PBS NewsHour full episode Oct. 3, 2017

On the "NewsHour" tonight: Las Vegas mourns.
Hospitals remain full with the injured, while authorities struggle to learn a motive for
the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.
Then: President Trump arrives in storm-ravaged Puerto Rico amid criticism of sluggish federal
relief efforts.
And the latest in our America Addicted series.
Tonight, we look at one school's efforts to help teens fight substance abuse.
NICK SHIRKEY, Student: High school is hard in general, but it's even harder when you
have like this extra weight or extra pressure on your shoulders.
JUDY WOODRUFF: All that and more on tonight's "PBS NewsHour."
(BREAK)
JUDY WOODRUFF: A pall still hangs over the glitz of Las Vegas tonight.
Dozens remain critically injured, along with the 59 killed who died, after a gunman's assault
on a country music concert Sunday night.
Investigators say he planned every aspect, even hiding a camera outside his hotel room
to keep watch.
Cat Wise begins our coverage from Las Vegas.
CAT WISE: A day after the deadliest mass shooting in modern history, police and FBI investigators
in Las Vegas worked the crime scene.
JOSEPH LOMBARDO, Clark County, Nevada, Sheriff: This individual was premeditated, obviously
premeditated.
I pray that, in these situations, that a citizen, because we can't be at all places at all times
-- that a citizen sees something and says something, and we act on that.
CAT WISE: They're still trying to understand the gunman, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, a
retired accountant turned gambler from Mesquite, Nevada.
The question of why is paramount.
JENNIFER ZELENESKI, Shooting Survivor: I can understand if one person did something to
somebody, but this person went out and killed so many people that he didn't know, for no
reason.
CAT WISE: On Sunday night, Paddock poured fire into the crowd of 22,000 people at a
country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip.
He had stationed himself 32 floors up in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, knocking out
windows for sniper perches.
MURRELL SAILERS, Shooting Survivor: You want to stay still, because he's firing at moving
objects.
That's what he's doing.
Anybody laying down, that doesn't mean anything to him.
So, every time he stops, I get up and I move.
Every time it starts, hunker down.
You can just hear the rounds almost like creeping up on you.
And it feels like they're just -- it's like hunting you down.
CAT WISE: This mobile phone video from last year shows a tour of the exact room that Paddock
used.
Police ultimately found him there, dead by his own hand.
Overnight, vigils for his victims were held around the country.
On the University of Nevada-Las Vegas campus, a moment of silence.
CHLOE GERONIMO, Student: What happened is just like heartbreaking, and it's scary, because
it could have been us.
It could have been anybody.
CAT WISE: All told, more than 500 people were wounded, some hit by bullets, some by shrapnel.
Others were injured jumping over fences or getting trampled.
At University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, trauma surgeon Dr. Jay Coates says they arrived
in droves.
DR.
JAY COATES, University Medical Center of Southern Nevada: Lung contusions, liver, spleen contusions,
a number of other injuries.
Vascular injuries.
Broken bones.
You name it, we saw it last night.
It was like a war zone last night.
CAT WISE: Police say Paddock stockpiled at least 23 firearms in his hotel room, some
with scopes.
He also had a pair of so-called bump-stocks, used to modify weapons and make them fully
automatic, and at the gunman's home, 19 more guns, explosives and thousands of rounds of
ammunition.
In Washington today, Democrats, including Congressman Mike Thompson of California, opened
a new drive for what they call commonsense gun laws.
REP.
MIKE THOMPSON (D), California: It's also important to note that yesterday's mass murder marks
the 272nd time that we have experienced a mass shooting this year.
Things are absolutely out of control.
CAT WISE: On the Republican side, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said discussions of
gun violence should wait until the investigation in Las Vegas is over.
House Speaker Paul Ryan focused on mental health issues.
REP.
PAUL RYAN (R-WI), Speaker of the House: I think it's important that, as we see dust
settle and we see what was behind some of these tragedies, that mental health reform
is a critical ingredient to making sure that we can try and prevent some of these things
from happening.
CAT WISE: President Trump weighed in on the shooter as he left the White House, on his
way to Puerto Rico.
DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: He was a sick man, a demented man.
Lot of problems, I guess.
And we are looking into him very, very seriously.
But we are dealing with a very, very sick individual.
And we will be talking about gun laws as time goes by.
CAT WISE: The president will be in Las Vegas tomorrow and is expected to meet with first-responders
and victims.
Meanwhile, hospitals around the area continue to care for the wounded.
Earlier today, I spoke with Dr. John Fildes, medical director of the UMC trauma unit.
I began by asking him to describe the scene late Sunday night into early Monday morning.
DR.
JOHN FILDES, University Medical Center of Southern Nevada: While, as the shots were
being fired, we were notified, and the hospital went on disaster drill.
The first wave came in, and they were mostly delivered by EMS units.
We got them all into beds.
We started treating them.
We started to get them into the operating rooms, to ICUs, and so forth.
And then the second wave came, and that was largely in private vehicles.
CAT WISE: What kind of injuries were you seeing?
DR.
JOHN FILDES: Mostly gunshot wounds.
Then we saw a number of patients who were injured fleeing the scene.
So we saw some pedestrians that were hit by cars.
We saw some people who had fallen.
We saw people who had been trampled.
CAT WISE: How do you view these things and kind of your sense of how many you were going
to get?
DR.
JOHN FILDES: Well, we anticipated a large number of patients.
We didn't know how severely they would be injured.
The science of disaster medicine tells us that the people that are going to die will
largely die on the scene.
Many people will be walking wounded and will flee the scene, and then there will be a smaller
number of critical injuries.
The night of the incident, I went through the room.
And we had about 30 or 40 people on stretchers.
