judy: good evening. i'judy woodruff. on the "newshour" tonight, arming ukraine --- the u.s. provides more weapons to ukraine to help the country defend itself against a renewed military offensive by russian forces in the east. then, information battles -- how so-called open source intelligence, from cell phones videos to satellite images, are being used to uncover the truth in russia's war against ukraine. and, understanding alopecia --- people living with an auto-immune disease that leads to hair loss speak out about the need for greater awareness and acceptance. >> i will like for people to take away the fact that hair does not define any of us, and alopecia may not be life threatening but it is life

altering. it affects a person's livelihood as well as their mental health. judy: all that and more on tonight's "pbs newshour." ♪ >> major funding for the "pbs newshour" has been provided by. >> moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf. the engine that connects us.

>> the lemelson foundation, committed to improving lives through invention in the u.s. and developing countries. on the web at lemelson.org. supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org. and with the ongoing support of these institutions. this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. judy: president biden today approved $800 million in new

military aid to ukraine, including weaponry designed to counter russian forces, who are refocusing their offensive on eastern ukraine. today, the northeastern city of kharkiv came under intensified attack, and the city's mayor's had residential areas were targeted. meantime, in a preliminary report, a group of european security officials said that russia has committed both war crimes and crimes against humanity in ukraine. this comes a day after president biden labeled the killing genocide. nick schifrin begins our coverage. nick: in mariupol today, russian troops and their separatist allies are driving into a city they have already destroyed. a six-week siege has gutted 90% of the city's buildings. separatists invited journalists to film the homes they occupy and the backyards they exploit to prepare a final battle. outgunned ukrainian forces climb rooftops to target russian tanks

parked next to churches. the fight has been bloody and deadly. and now russia says thousands of the city's defenders have surrendered. yesterday, ukraine's 36th marine brigade recorded thivideo that sounds like a goodbye. >> the reality is that the city is under blockade and enciled, and we did not have any supplies of ammunition or food. we were holding these positions until the end. we did not leave our positions. we remain faithful, and will always be faithful. glory to ukraine. glory to the heroes. nick: mariupol would be the largest city that russia has captured. it would also help russia link what it controls in the donbass with territory as far west as kherson. pres. zelenskyy: mariupol is the heart of this war today. it's beating. and if it stops beating, we will be in a weaker position. mariupol is captured, russia -- nick: ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy worries, if

mariupol is captured, russia could reverse its setbacks. pres. zelenskyy: the stronger our position in mariupol, we will have advantages in the dialogue with the russian federation. if our situation is weak, the talks will not happen, because russia will take steps which will lead to coming back to those cities which we liberated. nick: to try and prevent that, president den announced today an additional $800 million of weapons to ukraine, including, for the first time, armored personnel carriers, drone boats, radars, and artillery systems and rounds. before today's announcement, zelenskyy took two social media to demand more. pres. zelenskyy: freedom must be armed better than tyranny. western countries have everything to make it happen. the final victory over the tyranny and the number of people saved depends on them. arm ukraine now to defend freedom. nick: today, zelenskyy spoke with president ben about weapons and holding russia accountable for a campaign that president biden yesterday called genocide. pres. biden: yes, i called it genocide because it has become clearer and clearer that putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being able to be a

ukrainian. nick: nowhere is that more apparent than mariupol. today, a report for the organization for security and cooperation in europe called a strike that destroyed a maternity hospital a, quote, clear violation of international humanitarian law and those responsible for it have committed a war crime. today, mayor vadym boychenko accused russia of killing civilians and burning their bodies. vadym: the bodies have disappeared somewhere. where did they go? they are trying to hide them. they collect the bodies. 13 mobile crematoria have arrived in the city and are being prepared to get rid of the evidence of war crimes. nick: there are still 120,000 people trapped in mariupol. and there is little preventing russia from targeting them next. for the pbs newshour, i'm nick schifrin. judy: to further discuss the u.s. support for ukraine and the new weapons package president biden announced today, i spoke just a few moments ago with department of defense spokesman,

john kirby. admiral john kirby, thank you very much for joining us. so, $800 million in new military and security aid, tell us what difference the biden administration believes this is going to make in the overall war effort. admiral kirby: well, if you take a look at some of the capabilities, there are new capabilities, not things that we have provided in the past. and they're really designed to help ukraine in the now, in today's fight, the fight that they're going to be having here going forward in the donbass region, a much more confined geographic region where the russians are now reprioritizing. so, take a look at, for instance, the howitzers and the 40,000 artillery rounds that are going to go with that. the fight in the donbass is going to rely on artillery. and, in fact, the russians are already moving artillery units into the donbass because of the geography, the topography there. look at the counterbattery radar that was provided. that will help save ukrainian lives because they will be able to track incoming artillery rounds from the russians. the unmanned surface vessels that we're going to be providing

