judy: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. on the "newshour" tonight, the road ahead. the president celebrates passage of the massive infrastructure bill, but the status of the remainder of his agenda is uncertain. then, tipping point. world leaders struggle to take meaningful steps to combat the ever worsening global climate crisis. and, taliban takeover. afghanistan's future looks bleak, as the economic freefall and dire food shortage hit the poorest hardest. >> there is hunger back home. we have food, but very little. we just put something small in our stomachs. there is no work and no money. judy: all that and more on tonight's "pbs newshour." ♪

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public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. vanessa: we will return to judy and the full program after the latest headlines. the united states is fully reopened to most travelers tonight for the first time since before the pandemic. vaccinated travelers from canada and mexico were once again allowed to cross the borders today. across europe, people lined up for flights to the u.s., including to chicago am aware the commerce secretary welcomed the change. >> america is open for business agai we are open for business again on a global stage, and you will see a real shot in the arm to the economy because of that, to a part of the economy that has been hardest hit. vanessa: the u.s. move came as the official global count of covid cases passed 250 million. the actual figure is believed to be even higher. this was also the deadline for federal workers to get vaccinated.

and, los angeles began requiring proof of shots to enter most businesses. we'll focus on vaccine resistance later in the program. a new federal reserve report out today said risks to the u.s. financial system have eased significantly compared to one year ago. the central bank noted that as the economy recovers from the pandemic-driven recession, the finances of individual americans and businesses continue to strengthen. however, the fed cited a rise in volatile trading of so-called "meme" stocks as potential risks. the u.s. today charged 2 hackers, a ukrainian and a russian, in a string of major ransomware attacks. they allegedly shut down the world's largest meat processor, paralyzed an east coast oil pipeline, and froze businesses and local governments. the u.s. and 16 other countries were involved in the enforcement operation. crowds of migrants stormed poland's border with belarus

today, escalating an ongoing confrontation. polish authorities say thousands of people on the belarussian side tried to cut through razor wire fences. polish guards used chemical sprays to turn them back. poland charges that belarus has created a migrant crisis to retaliate for european sanctions. u.s. and iraqi officials say iranian-backed militia forces carried out sunday's drone attack on iraq's prime minister. mustafa al-kadhimi was slightly wounded. security was ramped up across the capital after the attack. tensions have escalated since pro-iranian militias lost ground in october elections. nicaragua didn't -- president is being condemned after he won a fourth consecutive term on sunday. he had jailed many of his rivals . his supporters celebrated overnight when tallies showed

him getting 75% of the vote. the opposition mostly boycotted the balloting. back in this country, the supreme court will consider whether to allow a class-action lawsuit over fbi surveillance after 9/11. the justices heard arguments from muslims in california who say they were spied on because of their faith. the government says the suit would jeopardize state secrets. still to come on the newshour, the biden administration's new vaccine requirement is blocked in federal court. questions remain following multiple deaths out a massive houston concert. tamra keith and amy walter weigh in on the latest political news, plus much more. ♪ >> this is the pbs newshour from w eta studios in washington and in the west from the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university.

judy: the bipartisan infrastructure bill, a key part of president widens legislative agenda, passed congress late last week. now headed to the president's desk to be signed into law. the $1 trillion plan will bring historic investments to roads, bridges and public transit as well as other major projects across the country. joining me on all of this, someone closely involved in the push for infrastructure, secretary of energy jennifer granholm. good to have you with us. a lot of parts to this legislation. i want you to remind the audience of a few of the major parts of this, where the public may see something in the near term and maybe in the next six months. >> certainly, there are different parts of this legislation that will go quickly and some that will take a little more time to develop. the ones that will go quickly are the ones that are pursuant to formula, the things like

weatherization assistance, which goes to the states and they have a formula for doling it out. perhaps the road funding, which you have heard about, the bridge funding would you have heard about. judy, i think there are some things that might be more midterm, but are very consequential. for example, the investments in the transmission grid, which we will need to expand significantly if we are going to triple the amount of renewable energy on the grid, which is necessary to get to the president's goals of 100 percent clean energy by 2035. or the broadband expenditures, every single state will get $100 million to be able to build out broadband, especially in areas that don't have access to it now. poor areas, rural areas, etc. i think you will see quick movement on the eruption of charging stations of electric vehicles across the country. there are 250,000 stations in