I went around to every one of them and I talked to them and examined them and spoke to them.
And the ones that were awake and alert were even holding pressure on their own wounds
and they just telling me that it's OK for me to go take care of the sick ones.
CAT WISE: What did you make of that?
DR.
JOHN FILDES: Oh, that's just tremendous resilience.
And the people were really selfless.
And the community responded.
CAT WISE: What does the road to recovery look like for the patients here, but especially
those that are the most severely injured?
DR.
JOHN FILDES: Those patients will have temporary disabilities.
They will have to be attended to, and some of them will have permanent disabilities.
And we try to channel those patients into rehabilitation programs where they can get
physical therapy and occupational training and post-traumatic stress management.
And those patients typically do quite well.
CAT WISE: We're talking a matter of certainly months, perhaps even years.
DR.
JOHN FILDES: It's not uncommon that patients spend up to six months trying to recover,
restore their strength and abilities to go back the work.
CAT WISE: How are you and your colleagues coping?
DR.
JOHN FILDES: We're all really tired.
But, as you walk around, you see this tremendous sense of pride that everybody has with what
we have done.
And we're just glad that we could be there.
And people never want to go to a trauma center until they have to go to one, and we're just
glad we could be here.
JUDY WOODRUFF: That was Cat Wise reporting from Las Vegas.
In the day's other news: President Trump got a first-hand look at hurricane damage on the
island of Puerto Rico.
He spent much of the day on the U.S. territory, after rejecting criticism of his administration's
response.
He also said that compared to -- quote -- "a real catastrophe," like Hurricane Katrina,
Puerto Rico suffered relatively less.
We will have a full report later in the program.
The Trump administration today ordered 15 Cuban diplomats to leave the United States
within one week.
It's meant to match the withdrawal of 60 percent of U.S. diplomats from Havana.
The State Department defended the moves today, citing unexplained attacks on Americans in
Cuba that damage hearing and vision.
HEATHER NAUERT, State Department Spokeswoman: We have certainly been harmed in our ability
to do our jobs down there, OK?
And now Cuba, we have this -- not reciprocity, but something of similar sorts where they
don't have the ability to conduct their operations, just like we...
QUESTION: So this is a punishment?
HEATHER NAUERT: No, this is not a punishment.
This is not a punishment.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Cuba called the U.S. move unjustified.
The Pentagon's chief is backing diplomatic efforts with North Korea, after President
Trump disparaged the idea.
Over the weekend, he tweeted that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was -- quote -- "wasting
his time" trying to negotiate with Kim Jong-un.
Today, Defense Secretary James Mattis weighed in on the issue at a Senate hearing.
JAMES MATTIS, U.S. Secretary of Defense: The Defense Department supports fully Secretary
Tillerson's efforts to find a diplomatic solution.
I believe that Secretary Tillerson is accurately stating that we are probing for opportunities
to talk with the North.
All we are doing is probing.
We're not talking with them, consistent with the president's dismay about not talking with
them before the time is right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Separately, Mattis said he believes Iran is fundamentally in compliance
with the terms of its nuclear deal.
President Trump has accused Iran of violating the spirit of the deal.
This year's Nobel Prize in physics goes to three scientists who were the first to detect
gravitational waves in space.
The announcement in Stockholm today named Americans Barry Barish and Kip Thorne of the
California Institute of Technology, and German-born Rainer Weiss of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology.
RAINER WEISS, Nobel Prize Winner: I would love to be able to talk to Albert Einstein
right now, if I could, and tell him about that we have seen gravitation waves, because
he was skeptical about that.
And I would be even more pleased to tell him about black holes, which he was very skeptical
about.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Einstein predicted that -- gravitational waves, or faint ripples in space and time,
a century ago, but he said he doubted they could ever be confirmed.
Today's Nobel winners detected waves caused by the collision of two black holes more than
a billion light-years away.
The former CEO of Equifax publicly apologized today for the credit bureau's massive data
breach.
The theft potentially affects more than 145 million Americans.
Richard Smith told a House hearing that Equifax is working to restore consumer trust.
Lawmakers from both parties charged that the company's response has been confusing and
inadequate.
Yahoo now says that its data breach in 2013 affected all three billion of its accounts
at the time.
That's three times larger than initially reported.
The company says it's notifying the additional account holders via e-mail.
And on Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 84 points to close at 22641.
The Nasdaq rose nearly 15, and the S&P 500 added five.
Still to come on the "NewsHour": the guns the Las Vegas shooter used in Sunday's deadly
attack; President Trump's trip to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico; a Supreme Court case that could
change the makeup of Congress; and much more.
We remember now some of the victims of the tragedy in Las Vegas.
They were mothers and fathers, siblings and teachers, veterans and colleagues.
Here are 12 of the 59 people who died in Sunday's shooting, and what co-workers, friends, and
loved ones have said about them.
Fifty-nine-year-old John Phippen owned a home remodeling company.
He had a heart that was larger than life and a personality to match, a neighbor said.
Angie Gomez graduated high school two years ago.
"She was a fun-loving young lady," her school district commented.
"She always challenged herself academically."
Thirty-year-old Charleston Hartfield was a Las Vegas police officer.
"This man wasn't just a good man, he was a great man," one of his friends said, "as kind
as they come and cared about everyone."
Fifty-three-year-old Susan Smith was an office manager at a California elementary school.
From its parent-teacher association: "She was a wonderful woman, an advocate for our
children, and a friend."
Twenty-eight-year-old Christopher Roybal served in Afghanistan.
A colleague noted, "If your car broke down in the middle of the night, you could call
him and he would come help you."
Twenty-nine-year-old Sonny Melton was a nurse.
The White House said he shielded his wife from the bullets, saving her life.
