geoff: good evening. i'm geoff bennett. amna: and i'm amna nawaz. on the "newshour" tonight, a new intelligence report refutes one possible cause of the mysterious havana syndrome that sickened hundreds of american diplomats in cuba and other parts of the world. geoff: chicago voters oust mayor lori lightfoot in an election where crime was a top issue, setting up a runoff between o candidates backed by teachers and police. amna: and scientists researching the aftermath of california wildfires add to the growing evidence that climate change is accelerating the risk of disease spreading from animals to humans. >> as animals get more and more stressed, they're more likely to shed a particular virus or a pathogen.

>> major funding for the "pbs newshour" has been provided by. >> moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf. the engine that connects us. >> the walton family foundation, working for solutions to protect water during climate change so people and nature can thrive together.

supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org. and with the ongoing support of these institutions. this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. amna: welcome to "the newshour." it is a mystery that has challenged the country's intelligence community for years. geoff: 1500 reports of an unexplained illness known as the havana syndrome, named after the city where u.s. diplomats and intelligence officials first suffered from dizziness, cognitive difficulties, even memory loss. today, the intelligence community has assessed it was likely not the work of a foreign adversary. nick schifrin is here with more.

so what does this assessment say? nick: the top line is exactly what you just said. that the members ofhe intelligence community participating in this founded quote, very unlikely a adversary was responsible, very unlikely a weapon or any device purposely or accidentally caused the symptoms. and there is not even a consistent set of physical injuries that could be characterized as havana syndrome. not the entire intelligence community participated in this but this is as emphatic a conclusion as they make. on the serious conditions we are talking about that americans suffered in cuba, in china. americans who worked on russia. even u.s. officials who suffered this here in the united states. one official told us today, we cannot tie a foreign adversary to any of those instances. geoff: what evidence does the intelligence community provide to bacthat up? nick: the intelligence briefer

suit talked to me and about a dozen reporters today, one official said intelligence points against foreign involvement. band this official said that adversaries including china and russia expressed some confusion when the u.s. started reporting have symptoms. many thought this was a u.s. plot to blame them for something. there was no evidence, this official went on to say, that ukrainians or any kind of partner country suffered from any systematic attack or any evidence an adrsary was even practicing this kind of attack. again, evidence they would have seen if they believed an adversary was behind this. as for the weapon, previous assessments the intelligence community has considered said that directed energy might have causedhese symptoms. the intelligence official told us, quote, those were all washed out. there was no evidence, the official said, that any evidence overcame some of the challenges to create some kind of microwave that would have had to gone

through concrete or had line of sight to some of these victims. but i just spoke with the head of the intelligence community expert panel and he disagreed. he said that the panel found a device could have been portable, concealable, and there could have been more than one mechanism used. he said, look,he u.s. does not know enough about directed energy to know for certain whether it could have been used or not in this case. geoff: wow. so if we were to take this assessment at face value, if not a foreign adversary with a weapon, what then explains the symptoms these people have come forward with? 1500 reports across 96 countries. nick: it is a great question for which the intelligence community does not have a great answer. the officials who we spoke to briefed on a couple possibilities for what the victims suffered from. they talked about environmental circumstances.

one official even talked about a malfunctioning air-conditioner that created undue pressure in a room. the official talked out pre-existing medical conditions. what they called conventional illness in some of these cases, and social forces, otherwise known as, frankly, media attention causing more people to report what they suffered. but that has not ameliorated what the victims felt. i talked to multiple former officials who made the same point. 26 americans and canadians in havana at the same time felt symptoms and there were no pre-exting medical conditions among them, nor was there coordination between them when they suffered, these victims. we talked to attorney mark zaid who represents a couple dozen of these victims and their families. he said quote, they were demoralized these findings and they disagree with them. >> there is absolutely no doubt that our foreign adversaries are very capable of doing this. in ft, the technology,

