July 2, 2024 - PBS News Hour full episode

AMNA NAWAZ: Good evening.

I'm Amna Nawaz.

Geoff Bennett is away.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: Hurricane Beryl closes in on Jamaica after battering Grenada and Barbados.

Israel launches another assault on Khan Yunis after previously claiming it had destroyed the Hamas battalions operating in the Gazan city.

And a look at how abortion restrictions in the U.S. disproportionately impact Black women.

USHA RANJI, KFF: There's both the financial cost of getting the care, the abortion itself, but also the logistical issues of traveling, potentially long distances.

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

Hurricane Beryl is taking aim at Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and Haiti after leaving a trail of destruction in the Southeast Caribbean, including Grenada.

The storm has killed at least six people in the region.

In Barbados, high waters lapped against the shoreline as strong winds whipped through the trees.

Beryl's strength has weakened from a Category 5 to a Category 4 storm during the day, but officials say it could still devastate island nations with life-threatening winds and storm surge.

The Biden administration today proposed a new rule to protect U.S. workers from the dangers of excessive heat exposure on the job.

It could be the first federal heat safety standard of its kind.

President Biden said during a visit to Washington, D.C.'s Emergency Operations Center that the measure will save lives.

JOE BIDEN, President of the United States: Across the country, workers suffer heat stroke or even die just doing their jobs.

This new rule will substantially reduce heat injuries, illnesses and deaths for over 36 million workers to whom it will apply, from farmworkers to construction workers, postal workers, manufacturing workers and so much more.

AMNA NAWAZ: Among the proposed requirements, employers with workers routinely exposed to a heat index above 80 degrees must establish a heat injury and illness prevention plan.

They must also offer rest breaks and access to shade and water for workers.

And employers who fail to comply would face steep penalties.

The White House says it will convene a summit on extreme heat later this summer.

The judge in Donald Trump's New York hush money case has pushed his sentencing until September 18 at the earliest.

It was originally set for July 11.

Judge Juan Merchan delayed to consider the possible impact of Monday's Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity.

In May, Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

He has denied any wrongdoing.

A Manhattan appeals court has disbarred former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for repeating Donald Trump's lies about fraud in the 2020 election.

The court wrote that the former federal prosecutor and Trump lawyer -- quote -- "repeatedly and intentionally made false statements" that -- quote -- "baselessly attacked and undermined the integrity of this country's electoral process."

Giuliani claimed he didn't know the statements he'd been making were not true.

One day after closing out a momentous term, the Supreme Court announced several high-profile cases it will hear in the fall, one challenging the Food and Drug Administration's ban on marketing flavored e-cigarette products, another appealing a Texas law requiring that pornographic Web sites verify a user's age.

But the court declined to hear a challenge to an Illinois ban on certain semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines, a case that could have impacted more than a dozen state laws.

Officials in Northern India say a stampede at a religious event has killed more than 100 people, including many women and children.

Local media said some 15,000 attendees of a Hindu gathering were trying to leave a tent meant to hold just 5,000 people.

Relatives of the victims wept outside a nearby trauma center, and survivors spoke of the carnage that they saw.

SHAKUNTALA DEVI, Survivor (through translator): People started falling one upon another, one upon another.

Those who were crushed died.

People there pulled them out.

SURESH, Survivor (through translator): I came to attend the event with eight other people.

None of them survived.

AMNA NAWAZ: Authorities say heat and the lack of air inside the tent could have contributed to the disaster.

The United Nations says that gang violence in Haiti has displaced 300,000 children in just the last four months.

That's more than half of the nearly 580,000 people overall made homeless in the ongoing fighting.

UNICEF says many kids are living in makeshift shelters, with some forced to join violent gangs just to survive.

Those gangs now control about 80 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says the U.S. will send an additional $2.3 billion in security aid to Ukraine as he welcomed his Ukrainian counterpart to the Pentagon this morning.

Ahead of closed-door meetings, Austin reiterated the Biden administration's unwavering support for Ukraine's defense against Russia.

LLOYD AUSTIN, U.S. Secretary of Defense: We will continue to provide the critical capabilities that Ukraine needs to push back Russian aggression today and to deter Russian aggression tomorrow.

This package under presidential drawdown authority will provide more air defense interceptors, anti-tank weapons and other critical munitions from U.S. inventories.

AMNA NAWAZ: Meantime in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hosted Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban for his first visit since Russia's 2022 invasion.

Orban has long criticized and even hindered the West's military support for Ukraine.

He urged Zelenskyy to consider a cease-fire to accelerate peace talks.

And Wall Street ended higher after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell noted some progress on inflation.

The Dow Jones industrial average added 162 points, the Nasdaq closed at a new record, gaining nearly 150 points, and the S&P topped 5500 for the first time ever.

Still to come on the "News Hour": after an historic Supreme Court decision, what history tells us about presidential immunity; new laws on tracking gun sales highlight the divide over firearms between blue and red states; and a Scottish oil town provides a test case for the country's pledge to be carbon-neutral by 2050.

Israel launched airstrikes into Khan Yunis overnight, a part of Gaza it already assaulted and left a few weeks ago.

A ground operation now seems likely.

It's not the first time in this now-nine-month war that Israeli forces have claimed to clear Hamas from an area, only to return weeks or months later.

