judy: good evening. on "the newshour" tonight, the january 6 investigation. states officialsestify about how former president trump testify -- tried to pressure them to overturn the results of the election. and new information about the uvalde school massacre. the texas department of public safety castigates the police department for its response, saying it put the lives of police officers over children and teachers. and the uncertainty women could

face again if i landmark supreme court decision legalizing abortion is overturned. >> women's lives will be thwarted. they will be lessened, they will be diminished because their freedoms are diminished. judy: all that and more on tonight's "pbs newshour." ♪ >> major funding for the "pbs newshour" has been provided by -- >> for 25 years, consumer cellular has been operating no-contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like. our team can help find a plan that fits you. to learn more, visit consumercellular.tv. >> and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions and friends of "the

newshour." >> the john s and jamestown knight foundation, fostering and warmednd engaged communities -- fostering informed and engaged communities. more at kf.org. >> 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: for the fourth time this month, the congressional

committee investigating the january 6 attack on the u.s. capitol presented evidence of the relentless effort from former president trump and his allies to throw out the results of the 2020 election. the focus of today's hearing was the pressure former president trump exerted on state legislators and statend local election officials. because of the former president's repeated lies, congressman adam schiff said election workers facedets for simply doing their job. >> the president's life was and is a dangerous cancer on the body politic. if you can convince americans that they cannot trust their own elections, then any time they lose, it is somehow illegitimate, then what is left but violence to determine who should govern? judy: witnesses shared story after story about how the sustained intimidation has

completely upended their lives. >> at home of till even -- up till even recently, it is the new pattern in our lives to worry what will happen on saturdays because we have various groups come by, and they have had panel trucks with videos of me proclaiming me to be a pedophile and pervert and corrupt politician and blaring loudspeakers in my neighborhood. >> some people broke into my daughter-in-law's home. my son has passed, and she is a widow and has two kids, so we are very concerned about her safety also. >> i don't want to go anywhere. i second-guess everything that i do. it has affected my life in a

major way, in every way. all because of lies. and me doing my job, the same thing i've been doing forever. judy: "the newshour's" congressional correspondent and white house correspondent have then watching the hearing today, and they joined me now. so much of today's testimony was moving, as we just heard. i want to begin with you, the witness we just heard from is the secretary -- i'm sorry, the speaker of the house in the state of arizona, rusty bowers. this is a state that joe biden won by -- what? 10,000 votes, and yet, he has testified to the kind of relentless pressure he was put under. >> that's right. he faced pressure from president trump and from trump's lawyers.

specifically, he recounted a conversation he had with one of trump's lawyers, john eastman, and in that conversation, eastman asked bowers to call a vote in the arizona legislature so they could decertify the state and let for us, and those electors represent that state's electoral college vote. here's what bowers said in response. >> i said, what would you have me do? he said, just do it and let the courts sort it out. i said, you are asking me to do something that has never been done in the history of the united states, and i'm going to put my state through that without sufficient proof, and that's going to be good enough with me, that i would put us through that, my state, that i swore to uphold both in constitution and in law?

no, sir. >> bowers also told the committee he faced pressure from trump and that he repeatedly told trump that he would not do anything illegal to overturn the election results in his state. even to this day, bowers is facing a target on his back from the former president because president trump put out a statement ahead of the hearing today saying that bowers is a rino -- a republican in name only. trump also said that bowers told him he won the election and that bowers said the election was rigged. congressman schiff asked bowers about that, and bowers said all of that is false and that he did not say any of that to the president, and he repeated again and again in his testimony that he would never do anything illegal to overturn arizona's election results. judy: we should add that speaker bowers described himself as a

conservative republican. lisa, we also learned that some of this pressure campaign was coming from members of congress themselves, who work -- work -- were pushing officials to accept what they called alternate slates of electors. >> in addition to the idea laura was talking about that the president and those around him were pushing states to simply overturn the results and say that he won the popular count in each state, we heard testimony the trump campaign was also trying to push a different idea, alternate slates of electors that no matter what the results were in the end, they were preparing lists of people who would be the electors, and as many of our viewers know, the ones who cast the final votes in the american presidential system, and there was the question of who is behind the idea.

at one point, president trump got together with the chairwoman of the republican national committee, top republican official in the country, and john eastman, the lawyer would have heard so much about. >> what did the president say when he called you? >> essentially, he turned the call over to mr. eastman, who proceeded to talk about the importance of the rnc helping the campaign to gather these contingent electors in case of any legal challenges that were ongoing changed the result. i think more just helping reach out. my understanding is campaign did take the lead, and we were just helping in that role.

