♪ geoff: good evening. i'm geoff bennett. amna: and i'm amna nawaz. on "the newshour" tonight... the defense department says it shot down another object tt crossed into u.s. airspace, this time, over alaska. geoff: aid begins to reach remote regions in turkiye and syria, and more survivors are rescued, offering glimpses of hope amid the earthquake's vast destruction. >> we started giving warnings like, "is anyone there? is anyone hearing my voice?" for a moment i thought the voices of the survivors were coming from my mind. amna: former vice president mike pence is subpoenaed, plus the fbi finds another classified document at his home. we explore the latest on the justice department investigations. ♪

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border region has claimed nearly 24,000 lives -- and the count is still rising. we'll have a full report. geoff: but first, there's been a new incursion by an unidentified object high above american territory, and the u.s. military has shot it down. it happened this afternoon, off northeastern alaska, near the canadian border, as the object flew at 40,000 feet. national security council spokesman john kirby says it was the size of a small car. but what it was doing and where it came from are unclear. mr. kirby: we do not know who owns it, whether it's state-owned or corporate-owned or privately-owned. we just don't know. and we don't understand the full purpose. we don't have any information that would confirm a stated purpose for this object. geoff: kirby says a debris recovery operation is now underway. nick schifrin has been following these developments. what more is known about the

object? nick: as you heard, the u.s. does not know the origin or exactly what the object was doing, but it does know it was flying at 40,000 feet. that is the altitude civilian airplanes fly, and that was the crucial variable that led president biden today to order it shot down, and saw it as a threat to the civilian airliners. the pentagon says it dispatched fighter jets yesterday to observe the object, and they assessed it was unmanned. they say it has been shot down over frozen water, which could make the salvage operation a little bit easier than it has been for that chinese balloon. geoff: how does this incident compare to the fighter jet shooting down the spy balloon off the south carolina coast? nick: john kirby says the two objects are different in terms of apples and oranges. one is the size. the chinese balloon was 200 feet tall, had a payload the sizef a jetliner. and the object today was the

size of a small car. not clear that the object today was capable of any kind of surveillance like the u.s. assessed that spy balloon was for. but the response was dramatically different. the pentagon yesterday argued that it did not shoot down the chinese spy balloon over alaska because it was not going to be easy to salvage. and the director of operations and joint staff just yesterday argued that they did not want to be too quick to shoot down the spy balloon because they wanted to watch it as it flew over the united states and observe it and learn from the balloon. a very different response to this object from both the military and president biden, after bipartisan criticism of the president for not shooting down that spy balloon earlier. but again, officials stressed the main difference was the altitude, 40,000 feet. it was just too much of a threat toivilian aircraft to allow it to keep flying. geoff: nick schifrin, thanks for

that reporting. ♪ amna: now, to the earthquake that devastated southern turkiye and northern syria. the toll of the dead keeps climbing, but there have also been dramatic moments today of people pulled alive from the ruins. jane ferguson reports from near the quake's epicenter in turkiye, where little is left standing. jane: it hardly seems possible, but five days after the earthquake, some people are still alive under the wreckage. the noises are growing quieter. these spanish and turkish rescue workers have heard what sounds like someone deep inside this debris, banging against the rocks. reaching them is painstaking and increasingly rare, however. at the neighbor's house, the body of a newborn baby was

found, its tiny frame wrapped in a blanket and placed on the sidewalk. a few streets over is pulled out in front of hisa n family. people are being pulled out of the rubble still here but many of them are simply not alive anymore. family members who have been waiting for a long time watching the rescue efforts finally have the devaating confirmation that their loved ones are not coming out from under the rubble alive. kahramanmarus city is close to the epicenter of the quake, and devastation is everywhere. we found 19 year old murat geceyatar sitting on a bench next to a massive pile of rubble. underneath, his best friend and older brother irfan lays dead. you are not able to personally dig through the rubble yourself but you still sit here and wait. what does it mean to you, personally, to be this close?