In the streets of Khan Yunis today, pain and prayers for the dead, as residents mourn, Palestinians killed overnight in Israeli bombardment.

The strikes came a day after Israel ordered a mass evacuation from much of the city in response to a barrage of rockets, it said were fired from Khan Yunis into Israel.

Many of those forced to flee have already been displaced multiple times.

They escape any way they can, carrying only their most crucial belongings.

AHMED AL-BAIRAM, Displaced Palestinian (through translator): God knows where we will go tomorrow.

It is tiring.

This time, we did not take anything with us.

There is no time to carry anything.

AMNA NAWAZ: For wounded Palestinians, there's also no place for lifesaving care.

The European Hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals in Khan Yunis, is now virtually empty.

Patients are being transferred to the nearby Nasser Hospital, already packed full.

Earlier this year, Israel had already largely withdrawn from Khan Yunis and is now ordering Palestinians to evacuate to the humanitarian safe zone of Al-Mawasi in anticipation of a new ground assault.

This isn't the first time the Israeli military has assaulted parts of Gaza it said it had already cleared of Hamas, including parts of Gaza City and Jabalia in the north.

For months, the U.S., Qatar and Egypt have tried to negotiate a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, but progress has stalled.

A top Israeli military official told The New York Times the army is short of munitions and wants a pause in the fighting in Gaza.

But, today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied the claims.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, Israeli Prime Minister (through translator): We will end the war only after we achieve all of its goals.

We do not give in to the winds of defeat, not in The New York Times and not anywhere else.

AMNA NAWAZ: For more on Israel's military campaign in Gaza, we turn to Daniel Byman.

He's a professor at Georgetown University and the author of "A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism."

Professor Byman, let me ask you about this policy now, this -- this pattern, rather, of the IDF going back into areas it had previously cleared and left in Gaza.

What does it tell you about how the military campaign is going?

Does it signify a setback, or is this kind of pattern to be expected in this warfare?

DANIEL BYMAN, Georgetown University: This kind of pattern is to be expected because of, frankly, a flaw in how Israel has approached Gaza from the start.

It's gone in.

It's tried to kill Hamas fighters, remove them.

But it hasn't left enough forces to garrison much of the strip.

And, as a result, when Israeli forces leave, Hamas reconstitutes itself.

And this is a lesson that the United States learned the hard way in Afghanistan and especially Iraq, which is that you need to have something governing the territory you conquer.

And Israel has failed to do that.

AMNA NAWAZ: So, the stated goal, as you know, has been to eliminate Hamas.

Is that actually a reachable goal, based on what you have seen?

DANIEL BYMAN: Completely eliminating Hamas is unrealistic.

This is an organization that not only has over 25,000 fighters under arms before the war began, but also has extensive social and educational and religious networks in Gaza.

Israel can reduce Hamas' military strength, can make it harder for the organization to fight as a large, coherent force.

But Hamas is going to be a presence in Gaza, at least for the short and medium term.

And that's going to be very hard for Israel to change.

AMNA NAWAZ: We cited that New York Times' new report quoting some top Israeli army officials saying they want to pause in the fighting, they're running out of munitions.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has denied those reports.

But I'm curious for your reaction to them.

What do you make of that?

DANIEL BYMAN: So the Israeli military has to worry about three different wars.

First, of course, is the war on Gaza, and it's using many munitions for that.

My sense is that it does have enough munitions to continue that on a day-to-day basis, but that is costing a lot of Israel's ammunition stocks.

But Israel also has two other wars.

One is the limited war that's going on across the border with Lebanon, where it's fighting the Lebanese Hezbollah.

Here, we have seen literally thousands of attacks across the border, and well over 100 people have died on the Lebanese side, over a dozen Israelis.

And this conflict is not only something that's ongoing, but Israel fears it can become a full-bore conflict.

And, if so, it would dwarf what we have seen in Gaza.

Hezbollah is a much more formidable force than Hamas, and the Israeli military would need a lot of munitions for this, and it wants to keep some in reserve for that possibility.

And the last, as we saw in April, is an open shooting war with Iran.

And when this happened in April, Israel used its missile defense forces and really did only a very limited retaliation against Iran itself.

But the possibility that Iran could become directly involved in a much bigger conflict is also something that the Israeli military has to worry about.

AMNA NAWAZ: Professor, we should note that one of the reasons Israel continues to fight in Gaza is also because Hamas continues to launch attacks on Israel from inside Gaza.

This latest Israeli airstrike overnight, they say, was in response to one such attack.

How does Hamas, almost nine months into this war, still have the capability to carry out those kinds of attacks?

DANIEL BYMAN: So, Hamas has prepared for this war for -- really for years.

And we know that it has amassed massive ammunition stockpiles and rocket stockpiles.

We saw some of this, of course, on October 7 itself, which also involved massive rocket and missile attacks on Israel.

So it's not surprising that Hamas has kept some in reserve, probably in tunnels or other facilities that are relatively secure.

My sense is that Israel has destroyed a lot of this.

This has been a real success of Israel's invasion of Gaza.

But it's hard to go completely to zero, and Hamas certainly retains some capability, including a capability to try to attack Israel directly.

AMNA NAWAZ: I have less than a minute left, but I wonder if you can briefly summarize for us.

