October 2, 2024 - PBS News Hour full episode

GEOFF BENNETT: Good evening.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

AMNA NAWAZ: And I'm Amna Nawaz.

On the "News Hour" tonight: Israel presses on with targeted raids against Hezbollah in Lebanon, while it considers how to respond to Iran's missile attacks.

GEOFF BENNETT: A newly unsealed court filing details evidence for the alleged crimes of former President Donald Trump in his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

AMNA NAWAZ: Tim Walz and J.D.

Vance spar on the debate stage.

We break down how the candidate's performances play into the larger presidential race.

GEOFF BENNETT: And the catastrophic damage wrought by Hurricane Helene shows why no place is immune from the impacts of climate change.

ALEX STEFFEN, The Snap Forward: We used to think of climate change as being something that would happen elsewhere some time in the future and with somebody else's problem to worry about.

And none of those things are true.

(BREAK) AMNA NAWAZ: Welcome to the "News Hour."

Fear of a regional war in the Middle East accelerated today.

Iran is bracing for an Israeli response to yesterday's unprecedented ballistic missile barrage against Israel.

GEOFF BENNETT: In Lebanon, Israeli forces have suffered significant losses as their ground invasion targeting Hezbollah militants pressed on today.

Eight soldiers were killed in combat.

And Israel continued its bombardment both of Lebanon and Gaza, killing dozens.

We have Nick Schifrin and Tel Aviv tonight and Leila Molana-Allen in Beirut.

And that's where we start our coverage.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: War in the skies and now on land too.

Israel's first full-scale ground incursion into Lebanon for nearly two decades on Monday night met little resistance, today, a different story.

IDF soldiers crossed barely half-a-mile into Lebanese territory when they were ambushed by Hezbollah fighters.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, Israeli Prime Minister (through translator): I would like to send my condolences from the bottom of my heart to the families of our heroes who fell today in Lebanon.

We're in the middle of a tough war against Iran's axis of evil, which seeks to destroy us.

This will not happen.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Hezbollah is keen to show it remains ready to fight, despite crippling attacks on its leadership and communications network.

The group has been preparing for this war for years and says most of its weapon stocks are still intact.

In Beirut's southern suburbs of Dahiyeh today, amidst the shattered ruins of residential apartment blocks, a Hezbollah spokesman accused Israel of targeting civilians.

MOHAMMED AFIF, Hezbollah Spokesperson (through translator): For us, the goal of this large-scale destruction of the southern suburb is destruction itself, killing, hatred, criminality, and repeating what happened in the Gaza Strip.

All the civilian buildings that were bombed in the suburb in the last week are purely civilian buildings inhabited by Lebanese civilians.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Nearly 2,000 people have now been killed here in just 10 days.

Last night, as Iran launched its largest ever missile assault on Israel, the air was thick with foreboding in Beirut.

Iran awaits Israel's response, but the retaliation in Lebanon was swift.

As another day of devastating Israeli airstrikes leaves dozens more dead and many thousands more homeless, people here in Lebanon wait in fear to see what the next stage of this escalating regional conflict will bring.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Leila Molana-Allen on Lebanon's southern coast.

NICK SCHIFRIN: I'm Nick Schifrin in Israel, where today those Iranian ballistic missiles became tourist traps.

In the southern Negev Desert, the fuselage of a missile that can carry a 1,600-pound payload caused no damage.

The U.S. official tells "PBS News Hour" Iran tried to destroy its targets, but largely missed and its missiles suffered a significant failure rate.

One of the targets was the Tel Nof Air Base, where today Israel's top officer delivered this threat.

LT. GEN. HERZI HALEVI, Chief of Staff, Israeli Defense Forces (through translator): We will respond.

We know how to locate important targets.

We know how to strike with precision and power.

NICK SCHIFRIN: What important means Israeli officials won't say publicly.

One official briefed on the matter told "PBS News Hour" that Israel could target Iran's economy and not its nuclear sites, a target that President Biden today opposed.

JOE BIDEN, President of the United States: They have a right to respond, but they should respond in proportion.

NICK SCHIFRIN: But U.S. officials believe the Israeli government feels less restrained since they killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

In Gaza, residents feel there's no restraint.

And today marked the death of Jude, who just started his life.

This war spares no one, not the daughter who today lost her mother, or the mother too shocked to realize she'd lost her son.

Gazan health authorities say, in the last day, 70 were killed by Israeli airstrikes.

Israel says it struck multiple U.N. shelters used by Hamas as command-and-control.

Another Gazan laid to rest today, 38-year-old Sameh Al-Asali, a resident of the occupied West Bank, and the only person known killed by Iran's massive missile attack.

As for Israel's response, U.S. officials tell me tonight they hope it's calibrated to allow Israel a military reply, but one that falls short of inspiring Iran to launch another round of missile attacks.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Nick Schifrin in Tel Aviv.

AMNA NAWAZ: We're learning previously undisclosed details tonight about former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

A newly unsealed 165-page court filing from the Department of Justice argues the former president should still face trial even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled presidents have immunity for official acts.

NPR's Carrie Johnson and former U.S. attorney Mary McCord are following the latest developments.

They join me now.

Welcome to you both.

So, Carrie, what do we know about why this filing was unsealed now by Judge Tanya Chutkan, and what stood out to you as you made your way through it?

CARRIE JOHNSON, NPR: Yes, the Justice Department made this filing in response to what the Supreme Court did this past summer.

