AMNA NAWAZ: Good evening.

I'm Amna Nawaz.

Geoff Bennett is on assignment.

On the "News Hour" tonight: In a White House visit with the king of Jordan, President Trump doubles down on his plan to take over Gaza and push out Palestinians.

We examine the long-term effects of the Trump administration's plans to cut medical research funding.

And how students and teachers whose schools were destroyed by the California wildfires are finding ways to keep learning.

SHAWN BROWN, Executive Director, Pasadena Rosebud Academy: Sure, we lost our building, but we still have each other, and I think that that has been a huge factor in students being able to move forward.

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

The fate of the cease-fire in Gaza appears fragile tonight, after Israel today threatened to restart the war unless Hamas releases all Israeli hostages by Saturday.

The overall fate of Gaza was the focus of an Oval Office meeting between President Trump and Jordan's King Abdullah, in which Trump vowed to -- quote -- "take" the enclave.

Nick Schifrin reports.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Tonight, on the outskirts of Gaza, Israeli troops are once again preparing for war.

Hamas is threatening to delay an upcoming hostage release because it says Israel is withholding tents.

So, today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replied with his own threat.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, Israeli Prime Minister (through translator): If Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday noon, the cease-fire will end, and the military will return to intense fighting until Hamas is finally defeated.

NICK SCHIFRIN: The Hamas-Israel agreement, facilitated by the Biden and Trump administrations, called for the gradual release of hostages over months.

The new deadline was first set by President Trump after he saw the condition of released Israeli hostages.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: They are emaciated.

They look like Holocaust survivors.

So I don't want to do two, and then we do another two in another week, and then we do four in three weeks now.

No, no, they either have them out by Saturday at 12:00 or all bets are off.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Trump spoke in the Oval Office with Jordanian King Abdullah and reiterated his vision of U.S. ownership over Gaza.

DONALD TRUMP: We don't have to buy.

There's nothing to buy.

We will have Gaza.

No reason to buy.

There is nothing to buy.

It's Gaza.

It's a war-torn area.

We're going to take it.

We're going to hold it.

We're going to cherish it.

QUESTION: And, Mr. President, take it under what authority?

It is sovereign territory.

DONALD TRUMP: Under the U.S. authority.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Egypt's foreign minister is in Washington, and Egyptian officials tell "PBS News Hour" they're developing a -- quote -- "alternative proposal," no displacement of Gazans.

Local Gazans with no political affiliation would provide both security and governance, with the hope of transitioning to the Palestinian Authority.

On X this afternoon, King Abdullah wrote: "I reiterated Jordan's steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank."

Forcing them to leave would be a war crime.

But, today, President Trump said all Gazans would choose to leave, and Jordan and Egypt would accept them.

DONALD TRUMP: I believe we will have a parcel of land in Jordan.

I believe we will have a parcel of land in Egypt.

They don't want to be there.

They have no alternative.

When they have no alternative, not one person will want to stay where they are.

Nobody wants to stay there.

They're living in hell.

NICK SCHIFRIN: In Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp, the Massouds might be living in the rubble, but they say they're not going anywhere.

SABRINE MASSOUD, Displaced Palestinian (through translator): We reject displacement, even if we continue living on rubble.

The rubble of our homes, the rubble of our ancestors, the homes of our ancestors, our country, our country that is dear to our hearts.

NICK SCHIFRIN: More than half of Gaza's two million people are children.

Today, Jordan promised to evacuate 2,000 of the sickest, apparently convincing President Trump to drop previous threats against Jordan and Egypt.

QUESTION: Mr. President, would you still consider withholding aid to those countries if they don't accept your plans to accept... DONALD TRUMP: Well, I don't want to say that, because we have had such a good relationship, and we're doing so well just in the short time that we have been talking.

I don't have to threaten with money.

We do.

We contribute a lot of money to Jordan and to Egypt, by the way, a lot, to both.

But I don't have to threaten that.

I don't think -- I think we're above that.

