♪ judy: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. on "the newshour" tonight... a declaration of independence -- u. senator kyrsten sinema leaves the democratic party and registers as an independent. how the move affects democrats' slim majority in the senate. then... one on one -- as he prepares to step down, dr. anthony fauci reflects on his decades-long career combating infectious diseases, especially covid-19. dr. fauci: we have a common enemy. it's sort of likeou're in a world war, you shouldn'be fighting each other when you're fighting the enemy. judy: and it's friday... david brooks and jonathan capehart weigh in on the latest congressional shakeups and the political reaction to basketball star brittney griner's release. all that and more on tonight's "pbs newshour."

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stephanie: i'm stephanie sy with "newshour west." we'll return the full program after the latest headlines. brittney griner is back in the united states tonight, a day after the russians swapped her for a convicted arms dealer. the wnba star returned before dawn, amid questions about prospects for additional prisoner swaps. william brangham has our story. william: it was a homecoming ten months delayed, as the plane carrying brittney griner touched down on u.s. soil early this morning. her first stop, brooke army medical center in san antonio, texas, a hospital that, along with other care, treats civilians and military personnel who have undergone trauma or torture. white house officials confirmed the wnba star and two-time gold medalist appeared to be in good health and has been reunited with her wife, sherrelle. russian authorities arrested griner back in february after finding vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her

luggage. she was sentenced, and then imprisoned in a russian penal colony. her release yesterday was part of a high-profile prisoner swap for notorious russian arms dealer viktor bout. he was reunited with his family back in moscow. russian state media hailed bout's release as a win for president vladimir putin. white house officials defended the exchange. sec. jean-pierre: it was either brittney griner -- one american -- or no americans, and so that's how we see the negotiation that was presented in front of us, and that's the very difficult decision that the president had to make. william: today, putin left open the possibility of further prisoner exchanges. pres. putin: everything is possible. this is the result of negotiations in search of a compromise. in this case, compromises were found and we are not against continuing this work in the future. william: the u.s. is still trying to win the release of paul whelan, a u.s. marine corps

veteran who the u.s. says was wrongfully jailed by the russians in 2018 for alleged espionage. state department officials confirmed talks between washington and moscow are ongoing. mr. patel: this is something that we are going to continue to work on. it's something that this department continues to be engaged on tirelessly. and of course, it is our hope that we are able to bring paul home very soon. william: for "the pbs newshour," i'm william brangham. stephanie: reports out of ukraine say russian shelling in the east is intensifying. buildings were heavily damaged in the city center of donetsk today. the assault left behind a shell of what had been a university campus. moscow illegally proclaimed donetsk and luhansk as russian territory in september. a political shakeup in the u.s. senate today. arizona senator kyrsten sine announced she was leaving the democratic party to become a registered independent. in mesa, arizona today, sinema said rising partisan divisions

drove her decision. sen. sinema: arizonans know that i don't spend much time talking about the politics or the electoral stuff, i just stay focused on the work ahead of us, so today's announcement was a reflection of my values and i think the values of most arizonans who are tired of a political system that pulls people to the edgeand doesn't reflect who are as a people. stephanie: we'll return to this after the news summary. u.s. health experts urged older americans today to get covid-19 boosters before the holidays. they said only about a third of those 65 and older have received updated boosters. meanwhile, the cdc approved the new shots for children as young as 6 monthtoday. we'll focus on all of this and more with dr. anthony fauci later in the program. social media users in china are reporting rising covid cases, now that pandemic restrictions have eased. in bao-ding -- a city southwest of beijing -- streets were mostly empty today. shop oers, including one man who did not give his name, said

fear is keeping people at home. >> look at how it is now, there's hardly anybody outside. people only come out to buy their daily necessities. they still take self-protection measures by not going out. basically, there's hardly anyone on the streets. stephanie: there were similar reports from other cities across china. back in this country, one of the former minneapolis police officers involved in the killing of george floyd was sentenced today to 3 and a half years in state prison. j. alexander king helped restrain floyd during a fatal encounter in may 2020. king is already rving federal prison time for violating floyd's civil rights. inflation at the wholesale level has risen again. the u.s. labor department says producer prices were up 7.4 percent in november from a year earlier. that was down from october but still, more than economists had expected. the latest look at consumer prices comes out next week. a rupture in the keystone oil