frankly, was created by the united states for the most part back five or six decades ago. there are counterintelligence situations that have arised with respect to surveillance and directions with human individuals with respect to our intelligence officers that have not been investigated. there are technical situations where electronic devices have started to act strangely in the midst of what the human individual interprets to be an ahi incident. nick: ahi incident is an anomalous health incident. the intelligence officials i spoke to today responded to some of those criticisms, and say they did track down every lead in an investigation they compared to the osama bin laden hunt before coming to their conclusions. as for the victims feeling rejected by today's assessment, cia director bill burns,

director of national intelligence, all released statements saying the same thing, that they believed victims' pain was real and that was echoed today by the state department spokesman, ed price. >> the findings that the intelligence community has spoken to today in no way call into question the experiences, the symptoms that our colleagues and their family members have reported in recent years. nick: and so, while the victims do say their medical care has improved in the last few years, and whether or not they receive care, independent of today's assessment, they clearly believe they were still a target of a foreign adversary and they are very upset by today's findings. geoff: nick schifrin, thank you so much for that reporting. appreciate it. stephanie: i'm stephanie sy with "newshour west." here are the latest headlines. more than half a million voters in chicago have spoken, and

they've turned away from the incumbent mayor. they'll decide next month who the new mayor will be. john yang reports on tuesday's election results. >> obviously, we didn't win the election. john: chicago mayor lori lightfoot turned out of office after just one term. she got 17% of the vote, placing third in a nine-person field. >> regardless of tonight's outcome, we fought the right fights and we put this city on a better path. no doubt about it. john: the first black woman and the first openly gay person to lead the city has become the first incumbent to lose reelection since jane byrne in 1983. >> it's a seismic event in chicago history. john: heather cherone is a reporter at wttw, chicago's pbs station. >> in 2019 she ran as a progressive but did not govern as a progressive, which left that community angry and frustrated and ready to pick a new candidate.

john: the top two finishers advance to a runoff in just five weeks, squaring off in a campaign that's likely to focus largely on crime and public safety. >> five weeks. john: paul vallas, the former ceo chicago schools, was in first place, with a third of the vote. vallas is the only white mayoral candidate in a city that's about 29% black and 29% hispanic. he says, as mayor, he'd increase the number of cops on the street. >> the voters want a mayor who's gonna, you know, who's gonna get the city back on track and is gonna address its most pressing issues. and obviously, the issue of public safety is front and center. >> well, chicago, we did it, y'all. john: brandon johnson, a county commissioner and former teacher, says he'd focus on the root causes of crime. he finished second, edging out lightfoot, with 20% of the vote. >> a few months ago, they said they didn't know who i was.

well, if you didn't know, now you know. >> this is the most chaotic possible outcome of the vote last night, with the two candidates, you know, completely ideologically opposed, you know, race, approach to schools, approach to public safety. john: now that the runoff matchup is set, early voting starts later this month. for the "pbs newshour," i'm john yang. stephanie: and late today, mayor lightfoot announced that chicago's police superintendent, david brown, will step down in two weeks. both of the candates in the runoff had vowed to replace him if they are elected. for the first timepolice in israel have used force against crowds protesting an overhaul of the nation's courts. it started after hundreds of people in tel aviv blocked highways today, waving flags. officers on horseback used stun grenades, and others fired a water cannon.

they said protesters threw rocks and water bottles. critics of the court plan say it would weaken the independence of israel's judges. rescuers in northern greece spent the day searching for survivors and bodies after an overnight train crash killed 43 people and injured scores more. a passenger train and a freight train collided head-on. cranes were brought in to lift derailed cars as crews dug into the wreckage. the prime minister toured the site and promised accountability. >> what we are experiencing today is very, very difficult as a country. we are talking about an unspeakable tragedy. one thing i can guarantee, we willind out the causes of this tragedy and do everything in our power to make sure it never happens again. stephanie: the cause of the crash is still unknown, but the greek transportation minister resigned today, and a station master in a nearby city was arrested. in ukraine, a top government adviser suggested today that

commanders might pull back from the besieged town of bakhmut, in the east. they've held out for months, but russian forces are closing in on the last escape route. shelling hit the nearby town of chasiv yar today, sending up thick smoke and leaving a grocery store in flames. ukrainian fighters have set up new defensive lines there. back in this country, the latest winter storm to sock california is finally winding down. it dumped several feet of new snow east of los angeles. farther north, the storm added to already staggering totals. parts of the sierra nevada have gotten more than 41 feet of snow since october, the most in 50 years. and a california parole board panel denied parole today for sirhan sirhan, the man convicted of assassinating robert f. kennedy. the decision reverses a different parole board's ruling from 2021. governor gavin newsom rejected that decision last year. sirhan is 78 years old and has expressed remorse for the crime.