Jennifer Irvine was a lawyer in San Diego.
A friend and business partner said she was a kind, generous and beautiful lady.
Fifty-year-old Stacee Etcheber was a hair-dresser in California.
"She was a loving wife and a great mother," her brother-in-law commented.
"Tough as nails and just the salt of the earth."
Bill Wolfe Jr. was a wrestling coach in Pennsylvania.
"Every child mattered to him," said the aunt of one wrestler.
Canadian mechanics apprentice Jordan McIldoon was just shy of his 24th birthday.
His family said he was a compassionate young man who lived a life full of adventures.
Thirty-four-year-old Carrie Barnette worked at Disneyland.
Disney CEO Robert Iger said she was beloved by her friends and colleagues, and a wonderful
member of the Disney family.
Neysa Tonks worked at a technology firm.
The company noted, "She was a great mother, colleague and friend who brought so much joy,
fun and laughter."
And we will remember other victims in the days to come.
While the shooter's motives remain unclear, we are learning more about the veritable arsenal
that this man brought into his hotel room.
William Brangham explains how some of those weapons were likely modified to become even
more deadly.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You can hear it in those horrible cell phone videos from Sunday night.
(GUNFIRE)
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That rapid fire is virtually impossible for one person to do, unless you're
using a fully automatic weapon.
Fully automatic means one pull of the trigger fires a continuous stream of bullets.
It continues firing until you release the trigger or run out of ammunition.
That's certainly what the video from Las Vegas sounded like, but it's been illegal to sell
automatic weapons since 1986, when Ronald Reagan signed a law that banned them.
They were simply considered too deadly for civilians to own.
Existing owners in most states were grandfathered in, and those can be sold, but no new sales
to civilians have been allowed since.
So how was the killer able to shoot so many rounds so quickly?
One clue is right here.
This is one of his guns from that hotel room.
See this part of the gun?
That's an added modification known as a bump-stock, and it's likely one of the ways he was able
to kill so many people so quickly.
A bump-stock is one of several ways that people now modify legal semiautomatic weapons into
acting like a fully automatic machine gun.
YouTube is full of videos of manufacturers and their customers showing how these easy
inexpensive bump-stocks actually perform.
If you attach a high-capacity magazine, like this one that holds maybe 100 rounds, these
weapons become virtually indistinguishable from automatic weapons.
Another common modification is the so-called gat crank, where this small silver crank is
inserted into the trigger mechanism of a semiautomatic weapon, making it act like a fully automatic
one.
These current modifications are not technically illegal, because, remember, a gun is only
considered fully automatic if one pull of the trigger unleashes that continuous volley.
These devices don't do that.
They just dramatically speed up the actual firing mechanism of the gun.
So they can still be legally sold to anyone under federal law.
In fact, they're available right now at Wal-Mart and at sporting goods stores and all over
the Internet.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm William Brangham.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The attack has opened up once again questions over the availability guns.
It's a debate that comes up repeatedly after mass shootings.
But little has changed in so many years.
We're going to begin our own series of conversations on the subject tonight.
And for that, we are joined by Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.
Senator, thank you for joining us.
I want to ask you about this new information that the shooter was apparently able to modify
some of these weapons in order to make them even more lethal.
What does that say to you?
SEN.
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D), Connecticut: This evidence of the use of a bump-stock, as well
as a semiautomatic weapon, a weapon of war, along with a high-capacity magazine, shows
the need to ban those devices, which are designed simply to kill and maim other human beings.
They have no legitimate recreational or hunting purpose.
And what it shows me very dramatically is that nothing has changed since the tragedy
of Newtown, Connecticut, when the same kinds of weapons, semiautomatics, were used to kill
20 beautiful children and six great educators.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What could be done about these so-called bump-stocks, this relatively inexpensive
device?
SEN.
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: Very simply, they should be banned.
We have a bill to do so, which we're going to introduce, as well as banning the semiautomatics,
which were designed as weapons of war, along with the high-capacity magazines.
All of these devices, very simply, enable the kind of mass shooting that unfortunately
occurs all too often, and obviously in Las Vegas caused the heartbreaking, gut-wrenching
kind of tragedy that we saw.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Senator, we see after almost every one of these mass shootings, there's
an examination of what kind of gun the shooter used, and then a movement toward trying to
do something about that weapon or that device, and yet nothing much, if anything, has come
of it.
What makes you think that now the time is right to try again?
SEN.
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: This nation often reaches a tipping point, as it did after the near
assassination of Ronald Reagan.
But it took 10 years.
So it's a marathon, not a sprint, and what we need to recognize is that the tipping point
comes through awareness and education and continued, persistent advocacy, which is to
mobilize people, in the same way the NRA has done.
The major obstacle to commonsense measures, like background checks and the ban on assault
weapons and high-capacity magazines and bump-stocks, and closing a number of the loopholes that
enable domestic violence, which is a major cause of death as a result of gun violence,
is very simply to break the grip of the NRA.
We must break the grip of the NRA, which will be done through mobilizing the American people.
JUDY WOODRUFF: If something had been done before this about the semiautomatic weapon,
about the so-called bump-stock device, could that have prevented this incident?
SEN.
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: There is no guarantee ever, Judy, that a single law will prevent
this kind of mass tragedy.
But 59 deaths occurred in Las Vegas; 92 deaths every day occur in America across the country
as a result of gun violence.
And we can at least save lives.
Would it have prevented the Las Vegas atrocity, that unspeakable tragedy?
We will never know.
But it might have, and we can definitely prevent such mass shootings by adopting these kinds
of commonsense measures.
JUDY WOODRUFF: I want to ask you again, though, Senator, about the climate, because, as you
know, this has been tried.