pipeline caused an estimated 14,000 barrels of crude to spill in rural kansas. it's the largest spill in the history of the keystone pipeline. while the spill is contained, clean-up is expected to last into next week. crude prices surged briefly on the news. still to come on "the newshour"... dr. anthony fauci addresses the uptick in respiratory illnesses this holiday season... a space historian examines the parallels between nasa's first moon landing and the current artemis mission... author and nobel prize winner annie ernaux reflects on her genre-bending work... 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: democrats now have an asterisk on their 51 seat

majority in the u.s. senate, with arizona's kyrsten sinema announcing she will switch her party affiliation from democrat to independent. she will be the third independent senator, joining bernie sanders and angus king, who both caucus with the democrats. kyrsten sinema has at times sparred with democrats, but today the white house called her a key partner on issues and said "we have every reason to expect we will continue to work successfully with her." here to assess what this means are our capitol hill correspondent, and stephanie sy. lisa i'm going to start with you. what does this mean for the senate and wt democrats want to get done? lisa: if you think of this as a political earthquake, which is what it felt like for a few minutes this morning, is more about a tremor about the future.

it hasn't really changed the landscape in congress. what i mean is this -- kyrsten sinema will allow them to keep the majority. they will be able to have the committee structure stay the same. they will be able to subpoena witnesses, move nominees more quickly than they could in the 50-50 senate, and she will retain her spots on committees, at least two subcommittee chairmanships. while she is being clear she is not caucusing with republicans, she has not gone to democratic caucus meetings in the past. she is not someone who participated in those meetings, and shis not going to in the future. so she is not exactly in the democratic caucus. she just votes with them most of the time. as far as one other senator we are watching, joe manchin of west virginia, who has also voted with republicans at time, my reporting is we should not expect him to make a similar move to be independent, though he has in the past made overtures and indicated he is

willing to switch under the right circumstances. we do not expect him to do that. one reason, the politics in west virginia are very different. it is harder to run for the senate in west virginia as an independent. also, he is a member of the senate democratic leadership right now. judy: very different situations. also interesting. stephanie, remind us what sinema's political history is. how did she get to this place? stephanie: the timing of this announcement may be surprising, may have felt like an earthquake in washington, but for those who have observed kyrsten sinema the last few years, this was not entirely surprising. i was reminded how much anger there is directed at senator sinema by democrats. i spoke to several arizona voters today who reminded me of a couple really last year when senator sinema was being ambushed at her office at the

-- at her office, at the airport, on flights, even in bathrooms because of her position on deciding she wanted the filibuster to remain intact. what that meant is the biden administration and many progressive democrats would not be able to pass the type of legislation they thought they would be. another democrat said she has been a fake democrat. there has been a lot of anger directed at her from base democrats here in arizona. the arizona democratic party censured h. today, the party issued a scathing statement saying that "she has shown she answers to corporations and billionaires." the way a lot of people here are seeing this move, one political watcher probably put it best. he said, senator sinema's move today was the equivalent of breaking up with a partner before they break up with you. judy: really interesting to get that much criticism from the democrats. stephanie, how do her politics now fit in to arizona's politics?

stephanie: remember, judy, that kyrsten sinema won her senate seat here in arizona, becoming the first democrat in decades to win a senator's seat by saying she would be the independent voice of arizona, and she has continued to parrot that phrase in her media interviews with local reporters today. she said what she is doing reflects where arizona voters are. to some degree, that is seen in the statistics. let me show you how arizona voters break down. the most number of registered voters are with the republican party, but the second largest group of voters here are independents. that group has grown vastly. that is followed by democrats. democrats who are too far left have a hard time winning general elections, which is why the other democratic senator of arizona, the junior senator mark

kelly, recently won his election against a republican by touting his independence from the biden administration. some might say kyrsten sina is being strategic. she denies that. that remains a question. it is not clear that she is going to go for a second term in 2024. but one democratic consultant said if she does it would be tough for her because she does not ha that democratic base anymore. there are a lot of democrats angry with her. there was a recent poll that showed more than half of independents do not view her favorably. so it is not clear where she would get that base, but she has not said she would run for reelection. judy: interesting. lisa, looking ahead, who stands to gain from this, including sinema herself, and how? lisa: that is the question, is she going to run in 2024? until this moment, i was not sure she was going to.

