♪ >> good evening. on "the newshour" tonight, a federal judge limits the biden administration's contact with social media companies over concerns about censorship and free speech. americans contend with the aftermath of fatal shooting's at july 4 celebrations across the u.s. as the 2024 presidential race heats up, a group of ohio voters works to bridge the widening partisan divide. >> we need to start to bridge personal bridges with each other by listening better, being more curious about what the stories are behind our positions.

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that fits you. >> the walden family foundation, working for solutions to protect water during climate change so people and creatures can thrive together. >> supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. 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. let's welcome to "the newshour." the questions swirling the past few years about information and misinformation spread on social media about everything from covid vaccines to election security have made their way to

the federal courts. several republican state attorneys general argued the biden administration went too far to suppress conservative views online and yesterday, a judge in louisiana agreed, issuing a sweeping and temporary ruling blocking government officials from communicating with social media companies about so-called protected speech. the solicitor general of louisiana led the republican states' legal team and joins us now. i want to put to you, solicitor general, if i can, what jamil jaffer, of the ninth first institute amendment said in response to the ruling. he said it cannot be the government violates the first amendment simply by engaging with platforms about content moderation. if that is what the court is saying, it is a pretty radical proposition that is not supported by case law. what do you make of that argument? >> there are 80 pages of fact-finding by the judge in this case that explain why this

is so much more than that. this is not just the government saying we don't agree with something somebody said on facebook or instagram or some other platform. this is about the government engaging in a widespread enterprise to censor people's speech that it disagreed with. it does not matter what side of the aisle you are on. that ought to scare people. >> when it comes to content moderation of dangerous, harmful content online, what do you believe should be the government's role? >> i think the first amendment establishes where lines are drawn when it comes to what the government can and cannot do. what is shocking about this case is the revelation through 20,000 pages of documents we obtained in early proceedings in this case that demonstrated that the government not only did not know where to draw the line but did not care. >> where do you draw the line? to press further on that, i know there are some exceptions in the

ruling. the judge did say the government can flag contact about national security threats, foreign attempts to influence elections. >> that is speech that is not protected by the first amendment. and then there is speech protected by the first amendment, and the government cannot do through the back door what it could not do through the front door. it cannot partner with tech companies to censor people's speech that it disagrees with, and that's what we discovered and we are still in the early stages of this case. there's probably a lot more documents to come. we have 20,000 pages from the white house through the fbi through hhs through the cdc that there was just a widespread problem where the government had moved from addressing speech that it disagreed with, which it can do, by the way. it can say we don't agree with what somebody said on facebook.

they can absolutely do that, but what they cannot do is cross the line and through a private pipeline tell those companies under threat and coercion they have to take free speech down. >> critics have said this is not a broad ruling and that it does not necessarily add a lot of clarity to where some of these lines are. i want to ask how you view some of these issues. what about election misinformation? posts about the 2020 election being stolen which are provably false and we know fueled real-world violence. should the government be able to step in and stop those? >> we have jurisprudence on what is established free speech and what is not -- >> do you think that is protected or not? >> i think the government does not get to go on facebook and say what is protected and not.

what we saw in this case is that the government is quoted in emails as saying that people should not be able to decide their own facts. >> i just want to be clear here. you are saying you do believe people should be able to spread misinformation about the 2020 election. >> i'm saying the government does not get to decide what it thinks is misinformation. >> we have seen in studies and reports from social media companies that has been a lot of an increase in terms of hate online in recent years. many people have said they have been harassing increasingly online. we know how quickly and easily harmful content can spread. what have you seen that leads you to believe social media companies are capable of moderating that dangerous content themselves? >> if they are not capable of moderating content, i think the companies themselves have set some guidelines. these platforms enjoy a kind of protection that newspapers and radio and television stations do not. they are granted immunity under

section 230, so i think that this is a different -- it is a more complicated problem. if they are going to edit and censor people, then they are essentially not in compliance with section 230. now they have become editors. so does government get to step in and force them to censor speech that government could not otherwise censor on its own? that is the real question in this case. it is not about if these companies are capable of censoring speech adequately on their own. it is if government under the first amendment can do it in compliance with the constitution, and it can't. >> louisiana's solicitor general joining us tonight. thank you so much for your time. >> thank you for having me. >> for another perspective, i am joined by a professor at the university of chicago law school who studies intersection, free

