>> good evening. i'm geoff bennett. tonight, decision day in france. vors vote to keep emmanuel macron i power, despite a surge from his opponent. and we look at what is behind the recent spike in gun violence across the country. and we talk with a 100-year-old retired park ranger about the importance of telling everyone story, and her endless curiosity. >> i felt i was jumping out of bed every morning, wondering what it would be like. i still am. jeff: all of that and the

headlines on pbs news weekend. >> major funding for pbs news weekend has been provided by -- >> our u.s.-based customer service team can help you find the plan that fits you. visit consumer cellular.tv. >> and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. and friends of the newshour.

this program was made possible by the corporation for public and, and for contributions to your pbs station by viewers like you. thank you. geoff: emmanuel macron has won a second term, defeating his challenger, but the margin is projected to be closer than the first face-off in 2017, when he won by more than 30 percentage points. we have a report from paris on what led to his victory and his opponents stronger showing. >> marine le pen said she was feeling serene, despite being high -- behind in the opinion polls. she prepared like never before

but she was dependent on a low tuout, and reliant on the extension of people w could not bring themselves to vote for the sitting president. she has appealed to the poorer, working-class families with pledges to bring down the cost of living but promises to be a disruptive influence in the eu has alienated those who want international stability while the war is close by in ukraine. emmanuel macron is painting himself as an international statesman who can offer substance abroad and be all things to everyone at home. in the second round of french elections, most voters traditionally hold their noses while casting their ballots because they have to vote tactically and not with their hearts. reluctantly, librarian caroline voted for macron. >> i voted for macron, not out of passion, but just to prevent

fueling the war like the one you had during the trump presidency. reporter: another did what she believed was her civic duty. >> i voted for someone i disagree with. reporter: so you voted for macron >> yes. reporter: how concerned are you about the prospect of his presidency? >> for the first time, i am very scared. reporter: not as scared as the french muslims, who had promised to banned headscarves. at the mosque in paris, community leaders showed disdain for le p abundantly clear. how afraid are you of a le pen presidency? >> for me, i cannoenvision it

but if she was elected, it would be catastrophic. reporter: this man is director of the mosque and speaks on behalf of all of france's muslims. >> she nourishes, she carries values that are racist and divisive. reporter: this is sadly one of the most poor and diverse districts in france. the deputy mayor is a socialist of turkish heritage and the area is hostile to macron, but she says he has to be elected. >> it is not a vote for his policies, but a rallying call for the republic and against the national front. geoff: it is good to have you with us. this campaign was beset by apathy but in the end, macron looks to have gotten the clear

victory. how did he pull it off? >> this has been a vote for the soul of france. 58% for macron, 42% for le pen. but this is not a triumph. he is here tonight, talking with the nation and he recognized that people did not vote for his program. they just could not stomach the thought of marine le pen and her right wing ideas being in the 80's a palace where the president lives. so he knows this is a country divided and he knows there is an awful lot of work to do to heal the country and try to appeal to her supporters, to prove he is president of all of france. what this means is continuation

of stability. it is important for nato because it means that will be no disruption. that is what would have happened if she got into the palace. it is also very bad news for the kremlin because he would have liked for her to win because it would have caused chaosere. geoff: thank you so much for that report, malcolm. russian shelling continued in ukraine today, despite calls for a truce in observance of orthodox easter. this prevented another attempts to open a safe passage. volodymyr zelenskyy pressed the west for more powerful weapons but antony blinken and lloyd austin are expected to become the first top u.s. officials to travel to ukraine since the war started. joining us is a special

correspondent. night has fallen where you are. give us a sense of what you have seen since arriving this afternoon. rerter: we are in one of the largest cities in ukraine southwest of kyiv on the river. it is a natural burial -- barrier against attack. the bulk of the conflict is to the east of where we are and on the drive down we passed throu dozens of military checkpoints, trenches dug in the last couple of months to prepare essentially for any fallback positions the ukrainians might have to make. and where we were yesterday, a city to the northeast of kyiv, the devastation was extraordinary. the number of buildings completely obliterated by shelling artillery.

geoff: and we do not have any information except that blinken and austin have been invited to ukraine today. give us a sense of how that would work, bringing a trip like that together. reporter: these kinds of trips are under embargo until they arrive in the country but in terms of logistics, errors -- there is a no-fly zone. we would not expect any government aircraft coming in so they might have taken the same route, the train through poland towards kyiv, and overnight train. pretty comfortable, traveling by road at night is challenging and doing it by the daytime, it is a long way from the polish border. geoff: special correspondent, thank you for that update.