i thought maybe there was a chance she would not. this move makes me think she is at least keeping that option open because she would most certainly have a docratic primary challenger rhaps blocking her from getting on the ballot in november, and we know who that is, ruben gallego. a congressman from arizona. he had something to say about this switch today. he wrote, "unfortunately, senator sinema is putting her own interests ahead of getting things done for arizonans." he has not announced for senate yet, but he has indicated he is interested. we could have kyrsten sinema trying to maintain her viability to run again, but it is a problem for democrats. if you have her running and gallego as a democrat, that could split the vote. judy: fascinating. we are looking at this from all angles. thank you lisa desjardins, stephanie sy. ♪

after a five-decade long career in public health, dr. anthony fauci is stepping aside from his job. he has been one of the leading public health voices in the country since he took on the role of director of the national institutes of allergy and infectious diseases in 1984, and he's advised seven presidents. his exit comes as the country is dealing with the worst flu season in a decade and another covid winter surge. the u.s. has come a long way with covid over the past three years, but the problem is not over, and hospitalizations are rising again in some areas. for a look at all of this, dr. fauci joins me now. welcome back. dr. fauci: thank you, good to be with you. judy: anthony fauci, so you are coming up on the end of your public career. but as we just said, covid is still here. you were at the white house

today with first lady jill biden, encouraging people again to get their vaccine, their covid vaccine. as we just said, hospitalizations up just in the last two weeks. this is not over, is it? dr. fauci: no, by no means. it's not over at all. and that's one of the things we want to make sure that the americanublic appreciates, because there are still things that are at our disposal that we can do to mitigate what you just said. you know, we're entering into the colder season. we're getting into the holiday season. we have flu out there, and now we have covid that is still lingering there. in fact, upticking in certain regions of the country, which is expected as you enter into the winter months. judy: so what does it mean to you to be urging americans yet again? i don't know how many times you've been out there saying, get the vaccine, get the booster. dr. fauci: wel it is frustrating, judy, because we are appreciative of the fact that all of us are fatigued with three years of covid and the public would like to put it

behind them. and then when you say we still have to update ourselves with the best possible booster, a vaccine that's available. the irony of it is we have a very good booster available, and the relative percentage of people who are making use of that is small. it's less than 20% of the total population that are eligible. we've got to do better than that. and that's the reason why just today, as you said, the first lady and i and dr. jha were out there encouraging people to vote --to right now. not wait a week, three weeks, a month, if you're eligible. now get boosted. judy: and there are still people out there -- i mean, you mentioned there's fatigue, but there's still skepticism out there. is there any question that there's a correlation between getting the vaccine and either not having covid or having a milder case of it? dr. fauci: the data are so strong, they knock you over. all you have to do is look at

the data of the hospitalizations and deaths among unvaccinated individuals. and the curve is like that. you compare that curve with the vaccinated and boosted people, and the curve is like that. you don't need a statistician to explain to you the difference between unvaccinated and vaccinated and booster. the data a crystal clear. judy: i'm asking in part because i still have people saying to me, well, you say people are dying with covid, but is it because they have -- because it's with covid or because of covid? dr. fauci: it's because of covid. there is a difference between someone who will get in an automobile accident and have covid. that person didn't die from covid. that person died from the automobile accident. when we're talking about the numbers now, which are still lingering around 300 deaths per day, those are deaths from covid. judy: the flu. you mentioned it, and we mentioned it in the introduction. what's going on with that? i mean, there's a history almost

-- maybe it's not historic, but a surprisingly low percentage of americans this season are going out and getting the flu shot. how do you understand that? dr. fauci: i think that's a carryover of the public being exhausted from outbreaks, from viruses, and from getting vaccinated. i think it's a spillover in people who feel they want to put covid behind them, and then they say, oh my goodness, another outbreak, flu. and they have to realize, we're having a particularly bad flu season. again, if you look at the curve, it's almost vertical in cases going up with flu. and if you compare the flu numbers at this time of the season compared to the last decade, it's the worst that we've seen in about 10 years. dy: let's talk about your career. you, as we said, five decades and more. many highlights and many tough slogs you've been through. you are credited, dr. fauci, as

being the person who drew attention, sufficient attention, to the aids epidemic back in the in the 1980's, at a time when many were arguing it was a niche problem, a niche illness. it didn't deserve the research, the attention, the funding. but you, and you've said yourself, you didn't take it so seriously to begin with. dr. fauci: well, it isn't that i didn't take it seriously. it's that i didn't fully appreciate that the scientific, clinical trial, and regulatory structure was ill suited to this type of disease. and the activists, particularly the gay activists, were trying to get our attention to realize that we needed to get em involved in the planning, to understand what it is like to be afflicted or be at risk for this. thank goodness pretty quickly i listened and paid attention to them and learned a lot from the activist community. and then, we started to work together to make the conditions better. judy: and what would you say you learned? because at the time, as you say, the activist community was very angry with you. you've written about this, spoken about it.

