♪ lisa: good evening. i'm lisa desjardins. geoff bennett is away. tonight on "pbs news weekend"... with monkeypox cases on the rise, we look at the issues of access to vaccines, treatment and testing. dr. gonsalves: the big problem is that we have a vast shortage of vaccines. we can't get our arms around the outbreak. we're creating a caste system of who's going to get access to what's needed for monkeypox. lisa: then... as students acss the country get ready to return to school, what's keeping them safe in the classroom. and... alley-oops and drop ins, more people finding a home with skateboarding as the sport becomes more inclusive. all that and the day's headlines on tonight's "pbs news weekend."

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broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. lisa: good evening and hello. late last night, indiana became the first state since the supreme court struck down roe v. wade to approve a new law banning nearly all abortion procedures. as protesters gathered outside the state senate chambers, republican governor eric holcomb signed the bill, within an hour of its passage. all current india abortion clinics will lose their licenses, but the law narrowly permits some abortions at hospitals and outpatient centers in cases of rape and incest within the first 10-weeks of pregnancy. today, the biden administration and eli lilly, one of indiana's largest employers, condemned the law, which goes into effect next month. the stakes are high for the u.s. senate tonight, on the verge of passing a sweeping reform bill. senate democrats have forced an unusual weekend session to push

through their half-trillion dollar health care, climate, and tax reform bill. supporters of the bill got some good news overnight. "newshour" has learned the senate parliamentarian has given a green light to the climate and tax provisions, and many of the health and drug pricing elements of the bill. but a proposal to cap the out-of-pocket cost for insulin is still in doubt, and may not make it through to the final version. votes are expected overnight. president biden has tested negative today, after testing positive from a rebound case of covid one week ago. the president's physician says mr. biden will remain under isolation until he receives a second negative test. for the first time in years, there is no direct communication between the united states and china, including in ongoing defense and climate talks. beijing's silence is seen as retaliation for house speaker nancy pelosi's visit to taiwan this week. china also escalated the intensity of its actions near the island, ratcheting up military drills and attack

simulations, now in their third straight day. earlier today in the philippines, secretary of state antony blinken rebuked beijing's actions. sec. blinken: the differences between taiwan and the maiand need to be resolved peacefully, and what we have seen china do over the last few years is move away from a peaceful resolution of differences to doing so coercively and potenally forcefully. lisa: the chinese military says this week's activities are a test of its land strike and sea assault capabilities. there is escalating violence in the gaza strip, amid an israeli crackdown. a warning -- some of the following images are graphic. israeli airstrikes pummeled parts of gaztoday, leveling buildings, destroying what the israeli military alleges are militant targets. later in the day, israel claims stray rocket fire from palestinian militants caused more civilian deaths in northern gaza. at least 15 palestinians,

-- at least 24 palestinians, including a 5-year-old girl, have been killed since israel began strikes against gaza on friday. still to come on "pbs news weekend"... as kids head back school, questions and concerns about safety. and... a w era -- we look at skateboarding's growing community. ♪ >> this is "pbs news weekend" from weta studios in washington, home of the "pbs newshour," weeknights on pbs. lisa: now a declared national emergency, monkeypox continues to spread in the united states. so do concns over disparities in access to testing and vaccines for vulnerable communities. joining me now is gregg gonsves, an epidemiologist from the yale school of public health. gregg, thank you for coming back . in just the week since we last spoke with you, the number of

monkeypox cases has doubled. so what is this moment right now? can we still contain this? dr. gonsalves: well, you know, lisa, i'm also alarmed by the rapid growth in monkeypox cases around the u.s. in may, we hadn't even really thought about monkeypox as a concern as an endemic disease in the united states. but as you said, we have over 7,100 cases now in almost every american state. if we could have contained it, we would have moved quickly and and and expeditiously in early june to ramp up vaccine deployment, ramp up testing, ramp up access to treatments. but we have sort of dillydally -- dillydallied for eight weeks now. and now, as you said, we are watching cases rise precipitously acrosshe country. lisa: you know, these past few years have put such a spotlight again on health disparities in

this country in a big way in crisis, health crises that we're facing. you study this. i wonder, who do you think is most at danger from monkeypox and then who is most at danger from not getting access to treatment for it? dr. gonsalves: well, you know, fenit nirappil from the washington post has done a lot of great reporting on this, health disparities and monkeypox. and he was writing the other day that of the known cases we know where we know race and ethnicity, we have about 38% white, 32% latino and 26% black, but african-americans only account for about 17% of who received txx, the treatment for the disease. so what we're seeing is that health disparities we'veeen in covid, we've seen in hiv, are recapitulating themselves with this new virus, monkeypox. lisa: we hear a lot, of course, about men who have sex with men. is there a treatment disparity there as well? dr. gonsalves: well, right now, you know, over 9, close to 99% of these cases are in men who have sex with men, so while monkeypox is not a gay disease, the gay community is facing the brunt of it right now. the big problem is that we have a vast shortage of vaccines.

