judy: good evening, i am judy woodruff on the newshour tonight. months later, investigations and arrests ongoing in the violent attack on the u.s. capitol by violent or trump supporters. then, express search for clues to the structural failure of the condominium in surfside, as rescue teams continue to comb the rubble. and leaving afghanistan. members of the u.s. military reflect on 20 years in the country and whether the war was worth it. >> there is a saying in infantry, ours is not to ly, ours is to do or die.

i don't know if we did good but i know i made it home alive. judy: of that and more on "pbs newshour." ♪ >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by -- >> cfo, caregiver, teclipse chaser. a raymondjames financial advisor taylor's advice to help you live your life. >> for 25 years, consumer sellers goal has been to provide service that helps people communicate and connect. our customer service team can help you find one that fits you. >> johnson & johnson. bnsf railway.

>> that john s. and james l. knight foundation. >> and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. ♪ >> thiprogram was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station by viewers like you. thank you. >> i am vanessa williams at newshour west in for stephanie sy.

we will return to judy woodruff after the latest headlines. the death toll has risen to 36 in the collapse of a condominium tower in surfside, florida. search teams recovered eight more bodies at the rubble pile earlier today, but 109 people are still missing. this was day 13 of the digging operation but with no new signs of life, officials said relatives of the missing are bracing for the worst. >> for the family members who are excruciatingly waiting for information, they know what is happening. they understand that the news of their loved ones may be tragic loss. vanessa: the search teams paused their work for two hours early today due to lightning and high winds along the fringe of elsa, the tropical storm that has now become hurricane. we will return to this story later in the program. elsa churned past south florida

today, heading for the state's western coast. the now category one hurricane is sustaining winds of 60 miles per hour, regaining strength even after lashing the florida keys today. elsa is on track to make landfall wednesday morning between tampa bay and florida's big bend area. eric has won the democratic primary in new york city. he defeated a large field in an election that used ranked-choice voting. in a narrow around, he defeated the former city sanitation commissioner, catherine garcia. a former police captain adams will be new york city second's black mayor. and in japan, rescue workers found more victims in last saturday's mudslide, bringing the death toll to 7. at least two dozen people are still missing. emergency crews and soldiers continue today to dig through the sludge and debris but rain threatened to touch off new

slides. american officials from president biden on down say that a worldwide ransomware attack has left the u.s. largely unsaved. on friday, -- largely unscathed. friday, russian-linked hackers targeted the software company because kaseya, based in florida and demanded $70 million of resident address. hthe rnc deny that any data was stolen. the pentagon today canceled it $10 billion contract with microsoft to modernize the military's cloud computing systems. instead, it will solicit new bids. amazon had alleged president trump intervened to deny him the contract in 2019.

it cited his integrity is in toward jeff bezos, who was then amazon's ceo and also owns the washington post. journalist nicole hannah jones will join the faculty of howard university in washington, d.c., after a highly publicized tenure fight at the university of north carolina at chapel hill. she said conservative critics on her work on slavery's legacy pushed university trustees to hold her tenure approval initially. they then voted to grant it after weeks of protests. she won a pulitzer prize for her work. still to come, express search for clues to the structural failure of the surfside, florida condo. u.s. military veterans reflect on 20 years of war in afghanistan. why the boy scouts of america reached a legal settlement, with tens of thousands of sexual abuse survivors.

plus much more. ♪ >> this is the "pbs newshour," from weta studios in washington and, the west from walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. judy: today marks six months since a pro-trump mob attacked the u.s. capitol on january 6 in an attempt to stop the certification of president biden's election results. i am joined by lisa desjardins. tell us now, where does it stand in terms of finding out and arresting those who broke into the capitol? lisa: let's talk about this sweeping investigation that's been all around the country led by tips in part to the fbi . here is where that stands so far. the fbi has arrested about 535 people in these investigations . from that group, 10 have pleaded

guilty themselves. the rest have cases pending. there is a wide range of different kinds of charges. almost everyone in that group has been charged with improper entry, but a smaller group has been charged with conspiracy and over 100 people have been charged with assault. over 100 police officers were assaulted in that attack and that's what those charges are part of. there are still some 300 suspects that the fbi would like to identify. they uploaded 11 new videos today of faces that they want americans to look at and see if they can identify. ong those who haven't been identified or the peop or person who planted the pipe bombs at the republican and democratic national committee headquarters. we know where these sentences are going, just based on a few guilty pleas. some for misdemeanors like improper entry. a woman was given three years probation.