Gun control advocates have tried in recent years again and again.
This country is so divided.
The polls show most Republicans oppose most kinds of gun control.
Most Democrats favor it.
There's another poll I saw today showing most Trump voters oppose gun control.
Those who voted against Donald Trump feel the other way.
How do you get a consensus?
How do you reach a majority in that -- under these circumstances?
SEN.
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: The polls also show that more than 90 percent of Americans favor background
checks.
If you ask the ordinary American, are you in favor of criminals or people with records
of dangerousness, with severe mental issues having easy access to these weapons of war,
they will say no.
And the Congress has to reflect the American people.
If we can provide the kind of groundswell and grassroots advocacy that is building in
this country and will reach a tipping point, I think we can win in Congress.
But it will take persistent advocacy.
And prayers and condolences are appropriate.
They're necessary.
They're not enough.
And that's what we need more of.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But background checks, tougher background checks wouldn't have prevented
this shooter from getting these weapons, would they have?
SEN.
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: Not this shooter, but the trap that is laid by the opponents here
is to point to one or another instance of gun violence and say, one or another specific
reform wouldn't have prevented it.
Maybe that one wouldn't have, but others would.
And the combination, the strategy of combining these measures is absolutely necessary.
And we can save lives.
To say we can't prevent all tragedies, there are going to be some, but that's a false analogy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Just finally, Senator, what about the White House comment yesterday, again
today, that it's just too early to be talking about laws?
The investigation is not nearly over here.
SEN.
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: The investigation will continue, and we will learn more about this
horrible human tragedy.
But we should honor the victims through action.
We can say, enough is enough, and take advantage of the moment, seize this moment, and make
sure that we honor the victims through action.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal.
Senator, we thank you.
Now to Puerto Rico, and President Trump's visit today, two weeks after Hurricane Maria.
It was a chance to view the devastation and meet some of the victims, and politics was
never far away.
Special correspondent Monica Villamizar from San Juan.
MONICA VILLAMIZAR: The president and first lady touched down at the Air National Guard
base outside San Juan, to be greeted by Governor Ricardo Rossello.
DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: Right from the beginning, this governor didn't
play politics.
He didn't play it at all.
He was saying it like it was, and he was giving us the highest grades.
MONICA VILLAMIZAR: He also pointed to the island's relatively low official death count
of 16, as of several days ago.
DONALD TRUMP: If you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous,
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here
with really a storm that was just totally overpowering.
MONICA VILLAMIZAR: The president's chief critic on the island, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin
Cruz, also greeted him today.
She had accused the administration of -- quote -- "killing us with inefficiency."
He fired back over the weekend, branding the mayor a poor leader and a politically motivated
ingrate.
And he said people on the ravaged island want everything done for them.
Mayor Cruz said today's meeting were productive, but she told CNN that President Trump spouts
things that hurt the people of Puerto Rico.
Before departing the White House, the president again said Puerto Ricans need to do more.
And once there he, turned to the issue of the cost of recovery.
DONALD TRUMP: Now, I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you have thrown our budget a little
out of whack, because we have spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico.
MONICA VILLAMIZAR: Opinions over the presidential visit were divided in places like the slum
of La Playita in San Juan.
We met two cousins, Jeremy Agosto and Juan Gauche.
JEREMY AGOSTO, Puerto Rico (through translator): I like him.
I mean, if he helps us, I like him.
MAN (through translator): We need some benefits.
JEREMY AGOSTO (through translator): Of course we have to help Puerto Rico.
I mean, we're screwed.
MONICA VILLAMIZAR: Down the road, a young fisherman, Edgar Santiago, he lives with his
grandmother in a house right next to the airport, where the president landed.
The storm killed half of his chickens and flooded his home, but he said he's willing
to give President Trump a chance.
EDGAR SANTIAGO, Puerto Rico (through translator): We have to wait.
But if he doesn't help, he's going to have a really hard time with the people here.
MONICA VILLAMIZAR: Mr. Trump met some of the locals today, as he toured a town near San
Juan.
DONALD TRUMP: We're going to help you out.
MAN: Thank you.
DONALD TRUMP: Have a good time.
MONICA VILLAMIZAR: Inside a church, the president threw paper towels and other supplies into
a crowd.
He didn't experience the long lines of people in need, waiting, and then waiting some more,
for virtually everything.
WOMAN: Everybody wants to take out money from the banks, because the machines are not working,
so that's why, because of Maria, we don't have service, Internet service, and almost
everything, no electricity.
MONICA VILLAMIZAR: Just 45 percent of Puerto Ricans have access to clean water.
In Manati, on the island's northern coast, people drink and bathe from a precious stream.
WOMAN (through translator): From all towns of Puerto Rico, people come here.
They nourish themselves from this blessing, because right now this is most valued, I think
even more than gasoline.
MONICA VILLAMIZAR: Aid is now pouring in, but little has reached some of the most damaged
areas.
But, after his tour, the president praised the work he saw.
DONALD TRUMP: I think the job of the first-responders has been something like I have never seen
before.
MONICA VILLAMIZAR: He also met today with Governor Kenneth Mapp of the U.S. Virgin Islands,
also devastated by Hurricane Maria.
This evening, the presidential party returned to Washington.
But for the 3.5 millions of Puerto Ricans, recovery is just getting started -- Judy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Monica, you mentioned in your report a place, this neighborhood near where
the president's plane landed and what it's like for the people who live there.
Tell us a little bit more about the difference between their circumstances and some of the
places where the president visited today.
MONICA VILLAMIZAR: Absolutely.
La Playita and Shanghai, Llorens, all these are neighborhoods that are in the capital,
San Juan, which has received most of the aid, first-responders, et cetera.