areas the private sector hasn't already taken action along highways, for example or in rural areas or in poorer areas where there aren't a lot of electric vehicles yet, but could be. there is a lot to love and what we are seeing. i'm very enthused by the bipartisan nature of this and the fact that we seem to actually have a deal, which is great. judy: it took several months, but here we are. i'm asking you about one americans will see results from this, because we know many americans increasingly worry about the price of gas, about the cost of goods that are being shipped, the so-called supply chain problems. it caught our eye that over the week the white house said the bill will ease inflationary pressure, strength and supply chains by making these long-overdue improvements. how is that going to happen? when will prices come down in connection with this legislation

in a way that americans can see and touch it? >> first of all, we know a lot of the mismatch between supply and demand is the world and the economy coming out of covid. the quicker we can ensure everybody is vaccinated, the quicker we get back to normal. but there is also 17 nobel economist who say this bill will in fact address inflationary pressures, especially addressing some of the physical bottlenecks that we have seen. so the investment in our ports and our airports, in our railway system. that is important as well. there is no doubt there will be some natural evening out of prices and inflation as soon we get through this covid, but it will take a few months before that settles down. judy: the administration is saying this is going to have an effect on prices.

i want to ask about the criticism that the bill isn't as effective as it might have been if it hadn't had to have been watered down. we know when order to get the bipartisan support, you mentioned watering down on this bill. there will be more watering down or whittling down, whatever you want to call it, and the build back better bill. it is still before the congress, hasn't passed yet. how much difference do you think all of that compromise, which you had to make, is going to make in the effectiveness of this legislation? >> honestly, this is, especially with the two pieces, these are such historic investments in our country. but even the infrastructure bill alone, it is the kind of investment that we have not seen in generations. so we are very positive about it. in all pieces, compromise has to happen, and the president has

always said that compromise is not a dirty word. he feels very good about the combination of things that came out of this bill. for example, one thing we didn't lk about is making sure we remove lead pipes from older buildings across the country so children are not poisoned by lead. and the investment and resilience for communities that may be adversely experiencing impacts of these extreme weather events. we have to make sure we don't just have a grid that is resilient, but seawalls to protect communities from what we are seeing in climate change. there is a lot in this bill that is helpful to everyday citizens, that they are going to start to see in near term and then it is a multiyear bill so it will stretch out over a few years. this is to build the future, the bones, the infrastructure of our nation. that will happen over several years and that i think is a very good statement about us being set up for competitiveness in the 21st century. judy: finally, you are the

secretary of energy and i want to ask about concerns about the price of gasoline, concerns at home heating with the cold winter coming. people will be dealing with that. you said it -- you said the president is looking at the strategic petroleum reserve, dipping into that. is he going to do that or not? >> it is one of the tools he is looking at. the president is all over this. he wants to make sure people are not adversely affected by fuel costs, whether it is home fuel or gasoline at the pump. he recognizes of course, as every president is frustrated they can't control the price of gas because it is on a global, oil is on a global market and that is controlled by a cartel and that is opec largely. that is why he is doubling down. this is the short-term issue and he is doubling down on the long-term investments, making sure we are investing in clean energy so we aren't disproportionately reliant on fossil fuels, especially from areas of the world that don't

have our best interest at heart. he is looking at whatever short-term tools he has to be able to relieve the pain people may be feeling at the pump. the american rescue plan put a lot of money, $4 billion, into low income heating and home energy for propane, for natural gas, for home heating oil. for this winter. so there is a lot of money that went into that that went to the states to be able to relieve people. the question of the pump is one that we will learn more about tomorrow, when our energy information agency will put out its short-term projections for the next couple months. judy: we will be watching for that. secretary of energy jennifer granholm, thank you very much. ♪

judy: as we have reported, negotiators from around the world are meeting in glasgow for a second week. all part of the u.n. summit at getting new actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. pressure has been building on the street this weekend and today, there was a call for meaningful change beyond the rhetoric of these gatherings. william is there for us all week and he joins me now. hello, william. we know you just arrived in glasgow yesterday. tell us, in the time you have been there, are you seeing and hearing? >> as you mentioned, we landed here and there were enormous protests. on most 100,000 people on the streets on saturday. inside the conference hall, it is late at night, most people have left that it has been this combination of high and diplomatic meetings and the kind