murat: i think my brother is under a main column and that's y we couldn't find him. we found my nephew's body and i pulled it out with my own hands. i have been here for five days. the desperation is killing people, it is killing me. you know they are in there but you can not do anything. bare hands are not enough. jane: in other areas of turkiye, moments of grace. in diyarbakir, more than 200 miles from the epicenter, a mother and her son were buri under ruins for over 100 hours. as they were carried to ambulances, rescuers took a brief moment to rejoice. cevik: it's an incredible moment. we started giving warnings like, "is anyone there? is anyone hearing my voice?" for a moment i thought the voices of the survivors were coming from my mind. jane: babies and young children are still being discovered, too. but as hours pass, hope dwindles for the thousands waiting for word of their missing loved ones.

meanwhile, turkish president tayyip erdogan is continng his tours of the destruction today in adiyaman. he visited an aid hub, swarming with people whose town was levelled by the quake. pres. erdogan: i know very well that words are not enough to describe the pain we are going through. jane: criticism over lax government assistance has been unceasing. the slow response leads to desperation in tent cities like this one, where many syrian refugees are living. rabie: i am not sleeping at night trying to provide for my kids. when the aid car shows up, a thousand people in need rush to it. naser: this note is from heba, pwh. god help me, she's gone, my god. jane: across the border in syria, a father clutched onto the tiny clothes of his dead children. naser al waka sat in theuins of his destroyed home in jenderes, west of aleppo. three of his children were

rescued but he lost his wife and six other children. naser: we are used to airstrikes, we are used to rockets, to barrel bombs, this is normal to us. but an earthquake, it's a god act, this is the first time this happens with us. jane: for over a decade, syrians like him have suffered a brutal civil war. yesterday, the first un convoy of 14 trucks made its way into rebel-held idlib province. mazel alloush, the director of relations at the border crossing said the un has promised more aid. mazel: what we have heard from ocha, un and from turkiye is that these trucks are just an initial response that will hopefully be followed by larger and more numerous loads of supplies. charles: it's become increasingly clear that the main challenge as far as the un is concerned is its desire not to rock the boat in damascus with the syrian regime. jane: charles lister is a senior

fellow at the middle east institute, a think-tank. he says after the earthquake, syria was willing to see aid delivered only through damascus, and not through the un-approved border crossing from turkiye. charles: while the regime says that it would like and is happy to provide cross line assistance to all syrians, includg opposition areas, its track record of doing so is appalling. jane: back in kahramanmarus, some look around and wonder why the destruction has been so widespread. murat believes the building his brother and nephew died in was like many others here -- unsafe for a quake zone. murat: it's not only this building. in kahranmanmaras many new buildings had cracks before people even moved in. many buildings had crack spared -- crack's. many buildings collapsed. we are not only killed by the earthquake, we are killed by poor safety standards. jane: the number of new buildings that came down in the earthquake has raised questions about their building standards.

government has overseen a massive expansion in housing development and construction in recent years. questions over the quality of those buildings grow louder. >> we have a fault line through our country, and experts giving warnings many times. yet we didn't have any building precautions. and then this has happened, causing so much despair. in the future we must be thinking of the next disaster. our government and people should be more sensitive about this issue. jane: the rapidly rising death toll has shocked many here. as the country continues to reel from this catastrophe, millions pray the numbers stop growing. for "the pbs newshour," i'm jane ferguson, in kahranmanmaras, turkiye. ♪ stephanie: i'm stephanie sy with "newshour west." here are the latest headlines.

the fbi searched former vice president mike pence's home in carmel, indiana today, for more classified material. a pence adviser said they found a single document marked classified. the residence was blocked off during the search. pence lawyers agreed to it after finding a small amount of classified material last month. migrant crossings at the u.s.-mexico border have dropped sharply. customs and border protection reports encounters in january fell 40 percent fromecember. the total, a little over 156,000, was the lowest in nearly 2 years. the agency cites a new policy that limits migrants from cuba, haiti, nicaragua and venezuela. russia launched a new wave of aerial attacks across ukraine today, targeting cities and power facilities with missiles, bombers and drones. kyiv said it shot down most of the missiles. but in the southeast, the barrage struck residential areas, smashing houses to the ground and throwing a car onto a roof. survivors angrily condemned

