♪ judy: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. tonight, taking to the streets. cuba sees its largest protest in decades as thousands gather across the country in a call for freedom. and getting the vaccine. the spread of the delta variant prompts questions about the possible need for booster shots in the future. and raising the future. covid-19 exacerbates the already daunting challenge of accessing childcare for parents in the u.s. >> america's working families have had to cobble together childcare solutions in a challenging market that often lacks quality. judy: all that and more on

tonight's "pbs newshour." ♪ >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by -- >> before we talk about your investments, what is new? >> audrey is expecting twins. we want to put money aside for them so change in plans. >> let's see what we can adjust. >> a change in plans. >> ok. >> mom, are you painting again? you could sell these. >> at fidelity, a change in plans is always part of the plan. >> consumer cellular. johnson & johnson. bnsf railway.

financial services firm raymond james. >> the william and flora hewlett foundation. for more than 50 years, advancing ideas and supporting institutions to promote a better world at hewlett.org. the chand zuckerberg organization building to build a more inclusive future for everyone. at cz i.org. and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions -- ♪ ♪ >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and contributions

to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. judy woodruff: in cuba, police are out in force tonight in the capital, havana, after thousands of protesters rose up sunday. they took to the streets across the country, in the largest demonstrations against communist rule in a generation. nick schifrin begins our coverage. [chanting] nick: on the streets of havana, thousands of cubans walked to the center of e capital to demand their freedom. >> we are here because of the repression against the people. they are starving us to death. we have no house. we have nothing. but they have money to build hotels. nick: homeland and life. down with the dictatorship. down with the castros. down with the communist dogs. they filmed on their phones and spread the call to demonstrate via internet they have only recently been able to access,

first san antonio de los banos, south of havana, and then to hundreds of cities throughout the country. wasn't all peaceful. ninety miles east of havana, protesters overturned a cop car. in response, police arrested zens, and plainclothes officers administered the state's justice. >> state security beat me and my daughter. they beat us because we were walking down the street. nick: the nationwide release of anger from protesters willing to personally yell at cuba's president, the product of acute shortages of covid vaccines and other medicines, despite a covid outbreak, and more cubans getting sick, anger over inflation that could hit 500 percent this year. and because of trump administration sanctions, cubans no longer have access to remittances that were once their second largest source of income. but it's also the product of longstanding outrage over an economy that for years failed to lift up working-class cubans. yesterday, cuban president miguel diaz-canel accused

demonstrators of being u.s. sellouts. today, he blamed the 70-year-old u.s. trade embargo. >> lift the blockade, and we will see what our people are capable of. nick: but in the white house today, president biden took the protesters' side. pres. biden: they cuban people are demanding their freedom from an authoritarian regime. the united states stands firmly with the people of cuba as they assert their universal rights. and we call on the government, the government of cuba, to refrain from violence. nick: it's been 27 years since cubans protested en masse. but those demonstrations were only in havana. yesterday's protests were across the country, spontaneous, and leaderless. and to talk about the significance of these protests, we turn to lillian guerra, professor of cuban history at the university of florida. lillian guerra, welcome to the "newshour." so, how historic were

yesterday's demonstrations? lillian: they were really unprecedented. we have not seen anything like this in 60 years or more in cuba. they are not just extraordinary in their magnitude, but they are also geographically vast in terms of the numbers of cities and places where they have taken place. and the quality of people's denunciation, the diversity of voices, but also that people are openly calling this a dictatorship, and today even calling for the end of communism openly in holguin, which is far eastern cuba, this is all really uncharted waters. nick: we reported some of cubans' most recent concerns over covid, over medical shortages, inflation, but also long-tm economic hopelessness. what do you think lead to yesterday's demonstrations? lillian i think this is a : culmination of three decades of the cuban government making reforms that really have most served its owntabilization and consolidation of control over thcapitalist sector of the

economy that was created by the communist party in 1991, really because of the collapse of the soviet union and the need to do something to maintain power. so what we have is a lot of anger. we have now multigenerational disappointment with the lack of change. and, most recently, we have a lot of hypocrisy on the part of the cuban state that claims it is so humanitarian and so interested in its people's welfare, but really has not even been able to supply people with tylenol and basic food and also will not admit -- and that is the real key here, the new and old leadership have held hands. and they will not admit that anything is wrong with their modelr their one-party rule. nick: and in fact today we have , seen the cuban government blamed united states for these protests, also shut off some access to the internet. do you believe the government is willing to make some of the changes that are required to