to help them with some coastal dense down in the sea of azov are in the northern black sea. in addition to that, there are javelin missiles as part of this package, which we know are very effective against russian tanks. so, lots of capabilities in here that are really designed to help ukraine in the fight that they're in right now. judy: the foreign minister of ukraine, mr. kuleba, has been saying this is the kind of thing they need in days, not weeks. how quickly is all this going to get into the hands of the ukrainian military? john: it can get there, start to get there very quickly. we have been able since -- in the past, between the time the president authorizes something until it gets into ukrainian hands can be as little as less than a week, five to six days. now, we're going to be moving with a sense of energy and urgency here. we know the clock is not on our side. we know that time is a factor. and so we're going to be moving these things as quickly as possible. i would add that not all of these things have to come from the united stes. some of this stuff will probably come from areas where they're prepositioned and a little

closer to ukraine. so, it may not take quite that long, but we're going to be moving things as fast as we can. even while we're working on that, judy, we are closing out the previous $800 million that the president signed out in the middle of march. there are javelin missileshat are literally flying today and in tomorrow on the way to ukraine. judy: at the same time, admiral kirby, we know that president zelenskyy has repeatedly asked the allies for military aircraft. why not provide that at this critical moment? admiral kirby: well, i would tell you that there are some nations that are helping mr. zelenskyy with his fixed-wing aircraft fleet, and he has more aircraft available to him now than, frankly, he did just a couple of weeks ago. now, every nation-state that does this does this on their own terms. they talk about it or they don't talk about it. that's their decision, and we respect that. but he continues to be able to put more aircraft into operational condition even as

the war goes on. what we're also focused on is long-range air defense. and you saw the slovakian government just a few days ago announce that they're sending an s-300 stem. we're going to backfill that temporarily with a patriot system, so that slovakia also has legitimate and credible air defense. we are working closely every day with allies and partners who have these kinds of systems, tanks, for instance, t-72 tanks, that they're willing to provide to ukraine, and the united states is helping have those conversations with them. judy: some of this new equipment, weaponry that the u.s. is sending to ukraine is going to require training on the part of their troops. is the u.s. going to be sending more soldiers into the area to train them? and are you concerned that this could be seen as some kind of provocation by russia? admiral kirby: well, so let's break it apart a little bit. most of the systems we're sending in this new package don't require any training. the ukrainians already know how to use this stuff, like javelins and like the switchblade uavs. some of the stuff, the howitzers and maybe these radars, they

might need a little bit of training, but not a lot. these are not ultra-sophisticated systems. it won't take that long to get ukrainians up to speed on it. so we're looking at perhaps a train-the-trainers scenario, where you pull out a small number of ukrainians outside the country, you show them how to use these systems, and then they go back in and help their colleagues and teammates use them going forward. we think that we can handle that, since it's a limited duration and a limited number of training needs, with the troops that we already have in europe. now, look, how mr. putin might see this, that will be up to him. we know we have a requirement to help ukraine defend itself. these capabilities are literally ones that we have been discussing with the ukrainians. we know they need them. we know that they can use them. and so that's our focus, is making sure that they can actually use them once they get inside ukraine. judy: as you know, vladimir putin right now is saying that he is committed to finishing what he set out to do. this war could go on for a very long time. this is unlike anything the u.s.

has faced against another country, a country certainly the size of russia, in a very long time. is the u.s. equipped to keep sending supplies that ukraine is going to need to stick with it? admiral kirby: i will tell you, the president has been really clear, we're going to help ukraine as much as we can, as fast as we can. and this additional $800 million that he's just signed out today is proof-positive our commitment to actually do that. and, as i said, stuff is moving in everyday, literally eight to 10 flights a day into the region. and it doesn't take long for that stuff to eventually get inside ukraine via ground routes. we're going to keep doing this as long as we can, as long as the ukrainians need that help in the fight. and i will tell you, the proof is in the pudding, judy. i mean, if you just look at how the russians had to completely refashion their strategy inside ukraine because they failed in kyiv, they failed in chernihiv, they failed to make progress in the south. they never took that town of mykolaiv. they still haven't been able to present any kind of credible threat against odessa. that's not by accident. that's because the ukrainians have been so effective on the

