February 27, 2026 - PBS News Hour full episode

Good evening. I'm Jeff Bennett. Hamna Nawaz is away. On the NewsHour tonight, movement on a crucial sticking point, whether Iran should be allowed to enrich uranium. The latest on the nuclear talks with the U.S. as the two countries teeter on the brink of war. Former President Bill Clinton testifies before a GOP-led congressional committee saying he had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. And with a growing number of people detained in the Trump immigration crackdown, the Trump administration looks to an unexpected place to house them, warehouses. These places were built to hold goods and ship goods. They were not meant to hold human beings. So there's a pretty significant renovation process that has to go underway. Welcome to the NewsHour. President Trump said today he was unhappy with the progress of diplomacy with Iran and suggested he may, as he put it, have to use the military. That came in contrast to a statement from the mediator of the talks who said they're making progress. And that's as the U.S. has deployed the largest military presence in the Middle East in more than two decades. Here's Nick Schifrin. NICK SCHIFRIN's ejacist of war, сот analyst. Today, as the U.S. prepares for the prospect of war, President Trump didn't hide his disappointment in U.S.-Iran nuclear talks. ROBERT TUMMARD, U.S.-Iran nuclear talks, President Trump, We don't want to see the keywords, we're not going to have a nuclear weapon. They have to say, we're not going to have a nuclear weapon, and they just can't quite get there. NICK SCHIFRIN's Серг 관련. He stuck to his demand that Iran not be allowed to create any nuclear fuel. FUEL. They want to enrich a little bit. You don't have to enrich when you have that much oil. So I'm not happy with the negotiation. NICK SCHIFRIN, Former U.S. Foreign Minister of Foreign Minister of Foreign Minister of Omani, Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad al-Busaydi. Today he met with Vice President J.D. Vance and other U.S. officials, and afterward told CBS's Margaret Brennan the talks were making progress. ABU SAIDI, So, there will be zero accumulation, zero stockpiling, and full verification. NICK SCHIFRIN, So, there will be zero accumulation, zero stockpiling and full verification. NICK SCHIFRIN, So, that suggests Iran has agreed not to store any nuclear fuel, but not necessarily to stop enriching entirely. Albu Saidi also said that, for the first time, Iran would agree to Americans verifying Iran's nuclear program. ABU SAIDI, If I was President Trump, my only advice is just to give those negotiators enough room and enough space. to really close these remaining areas that we need to discuss and agree upon. AMNA NAWAZ, And if Israel carries out a strike, or if the U.S. carries out even a limited strike on the ballistic missiles, do you think that you could still get a nuclear deal done? AL- Well, diplomacy can reach a deal. I don't think any other other acts can solve this problem, really. NICK SCHIFRIN, Former U.S. Ambassador to U.S. Ambassador to U.S. Ambassador to U.S. White House senior adviser Dan Scavino posted on social media a row of B-2 bombers, the same plane used in last summer's Iran strikes. And overnight, also precautions for possible war. The U.S. Embassy in Israel told its staff to consider leaving the country immediately. U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee wrote an internal e-mail obtained by the Associated Press that said there was no need for panic, but, quote, those wishing to take authorized departure should do so today, today written in capital letters. And a U.S. official confirms to PBS NewsHour the military's top Middle East commander, Admiral Brad Cooper, briefed President Trump yesterday on options for a strike. There are negotiations scheduled for next week after yesterday's meeting in Geneva. says technical talks are supposed to begin Monday. But the U.S. has assembled what President Trump has called an armada, the largest deployment of warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades. And despite the mediator claiming progress, the U.S. has set the theater for an attack. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Nick Schifrin. Bill Clinton became the first former president compelled to testify to members of Congress today. At a closed-door session in Chappaqua, New York, the House Oversight Committee heard from Clinton about his connections to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Mr. Clinton said he did nothing wrong, adding, quote, I saw nothing that ever gave me pause. Republican Chairman James Comer spoke late this afternoon. I will have to say that President Clinton answered every question or attempted to answer every question. We can talk about some of his answers in more detail. And I'm sure once the video is released and the transcript is released, not only will you, but a lot of people in America will have more questions about some of the answers that were given. The former president's testimony comes a day after the committee questioned his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for more than six hours. She said she had no new information about Epstein and had never met him. Joining us now is our congressional correspondent, Lisa Desjardins. So, Lisa, what did President Clinton say today behind closed doors? This was extraordinary. The former president testified for nearly seven hours. He did say, as you indicated, that he knew of no wrongdoing. And specifically, in his opening statement, I want to read another quote that he had. He wrote, not only would I have not flown on Epstein's plane if I had known any inkling of what he was doing, I would have turned him in myself. Now, photos in the Epstein files, though, show some of the relationship between the two men. Clinton flew on Epstein's plane roughly two dozen times. That was part of the work for the Clinton Foundation that he was doing after leaving office. Now, Democrats on the committee both defended the former president, but also sharply questioned him. President Clinton, as of today, has not been accused of a crime. There are not public files available that accuse him of a crime. Whereas there are publicly available documents that do allege a crime of President Trump. But it is very well established that President Clinton had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. We'll return to the Trump