william: good evening, i'm william brangham. judy woodruff is away. on the "newshour" tonight, the road to recovery. the latest jobs report shows a solid labor market but also a potential economic cooldown. then, 100 days of war. ukraine continues to fend off the russian assault as the conflict grows more entrenched. we speak to ukraine's ambassador. >> we know it's going to be hard, but at the same time there is no other alternative. cannot reach peace unless russians are out from the country. william: and it's friday, david brooks and jonathan capehart weigh in on the wave of gun violence in america, and whether congress will act. all that and more on tonight's "pbs newshour."

>> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by -- >> pediatric surgeon, volunteer, topiary artist, a raymondjames financial advisor taylor's advice to help you live your life. life, well planned. >> john as in james r knight foundation fostering informed and engaged communities. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions. and friends of the newshour.

this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. william: the u.s. job market is still going strong, despite higher prices and interest rates. that's the upshot of the may employment numbers. the labor department reports employers added a net 390,000 jobs last month. at the same time, the unemployment rate remained steady at 3.6% . president biden welcomed the news but he also acknowledged that the job gains were the smallest in a year. pres. biden: as we move to a new period of stable, steady owth, we should expect to see more moderation. we aren't likely to see the kind of blockbuster job reports month after month like we had this past year, but that's a good thing. that's a sign of a healthy economy. william: we'll take a closer look at the economic signals

after the news summary. there's another disclosure in the texas school massacre of 19 children and 2 teachers. reports today say pete arredondo, the schools' police commander, did not have his radio, and thus could have missed critical information. arredondo held off sending officers against the gunman for nearly an hour. also today, a congressional committee announced it will hear next week from parents and survivors of the shootings in uvalde and buffalo, new rk. a federal grand jury indicted former trump adviser peter navarro for contempt of congress today for refusing to cooperate with the january 6th investigation. he has argued that the former president's claim of executive privilege bars him from answering questions. congressional investigators want information about his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. in ukraine, the reached its 100th day, with russia grinding out gains in the east. british intelligence warned that

all of luhanskrovince could be russian-controlled within 2 weeks. the russians kept up their assault on the neighboring cities of several donetsk and lucy sean's could. they're the last two ukrainian holdouts in luhansk. but ukraine is still sending in troops, including foreign-born fighters. the volunteers insist they won't leave without a victory. >> i am just a 22-year-old kid and i felt that is the right thing to do. we are gonna push the russians back. we are on the right side of history. so we are going to make sure all of us, we gonna get back home with our families. william: in washington, president biden said it will take a negotiated settlement to end the war. but he deferred to ukraine on whether to trade territory for peace. we will hear from ukraine's ambassador to the u.s. later in the program. back in this country, much of the florida peninsula is under a tropical storm warning tonight from the atlantic hurricane season's first named storm. people sand-bagged coastal

properties today, amid forecasts of 10 inches of rain. the system started as pacific hurricane agatha which struck mexico last weekend. remnants reached the gulf of mexico and are expected to reform into tropical storm alex. federal scientists report that the major driver of climate change has passed a milestone. as of may, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were more than 50 times higher than before the industrial age. the greenhouse gas traps heat, and the national oceanic and atmospheric administration says the levels in our atmosphere now resemble earth 4 million years ago, when the planet was much hotter. on wall street, the strong jobs report raised fears that the federal reserve will keep raising interest rates aggressively to slow growth and curb inflation. the dow jones industrial average lost 348 points, 1%, to close below 32,900. the nasdaq fell 304 points,

2.5%. and the s&p 500 slipped 68, re than 1.5%. and the winner of this year's scripps national spelling bee is harini logan of san antonio. the 14-year-old took the title last night in washington. she'd been eliminated earlier and then reinstated when her answer proved correct. in the finals, logan correctly spelled 22 words in a 90-second spell-off with her last rival. with that, she claimed the championship she had sought for years. >> honestly, just so surreal. this is my fourth time at the bee. and this is just such a dream and wow, i'm just overwhelmed. william: the nation's new top speller walks away with more than $50,000 in cash and prizes. congratulations to her. still to come, students speak out about the impact gun violence has on eir daily lives. david brooks and jonathan capehart weigh in on whether we

can topple -- we can tackle that violence. we will take a closer look at a pulitzer prize winner's modern take on hamlet plus just -- plus much more. >> this is the pbs newshour we -- from w eta studios. william: as we reported, employers added 390,000 jobs in may. that is the 17th straight month of job growth. over the past year, employers have added more than 6.5 million jobs. betsy stevenson served as chief economist for the department of labor from 2010 to 2011. she is now a professor of public policy and economics at the university of michigan. great to have you on the newshour. we heard the president bragging about today's numbers but also cautioning that we are not going to see similar blockbuster jobs reports going into the future.