battlefield. and that effectiveness comes from the security assistance that we and 30 other nations are providing, as well as the training that we have been conducting over the last eight years inside ukraine. judy: retired rear admiral john kirby, who is the spokesman at the pentagon. john kirby, thank you very much. john: yes, ma'am. thank you. meanwhile, the white house is facing questions about president biden's statement yesterday that russia's campaign in ukraine was, quote, genocide. mr. biden later clarified that that was his personal view and that lawyers wou make the final determination. nick schifrin is back with a look at what exactly is meant by the term genocide, and the impact of the president's words. nick: since the holocaust, the state department has declared genocide on eight different occasions. that decision is made by the secretary of state, advised in part by the state department's office of the legal adviser. john bellinger served in that role during the george w. bush administration. he's now an adjunct senior

fellow at the council on foreign relations and heads arnold and porter's international law practice. john bellinger, welcome back to the newshour. here's what president biden said, i called it a genocide because it's become clearer and clearer that putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of being ukrainian. if that is what putin is doing, does that constitute genocide? john: well, i think that's obviously about the most serious charge that can be leveled at a country. and the russians didn't like it at all. biden, as judy said, said that he was speaking essentially from his heart as an american and wasn't making a formal determination at this point. but, obviously, the president's words have a lot of impact. at this point, the state department will go through a process where the lawyers will apply the facts of what's actually going on to the law. the legal definition of genocide is an intent to destroy a racial, national, ethnic, or

religious group. and so the lawyers in the state department will look at the intelligence information. they will look at things that putin says and see if that satisfies that determination of the definition in the genocide convention. nick: does russia's killing large number of ukrainians, forcibly transferring ukrainian children from ukraine into russia, and putin's denying that ukraine is a country, does all of that add up, in your opinion, to an intent to destroy a national group? john: well, every genocide is different. in general, we think that a genocide is basically killing everybody. and i don't think putin is trying to kill every last -- right now. but what he does seem to be trying to do is to -- of being a ukrainian and ukraine as a separate country. so that will be really a new concept for the lawyers at the

state department -- that destroying ukraine as a separate identity and trying to fold them into russia, is that genocide? i thinthat case can probably be made. but that's different from past determinations of genocide that have involved essentially killing an entire group. nick: if not genocide, do we know that russia is committing war crimes or crimesgainst humanity? john: that, it looks very much like they are. certainly, over the last eight weeks, the sikes on civilian targets -- nick: i think we might have lost john bellinger. john, can you hear me? i think we might have lost john bellinger. john: yes, i'm back. can you hear me now?

nick: sorry, john. just finish that thought. so, basically, you're saying that, as far as we can tell, war crimes or crimes against humanity are being committed. john: that's what it looks like, including in the most recent killings of civilians in bucha as well. and the international criminal court is investigating those war crimes claims and crimes against humanity right now in the hague. and they now may be investigating possible allegations of genocide as well. nick: today, french president emmanuel macron declined to use the word genocide. he said it could elevate tensions with russia if he did. instead, he said he prefers to use war crimes. is that kind of division unhelpful when it comes to trying to find accountability for the crimes that russia has committed? john: well -- call a spade a spade here.

macron is trying to stay in the middle, as are a number of other countries. but when putin is doing what he's doing to try to apparently wipe out ukraine as a country, i don't think it's inappropriate to call it genocide. the russians obviously didn't like it. but that's to be expected. nick: all right, we apologize for the technical problems, but, john bellinger, always a pleasure. thank you very much. appreciate it. john: pleasure to be with you. vanessa: i am vanessa ruiz in for stephanie sy with newshour west. we will return to the full program after the latest headlines. the head of the world health organization says the situation in ukraine gets far more attention than the suffering in nonwhite nations, and that racism may be the reason. ted rose spoke in geneva. he said, quote, the world is not treating the human race the same way.

some are more equal than others. ted rose is ethiopian. he says the emergency there receives only a fraction of the concern over ukraine. police in new york have arrested the man wanted in tuesday's subway shooting. frank r. james was taken into custody today in manhattan. he iaccused of shooting 10 people on a train in brooklyn. james was turned over to federal agents this afternoon after his capture. >> nypd patrol officers from the ninth precinct responded to st. marks and first avenue where they apprehended him without incident. this case was quickly solved using technology, video canvassing, and then getting that information out to the public. vanessa: investigators said james himself tipped them off to his location. he is now charged with a federal terrorism offense. police in grand rapids, michigan released video today of the fatal shooting of a black man last week.