Based on U.S. war conduct you have seen in other nations, when you look at the way Israel's conducted this war inside Gaza, have you ever -- do you see any comparison there between what Israel is doing and what you have seen the U.S. do in other places?

DANIEL BYMAN: So, when the U.S. first went into Iraq and was fighting insurgents there, it often cleared them out, but failed to secure territory.

What Israel needs to do is establish a government in Gaza, ideally, a Palestinian government, and until it does that, it's going to face significant problems.

AMNA NAWAZ: That is Professor Daniel Byman from Georgetown University joining us tonight.

Professor, thank you so much for your time and insight.

We appreciate it.

DANIEL BYMAN: My pleasure.

AMNA NAWAZ: The Supreme Court's landmark decision former President Donald Trump's immunity from some legal prosecution has potential to transform the powers of the presidency.

Our Jeffrey Brown takes a deeper look at how the ruling fits with history.

JEFFREY BROWN: How much power for the executive branch?

What kind of legal restraints?

Those are questions that have been debated since the beginning of the country.

But now, by any account, there's been a major new development.

We look at the past and potential future with historian Heather Cox Richardson, a professor at Boston College.

And welcome back to the program.

Let's do start with history.

What do you see when you look at these early debates about presidential power that might help us think about now?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON, Boston College: Well, I want to be clear that, in fact, there hasn't been much dispute about the power of the president since the founding of the United States of America.

The people who framed the Constitution as well as the people who wrote the Declaration of Independence, were very clear that they did not want a king, that it was important for the chief executive to have guardrails around him at the time, is what they thought, and that those -- that it was imperative that the president always was answerable to the law.

So we had Alexander Hamilton, for example, in Federalist 69 being very clear that the president could be impeached, the president could be convicted of treason or bribery or high crimes or misdemeanors, could be removed from office, and, crucially, would always, as he said, be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.

They contrasted that with a king.

Now, that really has not been in dispute, as we know, certainly we have got from 1974, when President Richard Nixon stepped down because he had broken laws and received and accepted a pardon from Gerald Ford, which suggested that he recognized that a president could be held liable for crimes.

And we have had in the confirmation hearings of many of the Supreme Court justices who yesterday overturned that central rule of law saying they too believe the president was under the control, should be under the control of the law.

So this is not a question of we have jockeyed with this.

This is a question of, this is a brand-new development that undermines the central American principle that we are all answerable to the law.

No one is above it.

No one is below it.

JEFFREY BROWN: Let me push back a little.

The majority of the court yesterday says it's distinguishing now between official and unofficial acts.

Now, why is that not a reasonable demarcation line?

Why won't courts in the future be able to distinguish between those?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Well, that was an interesting part of the decision, now, because -- because, as they said, that we have never had to explore what an official act is for the presidency.

What they did was they suggested that the people who would have to arbitrate that would be the court itself.

So, in a way, what they have done is they have set themselves up as the people who got to -- get to decide whether or not what a president does is legal or can be can be prosecuted.

But, just to be clear, this has never come up before, in part because presidents have never been unconstrained by fear of criminal prosecution.

Now, that's not to say that we might not have had presidents who crossed over that line, and we could have a great discussion about who they might have been and what they might have done.

But this is the first time anybody has suggested that a president acting within an official capacity can break the law.

And think about what that looks like.

For example, you could say that, as George W. Bush did with his signing statement, that, regardless of what Congress said about torture, he could engage in that.

Now, think about the things that a president could do.

And, in fact, somebody put on social media yesterday, an A.I.

program that could -- that said, say what crime you want to commit, and A.I.

will tell you how you can say it's an official act.

Think of what somebody who is not liable for criminal acts might behave.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, what do you fear now?

We have a -- former President Trump has a track record, his first administration.

He's spoken of things he wants to do in the future if elected.

What do you fear and why do you think that these constitutional checks and balances that we have had will not hold?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Well, they're gone.

I mean, that's not -- it's not a question -- people are saying this might be a problem in the future.

No, we're in the problem, because the rule of law, law and order underpins our entire system, the idea that everybody should be treated equally in the courts.

The Supreme Court just ripped that up.

So what am I afraid of?

I'm afraid of, first of all, that people don't recognize what a big deal this is.

This isn't an adjustment in the law.

This is a change in our entire constitutional system.

It says that there is one of the three branches of government that cannot be checked by the other two.

And I don't think that people necessarily understand what that means.

And all you have to do is look to any authoritarian country.

Look, for example, right now in Hungary, where Viktor Orban is busily taking control of other countries' companies that are within his country, because he can do that now.

He's not checked by the courts.

Look at Vladimir Putin's Russia, for example, where he can simply throw his people into the maw of a meat grinder in that war because they can't say no.

We have just -- our Supreme Court has just done the same thing.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Heather Cox Richardson, thank you very much.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Thanks for having me.

AMNA NAWAZ: It's been more than two years since the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion.

Since then, nearly two dozen states have banned or restricted access to the procedure and to abortion pills.

Special correspondent Sarah Varney Sarah Varney traveled to one of those states, Tennessee, to report on the disproportionate impact abortion bans are having on Black women.

It's part of our ongoing coverage of Race Matters.

NICOLE BLACKMON, Mother of Shooting Victim: He's actually 14 in that photo.