still to come on the "newshour," lgbtq americans voice their apprehension as new state laws restrict rights. pharmaceutical giant eli lilly slashes the price of insulin after pressure from the government and consumers. the ruling party's candidate wins nigeria's presidency after a disputed vote. 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. amna: across the country, at least 150 bills have been filed by republican legislators targeting transgender americans this year. roughly 100 specifically restrict doctors and other providers fromffering transition-related health care for minors, even when their parents approve. william brangham takes a look at where these bills are being

proposed and the impact they could have. william: yesterday, mississippi's republican governor tate reeves signed a law banning puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and other gender-affirming care for minors. its the third state this year to legalize restrictions on transgender health care. and similar bans are moving quickly through tennessee and indiana. in a moment, we will talk with someone who tracks all these new laws. but, first, let's hear from some parents whose children are most impacted. krisztina: when our son was growing up, he was an active kid, liked to go play basketball, ride his bike, do all kinds of things outside, climb the walls even. and then, as he grew near adolescence and puberty, things got more distressing. he began to have lots of anxiety, severe depression, began to self-harm. he was even hospitalized for suicidal ideation. so, times were really very tough for a while.

a little bit later, as a teen, he realized what had been nagging at him all this time was that really he wasn't a girl, as we thought, that he was really a boy. beth: our daughter is 10 years old. she started letting us know that she was transgender really before she could even speak. she would do things like wear her sister's clothes, pretend that towels were her long hair. and when she was about three years old, she started to withdraw and become depressed. so, we started doing some research. we talked to her pediatrician. for us, gender-affirming care so far is -- has just been a social transition, using the correct pronouns, letting kieran grow her hair long, letting her pick her clothes from the girls

section. rori: when my son transitioned at the age of seven, it was not something that was particularly eventful. it involved him changing his name, changing his pronouns. suddenly, when i went to target, instead of going to the girls section, i went to the boys section. ken: it is just so heart-wrenching as a parent to see your kid in such agony and hopelessness. and it was through gender-affirming care with good doctors and mental health professionals and the like that he saw hope. beth: asoon as we started affirming her as a girl, her mental health increased greatly. i do -- we do notice, with the onset of puberty coming anytime now, her distress rises greatly. rori: as he gets older, what

we're looking at is first puberty blockers, so medication that would prevent puberty from happening in the natural course at its core really to buy us time. what we don't want is to have unnecessary and sometimes invasive surgeries. and so we want to be able to push a pause button to make sure that we're not making these decisions at young ages, at ages like 11, 12, 13. nathaniel: it's been really tough on us as a family. the idea that the state of indiana wants to take away our rights as parents to make medical decisions for our kid with our doctors, and it's really painful.

krisztina: here comes the legislature saying, ok, your child's been living as airl for seven years, but they can't go on puberty blockers when they hit puberty because we think it's best that they don't. rori: when you have health care professionals who are working with you, who have gotten to know you, who have been talking about plans months and yea out, understanding what that is going to look like, and helping you to plan that road ahead to know what it is that you're looking towards, to think that you could then lose that, and that the government could be telling you that they know better than this entire team of people to stop you from accessing lifesaving medical care, that, in and of itself, is terrifying. william: so, those families are clearly watching these laws and are deeply concerned with what they might mean for their children. for more on what the various states are doing, i'm joined now by erin reed.