the january 6 congressional committee upcoming hearings will tell a story thawill blow the roof off the house, according to jamie raskin, speaking to nbc news last week. raskin says the public hearing starting in june will provide evidence that trump and his allies helped coordinate the january 6 attack as they tried to prevent joe biden from taking office. we turn to the congressional reporter for the guardian, hugo, it is great to have you with us. we learned this week from a court document filed that republican lawmakers including matt gaetz and jimordan called trump in december 2020, plotting ways and trying to find any way

to overturn the election and prevent joe biden from taking office. what more can you tell us? reporter: the key point is the meeting trump had with republicans, big trump allies on the hill and they talked about how to stop the certification of joe biden, and they went back and forth and at some point mark meadows and others learned the efforts to violate this are unlawful and yet they pursue the strategy anyway. geoff: so the question about if it is all connected, there is testimony about the rally that the president had at the .

present trump said he wanted a peaceful rally but he said the ad-libbed phrase washat he told his supporters to go march 2 the capital. testimony says that might not have been ad-libbed at all, it might have been planned. >> members of congress wanted to put maximum pressure, that was the aim. so the question is, it did trump coordinate with members of congress and with the oath keepers or an cowboy militia groups that ended up storming the capital, the coordinated assault that was preplanned and the nexus of it seems to go back to trump and that is the point of the investigation. geoff: will the committee and

hearings connect that. -- connect those dots or just leave us with more questions? >> i think it is both. it's about advancing the narrative and their theory about what happened january 6. the point of the january 6 commtee is to throw the facts out for americans to think about and decide, do i want to be trump to be on the ballot next time? it could shock the public into inking what was really unlawful. geoff: your reporting has been fantasticnd i appreciate you coming in and sharing your time with us.

in today's headlines, wildfires in nebraska this weekend came -- claims the life of one person. wind conditions have eased today, helping firefighters battle dangerous places in new mexico, arizona, and colorado but thousands of acres are still burning. thousands remain uer evacuation orders across multiple states. a woman on three childrenre dead after a two story row house caught fire in philadelphia overnight. of the people inside, there was only one survivor who escaped after jumping out of the building. the cause of the fire is under investigation. it's the latest twist in the contentious contest for the ohio gop senate nomination. former president donald trump held a rally last night for his

pick in that race, author jd vance. that's despite vance having once called trump “america's hitler" during the 2016 campaign. last night, trump addressed vance's past remarks. trump: he's a guy o said some bad [beep] about me, he did. he did. but, you know what? every one of the others did, also. in fact, if i went by that standard, i don't know if i would've ever endorsed anybody in the country, you want to know. geoff: and, on saturday former utah senator orrin hatch died in salt lake city. hatch was the longest serving republican senator in u.s. history. orrin hatch served in the u.s. senate for 42 years, from 1977 to 2019. he was an ardent conservative consistently voting against gay

rights, abortion and stricter gun laws, while reaching across the aisle on issues including aids education, the children's health insurance program, and the dream act. in his last te speech, hatch reflected on his willingness to compromise, including with his longtime friend, the late senator ted kennedy. >> could two people with polar opposite beliefs and from vastly different walks of life come together as often as teddy and i did for the good of the country? or are we too busy attacking each other to even consider friendship with the other side? geoff: orrin hatch once ran for the presidency in 2000, in a campaign that never gained traction. before retiring, he was awarded the nation's highest civilian honor, the presidential medal of freedom, by former president donald trump. outside of his career, hatch was a man of faith, a devout mormon. a prolific musician, too, he wrote and recorded hundreds of songs. the hatch foundation remembering him upon his death as “a man of wisdom, kindness, character, and compassion.” orrin hatch was 88 years old.

still to come on "pbs news weekend", as gun violence in america continues to surge, we look at what's behind the statistics. ranger, betty reid soskin. -- and, our "weekend spotlight", with 100-year-old retired park ranger, betty reid soskin. announcer: this is pbs news weekend from washington, home of the pbs news weekend. geoff: gun violence is surging across the u.s. so far this year, there have already been 154 mass shootings, and new data shows the leading cause of death among children in 2020 was gun-related injuries. for more on what's behind these numbers, i spoke with jenner mascia, she is a reporter for "the trace," a nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom focused on america's gun violence crisis. jennifer mascia, thanks so much for being with us. and three mass shootings last

weekend alone underscored what has been a month-long spate of gun violence across this country. based on your research, your data analysis, what accounts for it? jennifer: well, we have seen a surge in gun sales that accelerated greatly during the pandemic. a lot of americans, their ideas of security and safety are wrapped up in firearm ownership. we actually had 12 mass shootings last weekend, the three that made the news, and there were nine others where four or more people were shot in a single incident. this is ppening earlier than we usually see it. two years ago, right at the onset of the pandemic, there were 88 mass shootings at this time. january through april. 2021, last year there were 155. that is a big leap. this year so far, we have had 147. so it seems that 2020 was something of a turning point and the violence is happening earlier and earlier in the year now. geoff: so gun violence is going