patrick lyoya's death has sparked protests over racial justice. the video shows a white officer approaching after a traffic stop. then, there's a chase, and they struggle over the officer's taser before lyoya is shot in the back of the head. kent county prosecutors said no decision on charges against the officer will be made until a state police investigation concludes. the cdc today extended a covid mask requirement for air travel and public transit for two more weeks. and a federal covid health emergency was extended for another three months. that continues access to free vaccines, testing, and treatment. the moves come as cases are rising again in parts of the country. a dispute over immigration policy kept trucks backed up along the texas-mexico border today. mexican drivers blocked a key bridge near mcallen after texas republican governor gregg abbott ordered inspections of all incoming trucks.

today, he announced a deal with mexican officials for that one site. gov. abbott: since nuevo leon has increased its security on its side of the borderthe texas department of public saty can return to its previous practice of random searches of vehicles crossing the bridge from nuevo leon. vanessa: the backups are prompting complaints from businesses and the white house. but abbott says he will not end inspections at other crossings, until he gets federal assurances about border security. severe flooding in south africa's durban area has taken over 300 lives. south african president cyril ramaphosa said several days of rain caused a catastrophe of enormous proportions. officials expect the death toll to rise. u.s. federalgencies issued a joint alert today of a potential plot to spread malware in industrial control systems.

one cyber-security firm says liquified natural gas and power plants could be targets. former president trump's white house chief of staff mark meadows is off the voter rolls in the state he once represented in congress, north carolina, and under investigation. state officials announced the move today. documents show meadows lived and voted in virginia last year. he voted in north carolina in 2020, and listed his residence as a mobile home. and in economic news, wholesale prices shot up more than 11% in march, from a year earlier. that's the most on record, and it follows tuesday's news that retail prices jumped 8.5% from a year ago. meanwhile, interest rates on 30-year home mortgages topped 5% last week, the highest since 2018. and this year's inductees to the national recording registry are out, with everything from wu-tang clan's debut album to "moon river" by andy williams.

the library of congress named 25 honorees today. one was queen's operatic rock hit "bohemian rhapsody," from 1975. ♪ the registry will also preserve broadcasts from 9/11 by public radio station wnyc. still to come on the “newshour”" maine passes a law to otect poll workers facing increased threats since the 2020 election. how so-called open source intelligence is combating disinformation about russia's war against ukraine. and people from around the country share their stories of living with alopecia. and much more. >> this is the "pbs newshour" from weta studios in washington and in the west from the walter

cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. judy: unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud have led republican-controlled legislatures to shake up election laws in many states leading into this midterm cycle. as william brangham explains, the people who oversee elections have been caught in the middle. william: judy, in a survey conducted by the brennan center last month, 77% of local election officials said they think threats against them he increased in recent years. 17% say they have been personally threatened themselves because of tir work. in maine, a new law signed by the governor last week makes threats against election workers a misdemeanor. shenna bellowss maine's secretary of state, and she oversees elections there. secretary, great to have you on the newshour. obviously, it sounds like election workers in states all over the country feel that they are under siege in some way.

what kinds of things were you hearing from maine's election workers that made you want to support this law? shenna: so, what we are seeing all across the country is an increase in threats against election workers. and it's really a consequence of the big lie about 2020 and disinformation, misinformation, and malinformati. reuters documented more than 850 threats against election workers nationwide. and, here in maine, we had election workers whose lives were threatened. one election worker who wishes to remain anonymous had a voter come in with a weapon threatening that person. and so election workers asked us to move forward with legislation to protect them to make it a crime, to get -- put it under the jurisdiction of the attorney general, and to create a system for reporting when these incidents happen, and also training to help election workers protect themselves and their polling places. william: i mean, it's got to be,

i don't know what the word is, but incredibly dispiriting that you have to pass a law to try to deter this kind of behavior. shenna: it's very upsetting. i was talking yesterday to a clerk who has been in this work for over 20 years. and she said, when she started out, voters would make her pies. at the polling places on election day, there would be hugging. it would be like a big family reunion. and, unfortunately, that has changed. suddenly, people are blaming her if the results don't go the way they should, or casting aspersion or spreading conspiracies. and i think the atmosphere has changed significantly. and we need to do more to step up to protect our election workers. william: i mean, as you touched on earlier, these threats and intimidation seem to come from this endlessly repeated lie that the 2020 election was stolen and that there is somehow widespread fraud in the elections process, for which there is no evidence,

we should continually say. how do you, as your state's top election official, push back against that incredible tide? shenna: so, suddenly, election administration, which is actually a very routine, very technical, very precise, almost boring job, has become also an exercise in public education. so, first and foremost, we're recruiting members of the public to get involved in our elections as poll workers, as volunteers to see for themselves firsthand how our elections work. and then we talk about the process. today, i was talking to high school students. i was reminding them that, when you go into vote, you state your name. your name gets crossed off on a list, the voter participation list. and then you go in. those ballots are tallied. the number of ballots is compared against the number of names who voted, just all the technical steps, which hopefully you're not yawning as i'm describing them, but are the checks and balances in our elections. and our local election officials