she's a researcher who tracks transgender legislation around the country and advocates for trans rights. erin reed, thank you so much for being here. there are so many states that are proposing these different kinds of laws. broadly speaking, can you explain, what are these laws generally trying to target? erin: yes, thank you for having me on. there are over 400 bills that i'm tracking that target the lgbt community, primarily the trans community. and a good third of them target the medical care of transgender youth and, in some cases, transgender adults. they essentially will ban things like puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and, in some cases, surgery from this population. and, in many cases, they will tell doctors precisely how they should medically detransition these transgender youth by withdrawing them from their medications systematically. and so that's what i'm tracking. and that's what's moving around the country right now. william: and, generally speaking, some of these have passed into law. some of them are still just in the legislature.

what are the penalties for people who break those laws, for doctors or families or individuals? erin: yes, so they tend to vary. in some cases, it's a revoker of licensure. in other cases, they are felony bans, like in alabama. in some cases, there have been times where they floated child abuse provisions, where, like, for instance, in texas, last year, whenever governor greg abbott began investigating the parents of trans teens for child abuse. and so we have got a broad range the way that the community is targeted by this legislation. william: we should say, for the record, that this is care that is widely accepted by most major medical organizations, pediatric organizations, that study this. but what are the arguments that these legislators are making as to why they want to pass these bans? erin: the arguments that i tend to see within the actual legislative hearings tend to be around, the kids are too young to choose, and things like that. and i think that, also, they tend to float surgeries.

and we often hear a lot about transgender surgeries done on minors. and there's often very little time spent by the proponents of this legislation on puberty blockers and hormone therapies. and i believe that that's intentional. surgeries are perhaps a little bit more ereme and, therefore, easi to sell than puberty blockers and hormone therapies. william: in fact, one of my colleagues, laura barron-lopez, spoke with a legislator in tennessee. this is speaker of the house cameron sexton. he supports one of these laws, and i want to play a clip of what he has to say. he equates gender reassignment surgery with child abuse, and argues that people who undergo that surgery, 80% of them later regret it. here's a little bit more of what he had to say. rep. sexton: there's a difference between a child who is younger than 18 making that decision compared to someone who's an adult making that decision. and so we're going to err on the side of saying, if you're an adult, and that's what you want to do, go at it. but, as a child, you're telling

me that a 10-, 11- and 12-year-old child absolutely knows what gender that they want to be. i do not believe that. that decision should be left later in adult life. william: erin reed, what do you make of that argument? erin: the idea that transgender youth are being treated abusively by their parents, i think, is -- stands in stark reality to some of the clips that you had played earlier as well as the testimony that i have seen at these hearings. i watched a testimony in nebraska where the mother a transgender teenager spoke about how, for years, she was worried that she would come home and find her child dead. and then, after allowing transition, by going through an intensive medical process with therapists, doctors over the course of a few years, she stated, while pleading for her medical care for her child, that she went from having a depressed, suicidal teenage boy to a happy, thriving, successful teenage girl, a daughter. and this particular representative mentioned something like 80% of people detransitioning. and these are the kinds of

things that we hear that just are not borne out by reality. these numbers are often based off of data that are decades-old from back in the 1980's and 1990's, whenever transgender people could not be in public, we could not exist in public safely. and so, yes, of course, rates of detransition were so much higher back then because we were not allowed to be ourselves. and the idea that we would treat these parents as abusers and take their kids away from them, it's heart-wrenching. william: why do you think we are seeing all of these laws occurring across the country? erin: there has been a sustained fear campaign waged against the transgender community and the lgbtq community as a whole. for the better part of two years now, we have heard the groomer slur. we have heard that we are dangerous around kids, that children should not be exposed to lgbtq people, lgbtq topics, identities, that we're dangerous in bathrooms, that -- and i

think that this fear campaign that has been waged has gotten through and has been utilized in a political manner. and it's unfortunate, because it's targeting families that very clearly care deeply about their kids, that are following the best medical guidelines that they know how, that are working with their care teams, doctors, and therapists, and that are seeing the results in their kids, that are seeing the improved lives and the ability of these kids to express themselves and be themselves. william: all right, erin reed, thank you so much for being here. erin: thank you for having me. amna: we spend a great deal of time looking at the impact of climate change and how it's changing our weather and environment. that, in turn, can have an impact on how pathogens and disease could spread as well.