I do believe we're above that.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Trump's proposal has shocked the Middle East and is perhaps impossible to execute, but what it has done, put regional leaders on the spot to publicly come up with their own plan.

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

AMNA NAWAZ: The day's other headlines start with an American teacher who's heading home after 3.5 years in Russian detention.

The U.S. envoy for hostages posted this photo today of Marc Fogel enjoying his newfound freedom.

Officials say Fogel was handed over in an exchange that they described as a diplomatic thaw with Moscow.

It's not clear what the U.S. side of the bargain entailed.

Fogel's arrest in 2021 sparked calls for his release.

He was serving a 14-year prison sentence after being found with a small amount of medically prescribed marijuana.

At the White House today, President Trump celebrated Fogel's release, saying it bodes well for future talks on ending the war in Ukraine.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: We were treated very nicely by Russia, actually.

I hope that's the beginning of a relationship where we can end that war and millions of people can stop being killed.

AMNA NAWAZ: Those comments came during an extended joint appearance by Trump and Elon Musk in the Oval Office.

The billionaire businessman defended the efforts of his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

That work has led to numerous lawsuits and pushback from Democratic lawmakers and other groups.

Twenty-seven religious groups are suing the Trump administration over a policy that makes it easier for immigration agents to carry out arrests at places of worship.

Plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit range from the Mennonite Church to the Central Conference of American Rabbis to Unitarian Universalists and more.

The groups say their congregations are -- quote - - "experiencing decreases in worship attendance due to fear of immigration enforcement action."

They argue that violates their religious freedom, including the ability to minister to migrants.

The Trump administration has not yet responded.

Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon pleaded guilty today to defrauding donors in a private effort to build a wall along the U.S. southern border.

Bannon called the case political persecution as he left the courthouse.

As part of his plea agreement, Bannon will avoid jail time.

But he is barred from holding leadership rules in any nonprofits or charitable organizations in New York.

This marks Bannon's second criminal conviction.

He spent four months in prison last year for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation of the January 6 attacks.

J.D.

Vance used his first major policy speech as vice president to warn against what he called the excessive regulation of artificial intelligence.

He made the comments at the A.I.

Action Summit in Paris, where more than 60 countries, including China, signed an agreement to promote responsible A.I.

development.

But the United States and the U.K. were not among those signing.

Instead, Vance told world leaders that a hands-off approach to the new technology is the best way to ensure growth.

J.D.

VANCE, Vice President of the United States: We need international regulatory regimes that fosters the creation of A.I.

technology, rather than strangles it.

And we need our European friends in particular to look to this new frontier with optimism, rather than trepidation.

AMNA NAWAZ: At that same Paris summit, OpenAI boss Sam Altman dismissed Elon Musk's offer to buy the ChatGPT maker, calling the idea ridiculous.

Altman added that the company is not for sale.

A consortium led by Musk said yesterday that it has offered more than $97 billion for the nonprofit that controls OpenAI.

It's just the latest in a long-running battle between the two men who helped start OpenAI back in 2015 before parting ways.

In North Carolina, one of the largest military bases in the world once again bears its controversial former name, Fort Bragg.

It was renamed Fort Liberty in 2023 as part of a broader effort by the Biden administration to remove names that honored Confederate leaders.

The original namesake, Braxton Bragg, was a Confederate general who owned a plantation where he enslaved African Americans.

Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth restored the Bragg name, but now says it's an honor of World War II hero Private 1st Class Ronald Bragg.

In doing so, Hegseth got around a law prohibiting the military from naming a base after a Confederate leader.

A parade of winter storms is marching across the country this week, making travel treacherous and burying millions under snow; 60 million Americans are under some form of winter advisory, as two winter storms threaten to bring snow, sleet and freezing rain from Denver to Delaware.

Many areas in the South will see heavy rain and severe thunderstorms.

A third storm comes on shore on the West Coast starting Thursday.

Snow is already piling up in parts of the Tennessee Valley, the Appalachians and the mid-Atlantic, where Virginia's governor declared a state of emergency.

A record number of people tuned in to watch the Philadelphia Eagles trounce the Kansas City Chiefs in Sunday Super Bowl.