he said that was a good thing. how do you see today's report? betsy: i think it is worth thinking about how rapidly we recovered. if you go back to the 2008 recession, it took over eight years for us to get unemployment below 4%. we did that with less than two years. we have got unemployment that is stable at 3.6%, which is just great. it is really low unemployment. and yet, at the same time, we are seeing rapid job growth as people are reentering a labor force. if we have unemployment at 3.6%, how do we find nearly half a million people to hire? we theidelines io dthe labor force. we are continuing to do that. we have seen job growth is slow a little bit to 400,000 the last two months. it was running at a faster clip before that. that can't go on forever. we don't have that many people in the country to bring back a couple more months of this

kind of growth, and we will be back at the labor force participation rate we had prior to the pandemic. we need to start thinking about, and we get ourselves to a place where we have the kind of growth we were experiencing prior to the pandemic? and at that level of labor force participation. that is going to be adding 200,000, 100,000 jobs a month, and growing steadily. that is what bringing this labor market in without really slowing it is all about. bringing a bunch of people back into the workforce, allowing us to continue to grow, but obviously, we can't grow at 400,000 jobs a month for forever or we run out of people. william: rate. we have not figured out a way to manufacture new humans. we are lacking in that department. there are certain set -- certain sectors, there are still employers that are really looking for workers and have a lot of open vacancies. betsy: there are a lot of vacancies out there. we are really still at record

high openings, and for most people, what this means is the opportunity is out there to find a job that fits you well, that pays what you want, that allows you to meet work-family balance, that is better than it has ever been. i hope lots of people are out there looking for those new opportunities. we see it court -- see it across a lot of industries. let's take the airline industry, which is saying, we can't hire people, we are cutting flights, yet they have more people employed in air transportation then we had prior to the pandemic. what's going on? part of it might be that they lost a lot of experienced workers and it is taking time to get the new people they are hiring back up to speed. it may be that the industry itself has had to change because of the pandemic. then you could switch over to leisure and hospitality, which has a lot of growth. we have not seen demand come all the way back. we have not gotten all of the workers back. and they added over 80,000 jobs

in this past month, one of the strongest sectors of growth. it is growing because consumers are continuing to increase their demand for lsure and hospitality. what we saw in thireport is if you want to hire, they are coming. i think it's good news. the markets did not like it. but if employers have been trying to hire all those people and had not been able to hire them, that is when you have to worry. what we saw this time was employers wanted to hire, workers wanted to take the jobs and we saw expansion of 390,000 jobs. william: i saw that you pointed out today that women also had surged back into the workforce amongst those new employees. what do you think is driving that specifically? betsy: we have seen, in particular, labor force participation among women start to increase over the last four to six months. some of that may be due to the fact that schools are finally starting to settle down, not sending kids home for as many --

you know, you have to do a two week remote school because of this covid outbreak. might be a little bit of that. it could just be that it takes time for people to rnter the labor force. women took on other responsibilities outside of the labor force, caregiving responsibilities, more broadly than just their children. they have to figure out how to balance those responsibilities that they took on with a job they want to find. it just takes a little bit of time. we have seen this steadily over the last few months as women are coming back. what happens in most recoveries and is happening in this one is that the more highly educated -- more highly educated people come back faster and first. we see in particular, labor force participation among college-educated women recover much faster. but we are starting to see some recovery in the labor force participation of women with less education. that does tend to happen more slowly. i personally hope the economy

stays strong enough to bring more of those women back in over the next few months. william: betsy stephenson at the university of michigan, thank you so much for being here. betsy: thank you. it's nice talking with you. william: exactly 100 days ago, russian soldiers launched a full-scale invasion of ukraine, aiming to overthrow a democratically elected government. ukraine won the battle for kyiv, and has achieved military success. but the war has killed tens of thousands of ukrainian civilians. tens of thousands of ukrainian and russian troops, and at its peak, drove close to 14 million ukrainians from their homes. that is one third of the country. nick schifrin takes stock of this moment and talks to ukraine's ambassador to the united states. nick: this war's horrors have become household names. our util, a city destroyed.

