judy: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. on the "newshour" tonight. the united states and its allies increase arms treatments to ukraine. worries about russia's reaction. then wildfires search across the american planes and the southwest. we are seeing thousands -- forcing thousands to flee. and the impact on enrollment as colleges drop tests. >> students from lower income did not take the test. it is a big divide. >> all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour.

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engaged communities. >> and with the ongoing sport of these individuals and 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: the war in ukraine is accelerating in the eastern donbas region. today ministers from dozens of nations met in germany to coordinate efforts to send more arms to ukraine.

american leaders changed their tone from one of just helping ukraine fend off russia to helping them defeat and weaken russia for the long term. reporter: the and the open fields of ukraine's eastern donbas, ukrainian soldiers take aim at russian positions along the ridge. this terrain will help determine the war's fate. as russian tanks try to take advantage of flatland to break through outgunned ukrainian lines. that is what the u.s. and more than 40 countries meeting today in germany are trying to prevent. senior u.s. military officials fear time is not on ukraine's side. they are trying to accelerate arms shipments. secretary of defense lloyd austin said ukraine was targeting russia's milita with a long-term goal. >> we would like to make sure they do not have the same type of capability to bully their neighbors that we saw at the

outset of this conflict. >> to target russians in the donbas, the u.s. is sending more american artillery systems to supplement the soviet era artillery that ukraine currently uses. >> the fight in the east is open terrain first and foremost being an artillery duel. >> mike vickers is a former under secretary of defense for intelligence, and cia officer who helped design the 1980s afghan resistance against a much larger soviet occupation force. he says ukraine needs and the west is providing more russian-made air defense systems and hand-held american drones that can identify and target russian soldiers and tanks. >> if this is a protracted conflict, we're going to need to continue to supply the ukrainians. that is easier to do with western and u.s. weapons. reporter: but so far the biden administration has resisted calls to provide more advanced rocket systems whose range is long enough to reach inside russia. you a higher volume of fire.

out-ranging your opponent or at least being able to range like he can is a good thing. reporter: do you think the u.s. is doing enough to allow ukraine victory? which is a word that ukrainian and increasingly u.s. officials are using. >> we are getting there. time is of the essence in this eastern battle. i think we lost three to four weeks that we might have started this supply in train earlier than we have. we just need to put pedal to the metal right now. reporter: ukraine also needs more nato supply tanks and today germany agreed for the first time to provide its tanks in what cistine lambrecht has called a generational shift. >> the point is that the support for ukraine should now be provided quickly, that it should be effective, and that above all it should be coordinated with allied partners. reporter: but russia has made

clear arming ukraine carries risks including nuclear war, as russian foreign minister sergei lavrov mentioned on state tv. >> the risks are very, very significant. i would very much not like these risks to be artificially inflated, and there are many who want them. the danger is serious, it is real, it cannot be underestimated. reporter: but it was russia who nearly created a nuclear crisis in ukraine. today international atomic energy agency officials got their first look at chernobyl since russian forces occupied the site, and left. director general rafael grossi paid respects to those who died when the reactor exploded 36 years ago today. d called recent russian moves "very dangerous." >> what we had was nuclear safety situation that was not normal, that could have developed into an accident. reporter: in europe, russia is -- an energy crisis is already developing. today russian energy giant gazprom notified poland and

bulgaria it would halt gas imports after they refused to pay for them in rubles. prices spiked, but the polish energy infrastructure minister said warsaw was transitioning away from russian energy. >> this is a turning point that has been accelerated by the russians today. russians are speeding it up. reporter: meanwhile in moscow, 20-feet apart, president vladimir putin met with un secretary general antonio gueterres. the un says putin agreed, quote, in principle, to allow civilians to leave their final holdout in mariupol: the sprawling azovstal plant. that's where civilians like this woman today are still trapped by russians forcing the population to submit or starve. the u.n. predicted 8.3 million, nearly 20% of the country, would become refugees. the victims of a war, that even u.s. weapons cannot end.

