June 4, 2026 - PBS News Hour full episode

Good evening. I'm Amna Nawaz. Jeff Bennett is on assignment. On the news hour tonight, President Trump's limits are tested after some Republicans in Congress push back with immigration enforcement funding on the line. A new proposal could give Trump officials more control over scientific research grants if they don't align with the president's agenda. I do not want a political appointee making the decisions as to not only what science will we pursue, but what that scientific outcome is. And college graduates begin their job search in a world being transformed by artificial intelligence.

Welcome to the News Hour. The Senate is in the midst of voting on $72 billion of fresh funding for a border and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The package has been held up for months since federal agents killed two U.S. citizens protesting immigration crackdowns in Minnesota. It stalled again when the Trump administration proposed nearly $2 billion for his so-called anti-weaponization fund,

which could compensate January 6th rioters. Amendment votes are expected to run well into the night, but it's still unclear at this hour whether Republican leaders will ultimately be able to wrangle enough votes to pass the measure. The professional correspondent Lisa Desjardin is here with the latest on that measure and the other Capitol Hill debates driving a wedge between legislative leaders and President Donald Trump. Lisa, it's good to see you. Good to see you. So where do things stand right now when it comes to funding for ICE and this anti-weaponization fund?

After eight months, it does look like the ICE funding is lumbering perhaps toward passage tonight on the Senate floor, but the process is tedious. As you can see, this is that process called Vodorama. It is definitely not as fun as that indicates. It is really more of a stare down, a process of exhausting senators through an endless series of amendments. But I am told it could end as soon as tonight on the floor. Now, in this debate, the two parties are not just divided, Omna, they really are having two separate debates. First of all, for Republicans, this is about the ICE funding,

about the border, and about what they say is a debate over security itself. What you get is a secure border versus a broken border. What you get is, ICE being able to do its job instead of being closed for business. To my Democratic college, you're on the wrong side of this issue. You will find out in November. But Democrats disagree. For them, this is still about ICE conduct, what you just reported. But it is also specifically about the president's anti-weaponization fund.

His attorney general, his acting attorney general, said that it's not moving forward. But Democrats don't trust that. They think it needs to be codified and put into law now. Do any of us believe that Donald Trump, who has lied to us day in and day out, will be able to resist getting his sticky fingers in the slush fund when it would benefit himself and his families? So they are pushing for a law to ban it. Why are Democrats pushing for that in a separate ICE funding bill? The answer is actually simple, because they can. This special process allows them to do that. Interestingly enough, Omnott, Republicans, many of them tell me they also want to have something codified to, outlaw this kind of thing, including Lindsey Graham, who I just spoke with. You heard from him there on the floor. He says he's open to something like that, and he thinks the president might be able

to accept it. So we'll watch carefully. We'll watch and see. Separately, Lisa, I have to ask you, President Trump receive what's probably the strongest rebuke yet from Congress yesterday when the House voted to end the war in Iran. What happened and what does it mean? That's right. This was significant on the House floor, a vote of 215 to 208 to block the President's actions in Iran. war, an assertion of Congress's warpower altogether. How did it happen? Well, four Republicans joined with Democrats, there they are right there, to vote to block that war and block any more action in Iran.

For now, House Republican leaders are holding onto that bill. It's a certain kind of resolution, a concurrent resolution. To become law, it would also need Senate passage and the president to not veto it. We do expect the Senate to hold a different vote on Iran in coming weeks. But this was a very strong statement whether or not it leads to any changes in more policy. Another question we know senators are going to face soon. The president said he's going to nominate to act on a permanent basis as Attorney General, the current acting attorney general, Todd Blanche.

What do we think will happen? Yeah, Mr. Todd Blanche has had a lot of face time with senators lately over that anti-weaponization fund that is not popular with Republicans. Now, right now there are senators telling me behind the scenes that they have doubts with him, especially because of that fund and because he was the personal attorney to the president. but more of them publicly say they favor him. One said they thought this man, their fellow senator Eric Schmidt, was going to be the nominee.

So that's another sort of pause for senators. But I think in the end it reminds me of when perhaps Pete Hegseth was nominated, and senators had a lot of problems behind the scenes, but in the end, Trump pushed him through. This could go either way, but I see the winds blowing in Todd Blanche's direction. All right, Lisa Desjardin, covering it all as usual. Lisa, thank you. You're welcome.

