judy: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. on the "newshour" tonight... tragic aftermath -- the number of confirmed dead rises to twenty-two as rescue workers continue to scour the rubble of the surfside, florida, condominium collapse. then. leavg afghanistan -- the u-s military hands over a critical base after twenty years of war, leaving the future of the cotry in question. plus. at the extreme -- widespread drought raises concerns of another dangerous fire season as the western us struggles to recover from last year's fires. >> if we try to attack this problem like we always have, assuming that it's the same problem, we will not find success. and if the environment

're operating in changes and it obviously has, then we have to change too. judy: and it's friday. david brooks and jonathan capehart break down the supreme court's ruling on voting rights and the criminal charges filed against former president trump's business. all that and more on tonight's "pbs newshour." ♪ >> major funding for the newshour has been provided by -- ♪ bnsf railway. consumer cellular. johnson & johnson. financial services firm raymond james.

>> more at kf.org. >> 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. >> i'm finesse early's in for stephanie sy. we will return to judy woodruff and the full program after the latest headlines. the city of north miami beach has ordered the evacuationf a condo building after a review found it to be structurally and electrically unsafe. an audit of the 156 unit

crestview tower, which is nearly 50 years old, was promed by the collapse of champ lane tower south, where the confirmed death toll has risen to 20 zero. the number of missing dropped from 145 to 126. they also announced they are going to demolish the remaining part of the tower once engineers have signed off. crews kept working today after recovering more victims overnight. the mayor said one was the seven-year-old daughter of a miami firefighter. >> last night was uniquely different. it was truly different and more difficult for our first responders. these men and women are paying an enormous human toll each and every day and i ask that all of you please keep all of them in your thoughts and prayers. >> as the work continued,

officials also kept an eye on elsa the first atlantic , hurricane of 2021. the storm hit barbados today in the eastern cariean, wh winds of 85 miles an hour and heavy rain. it could reach south florida by early next week. the rebound in the u.s. economy is showi even more strength. the labor department reports a net gain of 850,000 jobs in june -- the most in 10 months. average hourly raises rose 3.6% from a year earlier as businesses offered incentives to workers. the unemployment rate, however, ticked up to 5.9% as more people entered the labor force. the world health organization warned today that the delta variant of covid-19 has opened a dangerous new phase in the global pandemic. it's spreading in nearly 100 countries, and infections across africa are doubling every 3 weeks. in india -- where the delta

variant first appeared -- the official death toll topped 400,000 today. the true total is believed to be far higher. the delta variant is also spreading in the u-s -- as the fourth of july weekend arrives. more tn 47 million people are expected to travel for the holiday -- but a third of all us adults are not yet vaccinated. at the white house today, president biden said thaans too many people are still at risk. >> i am not concerned there's going to be a major outbreak, in other words that we're going to have another epidemic nationwide. but i am concerned. lives will be lost. >> the u.s. military all but completed its withdrawal from afghanistan today departing , bagram airfield after nearly 20 years. the withdrawal is running well ahead of president biden's deadline, of september 11th. he said today it's up to the afghan government to unify in the face of rapid taliban advances.

in this country, newly released records from maricopa county showormer president donald trump in his allies pressured top republican officials after the 2020 election. president trump tried to reach one county supervisor soon after news that the former president rests georgia secretary of state to overturn bidens when there. and an independent review commission has formally recommended that outside prosecutors, not military commanders handle sexual assault cases in the uniformed services. president biden endorsed the proposal. he did not address calls in congress for outside prosecutors to handle all major crimes in the military. still to come. on the ground in afghanistan as the u.s. military leavesfter 20 years of war. the u.s. surgeon general discusses e threat of new covid variants and the ccination effort and widespread drought raises

concerns of another dangerous fire season for the western u-s , plus much more. ♪ >> this is the pbs newshour from w eta studios in washington and in the west at the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. judy: for more than a week, rescue teams have worked tirelessly to clear and search the rubble of that collapsed condominium building in surfside, florida. amna nawaz has this conversation, recorded this evening before news of the emergency order to demolish the remainder of the partly collapsed building. >> judy, rescue efforts resumed late yesterday, after a 14-hour pause, over concerns that parts of the building that remain standing could fall and endanger workers. weather issues including heavy rain and lightning storms have also slowed or halted work in recent days.