respond to those longer more medium and long-term concerns expressed by the population. lillian: i think they are very unwilling. in april, the cuban communist party held its latest congress. they said at the congress that they were committed to the idea that social media and the internet and all the means by which cubans are expressing them are an affront to the nation, that they are anti-cuban and that they are a source of subversion. so, that was several months ago, yes, but, so far, the tune has not changed. and the story line has pretty much gotten narrower, as miguel diaz-canel has gone on television accusing those protesting of being vulgar criminals, of being mercenaries. and none of that is believable. the people who are protesting are your neighbors, the people you know. there are people of all backgrounds. and the diversity of that community of cubans in every place that they are protesng makes it really difficult for this to be discredited according to the traditional means. nick: candidate biden promised to lift some of the trump

administration actions on cuba. the biden administration is close to finalizing its cuba policy. let me play you a clip from an interview i did earlier today with mike gonzalez. he's a heritage foundation senior fellow who says, after these protests, the biden administration should not open up to the cuba. mike: i think this is now off the table because it will be widely seen and it will be a lifeline to a thuggish, murderous totalitarian regime that has been rejected by its own people. so i don't see how biden can send back an ambassador or lift punitive measures that trump imposed. nick: lillian guerra, what do you think the biden ministration should do following yesterday's protests? lillian i really think that they : should do the opposite of what this gentleman just suggested. if he were to take a position of loosening the embargo or doing the kinds of things that obama did that really poked holes into it, that would really call the cuban state's bluff. i mean, all i can say is that everything that is going wrong in cuba is the result of the united states and the united states' blockade,

as they call it, t embargo, when cubans on the ground know that it's really what they say is the internal blockade. i mean, that phrase has been used now for more than 30 year to describe the kinds of controls that the communist party exercises. and so i think we need to stop being the aggressor. we need to stop taking on the scripted role that has been our role since 1960, at least 1961. it's time to be a radical friend of the cuban people, even as we maintain our criticisms and perhaps some of r sanctions certainly against the revolutionary armed forces. nick: and that debate over u.s. policy continues. thank you very much. ♪ vanessa: we will return to judy woodruff and the full program

after the latest headlines. resident biden has issued fresh appeals to get gun violence under control. he called in attorney general merrick garland and law enforcement and local officials today amid a strike of shootings across the nation. >> we recognize that we have to come together to fulfill the first responsibility of democracy which is to keep each other safe. that is what the american people are looking for when it comes to reducing violent crime and gun violence. >> pfizer met today with the u.s. food and drug administration to advocate covid-19 booster shots. the company wants authorization for a third dose of its vaccine. federal officials saying it is not you did -- it is not needed yet. the world health organization appealed to shipping vaccines to poor nations before anyone adds booster shots. firefighters across the western u.s. faced another day of

searing heat. the largest wildfire of the year in california has already scorched about 140 square miles along the nevada state line and it is about 25% contained. a fire in oregon damag electrical transmission lines into california's power grid forcing operators to call for conservation. at least 50 texas democratic lawmakers fled the state in an effort to block new voting restrictions. the democratic lawmakers flew to washington to demand federal action on protecting voting rights. they are trying to deny majority republicans a quorum to do business in a special legislative session. the death toll reached 94 today at a collapsed condominium building near miami. work crews found four more bodies leaving 22 people still missing. the mayor of miami-dade county acknowledged it is getting harder to identify decomposing remains. >> at this step in the recovery

process we must rely heavily on the work of the medical examiner's office who are undertaking technical and scientific processes to identify the human remains. the process is very methodical and careful and it does take time. >> in afghanistan, the top u.s. commander for malay down today as the u.s. military withdrawal winds down by august 31. the army general, scott miller, handed authority to frank mckenzie. a marine general. he will operate from u.s. central command in tampa. police in britain have opened investigations into racist abuse of three black professional soccer players. they missed penalty kicks on sunday as england lost to italy in the european championship. the loss triggered online attacks that prime minister boris yeltsin joined in denouncing today. >> to those who have been directing racist abuse at some of the players i say, shame on

you. and i hope you will crawl back under the rock from which you emerged. because this entire team played like heroes. >> johnson himself was criticized last month for not condemning the booing of players who took a need to protest racial injustice. edwin edwards, a flamboyant four term governor of louisiana has died. veteran democrat was known for his sharp tongue, high living, and populist style but he ultimately served eight years and is in for racketeering and other crimes. he was 90 three years old. still to the newshour, haiti grows increasingly unstable in the wake of the assassination of the country's president. the spread of the delta variant prompts questions about booster shots. raising our future. we kick off a special weeklong series on the lack of