question in a minute. But one other thing that Republicans said today was that they're investigating whether Epstein was part of some foreign intelligence operation targeting some public officials in America. So what is known about Clinton's relationship with Epstein? Right. Now, this is something that's important because Clinton said in his opening statement that he had a brief acquaintance with Epstein. But we know that they knew each other at least 10 years, going back to when President Clinton was in office in 1993. Ghislaine Maxwell said she introduced them. There was something transactional. President Clinton, with his foundation, needed wealthy donors. He also needed a way to travel around the world. Epstein and his plane provided some of those things. But it wasn't all business. There are photos in the Epstein files that show, for example, President Clinton in a hot tub with a woman whose face has been blacked out to keep her anonymous. Clinton did also write a note in that infamous 2003 birthday book for Epstein talking about friendship in that. And to this idea that Clinton never had any inkling that there was anything wrong, the actor Kevin Spacey was on one of those flights, on several flights in Africa with Epstein and Clinton. And he said in an interview a few years ago that he saw young girls on those planes with Clinton and Epstein, and he was worried about the public risk for Clinton. Clinton says he never saw that. On the politics of this, you have the Republicans who lead this committee trying to, in some way, make the Clintons the face of this. You also have Democrats now trying to subpoena President Trump, which would be unprecedented. Right. There are civil court examples where Clinton and Trump have both been in civil court, either as president or former presidents. But the subpoena aspect of this is interesting if President Trump is subpoenaed. Really, it could be a constitutional question. But there's more to it now because Republicans are not even asking President Trump to testify. We know that he had a long association with Epstein. And, you know, whether he did wrongdoing or not, the Republicans say no. They're not saying Clinton had any accusations of wrongdoing. They just want to answer questions. There are questions about why Republicans still refuse to call President Trump. Any other officials who could be forced to testify? Yes, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. He is a billionaire who had a law association with Epstein. And in fact, he told Congress that he was mistaken in at one point saying he didn't speak to Epstein after his arrest. And in fact, we know that he saw him in 2012 on his island. So there are questions from Congress about him. And it does look like he could be subpoenaed. Lots of questions, lots to track. Lisa Desjardins, always on top of all of it. Thanks so much. You're welcome. In the day's other headlines, Pakistan's defense minister says his country is engaged in an open war with Afghanistan after the neighboring countries exchanged attacks last night. Pakistan accused the Taliban government in Afghanistan of harboring militant groups, which it says launched strikes across the border in Pakistan. For its part, Afghanistan denies enabling terrorism and says Pakistan broke a previous ceasefire agreement the two sides reached back in October. Whenever aggression has occurred against Afghanistan, the Islamic Emirate has always tried to resolve the issue through dialogue and mutual understanding. However, each time, the aggression has persisted. In Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, residents there voiced support for the strikes. The point is, when faced with aggression, you have to respond. Pakistan is a sovereign state, and our nation expects us to defend it. Tensions between the two sides have been boiling for months after border clashes in October. Israel's high court ruled that aid groups can continue operating in the Gaza Strip. The ruling reverses an earlier government decision that barred the groups for refusing to comply with new Israeli rules. It comes as five people were killed in Israeli drone strikes on two separate police checkpoints today. Israel says they were in response to a violation of the fragile ceasefire by Hamas. At a funeral today for some of those killed, family members said that the truce has done little to stop the violence. Those three dead are among a number that continues to rise every day. As Israeli violations continue, they have not stopped since the signing of the truce agreement. Meantime, some Palestinians from the West Bank were denied entry into Jerusalem for the second Friday of Ramadan prayers. Israeli authorities had said they would only allow up to 10,000 Palestinian worshipers, and they'd tightened security across the city. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says that Scouting America will change several policies to maintain Pentagon support, including one targeting transgender youth. The Texas-based organization is keeping its new name rather than returning to Boy Scouts, and it will continue its service for some 200,000 girls. But in a video posted to social media, Hegseth said the group will require its members to use their, quote, biological sex at birth and not gender identity, and that the Pentagon will end its support of the organization if it fails to comply. These and other changes that Scouting America's leadership committed to will hopefully result in a rededication to the foundational ideals that have defined Scouting for generations. duty to God and country, leadership, character, and service. Meantime, in Kansas today, two transgender men are suing the state over a new law that requires that gender markers on a driver's license or birth certificate match a person's sex at birth. The Kansas law is the first such measure in the nation. Democratic lawmakers say they are stunned and deeply alarmed following yet another instance of a laser being used to shoot down a drone near the U.S.