>> that's the key portion, that the campaign took the lead. the timing matters. was it when all the court cases had ended and it was clear the president had loss? in that case, it raises questions about election fraud. let's talk about the members of congress today that came up today in the hearing. representative andy biggs of arizona is someone who did ask -- we heard in testimony, the state speaker to try to change the results or overturn the results, bring in new electors, and senator ron johnson of wisconsin, testimony today and we saw this in text messages, was that one of his aides reached out to vice president pence's staff and said the senator wanted to hand him a slate of alternate electors on january 6. ron johnson's office says he did not know about that ahead of

time, but there's the real question of if on january 6 itself, ron johnson was still trying to bring in a state of electors that was not what his state decided. judy: some unanswered questions there. lisa, staying with you, so much of the focus today was on the state and local elected officials. tell us more about what we heard from this committee in terms of white house officials themselves pressuring local election people. >> in particular, two women from fulton county, the two women seen in the video, moving absentee ballots late at night. the trump campaign set for months those were secret suitcases of ballots. we know that is not true. it was regular election procedure. you heard from shay moss earlier . her mother testified about the barrage of threats that came emanating from her name being used by the trump campaign, including people knocking on her door. at one point, the fbi saying she had to move because of threats

on her life. here is what she told the committee. >> there is nowhere i feel safe. nowhere. do you know how it feels to have the president of the united states to target you? the president of the united states is supposed to represent every american, not to target one, but he targeted me, lady ruby, a small business owner, a mother, a proud american citizen, who stood up to help fulton county run an election in the middle of the pandemic. >> i want to show you some quick statistics. she represents thousands of election workers across this country, and look at what has happened. election person experiencing threats -- one in six.

election officials planning to quit by 2024 -- look at that. one in five. many election officials feeling personal harm and professional harm from the last election. judy: those numbers are absolutely stunning. finally, back to you, laura, we did here today from the top two election officials in the state of georgia, secretary of state brad raffensperger and also the official who worked cloly with him, gabriel sterling. we already knew about the phone call that president trump had placed and spent over an hour pressuring raffensperger. what else did we learn today? >> there were two things that stood out. warm, sterling in his testimony said that the onslaught of disinformation and conspiracy theories as he and his team tried to fight it, it was like

trying to clear out the ocean with a shovel. the second thing was the specificity of raffensperger's testimony. he went into specific details about everything that he investigated, saying he investigated every element of the allegations that trump's team brought to him. >> they said there was over 66,000 underage voters. we found there was actually zero. they said there was 200,000 non-registered voters. we found zero. they said there was 266 felons. we identified 74 or less still in felony status. >> he detailed all of the allegations. he talked about the phone call trump made to him, pressuring him to find more than 11,000

votes. the committee today brought up the illegality of what we witnessed on january 6. the justice department needs to be paying attention to what they are presenting, but it's not just the justice department could bring criminal charges. the fulton county d.a. in georgia could very well bring charges herself against the president and againstis allies. right now, there is a grand jury investigation going on. they also heard from raffensperger earlier this month. judy: a very, very full day of testimony. i want to thank you both.

election officials have faced and continue to face unprecedented pressures, as we have reported. nearly one in three know someone who left their job because of threats or fears for their safety according to a survey released by the brennan center for justice. i'm joined now by two people who have experienced those challenges. new mexico secretary of state, a democrat, has battled with election deniers in her state, and former kentucky secretary of state is advising local officials who are preparing for potentially contentious elections this fall. welcome to both of you. we appreciate you being here. what stood out today when you listened to what these election

officials had to say? what stood out the most about what you heard? >> thank you, judy, for having us here, and thank you for the question. i think i can relate very deeply to a lot of what secretary raffensperger, sterling, the election workers, the speaker of the house of arizona -- i have been personally through a lesser version, shall we say, of what they have gone through, and it is just as deeply disconcerting and troubling for me,ut i also will say that every single thing that was said today really hit the nail on the head, particularly the arizona speaker of the house, when he referred to not being willing to violate his oath of office, particularly on the basis of feelings and assumptions and not evidence. that was really, i think, critical testimony that we heard