The Supreme Court ruled that Trump and future presidents do enjoy substantial immunity from prosecution for official acts.

But the special counsel, Jack Smith, and his team maintain that Trump was acting as a political candidate and not the president of the United States when he allegedly attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

And this court filing today was filed under seal a short while ago.

There's been some back-and-forth about how much the public should be able to see.

And just this afternoon, Judge Tanya Chutkan mostly sided with prosecutors and released this filing with some redactions.

There are some new details in here based on grand jury testimony and notes that people like former Vice President Mike Pence took about his interactions with former President Donald Trump.

There's some really interesting mentions of notes that Pence took about this all being up to Pence in the later part of 2020 and early 2021 as people prepared to count the electoral votes on January 6.

And there's some new detail from prosecutors, who maintain that Trump himself was in the dining room near the Oval Office tweeting on January 6 as Mike Pence was in danger from rioters in the Capitol.

And Trump allegedly said to an aide who asked him about all this: "So what?"

So there's a lot of new color and vivid detail about Trump's alleged actions and his state of mind and his knowledge in those waning weeks of 2020 and early 2021.

AMNA NAWAZ: Mary, we knew this was an argument that Jack Smith was going to lay out, saying, even though Trump was holding the official office of president, his scheme, as he writes in the filing -- quote -- "was a fundamentally private one."

Just broadly speaking, how does he make that case here and how compelling a case is that?

MARY MCCORD, Former Justice Department Official: He goes through all of the different facets of the scheme the pressure on state legislatures, the pressure on his own vice president, the efforts to orchestrate the fraudulent electors scheme, and his comments not only at the Ellipse on the morning of January 6, but in the lead-up to that, including public speeches and tweets.

And he -- and Jack Smith emphasizes at every step how many private actors, private attorneys, and advisers, including some of his co-conspirators, were involved in so many of these efforts.

He also makes the point about there not being executive branch officials involved in these various efforts.

And he also adds, I think, some really interesting details, to go to Carrie's point about showing his capacity as a candidate.

He adds details about, when he's pressuring state legislatures, for example, and state government officials, he is, for one, only pressuring Republicans.

He never calls, for example, the Michigan Democratic governor or secretary of state to complain about election fraud.

He only pressures Republicans.

And in those states that are led by Democrats, he instead pressures state legislatures.

He constantly refers only to his own race when he talks about fraud in the election and never to the election more generally.

So, in other words, claims of election integrity, you would expect to be calling into question a number of different facets of the election, but, instead, he focused only on himself.

So, Jack Smith really does paint quite a vivid picture throughout not only the first part of this motion, which includes this extensive factual recitation, but particularly in his legal analysis and his application of the law, the law that the Supreme Court laid down in Trump v. United States, to the facts of this case.

AMNA NAWAZ: Carrie, I want to underscore here that moment you briefly mentioned about Mr. Trump's reaction to learning that his vice president had been taken to a secure location.

Here is what is actually written out in the filing related to that.

Jack Smith writes that: "Upon receiving a phone call, learning that Pence had been taken to a secure location, a redacted person rushed to the dining room to inform the defendants in hopes the defendant would take action to ensure Pence's safety.

Instead, after he delivered the news, the defendant," in this case, former President Trump, "looked at him and said only: 'So what?'"

What else do we learn from this, Carrie, about the many efforts Vice President Pence made to offer then-President Trump an off-ramp from these false claims of election fraud?

CARRIE JOHNSON: Yes, we learned a lot about conversations that Pence had with Trump, as well as Pence's aides, who met with some of Trump's alleged co-conspirators, people we believe to be former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, law professor John Eastman, and others who were advancing these bogus claims.

And after they tried all kinds of other efforts in the courts and with the states, they basically failed at all of those things, and it came down for them to Mike Pence.

And so they placed enormous pressure on Pence, tried to signal that he had the power to overturn the will of millions of voters.

And Pence wasn't buying it.

Nor was one of his legal aides who's testified before the house January 6 Committee.

And we get a lot of detail about that.

Pence basically says to Trump, why don't you try again?

Take this -- sit this one out.

You can try again in 2024.

And Trump and his top aides were just not having it.

In fact, Trump called Pence on January 5 and the morning of January 6 asked him to be tough.

And Pence was under enormous pressure, as we saw in that period, but, still, he held firm and refused to go along with this alleged scheme.

AMNA NAWAZ: Mary, there are some newly disclosed details in here, some newly confirmed details.

Much of it was also known from the results of the January 6 hearings.

But the big question is, now what?

What kind of impact will this filing have on the case moving forward?

MARY MCCORD: Right.

So now it will be Mr. Trump's legal counsel's turn to file a response to this and make arguments in opposition to Jack Smith's arguments.

So he has argued that, for each facet of the scheme, Mr. Trump's conduct -- well, first of all, for his pressure on his vice president, where the Supreme Court said that could -- that's official, they have made a showing and an argument that they can rebut the presumption of immunity by showing through the evidence that prosecution for this illegal pressure on Mike Pence would not create any danger of intrusion the functions of the presidency.

For every other category, he argues that acts are private and not official.

And even if the court were to find they were official, again, he can rebut the presumption of immunity by showing prosecution would have no danger of intrusion the functions of the presidency.

And this is something that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in her concurring opinion, she pointed out some areas that she thought were private and said if she had -- she thought the majority should have said so in its opinion, and some areas where she thought the presumption was rebutted.