our science correspondent, miles o'brien, has the story. miles: dawn in the high sierra, 50 miles northwest of reno at the clover valley ranch. brian: remember to check every trap. walk the line. miles: the hunt is on once again. brian: make sure you take the boxes, open, closed. they're empty if there's no animal in it. miles: for clues linking a changing climate and the worsening spread of disease. that is ranch owner brian bird, a veterinarian, virologist and director of the one health institute laboratory at the university of california, davis. brian: good hunting. miles: overnight, 47 of their quarry took the peanut butter, oats, d bacon bait. now it's time to retrieve the traps. brian: i believe that's the most we have ever captured here. miles: and gather some data. for three years now, he and his students have been systematically trapping deer mice that live here.

they're hoping to better understand hantavirus. the rodents are the primary reservoir for this pathogen. brian: it doesn't cause any harm to the rodent at all. they carry the virus throughout their life. but then they shed this virus in their urine and their feces. miles: when a human gets hantavirus, is that pretty serious? brian: it can be very serious. there are hundreds of cases a year. of those, 20% to 30%, maybe even 50% could be fatal. so it's a relatively rare, but a high-consequence disease. miles: hantavirus pulmonary syndrome is a so-called zoonotic disease, meaning it is spread by pathogens that spill over from one species to another. this is the primary cause of pandemics throughout human history. human encroachment and global travel hasten these spillover events. and it appears the climate crisis is making matters even worse. brian: so, as the animals get more and more stressed, they're more likely to shed a particular virus or a pathogen.

there's also the impact on the animals themselves. so where do they live? as those environments change, well, those animals will move. they're adaptable at a species level, certainly. but those changes occur very gradually, over perhaps millennia. but now we're looking at rather dramatic, fast-paced changes on the time scale of hundreds of years, if not even faster. miles: in september of 2021, he learned just how fast. so did the fire come through here? brian: it did. so you're working on burned area here. miles: it was the dixie megafire, amplified by a historic drought linked to climate change. it burned nearly a milli acres over three months. so you had been working in this spot prior to the fire? brian: yes, exactly in this spot prior to the fire. and we had two seasons of sampling data here before the fire. miles: bird expected it would take years, even decades, to connect the dots. but in his blackened field, he saw opportunity.

brian: so, we thought, well, this would be a great time to continue that sampling and then see, well, how do the rodent populations respond to pretty much a complete destruction of their habitat? miles: they're now finding active hantavirus in 8% of mice they're trapping. in the unburned control site, it is 4%. bird says the mice are fighting to establish turf. brian: the primary method of transmitting the virus amongst the rodents is when they fight and bite each other. so they could be transmitting the virus at a heightened rate, compared to a control site that wasn't burned. miles: they're carving out turf and fighting, and that means more transmission, potentially. brian: potentially, yes. miles: so, climate change worsens a drought that triggers a megafire, which wipes out a habitat, causing a rodent rumble, a virus super-spreader. a nuanced link, to be sure, but not new. the historical evidence linking the climate to zoonotic disease is growing. biologist camilo mora is a professor at the university of hawaii at manoa.

he led a team that pored through no less than 70,000 scientific studies dating back to the end of the roman empire. camilo: over 58% of those pathogens that have impacted humanity anywhere in the world are already affected by climatic changes. but those are the ones that we already know. the scary things are the ones that we just don't know about, because the ones that we know of, we know that we cannot cope with them. you can imagine the surprise that we might get when we start unleashing all of these pathogens that could be more damaging to us. miles: at georgetown university, global change biologist colin carlson is working on a way to take the surprise out of this. so, colin, what are we looking at here? colin: we are looking at the pathogen harmonized surveillance system. miles: he is trying to meld existing climate and disease data in a way that allows epidemiologists to see the big picture. colin: so let's go to berlin. so, each of these points is somewhere that they have tested a fox for distemper virus.