today. judy: former kentucky's ticket -- former kentucky secretary of state, what resonated most with you that you heard? >> it was actually those election workers from fulton county. i was more familiar with what secretary raffensperr was going to say as well as the speaker from arizona, but seeing those two women, we need folks like that. that's how we run our elections. it is lope or volunteers. there's thousands of them across the country. they did not sign up to get harassed or have to move out of their house. there was really moving testimony, and watching, i teared up a little bit just listening to the two of them because our system does not function without folks like that. in some respects, election officials, state election reps, we signed up to have thicker skin and to deal with this, but those making things work on the ground, counting votes on election night -- wow, that was

just stirring testimony. judy: it was hard not to tear up listening to the women who worked as election officials, election workers in the state of georgia. secretary of state oliver in new mexico, how much training do most election officials go through? is there standard for what you have to learn before youle workn elections? >> sure, there's a standard. they go through a certain amount of training. it is not very much. if you are a brand-new electn worker, if you have never done this job before, depending what county you're working in and how complicated the individual processes are, you may go through three to five hours of training, some additional online training. for the election workers that come back year after year, they have been through training many times and been through actual elections. this is an incredibly important

reason why we need to retain our election workers because these are not necessarily full-time workers. they are essentially volunteers that come out once or twice a year to help run citizen-run democracy, and the more experience they get, of course, the better they are at their jobs andhe more that they know. judy: picking up on that to you, i jotted down, now i cannot find it, the statistics from lee said that something like one in six election workers have experienced a threat, one in 5 -- i hope i t that right -- are thinking of leaving or maybe the other way around. tell me, does that surprise you? >> you will find this ironic. i'm attending the kentucky county clerk's association summer calm in's today.

today they announced the chief election administrators, among other duties. 20% of them are retiring this year. even in a non-battleground state like kentucky, we are seeing this. and they have trouble recruiting for workers in our recent primary because a lot of folks want to step aside. the pandemic and other health concerns certainly played a role, but these threats, is it really worth it to go through all this? it has changed the dynamic of elections, so it is unfortunate, but the impact is being felt by republicans and democrats at the local level, and these clerks are always questioning, why am i doing this? judy: what does that mean for this fall elections? we know all elections matter,

these matter. what does all this mean, do you think? >> it means that our county clerk's here in new mexico -- that is who administers elections on the ground -- they will be struggling to recruit poll workers. agai keep in mind, we cannot have an election without these nonpartisan, bipartisan groups of people. friends and neighbors, folks just dediced to doing their civic duty who come out and give of their time for very little money, if any, to help run our elections, so they are going to struggle to ensure they have the staffing necessary to support every voter that comes out to cast a ballot in person and to process the mail ballots in our state and other states. these county clerks already have a very big, very challenging job, so not being able to find enough individuals to conduct our democratic process is a real threat to our democratic process .

i'm a republican, so this hits me really personally and bothers me to see members of my party applying this much pressure without evidence, without facts, without the law, and the negative consequences that's having. we need folks to stop doing this , and we also don't want to lay predicate to give democrats permission to do this if they find themselves in a similar situation. our democracy iat risk. judy: very powerful words. thank you both very much. stephanie: we will return to the full program after the latest headlines.

key u.s. senators announced negotiators have -- drafting a bipartisan gun violence bill. it calls for tougher background checks on juvenile gun buyers, addresses illegal gun trafficking, limits gun purchases for people with more than one conviction of domestic violence, and adds new spending on school safety and mental health. the school -- tonight, the senate voted to begin debate on the bill. the nra has announced its opposition. the top law-enforcement official in texas charged today that the police response to the uvalde school massacre was "an abject failure." colonel steve mcgraw testified at a senate hearing and said police could have stopped the gunman within minutes but assumed a classroom door was locked and waited for a key. we will return to this after the news summary. in alabama, republican katie britt has won the u.s. senate nomination in a runoff. former president trump initially

endorsed her opponent but switched his support to her. brooks conceded defeat with a tweet moments ago. there were also primaries and runoffs today in arkansas, georgia, and virginia. in ukraine, invading russian forces and their allies against the last bastion of government fighters in the east. they seized towns near a city across the river from donetsk, which is now largely in russian hands. meanwhile, the u.s. attorney general met with ukraine's minister general. >> there is no place to hide. we and our partners will pursue every avenue available to make sure that those who are responsible for these atrocities are held accountable. >> garland also announced the formation of a war crimes accountability team.