aheater shielding people. this week, president zelenskyy admitted pressure controls 20% of ukraine. ambassador, welcome back to the newshour. can you give us some perspective on how destructive these 100 days have been? >> yes, this 100 days of the war that goes on for eight years, but this 100 days were especially brutal with full-fledged war returning to the whole of ukraine. the devastation has been huge. more than 40 million square meters of residential areas destroyed. and the majority of people live under constant threat, and get, -- and yet, we are fighting, we will be fighting, and we still can win. nick: looking forward, how do you define winning in this war? ? how do you define victory? >> just getting our country back. having control over all you to

-- overall territory of ukraine, have recognized borders, with russians getting out from our territories, stop shooting at us. then we can start returning to rebuilding our country, returning to some kind of normal life, which is going to be very difficult. but first, we have to win. it means we have to defeat russians in ukraine. nick: you are suggesting russian forces need to be evicted not only from the territory they seized since february 24, but also charity -- also territory in the donbass and crimea. is that what -- what your site? >> since russia illegally attacked crimea and illegally attacked part of donbass and luhansk, not only ukraine, but the whole democratic world and never agreed or recognized that act of aggression and the illegal annexation. yes, crimea is ukraine. since 2014, we had all of the

rights to retake crimea through military operations. but we never did it and we never planned to do it. we still are open for any diplomatic solutions. russia crossed the border again, and it is a very black-and-white situation. we would like to retort -- restore our sovereignty with our borders. nick: some senior ukrainian officials i spoke to have doubts about whether the military can re-seize territory that russia has occupies, not only since february 24, but over the last eight years,. does that not mean that this war is headed for a stalemate, and ukraine will struggle to re-seize that territory? >> we can all have doubts or we know it is going to be very difficult. even today, we hear russian officials and others essentially saying the separation has to go on, that they are still on target, which is really a brutal thing to hear. we are up against a much stronger power, very brutal

power, a power that has no moral restrictions or the red lines that they would not cross. we know it is going to be hard. but at the same time, there is no other alternative. we cannot reach peace unless russians are out from the country. anything else, any stalemate on russian terms, would be an illusion of peace. unfortunately, we know what happens on the territories where russia occupies and we are not ready to leave our people behind. nick: this week, the biden administration authorized the most advanced rocket system to ukraine, the high mobility advanced rocket system. but the biden administration did not provide the longest range ammunition, and basically capped the ammunition rage -- range providing at 45 miles. is that good enough? >> we are very grateful to the american people, to the administration, to president biden, to congress. russia is not motivated but they

have so many weapons. that is why we need more and more support from the u.s., but also from other allies. we never asked boots on the ground. we never asked other countries to help us fight the fight. we will fight this fight. it is our fight. we need as much artillery and as mu ammunition to this new capabilities that we will be getting as possibl every face of the war requires different weapons. we are in discussions and i really hope that we will see more support. nick: some of the main fighting is in a city which is the last ukrainian held city in luhansk. british intelligence today said that they fear luhansk could fall entirely in the next two weeks. do you fear that to be the case? >> is a full-fledged war and i know our armed forces do everything possible and impossible.

and i'm positive, as well as all ukrainians and our armed forces and our president, that we are fighting for our land and we are fighting for our people. and we will be able to retake everything. the question is how long it will take and how many of us, the best of us, we will lose. nick: president biden wrote in the new york times op-ed, he did not use the word ukrainian victory or russian defeat. he said specifically that the goal is not to unseat vladimir putin. do you fear that so -- that so long as putin remains in power, the threat to ukraine will remain? >> believe as long as pressure remains in this mode of thinking, the threat not only to ukraine but all democratic world will remain. russia in its present form is a threat to global security, is a threat to full security after blocking ukrainian ports in the black sea. they are a threat to any democracy. because again, ukraine did not

provoke this war. we did not do anything to cause this aggression. and we just wanted to live in our own country is enough reason for a large country to attack you, the nobody is safe. nick: president zelenskyy said overnight that 200,000 children, ukrainian children, have been forcibly moved to russia. he said half a million ukrainians in the past have been forcibly moved to russia. is that an example of russian genocide? >> it is one of many. yes. half a million people who are forcefully deported to russia, many children which were killed in ukraine, people put in infiltration camps. these are the nazi techniques that we saw 80 years after the world said never again. yes, it is a genocide, because we are being targeted andd only because we are ukrainians.

