June 18, 2026 - PBS News Hour full episode

Good evening. I'm Amna Nawaz. Jeff Bennett is away. On the news hour tonight, the U.S. lifts its blockade on the Strait of Hormuz after the U.S. and Iran signed a memorandum offering a pathway to a peace deal. A new Tennessee law requires children's immigration status to be reported to ICE if they're receiving government-funded medical services. Advocates now fear some kids won't get the care they need. and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber on the success of a reimagined Cat's musical and the evolution of his illustrious career. If you can have the kind of career that I've had doing the one thing that I really enjoy, I can't do anything other than say I'm the luckiest man alive. Welcome to the news.

News Hour. The U.S. announced today that it's lifting the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz to let ships pass through. Sea traffic there has been at a standstill since nearly the start of the war. An Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, blessed the deal with the U.S., saying it was, quote, desperation that drove President Trump to the bargaining table. Liz Landers begins our coverage again tonight. First of all, I think the president's peace plan in Iran is already bearing real fruits for the American people. Vice President JD Vance, a self-professed skeptic of foreign wars, is now the face of President Donald Trump's tentative agreement to end the war with Iran. Their economy is an absolute dire straits. But in order for them to get any integration in the world economy, they're going to have to show us and verify for us that they are changing their behavior.

And that's why the deal is set up in the way that it is. The 14-point memorandum of understanding opens the Strait of Hormuz with the U.S. ending the naval blockade and Iran, ensuring pre-war ship movement for 60 days while lifting sanctions immediately on Iranian oil and petroleum products. It also sets up future talks on the nuclear ambitions of the country, while forcing the Iranian regime to downblend their highly enriched uranium. The agreement was read to reporters yesterday. The White House has yet to release the text. The United Nations Nuclear Watchdog welcomed the interim agreement today. Director General Rafael Grosses said his agency would be involved in technical discussions to implement the agreement.

And now it's for us to sit down with our American colleagues, our Iranian colleagues, and start formulating the concrete steps that will have to be taken. In Tehran today, some Iranians reacted with skepticism and pessimism about the newly signed deal. I have no hope at all that this agreement will be carried out because America has proven numerous times that it's nothing but a liar. A sentiment echoed by Israelis today. I honestly don't know much about it. I just know that it doesn't stop the war and it doesn't stop the hate.

And it sucks for me because I really believed in Trump and I believe that it would end the war. But Israel and Hezbollah, neither a party to the agreement, presented potential stumbling block on the ground in Lebanon. The Memorandum of Understanding says that Lebanon is included in the ceasefire. But today's attacks killed at least three people in southern Lebanon, according to Lebanon's state news agency. Iran has said continued Israeli attacks would breach the agreement. The angry denunciations of the deal from Israeli leaders drew unusually sharp criticism from Vice President JD Vance. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful, ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world. More shifting rhetoric on one of America's strongest

allies that reflects a White House where broader messaging is apparently malleable. In February, the day the war began, President Trump's view on Iran's missiles was clear. We are going to destroy their missiles and raise their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally again obliterated. And then just yesterday, I'm saying that if other countries have them, It's a little bit unfair for them not to have some. In March, the president originally suggested that regime change was an objective and the Iranian people could take control of their government. But we've had regime change. You look already, we're dealing with different people than anybody's dealt with before.

It's a whole different group of people. So I would consider that regime change. But on Tuesday, he said, now you talk about regime change. I never cared about regime change. It's never a part. And the administration has lowered expectations about what happened. to the Iranian stockpile of highly enriched uranium, initially saying, We have to take that, that we call it the nuclear dust, right?

But we have to take that nuclear dust. We're going to take it. And that's part of our negotiation with Iran. But the agreement only stipulates that Iran must downblend to the material on site pending broader negotiations. They have promised not to enrich. They have promised that they would allow inspectors in to destroy that highly enriched stockpile. And then, of course, it's not used.

usable anymore, you take it somewhere else. This afternoon, the president made sure to tout the stock market, saying, The stock market just hit a new all-time high. The 401Ks just hit a new all-time high, and oil is dropping like a rock. Other than that, it's another day in paradise. Meantime, JD Vance was expected to attend a signing ceremony with the Iranians in Switzerland on Friday, but told reporters today that timing may slide into the weekend. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Lizzie.

No, I don't agree with that. From my perspective, it's a mixed bag, but I'm willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt. I mean, he's gone to war against Iran and his proxies three times, just in this term, once against the Houthis, Operation Midnight Hammer and now Epic Fury. I think he's really done more to degrade Iran's. capabilities than any other president and I think we should give him a little leeway. With this agreement, though, Iran is now saying it won't work towards a nuclear weapon, the strait of Hormuz is open.