the worst monsoon floods in more than a century submerged bangladesh today. the disaster has killed at least 69 people there and in northern -- northeast india and displaced many thousands. villagers in northeast bangladesh waded through streets today with the water up to their knees. some created makeshift boats to get around. parts of china are facing major flooding and landslides after weeks of heavy storms. more than 145,000 people have enforced to leave by floodwaters hitting 50-year highs. images from state tv showed victims being rescued from their home tens of thousands of railway workers in britain staged a dire largest strike in three decades today. the 24-hour action center demands better pay. plans were derailed for millions of commuters. >> if we give a wage increase to

the railway, then it's going to be inflationary. >> a civil jury in los angeles county today found that comedian bill cosby sexually abused a teenage girl in 1975 at the playboy mansion. the jury delivered the verdict of the now 64-year-old victim. the 84-year-old cosby's criminal conviction for sexual assault was thrown out last year by the pennsylvania supreme court. twitter's board of directors unanimously urged shareholders to approve sale to elon musk. still to come, the future of cryptocurrency is in question after precipitous drops in value. a supreme court decision allows public funds to be years for

religious education. women who facilitated abortions before roe v. wade reflect on the uncertainty of that time and much more. >> this is "the pbs newshour," from weta studios in washington and in the west from walter school of journalism at arizona state university. judy: as we reported, there are more questions and strong criticism about how law enforcemenresponded in uvalde, texas, to the mass shooting when happened. the texas senate held a special hearing where new detailsave emerged about what officers did and did not do in this critical moments. >> it took law enforcement one hour, 14 minutes, and eight seconds to engage that shooter who was in a classroom. testifying before a state senate committee today, the director of texas' department of public

safety offered this scathing assessment of the uvalde police response. >> there is compelling evidence that the law enforcement response to the attack at robb elementary was an abject failure and antithetical to everything we have learned over the last two decades since the columbine massacre. three minutes after the subject entered the building, there was a sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract, and neutralize the subject. the only thing stoing the hallway a dedicated officers from entering room 111 and 112 was the commander who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children. the officers had weapons. the children had none. >> an investigative reporter for the austin american statesman has been covering the robb elementary massacre and joins us now from austin, texas. welcome back.

thanks for being with us. you know as well as i do, from the beginning, we have been getting a very different story from officials, and details have changed. first, they said the gunman had barricaded himself in. we now know that is not true. they said officers did not have protective gear. what else new did we learn from the hearing today? >> there was a lot of discussion, frankly, about keys and the extent to which authorities were trying to access the classroom where the gunman had in fact barricaded himself, but what we now know is that according to body camera video, authorities who arrived at the scene apparently never even tried to access that classroom. they never tested the door to see if it was locked, and furtrmore, there is now evidence that the classroom door was not even locked, so all of that time spent trying to

acquire a master key from a janitor according testimony today from colonel mcgraw, that time was apparently wasted, and officials could have been doing other things and taking other steps to try to breach that classroom. >> it is incredible to think they never even tried the door. i got a chance to review some of the video surveillance footage inside the school that captured some of those critical moments during the shooting. tell me a little bit about what that surveillance, what this image shows and what it tells us about what was going on. >> as you mentioned, i was allowed to review a substantial amount of from that video camera, that security camera in the hallway. this particular photo is particularly noteworthy. the screen grab was taken from the video at 11:52 in the

morning, 19 minutes after the gunman entered robb elementary school, and what is so significant is that you can see two police officers -- at least 2 -- were on the scene at that point with high-powered weapons as well as one of them -- you can see it there in the bottom of your screen -- had a protective shield, a ballistic shield, so according to investigators reviewing all of this information, that was more than enough, according to them, to do what they needed to do and breach that classroom door to make every effort possible to take out the gunman. >> is it such a damming response -- such a damming -- it is such a damning assessment of the response. >> the school board police chief