nick:leil while we talk about af those atrocities, at the same time, the u.n. says they are -- there are credible allegations of treatment ous ssi rerolansdie examples and taking steps to ensure that russian soldiers in your custody are being treated humanely? >> we already have shown how we treated the captured soldiers. we are recording everything, where they have access to everything. we are giving them the possibility to call their relatives, regardless of the crimes they have committed. yes, we take very seriously, and our armed forces are doing everything possible in order to stick to all the rules, why we are defending our country and why we are defending our people. nick: thank you very much. >> thank you.

william: let's turn now to the subject that has consumed much of the nation this week. . in the past several weeks. gun violence. we will hear from a number of voices on that subject. i'm none of us begins our look. reporter: congress and the two parties have been deadlocked in a stalemate for years over what measures could or should be taken. in a speech last night, president biden called for congress to pass major bills including a ban on assault style weapons, expanded background checks, age limits on purchases and red flag laws. in doing so, he cited some of the cities and communities devastated by past shootings. pres. biden: after columbine, after sandy hook, after charlston, after orlando, after las vegas, after parkland, nothing has been done. this time, that can't be true. this time, we must actually do

something. imagine what it's like for children who experience this kind of trauma every day in school, on the streets, in communities, all across america. imagine what it's like for so many parents to hug their children goodbye in the morning, not sure whether they will come back home. unfortunately, too many people don't have to imagine that at all. >> of course, tulsa, oklahoma and you've, texas are the latest communities to struggle with all of this. in uvalde, the are five funerals and visitations today. elizabeth willison of the new york times has covered the many ways these attacks affect communities for years afterward, as part of the focus of her new book called "sandy hook: an american tragedy and the battle for truth." welcome to the newshour. thank you for being here. >> thank you. reporter: you talked to families in newtown about that sandy hook shooting we remember. and that moment immediately afterward when the world is

watching and the media has dissented, you talked about what they felt in that moment. what they were going through. what did they share with you? elizabeth: the families i spoke with talked about this sense of the media onslaught feeling like prey. there were so many requests for interviews, the presence of the media even altered the landscape ofhe town. there was an influx of goods and services and money that was very disorienting, that people really struggled to accommodate and even to store. and then of course, there was the appearance of conspiracy theorists, people who claim that the shooting never occurred at all. and were following the families, digging through their trash, looking in their windows, and generally really tormenting them in those first weeks and months. amna: this one part of it really stuck with me when you talked about, what you call the global

spasm of heartbreak and generosity. because i think we see this again and again. people want to help. they send messages, they send gifts, donations. what did the families in sandy hook and newtown tell you about how burdenme that was at the time? elizabeth: i think it is a wonderful thing about americans, that they open their hearts and their wallets and they want to send any kind of help they can. but when you have so many people doing that, you have this influx of 68,000 teddy bears, enough mail that they had to open a new substation in the post office, they had to get warehouse space. for the families, while they really appreciate it, that upwelling, what they also struggled with was what do we do with all of this, and how do we accommodate it, how do we store it, how do we acknowledge it, how do we use it? and also, the money that came

in, the issue quickly arose of who that money should go to. it has been established that the money should definitely go to the famili and the survivors. amna: journalists get accused of sanitizing thessue, of not speaking more bluntly about the brutality of some of these attacks, particularly when you are talking about children. what do you hear from the families aboutow they see this argument, about whether or not those kinds of more brutal and graphic images should or should not be shared? elizabeth: i have yet to speak to a sandy hook family member that would be in favor of having those photographs released. they are extremely painful and traumatizing to them. while i know, because i have written about this, that there are a number of people and policymakers even who think these would have an impact on the debate, that they would move our countrout of its official inertia.

but because i have looked at disinformation around sandy hook and around so many other major events, i actually think these photos could have a different impact. a father of the youngest sandy hook victim said, it could just intensify and add fuel to the disinformation that circulates after mass shootings. people could produce those photos in different contexts. they could be mailing them or emailing them to the families themselves, they could be used as an additional source of harassment and pain. so i think any release of that type of material would have to be up to the individual survivor and family member. thw nlth te miree le, ase offa l by one family member would impact all the others. and that is a worry forhem. t id

in uvalde where people said, we understand why you are here, but we know that the cameras are going to leave, the attention will fade, and we as a community will be left to grapple with this. and we have been forever changed. based on what you learned from family -- from sandy hook families, what can you say about what is ahead for the families in uvalde and tulsa and so many other communities? elizabeth: what these communities face is a river -- a reverberating loss. it radiates outward like fallout from the event itself, throughout the community. there are impacts that people in uvalde, just like in any other community where this type of violence occurs, that no one can predict. there will be a lot of anger, and a lot of sadness, and a lot of stray voltage emotionally that really impacts how a town pulls through. these immediate aftermaths do not lend themselves to redemptive narratives. it is not a triumphant story.