Both of those were true before the war. So what's fundamentally changed? Well, what's fundamentally changed is that Iran's nuclear program has been destroyed for all intents and purposes, and they're not enriching uranium. And I think the most important clause of the memorandum understanding is that the nuclear or status quo will remain in place as long as the MOU is in place. So as long as they're negotiating, there's not going to be any enrichment. That's a fundamentally different quality that we've had with Iran since they started enriching

uranium in 2006. You wrote about this in a piece recently that the agreement buys the U.S. time to allow ships to leave the Persian Gulf, also time for the U.S. to rearm, to replenish its stockpiles, and get ready to attack Iran again, as President. Trump has threatened to do if they don't comply with the deal. Doesn't that timeline also allow for Iran to replenish its stockpiles and get ready? Yes and no. I think we have the upper hand there because, like I said, number one, they're not enriching uranium, so we don't have that pressure on us.

And then we can also see what they're doing with missiles and with proxies. And if they start to misbehave, then we can strike them. And they know that. They're under enormous economic pressure. and we have a kind of economic chokehold on them. So I think that there is, we don't have to be, we have a little bit of room for error here, and we can test and see where this will go. You mentioned the missiles and the proxies, though.

As Liz Landers just pointed out in her report, there's no language about stopping support for proxies in the region in this framework deal. And the president has seemed to walk back that goal of ending their missile capability. They were striking allies in the region just a couple of weeks ago. How are allies in the region safer now?

Well, the number one thing the president is focused on is ending a nuclear Iran. I don't actually believe that this larger framework is ever going to come into being. I think the Iranians are going to behave the way they always do. You've been a larger deal on the nuclear ambitions. Yeah, on all of it. I think this is really basically, in essence, a deal to open up the start. and to relieve, to allow the Iranians to sell some oil, get some frozen assets return to them in return for allowing us to get all of our allies oil out.

It pushes all of the larger issues into the distance. I think we're going to be in MOU land. I mean, we have 60 days of an MOU, which is renewable, and we're supposed to negotiate this larger deal during that time. I think what we're going to find is that six months from now, we're still going to be in MOU land. And that's okay with me if we're still in MOU land. MOU land can go on forever because they're not enriching uranium while that's happening. We heard the president explicitly say oil supplies would be depleted in a matter of weeks if the war had gone on. In your view, did domestic energy and political pressures force the president to make a deal at this moment?

I think it was the three inns. It was markets, munitions, and midterm elections. So he was looking at a spike in oil prices, and he was worried about the effect that that would have on the midterms. But also, he's concerned about the expenditure of interceptors. We don't know the exact numbers. This is one of the best kept secrets, but it's not a secret that we burned through a lot of our interceptors, and that made it.

a lot of our allies nervous around the world. Michael Duran, the Hudson Institute. Thank you so much for being here today. We appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thank you. captured the explosion at a fuel depot with the massive storage lid flying into the air like a popped cork. A drone also hit this residential building nearby. The barrage turned the skies over Russia's capital city into a ceiling of smoke. Speaking in Brussels today, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strikes were in response to Russia's attack on an historic monastery complex earlier this week. Our mid-range strikes are seriously disrupting Russian military logistics, but Vladimir Putin is not stopping this war. Russia's defense ministry said today's Ukrainian assault was the largest since the war began more than four years ago.

And Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov vowed that strikes on Ukrainian targets will continue, quote, on a regular basis. The U.S. Supreme Court today sided with a Texas man who said his marijuana use shouldn't make it a crime for him to have a gun. The justices unanimously found that the federal ban against all regular drug users from owning guns violated the Second Amendment. That same law was used to convict Hunter Biden back in 2024. He was later pardoned by his father, then President Joe Biden. The Trump administration has defended the law despite arguing against other gun restrictions. Today's opinion was a narrow one, applying only to drug users who are not considered dangerous. In parts of the Midwest today, residents took stock of the wreckage after powerful storms tore through the area.

Cell phone video showed what appeared to be a large tornado hitting Effingham, Illinois, overnight. By daybreak, the extent of the damage was clear, though authorities say there were no serious injuries. Meantime... Right, in the current. In my own yard. Downpours from what was tropical storm Arthur swamped entire Gulf Coast neighborhoods. More rain is expected. through tomorrow from Mississippi to the Carolinas.

And from floods to flames. Firefighters in Washington State have been working to contain a blaze near Spokane that's destroyed at least 15 homes and forced about 1,500 people to evacuate. Authorities say they found possible human remains in one of the homes. In Los Angeles, officials say there's no longer any threat of hazardous air after a massive warehouse fire east of the city. It tore through a cold storage warehouse, sending large plumes of smoke across the Boyle Heights neighborhood. Authorities say it started on the building's roof, which is covered in solar panels, and reached an ammonia line, which led to several small explosions.