This was the year where he was graduating from the eighth grade.

SARAH VARNEY: Nicole Blackmon's son Daniel was shot and killed in Mobile, Alabama two years ago, an innocent bystander.

Overcome with grief, Nicole and her husband moved to a Nashville suburb.

NICOLE BLACKMON: After so many tries, I did finally get pregnant.

SARAH VARNEY: Blackmon long had difficulty conceiving after having Daniel, so she was elated when she became pregnant after arriving in Tennessee.

But four months into her pregnancy, doctors discovered that the fetus' organs were growing outside its body, and Nicole had became so dangerously ill, she was hospitalized.

It was only when she decided to end her pregnancy that the couple found out Tennessee lawmakers had outlawed abortion.

When you learned that you were unable to make the choice to end your pregnancy here in Tennessee, what was your husband's reaction?

NICOLE BLACKMON: He was devastated: "You're putting your life on the line.

You know, we just lost Daniel, and I don't want to lose you."

SARAH VARNEY: The couple considered driving out of state.

But Nicole was already too sick to work, with no paid sick leave, and her husband, a house painter, would lose a week of wages.

At 31 weeks, she vaginally delivered a stillborn baby.

NICOLE BLACKMON: Me knowing the condition of the baby, I did ask that the doctors to put a sheet in between me and the doctor, because, mentally, I did not want to be prepared to see the baby like that after just losing my son, and I wanted to just have a memory in my head on how I wanted the baby to be in my head.

SARAH VARNEY: And Blackmon isn't facing these restrictions alone; 57 percent of Black women between the ages of 15 and 49, or about seven million women, live in states where abortion is banned or limited.

Tennessee has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, and Black women here are about 2.5 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes as white women, regardless of their income or level of education.

The Republican-controlled legislature here in Tennessee made a few limited changes to its total abortion ban last year.

Abortions are now legal if a pregnant woman is facing death or is at risk of irreversible damage to a major bodily function.

But doctors here say pregnant women are still in danger.

How long have you been practicing in Tennessee?

DR. ROLANDA LISTER, Vanderbilt University Medical Center: Since 2016.

SARAH VARNEY: Dr. Rolanda Lister is a maternal fetal medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.

DR. ROLANDA LISTER: One of the unfortunate challenges with not having choice for a mother, especially when there is a lethal fetal anomaly, is the complications that can potentially happen from continuing a pregnancy.

SARAH VARNEY: Complications like postpartum hemorrhage and preeclampsia, a high blood pressure disorder that can lead to organ failure.

DR. ROLANDA LISTER: So it's hard to justify continuing some pregnancies that have very little to no likelihood of survival.

SARAH VARNEY: Lister says it's not uncommon for her office to recommend patients leave Tennessee for abortion care.

DR. ROLANDA LISTER: We provide them with phone numbers, foundations that help with travel.

So we do our best to assist patients if that's what they have decided to do after hearing about the unfortunate news about their unborn baby.

SARAH VARNEY: Last year, more than 171,000 patients traveled across state lines to end a pregnancy.

That's more than double the number who did so in 2019.

USHA RANJI, KFF: Some people have been able to travel out of state to get abortion care, but, for a lot of people, that's not really practical.

SARAH VARNEY: Usha Ranji is the associate director of women's health policy at KFF, a nonprofit health research organization.

USHA RANJI: Most Black women say they actually don't have enough savings to be able to afford a $500-or-more unexpected expense.

So there's both the financial cost of getting the care, the abortion itself, but also the logistical issues of traveling, potentially long distances.

SARAH VARNEY: She says Black women who are pregnant enter the health care system already at a disadvantage.

USHA RANJI: Black women, we know, have experienced discrimination and racism in all sectors of society, including the health care system, and that has affected their access to care, their relationships with providers, and their treatment by providers for a very long time.

TIA FREEMAN, Reproductive Health Organizer: There are safe ways that you can obtain abortions right now.

They might not be safe in a legal aspect all the time, but there are safe ways where we don't have to find people using coat hangers or caustic substances.

SARAH VARNEY: 28-year-old reproductive health organizer Tia Freeman educates Tennesseans about their options outside of medical settings.

She leads trainings on how to safely take medication abortion pills in a state where Republican lawmakers have made doing so illegal.

TIA FREEMAN: We're getting more and more people who are scrambling to find people they're in community with who know someone who might know someone that can help them.

And were also seeing a lot of people continue unintended pregnancies because they don't have access to a clinic that's nearby.

SARAH VARNEY: Access to reproductive health care has long been limited for women in Southern states, especially Black women.

TIA FREEMAN: A lot of people say like, Roe was the floor, not the ceiling.

And the reason that is, is because a lot of people were barred from care anyway.

SARAH VARNEY: And Black women between ages 18 to 59 have higher uninsured rates than their white counterparts.

That's in part because far more Black women live in Southern states that have not expanded Medicaid under Obamacare.

Without insurance, women's access to health services is limited and costly, including prescription birth control pills and IUDs and routine gynecological care.

USHA RANJI: Having health insurance and access to care is really important before, during, and after pregnancy.

But we know that, in states that have not expanded Medicaid, a lot of people only gain health insurance once they become pregnant.

And that's particularly for lower-income people.

SARAH VARNEY: Freeman has had two abortions.