assumed incident coand. we know he testified privately today for five hours but with regard to any sort of major public statement, he has said precious little about what steps he did and did not take that horrible day. >> in the few moments we have left, i know a lot of talk about the investigations, rightly so, but i want to ask about folks on the ground in uvalde. they were able to hold dire little league all-star championship. six kids we know who should have been there were not. -- they were able to hold their little league all-star championship. >> based on people we talked to, certainly there is a range of emotion. there are people who are, as you mentione trying to get back to some sense of normalcy if that can ever really happened, but

let me also assure you that the pain in that community, that town of 60,000 people, absolutely runs deep, and there is a continued thirst to get to the truth and to fully and broadly understand what happened and to hopefully stop it from happening in any community across america again. >> you have been covering that massacre one month ago at uvalde , texas, robb elementary school. thank you for joining us today. >> thank you. judy: the u.s. supreme court handed another victory today to religious rights advocates. as john yang reports, it had to do with an unusual education funding program in a small new england state.

john: the case involves olivia carson of glen byrne, maine, a town so small that it doenot have a high school. under maine law, those students may get taxpayer money to help pay tuition at private schools as long as they are nonsectarian. because of that restriction, the state would not pay for olivia to go to bangor christian school, which her parents had chosen for her. today, a six-three majority of the court said that violates the first amendment's guarantee of free exercise of religion. the chief washington correspondent of the national law journal, this division fell along the usual liberal-conservative lines that six conservative justices in the majority, three liberal justices dissenting. chief justice roberts voted for the majority saying in his opinion a state need not subsidized private education, we

concluded that he was referring to her previous cases -- but once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely becau they are religious, and he turns to the main case. the state pays tuition for certain students of private schools so long as the schools are not religious. that is discrimination against religion. can you unpack the majority's reasoning here? >> this case is sort of a step beyond two recent cases involving the free exercise clause and the supreme court. in the most recent case involving schools, and there is a scholarship program that religious parents and schools were excluded from, and the point bears reiterating that you cannot discriminate -- if a ste is subsidizing private schools, you cannot discriminate solely on the basis of religious

status. the court must open, what about the money is used for religious purposes by a school, not just because it is a religious school , and the court seemed today to say there really is no distinction. if a state is subsidizing private schools, it has to also subsidize private religious schools, and this is based on -- his reasoning was based on the free exercise clause. this is a reminder, remember, the first amendment says two things about religion -- it says congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religion. those two clauses the court has often said are sometimes in tension with each other, and that was the case here. you have parents who want to

have their students attend religious schools saying you are violating our free exercise rights. at the same time, you have maine saying that if we subsidize you, we maybe violating the establishment clause. >> justice breyer wrote the main dissent for the three liberal justices. justice sotomayor your wrote her own dissent saying today the court leads us to a place where if a state cannot offer subsidies without being required to fund religious exercise, any state that values historic antiestablishment interest more than this court does will have to curtail the support it offers to its citizens. help us understand the dissenters' argument. >> she is saying basically the majority has elevated the free exercise clause above the

establishment clause of the first amendment, and she said at the opening, sort of destroying that old doctrine known as the wall of separation between church and state. stice breyer was also very concerned about this sort of elevation of the free exercise clause over the establishment clause. he said the court has always allowed states to deal with specific problems without violating the free exercise clause or the establishment clause, and he thought that maine was doing exactly that in order to deal with the problem of a lack of public high schools in rural areas. this is the continuation of a trend in the supreme court. this conservative majority truly does favor the free exercise clause, so the court is really

expanding on the role of religion in public life, and i'm not quite sure how much farther it is going to go. >> thank you very much. chief lovell correspondent of "the washington journal." >> thank you very much, john. judy: in light of a leak supreme court opinion that would reverse the landmark case roe v. wade, the country faces the prospect of a future where abortion will no longer be legal nationwide. >> it was just not something that any woman should have to go through, period. it is a simple as that. >> tickets ago, now 81-year-old

roberta was a reporter in new york city when she had an unplanned pregnancy. she traveled to a clinic in puerto rico for what was then and illegal procedure in new york state and across much of america, and abortion. >> it was the kind of hospital where women gave birth as well as had abortions, so you heard babies crying, and you saw women who were there for the same reason you work. i had an anesthetic. it did not totally take, so it was partially painful. it was humiliating because i knew i was doing something illegal. >> before the 1973 supreme court decision roe v. wade, abortions were prohibited in 33 states and only allowed in special circumstances in 13 others, but women in those states still had abortions, some through unsafe so-called calorie procedures. others tried to induce abortions themselves.