That prompted a shelter-in-place order, which has since been lifted. There have been no reports of injuries. In Washington, D.C., Janice Lewis-George has won the city's Democratic primary for mayor, meaning she will almost certainly become the first new leader in the health. heavily Democratic City in more than a decade. The Democratic Socialists had run on issues like education and affordable housing. She's also pledged to push back against federal intervention in local affairs, telling reporters today about the need to stand up for the city's autonomy. Earlier this month, President Trump said he would consider putting Washington under direct federal control if Louis George becomes mayor. Former President Barack Obama celebrated

the opening of his presidential center in Chicago. today. The nation's 44th commander-in-chief was joined by his family, a host of celebrities, and three former presidents. In his remarks, Mr. Obama said that the $850 million center was an expression of thanks to the city that gave him his start in politics. President Trump was notably absent, and Obama did not mention him by name. But there were some nods to the current administration, with Obama remarking, in his words, how precious our democracy truly is. People aren't looking for perpetual anger and division. They are looking for fairness and common sense and mutual respect that deep in our gut,

we want to find a way to turn towards each other again, not further away. The Obama Presidential Center is expected to draw more than a million visitors annually. It officially opens to the general public tomorrow on June 10th. On Wall Street today, stocks ended higher ahead of the Juneteenth holiday weekend. The Dow Jay Jones Industrial average rose about 70 points. The NASDAQ jumped nearly 500 points or almost 2%. The S&P 500 closed about 1% higher to close out the trading week. And in New York today, Joy and confetti filled the air

as the city celebrated its first NBA championship in more than half a century. An estimated two million people lined the famous canyon of heroes in lower Manhattan, forming a sea of orange and blue or the Knicks colors. It was the first ever ticker tape parade for the Knicks despite winning two titles in the 1970s. The route ended at City Hall, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani presented the Knicks with keys to the city and addressed what this moment means for New York. So often when this city comes together, it is because we are forced to, by a moment of tragedy or adversity.

What a gift it is to be brought together by pure, unfiltered joy. For as long as we live, we will remember this feeling of a city together, a city alive, a city overcome by happiness. The celebrations cap off a dominant and improbable run for the Knicks, who beat the San Antonio Spurs for the title in five games. Owner James Dolan has said the team has accepted an invitation to visit the White House. No date has been set, but they would be the first NBA champions to do so during President Trump's time in office. Still to come, on the news hour, an injured Israeli soldier recounts his experience on the front lines of the war with Hezbollah, where pardoned January 6th rioters are today, from new convictions to public office. Andrew Lloyd-Weber reflects on the reimagined musical Cats the Jellicle Ball.

And Americans give a warm welcome to World Cup fans from across the world. the globe. This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubenstein studio at WETA in Washington, headquarters of PBS News.

Major surges of ICE agents have largely faded from public view. But immigration crackdowns are still ongoing in many communities, especially where there's cooperation with state and local authorities. In Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis partnered with ICE, there were more than than 90 arrests a day earlier this year. And in eastern Tennessee, more than 100 people were arrested in an ICE operation just a few weeks ago. Stephanie Sye looks at a new law in Tennessee that goes further than any other and has critics worried it will cut off life-saving care for children of undocumented immigrants. Omna, in the spring, the state's Republican legislature

passed a law requiring state agencies to report undocumented people to ICE if they receive benefits. Many of these families, ineligible for Medicaid or other insurance, have been turning to a last resort state special services program for their kids' medical care. According to the Tennessean, earlier this month, about 400 families received a letter informing them that they will have to disenroll from that program by the end of this month or have their status reported. Michelle Johnson is executive director of the Tennessee Justice Center, which is raising alarms about what may already be happening to these children, and she joins us now. Michelle, thanks for joining the News Hour. I understand this amounts to a relatively small number

of children, but I understand there's some of the most vulnerable cancer patients, those that need ventilators to breathe, and those with disabilities. The law does not kick these kids off the program, though I have heard that was on the table at one point. So what does it do, and what are the practical impacts you're concerned about? Well, the letter gives mothers an impossible choice. It says you can either willingly disenroll from this program. That is your only pathway for your child to get life-saving care. Or you can stay on the program and we will turn over your information to ICE, which mothers know means that these children and could be deported to, could be detained in things like alligator, alcatraz. where they not only won't get the care they need, but they won't even get nutrition. So, I mean, the choice that these mothers have isn't possible. And both of these choices lead to, according to doctors in our state,