and state election officials work very hard to ensure our elections are free, safe and accessible to all. and we should be very proud of that herin maine and across the country. william: i mean, your former governor paul lepage, who is running to get back into the governor's mansion, has made these same allegations, that there was -- the 2020 election was stolen, that ballots were stuffed in a prior election, that all the laws need to be redone. is there any evidence for the allegations that he has been making? shenna: none, for two reasons. first, it would have been big news if that had happened on election day, especially in a small state like maine. we have election hot lines to take every complaint. and we get the gamut, from somebody who's wearing a t-shirt that is political, to a tabulator needs to be updated or fixed. and so we take all and every election complaint very seriously.

never has there been a complaint that there has been fraud on election day or that people have been bused in. but, second, the processes of checks and balances, of checking the voter participation lists and history, counting the ballots, checking those tallies against the number of people who vote, checking them in the central voter registration system to ensure that everyone who votes is legitimate, and that no one votes twice. and so those things happen on a routine basis. and there are checks and balances at every level. so, it's impossible, absolutely impossible, for that type of -- the suggestion that people get bused into maine to vote, it couldn't happen. william: when he makes those allegations, he also is then calling for a lot of the things that gop-controlled legislatures all over the country have been doing, which is really a tightening of the whole process of voting. i wonder what you make of that process that's happening nationwide. and do you think that there's anything in maine that you could do to even tighten things in an

effective way? shenna: remember, voting is fundamental to everything else that we care about. it's a right guaranteed in our united states constitution and in our state constitutions. and so what we should be doing is doing everything in our power to make voting accessible and ensuring the integrity of our elections. so i'm very concerned about the rollback of voting rights that we're seeing in other states. and i'm proud of other measures we have taken in maine, for example, protecting the chain of custody of ballots and equipment to make sure that partisan actors, third parties like cyber ninjas, can never have access to them. we have also done things like making voter registration easier. we just passed online voter registration a year ago. we just passed a bill the governor signed into law last week, legislation to allow tribal id's to be used as proof of identity for purposes of voter registration. so we are working to make voting more accessible and protecting election integrity. and it's concerning to me that some politicians, in pursuit of

their own gains, are rolling back fdamental constitutional rights of the citizenry. william: all right, shenna bellows, the secretary of state for maine,hank you so much for being here. shenna: thank you. pleasure. ju: it is often said that truth is the first casualty is any war. propaganda, disinformation and outright lies have always been dependable tactics to win hearts and minds. but in a world filled with millions of connected cameras on smartphones, street corners, dashboards and satellites, it's increasingly possible for anyone who's online to root out the real story. it's called open-source intelligence. and our science correspondent, miles o'brien, met some of the

people using it to lift the fog of war in ukraine. miles: it is spring break. and university of alabama birmingham sophomore justin peden is savoring some downtime with friends in the florida panhandle, while thinking about a war more tn 5700 miles away. justin: i wanted to pull the curtain back on the world and just, i'm so sheltered, so many of us are sheltered, and to expose them to what is going on out there. miles: eight years ago, when he was all of 12, russia's first push into ukraine piqued his curiosity. he gravitated virtually to a place he has never been and got to know people he has never met, lots of them. justin: i came to realize that they are just like me. some of them are even adolescents at the time, just like myself. and this is not a story to them. this is their life.

miles: and now it is a big part of his. young justin is a highly regarded practitioner in the fast-growing field of open-source intelligence, or osint. it is information in the public domain hoovered up by armchair analysts and intelligence professionals alike. his intel crab feed has drawn a quarter million followers outside and inside the intelligence community. justin: i never, ever in a million years could have imagined it would be so relevant as it is this current month, last month as well. miles: in addition to cultivating a cadre of 500 sources on the ground in ukraine, mostly through twitter, he combs the internet to gather information from flight and ship trackers, commercial satellite imagery, streaming webcams, and smartphones stills and videos shared on facebook, instagram, and tiktok.