She wants to focus on supporting her son financially and emotionally, and she's deeply committed to his future and her own.

A landmark study that tracked 1,000 pregnant women for a decade found that 72 percent of those who were denied an abortion ended up in poverty, nearly 20 percent higher than women like Freeman, who were able to obtain abortion care.

TIA FREEMAN: I think that, for Black people, abortion is a liberatory point of access because of the blockages for upward mobility when people experience unintended pregnancies, the lack of access to career options, college and education, because of the high rates of maternal mortality.

SARAH VARNEY: For now, Nicole Blackmon is waiting for her day in court.

She's the lead plaintiff in a Center for Reproductive Rights lawsuit against the state of Tennessee over it's abortion ban.

But she's already taken a painful step to protect herself.

NICOLE BLACKMON: I did decide to have my tubes removed, because I was scared of going through all of that all over again, knowing that I'm going in a battle with no support from the doctors, because the doctors' hands are tied, and that's -- not much that they can do.

SARAH VARNEY: Had you been able to have an abortion when you wanted it, would you have wanted to try again, try and get pregnant again?

NICOLE BLACKMON: Yes.

I would have gave myself another chance at having another baby.

SARAH VARNEY: Who do you blame for what happened to you?

NICOLE BLACKMON: I blame the law.

I blame the law for being made, not thinking about the different reasons women go through what they go through, not making it where women are able to make their own decisions when it comes to their body.

SARAH VARNEY: Decisions, she says, that can be life or death.

For the PBS "News Hour," I'm Sarah Varney in Nashville.

AMNA NAWAZ: New and conflicting laws around the purchase of firearms are taking effect across different states this week.

In California, the law now requires credit card companies to provide banks with special retail codes for gun stores in order to help track their sales.

But just the opposite is happening in Georgia, Iowa, Tennessee, and Wyoming, where it is now illegal for banks and credit card companies to track that information.

Stephanie Sy has more on that story and joins us now -- Stephanie.

STEPHANIE SY: Amna, credit cards have been used to buy guns in some of the nation's deadliest mass shootings.

In 2012, the gunman in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater shooting charged $11,000 to buy guns, ammunition and tactical gear.

In 2016, the Pulse nightclub shooter in Orlando put more than $20,000 on credit cards.

And, in 2017, after the Las Vegas massacre killed 59 people, police found four credit cards that the shooter used to pay for part of his $95,000 rampage.

This new front in tackling mass shootings has divided conservative and liberal states.

For more, I'm joined by David Lieb, who's been covering this for the Associated Press.

David, thank you so much for joining the "News Hour."

Can you just briefly remind us how merchant codes work?

Are those what you see in your end-of-year credit card statements that give you an idea, for example, of how much you spent on groceries or clothes?

DAVID LIEB, Associated Press: Yes, exactly.

That is probably the most common way that a consumer would be familiar with these.

A merchant category code is set by the International Organization of Standardization.

That's a big mouthful, but that's a group that sets standards for a variety of fields across the world, actually.

So they have come up with a new four-digit code that can be assigned to stores that primarily sell guns and ammunition.

STEPHANIE SY: How specific is this code?

Is it one code?

And can a credit card company tell whether you bought a gun from Walmart or a sporting goods store?

And is having that information, potentially sharing it a privacy violation?

DAVID LIEB: So these codes are shared by credit card networks like Visa or Mastercard with banks that issue credit cards and which have accounts with businesses.

It's the banks that then in turn decide how to categorize particular businesses.

So, until now, a place that sold guns, say, a Walmart that sold guns, was probably not categorized as a gun store, probably a general merchandise store, and still might be categorized as a general merchandise store.

Where this code comes into play is for stores that specialize in guns.

Those stores now would get this new code.

And so, when someone buys something from one of those stores, it will show up as a gun store purchase.

But they won't be able to tell whether you bought a gun, ammunition, a gun safe, or perhaps hunting apparel, like an orange hunting vest.

STEPHANIE SY: So why do states like California believe this could combat mass killings?

Companies already have the names of companies every time there's a transaction.

They already, from what I understand, also have the right to flag that to law enforcement authorities for further investigation.

Why is this needed?

DAVID LIEB: So some state officials and gun control activists hope that, by categorizing particular stores as gun stores, banks will be able to spot unusual purchasing patterns.

Let's say you're not usually shopping at a gun store, but suddenly you make a large purchase from a gun store, but not just one, but from multiple gun stores, in a short period of time.

That might raise some suspicions.

A financial institution then might flag that suspicious activity to federal or state authorities, who could do further investigation and, gun control activists hope, potentially thwart a crime or a mass shooting.

STEPHANIE SY: Does it lead to unlawful government spying, which is what Republican critics of this type of rule suggest it does?

Are you expecting legal challenges?

DAVID LIEB: Well, that is the fear from gun rights advocates.

And that's why Republican legislators in 17 states now have passed some sort of measure that limits or outright prohibits the assigning of gun store codes to particular retailers.

Their fear is that what might be suspicious to one person is not actually suspicious at all.

Let's take the example of someone who for their job perhaps has to undergo periodic firearms training to make sure that they're still accurate.

Well, that person may go out and buy a large quantity of ammunition for a weekend training session, may be perfectly legal, but it could arise suspicions to someone.