and now, as we reported earlier, hurricane elsa is on course to reach the florida coast this weekend. all this, as rescue workers continue their mission around the clock. we turn to michael fagel. he served as a safety and logistics officer after both the oklahoma city bombing in 1995 and the world trade center attacks on september 11, 2001. he now teaches disaster management and has written a number of text books on the subject. michael fingal, welcome to the newshour. we are on day nine now of the search-and-rescue efforts. last night the terrible news, they pulled the body of a seven-year-old daughter of a miami firefighter from the rubble there. help us understand for the rescue workers doing the work right now. what is it like what's going through their minds? >> they are on pure adrenaline right now. uh, these folks are working. 12 hour shifts are not longer and even when they stop to rest, they don't rest. they're still doing 100 miles an hour. these people are

dedicateto try and find every person that they can and they just don't want to stop. >> no survivors have been pulled from the wreckage since the hours after the collapse last thursday. they're still in a search and rescue mission. when does that turn to search and recovery? >> when it changes to recovery will be what beyond the ground commanders decide could be several days. remember, it was 11 days with mexico city, and it was eight days with haiti. so they're evaluating every condition in their unified command as we speak, and that's a decision. it's going to be a hard decision to make. because nobody wants to give up. >> you know, at that site, there is this collapsed tower the north ut rather than the south tower. there's also a north tower just about 100 yards away. that is, of course, still standing was built by the same developers. at the same time, fema has now said that they will temporarily relocate residents of that building if they wish to leave, but they haven't been ordered to evacuate. i wonder.

from your experience, what your take is. should those residents leave the building? >> i know that when we did other evacuations that if you have an opportunity to leave while it's safe, i would highly recommend doing so. i'm not an engineer, but i suspect that in various engineers have suggested there may be similar conditions, so if i was given the opportunity to evacuate, i would. >> as we mentioned hurricane elsa is now threatening the coast. give us a sense of how that's changing the rescue work on the ground. >> of course, with wind whether those issues will certainly exacerbate the issues. the crews are going to keep working as safely as they can for as long as they can. but when you at wind, whether shifting debris as we had yesterday, when a beam moves 6 to 12 inches, all those things just add to the the the entire problem that must be evaluated minute by minute. >> i wonder too, if you'd weigh , in on this, because obviously the safety of the workers is at the foremost of everyone's mind right now. but what about the long term safety?

i think back to the rescue workers who were there after 9 11 and many of them inhaling the dust? and who knows what else afterwards? are you concerned based on what you've seen about the long term health of those rescue workers at surfside? >> absolutely. and it's something that will rear its ugly head at the at the very unknown times. i tried to keep people safe wh i was at ground zero. i succumb to cancer 10 years later,o you just don't know i have lost a kidney and some lung function. these folks are going to be so -- they need to be monitored so carefully. they need to say i need medical attention, and they need mental health support as well. don't be afraid because the long term effects of critical incident will last with them for their lifetime. and for their families. don't ignore it. >> michael fickle. you know what it is to be in those rescue working teams. i wonder if you had a brief message for those on the ground doing the work right now. what would that be?

>> don't give up. don't panic. and stay safe. and please, please obtain medical attention and mental health support. don't be afraid, it's ok. >> that is michael fagel joining us tonight. and, of course, our thoughts remain with the people and those rescue workers down in surfside, florida thank you so much for your time. ♪ judy: a generation of american military presence in afghanistan is nearing its end. but what comes now? here's nick schifrin. >> the sprawling hub of american operations in afghanistan for nearly two decades - bagra airfield - is now in the hands of the afghan government. defense officials say all american forces outside of the kabul airport and embassy, have left the country. president biden today suggested the country's challenges, are now

the afghans' problem. >> we have worked out and over the horizon capacity that we can be value added. the afghans will have to do it themselves with the airport -- the air force they have which we will help maintain. i will not answer anymore questions about afghanistan. it's the fourth of july. i'm concerned you guys are asking me questions that i will answer next week, but this is a holiday weekend. i will celebrated. >> so what of this moment in afghanistan, and of its very uncertain future? our jane ferguson joins me from kabul. jane, good to see you. ta about the mood on the ground in kabul. >> government officials are trying to make sense of what next coming weeks and months will mean for them. they have spent the last months trying to secure the u.s. funding, that $4 billion a year for the afghan security forces, but now they have much bigger

concerns, whether or not they can hold ground against the taliban. to a certain extent some of the political leadership has really gone underground and the president seems increasingly isolated in the lace. across kabul in the streets and cafes we have been to today, there is not a sense of panic. but there is a deep sense of fear. whether or not the taliban could come back here or whether or not they will see more of a civil war taking place, a new phase in this war. don't forget, nick, the vast majority of the populion here in afghanistan are too young to remember taliban rule. their parents and grandparents remember taliban rule and many people fear a return to that. in turn, you're sing a huge amount of them trying to get out of the country. there is also the important topic of what will happen for women here. i have spoken to those who run women's shelters across the country and they have had to evacuate many of those shelters within territory that had fallen