high-quality childcare in the u.s., plus much more. ♪ >> this is the "pbs newshour" from w eta studios in washington and from the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. judy: now to the crisis in haiti. it's been less than a week since the shocking assassination of haiti's president by gunman who broke into his home. now a possible conspiracy involving a haitian-born doctor living in florida has further roiled an already fraught situation, all this as political rivals jockey for power. there is now a new lead suspect in the assassination of president jovenel moise. haitian authorities said over the weekend that he is this man, 63-year-d christian emmanuel sanon, a haitian american who lives in florida. in 2011, he appeared to promote himself as a leader for haiti.

>> with me in power, you are going to have to tell me, at are you doing with my uranium? what you going to do with the oil that we have in the country? what are you going to do with the gold that you want to exploit? judy: police chieleon charles said sanon had arrived in haiti in june. in a search of sanon's home, officers found weapons, bullets, and a hat with an emblem from the u.s. drug enforcement administration. >> dea operation. everybody back up and stand down. judy: video shot at the scene of the crime appeared to show someone purporting to be a dea agent. charles said sanon was in police custody. >> he arrived in haiti on a private airplane to fulfill a political objective. he has contacted a company specializing in security to recruit some bandits. judy: haitian authorities have arrested 23 colombians and two haitian americans they say carried out the attack.

colombia's police chief said a florida-based security company, ctu, bought 19 plane tickets for the colombian assailants, many of whom were retired soldiers. the tickets were from bogota, colombia, to santo domingo in the dominican republic. from there, the assailants allegedly crossed over the border into haiti. meanwhile, the power struggle continued in haiti. two men each say they are the rightful prime minister of haiti. claude joseph had the role when moise was killed. but a successor, ariel henry, was supposed to take over that day. joseph's opponents are already calling for his ouster. >> we consider him as a usurper who should be in jail. judy: remaining membe of the mostly disbanded haitian senate voted on their leader, joseph lambert, to serve as acting president. the white house said a u.s.

delegation met with all three men on sunday. haiti's powerful gangs also seemed to be taking advantage of the power vacuum. notorious leader jimmy cherizier, known as barbecue, urged gangs to avenge the president's death. >> i ask all the gangs to mobilize. take to the streets. we demand explanations about the assassination of the president. judy: port-au-prince resident yvens rumbold said that moise's murder has led to fear on the streets. >> the feeling is, if the president can be assassinated at his home, so everything can happen to anyone in this country. judy: in the midst of the chaos, haiti still has presidential elections scheduled, which the united states says should proceed. president biden spoke this afternoon. pres. biden: the people in haiti deserve peace and security, and haiti's political leaders need to come together for the good of their country.

judy: we turn now to eduardo gamarra, professor of political science at florida international university. he has written widely on haiti, the caribbean, and latin america. professor gamarra, thank you so much for talking with us. first of all what do you make of , this new information about the haitian american who says he is a doctor living in florida who has now been arrested? eduardo: well, i think it signifies, more than anything else, the wide net of conspiracy that really lead to the murder of president moise. and it also involves, obviously, a significant component of the haitian private sector. this man, other than saying he is a doctor, also claims to be a businessperson. so, that possibly leads to a whole series of other names that will come up in the next few days that will help us more readily identify who financed this operation. judy: you mentioned the haitian

private sector, the business community in haiti. what would be the motive for them to get rid of president moise? eduardo: well, the unfortunate fact is that president moise was unpopular across the spectrum in haiti. but he also stepped on a was facing the wrath of some of the most important businesspeople, who not only were his political opponents, but who also, in essence, pledged to have him removed. judy: and what you are saying is it may be difficult to draw a line between what they may have said about him and what finally happened to him. eduardo: exactly. that's the most difficult part to decipher. and so i think that, in a sense, there were so many different, how should i put it, gangs already in place in haiti funded by different actors, gangs related to drug

trafficking, simple gangs related to street neighborhoods, for example, but also, and this is very important, a pattern that we had begun seeing in haiti around the turn of the century of foreign security teams coming in to provide different sorts of security for ministers, for the president or for the private sector for that matter. judy: do you think haiti law enforcement will ultimately get to the bottom of who did this? eduardo well, what is surprising : is that, given the weakness of the nonexistent judiciary, but also the fact that the police is essentially dismantled, that they got to -- so quickly to the culprits that they are arrested, so many of the mercenaries and that they are really moving fairly quickly in terms of finding out whfinanced this operation. judy: professor gamarra, what

