. they're real. we just have to be real. and i'm very hopeful, really hopeful. >> well, thank you all for joining me. so wanda gilbert, chief blake and captain moss. thank you all for joining us and leaving us with hope. >> woodruff: and on the newshour online, tune in tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. eastern for a live conversation between our jeffrey brown and "nomadland" author jessica bruder, who will answer your questions about her reporting following the newshour broadcast. we hope you'll join in on the conversation. and that's the newshour for tonight. in us again here tomorrow

evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you, please stay safe, and we'll see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> the ford foundation. working with visionariesn the frontlines of social change worldwide. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and individuals.

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