almost certain death for these children. Alligator Alcatraz, of course, the detention facility in Florida. Michelle, are you already hearing about families who are afraid of being deported, unenrolling in the program? And do you have examples of pediatric patients that may already be losing access to critical care. Absolutely. We have been talking to families for the last two weeks, families who are on the road to citizenship, who have done everything, followed every role, and received this letter and are scared. You know, that we've created an environment in this

country and particularly in this state that is terrifying for people. And so a client that we talked to yesterday has already disenrolled in her 10-year-old with severe spina bifida who needs surgery in order to not be in pain. They had to cancel the surgery. The provider canceled the surgery. So he is now in unnecessary pain. And I can't really imagine as a mother watching your child suffer. Watching your child suffer not because of a serious illness that they're born with, but because does the elected officials in your state want to have a political issue that they can run on? And that's what this comes down to. It's choosing politics over the lives of these children.

Well, speaking of politics, one of the laws proponents, Republican Mark Corcoran, has been quoted in local press as saying this law, quote, ensures Tennessee public benefits are reserved for those legally present in the U.S. and directs appropriate referral to ICE, while fully upholding all federal mandates for emergency and life-saving care. You just gave that example of the child with spina bifida. Is it true what he says, that children still have an alternative? What is your response to his comment? Well, I've done health law for poor children for the last 32 years, and the emergency room does not address the health needs of these children.

There is a law that says if a child is on death store, the hospital must take them in and stabilize them. But we have kids with cancer, toddlers with cancer that need chemo. And the emergency room will not provide chemo. That is not something that they have to do. And I know this because I've been trying to get health care for children over the last 32 years, and that's not part of the law. It's supposed to go into effect on July 1st, and we should note that we did invite the state health commissioner to join us, but he declined.

What is your organization doing right now to help these families? First and foremost, we're letting the public know that this is being done in their name with their tax dollars, and we're asking them to call the governor. The governor has said he's a faith-filled man, and I can't fathom that he intended to sign a bill that would do that to these most vulnerable angels. angels, angels in our state. Second, we're preparing to fall suit. We will fall suit in short order because it's illegal. It's not just immoral, but it's illegal. And last, we're working with families to figure out, is there any way to get any benefits, even some benefits, you know, donated? But the fact is their health care is so complex that even if they can get part of their needs met, they cannot, they cannot know that they'll be safe. We're the only state doing it

because Stephen Miller told our, you know, our head of our house that this was something that would curry favor with the public. The public that I talked to on both sides of the aisle say killing children is not, it does not reflect our values and we're better than that. I really hope the governor will, will take a second and live out his values. Stephen Miller, of course, a chief advisor to the Trump administration and one of the architects of its immigration policy. That is Michelle Johnson with the Tennessee Justice Center joining us. Michelle, thank you. Thanks for having us. This podcast is supported in part by Parloa.

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A lynchpin of the U.S. Iran deal signed yesterday, lies on two forces not part of the deal, Hezbollah and Israel. Their deadly back and forth continues with the potential to scuttle the agreement. Many of the Israeli soldiers are reservists, called up again to fight Israeli adversaries at great personal cost. Nick Schifrin met one Israeli officer on the border in March and recently spoke with him again after the latest fighting with Hezbollah came close to claiming his life. For Captain Meeha, life has become so. slower and more quiet.

He was wounded about two months ago fighting for Israel in southern Lebanon and is now recovering at home outside Tel Aviv. He holds on to his faith and his desire to return to his men, despite his injury and trauma. My greatest fear is actually to forget, so I actually don't mind talking about it. I think it's important. This is him back in late March patrolling southern Lebanon through a village, emptied by the Israeli military, past the Lebanese homes flattened by Israeli airstrikes. Before the tenuous and faltering April ceasefire, Israel's campaign in southern Lebanon was relentless. The military raised entire towns and villages, pushing out the population.

Lebanese authorities say more than one million have been forced to flee their homes. And more than 3,000 were killed. Israel invaded and occupied deeper into southern Lebanon than it had in a quarter century. Israel says it wanted to put a buffer between northern Israeli residents and Hezbollah, which had fired thousands of rockets and missiles into northern Israeli communities, killing dozens of Israeli soldiers and a handful of Israeli civilians. I visited the border in late March. Mutula, Israel's northernmost town, is where Mika and I first met.

Our job as reservists and our job as the IDF in general is to create a barrier and to make sure that we are what is between them and what we consider our enemy. In the days and weeks after, the military ordered him and his unit to create that barrier inside of Lebanon. On April the 18th, they were protecting a bulldozer. The bulldozer went over a explosive device. and basically took out of the ground an old explosive device and it exploded on our men. It was a massive explosion.