And yet, Judy, up until yesterday they haven't received a single drop of aid.
They had SOS signs on the highways.
We saw them here when we landed.
And this is 13 days after the storm, of course.
We understand they got some food finally yesterday.
Things are very desperate there.
The sewage system flooded.
They say people are sick.
It is quite a dire situation, and people are saying they really want, hope Trump's visit
to materialize on the ground in the form of more things, supplies, basic needs coming
to them.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Monica, also today, the president of course had some comments for the people
of Puerto Rico while he was there, including what he said, comparing this Hurricane Maria
and its effect on Puerto Rico to Katrina.
How are people reacting to that?
MONICA VILLAMIZAR: Well, that's a very good question.
People are not happy at all.
I mean, just to give our viewers some context, people here were already upset.
Trump's image here wasn't great already because of the slow response, obviously, but also
because of his tweets where he kept saying that Puerto Ricans were not doing enough to
help themselves, when really on the ground the community effort was huge.
Now, when he said the Katrina comment, people here were telling us, that's not fair.
Of course, there hasn't been as much loss of life as Katrina saw, but, for us, we lost
everything.
We lost our livelihoods.
This is a tragedy, and it is devastating.
They didn't really appreciate that, nor the fact that Trump said that the budget was already
being stretched out because of aid to Puerto Rico.
Everybody is very -- is really keeping close attention to the funding, how much money would
be allocated, because it will have an impact right here on the streets.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally, quickly, how are people reacting to this sort of back-and-forth between
President Trump and the mayor of San Juan?
They have had a back-and-forth going.
We know he saw her briefly today.
MONICA VILLAMIZAR: He did.
And everybody was anticipating, you know, if both of them were to meet, what the reaction
was going to be like.
She's been quite vocal against him and his officials, saying they are out of touch with
people on the island.
And it's important to say that, of course, she's sort of serving her political platform,
which is a platform that wants more sovereignty for Puerto Rico and is voicing a generalized
feeling here that Puerto Rico is a commonwealth that has been treated sort of as a colony,
not really a lot of people paying a lot of attention to the needs of people here, a huge
disconnect between the mainland and what goes on in the island.
But certainly people were hoping that she also tries to work with the administration
and works to get as much aid as possible, because they need it desperately on the ground.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Monica Villamizar, doing some great reporting for us on the ground in Puerto
Rico, thank you, Monica.
MONICA VILLAMIZAR: Thank you, Judy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Stay with us.
Coming up on the "NewsHour": we visit a school for students recovering from opioids addiction;
and remembering American rocker Tom Petty.
But first: The U.S. Supreme Court began its new term this week with a full bench of nine
justices and a jam-packed docket.
Today's case, on partisan gerrymandering, has the potential to reshape American politics
as we know it.
Our regular Supreme Court watcher, Marcia Coyle, will join Lisa Desjardins to break
down the arguments.
The case centers on a redistricting map in Wisconsin.
And that's where special correspondent Jeff Greenfield begins.
BARACK OBAMA, Former President of the United States: Hello, Wisconsin!
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
JEFF GREENFIELD: The 2012 elections brought good news to Wisconsin Democrats.
President Obama carried the state for a second time, and the party won 174,000 more votes
for the state assembly than Republicans.
But that didn't mean Democrats would control the state assembly.
In fact, Republicans wound up with 60 of the 99 seats, some 61 percent of the seats, after
winning only 49 percent of the votes.
Was that because so many Democrats were clustered in urban districts in Madison and Milwaukee?
Bill Whitford didn't think so.
The retired law professor and lifelong Democrat believed the way the district lines had been
drawn had effectively rigged the election.
BILL WHITFORD, Plaintiff: The value that's clearly at stake is that majorities should
rule.
Democrats got a majority in the statewide assembly vote, and they got less than 40 percent
of the seats in the assembly.
I mean, that made very clear that we had no chance.
JEFF GREENFIELD: Whitford is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit that asked the federal court
to strike down a legislative map because of a partisan gerrymander, and, last year, a
federal district court agreed.
While both parties have gerrymandered, since the 2010 census, it's mostly helped Republicans,
because they have controlled the legislature and governor's office in many more states.
The Brennan Center for Justice in New York has found what it calls extreme maps, where
partisan bias, largely from gerrymandering, currently gives the Republican Party a net
benefit of 16 or 17 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans have
a 23-seat majority.
MICHAEL LI, Brennan Center for Justice: We're talking about where you grab and lock in a
large share of seats, and make it impossible for the party to -- the other party to win
seats.
JEFF GREENFIELD: The center's Michael Li co-authored the extreme maps report and also a legal brief
that supports the Wisconsin challenge.
If the court goes your way, it's fair to say this is a big deal?
MICHAEL LI: This would be a very big deal.
The court has never put partisan gerrymandering out of bounds in the same way that it's put
racial gerrymandering out of bounds or other things out of bounds.
JEFF GREENFIELD: Li notes that prominent Republicans, including two presidential nominees and a
2016 presidential candidate, back the effort to limit partisan gerrymandering.
But Rick Esenberg, president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative
group, says such limits would be a judicial nightmare.
RICK ESENBERG, President, Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty: The problem that the
courts have had -- and this problem goes back 30, 40, 50 years -- is judges have been unable
to identify such a judicially manageable standard.
JEFF GREENFIELD: Esenberg filed a Supreme Court brief supporting the existing maps and
arguing that Wisconsin's assembly districts follow all of the existing redistricting rules:
They're compact, contiguous, and encompass communities of interest.
A court-imposed change, he says, would be itself political.
RICK ESENBERG: You're essentially imposing a constitutional obligation to gerrymander
for competitiveness, that is, a constitutional requirement to compensate for the natural
disadvantage that Democratic voters might have.