AMNA NAWAZ: That is former U.S. attorney Mary McCord and NPR's Carrie Johnson joining us tonight.

Thank you to you both.

With little more than a month to go, the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns are dialing in on key swing states.

GEOFF BENNETT: And for the first and only time, vice presidential candidate Senator J.D.

Vance and Governor Tim Walz squared off on the debate stage.

Lisa Desjardins has this report.

LISA DESJARDINS: In Georgia today, vice President Kamala Harris arrived to survey the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

KAMALA HARRIS, Vice President (D) and U.S. Presidential Candidate: I'm here today to thank all of those who are working to get folks the support and the relief that they so desperately need and so rightly deserve, and particularly devastating in terms of the loss of life that this community has experienced, the loss of normalcy and the loss of critical resources.

LISA DESJARDINS: Meanwhile, fresh off last night's CBS vice presidential debate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz kicked off a Pennsylvania bus tour.

GOV.

TIM WALZ (D-MN), Vice Presidential Candidate: From her first day as a prosecutor to right now as vice president, Kamala Harris has only one client, the people, the people, the people.

(CHEERING) (APPLAUSE) LISA DESJARDINS: And Donald Trump's running mate, Ohio Senator J.D.

Vance, rallied crowds in Michigan.

SEN. J.D.

VANCE (R-OH), Vice Presidential Candidate: We already ran this experiment once.

Donald Trump's economic policies worked for American families.

They worked for American consumers.

NORAH O'DONNELL, Moderator: Governor, Senator, thank you for joining us.

LISA DESJARDINS: In the vice presidential debate last night, Vance came out focused on Harris.

SEN. J.D.

VANCE: Governor Walz, you blame Donald Trump.

Who has been the vice president for the last 3.5 years?

And the answer is your running mate, not mine.

LISA DESJARDINS: While Governor Walz had a shake your start.

He was asked about the Middle East and whether Israel should preemptively strike at Iran.

GOV.

TIM WALZ: Iran -- or Israel's ability to be able to defend itself is absolutely fundamental, getting its hostages back, fundamental, and ending the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

LISA DESJARDINS: At the top of Senator Vance's agenda, immigration.

Moderators asked him about former President Trump's vow to carry out mass deportations.

SEN. J.D.

VANCE: I think the first thing that we do is, we start with the criminal migrants.

About a million of those people have committed some form of crime, in addition to crossing the border illegally.

LISA DESJARDINS: The contrast was clear, but the tone civil.

Walz blamed Trump for blocking a relatively conservative border bill and criticized Vance for inflammatory false statements about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio.

GOV.

TIM WALZ: I believe Senator Vance wants to solve this.

But by standing with Donald Trump and not working together to find a solution, it becomes a talking point.

And when it becomes a talking point like this, we dehumanize and villainize other human beings.

SEN. J.D.

VANCE: The people that I'm most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris' open border.

LISA DESJARDINS: The moderators stepped in with one of just two fact-checks in the debate, sparking a fiery exchange.

MARGARET BRENNAN, Moderator: And just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected status -- Norah.

NORAH O'DONNELL: Thank you.

SEN. J.D.

VANCE: Well, Margaret, but no.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Senator, we have so much to get to.

SENATOR J.D.

VANCE: Margaret, I think it's important, because the debate -- Margaret, the -- the rules were that guys weren't going to fact-check.

LISA DESJARDINS: Another substantive contrast came over abortion.

Vance was asked about his previous support of a national 15-week ban.

He called it a national standard and pivoted to say Republicans have to do better in explaining their position.

SEN. J.D.

VANCE: As a Republican who proudly wants to protect innocent life in this country, who proudly wants to protect the vulnerable, is that my party, we have got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people's trust back on this issue where they, frankly, just don't trust us.

And I think that's one of the things that Donald Trump and I are endeavoring to do.

I want us as a Republican Party to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word.

LISA DESJARDINS: But Walz found his footing and blasted Vance's words as masking a GOP that he sees as oppressing women's rights.

GOV.

TIM WALZ: How can we as a nation say that your life and your rights as basic as the right to control your own body is determined on geography?

Donald Trump is trying to figure out how to get the political right of this.

I agree with a lot of what Senator Vance said about what's happening.

His running mate, though, does not, and that's the problem.

LISA DESJARDINS: The debate was often substantive and notably more congenial than past face-offs, ending on a question and key exchange about democracy.

Vance in the past has said he would have tried to block the 2020 results.

He was asked if he would challenge election results this year if he loses.

SEN. J.D.

VANCE: Look, what President Trump has said is that there were problems in 2020, and my own belief is that we should fight about those issues, debate those issues peacefully in the public square, and that's all I have said and that's all that Donald Trump has said.

LISA DESJARDINS: But Walz criticized Vance for not acknowledging the election results and Trump's relationship to the January 6 Capitol riot.

GOV.

TIM WALZ: This is one that we are miles apart on.

This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen, and it manifested itself because of Donald Trump's inability to say -- he is still saying he didn't lose the election.

I would just ask that.

Did he lose the 2020 election?

SEN. J.D.

VANCE: Tim, I'm focused on the future.

Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?

(CROSSTALK) GOV.

TIM WALZ: That is a damning nonanswer.

LISA DESJARDINS: Elsewhere, at a Wisconsin news conference last night, Trump himself also had a telling nonanswer to the same question.