russia's actions. yevhen: they are not humans. i don't know whathe russians are thinking about when they are doing this, when they press the buttons and shell civilians. they are very well-aware that they are firing at civilians, they know it. stephanie: meanwhile, the white house confirmed that president biden will travel to poland next week ahead of the war's first anniversary. ukraian president volodymyr zelenskyy insisted today that russian athletes be barred from next year's summer olympics in paris. he told a virtual summit of sports officials that russians have no place at the olympics while they are waging war on ukraine. the international olympic committee has said it wants to let russians compete under a neutral flag. in east jerusalem, a palestinian man drove a car into a crowded bus stop today, killing 2 people and injuring 5 before he was shot and killed by police. medics say one of the dead was a 6-year-old boy. emergency crews rushed to the

this came amid a surge of violence in theli-anxed eastern part of city a the occupied west bank. president biden welcomed brazilian president luiz inacio lula da silva to the white house today. it was their first meeting as presidents. they said ey are united on the need to safeguard democracy and fight climate change. the visit came just over a month after right-wing rioters in brazil tried to oust lula. pennsylvania senator john fetterman has been released from a washington hospital. he was admitted wednesday ght after feeling light-headed. the freshman democrat suffered a serious stroke last year during his campaign, but the spital says tests showed no signs oa second stroke. texas attorney general ken paxton will apologize to 4 former aides who accused him of corruption. the allegations ignited an ongoing fbi investigation. a tentative settlement today also calls for the aides to be

paid $3.3 million in state taxpayer money. they claimed paxton took bribes from a campaign contributor. they were then fired or forced out, and he branded them rogue employees. paxton admits no wrongdoing under the agreement. still to come on "the newshour"... two newspapers collaborate to finish the work of a investigative reporter who was murdered... we examine the efforts to crack down on sex trafficking ahead of the super bowl... david brooks and jonathan capehart weigh in on the week's political headlines. >> 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. geoff: former vice president mike pence is at the center of two doj investigations this week. the fbi found an additional

classified document during a search of his indiana hope today after a small number were discovered last month. yesterday, reports surfaced that pence was subpoenaed i the council investigating former president trump's attempt to hold onto power. that makes him the highest to be subpoenaed for this. neil, it is great to see you. first question is this, would the special counsel, jack smith, take this extraordinary step of issuing a criminal subpoenaed to the former vice president and less he was very serious about prosecuting donald trump? >> i don't week -- don't think we can say it's about seriousness of prosecuting donald trump, it does show a seriousness in the investigation. it is a rare thing to have the subpoena of a government official, let alone someone like the former vice president. i think there have been three

subpoenas of presidents -- thomas jefferson in the early 1800s, richard nixon during watergate, and bill clinton during the wtewater investigation. i'm not sure any subpoenas for vice presidents before. it is a big deal but we don't know enough about why jack smith is subpoenaing mike pence. we can guess that a good part of it is that pence was the focal point for the pressure trump and others tried to use to throughout the results of the election. geoff: i understand that pence could challenge this under executive privilege. how could this hold up under scrutiny, especially for mike pence, who has given interviews, written a book, he had a detailed op-ed in the -- detailed op-ed?

>> it will fall on its face for several reasons. as you pointed out, there's been a waiver of privilege by former vice president pence, as he has written and talked about this extensively. second, the u.s. supreme court has said executive privilege lies in the hands of the incumbent president, not a former president. geoff: how does the special counsel navigate the sensitive territory given the donald trump is running for reelection and mike pence might soon announce he is running as well? pence is not the target of the special counsel investigation but there is a consideration. >> i think the navigation is easy. it is the guiding principle, no person is above the law, that's what our country was founded on, it is what thomas payne's common sense is all about. just because you are running for office, you don't get a it out of jail free card. it's a case that the justice apartment h opined twice that

if you are a sitting president, you can't be indicted. i think that is wrong, but that only go so far as a sitting president and that is why donald trump skated on the muller investigation, because bill barr concluded you could not indict a sitting president. but it can be the law that you could indict someone while they are president, and you can indict them after they are president if they announce they are running again for office. geoff: the fbi today discovered an additional classified document at mike pence's indiana home during a voluntary five hour search at the house. is this what we can expect moving forward when the doj encounters high-ranking politicians, former officials that have classified documents where they shouldn't be? >> as a someone who was the former national security advisor of the jtice department, i find it disconcerting that anyone, whether it be vice president pence or president