-Mexico border. It happened yesterday near Fort Hancock in West Texas. The drone belonged to Customs and Border Protection, and the incident prompted the FAA to temporarily suspend flights. In a joint statement, the agencies and the Pentagon described the drone as a, quote, seemingly threatening unmanned aerial system operating within military airspace. It follows a similar incident earlier this month that grounded commercial flights in nearby El PASO FOR A FEW HOURS NASA PLAN TO SEND ASTRONAUTS back to the moon is getting a revamp The agency says it adding an extra practice mission to its Artemis flight lineup next year with the goal of one or even two lunar landings in 2028. The shakeup comes just days after NASA's Artemis 2 moon rocket returned to its hangar for repairs. We shouldn't be comfortable with the current cadence. We should be getting back to basics and doing what we know works. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the new plan will inject momentum into the program by reducing years-long gaps in between flights. In that way, it will be similar to NASA's fast-paced Apollo program, the first that brought humans to the moon more than a half century ago. The financial technology company Block is cutting 4,000 of its 10,000 employees as it embraces the use of artificial intelligence. The 40% cut is one of the most dramatic steps taken by a tech company directly because of the use of AI. Investors welcomed the news, though, with Block's shares ending nearly 17% higher. Elsewhere, on Wall Street today, stocks slumped amid worries about AI, inflation, and a possible war with Iran. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 500 points. The Nasdaq dropped more than 200 points. the S&P 500 also ended the week lower. And there was an unusual scene at Washington's Reagan National Airport today as a former U.S. president joined with his fellow travelers in waiting out a flight delay. Joe Biden's Secret Service detail gave him away as people lined up to take pictures with the nation's 46th president. Mr. Biden was flying to South Carolina for an event. The flight was delayed by fog. Once on board, the former president greeted his fellow passengers as they filed past. His seatmate only realized who he was when she sat down. She told a reporter she felt like she was about to cry as she shook hands with the former president. The two chatted throughout the flight. And we have a passing of note from the world of music. Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka has died. They say that breaking up is hard to do. Known for his hits, including Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, Calendar Girl, and Oh Carol, Sadaka's work was a staple of radio stations in the 60s and 70s. A Brooklyn native, Sadaka initially pursued classical music, but as a teenager fell in love with the pop songs of the era. He went on to forge a six-decade career in the business, racking up hits and five Grammy nominations. Luminaries like Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra covered his work, and Sadaka continued performing well into his 80s. His family said they are devastated by his sudden passing. Neil Sadaka was 86 years old. Still to come on the NewsHour, Paramount outbids Netflix paving the way to take over the Warner Brothers media giant. A leading AI firm pushes back on the Pentagon, why the tech company refuses to remove safety guardrails. And David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart weigh in on the week's political headlines. This is the PBS NewsHour from the David M. Rubenstein studio at WETA in Washington, headquarters of PBS News. The standoff between the artificial intelligence firm Anthropic and the U.S. government escalated sharply today. President Trump lashed out at the company's leadership and directed all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's products. And the Pentagon designated the company a supply chain risk to national security. William Brangham joins us now with more. William? That's right, Jeff. Anthropic had long said that it didn't want the U.S. military using one of its programs for any fully autonomous weapons systems or for any mass surveillance of American citizens. Negotiations were ongoing this week, but the president's order seems to have brought them to an end. The Pentagon's designation would bar any company that does business with the Department of War from doing any commercial business with Anthropic. For more on what this could mean, we are joined by the University of Pennsylvania's Michael Horowitz. He previously worked in the Defense Department, where he wrote the Pentagon's policy on artificial intelligence weapons systems. Michael Horowitz, so good to have you here. I wonder if you could just give me your first reaction to this. to the president saying we are wiping Anthropic completely out of the federal government and that any Pentagon contractor that also has dealings with Anthropic has to stop those as well. What a day. I think that my initial thought, frankly, is that that escalated quickly in that what seemed like a needless dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon has hit crisis proportions. I say needless dispute because Anthropic was the first of the frontier AI labs willing to work with the Pentagon in a classified environment. And all of the projects that the Pentagon has asked Anthropic to work on, Anthropic was happy to work on. This was a theoretical dispute about future possibilities between Anthropic and the Pentagon that has now really escalated. The president's order in combination with the order from Secretary Hegseth could not just be devastating to the Pentagon's ability to use Anthropik's technology, but could be devastating to Anthropik's core business, depending on how it's interpreted by the markets and whether Anthropik is able to get, I'm not a lawyer, but Anthropik is able to get a stay of the supply chain designation. What does this do to America's ability to keep up a robust defense? I mean, Anthropic was already being used in many parts of the Pentagon, according to reports. So now if the president is saying, get it all out of there, what does that do to our ability to maintain a defense? Anthropic's technology wasn't just being used in parts of the Pentagon. It was being used in other parts of the government as well. So this could be pretty devastating in some ways. The only thing that mediates that is the six-month time period that appears both in the president's announcement and in the supply chain designation by Secretary Hegseth, if you wanted to be an optimist about the chances that the two sides will come to a deal, the optimistic read would be, in some ways, this sets a six-month clock for negotiations between Anthropik and the government. But you had to squint real hard in some ways to see that optimistic read. And the