for the pbs newshour, i'm nick schifrin. stephanie: we will return to the full program after the latest headlines. the u.s. senate today confirmed leo brainard as bryce chair -- lael brainard as vice chair of the federal reserve. efforts to wrap up debates on lisa cook's nomination failed. republicans have questioned her experience. vice president kamala harris has tested positive for covid-19. the white house said today she has no symptoms, but will self-isolate and continue working. aides also said she has not had close contact with president biden in recent days. the cdc n estimates that three of every four children in the u.s. have been infected by covid. that follows a dramatic jump in cases during the omicron variant's spread.

today's finding came as the white house moved to make paxlovid pills more widely available. they can sharply reduce serious illness and deaths from covid. >> we're opening up a federal pharmacy channel and what that means is pharmacies can order directly from the federal government. currently there are about 20,000 sites that carry paxlovid. we expect with this change we'll very quickly get to 30,000 and within the next coup of weeks i expect us to get to about 40,000 sites. stephanie: meanwhile in china, officials in beijing erected more barriers around locked down sections of housing. mass testing also got underway in 11 of the capital city's 16 districts. we'll look at the pandemic in this country, after the news summary. north korea's leader kim jong-un is vowing to speed development of nuclear weapons and use them preemptively if provoked. kim spoke as missiles rolled through pyongyang in a military parade. the north fired a missile higher

and farther than ever before. a russian court has fined meta for what it calls lgbt propaganda. the penalty of 4 million rubles is the equivalent of $54,000. the court acted under a law that bans the promotion of nontraditional sexual relations to minors. back in this country the u.s. supreme court today considered the trump era policy that makes asylum seeking migrants wait in mexico. president biden suspended the program, the lower courts reinstated it after texas and missouri filed suit. the high court's decision is expected by late june. anti-semitic incidents in the united states hit an all-time high in 2021. that's according to the antidefamation league which says it counted more than 2700 cases of harassment, vandalism, a assault. that is up 34% from 2020. the adls has incidents spiked

during the israel hamas war last may. oklahoma governor kevin stitt signed a bill banning non-binary gender markers on birth certificates, becoming the first state to do so despite oklahoma's department of health agreeing to issue a non-binary gender designation in response to a civil case. currently those designations are allowed in 15 states as well as this writ of columbia. los angeles county sheriff alex via nueva is not only disputing allegations he covered up a case of inmate abuse. he has launched a criminal investigation into the los angeles times journalist who reported his intvenvme in the lethe los angeles times executie editor condemned the sheriffs action calling it an illegal attempt to criminalize news reporting. and production of conventional lightbulbs in the united states will end january 1 in favor of led bulbs lasting 25 to 50 times

longer. the u.s. energy department will allow sales of less efficient bulbs until the summer of 2023. then president trump canceled a similar phase out in 2019. still to come, however of powerful republicans -- how a group of powerfu republicans -- fraud in the 2020 election. a columbia university professor shares are brief but spectacular take on black life in literature and 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. >> let's look at the late news on covid and what is needed now. i spoke earlier today with president biden's chief medical advisor dr. anthony fauci as part of e upcoming festival

for a kt cs nine, the pbs station in sttle are full discussion can be seen during the festival which runs may 3 to the seventh. thank you for joining us. so much to talk about. i want start with new data that we are learning about about how many americans have been infected with the covid virus . among all americans, and i think this dates back to february 60% almost had been infected and among children, 75% had been infected. first of all, were you surprised by these numbers? and second of all, was this -- does this in your mind change the way there should be an official response to the to the virus? dr. fauci: i wasn't terribly surprised virus now almost two and a half years so the idea if you look at the antibody test in

blood which determines infecti is not surprising that proportion of population i think it's important to realize that because although immunity following infection and recovery does not last indefinitely it does give a degree of protection against severe disease if reinfected. so if you add up the people who have been infected plus the people who have been vaccinated and hopefully boosted, you have a rather substantial proportion of us population that has some degree immunity residual -- degree of immunity that is residual, eier from prior infection, or hopefully people who are getting vaccinated and boosted. we have 626% -- 66% of the total population has been vaccinated and about half have been boosted. judy: we live in theortheast

of the united states. we are hearing about court cases here including prominent members of the public, including lawmakers. the vice president of the united states. many of them are having mild or no symptoms at all. what does that tell us about how many more americs who are not getting tested is regularly as these individuals are who may just be walking around with covid that are not aware of it? dr. fauci: i think you just hit the nail on thhead because i am virtually certain we are undercounting the number of infections just for the same reason. there are many people who i know myself, friends and others who get infected, do an antigen test, do not get symptom, but do not report it to anyone, so the fact is there are infections not getting centrally reported. there is an undercount.