biden, is being classified material home, it is an obvious problem mom but what pins did does not appear criminal in the same way that donald trump did. with mike pence, it seemed inadvertent, and he right away call the fbi through his lawyers and have them search the home. it took a while but it looks like cooperation existed. with trump, he denied and lied about having those documents. geoff: neil, thank you for your insights. >> thank you so much. ♪ amna: it's a microcosm of the larger debate about changing the nation's criminal justice system. this week, republicans in congress have taken steps to block a new criminal code in washington, d.c. the constitution gives congress oversight of d.c.'s local polici. yesterday, the u.s. house of representatives voted to

disapprove of d.c.'s new law, which lowers some maximum criminal penalties. the senate needso weigh in next. lisa desjardins has more on the proposed changes. lisa: washington, d.c.'s new code that passed the council overwhelmingly erases some antiquated laws and more clearly defined others and also eliminates most mandatory minimum sentences and lowers maximum sentences for several crimes, including robbery and illegal possession of a firearm. to discuss this and the larger debate around crime and punishment i am joined by amy , fettig, executive director of the sentencing proje, and zack smith, a fellow with the heritage foundation's edwin meese center for legal and judicial studies. thank you to you both. amy, d.c.'s new code has many facets. it increases some penalties, lowers others. i think that is what i want to focus on. on the sentencing part, what is the argument for lowering some of those maximum sentences? amy: d.c.'s criminal code was vastly outdated. it has not been updated in over

a century. in contrast to many states that updated their criminal codes in the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's, d.c. has never done that. so it was pa time for an overhaul to modernize the criminal code, to rationalize the criminal code in the district of columbia, and make it more proportional and fair. lisa: you see those maximum sentences that you believe were too high as outdated. amy: absolutely. in fact, a lot of the sentences in the new criminal code are still very harsh, and frankly far harsher than some of the sentences we see in other states like kentucky and georgia and tennessee. from my perspective, they could actually be less harsh, but right now what we've got in the update is the will of the people, and it was a product of 16 years of deliberations by prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and legal experts.

lisa: this is a national conversation. d.c.'s situation is very specific. but talking nationally, i know you believe lowering these sentences is a bad idea. you hear from amy that they were overly harsh. why do you think it is a bad idea? zack: i disagree that the sentences were overly harsh. you look at specifics, it is very troubling. most mandatory minimum sentences were eliminated in this new criminal code. the only mandatory minimum that remained was for first-degree murder, and even that mandatory minimum was lowered. the other important point remember is maximum sentences are rarely imposed. those are typically the sentences that community members feel are appropriate when the worst iteration of a crime is committed. but it is typically a much less harsh sentence that a judge imposes in most cases where a crime is committed. when you are lowering the maximum penalties, you are

lowering the actual penalties that are imposed in many cases. with the surge in violent crime you are seeing not only in the district of columbia, but in cities around the country right now, this is not a good idea on many levels. lisa: there is an assumption that the judges will move. i know the idea that d.c. had was that they were trying to align the penalties more with what judges have been issuing. i have to ask, is there evidence that says higher maximum penalties for criminals actually reduces crime? zack: there's a lot of studies out there on this issue, and we do know that lengthier sentences do in fact reduce recidivism rates, the amount of times that an individual repeats an offense after their release from incarceration. the u.s. sentencing commission has released avril reports -- released several reports highlighting that fact. the most recent one from this summer where they found that lengthier terms of incarceration do lower recidivism rates. lisa: amy, do higher maximum

sentences reduce crime? amy: absolutely not. we know from 50 years of mass incarceration in this country that started in 1973 and now we have had0 years in 2023, that bringing more people into prisons and jails and keeping them there for longer periods of time does not make our community safer. more prisons and -- if more prisons and longer sentences made our community safer, the united states would be the safest in the world because we incarcerate more people for harsher sentences than any other industrialized country in the world. the fact is, it doesn't work. decades of research have demonstrated that long sentences don't create safe communities. so what we are facing now is a choice. are we going to build more prisons? are we going to put more people behind bars? or are we going to invest in public safety, in the solutions we know work, like preventing