winner in some ways, if Anthropic and the Pentagon can't make it work, frankly, is China. Because in a world where there's been intense AI competition between the United States and China, and that includes the military realm, it should be all hands on deck for the American frontier AI labs to work with the Pentagon to improve American National Defense. And Anthropics has been willing to do that. Over a six to nine month period, then you would imagine some of the other AI labs will try to cycle in and pick up some of that business if nothing can be done. Note that Elon Musk's ex-AI has already stepped up to the plate and said last week that they were willing to now work in the classified environment with the Pentagon on defense challenges. That's right. It's hard to imagine that there's not a whole slew of other companies willing to step into the breach there. I want to ask you about this request, though, that Anthropic was making. They were saying, we're happy for you to use our product, except in these two instances. And I wonder what you make of that request. It's hard to think of another defense contractor, Northrop Grumman, saying, we'll sell you jets, but you can only use them in certain ways. Absolutely. I mean, this was what really escalated the dispute between Anthropic and the government was Anthropic's insistence that their technology not be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapon systems. Although, to be clear, this did not bother the Pentagon when they signed the original contract with Anthropic less than a year ago. This is something that really escalated after Anthropic asked Palantir, actually another a leading technology company, about whether Anthropik's technology was used in the Maduro raid in January, where Palantir's Maven smart system technology was used, and that platform incorporates some of Anthropik's technology. And so we were off to the races from there. In some ways, this is a dispute about personalities and about the role of government masquerading as a policy dispute, because in a normal atmosphere, Anthropic would decide they want to work on some issues for the Pentagon, but not other issues. And the Pentagon would hire Anthropic to work on some things, but not other things. It would find other vendors. But this escalated to the point where the department was threatening to either compel them with the Defense Production Act or impose that supply chain designation. As you said, what a day. Michael Horowitz from the University of Pennsylvania, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery reportedly signed an agreement today on a $110 billion deal, a merger that will make Paramount one of the largest media empires in the world. It happened after a dramatic turn of events and after Netflix walked away from its proposal to buy out Warner Brothers. Paramount could now control two key movie studios, multiple streaming platforms, major intellectual property brands along with television and cable channels, and two of the biggest news operations on television, that's CBS and CNN. But this isn't a done deal yet as it's now under investigation and awaiting regulatory approval. For more on all of this, we're joined now by Robin Farzad, host of Public Radio's Full Disclosure. It's always great to see you, Robin. Thank you, Jeff. So we will get to the concerns about the media consolidation regarding this deal, but on the specifics of the deal itself, when Netflix said that this offer was no longer attractive, what was that really about? Was it just about the price or deeper concerns about taking on Warner Brothers' debt and its market exposure? I think Netflix got every signal from this White House and the FCC and Donald Trump being explicit and both with kind of background suasion that by far he prefers Paramount and the Ellisons taking this over. He's obviously cast dispersions on CNN, which is a small part of the economics of the broader Warner Brothers Discovery franchise, but it's a lightning rod for him. And he'd like to see CNN under new ownership, ideally friendly to the persuasions of Donald Trump. So this wasn't about the offer price. It was about Trump putting his thumb on the scale. Yeah, because Netflix has so much money. And by the way, this ceased to be uneconomic a while ago, like a bidding war. And it's happened in the history of LBOs and massive mergers and acquisitions. Indeed, Warner Brothers' discovery itself is like, you know, they say there's something about Mary. There's something about Warner. For 25, 26 years, everybody has been mega-merging, acquiring, stripping, flipping it off to other people. It was AOL. It was AT&T. It was AT&T. This discovery disaster. And now it's being sold off to another multibillionaire. It's been certainly an ill-starred asset to own. So what does Paramount get by acquiring it? You get this holy grail of a mega streaming app, right? Paramount Plus or whatever it is, and its predecessors app, you know, Showtime and the other things, they're known as the kind of the third tier apps. But if you smash HBO Max or whatever they're going to call it into this, think about Game of Thrones, Sex and the City, The Sopranos, that superior IP, you suddenly have a value proposition vis-a-vis a Netflix or an Amazon or an Apple to say, hey, we're big players. We deserve your 25 or 30 bucks a month. You should cancel the other players. So this is something that Disney is currently duking out. It had acquired massive Fox assets. Amazon and Apple obviously have unlimited amounts to play in this. Google, which owns YouTube. It's a whole different Hollywood than it was just even 10 years ago. The Ellison's close proximity to President Trump drawing scrutiny. Could that relationship shape the regulatory process? I think it could in that every indication has been that it's going to get smooth sailing, right? The FCC is okay with it. You saw what the acquisition of Paramount and maybe kind of the hush money paid out what it was for CBS News. And there are potentially some scalps that are going to have to be delivered in this with CNN. There's fear there. Again, CNN by itself is hugely profitable. It's diminishing, but its competitive bogey right now is the New York Times. It's not these other issues. It not this bottleneck of leadership or ownership or big tech money coming in The bigger perception is that this was done for political reasons uh to fast track the acquisition of much more important