we can't get our arms around the outbreak. as i said, there are disparities in access to treatment there. people have health insurance and access to medical care whore quickly seen by the physicians can get treated for pain, can get access to tpoxx. others are waiting for weeks and weeks to try to get a test or once they get tested, have nowhere to go. if they need to go to the hospital, for instance, to manage their pain, because it's so excruciating. and so we're creating a caste system of who's going to get access to what's needed for monkeypox. in a few months when we do have vaccines, i expect there to be a rush on it by people who have access to resources and who can sit on online and hit refresh until they get an appointment, but it's going to seep into the rural south and other places in whh the hiv virus has gone beforehand. li: you know, i wonder you mentioned, of course, resources. affluence is sort of one issue about access, but some of this is ademographic. to ask a complex question, i

hope it's not naive. why do we still have these persistent, malignant kind of biases in health care? these are often these systems are run by health professionals, many of whom are trained to try and think about marginalized communities. why are we still here? dr. gonsalves: so a couple of things. our health disparities are baked into the american health care system. the former surgeon general, david satcher, wrote a piece a while ago. i think it was in health affairs, where he talked about the excess deaths among african americans in this country in the tens of thousands, at least. and so we can talk about health dispities, not just with monkeypox, but with covid, with hiv, with cervical cancer, with sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea. so it's baked into the system for quite a while, not only on income and your wealth, but on race as well. lisa: hmm. the white house says now, of course, this problem with the enough vaccine and not enough vaccine that it's considering splitting some of these doses,

maybe injecting them a different way that could work. do we know if that would work and does that address the disparity issue at all? could it? dr. gonsalves: well, the health disparities are going to linger no matter what. as i said, they're baked into the system. right now, we need more vaccine and the federal government should really be working as hard as they can to figurout how to get more of this product online before the fall. splitting the doses is a risky strategy. we have very little data on the effectiveness of this vaccine in the context of this current outbreak, because simply we haven't seen monkeypox erupt in the united states before at this level, nor have deployed the vaccine for that purpose. so the nih is going to do a study of splitting doses, but that information is going to take weeks and weeks for us to get and to implement. right now, we need to really be scaling up our availability of vaccines that we have now, figure out if there's ways to ramp up production, making sure that people get access to tpoxx. the other thing we haven't talked about is that, you know,

this disease requires 21 days for isolation. right? i might be able to stay home if i get sick. but there are many people who have to go right into work. and so how are people going to find support to work throughhe pain and to figure out how to supporthemselves and their families while they're dealing with this disease? lisa: one more question. do we know if this disease can be asymptomatic, if there are carriers of this disease who may not show any signs that they have it? dr. gonsalves: so remember, this sease is transmitted by close physical contact. it's skin to skin, so you're exposed skin against the lesion of somebody who already has the disease. whether there's asymptomatic transmission through other means, through bodily fluids, for instance, is not certain yet, but the classical presentation is to to have a lesion and to have skin to skin contact that way. so there's a lot we don't know. but remember, this virus has been around, at least in human cases, for 50 years, so it's not an old virus. we're learning more about how it's presenting specifically in the context of this outbreak.

but skin to skin close physical contact right now, in the context of close sexual relations, is what's driving the pandemic. lisa: important information for the whole country to think about. thank you for joining us. ♪ students head back to the classroom in just weeks and along with books and backpacks, they bring renewed concerns about safety. that's often left to individual school districts, but there is some federal money to help. after the massacre this spring at an elementary school in uvalde, texas, congress passed the bipartisan safer communities act. the gun provisions in that bill are one part of the issue, but let's take a look at the security piece. that law funds billions for new mental health and safety measures in schools, an expansion of current federal

funding. december, the department of justice awarded nearly $126 million in security grants to schools. that included money for violence prevention training in 29 states. but overall, that money went to just a few dozen of the nation's 13,000 school districts. so, how are schools tackling this and what is working? to learn more, i'm joined by lori alhadeff, who founded "make our schools safe" after her daughter was killed in the 2018 parkland school shooting, and amy klinger from the educator's school safety network. lori and amy, thank you so much for joining us for this important conversation. lori, i want to start with you. your state, florida, has a law now named after your daughter, alyssa's law, that would provide panic buttons to teachers. but you're also focused on mental health as a key part of the safety needed. what do you think is needed there and what is working so far in that area? lori: so we passed the marjory