justin: it has been consistently uncovering some of the biggest leads of this conflict in the lead-up to it. miles: nick waters is an ex british army officer and open-source analyst at bellingcat, a netherlands-based nonprofit that harvests osint to publish investigative journalism. nick: with the advent of smartphones, as well as social media and the internet, what we have done is created an incredibly powerful information network that pretty much anyone can use to discover what is happening in the world around them. miles: osint is often useful to determine what did not really happen. right before the invasion, russian separatists posted images purporting to show the aftermath of a fatal bomb attack aimed at them by the ukrainian army in donetsk. media embedded with russian separatist troops swooped in to cover the event. >> the armed forces of ukraine blew up two improvised explosive

devices on this highway. miles: but the online crowd was immediately skeptical of the video. they noticed the vehicles had no license plates, saw no evidence of an explosion, and found the injuries to the victims highly suspicious. nick waters reached out to pathologists and explosive experts. a few days later, a detailed bellingcat report concluded the cars were torched, the supposed shrapnel damage was more likely bullet holes, and the bodies had clear angular cuts and organs removed, evidence of autopsies. nick: so, basically, these people were already dead before they were put in this vehicle. and so what we saw was the attempt by russian-backed separatists to try and fake an incident. these kinds of initial inconsistencies were identified by individuals online, and were then confirmed by experts. miles: russia's attempt to create a false flag pretext for war was not a surprise to those

who investigate disinformation and how it spreads. jane lytvynenko is a senior research fellow at harvard kennedy school's shorenstein center. jane: russia has made multiple attempts to essentially fake pretext for invasion. and through using this open-source intelligence, granular gathering of informion, we are essentially able to say that it is hogwash. miles: the intelligence gathering, fact-checking, and debunking is happening in real time. when this deepfake video of ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy appearing to surrender emerged, it was quickly debunked online, including by zelenskyy himself. the online crowd is also documenting the movement and placement of russian troops, creating something more than just a snapshot of recent history. it is often actionable

intelligence. juliette: it is a war where the crowd is essentially helping to make tactical decisions. miles: juliette kayyem and is a former assistant secretary of the department of homeland security. juliette: people are making decisions about where they want to attack, or where are the russian tanks, or what are we seeing in the skies, based on the guy or the woman on the street with an iphone. we have never seen anything like that. miles: before the advent of this technological revolution, open-source intelligence was limited primarily to professionals collecting and translating foreign media reports. heather: now we are sort of seeing how david can weaponize his cell phone against goliath. miles: heather williams is a former intelligence analyst now at the rand corporation.

heather: there may be times where goliath learns how to fight back against that. but, right now, we are seeing a lot of savvy on the part of the ukrainian people and on the ukrainian government on how to use some of these different tools to their advantage. miles: all of these points of data might help clear the fog of war. the challenge is piecing it all together quickly and accurately. open-source intelligence is not herently intelligent. justin: just because it is a firsthand account does not mean it is truthfully from there. you never know until you go through that process, that verification process. they could live in alabama too. miles: we are seeing a war unfold like never before. what once might have been kept secret is out there for all of us to see. the real secret now? knowing who to trust and what to believe. for the pbs newshour, i am miles o'brien.

judy: alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that leads to hair loss, was brought to the center stage at the oscars when actor will smith slapped comedian chris rock after he made a joke about smith's wife, jada pinkett smith, who suffers from the condition. we wanted to dig deeper into alopecia and what life is like for those who deal with it every day. the newshour's nicole ellis recently spoke to a leading expert to learn more about what we know and don't know about the autoimmune disorder. but, first, we hear from people across the country who live with the disease. ebony: my name is ebony jean. to date, i have lived with alopecia for 27 years now. simon: my name is simon rubenstein. i have had alopecia now for near two decades. i was first diagnosed when ias eight years old. i found hair clumps in mbed.

i found bald spots. i wasn't really sure what to do. deidre: my name is deirdre nero. i turned 45 this year. and i started to have patchy alopecia when i was 21 years old. so it's been over half of my life now. so, this is a wig that i wear. so i'm going to take it off, so you can see what my alopecia looks like. bob: my name is bob flint. i was 3.5 when i was diagnosed with the disease. and, frankly, i don't remember. my folks, i'm sure, told me. but that is how i found out. jonelle: my name is jonelle massey. and my daughter's name is kayla massey. kayla has been living with alopecia since she was around four years old. she is now 10, so, six years. ebony: growing up, dealing with hair loss, a lot of people mistreated me for my appearance because they asked so many questions regarding my condition, and they made me feel less than, because i know

dealing with hair, being a woman, a lot of people use that as a w of defining our beauty. simon: it is very difficult. children can be very mean, very hard on the playground or in the cafeteria. i experienced people ripping my hats off or just staring at me. deidre: didn't know a sine other person in the world that had alopecia. i thought i was the only one on earth that was dealing with this, or at least it felt like that, even though i knew -- intellectually, i knew that that was not true. i felt very alone and had a hard time dealing with it. so, i hid it a lot for many years. jonelle: i was caught off-guard. and i was very emotional. so, we were constantly trying to make sure that we were not projecting feelings onto our children, who were really young, and not experiencing some of those emotions that older teenagers and young -- adults go through with the grief and the loss and the emotional toll that grief takes.