about the political piece of this? there are now, what three , people, different people who are saying they should be in charge, who may laying claim to being prime minister. where do you see this -- how do you see this playing itself out? eduardo this is going to be : probably determined largely by who the international community supports. and as of right now it has been , the prime minister who was nominated in april, but who was essentially replaced by president moise on monday of last week. but the international community is putting their support behind that gentleman, mr. joseph. so i imagine that is where the direction, at least politically, that haiti will take. but, again, even in that context, holding elections in haiti, which i think is what the international community expects, is going to be difficult, given the fact that things are so unraveled at the moment and

that, really, there appears to be chaos at least in port-au-prince. judy: yes, i was struck that you told my colleague, our producer dan sagalyn, that â” when he asked you if haiti is a failed state, you said you can't have a failed state when there is no state. i mean, did you mean that? eduardo: yes. unfortunately, haiti has been in a very precarious situation in terms of institution-building, and probably going back since the collapse of duvalier regime in the middle of the 1980s. this is a transition to democracy that never really jelled, that never was able to produce political parties, stable institutions, even a constitutional regime. and in the context of natural resource -- natural catastrophes and recurring political crises, what you have had is complete, complete political implosion. and so here we are now, withwo prime ministers who, in a

parliamentary system that -- with a parliament that doesn't exist, with a judiciary that's collapsed, with police that is essentially half of what it used to be four years ago, with no armed forces, with no institutionality. it is very difficult to see the presence of a state. judy: such a difficult, difficult set of circumstanc. professor eduardo gamarra of florida international university, thank you very much. eduardo: thank you very much, judy. ♪ judy: it is an increasingly difficult problem: how to stop or at least slow the rise in gun violence across the country. lisa desjardins talks with one local leader who's joined others at the white house today to tackle this urgent queion. lisa: washington, d.c., is one of five areas nationwide where

the bideadministration is launching strike teams to address gun traffickg. like many regions across the country, homicides and gun violence in the city have been on the rise. homicides this year in d.c. havelready surpassed those in 2020. that's after homicides in 2020 rose nearly 20 percent from 2019, that according to data from the d.c. police department. communities of color are disproportionately impacted. according to the kaiser family foundation, in 2019, in washington, d.c., there were about 18 firearm-related deaths per 100,000 white residents, compared to twice as many, 40, per 100,000 black residents. for more, i'm joined by d.c. mayor muriel bowser, a democrat, who was at the white house meeting today. let's start with the big question, mayor bowser. why is gun violence rising in your city? mayor bowser: well, i don't think any person can point to one thing, lisa, on the rise in shootings. certainly, we see a prevalence of illegal guns in our city and we see a repeat offenders using

those guns. we are attacking the problem from all sides, including law enforcement strategy, but community policing, excuse me community violence intervention , strategies as well. lisa: we are going to come back to that. there is a debate over really who should be responsible and solve this problem. some republicans say that this is an issue for mayors like yourself. and it is under your watch that we have seen these numbers go up. what do you say to those republicans who say this is not a federal issue, this is something for local mayors and police to be dealing with? mayor bowser: well, in my tenure, i have been mayor for six years, and i have seen crime numbers go up and crime numbers down. and always, our strategy is to focus on opportunities prevention and enforcement. but , the federal government does have a role to play. at the white house, where the american rescue plan under president biden's leadership is allowing

us to fund new officers, new police cadet but also allowing us to fund new jobs, new clean jobs where our public safety programs can place individuals, pilot programs to assist returning citizens with housing and cash assistance. so, it is also true that there needs to be real action around limiting thellegal trafficking of guns. lisa i'm so interested in those : strike forces that your city will be getting one of, and to deal with the idea of guns coming in from areas with, in the biden administration's words, weaker gun laws. can you talk to us about what does that actually look like? what do these strike forces do? and what do they actually achieve, especially -- how do these guns are illegal? many of these are legally purchased in other states. mayor bowser well, we find that : they may have been illegally

purchased, but -- legally purchased, but if they end up in the hands of somebody who is committing crimes, then they are illegal here. and we have a long partnership with the atf and fbi and the department of justice. and now that partnership is going to be focused on tracing illegal guns, figuring out which guns were used in all crimes, crimes here and crimes elsewhere, focusing on straw purchasers, people who are illegally purchasing for individuals who shouldn't be able to buy a gun. all of those efforts will keep guns off of our streets. one thing our law enforcement officials tell us, one trend that they see is that, in a group of people 10 years ago, there may have been one of those individuals who had a gun. now four or five of those individuals have guns. and when you see the incidents of shooting go up with lethal weapons, like .9-millimeters that are very prevalent on our streets, sometimes, they are modified so that they can have rapid fire. we have to get to those guns before they harm someboy in the hands of the wrong person.