That, it seems to me, is every bit as partisan as what the Republicans been accused of doing.
JEFF GREENFIELD: Last year, I spoke with North Carolina Republican State Representative David
Lewis, who co-chaired the redistricting committee, who freely says partisanship is perfectly
legitimate.
DAVID LEWIS (R), North Carolina State Representative: I think it's more honest and up-front to say
that, as a Republican, I'm going to follow the law, I'm going to follow the rules of
the law, and if there is a discretionary decision to be made, I will make it from my partisan
point of view.
JEFF GREENFIELD: Like Lewis, Wisconsin's Republican attorney general, BRAD SCHIMEL, says that
nonpartisanship is just an illusion.
BRAD SCHIMEL, Wisconsin Attorney General: We could all dream of finding the unicorn
that takes all the politics out of these things.
But there's a reality that the Supreme Court has recognized, that you're not -- you can't
take the politics out of this.
JEFF GREENFIELD: In some states, there is no partisan fighting about legislative lines,
because the politicians don't draw those lines.
In those states, the power has been taken away from the legislature and placed in other
hands.
The biggest is California, where former Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger backed referenda
that created an independent commission to handle redistricting.
Three other states now take a similar approach.
Schwarzenegger says that, when he became governor in 2003, members of Congress were entrenched
and protected.
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (R), Former Governor of California: You had 265 congressional elections
in a 10-year period, and only one changed party hands.
I always made a joke that there's more changeover in a former Soviet politburo than we have
here in California.
JEFF GREENFIELD: Schwarzenegger says that, since the independent commission took over
the process, the state legislature has become far less polarized.
He believes that's the key to creating less partisan districts and relieving gridlock
in Washington.
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: For decades now, I have been talking about immigration reform.
It can't get done.
You have for decades people talking about in Washington how important it is to rebuild
our infrastructure.
It can't get done.
It is a dysfunctional system.
And it's dysfunctional because of our gerrymandering.
JEFF GREENFIELD: If the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the lower court's findings, it could
mean legislative maps across the country will be challenged.
And that would mean a radically different terrain for the battle for control of the
U.S. House of Representatives.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Jeff Greenfield.
LISA DESJARDINS: And here now to discuss today's arguments, as ever, is Marcia Coyle, chief
Washington correspondent for "The National Law Journal."
And she, of course, was in the courtroom today.
MARCIA COYLE: I was, Lisa.
LISA DESJARDINS: Now, this is an issue almost as old as our country itself, but yet something
that has not been definitively resolved by the Supreme Court.
Can you remind us of the last time the court talked about this?
And it's significant now.
MARCIA COYLE: Oh, absolutely.
The court took up a case out of Pennsylvania in 2003, decided it in 2004, and basically
said, we can't decide this.
There is no way to really measure when a partisan redistricting has gone so far that it violates
the Constitution.
One of the justices -- one of the five who said that was Justice Kennedy, but he wrote
separately to say, you know, years to come, there may be some way to measure this.
Science, social science will evolve to the point where there will be a standard.
And today, in the Supreme Court, the challengers to the Wisconsin plan offered them several
standards.
LISA DESJARDINS: And Justice Kennedy was quoted in many of the very long briefs here.
So, what did Justice Kennedy say today, and what did other justices, especially the chief
justice, Roberts, say ?
MARCIA COYLE: Justice Kennedy didn't give the challengers a hard time at all.
In fact, he asked no questions of them.
But he did give the state of Wisconsin a rather difficult time.
And we took away from that that he may think that perhaps it is time for the court to accept
one of the standards that's being offered, especially in a district where it appeared
that most of the justices seemed to feel this one may have gone a bit too far.
LISA DESJARDINS: And Chief Justice Roberts, however, talked about the institution of the
court itself.
Can you talk about the stakes that he sees on the table here?
MARCIA COYLE: This was really a fascinating argument, Lisa.
And you saw the policy considerations playing out in different ways.
The chief justice said, look, you know, if we strike down a redistricting map like Wisconsin,
and the decision favors the Republicans or it favors the Democrats, and we say the reason
we did it is because of a mathematical formula, the average person on the street is going
to say -- and these are his words -- what a bunch of baloney, that we really voted because
you had maybe five Democratic or Republican-appointed justices.
What is that going to do to the integrity of the institution of the Supreme Court?
It's going to throw us into the thick of politics.
On the other hand, you had Justice Ginsburg offering different policy concerns.
She said, what about the precious right to vote?
What incentive is there going to be for people to vote if the deck is always stacked in favor
of one political party?
LISA DESJARDINS: I'm wondering about this case.
Is this one of those cases where whatever the justices decide could have a very quick
impact on how our politicians act, whether they uphold this map or whether they reject
it?
Can you talk about what could happen?
MARCIA COYLE: Absolutely.
As the lawyer for the Wisconsin challengers pointed out, the court is the only institution
right now that can deal with what he said the cusp of a very serious problem, that if
the court doesn't come up with some kind of test, in 2020, after the census, he said there
will be a festival of copycat partisan gerrymanders, the like of which we have never seen.
And that, he said, presents a serious problem for democracy.
As Justice Ginsburg pointed out, the right to vote is our most fundamental right.
LISA DESJARDINS: Marcia Coyle, I can't wait to see what happens with this case.
And you will be here to talk to us about it.
Thank you.
MARCIA COYLE: And, Lisa, remember, too, our viewers can listen to the audio on Friday
on the Supreme Court Web site.
LISA DESJARDINS: Perfect.
Thank you, Marcia Coyle.
MARCIA COYLE: My pleasure.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And now to our America Addicted series.
Drug use has been down among teenagers, but mortality is rising.
And that is leading many to seek out new options for their children.