it is a long, hard, painful slog for a community where this happens. and it is a very long healing process. amna: that is elizabeth williamson of the new york times, author of the new book "sandy hook: an american tragedy and the battle for truth." thank you for being with us. elizabeth: thank you. william: tragically, school shootings have become all too common in america. while the attack at the elementary school in ulde is the deadliest in nearly a decade, it's also the 27th school shooting this year alone. our national network of young reporters, they are part of our student reporting's lab, asked their fellow students what grownups should know about what it's like growing up in this era of gun violence in schools. here's some of what they had to say. >> we had a fire alarm monday go off. there were two girls in front of me and they asked, what if this is not a drill? we all knew they were not talking about a fire.

kids in america don't hear a fire alarm any fear fire, they fear shoot a trap they are walking into. >> it makes you grow up really fast in terms of coming to terms with your mortality, which is something someone my age i don't think needs to do right away. i feel like i should not have to be like, every morning, this could be it for me, i could die today. >> i think about where the best place to go in a classroom would be. i think about what classrooms are the worst to be in. its damaging to anybody's mental health to worry about that, student and teachers. >> teens nowadays feel like it is cool to play with guns and have it in their videos, so i think guns are being promoted in a way to look cool on social media, in which i think that right there is already a big red flag. because no children should be having any guns in their hands. >> i would like to say that it affects us greatly, but the

unfortunate reality is, i think we have mostly gotten really numb. it happens so often, you see them in the news all the time, it no longer really has that much of an impact on us anymore. >> the parkland shooting, i remember feeling a little disconnected and like, oh, it can never happen to me. it is awful it is happening to these people but i don't think it will ever happen to me. then it happened in oxford and then i was like, that was 20 minutes from where we live. >> we had a smaller shootg. everyone was really silent for the whole week. everyone was on edge. it was really traumatic, if i'm being honest. >> our school runs the mandatory drills every year. every single time, there is a group of 20 to 30 students who run into our shooter and nothing ever happens. we don't rerun them. this is a problem. >> every time there is a new one, they let us know that we are safe here. they let us know what they are dog. but in reality, they can't do

anything if people are allowed to get guns. they can't do anything if we are still feeling unsafe. >> recently we saw ted cruz saying the solution was to have less doors at schools. i think when we do things like that, we don't give the issue the seriousness it needs. i want elected officials to take the issue a t more seriously than we currently do. >> with gun ownership, it is really easy to get past your background check. not only stricter background checks, that also mental health checks or routine mental health checks would be good. >> the procedures we have in school directly correlate to what is going on in the news. if there is no new school shootings, the proceres die down. people don't care about -- care as much about enforcing them. >> it is a cycle of helplessness we can't get out of. it just needs to stop. william: there has been another

spate of carnage and death this week. a dozen mass shootings left 12 dead and nearly 60 more injured. last night, the president delivered another nationally-televised plea for common-sense reform but meaningful action continues to look like a legislative long shot on capitol hill. that brings us to the analysis of brooks and capehart. that's new york times columnist david brooks and jonathan capehart, associate editor at the washington post. gentlemen, very nice to see you. david, we heard the president last night acknowledge that we are in this grotesque cycle of carnage, that innocent people are murdered by someone wielding this enormously powerful weapon. and he says we have to act. you have recently said that these events move public opinion in a meaningful way, maybe not quickly, but they do. do you think that is going to matter to the negotiators here

in washington, d.c.? david: it is a long-term process. they move in a ratchet fashion that you see arise for the support of gun regulation, and then it trips down, but not back to where it was. public opinion is gradually shifting. this is a decades long process of the republican party has been moving firmer into more gun friendly and not only gun friendly, but gun aggressively friendly direction. for the identity of conservatism, it has become god and guns. or borders, bullets, and babies as one candidate said. supporting guns has become almost a talisman of visual signatures for republicans. like the visual thing to symbolize an entire philosophy. i think what the president said was compelling, but i don't think the republican party, if anything, they are moving in a very different direction. william: jonathan, as david