to the taliban. and move vulnerable women, those who are being helped because they are coming from abusive situations or they have been released from jail and they have children -- many of those women have nowhere else to go and have had to flee those shelters and move into government controls areas, which are becoming smaller and smaller. >> those fears outside kabul are also about fighting, not only between the taliban and the afghan military, but also local militias now fighting. >> absolutely. we have seen since president biden's announcement that there would be annconditional withdrawal a huge uptick in violence by the taliban. the tactics are fairly clear. they want to take rural areas between the major cities. essentially choking off those cities. for now they have managed to take many districts across the country. part of the tactic as well is to draw the afghan security forces, the government security forces, into fighting on way more friends than they can really managed to do so.

to draw them into fighting across the country and stretching them thin on many different areas. in response to that, the government is essentially handing out weapons to civilians and encouraging what it calls popular uprisings, essentially militias across the country to try to get them to go out and support the afghan government security forces. we have been out there ourselves fight the taliban next to the afghan army. some of them have been in militias way back during the 1990's civil war. they are being handed guns by the government and told to help protect their own areas and other areas that are under threat of falling to t taliban. >> as u.s. servicemen are leaving, we are -- also lving our our u.s. contractors. the u.s. is trying to figure out a solution. how important is that? >> air support for the afghan security forces is absolutely

crucial andhe loss of it could completely tip the balance of power in the battlefield across afghanistan. we have already seen at least one unit of afghan special forces last month being killed by the taliban because they did not have any backup. >> the u.s. is also trying to figure out what to do in terms of future airstrikes, how to get afghan translators out of the country, and how to secure the airport. how important is it that the u.s. finalize those deals? >> there are so many questions still left, nick. we do not know exactly what the rules of engagement will be. will the u.s. military prevent the taliban from marching on major cities or even kabul? will the civilian or special immigrant visas for the contractors, the interpreters who worked with the afghan military, get access to those reasons? i had dinner tonight with one of those former interpreters who has been denied his application for the visa. he knows that americans have been flying out today and that

time is running out. him and many others feel completely left behind. that lack of answers means a lack of answers for thousands of them across afghanistan. >> jane ferguson tonight in kabul. thank you very much. ♪ judy: as we reported earlier, health officials are sounding the alarm this holiday weekend, that covid-19's highly transmissible delta variant is causing an increase in coronavirus cases in the u.s. and its greatest threat is to those who are unvaccinated. i spoke about this a short time ago with the u.s. surgeon general, dr. vivek murthy. thank you very much for joining us here. we see the reporting that the delta variant is now in all 50 states. how prevalent is it echo >> judy, it is quite prevalent. it is doubling nearly every two

weeks. it will very quickly become the dominant variant in the u.s.. what is deeply concerning his it is highly transmissible, perhaps the most transmissible variant we have seen today. but the g news is the vaccines we have appear to be effective against the delta variant and if you are vaccinated, you are in good shape. you have eight high degree of protection. my worry is for those who are not vaccinated. this virus tends to spread even more quickly than other variants among the unvaccinated. that is what we're seeing in missouri and nevada. i worry at unless we quickly get more people vaccinated we will see it in other states. >> that doesn't suggest the biggest worry is going to be in those placeswhether it is rural areas or urban. those states where there is a lower vaccination rate. are we looking at two different pictures of the country here, where people -- where there is a high vaccination rate and a lower vaccination rate?

>> judy, right now we are a divided country in terms of vaccination rates. we have some parts of our country that have 70%, 80% vaccination rates. we have others that are below 30% in parts of their regions. i am worried about that. it means some parts of our country ar at significant risk while others are relatively safe. what we do not want to see is a scenario over the summer and into the fall where we have surges in those regions where there are low vaccination rates. i feel that is where we are headed in less we can quickly increase vaccination rates. it's one of the reasons the administration is putting together a surge effort to help build teams that can go to areas that have been hard-hit, either by micro-surges or that had low vaccination rates and can bring a series of resources to them from assistance with expanding

testing to vaccine administration to technical assistance, to support their public health departments. also to get therapeutics like monoclonal antibodies. >> you said the administration is trying a number of tactics to try to persuade people, but we have a new poll we have been reporting on in the last couple of days. it shows 20% of americans are saying they do not plan to be vaccinated. how do you change the minds of the people who are dead set against it? >> one of the things i learned during my time practicing medicine and working with patients from a wide variety of backgrounds and points of view is that you really have to understand where people are coming from, what their concerns are, and also who they trust. we are a big country. people trust different institutions and individuals. not everyone will listen to officials from the federal or state governments. 50% of people in polls say they