In the day's other headlines, President Trump's former national security advisor turned critic, John Bolton, has reportedly agreed to plead guilty to one felony count of illegally retaining classified information. The deal would settle a criminal case that burst into public view when FBI agents raided his Maryland home and Washington, D.C. office. Officials say he held on to sensitive diary-like notes that he planned to use for a memoir. If the deal is approved by a judge, John Bolton could either face no prison time or up to five years in custody plus more than $2 million in fines. U.S. officials said today there is no threat of mass infestation from a flesh-eating insect that's been detected in livestock in Texas. Authorities say the New World Screwworm was found in a three-week-old calf in South Texas. but that no other cases have been confirmed so far.

It's the first time in decades it's been detected in the U.S. At a hearing on Capitol Hill, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins stressed the threat to livestock production did not mean a threat to the food supply. We are using every tool at our disposal to eliminate this threat to our livestock producers and to our national security, and we will actively keep you updated.

Thankfully, this pest does not represent any sort of challenge to our food safety, and that's a really important message. The New World Screw Worm is a parasitic fly that affects livestock, pets, and wildlife, and in rare cases, people, though officials say there's no current threat to humans. Hezbollah rejected the latest ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon today, and instead called for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Smoke billowed from Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon today that killed at least four people. A UN peacekeeper was also killed in the crossfire.

The attacks came just hours after Israel and Lebanon agreed to extend their truce during talks in Washington that did not include Hezbollah. But speaking to reporters today, President Trump said he believed Hezbollah wanted to find an end to the fighting. I think Hezbollah, I will tell you, they called us, and they said, how about stopping? And I think you're going to see things happen over there. That's been like a little bit of a different world, but it's a little bit of a different world. It's interconnected with Iran.

And it would be really nice if Lebanon could have some peace. Meantime in Gaza, health officials say a series of Israeli airstrikes killed at least 10 people over the last day. One strike hollowed out entire floors of an apartment building in Gaza City. Families began burial preparations today. The victims included two women and two children. A court in Colorado reversed the homicide convictions today for two paramedics who'd been sentenced the overdose death of Elijah McLean.

The 23-year-old black man had been forcibly restrained by police as he walked home from a convenience store in 2019. The paramedics injected him with ketamine and were found guilty of criminally negligent homicide after a trial in 2023. Today's ruling sends their cases back to a lower court. McLean's final words, I can't breathe, foreshadowed those of George Floyd a year later

and helped fuel public anger over police tactics across the nation. Tens of thousands of people have been getting a sneak peek at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. The facility officially opens on Juneteenth, but friends, students, and journalists have been strolling the nearly 20-acre campus this week. The $850 million project reflects the life and legacy of the nation's 44th Commander-in-Chief and first black president. It includes a replica of the Oval Office from his time in office, a collection of former First Lady Michelle Obama's gowns, and a full-flexia.

full-size basketball court, reflecting one of Mr. Obama's favorite pastimes. Stocks on Wall Street ended mixed today amid a fall in oil prices. The Dow Jay Jones Industrial Average jumped nearly 900 points, but the NASDAQ posted a modest loss of about 20 points. In the meantime, the S&P 500 rose for a 10th time in 11 sessions. And the French-Iranian author and filmmaker Marjan Satrapi has died. She was best known for her graphic novel series Persepolis. based on her own coming of age in Tehran after the Islamic Revolution. It was later adapted into an Oscar-nominated film directed by Satrapier.

She spoke with the news hours Jeffrey Brown in 2012 on telling complex stories about Iranian people. Unfortunately, Iran is reduced to veil and beard and nuclear weapon. The problem when we did reduce people to a country to a notion, then they become abstract. And from the second they stop being human beings, then we can go and bomb them and kill them. She also wrote the graphic novel, Chicken with Plums, and directed the Marie Curie biopic radioactive starring Rosamund Pike. French president Emmanuel Macron called Sartrepie an artist devoted to freedom whose work carried a universal message.

Her family said she died of sadness after the death of her husband last year. Marjan Sartrepie was 56 years old. Still to come, on the news hour. A new book offers guidance for young people entering the workforce during an uncertain time. A musical phenom introduces an old instrument to new audiences, plus much more.

This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubenstein studio at WETA in Washington, headquarters of PBS News. The Trump administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul. of how the federal government awards billions of dollars in research grants, giving political appointees a much larger role in funding decisions. The administration argues these changes are necessary to stop what they call a woke agenda. But researchers across many fields say this could allow the administration to effectively limit and exert more control over critical scientific research.