speech, and constitutional law. welcome. thank you for joining us. you said recently you were surprised by the breadth and lack of clarity in the ruling. tell me more about that. what did you mean? >> what is interesting but also difficult about this case is that the plaintiffs have alleged a lot of things by a wide variety of government officials. this is a very ambitious case that has a lot of different parts. they have been able to get some emails about what is actually happening, and what they found was lots of contact between government officials and platforms about misinformation and disinformation of various kinds, speech that is dissuading people and things of that kind, speech that for various reasons the government have found as harmful. what they have not found is any

kind of explicit threat by a government official against the platforms like if you don't take this down, we will do this, right? we will harm you in this way. what they found was encouragement, pressure in terms of weekly or monthly meetings asking what the platforms have done. up until this point, they have typically found that this is not the kind of direct, explicit, serious threat that violates the constitution. it is not serious enough, severe enough. what is so remarkable and interesting about both the ruling and the injunction is that the court here disagrees. it says even though we have not found a specific threat, even though this is not the kind of coercion that in the past has been blocked by the first amendment, it is close enough. on that basis, the injunction

now says executive branch officials, you cannot speak to the platforms, not just you cannot threaten them. you cannot speak in any way to discourage the circulation of protected speech. >> what does this mean for a likely we are to see an appeal and how that unfolds? >> i think we are very likely to see an appeal. one, it's going to stop thousands of government employees from being able to speak to platforms. second, it is just very unclear. on the one hand, the injunction does not say you have to change everything you are doing entirely, but it could be read another way to say everything is fine, keep going as is, so it is it's incredibly unclear. >> what does this mean in the meantime in terms of practil there are exceptions in terms of when government agencies can reach out to platforms. are they sufficient to prevent the spread of harmful, dangerous misinformation?

>> part of what makes the injunction so confusing and unclear. my guess is that right now, government officials who are affected by this injunction are just not going to want to speak. that an injunction in the name of freedom of speech is going to have this chilling effect on speech. it will be to unclear what exactly it means. i imagine most communications between the federal executive branch administrative state and the platforms will cease, at least until the appeal. this is why i think there will be an appeal. >> i haveo ask you, the case is largely based on this argument that conservative speech was being censored online. you look at this. i just want to ask what you make of that argument. >> all the studies that have been done have found if anything, the opposite is true. that platforms are worried about being targeted as anti-conservative and so in many

cases have been more lenient to conservative speech. that said, it may be the case that the speakers who are more likely to violate the rules that have been set online are going to be conservative. they are more likely to be violating disinformation policies. it might be the case that even though there is no bias, it still will be that the rules are affecting more conservative or right-wing speakers than left-wing speakers. i think what we have here is in some ways a culture clash about what the rules of speech may be. it may not be that they are acting in bad faith. it may be that they are applying the rules in a reasonable way, but the rules themselves, there is disagreement about that and part of that i think is what is fueling these lawsuits. >> professor, thank you for joining us.

stephanie: here are the latest headlines. mass shootings erupted in more u.s. cities overnight amidst celebrations for the fourth of july. a g in shreveport, louisiana, killed at least three people and wounded 10 at a block party. today, local officials condemned the attack. >> what you have done is traumatized this community. you have traumatized us in a way that is unfathomable. you have hurt us in ways that we cannot go into words. >> in philadelphia, i suspect was arraigned on murder charges in monday night's shooting that killed five people. one of the so-called central park five in new york has won the democratic nomination for a city council seat in central harlem. he was convicted, imprisoned,

and then exonerated in the rape and beating of a white jogger in central park in 1989. last week, he claimed victory on primary night had to wait for officials to count absentee ballots. he is all but assured of winning the general election in november. in the war in ukraine, fears about the fate of a nuclear plant under russian control escalated today. each side claims the other plans to sabotage the zaporizhzhia nuclear site in southeastern ukraine, the largest in europe. the plant has already been damaged during months of shelling. ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy has warned that russia has mined groups of reactor buildings. >> and nuclear power plant must be fully protected from any radiation incidents. different countries have their own intelligence and other capabilities to know exactly what is going on and who is to blame. >> united nations expert space