violence? lisa: that is what i want to ask you about. this is an important discussion and we could spend a lot more time on it. but neither of you really thinks reducing maximum sentences is the best way to curb crime ultimately. i want to ask you, what do you think is the best way? zack: i think the best way to reduce crime is put more officers on the street, empower them to do their jobs, to keep communities safe, and to prosecute offenders and seek juste for victims. i have to push back on one thing that amy said, this idea that we have a mass incarceration problem in our country. it is a myth. if you look at who is actually incarcerated in state and federal prisons, it is repeat violent offenders. it is people who have committed violent crimes like rape, robbery, or murder. one of the reasons we have a higher incarceration rate than other westernized countries is

we have more violent crimes than other westernized countries. if you look at when the prison population began to increase, it was at the same time the violent crime rate in our country exploded by 350%. amy: there is no question we have a mass incarceration problem in this country. this is not an urban-rural problem, this is an american issue. we are ready for something different. we have been locking up more people than anyone in history for longer periods of time. in most states, the fastest growing population of people are over 50. they don't need to be in prison now. but the fact that they are their -- they are there means we are spending billions of dollars every single year on failed strategies when we could be investing our communities. we could be investing in violence prevention programs. what does not build safe communities is more prisons. if that were the case, we would be the safest country in the world, and we aren't.

lisa: something so many americans are thinking about. thank you both for your time and continuing the conversation. zack: thank you. ♪ geoff: we turn now to a story from the world of journalism. it's an example of one newsroom helping another after a horrifying tragedy. john yang has more. john: last september, longtime las vegas review-journal reporter jeff german was stabbed to death outside his home. charged with his murder was robert telles, a clark county public administrator who german had investigated. the killing shocked the newspaper and the community, and left reporting unfinished. enter the washington post, which worked with the review-journal to complete one of the stories that german started. the piece detailed a sweeping ponzi scheme that targeted mormon investors. last week, it was published

by the two papers. for more on how this collaboration came about and how it was carried out, glenn cook is the executive editor of the las vegas review-journal, and lizzie johnson is the washington post reporter who went to nevada to finish the reporting that jeff german had started. as difficult as it is for a newsroom to lose a colleague, i cannot fathom what it is like to lose a colleague the way this life was taken. how did this affect the newsroom? glenn: it is the worst thing a news organization can ever possibly deal with. there's shock, intense grief, anger. and and for a lot of our employees, the kinds of conversations that they'd never had to have before with their partners, their spouses, their families about the risks of

doing their jobs. i had to have a sit down conversation with my wife and my teenagers who asked me specifically, you know, would someone ever come to our house to harm you and would they harm us? that was that was part of the trauma that we had to navigate as a news organization going forward after jeff's murder. and it goes without saying that we still miss him terribly and that this community misses him and his work. john: [00:01:40izzie, glenn -- lizzie, glenn glenn was talking about the risks that come with this work. this is the same work you do. there's sort of enterprise investigative reporting. what was your reaction when you heard the news about jeff? lizzie: it is awful. it's exactly what glenn saying. i think journalists are very aware of the fact that our jobs are getting harder and there are dangers there.

but you never actually think that, you know, someone you see in the newsroom one day won't be there the next. john: glenn, tell me a little bit about how this collaboration began, how it came about. glenn: the day after robert telles is arrested in connection with jeff's murder, i got an email from craig timberg, who's the washington post's head of collaborative investigations. and the subject line of his email was condolences from the washington post and an idea. it offered reporting help. specifically, the idea of the post providing reporting help on stories that jeff might have been pursuing at the time of his murder. we came to an agreeme fairly quickly that that this story on this ponzi scheme that we already knew about, the man alleged to be the leader of this

scheme had already was already arrested in custody. , there were a lot of documents that had already been filed in connection with this that jeff had pulled and had read, studied, highlighted, made notes from at the time of his murder. and and after some back and forth with his colleagues at the post, you know, craig said, we're in. john: lizzie you went out to , nevada. what did you do from there? lizzie: i landed in las vegas and the newsroom was the first stop that i made. i went in there and met jeff's colleagues and got to hear all about him and what he was like as a reporter. and then his editor handed me this stack of folders containing these court filings that glen n had mentioned he'd read and started thinking about. so that's where i picked up. john: tell us about what you

found, this the scope of this ponzi scheme and what you found as you reported about it. lizzie: the alleged ponzi scheme was about $500 million, and it spread very quickly through the mormon church. there were people who had put in their life savings, their retirement aounts, who had taken out a second mortgage on their house. they thought that they would get annualized returns of 50%, which seemed really great. and they were being sold on this by people that they trusted, people that they saw in church on sunday, whose kids had grown up with their kids and they had no reason to distrust that the investment wasn't real. unfortunately, this is fairly typical of what is called an affinity fraud. and so in the aftermath, these people's lives were left in ruin. john: glenn, what do you take away from this experience about journalism, about the state of the industry, about collegiality in the industry? glenn: our industry is is an incredibly competitive one. everyone's competing for readership, for audience.

