♪ >> tonight, shake up at the pentagon. what the potential consequences are for the military and the nation. then,which parts of the project 2025 blueprint is the trump administration already implementing, and how they could touch americans' lives.

and, we explore how generational trauma affects african american women. >> it's important to recognize the ways that stigma related to having a mental health condition, as well as participating in treatment, might be a barrier to one engaging and helping to normalize some of those other activities. ♪ >> major funding has been provided by -- >> two friends set out to make wireless coverage accessible. with no long-term contracts, nationwide coverage and u.s.-based customer service, u.s. cellular. freedom calls. ♪ >> the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions.

and friends of the news hour. ♪ this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. john: good evening, i'm john yang. president trump's shake up of washington reached the pentagon as he fired several top military leaders, including the chairman of the joint chiefs and the admiral leading the navy. last night mr. trump and defense secrtary pete hegseth said they were dismissing air force general "cq" brown as the country's senior military officer, admiral lisa franchietti, the first woman to lead the navy, general james slife, the vice chair of the air

force, as well as the top lawyers for the army, navy and air force. the president has selected retired air force general dan caine to be the new joint chiefs chairman, a job that requires senate confirmation. mr. trump has spoken highly of caine since meeting him in iraq during his first term. eric edelman served in senior positions in the state and defense departments under both republican and democratic presidents. he's now at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments. how unusual is this? a new president in his first month getting rid of the chair of the joint chiefs and other leaders. >> unprecedented. we have had presidents relieve other senior commanders from president truman and general macarthur during the korean war, president obama relieved general stan mcchrystal, but that was for cause.

in this instance, no-call is given. it is unprecedented. previous presidents wanted to put their own chairman in, president kennedy for instance, max taylor, but he waited until the chairman left before replacing him. john: what will the effect be on the military, the changing of the command and the message president trump appears to be sending? >> overall, it will be disruptive, along with the exercise secretary hegseth and relocation of funds and the appearance what the president is looking for is personal loyalty rather than institutional loyalty, all the senior military officers have undertaken as a result of their oath.

they swear an oath to the constitution, not an individual president although they clearly understand they are under civilian control. >> what can you tell us about the new chair of the joint chiefs that president trump wants? >> i cannot comment on general kane other than to say he has had a distinguished career in the military. he is not a four-star general. he is a retired three-star. under the goldwater nichols statute, the chairman by law has been a four-star, vice chairman, service chief or combatant commanders under the unified command plan. >> the top lawyers were dismissed, the judge advocate generals or jags. pete hegseth talked about what

he didn't like about some military lawyers. >> a jag officer puts his or her own priorities in front of the war fighters. their promotions, medals, in front of having their backs making the tough calls on the front lines. john: what is he talking about? >> it is hard to know but he may be talking about court marshals for war crimes that took place during the trump first-term which the president interceded in and pardoned people involved. i think it is a dangerous precedent, attitude. the jags are there to make sure essentially orders are followed, borders are conformed to the laws of armed conflict, to title x, the u.s. code that outlines responsibilities of dod and military, the constitution and

whatever international obligations the u.s. has under treaties. i fear what is happening here is they are looking for jags who will essentially commit to validate and adjudicate any order from the white house as lawful. john: what are the dangers, but possible consequences of that? >> during the campaign, 2016, president trump said he might order the military to torture people who were captured, terrorists captured on the battlefield. that is an illegal war crime under u.s. statute. it would be unlawful. if there are no jags to impose that interpretation and make it clear that is not lawful, the president might be able to force military officers into doing

things they know are not correct, not right. john: there, thank you very much. >> thank you for having me john. john: president trump spoke at the final day of the conservative political action conference. he touted his administration's achievements including what he said is a deal with ukraine that will end the war and repay the u.s. the money it spent on the war effort. >> i am dealing with president zelenskyy, president prudent -- putin. i'm trying to get the money secured because europe has given $100 billion. the united states has given $350 billion. so we're asking for rare earth and oil, anything we can get. john: mr. trump also praised the work of the doge team and said it has already found billions of dollars in wasteful spending. new fbi director kash patel is