what if we knew this much about viruses everywhere in the world? what if we knew this about the diseases that we were worried about jumping into humans, right? we can literally know within a city where spillover risk is the highest. miles: he's building an open-source tool to forecast an outbreak sooner. he foresees the ability to predict disease, as well as the weather. colin: if we want to get really good at predicting spillover, we need to know what the dynamics of these viruses are when we're not watching them. miles: so can technology make it easier for public health professionals to monitor disease in wild animal populations? epidemiologist christine johnson is also a professor at the uc davis one health institute. she is testing new ways to monitor one of the most prolific spreaders of zoonotic disease, bats. christine: well done, jana. yeah. did you get that stream? >> we did, yes. >> we got two of them.

miles: she and her team are testing thermal cameras, as well as audio devices able to record what bat echolocation sounds like. they hope to deploy the technology to make their work more efficient and safer. christine: we don't like to go into bat caves for so many reasons, especially because they're very dark. we're able to see them much more clearly with thermal cameras than we could just see with our own eyes. the techniques that we're developing could be used to do that remotely. miles: she is collaborating with the engineering department, seeking ways to monitor and test bat populations remotely. christine: and so that's what we're seeking is, witthe innovative technology that we're using to try to bring much more feasibility to wildlife surveillance. miles: there are more and more zoonotic diseases coming. the climate crisis makes it unavoidable. a greater investment to protect public health with some 21st century tools, along with the risky, laborious field work,

might be the only way to stop a spillover from boiling over, shutting down the world once again. for the "pbs newshour," i'm miles o'brien, near portola, california. geoff: more than seven million americans rely on insulin, and over the last two decades, prices for the lifesaving drug have skyrocketed. with pressure mounting on pharmaceutical companies to address the high cost of diabetes care, drugmaker eli lilly announced today it's cutting the prices for its most popular insulin products by 70% and capping out of pocket costs at $35 a month. we're joined now by bram sae-smith. he's a reporter with kaiser health news. it's good to have you here. and, bram, how significant of an announcement is this? i mean, given the way that drug

pricing works in this country, a company's list price doesn't necessarily reflect how much insurers will cover and how much folks end up paying out of pocket. bram: that's true. and that's been the criticism of a lot of the approaches to addressing the high cost of insulin in the past. so, you will remember, ithe inflation reduction act last year, congress passed a $35 cap for some medicare patients for insulin. there was talk, there were proposals to pass a similar cap for all insured patients. the criticisms with that -- those kinds of caps is that it doesn't address the list price. so if you're uninsured or you're underinsured, you would still be exposed to the high list price of these products. so, by reducing the list price of insulin, it's a really significant step. and it gets at some of the criticisms that people have had in the past for addressing this issue. geoff: will this announcement by eli lilly push other insulin makers to follow suit?

bram: it's certainly possible. i mean, you saw president biden applauded the announcement. bernie sanders has written letters to the ceo's of sanofi and novo nordisk. those two companies, together with eli lilly, account for something like 90% of insulin that's used in the united states of america. so, bernie sanders has written letters to their ceo's asking them to follow suit. so there's certainly pressure. geoff: as you mentioned, this announcement by eli lilly puts the company in line with the provisions in the inflation reduction act capping out of pocket costs for seniors who rely on insulin. but let's talk about how we got here, because, in 1999, one vial of humalog, which is a diabetes drug, cost $21 a vial. in 2019, that cost was $332. that's a 1000% increase. how did that happen? bram: you know, one of the ways to think about it, i kind of

descbe it as a "game of thrones" that pharmaceutical companies are playing with insurers and these middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers. and the gist of it is that you will have an insurance company that has millions of patients that they provide insurance for, and through these middlemen, they will go to the pharmaceutical company, and they will say, hey, we want to make your insulin the preferred insulin on our list, but, in return, we want a good deal on it. so the manufacturers will provide these things called rebates to the middlemen, who will then pass some or all of it on to the insurer. and it creates these incentives for high prices, so that everybody will get their cut along the way. but what that doesn't take into account is the uninsured and underinsured patients. so when you don't have insurance, or you have a high-deductible plan, something like that, you could be exposed to these high list prices, that really were never meant for patients. geoff: how big of a financial burden has this been for folks up until now?