and profitable film and studio and streaming assets. And what does it mean that one family potentially could own so much media and entertainment? And to say nothing else of TikTok, which Larry Ellison and Oracle control 15% of. We are in that era right now. If you think about Elon Musk coming in and making an uneconomic acquisition of Twitter, did it matter in the end? Did it bankrupt him? He might have a trillion-dollar SpaceX IPO. Washington Post and Jeff Bezos, was $250 million supposed to be meaningful to a person maybe worth $200 billion? He still gutted that. It's a really treacherous time. As you see with the stewardship of the Ellisons and CBS News, they're willing to cut where others didn't cut before. And there's going to be no shortage of debt and cost-saving synergy expenses in this. and a tremendous amount of fear and loathing in Hollywood, in CNN. It's just been a pretty lost decade for all of media and entertainment. Robin Farzad, always good to speak with you. My pleasure. For months now, ICE has been quietly buying industrial warehouses around the country, reportedly with plans to turn them into a network of immigration detention and processing centers to hold tens of thousands of detainees. Our White House correspondent, Liz Landers, begins our coverage with a look into how the national and at times local controversy is playing out in one small Maryland community. A national controversy lands on the agenda of a small Maryland city during an otherwise mundane weekly meeting. The Hagerstown City Council and Mayor represent about 45,000 residents, but the broader community is bracing for the arrival of as many as 1,500 mostly undocumented migrants. This huge warehouse right here was recently purchased by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a detention facility. This is more than 800,000 square feet, and if it opens, it could be one of the largest detention facilities of its kind in the country. During a couple of visits over a week, we saw anti-ice vandalism, but no visible signs of ice itself. We ran into Doris Kyle Shami and her husband Greg as we left the site. The administration is ruining this country and it's tearing apart communities, tearing apart communities that we need and they're good people. You know, this has got to stop. Locally, the facility will be primarily regulated by the Washington County Board of Commissioners. All in favor by saying aye. Aye. Protesters interrupted their meeting earlier this month, shortly after the board unanimously agreed to a resolution welcoming ICE. Nobody ever expected it to become a place of residence. We listened last week as the city's utility director briefed the council on its limited but critical role governing the facility. Our authority starts and stops with the water. In the audience, community members on both sides of the national and now local debate. I don't think it's a good thing for Hagerstown if we get that. I think it's a great thing. Hagerstown needs as much help as it can get in increasing the income per person. Having this facility will do that with jobs. If there are people that are being held in this facility who haven't broken the law other than being in this country illegally, are you OK with that happening? I am engaged to a man who was a political refugee from Bolivia, who was naturalized as an American citizen. So for me, it's really personal that people come to this country legally. The things I've heard are going on in some of the other ice facilities. I definitely don't want that in my community. I'd love to see the city do everything they can to fight this. Given our council and our mayor, I'm not sure that they will. ICE already spent $102 million purchasing the warehouse. The Department of Homeland Security responded to our questions with a statement touting its economic benefits and reading in part, quote, These will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards. Sites will undergo community impact studies and a rigorous due diligence process to make sure there is no hardship on local utilities or infrastructure. We know who bought it, but we don't know what is actually going to happen there. Bill McIntyre, Hagerstown's nonpartisan mayor, notes that while the city does have limited authority over water and the new facility will almost certainly need to secure a greater allowance, he's not eager to pick a fight between his small town and a giant federal agency. We have never denied water to anyone. So if you do deny this, does the federal government look at this as a political move? and are we opening ourselves up to litigation? Earlier this week, Maryland's attorney general sued the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, saying that the administration failed to conduct an environmental review or seek public input or provide explanation for the purchase, which is required by law. Joining us now is Douglas McMillan, a reporter for The Washington Post, who's done extensive reporting about these ICE facilities. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. Let's start with the size and scope of this. Can you give us an idea of ICE's efforts to create this system of detention centers throughout the country? Yeah, so they're going all around the country. We're seeing this happen all the way from, all the way up in New Jersey, New Hampshire, all the way down to Orlando and Florida, all the way out west. They're trying to build places in Kansas and Oklahoma. This is all over the country. They're focusing on warehouses they can find a little bit outside of large towns. So we're finding these about 45 minutes to an hour outside of large city centers. And they're trying to fix these near logistics hubs where it's easy to move people in and out of the city. So we think that they want to, ICE officials have stated that their objective is to make the system of detention and deportation more efficient. And the current acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, has actually compared his aspiration to Amazon's system of moving packages. He said, we want to be able to move humans around the country as efficiently as Amazon ships packages. What's the overall cost of this? How much is the Department of Homeland Security and ICE spending on this? So they're projecting to spend $38 billion. That involves buying the warehouses. Many of them cost around $100 million. That involves significant upgrades and retrofitting these warehouses