in zaporizhzhia reported no signs of explosives but said they would need greater access to the plant to be certain. the u.s. and iran have had a new confrontation. u.s. navy officials say iranian vessels tried to seize navy tankers and fire on one of them outside the persian gulf today. an american destroyer blocked both attempts near the strait of hormuz. the waterway is a vital route for the international oil trade. iran has seized at least five commercial ships there in the past two years. drinking water from almost half of u.s. faucets likely contains so-called forever chemicals linked to cancer. that's according to a government report released today. the u.s. geological survey says descended -- synthetic compounds were found in water systems of schools and national lands like protected parks. the epa proposed limitations of

so-called pfas earlier this year. disruption on the west bank after israelis complete a raid. and the skyrocketing cost of living threatens the status of austin, texas, as the live music capital of the world. >> 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. >> we return to the city of philadelphia where a mass shooting on the eve of july 4 let five people dead. the suspect was arraigned today on a host of charges including five counts of first-degree murder. in response to the shootings, the philadelphia mayor announced this afternoon that the city is suing two firearm parts manufacturers. joining me now is the district

attorney of philadelphia. thanks for joining us. welcome. i want to start with the loss just announced. the city is suing two companies. what can you tell us about why the city is taking that route now? >> the city has tried and will continue to try to go after gun manufacturers. that has been almost impossible. i think the opportunity here is because we are talking about parts manufacturers, the parts being used for ghost guns. ghost guns are usually about 80% plastic, about 20% metal, and they represent a giant loophole in both federal and state law. people by two different sets of parts and go in th basement and put them together. the minute they are assembled in the basement, alize cornet, but we nevertheless have a world where you can get around all sorts of gun regulation. not that we have enough -- we don't -- but you can purchase these things and massively sell

them out of your basement. their purpose is crime. these are not the best guns, although they work, but they are guns that are not serialized and for which there are no records, so people wanting to commit a mass shooting or bank robbery or otherwise armed people who commit crimes are drawn to ghost guns. >> are these two companies linked to the shooting in anyway? >> there was a ghost gun involved in this case. i don't know if these particular companies were involved, but the killer in this case came out of his residence wearing a bullet-proof vest. he had an ar-15-style assault rifle, which is how he committed all these killings and shootings, and he also carried with him a ghost gun he did not actually use in the incident before he was apprehended. >> you have been lamenting the lack of gun safety laws in pennsylvania. we know the city of philadelphia has tried in the past to pass its own gun safety laws and been thwarted by the state. it would take state legislators

changing the so-called preemptive law for philadelphia and other municipalities to be able to do that. do you see that kind of reform happening at the state level? >> we can try. the good news in pennsylvania is we have democratic control, however slight, in the house for the first time in 12 years. that is the state house. the senate is still controlled by republicans, so i think we are making progress, but it is it's going to be a challenge to get republicans whose identity seems to be so wrapped up in eliminating choice and making sure that every born child has a gun to tuck into their diaper -- be a little hard to get them to take a more reasonable stand. >> what specific law do you think would have prevented this shooting from happening? >> i think there are several that might. serious context. this is an individual who had a conviction from a case that originated in 2003. i think a red flag law. we know there is a significant history of mental health, although we do not have all the

details. there was bizarre behavior in advance of this mass shooting. if there was a pathway for people to report it, they might have done so, as he was, at least in his residence, walking around with guns and bullet-proof vest saying unusual things -- let's put it that way. i think those are just a couple. just to speak more broadly, we have a country that has more guns than people. it is absurd the level of violence on the level of people being armed that we have, and the only answer the nra has is well, it is really dangerous out there. make yourself safe by buying another gun. >> what more could be done? what more could your office do? in the past, republican lawmakers have decried some of your policies -- have said some of your policies contributed to the rise in violent crime. do you think your office has been as tough as it can be on those gun possession cases? if you are tougher, would that