i mean, there are millions of americans who have been rationing their insulin. bram: yes, that's right. and a study came out last year that something like 17% of americans who use insulin had rationed it. a lot of that is because of financial constraints. and there are plenty of stories. i mean, i have written some. there have been plenty other stories have been written by other reporters, other journalists, about people who've actually died from rationing their insulin because they didn't feel they were able to afford the insulin they needed to survive. so, i mean, it's been really big issue. geoff: so, what will you be watching for in the weeks and months to come? bram: well, i'm certainly interested to see if the other insulin manufacturers will also reduce the list prices of their insulin. i'm interested to see if congress will continue to take action itself. president biden, in the state of the union this year, called for a more universal co-pay cap.

i'd be interested to see if congress will do something along those lines. there's also initiatives in states around the country that are worth keeping an eye on. so, california, for example, has an initiative that they're going to manufacture their own insulin to bring it in at a lower price. and continuing on that path could provide even more market pressure for other companies to reduce the list price of the insulin products. geoff: bram sable-smith is a reporter with kaiser health news. thanks so much for your time and for your insights. bram: thanks for having me. amna: nigeria africa's largest democracy has a newly elected president. bola tinubu, a longtime nigeria kingmaker, has been declared the winner today with over 36% of the vote. the fiercely contested election wasn't without controversy, though. long lines and delays have led the opposition to allege fraud, and there have been sporadic protests and some violence since the election.

ebenezer obadare is a nigerian american academic and a senior fellow at the council on foreign relations. he joins me now. ebenezer, welcome to the "newshour." thanks for joining us. before we get into the candidates and the results, help us understand how significant this election was, especially given nigeria's history of military rule. is it fair to call this election a turning point? ebenezer: it's fair to say that because, for the first time since nigeria returned to democracy in 1999, this was the first election in which there was no former army general on the ballot. all the candidates were proper civilians, if you know what i'm talking about. it was also an election which, for the first time, a bulk of young people sought to overthrow the old, the established order in the country. they did not succeed, but the energy they brought to the election, the new sense of urgency was something to behold, and i think in the long run

bodes we for the democratic process in nigeria. amna: so, tell me about the winner here. bola tinubu beat out two opponents, a man named atiku abubakar, who's from the people's democratic party, or the pdp, and a man named peter obi, who's from the smaller labor party. tell me about tinubu. how did he win? what was his message? ebenezer: i don't think it's the message, as much as the craft that he brought to the game. he's been running ever since he concluded his term of office as governor of lagos state in 2007. and what do i mean by he has been running? he has been appointed -- he appointed every successive governor of lagos state up until now. he has built a political machine. he has reached out to constituencies across the country. he won right across the countr and he was able to dig into and exploit all the alliances that he had built over a long period of time. that's why he won the election. amna: you know, there were some

familiar issues to american politics i wanted to ask you about. there were questions raised about tinubu's age. he is 70 years old. there were questions raised about his claims that he worked for the company deloitte, which later turned out not to be true. did either of those factor into the race? ebenezer: i wouldn't hold his age against him. he is 70. the president of the united states, joe biden, is 80. that makes tinubu, compared with joe biden, a spring chicken. i think it's wrong to be talking about his age. what we shoulde talking about is whether he has the energy, the vitality, the know-how and expertise to rule nigeria. i would focus on that, rather than talking about his age. amna: there were a lot of issues around the tech deployed for this election, though, which is now leading the opposition to say that there was fraud. and turnout was also very low, just around 27%. why do you think that is? ebenezer: i think turnout was low because of the environment in which the election took place. there was this very