but at the same time, nothing brings our industry together, like fighting for press freedoms, the first amendment, ensuring that important stories can be told everywhere, not just in certain places. and it is unfortunate, obviously incredibly tragic that the murder of journalist really sends that collaboration and, you know, into overdrive. the post's offer was incredibly important and meaningful to us because our limited resources were focused on telling jeff's story and on on telles, you know, his suspected killer. and i knew we just were not going to be able to get to this ponzi scheme story at any time in the near future.

and the post's willingness to step in and tell the story -- lizzie worked with our photographer, rachel aston, and together, i just thought they did a beautiful job. john: lizzie, what do you take away from this experience? are there any particular feelings about picking up the torch th jeff had sort of been leading and finishing it for him? lizzie: from what i have heard about jeff, how colleagues and family described him to me, he seems like the kind of journalist that i've always wanted to be, someone who is really dedicated to his community, someone who shed light on dark places, someone who wanted to expose this tangled web of fraud and all of the people that were left in its wake. and so it felt really, really meaningful probably the most , meaningful thing that i've done in my career, to be able to tell this story for him in his honor, to let people know that just because he couldn't do it,

you cannot kill the story. the story will live on. i think jeff would have liked that. john: lizzie johnson othe washington post and glenn cook of the las vegas review-journal. thank you both very, very much. ♪ amna: after his state of the union address, president biden is taking his message on the road, making stops in battleground states and outlining his plans for the upcoming political season. for analysis on this and more of the week's political news, it's brooks and capehart. that's new york times columnist david brooks and jonathan capehart, associate editor for the washington post. good to see you both. we spent some time together watching the state of the union on tuesday and we talked about this on the night as well, the president focused a lot on the economy and a lot of specifics, things like credit card fees,

bringing down the cost of prescription drugs. he is now working in a divided congress, he made a lot of pledges that night. how many can he see through legislatively? jonathan: that remains to be seen. we know why. speaker mccarthy and his caucus are not terribly interested in accomplishments that will make the president look good. but what i think the president was doing by looking at all these seemingly narrow things was communicating to the american people, i see your pain, i know what you're going through. you are being nickeled and dimed and i am on it. , the other thing about the president focusing on the economy, he has a record. that last congress was successful for him. a lot of the things he passed will come to fruition, or at least start, this year and next year. he is setting things up to say, i will be breaking a lot of ground, cutting a lot of ribbons, and in your faces for the next two years to remind you of all the things that we,

meaning the administtion, have done for you. i think that is what the state of the union was all about. amna: he did carry out a real-time negotiation, which is unusual to see. he drew out enough boos from republicans when he referred to the handful of republicans who have talked about entitlement reform. the white house seems to think he secured a pledge that no one will be touching social security or medicare. it was unusual, was it effective? david: i think the moment was effective, it may democrats happy. i like my democratic friends to be happy. rick scott is the senator from florida who sa we should sunset laws after five years, and that was seized on as they will cut your medicare and social security. maybe, maybe not. whatever rick scott was selling, mitch mcconnell was not buying. there was no shot the republicans would really be for cutting entitlement spending. but it is a sign, that and a buncof other issues, how much

american politics has moved. 2012, you had a lot of republicans saying we need to reform entitlements. you had a lot of republicans and democrats who were pro-globalization. let's be partners with china. on every single one of these issues, if youooked at that bidespeech, it is clearly a post trump speech. trump shifted the window of american politics. biden, a democrat, speaking in a different manner than trump does is buy american secure the , boer, we are taking on china, no more off shoring. it is a bunch of trumpy issues done with more substance, frankly. but the whole focus of american politics has shifted toward the working class and the heartland. and trump really is somewhat responsible for that shift in attention. amna: you are almost describing america first, but with a biden lens. do you seet that way? jonathan: sure, but with a heart