Our William Brigham has more. These proposed changes, which were put out by the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, call for new criteria to review grants, including no funding or promoting of diversity, equity, or inclusion. Projects must, quote, demonstrably advance the president's policy priorities. And in a major change, political appointees, not necessarily subject matter experts, would be required to give the final okay before money is awarded. For more on all this, we are joined by Craig McLean. He is the former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where he oversaw grants and awards flowing

through that agency. Craig, thank you so much for being here. You are part of this organization called Stand Up for Science that is pushing back against this change. Help us understand why this would make a difference, because to some people, they might think these are relatively minor changes. Putting a different person at the top of the decision-making chain doesn't seem like such a huge shift. Why is this so troubling to you? It's remarkably troubling because, first off,

the Trump administration has already demonstrated its ability in the past to displace scientific judgment with their own political pronouncements. One of them is climate change, believing that it doesn't exist when, in fact, the evidence is conclusive that climate change is real, humans are causing it. So this is an administration that is quite ready to displace scientific truths for their own convenient interpretation. And that's remarkably damaging to the integrity of the United States, to the safety of our people, and to the value of science itself. I mean, OMB, in their putting out their statements about this, they told us today that this to them is about eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse, trying to stop woke funding projects. And they argue on some

level that this is the prerogative of any administration to stress the kinds of research they want and de-emphasize others. What do you make about that argument? Publicly elected officials have always stated their preference for where the science enterprise might focus. And they state that preference by the annual appropriation, the money that Congress passes and then hands over to the federal agencies. And those federal agencies are populated with merit-driven individuals who then make the judgments as. to what should be awarded where. And we also have seen the use of peer review panels where non-federal individuals, scientists,

come in and evaluate proposals and then make selections. So what we're doing here that's very different is we're asking political appointees who often do not have the credibility or experience in the positions that they're in to be making those judgments instead of the people who have spent their entire careers in a position to gain the knowledge and experience as to what's the best investment scientific. I do not want a political appointee making the decisions as to not only what science will we pursue, but what that scientific outcome is. And the Trump administration has repeatedly demonstrated they don't understand science,

they don't believe in much of the science, health or climate and other subjects, and putting people like that in the control seat to determine what the scientific answer is, is unconscionable. This is not just about climate work. across all of government. And OMB argues that they specifically want to eliminate any DEI grantmaking that is going on. What is your sense as to what the impact of that elimination would be? It would narrow the field of participants. I think the Trump administration has a very sensitive tripwire that if anyone who doesn't

look like their perceived majority of white males winds up in a position of resists, responsibility or an advantage or as a financial recipient awardee, that there must be some other reason than their skill and abilities to have found themselves in such a place. And they're doing it aggressively because I think the National Science Foundation, among other agencies, had a very proud and aggressive stance to try and open and widen the aperture of participation of all Americans with appropriate scientific credentials. I just want to read you a statement that OMB gave us today about the rationale for this. They write, quote,

federal grants were already politicized by the last administration to promote a far-left DEI agenda. Funding went to projects like drag shows in Ecuador and transgender experiments on mice. That ends now. With this new rule, the Trump administration will bring

much-needed transparency to the grant-making process and ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely. I should say, researchers have pushed back quite hard on this assertion that there was any research trying to turn mice, transgender. But to their larger argument, they are saying this is a corrective, a needed corrective.

What do you say to that? I don't see this as a correction. I see this as a regression or a degradation of standards that were advanced to make science more open and available to everyone. The fact that they don't understand what those experiments were like is, number one, disappointing. but number two, if that's the best answer they could come up with, it reveals that they don't understand science, because that's not what those experiments were. There were no transgender mice. I would have been much more inspired to hear OMB talk about things like trying to economize in the

regulatory burden on the scientific and academic community and the likes of that. But they have missed that opportunity, and they rely on their political talking points. All right, that is Craig McLean, the former chief science officer at NOAA. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you very much for having me.

Well, we are in commencement season, when graduates look back on their accomplishments and look ahead to their future ambitions. But shifts in the economy and the anxiety around it are changing how this generation of grads see their prospects. Ali Rogan has more on that as part of our series Rethinking College. Recent college graduates are facing one of the more difficult job markets in many years. The unemployment rate for recent graduates, between the ages of 22 to 27, is over 5.5% and some believe it's higher than that. It's above the national unemployment rate. And all of the talk in forecasting about AI, wiping out millions of jobs, is souring young adults on what they could face.

Take a listen to this montage of recent commencement speeches, where a speaker talked about AI. and how they were received by students. Last December, Time magazine selected its person of the year for 2025, and this time it was the architects of artificial intelligence. Interesting.

The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution. What happens? AI is rewriting production as we sit here. I know it. Deal with it. Like I said, it's a tool. We're going to talk tonight about some ways of navigating this moment. It's the focus of a new book by New York Times journalist Jody Cantor.