of trade show conference feel to everything. the whole goal, as we have discussed, is about getting world leaders to commit to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions so the planet doesn't warm to a dangerous degree. complicating that is a washington post investigation that dropped this morning that indicated that many nations around the world have been grossly overstating how much emissions reductions they have been doing. they have been using all sorts of complicated data. the washington post rakes that down. the issue is if this conference is about getting people to put down very specifically how much they will reduce their emissions, if as the post reports, a lot of this is based on dubious data, that complicates matters. judy: when it comes to galvanizing, we know former president obama was there, and spoke to the conference today, urging countries to step up. tell us, how was his message

received? william: that is right, the former president's speech initially got sometng of a standing ovation in the hall. he said, there have been real roadblocks to progress. he acknowledged there is an enormous amount to do but he said there has been substantial progress. that said, we talked activists who came into the conference hall today who argued and specifically mentioned president obama, that he and other western leaders are paying lip service to action instead of really taking concrete steps. i talked to one young activist from south africa. here is what she had to say. >> and the climate crisis right now, we are in the position where because of empty promises, because they prioritized themselves and their economies over the planet and the people, they have always been putting profit over people. why would this be any different? william: the former president

took on these criticisms had on. he acknowledged there had been as he called them, imperfect compromises and all the past victories were not full victories. that said, he said to these activists directly, i want you to stay angry. i want you to stay frustrated, but turn those emotions into action. keep pushing us world leaders to do better. so far, they heat -- they seem to be heeding his wishes. judy: interesting to see the former president is engaged in this. you are going to be there for the rest of the weekend will be reporting for us. thank you very much. william: you're welcome, judy. ♪ judy: this weekend, a federal appeals court in louisiana temporarily blocked the biden administration's requirement that millions of private sector workers get vaccinated against covid-19, or get tested weekly. the new rule, formally

introduced just days ago, has led more than two dozen states to file multiple legal challenges. john yang has the story. john: judy, a three-judge panel of the fifth circuit court of appeals in louisiana agreed on saturday to block the new rule. while it is being reviewed. the judges said they took the action because "the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the mandate." alan wilson is the attorney general for the state of south carolina, which is one of the plaintiffs. thanks so much for joining us. tell us why you joined this action, why you joined the challenge. >> for the very reasons the fifth circuit court of appeals stated, because of grave statutory and constitutional issues at stake here. one thing we did about six weeks ago is, 24 states signed a letter to the administration, two other states, by the way, did their own letters, so 26 in all sent a letter to the

president saying what you are doing through executive is unconstitutional. you are expanding the power of osha jan what congress -- beyond what congress intended. we are trying to keep that constraint. osha does not have authority to basically put this kind of mandate into practice, so we are trying to protect the 85-1 hundred million americans who would be affected by this if it were to go into effect. john: i want to be sure we are clear about this argument. as i understand, it is not about whether or not people should get the vaccine. it is about whether the government, through osha administratively, should order employers to do this. >> absolutely. many of my colleagues including myself are vaccinated. this isn't whether the vaccine is good or bad policy. it is about the role of government. osha stands for occupational safety and health administration. it was created 50 years ago to

protect employees who opt your rated -- operated in certain occupational fields from days as -- dangers and hazards specific to that field. it wasn't created to protect employees from some general future threat that might exist in the world. what they are doing is basically expanding the authority of osha ja what congress originally gave it and this is a violation of separation of powers. they are also passing, violating the administrative procedures act through an arbitrary and capricious rule. basically, the standards are such that you could have 99 people in one building who don't have to comply because they are under 100, and you could have two people in 50 states, 50 state offices, have to comply because they are a 100 person, and 100 employee company. the standards are arbitrary and can preach us and -- and cut -- and capricious. john: if this had been a law, if

congress had passed a law saying this, would you be taking the same position? what exit depends. first off, let's start with this. states have general health care and police authority and police powers, we call it. congress has only been given certain powers in the constitution. if congress were to pass a law that fell under one of those authorities and they had the authority to do this, we would have a different conversation. i personally feel like it is a bridge too far for congress to pass some kind of general health care police authority to the states but if they didn't through their spending authority or interstate commerce authority, maybe you could make a more plausible argument. what they are doing is through administrative fiat, they are expanding the administrative authority of the regulatory agency well beyond what congress gave it and they are using it to cram down their policies on the american people. they simply can't do that. john: people on the other sidearm you, the public health argument -- on the other side