It's scenarios like that that gun rights advocates are concerned about, casting unwarranted suspicion people who have done nothing wrong.

STEPHANIE SY: What you have now is a patchwork of laws that contradict each other, with states like California saying they want this merchant code, and other states saying they prohibit credit card companies from using these codes.

How are the companies going to comply with this patchwork of laws?

DAVID LIEB: Well, Visa, in its latest manual that it distributes to all of its customers, included this new standard and put a footnote on there that said, this is being distributed in compliance with California law.

But only the banks and financial institutions in California are required to assign this to businesses.

So, yes, the situation exists that, across the country, the very same store in one state might be categorized as a gun shop, but in another state it might still be categorized as a sporting goods store.

STEPHANIE SY: It is certainly a development that we will continue to follow, especially as we reach peak summer, when we often see a lot of gun violence in cities.

David Lieb with the Associated Press, thanks so much for joining us.

DAVID LIEB: Glad to be here.

AMNA NAWAZ: A major issue in Britain's general election this week is the cost of living crisis, fueled by spiking inflation after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

That, in turn, has put pressure on the country's pledge written into law to become carbon-neutral by 2050.

Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from Aberdeen, Scotland in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: For much of its history, Aberdeen was a small port with mostly fishing vessels that anchored the local economy.

NARRATOR: Aberdeen on the east coast of Scotland.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Then, 50 years ago, amid a global energy crisis, black gold was discovered in the North Sea.

NARRATOR: Liquid gold.

Call it what you like.

Britain now has oil.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Aberdeen became the anchor of Britain's oil industry.

Hundreds of offshore rigs began to reel in oil, gas and money.

But with reserves dwindling in a global climate crisis, the United Kingdom set a goal to reach net zero by 2050, something highlighted at the COP 26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, which itself set a 2045 net zero target.

The city of Aberdeen, self-described as Europe's oil capital, pledged to become its energy capital.

MAGGIE MCGINLAY, Energy Transition Zone: It's almost like another Industrial Revolution.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Maggie McGinlay leads a government-funded nonprofit called the Energy Transition Zone in Aberdeen.

It's intended as an incubator for new companies in emerging technologies, like this experimental platform for floating wind turbines.

MAGGIE MCGINLAY: We very much see it as a managed transition that's more focused on energy production from offshore wind, from hydrogen, and then utilizing carbon capture.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Half-a-mile away at the Technical North East Scotland College, students strain to work on oil rigs and offshore wind farms alike.

T.J. PRIESTLY, Student: I believe there's a lot of life left within oil and gas in the North Sea.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: T.J. Priestly and classmate Chloe MacIntosh said they liked the adventure of working on remote platforms miles out to sea for weeks at a time, and the perks.

CHLOE MACINTOSH, Student: That's why we're paid the money that we are, because...it's FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It's good, isn't it?

CHLOE MACINTOSH: Yes, it's good money that we go into.

Brodie MacGruer is a renewables tech student.

BRODIE MACGRUER, Student: I have always wanted to go off onto the rigs and do mechanical work.

And since renewables is the next upcoming thing, and it's only going to get bigger, I thought this would be the best thing.

PAUL BALFOUR, Instructor, North East Scotland College: It's a really exciting place to be a young person in the northeast of Scotland right now.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Instructor Paul Balfour says, for many students, the choice of oil and gas or renewables is not hard.

PAUL BALFOUR: The skills are really transferable.

Traditional oil and gas companies still exist.

They need employees.

Offshore wind and wave power, they're looking for employees as well.

JOHN UNDERHILL, University of Aberdeen: Three-quarters of our total energy needs still come from oil and gas.

So the starting point on our journey to decarbonize is already a challenging one.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: John Underhill directs the Center for Energy Transition at the University of Aberdeen.

He says that decarbonizing journey has been subject to detours, thanks to global developments and politics closer to home.

JOHN UNDERHILL: In the period since COP 26, there's been a seismic event, if you like.

And with events in Ukraine, we now see that energy security and affordability have come right up the political agenda, perhaps at the -- arguably at the expense of environmental sustainability and climate compatibility.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Gas prices and home heating costs and inflation overall soared after the invasion, creating a cost of living crisis.

Britain's government called for redoubled efforts to drill more in the North Sea in pursuit of energy security.

But to critics, this was a step backwards, evidence more of the influence of oil companies than any security or climate concerns.

ERIK DALHUIJSEN, Aberdeen Climate Action: The problem is, with the same company making his profit out of producing fossil fuels, at the same time, controlling the conversation about how quickly renewables are going to expand.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Erik Dalhuijsen, who once worked in the petroleum industry, now runs an environmental group called Aberdeen Climate Action.

ERIK DALHUIJSEN: We need a different mind-set, a different approach to actually do the things that bring these emissions down, that take our energy demand down.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Very little has been invested in lowering energy demand, he says, heat pumps and insulation, for example, retrofitting Britain's aging buildings and housing stock, which account for as much as a fourth of all its carbon emissions.

ERIK DALHUIJSEN: The North East Scotland College doesn't have a retrofit department yet, yes?

That's unbelievable.

And because the oil industry controls this transition funding, it's pretty much impossible to get transition funding for things that were to develop these jobs.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: And the jobs so far in renewable energy have brought little benefit locally.