It's called How to Start Discovering Your Life's Work. Jody, welcome back to the News Hour. Thank you so much. We are well into commencement season, and this book really came out of an address you gave last year where you talk to students. You interviewed many of them before giving your speech about some of the fears that they were facing. And since that time, it seems like the conditions have only gotten worse. What are you hearing from students now about their worries, about getting into the job market and really start beginning to chart the rest of their lives? One of the reasons they're so worried and one of the reasons why I think many of them have a negative impression of AI is that they are being sent a terrible cultural message.

Graduation is supposed to be a moment of possibility and they're being told the AI moment is going to make you superfluous. Entry level workers are not going to be needed. I think, first of all, we don't know that that's true and it's also a very damaging message. The other thing that is very important to say is memo for anyone who hasn't applied for a job in a while. The job hiring process is very AI-fueled right now, and it has turned digital and lonely. Looking for a job has always been stressful. But these young people are going from gigantic digital job portal to gigantic digital job portal. They're seeing these listings that may or may not be ghost listings, meaning do they even represent?

real jobs, some of them are being interviewed by AI instead of being interviewed by real people. So they are entering into the workforce and like we're trying to and essentially meeting nobody. And they say that this is just a degrading and dehumanizing experience. So the booze did not surprise me at all. But that said, I think there's a more interesting question here. And this is the question I tried to address in the book. what are they supposed to actually do? They need jobs.

They need to move forward with their lives. So what does it look like for a young person to have a positive, productive response to this very intimidating and degrading environment? And you offer a lot of advice about how to respond to this degrading environment. I do want to ask you, though, first, you talk in the book about how every generation has its advice that eventually becomes obsolete, whether it's study. Japanese or, you know, one word, plastics. So in some ways, it does seem like this generation

is no different, but then in others, it seems like the conditions are much harder. So where do you think this generation lies in terms of how hard things are over the spectrum of when people graduated? I think we can say what we do know and what we don't know. What we do know is that there is a long history of people being told exactly what was going to happen in the workplace that turned out to be wrong or misleading. And also there's like a long history of conventional wisdom about the thing you supposedly have to study. When I was in high school, it was learned Japanese. We were literally told that the Japanese were going to take over the world economy and that we were going to be losers if we were not fluent in Japanese. Well, meanwhile, the Japanese stock market

after that languished for 30 years. And then the conventional wisdom was you need to learn genetics. and then it was Mandarin and then it was coding. So these are all great pursuits. If this is your passion, of course you should study it. But is it an infallible golden ticket that is going to earn you instant stability? Of course not. So I would say the first thing we can say is like beware of conventional wisdom or anybody who professes too much certainty about exactly what's going to have.

happen. I think the second thing we can say is that it's too early in the game to know exactly what's going to happen with the future of work. It's a really tough hiring point right now, as you alluded to, AI is not the only reason. It may not even be the major reason. I think we are several years out from seeing exactly what the workplace will look like, whether AI is really going to be a revolution or more of a red herring. And for that reason, I want us to work with really time-tested materials that will be durable for this generation no matter what happens. And a couple of the materials are the concepts that you lay out include finding your craft and marrying it with a need that's out there. Can you flesh that out for us a little bit?

The best careers, the people who are both happiest and most successful, I think have harness two things, a craft and a need. And I think you want to look for each of those and pair them. A craft is a special skill you have that other people don't have. Surgery is certainly a craft, but so is putting together an amazing news broadcast like this one. Baking can be a craft, writing recipes can be a craft, teaching can be a craft. A craft is something you get good at over a long period of time. It's not instantaneous. But when you have it, It provides at least some protection from being treated as disposable or interchangeable in the marketplace. Any employee can be fired, but your craft can never be taken away from you.

And then I think if craft is authority, I think it gets really powerful when it's paired with a need. I want to say to other people, using your own eyes and ears, what is your independent assessment of what other human beings are going to need during your time? time at work, what products, what services, what information. When you have a need that you're chasing, your career is less like a lonely paddle up a stream, and it's more like you're being buoyed by a rushing river, whether it's an altruistic need or a business need that is pushing you. I think the need factor is also very important right now because of what we talked about a second ago, young people are being told essentially that they're not needed. That's not true. That's not I want them to have a rejoinder and a way of seeing, of course, my energies and ambitions

are valuable. I'm going to give my dreams of fighting chance here. Such great advice to end on. The book is How to Start, Jody Kancher. Thank you so much for talking with us about it. Thank you for having me. This podcast is supported in part by Parloa. Parloa provides an AI-powered customer experience platform designed to support communication across voice, chat, and email. Its system operates continuously and is designed to integrate with existing business tools while maintaining consistent interactions over time.

Parloa's technology is used by organizations seeking to manage customer inquiries, including areas such as scheduling, account support, and service coordination. Additional information about Parloa is available at parloa.com slash CX.