dr. fauci: yeah. you learn to listen to the people who are being involved with what you're trying to deal with. if it's an outbreak, it's a disease, it's the people who are suffering or at risk for it. you have to include them in the discussion. it can't be top down from the regulators, the scientists, the physicians, and the people who are involved. you've got to involve them right from the very beginning. and thankfully, that's what we ultimately did, and it made the situation much better. judy: are there other lessons that that jump out at you or that you feel you have ingrained over the years about being in public health? dr. fauci: yeah, well, the thing that's been so distressing and painful for me over the last three years is witnessg what happens when you have a common enemy, like a virus that is causing covid, the sars-cov-2 that has already killed over a million americans. and you have such divisiveness in society.

that sound, obvious public health principles are not followed because they're being influenced by ideological considerations. there's absolutely no excuse for that. we have a common enemy. it's sort of like you're in a world war. you shouldn't be fighting with each other when you're fighting the enemy. just the way we came together on 9/11, we've got to do that when we're dealing with a formidable challenge like covid-19. judy: on cov, as you know, there's been praise for what you've done. there's also been criticism. we've heard people say in particular that you and others who were in charge of getting the word out to the american people sent the message that we need to keep things closed for too long, and that there were states like florida that opened up earlier than the federal government was recommending and they did relatively okay. how do you look back on the advice about being closed and for how long? dr. fauci: well, you always have

to evaluate to try and open as quickly as you can, as safely as you can. no one likes to shut down anything, be it general society, the economy, or schools. we all felt strongly that it was a difficult decision, and you want to open up as quickly as you can, as long as you use the shutdown period for a purpose and endgame, namely at the time that the recommendation s made to essentially close down a bit. you might recall the hospitals were being overrun in new york. remember elmhurst hospital with the cooler trucks out there putting the bodies in. we had to do something. that doesn't mean you do it indefinitely. you use that time to get hospital beds in better shape, to get more ppe, to get the proper number of ventilators. when you're in a situation where you have vaccine available, the only time you would want to restrict society is to give you time to get your pulation vaccinated, which in fact is the

reasonhy we believe the chinese have made sowhat of a mistake in shutting down rigidly but not at the same time vaccinating their entire population, including the elderly. judy: do you think here in the united states, though, that the guidance to stay closed down went on too long, that it should have been open sooner? dr. fauci: judy, it's tough to say. no doubt that kind of restriction has saved a t of lives. there's no argument about that to say maybe a little bit longer or a little bit shorter. i think that's arguable. but the idea about shutting down for at least a temporary period of time clearly has saved many, many lives. judy: as i mentioned, there's been praise and there's been criticism. but another criticism is that you and other public health officials were not transparent enough at points along the way about what you knew and what you didn't know about covid. dr. fauci: that's nonsense. [laughter]

that is total nonsense that we weren't transparent about it. what the public needed to know and perhaps we could have done a better job, is that we were dealing with a dynamic, evolving situation. the information we had in january of 2020 evolved because as we were first, we first thought it was poorly transmitted from person to person. then we found out from china gradually it was well transmitted, then it was aerosol transmitted, then it was ansmitted predominantly 50% to 60% from seone who has no symptoms at all. so, when we were making recommendations in january, early february, mid-february and march, the situation was changing. judy: you and i were just talking as we wrap up this interview about the reaction you've gotten from many in the american public about your work overall, especially during this pandemic. is there a message there for

other -- and a lot of it has been very ugly, as you shared. is there a message in there for other government workers, other public servants? dr. fauci: it has been a tough road to hoe over the last three years because public health officials, physicians, nurses, and scientists, and public health officials he really had a lot of pushback and an anti-science, somewhat hostile approach to them. my word and advice to them is stick with what we're doing. it's a noble profession. you get a great deal of satisfaction and gratification about of helping others. and even though we're in a somewhat bizarre situation where there's attacks on public health officials, that will pass. we'll get back to a world, i hope, where people appreciate when a group like public health officials have devoted their lives to the safety and the health of the american public, and they should be looked upon with some degree of appreciation for that. judy: dr. anthony fauci, stepping down afte54 years in

