♪ judy: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. judy: on "the newshour" tonight... storm preparations -- residents prepare for impact as hurricane ian gains strength and barrels toward cuba and the florida coast. then... a turn to the right -- italy votes for a party with neo-fascist roots, setting the stage for the country's first far-right government since world war ii, and its first female prime minister. and... collision course -- nasa tries to knock a space rock off its path, testing one way to defend against future killer asteroids headed toward earth. >> this is the first time in human history that we've actually set out to change the orbit of a natural object in

space. judy: all that and more on tonight's "pbs newshour." ♪ >> major funding for "the pbs newshour" has been provided by -- >> it is the little things... the reminders of what is important. it is why fidelity dedicated advisors are here to help you create a wealth plan, a plan with tax sensitive investing strategies, planning focused on tomorrow while you focus on today. that is the planning effect by fidelity. ♪ >> and with the ongoing support of these individuals and

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stephanie: i'm stephanie sy with "newshour west." we'll return to the full program after the latest headlines. hurricane ian is aiming at cuba's western tip tonight with winds of 100 miles an hour, and after that, florida's gulf coast could be in the crosshairs. the storm is growing rapidly and may be a category 4, with winds of 140 miles an hour, when it reaches the u.s. mainland. florida residents are preparing for ian's onslaught, with swathes of its gulf coast under hurricane watch and evacuation ders. >> this is a really, really big hurricane at this point. stephanie: governor ron desantis spoke in tallahassee today after declaring a state of emergency. gov. desantis: it will bring heavy rain, strong winds, flash flooding, storm surge, along with isolated tornado activity along florida's gulf coast. stephanie: ian became a hurricane overnight. it battered the cayman islands early this morning as it moved northward through the caribbean

sea. it's expected to hit western cuba as a major hurricane tonight, and then gain more strength over the warm waters of the gulf of mexico. forecasters expect landfall in florida later this week, with the cities of tampa and st. petersburg preparing for what could be a direct hit. ian's trajectory has now forced nasa to scrub this week's test flight to the moon, which had been set to launch tuesday from the kennedy space center after a month of delays. and across the state, residents are stocking up on water and boarding up their homes. amy: we're just trying to get some supplies to cover the windows because we've just seen it come closer and closer, and so we just want to make sure we get at least some coverage since we weren't expecting it to come right at us and now it looks like it is. stephanie: meanwhile, in eastern canada, devastation is still being assessed from another major hurricane -- fiona -- that made landfall over the weekend.

george: there was two or three trees that fell on the house, and then about an hour later we had three more trees fall on the house. stephanie: puerto rico was hit by fiona last week and still has more than 740,000 residents without power. in italy, a party with neo-fascist roots is now set to form the country's first far-right government since world war ii. the brothers of italy won the most votes in sunday's elections. its leader, giorgia meloni, will become italy's first female prime minister if she can form a governing coalition. we'll take a closer look after the news summary. new protests flared in russia today over military call-ups for the war in ukraine. and in one siberian city, a man shot and killed the head of an enlistment office. at the same time, military-age men are fleeing the country. traffic to get into neighboring georgia has been backed up for 48 hours. the exodus began when president vladimir putin announced the

mobilization last week. denis: of course, this has scared many people, no one wants to go to die. probably why people choose this way of protesting to leave the country. people are crossing on foot, with one bag, leaving their whole life there. stephanie: meanwhile, russia stepped up long-range attacks in ukraine's odesa region. an oveight drone strike caused a large explosion there. also today, president vladimir putin granted russian citizenship to edward snowden. he's been living in russia since 2013, after the american-born rmer computer consultant leaked classified information from the u.s. national security agency. snowden faces a battery of charges if he ever returns to u.s. jurisdiction. a gunman in central russia killed at least 17 people and wounded 24 at a school today. eleven of the dead were children, along with nearly all of the wounded.

emergency officials in izhevsk arrived to find children and adults running from the school. the regional governor said the 34-year-old gunman ultimately killed himself. gov. brechalov: we already know the name of the person who did it. we know that he was registered in a psychoneurological treatment facility. there are suggestions that he adhered to the nazi ideology, because he was in a t-shirt with nazi symbols, in a balaclava. stephanie: officials said the gunman was a graduate of the school. iran attacked kurdish separatists in northern iraq today and accused them of fomenting protests across iran. news accounts said the revolutionary guard struck the kurds with drones and artillery for the second time since the weekend. the protests in iran began after a young kurdish woman died in police custody. a 90-year-old roman catholic cardinal is now on trial in hong kong over anti-government protests there in 2019.