help stem gun violence? >> the problem with our republican critics is we actually tell the truth and have the information to back it up. i have yet to come forward with anything that shows that our policies have endangered people in philadelphia. the truth is we are extremely good at the prosecution of violent crime committed with guns. we just know that it is more important to go after shooters then to act like anyone who possesses a gun but failed to get a permit to carry it is equally dangerous. we did the numbers. the numbers look like this -- one out of 100 people arrested for possession of a gun is going to turn up arrested as a shooter later. that is different than shooters. 100 out of 100 shooters are shooters. while's it's important to go after illegal gun possession and we have a bunch of hurdles, including illegal police searches due to certain policing policies and certain changes in the law, while that is important, it is actually more

important to go after people who are killing people with guns and shooting people with guns. that is what we said from the beginning. the data shows that we were right. the philadelphia police department's behavior in which they have come up with a new unit to investigate shootings shows that at some level they agree that there is a difference between shooters and people who possess, some of whom might be shooters but many of whom are not. >> we report often on the cumulative told that this gun violence can take in a community, so we are thinking about the residence of philadelphia. we thank you for joining us tonight. that is the district attorney of philadelphia joining us. >> thank you. after two days of intense combat, palestinians today left their homes to find the jenin refugee camp in the occupied

west bank in shambles. israel's military operations a targeted militants. 12 palestinians were killed including nine that militant groups claimed as their leaders. welcome and thanks for joining us. you went to that jenin refugee camp today. what can you tell us about the latest on the ground and what residents told you? >> i did, and on the drive to the camp, there were israeli forces positioned on the road. it was clear things were still very tense. you could see the remnants of roadblocks that had been made by protesters the last few days to try to block off israeli defense forces from coming further into the camp. once we got there, we were told we had to be very careful going in because they had been using improvised explosive device's, and they laid those out and they were still trying to clear them. once inside, really, there's

huge destruction in the center of the camp. you are walking along and suddenly it changes from tarmac to just sand, and you realize that is because the piles of rubble on the streets are not from buildings. they are the entire road having been bulldozed up. people there say it was just punitive, destroying their streets because they came in and could not find what they were looking for. >> we heard from prime minister netanyahu today speaking about that operation. here is part of what he had to say. when it is by no means the last action we will take. we will do what we can from the ground, from the air, with superb intelligence. we will do what we can despite the terrorists. they shall have no safe haven. >> what more do we know about what exactly the israel defense forces were trying to achieve

with this operation? >> there was a question over why right now, and there has been a huge increase in violence this year. more than 150 palestinians dead. prime minister netanyahu does need to appease the ultra right in his coalition government. they really want him to take strong action, and also the israeli public who feel they want to feel protected by their government. that is an argument why right now. originally i said going in, they were looking for suspected shooters who have been trying to stage attacks against the israeli public and then have gone and hidden in jenin camp. those people have not been found. they were warned by people insidep c t wamercoming. thhaey were long gone. in a place where young men often say they feel they have to take up arms, difficult really to tell who they were, but certainly not the high-level

people they were looking for. they did put out a statement saying they have found a huge cache of things. they found over 1000 weapons. they found guns. they found explosive devices. they found operations they believe were being used for terrorism. they are saying it has been extremely successful, this raid. it is worth bearing in mind this was a huge military operation for a very small place with several thousand people living there. they used 15 helicopter gunships against people in a tightly packed refugee camp, using air, shelling, drones. to attack people in that sort of tightly compacted space where there are lots of women and children, incredibly difficult to isolate exactly who you are attacking and who you are trying to avoid. they feel that was successful. there have been criticisms that there was far too much military use against civilians. >> of course, this has raised concerns about escalating violence, even further retaliation may be for this

operation. the big question is what happens now? >> thus far, they have said this is the end of this particular operation. today, as i said, people were focused on trying to get back into their homes and rebuild, but there was a huge amount of anger. palestinians believe the palestinian authority which does govern in these areas just is not doing anything for them and is almost complicit with working with the israeli authorities, so moving forward, very difficult to say if there will be more violence, particularly as we see even more settlements, seen as internationally illegal, being established in the area in and around jenin. >> our special corspondent joining us tonight from jerusalem. thank you. good to see you. >> thank you.