stoneman douglas act and alyssa's law, and alyssa's law is panic buttons in school, so if there is a life threatening emergency situation, we want to empower our teachers to push a button on the phone or something to wear around their neck. and it's directly linked to law enforcement, geofence the area so that they can get on the scene as quickly as possible. so we believe that in that life threatening emergency, time equals life, and to get help there as quickly as possible will save lives. and of course, mental health is a huge part of the conversation. you know, especially after covid, we really need to provide services for our students to be able to get the help that they need. lisa: is that a case of looking at the trauma on students who may be worried about violence or what about mental health in terms of dealing with students who may become violent? lori: so we definitely want to be very proactive about making sure that students know how to

access their mental health services. here in broward county, we have a talk app on every student computer so they can be able to access that information if they need help and that we will then provide that help for every student. also, see something, say something. it's so important that students be able to reach out for help as themselves or anonymously. we had someone that wanted to commit suicide and told me and i was able to report it through the app and they were able to find that person and get them the help before they committed suicide. lisa: amy, there's a good example, but this is still an area with a lot of stigma. are schools nationwide doing enough to look at mental health as a component in potential violence? amy: well, i think we always need to do more. i think we need to look at a continuum of options and services and tools. and that's been part of the problem is we have only looked at school safety through a very narrow viewpoint and we have not expanded and broadened.

we need to look at a comprehensive approach that is all hazards that takes into account mental health and all kinds of both prevention and response aivities. and that's how we really solve these problems, is to go at them from a variety of means, rather than just taking one thing and saying that's enough because it's not enough. lisa: and then also in that mix, i know a lot of your educators and schools are looking at the physical plan. you know, we've seen metal detectors, we've seen changes in the school structure. what have you learned about what's working and are there things that are just sort of adding to the sense of fear and what's good, what's bad in that area? amy: it's a very delicate balance because we're not running prisons, we're running schools, but yet we need to have appropriate access control. we need to have some of those hardware mechanisms in place, but that can't be the only thing we have. we know that relationship based cultures, that a positive culture, students who are able to make disclosures. we know that all of those

relationship activities that are not laforcement based, but they are education based. those are the things thareally make a diffence. so it is easier, it may seem easier to just buy something or to put a piece of hardware into a school, but that can't be the only tool in the toolbox. and i think that's the big takeaway from all of these events is we have too an array of things. because frankly, i don't know what else we're doing in schools that is more important than saving kids' lives. it is literally the most important thing we should be doing as educators and law enforcement and mental health. lisa: lori, i see you nodding. what do you think is most important right now? what's needed most? lori: so i think it is -- you know, it's going to be layers and layers of school safety protection. i think it's very important that we give professional development to our teachers for mental health first aid. so they are able to see if a child is having issues in their class, be able to identify it and then connect them to the resources that that student will

need. and it's especially important that we provide mental health services for students starting in the elementary school level so that they don't grow up and become teenagers and commit violent acts. lisa: this is something on so many parents' minds, including my mind as well. thank you both so much, lori alhadeff and amy klinger. ♪ its popularity has skyrocketed since its early outsider origins, but for a lot of its history, there's been a barrier around skateboarding. learn the vernacular, the aesthetic, and of course, how to skate, and you can gain admission. but that entrance has seemed largely reserved for white, heterosexual men. special correspondent christopher booker reports on how the closed-off culture of

skateboarding is becoming a lot more open. christopher: in 1997 when alexis sablone was 11 years old, she convinced her parents to send her to woodward, pennsylvania, to attend what was, at the time, one of the few skateboard camps in the world. alexis: i was the only girl in the entire camp. it was like 600 guys and me. christopher: did that discourage you at all? to be one of 600? alexis: no, i didn't care at all, i was just excited to be there. christopher: having fallen in love with skateboarding the year before, sablone was a minority in what was still a subculture. the x-games was in only its third year and tony hawk had not yet landed hisamed 900 aerial spin move. alexis: it was just me. and, like, guys would be like, "oh, my god, yeah, th's the girl." i hadn't skated with other girls, but they'd never skated with a girl either. so to them it was rprising. and then i was just one of the crew. christopher: well, not exactly. sablone was exceptionally