we should do better than that. we should be able to track them much better, but the good news is what you mentioned and you are absolutely correct. the relationship or ratio between hospitalizations and infections is such that we are not seeing a comparae increase proportionately of hospitalizations. unlike what was happening with delta, when as the cases went up , hospitalizations also went way up. dr. fauci: -- judy: should we have stricter reporting requirements so the country can keep that or track of how many cases there are? dr. fauci: i would like to see that. i would like to see a way where when you get an antigen test you can put it in an app, some way of recording it. it would give us a much better understanding of the scope of any rebound, even though it is a mild rebound. we would really like to know what the accurate counting of cases is. judy: there has been a fair

amount of discussion lately about a treatment, a drug called paxlovid. there has been a fair amount of confusion about who should be taking it, who should not. there is a sense it is not available to many people who need it. it does require a prescription. we are told it is available, but it is not reaching everyone who needs it. what should we know about this drug? dr. fauci: we are under utilizing what is a highly effective therapy. in clinical trials, when you looked at the proportion of individuals who were protected from getting on and progressing to hospitalizations, it was close to 90%. we need to do more. there are a lot of doses available. we have sites where you can as we say test to treat, which means you can come into a place, get tested, and if you are

tested immediately put on therapy if you are eligible. with tens of thoands more of thes drugs, namely paxlovid, there are sites where we started with 27ites that had paxlovid available and we are increasing that -- with 20,000 sites that had paxlovid available and we are going to 40,000, doubling the number of sites wherue arcaman geest i and clinics as l as something that is important that you alluded to, is educating the public and the health care providers that this is something that is available and that should be much more widely used. judy: let me broaden this out and asked, here we are. it is the end of april, the spring of 2022. how close are we to the end of the pandemic? dr. fauci: that is an unanswerable question. i do not want to be evasive but let me tell you why i am giving that answer.

we are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase. namely, we don't have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. we are at a low level right now. so are we out of the pandemic phase in this country? we are. what we hope to do, i don't believe and i have spoken about this widely, we are not going to eradicate this virus. if we can keep that level very low and intermittently vaccinate people, and i don't know how often that would have to be , judy. that might be every year that might be longer in order to keep that level low. but right now, we are not in the pandemic phase in this country. pandemic means a wide spread throughout the world infection that spreads rapidly among people. so if you look at the global situation, there is no doubt this pandemic is still ongoing. judy: thank you very much.

dr. fauci: thank you, good to be with you. judy: firefighters in the american west and in the plains are battling nearly a dozen large fires that have burned over 340 square miles in six states recently. more than 3,500 firefighters and support personnel are on the fire lines. stephanie sy has a report on the particular challenges the fires are now posing in arizona, new mexico, and nebraska . >> when fueled fires -- wind fueled fires continue to ravage parts of the southwest in what experts say is an unusually early start to the season. more than 150,000 acres have been decimated and thousands of residents in arizona, new mexico , and nebraska have had to evacuate in the past few weeks. in new mexico 20 wildfires

continue to burn fueled by prolonged and severe drought. the calf canyon fire northeast of santa fe has charred more than 200 homes. governor michelle lujan grisham of new mexico has issued a state of emergency. >> there is no reason for us to lose anyone because they made a decision to stay even in a mandatory evacuation order. please leave. we want y to be safe. this is a state that cares about you. reporter: winds are picking up again today. evacuees are becoming weary. >> the main problem you have, shelter. i cannot stay here forever. as the weather gets hot, i have two cats in there.

reporter: in northern arizona, evacuation orders were lifted, but not before the massive tunnel fire destroyehundreds of properties on the outskirts of flagstaff one of the biggest casualties for the region, the sunset crater volcano national monument, which officials said was burned in its entirety. the visitor center and its relics survived. >> the environment is not very friendly. it was blowing 70 miles an hour, rocks were hitting everybody in the face. it was very smoky. and we're working directly in the heat, these guys were working incredibly hard. >> meanwhile, in nebraska a wildfire claimed the life of a retired fire chief on his way to help fight the fire. 15 others were injured. the blaze near the border with kansas has mostly consumed prairie and farmland. ranchers have reported losing hundreds of livestock. >> these are some of the same guys that have donated in the past to go to the other fire relief deals. they are now the victims. so you see someone who's been wiped out, i have friends that lost their ranch and they're