bob: the biggest issue is, we are regular people. we don't have hair, but that doesn't change us. that doesn't make us slower or faster. it is just hair until you start picking on me as a kid or laughing at me or pointing me out in the crowd. and that is where it hurts. it is in the head. it is clearly in the head. it is the psychological impact of the disease more than anything else. ebony: i would like people to take away the fact that hair does not define any of us. and alopecia may not be life-threatening, but it is life-altering. it affects a person's livelihood, as well as their mental health. so, it is just time for everyone to show a little more respect for the alopecia community, and to educate themselves more on the condition and how they can support us. deidre: i'm an attorney. i'm an immigration attorney in miami, and i have my own law firm. and i have had colleagues ask me after they saw a picture of me without hair if i would be able to handle the case or not because i was sick. it is draining and exhausting to

have to constantly be dealing with it all the time. and so just to be kind to people and maybe a little more understanding. jonelle: empathy is different than sympathy and the power of pity, but your encouragement and your validation that we do have sad days and we do have happy days, but we are going to be there nevertheless, that we are still blessed. nicole: for a closer look at alopecia and the different ways the disease can affect people, i am joined by dr. brett king. he's an associate professor of dermatology at yale university's school of medicine. dr. king, for those who have never heard of alopecia, what exactly is it and what do we know about who it impacts? dr. king: yes. so, it is an important question. alopecia just refers to hair loss. and that means hair loss broadly. so, that includes male pattern

hair loss, female pattern hair loss, alopecia areata, and then other forms of hair loss. what we have had a lot of attention to in the media recently is the form of hair loss called alopecia areata, which is an autoimmune form of hair loss that affects people of all ages, all races, though it typically occurs for the first time in the first, say, 40 or 50 years of life. but, again, it is an autoimmune form of hair loss, so distinctly different than, say, male pattern hair loss. nicole: so, you mentioned alopecia areata, but are there different types, or what are the different types of alopecia? dr. king: yes, so alopecia areata most commonly is characterized by a spot or a few spots of hair loss. and these can be the size of a nickel. these could be the size of a half-dollar. they areften round or oval-shaped patches of hair loss, typically involving the

scalp. but they can involve an eyebrow, the eyelashes, the beard area in men. and, again, this is the most common presentation of alopecia areata. of course, there can be more severe presentations as well, where people lose 50% or 80% or 100% of their scalp hair. the folks with the most severe presentations are often said to have apecia totalis or alopecia universalis. but, again, it is all alopecia areata. nicole: how does this disease progress? what does it do to your body? and is there treatment for it? dr. king: again, going back to the most typical presentation, that is, somebody who develops a spot or a few spots of hair loss, this will be what majority of people ever have with alopecia areata. one of the menacing things about this disease, though, is that it is very unpredicble.

and so we don't know who is going to be the person that, in three weeks, three months, or three years, those two spots are going to turn into complete scalp hair loss or complete scalp hair loss, in addition to loss of eyebrows and eyelashes. and it is that unpredictability which makes -- or is part of what makes the disease so difficult to deal with. what is really exciting, getting to your question of, are there treatments, what is really exciting is that, up until recently, there was not thought to be a very good treatment for people who have severe alopecia areata, people who have lost 50% or 80% or 100% of their scalp hair. one of the really exciting developments is, just two weeks ago, a paper was published in the new england journal of medicine showing a new medicine called baricitinib that grows

hair in up to 40% of people with the most severe form of alopecia areata. and so, indeed, what was once something that was thought to be untreatable, we're completely changing that paradigm, and, indeed, there is hope for the future for people with this disease. nicole: while the is some progress, there are still many people who experience alopecia or hair loss in severe forms. what do we know about the impact this disease can have on the mental health of people who are diagnosed with it? dr. king: it is such an important issue to address. alopecia areata is very often a devastating disease to suffer from. i think all you have to do is understand what it would -- or try to imagine, rather, what it would be like to wake up to all

of your hair on your pillowcase. it's confusing, at the very least, and, again, wildly devastating to just imagine what that feels like. your identity can be erased in a moment. people with alopecia areata or severe alopecia areata are often thought to be sick, right? this is an appearance that is easily mistaken for somebody with cancer undergoing chemotherapy. and so the impact of this disease on quality of life, on personal identity, on cultural identity is tremendous. and so it really highlights why we need to keep pushing to make this disease better and to find effective treatments. nicole: dr. brett king, associate professor of dermatology at yale university's school of medicine, thank you for joining us. dr. king: well, thank you so