talented and driven. by 12, she had become a sponsored skateboarder, and her 2002 appearance in the skateboard video, pj ladd's "wonderful, horrible life," established sablone as one of the best female street skaters in the country. this was all happening as skateboarding's visibility was creeping into mainstream culture. from video games to mcdonald's adrtisements, the sport was everywhere, and there were growing opportunities to do it professionally... at least for men. alexis: no one was knocking down my door saying, like, "we want to pay you to come out to the west coast and be a pro skater." like, it doesn't matter how good i get, i'm never going to be able to make a living off this or succeed here, it was just something you accepted. christopher: but, sable didn't stop, her path forged not with corporate deals, but contests. since she first entered the x-games in 2009, she has won 7 medals, this kickflip part of her first place win in 2012. her contest skating help pay for her undergraduate degree at columbia and graduate degree at mit, but it was not enough for a full time career.

alexis: for so long you hear guy skaters talk about how everyone can learn from skateboarding, skateboarding is for everyone, and for so long, that just wasn't true. it left out girls and gay people, trans people, just go down the list. christopher: but sablone says for women, the skateboarding world looks very different than when she started, with large corporations putting money behind femalskaters. she now partners with converse and has own signature shoe. the interest starting a few years before she became the oldest member of the first u.s. women's olympic skateboard team. alexis: now it's really starting to change. i think social media is a huge reason that we've seen that the growth we've seen. it used to be like there were these pockets of girls skating here and there, and there was no way for them to find each other really. now you have access to this, like, global network, and so that gives you some form of community and then has also really helped build actual like physical communities, because it's a lot easier to find people.

christher: it was through social media that skater shauny stam, along with partners corey and ann, was able to start pansy, a brooklyn-based group they describe as a "skateboarding-based mutual aid organization for trans and queer people." shauny: so we basically just wanted to help create a safe space where like we could meet people where we can say like, hey, there's other people that want to skate that are maybe like not your traditional skateboarder. it's super inclusive. like, it's like the most at-home i felt ever like in my experience of doing anything. christopher: pansy holds monthly meetups in skateparks across city that invites people to come skate, swap gear and talk about issues within their community. have you run across resentment or anyone saying we should just state -- like we don't need to bring in identity and identity discussions into this spe? shauny: here and there we'll have, like, negative responses. there skateboards put out a video called "ruining skateboarding." and it's all about these amazing, like, trans and queer skaters, like, doing their own thing.

and there was like a really crazy response to it, a lot of transphobic comments, homophobic comments, but it was the perfect example that they knew what they were doing and they were going to put this video out and people were going to get mad about it, but then that is kind of the whole point, skateboardings a toy and we are supposed to have fun and be a community. christopher: why do you think skateboarding lends itself to this conversation and this type of effort? shauny: skateboarders seek out skateboarding because it's different. and so because of th, i think that queer people and like marginalized people seek out skateboarding because it's different. and then we find each other within that. christopher: but the expanding umbrella of skateboarding isn't exclusive to gender, identity, or new york city. justin: i've been skating for 21 years. 16 years with sight and five without. christopher: at 25, a degenerative eye disease took the last of justin bishop's eyesight, and for four years, bishop didn't touch his skateboard. but then a friend suggested he

try to return. justin: those years i wasn't skating, i was lost. i didn't really know who i was. and then i had skateboarding back. i was me again. christopher: recently, grind for life, an organization that raises money to help cancer patients with travel expenses, hosted an event for adaptive skaters. it was part a oader effort by usa skateboarding to get adaptive events into the 2028 paralympic games. justin: the adaptive skateboarding world is been growing a lot. we have limb difference, amputee skaters, wheelchair skaters, deaf, blind, visually impaired. christopher: where do you think you are five years from now? justin: five years from now, hopefully getting beat by new kids, you know, because like if new kids don't come up, then this was a gimmick. but if new kids come up and start beating us and start, like, you know, putting their foot in the skate parknd start, like taking us out of the rankings, then it's an adaptive sport. it's always been if you're like,

if you are a skater, you are part of his, but now if you're a skater, we don't care about anything. as long as you're on a skateboard, you're a part of our club. christopher: for pbs news weekend, i am chris to for booker. ♪ lisa: online right now, the to reasons why housing costs are so high in america. all that and more is on our website, pbs.org/newshour. an update, the u.s. senate has begun its first vote on democrats's health care and climate bill, which is expected to get the 50 votes needed to start debate. a final ve could come relatively quickly, overnight or in the daytime tomorrow. and that's our program for tonight. i'm lisa desjardins. for all of us at "pbs news weekend," thanks for spending part of your saturday with us and we'll see you soon. >> major funding for "pbs news weekend" has been provided by --

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

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