she got a lenient sentence. we saw a guilty plea from an oathkeeper who pleaded guilty to conspiring to in fact trying to overturn the election. the sentence is still pending. judy: where are we in terms of the attempt to find out who is responsible in terms of investigations, and also to make sure the capitol is safe? lisa: that is a big question. u.s. capitol police put out a statement today. i want to break down what we know about capitol security going forward. one thing that is new, capitol police are actually opening two offices in florida and california to deal with threats against members. a lot of these members are getting threats continuing after january 6. the last fences at the capitol are expected to come down this week. there is still no deal on money to improve security at the u.s. capitol that is stuck in the senate right now. in addition, capitol police at

this moment still cannot call in the national guard for an emergency on their own they still have to go through red tape to do it. house democrats passed a select committee to do this. they could not agree on a bipartisan commission. that is operating. eight democrats appointed by nancy pelosi and five would be appointed by republicans. judy: thanks, probably the next thing to watch. thank you very much. i spoke with representative bennie thompson of mississippi who chairs the select committee on investigating the january 6 attack. what can people expect to learn from this investigation that isn't going to come from the number of other investigations underway? rep. thompson: well, the charge that this select committee is tasked with is looking at the circumstances and e facts surrounding what occurred and coming up with a body of

recommendations. we have a number of committees of some jurisdiction, our charge is to collect all of the relevant committee information and synthesize it into one select committee report. we have staff, we have the budget necessary to do that. so to some degree, with singular focus on the events of january 6. judy: you have subpoena power, the select committee does. do you expect to call individuals including former president trump, former vice president pence, others in the white house? rep. thompson: let me just qualify saying we have the subpoena authority. if the facts themselves lead us to any individual we will not hesitate to bring them before the committee. ju: so you are open to calling

president trump. let me go on and asking about republican reaction in the house. not just the republican leadership, but even republicans who voted to impeach former president trump or who voted for an independent commission, are saying they think this committee is to partisan. i will quote your ranking republican on homeland security, he called it a turbocharged partisan exercise, not an honest fact-finding body that the american people deserve. rep. thompson: let me just say that my ranking member on the homeland security committee is a good person. he was the one that was ambushed by republican leadership. we negotiated in good faith what i felt was a resident step in the right direction, but we could not get the republican leadership to accept it, and we accepted everything they asked for and we could only get 35 votes. we could not get enough votes in

the senate. so the senate kept saying, give us some time, give us some time. we give them six weeks before we moved in setting up the select committee. our charge right now is to get to the bottom of what happened. all the film that the people have looked around the country on their tv and what have you, it is absolutely astounding what occurred. if you had said something, judy, to me, that the capitol of the united states of america would overrun by insurrectionists because they were dissatisfied with thelection, i would have said, you have to be kidding. we are not a third world dictatorship or something like that, we are a democracy. we set the example for the rest of the world. judy: to their charge that it is not fair from a partisan standpoint, because even if

republicans are appointed, there are only five appointed out of 13. rep. thompson: well, this is a democratic-led effort. we made good faith efforts for a bipartisan commission and the republicans voted against it. so now, those same people are coming back, saying,, well, this on his partisan. i don't know what they want. we give them one thing and they voted against it. so speaker pelosi is absolutely correctn moving forward, because at the end of the day, we have to protect this fragile democracy. judy: there is no date set for finishing the work of the committee, when do you think it will finish? rep. thompson: we will work as expeditiously as we possibly can. as you know, we are several weeks late from the original start. our projected date was december 31 of this year.