QUESTION: Do you trust the process this time around?

DONALD TRUMP, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: I will let you know in about 33 days.

LISA DESJARDINS: Closing in on one month left and still many questions about how this ends.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Lisa Desjardins.

AMNA NAWAZ: We start the day's other headlines with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

President Biden has ordered 1,000 active-duty troops to the region to help with aid efforts.

The announcement came just hours before his visit to the Carolinas today to survey the devastation left behind by the storm.

Biden touched down in Greenville, South Carolina, and then from a helicopter got a bird's-eye view of the storm-battered region.

Later, in Raleigh, North Carolina, he committed to covering 100 percent of all costs related to debris removal in the state for six months.

JOE BIDEN, President of the United States: The damage is still being assessed, but -- and many people are still unaccounted for.

So I'm here to say, the United States, the nation has your back.

The nation has your back.

We're not leaving until your back on your feet completely.

AMNA NAWAZ: Residents in North Carolina are still navigating knee-deep muck, crumbled roadways, and little to no cell phone signal.

More than 180 people have died across the Southeastern U.S. Before heading to the Carolinas, President Biden also addressed the dockworkers strike, likening it to a potential manmade disaster on top of the storm.

Mr. Biden was highly critical of the port owners, saying they should not profit from the ongoing walkout, adding that -- quote -- "It's time for them to sit at the table and to get the strike done."

Roughly 45,000 dockworkers walked off the job this week at dozens of ports from Texas to Maine.

They're calling for higher pay and guarantees that their jobs won't become automated.

There are currently no negotiations scheduled between the two sides.

In Denmark, police have detained three young Swedish nationals in connection with two explosions near the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen this morning.

Investigators say no one was injured by the pre-dawn blasts, which were likely caused by hand grenades.

They went off about 100 yards from the embassy, although it's not clear if that was the target.

A Jewish school in the vicinity closed for the day, and Copenhagen's main synagogue stepped up security for the Jewish new year, which starts tonight.

Turning now to Ukraine, where the fall of a front-line town has given Russia a vital battlefield victory.

Ukraine's military said today it will retreat from Vuhledar in the east after holding the town for more than two years of fierce fighting.

Its high elevation and access to rail lines make it a strategic hub for the region.

Russia had been bombing the site for months, and a spokesman for Ukraine's military command said troops on the ground had been nearly surrounded by Russian forces.

NAZAR VOLOSHYN, Ukrainian Military Spokesman (through translator): After sustaining many losses in long-lasting battles, a threat of besiegement arose.

Senior command granted permission to carry out a maneuver to withdraw units from Vuhledar in order to preserve personnel and military equipment and take positions for further action.

AMNA NAWAZ: This latest setback for Ukraine comes amid repeated pleas by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for permission to use Western-supplied weapons to strike targets deep inside Russian territory.

The U.S. and others have so far denied those requests.

The CIA is trying to make it easier for potential informants to share tips, especially in places like North Korea, Iran and China.

The agency rolled out an online drive today with instructions in Korean, Farsi and Mandarin on ways people can contact U.S. intelligence officials without putting themselves in danger.

That includes using virtual private networks or VPNs and private web browsers.

The CIA posted similar instructions in Russia two years ago after the Ukraine invasion.

In a statement, the agency said it wants to expand on those efforts -- quote -- "to make sure individuals in other authoritarian regimes know that we're open for business."

Closing arguments began today in the federal trial of three former Memphis police officers charged with violating the civil rights of Tyre Nichols.

Prosecutor Kathryn Gilbert told jurors that the officers involved wanted a -- quote -- "beat-down" after the 29-year-old ran from police after a traffic stop last year.

A lawyer for one of the officers insisted that -- quote -- "The force was not excessive."

Nichols later died from traumatic brain injuries.

Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith did not testify at the trial.

The two other officers who were involved have pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution.

On Wall Street today, the major markets ended virtually unchanged amid ongoing worries about the situation in the Middle East.

The Dow Jones industrial average added about 40 points on the day.

The Nasdaq rose nearly 15 points, so a small gain there.

The S&P 500 ended the day virtually flat.

And voting has begun in one of the most hotly contested elections of the season.

We're talking, of course, about Fat Bear Week.

It's an online contest pitting 12 chunky bears in a March Madness-style bracket to decide which one has put on the most weight ahead of the hibernating season.

This is the 10th annual Fat Bear Week, which is meant to celebrate Alaska's brown bears.

Last year, more than 1.3 million votes were cast.

Voting runs through October 8.

Still to come on the "News Hour": as Generation Z overtakes the number of Baby Boomers in the work force, we examine changing perspectives on jobs; members of the U.S.

Postal Service sound the alarm about a lack of preparedness for the election; and the authors of a new book on Elon Musk's control of Twitter discuss his controversial impact on the platform.

GEOFF BENNETT: Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 storm in Florida, but it's towns across Western North Carolina hundreds of miles from the coast and thousands of feet above sea level that have seen some of the worst destruction.

Communities once considered climate havens are now facing a harsh reality.

There may be no such thing.

William Brangham joins us now with more -- William.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That's right Geoff.

Asheville, which is temperate, inland, nestled up in the hills with lots of freshwater, often ranks high on lists of so-called climate-safe cities.

But experts are skeptical of the idea that any community is truly out of reach of the impacts of climate change.