Let's return now to Capitol Hill, where the U.S. House yesterday voted to limit President Trump from further military action in Iran. One of the Republicans who voted for that resolution is Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. He joins us now. Congressman, it's good to see you. Welcome back to the News Hour. Thanks for having me. So we reported earlier you were one of four House Republicans to vote for that Iran War Powers bill. You did vote against it. Earlier in the year, in March and in April, you changed your vote to yes in May. last night. So why the change? Why support that now? Yeah, it's very simple. It's following the law. The War Powers Act of 1973 has two

essential requirements, 48-hour notification in advance, and within 60 days of hostilities commencing approval by Congress. So as soon as we hit that 60-day mark, every resolution that's been brought to the floor I've supported. It's just a simple, basic matter of following the law. Some people complain about the war powers Act of 73, there's two choices. You follow the law or you change it. You can't violate it. That's not an option. So you don't seem to buy the president's argument then that the clock had stopped when the ceasefire was declared. But I'm sure you saw the president react to you and the other yes votes. He called you bad Republicans and grandstanders. He said, why would you do,

rather who would do such an unpatriotic thing? What's your response to that? Well, I think following the law is very patriotic. And listen, we get criticized all the time in this job. You can't let that affect your focus. I report to no person or no party in Washington, D.C. I work for the people back home in Bucks in Montgomery counties of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania's first congressional district. They're my bosses.

I listen to them intently, and my job is to reflect their voice here on the House floor, and I'm going to continue to do that. So this measure is specific to military action in Iran, but we have heard the president threatened to use military action in other places like Cuba. I'm just curious if you believe that the president needs congressional approval before any potential military action in Cuba. Yeah. Again, follow the law, right?

We have a War Powers Act that spells us out. By the way, unfortunately, many presidents that have preceded this one have violated it as well. I was not in Congress then. I am in Congress now and I'm going to force enforce the law now. You know, under President Obama, we had Libya, under President Clinton, we had Bosnia and Kosovo, under President George H.W. Bush, we have Panama. What we've seen consistently is the executive branch tends to take a view of the War Powers Act of 1973. That's most deferential to Article 2 to the executive branch. But we have three branches of government in this country.

I work for the legislative branch. We have to be a separate independent constitutional check on the other branches of government, including the executive branch. So it's pretty basic for me. Follow the law. While I have you, I want to ask you as a member of the House Intelligence Committee as well. We've heard the president say that he will name Bill Pulte as his new director of national intelligence to replace Tulsi Gabbard.

The president said today that it wouldn't be on a permanent basis. As you all know, Bill Pulte is now head of a federal housing finance agency. He doesn't seem to have any kind of intelligence background at all. So permanent or not, do you believe he's qualified to serve in that role? I do not. No. So what do you make of the president's plans to push ahead with this, even if it is on an acting basis? Does that worry you about the integrity of the job for the top intelligence official in the country? Of course. You know, you always want somebody with the background and intelligence.

I've been in the intelligence community for 15 years as an FBI agent prior to coming here. And now is the chairman of the CIA subcommittee on the House permanent select committee on intelligence. You know, these are serious jobs. They require people with a, you know, background in the subject matter. We have a lot of issues, including FISA section 702 that we're debating right now, that the director of national intelligence has a, you know, significant voice in. So, yes, you always want someone with the background. I've spent my whole life in the IC.

So I think that, you know, I answer. answer the question, I think that he's not qualified to do it. And the president appointed him purportedly on an acting basis. So we'll see who gets the nomination. Do you believe there's enough Republicans who've expressed similar concerns that the president could walk back putting Bill Pulte in that job? In terms of nominating him? Yes.

Well, I don't think he'll get confirmed. I think that's pretty clear. So you have concerns about Bill Pulte. What about Todd Blanche? because we've now heard the president will actually nominate him to be officially the permanent attorney general. He's been serving in an acting role we reported earlier on some of the headwinds he might face in the confirmation process. Do you believe he should be confirmed in a permanent role? I do not.

You know, I've been at the tip of the spear on fighting back against this so-called anti-weaponization fund. I think it was a serious abuse of authority by the acting attorney general. so much so that I introduced a bipartisan bill with Tom Suozzi, my co-chair of the Problem Sivers Caucus, to fix this instance. But moreover, we're going to go back and actually get to the root of the 1956 Federal Judgment Act. The bill is that old. That has been significantly watered down in 1961 and 63 and several points thereafter

that really migrated a lot of authority away from Article 1, Congress, and, towards Article 2 and gave a ton of discretion to the Attorney General, too much discretion that allows it to be abused like it was now. So we've got to fix that. But to answer your question, that really undermined my confidence in his judgment. It's Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. Congressman, so much more to talk about. We hope you'll come back and join us again soon.