i just say, i d't think we can get it by that time. but i can say that we will go and get the facts. some of the facts, we have already collected. but i don't want to limit it to what other committees have collected. we want to hire the bes professionals, the best legal minds, the best investigators, and turn them loose. but i also want to hear from witnesses. you know, we have yet to talk to any of the rank-and-file of the capitol police. we have always talked to the brass, but we haven't talked to those men and women who were being assaulted on that day. we need to hear from them what occurred to make sure that we can protect them as they protect us. so we have a fiduciary responsibility to get this right. as chair, i will work just as

hard as i can, my colleagues who have been appointed so far, we have had one meeting. it was a good meeting. t we are in the embryonic stage of putting it together. i hope you do mccarthy -- i hope, leader mccarthy will hear those individuals who want to protect this country. and not individuals who want to tear it up. the spirit of this committee is we want to protect this democracy and the people who work in it every day. judy: representative bennie thompson, chair of this house select committee, thank you very much. rep. thompson: thank you for having me. ♪ judy: with the search it

surfside, florida growing more dire, each day seems to bring more questions. william brangham speaks tonight with an engineer he's trying to get answers. william: there are still so many questions about what happened at the champlain towers south, questions about the original design and construction of the buildings, revelations about earlier warnings regarded needed repair work and whether those were taken seriously enough and questions over whether cost concerns eclipsed concern about risk. the town of surfside has hired a renownedtructural and forensic engineer to investigate this tragic collapse. he has investigated dozens of other structural failures, and he joins me now from surfside. allen kelsheimer, very good to have you on "the newshour." there is this enormous pile of rubble where rescuers are still trying to see if there are people inside there.

now you have to try to investigate what happened. can you explain the process? allen: we collect all information that we could find by looking at drawings, original drawings and technical information. we take samples of various kinds of materials and have it tested for various nds of things that give us information about the components and the materials and we do computer engineering models. we modeled the entire building, structurally, based on the original set of drawings. we are searching for a trigger. things like the pentagon world trade or commerce city . what the trigger was. you don't know what the trigger is here. we look at, from the materials testing and stuff, we look at the materials that were used and their consistency and strength. then at the beginning of this, like last friday night, i came up in my head with 20 things

without could have caused this. what we do is we eliminate them. we move down the list, we add more things to the list, and if possible we remove them from the list if we can prove it. then once we have the models done, we start saying, let's assume a hypothetical situation that this particular material wasn't the strength it was supposed to be. so we plug in what that material strength is an say, does that contribute to a problem or does it cause a problem? it is like three huge 3000-piece puzzles that you throw up in the air and you mix them all up with a broom so they're all mixed up and then you have to put the puzzle together. william: we have seen reports about the building owners getting some warnings that certain things needed to be repaired that were apparently not done. do those warnings and those reports give you any hint as to what might be going on here? >> we are getting probably 300

emails idea with people giving us this information and also people who have ideas about why it happened. probably more than that. we listen and see it. bottom line is concrete cracks. it is made to crack. things deteriorate over time, except for old people like me, right? i don't deteriorate. william: the magic you have got there. allyn: or something. the idea is that i don't think all these different things that i have read, and we haven't been able to test anything yet, i don't think they were the necessary trigger. they may have been a contributing factor but not a trigger. that is what the big challenge will be, to find the trigger, and look at the various things that have been reported and say, if this was arrested like this, or if this concrete was soft or

whatever, how might it have affected it? william: miami is under lots of stress, from sealevel rise and flooding. we know the area was built on very porous limestone. and then there is this tragedy. must be hearing from building owners up and down that region saying, do we need to worry? what are they saying? allyn: yes, we are hearing from lots of those people. what they really want is some assurance from somebody that they feel comfortable with that they don't have any problems, that they're building will not fall down around them like the one in surfside. we are talking to them. we are putting together a list of things we suggest they might look at in their particular units if they choose to do so, and we are working with the city of surfside on issues they could have looked at. i just got finished in a meeting with the vice of their and other building owners where we talked about those kinds of things. william: i know you have to give

precedence to the search-and-rescue that is still going on. do you have a general sense of how long this investigation of yours will take? allyn: it is going to take months. then we can only do some of it right now. for the last 12 days and probably another four weeks, we will not be able to do parts of what weo, but that is letting us do other things. my experience is that it takes a very long time because you are collecting information and sometimes there is this tiny thing that gets uncovered that you go, geez, that is a huge issue, and then you have to follow that path. so it will take a long time. william: allyn kilsheimer, thank you very much for your time. allyn: thank you. ♪ judy: there is a long history of foreign troops leaving afghanistan after long and bloody fights.