retired cardinal joseph zen walked into court with a cane today. he and five others are aused of failing to register a relief fund that assisted protesters. voters in cuba have approved a law to let same-sex couples marry and adopt children. the communist government's support for the measure overcame opposition from a growing evangelical movement. back in this country, pfizer is asking the fda to authorize its updated covid booster shots for children 5 to 11 years old. it targets the omicron variants. the fda already approved the new boosters for adults and older children. the u.s. forest service has launched a criminal investigation into the cause of california's largest fire this year, seizing equipment belonging to pacific gas and electric. the mosquito fire has burned nearly 80,000 acres since igniting three weeks ago. earlier, fire officials determined the fire started on national forest land in an area

near a pg&e power line. still to come on "the newshour"... former nfl quarterback brett favre comes under scrutiny for allegedly seeking welfare funds to build a sports facility... the pandemic and russian threats prompt more swedes to prepare for doomsday scenarios... our politics monday duo look ahead to this week's january 6 committee hearing... and much more. >> this is "the pbs newshour" from weta studios in washington, and in the west from the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. judy: as we reported, italians have chosen their first far right wing government since world war ii. giorgia meloni is expected to become the first female prime minister to lead europe's third largest economy. her party, brothers of italy, draws its roots from italy's fascist history. today she sounded a moderate

tone, but as nick schifrin reports, her recent rhetoric has many in italy and wider europe concerned. nick: in the birthplace of the renaissance, today italians woke up to a new political era, and a new, untested leader whose message in victory was moderate. ms. meloni: if we will be called to lead this country, we will do that for all. we will do that with the aim to unify the people, to underline what unifies it, rather than what divides it. we on the right understand exactly who we are and what we stand for. nick: but giorgia meloni is unabashedly nationalist, and oudly populist. ms. meloni: our individual freedom is under attack. the sovereignty of our nation is under attack. the prosperity and well being of our families is under attack. the education of our children is under attack. nick: she will lead italy's farthest right coalition in 80 years, with firebrand matteo salvini, the former interior minister and leader ofhe euroskepc, nationalist party

league, and three-time former prime minister, 85-year-old silvio berlusconi. >> [speaking italian] nick: meloni's rise in italian politics has come quickly. as a girl, she was raised by a single mother and has long said she found a new family as a teenager in the neo-fascist italian social movement, created by supporters of dictator benito mussolini. its logo, the flame, is part of meloni's own logo today. and almost exactly 100 years after mussolini's march on rome brought him to power, italy's future leader once praised mussolini on french tv. ms. meloni: i think mussolini was a good politician. everything he did, he did it for italy, and we can't find this in the politicians we've had for the past 50 years. nick: but 25 years later, on the campaign trail, meloni criticized mussolini. and she vows to stand up to russian president vladimir putin, as she told the conservative political action conference the day after the february invasion of ukraine. ms. meloni: we are on the side of international law. we are on the side of freedom.

and indeed, we are on the side of a proud nation that is teaching the world what it means to fight for freedom. nick: but her coalition isn't convinced. salvini used to wear putin t-shirts, and joked he would trade two italian presidents, for half of putin. and burlosconi has described putin as a younger brother. he recently walked back comments that putin's war was about putting quote good people in kyiv, but still wants to restore relations with russia. mr. berlusconi: in terms of history, religion, culture, and lifestyle, russia is absolutely a european state. i hope that this situation can change and that we can really create an europe that would include all the truly european states. nick: but each of those coalition leaders actually lost votes to meloni's brothers of italy. nathalie: the pro-kremlin parties took a real beating, and brothers of italy, giorgia meloni's party, which has indee

has been very firm in opposition to the kremlin, and in support of ukraine. nick: nathalie tocci is an italian political scientist and a former senior advisor to the european union. nathalie: she firmly believes in the notion of the west. as far as the juxtaposition between the west and russia in the context of the war, this is something that she actually really believes in. this is in a sense an identity point of the party, that's quite firmly held. nick: but meloni domestic's agenda is also firmly held, especially on immigration. she has called for a naval blockade against migrants and predicted a quote great replacement of native italians. ms. meloni: i see unbelievable things happening on the border between united states and mexico. and i think of our own sicily -- thousands of migrants allowed to enter without permission, who in many instances are engaging in crime. nick: and liberal activists

worry about her eroding lgbtq rights, and access to abortion. in the european parliament, meloni chairs a right-wing group in 44 parties that includes poland's ruling law and justice party, which the eu has condemned for undermining the rule of law. it also includes sweden's democrats, an anti-immigrant party created out of a neo-nazi group, that just became the country's second largest party. but meloni's euroskepticism will be constrained by the crises sparked by ukraine, and she will work with the biden administration, says tocci. nathalie: we are in an energy crisis, we are in an economic crisis, we are in a war, and so those are constraining factors to that euroskepticism. nick: why would she want to work with the biden administration, or why does she feel she has to? nathalie: it goes back to this question of kind of belonging to the west. you know, this is the family she belongs to. these are the international relationships that she believes in. meloni is very, not only is she very opposed to russia. she is also very gung ho about china.