want to hear from a family member or friend as they make their decision about the vaccine. 80% of people say they want to talk to their doctor or another medical professional about making a decision. that's why it is so important we keep focused on this eort to mobilize trusted messengers and help people connect with informed individuals in their communities, whether those are doctors or faith leaders or family members. the problem we have is there is a lot of misinformation floating around. two thirds of people who are unvaccinated eher believe common myths about covid-19 vaccines or think those myths might be true, myths like you can get covid from the vaccine, which is absolutely not true. we have to dispel that misinformation, but the most important piece here are those trusted messengers, information is power, but what we have learned is that information alone is not power. information plus trust creates power. in that sense, all of us have

the ability to talk to friends and family, help them get information they need and help them go to vaccines.gov to find a place close by to get vaccinated. judy: in the meantime, the advice is to people who are vaccinated, it is ok to go without a mask, but if you are unvaccinated, you should wear a mask echo -- mask? >> if you're unvaccinated you're still at risk so you should still wear a mask, especially indoor settings. you should keep distance from others like we have been advising people throughout the pandemic. a few are fully vaccinated, that means two weeks after your last dose of the vaccine, the science tells us your chances of getting sick with covid or transmitting the virus to others is low. that is why the cdc gave people the flexibility to go without masks, indoors or outdoors if they are fully vaccinated. with that said there are some people who might make the decision they want to keep wearing masks. maybe they are in a higher risk

setting based on their own health or live at home with people unvaccinated or in their community there is a lot of spread of covid-19. it is ok for people to make those decisions. judy: is the delta variant the main reason for people to get vaccinated? >> i think it is certainly the most clear and depressing region -- reason. not only is it spreading fast, we have also learned in recent weeks and months that it is not only hospitalizations and deaths we worry about with covid-19, that increasingly we are seeing people with long-haul syndromes, shortness of breath, brain fog that lasts for months beyond their infection. we have seen this with people that have had mild to and in some cases even a symptom attic infection. if you're someone thinking gosh, i am not high-risk, i will not get seriously ill, what we worry

about is even if you do not get hospitalized, you could be at risk for long-haul symptoms. we've seen this at risk for young people. the delta variant makes getting vaccinated even more urgent than it was before. judy: dr. viv act murthy, we thank you very much. >> thank you, and happy fourth of july. ♪ >> in the middle of an unprecedented heat wave and a worsening drought, western states in the u.s. are bracing for what could be an even harsher wildfire season then last years. the worst on record. with many residents still picking up the pieces, they worry about what is on the horizon. stephanie sy has this report from southern oregon. >> you can see where this area burned over here.

reporter: these are the charred remains of a section of the bear creek greenway that burned early in the fire season--too early. it's bone-dry along the 20-mile trail that runs through jackson county in southern oregon. just a spark in this tinderbox could become another disaster, like it did last summer. >> there's vegetative fuels like this all along the greenway and the fire was just moving rapidly. reporter: bob horton was the chief of jackson county's fire district 3. when the almeda fire erupted last september, consuming the towns of phoenix and talent and leveling some 2800 structures. >> i remember vividly, like it was yesterday coming across the radio say we have one chance, one chance to stop this fire. reporter: will clelland, his battalion chief, says the first priority was saving lives. >> the fire that day was forcing us to decide about neighborhoods, not homes or streets, blocks of streets. >> like which neighborhoods you have to let burn.

>> yeah we were forced to decide , which neighborhoods we would we would be passing by and. you know, that's hard. there's these are real families. >> i feel that was my last day. reporter: beatriz gomez remembers the fire drawing closer--the ash, the smoke.. she grabbed important papers and packed her kids into a van to flee, but so found herself on a packed road surrounded on all sides by fires. >> my brother called me he , called me and said where are you? i said i'm stuck. and he told me. >> you said, i'm stuck. >> i'm stuck in the fire. my five year old told everybody, close their eyes because this is bad and everody is scared. reporter: they survived but lost their house. she, her husband, and their four kids have been living in this cramped rv, which they were able to buy with their own money and a church donation. these rv parks are scattered throughout the area, filled with displaced fire survivors, many still traumatized by that day september, which happened to also be beatriz's birthday.

