>> good evening and welcome. geoff bennett is on assignment. walgreens says it won't sell abortion pills and a handful of states where the medication is still legal. the latest blow to reproductive rights in the u.s. we speak to some of the tens of thousands of prisoners conscripted by russia to fight on the front lines in ukraine and one of the first black officers to lead a special forces unit receives the medal of honor nearly 60 years after first being recommended for the prestigious award. >> it means a lot to america to see that we are all capable of doing good.

>> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. and friends of the newshour. >> actually you don't need vision to do most things in life. i'm legally blind and responsible for the user interface. if i can see it and understand it quickly, anyone can. it's exciting to be part of the team driving the technology forward. >> the john s and james l knight

foundation. >> and friends of the newshour. this program was made possible by the corporation proposed broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> we begin with the war in ukraine where the besieged city appears to be on its last legs. russian artillery fire rained down on the final access routes to the eastern city. defenders also faced scores of ground attacks and the head of

russia's wagner group mercenaries claims the city is almost entirely surrounded. >> the pincers are getting tighter. today we see more and more old people and children. they fight, but their life is short. one or two days. let them leave the city. >> a victory would mark russia's first major win in half a year. president biden and olaf scholz pledged to support ukraine as long as it takes. the leaders met at the white house and said they would continue working in lockstep. it troops used stun grenades and teargas today to disrupt a rally bite israeli left-wing activists in the occupied west bank. it was meant to show solidarity with the palestinian town the jewish settlers had attacked on sunday.

soldiers pushed protesters to the ground and blocked busloads of others from the area. the armies of the town is now an enclosed military zone. a court in belarus sentenced to human rights activist and nobel peace winter to 10 years in prison. accused of helping to finance huge antigovernment protests in 2020, he has already spent 21 months in jail and appeared today in a caged enclosure in court. a judge in south carolina sentenced alex murdaugh to life in prison without parole for murdering his wife and son. the trial of the once prominent lawyer drew national attention that the jury found him guilty in less than three hours thursday. today he insisted he was innocent. he admitted stealing to feed and opioid addiction and lying about it. judge clifton newman said he lied about the murders as well. >> you have engaged in such

duplicitous conduct here in the courtroom, here on the witness stand and the question is when will it end? when will it end? it's ended already for the jury, because they have concluded that you continue to lie and lie throughout your testimony. >> his defense attorneys said they plan to appeal. a winter storm system that varied parts of california in snow has now reached the upper midwest and the northeast. it could bring 18 inches of snow through saturday. the front touched off tornadoes in texas and louisiana, tearing up trees and cutting power to thousands of customers. one twister struck north of dallas. >> somebody said that training sounds loud. we looked up and there it was.

it looked like moses was parting the red sea. >> high winds were blamed for three deaths today in alabama, arkansas and mississippi. president biden's doctor says a small lesion on the president's chest turned out to be cancerous but not malignant. dr. kevin o'connor said today a basal cell carcinoma. no further treatment is needed. stocks on wall street saw their best gains since january. the dow jones industrial average was up 337 points to close at 33,000 391. the nasdaq rose 2%. still to come on the newshour, one of the first black officers to lead a special forces unit

finally gets the medal of honor. what the annual conservative political confidence -- conference says about republican priorities. the weeks political headlines plus much more. >> this is the pbs newshour. >> the nation's second largest pharmacy chain said today it will not dispense abortion pills in several states where the drug remains legal. the decision comes after nearly two dozen republican attorneys general wrote to the company threatening legal action. senior correspondent for kaiser health news joins us now. i want to show folks the state we are talking about. 21 attorneys general from these states have threatened that legal action. in many of them were abortion --

abortion is already legal or restricted. walgreens could steeply dispense -- could still legally dispense those pills, they still won't. >> the biggest impact is to show that these legal threats work. right now abortion medication is not available in these pharmacies. you have to get it from a clinician w has a specific registration with the government or you can get it via some telehealth pharmacies. it will change nothing on the ground in this moment, but the idea was to allow the dispensing of mifepristone in these pharmacies and communities so they were more accessible to women and what is typically a very time sensitive situation. >> so if you live in one of those states and you are seeking abortion care, what will be your options? >> depending on the telehealth