now the u.s. and its allies have almost completely withdrawn. nick schifrin explores how these decades of war look to veterans who served there. nick: the united states will soon complete the withdrawal of almost all military forces in afghanistan. the war in afghanistan has been the u.s.'s longest. the u.s. invaded in october 2001 nearly 20 years ago. we thought we'd mark the withdrawal by talking with three veterans of the war about their experiences and what was accomplished. major megan evans has been in the military since 2004. in 2013, she led an all-female cultural support team who would speak to ghan women in the villages. she is still in the army. former specialist isaiah james was in army reconnaissance surveillance and acquisition team outside of kandahar city in 2010-2011. he served two tours in iraq and was medically retired in 2013. and retired colonel mike jason

is a 24-year career in the army. in 2012 he was battalion commander in northern afghanistan and served two tours in iraq. he retired in 2019. major, events let me start with you, when you would speak with afghan women, did they give you the intelligence that you were looking for, and looking back, did you believe you are doing something good? >> we were gathering information atmospherics from the women they needed helpful support for medical facilities. it is not likamerica where there is a walgreens down the street, there is not an urgent care they can go to. those were the things my team will do. people from the village would come into the clinic, specifically women and children, and some men, and we would give them care. we would get the information but also provide medical care to them. that women in the villages were always very receptive.

sometimes not so much. majority of the times we went in, they were very perceptive to everything you are doing. nick: major -- isah james, it was a lot more kinetic in kandahar. you remember that your commanders talked about winning the war by winning hearts and minds in afghanistan. were you ever trained to do that, and do you think you succeeded in that mission? >> my mission was very kinetic. i am an infantry man by training, i have been my whole nine years in the military. no, we were never taught to win hearts and minds. you cannot turn a grunt off, so to speak. we were taught to put bluntly two in the heart and one in the mine. our shooting drills. they teach us how to kill, kill, but at the flip of a switch, you are told to go out there and be nice to people who you have seen

as a target your whole entire deployment. it was a hard transition to not look at everything as a threat. every motorbike was an aed every pile of trash, on the road, every person giving you the people i, so to speak, at the market -- giving you the the evl eye, so to speak, at the market, was a target. nick: do you think you did good, that you succeeded? >> those same infantry, there is a saying, "ours is not to reason why, ours is to do or die." i am happy that i made it home alive. nick: jason, you saw an interesting mix of special operations, what we saw black ops, guys who go in at night to try to kill senior taliban commanders, and white ops,

people who go into the villages to work with tribal elders. that was about 11 years since the initial invasion. did that work? did your mission succeed? >> like everything else in afghanistan, it is all in shades of gray. i saw what looked like progress. you had the black ops clearing the space for us to do our operations, while the white ops, working in the villages, doing things we had learned in vietnam. we brought those tactics back, really started working with the people in small villages, with the cultural support teams that megan worked on. we all were working together on this stuff in very remote and isolated places. you could see it could work, except the silent voice inside my head in 2012 said, white man, too little too late. we knew in'12 the surge were going to come to an end and we were starting to talk about transition and taking things

down. nick: major evans, i wonder if the u.s. should have stayed 20 years. >> we did good work. i am proud of what we were able to do. a token both to support and defend the constitution, and inherent in that is to support the leaders over me. i say to them that they made the right decision each side to stay, and this time to withdraw. nick: isaiah james, was the war worth fighting for afghanistan and for u.s. national security? >> for 20 years, absolutely not. i have been deployed three times as an infantry man. my first deployment, we lost 32 brothers and sisters my second, we lost eight. my third, we lost 11. once we got osama bin laden, that was our mission. there is an ahan proverb the villagers would tell us that says, "you may have the watches, but we have the time." afghanistan is known as "the empire killer." alexander the great march there

and lost, the russians sent one million men and lost. americans have spent countless treasure and human lives and we are pulling out. we have to learn from history. we cannot go there and expect to give someone a gift at the tip of the sword. nick: you made a point earlier, which is that the u.s. did not fight 120-year war, the u.s. for 21 years, meaning people were deployed only one year. what was the impact of that. >> we were there 20 years. mike was there 10 months. to the locals and partners we worked with they were, ready for who is the next gringo that is coming along. in 9/11, i was a captain, i remember, we knew that we had to go to war. we had to eradicate al qaeda. we had to get rid of the space they were operating in and we could not allow what was happening to come out of afghanistan again. and we had to bring bin laden to

justice. but looking back i think we can all agree, we never really had a definitive strategy. we can disagree on whether we should come out or take our forces out or how much we should leave behind, but at least right now we finally have a definitive policy, and we have not had that. nick: major evans, do you think about the women who you met in afghanistan, and are you worried about them? >> i think about them several times a day. we really were trying to help them help themselves. with the women in that district, women's affairs representatives, we established a good relationship with the one in the shindang district. with her we were able to build such a good network with women in the village. we established a meeting where we were able to find out security issues.