>> we had almost no options. you would either put yourself at risk with a self abortion using knitting needles, crochet needles, take pills. there was no other option i knew anything about. >> this activist has been working on abortion rights issues since 1971. at the time, women would also travel to terminate pregnancies abroad or to new york where abortions were legized, but avery says that kind of travel just was not possible for many women she counsel when the procedure was illegal in most cases. >> a black woman came, and she said i don't have any mey to go to new york. i don't know anybody there. a month or two later, she died from a self induce abortion, so

that really opened my eyes that even if we had access to abortion, if women did not have the means by which to pay for that, they still did not really have access. >> throughout the 1950's and 196's, an estimated 200,000 to 1.2 million illegal abortions were performed a year in the united states. hundreds of women died every year from botched procedures. in the early 1960's in new york city alone, abortion accounted for half of all child-related deaths. >> there women in hospitals of women who either tried to induce their own abortion or went to someone who was not reliable, was not trustworthy, and had done damage to them. >> as a graduatstudent in 1965, heather cofounded an

underground abortion service in chicago using a codename. >> changes so they don't ask for eleanor. how about jane? nobody is called jane anymore. >> a new film erring on hbo and hbo max tells the story of those women who call themselves the service between 1969 and 1973 using a network of secret communications and safehouses to protect each other and the women seeking help. they performed thousands of safe and affordable abortions. >> women would launch into these stories. i have three children, i have no more money, my husband is leaving hour my husband is sick or i don't have a husband. i'm 17, i want to go to college and i got this scholarship and if i don't do this now -- they were really cogent and important

reasons, but we would really try to make clear to them they did not have to justify themselves. >> it was both a question of providing the care at all, creating a community, ensuring the cost was feasible and that it was accessible to anyone who wanted it. >> in 1970 two, the chicago police department arrested seven members of the service and charge them with 11 counts of abortion and conspiracy to commit abortion. one of the james -- one of the janes remembers that day. >> they took me out to a parking lot where they cuffed me and took me to this van. i was nervous. i was physically uncomfortable, literally shutting -- literally shuttering from the cold. >> she was first to be let out on bail because she recently had a child and was still nursing. what do you remember about going

home to your by? >> i went and stood next to his crib, and he woke up, so i picked him up and nursed him, and while i was nursing him, i could feel the tension which i had not even been conscious of, just streaming out of my body down my arms and legs. >> a few months after their arrest, the supreme court legalized abortion nationwide. the charges against the janes were dropped. nearly 20 years on, the elite -- nearly 50 years on, the leaked draft opinion indicates the law may be overturned. >> women's lives will be thwarted because their freedoms are diminished. it means if you are raped, if

you are a victim of incest, in many states, you will not have an option to have another direction in your life. >> when you heard about the leaked supreme court draft earlier this year and it looks as if roe could be overturned, what did you think? >> i was devastated. i think it will be worse for a lot of women. it will be worse for women who live on lower incomes. >> nevertheless, avery believes like in the days before roe, women will find a way around restrictions. >> this might seem like a step backwa, but it is and unjust law, and these young women are not going to take a backseat to anybody. they are going to do it. i have faith in them. they will because their lives depend on it.

>> in new york, she ss getting her own illegal abortion motivated her to report on other women's abortion stories and just months after the 1973 roe v. wade decision, she wrote a groundbreaki piece illustrated with a gruesome photo of a woman who died years earlier from a botched illegal abortion. the headline was "never again." >> it was entitled "never again" because ironically, we thought never again would women have to go through what the woman who was pictured in the photograph that accompanied the article had to go through, dead on a motel room floor. we thought never again. who would have ever thought that the whole thing could be turned around? >> the future of abortion access in america now rests with the supreme court and a decision that is expected in the coming days.