service of the federal government. thank you very much. dr. fauci: thank you for having me, judy. good to be with you. ♪ judy: this is a big weekend for nasa's plans to go back to the moon, and eventually to mars. and it happens to come at the same time as a milestone anniversary of the original moon missions. our resident space correspondent miles o'brien has some perspective on the moment. miles: the nearly month-long artemis i mission to the moon is slated to end on sunday, with a splashdown in the pacific ocean. on that very day 50 years ago, december 11, 1972, the last apollo astronauts set foot on the moon. apollo 17. it was the longest mission to the moon, and in many respects delivered the most science.

what better time to check in with space historian andy chaikin, author of the absolute definitive account of the apollo missions, "a man on the moon." andy, good to see you again. andy: thanks, miles. it's great to be with you. miles: you were there 50 years ago, the one and only night launch of apollo, apollo 17. tell us about that experience. andy: well, i was 16 at the time. >> all engines are started. andy: i was an apollo fanatic. it was uttly spectacular. it was like a sunrise in the middle of the night. the emotion for me was just raw excitement, you know, as only a 16 year old space fanatic could feel, i suppose. miles: fast forward to 50 years. there's the space launch system with the orionapsule. >> and lift off of artemis i. miles: another night launch. what was that like watching that, considering your experience when you were 16? andy: to me, it seemed like the sls got going more quickly than

the saturn 5. just really leapt off the pad and was on its way. miles: it happens to fall, coincidentally, on the 50th anniversary of apollo 17. this is landing number six, the longest stay on the surface. gene cernan, the commander, jack schmitt, the lunar module pilot. he was the only scientist to fly in the apollo program. what did jack schmitt find scientifically? andy: jack found pieces of the primordial crust, allowing us to look back almost to the origin of the moon itself. you're looking at a surface that hasn't changed hardly at all in billions of years. it's like getting led into the rare book room of the cosmic library and getting to page back through the earliest chapter of solar system history. and the biggest surprise of the mission, he discovered orange-colored soil. >> there is orge soil! >> well, don't move it until i see it.

>> it's all over! andy: and it turned out to be beads of volcanic glass that erupted in a fire fountain on the moon billions of years ago. just in the last 10 or 15 years, scientists have found that they contain traces of water. everybody always thought that the moon was bone dry, but that orange soil really told a different story. miles: let's talk about the lunar rover. that was an extraordinary accomplishment on its own, wasn't it? andy: the lunar rover was a spacecraft on wheels. it could carry supplies for the exploration of the moon. and, of course, it could range over the surface for miles, even up the sides of lunar mountains. to some of the most spectacular places on the moon. miles: this shot stands art among the apollo shots of gene cernan, kind of covered in dust after a hard day's work on the moon. there's kind of a sense of accomplishment, exhilaration, and exhaustion all at once there in that shot.

andy: absolutely. this is a truly human moment that this picture captures. the other thing you notice is that his face is smudged with lunar dust, and that dust is something that the astronauts who go back to the moon on artemis are going to have to deal with. when we go farther o to mars, we're going to experience the same kinds of hazards, the same kinds of difficulties. and the moon is only three days away. it's kind of an outward bound school for learning how to live off planet. >> ♪ i was strolling on the moon one day ♪ miles: you get the sense that, you know, they were actually having fun. >> ♪ in the merry merry month of december ♪ andy: no doubt, they were having a blast.

and you can hear it. you can hear the exuberance, you can hear the laughter. miles: let's talk about earth rises. this is the last earthrise. what was it about seeing our planet in that fashion that stirs our otions? andy: when you see the earth suspended in the blackness of space above the barren, lifeless lunar horizon, it's the contrast that is so striking. this is our home. it has the emotional attachment of home. it's been so cool to see the pictures from the orion capsule as it goes around the moon, looks back at the moon and the earth. and these pictures really give a sense of how small the earth looks from lunar distance. it is so small, in fact, that as the apollo astronauts talked about, you can literally put out your thumb and hide the earth behind your outstretched thumb. and that reallgives you a sense of being far from home.

it is that leap in awareness that apollo gave us that we will get to re-experience soon when humans go back to the moon with artemis. miles: the public lost interest in apollo relatively quickly. will it be different this time? andy: you have to accept the fact that a certain segment of the population is going to lose interest. what really matters is there are so many kids out there who are just turned on by this stuff and they're going to space camp or they're trying to go to engineering school or they're becoming scientists or, you know, they're applying for the astronaut program. it just keeps going. i don't see that stopping. miles: andy chaikin, always a pleasure to talk with you. thanks for your time. andy: thank yoso much, miles. judy: you can watch the orion spacecraft returned to earth on sunday at 11:00 a.m. eastern on our website, pbs.org/newshour.