This storm has driven that point home in the worst way possible.

To discuss how a warming world impacts us all and what individuals and communities can do about it, we are joined by climate expert Alex Steffen.

He writes the newsletter The Snap Forward.

Alex Steffen, so good to have you on the "News Hour."

I mean, as I mentioned, Asheville for years has had this reputation as, a haven a place you could go to live a safe life in the woods and in the hills, insulated in some way from climate change.

What does this storm tell us about that conceit.

ALEX STEFFEN, The Snap Forward: Well, I think it tells us three things.

First, I think it tells us that nowhere is totally safe.

And, second I think it tells us that while there are places that are relatively safe compared to others, even those relatively safe places can have a tragic disaster.

And that means the third thing that we all have to be thinking in our own lives, in our own communities about how we're going to prepare for what's coming and ensure that we have the best chances.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: As you mentioned, some places are more resilient than others and potentially more protected than others.

But do you think it's even a wrong question for people to be thinking about moving to a place that is -- quote, unquote -- "safe from climate change"?

ALEX STEFFEN: Well the way I like to talk about it when I teach classes and do talks is that the thing we want to think about most is moving away from risk.

There are places that we know for sure have very high and rising risks.

There are places that have fewer risks.

And I think that, if you live in a really dangerous, vulnerable place, moving is in fact probably the best thing you can do.

And I think millions of people in America will be moving over the next couple of decades.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I mean, as you're talking, I'm thinking about -- I mean, apart from the human toll that these disasters cause, there are so many embed assumptions made in where we live, the houses people buy, the mortgages that banks give, the businesses that are bought and run.

I mean, it seems those places -- those are all done with an assumption of certainty.

And this seems to call all of that into question.

ALEX STEFFEN: Absolutely.

We built these great lives for the needs we had in the past.

And we have thriving communities and folks have homes and we have businesses and infrastructure that were all built for how the world worked a couple of decades ago.

But the world doesn't work that way anymore.

So there's been a discontinuity.

What we're used to thinking about, what we thought we knew, how we act and our expertise, all that is up in the air now because now we need to think and act in new ways.

That's a really hard thing for people to get their heads around.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Right.

In fact, the data, I think, indicates that people, rather than doing what you're suggesting, moving away from risk, are in fact moving into risk.

They may not be doing it intentionally, but they're moving to areas that we know are more and more dangerous.

How -- what is -- what should individuals do to try to make an assessment about smart moving, if they're going to do so?

ALEX STEFFEN: Well, at the very basic level, we should be looking to resources like the FEMA risk maps that exist and making sure that we're not moving right into the jaws of harm.

But at a longer -- at a larger level, we need to be thinking on a broader scale and understanding that each person's answers will be different based on their community, their politics, their race, their creed, and that each person also can balance different risks more capably.

And so we need to start digging into what actually makes a place safe, not just how endangered is it by climate change and other ecological problems, but how well is the community coming together?

How effective is local government?

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: It also seems that the role of government plays a big part here, because every time we rebuild a coastal community that has been leveled multiple times by storms, you're signaling to people, it's OK to move back here, it is OK to live near this beach or on this slipping wetland.

I mean, what role would you like government to take, broadly speaking?

ALEX STEFFEN: Well, in an ideal world, we would be moving much faster to head off further climate change by lowering our emissions, and we would be engaged in a nationwide process of helping people who are most at risk have supported migration away from those places, meaning that they have resources and help to actually make these moves, but also that we're making some tough choices, doing some triage about what places can we easily defend and what places might be a little too hard to save.

And, unfortunately, we are at that point in things.

We can't save everything.

So we have got to be smart about where we put our dollars.

Right now, we're not even being smart at all.

We're not -- barely doing anything.

So we need to do a lot better.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Right.

And it does seem like the incentives are running completely in the wrong direction, that it's very difficult for a local leader to say no to those new housing permits and tax revenues out of concern for this, what are - - what's often thought of as a future risk.

ALEX STEFFEN: Yes.

I mean, if there's any lesson that we have learned from Helene and other storms and disasters, it's that we used to think of climate change as being something that would happen elsewhere sometime in the future and with somebody else's problem to worry about.

And none of those things are true.

It's here.

It's happening where you live, and nobody's coming to save you.

You have got to be part of the solution in your own life.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, Alex Steffen, who writes the wonderful newsletter The Snap Forward, thank you so much for being here.

ALEX STEFFEN: My pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

AMNA NAWAZ: This year, for the first time, members of Generation Z, those born after 1997, are expected to outnumber Baby Boomers in the work force.

They bring with them, like past generations, different expectations, attitudes towards upper management and views on the importance of work in their daily lives.

Stephanie Sy has more in a moment.

But, first, let's hear from workers in those different generations.

CHRIS HICKS, Millennial: I'm Chris Hicks, a 29-year-old Millennial engineer from Cleveland, Ohio.

INGRID KAMPHAUS, Generation X: My name is Ingrid Kamphaus.

I am Generation X. I am based in Springfield, Illinois.

I work in state government, and I am a learning and development manager.

GABRIEL CASUL, Generation Z: My name is Gabriel Casul.

I'm a retail sales associate and part of Gen Z. LUCINDA MANLEY, Baby Boomer: My name is Lucinda Manley.

I work in Florida in the insurance industry and have for over 40 years, and I am the Boomer generation.