The "NewsHour"'s Pamela Kirkland went to look at how one so-called recovery school in Indianapolis
is giving new hope to students battling addiction.
It's part of our weekly Making the Grade look at education.
FRANCIE WILCOX, Student: I went from using downers, mixing alcohol and Xanax.
NICK SHIRKEY, Student: Oxys.
Percs.
FRANCIE WILCOX: Then I would use uppers like cocaine.
NICK SHIRKEY: Some meth and some heroin.
FRANCIE WILCOX: I would just use anything I could possibly use.
NICK SHIRKEY: Life just went on that downhill spiral, and I let it take me there.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Francie Wilcox and Nick Shirkey are two of about 30 students who attend Hope
Academy in Indianapolis.
All of them have struggled with substance abuse.
WOMAN: Thank you for taking part in today's circle and your willingness to support the
community.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Twice a week, their day starts here, in a circle modeled after the teachings
of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Students lay out their goals.
STUDENT: What can life be like when I'm clean?
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Their regrets
STUDENT: Felt bad for all the things that I have done to people.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: And their sobriety dates.
STUDENT: My clean date is July 17.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Hope Academy is one of nearly 40 recovery schools in the U.S.
When it comes to kicking a drug habit, experts say simply being young is a major hurdle.
Only half of U.S. treatment centers even accept teenagers.
That's why recovery schools like these are becoming increasingly popular.
RACHELLE GARDNER, Chief Operating Officer, Hope Academy: I get a call probably once a
week from somebody saying, hey, I saw your school, we really want to start a school,
how did you start that, can you help us?
PAMELA KIRKLAND: In 2006, Rachelle Gardner started Hope Academy to help students who
have fallen behind because of addiction.
RACHELLE GARDNER: Our young are pretty normal kids.
They got the same issues.
They just so happen to have this disease along with it.
And we look at it as a disease, instead of just a behavioral problem.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Hope is a public charter school, meaning it's tuition-free, and must
take any student who qualifies.
The school is attached to an inpatient treatment facility, and traditional subjects like math,
English, and history are offered in small classroom settings, alongside a constant emphasis
on recovery.
WOMAN: Think about how drugs really did start affecting your life.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Students are randomly drug-tested, and attend 12-step meetings.
They also meet one a week with Brad Trolson.
BRAD TROLSON, Hope Academy: It's an easy thing to forget that we have control.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: He's the school's recovery coach and also in recovery himself.
We first met Trolson in June while he was meeting with 17 year-old Francie, who had
just relapsed days before at a weekend party.
FRANCIE WILCOX: You just start to get into recovery, and you like literally just sit
there and think, like, who am I?
What do I even like?
If I am not getting high or I'm not with people that I hang out and get high with, like, you
just don't know what to with yourself.
BRAD TROLSON: Our society, our culture is really -- it teaches our kids that drug use
and alcohol use is really a deeply ingrained part of being a kid.
And a lot of our students have fallen prey to that idea, and to such an extent that they
really don't know what the teenage is if it doesn't include drugs and alcohol.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Francie says she's struggled with self-harm and an eating disorder for
years.
She began drinking in sixth grade because she wanted to feel grown up.
FRANCIE WILCOX: It didn't progress super fast.
It just kind of -- I would drink on the weekend, but, eventually, it did start to go into smoking,
and pills, and other kind of things.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Before coming to Hope, Francie entered three separate residential treatment
programs.
FRANCIE WILCOX: Addiction literally starts to control your entire life.
MARY ANNE WILCOX, Mother of Francie Wilcox: It was at the point where we would say, I
think we're going to have to get used to the idea that we might be burying our daughter.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Francie's mom, Mary Anne Wilcox, says she and her husband felt scared
and helpless.
From their home in Savannah, Georgia, they made a difficult decision.
MARY ANN WILCOX: My husband suggested maybe we look into this school in Indianapolis,
and we could live here for a couple of years, until she gets through high school, and then
go back to Georgia, because there was nothing anywhere in the southeastern corner really
for us to do to get her services.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: That's all too common, says Andy Finch of Vanderbilt University.
He's one of the nation's leading experts on recovery schools.
ANDY FINCH, Vanderbilt University: Many places just don't have many adolescent options available,
and a lot of times, the options that exist might be too costly for a family to afford.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Finch recently authored a report on the effectiveness of recovery schools
vs. traditional high schools for teenagers who have struggled with drug addiction.
He found that nearly 60 percent of students in recovery high schools reported not having
relapsed in the sixth months that followed treatment.
That compares to just 30 percent of students in regular high schools.
ANDY FINCH: Teenagers who are struggling with addiction are having to face a lot of peer
pressure.
They struggle sometimes if they're trying to stop using to find friends who aren't using,
to find adults that know how to handle that and what to do with it.
And, often, the place where they're either finding drugs or finding friends who are using
drugs is in their school.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Finch also says that many adults in treatment admit to first using drugs
while in high school, meaning this age is crucial to combating lifelong addiction.
NICK SHIRKEY: High school is hard in general, but it's even harder when you have like this
extra weight or extra pressure on your shoulders.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Nick Shirkey spent much of his early childhood in the foster care system,
where he says he was abused and neglected.
His drug use started at age 12.
NICK SHIRKEY: At birth, I weighed 1 pound, 6 ounces.
I was born addicted to methamphetamines.
Parents were real bad addicts.
They didn't care.
They just wanted their next high.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Nick tried a treatment facility, but relapsed earlier this year.
This is his second attempt at Hope Academy.
BRAD TROLSON: Most of our students, they're not just substance users.
They come with a lot of trauma.
They come with a lot of mental and emotional issues that, once they get clean and sober,
now those things really start to surface.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: In many ways, 18-year-old Ian Lewis represents Hope Academy at its best.