>> most americans feel the nation is more divided today than in the past. to find out why, judy woodruff sat down with a group of republican and democratic voters in northeast ohio who are trying to bridge partisan divide. it is her latest installment in the series america at a crossroads. >> on a beautiful spring sunday when many clevelanders were cheering on runners at the city's annual marathon, we were inside the city's historic public library next door, talking to a half dozen local residents about america's divisions. the group was brought together with the help of braver angels, one of hundreds of grassroots organizations that have sprung up in recent years to try to bridge the partisan divide. thank you, each one of you, for joining us for this conversation. we so appreciate it. joining me work republican nancy miranda, who cochairs the state

chapter of braver angels. what is going on in this country was so disconcerting to me that i was actually waking up at night thinking, oh, my gosh, what are we leaving our kids. >> democrat dr. bill shah, a retired family doctor and braver angels ambassador. >> i think we need to start to bridge personal bridges with each other by listening, being more curious about what the stories are that are behind our positions. >> a republican who works for americans for prosperity, a libertarian conservative group, and who hosts a radio talk show. >> we have always had problems, but the approach to those problems, there's fundamental differences in how people see the solutions to those problems. >> democrat leah nichols, mother of a four-year-old and frequent

volunteer in local and state politics. >> there is so much division in between democrats and republicans, and i think is it's really important to try to find a way forward together. >> republican mark who works in i.t. >> you tell me who you voted for, i can very easily identify you and count you as a person right away, which is antithetical to what this country should be. >> and a democrat who moved here from california eight years ago for college and stayed. >> our polarization is a systemic problem at this point. his is not caused by one individual and will not be changed by one individual. i think it takes a collector to fix that. >> as part of my reporting project trying to understand how the country seems to be so divided right now, i want to talk to a mix of voters here in ohio to understand how you see this divide and if you think there are ways to bridge it. we have reason to think this is

something you think is possible. nancy, you turned to braver angels because you sensed things were getting more and more divided. how did you see that in your own life? >> i thinkg pa in viding us, i's racially or politically, or gender. >> media tends to foster the extremes by fueling a lot of the rhetoric that is at the extremes of both red and blue, and the rhetoric and the disrespect and the lack of civility that we sometimes see portrayed in the media i think has made this a lot worse. >> i do see the media as somewhat of an arsonist in many respects. however, unfortunately, they are a mirror also as to some of the climate that is out there. there is this lack of ability to hear discourse from the other

side. >> now we have a 24-hour news cycle, and the news i see is probably different from the news nancy sees, which is probably different than the news you see because we all have our own tailored algorithms. i think the news is just so different than it used to be. it is hard for us to even be on the same page sometimes. >> are we really divided? i'm just not sure how much is being fed to us through the media. it is furthering confirmation bias, i think is the problem. judy: picking up on that, it is also the case that when you look at congress of the united states or at state legislatures, they are pretty divided right now. are they reflecting the public? are they influencing the public? how do you see that? >> they seem to be speaking to the fringes. i don't know if they are really listening to any of us sitting here. i don't know if any politician right now even looks at an issue

objectively and says, hey, this is good for the american public. no, it is red, and against it or it is blue, i'm against it. it is very infuriating. >> that points to a bigger problem i think that exists in american politics today, and that is our leaders not representing the constituency. it feels like if it is polarized voices, shouting the loudest or special interests with funding campaigns to get their messages and opinions heard. >> you just heard what john and nancy were saying about our political leaders. how do you see that dynamic? are they playing a role in this division? >> i think probably a lack of humility is probably at the core . >> you mean on the part of our leaders? lexi r. we are here doing it. i have heard it said that the