Initially, I got injured. I have many pieces of shrapnel in my legs. And initially, I didn't realize, I mean, I had immense pain in both my legs, but I was still able to run backwards and get on the radio and see how my soldiers were doing because I didn't actually realize that something hit me. One of his soldiers was killed that day. Sergeant First Class Lidorey, who was 31 years old. He actually volunteered to come to my unit.

He wasn't in as much of a combat unit as we were. And about a year ago, he had a friend that was in my platoon, a soldier of mine. And just as life would have it, he ended up losing his life in the battlefield. The bomb tore through one of Mijah's arteries and multiple veins. He survived thanks to quick care. His is a soldier's stoicism. The actual moment itself, in a way, was a shock, but also it's what you come to expect when you go to war.

I think the thing about war and when you go into enemy territory is you know that people are trying to harm you and kill you, and we were evacuated pretty quickly. Hezbollah has made Israel's invasion of southern Lebanon even more deadly thanks to drones. Hezbollah videos show first-person view or FPV drones, targeting Israeli soldiers, and precisely. These drones are often operated using long fiber optic cables. The same technology I filmed in Ukrainian trenches, with Ukrainian soldiers targeting Russians. We've known that they had these kind of capabilities for a while, and I think it was a matter of time until it became so popular to them in such a mass scale. If you would actually see

the numbers of how many drones are hitting or trying to attack Israelis every single day, And the number of casualties and injuries, I think we'll see, and we can see that slowly, slowly the army is getting better at adapting. But Meeha is a reservist, and the Israeli army and society have struggled to adapt to sending reservists to war repeatedly since the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack. Of 900 days after that day, he deployed more than 500 when we first met in March. The impact of these wars since October the 7th has been immense on Israeli society, especially on reservists. really straining the fabric of Israeli society. So I think that there's nothing we have felt more than that. If I have a soldier, any of my soldiers, they will come up to me and tell me,

Mecha, my wife is finished, I need to go home, so we will send them home because there is no point to protect our home if there's no home to go back to it at the end of the day. My mom has four reserve of sons. She hasn't slept in about 10 years. I got married shortly before October 7th, and I've been 500 days in reserve, so I mean, I've seen my soldiers a bit more than I've seen my wife since I've been married. The first thing I told my wife when she came and saw me after the surgery was 3 a.m. And she came into the ICU and she asked me how I am. I told her that the first thing I told her was that I'm sorry, but once I'm recovered, I'm going back to the unit.

So she wasn't very happy. And why do you want to go back to your unit despite the risks? Because the risks have always been there. It's not a new risk. Someone needs to be on the front line. And if all of us will say that another person will do it, then. and no one will be there. So it's my time, and it's my time now, and it'll be my time in a few months when I fully recover.

But he's planning a future for after the war. He's studying to practice law. Until then, he checks his phone for news from his men. His recovery depends on theirs as well. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Nick Schifrin.

New concerns are emerging about President Trump's sweeping pardon of January 6 defendants after a recent report found that nearly a hundred of them have been arrested, charged, or convicted of additional crimes since the attack in 2021. Continuing efforts by President Trump and his allies to recast the events of that day have reignited debate over accountability and the rule of law. Our White House correspondent Liz Landers takes a closer look. The January 6th attack on the United States Capitol in 2021 has been called the most documented crime in American history. More than 1,500 people were charged with crimes related to the attack, which almost prevented the peaceful transfer of power.

We have a breach of the Capitol, breach of the Capitol. Four years later, a presidential pardon from President Trump, only hours after he was sworn into office a second time. So this is January 6th. These are the hostages, approximately 1,500 for a pardon. Yes. Full pardon. Now, a new study finds that in some cases, the criminal behavior that defined January 6 didn't stop when the rioters left the Capitol that day. A new report from the nonpartisan publication Lawfare found that 97 people charged in connection with the Capitol riot have been arrested, charged, or convicted of new crimes since the attack.

That's a recidivism rate of one. in 16 convicted rioters. Law Fairs Review found the new offenses ranged from minor infractions to serious felonies. 14 rioters have been charged with sex crimes or crimes related to child sexual abuse material. Others have faced charges like property damage and driving under the influence. One rioter was convicted of reckless homicide in 2025. These acts of massive violence. Brendan Ballou is a former Justice Department attorney who spent two years prosecuting rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6th. I think it's unsurprising that so many January 6th rioters have since committed violence because I think that was the point of Donald Trump's partons.