to basically turn what are empty, vacant shells of buildings into a kind of functioning detention center with housing units, recreation areas, kitchens, outside basketball courts. They want to kind of, like, build these out and spend up to $150 million for a single facility in some cases. Many of these warehouses are currently just massive, empty buildings. We saw this one in Hagerstown, and apparently there are only four toilets in this huge 800,000-square-foot-plus facility. What is the process going to look like for making these habitable for people? Yeah. I mean, these places were built to hold goods and ship goods. They were not meant to hold human beings. So there's a pretty significant renovation process that has to go underway, and ICE wants it done really rapidly. So it's going to be a challenge. For one example, a lot of these are distribution centers built for a company like Amazon, where a lot of trucks would have been pulling up to these large bay doors. And so many of these facilities have dozens of bay doors around the perimeter of the building. That's not a very secure feature if you want a detention center to hold people who are not going to be able to escape. So one of the first things they might have to do is brick up all those bay doors. Another thing that a lot of these facilities have is going to be a challenge is that they are built on a thick concrete slab, which is going to make it extra hard to install plumbing and to install wiring and to install kind of the workings of a building that you're going to need when you're talking about holding thousands of people. So it's going to be a pretty complex job. What's your reporting on the timeline that ICE has for this? How long is it going to take them to be able to convert these warehouses? So it's really rapid. They want this whole system of up to 24 facilities to be up and running by the end of the year, essentially. And we've heard internally there's been a lot of debate over that time frame and that even some companies that they've worked with for many years, like GeoGroup and CoreCivic, were the two largest detention contractors in the country, that they've been pushing back and saying that this timeline is too aggressive. The administration has found some of these warehouses that they've purchased in areas that are Republican communities. What has been the reaction in those places? Yeah, so I spent time in one of these facilities down in Social Circle, Georgia. It's a small town 45 minutes east of Atlanta. It's projected to be one of the first mega detention centers. Like, they're going to turn one of these warehouses and turn it into a detention center holding up to 8,500 people. The people there were really worried and scared and nervous about what this means for their town. A lot of them say that they support the president and they voted for the president, and they generally agree with his immigration agenda, and they agree that illegal immigrants should be locked up and deported from the country, but that they don't think that this makes sense for them. And just quickly, how has the administration handled some of the pushback in some of these places? So very different. In some places, they've just been completely quiet. And they've gone about their business just simply buying the facilities and moving forward with their plans to put these up, not really kind of giving any mind to the protests and the pushback. In other places, it seems like they have acquiesced and they have actually come to the table. We've seen a few examples now. Just this week, Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee announced that ICE was canceling its plans to host a detention center in her state in Tennessee. We've seen similar announcements from state leaders in New Hampshire and Mississippi. So it looks like that some Republican leaders who have juice with DHS are striking deals to get these facilities not in their areas. But in other places, including many Democrat-led areas, there isn't kind of that ability. And the DHS has not really come to the table and meaningfully engaged with the local community. DENISE GLADER, THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR REPORTING. DOUG McMILLAN, THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR REPORTING. THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME. PRESIDENT TRUMP IS VISITING TEXAS TODAY WHERE THREE OF HIS SUBORTERS ARE BATTLING IT OUT IN THAT STATE SENATE PRIMARY ELECTION SET FOR NEXT WEEK. THAT SAYS THE PRESIDENT ALSO CONSIDERS MILITARY ACTION IN IRAN. LOTS TO DISCUSS. And we turn now to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart. That's with The Atlantic's David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart of MS Now. It's good to see you both. So as we said, President Trump in Texas were three Republicans to include the incumbent John Cornyn. They're locked in this competitive GOP primary. The president has yet to make an endorsement. The fact that he's inserting himself early and forcefully in this race, does that suggest that he's still the GOP kingmaker or that he's trying to demonstrate that he is? A little of both, maybe a little more of the latter. The Texas race, to me, is the most interesting Senate race in both parties, because it gets at the core debate right at the middle of both parties. On the Democratic side, you have Jasmine Crockett, who's an aggressive, progressive fighter. And then you have James Tallarico, who is more moderate, is trying to revive the religious left. And so the argument on the Democratic side is, do we want somebody who will just go to the mat and take down these Republicans, or do we want somebody to be conciliatory and win over people from the Senate? And that is the core debate in the Democratic Party. On the Republican side, you've got Ken Paxton, who has been scandal-plagued since nursery school, and then you've got John Cornyn, who is not the most exciting bulb in the Senate, but a standard-issue Republican. And so the Paxton race in particular, and he'll probably come out first but not force a runoff, shows that there's still some juice if he does really well in MAGA, If he doesn't do really well, and if Wesley Hunt or Cornyn do well, then that's a sign the Republican Party is beginning to move on. Jonathan, what stands out to you in the Crockett v. Tallarico matchup? Well, look, the one thing I will say is that no matter which candidate wins the