aders we get are a reflection of the people, so maybe here, we are starting to turn the tide and starting to get some leaders who will think and respond to the people as we are responding to each other. >> my question for each of you is -- how do you see the people you disagree with politically? >> i think it is really easy to look at the other side and be able to say oh, you know, maybe they just don't have the knowledge that i have or they don't know the things that i know, but in reality, we all have our own lived experiences that have brought us to where we are and if we could listen to each other, maybe we would be able to understand a little better. >> i'm going to probably sound a little different here. i'll say it is a mix of things. some of them are bad. some of them are decent people in the middle. some of them are just misguided. we are being forced to try to accept the one-size-fits-all for the entire country, and i think that is the problem. >> you just heard that some of

them are good people but some of them are not. >> if we understood how people shape their opinion, if we understood what their deeper values where that led to those positions, i think that requires a certain degree of curiosity, a certain degree of humility, and i think it will offset or mitigate some of the extremes that lead us to say those are bad people or i could never agree with anything that person says. >> do you think that could work if you understood where they were coming from? >> i kind of know where they are coming from, but i think a lot of people have a view of this country that is based on everything that is negative and nothing more. it is ill-founded. it is immoral. it is racist, sexist, bigoted, and a lot of people think the country needs to be completely revamped and upended. some of us don't. some of us think it needs to be

fixed, but how do we fix it, and do we just dismantle our foundations? i think there are some real issues here in how we approach those issues, and fixing the country is the fundamental problem. >> as somebody who doesn't see some of these systems wanting them to be dismantled, i do feel like i see america as something that can be greater than it is right now, something that we can look forward to two be better together rather than just hating america. >> one thing i wanted to ask you all for sure is if this division has affected you in your personal lives, in your families . how have you seen that? >> it definitely has affected my personal life when the covid vaccine started rolling out in early 2021, i was speaking to my father, who is quite conservative, and i'm quite liberal, so very different

political views, and he is inhe vaccine, but he refused that and to this day has not taken the vaccine. having a conversation with him about the covid-19 vaccine was difficult, but around the same time, i attended one of the workshops where they taught me some lessons about understanding the other side and having a respectful conversation. that has led me to talk with him more about the vaccine and other things and has significantly improved our relationship. >> i almost lost a friend over it. we would get into discussions and not very civil discussions, and then we just decided, you know, is our friendship worth it? and we just put certain things off limits. we did not talk about them at all. it was not risking losing a friend over politics, so we

stopped talking about it. >> what about the rest of you? >> i'm able to field someone else's opinion without feeling necessarily personally attacked. i think people have gotten to the point where they think their opinion is who they are. they are not. it is a piece. it is not who they are. >> unfortunately, i feel like it has affected so much of my relationships and my life. my family leans more to the right. even growing up, i am bisexual, and i would not express that until i moved out away from my family where i thought it was more safe to do so. i feel like i have a decent relationship with my family. luckily, we all are very question-oriented. we ask questions -- why do you think that? why do you feel that way? why did you come to that decision? there are times we change our minds, which is what i think the country needs to have more of. judy: let's use that as a way to raise this question -- what do

you think it will take to make things better, to bring us to a place where we are able to talk about our differences? >> start individually. go talk to somebody who thinks differently than you. if you are focused on fox all the time and you cannot break away or msnbc, turn on the other station once in a while. research what you are listening in the media. find out what it is about. don't take anything anybody says verbatim. >> we put community in front of politics in that we put our community first. i also in my small town have helped start a community garden. i think i have had the most amazing political discourse and gardening with people from all different sides. we don't come in and say i am republican or democrat. we just come in as people who want to garden and better our community. >> are you hopeful that we can get to a better place?

>> i really think the answer to our polarization politically in this country is in our communities and it is in the relationships we have with one another, especially across lines of difference. i think with enough time, we can start to reverse this trend of polarization we have seen over the last decade or two and work towards a democracy. >> are you hopeful? >> i would like to be, but there are things that are disturbing to me. the underpinnings of our culture and society are out there unraveling. i would like to be hopeful, but those things -- but i want those things addressed as opposed to us having a civil debate, which is fine, but how do we live? >> i'm hopeful. i would not be doing what i'm doing if i was not hopeful. sometimes it feels like a horribly uphill battle, but it is better than not doing it. >> i feel more encouraged and hopeful by virtue of being involved in something like