Thousands of wind turbines now dot the British coast, the most visible symbol of this country's effort to decarbonize its energy sources.

But many people in Aberdeen see something different.

They see imported turbines, almost all of which have been installed using foreign labor, workers housed offshore on boats, many paid far less than even the British minimum wage.

Those are terrible optics, aren't they?

DAVID WHITEHOUSE, Offshore Energies U.K.: They are.

They're terrible optics.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: David Whitehouse heads Offshore Energies U.K., an association of energy companies.

DAVID WHITEHOUSE: But there's some great work now going on that shows we can learn from that.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: He insists that new homegrown jobs will be developed in emerging industries like hydrogen, carbon capture and storage and floating wind turbines that can be deployed farther out in windier waters.

But Whitehouse says oil and gas will remain the most reliable energy source for decades and must remain in the mix.

A total switch to renewables by 2050 is simply not feasible, he says.

DAVID WHITEHOUSE: Because you will never get there quickly enough.

Yes, we could have more wind, but we would have blackouts.

That is not going to be acceptable.

So I think there's a recognition that, while we in the U.K. use oil and gas, and we will be on 2050, then, actually, that it is right that we produce our own.

JAKE MOLLOY, Just Transition Commission: We have got to take control of renewables.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: For his part, Jake Molloy, veteran oil worker and union leader, says fossil fuels will continue to be part of Britain's energy mix because it's profitable for the oil companies.

What's needed is major investment in grid expansion to transmit renewable energy, he says.

That will create thousands of jobs.

JAKE MOLLOY: What we should be doing is transitioning those workers into what has to be done to enable all of this electricity we're going to produce, because we don't have the infrastructure for it just yet.

We can produce electricity during the windy periods.

What are we going to do when the wind drops?

We don't have any storage capacity in the U.K. We have got nothing, zero.

JOHN UNDERHILL: We have not had an energy policy, a long-term energy policy in the U.K., since the 1970s.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Professor Underhill says Britons have taken energy security for granted for decades.

JOHN UNDERHILL: We could make some of those net zero targets, and much more easily, but only by shutting things down with the cost that comes with that to jobs, to security.

The hard bit is actually, if you like, from now forward.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Britain accounts for barely 1 percent of global emissions today, but, as a developed economy, cradle of the Industrial Revolution, and with it today's climate crisis, many scholars say its example will be closely watched across the globe.

For the PBS "News Hour," I'm Fred de Sam Lazaro in Aberdeen, Scotland.

AMNA NAWAZ: And Fred's reporting is a partnership with the Under-Told Stories Project at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

A number of prominent musicians, including George Gershwin, Miles Davis, and John Lennon, were also artists in other mediums.

You can now add Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart to that list.

Special correspondent Mike Cerre visited Hart in Las Vegas, where his fans are flocking to see his art and to hear his band play in its summer residency.

It's part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

MICKEY HART, Musician and Artist: Painting is like music.

When I paint, I can hear the music.

I can hear the paintings.

And they're full of rhythm.

And that's what I do.

MIKE CERRE: For percussionist Mickey Hart, art is in the eye and ear of the beholder.

MICKEY HART: I like to create things from nothing, to make things happen.

And visual or sonic, it doesn't matter.

It's just the act of creation.

MIKE CERRE: For more than a half-century, Mickey Hart has been part of creating the Grateful Dead's enduring magic as a percussionist throughout its many iterations, the latest as Dead and Company.

MICKEY HART: OK, we're -- mind your head, kids.

Mind you head.

MIKE CERRE: More recently, he's taken on painting as a second career, both as an emotional release from his day job and as another medium for expressing the fundamental role rhythm plays in all of his work.

MICKEY HART: I paint with multicolors.

I also play with multirhythms, polyrhythms.

So they're very similar in many ways.

MIKE CERRE: Is it performance art?

Because you are dancing to the rhythms.

MICKEY HART: It is.

MIKE CERRE: You are moving to the sounds in your studio.

MICKEY HART: Oh, yes.

Oh, yes.

When I paint, I have music going and I'm painting in rhythm and I'm grooving and I'm having fun.

MIKE CERRE: Rhythm is more than just an inspiration for his art.

It's an integral part of his technique, which he and others are calling vibrational expressionism.

Some of his canvases are the actual drumheads and cymbals he's performed with over the years.

They are placed on top of massive audio speakers to let the rhythmic vibrations move the paint around, forming unique patterns that can't be created with brushes.

MICKEY HART: Paint brushes are too limited for me.

hand everybody paints with brushes.

So I imagine I couldn't paint better than a billion other people.

But this is a different kind of painting.

I use buckets and all kinds of things that hang from the ceiling that make figure eights and circular movements.

JACKSON POLLOCK, Artist: Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.

MIKE CERRE: Did Jackson Pollock inspire you at all?

MICKEY HART: Oh, yes.

Jackson Pollock was one of my idols.

JACKSON POLLOCK: I can control the flow of the paint.

That was no accident.

MICKEY HART: And he was random.

And I like random.

And I like chaos.

Chaos -- I embrace chaos.

And so did Pollock.

But he only went so far.

And I was going to take it further than that, take it into the vibrational world.