we were getting ready to vote in 2013. we talked to them about elections. we connected with them about infrastructure issues in their area. the intent was to help them help themselves, and. . they did nick: isaiah james. when you remember your memories i remember if you think about that phrase "help them help themselves." >> history is replete with that phrase "help them, help themselves." it never turns out the way it sounds. when the pilgrims held the indigenous, people when missionaries went to africa it was to help those people help themselves. it never sounds the way it sounds. it never turns out that way. it sounds very lofty. i have good memories but as you said at the beginning of the segment, my job was to be finding targets and executing on those targets when we got orders. so i don't know if we helped

them help themselves, but all i know -- i am a grunt, i am a dork kicker, my platoon sergeant would say, i am a barrel chested freedom fighter. we did not make decisions at the operational or strategic level, but i know that on the ground, it did not look like that. all i know is we were sent there to do a job in 20 years on, has that job been done? did we even have a strategy? it was 20 different strategies. was this war even worth it? when i think about some of the memories from afghanistan, a lot of them are hunting. i am still in therapy to this day because of that. i am still dealing with the ptsd, still dealing with the night terrors and traumas. i retired medically at 27 years old because i got hit by too many aeds. nick: mike, we have been talking about the afghan interpreters, all the afghans who facilitated the u.s. war.

do you believe the u.s. should evacuate them? >> without question. right now we are talking about the high numbers, about 70,000 when you start including families and children. there is an absolute moral responsibility by this country to help those who signed up and turned in and were out there with us, whether it is isaiah's interpreter or my interpreter. even some of the afghan security forces, megan's people, all the people we worked with. we would ask our allies and other operations in future conflicts to sign up and be part of this effort and work with the united states. it is, our credibility is on the line. we owe it to them to get them out as quickly as we can. nick: mike, isaiah, major megan evans, thank you very much to all of you. >> thank you. >> thanks for having me. >> thank you. ♪

judy: the tentative legal settlement between the boy scouts of america and tens of thousands of sexual abuse survivors is one of the largest in u.s. history. the national organization of boy scouts filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in the winter of 2020, and as john yang tells us, there are concerns about how much survivors will receive. john: judy, the proposal is a first step in settling the more than 80,000laims against the boy scouts for decades of sexual abuse, and lawyers who negotiated the deal on behalf of survivors of the abuse say there could be a lot more money to come. in a statement, the boy scouts of america called it a significant step toward a global resolution the deal must still be approved by bankruptcy judge and other attorneys representing survivors said they will object to it as too small.

attorney kenneth roth weiler represents about 16,000 of those claimants and negotiated a settlement. thank you for joining us. have you talked to any of the survivors that you represent, and what is their reaction? >> i talked to survivors every day and always get their opinion about how they foresee the bankruptcy going. i don't think they are overjoyed, but they feel satisfied, because the boy scouts have acknowledged what they have done. thou they have come to the table and compensation is coming to the survivors. john: when we hear numbers like these and settlements like this, i mean, this is big, but how much of that money after fees and expenses, is going to actually end up in survivors' pockets, is there any way of estimating that at this stage? >> it is hard to estimate it because we are not finished yet. this settlement with the bsa and

the locals is just the first step. that has always been the plan, to get the settlement with those entities, and then to get the insurance rights which have been assigned to the trust, so we can go after the insurance companies where most of the money is. i predict that at the end, this will be a multibillion-dollar settlement. john: will all the claimants get same amount or different amounts? >> different amounts to different claimants depending upon the state they were in the severity and longevity of the abuse, there is a lot of ther is a protocol which is basically guidelines for the trustee to assess how much each individual claimant will get. john: when the boy scouts filed for bankruptcy, there was a lot of controversy because the local councils were not involved. a lot of people were saying that is where a significant amount of the assets were held. where is the money for this settlement coming from? >> it is a total of $850