lisa: i know you spoke of the money that you are putting towards increasing the police cadet corps and to dealing with violence in your city. it's tens of millions of dollars, about $60 million. but the city received $3 billion from the american rescue plan. why not more? and then, also, how do you hold those new police officers accouable? mayor bowser well one strategy : we have for new hires is to makeure they are out in the community and getting to know their communities. and we are also funding for , example, electric bikes. we know that our communities like to see their officers on the beat, out of their cars. and that is one thing that we're doing. and while we talked about our alternative to policing program costing about $60 million, there are other huge programs that are part of that $3 billion, including $400 million that we're putting into our housing production trust fund, which

will allow us to create more affordable housing in the district, which addresses public safety. lisa such an important time for : all local government in this country. mayor muriel bowser of washington, d.c., thank you for joining us. mayor bowser: thank you. judy: even before its meeting today with the fda, pfizer's recent push to add a booster shot to its covid-19 vaccination protocol seemed to be at odds with what many people thought they had understood about the drug's effectiveness. and, as william brangham reports, it also has prompted real concern among health care professionals. william: that is right, judy. late last week, pfizer said it recommended adding a third so-called booster shot to its original two-shot vaccine at about six months after initial immunization. the company said that's when its own internal study showed the vaccine's

initial protections began to decline. but those findings contradicted other research. and many public health officials disagreed whether boosters were necessary or appropriate, especially given that three-quarters of the world's population has not had a single dose just yet. one of those weighing in is dr. kirsten bibbins-domingo. she's a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the university of california at san francisco. dr. bibbindomingo, great to you have back on the "newshour." so this pfizer announcement came -- it caused a good deal of confusion because what we had been told so far -- i mean, pfizer said, because of the delta variant, we're going to work on this booster. but we have been lead to believe thus far that the vaccines, including pfizer's, are quite protective against the delta variant. help us unpack all this. >> right, it turns out that both

of those things are true. and i think the question is not whether pfizer should be constantly looking to understand whether their vaccines are working in all people as well as it possibly can or whether a booster might not be necessary in a specific group of people, let's say older adults. the question really is, right now, do we have confidence in the vaccines? we absolutely do. does this pfizer vaccine work against the delta variant? it absolutely does. and is the most important thing that we need to do now making sure those people who don't have any doses, making sure that they get their first and second dose? that's absolutely the most important thing now. so both things are true. we need to look for the possibility for boosters in the future, but stay very focused on getting everyone vaccinated today. william: let's talk about that global vaccine response in a second. but, first off, this issue that pfizer is saying that there does

seem to be some waning of protection after six months, should that alarm people? because, on its face, it sounds alarming. >> right, it sounds alarming. and i think that is what leads many public health people to be worried that it's going to distract people from the actual issue at hand, which is getting vaccinated. it turns out all the reports from israel which is where a lot , of this data is coming from, actually suggest that the pfizer vaccine is 93 percent efctive against preventing against hospitalizations with severe disease and death. that is in the face of the delta variant, so highly effective in preventing severe disease and death against the variant. but it may not work in exactly that same way in all people. and so i think many people who are willing to think about whether a booster is necessary are really asking the question, in whom is it necessary? it might be that those who have more compromised immune systems or in older people, who oftentimes don't

mount as effective an immune response, might need an extra boost later on. but, right now, every study that's been published, all the data that we have available to us suggests that the pfizer vaccine, the moderna vaccine is actually quite effective at the delta variant. william: ok, so let's talk a bit, as you mentioned before, about what the u.s. can do to help spread this global vaccination campaign. we know the u.s. has secured enough vaccine for every man, woman and child in the united states and still have tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of doses left over. should we be doing more to get more vaccine into all those nations that need it? >> right i mean, i think the big , issue, when we look at the surges around the world, when we look even at the surges in the u.s., is that there are people who are not yet vaccinated. and so, even though we have a little more than half of the people in the u.s. vaccinated, it is