You know, these were people that committed violence in the president's name. He pardoned them because they committed violence in his name. Some of those January 6 defendants Trump pardoned are now running for public office. Adam Johnson, the self-dubbed lectern guy who carried Nancy Pelosi's podium through the Capitol Rotunda, is running to be a Florida County Commissioner. Tyler Dykes, who was sentenced to 57 months in prison for his actions on January 6th, recently lost his bid in South Carolina for a seat in Congress. I am a January 6 defendant guns up. So did Ryan Zink, who was running for Congress in Lubbock, Texas.

And one convicted rioter now even works in a highly sensitive role in the Pentagon. Elias Irizari was 19 years old when he broke into the Capitol on January 6. He later called the day's events a disgrace. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed that Irizari is a political appointee in the department, calling him, quote, a qualified patriotic young professional. The Washington Post reports that Irizari works as a special assistant in the special operations and low-intensity conflict policy office and that he has a top security clearance. Last month, the Justice Department announced a controversial plan to try to further help January 6th rioters and others who feel they've been targeted by the U.S. government. The $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund, which immediately sparked a bipartisan backlash, is now on hold after a federal court blocked it indefinitely. And acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress the DOJ does not intend to move forward with the fund.

But President Trump continues to insist those convicted of storming the Capitol on January 6th deserve some kind of monetary settlement. These are people that are great people that would destroy. Their families have been destroyed. many suicides, they committed suicide. People that went there to, with love, they went there with love. The whole situation is so absurd, right? Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges was pinned against a door and trapped in a tunnel

defending the Capitol that day. They fought for him and that's all the matters to him. It doesn't matter that they committed crimes, that they assaulted me and my colleagues, that they threatened Congress, that they tried to stop a peaceful transfer of power. All the matters is that they did his bidding. And he wants to make sure that they are willing to do that again in the future, should he wish it.

Hodges says he's faced harassment and death threats since he spoke out about what he experienced on January 6th. If these people were given money, then it would empower them, give them the resources and make them feel like they're untouchable to carry out their threats and any potential for their violence. Enrique Atario, the former leader of the Proud Boys, was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in organizing the attack on January 6th. In January of this year, he told PBS News he has no regrets about what happened five years ago. Would you do it again? I would definitely do everything I did again because I'm not guilty of that crime. And he's not alone. Since he returned to office, President Trump and his administration have embraced a campaign to rewrite the story of January 6th.

The official White House website hails the proes. Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol as, quote, peaceful protesters who were provoked by law enforcement. It also claims the violence that day was instigated by law enforcement and then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Last month, the Justice Department acknowledged it has been removing hundreds of news releases from its website about criminal prosecutions connected to January 6, saying it is proud to get rid of what it calls, quote, partisan propaganda. Former federal prosecutor Brandon Ballou says the effort to rewrite the narrative of January 6th is very dangerous. I think the president is trying to rewrite the history of the past because he knows how relevant it is to the future. If he can get people to forget January 6 or worse yet, if he can get people to think of it as legitimate political

discourse, then he knows he can get people to accept any attack on democracy without consequence. Brandon Fellows was at the Capitol on January 6th, entering the building through a broken window and photographed sitting in Senator Jeff Merkley's office. Fellows was convicted and spent more than three years in jail for his actions. Do you think your actions that day were anti-American? No, actually, very, very American. You know, it was like Boston Tea Party light. I don't think I did anything wrong. If anything, I think a lot of us should have actually, you know, helped save the country and partook in a real insurrection. Fellows was among those pardoned by President Trump last year. Do you think that there has been a rewriting of what happened on January 6th?

I think it needed to be rewritten because the narrative was just one-sided in many ways. And also they've continually tried the media. And at times the government has tried to keep it one-sided. The courts have tried to keep it one-sided. It's a very complicated thing to try to summarize that day. Despite only being four hours, there's so many different stories and a lot to unpack. Officer Daniel Hodges says that what happened that day is not complicated at all. And he says the record makes that clear.

I think that the attack on the Capitol is one of the most recorded. mass crimes in American history, if not human history. So the people have an abundance of evidence to use to judge for themselves. Yeah, there are absolutely people trying to change how we perceive the events of the day. But I think that the crimes and the violence and the events of the day will speak for themselves and people can judge for themselves exactly what happened. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Liz Landers.

One of the biggest hits on Broadway right now is a new version of Cats, the legendary musical based on T.S. Eliot's poetry about a tribe of felines called Jellicles. It's an imaginary name, now reimagined in Cats the Jellicle Ball, and critical acclaim has followed. The musical received nine Tony Award nominations and won three. senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown took in the show and talked to composer Andrew Lloyd Weber, who created it and so much more for our arts and culture series Canvas.

The high energy spectacle is certainly still there. Famerous songs get their moments. The words and characters are still based on a cycle of poems, originally written for children by renowned T.S. Eliot.