make the argument, the public health argument. what is your response? >> this is what i say. you may agree with the policy prescriptions of this administration or any government because you happen to like the people who are running it, but once you expand the power of any government, especially the federal government, that government entity will never give that power back and one day, people you don't agree with, that you don't like, will be using the same power against you. this is about constraining and having limiting principles, constraining the power of the federal government. if you are a person on the left to thinks this is about protecting the health of society, that's great but this is violating the constitution and it is a power the people will never get back. john: people on the other of this argument, not necessarily left or right but, they point to private employers who have put mandates on their employees. as state attorney general, do

you have any problems with private employers doing this? >> listen. private employers make people aware of -- wear uniforms, dress a certain way. they have certain rules they implement. there is a liberty part of a private employer. the private employer would be different. this is the federal government compelling private employers, to compel their employees through regulatory act avid -- executive diktat. a private employer could do that but that is not what is happening. this is about the role of the federal government involved in people's personal decisions within their companies. john: attorney general alan wilson of south carolina, thank you very much, sir. >> good to be with you. ♪ judy: it is now nearly three months since the taliban takeover of afghanistan, and the country is collapsing. hundreds of thousands are

hungry, millions more are jobless and impoverished, and the hard afghan winter is bearing down. with the support of the pulitzer center, special correspondent jane ferguson sent us this report, beginning in the capital kabul. and a warning, images in this story may disturb some viewers. jane: even in a country gripped by catastrophe, this may be its most desperate corner. the few remaining children's wards left operating in afghanistan are flooded with weak, starving babies. the children of jobless fathers and malnourished mothers, an entire generation fighting to stay alive against the odds. "son of sadam," written on a piece of tape stuck to this child's chest, is all that identifies him. with each shallow breath, his chances of making it grow thinner. this ward is packed, frail, sick babies lined up next to one another in beds meant for one.

>> we have a little space, not a lot of space for every baby to have just every baby to one bed. >> so you put two in a bed? >> two, three or four sometimes in a bed. jane: dr. abdul jabad despairs at the numbers who come and never recover. almost a third don't make it. that means four or five of the babies in this room will die. it's the very crowding that kills many, with weak, malnourished bodies unable to fight off infections from the others. >> we have not a space sterilization process here. most of the baby take infection from the ward. you see here, two baby in one bed. jane: downstairs in another ward, dr. marwa examines ayaz. the lack of nutrients in his diet has led to a severe skin condition.

>> he gets infected and it is very dangerous. jane: his father a laborer, and work dried up, leaving his mother with little to give him. in another bed nearby lays omid. his muscles have wasted away. at 18 months old, he weighs just over 10 pounds. he should weigh twice that. it took only a few months for afghanistan's poorest to be gripped by hunger once the government collapsed. without the government and its funding from the international community, the economy is in freefall. millions have lost their jobs and livelihoods within the government and internationally-funded organizations, and with a taliban authority sweeping to power in august, aid agencies cannot send support to a recognized terrorist group. across town, the newly jobless shuffle forward in line for help from the u.n.'s world food program. many of the men here have never needed to live off handouts before, but these are desperate times.

>> there is hunger back home. we have food, but very little. we just put something small in our stomachs. there is no work and no money. jane: the distribution is guarded by taliban gunmen. if aid can be dispensed without it going through their government, then it can get around sanctions. although the aid that went from the u.s. government to the afghan government has been stopped, there is still some coming from usaid directly to civilians here through the wfp, the world food program. people who have come here today are getting two sacks of wheat flour, ten bottles of cooking oil, and a small bag of soy bean. it's not very much, and that's all families will get for the next two months. but it will keep them alive. the levels of hunger across the country are staggering. 14 million people, nearly half the population, need food assistance to survive. leading humanitarians say aid must get directly to the people now, regardless of who is running the country.