million. $250 million is from the national boy scouts of america organization. $600 million is from the local councils, and there is about 250 local councils. that is broken down tech cash, property, and a promissory note. we tried to extract as much money as we could from survivors both from the bsa national and local councils. john: will this lit the liability of the councils after this settlement? >> they will be getting what is called a channeling injunction which means potential exposure has ended. john: what do you think are some of the more significant other provisions of the settlement? >> on behalf of the survivors, i can tell you that it has never been about the money, it is about recognition from the boy scouts that this went on for decades. the survivors feel good about the fact that the boy scouts have acknowledged that and now we move on from there.

john: as you noted in the introduction, there are some attorneys who are not thrilled, who say it is too small, who say you can't really judge how equitable it is until you know how much local councils really have. what is your response? >> my response is that those lawyers don't know what the plan was from the beginning. the plan always was to get a settlement with the bsa national and then the locals and then move on to the insurers. there is billions of potential that could come from the from dollars the insurance companies , also from chartering organizations like the lds church, and i mean, from sponsoring organizations like the lds church and also from chartering organizations. so there's a lot of potential money that can come the way of the survivors. we now have to be aggressive as the lawyers go after it. john: it is ultimately up to the bankruptcy judge, but will survivors have a say in this?

>> they will. they will ultimately vote on the plan. their votes will be content and a certain percentage of the survivors have to vote in favor of it for the plan to go through. so yes, they will have about. john: you say this is just the beginning. how long ultimately do you think the process will take? >> it depends on the survivors. if they come to the table, we could get this done by the end of the year. if they don't that, we will have to litigate against the boy scouts. we have lawyers ready to litigate against the major insurance companies. we will have to wait and see. probably a better question after a couple of months. john: connect roth weiler, who is representing claimants in the sexual abuse cases against boy scouts of america, thank you. >> thanks, john. ♪

judy: san francisco has a soaring homeless population. on any given night, some 35,000 are without a place to live. much effort has gone into resolving the crisis with little effect. stephanie sy reports on how there is now hope that a new perspective can make a difference. >> good morning, we have some of your hygiene kits, t-shirts, water. it is easy to get stuck in this life especially when you don't have no help, no hope. stephanie: this is silicon valley, home to facebook, google , some of the greatest wealth of the country. yet along the 140 miles of trails and river beds in the city of san jose lies its other half. do you think you will always be homeless. >> yes. stephanie: the hidden population of homeless who can't afford the ever-increasing cost of living. what is it like living here?

>> you are vulnerable. you can't be prepared for everything. >> you can't get better once you're on the street. there is no way to get a job. >> one of my greatest desire is for somebody to see the change in me because i know a lot of these people out here. stephanie: he has been there himself. addiction and jail time lead to a 5 --year stretch of living on the streets. . like thousands of others that home, he felt ignored by a broken system. before the pandemic hit, he finally made his way out, but hasn't forgotten who he left behind. >> one of the biggest things is being able to win people stressed, reaching back out to the homeless, offering them services. stephanie:lee transfoation'is in part due to hiss involvement this advisory board formed by the nonprofit "destination home." it gives the homeless of voice

and what matters to them. the ceo jennifer loving says this type of formal board reflects a paradigm shift. >> that was created by a group of people who had either been homeless or were currently homeless, saying, we need a place where we can talk, we need power to make decisions. and i was, like, sign me up today. all decision homes did was provide a container. it has been self governed since the beginning. stephanie: its executive committee oversees the 16 member board. >>. >> it is important for us to build positions rooted in the lived inexperience. stephanie: together, they advise nonprofits such as destination home on policy and spending will also consulting for the local government. their most recent assignment was to determine why this hotel bought by the city for the homeless wasn't being fully utilized. >>. >> it looks like a juvenile