quickly making good on his pledge to shift agents away from the washington, dc area. 1500 employees are expected to be reassigned to fbi offices around the country. patel told senior administration officials about his plan on friday, after being sworn in. patel has long talked about wanting to shrink the bureau's presence in washington and focus more on fighting crime across the country. in the middle east, hamas released the last six living hostages who were promised in the first phase of the ceasefire with israel. four of the hostages had been taken in the october 7 hamas attack. families cheered the release. freed hostage omer shem tov said he had dreamt of this moment. >> i cannot believe. john: the two other hostages released today had been held by hamas for about a decade after they crossed into gaza on their own. their families said they suffered from mental health issues. as part of the ceasefire agreement, israel was to release

more than 600 palestinian prisoners, but the exchange has been delayed without explanation. tensions mounted this week when hamas handed over the wrong body for shiri bibas, an israeli mother adbucted with her two young sons. on friday, hamas handed over another set of remains that israel has confirmed are hers. pope francis is in critical condition after suffering a long asthmatic respiratory crisis. the vatican said the 88-year old was in more pain today and had to be given supplemental oxygen and blood transufusions. the pontiff entered the hospital a week ago with bronchitis, and then developed pneumonia. doctors say pope francis is not out of danger and faces the risk of developing sepsis. outside the hospital members of the church and the faithful have held prayer vigils. all his public engagements have been canceled, including his appearance at the weekly angelus prayer. the west texas measles outbreak is getting worse. there are now 90 confirmed cases, according to

the state's health department, with at least 16 people hospitalized. neighboring new mexico is reporting nine cases although there's no known tie between the two outbreaks. the highly contagious respiratory virus can stay in the air for two hours making it highly likely that unvaccinated people who are exposed will get it. and, in a city in southern sudan, a cholera outbreak has killed 60 people over the last three days and second 13 others. -- sickened 1300 others. the outbreak was blamed on contaminated drinking water after attacks by a paramilitary group knocked out the city's water supply. the group has been fighting the country's military for nearly two years. doctors without borders said its treatment center is overwhelmed and that the situation is "about to get out of control." still to come on "pbs news weekend", the project 2025 policies that the trump administration

is implementing. and, the history of generational trauma in the black community. ♪ >> this is pbs news weekend from weta in washington home of the pbs news hour weeknights on pbs. john: in the first month of his second term, president trump has reshaped the government with a flurry of executive orders. as william brangham reports, many of them echo the language of a policy blueprint he once disavowed. >> during the heat of the presidential race, the 900 page project 2025 became a rallying cry for democrats and a focal point for their warnings about a second trump term. it was published by the conservative heritage foundation, and it outlined plans to reshape the federal government, expand presidential power and enact right leaning social policies. in polls, it proved wildly unpopular with voters, and then candidate trump distanced

himself from it, calling parts of it "ridiculous and abysmal." >> i have nothing to do with project 2025. that is out there. i haven't read it, i don't want to read it purposely. i'm not going to read it. >> but a recent analysis by politico found dozens of instances where president trump's executive actions have closely aligned with project 2025. megan messerly is a white house. for politico and coauthored the piece. megan, so good to have you on the program. let's start with the big picture overview. what what policy aspects of the second trump administration most dovetail with project 2025, according to your reporting? megan: so we've seen really sweeping overlap between the president's actions and project 2025. we found significant overlap on social issues, on immigration, on government staffing, energy, foreign affairs, the economy. but really, the biggest category that we saw was this sort of

social issues category. you know, as president trump has really taken this aggressive posture on culture war issues in the early weeks of his presidency. so i'm thinking about policies like ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs using the civil rights act to remove, you know, gender ideology and critical race theory from schools, and also ending government efforts to fight misinformation and disinformation. >> and again, these were all things that donald trump promised, that he would do what he could to eradicate when he got in office. on those dei examples, are there some examples you can cite that illustrate the connection between the two? [12.4s] >> so i think a really clear one is, you know, project 2025 calls for, you know, deleting the term sexual orientation, gender identity, diversity, equity, inclusion for really every federal rule, every agency regulation contract grant that exists. and one of the president's early executive orders similarly called for, you know, terminating dei mandates, policies, programs under whatever name they appear.