says, chris murphy is currently talking with republican senators and he hence there is some idea of progress. others cautioned that mitch mcconnell has his eye on the midterms and hrecognizes what is base voters, as david is describing, what this primary voters care about. and it's guns. he is not going to allow anything to happen. do you have any hope that this set of latest tragedies is going to do anything? jonathan: i always have hope, but i'm a realist. we have been here before. too many times before. the fact that senator murphy is sitting with a bipartisan group of senators and they are talking, that is a good thing. i want him to talk. but i have no faith that they will get to a pnt where they will have a press conference where they announced, here is our framework, here is our bill, here is our language, here are the items that we are calling for, and then to actually get

that piece of legislation to a vote that breaks a filibuster. i've just laid out about three or four hurdles right there. if the slaughter of babies at newtown elementary school -- sandy hook element or school 10 years ago in december was not enough to move the debateo the point where we are talking about and safety laws, or the murder of high school students at marjory stoneman douglas high school in parkland, florida, if that was not enough, then why should anyone expect the murder of 10 grade schoolers in uvalde, texas to move this conversation? it pains me to have to say that, but i have seen this horrible groundhog day movie too many times. and i have heard the yeah, yeah,

yeah out of mitch mcconnell too many times to believe that the action and the things that senator murphy is pouring his heart and soul into, i don't doubt his sincerity. he is absolutely sincere. i do doubt the sincerity of the people around that table, that they actually want to get something done. william: david, we know it is these mass shootings that garner all of the attention, all of the names that you riddled off, donovan, we know those -- jonathan, we know those so well. the analysis of gun deaths in america show that it is suicides and these less publicized homicides that happen all the time. when you look at the policy prescriptions people are talking about, are there things that you think, if we could get this passed, this would make a dent in all of those deaths? david: i think if you look at the history of gun regulation, assault weapons bans, and you look at the social science

research, it is underwhelming. the effect of this is not to nothing but it is underwhelming in preventing violence and crime. the one area of the research shows that gun regulation can make a difference is owned suicides. and a lot of people commit suicides because they have a mood crash and there is a gun right there. if you can make it harder to have a gun right there, they will not commit suicide. suicide do not attempt it again. the evidence is that that is the sort of thing where you can have an effect and we should probably not be focusing as much as our hearts are rendered about the events jonathan described, gun violences the main thing. i do think if we can focus on regulating guns at those moments. and it is also important for democrats to understand where republicans are. republicans see guns as a way to defend their family. so one of the things democrats have not done, and i think joe bryant -- joe biden did a decent job in his remarks in saying he honors responsible gun ownership -- william: and we should celebrate

them, he said. david: we should distinguish between defensive gun use, people defending their family, they feel threatened by crime, and offensive use. a lot of the weapons, a lot of the ammunition is for offensive use. there is no place for offensive gun use in our society. we call that murder. i think reframing it in a way that would honor the gun owners in america is a potential way to shift the debate, so we are not stuck in this groundhog day. william: some of the things david is mentioning do have a lot of broad appeal. as david is pointing out, it is difficult for republicans to embrace those things. i talked with a guy who was a former legislator in colorado. there was a terrible murder of a sheriff's deputy in his district. by a severely mentally ill young man. he tried to pass a red flag law in colorado, and he was hammered for it.

the gun rights groups came out and blasted him for it. the build and not pass, he lost the election, and this kind of thing is very difficult for republicans to do what david is saying, which is to embrace even the most minor things. jonathan: i'm confused by something. whenever anything -- any of these mass shootings happen, or when we get into a discussion about gun safety organ control, -- or gun control, we always hear the majority of gun owners, the majority of the members of the nra, they are law-abiding and they support all of these background checks and everything. but then i hear stories like this where legislators who apparently tried to reflect the broader membership of the nra to do the right thing, they get hammered by gun rights groups. at some point, someone is going to have to have the courage,

like this legislator you talked about, he lost his election, and i'm sorry for him, he did the right thing and got hammered for it, but we need more republican legislators to step out there and be on the side of the majority of the american people. it takes political courage to do that. i respect the fact that the republican party and gun rights groups are way over here. but how do we break the cycle? how do those majority of nra members who are with the majority of the american people who want some sort of gun safety regulations, how do we get the laws to reflect them? david: i have a theory. jonathan: ok, good. david: in addition to the guy you interviewed, first term member of congress from the buffalo area, he said i'm shocked by the events, and he was a big supporter of the nra. he said no, we need to ban assault weapons. he lasted a week and now he is not running for reelection.