and the west -- the so called leader of the west is still obviously the united states, and so this is who she'll be looking at moving forward. nick: the election featured historically low turnout, and it will take weeks before the coalition is set. but italians have chosen change, and will be led by the far right, and for the first time, a woman. for "the pbs newshour," i'm nick schifrin. ♪ judy: the united states social safety net somimes fail the who need it most. in mississippi, recent reporting has revealed how political corruption, celebrity and power combined to fleece the state's most vulnerable residents. amna nawaz has our report. amna: judy, tens of millions of dollars meant to assist families in need were instead used for personal expenses and pet projects unrelated to

mississippi's welfare program. as part of an ongoing lawsuit, last week a former director of the state's welfare agency pled guilty to counts of conspiracy and fraud, and faces up to 15 years in prison. the scandal has rocked the poorest state in the nation, and has now raised questions about the roles of prominent mississippians -- including football hall of famer brett favre and former governor phil bryant. mississippi today reporter anna wolfe broke the story, and joins me now from jackson, mississippi. welcome. thank you for joining us. you broke the story as we mentioned, an enormous fraud scheme. what caught the nation's attention was the $5 million effort to funnel welfare funds to a volleyball program where brett favre's daughter plays. what did you learn? anna: in 2020, when six people were arrested from the state

auditor's office, in this scheme, allegedly to steal $4 million from the state's welfare program. we learned pretty quickly that 5 million dollars had gone to build a volleyball stadium at the university of southern mississippi which is the alma motter -- alma mater of brett favre also the former governor phil bryant, and that brett favre's daughter played volleyball at the at the university. amna: as we mentioned, this was part of a larger alleged scheme there. the state auditor said this was the biggest public fraud case in state history. what does that entail? how big are we talking? anna: yeah, so he questioned a total of $94 million in federal spending from the mississippi department of human services, which was our social safety net agency in mississippi. you know, the money went in a number of kind of wild ways to the political cronies and friends and family and quite a few sports celebrities as well. and so the money wasn't going to a programs that were actually helping people out of poverty. instead they were spent on things like speeches from sports celebrities, and the volleyball stadium or, you know, fancy

centers with virtual reality equipment, these kinds of things. instead of being used on, you know, direct tangible assistance for mississippi's very poor families. which again, this is the poorest state in the country with one of the highest poverty rates, and that money was not being used to help those folks. amna: tell me more about that. what kind of difference would that money have made specifically in mississippi, who would it have helped? anna: we went down to hattiesburg to kind of take a look at the volleyball stadium when we found out about it back in 2020. and we interviewed people around the community, you know, people, you know, maybe living in poverty, single parents, and we asked them what they would have liked to have seen this money spent on, and one man that we spoke to actually had his kids taken away because he was homeless about five years before this. and he told us that he in going to the social service organizations that could have

benefited from these funds, he asked them for help for rental assistance, you know, to put a roof over his head to get his kid and he was turned away, told that there wasn't any support available for him. so these are the kinds of stories that you know, it's one thing that taxpayer money went to this sports celebrity who has many millions himself, but it's another thing to think about the missed opportunities for people who so desperately needed this assistance, and that if it wasn't there for them. amna: the text messages here are central to your reporting. and there's one text exchange i want to highlight that was revealed from your work. it is between brett favre and a woman named nancy new who n the nonprofit that distributed a lot of these funds. "if you were to pay me is there any way the media can find out where it came from and how much?" nancy responds, "no, we never

publicize that information, i understand you being uneasy." brett favre's attorney says he never knew the money was from a welfare fund, but what have you found from your reporting? anna: he says that he doesn't know that this money came from federal fund called temporary assistance for needy families most commonly known for , providing the welfare check to very poor families. but he did know that it was grant money, and in some cases, the text messages show even that he said that he figured that she was supporting him with federal grant money. at one point he told his business associate he was working with another company to try to get welfare money for a pharmaceutical startup company that ended up receiving $2 milln in allegedly stolen welfare funds. and he told his business associate at the time that he knew that nancy, this nonprofit founder, would be helpful because she gave him $5 million via grant funds for the volleyball stadium. so you kind of see in the text messages, their mentality around this spending. this was this was something for brett favre personally, you