judy: it has been a very rough year so far stocks and other investments. markets have dropped sharply over the past few months. that plunge has been even larger and going on longer for cryptocurrencies and that sector. >> after hitting recent lows over the weekend, some key cryptocurrencies like bitcoin did rebound a bit today, but that's only after months of steady, dramatic losses. in fact, the total market value of all cryptocurrencies combined is down nearly 2/3, about $2 trillion since november. some of the biggest ones like bitcoin are down 50% or more from highs, and several trading platforms dedicated to crypto have suspended activity in

recent weeks. it is a far cry from the gold rush-like atmosphere from not that long ago. the reporter with "the wall street journal" who follows this trends me now. can you remind us a bit, give us a primer on what cryptocurrencies are and why they were created in the first place? >> oh, wow, the why question i think is one people have been debating for a while, but cryptocurrencies are essentially -- it is a computer program or a standardized ledger where people create tokens that cannot be replicated or cannot just be created whenever someone has the urge. you have to go through a process, and there is a scarcity, so there's only a certain number of tokens that can be created and published for people. that is kind of the draw, that it is not an unlimited resource.

there's only a certain amount that can be created, and the idea is that scarcity creates lu. >> that is a digital currency people can use to buy and sell things and trade back and forth. >> exactly. is a digital currency not created by governments. >> people may remember an avalanche of crypto ads that ran during the super bowl. everybody was trying to get into it, but then valuations have had this incredibly precipitous fall. what has happened? why are they falling? >> that's another very good question. no one is entirely certain why they are calling, right? why the markets do what they do, but based on conversations we have had with investors and some of these crypto evangelists, it is a few things. number one has just been crypto has moved a lot in line with the stock markets, particularly tech stocks, some of the highflying, very ris bet that were doing

well towards the tail end of 2020 and in 2021 and really kind of peak out towards the end of november, so a lot of the same investors -- i did a video recently for "wall street journal's" tube -- youtube channel about how wall street has really moved into crypto. wall street investors have traded about 10 times as much crypto in 2021 as they did in 2020. you are seeing and magnitude 10 shift wall street moving in. that is good in terms of increasing validity and mainstream-ization of crypto, but also when these guys see risk, they are much quicker to sell than some of the troop believers who believe in ho dling, which is another way of saying holding crypto. there has been a lot of risk and

bitcoin is seen as a risky asset. there really is not an underlying use for bitcoin, not like things like gold or copper. you don't really treat cryptocurrency like currency. it is not generally used two by or sell things, so there has been that use case scenario. also, a lot of folks have been getting margin calls, meaning that they are borrowing money and using that to invest and when things sell off and they lose value, they've got to sell more things to make up for the money they owe. there are a lot of different things that are weighing on the market, but none of them are helping the cryptocurrency market at the moment. >> right. it is funny because i remember the early evangelists saying that cryptocurrencies would somehow be immune from these mark forces. seems like that is not totally the case. in all of this enormous loss, these trillions of dollars in

value losses, who is gettin hurt in those cases? big investors, little investors? who is it? >> largely, it is and of little investors who bought at the peak and are now having to sell at the trough -- it is a lot of little investors who bought at the peak and are now having to sell at the trough. a lot of investors who thought this was a great way to get rich, so they bought when bitcoin was $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 and thought it would only continue going up, and now it is going down. big investors are certainly being hurt. there were a lot of people who bought in vague on the bitcoin train and are now seeing a lot of their positions eroded and really run amok or afoul the rest of their portfolio, so it is across-the-board. i think the people who are really suffering are those who bought in high and are now having to sell low powered up

right down to zero. >> thank you so much. >> thanks for having me. judy: interesting update. thank you for that. and that is "the newshour" for tonight. join us online and again here tomorrow evening. please stay safe. we will see you soon. >> major funding for "the pbs newshour" has been provided by -- >> architect. gatekeeper. mentor. a raymondjames financial advisor tailors advice to help you live your life right. life well planned. >> carnegie corporation of new york, supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement, and the advancement of international peace and security at carnegie.org. the target foundation, committed to advancing racial equity and

committing the change required to shift systems and accelerate equitable 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 w eta studios in washington and in the west from walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university.

sisisic) - [danielle] comfort food is nostalgic, nourishing and all about pleasure. in our modern lives of busy days and sleepless nights, food that provides comfort has never been more indispensable. whether it's chinese dishes made at home with an assist from a family cooking blog, or taiwanese and indonesian classics re-imagined by ambitious young chefs, a new generation of diners is findingleasure amongst the familiar, even if the familiar is an acquired taste. in an instagram age when we're constantly seeking what's new, foods with the connection to our earliest days