Thank you for your time. You bet. Thanks.

The pipe organ is typically associated with formal concert halls and church music, traditional works by Baroque composers like Bach. But one musician is broadening the instrument's reputation and has gotten over a million people to tune in. Our senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown, with help from our friends at Maine Public, went to experience this in Portland. It's part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

A lone musician at the console of an instrument capable of enormous and enormously varying sounds. Hands and feet flying across the keyboards. Oh my gosh, thank you so much for coming. I am so excited about this. It's become a most unexpected phenomenon. phenomenon playing out before packed audiences. Hello, I'm here at the Sydney Opera House. And gaining large followings on social media.

I will give in this baby Trader Joe's bag, and it's the perfect size for my organ shoes. For the traditional pipe organ, something big is happening, and Anna Lapwood is helping lead the way. It's a novelty that people haven't been given the opportunity to understand, because it's been impossible to get them close enough. But now with social media, we can bring a million people close enough just for a phone.

They come to the concerts. They come and they want to hear what you're talking about and they want to understand and they have questions. They want to see it live and real. And they want to feel it. They want to feel the room shaking. We got a glimpse of the Lapwood effect recently in Portland, Maine.

As she prepared for the final performance of a U.S. tour playing the Kachmar organ, built for the city in 1912. There's a lot going on here, right? There's quite a lot going on, particularly an organ of this size, actually, because we have five keyboards, five manuals, you've got the full pedal board, you have all of the different stops. These are called stops that control the sounds.

Ahead of the performance, she spent more than 18 hours registering the organ. For every moment of the concert, you have to choose the sounds you want. You have to basically audition the different sounds. For this program, about 350 different settings, all of which have to be programmed individually. And this is a completely new organ for you, right? So you are getting to know this instrument? Every organ is totally different. It's a bit like sort of speed dating.

You have to try and get to know the personality of the organ as quickly as possible and then figure out what that organ wants you to say with the music. Lappwood's classical music credentials Bachinall are impeccable.

Now the official organist at London's Royal Albert Hall. She was the first female organ scholar at Magdalen College in Oxford. Later director of music at Pembroke College, Cambridge. She tried many instruments in childhood. It somehow it was the organ, which she sometimes refers to as a machine, that offered a new kind of connection to audiences and more. It is a way to connect with them, but I think for me it's been a way to connect with myself and figure out who I want to be on stage. What does that mean? I feel the most free, natural version of myself.

I feel so much more free than I do in normal life to be perfect. honest, it is the freest version of myself on stage because it's the music which is just like a glove in my mind. It is just me. When you're playing, do you feel yourself part of the machine or? I just feel like my body has suddenly expanded and this living thing around me is part of me.

And it was her own love of movies and film scores that offered a way. way to reach new audiences. The thing I give the biggest credit for the shift in how people perceive the organ is the film Interstellar.

Suddenly, people hear the organ in a totally different context. They hear the beauty of it. They hear the sensitivity of it. If you count how many times a day you hear the Interstellar soundtrack scrolling on TikTok or Instagram, everyone knows that music.

It has brought the organ front and centre into public consciousness. Popularity she's gained is also led her into some unexpected places, performing with contemporary artists from other musical genres, including a collaboration with the electronica musician Bonobo. To Carter and Fugan D minor. They heard me practicing and came on stage. They were like, this is so cool. Wouldn't it be cool if we included the organ in our set tomorrow?

So I ended up joining the show with no notice. And it was so far outside my comfort zone. I had no idea what I was getting myself in for. And then... There were these soaring strings. And I just started crying. The wool had just been pulled from over my eyes. And I went, oh my gosh, the musical world is about 70 million times larger than I'd ever imagined it could be.

No one knew I was going to be doing it, and the crowd just erupted. Clearly behind all this, Lapwood's personal effervescence, love of her instrument, Lord of the Rings, this is the biggest project I've ever done, and desire to communicate directly with her audience, including regular posts of behind the scenes of her life and work, And middle of the night rehearsals, often the only time she can access these special and unique instruments. It's paying off with more than 4 million followers across platforms. Is that a phenomenon that still surprises you? All the time.

All the time? It's so strange. I always say there's like Anna Lapwood and there's Anna, right? Who's here with me? Somewhere in the middle, I think. Probably a little mix. I try to bring as much as I can over. And I think there's something that people like about that because it feels like it gives them permission to be the most authentic version of themselves as well.

The Portland concert had ticket holders come from 43 states and four foreign countries. Hello. Hi! Can I give you a hug? And she greeted many of them for more than two hours after the concert ended. She just exudes this enthusiasm. Hi. How are you? I'm finding you.