Nielsen data out today showed an average of 127.7 million viewers across TV and streaming platforms.

That beats last year's title game by more than 3 percent, and it's the second year in a row that the Super Bowl has seen record viewership.

Kendrick Lamar's halftime show also set a record with more than 133 million people watching.

And on Wall Street today, stocks ended mixed after Fed Chair Jerome Powell struck a cautious tone on interest rates in congressional testimony.

The Dow Jones industrial average added more than 120 points on the day.

The Nasdaq went in the other direction, losing about 70 points.

The S&P 500 ended virtually flat.

And now to the mutt, the myth, the legend.

Scrim, the famous fugitive dog of New Orleans, has been captured again.

Michelle Cheramie, who runs a local animal shelter, posted an image of the white terrier mix in her arms on a leash and no longer on the lam.

Scrim has a history of escapes and a talent for not being kept for long.

He was captured in October for the first time, but soon chewed a hole through a window screen and jumped from the second story of a house to freedom.

The renegade pup eluded pursuit for months, becoming an unlikely folk hero and online sensation.

His current caretakers hope he stays in one place this time.

Still to come on the "News Hour": the global ramifications of the U.S. withholding AIDS funding; New York City's mayor cheers the Justice Department's order to drop his corruption charges; and Democratic Senator Andy Kim on why he thinks the nation is nearing a constitutional crisis.

The Trump administration recently announced that the National Institutes of Health, or the NIH, will make big changes in the way it funds researchers.

White House officials say they will save $4 billion by capping so-called indirect costs, or what you might think of as traditional operating expenses, that's funding universities that they receive on top of money for direct research.

Those can range from 30 percent to 70 percent in additional funds.

The administration wants to cap that at 15 percent.

Scientists say the move will have a huge effect on their work.

We spoke to medical researchers to hear what they had to say.

CAROLE LABONNE, Northwestern University: Hi.

My name is Carole LaBonne, and I am a professor of molecular biosciences at Northwestern University.

RACHEL HARDEMAN, University of Minnesota: I'm Dr. Rachel Hardeman, and I'm the Blue Cross endowed professor of health and racial equity at the University of Minnesota School of Public health And the founding director of the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota.

DR. THEODORE IWASHYNA, Johns Hopkins University: My name's Theodore Iwashyna.

I'm an ICU physician and professor of medicine and health policy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

CAROLE LABONNE: So, in science, you can think of direct costs as one specific to a particular research project, the chemicals and the cells and the salaries of the researchers.

But then there are the indirect costs of maintaining and replacing equipment, ordering, bookkeeping, handling hazard waste, and compliance with government regulations.

RACHEL HARDEMAN: The NIH decision to shift the indirect costs has an impact on myself and my colleagues and many researchers across the country, because what it means is that a smaller percentage of funding is flowing into our universities and to our institutions to help do very simple things like keep the lights on, make sure we have paper and printers and supplies.

CAROLE LABONNE: All projects of every scientist are being affected.

So take any particular area of research you want, let's say pediatric cancer.

This would amount to a 15 to 20 percent decrease in funding for studying that.

And this is an area where NIH investment has already fueled amazing results.

If it continues like this, it's going to lead to layoffs.

So people are going to lose their jobs.

DR. THEODORE IWASHYNA: All the support staff, all the suppliers, all the other folks who keep the buildings running, keep the labs running, keep the hospital running who depend on the downstream benefits of the NIH funding.

And it's not just taking money away from the scientists.

It's taking money away from the working people who make these universities often the largest employer in their state.

RACHEL HARDEMAN: For those who are not in the research world, it's very easy to think it's not a big deal or that these costs are sort of a luxury for universities.

But they really are a critically important part of how we are able to do our best work and are able to hire the best folks to do that work alongside us.

DR. THEODORE IWASHYNA: A lot of our work right now is about trying to understand pneumonia.

That work all depends on really intensive computation and the ability to do advanced statistical models.

And that all depends on tools that are funded by NIH indirect costs.