INGRID KAMPHAUS: I would say, for a good portion of my career, I did make work my identity.

I am not proud of that.

It would be to the point where I was working every evening, all the time on the weekends.

There were many times where my partner would take the laptop out of my hands as we were in bed.

CHRIS HICKS: I had to force myself to work within certain hours and then turn off my phone afterwards, right, just so that way I can maintain some sort of peace for myself and protect my relationships and hobbies.

LUCINDA MANLEY: I was working for a company that we had high-demand customers.

My daughter at the time was going to take her driver's test.

In the middle of all of this, I was doing a certificate of insurance, and I remember her telling me: "Mom, can you stop working?

I'm learning to drive.

I'm taking my test.

Can you focus on me for a change?"

That was sort of an epiphany for me to know that it was getting to be too much.

The strong work ethic was actually ruling not just my life, but the life of my family.

GABRIEL CASUL: Gen Z is finally taking the stance on demanding what boundaries can be set, what rules should be followed.

We're being asked to take on jobs of three to four different people, meet those expectations and then exceed expectations, all while being paid to bare minimum.

Quite frankly, me and my generation, we don't see that as a substantial way of living.

People like to tout that they work 60, 70 hours a week, but we ask the question, what -- is that life?

Is that really living?

LUCINDA MANLEY: For me, there's never really been a reward for all the hard work.

Don't get me wrong, I have a great job, but it never really came with the rewards that I thought, especially monetary rewards.

CHRIS HICKS: Work supports my relationships.

It supports my ability to go out and have lunch with my friends and visit family.

So I have worked to live because those things are more important.

This - - work is the foundation and it feeds all the things that I need or that I really prioritize.

INGRID KAMPHAUS: What I wish I would have known starting my career is that my value as a person is not coupled to the work that I'm doing.

Really, what did it was onboarding the younger generation and really buying into the Millennials, where it's like, hey, 5:00, I'm done, no weekends and all that.

So I'm really taking a cue from that generation.

GABRIEL CASUL: Older generations will constantly say that we are lazy, we don't want to work, we just want handouts, when, in reality, we want things to be fair, we want things to be acceptable when it comes to pay, for example.

The cost of living has gone up and companies are making record profits and we're just not seeing that down at the bottom.

STEPHANIE SY: For more, I'm joined by Kyla Scanlon, a writer and content creator that focuses on economics.

Kyla, thanks so much for joining the "News Hour."

You heard from that last comment that we just played from Gabriel, the Gen Z'er, a lot of the things that you talk about on social media, which is the idea that Gen Z'ers feel they can no longer achieve the American dream by working.

Is that the reason why a lot of Gen Z'ers have simply decided to forego work?

KYLA SCANLON, Writer and Video Creator: Yes, I mean, I think Gen Z has had a tough go of it, being essentially born into the tech bubble, growing up during the Great Recession and then graduating or being in college during the pandemic.

It's all quite difficult.

And I think the relationship between the employer and the employee has deteriorated significantly over the past 25 years or so.

And so a lot of Gen Z'ers look at the traditional 9:00-to-5:00 structure and they're like, that doesn't necessarily offer me what it maybe offered my parents or grandparents.

So they seek out flexible work arrangements.

They seek out maybe consulting or different types of freelancing work versus going after a more traditional corporate structure.

STEPHANIE SY: You talk a lot about housing affordability as being part of that American dream.

There has been some data in the past year that shows younger workers within Gen Z have actually seen about an 8 percent rise in wage growth.

That's more than the overall population.

Why isn't wage growth enough to offset those financial burdens that seem so keenly felt by Gen Z'ers?

KYLA SCANLON: Yes, I mean, I think housing definitely impacts pretty much everybody, not just Gen Z.

But I think for a lot of Gen Z'ers, rent is definitely not as affordable as it used to be.

Real wages have increased, so wages adjusted for inflation, but rent has increased much more.

And that's sort of the foundation of how everyone experiences the economy.

It's where you live and how you have to pay for where you live.

And so I think people look at the price of rent, they look at the price of gas, they look at the price of food, they just look at the inflation that we have experienced over the past few years, and it's sometimes just not enough to even make those real wage gains worth it.

STEPHANIE SY: It goes back to a term that I believe you coined, which is vibecession, the feeling that there's a vibe that we're in a recession, even though the economy is not in that place.

You attribute that to housing.

What are the vibes now, especially as we head into an election?

KYLA SCANLON: Yes, so the vibecession is that disconnect between consumer sentiment and economic data.

And a lot of it is structural affordability like housing.

It's also the cost of childcare, eldercare, these things that are economically quite painful, but don't necessarily show up in traditional economic measurements like GDP, et cetera.

They're things that are kind of these hidden costs that people experience.

There's also the media sentiment that drives a lot of how people feel about their economic circumstances.

Media sentiment has trended negative for a long time, and that's just, unfortunately, the business model in a lot of cases.

And so people are reading headlines that are quite negative, dealing with structural affordability problems, despite everyone being like, well, the economy is OK. And so there's a bit of a disconnect there.

And I think, especially for the younger generation, they get most of their news from social media, which definitely has a little bit of a clickbait phenomenon.

And I think it really does drive how people experience economic circumstances.

And then, going into the election, that's also quite difficult, because both candidates are trying to win.

And so both candidates are saying things to win.

And some of that can be confusing if you don't have a proper understanding of the economy.