restrictions in your state, you could do an appointment with someone outside of the state, you could order from an online pharmacy, you could order it from eight access, an organization based in austria that has been sending mifepristone into the united states regardless of the legality. >> those same republican attorneys general have written to other pharmacies demanding that they also refused to dispense the medication. do we know if they will? >> friday said they would continue -- rated said they would continue to monitor the developments and evaluate are not the company is able to dispense mifepristone. >> if any pharmacies decide to take similar action, what does that say to you about access?

>> these attorneys general are very aggressively antiabortion attorneys general. in alabama they made the suggestion that if they couldn't prosecute women who had abortions for homicide that they might use the states chemical endangerment law to bring charges against women. these attorneys general are getting very creative in trying to figure out how to stop aess to abortion in clinics, stop the flow of pills into their state. they haven't gone as far as to say we need to be searching the mail, they do say under a different type of department of justice, the doj would have a different reading of the comstock act, a law from the 1800s that is an anti-obscenity law that prevents the mailing of abortion drugs through the mail.

the says that's no longer applicable. but in their letter, they say that under a different type of department of justice there would be a different reading of that application. >> i know you have been reporting on this potential federal judge ruling in texas as well. when you talk to advocates for abortion rights, what are they telling you about this moment? >> they are very concerned. this judge in amarillo texas is a devout antiabortion activist and i think they are ve concerned that if he were to rule in favor of this christian legal organization that mifepristone would disappear off the market in every state in the country. >> good to see you.

russia has thrown hundreds of thousands of troops into its war in ukraine and suffered immense casualties. some of those personnel are drawn from russia's prisons, both officially and through private military company called the wagner group. special correspondent simon ostrowski tveled to ukrainian prisoner of war camp. they met with men faced with a stark choice. prison or the front lines. >> threeonths ago he was rving a nine-year sentence for murder in a russian penal colony. now he's calling his mother to tell her he's no longer convict. he's a prisoner of war. >> hello mom. >> hello? >> it's me.

everythi is ok. don't worry. basically i've been captured in ukraine. understand? >> but how? >> its war. that's what happens. >> are you being fed? >> everything is ok. there is food. the surprising thing is the people in ukraine are ok. >> he's one of tens of thousands of convict to have been taken from prisons in russia since june and thrown into the meat grinder that is the frontline of the war in ukraine. as he waited in line to use the phone, he told us he had three years of his prison sentence left and was recruited with the promise of freedom and good pay. >> these military guys show up in full uniform and say here's how it is. you fight for half a year. if you are alive and well, you get a full pardon. 100,000 rubles per month. yes or no. i say yes. i figure i can fight for half a

year. >> he was transported to an airfield and flown to russian occupied areas of ukraine, where he received about a month of training. then he was ordered to storm a village. >> they point to some coordinates and tell the commander, take the positions and fight. that's it. so we go, we get there. they are. everything is brutal, like war. real brutal. >> after securing a foothold in the village, the convicts were ordered to retreat and replaced by a different group of soldiers. although we weren't able to independently verify this account, it corresponds to assessments of how russia is using convicts as expendable fighters thrown at the enemy in human waves. for many of the convicts being held here, the path from a russian prison to ukrainian prisoner of war camp is very short because the russian military uses the convicts as

storm troops and the casualty rate is very high and so is the rate of capture. this man was recruited from a prison and was told he would merely be used to dig trenches and carry the wounded. >> then when we arrived for our rotation, there weren't enough people and we were forced into a wave. our apc was hit and we all jumped into the trenches. i threw a bunch of grenades at us. i lost consciousness. i don't remember anything else. >> when he came to, his leg was gone and he was a prisoner of war. the owner of russia's four military contractor, the wagner group. >> we are very scrupulous of those convicted of sexual crimes, but we understand sometimes people make mistakes. who do we want? we are looking for storm troops only. >> last summer, and ex-cons

started visiting prisons around russia to offer convicts the chance of freedom if they joined his ranks and he didn't mince his words. >> the biggest sin is desertion. no reverse. not one step back. no one gives themselves up. in training you will be told about the two grenades you have to use when you get captured. >> he flew into our present and talked to the prisoners. there were 560 people. 220 agreed to sign a contract an participate in the special military operation. >> this prisoner had eight years left to serve on his sentence for attempting to sell 2 kg of narcotics when he signed a contract with the wagner group. he fought just one battle after training for two weeks. >> we were given orders to advance 500 meters. there were 10 of us. we had only advanced about 70 meters.