♪ a win in georgia expands democrats' senate majority, but the party loses a member in arizona. and the u.s. trades the world's most notorious arms dealer for a wrongly-detained basketball superstar. for analysis of this week's news, brooks and capehart. that is columnist david brooks and jonathan capehart -- david brooks with the new york times. [laughter] and jonathan capehart, associate editor for the washington post. we want to make sure we get your titles right. david: i thought i had been fired there for a minute. [laughter] judy: a lot of news we want to try to tackle. david, let's start with kyrsten sinema. some say it is not entirely a surprise, but she has now left the democratic party. she will be an independent.

she says she will not caucus with republicans, but what does this mean for the dynamic in the senate? david: i don't think it means that much. she had been independent all along. she was sometimes a vote and sometimes not a vote. she will still get her committee assignments. i think it will be pretty much the same. as lisa mentioned earlier in the prram, it affects 2024 for her race back home. it is sort of a bold move. if you want one calculation, it could be this. that she thought she had no chance against ruben gallego, so she goes to the national democrats party to say i will run independent, split the mocratic vote, and you will get your republican senator, so you have to do for me what you did for angus king in maine and with bernie sanders. don't run against me. it is basically holding the party hostage. but if there's anyone who can do it, it is her. [laughter] jonathan: holding the party

hostage again. judy: a little bit of that before now. jonathan: i read it the same way david does. since we are quoting people from the first block talking about sinema, i will quote stephanie sy who said senator sinema broke up with the democratic party before it broke up with her. it made me think of missy elliot. "i broke up with him before he dump me." but as david said, she still has her committee assignments. she said, i will still vote for lyrical apartments and judges and ambassadors, so nothing chans. david: this is a country with a rising group of independents. you're beginning to see that in the senate. lisa murkowski is kind of independent. i think it reflects something deeper in the country, that there are a lot of people who are sick of both parties and

this rhetoric she has appeals to a group. not a huge group in arizona, apparently, but it appeals to them. judy: that was part of her statement. jonathan: that is what she said and it is part of her statement, but i am not going to give her all of that credit that she is doing this because she is representing this bigger part of the country. i do buy the argument that her actions today were more about her and her political future and the ability to hold that seat than it did this overall thinking that there is a movement out there for independents and i'm going to lead them from the great state of arizona. i am not buying that. judy: you're not suggesting crass politics? jonathan: i couldn't possibly. [laughter] judy: there was an important runo election in georgia. rafael warnock, the democrat, hung on by a couple of points to that seat.

it has now been three days. what does the result tell you about mr. warnock, rev. warnock, about georgia, and about the two parties right now? david: warnock ran a good campaign. he has been an effective senator. and herschel walker ran a completely terrible campaign. it is a sign that candide quality does still matter. i am glad for that. and it is a sign that we never count donald trump out, but there seems to be a continued degeneracy. not only are his candidates doing so bad in election night, but doing bad this week. he has allegly mounted a campaign for president without actually doing anything. there are no rallies or anything. and then the wackadoodle comments and dinners and everything. i think republicanare wondering.

i think it is likely he will get the nomination. i think it is more likely than not, but less likely than i thought two weeks ago. jonathan: interesting. [laughter] i want to keep talking about senator warnock. the race was maddeningly close even on election night, swinging back and forth. but i do think democrats were reasonably confident he would eke it out because he didn't depend on atlanta to get the votes. he traveled all around the state, to red districts, and gave those voters the courtesy of asking for their vote, but at least listen to what i have to say. he ran a positive campaign, especially during the general election when people were getting him to talk about the travails of herschel walker. he spent all of his time talking about, here is how i worked with senators on the other site to compromise, to do things for georgians. he wasn't afraid to do all of