and empathy for the people who have been left behind. i want to pick up on one other thing about this real-time negotiation that happened before our eyes. not bad for an 80-year-old man. a lot of people worry about, he has lost his step, he is too old. that was the biggest platform he will have as president this year to talk to the american people, and in real-time the american people saw him corral the republicans into a corner and make them applaud something that they will soon regret. [laughter] david: i think democrats are happier with the fall campaign. republicans i have heard some , disquiet, especially about sarah huckabee sanders's remarks. they mentioned two things, that the two things republicans should be proud of is donald trump -- she didn't mention his

name -- and the second is abortion. the big policy issue. not a word on abortion. if you can't talk about your two major successes, you are a party with some holes in your agenda. amna: let's talk abut that party moving forward because i know you have some poll numbers. republican voters were asked about who they would support in the 2024 contest of former president. two names topped the field. florida governor ron desantis and former president donald trump. about one third of all folks named them. everyone else -- mike pence, nikki haley -- fell down in the 2% to 1% range. a quarter of people said the just didn't know. a huge caveat, this is february of 2023. there are several political lifetimes to go. but what do you take away from those numbers? jonathan: ron desantis is the shiny object. he is the flavor of the month. donald trump is dominating the scene, as he has since he came down that escalator in 2015.

those numbers are going to fluctuate as more people actually get into the race, and they get on this national stage where it is a lot harder to run for president than it is to be speculated as someone who is going to run for president, and you roar to reelection as ron desantis did in florida. but once he gets on that national stage, his whole world changes, and i bet those poll numbers change as well. amna: nikki haley is going to iowa. we expect her to announce her candidacy. tim scott is going to charleston, south carolina, for a gop dinner. this field is going to get more credit? david: it looks like it will, nikki haley being the first one in. i am a little surprised if you lookack historically, that the polls this far out are not meaningless. they tell you something. but i think nikki haley is vastly undervalued, that the two grumpy guys, trump a desantis, will wrestle each other to the ground. i think at some there will be a

point lane for republicans short -- sort of trumpy but not all that chaos. with a different demeanor. nikki haley has a much more sunshiney demeanor. so does tim scott a normal , demeanor. glenn youngkin, governor kemp in georgia. i've a fling there is a lane for one of those people. i would say the non-culture war republican party reasserted itself in 2022. i think a lot of those people are looking for a candidate. some may right now imagine it is desantis. i think it probably will not be desantis. amna: the crowded field last time in a fitted mr. trump. you don't think it will happen this time? david: if you look at the credit field last time with all of them -- rubio, ted cruz, chris christie, they were nines and tens. there were not too many twos. there were a lot of nines and tens. they had real support. the field really was divided.

this time it might be the two big guys and one other. >> i think once it becomes trump and somebody else the pressure for everybody else to get out will be a month. >> we do like to point out bipartisanship whenever we can on the show and when it comes to china and this by balloon there was frustration from both republicans and democrats when they look at how the department of defense and the president reacted saying they should have a it more quickly and curious to get both of your takes on how you think this has been talk about especially in light of this new incident and we don't know the origin of this aircraft but we do know they acted quickly. >> i don't know much about this latest flying object blown out of the sky over alaska, but i do understand frustrations and the democratic and republican senators particularly where the balloon sailed over, but i do

understand why the administration did what it did by following the balloon and shooting it down over relatively shallow water off of the south carolina coast and collecting all of the material. we don't know if the pentagon, while the balloon was drifting over the continental u.s., or we pulling out information or were we jamming signals? what was the united states doing while the balloon was up there. i think time will tell if we actually have good intelligence or information, not just about the balloon but what about china and what it is up to. >> i think the new object is the toaster. there are two ways to see this. i think both the chinese and americans are realizing how fraught relationship has become. i think both sides, they are

saying we are not taking this to the map and so for their part the chinese used state media to not let this be whipped up in both sides pulled it back a bit and relations not what they were in 2001 and it was a warmer relationships he could manage a crisis, but i think we learned this week that even with the relationship that exists now there is still that instinc not to get carried away and i think we can take some peace from that. and the trajectory could increase tensions but it didn't happen this week. >> for that we are grateful. it is good to see you both. thank you. geoff: more than 100 million viewers are expect it to tune

into the super bowl on sunday being held in the phoenix metro area and the stadium is expected to be packed with more than 70,000 people on hand to watch the kansas city chiefs and eagles square off but biggest sporting events could have a darker side that isn't talked much about publicly any notable rise in sex trafficking and she is an associate professor at arizona state university and director of the university's office on sex trafficking intervention research. >> thank you so much for joining the news hour. we have all seen the advertisements in the airport bathrooms and heard the announcements warning about sex trafficking and it seems like there is a lot of public awareness these days around this issue. is it true that sex trafficking increases during the super bowl