Democratic nomination, they will be infinitely better than whomever the Republicans decide to nominate. So I'll just put that out there. But in this race, the polls seem to be a bit all over the place. There was one poll that came out from UT Tyler that had Congresswoman Crockett up by 12 points, but the sample size is small. And other polls that I just took a look at have State Representative Tallarico up by single digits maybe six points eight points I think both candidates are trying to win in two different ways but I think in two legitimate ways. Congresswoman Crockett, she is going for disaffected voters, African-American voters, voters who may not have voted in previous elections. In a lot of ways, she's taking a page out of Donald Trump's book, playbook, when he ran in 2016, when he, what I called, fracking for votes. He pulled people out who had not voted before. That's who Congresswoman Crockett's trying to go after. But then State Representative Tallarico, he's going after more middle of the road, but really setting his sights on disaffected Republican voters who might not be too keen on what the president is doing, and they might be gettable. So on Tuesday, I'm looking to see which tactic actually won and whether they can win enough votes to not be in a primary runoff. Let's shift our focus back to this previous Tuesday, the State of the Union address. David, was there anything in that speech that stands out to you as meaningfully changing the landscape or President Trump's standing? Yeah, I mean, the question I'm asking is, is he losing the country? A lot of people have been waiting since 2016 for him to lose the country. But there's clearly some type of slippage. My ex-colleague Ross Douthat issued a video at the New York Times saying he's losing the country and conservatives have to adjust. Is he losing the country or is this just another wish fulfillment for people who don't like him? I think there's evidence that he is. That if you look at particularly at independents, they have swung sharply away from him. And then if you look at Republicans, does, this is a Pew research, does Donald Trump respect the country's democratic values? The number of Republicans who say that is down sharply. Should Republican members of Congress feel obligated to support Donald Trump? 61% of Republicans say they do not have any responsibility to support Donald Trump. These are all changing numbers. And so clearly there's a sense, whether it's Minnesota, whether it's just General Mishigas, which is Yiddish for crazy. I'm familiar. Just for Jonathan. Jonathan's a New Yorker. He definitely knows what Mishigas is. And so I think that there's signs that even Republican support, it's not going anywhere, but it's getting demoralized. Yeah, yeah. Jonathan, I will say the contrast in that speech really stood out. The president in one way sounding like a conventional policymaker talking about making, you know, tech companies pay for their own electricity bills because of the AI plants that they operate. And then in the next breath, he would be shading the Supreme Court or calling Democrats crazy. There was governance and grievance side by side. Jeff, I think you're being charitable. I'd actually forgotten about what he had said about AI paying its own electricity bills because the rest of the speech was nothing but a variety show where he trotted people out, used them as props, handed out medals like Pez. Now, that's not to take away from the people who got the medals. They deserve them. They deserve to be celebrated by the American people, but not like that, not in the way that the president did it. And also, I thought there was a meanness to his address and also the dabbling in just the language of violence, getting into just infinite detail about what people went through, the horrors and the trauma. I came away from the 107 minutes of that speech just feeling worn down and wanting the 107 minutes back and longing for the days of what? That long State of the Union address that President Bill Clinton gave in the way, way back that was just chock full of policy proposals and ideas to the point where Washington reporters were like, my God, this guy is so boring. I long for that kind of boring. In the time that remains, I want to have you both weigh in on Warner Brothers' discovery, reportedly agreeing to be acquired by Paramount Skydance. This is after Netflix walked away from the negotiations. And if the deal closes, it means that one family, in this case, a family that has been so far deferential to President Trump, would control CBS, CNN, HBO, and TikTok. How do you see it? Yeah, I've found media business incredibly boring and pointless. And I've been able to do that because I've worked at Dow Jones, News Corp, New York Times, PBS. I've worked at all these agencies. And the business structure of the business had no effect on me. There's never been a moment in my career where I had the sense that somebody in the business side of things was going to try to influence anything I ever did. But that seems to be changing. And the malefactor here is Donald Trump. once Trump starts playing political favorites among whether it's Anthropic versus OpenAI or whether it's Netflix versus Paramount, then of course the companies have to be mindful of that. And I'm a guy who, I don't know Barry Weiss particularly, but I support what they're trying to do. I think it's time to mix up the media that we got a little too progressive, a little too elite. And if Barry Weiss can change the mindset, ball power to her. But if this is being done for lobbying and business, which it sure looks like it is, then that's the real deterioration in the business we're in. How do you see it, Jonathan? Well, I would argue that the media isn't necessarily liberal. When you look at the fact that the number one cable channel and the number one viewing channel is Fox News channel, This idea that there are liberals out there running around through the media, indoctrinating people and changing, you know, setting the narrative, I just think is wrong. And I think bringing a Fox-like mentality and demeanor to CBS News and potentially to CNN, I think, in the end, makes the American people worse off. Our job as journalists, and I'm thinking specifically of CNN in this case, in this deal, folks turn to CNN for news. They turn to them for just what is happening in the country. And if what's happening at CBS could happen at CNN, then