jonathan: that happened today? david: that happened today. my theory of what has happened is a lot of gun owners, and we have ample evidence of this, do support these things we are talking about. the republican party has become not just a political party that passes legislation, it has become a cultural tried. and tribes are held together by loyalty. tribes are held together by taboos. it has now become a taboo in the republican party, having nothing to do with the substance of guns, it is just a marker. if you are a member of our tribe, if you belong to us, you do not do anything on guns. you also believe the election was stolen and these are tribal markers. i have trouble seeing us breaking that tribal mentality, which demands uniformity, unless our overall politics becomes less polarized. how that is going to happen is what we have been struggling with for a few decades. william: i want to ask you about something we heard amna talking

about with elizabeth earlier. it is something i have not been able to get out of my mind, which is t parents in uvalde having to be swapped for their dna, because the children were unrecognizable in those classrooms because of the weapon used against them. it has led to some people to say, to shocked the country's conscious into action, we ought to consider showing people what these weapons do more graphically. what do you think about that proposal? nathan: like you, when i saw the news, it just broke my heart. imagine, you are going to this place where you are fearing the worst about your child being dead, and you are going to go identify the body, and a person comes and says, we need to swap your cheek because that is the only way we will identify your child. i don't have children, and it

just tore me to pieces. please excuse me for that turn of phrase there. i go back and i think i side with former homeland security secretary jeh johnson who wrote an op-ed where he said, you know what, we need to see, we need to see the bodies. we need to see this for the very reason you were talking about, in order to shocked the country, not in a urient way but in a way that says, we must do something here. i go back to maybe till. her son, emmett till, was lynched, totally disfigured in missisppi. and she decided, you know what, the world, the nation needs to see what they did to my child. when she did that, as shocking as it was, it advanced the cause of civil rights in this country. i would not want to be a parent

that would have to decide whether that is a choice i would want to make. but if a child -- i'm sorry, if a parent were to do that, were to have the courage and the harrah'-- the heroism to say, i want the nation and the world to see what an ar-15 did to my child, i would support that parent 1000%. i'm just rendered speechless by even having to talk about this. i don't know what else can be done to get any kind of action to protect families. william: david, i'm sorry, i would love to hear your te on this. david: i agree with elizabeth. william: david and donovan, always good to see you both. thank you.

as shakespeare wrote, "what a piece of work is a man?" well, now a man named james imes has re-worked shakespeare's "hamlet." his new play, fat ham, recently won the pulitzer prize in drama. jeffrey brown has the story from new york part of our arts and culture series, canvas. jeffrey: something is rotten in the state of denmark. >> now my father wants me to kill my uncle. jeffrey: actually, make that north carolina where the setting is not elsinore castle but a backyard barbecue. >> april 12. jeffrey: the son with a murdered father, not a rinse named hamlet but a black, queer, southern young man called juicy. and the playwright, not william shakespeare, but james imes.

>> it is my conversation with shakespeare. it is me trying to talk to the guy. jeffrey: to shakespeare saying, what, for example? >> i g to say, this is what your story,r the story that you discovered and wrote a version of, this is what it can do now. jeffrey: shakespeare's story of course is "hamlet." >> to be or not to be. jeffrey: and tre is little question it is among history's best known works. a tragedy of vengeance in which, no spoiler needed, a lot of bodies end up on the floor. including the title characters. >> pretty cool about your mom and uncle. jeffrey: james imes version unfolds differently. it was first presented in streaming video due to the pandemic, produced by the wilma theater in philadelphia, where imes serves as a core -- a codirector.

it is now getting its first in person production at new york's public the -- theater. >> early drafts are very much beat for beat, i am tracking hamlet. >> i just saw your daddy. >> what do you mean? >> he was there, waing across the yard. >> then you get to the end of hamlet and i go, right, i'm in a backyard, and everybody has to die. that is literally what happens in the play. i had to rethink what my relationship to the ending was, which made me rethink how i wanted to tell the whole story. jeffrey: this family in the backyard, loud, going at it, loving, hating, all of it together, this is in some sense your family? >> now, my community. i was always surrounded by that energy. i think it is worthy of the stage. and don't always see it. so i wanted to bring that to life for people. >> you already to pray? >> you know i am. >> it is my attempt to bring the

black south closer to these plays and to shakespeare's language. jeffrey: this is the set but this also feels like home. >> yeah. this edifice here with the doors very much looks like the house i grew up in when i was a kid. jeffrey: imes grew up in bessemer city, north carolina, which he describes as a close knit, church centered community. he did not come out as gay until his 20's. he began writing in his teens. a way, he says, to get painful feelings out of his head. he would later go on to act in direct as well. >> i have heard a guilty creature sitting at a plate. jeffrey: he loves shakespeare and said is his -- and so does his character, juicy. >> i will have these players play something like the murder of my father before my uncle.