But in some important ways this is a new cat's. And the man who wrote the music and started it all back in the late 1970s, Andrew Lloyd Weber, sees something very exciting. I can see a cat that, you know, is not just reimagined, which it is, it's not just a revival, but for some reason I think it gets closer to the heart of Elliot's writing than any version of it that I've seen before any other. Cats, the Jellicle Ball, gets there in an unexpected way. No more cats in a London junkyard.

Instead, directors Jalen Levingston and Bill Rausch have set the action in New York's queer ballroom scene, where contestants in and out of drag and never far from a history of oppression and ostracization, sing and dance.

Competing and flaunting their style, and personalities celebrating their culture. It sort of feels organically right. Because it reaches into these kind of differences in humanity in a way. I think it does. I think it touches on something, you know, which it's very hard to define. But it's very rare when it happens. And I do think that this production has done that.

Now 78, Lloyd Weber knows something of making theatre magic. In the late 1960s and early 70s, working with lyricist Tim Rice, he composed the music for Jesus Christ Superstar, and Aveda.

But as he told me outside the theater where the Jellicle ball is playing, when he first dreamed up the idea of a kind of musical review featuring singing cats, he was met with derision. Suddenly you are bats to the wall and everybody says, This is the most disastrous idea. Nobody should ever be doing this. Is that what people were saying at the beginning? It opened with some of the investment missing, and I had to get a second mortgage on my house to pay for the production costs.

Suffice it to say he was able to pay off his mortgage. Cats was a cultural phenomenon, beloved, parodied, running on Broadway for nearly 18 years. A record later surpassed by another Lloyd Weber, mega hit, Phantom of the Opera, which opened on Broadway in 1988 and ran a remarkable 35 years.

Across the street from the theater at Broadway's Sardi's restaurant, we talked about the art and craft of musical theater, including advice from fame director Hal Prince. Do you work thinking about the entire show from the beginning, or are you thinking about individual songs. You have to think of the entire the entire show. I've learned the hard way that a great story is what you need. If the story for some reason has not been quite right then no amount of music, no matter how it will really, really make it a great evening or even save a show. Sometimes a very good story can carry a not so good score, but I've never found it the other way around.

Does the same thing apply to individual I mean, do you know you've got a great song, or is it only great within the context of hearing it within the production? Well, I would go so fast to say some of the greatest songs ever written for musical theater. We wouldn't know if they had been in shows that hadn't worked. It comes back to the fact that so many factors in musicals,

you know, I've always remember that one of the things that Hal Prince said to me when I was very young, he wrote to me when I'd had a big flop musical in London to sing, I'd keep some of those tunes for something else, but he said, you can't listen to a musical if you can't look at it. And by that he meant that the production design has got to be right. Every aspect has got to be right for a show to really click.

Knighted and later bestowed with a life peerage, he's Lord Lloyd Weber. He wrote an anthem, Make a Joyful Noise, for the 2023 coronation of Charles III, and has composed more than 20 musicals in all. He's seen plenty of misses among the hits, taken his share of critical punches, and kept working. What about when there have been failures? How have you dealt with it? What about when there has been, you know, critical? Well, you move on. Negatives. You move on. And you also know that if the thing's actually any good, it'll resurface again in some way. Or if it's not, or if the story's not quite right, then it probably won't.

In fact, he's lately seeing something of a renaissance of earlier works presented by a new generation of directors, including a new version of Sunset Boulevard, originally on Broadway in the 90s. And now, catch the jellicle ball. A lot of things have come together at the same time. But does it surprise you that this is happening? I always feel that the shows, if there any good, would stand the test of time. I think for me now, all these years later, seeing it, as the Jellicle Ball, it's incredibly moving now because they are real people as cats. And the fact that, for example, 19 of them had never been on Broadway before, all these things,

somehow there's a kind of raw quality, which is cats are street things, aren't they? So are you surprised all these years later at how many times it all has come together for you? Well, I'm very lucky. Is that how it feels? Lucky? I do feel that, because I feel that you're very lucky in life if you know what you want to do. You're incredibly lucky if you succeed in doing what you want to do and you can make a living out of it. But if you can have the kind of career that I've had doing the one thing that I really enjoy, I mean, in a way, I can't do anything other than say I'm the luckiest man alive.