controversial monetary policy that was being implemented by the central bank of nigeria which left people bereft of cash. insecurity was very high. mobility was very low. people could not get around. people could not get food. in short, the election was the last thing on people's mind. amna: but there were questions about some of the -- there were some allegations of fraud. there were long lines, long delays at some places. do you think that the opposition's charges of fraud have merit? ebenezer: i don't think so. i don't think so for a couple of reasons. one, i think people should distinguish between fraud and irregularity. second, if you look at the pattern of results, it does not support the allegation of an orchestrated, systematic rigging by anyone. there were irregularities, but those irregularities were of a national character. they didn't just take place in one zone or region of the country. they took place right across the country. i have heard about those allegations, but i don't think

the case has been sufficiently made. amna: so tinubu now takes charge of africa's most populous nation, right, 216 million people, the largest economy on the continent. it is also facing a very serious economic crisis and deep polarization. what's ahead for nigeria? ebenezer: it depends on how he handles matters. insecurity is very high. the economy is in the basement. infrastructure has radically degraded. young people, they are disenchanted. what all this means is that the new president will have to find a way to respond to all these, while keeping the political system itself in harness. i think, if we look at what he was able to do as governorn lagos state between 1999 and 2007, there is hope. but there is no doubt that, in order to succeed as president, he will have to reach out to the political elite and young people across the country. amna: ebenezer obadare, senior fellow at the council on foreign relations, thank you for joining us. ebenezer: thank you for having

me. geoff: amna: arizona republican y

bowers stepped into the national spotlight when he testified before congress about refusing president trump's requests to help overturn the 2020 election. that stance cost bowers his political career, but he has since found a sier lining. now he has time to pursue his long love of art full-time. shana fischer of arizona pbs reports for our ts and culture series, canvas. shana: at 70 years old, rusty bowers is not looking to start a new chapter in his life, but rather continue an old one. rusty: i loved to doodle and draw in class in grade school. shana: six months after losing the republican primary to his

trump-backed opponent -- rusty: and i'm thinking of this in the terms of politics. shana: the outspoken conservative is letting his art speak for him now. rusty: in the legislature, the contrast in time demand made it where i could rarely paint. shana: growing up in chino valley, his mother sparked the creative fire inside of him when he was just five. but, at the time, he says, she was just trying to keep him quiet in church. rusty: she would draw the girls like they're on breck shampoo, and these beautifully coiffed. she'd draw and just out of her head, and then hand it to me and say, copy that. and i would sit and copy it. and wasn't much of a bother. [laughter] shana: after winning a statewide art competition in high school, he enrolled in art school at brigham young university and graduated with a degree in watercolor. rusty: i'm not a modernist. i want a message. just to do something and make it a design doesn't hold strength for me. shana: the walls of his studio are lined with watercolors and

oils of places special to him, the view from his family ranch, a field in utah, haystacks in romania. rusty: i think it's kind of a combination of manmade geometry with god's geometry and how those juxtapose. there is an organic symmetry in geometry and nature that i love to combine with buildings, barns, old homes, and also the geometry of trees. i love that inspiration. and then, when the monsoons come to arizona, with those gorgeous clouds, that's always a subject that i enjoy painting. shana: along with painting, bowers is an accomplished sculptor. his pieces can be seen all over arizona. he has several works in progress, including this privately commissioned bust of the late democratic senator carl hayden. it'll replace one that was stolen from the capitol grounds. rusty: carl hayden's dad saved my grandma's life.

shana: his family has a deep connection to hayden. it was the senator's father who saved bowers' grandmother from drowning in the salt river in tempe after her horse buggy fell off hayden's ferry. bowers says he will remain politically active, but is fairly adamant he won't run for office again, noting his paintbrush is just as powerful as the speaker's gavel. rusty: the values in art are what makes art good or bad. and it's the same with government. if you know the values, and you know wn to employ them and how to employ them, you will be able to make an impression. geoff: and that's "the newshour" for tonight. i'm geoff bennett. amna: and i'm amna nawaz. on behalf of the entire "newshour" team, thank you for joining us. >> major funding for the "pbs newshour" has been provided by. >> for 25 years, consumer cellular's goal has been to

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major funding for this program was provided by... porticus... "the letter: a meage for our earth" is made possible in part by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. (in wolof and french) hello, everyone. my name is bilal seck. my home town has been affected by rising sea levels. houses have been destroyed.