-- all their feed. reporter: high winds in nebraska, expected to gust up to 35 miles per hour and low humidity will challenge firefighters today. typically wildfire season begins in t late spring, but extremely dry conditions and rising temperatures, tell-tale symptoms of climate change, are fueling these conditions for longer stretches of the year. for the pbs newshour, i'm stephanie sy. judy: the unfounded belief that the 2020 election was rigged has become an important force in american politics, especially in this year's republican primaries. john yang has more on what the nonprofit news organization pro publica and pbs' "frontline" found about how the myth of the stolen election grew and spread.

reporter: judy, the joint investigation uncovered a trove of internal emails and other documentation. the news organizations say lawyers, political operatives and other trump supporters spread a number of theories even knowing some of them had been discredited and even used them as the basis for lawsuits. propublica reporter doug bock clark worked on the story. you write that this is the case of little untruths adding up to the big lie, moving from the fringes to the mainstream of the republican party. how did this happen? >> the big lie did not magically appear. there had to be people who thought of the idea that spread through republican legislatures to the public and the white house. what we found was that there was a small group of people who were very engaged with searching for what they called evidence for the big lie. during a reporting we found that

actually there was a pattern of them being told this evidence was not valid. they still kept on going and promoting the stuff anyway. that had a huge impact. polls show that two thirds of republican believe in the big lie and millions believe that voting machines were hacked by foreign governments. reporter: the allegation that voting machines between georgia and michigan were switching votes, were changing votes -- how did that grow and spread despite the evidence that suggested it just was not true? >> one of the key things this small group of people worked on was a technical report called the -- and this report asserted in very tech savvy language that evidence had been found in voting machines in michigan that

suggested the election had been stolen and it provided a technical wash for these ideas. it was very widely spread including by president trump himself. during a reporting we found the original version of this report did not actually make such strong assertions. one of the authors of the report told us they could not find conclusive evidence of election fraud. they found things they thought were suspicious, but it was given to someone else. reporter: so many of the people pushing these theories were told by their own investigators, people they hired, that there was nothing to these theories. the companion documentary from frontline contains a question to the former ceo of overstock.com. >> you seem to be the person most personally responsible for motivating this election fraud movement and some would say spreading this information.

do you think that is an accurate way, that you are the kingpin? >> or that i'm the one who is waking up americans to this deep problem of election apparatus. >> let me ask you if you agree to this. if you are right you are saving the country. if you are wrong you are destroying it. >> i can live with that. reporter: how typical was that response? doug: these people defended their actions, but our reporting found they were warned about the evidence they were championing. one of the things we published in the article is an email in which burn describes a woman who he would champion as a reliable source on election fraud as being untrustworthy and unreliable.

his own investigators told him this and yet he still ends up promoting her. he had become her friend and he found he believed her idea. time and time again we found these people were warned about pieces of evidence or about the quality of their witnesses and they still promoted it. reporter: as you said, two thirds of republicans doubt the legitimacy of the election. we are in the midst of primary season for midterms and whether or not the election was legitimate has become a litmus test for republican candidates. to win support in republican primaries. what does this say about where we are right now? i was struck by the story when you asked michael flynn's brother who was acting as his spokesman to respond to these allegations or some of the denials. he said no one we care about is

going to read this story. what does this say about where we are? doug: it is concerning it has become such a basis for a political platform, the idea of election had been stolen. do you have good political outcomes to have a legitimate and healthy political discourse, we need to have agreement on what actually happened. we need to base that on facts. if so many people are pushing the idea that, you know, this election was not real and was not legitimate, that is really unhealthy for american democracy. >> thank you very much. judy: to follow more of this collaborative reporting from frontline and propublica, you can watch the documentary film plot to overturn the election at pbs.org/frontline.