eight of us were killed. the commander who was wounded called back to our lines and i ended up being captured. >> now his greatest fear is being traded to russia and getting thrown back into battle. >> because i signed a contract, i still have two months left. >> newshour had to agree not to show guards faces or disclose the location of the pow camp to gain access. prison is regularly monitored by international observers and appears to be run as a model facility. the pows we spoke with told us they were giving interviews of their own free will. some of their responses were even defiant. >> when they came to see us, they said they were from a private military contractor. they said they could help us get out of prison early. wash our guilt away with blood. i decided i was needed not only by my family but by my country.

so whatever i'm order to do, sorry but that's a soldier i'm required to carry it out. a russian person must defend their country. >> olga is the director of russia behind bars, prisoner rights with extensive sources in the russian penitentiary system. she told me wagner alone had recruited as many as 50,000 prisoners to fight in ukraine as of february of this year. >> the defense ministry has started recruiting from the same prisons as wagner. they offer a full pardon after half a yr. $50,000 for an injury leading to a handicap and $80,000 in case of death. >> what's the social effect that this is having in russia given that the prisoners aren't serving their fullerms? how is that affecting their

victims or the families of the victims of the convicts? >> they could still recruit 150 to 200,000 prisoners. and how has russian society reacted? no one is sorry. everyone prefers it to be the prisoners rather than their own sons and husbands naturally, so this policy is very popular. >> for former prisoners, life as a pow isn't as big an adjustment as it is for ordinary soldiers who are unfamiliar with the strict regime of a secure facility. >> this is a prison facility if you don't break the rules, everything is all right. we just got here yesterday and i haven't seen anything really bad yet. >> the biggest question for them is whether they will end up back in prison in russia or back on the front lines of ukraine or as

free men. for now the only thing they are certain of is that they have managed to survive this far. >> one of the first black military officers to lead an elite unit in combat today received the nation's highest award for bravery on the battlefield, writing a decades long injustice geoff bennett has the story and a conversation with paris davis. >> recognition nearly 60 years overdue. president biden awarded paris davis medal of honor. the u.s. military's most prestigious declaration for his acts of valor as a commander during the vietnam war.

>> you are everything this metal means. you are everything our generation aspire to be. >> davis was one of the first black officers to lead the special forces team in combat. on 6/18/1965, davis led his team plus 95 south vietnamese troops in a predawn raid on the north vietnamese army camp. a counter attack forced the group into a rice paddy with no cover. every american was wounded. some stranded. davis raced back to rescue his team. >> they had been shot twice in the same foot. >> davis first spoke of the battle in 1969 on the phil donahue show, showing he twice

refused orders from a commander to withdraw. but combat lasted 19 hours. his entire team survived. his commander submitted his name for the medal of honor at the military lost his paperwork two times with no record of it ever being submitted. his team has long argued race played a role. >> emotional to say the least. >> the team's youngest survivor is 79. he is also part of the group of advocates who painstakingly re-created and resubmitted his medal of honor paperwork. >> what does colonel davis mean to you? >> working with team to re-create all the documentation it takes, grown very fond of him. i respected him immensely when i was under his command.