know, in the way that he's describing it in these text messages. it also shows their attempts to sort of operate in secrecy, right? none of the money that was being spent from these nonprofits was really being recorded and then reflected back to the state agency. so when i was trying to get expenditure reports and asking the agency to show me how they were spending the money and what they were doing for people in poverty, there wasn't any data to show for it, because that nonprofit had kind of turned into a black hole, as she described in that text message where she says we don't blicize that information. amna: i want to be clear about one thing, i know in your reporting you use the word the misuse of funds a lot. we've seen that again and again. were laws broken? anna: that's a good because point. there is a difference between misuse like misspending or even spending outside of federal

regulations and a crime right? there have been six people who have been charged with crime there is a large civil suit that the state is bringing against a number of other people, including brett favre, that doesn't allege a crime took place, but it does allege that they received money improperly and asked them to return the funds. and so you kind of have to look at each purchase to say okay, whether this is just bad government or whether this is misspending or whether it is a crime, and that is something that we will learn more about as the federal investigation, criminal investigation into this matter continues. brett favreas not been charged with a crime, bryant has not been charged with a crime, but the people who have agreed to work with federal prosecutors in their ongoing probe and i think we're gonna see if that's going to result in in those folks being he accountable for their role in this scandal. amna: it's an incredible story. we'll continue to follow first broken by mississippi today reporter anna wolf.

thank you for joining us. anna: thank you for having me. ♪ judy: there has been lots of anticipation today around nasa's first-ever attempt to strike an asteroid and knock it off course. william brangham has all the details. william: judy, nasa today pulled off a historic first. take a look at this. >> oh my gosh! oh wow! [applause] william: is video received a few moments ago at the exact moment nasa's dark spacecraft approached and crashed into that asteroid 100 million miles away. we will speak with science correspondent miles o'brien in a moment. first, here is his report on what nasa was attempting with this mission. miles: planet earth is practicing defense david and goliath style.

a spacecraft the size of a vending machine is hurtling toward a kamikaze dive into an asteroid the size of a great pyramid. elena: dart is the biggest engineer's dream ever. miles: elena adams is the systems engineer for the double asteroid redirection test or dart. it's a 330 million dollar nasa mission designed at the johns hopkins' applied physics laboratory in laurel maryland. launched in november of 2021, dart is nearing the end of a 107 million mile journey to the asteroid didymos. alayna -- elena: our job is to go hit an asteroid. and that's a very specific job for planetary defense. miles: their target is actually the asteroid's moon dimorphos. dart is programmed to auger in at 14,000 miles an hour. engineers hope the 1300-pound spacecraft will nudge the 5-billion ton dimorphos into a new orbit. dimorphos is not headed toward earth it's just a test.

lindley: this is the first time in human history that we've actually set out to change the orbit of a natural object in space. miles: lindley johnson is nasa's planetary defense officer. lindley: the orbit of an object is determineby the velocity at which it is orbiting. so if you just, you know, shave a hair, you know, less than 1% off of that speed, you've changed the orbit and, you know, forever altered where that object will be in space in the future. miles: our planet gets grazed and hit by asteroids all the time, most offer harmless thrills for stargazers, but the bigger ones are a different story. in 2013, a 60 foot asteroid exploded about a hundred thousand feet over chelyabinsk, russia. about 1500 were injured by shattering glass. over the epochs, much bigg asteroids have triggered mass extinctions, including most infamously the dinosaurs 65

million years ago. planetary scientist nancy chabot 's coordination lead for dart. is it accurate to say it's inevitable over the course of time that there will be some rock of relatively big size, which has our number on it? nancy: this is going to continue in the future. it is sort of a cosmic inevitability at this point. the good news is of the asteroids that we're tracking, there are no known threats. but this is also why we need to find all these asteroids and figure out where they are. miles: in 2005, congress directed nasa to find 90 percent of potentially hazardous near earth objects 460 feet or larger by the end of 2020. so far, ground based surveys have found all the planet killers they can see, but only about 40% of asteroids big enough to wipe out a city. at this rate, it would take 30 years to approach the finish line. but no matter how hard they try, they will never cross it using only ground based telescopes. scott: there's a whole half of

the sky we're not looking at. because basically the glare of the sun prevents you from looking very easily. mis: astronomer scott sheppard is a senior research scientist at the carnegie institution for science. scott: the ones that are most concerning, the ones that spend almost all their time in the daylight, that just get up to where earth's orbit is or just barely cross it. so the vast majority of their time is in the daylight. miles: sheppard is using the national science foundation's blanco telescope in chile to look for the holy grail of astronomy, planet x. he decided to point the lens toward the sun at twilight to see if he could see any near earth objects. scott: it is a hard thing to do. miles: so when you looked, you saw some objects that are hiding in broad daylight. scott: we found several near-earth objects in the survey now that have not been found from other surveys, and they're fairly large objects. are planet killers. miles: in this scenario we could have only days to act. is that possible?