If there are no indirect costs flowing, we can't keep the computers running.

If we can't keep the computers running, we can't do the science that we're doing.

CAROLE LABONNE: I think one place where you're seeing the most immediate effect is on the trainees, who are the future of science in this country.

Many are right now questioning the viability of being a scientist in the U.S. going forward.

And who knows how many will end up abandoning their scientific careers, moving to another country, which could lead to further brain drain from the U.S.

This will severely hurt America's leadership and competitiveness in the world.

DR. THEODORE IWASHYNA: If we're supposed to work without buildings, without computers, without centrifuges, there's no way to get that done from someone else.

What's at stake here is the U.S.' dominance in the world of biomedical and health research.

AMNA NAWAZ: For more on all of this.

Let's turn now to Dr. David Skorton.

He's president and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Dr. Skorton, thanks for joining us.

DR. DAVID SKORTON, President and CEO, Association of American Medical Colleges: Amna, thanks for having me.

It's a pleasure.

And you sure did a good interview with those folks you just talked to.

They covered a lot of this ground.

These are real costs.

They're reimbursements for real costs, and the folks you talked to told you quite a bit of the story.

AMNA NAWAZ: Well, tell us a little bit more now, because your organization represents, what, 150 medical schools, nearly 500 academic health systems.

Big picture, if those indirect funds are capped,what's your concern about what happens to medical research in America?

DR. DAVID SKORTON: Well, I want to focus on the downstream effect, the most important downstream effect, and that is that people depending on the results of this research for better diagnosis, for better treatment, for actual cures,our neighbors, all of us, we're going to suffer from the lack of the march of science if we cannot do the science.

And as the folks, the researchers that you interviewed have indicated, these are real costs, and I want to emphasize that they're reimbursement for audited real costs.

They will cause us to do less research.

And as important as it is to the researchers and the universities, the most important negative effect of this would be that people just like us would not benefit from the advances of medical science.

AMNA NAWAZ: So tell us more about that.

I mean, what are you hearing from your members across the country now?

What kind of decisions are they having to make now about future research or how they do their work because of this potential cap?

DR. DAVID SKORTON: These are difficult, heartbreaking decisions.

How do you make up for tens of millions of dollars of real costs, audited reimbursements, that could all of a sudden be very arbitrarily taken away?

What they're worried about is all the things that they have to do to make ends meet at the university.

Please no mistake -- make no mistake about it.

Not paying these reimbursed costs, these reimbursable costs, will cause research operations to stop.

The lights will go out, the people will be let go and these advances will not occur, and people at the other end will not get the lifesaving benefits of medical research.

AMNA NAWAZ: As you have seen, though, critics will point out that even a 15 percent cap is higher than private research grants, many of whom cap indirect costs at 10 percent.

They also argue that taxpayers don't need to be the ones who are footing the majority of the overhead costs here.

Here is how one person -- this is Jay Greene from the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation -- put it.

He wrote: "It is unseemly that universities with billions in endowments are hounding taxpayers to pay for every pencil and administrator partially devoted to producing research.

Cutting overhead will allow more resources to support research and reduce waste."

Dr. Skorton, is there truth to what he's saying?

DR. DAVID SKORTON: It's apples and oranges and other things that are not similar.

And with all respect to that individual, this is somebody who doesn't work in the research world.

First of all, the federal grants, the direct cost of grants do not cover all the costs of research.

That's number one.

Number two, foundations operate by different rules than the federal government.

Some of the costs that are not allowed as so-called direct costs on federal grants can be allowed on some foundation grants.

In fact, you can find on our Web site on AAMC.org a page that actually goes over this.

And when you make up for these differences and when you do an apples-to-apple comparison, there's actually not that much difference.

And then, in terms of the endowments, having been a university president twice, I can tell you that this is really apples to oranges.

Those endowments serve other functions that have to do with the education and research and other things in the institution, not based on reimbursement of research grants from the federal government.

The federal government has a longstanding process to do this.

And I want to give you one example from my own practice if we have time.