standardized test scores in the u.s. used to all but make or break college applications for high school seniors. but during the pandemic, nearly 80% of four-year colleges and universities went test optional. the result? some students got accepted to more selective schools. now, many colleges are considering eliminating admission tests permanently. special correspondent hari sreenivasan reports from atlanta, as part of our special series rethinking college. reporter: along with its reputation as one of the nation's leading research universities, the campus vibe helped make emory university porsche smith's number one choice. >> toured emory and fell in love. i called my parents that night and told them that's where i want to go. >> the freshman from north

carolina was a straight a student, but her test score was a dream crusher. >> i made an 18 on my act, which is half of the perfect score being a 36. >> did you automatically compare it to what the average emory student gets? >> absolutely, i went on google, what does a 18 test score mean they told me i should look at community college. and they didn't even consider my grades as a student. reporter: but when emory and hundreds of other institutions announced students no longer had to submit the scores due to the pandemic, porsche applied, hoping to be the first in her family to go to college. porsche smith was not alone. according to the common app, which is used by more than 900 schools, only 43% of the incoming class of freshmen submitted their test scores along with their college>> you n activity -- reporter: that is down from 77% prior to the pandemic. selective universities, or schools that admit less than half of applicants, have seen

the greatest surge in applications, despite overall enrollment in postsecondary education dropping during the pandemic. >> we went from about 75% of colleges requiring the sat to almost none in a year. reporter: john latting, emory's dean of admissions, said dropping the scores helped fuel the surge of applications but also changed the composition of applicants. >> lt year, 31% of the students we admitted didn' submit scores. but what was eye opening to us was how many students from lower income backgrounds, or whose parents didn't happen to go to a college at all, or whose high schools are not feeders to world famous universities, how much they said, "wow, that's great! you mean, i can apply to emory? or somewhere else?" that's where our applicant pool really grow. and we didn't expect that. reporter: last year, emory saw a

20% surge in applicants, the largest pool in the school's history. this spring, one third of admitted students are from historically underrepresented backgrounds who, according to data from the common app, were less likely to report test scores. >> this is voting with your feet. in communities it is represented as an obstacle. i do not think it is serving every student as well as it needs to. students who came from wealthier zip codes and school districts tended to not only take the test more often, but they were the ones who submitted those test scores. reporter: author jeffrey selingo is not surprised. for his book called "who gets in and why: a year inside college admissions," he spent a year sitting in on the admissions process at three top universities, including emory. he could see how testing favored the wealthy. >> underrepresented students who

came from lower income zip codes tended not to take the test or if they took the test did not submit test scores. it's a really big divide. reporter: tests were once seen as the key way to compare students from different high schools on a level playing field. >> what you learned in your interview -- reporter: cassidy puckett, an assistant professor of sociology at emory, says that field isn't level for all. >> white students were doing better on more heavily weighted, easier items with common words like golf and canoe. but black and latinx students did better on items that were more academic and more difficult, although those were weighted less heavily. so words like vehemence, and sycophant, which i can barely say. reporter: it's part of why even before the pandemic, some schools including the university of chicago and brandeis university had moved away from using the tests as part of the admissions process. >> teachers were really impressed with her in school. they called her a powerhouse in

the classroom. reporter: we we flies on the wall for conversations like the ones admissions counselors have at emory. each applicant gets a review by a pairf officers. those applications that are too close to call get discussed in larger committees. >> i rated the letters of recommendation at the very top because in the school context, big public school this student was certainly standing out for me. reporter: mark butt says emory's holistic admissions process took on an urgency during the pandemic. what are the things that leap off the page to you? >> we spend a lot of time looking at the context of the student. what were your opportunities in your high school? what courses are offered at your high school? reporter: but accounting for those differences is hard,: even the essays, activites, recommendations can be gamed, says author jeffrey selingo. >> many wealthier parents hire essay coaches to help their kids write the essay to help them edit it. many high schools provide coaching on the essays, but they do the same thing with the activities. the recommendations tend to be

better from counselors and teachers at suburban, well-resourced high schools and private high schools. reporter: then there's the money factor. an applicant's need vs ability to pay. >> most colleges need money and they need the money from full pay students, for example. so, many colleges look at the the need of students in admissions or have other ways of assessing need, when they are assessing applications. reporter: emory, like many other universities, will be studying how their students who enrolled without st scores have fared, and they've extended the test-optional policy for another year. >> for the rest of this year, we're going to we're going to study how our first year students are doing. we'll start with the easy to measure things like retention, what's going on with transcripts, grades, course selection. is emory serving as a catalyst for them to achieve their goals? reporter: puckett, a first generation college graduate