absolutely essential that we stay focused on getting the rest of the people in the u.s. vaccinated. and then, globally, we have less than a quarter of people globally are even vaccinated. and there's some estimates that it will still take anoth year until we get enough people in other countries vaccated. that's really a catastrophe for the world. it is a catastrophe for -- many of these are individuals in the global south, massive inequities because we are not vaccinating. it is important that those countries like the u.s. that have substantial portions of their population vaccinated turn their attention to making sure that the rest of the world also is protected. it is an interest -- it is in our interest -- it is an essential interest for equity. but also we know that as long as the virus is being transmitted, variants, new variants develop. and so, ultimately, this is an our own self-interest as well, in addition to just our responsibility for the world's population.

william all right, dr. kirsten : bibbins-domingo from ucsf, always good to see you. thank you very much. >> thank you. ♪ judy: tonight we begin special week-long series examining a problem that's taken on renewed importance for america's working families, child care. during the pandemic, the federal government spent more than $50 billion to shore up the child care industry, but advocates say cost and access are still major issues. over the past several months, special correspondent cat wise and producer kate mcmahon traveled across the country for our series raising the future: america's child care dilemma. they begin with how we got here and what's at stake. cat america's fragile child care

: system was thrust into the national spotlight last year. larry: day cares across the state are closing its doors because of the coronavirus. cat forcing parents to scramble : and driving millions of women out of the work force. today the country emerges from , as the pandemic, with businesses and the economy roaring back to life, the same can't be said for the child care industry. >> and now, many parents who want to go back to work are faced with a new problem, child care shortage. cat: child care has been one of the biggest struggles for the working families of -- for decades. heidi: we wer blown away by the cost of childcare. cat: heidi lohman and her wife, marenda chamberlain, live in portland, oregon, with their 2-year-old daughter, autumn. heidi is a high school counselor and marenda is an electrician. when they began their child care search, they were shocked by what they learned. heidi she was born in 2018. and : some of the places i toured were touring for the 2021 school year. so, it was even like a

year-plus down the road. so it was a scramble. cat eventually, they found a : program that cost nearly as much as their mortgage, and then covid hit. >> i had to play myself off for about four months. as essential workers, they later cat: -- catch: as essential workers, they later found an opening at a center, but it wasn't a great fit. heidi it was for four days a : week, and we were paying $1, 650 a month, which was â” that did exceed our mortgage. it's absolutely not sustainable. i don't think that working families should have to this juggle. and i don't know how some families do it. cat: before the pandemic, nearly 70 percent of children in the u.s. under the age of 6 lived in households where all parents worked. during the earliest years, when research shows that ildren need high-quality care and education, america's working families have had to cobble together child care solutions in a private market that is costly, often lacks quality, and fails to pay caregivers a living wage.

>> it literally took a pandemic in order for child care to be a part of everyday conversation. cat lynette fraga advocates for : affordable, quality child care. she says it's a critical window of time for development. the science shows that, duri the first few years of life, more than one million neural connections are formed each second. >> why then should we leave that kind of importance not only for the current work force, but for the future work force, to the market? how about we think about this as a public good? caps studies have shown : -- cat: studies have shown investments in child care can pay off, including one that found a dollar invested in quality child care for economically disadvantaged kids returns more than $7 in savings. but not everyone wants more government funding for child care. >> the focus on non-parental

group care for young children is the -- is detracting from our focus on supporting parenting and enabling parents to spend more time with their children, if they want to. cat: katharine stevens is an early childhood researcher and author. she says more research is needed to understand the impacts of child care on all children, and she thinks the federal government should stay focused on helping lower-income families. >> budgets are reflections of values. if we are directing large sums of money to subsidize parents parenting less, that's a very significant statement to be making about the imptance of parenting in our society. cats: -- ct: but in today's world, many parents do need child care, and demand exceeds supply. >> childcare programs are struggling in finding staff.

cat: nationwide, the child care industry has suffered a loss of 20% of its work force since the pandemic. one of the hardest-hit states? oregon; 24-year-old olivia pace of portland lost her job at a child care center in march of 2020. olivia most of us got laid off. : most people didn't go back or have gone back and then left since then. cat: she has a degree in child and family studies, and planned on being in the field a long time, but now she's not sure she will ever go back. olivia even though i love : working with children, the structure of the field is such that, if that's what you want to do, you're going to be worked to the bone and you're going to be really burnt out. and i don't want to do that anymore. >> about 97 percent of early educators are women. about 40 percent are women of color. and the majority of women are black, brown and immigrant women who are doing this work. cat: lea austin is director of the center for the study of child care employment at u.c.