are you still scared of the wildfires. >> yes. every day, especially last week, we have a small fire close to here. i see the smoke and i look in every five or ten minutes when i start to feel the smell, and i said, what did i do? so i put my papers in the van again and again. i have to run again. my five year old daughter told me, i told my mom this smoke, maybe it's carne asada you don't have to worry. after the fire, i put my kids for therapy. my older son would scream in the night. daughter too. and i heard her cry in her sleep. reporter: the kids attend schools in the phoenix-talent district where tiffanie lambert and lucy brossard work. the almeda fire arrived on the first day of school last year. >> i looked back and i saw the

big plume of smoke, and that is when panic set in and just hearing where the fire was and knowing that it was getting really close to some of our family's homes and it was some of our most at risk families broke my heart. reporter: the fire left one-third of students in phoenix-talent schools suddenly homeless. >> i mean, our areas are just reaching the end of the cleanup phase. reporter: so when you are looking at the school year starting in the fall, you're still going to have a big percentage of students that are displaced and not in permanent housing. >> correct. reporter: officials estimate more than 400 families are still displaced, among them allan shephard's grandkids. with school out for the summer, they cooled off in a kiddie pool, hastily purchased on a day when temperatures broke all-time highs in southern oregon. like beatriz gomez, he says he had had almost no warning to evacuate, and could hardly save anything. what was most valuable to you

that you lost? >> my whole home. my whole home. and it hurts. what can you do, you stick your chin up and keep going on, try to make it right for these guys. reporter: he can't afford to rebuild or even rent. >> i got four kids, you know, even to get into a three bedroom, i'm sure i'll be up around twelve, thirteen hundred a month. you know, for me that's not feasible. right. so that's what i'm saying. i might have to go off grid again and save enough money to buy a mobile home, you know, and then move it in on a park that i can afford . rerter: the hard-hit town of talent still bears the scars of that september day. >> everything on one side of talent avenue, completely annihilated. reporter: dominick dellasala is

a longtime talent resident. he has spent years studying climate change and warning of its impact on wildfires. he had to evacuate along with all his neighbors, and feels lucky his home survived. but when he surveys the new construction in talent, he sees how quickly it could all go up in flames again. >> part of me looks at this and says we're not building back better. i mean this used to be a forest, and instead of being out in the forest it's in these , buildings, and it's totally flammable. so if there's another fire, and we have seen these western towns burn not once but twice, this is the worst possible way to build a house. reporter: a new wildfire season is underway, which threatens to be worse than last year's. >> all of the forecasts have been well above the level of danger or risk that we would have at this time of the year. reporter: fire chief bob horton says they've learned from the almeda fire and other explosive

wildfires happening across the west. >> we're getting greater fires of intent, greater intensity and greater frequency of fire. we absolutely have to be more aggressive at managing the risk and just just more effort and energy put into hardening homes in the wildland urban interface and it's the reducing the hazardous vegetation around people's properties. reporter: dominick dellasala says the firesre part of “runaway climate chaos” and without action to address that, future genations face more losses. >> this community has struggled with a lot of grief. it's rebuilding itself. but in terms of the bigger picture, this is all connected. when we chae our atmosphere, when we destroy our wild areas we alter the climate. so we're seeing fire misbehaving, causing catastrophic urban fire events. >> if we try to attack this problem like we always have, assuming that it's the same problem, we will not find success. and if the environment

we're operating in changes and it obviously has, then we have to change, too. reporter: and change quickly. before the next fire becomes a catastrophe. for the p-b-s newshour, i'm stephanie sy in southern oregon. ♪ excuse me. landmark decisions came down this week from the supreme court, u-s house speaker pelosi finally has a committee to look at the january 6th capitol insurrection and criminal charges came down on the former president's family business. luckily, to help us better understand it all - the analysis of brooks and capehart. that's new york times columnist david brooks, and jonathan capehart, columnist for the washington post. hello to both of you. very good to see you as we head into this july 4 weekend.

a lot to talk about. let's start with the supreme court decision on voting rights. it was a decision we have been waiting for. very stark division between how the justices saw this and a lopsided 63 decision. how did you read what you saw from the justices? >> this is one of the surprisingly few 6-3 ideological decisions but this was straight down party lines. it's always worth reminding this is an answer to a problem that does not exist. there is no major voting fraud. we do not need these rules. they're just in-service to the trump live at the election was stolen. i have every reason to believe the intent of the legislature's was to help their party, basically a white republican party, therefore they are trying to make a harder for people in the other party to vote. i imagine that is the intent. the impact is the crucial thing. is there disparate impact.