>> don't politicize food. i don't care which side you are on. everyone should give us what we need to reach the innocent victims of this complex situation. jane: the head of the u.n.'s world food program, david beasley, flew into kabul over the weekend. more than $9 billion of the country's foreign assets have been frozen by the u.s. government to prevent the taliban from accessing them. he says that's morally wrong. >> all i'm doing is jumping up and down, saying, please, you must understand that people are dying are going to die -- more people are going to die. if you don't unfreeze them, more people are going to die. unfreeze them in such a way that they go directly to the people through organizations like us. what am i missing here? these are innocent people. it's heartbreaking. i mean -- jane: how much does that impact your ability to get food to the people without getting money in the pockets of the taliban? >> we just want to reach the people who are vulnerable, we just want to reach the people that are really marching towards starvation. that isn't complicated. the

taliban have told us, "we will stay out of your way, we will support anything you need to reach the people you need to reach." i need for everybody on all sides to take that same approach. jane: the taliban has, unsurprisingly, called for the assets to be released to their government. the pressure on the group mounts the longer their leadership is unable to abate the spreading hunger. we sat down with their main spokesman. >> the money that was frozen by the americans is the money of the afghan people. we told the american authorities, international community, and europeans. we have told all countries this should never have happened. the economic crisis can be stopped. also, we are cooperating with the ngos and requested help from them. jane: but it's not just the financial crisis that is keeping people hungry. the blight of drought has gripped the country, with the national wheat harvest down by nearly a third. we travelled out to herat in the west of the country, where the crisis is most severe.

in his hard, parched fields, local farmer mohammed asif told us his wheat crop this year was 80% down. he has 125 acres, which would normally employ dozens of workers, supporting hundreds of family members. >> in the past, we were self sufficient and relied on ourselves. we had good harvests. this last 4 or 5 years, the drought is very bad. we have never seen anything like this. we have lost 100 year old trees here. when we have water and a good harvest, then we can keep livestock like cows and sheep and chickens. jane: on the day we visited, there were only a few people, one of them a child, harvesting a little saffron. the farmer has not planted this ar's crop of wheat yet. the ground is simply too hard without rainfall. in the city of herat nearby, it is clear the scenes in kabul 's hospital repeated across the country. dangerously wasted and thin babies are carried into the main hospital. doctors without borders staff

and fund the malnutrition ward, so these children will get some milk and care. but it's temporary. the homes these children came from remain blighted by poverty. mahbabin brought in her only surviving twin baby. at six months old, she should not be this small. "we don't have enough food. i'm not able to breast feed," she tells me. "we feed them with formula, but i cannot afford it." few in this country can afford much more right now than the bare essentials. millions cannot manage even that. as the world watches the fallout of afghanistan's sudden collapse, the failure to build a sustainable, functioning state in the two decades since the 2001 invasion have never been more stark. >> the international community this last 20 or 30 years has done a disastrous job here. 75% of the economy is based on outside funding. i mean, hello.

coupled with the corruption that was allowed from year to year to year. why do you think the people didn't rise up when the taliban were advancing? because they were like, "wel which one's worse here?" and so you have got now an economy that was built on a house of cards, and everybody's to blame. everybody shares the blame. and if you don't feed the innocent victims of this chaos, well, you are talking about a lot of dead people. jane: after surviving four decades of continuous conflict, hunger could take more innocent lives than war ever did. for the pbs newshour, i'm jane ferguson, in kabul, afghanistan. ♪ judy: eight people are dead and many others were injured on friday in houston after the

astroworld festival crowd surge at a concert with rapper travis scott. tonight, there are more questions than answers about the security measures in place lisa desjardins looks at some of those concerns. lisa: judy, concertgoers began panicking soon after travis scott started singing, and some members of the crowd rushed to the stage. here's how one concertgoer described it. >> i just heard from other people, i can't breathe. just people screaming at each other, i can't breathe. people yelling there friends names because they got separated and they had nowhere to go. it was just hard to get out. that was the worst part of it for me. lisa: the deaths have prompted a series of questions about whether travis scott should have stopped the concert completely, what the production company did and whether there were adequate preparations. at least 35 people has sued already. steve allen is a lead safety consultant at crowdsafety.org, who has provided security for artists like oasis, red hot chilli peppers and eminem. and he joins me now from southampton, england.