and that's never wavered. >> we spoke with colonel davis the day before the medal of honor ceremony. he was 26 years old, a black officer leading an all-white unit. he recalled the day of the attack. >> the first thing on my mind was to get going. when you are in a situation that is foreign to you, you take a moment and tried to piece it together. >> you were firing your rifle with your pinky finger because your hand was shattered by a grenade. >> a grenade knocked out a couple of my teeth and some othethings. think about pulling the trigger with your little finger. slippery, blood everywhere. people dying, a volley of the

air force dropping bombs, the artillery firing shells. you've got a couple men down. >> you twice disobeyed commands to withdraw, to effectively abandon your men. >> it was really interesting because i'm trying to make a decision of how we can really handle the wounded. the general officer said don't worry, leave him there and we will get him. i said we are not going to go. he probably stopped me from being a general officer because i had disobeyed an order. >> your commander submitted your name for the medal of honor, but the paperwork inexplicably disappeared twice and there was no record of the file. it strikes me that you didn't have to wonder much about the reason for that.

>> the interesting thing was the soldiers were saying, what is going on here. it brought to the fore racism and the difference the way whites are treated and blacks are treated. they had never to my knowledge at that time lost a medal of honor citation that was lost by a white guy. but it did with the black guy and the soldiers knew it. it changed the whole complexion of war. especially when you are out there fighting with them and they know that it's not right. the other thing is more important than the, the fact that i pulled guard duty. they thought that that was the thing that separated me from

other officers. because when other officers had teams, they never pulled guard duty. if their lives were on the line whenhey were pulling guard duty, why couldn't mine. the other thing we did was the fact that ncos all ran patrols. i was on some of those patrols. not as a leader, but as a machine gunner. >> president biden called you to inform you that you would receive the medal of honor. what was that moment like? >> i don't know if a lot of people know the president, but in those five or six minutes. he wanted to talk longer. he was so cordial. when the balloons were up in the sky, that is when i got the phone call. he said i was doing good things, the battles and all that. not in detail but for enough for

me to realize that he knew what was going on. during the conversation, he would ask me about the family and things like that. he said something about lunch and i said are you going to pay for? he said why the hell would i have you there if i was going to pay for it myself? we had a couple of really nice jokes that aren't appropriate right now. i tell you, he is got a sense of humor. >> how do you think you are going to feel when he puts the medal of honor around your neck? >> the one thing i'm really afraid of doing is crying. the metal means more to the black race than it means to me.

for so long, we have had this reputation of not being part of america. i think this metal might sell that. and i think it's really important for something like this to happen. luckily it's happening to me. it means a lot to america to see that we are all capable of doing good. >> what's it like living for 60 years knowing that you deserved recognition which you were wrongfully denied? >> the thing that bothered me the most is the minute terry -- the military knowing that didn't have the gumption to give me a call or say hey, we lost it and we can find it.

and then coming back and said, we understand that someone put the second narrative in and we can't find it either. and i'm saying, you are telling me you lost the citation twice? and they said no, we just can't find it twice. and i said right. it was something that doesn't happen. you can name the people that have won the medal of honor. just to lose the citation really pissed me off. when you find out the silence is the word, nobody calls. nobody says anything for 50 years. >> it's all being made right now. >> that is.

the other thing is, i am happy as a pig in you know what that it's going to be president biden. >> congratulations. it's a real honor to speak with you and there are lots of folks who thank you for your sacrifice, your patience, your diligence, your tenacity and service. >> thank you. i really appreciate it. >> for nearly 50 years, grassroots activists have gathered to hear from gop leaders at conservative political action conference. as republicans debate who is the best candidate to help them win back the white house next year, what is gaining traction the party's right flank. >> once a republican primary season tradition.

speeches to the party faithful at the annual conservative political action conference, better known as cpac is now a platform for white grievance politics. local -- loyal acolytes of donald trump. >> we either defund or get rid of the fbi, cdc, atf. doj, every last one of them. >> and election deniers. tomorrow, trump delivers the keynote speech to close out the conference, but he's not alone. all of the gop is declared presidential candidates. today, nikki haley. >> i'm running for president to renew an america that is strong and proud, not weak and woke. >> i'm all in on the america first agenda.