up, but the crime rate is going down. that, to me, seems counterintuitive. how do you account for those two trends? jennifer: yes. all types of crime actually are going down, but gun violence is going up, probably because there are 400 million guns in civilian hands in this country. it is simple math. the more guns that are around, the more people are going to use them. geoff: last week, as you know, georgia became the 25th state to eliminate the need for a concealed care permit. so that means in half of the country now have you can carry a concealed gun with no permit and no training. how does that compound the issue? jennifer: if there are no permits, they can't really check to see if that person is legally carrying. so you have people going out with guns in public who are not trained and don't have that extra layer of vetting, and we've seen law enforcement across the country come out against these bills. and it just doesn't seem to matter to the lawmakers, and they're the ones who have to deal with it on the ground. geoff: i want to ask you about this new study by the university

of michigan. researchers there who found thag kids in 2020 was gun-related injuries. kids obviously can't buy firearms, but they're still getting access to them. jennifer: they're getting access because in most of the country, there are no laws that criminalize leaving guns accessible to children. so you have a situation where there are millions of guns in households and there is no safety training that goes with that. there's no mandatory class about how to keep a gun secure and safe, and there's no laws, really. in 2020, gun-related injuries became the leading cause of death among kids. that's actually in line with the huge jump we saw in gun deaths between 2019 and 2020. it put us above 45,000 gun deaths in a single year. now we have never even breached 40,000 before that. it was a huge jump and it was driven largely by homicides. geoff: so gun control is not

movingeally anywhere. it is entirely stalled. the biden administration has talked about providing more funding for community intervention. the president signed a bill regulating so-called ghost guns. what needs to happen to sort of move the needle here? jennifer the most successful gun : violence prevention strategy would be controlling access to firearms. unfortunately, federal background checks only cover 78 percent of gun sales, and that's written into our federal law. so you have almost a quarter of gun sales happening legally with no background check. states who are taking it upon themselves to craft laws. but the problem is if the state next door has weak gun laws, you can just go get a gun there. geoff: jennifer, thanks for your time and for your insights. finally tonight, our "weekend spotlight" -- a couple weeks ago in richmond, california, a national park service ranger finally hung up her flat hat. it was a retirement that came much

later than most of her colleagues. i recently spoke with 100-year-old betty reisoskin about her life and time as a park ranger. betty reid soskin had the distinction of being the oldest active national park ranger in the country -- until her retirement late last month at the age of 100. >> on behalf of all of the staff, i wanted to say thank you so much. geoff: she led public programs at the rosie the riveter world war ii homefront national historical park in richmond, california, a job she held for 16 years. ranger betty, you started working as a park ranger at the age of 84, which is remarkable in itself given that you started a new career in your 80's. what drew you to the job? betty i was actually working for : the state of california.

i was working as a field reprentative for a member of the california state assembly, dion aroner. after she term limited out, loni hancock. so i was already on site. so it was pretty easy for me to go from one meeting to another. geoff: the park pays homage to rosie the riveter, the iconic symbol representing the civilian women who worked in ipyards and factories, taking the vacated jobs of men duri world war ii.war ii. ranger betty says -- world war ii. ranger betty says she worked to make sure visitors understood “rosie the riveter is an important story,” but not the only one worthy of attention. betty the story was incomplete : as it stood. the story would be the, in part, of 120,000 japanese who were interned during the war, for three and a half to five years. it was also the story of port chicago - an explosion of two kaiser ships, which blew up, and blew out the lives of 320 men - 202 of them were black.

there were so many stories. so, i was really interested in seeing that the park covered all of them. geoff: you have said that you have lived lots and lots of lives. you grew up in a creole black family in oakland, california. you later worked as a file clerk, at a segregated union shop. you and your late husband founded one of the first black owned record shops, which was in existence for nearly 75 years. you're also a mother to four children you were a songwriter you were active in politi throughout your entire life. how has all of that shaped you? betty: i have never known how that happens. [laughter] i know that, had i grown up knowing what was ahead, i never would have been able to do it. but, i grew up with a sense of surprise, and also felt that i was jumping out of bed every morning, wondering what was life going to be like? i still am. i'm still jumping out of bed, trying to figure out what life is like.

geoff: since becoming a ranger, accolades have poured in, including from then-president barack obama in 2015. and a california middle school was recently renamed in her honor. so what's next for you? what are you going to do in retirement? betty: i have no idea. i do not even want to know. i want to go on being surprised. geoff: ranger betty, thank you so much for your time and for your service to this country. deeply appreciate it. bey: thank you very much. geoff: and that's pbs news weekend for tonight. join us online and tomorrow evening. i'm geoff bennett. for all of us at pbs news weekend, thanks for spending part of your sunday with us. announcer: major funding for pbs news weekend has been provided by --

and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. this program was made possible for the corporation for public broadcasting, and for contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.] announcer: aly is made possible .

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