braver angels. it for some reason the energy that goes into that translates for me into a hopeful feeling about the future. >> this has been such a wonderful conversation. thank you, each one of you, for sitting down and talking with us today. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> thank you for having us. >> amid the flurry of supreme court rulings late last month, the justices also handed down a decision on what seemed to be a technical question of law around federal habeas petitions, a fundamental right that protects against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment, but as john yang reports, the decision has big consequences for federal prisoners trying to challenge their convictions. >> the case involved a man convicted in 2000 of having guns despite the -- despite being a

felon, a violation of federal law. he was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison, but nearly two decades later, the supreme court changed the interpretation of the law used to convict him. under the new interpretation, he would be innocent, so on those grounds, he went to court to have the decision thrown out, but in a 6-3 decision that fell along ideological lines, the court said he could not appeal because he had already challenged his conviction once before. a professor at northeast university law school and the author of "barred: why the innocent cannot get out of prison." what does this decision do to people like mr. jones, in this case, people like him who want to have their convictions reviewed? >> i think as justice jackson said in her dissent, in a sense, this slams a door on people right -- people trying to raise

cases of legal innocence. habeas corpus is one of the greatest post conviction remedies we have in our country, but the supreme court has gradually whittled away at it as a tool for justice. >> you mentioned justice jackson. another line in her consent, she called trying to get a review, and appealed in the federal court aimless and chaotic exercise in futility. artificial barriers, arbitrary deadens, and traps for the unwary. how did we get here? >> we got here over a series of twists and turns charted both by the supreme court and by congress. there was a 1993 case in which the supreme court said claim of actual innocence by itself will not be recognized in one of these federal habeas corpus petitions and then in 1996, congress changed the law governing these federal habeas corpus procedures to make it very, very difficult to get into court. there are strict statutes of

limitations, restrictions on when you can file second or successive habeas petitions and other onerous procedural barriers. i think this case, jones versus hendrix, is part of a multi-decade trend toward narrowing the federal habeas corpus amendment. >> is this something the court was doing or where the laws written to be hard for prisoners to get out of prison? >> if i would allocate blame, i would go both to the court and congress, but mainly, it lies at the feet of congress. >> clarence thomas, who wrote the majority decision, said congress had chosen finality over error correction. what do you think of that? >> i think it is an interesting issue. on the one hand, finality is often highlighted as a variable or factor in favor of curtailing postconviction remedies. the idea is that at some point, litigation should be final or else victims will not have

closure, and the litigation system will not have the capacity to absorb new cases, but on the other hand, i think the finality is often a fallacy. what good is finality if there is an underlying question of legal or factual innocence? that is a problem. i think accuracy is more important than finality, and sometimes that means we should take a closer look, maybe a second look, at a meritorious claim. >> talk about the people who are wrongly convicted, who are innocent and prove their innocence. i think we all have images from movies or television that someone rushes into the courtroom and says, this man is innocent. why is it so hard to correct a wrongful conviction? >> a wonderful and important question. first of all, there is a misimpression that biological evidence, scientific evidence is available in all these cases and if you could just find it and test it after your conviction,

the prison gates will open. that's not true. biological evidence suitable, for instance, for dna testing is estimated to be available in only 10% to 20% of criminal cases to begin with, and that assumes it is retreat at the crime scene and adequately stored. second, even without scientific evidence, it is incredibly hard to reverse conviction because after a convention, the presumption of innocence disappears. a presumption of guilt takes hold, and all of the procedures are stacked in favor of reinforcing and supporting that finding of guilt. it is so hard not only to find new evidence, but once you have found it, you have to overcome an array of procedural obstacles just to get into court. >> thank. >> thank you so much.