herself, says the impact on campus goes beyond the students entering without test scores. collect in a field like sociology, where we ask them to think critically about society, how the world works, and apply that to their everyday experience, to have different voices at the table makes for a much richer conversation. reporter: for porsche smith, her gamble paid off when she found out she was accepted last spring. >> i received congratulations and felt on my chair at the dinner table. the next day i received the full ride. reporter: a full ride. >> yes. you completed the coursework in high school, you did extracurricular activities, you stood out, you did things that were new to you, you may have done sports. so why just the -- be seen for a

test score? reporter: she's majoring in neuroscience and behavioral biology. it's a chance for her to fulfill her dream of helping her autistic sister. >> i grew up watching her how she communicated and interacted going to her appointments. and i remember asking the doctor questions like, hey, what does this medicine do for her having autism? and autism is one of those things we haven't really tapped fully into. we're still researching. reporter: several states are now considering laws to address the role that standardized admissions tests play at their public colleges. for the "pbs newshour," i'm hari sreenivasan in atlanta. judy: we're not even four full months into the year and it's already been a deadly one for too many children and teens. 500 have lost their lives to gun violence in the u.s. so far this year according to the gun violence archive. amna nawaz looks at a sobering new analysis of related data

that underscores just how big a problem we have. firearm related injuries were the second leading cause of death among children behind only car crashes. the gap narrowed and in 2020 gun deaths soared past motor vehicle accidents to become the leading cause of death for one to 19-year-olds in the united states. joining me to talk about the updated numbers is dr. patrick carter, the codirector of the institute fofirearm injury prevention at the university of michigan and one of the authors of that analysis. welcome to the newshour and thanks for joining us. let's just talk about these findings. as you are running these numbers that came from the cdc, what stood out to you? >> we were eecting to see it increase because we have been seeing this trend since 2013.

in the number of firearm aths among children and teens. what stuck out to me was the magnitude of the increase. among the general population we saw a 14% increase in firearm deaths nationwide. among children and teens, at rate actually doubled, was about 30% higher. that is a significant increase from the prior year. reporter: what should we understand about that? obviously a lot of people pay attention to the kinds of videos that get attention, a recent one at a little league game where shots ring out and kids are ducking for cover. no one was injured, but are those the kinds of incidents we are talking about driving the increase? >> those incidents are horrific and they should garner attention and we should work on trying to help prevent those. but they do not represent the majority of these deaths. about 65% of the deaths we see

among children and teens are due to homicide and 30% are due to suicide. those are daily deaths that are occurring, not due to these mass shooter events or active shooter events. reporter: a we mostly talking about the older end of the one to 19 year spectrum? also demographically, geographically, is violence occurring in the same places? >> what we know is they occur equally in rural communities, urban communities. we saw increases in all types of firearm deaths among those communities. we know the deaths are a little different in those communities. among rural and suburban settings we tend to see more firearm suicide and unintentional injuries and in urban communities we tend to see more homicides due to interpersonal violence. but we know they occur at equal rates among all of those.

this affects every american's every type of community. when we talk about teens we see a greater number of firearm injuries that occur on that adolescent age as they start to get into those teenage years, although we still see a fair number of unintentional injuries among the younger age group. reporter: we mentioned the comparison with motor vehicle deaths. it was decades that motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of death. those have been steadily declining since 2001. how did we do that? how did we get those to come down and why can't we do the same with firearms? >> that is a good question and it is the comparison between the two and what we have been able to do with vehicle deaths and not firearm deaths. we have seen that we have been able to decrease motor vehicle crash injury and death largely due to evidence-based research. we make cars safer, made roads safer, change driver behavior. we have learned to train teens

how to drive better. we have phased out driving among elderly drivers who are no longer capable of having the skills to drive. we have applied evidence-based research to all angles of this problem and been able to market -- markedly decrease the number of people dying from motor vehicle crashes. that is thecience of injury prevention and we can do the same with firearms. we just had not been able to do it. the federal govnment has started to fund research to look at this problem and understand what the drivers are and what the solutions are. they involve applying injury science to figure out how we reduce the potential for harm and allow people to still have legal firearms. we reduce those deaths from motor vehicle crash without taking cars off the road. we have more people driving today than we have ever had. reporter: the numbers are striking, the headline is disturbing, but this is data from 2020. do you have any reason to believe the numbers have trended down since then?