scott: we're really not monitoring the daylight side of the earth very well. and so if something is approaching us from that distance, it would be very hard to find it. and most likely it might even hit us without us even seeing it. miles: a dart style mission would have to impact years in advance to knock an asteroid off a collision course with earth. astronomers say the solution is a space telescope called neo surveyor. it is designed to orbit between the earth and the sun using a wide-field infrared camera to identify potential threats that we can't see on earth. congress may have mandated nasa find the most hazardous near earth objects, but it did not appropriate specific funding. and so the billion dollar mission is floundering. the biden administration just delayed it two more years. lindley: it all comes down to the priorities of what nasa has on its plate. it has more things that it's been asked to do than the funding that's been appropriated. miles: [00:14:25]shouldn't we be

spending money on surveying before we practice changing the orbit of an asteroid? lindley: well, it's absolutely true that you got to find them first. miles: but the orbit of didymos and dimorphus brought them close enough to earth to create this target of opportunity now. it is a complex technical challenge. the target is only about 525 feet across, too small for the spacecraft to see until the last minutes. when are you going to see it? elena: we don't know. maybe as early as 80 minutes prior to hitting it. as late as 35 minutes before we impact. miles: this entire journey comes down to really in 35 to 80 minutes time, this spacecraft has to identify this tiny little rock and hit it right where you want. what could go wrg with that? elena: [00:17:52]oh, nothing. nothing whatsoever. it's going to be great. miles: the spacecraft is

equipped with a powerful camera, smart software and advanced avionics able to autonomously identify and home in on didymos but then switch to dimorphos once it comes into view. dimorphus orbits didymos roughly ery 12 hours. team dart hopes to speed it up by at least 73 seconds. to see if it works, astronomers will point a few dozen telescopes on every continent and in space at the asteroid. planetary astronomer andy rivkin is a lead investigator. newtonian physics would tell you that this is going to perturb this rock. andy: absolutely. miles: what do we have to understand further at this point? andy: we do expect to make a lot of ejecta, as we call it, when dart hits. that is also carrying momentum. how much bang for the buck are are we going to get? miles: and we can watch the bang as it happens. dart is designed to transmit live images of its death dive. must seev. ask any dinosaur. for the pbs newshour, miles o'brien in laurel, maryland.

william: miles, this is a tremendous, schmidt, and seeing the self joy in the mission control room tonight, i wonder if you could for a moment reflect on this accomplishment today. miles: it's pretty rare when you see scientists applauding a crash. but also this is a pivotal moment human history, we know we could do something if we were in the crosshairs of a big rock. talking to these scientists and engineers, they have some esoteric endeavor they are exploring is based, eyes glaze over, but with this they have people's attention. there is a level of pride, what they are doing, it is difficult to think of a more important

mission in space than this one. william: indeed. the mission here, the idea is this crash diverts this asteroid a tiny bit to alter its orbit. how will they know whether or not that part of the mission has succeeded? miles: that's going to take time. telescopes will be aiming at it. all this based telescopes as well. the reason they chose this -- all of the space-based telescopes as well. the reason they chose this binary system is the little object that was hit orbits a larger object we can see from earth about every 12 hours now. when it does do that, when it passes in front, it dims ever so slightly, like a mosquito on a headlight i suppose, but it still dims and the telescopes are sensitive enough to register this. they hit a stopwatch and when it dims again, they hit the stopwatch again. as long as that orbit is faster than it was before by 73 seconds or more, they have succeeded. it's going to take time to crunch these numbers. william: let's say -- as you

laid out, this was an experiment. this asteroid was not a threat. let's say there was an asteroid that was a threat, and they aimed a dart like mission and it missed. what do we do? i seem to recall that bruce willis movie where they sent oil drillers to an asteroid to try to somehow disable that. are there options in addition to this kind of mission? miles: as an asteroid like this gets closer, you run out of options quickly. while the bruce willis movie is highly entertaining, you would never drill into an asteroid and put a nuclear bomb inside it. however, a lot of scientists have been looking at exploiting a nuclear bomb offset from the object so you do not blow it to smithereens, which is a bad idea , and you could jar it off course significantly enough in time potentially. let's hope we just survey the skies so we are not in the situation. it is worth the money, i think. william: lastly, i have shot a

little bit of pool. this seems like a little bit of a bank shot. we know pool balls act in unpredictable ways, but asteroids are not made of the same kind of material. miles: we know the physics. we know it is going to move it at some level. the question is when that plume comes out, the ejecta, what will that do to move it further? it creates additional boost, momentum to it. that is the key thing scientists are interested in. how much bang for the buck they can get. william: miles o'brien, thank you so much. miles: you're welcome. ♪ judy: speaking of nuclear weapons, recent threats from russia's president vladimir putin to use nuclear weapons have sent a shudder across the world, conjuring visions of