Hardly slowing down, he has several new projects in the works. In addition, a highly acclaimed new production of Avita comes to Broadway next year. As for cats in its more than nine lives, the jellicle ball has been extended at least into next January. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Jeffrey Brown on Broadway.

themselves. But off the field, the constellation of American host cities and the way they've embraced teams from around the globe as their own, have sparked their own memorable moments. Residents in Lawrence, Kansas have welcomed the Algerian team to their city, where flags now adorn storefronts and cheers for the greens, as they're known, echo through the streets. In Dallas, Team Croatia found everything is bigger in Texas, including an enormous flag unfurled for a welcome parade downtown. Boston is the site of a tartan army takeover playing host to team Scotland, whose fans led a 5,000 strong bagpipe march and reportedly drained local bars dry in celebration.

I haven't seen Boston party like this in a very long time, so having it be in Boston, especially, city with a lot of immigrants, a lot of passion for the sport, it's great. It's great to see. Boston Globe reporter Emily Sweeney's been covering the excitement around the games and the parade of international pride that comes with it. Asian people, we always have energy, whatever the circumstances. So, BAK Friday, and he's already a victory. We already won.

Piavovara! As soon as I go went, I'm going to America. And Emily Sweeney joins us now from Boston. Emily, welcome to the NewsHour. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. All right, so just give us a sense of what it is like there in Boston, hosting the Scottish team and also all these World Cup matches. What's the vibe? Yeah, well, you know, I've got to say,

I've never seen so many kiltz in my life. I walked out of the news from my office building, and seriously, like, you look around to your left, you're right, kiltz, kiltz, everywhere. There's people singing in the streets. The energy is great. The vibe has been totally positive. And I think Bostonians have been like pleasantly surprised at just how, you know, cool, all the tourists coming in for the World Cup have been. You told the story of this one Scottish super fan. I want you to tell us more about a man named Craig Ferguson. He walked 3,000 miles from Los Angeles to Boston for the match.

Why did he do that? And what was it like when he arrived on Boston Common? Yeah, so he walked a long way in a kilt across the country. And he was using Boston Common as his finish line. And so I was there along with countless Scottish fans who were there to like cheer him on when he arrived. And I got to say there was the crowd, it was a huge, huge crowd on Boston Common. People playing bagpipes, people holding flags, singing.

It was such a, I mean, the crowd was huge. It was really hard to even like get to Craig when he arrived. But I got to say, and he was raising awareness for mental health and raising money for mental health. So it was a really good cause, a really good day. And I was shocked at just how large the crowd was. It's not just the Scottish fans, we should point out. We know Greater Boston is home to the third largest Haitian community in the country.

I know you covered the lead-up to their match, Haiti versus Scotland. Tell us about that. Yeah, so like all the people, all the local fans and fans from abroad, I mean, Haiti has waited such a long time to return to the World Cup. It's been over 50 years, and so it was like 1974. It was the last time they were in it. And the fans that I talked to and interviewed were just so excited. Some of them have literally been waiting 50 years to see this moment. And they were just so pumped before the game.

And so I joined them for like a pregame celebration. And again, there was music, there was dancing. People had the colors out. It was just a really good time. And everybody was so positive. And, you know, we had like Scottish fans come into and they joined. It was really cool to see. It's been amazing.

You know, we should note here, too, Emily, it's not just Boston. We're seeing cities and towns around the country just open their arms and embrace these teams from around the world. Why do you think that's resonating the way that it is with everyone who's watching? Well, you know, with all the crazy things going on in the world, it's really nice to see just people from all different places, just getting along and all coming together for like one thing to watch soccer, a great sport. And I got to say it's brought so much joy to the city of Boston. I got to say, every way you look, you'll see often on statues. We have lots of statues in Boston, lots of history. There's orange traffic cones appearing on the statue's heads.

And I got to say, it looks great. You have these very serious statues with a nice orange cone. And it's this is a little tradition that was brought over from Scotland that has been shared by the Totten Army with us. And it's been great to see all the traffic cones appearing on our statues. So, Emily, I should point out, too, you cover a lot of different things for the globe as their social video journalist. I think this is the First World Cup you've covered. Has any one moment stuck out to you? What's it been like for you to cover this?

Oh, geez. Well, you know, it's hard to pick, you know, being at the watch party with the, you know, Cape Verde fans, we have a large Cape Verdean community in Massachusetts in greater Boston and southeastern Mass. And, you know, it was their first World Cup. holding off Spain and seeing the goalkeeping, the defense, and just, and the fans were just going crazy for it. And it was just awesome, awesome to see. And I felt honored to be just a part of the crowd for that. That was really cool. So much, Joy. We can't thank you enough for taking the time to share it with us today. Emily Sweeney of the Boston Globe. Appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Remember, there's always a lot more online, including a look at our latest PBS News NPR Marist poll that shows President Trump's approval rating on the economy has hit a new low. That is at pbs.org slash news hour. And that is the NewsHour for tonight. I'm Amna Nawaz. On behalf of the entire NewsHour team, thank you for joining us.