that while standing firmly on capital-d democrat values, not running away frothe fact that he is a democrat. and asking people, give me your vote, give me a full term, and look at what i will be able to do. on the side of herschel walker, it was a cynical ploy by republicans to put up a black man to run against a black man who was woefully unqualified to be a member of the senate, thinking all they had to do was put up another black man and that would be enough to siphon off enough african-american votes to help them get over the top. what we saw in the runoff is that didn't pay off. in fact, they insulted a lot of people. judy: on herschel walker, i noticed in his concession speech, he seemed to b separating himself from donald trump, interestingly. made the comment that we should uphold the constitution, we should respect elected

officials. did you make anything of that? david: things are bad for trump if herschel walker is separating. [laughter] he can do that now maybe as reputation repair. but you think of the abortion scandals, the children, the weird things he said about vampires and werewolves or whatever, it was a campaign like no other and it was cynical to put somebody up that transparent. it is not a secret who herschel walker is. it was cynical for them to put him up. jonathan: i would add he did something else that donald trump has never done. he took responsibility. he said we ran a race and we came up short, and that's on me. that was breathtaking. judy: and he said respect to the results. jonathan: right. judy: another major development this week was the return of brittney griner. superstar, women's wnba superstar.

she had been held for most of this year in russia, traded for a notorious arms dealer, victor bout. you hurt the administration's explanation that it was either this or nothing. what do you make of the decision to do this, the optics of it, the reality of it? david: i don't think anybody feels great about it. her crime was a few ounces of marijuana and his crime was arms dealing to people o kill americans and others. so it is not an equal case but i think there is a fundamental rule that if somebody has an american passport, you bring them home. you don't like it because dealing with vladimir putin is never a pleasure. somebody said he punches you in the nose and asks you to negotiate. i think the biden administration did the right thing, which is to get an american citizen home. i wish they had gotten paul

whelan home -- my paper has a new story on how complicated that arrangement was. the ruians wanted someone, an assassin, who was in german's hands. the americans tried to getim, and the germans said, we are not going to give them back an assassin. there was complicated negotiations. the justice department didn't want to do it, the white house wanted to do it. this is super complicated. still, to have an american back is better than nothing. jonathan: i agree with david, but just to correct a little bit, it wasn't marijuana, it was cannabis oil in a vape pen. david: i stand corrected. jonathan: it is a big difference. but it is great she is home. imagine how the american people would have felt if they found out that the administration had an opportunity to bring an american home and they didn't take that chance. it would be a whole different conversation tonight. judy: a lot of conversation, speaking of that, about whether

-- the fact that she is black, she is a woman. did that have an effect? jonathan: and lesbian in russia, where they are debating lgbtq lives in that country. as someone who is black and an out gay man, i fear for her on top of just as an american citizen being behind bars in a totalitarian state. absolutely. judy: what does it say -- i he what you say about we learn if the government had not taken advantage of this. but does it send a signal that the u.s. will accept the worst kind of trade to get its citizens? david: the thing you worry about in these cases, it happens all the time in the middle east, when terrorists take hostages. does it reward kidnapping, hostage taking?

there is some moral hazard there, probably. my argument would be vladimir putin is not waffling on whether to be a bad guy. [laughter] he is going to do what he is going to do. us making this deal is not to encourage him to do more brutal stuff. he will do more brutal stuff. at least we got a human being home. i do accept the moral hazard. i do accept whether the justice department doesn't like this. it doesn't exactly serve because -- serve the cause of justice. but sometimes people are more important. jonathan: and we should also not forget the statement put out by paul whelan's family, which i thought was incredibly gracious in celebrating brittney griner's return, but also talking about the fact they appreciate the administration doing everything it can to bring paul home. i was waiting to hear with the family was going to say and how they said it. i was relieved because these are very emotional, tense things.

you want yr loved one to come home. and to find out they were possibly this close to getting them home and that didn't happen, i would have understood if they had put out an incendiary statement against the president, yet they didn't. judy: the administration says they are continuing to work hard on winning his release. but he has been there since 2018. david: we do hope the people who got brittney griner out will continue to work to get paul whelan. judy: david brooks, jonathan capehart, thank you both. ♪ on wednesday in stockholm, sweden, french writer annie ernaux delivered her nobel lecture, and spoke of how she hopes her work, which mixes fiction and memoir, has affected others. tomorrow, she and this year's other nobel laureates will formally receive their awards.