hall. stephanie: cinderblock. >> it looks like when you enter, it is not going to work. stephanie: and they don't listen to you? >> we will see. >> we have set aside funding to make improvements to the site in partnership with the lived experience advisory board. stephanie: the deputy director for san jose's housing department says the advisors have shed light on the complexity of the homelessness cris. it really highlighted how almost every person we're serving has some kind of previous trauma in their life. >> the more people are understanding how powerful this is, the more in demand they are. there is supply of housing available in every city in this country. stephanie: in san francisco, another organization has taken it further leading to tangible results in housing. andrea evans leads the chronic homeless program at tipping point, a nonprofit backed by one

of san francisco's richest philanthropists, including 49ers ceo. . its goal is a vicious. >> it is a $100 million five-year initiative, the goal of which is to partner with san francisco and a bunch of nonprofits to cut the number of people experiencing chronic homelessness in half by the end of 2022. stephanie: how much is $100 million in the grand scheme of the problem here in san francisco? >> it's not a lot, really. [laughter] stephanie: it is due to the fact that three thousand chronically homeless san franciscans are currently on the streets. >> we are by no means capable to replicate what the city does on an ongoing basis. we are trying some targeted approaches to house people more quickly and make sure they are able to stay housed. >> they are like a watchdog organization. stephanie: that is where the seven-member advisory board comes in. like destination home, it consists eirely of individuals who've been homeless like tj

johnston. >> right now i am staying in the house. but for about nine years, i have been on housed in san francisco. a lot of people struggle just to survive. i am honored that people are asking us for our input. these are very much studio units. stephanie: each one has a bathroom. so far that input has resulted in major decisions on grant money spending, including an $11 million flexible housing subsidy program. >> it has been incredible to have that wisdom at the table. stephanie: however a long time homeless advocate, jennifer cautions that not all boards are as effective. >> they get tokenized and never listened to in the group. you have to have a deep connection to decision-making and willpower. >> even before the formal advisory board was formed, we had 300 people experiencing

homelessness. we asked them, what are your priorities? it is bringing in that expertise. >> we have that know-how that we would like to impart to the rest of our community. our needs are relatively simple in that we just want to be housed. we want to be able to live in dignity, in shelter situations, having your own privacy. it is next to impossible. stephanie: that input is what drove the construction of this ilding, 145 units dedicated solely to the homeless population downtown. >> we are using modular construction. that has cut both the time and the cost significantly. stephanie: the goal is to have the project finished in just under three years for under $400,000 per unit, a record for the city's tough building laws. >> it is still a lot of money

but by san francisco standards, it is normally $600,000 a unit. stephanie: the units are free for those who qualify. to pull it off, the units are created of site then assembled on location. >> let's check out what it looks like inside. >> it is much more. it is an opportunity. it is going to be beautiful. here it is. stephanie: you have never seen this before, what do you think? >> relief is one thing. just to see all of this realized. i think this represents a chance to get a new start in life. average. stephanie: for t.j., it is satisfaction and knowing that he hopes so many homeless individuals find a new home with a doo for the "pbs newshour," i am stephanie sy in san francisco. ♪

judy: a new bo out today explores a life of scientific discovery in nature, and some extraordinary feats of the human body. jeffrey brown went deep into the woods of maine for our story , part of our arts and culture series, "canvas." jeffrey: at 81, he is still studying the natural world around his home in the mountains of western maine. a renowned biologist best known for his work on insect and animal physiology and behavior. he is also a renowned runner. you no longer races in the ultra marathons he set records in but he still takes a jaunt of five or more often rugged miles many days. you know this is unusual, right ? >> [laughter] i don't care if it is unusual. it makes me feel more alive.

they say if you stop moving, you start dying. so i don't want to stop moving. [laughter] jeffrey: his new book combines his lifelong pursuits, and the animal and observation is himself. >> it is one of the biggest topics in biology, is the biological clock. how does that clockwork? things are so geared to time. that is the theme. i am connecting it now to the running. jeffrey: you right in the book, aging is a trial of 1-2. what do you mean by that? >> i am ing an experiment and i cannot have anybody else do it. jeffrey: just getting to heinrich isn't easy. he lives alone in a cabin, or a campus as it is called in maine that he billed 10 years ago. an older camp nearby is used to keep books photographs and files and provide shelter for the students at the university of vermont where hinrich taught for decades, who still attend his

winter ecology session each year, covid-permitting. this is largely off the grid living without running water. he draws his own water from a well and chops his own mood fo heat. -- his own wood for heat. he uses a solar panel for charging the computer and a satellite dish to access spot internet service. in his science, he says he looks first for patterns in nature and then for differences and anomalies. the reason why something isn't going to pattern. >> if you only see one pattern and you can think about it, and then you see a different one, you ask why. jeffrey: he has been asking why in 24 books, including two on one of his best-known subjects, ravens, a bird not usually found in great numbers here. his work with them began with one of those anomalies. >> i heard, ravens making this noise -- aahh!