armageddon and nuclear fallout, echoes of the cold war. the covid pandemic certainly showed the world how swiftly society can grind to a halt. most people managed to survive that, but how would they cope with other catastrophes? in sweden with its bid to join nato and the war in ukraine, citizens are being encouraged to get ready just in case. as special correspondent malcolm brabant reports from sweden, what's called prepping has gone mainstream. malcolm: sweden is one of the last places you'd expect armageddon. it hasn't been at war for over 200 years. but the state is urging citizens to prepare for catastrophe. >> although sweden is safer than many other countries, there are still threats to our security and independence. everyone who lives in sweden shares a collective responsibility for our country's security and safety. if you are prepared, you are contributing to improving the ability of the country as a

whole to cope with a major strain. malcolm: one of the fundamental differences between the united states and sweden is that out of necessity, americans are much more self-reliant. there is a social contract here, and in return for paying some of the highest taxes in the world, the swedes and other scandinavians expect the state to take care of them from the cradle to the grave. but the covid pandemic exposed the flaws in that system and undermined pubc trust. what's more, the prospects of the war in ukraine spillin across borders into other countries has accelerated the need for people here to be more self-sufficient. lotta: lovely axe. i want to survive and i want my kids to survive. and i will do anything i can to protect both me and them. malcolm: lotta dalenius is preparing for emergencies ranging from a power outtage to doomsday. lotta: we have people from ukraine here in our little village.

it's good to be reminded that you can't take everything for granted all the time. you have to just be prepared that things can happen. malcolm: in tranquil southern sweden, fear of war has increased since the nation signed up to nato. lotta: of course we should be frightened of russia. they have a frame of mind to bring back the old empire. malcolm: if disaster strikes, lotta will either say arma geddon out here and head to her cabin on the west coast, or grab her emergency kit. lotta: this is just some of the good to have and nice to have. and some must haves. you'll have to have a re good knife. you can just use it for everything. protecting yourself. or if you want to make food or have to build a shelter or whatever. malcolm: what is that thing? lotta: it's a small kitchen. there's the frying pan. malcolm: it's like a russian doll.

lotta: yes it is. here you have to make your coffee. and stuff in here. you put your gas burner in here, and then you can just make your coffee. basically, it's outdoor stuff. you don't need special prepping stuff. malcolm: there's a substantial difference between swedish small town practitioners and american youtuber, the sensible prepper. >> without rule of law if things really go sideways, there are a lot of people that become desperate. they want food or they want to do whatever or they're just nefarious and they just want to cause trouble. i just would highly recommend that you stock up on ammo now. fredrik: yeah, we have freeze dried peppers. 15 years shelf life. and then we have, like, butter with long shelf life. apricot jam. malcolm: tins of green peas, curried rice. but no ammo. not a single round in the booming online prepping store run by fredrik qvarnstrom. fredrik: every time something happens in a world like this, a

war or a pandemic or terrorist bombings and things like that, sales go up. we have a lot of water purification equipment. there are a lot of lakes and rivers in sweden. so if you purify the water with some kind of equipment, it's the water is drinkable. when i started, i believed the normal customer would be a man living in the outskirts far away from the cities. but it's not like that. i have people all over sweden. a lot of them are living inside the cities, like in flats. martin: people tend to remember those typical preppers with with guns surviving in the woods. but i am not one of those crazy preppers. i'm just an ordinary man wanting to make sure that my family can live a good life. malcolm: martin svennberg is heading to one of his food stashes in the basement of a stockholm apartment block, that doubles as a bomb shelter. what are you preparing for?

martin: well, i don't know. everything. a crisis can be several different things. it can be war. it can be a pandemic, obviously. but it can also be being out of a job. or it can be to also prepare for inflation. so this is just buffer. so if something happens, i acally have time to adjust my way of life or adjust something and then consume the buffer. here we have sugar and salt. all these boxes are filled with baking supplies, dry powdered milk, flowers. well. malcolm: are you being hysterical? martin: no, i'm not hysterical. but it has become a way of life for me to be prepared in different ways. but i don't have any guns. malcolm: earlier this summer,

svennberg spent 24 hours confined to his apartment without electricity. it was an attempt to teach his 16 year old son maximillian how to survive without the conveniences of modern life. maximillian: it was fun, but, yeah, it became boring after a while. it was kind of difficult for me because i am kind of addicted to my phone and without electricity and, like, charging, it was, uh, pretty difficult to just, like, sit and do nothing, because i'm not used to that. filip: i wouldn't go so far to say that there's an increased level of fear in the public society. malcolm: if disaster strikes, the swedish government will turn to psychiatrist filip arnberg for advice on how to handle the country's collective mental state. filip: when it comes to human behavior and our psychology, we have to realize that most of the preparation that we can do is are things that we have to do before the crisis. >> flour, a lot of flour.