jeffrey brown spoke with her for our arts and culture series, "canvas." >> [speaking french] jeffrey: in a new docuntary titled "the super 8 years," we see a young french woman named annie ernaux, a wife and mother, a high school teacher in the early 1970's. what we don't see, taking place at this time secretly off-camera, the book she's working on, her first. the film, based on home movies and produced many years later by ernaux and her son, captures the early inner struggles of a woman, as she says, "tormented by the need to write" of her life, to become what she would later call "an ethnologist of myself." >> [speaking french] >> i truly hoped to transmit an individual, personal experience, but in such a way that it would be received by others. it was really that desire that motivated me to write. to be an ethnologist of myself means to speak from my being,

from my experience, but looking at it from a great distance, approaching it from the exterior of myself. jeffrey: many books later, ernaux would win literature's biggest prize. >> the nobel prize in literature for 2022 is awarded to the french author annie ernaux. jeffrey: soon after the announcement, ernaux, now 82 and living outside paris, came to new york. we spoke at the office of her longtime u.s. publisher, seven stories press, and i asked about mining the past, and a line that begins "the years," one of her best-known books -- "all the images," she writes, "will disappear." annie: i do think that in each of us, images disappear when we die. and perhaps that's what made me write, to think of this moment when all the images i have seen would disappear. this feeling of the loss of things. but i also think that the true reality of the world is forgetting. we forget a great deal, from a collective perspective.

for instance, we're always surprised when war arises again, as we are seeing now. so it's more a question of forgetting than of memory. and to write is to fight forgetting. jeffrey: in some 23 volumes, 16 of them translated and published in english, she's written one woman's story, a woman who is both her and not her. she's been described as genre-defying, her books not quite novels, but not traditional memoirs. annie: i don't try to define myself in terms of a genre. for me, the most important thing is to find the form of the writing that fits with what i'm writing. so, to me, the right term is writer. jeffrey: one constant theme -- her working class roots in normandy, where her parents ran a grocery, far outside france's traditional literary culture.

her move through education and writing into a more intellectual world, and the distance that created from her family and within herself. annie: i remain divided between two worlds. writing is the place where, with these tools i've acquired, i see the world. but always from the world of my youth, which i never could erase what the writer albert camus , called "the first man." well, there is the "first womaâa -- first woman in me, which means that i will always write from that separate place. jeffrey: has it been important to you as a woman to tell a story that perhaps is less told? annie: it's obvious these stories haven't been told, especially because they haven't been told in the way i wanted them to be told. jeffrey: without sentimentality but with finely crafted language and probing honesty, always working from memory, she's

written of deeply personal and traumatic experiences. in "happening," first published in 2000, and recently turned into a feature film -- >> [speaking french] jeffrey: she looks back to a 1963 pregnancy and abortion, an almost barbaric procedure that nearly killed her, at a time when abortion was still illegal in france. the story, she knows, has a new relevance. annie: it is a problem that wasn't ultimately resolved. i think my book "happening" reveals the savagery of abortion fowomen when it is banned. but those things are forgotten. jeffrey: are you surprised that what you experienced so long ago and then wrote about could perhaps be with us again? annie: above all, i'm horrified

and outraged that this could happen again. at the same time, i think that there is something about the power of women to bring children into the world that men wanted to appropriate and once again want to propriate. jeffrey: sometimes in the books, you seem to be trying to understand what you're writing. at the end of "a woman's story," you write, "this isn't a biography. neither is it a novel. maybe a cross between literature, sociology and history." annie: the sentences that you quoted from "a woman's story," the book about my mother, were indeed about trying to situate myself in relationship to what i'd just written. it's work to write, and i want the reader to understand that i'm asking myself questions. for me, to write is to go looking for what i don't even know myself before i write it. jeffrey: in her nobel lecture,

annie ernaux spoke of her hope that her work can shatter the loneliness of experiences endured and repressed, and enable beings to reimagine themselv. for "the pbs newshour," i'm jeffrey brown in new york. judy: and we celebrate her along with the many others who do. be sure to join yamiche alcindor and her panel on "washington week" later tonight right here on pbs. and on tomorrow's pbs news weekend, how rising prices are changing the ways many americans celebrate the holidays. that is "the newshour" for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. 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 -- ♪

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and friends of "the newshour." ♪ this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ >> 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 responsible for its caption content and accuracy.]

tonight on kqed newsroom, we speak with san francisco mayor about the state of the city and how she is tackling homelessness, housing and economic veltman in the year ahead. also, we take a look at national politics and the legacy of congress member jackie speier, who is retiring from office. we discussed her long-term in public service, what she is most proud of and what comes next. plus, it is that most

wonderful time of the year and li