our country and our profession will be in worse shape. David? Well, the one reason Fox exists is because all the other mainstream networks don't have Trump supporters. I do think we have made a mistake over decades in shutting out working class folks and in not letting more Trump voices. And it's hard to get Trump voices on the air. I understand. But if you tell half the country that your voices aren't worth heard, they will rebel. And that's a bid on us. Trump is not to be defended, but he's never completely wrong. David Brooks and Jonathan Kephart, thank you both. Thank you. And now, a lighter story to end the week. In a zoo outside Tokyo, one monkey has pulled heartstrings around the world after forming an unexpected friendship. Stephanie Tsai has the story. It's a story of rejection, vulnerability, and the animal instinct for companionship. It helps that the central character is an unbearably cute monkey, a seven-month-old macaque in Japan's Ichikawa City Zoo named Punch. Abandoned by his own mother shortly after birth, zookeepers handed Punch a stuffed animal. Never mind that the orangutan is a different species, he's hardly let go of it since. MANUEL KINUH, This soft toy has quite long fur and several easy places to hold, and it looks like a monkey. We thought that it looking like a monkey might help Punch integrate back into the troop later on. AMNA NAWAZI, The New Yorker, The New Yorker, Watch as baby Punch is dragged around like a chew toy, escaping to the comfort of his protector, using him for cover. Videos like these have sparked an outpouring of love and sympathy from the more evolved primates among us. But he has plenty of friends on TikTok. Hashtag hang in there punch has gone viral. The spectacle has drawn massive crowds to the zoo and there's a run on the stuffed animal at Ikea. He's become such an idol like figure already. So I hope he stays lively and continues being an idol. It's not by any means a replacement for a mother and it's not going to give the animal the attachment that it sort of needs in order to develop. But it does give sort of an avenue to retreat to that might in the moment reduce those stress responses a little bit, allowing him to feel a little bit less of that anxiety and stress. Allison Behe is a primatology expert at Australian National University. She says the other monkey's ornery attitude toward punch tracks. Japanese macaques live in very strict matrilineal dominance hierarchies, which means there are dominant families and there are subordinate families. Dominant animals show aggression. Subordinate animals respond appropriately with sort of a subordinate signal. And then everyone stays happily in their place in the hierarchy. So while it does look like bullying and it looks quite confronting because it's an infant and because their mother has rejected or abandoned them, it is just a sort of a normal part of macaque society to have that sort of aggression as normal social behavior. But there are reasons to hope. More recently, Punch seems to have made a breakthrough. He's starting to make actual monkey friends and taking cues from adult monkeys on how to shelter from the rain. It's actually really reassuring that Punch is already sort of being groomed, being integrated into the group's structure, because it does suggest that hopefully any potential negative impacts of the abandonment will in fact sort of dissipate. Zookeepers say Punch is showing signs of resilience. It depends on how Punch's confidence develops going forward. But recently, he's been spending less time with the stuffed toy, day by day. And he's interacting with the other monkeys more. If things carry on like this, I think there will come a day when he no longer needs his stuffed toy. As cute as their relationship is, they'll know Punch is really OK when he finally gives up his beloved surrogate. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Stephanie Sy. Well, be sure to tune in to Washington Week tonight. A look at the growing calls for one of President Trump's top cabinet members to testify about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. This week on Horizons, our William Brangham and his panel examine the risks and rewards of having an AI companion. And coming up on Compass Points this weekend, Nick Schifrin sits down with President Trump's former envoy to Ukraine, the retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg as the war starts its fifth year. Here's part of that conversation. You often argue that Russia is not winning in Ukraine, and you recently said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is looking for a way out, but he can't psychologically get there. Why do you think Putin's looking for a way out, and what could that look like? Well, I think when you look at just the sheer numbers alone, first of all, when I say he can't get his way out of it, you know, he's not winning. And what I mean by not winning is he's really never gone beyond the land he's got right now. He's suffered between 1.2 and 1.4 million casualties, dead and wounded. So I think he's got himself to a problem where he can't really get out based on the losses he's taken, the equipment he's taken, and he's driven himself to be a regional power, not a full power. So I think he does want to become a Nicholas II at the last Tsar of Russia, Where somebody shoots him but I think he's worried about the fact that he's had those losses The people haven't turned on him yet, but if you keep sustaining losses like that eventually You're going to move into the area which we call white Russia Which is west of the Urals. Yeah, and then the people are going to start saying what's going on here? And then y'all you start to see the military bloggers right now saying what's going on? What's our strategy and and I think they've reached a point after four years of war with her frontline units have been mauled They don't have the military capacity to be able to continue the offensive beyond where they've gone. And it's sort of like a trap. And he's going to say, well, I've got to get a victory. If I don't get a victory, someone's going to probably try to eliminate me. A fascinating conversation. You can watch the full discussion on Compass Points on your local PBS station or on our YouTube page. And that is the NewsHour for tonight. I'm Jeff Bennett. For all of us here at the PBS NewsHour, thanks for spending part of your evening with us. Have a great weekend.