Her energy, it's just magnetic. Chloe, well, come this way, come this way, yes. The way she lights up, she's so entertaining to watch.

Lappwood's growing audiences online and in halls around the world are more than happy with what and how she's playing. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Jeffrey Brown in Portland, Maine. And we'll be back shortly, but first take a moment to hear from your local PBS station. It's a chance to offer your support, which helps to keep programs like this one on the air.

For those of you staying with us, we take a trip back to Antarctica with science correspondent Miles O'Brien. He traveled there earlier this year with a team of scientists who are trying to understand why the Thwaites Glacier is melting so quickly. In this encore report, Miles looks at some of the research they conducted despite a major setback. The timing was awkward. New York University glaciologist David Holland and I landed on the Thwait's Glacier. almost precisely when the valiant effort to bore through it and install a suite of sensors in the ocean beneath reached an unceremonious dead end. We did not succeed in doing what we wanted to do

was to put a weather station in the ocean out there to begin to monitor it. What we achieved there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. A little bit Shakespearean. Oh, man, that's brutal. The tragedy became comedy. when Dr. Holland asked me to give him a hand,

which, as an arm amputee, is literally all I had to offer. But I have a hard time saying no. Okay, these are empty. Just my speed. All right. Let's go. Are you doing your hand? No, I think we're just dragging.

All right. So we started setting up the distributed temperature sensor. the last instrument slated to go down the hole. The heavy gear connects to a fiber optic cable that provides continuous temperature readings from the surface to the sea floor. But now it will come up about 650 feet short. Once the hole closed up,

you could have closed up shop and just come back to the ship, but you didn't, why? So it shows the possibility of what we can do in terms of remote instrumentation. So it would be sugar-coding to say, you know, that's really great. I would say that's better than nothing. The drill project was the marquee event of a month-long scientific campaign

launched from the deck of the Icebreaker Aron, owned by the Korea Polar Research Institute, or Co-Priek. Despite the drilling failure, they notched some success. One of the helicopters flew for several days over the ice. A little bit of a haze to the left of us, too. surveying with a powerful radar able to peer through the thick ice to measure it and see what the lay of the land is below. Now in its sixth year, the research campaign is a partnership between Copry, the University of Texas, and Montana State University. So they've been out for, what, six hours? No, a little over six hours. The field team leader is glaciologist Chris Pierce.

We've got really good quality data, and we've got really good quality data, and we've got really good coverage coming out of this. He showed me one of their radar grams. It's a two-dimensional slice of the ice, like an MRI or X-ray. Understanding the terrain beneath the ice is a priority for researchers developing models to predict how fast the glacier might retreat.

Once you get past a certain point, you're gonna have a really low friction surface on which the glacier can slide. So that's one of the reasons that people believe that Thwaites is particularly susceptible to instabilities. To help calibrate his radar, Pierce turns to sea ice scientist Chavone Johnson of the British Antarctic Survey to get a precise read on the density of fern, snow that is transitioning to ice. She is an expert in ice coring. We were on top of Thwaites when she showed me how it's done.

So it's a little easier than doing it manually. So let's give it a try. Let's see how it goes. She uses a coring device attached to a cordless drill. Easy peasy. This core represents about six months of fern. It tells a story if you know how to read it. Clear ice means a warm spell.

Oh, actually, you see a little here. That's a melt layer. Do you see? Oh, yeah, I do. I do. When she cores sea ice, she cuts a precise section, then weighs it to determine its. density. In 2016, sea ice here began a sharp and unexpected drop as the climate crisis changes wind and ocean currents. Melting sea ice does not directly raise sea level since it's

already floating, but its loss can indirectly accelerate the melting of land ice, glaciers like Thwaites. The role of sea ice in glacier melt forecasts is one of a myriad of uncertainties this expedition was designed to help unravel. Perhaps the most novel approach was this, a device called Rift Ox. Polar geophysicist, Jamin Greenbaum, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, teamed up with helicopter maestro, Dominic O'Rourke,

to fly into ice canyons on a series of daring missions. Sir, at Thwaites, we can take advantage of the fact that it's collapsing and producing these rifts. that allow you to get to places that, you know, in other glaciers you just can't get to. Rift docks is lifted by helicopter and flown to a fractured rift. It breaks through thin ice and lowers a rosette of canisters as deep as 2,800 feet. They capture water samples at prescribed depths. They're looking for telltale signs of subglacial discharge,

formed under the glacier by geothermal heat and friction as the ice slides. over the rock, it squirts into the sea where it mixes with warm ocean water. You know, I like to think of the warm ocean as like the fire. And this subglacial discharge, I like to think of it like lighter fluid that's getting sprayed into the fire, and it just blows the whole thing up. His early data have confirmed this hypothesis. And lo and behold, in area three, we see direct evidence of subglacial discharge. So it really is exactly where we thought it might be. It's all hard-won data.