filip: i think it is overall a good idea to increase the awareness among the public. >> something to make the water taste good. malcolm: back in lotta daleniu'' house, that means having a well stocked freezer. lotta: butter you buy, it's on sale and then you freeze it. stuff like that. i make my own bread and put it in here. you have to have like a cake as well. if you have to flee from here, then you can't bring all this stuff. you have to take what's important. i'll take my axe. if the end of the world is coming, we'll take a glass of wine and just relax. we're not gonna make it anyway. malcolm: the main take away is the hope that the day preppers are getting ready for never comes. for the pbs newshour, i'm malcolm broadbent -- brabant in

sweden. ♪ judy: on wednesday, the house se committee investigating the attack on january 6 returns for another televised hearing this time, as early voting has already begun in some midterm elections. for insight on the politics of the hearings and more, i'm joined by amy walter of the cook political report with amy walter and tamra keith of npr. hello to both of you on this monday. let's start the january 6 hearings. what are you learning about how these hearings are affecting the way voters think, if they have any effect? and this week, we are at six weeks. amy: six weeks before the election. people are starting to vote.

early voting has started in many states. we don't know yet if before the election the committee is going to come out with recommendations and if so, what are those going to be? how much attention will those get? there are a lot of questions swirling about, whether somebody -- whether something will come out before the election. if you look at what are opinions about the president? have they changed, about the former president, have they changed over the course of the last year and a half since january 6? we have had a lot of things happen. we have had hearings, we have had a new information come to light. we have what happened in mar-a-lago, the fbi finding, what looks to be classified documents. the washington post has been asking whether the former president should be, as i said, charged with a crime. it is maybe not surprising, but it is quite noteworthy that opinions about whether he should be charged with crime since the very first time they asked,

which was a week after january 6 until now, have not budged. 52% of americans think back in early 2021 to today he should be charged with a crime. about 40% do not. what this is telling me is that opinions have not been altered. they have been probably cemented which is where we are as a , country right now. the reality of where we are as a country in terms of the way we see the world is when we get new information,t is not necessarily changing our opinions of something. we are molding ourselves and our brain in a way to say how does this new information fit into the prior way i have been looking at this? how do i make it fit into what i already believe to be true? judy: i am trying to get this mental picture, mental image of all of this. tam, what is your sense of whether these hearings have had an effect? tamara: the remarkable thing

about this moment as they are returning from what they are saying will be their final investigative hearing -- not the final results, but final investigative hearing -- is donald trump is more present in the american collective psyche this moment than he was when hearings were ongoing over the summer. so much has happened to put him front of mind in the news. he's holding rallies every week for congressional candidates. the investigations seem to have metastasized and have also ramped up. at the same time, the convictions and trials and sentencing of january 6 defendants, the rioters, those have ramped up in the last few weeks or month or so. it is a different landscape than -- landscape that this hearing is going to happen in than before.

as amy says, the opinions people have are pretty calcified. if these hearings serve as a reminder, well, there are a lot of reminders out there that donald trump was president and would like to be president again. judy: we will see -- we don't know yet what we are going to hear on wednesday. we will see. this is another opportunity for the committee to make its case. i want to ask about the messaging we are hearing. again, six weeks out from the midterms. people are voting. amy, at the end of last week, house minority leader kevin mccarthy put something forward called the commitment to america. it echoed what we saw decades ago from newt gingrich, the contract with america. what he was saying in a very brief form was where the party stands on policing and on abortion and a couple other things.

amy: and the economy. judy: what do you take away? amy: every midterm election, the party out of power put this together, more of a messaging document than anything else. what they are trying to say is to the naysayers or the other critics who say you are just running against something, why don't you be for something? they say here is this piece of paper in very broad brush strokes of what we are for. it also helps to keep members sort of focused on what the leadership believes are the top issues that are going to move not just the base, engage the base, but also really connect with swing voters. the bigger challenge for kevin mccarthy though is if republicans do win the house and by a very narrow margin, his ability to put any sort of agenda forward is going to be challenged. they don't have the white house, legislatively that is a challenge. the second is the smaller the majority, the harder it is for the leadership, which we know for the last two republican

house speakers the harder it is , for them to keep the party in line and keep them focused. i think what we are really going to see if republicans win is an unrelenting focus on president biden, investigations on him and his administration, especially on immigration and of course hunter biden, his son. judy: and the cook political report has been saying recently that the republicans may not do as well in the house races as it looked as if they would earlier in the year. tam, what do you take away from the kevin mccarthy message and also looking at the democrats and the legislation they are trying to get passed in these final weeks? tamara: kevin mccarthy cannot put out a document called the commitment to america that says realistically what a republican majority in the house will be able to accomplish, which is without a president to sign their legislation, if they are in the majority, they can pass message bills potentially, if he