steve, we have seen tragedies at concerts before, sadly, but this one seemed rare, in that it was a fatal crowd crush at an ongoing concert, which continued even as that was happening. how rare and unusual does that seem to you? what do you take away from this? >> very rare. it shouldn't be happening. if a crowd is in distress, there should be a procedure in place to immediately stop the show temporarily. lisa: there are lots of questions about whether travis scott, if he stopped the show four times but picked it back up. he asked people at one point if they were ok and some people raise hands, but we know there was distress at that moment even as the concert continued. can you talk about, how do you prevent concerts from going too far? how do you make sure a performer knows the concert needs to stop and what kind of point people need to be in place from

everybody on down? >> so the best laid plans can be in place, but they often fail at the first time there is a major incident occurring. to have that dynamic situation, you need a show stop team, a confident team of experts that know what they are doing and can identify a crowd in distress. it is not your uncle in a security shirt sit -- standing up there. it is people you attend you -- you trust to attend to life-threatening situations. they are in headsets, in communication with someone on stage. the team is adjacent to the artist representative who has been briefed in advance. there is a safety briefing on the day of the show and the brief is to the artist who will cooperate and understand their role and responsibility, along with the lighting designer and the front of house sound engineer. lisa: when we hear something

about this we imagine if we were there, if our loved ones were there, you can a most feel yourself, since of panic. can you talk about the role of panic and these situations? how much of a factor is that? >> one hundred percent real. for many years academics told me panic was if i a little -- a five letter word that doesn't exist in crowds. i have worked with crowds for 30 years. i can assure you if you can't breathe, you will panic. i have seen men that are 3 pounds of a 6'6" in the middle of a crowd with their arms locked by their side and elevated off the floor, with fear in their face. panic does exist, and you can feel a crowd in distress. you can see if a crowd is in distress or if it is just euphoria. the untrained eye looking out might think that there is a problem, but this is what they

do. it is about identifying when the crowd is in distress. lisa: looking at the pictures and videos, 50,000 people, this is a huge crowd. we are not yet out of the pandemic. what do you say? was this a wake-up call to the dangers of large events even as some people are no racing back to them? >> the risk is always there with live events. we were always engaged with the artists that had the energetic crowds. oasis for 15 or 16 years, some of the most energized crowds i had ever seen. but we managed it. everyone took it serious. i'm not speculating that this event wasn't taken serious. but -- lisa: something went wrong. >> something clearly because you had more than one fatality and the numbers of injured people. look at the ages of those people that passed away. they had gone to a concert to have a good time and go home

safe and talk about it and have memories forever. sadly, that is not going to happen. why is very clear to me from the reports i'm reading now. there were a number look -- of people in distress for a prolonged period. when you see the video of fans getting onto the stage, on the camera platforms, how that wasn't seen by a show stop team, a management, how that wasn't seen and responded to, what's going on, and from other video footage i have seen, the artist is looking around to the wings of the stage as if he is thinking, is everything ok? he is looking for someone. at another point, do i see anyone go on stage and speak to travis and say we have a problem? there may be video footage that shows that, but certainly not something i have seen. you would expect to see that pretty rapidly, summing going on stage and saying stop the show. just heads up, there is a major situation here. lisa: these are important

questions and we will follow this investigation, as i know you will. crowd safety expert steve allen, thank you for joining us. >> thank you. ♪ judy: last week was a pivotal one for president biden, with highs and lows, the passing of his infrastructure plan following the democratic defeat in virginia. here to take stock of it all are amy walter of the cook political report with amy walter, and tamara keith of npr. hello to both of you. it was a week of up and down. it was long in coming, the infrastructure bill, but it did pass late friday night. in the end, how much at this moment, how much of a political win is it for the president? exit is a win. you take them where you can get them. it is a bipartisan win in the

senate and the house. the president can now go out and members of the democratic party can go out in 2022 and say we worked in a bipartisan manner as we promised, to pass things that matter. the challenge is, while the president and the energy secretary say we will go and sell this to the public, the sausage making isn't done yet. they are still trying to do the build back better bill and that will have a back-and-forth between the senate and the house that will probably go on. we have talked about this, probably this number -- december, most reporters are talking about spending christmas and new year's covering this. there is a waste to go. the other big piece, and you raised this with the secretary, is, how much immediate help is this going to provide to americans right now? this is just a cnn poll, 40% of them say they don't think administration is addressing the most pressing problems, or they