much for the opportunity. judy: more than 70 million americans have an arrest or criminal record, and, in many cases, that prevents them from getting housing, work, and reconnecting with their families after incarceration. those challenges are the subject of a newshour documentary premiering tonight on pbs called "searching for justice: life after lockup." it is produced by our mike fritz and frank carlson and hosted by amna nawaz. here's a quick look. michael: so, i was released on february 10, 2020. and it was like around 7:00. [cheering] michael: and when i get to the door, the first person i see is my daughter. it was surreal. amna: after more than two

decades in prison, michael plummer is released under a washington, d.c., law that allows some prisoners who committed crimes as juveniles to be freed early. michael: i was just thinking, i'm finally free. what is the next step in my life? you got to get a birth certificate. you got to get a social security card. so, i was gone for 23 years. so, and my -- and both parents passed away. so, these documents was lost. so, i had to go and get them again. this felony is -- it's over the top of your head, right, not having an established credit long enough, so i'm not able to go and purchase a house or get the assistance i need. it is just always a burden. they are letting you know that you made a mistake, and, for this mistake, that these burdens are going to be placed in front of you. judy: and amna joins me now. amna, you were telling us you have been reporting on issues around incarceration for years.

what is it that you were trying to capture with this documentary? amna: judy, you're absolutely right. and you know better than anyone our entire newshour has been covering stories around incarceration for years. but stories of incarceration are actually more familiar to americans than many people know. i mean, one out of every two americans has a loved one or knows someone who's been incarcerated. but, oftentimes, those incarceration stories are about life inside prison or about the time that the person gets out. for most formerly incarcerated people, the day they get out is the beginning of their story. that's when a vast array and a web of problems and issues arise. and so that's what we wanted to look into, along with our colleagues producers mike fritz and frank carlson, who a the driving forces behind this documentary. that's where we wanted to focus. the u.s. locks up more people than any other country in the world. 600,000 people get out every year. they did their time. now they're free. now what? so we look at the lives of four people to try to answer that question. judy: so, tell us a little bit about some of the people you follow, the kind of hurdles they

encountered when they were out of prison, and we should say a lot of this during the pandemic. amna: that's right. well, we just heard from one of those people, michael plummer. he was just a kid, judy, when he was incarcerated, he was 17. he was convicted for murder. and he wasn't released until he was a 40-year-old man. and one thing he said really stuck with me. he said, i feel like i will always be in some kind of incarceration, even though i'm free. and what he was talking about was, even when you get out, on the outside, you are met with this system, more than 40,000 laws and rules and regulations that really limit how formerly incarcerated people can work and move and stay even with their own family members, how they can parent, how they can even try to find footing and reconnect with family and communities and all those support networks that we all need. so, michael is now wking two jobs. he's really trying to cobble his life together, trying to reconnect with a daughter who

was just a baby when he went into prison and his new granddaughter. you will meet another man named michael cevallo, who really tried hard after he was first incarcerated as a teenager as well to stay out, but every time found a problem, trying to get a job, finding stable housing, and ended up back in prison. he's now been incarcerated for more than his life than he's been free. you will meet a woman named rachel schuyler, who had an incredibly abusive and traumatic childhood. she lost custody of one of her children during her last conviction and is now fighting to get her daughter back. and you will also meet a woman named renee wyatt, who is kind of the exception to the rule, in that she got out and she stayed out. and she is now trying to counsel other formerly incarcerated women to make sure they stay out too. but, judy, this sociologist we talk to, a man named reuben jonathan miller, says it best. he says, the system really doe try to keep people from making their way back into society. judy: and you were telling us, amna, you also looked at their backgrounds, the kinds of things that led them to be incarcerated

in the first place. amna: that's right, judy. we had long, intimate conversations with them. we talked about the fact that every single one of them had a parent who was incarcerated or had struggled with addiction at some point. and that's the data come to life. we know that people who grow up with a parent incarcerated are more likely themselves to be incarcerated. and our system does more to reinforce some of those patterns than to break them. so, we hope that people will watch. we hope they will get to know some of these people to better understand how the system works, and to maybe ask the question if the system can and should be better than it is. judy: well, shining a light into an area that gets so little attention. amna nawaz, we are really looking forward to seeing this. the documentary is called "searching for justice: life after lockup." it airs tonight at 10:00 eastern/9:00 central on pbs. very much looking forward to seeing that. and that's the "newshour" for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you, please stay safe, and we'll see you soon.

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