can wrangle his conference, and they will be able to investigate. the one lever they will have is shutting the government down or threatening to shut the government down, which is what we lived through in 2010 and 2011. that is more likely to be what it actually looks like. investigations and brinksmanship over the budget and funding the government. in terms of democrats and what they are trying to accomplish, they have been trying to work on a couple of areas, reforming police and police reform. and this electoral count reform. this would be the one piece of legislation to come out of the january 6 hearings. the one effort they would make at a reform. this is bipartisan legislation but in classic congress it may be bipartisan but it is not bicameral at the moment. there is some disagreemt between the legislative vehicles that certainly they will be

under pressure to figure out before potentially democrats lose control of the use or the senate, or the few replicans that support these reforms are forced to retire or are already retiring. judy: where do you see the democrats? amy: i think the bigger challenge democrats right now is not congress, but what's happening in the broader environment, over which they have no control. what is the price of gas? how concerned are people about the rising interest rates? we are seeing mortgage rates continue to go up. those are the things that are going to drive the conversation among voters. more than anything else congress can pass. judy: democrats keep talking about the dubs decision as well. the economy very much in the picture. six weeks to go. thank you both. ♪

as students are getting into the swing of things back at school this fall, high-schooler solyana mesfin has a very unusual role. sitting on kentucky's board of education. after going to middle school in ethiopia, solyana's family moved to louisville, kentucky, and she now works to bridge conversations between the state's 600,000 public school students and policymaker tonight, she shares her "brief but spectacular" take on the importance of student representation. solyana: when i first came to high school in america i thought it would be like the movies but once i got here it was complete a different. i did not know how to operate the system. i did not know what it meant to be a student in america. ♪ i'm from alexandria, virginia, but i moved to addis ababa,

ethiopia, when i was 11, and i moved to louisville, kentucky when i was 14. when i first started high school, i didn't even know how to open a locker. now, i'm the first active student to serve on the kentucky state board of education. we're one of only a few states that does this across the country. it is highly important that we're able to have a seat at the table, but also just to, you know, be listened to and to be validated, so that we are a part of the solution. in my work in student advocacy, i contributed to statewide mental health round tables and equity related campaigns, especially in regards to the black lives matter movement. being the student representative is a huge weight because it is almost 700,000 students. i recognize the importance of it, but you know, i'd be lying if i said i didn't struggle with it because there's so many perspectives and we have such a diverse array of students. so i really prioritize a

collaborative effort and really connecting with students all across the state. my sense of belonging now, it's something that's definitely heightened. i was an invisible student in my freshman year, but now all of a sudden, teachers are saying hi and the administration is saying hi and that's the type of treatment that every student should receive. amongst representation, especially student representation, you often have students who are, you know, glorified by their school systems. students who are the honor roll students or students who are athletes or dierent things like that. but for me to be in this position and for me to say, like, i just failed a test yesterday. i'm not elevated above any other student or any other person in my class. it's highly important for students to have this position and for students to have this voice so that they can be integral parts of this education system and we can be validat not only as learners, but as peers in this work. my name is solyana mesfin and this is my brief but spectacular take on student representation.

judy: thank you. what an impressive young woman and you can watch more brief but spectacular videos online at pbs.org/newshour/brief. that is the newshour for tonight. i am judy woodruff, join us online and again tomorrow evening. for all of us at "the pbs newshour," thank you, please stay safe and we'll see you soon. >> major funding for "the pbs newshour" has been provided by -- >> for 25 years, consumer cellular's goal has been to provide wireless service that helps people communicate and connect. we offer a variety of no-contract plans, and our u.s.-based customer service team can find one the fits you. to learn more, visit consumercellular.tv. >> the kendeda fund, committed to advancing restorative justice and meaningful work through investments in transformative leaders and ideas. more at kendedafund.org.

♪ supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org. ♪ and with the ongoing support of these institutions -- ♪ this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ >> this is "the pbs newshour" from weta studios in washington, and in the west from the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is rponsible for its caption content and accuracy.]

♪♪ -"cook's country" is about more than just getting dinner on the table. we're also fascinated by the people and stories behind the dishes. we go inside kitchens in every corner of the country to learn how real people cook, and we look back through time to see how history influences the way we eat today. we bring that inspiration back to our test kitchen so we can share it with you. this is "cook's country." ♪♪ today on "cook's country," bryan visits ptland, oregon, and shares his version of khao man gai. i tell the story of a sacred herb, holy basil. and lawman makes pad gra prow.