Cope is vowing to return in two years. The puzzle pieces are elusive, and the hard work here moves at the pace of a glacier. But this one, the most consequential of them all, is moving faster than efforts to understand it. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Miles O'Brien at the Thwaites Glacier.

In a northeastern corner of Montana sits the small town of Freud. Rural and deeply conservative, it backed President Trump during every one of his White House runs. But earlier this year, when federal immigration agents detained one of the town's longtime residents, this tight-knit community pushed back. Here's Montana PBS's Matt Standell. Just 50 miles from the Canadian board. border, the town of Freud is home to less than 200 people. For more than a decade, Roberto Orozco Ramirez has been one of them.

Roberto's our neighbor. He's a part of our community. Over the years, Roberto has come to mean a lot of things to a lot of people here. He's a local diesel mechanic, little league coach, and father of four boys. Great businessman. He's my neighbor, been my neighbor next door for 11 years. But what residents of Freud didn't know until recently is that Roberto is also an undocumented immigrant who had been deported back in 2009. Up until six months ago, I didn't know Roberto was illegal.

Neighbor Keith Nordland says border patrol vehicles started showing up around town in early January. We had 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We had at least two border patrolmen in our town. Agents staked out Roberto's house and according to his neighbors, even harassed Roberto's children. I personally don't believe that's right. Them four boys are American citizens. Roberto turned himself in on January 25th.

The government charged him with illegal re-entry and immediately took him into detention, telling Montana PBS that this enforcement action represents a community safety priority. Within days, Keith Nordland found himself organizing the biggest fundraiser this town had ever seen. to help Roberto.

More people showed up to the Freud Community Center than the town has residents. They shared a meal. They bid on hay and gravel and tools, raising thousands of dollars for Roberto's family. A separate legal fund raised thousands more. It's really hard seeing that now he's in jail. Roberto Orozco Jr. is Roberto's oldest son.

He says his father fled cartel violence in Mexico as a teenager and came. here to build a better life. It's incredible seeing such a hardworking man. I mean, my dad, be in a situation like this, I just don't find it very fair. When Montana attorney Laura Christofferson heard about Roberto, she says she began studying immigration law and hired an expert thanks to those private donations. And what they found changed everything. What we believe is that even in 2009, at the time of his first deportation, he was not afforded due process, which means he was illegally removed.

Christofferson says she found mistake after mistake in the way federal authorities handled Roberto's deportation and says since January ICE agents have repeatedly violated his rights. I think people should understand that this is a person who's been in the U.S. more than 25 years. Raised a family with four U.S. citizen children who are contributing members of our community. They pay taxes. They obey the rules. They follow the law. They don't take from our society. In this deep red part of the state, there are mixed feelings about Roberto's legal status. But Keith Nordland says this ordeal has caused him to question some long-held political beliefs.

I'm not okay that Roberto was here illegally. I don't believe that's right. However, our system is so broken that a guy like Roberto that's came here has worked his butt off, has built a business, he's thriving in a niche, and he is a valuable asset to our community. How is there not a way for him to be legal? Orozco Ramirez versus Vicer et al. Last month, Roberto's legal team made their case in a Montana courtroom, arguing the Trump administration denied Roberto his constitution. right to due process. Roberto's neighbors drove six hours across the state to attend the hearing. There's probably 25 from the Freud community. I think it's kind of crazy to me how much this has affected the community. He is so important to us as a community. Because this isn't just

about the letter of the law. This is about humans. Good, good neighbors. You know, the kind that you want. Roberto's four children sat in the front row while lawyers argued for and against his release. The federal judge ultimately sided with Roberto and against the Trump administration. So after more than 100 days behind bars, Roberto was released from jail. And as he walked out of the Cascade County Detention Center, his oldest son was there to surprise him. And when he finally made it back to Freud, Roberto's neighbors lined the streets, cheering him on as he made his way back to home.

Roberto says this tight-knit community is what got him through ICE detention and helped him to keep one important thing in mind the whole time. Well, I think knowing that I wasn't alone or my family wasn't alone, he used to be pushing and I mean going through whatever, used to get to this day. The residents of Freud never expected the nationwide crackdown on immigration to make its way to their tiny town. but when it did, they were determined to stand up for one of their own.

For the PBS News Hour, I'm Matt Standle in Freud, Montana. And that is the News Hour for tonight. I'm Omna Navazz. On behalf of the entire NewsHour team, thank you for joining us.