MIKE CERRE: His sources of good vibrations for painting come from as far away as outer space, from his previous collaboration with Nobel Prize winning physicist and Deadhead Dr. George Smoot and as close to home as his own brain's reflection of different rhythms from his medical research with neurologist Dr. Adam Gazzaley.

MICKEY HART: They're interchangeable for me, sound and light.

Light, of course, is very powerful, more powerful than the sound, the eyes, anyway, as an organ, more powerful than the ear.

So I naturally just gravitated to the visual domain from the sonic domain.

MIKE CERRE: As nontraditional as his technique, so is his first major gallery exhibition, here at a Las Vegas casino, where he's created a pop-up gallery for his work at the Venetian Hotel, so longtime Deadheads can see and possibly buy some of his art, like Larry Watton from New York.

LARRY WATTON, Deadhead: I know him more as a musician, but I think him as a full artist.

His whole being is awed.

ROBIN LAMMON, Deadhead: We're dead heads from way back.

We want to see everything in this exhibit.

MIKE CERRE: Robin and Tim Lammon came from Florida for both Mickey Hart's music and his art.

TIM LAMMON, Deadhead: I have seen some of his art some other places.

MIKE CERRE: Are you surprised by the thing you see here?

TIM LAMMON: Yes, it's actually really good.

(LAUGHTER) TIM LAMMON: I wasn't expecting it to be this good.

MICKEY HART: Everybody sees something different in the paintings, and everybody hears something different in the music.

And that's the beauty of both, is because there's mystery involved in it.

MIKE CERRE: What about now art critics?

When you put your art out there, they're not going to be necessarily the critics.

MICKEY HART: I don't think of critics anymore.

Critics are long gone.

I don't care what they say.

It doesn't really matter to me.

I hope they like it.

If they don't, well, they don't.

But it wouldn't stop me, because I'm not doing it for the critics.

I'm doing it for people and for myself and maybe for the world of art.

MIKE CERRE: His art gallery exhibit is convenient for his other career and day job, playing with Dead and Company at the Las Vegas Sphere, yet another canvas for showcasing both of his art forms simultaneously on the world's largest LED screen.

MICKEY HART: When I'm painting, the same thing happens.

It's a groove.

And I'm improvising.

I improvise in the Grateful Dead, Dead and Company.

That's improvisational music.

This is the same in paints.

It's jamming.

It's -- I love the jam, no matter what it is.

MIKE CERRE: For the PBS "News Hour," Mike Cerre at the Sphere in Las Vegas, Nevada.

AMNA NAWAZ: Priyanka Mattoo is an L.A.-based writer and filmmaker whose new memoir, "Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones," chronicles her peripatetic search for home, from Kashmir to England to Saudi Arabia to Michigan to Rome and finally to Los Angeles.

Tonight, she gives her Brief But Spectacular take on what home means to her today.

PRIYANKA MATTOO, Author, "Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones": My parents met at, it's kind of like a Hindu bar mitzvah.

It's called a makal (ph).

They claim it was arranged.

It was not arranged.

Listen, my parents have been together for 40-some years.

They're an incredible partnership.

And my father has this hilarious practical approach, which is, he believes that all marriages should be agreed to in eight-year options.

And every eight years you go, hey, do we still want to be married?

And you go, yes or no?

I mean, it's not the worst idea.

My book is called "Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones."

I was born in Srinagar, Kashmir, at the foothills of the Himalayas.

I lived there on and off until I was 2.5 and then spent a big part of the year there until I was 9.

Because of mounting violence in the region, we had to leave and we couldn't go back.

I moved to London.

We moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

We lived in suburban New York.

We lived in Michigan.

My maternal grandfather, Nanaji, definitely created an army of strong, sort of pathologically assertive women.

And so that's all I knew was to go out in the world with this very confident, noisy attitude.

He was always chain-smoking.

He waxed and twirled his mustache and he was so larger than life.

Nanaji inspired me to be my true self.

There's a section in the book about this.

And what Nanaji really taught the girls, what was baked into them forever was to like themselves, that what anyone else thought or valued was irrelevant.

"No one can take your mind away from you,' he said sternly to his daughters and nieces and eventually to me.

The woman of my family took that edict and ran with it.

Food and language are everything to us.

I mean, you have to understand we were like tucked away in cold wooden houses during the winter, so all we do is talk and eat.

You will not get recipes written down from Kashmiri women.

It's a lot of like add enough so that it's red.

Rogan josh is the signature Kashmiri meal.

It is a delicious, spicy lamb stew.

I have a theory about why Kashmiri mothers and grandmothers do not share their recipes.

I believe that my mother enjoys feeding me with rogan josh so that when I have to make it I have to call her.

So it's a loving act, even though it's a little withholding.

I moved to the U.S. in the middle of my freshman year of high school, which was only hard for me.

My parents loved it immediately.

It's really hard for me to go through any second of any day without thinking about how lucky I have it and how I could be dead or in a refugee camp if I had just been born 200 feet to the right.

I did think writing books was for other people, and there was no point in which I thought it was a vocation for me at all.

I just know that I got to a certain point in my life where I couldn't hold the words in anymore and they came pouring out.

My name is Priyanka Mattoo, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on dreaming of home.

AMNA NAWAZ: And you can watch more Brief But Spectacular videos online at PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.

And that is the "News Hour" for tonight.

I'm Amna Nawaz.

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