STEPHANIE SY: That is Kyla Scanlon, who focuses on the economy on her social media channels.

Kyla, thanks so much for joining us with your insights.

KYLA SCANLON: Thanks for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: U.S. postal workers held rallies across the country yesterday, warning of what they call substandard performance by the U.S.

Postal Service.

The rallies were organized by the American Postal Workers Union, which is calling for the public's help in demanding improved staffing for postal workers, better customer service, and more opportunity for public input.

All of this comes ahead of the presidential election, where millions of Americans will be voting by mail.

Mark Dimondstein is president of the American Postal Workers Union, and he joins us now.

It's great to have you here.

MARK DIMONDSTEIN, President, American Postal Workers Union: Great to be here.

Thanks so much.

GEOFF BENNETT: So the Postal Service says it's committed to the secure and timely delivery of election mail and ballots in this election season.

Is the Postal Service up to the job?

MARK DIMONDSTEIN: We believe they are.

Postal workers are absolutely dedicated to our mission in general, and specifically around making sure that the people of this country have that kind of access to the ballot box and their cherished right to vote on a nonpartisan basis that the Postal Service can bring to the people of this country.

It's interesting.

In 2020, almost half the people in the country voted by mail.

In the midterms, about a third of the people voted by mail.

It works.

It's not fraudulent.

Everything says that, the audits, the recounts.

Vote by mail is a great way to vote, increases participation, makes it easier for people to vote.

I'm a lucky one.

I get a ballot automatically to my home in Washington, D.C., and my wife and I can vote at the kitchen table.

And so we encourage people to have full confidence in the Postal Service and the postal workers that will get their ballots there through the system, on time.

The Postal Service has put in a lot of extraordinary measures to make sure it gets done.

So the people of this country can have absolute trust and confidence in us that we will be there, just like we were in 2020 and 2022.

GEOFF BENNETT: Is the effort focused on election mail coming at the expense of the rest of the Postal Service?

MARK DIMONDSTEIN: Well, in a moment, it might, but it's such an important aspect of the public Postal Service's role in our society, that we accept that election mail, they are putting in what they call extraordinary measures.

And some of those include moving election mail ahead of other mail.

Now, those measures also include more overtime, more transportation, more clearing the election ballots.

And that's all part of why we have the confidence and the people of this country should have the confidence that we're going to come through.

But we also are saying yesterday, part of our message yesterday, is, as good as election mail is going to be, as important as it is, and as how much trust and confidence the people should have in it and will have in it, we want the people's mail to be treated that way every day of the year, because however we choose to use the Postal Service, that's important to us as a postal customer and patron.

So part of our message is trust election mail, we're confident, but let's make sure that postal management puts into place those kind of things and make sure people get this kind of service every day of the year.

We need more staffing, for example.

We can't serve the people of the country unless we have better staffing.

We have 10,000 less postal clerks who we do represent now than we did a few years back, and we got tons and tons of more packages to move because that's part of the way the mail is changing.

So there is a lot of work ahead of us to fix the problems.

And management has to do that.

GEOFF BENNETT: I reached out to the U.S.

Postal Service in advance of speaking with you, and they provided a statement, part of which reads this way.

It says: "We are executing on strategies to pull together the people, technology, transportation, equipment and facilities into a well-integrated and streamlined mail and package network."

In your view, is the Postal Service investing in the work force and the staff in a way that is sustainable?

MARK DIMONDSTEIN: Maybe the verdict is still out on that.

We accept, postal workers accept, our union accepts that the Postal Service is going through some needed change.

The communication habits of the people of the country have fundamentally changed with the advent of the Internet.

Letter mail is down, still very important, but down.

Packages are rising.

And that may result in changes in transportation, changes in machines, changes in buildings and so on.

But along the way, while we accept the need for change, we want to make sure that that change is always improving service.

And so far, the implementation of that change and some of the changes is actually going to slow down mail more.

We're completely against that.

We were out there yesterday standing with the people of the country for that prompt, reliable and efficient service promised under the law.

So there's some growing pains.

We will have to see where it ends up.

Some of the things we have been advocating, the Postal Service has listened to.

For instance, we believe that local mail, mail that you mail in your area for your area should stay in your area and not go on a truck ride five or six hours somewhere to come back.

Postal management has begun to address some of those concerns.

And there are other things like that, and we want everybody to be treated equally, whether you're in rural America, urban America, suburban America.

And some of the plans that postal management is putting into place, we believe will punish particularly rural America.

That's not the fundamental mission of the Postal Service.

No matter where we live, no matter who we are, we should get the same good service.

GEOFF BENNETT: Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, thanks for coming in.

MARK DIMONDSTEIN: Thank you.

AMNA NAWAZ: He is the richest person in the world, but also one of the most controversial and increasingly engaged in polarizing political debates.

A new book details the tumultuous leadership of Elon Musk and his approach to owning the social media platform X.

It was two years ago this month when he shocked the world with a huge deal to buy what was then known as Twitter.

Ali Rogin has that conversation for our Bookshelf series.

ALI ROGIN: The $44 billion deal gave Elon Musk total control of one of the most influential media platforms in the world.

Now X, the company and its site, have changed dramatically.

New York Times technology reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac are co-authors of "Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter."

And they join me now.

Thank you both so much.

Elon Musk, as you relay in the book, characterized himself as the savior of Twitter.

What did he think was wrong with it and why did he feel like he needed to come in and save it?