berkeley. she tracks work force issues nationally. >> the median wage right now for early educators in this country is $12.12 an hour. and we know from research that we have done at the center that about half of this work force utilizes some form of public safety net -- form of public safety net program. >> that is a huge number. >> it is a huge number. we have subsidize the system on the back of the workers. cat: austin blames the fragility of the system on the failure of the private market. >> it is a critical part of our infrastructure. but the way it is designed now is, it's a market-based system. and it is based on what parents can pay. that's how you access child care, where we're saying go out and see what you can afford. cat: but there was a time when childcare was not so hard to find. narrator: when married women with small children have to take

jobs. everything possible will be done to provide daycare care for the children. >> that time was during world war ii. i am standing on a navy ship here in portland that was built largely by women during that era. the federal government recognized that women were essential to the war effort, that, in order to build ships like this, they needed child care. about 75 years ago, just across the water for me, there was a federally funded child care center that provided high-quality care for about 400 children, while their parents were hard at work. but when the war ended, the government shuttered the oregon center and 3, 100 others like it across the country. the last time the u.s. government seriously considered child care policy was in 1971, but president nixon vetoed it, saying that a national child care system would weaken american families. president nixon: childcare is -- it would have been not only an administrative monstrosity. >> that kicked childcare back to the bottom of the policy public policy mountain and it has not recovered since. cat: he wrote a book recently on child reform.

>> you can't understand early childhood in america without understanding a deep history of sexism. there is a sense that it is the duty and obligation of the mother to take care of the young child. the problem is that especially since the 1960's women have entered the workforce in large numbers. there has been no adjustment on the policy side to that reality. cat: until now. the pandemic has pushed childcare back to the top of the agenda. president biden: the legislation includes the biggest investment in childcare since world war ii. cat: president biden has proposed $225 billion in new child care spending over 10 years. but there is still stiff opposition. >> we can't have everything. we cannot advance women's careers and boost the economy and optimize early childhood development all at the same time. this is just â” this is just a tough reality. >> we need a system that is going to support parents

whatever they want to do. the american child care dilemma can be smed up in the fact that we don't have an american child care system. cats while the politics play : out, america's child care dilemma continues for families like heidi lohman and marenda chamberlin. heidi: next week on masking for a reduction in hours. cat: their long-term plan is moving away from portland to raise autumn your extended family. for the "pbs newshour, " i'm cat wise in oregon. ♪ judy: more than six months since the january 6 attack on the u.s. capital and former president donald trump tries to rewrite what happened. here he is talkinto fox news yesterday about what happened. >> there was such love at the rally. there was over one million people there. they felt the election was rigged. that is why they were there. and they were peaceful people. these were great people. the crowd was unbelievable and i

mentioned the word love. i have never seen anything like it. judy: but as everyone saw, the events were anything but peaceful. rioters wrote into and ransacked the capitol building resulting in millions of dollars of damages as well as physical and emotional trauma for the officers, staff, and members of congress there that day. it had a devastating effect on laura -- law enforcement. three officers died and at least 140 suffered physical injuries ranging from concussions to cracked ribs and in one case, a minor heart attack and more than 70 rank-and-file capitol police officers since retired or resigned. our politics monday team is here to analyze all this and more incling tamra keith and amy walter. we thank both of you for being there. it is great to see both of you here in person at the desk.

i want to go back to what former president trump said. love was in the air. and it was peaceful. can he rewrite history? >> he has been rewriting history since january 6 or before. on january 6, he tweeted, these are the things that you get with regards to the election and he ends the tweet, go home with love and in peace and remember this day forever. he was rewriting the story of what happened that day on that day. and this is a continued evolution. it is not just him. there are republican members of congress who have said it was just a tourist visit. there is a very concerted effort underway to say that what we all saw with our eyes was not what we saw. judy: amy, we have been covering this city and american politics for a long time.