>> several of the parties leaders like kevin mccarthy and ronna mcdaniel as well as many of the potential presidential candidates are sitting out. florida governor ron desantis, former vice president mike pence and south carolina senator tim scott are among those who will not be speaking, opting instead to attend a donor retreat in orida for the conservative antitax group. hailey is going to both events. >> the geese that laid the golden eggs for the republican conservative movement. >> a republican strategist and former chairman of the american conservative union, the organization responsible for organizing cpac. >> i don't think most of the folks coming are conservative. i think they are populists. i think they're part of this cancel culture. i think they are election deniers. >> cpac and its chairman are facing a new scandal.

in january, he was accused of groping the gop campaign aide. allegations he denies. many 2020 hopefuls are skipping the conference for a different reason. >> they are not coming either by design or by the fact that they don't want to be participants in a show that's basically laying a crown on donald trump's head. >> a recent poll foundhat half of republicans say the party would be better off with the 2024 nominee other than donald trump. but here at cpac, it's clear it is still trump's party. >> desantis is a possibility for the future, but not now. trump deserves to finish what he started. >> president trump is the best president that this nation can have. right now there is not anyone that can wear his moccasins. >> we know that trump was a good president, but we think desantis will be a good president.

it's really tough. >> trump has won the cpac straw poll the last two years. some of his biggest allies like marjorie taylor greene had prime speaking spots to push an agenda. >> the protect children's innocence act will make it a felony to perform anything to do with gender affirming care on children. >> in recent weeks, some other would-be candidates have targeted suburban voters who recently departed the gop with a tough on crime message. but for the audience at cpac, the focus on anti-lgbtq, anti-transgender and a false belief that k-12 schools teach college-level race and ethnic studies resonated the most. >> there has been a lot of focus on really important issues like critical race theory in classrooms. that stuff is important. >> woke is divisive.

>> what is it? >> that's where i've got the critical race theory, all the other -- woke is broad. to me it's the critical race theory, the bathroom thing. >> with months before the race begins, candidates are still holding their messages and finding their own path to the nomination. >> you are either going to be a pureblood anti-woke pro-culture wars candidate or you are not. if the candidates who decide to jump in the fray, they have got to wait until either donald trump or ron desantis fadeaway before they have a unique chance. >> most of the 2020 hopefuls will be traveling to the critical early state of iowa in the coming weeks. >> for insights on cpac, the

future of the republican party and the rest of the week's news, we turn to the analysis of david and jonathan. it used to scene for a f years the road to the republican nomination ran through cpac. that does not seem to be true this year. when you look at who chose to go and who stayed away. >> reagan used to go to cpac, but he was not really of it. then it became the party under donald trump and no cpac -- now cpac has gone from centrist populism to wacky populism what's new is that a candidate used to be able to go to club for growth or cpac and these

were all different wings of the party. now you've got to go to one or the other. if you go to one, you are seen as an opponent of the party. you are either on the establishment team or the populist team, but you can't be on both. >> what does it say that nikki haley is going to both? >> she's going to try, but she's going to wind up on the establishment team. >> we are going to see donald trump and nikki haley. if you go to that room, who are you speaking to? >> there's a reason donald trump is going there. those are his people. those are his ride or die's for lack of a better description. it would be a waste of time for mike pence or ron desantis to go there, anyone who wants to be a serious challenger to donald trump.

look at the folks that we saw speaking on camera about what they were concerned about. not foreign policy. not economic policy. i would go back to state of the union night and you made the observation that sarah huckabee sanders in her response didn't even talk about the onomy. i remember it was the economy, inflation and crime were the big issues the republicans ran on. didn't hear any of that there. that conference is nowust about white grievance and targeting trans kids and anyone who is not like them. >> steve bannon was among those who spoke, and he went after fox saying that they are not pro-trump enough. we saw a huge admission in the latest filings in the defamation case, rupe murdoch conceded

under oath, fox hosts lied about the 2020 election and he chose not to stop them. what are the implications of that? >> rupert murdoch started a paper called mr. mnuchin. a long time ago he was an actual journalist. now he has gotten to the point that you can lie on camera as long as your ratings are ok. those people lie about little things, they lied about the results of the presidential election. kind of a major deal. they all knew what was happening. murdoch is sitting there atop this organization sort of lightly pretending it's not really his problem. he has power of the corporation, he owns it. he could fire tucker, all the people who were in on this and whose journalistic integrity has been exposed as zero. and yet he is still trying to politely rise above it. it's amazing that we have a