KATE CONGER, Co-Author, "Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter": Elon Musk really disagreed with a lot of the content moderation decisions that were being made by Twitter's former leadership.

There were accounts being banned that he disagreed with.

And he just wanted a more free-flowing platform that allowed different kinds of speech.

So when he sought out the deal, he said he didn't care about the finances of it.

He didn't care if he made money.

He just sort of wanted Twitter as an ideological tool.

ALI ROGIN: And what did free speech mean to Elon Musk?

Because it certainly seemed to end up meaning something different to him.

RYAN MAC, Co-Author, "Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter": It's kind of unclear, right?

He's talked about this idea of free speech when he bought the platform.

And maybe he was talking about this kind of unfettered world where there's no content moderation.

But he's also said free speech to him means that he will abide by whatever local law Twitter is operating under.

So it means if there's a law in India, for example, that requires him to take down content, he will abide by that.

And he's done that so far.

And so that, by most definitions, isn't necessarily free speech.

And it's been a bit weird to see how he's operated the platform.

ALI ROGIN: Morale at the company began to flag as soon as rumors of the deal came about.

So walk us through how that went and how bad it got and how fast it went so bad.

RYAN MAC: Yes.

I mean, when he -- there were rumors of his takeover, a lot of people were concerned about layoffs and they were concerned about their jobs.

There was subsets of people that were also excited about him coming in and changing things.

Twitter wasn't a perfect place before the takeover either.

But there were rumors flying around, 75 percent cuts, for example, of jobs.

And he comes in pretty soon before closing the deal.

He's walking around the office saying, oh, he's trying to assure people he's not -- that's not going to happen.

Well, lo and behold, a series of cuts have happened since then and thousands of people have been laid off.

And so it's been, from a morale standpoint, a disaster.

ALI ROGIN: And it seems like some of the people that he brought in really treated him like the leader of a cult.

You know that many people got that impression of him.

Tell us about that.

KATE CONGER: Yes, so the people around Elon Musk really view him as a once-in-a-generation leader.

And they're very attached to the missions that he puts forward for his various companies, whether that's expanding green energy through Tesla or getting humanity to Mars through SpaceX.

They're very bought into those missions and they feel like they need to do whatever is possible for them to protect him and protect the mission.

And so that really means walling him off from any kind of criticism or pushback as he makes these very uncomfortable decisions.

ALI ROGIN: He's obviously been very politically outspoken lately.

He recently tweeted and then deleted a question about why there haven't been assassination attempts against President Biden and Vice President Harris.

Tell us about his political evolution.

KATE CONGER: Yes, so Elon Musk started off not being particularly invested in politics.

It wasn't something that interested him deeply.

He was really focused on other issues.

And we saw a couple of moments in reporting on the book that really radicalized him, one being the COVID shutdowns in California.

He was very upset that those disrupted the operations of his Tesla factories.

And he was also going through some personal strife at that time with one of his children who was going through a gender transition.

He really objected to that.

And he now refers to his daughter as dead to him, essentially.

So he had these big radicalizing moments that shifted him more towards right-wing politics.

And he also began to feel snubbed by the Biden administration.

He felt like he was being left out from an electrical vehicle summit that the White House held.

And so he started to become more critical of Biden and shift towards Trump and other Republican contenders.

ALI ROGIN: And he's destroyed the valuation of this company.

He -- and lost a lot of his and other people's money.

RYAN MAC: Yes.

ALI ROGIN: And yet he's hailed as such a visionary and a success in many other industries, of course, leading in electric vehicles, in space exploration.

RYAN MAC: Right.

ALI ROGIN: How is it that a leader like him could experience such different highs and lows in these different industries that he... RYAN MAC: Yes, let's talk about that value loss.

It's $44 billion he paid for it.

He's now personally valuing it internally at $19 billion.

We have investors like Fidelity who have marked it down to about $12 billion.

That's a massive loss in valuation.

And I think there's a lesson to be learned here.

This is someone who has electrified cars, he has sent things into space, revolutionized those industries, no doubt.

But just because you have done that doesn't necessarily make you an expert in running a social media company.

And he came in with this hubris, this confidence that he could run it better than anyone else, and he's learning the hard way.

ALI ROGIN: Elon Musk bought the company for $44 billion.

But he can weather that -- those losses.

Did he get what he wanted here?

I mean, did he succeed in what he set out to achieve with this acquisition?

KATE CONGER: I think so.

I think he really wanted control of the platform from an ideological perspective.

And he's been able to do a lot of the things that he wanted to do, bringing back accounts that had been banned, like President Donald Trump's, for example, shooting himself to become the most followed account on the platform, becoming more and more popular, and getting more engagement and attention there.

So, in a lot of ways, this has been very successful to him.

I don't think that means he's not bothered by the financial losses.

I think that is of great concern for him.

The loans on this deal, he has to pay a billion dollars in interest alone every year.

So it is a financial pressure, even for someone as wealthy as him.

And that may come to bear more and more on the company as we go forward.

ALI ROGIN: The book is "Character Limit."

Ryan Mac, Kate Conger, thank you both so much for coming in.

RYAN MAC: Thank you.

KATE CONGER: Thank you so much for having us.

GEOFF BENNETT: And that's the "NewsHour" for tonight.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

AMNA NAWAZ: And I'm Amna Nawaz.

On behalf of the entire "News Hour" team, thank you for joining us.