do think they are addressing most prominent -- pressing problems, 60% says i don't think they are addressing the pressing problems in the country. for the white house and congressional democrats in 2022, those numbers have to be reversed. voters have to see that this administration is focused on the things that they see as the biggest problems. judy: so it is what the administration is dealing with, then there is this residue, bigger than residue, mistrust among democrats on the hill. they are crucial to passing the rest of this. >> as amy said, this would not have passed in the house without republicans helping out because there were some of the most progressive democrats who just didn't sign on. that said, many members of the progressive caucus ultimately did vote for the bill, knowing that it would decouple it from the build back better, the social safety net bill. progressives tried to have them tied together because they didn't trust the moderates to

support the other legislation. now, president biden today said that he thinks the other one is going to pass, but yes, there are challenges ahead. he is confident, he said, but that is the thing. this was a trust fall. and they will find out sometime before the new year whether the moderates are going to go along. but there isn't agreement on exactly what should be in this thing. there is more agreement than there was in the past my and there is also not agreement on just how essential it is. biden sees it as essential for the 2022 campaign. many democrats see it is essential. others aren't so sure. judy: the white house is trying to link it to infrastructure, has to have build back better in order -- >> right. judy: it did play a role, lots of people believe, in what happened in virginia. we haven't had a chance to talk to you since we learned tuesday night that the democrats didn't do so well in virginia. it was a republican night.

lessons for both sides? >> some of them can take with them moving forward, some of them, well, they were unique to that specific moment. the bottom line is, if you are a democrat on the ballot in 2022 and the president is sitting at 43% job approval rating, even in the state that is normally blue like virginia that is a problem. you are in big trouble. for republicans, the idea that a republican could follow the path of glenn youngkin and be able to sort of keep trump at a bit of distance, thread the needle, i'm with him, i'm not with him, that will be harder to do if you have to run in primaries. glenn youngkin didn't come out of a primary, he came out of the convention process so he didn't have that long process where everybody on the republican side is vying to be the trump acolyte.

so that part, both of those will be really important i think watching as we go forward. judy: we are trying to make those connections. meantime, you were talking to virginia voters this week to try to get a better understanding of what they were thinking. >> the thing that stands out is that both virginia and new jersey are states where democrats didn't perform as well as they had hoped on tuesday. there -- they are also states where schools stayed closed longer than other places, where the number of days where schools were open for in person education were few words -- few work and parents were upset. we focused on critical race theory but it was more than that based on the conversations i had been having with people. in fact, ballot pedia looked at the school board races across the country where there were anti-crt candidates or matt -- anti-mask candidates and it wasn't a sweep. there was not a strong signal

coming out of the races. a lot of those candidates lost. so it wasn't sort of a uniform message, except that, what one northern virginia parent and republican political consultant told me, democrat terry mcauliffe probably would have won if the schools had opened in the fall of 2020 instead of the fall of 2021. judy: something that was entirely out of his control. >> completely out of his control, but the parents were frustrated and they were looking for an outlet. judy: dealing with a lot, as parents do all over the country. interesting to point out that these two states, which happened to have governors races this year, work once that had school issues. >> the school issue, and it speaks to the broader issue right now. you have 70% of americans saying we think the country is on the wrong track. that means different things to different people. some people are worried about

the economy, some are frustrated not just that schools weren't open but just how hard it is for their child to catch up. they lost a lot of time. we heard from the same parents, i was talking to one consultant who said i hear now in focus groups a lot, especially from mom, the challenge that their kids are having with their mental health. there is a lot of stuff going on for people. they are feeling that anxiety and when you have that, and somebody, somebody is going to get the blame on somebody is going to offer a solution or at least a path forward. that is what happens. judy: a disruption, then you make it into a political campaign. there you go. amy walter, tamra keith my thank you both. ♪ judy: and now, a five-decade survey of a photographer who has helped change the perception of

his art form. jeffrey brown goes to glenstone museum outside of washington to look at the unusual process behind large-scale works. it's part of our arts and culture series, canvas. >> scenes of interior, hidden life. scenes of almost cinematic drama. but pull back from the frame. the first thing you notice about canadian artist jeff wall's photographs is their sheer size. >> because i was so interested in other art forms like painting and to some extent film, it seemed to me that photographs were too small, that something in them, in the medium wasn't being released by the conventional formats. and it was exciting. >> an exhibition now at glenstone, a contemporary art museum outside washington d.c, shows what wall has done since the 1970s to change the conventions of photography. what the photographs aim to