? >> what we found in arizona and new york and california when the super bowl has traveled is indeed there is a lot of sex trafficking. in our research we have found the buyers looking for people to purchas for sex whether they are children, adults, traffic are not, they are local people. the people that celebrate these big events have a bigger broader market of victims being brought to town and they are local people. >> there are more of them around an event like the super bowl? >> it is hard to measure. it is an illicit business and this is hard to measure and the things we can measure by our how many advertisements are online or how many people call to have sex, how many people we see or how many cars are driving up and down the street where prostitution is and those are weak metrics for a very serious problem. >> what are we really talking

about when we talk about sex trafficking? we talking about paid sex with minors or also a greater demand for willing adult sex workers? ú>> the people being sold are often coerced and forced and many are under the age of 18 so they can't consent to sell sex and those over 18 initially may have said it was okay and they may have fell in love with the person coursing them or they got talked into it so they could make some money for drugs, but almost always we find that people withdraw their consent and it met with violence. one of the important things is who is the sex trafficking are targeting and who is being bought or sold in the vulnerabilities we see a similar across the board and mostly they are women from the research we have and mostly

people whose families are disconnected. i can say to mom's out there, watch your kids and be smart and look online and see what people are doing but the chances of somebody grabbing their child to prostitute them in our community during the super bowl is very low. >> one of the criticisms i heard is it is a myth and there is not increased sex trafficking during the super bowl and what could end up happening is police officers criminalizing sex workers who may be in a position to choose that line of work and not be exploited. >> that is difficult paradox we have an prostitution and selling sex is illegal in arizona. i think it is a balancing act and i think people should be able to do what they want with their body, but what we do know from the research in phoenix is those who are arrested for prostitution at some point during their engagement with the criminal justice system identify as being a victim of sex trafficking. so with 1 out of 10 saying i am independent and on my own and 9 out of 10 say i am in trouble

and i need help and somebody give me a pathway out, it is a difficult decision for people to decide and i can say that we are paying attention to the nine out of 10 who say i am a victim and need somebody to give me a pathway out. >> given all of the mobilizations that you are talking about ahead of the super bowl, what do you expect will happen? >> i think there will be a number of sex trafficking is and you can know that the community is activated and we are looking and i think we will see a massive set of events that are arrest based and i would love for us to talk about this at her kitchen tables and while we are watching television or school buses or cars as we drive kids to school and think about what it means to our community and how we have an environment that allows what is

happening here and what can we do to change that from happening again. >> dominique, thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me. as americans gather to watch the super bowl this sunday, they will be watching a historic moment, the first time two black starting quarterbacks face-off in the starting game and tomorrow on pbs news weekend, doug williams the first black quarterback to win a super bowl reflects in the moment he realized history would be made. >> i got chills and i got emotional and i had tears in my eyes and it's not about the fact that two young guys were going to the super bowl but it was the guys before me who had a

chance to play as a quarterback in the football league and you think if they had not gotten the chance, would these two guys be the first two black quarterbacks? >> you can watch that fell interview later. tune into washington on more analysis of the policy goals that president biden laid out in the state of the union address. that is the news hour for tonight and this week. i am jeff bennett. on behalf of the entire team, thank you for joining us and have a great weekend. major funding has been provided by >> moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us.

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the quality of life for bay area residents through support of higher education and the arts. tonight on kqed newsroom, even though she hasn't stepped down, the race is on to replace senator dianne feinstein. we get the latest on that story and a response to president biden's state of the union address. plus america continues its racial wreck winning and how programs are making a difference. our chief dei officer joins us. we visit a neighborhood where you can grab a snack and a stroll in tonight's edition of something beautiful. coming