another one that jumps out to me, you know, project 2025 really asserts that dei has become this, you know, vehicle for what it calls unlawful discrimination in federal agencies and we saw a corresponding executive order, you know, saying that federal hiring should not be based on race and or what it describes as sort of the guise is the word it uses the guise of of equity. >> last week, as you know, a federal judge blocked this executive order that aims to restrict gender transition care for young people. what did project 2025 say specifically about that issue? megan: yeah, it really talked quite a bit about gender identity. so one of the big things it talks about is, you know, rescinding health care protections for sexual orientation, gender identity, which were issued by the biden administration and it also uses this language to, you know, "protect minors from from gender mutilation.'

we see that reflected very clearly in an executive order that really focuses on, you know, transgender health care. you know, using that similar language of of, you know, chemical and surgical mutilation, really paralleling project 2025 there and also specifically referring to that biden administration guidance on sexual orientation and gender identity and and rolling it back. then another example that that comes to mind is, is project 2025 really calls for, you know, defining sex to mean biological sex recognized at birth and the president very early on issued an executive order stating it's the u.s. policy to recognize, you know, two sexes, male and female and we've really seen that already have ripple effects across federal government. >> one major tenet of project 2025 was shrinking the overall federal government and in specific it talked a lot about usaid and i believe it was saying scale usaid back to pre-pandemic levels but it seems as if the trump administration is going even further in this instance. >> the administration is.

you know, the project 2025, the way it phrased it, was, you know, the pre-pandemic budget levels being sort of a minimum. and the trump administration has really gone far, far beyond that in its sweeping cuts to usaid. it really has been working to dismantle the agency almost entirely, though a lot of that is obviously wrapped up in litigation now. >> that project called for really addressing government staffing and employment. can you tell us about the parallels? again, we've seen so much of this with elon musk's doge operations firing workers across the federal government. what are the parallels? >> so i mean project 2025 really lays out this, you know, sort of sweeping blueprint for remaking the federal government and the federal bureaucracy. of course, trump's budget director, russ vought, being sort of the architect of that plan, he authored a whole chapter of project 2025 but two

really clear things that i think we've seen come directly out of that that blueprint and translate into executive order policy. one of them is, you know, project 2025 called for this hiring freeze for federal career officials that was implemented from the president by executive order. there's also this so called schedule f proposal, which basically just makes it easier to fire career civil servants and we saw the president put that into place as well and this really just underscores the president's vision and russ vought's vision really, for for reshaping the federal bureaucracy and for for getting rid of what vought often refers to as the fourth branch of government, which he refers to as sort of the administrative state but the the career workforce, the bureaucracy, the regulatory apparatus that he and president trump believe have way too much power independent from the president. >> all right, megan messerly of politico, thank you so much for

sharing your reporting with us. >> thanks for having me. ♪ john: most people will experience a traumatic event some time during their lives -- losing a loved one, being the victim of an act of violence or surviving a life-threatening natural disaster. but what happens when the impact of trauma is indirect, the result of the experiences of family and caretakers? as part of our series, "race matters," ali rogin sat down with inger burnett-zeigler, author of "nobody knows the trouble i've seen: the emotional lives of black women", to look at the effects of generational trauma. >> doctor burnett-zeigler, thank you so much for joining us. first of all, can you explain what is generational trauma? inger burnett-zeigler: generational trauma is trauma that's passed down from one

generation to the next. some of the ways in which that can be experienced is individuals who have experienced a trauma leave an imprint of that trauma experienced on their genes that can be passed down to future generations, making them more vulnerable to mental health challenges. that trauma experience can be passed down through the behaviors of individuals who have experienced the trauma, particularly if that trauma has been unidentified and not resolved. whereby some of the symptoms of trauma such as anger, irritability, depression are experienced by future generations and generational trauma can also be passed down behaviorally, whereby individuals who have experienced a trauma might then either expose their children to other traumatic experiences through their intimate partners or hrough community violence, or those individuals are more likely to get into relationships or be in societal circumstances where there's more poverty and they have more exposure to violence themselves.