i only look at this from the research, i don't look at it legally, but the research suggests the impact of all these kinds of voting changes is pretty minimal. over the last 15 -- certainly not in the days of jim crow it was minimal, but in the last 15 years when states have tried to make it easier to vote or make it less easy to vote, the impact on natural cash on actual voting has not been that great. so it does not strike me as catastrophic. but even though the impact is incremental, it is disparate. african-americans, latinos, native americans, they are more likely to be hurt, even though the effects are not big, they are not equally shared across all groups. on the whole i think the court made a mistake, but it is probably not a catastrophic one. judy: how do you see it, john? >> i don't know if i agree david in terms of it not being catastrophic simply because, this is a solution in search of a problem. as someone said to me once after

i said that -- pretty much the same thingn the show a few months ago, they said, that's the wrong frame. from the republican perspective, the problem is too many people are voting for democrats, and in particular to many people of color, i.e. black people, are voting, and that is the problem from the republican perspective and these laws are out there -- they might not be catastrophic in terms of the way you view it right now, david, but it really is interesting that after african-american voters, people of color, the democratic coalition came out en masse to vote for joe biden, to vote for senators warnock and jon ossoff in georgia, that all of a sudden there is a voter problem, a voting issue that needs to be solved. the problem is that too many of those people are voting and t idea that the supreme court would say, well, you know, it's

not such a big deal, 's just really a travesty and it does not do anything for chief justice john roberts's goal of trying to keep the supreme court looking like a neutral player. when it comes to voting rights, chief justice roberts is not a neutral player in this. judy: speaking of what happened in the georgia vote, i happen to have a rare and very fortunately interview with former president jimmy carter, in planes on the occasion of he and his wife roslyn are about to celebrate their 75th anniversary of their wedding. i want to run a little expert of the interview. i did ask we did not know at that point with the court would do, but what about has happened in georgia, and the tightening of laws. here's what he said. >> all over the world, ever since it was founded, we tried to promote maximum involvement

among the people in the election itself. to make sure votes are counted accurately. the republican state legislator has taken the position trump has a spouse. judy: he is saying that his own carter center has been called on to monitor elections in georgia. so you now have a situation -- what the u.s. used to worry about and the rest of the world is happening here. >> earlier this year i read the magnificent biography of ulysses s grant and as part of it covers the story of reconstruction. of when it former slaves were given the vote and taken away, so it is hard not to read that history and you hear echoes today. morley, i agree. given the history o america, if you are a legislature -- legislator of any already, you do not want to be on the side of

disparate outcomes on racial grounds. that is a bore into. i would disagree with president carter in that i do think the 2022 election will be a fair election. i do not think we have totally trashed our system. that is why they make the emphasis -- when you try to discriminate against people, one of the things that has happened is they come back at you harder. so you get turnout increases when people perceive that the legislators are trying to turn people away. whether that will be the system long-term is an open question. but i think overall, we have mail-in ballots, we have longer voting. then we did 20 or 30 years ago, i still think, as much as one can be outraged by what is happening, our election system will be fair in 2022, i imagine. judy: jonathan, i was struck in the poll we did that came out this week with npr and marist college, 79% of the respondents say they think it is good to require people to show

government id before they can vote. >> sure. stacey abrams, when the joe manchin compromise came out, one of the things and there was voter id, and stacey abrams came out and said she was fine with it. but that was a one sentence answer. the fine print of her answer is, everyone is fine with voter id. the problem comes in when some states demand only voter idea not other forms of identification and put restrictions on the kinds of photo ideas that can be presented. so you have in some states where a student cannot show their student photo id, but someone can show up and show their gun permit. and be able to vote. and that is the issue, that is the problem. i do not think it is unreasonable to ask people to

prove who they are. the problem comes in when you start picking and choosing which pieces of identification allow you to exercise your right to vote. judy: so much to ask the two of you about this week. david, i do want to raise the indictment that new york prosecutors handed down against the trump business and his chief financial. officer. my question to both of you is, how does this affect former president trump's political fortunes? >> i guess it remains to be seen. i confess, if you had asked me how much corruption there was in the trump organization, i would have expected way worse then some unexploded -- undisclosed fringe benefits. if that is all it is, i would be underwhelmed. but that is probably not all it is, as every legal expert seems to be saying this -- these days. they seem to be going on the sky as an attempt to turn him. he has been involved in trump organization numbers for decades