>> for more than a decade, the austin area has been the fastest growing large metro region in the country. that explosion has brought sweeping changes to the texas capital, including to its renowned music scene. this story is part of our arts and culture series canvas. >> bob man still considers austin his home. it is where he was born and raised, where he followed his sister into music, learning guitar at the age of 10, and mix of rock and the blues. he played in bands through high school and in 2005, music took him to new york city for more than a decade, but when he came back to his hometown, it was nearly unrecognizable. >> it was kind of a little bit of a shock, traveling to work and sitting on i-35 in traffic, and cursing all the high-rises

that were being built everywhere and all the cranes. i was working at the hotel van zandt downtown austin, would consistently hear real estate folks and developers come in, just talking about buying up plots and tear downs and this, that, and the other. it was definitely kind of one of the moments where i was like, what did you do to my town? >> on top of that, he could not afford to buy a house in austin, so he left, moving 40 minutes away, where he opened up this bar, which regularly hosts musicians from all around the area. including his own band blue jean queen. in leaving the city, he is far from alone. austin is known as the live music capital of the world, but the rising cost of living is driving out local musicians, and that puts music scenes like this one at risk. in february, a consulting firm

that works with music industry in local governments released the results of its 2022 greater austin music census. it found almost 40% of people in the music business here were struggling to afford housing. between 2014 and 2022, there was a 12% drop in musicians living in central austin, and more than 1/3 were considering leaving not just the city's core but the entire region in the next 30 years. do you have friends that are local musicians that have stayed in austin? >> yeah, absolutely. >> what do they tell you about the way it is? >> they are looking for houses out here. >> do you think you would back? >> i would have to win the lottery. >> austin is home to more than 250 live music venues. every year, it hosts music festivals like south by southwest and austin city

limits. estimates have shown the music industry generates well over $1 billion a year for austin. but the city's flourishing music scene has helped attract another industry -- tech. in recent years, tech giants like tesla, apple, and google, have relocated or expanded in austin. >> and a lot of companies are drawn to austin because the quality of life is really great. they want employees to have fun things to do, and of course, our music industry and all the experiences we have with our festivals and events, it is a great location for tech workers or any kind of worker. as more people moved in, there is just a catch-22 that prices go up. the very artists that created the experience of a place where people want to be there and enjoy the culture, those are the folks getting priced out as more people come in. >> the city has tried to help,

throwing up millions of dollars in assistance for the music industry, especially those impacted by the pandemic. but musician scott stricklin who has lived in austin for a decade says more can be done. he serves on the austin music mission, which advises the city council. he would like to see support like free parking for musicians playing gigs, and most importantly, he wants artists to have a voice in conversations about development. >> since i have been here, the city has turned into this moneymaking thing. you know, how do we expand commercially in terms of real estate, and just everything else, we will worry about later, and that has been one of the biggest travesties we have seen in my opinion in this city. the death star has been built already. you cannot stop it from happening. all we can do is say if we are going to build this high-rise or whatever, we will have this

commercial space that is also residential, that is also a work from home space or whatever the case may be, can we put musicians in here somewhere so that we can, you know, make some money, and can we use, you know, diversity, equity, and inclusion to make sure that artists of all genres are getting paid? >> not long after releasing his first album last year, strickland himself faced he pd arerant a her al gs y week to make ends meet. you could say music built austin, right? >> yeah, it has. >> do you think it is fair that artists are scrapping by? >> no, it is not. absolutely it is not. as musicians swing from vine to, what we are talking about is while they are swinging, let's give them opportunities while they are doing that. >> when you work really

struggling, did you ever think you may need to leave austin? >> no, no. this is my city. i'm not going anywhere. >> for change to happen, strickland says it is important to hear from musicians who have left, people like bob who would not mind if some of austen's music culture made it to elgin, the small town where he is building his home with his families. >> i would see stickers with don't dallas my austin kind of vibe and i could see that being a thing here. don't austin my elgin. i would love to see elgin kind of be an austen of 1970's kind of -- a real cultural melting pot. >> that sparks inspiration for all these artists. >> yup, that makes people feel welcome. >> he hopes his lightning bar can play a role in that

transformation. >> that is "the newshour" for tonight. thank you for joining us. >> major funding for "the pbs newshour" has been provided by the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions and friends of "the newshour," including jim and nancy bill nair and nancy build there and kathy and paul anderson. the ford foundation, working with visionaries on the frontline of social change worldwide. funding for america at a crossroads was provided by -- and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions.

this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> this is "pbs newshour west" from weta studios in washington and from our bureau at the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. ♪

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