So I practiced for decades caring for young people, teenagers and young adults with congenital heart disease, the commonest birth defect.

Some of those were those who have Down syndrome.

Down syndrome.

And Down syndrome as a group has a higher chance of Alzheimer's disease than the general population.

And in 2018, there was a study done, began to understand why some Down's patients are really at risk for dementia and others are not.

This would have enormous benefits not just for Down syndrome patients, but also for those who are worried about dementia.

And aren't we all worried about it?

And the thing I want to say is that that was funded during President Trump's first term, and a lot of wonderful, wonderful medical advances were made, part of his legacy.

It's critically important that we don't savage our ability to do medical research.

AMNA NAWAZ: Dr. David Skorton, president and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges, joining us tonight.

Dr. Skorton, thank you.

We appreciate your time.

DR. DAVID SKORTON: Thank you, Amna.

AMNA NAWAZ: A scathing report by the acting inspector general of USAID, the agency almost completely dismantled in the first weeks of this Trump administration, says thousands of tons of food set to ship are liable to spoil, and that more than $8 billion in money yet to be disbursed now has no oversight nor personnel to put it to use.

It also says an exception for some lifesaving aid is leading to confusion.

The same is true for an initiative started 20 years ago under another Republican president, George W. Bush, fighting HIV and AIDS around the world.

Stephanie Sy has that story.

STEPHANIE SY: The Bush initiative is called PEPFAR, or President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

It was the largest health commitment ever made by a nation to combat a single disease.

It has saved 25 million lives.

But the Trump administration's cuts in foreign aid has thrown this initiative into a tailspin.

A few days after the White House announced it was pausing foreign aid for 90 days, the State Department granted a waiver that allows the continuation of lifesaving HIV treatment.

But global health advocates say the waivers are not being implemented adequately and don't address prevention efforts.

With me to discuss this shift in HIV funding is Angeli Achrekar, a deputy executive director at UNAIDS, which helps coordinate the global fight against AIDS and provides services in 55 countries.

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

I want to start with who is being the worst impacted by this foreign aid freeze when it comes to the global fight against HIV-AIDS.

ANGELI ACHREKAR, Deputy Executive Director, United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS: The people that are most impacted by this freeze, by this pause are the people served at the country level in the communities, the 20.6 million people that PEPFAR supports on lifesaving treatment.

Those are the people that we're talking about.

These include mothers, babies, fathers, adults.

These are 20.6 million people on lifesaving services.

These are the people most affected.

STEPHANIE SY: Are you hearing about people that actually cannot access, for example, the antivirals that are so crucial for people living with AIDS, especially pregnant mothers?

ANGELI ACHREKAR: What has happened, because it is -- the pause that happened so quickly, is that lifesaving services have come to an abrupt stop.

We are seeing nurses, doctors, community health workers, laboratorians, people that provide these services not working, not in the clinics.

We have seen clinics themselves not functioning during this freeze and this pause.

It's caused a lot of devastation actually across the globe.

STEPHANIE SY: And that's just a few weeks after freezing aid.

Now, just a few days after the freeze, lifesaving aid was issued a reprieve by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

He said that the freeze would not apply to lifesaving HIV treatment.

How much has that helped?

ANGELI ACHREKAR: What was really important, and this was a really positive step by Secretary Rubio, was a waiver that was provided for lifesaving treatment services.

This included everything from testing to treatment itself to the ARVs, the lifesaving medications that are required to making sure prevention of mother-to-child transmission, to make sure babies are born HIV-free.

The problem that we're seeing, however, is that waiver for those critical lifesaving interventions has to be implemented across the globe.

And that's where we're seeing some real challenges and why we're seeing some real disruption in services at the moment.

STEPHANIE SY: Even if treatment and testing are spared from the chopping block, what about prevention services in care?

ANGELI ACHREKAR: What's not covered in the waiver is equally important.

Prevention services are not covered, except for PrEP for pregnant and breast-feeding women.

We need to make sure that prevention services for all people, especially adolescent girls and young women, especially for marginalized populations, especially for those that are most at risk.