>> i don't. the data lags behind because this is death data so it has to be collected across the country. we have seen this increased trend since 2013. i expect that unless we are unable to develop solutions i'm talking about, we are going to continue to see numbers go up. reporter: that is dr. patrick carter at the university of michigan. thank you for your time. judy: after years of free spending, the peak era of video streaming may be ending. streaming services are adjusting their plans, including raising pricing and the addition of more advertising. content could be affected too. exact numbers are hard to pin down. but netflix alone reportedly

spends more than 17 billion dollars a year on content for its 220 million subscribers. combined, streaming companies may spend more than 100 billion dollars each year. geoff bennett breaks down what it could all mean. reporter: as streaming evolves, the industry is experiencing some growing pains. click -- netflix is hemorrhaging customers for the first time in a decade, the company says. it plans to lose even more throughout 2022. netflix blames rampant password sharing but there's also more competition and the company's decision to increase prices at a -- prices. and cnn plus, the streaming service launched just three weeks ago announced they are shutting down at the end of the month. for more on the shake-up in the streaming world, we turn to kim masters, editor at large for the hollywood reporter. after a decade of incredible growth, netflix has reached at is likely is lowest point.

it has lost subscribers for the first time in 10 years. the stock is getting pummeled. what accounts for the stumble? >> well, the theory was the sky's the limit, we can get to a billion subscribers at some point. what happened is the model just did not deliver. they have raised prices. people complain that there's too much content, that it's not good enough, they don't know how to find it, and they have spent and and spent and spent. they've been very highly valued. they have been very gung ho about throwing billions of dollars into content, and for a while it worke but they have had a series of problems. they lost things like friends and the office, which was part of the most popular content on on netflix, as their competitors all ramped up their own streaming services, disney plus and hbo max. and that has been other problem. they have competition now. competition that's taking back some of the ograming that built them in the first place. when i took it cheaply, they got friends and deals on old shows very cheaply, and then these

guys looked at netflix, said we better compete, and they took those things back and they competed and they are competing at lower prices. reporter: netflix says it's now going to be open to offering lower priced subscription tiers with advertising. for years, they'd said that they didn't want to have commercials on their service. they're clamping down on password sharing. they're also going to invest in gaming. will any of that move the needle, do you think? >> i think it's a very tricky path for them. you know, first of all, as you say, it was heresy. netflix, you know, they vowed we will we will never advertise . and now they're basically saying uncle, but it's not something when you flip a switch and suddenly you have an advertising service. their competitors spent years and years developing this. you need a staff, you need a team, you need to figure out how it works. i wonder to some degree, you know, whether people who had gotten very used to the netflix model with no ads and churned out because of the price and then come back in, will sort of go, wait, these are just you

know there's too much ads now. i mean, their ad load is going to be a big question for netflix to tackle. password sharing? also a little dicey. i mean, you have to go after the people who who are paying money who are used to this, so everything has a risk. reporter: so what's this all mean for legacy studios that are going all in on streaming right now, especially for services like disney plus or hbo max that have a smaller subscriber base ? >> well, in a way, the smaller base is a good thing because they have room to grow. netflix is the biggest with 200 million, but you know, disney isn't there and neither is hbo max. so it's it's very ironic right now because this is wall street driven. wall street was all about streaming. you've got to do streaming. streaming is the future. everybody in hollywood sort of pivoted and threw so much resources into streaming and now all of a sudden, you know, diversity is the new sexy and the legacy studios where people were like, oh, they've got this

dying cable business. it's so terrible. the dying cable business still throws off a ton of money, so all of a sudden, these guys that were sort of apologizing and saying, you know, we're working on our streaming service, they're kind of like, don't we look good? they are hurt by this, make no mistake, because their stock price was dragged down with the tremendous hit that the netflix stock price took and the anxiety about, you know, wall street has pivoted. now they are scared maybe streaming is not the future, what is the ceiling for it? so they are hurt. they all have streamers, but you know, we have already heard david zaslav, who just took over at what is now warner brothers discovery saying already before this happened, you know, we'll compete, but we're not going to kill ourselves. >> so a question about that, i mean, how has that dynamic all of the questions around streaming -- add to that to the pandemic -- how does that change what gets greenlee? -- gets greenlit?