major news organization that is inaccurate about a presidential election. that's kind of an amazing fact. >> it's huge. it was confirmation of something that folks on the left and just folks paying attention kind of suspected, that fox news, the news is". they are out there blatantly telling lies. then to see in black and white as part of this case, they would say lies on television but then behind the scenes, they knew the truth. what that says to me is rupert murdoch and his anchors, those people peddling lies are insulated from the effect of the lies that they tell. when you see someone saying our ratings are going down and that's going to affect the stock price. >> you are talking about some of the private messages. >> that means you are more concerned about your bottom line than the corrosive impact on our

democracy and political discourse in this country. that was what's really disturbing. and what's even more disturbing is that fox news isn't even really covering this lawsuit, which means their audience, who should know about what's being said about them and the programming for them, they might not ever know that what they are being told is a big bunch of lies. >> i go back to the impact, because their audience which is in the millions. if you are a loyal fox watcher prone to distrust any information source anyway, does this make an impact? >> that's the point i was trying to make. we don't know if they will even know about this case as a result and even if they do find out, they might not trust it or maybe they just don't care >> they are definitely losing viewers.

my colleague made the core point about fox. fox is not just a news organization in rural arica, it's your community center. it pays intense attention, lots of good stories about cops and soldiers. and the coastal media get a lot of attention in fox. the loyalty is not only about politics or news coverage, it's about where people see themselves reflected. >> kind of an interesting window for president biden. we saw president biden's student loan relief plan challenged in supreme court. that expansion of snap food stamps benefit also ended this week. there's a lot of these pandemic era democrat backed issues that are being unraveled now that are going to impact millions of people. are we hearing enough about that from the president or from

democrats? >> i have not heard a lot about it. but let's shift the framing and the focus. the president is in office and the democrats have control of the senate. but republicans have control of the house and the president is releasing his budget on march 9. i'm sure in that multipage document, we are going to see all sorts of things about snap, maybe some things about student loans. we will see with the president's financial priorities are for the nation and targeted communities. my question is where is speaker mccarthy? where are the house republicans? dgets start in the house. i cannot tell you what their priorities are. do they carry it that the snap benefits have canceled?

what are their priorities for the real problems and financial pain out there for the american people? that's a question for speaker mccarthy. we are going to know the answer from president biden next week. >> when it came to the expansion of the child tax credit, millions of children lifted out of poverty. it ended. millions back to the poverty line. >> the child tax credit is the thing i supported most fervently. it really did reduce childhood poverty. i was surprised, but it's not a popular program. 60% of people decided it was too expensive, we can't afford it. including some democrats. there is a general distrust of government, government programs, programs that seem to give people money for nothing, and this sense of we spent all this money over covid, wha's happening to the national debt.

there is not as much political pressure as i would have thoht to keep the expansion. i supported the part of the program that was for pell grant kids. i didn't think we should give it to upper-middle-class kids. i still think the supreme court should probably strike it down. the constitution in visits -- inventions, the budget is supposed to start in the house. the president can't just create a 400 billion dollar program by starting -- signing a piece of paper. it's both possible to believe in the program and that president should have gone through congress. >> we are expecting him to announce a reelection campaign at some point. some democrats think these kinds of issues should be a more central part of his next campaign. do you agree? >> absolutely. his mantra in the state of the union was let's finish the job.

the child tax credit, snap benefits, student loan. that's all part of let's finish the job and we will see how he prioritizes when that budget comes out. >> always good to see you. we will be back shortly. but first, take a moment to hear from your local pbs station. it's a chance to offer your >> wr

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tonight on kqed newsroom, we dive into a chain reaction as barbara levi's to become the next senator from california , oakland latifah simon announces her bid to fill lee's spot in congress and was speak with them both about what they want to achieve in higher office. the vibrant colors and celebratory images of the women's building mural are this week's look at something beautiful. hello and welcome to