jeffrey: imes also wanted to play with the idea of tragedy itself. >> i'm going to become so mean and utal and awful. jeffrey: to ask how he might break out of cycles of vengeance and violence. >> don't do that. >> the expectation for black storytellers is that we will tell tragedies. that our existence is tragic. and i don't know that i agree with that. i think that tragedy happens. and we are living through a sea of tragedy right now on so many different levels. and the thing that has kept me and sustained me through all of that. >> you could stand to be more honest. >> is my ability to make other people laugh and for people to make me laugh. >> you had to think about that answer. >> you think you are more complex than you actually are. jeffrey: "fat hand" is funny, very funny, including knowing winks at shakespeare -- >> the king is dead.

jeffrey: and pbs. >> you watch too much pbs. >> how can walk -- how can one watch too much pbs? jeffrey: there is also the threat of violence in the demand that men be ready to take deadly revee. >> you could get hard and mean an cold, deadly. >> i don't know if i could do that. >> juicy, ing a person who is very alive in his softness, very alive in his que rerness in a plate and up -- in a place that is not welcoming to that, i wanted to show people that even in the midst of this really cruel and brutal environment, you can hang on to the parts of yourself that make you different. make you unique. make you special. >> you weird, juicy. jeffrey: imes has his character

opal say this directly. >> what he thinks is your weakness is going to save you, juicy. >> and that has always been true. the things about me that people thought made me weak, have been the things that have wrought me to this moment. i truly believe that. it took me a long time to accept my identity. it took me a long time to be confident, period. so i'm hoping the play offers people the spark to know that that is the thing that they can just turn that on for themselves. jeffrey: does theater have that power anymore? >> i think it does. theater reinforce the truth that we are not alone. even though everything keeps telling us that we are. jeffrey: an end to cycles of tragedy, if hamlet can become a comedy of competence and survival, than perhaps anything is possible. >> i plan on getting into the

cannabis industry. jeffrey: if the bard himself objects -- >> he cannot say much to me now, which is the great thing about being able to adapt shakespeare. can't say anything. jeffrey: you have the last word here. >> i do. jeffrey: james imes pulitzer prize-winning film -- play runs through july 3. for the pbs newshour, i am jeffrey brown at the public theater in new york. william: a news update, dr. manette won the republican senate primary in pennsylvania. his opponent, david mccormick, conceded when it became clear he could not make up his deficit in a recount. later tonight on pbs, you can watch the latest episodof this season's "beyond the cannabis." the program features interviews and profiles with some of the

brightest stars in music, art, and more. tonight's episode focuses on art to change the world. >> on beyond the canvas, read revisit artists finding ways to change the world around them. >> i think portraiture is powerful for making people feel seen. >> we are all running a relay race. >> the offering of themselves calls people to continue the work of racial justice. >> the artform has given me so much as an immigrant, and it continues to change my life every day. william: the latest episode of "beyond the canvas" premieres tonight at 10:30 on most pbs stations. that is after american masters "joe papp in five acts" and the -- and check your listings. this year's spelling bee champion was crowned last night with a very impressive performance. if you want to see how your own skills compare, test yourself with the quiz that includes some of the words from the spell off. that is in our instagram stories.

and that is the newshour for tonight. i am william brangham. join us online and again here monday evening. for all of us at the "pbs newshour," thank you. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has beeprovided by -- [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.] >> moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> the william and flora hewlett foundation. for more than 50 years, advancing ideas and supporting institutions to promote a better world at hewlett.org.

>> supporting social entrepreneurs and their solutions to the world's most pressing problems. school foundation.org. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions. and friends of the newshour. this program was made possible either corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you.

[air whooshes] [dramatimusic] - hello, everyone, and welcome to "amanpour & company." here's what's coming up. [air whooshes] blowing the whistle on britain's chaotic exit from afghanistan. i'm joined by the lawmaker investigating the startling accusations. then, former infantryman david kilcullen's new book, "the ledger," calculates the cost of the west's many failures there. also ahead. - the question really is not how you personally feel about abortion, because it is a deeply personal issue. the question is, who should make that decision? - [christiane] america's persistent culture wars. former planned parenthood president cecile richards talks to walter isaacson about the persistent assault on women's choice. plus ♪ without your love ♪ ♪ it's a melody played in a penny arcade ♪ a show business legend, kathleen turner,