and if they can hit him hard, which they really hit him hard on these untaxed benefits, and if he is facing jail time, he would be the person who would know all the secrets going all the way up to the top of the trump organization. so if this is the beginning of a turn of a set of witnesses, it is very perilous for trump. if this is all there is -- i would be surprised. and trump would be relatively safe from this kind of indictment. judy: jonathan, how perilous for former president trump? >> in terms of his political standing, i do not think perilous at all. one of the true statements to come out of his mouth's -- mouth came during the 2016 campaign when he said he could shoot someone on fth avenue and not lose any support. he has shown time and time again that is true. for his diehard supporters, this is just one more piece of the quote unquote witchhunt against him. i do not see him hurting him in any way with his true believers. judy: the last thing i want to

ask the two of you about is something the former president has denounced. that is how speaker pelosi naming a select committee to investigate what happened with the insurrection of the capital. she tried very hard, democrats tried very hard to get a commission created, republicans blocked it in the congress and senate. but now there is a select committee, she has named several members, including republican liz cheney, who haseen critical of the former president. how much can we expect to learn from an organization -- from an entity like this? >> we will not get the dispassionate, impartial viewpoint a lot of us voted for -- a lot of us hope for. i think a couple things are interesting to me. liz cheney is a tough person. to go against her own leader and accept this appointment from nancy pelosi, that shows she is very tough. she has decided that it is her

oath to defend the constitution and look into what happened in january 6, and more power to her. as for what kevin mccart does, i am intrigued. i assume he will staff his side of the committee, because otherwise the republicans will be silence. does he get super hardcharging, firebreathing right-wingers who make fox happy and disrupt the works, what elise stefan has beco? or does he go with people who voted to certify the election. i imagine he will go with the hard chargers and we will get something of polical leader. even despite the theatrical elements we seem destined to, i think we will learn stuff, just from witnesses and the back-and-forth of the politics. judy: what are your expectations, jonathan, from this? do you think we will learn very much? how do you see it playg out? >> i think we will learn a lot. but the key thi that everyone should keep in mind is that for speaker nancy pelosi, who is

deeply faithful person, a devout catholic, her love of the constitution, it ranks up there as number two in terms of her, what she strongly believes in. and for her as a member of congress representing a district in california, as a constitutional officer, as speaker of the house, her allegiance and oath to the constitution is inviolable. the fact that people stormed the capital on a really sacred day with a sacred procs for american democracy, it was an affront to her as an american and an affront to her as the speaker of the house. she wants this committee because she wants to know what happened, why it happened, so can all learn how to prevent it from happening again. anyone who thinks this is only a partisan exercise does not really understand who she is and why she is doing a and, more importantly, why she turned to republican congresswoman liz

cheney to be on that committee, because, also, someone from the opposite ideological spectrum from the speaker but who has also made it clear since january 6 that her oath is not to a person, but to the constitution. judy: in one way or another, we will continue to hear about january 6. even as we approached this national holiday, july 4, we think you both and hope you have a safe holiday. thank you both. ♪ >> the closing day of the supreme court term highlighted the power of the new six justice conservative majority. as we have just been discussing. but the ideological divide can also reveal the power of blistering dissent.

yesterday that dissent came from elena kagan who said the under dashers of the majority undermined the voting rights act. she wrote, and i quote, what is tragic here is that e court has yet again rewritten, in order to weekend, a statue -- statute that stands as a monument to american's greatness and protects us against from its most base instincts. >> judy, the name of supreme court justice john marshall harlan may not be widely known these days. tearing his tenure from 1877 to 1911. the high and -- in american life in the biggest cases, he was the lone dissent. he alone staked out decisions that decades later would become the law of the land.

those visionary opinions led him to be known as the great dissenter, which is also the title of a new biography of him. peter, thank you for being with us. what drew you to write about john harlan? >> it started back when i was in law school 30 years ago. and as you know, it's often a dry affair reading legal books but harlan's opinions immediately sort of leapt off the page. here is somebody who is bringing sort of a higher pitch of justice to his consideration of the law. it also is striking not only in the race cases, but also in some of these economic cases during the gilded age that his opinion is the law of the land now and not that of the court majority of his era. i want to know why somebody would be so different from their colleagues at that time and yet be proven right in history. >> he started out as a slave owner. he was born into a slave state, kentucky. he disagreed with president lincoln on

emancipation and actually opposed his reelection. so how does he go from that to becoming this champion of equal rights for freed slaves. >> in the context of kentucky politics, those stances were less resistant and conservative than you would think. there were essentially no republicans in kentucky, he was striving to keep the state neutral and so, yes, he cut deals and rallied very hard to get his fellow kentuckians to stay in the union and part of that promise was they would be able to make their own decision on slavery. but that's why he was opposing some of the emancipation proclamation and the 13th amendment. netheless, after the war, he came to believe that slavery was, in his own words, the greatest despotism of all time. also, his personal association with african-americans, especially the one who was long rumored and believed to be his half brother, robert harlan, who became a very prominent civil