He started using drugs in middle school, moving from marijuana and alcohol to prescription
opiates and cocaine.
After two years, Ian graduated in June as co-valedictorian.
He is now a freshman studying biology at Indiana-Purdue University in Indianapolis.
IAN LEWIS, Hope Academy Graduate: If you would've asked me two years ago, I probably would've
told you I didn't think I was going to college.
But I turned it around after I got into this recovery process.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: But Ian says Hope Academy can only do so much.
IAN LEWIS: It's not going to save you if you don't want to be saved.
Some of these kids out here, they don't want to stop using.
And that's when Hope isn't really effective, because they aren't using it.
FRANCIE WILCOX: Sometimes, you just forget.
You think, well, maybe I can drink, or maybe I can smoke, or maybe, if I go to this party,
I can use like a little bit of coke, if it's, like, recreationally.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: When we visited Francie again in August, she had relapsed for the second
time in three months.
FRANCIE WILCOX: It just reminds you that I don't drink and use like other people do.
Like, I have no limits.
I have no boundaries.
I just -- whatever I can do, I do, and that's just not a right way of thinking.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: But a relapse doesn't mean the end at Hope.
RACHELLE GARDNER: We can't be a no-tolerance school.
We have to be accepting, because relapse is part of the disease, regardless of how old
you are.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: Francie has been assigned more focused recovery classes, where students
complete their course work one-on-one with their teachers.
Her mom, Mary Anne Wilcox, says she remains hopeful, but she admits these last few months
haven't been easy.
MARY ANNE WILCOX: I mean, it feels devastating.
You know, it's just -- you want so much for the whole thing to be over.
But it's just -- it reminds you that it's not.
It's forever.
And it's something that we will be dealing with forever and she will be dealing with
forever.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: As for Francie, she says, despite her setbacks, she can't imagine life
without this school.
Do you worry what might happen if Hope doesn't work for you?
FRANCIE WILCOX: Yes.
I worry a lot.
If I had to be in a regular high school, I don't think I would even be alive.
PAMELA KIRKLAND: There's been little research into the long-term outcomes for those who
attend recovery schools, but, for the students here, they still have hope.
From Indianapolis, I'm Pamela Kirkland for the "PBS NewsHour."
JUDY WOODRUFF: It's powerful.
Tune in tomorrow night: Could pain be treated without addictive drugs?
Our America Addicted series continues with the latest scientific discoveries on pain
and how best to treat it.
And online, our newest "PBS NewsHour"/Marist new poll finds a majority of Americans feel
the president has not done enough to combat the opioid crisis.
You can find our analysis and the full results at PBS.org/NewsHour.
And before we go tonight, we want to mark the passing of a legend of rock 'n' roll.
Tom Petty died last night at the age of 66.
He is one of the bestselling music artists of all time.
Our Hari Sreenivasan looks at Tom Petty's life and legacy with Ann Powers of NPR.
He started by asking her about Petty's significance in the history of rock.
ANN POWERS, NPR: Tom Petty was a bridge figure in the history of rock 'n' roll.
He emerged in the late '70s as part -- part of kind of a power pop wave, but connected
to classic rock and even early rock 'n' roll to what came later, to new wave, to new sounds
of the '80s.
And Petty was as much a Beatles fanatic and an heir to the Beatles as he was an heir to
Southern rock, being from Florida.
So, he's really a guy, he connected so many different elements, and he was man of the
people.
His music touched the people and spoke of regular folks.
HARI SREENIVASAN: And he just finished a 40th anniversary tour.
This is a band and himself that lasted a long time, which is pretty rare to do in the music
industry.
ANN POWERS: Absolutely.
I think so many people loved Tom Petty because his music resonated in so many corners.
You know, it was melodic.
It is a joy and a pleasure to listen to.
It also has a gritty side, has a heartland feel.
The stories he told were often of heartland people, American girls and boys.
So, he had that fan base that never faded and also was intergenerational.
HARI SREENIVASAN: And he was well-respected.
Just being in the Traveling Wilburys sort of consortium is kind of an honor in itself,
with George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan.
ANN POWERS: Absolutely.
Petty, you know, he connected those figures.
He connected Roy Orbison and Dylan and Harrison to each other.
He is that glue.
And I think we will remember him that way.
He was a great pop craftsman.
He wrote some of the most memorable songs of my lifetime, you know, a song like "American
Girl," a song like "Free Fallin'."
You just don't make better pop singles than that.
And he also, with his band, was one of the hallmarks of rock 'n' roll, one of the great
rockers.
HARI SREENIVASAN: All right.
®MDNM¯Ann Powers of NPR, thanks so much.
ANN POWERS: Thank you so much.
JUDY WOODRUFF: He was brilliant, and he touched our heart.
And that's the "NewsHour" for tonight.
I'm Judy Woodruff.
Join us online and again here tomorrow evening.
For all of us at the "PBS NewsHour," thank you, and good night.
PBS NewsHour full episode Oct. 2, 2017 How Puerto Ricans see President Trump’s hurricane response TOM PETTY : His Last Show - Hollywood Bowl, September, 25, 2017 (FULL SET) PBS NewsHour full episode, October 2, 2017 Did district lines rig Wisconsin elections? Supreme Court case could reshape politics WATCH LIVE: Police update Las Vegas shooting news Coldplay performing Free Fallin' - Tribute to Tom Petty (Portland, 2 October) The legal gun device that likely sped up the carnage in Las Vegas Freefalling - Coldplay and Peter Buck Gov't Mule - Breakdown [Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers cover] (Houston 10.02.17) HD

PBS NewsHour full episode Oct. 3, 2017

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