one common way that i've seen generational trauma show up in the patients that i've worked with in individual therapy is i might be working with a woman who has been exposed to their mother, for example, being the victim of intimate partner violence in that relationship. they may have also been the victim of childhood abuse and neglect because of the trauma that that person has experienced firsthand. there's more of an urgency to leave that home environment, to get to a place of safety but by leaving home as a teenager, they're more vulnerable to themselves, being in an impoverished environment and more vulnerable to be entering into an unhealthy relationship themselves and i see that often pan out where the individual leaves the home early, leave the home as a teenager. they then get into a relationship where there is

abuse and the cycle then continues. a child is born out of that relationship, and the cycle of generational trauma continues in that child's life. >> many people in the united states experienced traumatic events, but black women in the u.s. are more vulnerable to traumatic events and ptsd. why is that? >> so about 7 in 10 people in general will be exposed to a trauma at some point in their lifetime. and those estimates for black women are about 8 in 10. black girls are more likely to experience childhood abuse and neglect, including sexual abuse and physical abuse and black women are more likely to experience intimate partner violence and other forms of sexual violence. across the trauma spectrum, which can include many things outside of sexual violence and intimate partner violence, black women are more vulnerable because of the social and economic conditions that many of us live in, including being more likely to live in poverty, where rates of community violence are

higher, being more vulnerable to chronic stress, which is associated with experiences and exposures to trauma, and having less access to the health care system, whereby those individuals who have been exposed to a trauma are then more likely to develop ptsd or post-traumatic stress disorder because they haven't gotten the necessary mental health care needs in order to reduce their likelihood of of that progressing into traumatic condition. >> there's also research that indicates black women are less likely to receive treatment, even though they experience trauma and ptsd at higher levels. what do communities of color, in particular black communities, need to know about how these sorts of traumas present themselves in order to spot the signs and access the care that they deserve and need? inger: i think one barrier that's particularly salient in

terms of individuals getting the necessary treatment for trauma is recognizing when they've been exposed to a traumatic event. so when we talk about trauma, it could be childhood abuse. it could be intimate partner violence, it could be community violence, but it could also be dealing with a significant health condition that has led one to confront a life threatening circumstance. it could be the traumatic loss or separation of a loved one, like a parent, to incarceration or death. it could be something like the covid 19 pandemic or experiences with direct racism and discrimination and so when we think about the broad spectrum of traumatic exposures, a lot of people who have been exposed to trauma don't even recognize that exposure in themselves, and they don't recognize the way some of those symptoms show up. they don't realize that that anger, that irritability, the difficulty sleeping, they're being anxious and nervous and on edge might be related to their

history of trauma exposure. so in terms of helping people get the care that they need, it's one identifying when individuals have been exposed to trauma. understanding how some of those symptoms might be showing up in their daily lives, and then helping them to make a warm handoff to treatment providers. additionally, it's important to recognize the ways that stigma related to having a mental health condition, as well as participating in treatment, might be a barrier to one engaging and helping to normalize some of those other activities. >> dr. ingar burnett ziegler, author and lecturer at northwestern university. thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you. ♪ john: now on our tiktok, the european space agency's recent discovery of the einstein

ring 590 million light years away. all that and more is on the pbs news tiktok page. and that is pbs news weekend for this saturday. on sunday we'll look at the anxieties in europe over the trump administration's shifting positions on russia and ukraine. i'm john yang. for all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us. see you tomorrow. >> major funding for pbs news weekend provided by -- ♪ 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 by viewers like you. thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

gates: i am henry louis gates jr., welcome to "finding your roots." in this episode, we'll meet actors, kristen bell and dax shepard, two stars who fell in love. bell: i made eye contact with him, and i was like, "oh, weren't you at shauna's birthday dinner?" he was like, "yeah."