rights figure in ohio, just across the river from kentucky, and with whom he had a long term and very respectful friendship and collaboration. >> you write about robert, you say, if there is a mystery to harlan's story, the solution lies in the person of robert harlan. >> robert harlan is an amazing man. he was a person of mixed race. he was believed to be the son of harlan's father and an enslaved woman. some dna tests later on suggested that may not be the case, but nonetheless, he was believed to be a member of the harlan family and had a special relationship with john's father. he was in a position to help john marshall harlan when harlan wanted to get on the supreme court. northern liberals were very skeptical of this kentuckian who came from a slave owning family. though behind the scenes, robert harlan was able to reassure people of john harlan's good intentions regarding african-americans in a time when most people doubted

him. and then he went on to become the greatest defender of african-american rights of his time and perhaps of american history. >> you talk about the sort of the gilded age and a lot of these issues, not just the race cases that, but economic cases that were the the supreme court sided with the moneyed interests over workers on things like work hours and that sort of thing. as you looked at those cases, where did you feel any parallels or were there echoes of the court's direction today? >> one recent vintage that sort of has a little of that air to it is the citizens united case. i think the basic situation during the gilded age was you had a supreme court that was much more conservative than the rest of the country and very much out of touch with what average people were experiencing. that was the result of having a long, unbroken string of essentially pro-business presidents, [] harlan was much more in touch with the country coming from

kentucky. he was not rich, he understood what was going on and he was every bit as aggressive a defense, a dissenter in those cases as he was in the race cases. what's amazing to me is today, in all of those cases, the race case, civil rights, voting rights, education and endorsed the separate but equal act, and then in these economic cases, harlan's views prevailed. and in his time he was just one person standing against the crowd. >> his dissent in the in plessy vs. ferguson, which which established the doctrine of separate but equal, was sort of the roadmap for thurgood marshall in brown vs. board of education. and today, harlan is is a hero to both sides, to conservative legal scholars and justices on the supreme court and also liberal scholars. how - talk a little bit about that. >> conservatives see harlan as a positive figure, as a person who believed in the original intent and plain meaning of the constitution when he stood up for equality in plessy v. ferguson. he was saying equal

protection means equal protection. he was also saying the people who passed that amendment intended to create a state of equality for african-americans. liberals, on the other hand, will look at him and say, here's a man who had a real sense of how the suprem court's decisions can affect people on the ground. >> you also say that that harlan was unique in at his dissents eventually became the law of the land, that there was no there hasn't been as forceful a dissenter. but do you see any parallel or any analog on the court today? >> well, certainly the court court liberals and a lot of people associated this with the la ruth bader ginsburg shifted to a position of dissent in the last four or five years. [] i think that ruth bader ginsburg in her later years really looked to harlan as an example of which he wanted her her own legacy to be. >> the book is the great dissenter, the story of john marshall harlan, america's

judicial hero, the author, peter canellos. peter, thank you very much. >> thank you. judy: d a quick announcement before we say goodnight. the newshour has launched a new digital series called “5 stories.” in each episode, host deema zein will recap five captivating stories you may have missed. all in about three minutes. you can find the latest episode every friday on our youtube channel or on our website, that's pbs.org/ newshour. stay with pbs. you don't want to miss yamiche alcindor and her panel unpack the criminal charges against the trump organization and a top executive. that's tonight on washington week. and be sure to join us here on monday for my rare, wide-ranging interview with former president jimmy carter, and his wife rosalynn as they prepare to celebrate their 75th wedding anniversary - the longest-married presidential couple in us history. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. join us on-line and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you, please stay safe and enjoy

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>> war stories with a war r hero this week on "firing line." >> basic s.e.a.l. training was a lifetime of challenges crammed into six months. >> a navy s.e.a.l. who spent more stories with the war hero. this week, on firing line peer >> basic seal training with a lifetime of challenges crammed in the six months. >> a navy seal who spent 37 years serving his country. admiral william the grave and commanded the special forces who captured saddam hussein. >> he went from being pompous and arrogant to just a tired corrupt old man. >> reporter: and rescued captain phillips from somali pirates. >> the first people i want to think of the seals, they are superheroes. >> i was honored to be part of the operation. >> he was also in charge of seal team six during neptune's a spear, the daring operation that took out osama bin laden. >> it showed that we as americans can do the hard things and do them well. >> he salutes the drake greatest generation, and has faith in a new one. this week on