have you seen an instance where someone in the former president's position can rearrange --? >> asking us not to believe our own eyes and arrest records. 500 people have been arrested for what happened. we know a commission is going to begin looking into this. we know the fbi is looking into this more and stuff will come out. people videotaped themselves doing the damage and being proud of the damage they did. what is really worrisome is not just, you did not see this and this did not really happen but the continued attacks on the rigged election and the idea that ultimately this election -- this president, president biden is illegitimate. once you undermine faith in democracy. once losers believe they only lost because it was unfair, you

have lost everything. our system works as well as it does because losers know at some point they will be winners and winners know that at some point they will be losers and it balances things out. it cannot be sustained, this level of attack on the foundation of our democracy. 75% of republicans believe joe biden is an illegitimate president. and more people believe this election was truly rigged. when people who stood up against the president he is now personally attacking them for not doing something illegal, that is a big problem and it will go beyond wtever donald trump says on fox. judy: you have now -- we are waiting to see whether republicans in the house representatives up their members to this select committee investigating a january 6 incident. do we expect there will be a

fact-finding that most americans can expect? >> do we expect a shared set of facts? it seems unlikely given everything the former president said. there was a cpac conference and many were talking about joe biden leaving office and donald trump coming back in this year which is not technically possible. it cannot happen. the likelihood of there being a universally accepted 9/11 commission styled report seems pretty unlikely at this point gin that republicans and congress ultimately did not go with the bipartisan deal to create a bipartisan commission. instead, you will have a committee that will easily be portrayed as partisan. judy: so it will just hang over the next election and beyond unresolved. >> the real question is what kind of people will kevin mccarthy a point to this? will he put on firebrands, those

that are donald trump acolytes -- that will not just push back ainst the commission findings but go full throated into these said conspiracy theories or will he put people on there that will look at this and maybe make some good recommendations but ultimately say that this was not the fault of president trump. whatever happened was not the fault of the president which is really what a lot of the debate at the impeachment was. we acknowledged these violent things happened. we cannot make the connection between donald trump asking them to do these things and creating that. judy: i want to ask you both about something president biden is dealing with today and that is the rise in violence, violent crime, gun violence. how much pressure is on this president to do something about this? we are waiting to see if there is police reform legislation. >> the biden white house for the

second time in about a month drawing attention to concerns about crime and talking about strikeforce is going into cities to help assist with violent crime. in a memo point take out to local leaders that yes, you can use covid relief funds to fund the police ash the biden white house is doing everything they can to say -- yes, there has been talk about defunding the police but the president never supported it and in fact he wants to fund the police more. why are they pushing on this? crime is up and that is a political liability. and so, that is the main reason why they are pushing forward with this and making it an agenda item because it is a real issue. >> and it was telling that he invited to the white house today eric adams who won the democratic primary, a former

police officer who ran as a more conservative, on this issue. he pushed back on the idea of defunding the police and using that as an example. using each other as examples of you can be a progressive democrat, you can before police reform but that does not mean you have to be for defunding the police and that they do believe in public safety. judy: democrats are sorting their way through this issue. on one hand, calls for spending a lot less money on police defunding and cutting back or on the other hand, wait a minute, crime is up. >> and president biden has been trying to strike a balance but it is unclear where the cter of the party is among democrats for how to deal with crime or how to deal with police reform.

how much money should go to community policing or even if that is the solution that president biden says it is. there is a lot of debate under the surface and the fact that they have not been able to come up with a bipartisan agreement on police reform indicates that there is not a breakthrough just yet. judy: in just a few seconds. it is a tough one. >> it is very tough for the federal government to have much impact on what is happening in individual cities and this is also the challenge. emme kratz overwhelmingly represent cities, urban cores and inner suburbs. it is easier for republicans to point at it and say it is a democrat roof -- democrat problem. it is a bigger challenge for democrats to get out their message on this. judy: amy walter and tamra keith, politics monday. thank you. and that is the newshour for

tonight. i am judy woodruff. thank you. stay safe and we will see you soon. >> major funding for the "pbs newshour" has been presented by -- >> cfo. caregiver. eclipse taker. taylor's advice to help you live your life. life well planned. >> consumer cellular. johnson & johnson. bnsf railway. the kendeda fund committed to restoring justice and meaningful work. more at kendeda fund.org. ♪ supported by the john d. and

catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. and with the ongoing support of these institutions -- ♪ this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ this is pbs newshour west from weta studios in washington, and from our bureau at the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state ♪

[ theme music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -today on "coos country," bryan makes julia a regional speciality -- chicago thin-crust pizza... jack challenges bridget to a tasting of jar pasta sauce... and lawman makes bridget a foolproof pasta e fagioli. that's all right here on "cook's coury."