capture, how they do that, and yes, their scale. glenstone's director, emily wei rales. >> i think of them as works that straddle different categories. these things are on a scale that you would associate more with cinema in some cases or advertising displays. so they're big, they're brilliant. in some cases, they have light shining from behind them. so the colors are supersaturated, and they glow. >> glenstone is a private museum, fully opened since 2018. it's a 300 acre campus of rolling pastures and woodlands, with interconnected gallery buildings. art and nature, sometimes art in nature, as with sculptures by jeff koons and richard serra. its spacious galleries showcase individual artists such as robert gober and other leading figures in contemporary art. >> we like to focus on artists who we consider disruptors, artists that really change the way people thought about art,

were innovative either in their ideas or their approach or process or tech. jeff wall certainly falls into this category. we were there as the exhibition was being installed. a chance to see the enormous, and heavy works being lifted and mounted into place. wall's photographs often have their own built-in light source, a so-called light box that creates a vivid, backlit effect. and also turns them into three-dimensional objects, almost sculptural. he is not an artist to walk through the world with a camera at the ready. instead, he says, he spends a lot of time not photographing. >> i do see things in the world, like any other photographer does. but i don't need to capture it with a machine. i can capture it with my own memory and then engage later in what i think of as a process of reconstruction or construction or composition that leads to the kind of picture i want to make. >> note the word picture.

wall prefers that term, seeing his works in the tradition of large-scale paintings. a different technology, but the same focus on pictorial composition. sometimes, as in "the destroyed room" from 1979, he directly riffs on an old master painting. here, dellacqua's the death of sardanapalus. a firm's -- a famous woodblock print by 19th century japanese artist katsushika hokusai became the inspiration for wall's 1993 work "a sudden gust of wind." >> i immediately thought how modern it was and how instantaneous it was. there's something photographic about what he's captured. and so it just struck me quite immediately that this was one of those moment where i could do something with that. >> but there's nothing immediate about walls process. he found a location, brought in actors, used a wind machine, and went day after day to shoot, as always with film. he then used early digital-imaging technology

to place all those flying papers, even a hat. the process took months to make. >> i did make one innovation, which is i made this guy sort of enjoying -- his hat just blew off >> yeah. he's got a happy look at the wonder of it all. >> he lost his hat. whereas in the original, they're not happy about losing their hats. >> in fact, wall's works are always intricately constructed and composed. he uses the term near documentary for photographs of people at work or a home eviction and progress. and when they look deceptively simple, as in more recent works like the diptych summer afternoons, and three paneled staircase and two rooms. who are these people? is there a story? >> i don't write the story, i erase the story. >> what does that mean? >> it means the process of picture making is the exact opposite of narrating it, because what you're doing is,

you are stilling the narrative, you are ending it. you are stopping it, which means essentially you're un-writing it. it's the viewer that will come back in real time and rewrite the narrative. >> again, the scale adds to the effect, with almost life-sized figures. >> the figures or the objects are the same size they would be if you're looking through a pane of glass into a real space that extends your own. life scale is a kind of magic. >> it's part of the drama, isn't it? that i'm looking at somebody who's almost my size? >> i think so. i think it has a kind of impact that is unique. you can almost feel like you're hovering in someone's life in a way that you can't really do actually. >> composition, light, and beauty, even when the scale and subject are smaller, as in one of the most recent works here, titled "mother-of-pearl." jeff wall's exhibition is on view into march 2022. for the pbs newshour, i'm jeffrey brown at the glenstone museum of contemporary art in

potomac, maryland. judy: a lot to think about there. that is the newshour for tonight. join us online and tomorrow evening. please stay safe and we will see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by -- >> the landscape has changed and not for the last time. the rules of business are being reinvented with a more flexible workforce, by embracing innovation, by looking not only at current opportunities, but i to future ones. resilience is the ability to pivot again and again for whatever happens next. >> people who no, no bdo. >> pediatric surgeon, volunteer, topiary artist. a raymondjames financial advisor taylor's advice to help you live

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♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -today on "cook's country," i'm making one-pan roast turkey breast with stuffing. toni joins the debate -- stuffing versus dressing. jack talks turkey. and lawman's making roasted butternut squash. it's all coming up right here on "cook's country."