Every year, we are seeing 1.3 million new HIV infections.

Without prevention, we will never get to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

Those goals that we're all after will not be achieved.

STEPHANIE SY: I understand that your group has looked at what could happen if the U.S. were to completely cease funding in the global fight against HIV/AIDS.

Talk about the potential consequences.

ANGELI ACHREKAR: If PEPFAR were stopped completely, we would be talking about a tenfold increase in the number of AIDS deaths, going from 630,000 AIDS deaths per year to over 6.3 million people dying from AIDS.

We are talking about -- if PEPFAR were halted, we are talking about going to 8.7 million additional new infections by -- in the next four to five years.

That is a major backslide.

That is a major movement in the wrong direction.

STEPHANIE SY: Angeli Achrekar with UNAIDS, thank you so much for joining us.

ANGELI ACHREKAR: Thanks so much.

AMNA NAWAZ: Let's return now to our ongoing coverage of the wildfires that tore through Southern California last month.

Amid all the devastation, thousands of children also had their education disrupted.

At least a dozen schools were burned or so badly damaged that kids can't return any time soon.

William Brangham recently spent time with teachers and students from one elementary school in Altadena, California, to better understand how educators keep moving forward in the middle of a disaster zone.

MAN: We don't want to miss the bus, do we?

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Parents rush to get kids on the bus.

Students are greeted as they head into class.

It has the look and feel of a normal school day for Rosebud Elementary in Altadena, California.

But it's not, because this is Rosebud today.

What was once a small charter school is now an unrecognizable pile of twisted metal, ash and rubble.

It's one of the more than 9,000 buildings that were consumed by the massive Eaton Fire a month ago.

Melted desks, a charred water fountain, warped playground equipment, they're just a few hints of what this place used to be.

SHAWN BROWN, Executive Director, Pasadena Rosebud Academy: Our school burned down on January 7 in the middle of the night.

And my house is literally one mile from the school and it also burned.

Good morning.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Shawn Brown runs Rosebud Elementary.

SHAWN BROWN: So we had about 35 students who lost their home, whose homes burned completely down.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Thirty-five out of how many?

SHAWN BROWN: Out of 175.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Wow, so a big percentage of kids.

SHAWN BROWN: That was a big percentage of kids.

And then we had another roughly 29 students who were displaced and were just scrambling to find somewhere to go.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So how do you instill a sense of security and safety for kids who had both stolen from them by these fires?

Brown says they have begun offering mental health services for kids, but simply having them return to class was a big step.

SHAWN BROWN: The goal was to make sure that they get back together in person and see each other.

And, sure, we lost our building, but we still have each other.

And I think that has been a huge factor in students being able to move forward.

STUDENT: Then we went outside.

We checked and we saw the fire getting bigger.

My mom said we should leave.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: With nowhere to gather, a few weeks ago, they started busing students nearly an hour away to a donated event space in South L.A. Its owners, a local education foundation called SoLa, helped convert the space into several classrooms.

XACHARY JEFFERSON, Student: We're here in this building because my school burned down in the fire.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Nine-year-old Xachary Jefferson's home and school went up in flames in a matter of hours.

Do you remember when you found out about your school burning down?

Like, how did you hear that news?

XACHARY JEFFERSON: I just came down the stairs one day and my mom was like crying.

And I was like, why are you crying?

And it was like: "Our house burned down and our school burned down."

My school burned down.

And so I was crying too.

I felt sad.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Rosebud parent Lorin Young also lost her home.

LORIN YOUNG, Mother: Our house is done.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: She filmed this the day after her family was forced to evacuate.

LORIN YOUNG: That's our house.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Young's 5-year-old son, London (ph), is a kindergartner at Rosebud.

She wants 4-year-old Rain (ph) to go as well when he's old enough.

LORIN YOUNG: I really feel like London was thriving there.

He is to himself a lot.

So to see him flourish at school and have so many friends of all ages, not just his class, it felt like more than a school for us.