how has that transformed what we watch? >> well, one of the things that netflix has done, which is not pandemic related, is the binge model where you get everything at once and you do all the right, you can stay up all night and watch it. they said we compete with sleep. the other ones have been a little bit more cautious, like we're going to drop one or two and then we'll drop some more. they want that watercooler moment. they want it to have a big moment and you talk about it at the office the next day or on your resume call. that is a model again that netflix has clung to that and they may want to change. we'll see. but in terms of the pandemic, what we have is quite a backlog and a glut of shows that were held up. so i think a lot of content creators, producers and their agents and representatives are very nerus that all of those nice commissions are not going to be so, so rolling in quite so freely. reporter: kim masters is editor at large for the hollywood reporter. kim, thanks as always

for your time. good to see you. judy: during the 2016 presidential campaign, columbia university professor farah jasmine griffin was deeply troubled by the litical turmoil happening across the country. she began writing a literary memoir titled read until you understand which explores what democracy means to the lives and work of black authors and activists and to herself. tonight, as part of our arts and culture series, canvas, she offers her brief but spectacular take on black life and literature. >> i lost my father when i was nine years old. the circumstances of his death were somewhat traumatic. he came home complaining of a headache. we called the police. they debated whether or not to take them to the hospital. they said it was friday night

and that he was probably drunk. he was not. finally they relented and they took him to philadelphia general hospital but he died and i never saw him again. but i think i also, that night began looking for him in all the books that he left behind. so it also gave me a gift of seeking answers in books. my father was my first teacher, and he shared his love of learning with any young person who would sit still long enough to listen. i think you can see a a through line from my father teachinge all the way through to my experiences in the classroom. my father loved the language of the declaration of independence and the united states constitution. he felt that they contained ideals about human freedom that the united states failed to live up to, especially

when it came to black americans. the title of my book, read until you understand actually comes from a note that my father left me in one of the many books that he had. there was one book called black struggle. and in the front of that book on the title page, he said, "read this until you understand, you may not understand it at first, but read it until you understand." i started writing read until you understand, during the 2016 presidential election. there was just so much going on that made me concerned about democracy. and i thought that black writers in particular might have something to teach americans about the values of democracy and the ways that we have often failed to live up to them. my book is about many things. it's a love story to a community

that embraced my mother and me after my father's death. it's a testament to the dynamism and power of my father's example. it's also a love letter to books, and to reading, and to literature. i also hope that the book will allow people to cherish their own stories, their own, um, quiet, ordinary, everyday experiences, that if they look deeply at them are the source of their own profound wisdom. my name is farra jasmine griffin, and this is my brief but spectacular take on black life and literature. judy: very powerful and thank you for sharing that. yocan watch more brief but spectacular videos online at pbs.org/newshour/brief. and on the newshour online, elon musk's purchase of twitter

raises questions about the future of the social media platform. three experts weigh in on twitter under musk's leadership. that is the newshour for tonight. join us online and again here tomorrow evening. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by. >> architect. beekeeper. mentor. raymond james financial advisor taylor's advice -- tailors advice to help you live your life well planned. >> carnegie corporation of new york supporting democratic engagement and the advances of -- the advancement of international peace and security. the target foundation committed to advancing racial equity and creating the change required to

shiftble onomic opportunity. and with the ongoing support of these institutions. this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> this is the pbs newshour from weta studios and the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university.

>> jamiehey! people everywhere are finally coming back together. so it's time to celebrate some of the love, friendships, and amazing moments that we've all missed out on. and what better way to show people that you care than to bring them around a table for some delicious food? so i've created easy-to-follow menus that will turn incredible dishes into epic feasts. >> life is about memories. and today we made a memory. >> jamie: and to make the most of the precious time with those that we love, it's all about getting ahead. i want to prepare a meal which is nearly all done, so when my friends and family get here, i can be spending more time with them. cheers, everybody! >> cheers! >> jamie: these are impressive menus made easy because i'll take you through them step by step, making them for my family and friends, so you can make them for yours. this is saying, "i love you," through food.