i said, i have never heard them make the noise before, what is going on? ? i said, i bet you there is food there. i went almost one mile up into the hills and sure enough, there was a moose, and it was covered in brush. i think the poacher had killed it up. but the ravens had found it. they were feeding. all of a sudden there were a lot. where did they come from? did they attract each other, know, you are not supposed to do that. you get a big pile of gold, you hide it. jeffrey: what is going on individually and then as a group? >> yes, that took 20 years. [laughter] jeffrey: it included raising ravens himself to study their behavior. some of them would accompany him on his rounds. heinrich ran short distances there half mile in high school and college. long distances came later. at 39, he won his second

marathon in san francisco. a year later he won the boston marathon 40 and over masters division. and then even longer distances with u.s. records set, including 100 kilometers in 1981, a 24-hour 156-mile run around a track in 1983, and 100 miles in 1984. he kept that beat up old pair of running shoes from his competition. and he kept running as he aged. from the start he says the , fascination was to see what he could do. the scientist in him was always at work. he studied how insects regulate their energy output and metabolism to achieve endurance . and then his own behavior and potential, sometimes to comic effect. >> i did not take anything for granted, like fuel. i wouldn't even mention it, but i tried, beer andll of oil and honey. [laughter] all the things that are not even

mentioned, you know, and i fell flat on my face a lot of times. so i thought that was kind of fun, you know, to find out. and then you wonder, why did you fail? well, because of that. now i know. i will not drink a jar of honey to run. jeffrey: he said accidents through the years -- he has had accidents throughout the years and surgery on both knees. but somehow in ways he cannot explain, it hasn't worn him down. >> what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. i don't know. but there might be something to it. jeffrey: a man who studied animals all his life looks at the animal that is man and sees this. >> we are billed for running. jeffrey: but most of us do not run. >> of course. we run for basically emergencies, but we tried not to run if we don't have to, because we want to save energy. so the bird is not going to fly

1000 miles if he doesn't have to. so most of us don't. we don't have to migrate. we don't have to, the grocery is right there, we don't have to go far, we don't have to travel, but we have the capability. jeffrey: the question is, do we want to use it? heinrich says he can only offer one man's experience, and as you can see, his answer is clear. for the "pbs newshour," i am jeffrey brown in western maine. judy: celebrating mr. heinrich. we are in awe of your energy. and in another note, when my interview with bennie thompson, i asked him about raising cases of mississippi, which has the lowest vaccination rate in the country. this is what he had to say. >> our governor refused to take

the fema money to help, to go out and identify those vulnerable areas. i have four counties in my district out of 26 where we didn't have a single vaccination site. judy: you can find congressman thompson's for response on our website, pbs.org/newshour. i am judy woodruff. please stay safe and we will see you soon. >> major funding has been provided by -- ♪ >> consumer cellular, johnn & johnson. financial services firm raymond james. bnsf railway. carnegie corporation of new york, supporting innovations in education, demratic

engagement, and the advancement of international peace and security, at carnegie.org. the target foundation, committed to creating the change required to shift systems and accelerate equitable economic opportunity. and with the ongoing support of these institutions. ♪ this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ >> this is "pbs newshour west" from weta studios in washington and fr our bureau at the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. ♪

>> pati narrates: travelling through sinaloa, i'm struck by the miles and miles of beautiful, largely untouched beaches. here in the southern part of the sinaloa coast between the small villages of celestino gasca and las barras you'll find just that. for ars this area has been a favorite stretch of beach for local surfers. they comall the way from mazatlan and culiacan to camp and have a few miles of pacific ocean all to themselves. luckily for me, i have 2 longtime surfers as my guides for today. they're givi me an insiders tour of this gorgeous part of the sinaloa coast. we're meeting up with local chef carmen to get the secrets of her pescado zarandeado.