It's a second home almost.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Since the fire, Young and the boys have been living like so many evacuees, staying in four different hotels in as many weeks.

Throughout, she's tried to protect them from the full scale of what's been lost.

LORIN YOUNG: London has asked to see our house.

He's asked to see the school.

And that's something I don't think I will let him do.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You just think that's going to be too jarring for him?

LORIN YOUNG: Yes, yes.

For now, I think just him knowing what happened and us kind of shielding him from the actual images of it, I think is best.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: But when students are willing to share, handling those conversations often falls to teachers like Laura Chavez.

LAURA CHAVEZ, Teacher: I love the color scheme.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Chavez grew up in Altadena.

She teaches fourth grade and, like so many of her students, lost her home in the fire as well.

LAURA CHAVEZ: The town that I grew up in, you can't even -- I'm going to get emotional.

You can't -- it's not there.

It was something out of a movie.

It was so -- it was apocalyptic.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: How do you talk to the kids about the fires?

Do you talk to them about it?

LAURA CHAVEZ: Yes, yes.

I wanted to make sure that they knew that I was just like them.

Like, it happened to me too.

And it's OK to share.

And I just let them tell me all about how they lost their dinosaurs or their favorite shoes and all of their things and their toys.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Shawn Brown says, this week, the school relocated again to another temporary location.

When you're faced with a disaster like this, there's -- it doesn't sound like there's some kind of a textbook that you pull off the shelf to say, oh, here's what you do on day one, on day five, on day 10.

Like, how did you figure all this out?

SHAWN BROWN: I just had to figure it out because I knew that the kids needed us, their families needed us to help them navigate this situation.

And so that was just kind of like my main focus.

What are we going to do with these kids?

We have got to get them back in school.

We have got to make sure that they are OK. WILLIAM BRANGHAM: When his family fled, Xachary Jefferson grabbed a basketball and his best sneakers.

Despite everything he and his family have lost, the fires have also given him some perspective.

XACHARY JEFFERSON: In the bus drives, sometimes, I see homeless people and I think, how are they living?

Because they don't -- they never had a home.

So, I still feel sad every once in a while and think about the stuff I have lost, but I still try to get through it and learn.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Getting through it and learning, it's a mission that Rosebud and many other schools in the region are now trying to accomplish.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm William Brangham in Altadena, California.

AMNA NAWAZ: Stay with us.

Coming up on the "News Hour," we speak with the director of "Nickel Boys," an Oscar-nominated movie filmed from the characters' point of view.

But, first, this week the Department of Justice directed federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.

Adams was indicted in September on five counts, which include accepting bribes and illegal foreign campaign contributions, in exchange for his influence as mayor.

Our White House correspondent, Laura Barron-Lopez, has more -- Laura.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Amna, that Justice Department order comes after Mayor Eric Adams curried favor with President Trump for months, including dining with him in Florida.

Today, Adams addressed the move by the Justice Department.

ERIC ADAMS (D), Mayor of New York: So let me be clear.

I never ask anyone to break the law on my behalf or on behalf of my campaign, never.

And I absolutely never traded my power as an elected official for any personal benefit.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Joining me now to discuss the implications of this order is Jessica Roth, former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York and professor at the Cardozo School of Law.

Jessica, thanks so much for joining.

To start, what's your reaction to this DOJ order?

JESSICA ROTH, Yeshiva University Cardozo School of Law: This is a highly unusual situation, to put it mildly.

It is very unusual for the deputy attorney general to direct prosecutors in a U.S. attorney's office to drop a case that has already been indicted.

And the memo that contains that direction says a number of things that are highly, highly disturbing.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Yes, I want to talk about that memo.

In it to prosecutors, acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said the case should be dismissed because it restricts Mayor Adams' ability to -- quote -- "devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that both claims escalated under President Biden."

Bove also cited Adams' reelection campaign.

Jessica, these look like expressly political reasons for dropping this case.

What do you make of them?

JESSICA ROTH: Yes, they do come across as expressly political reasons.

And that's exactly the opposite about how decisions about who shall be prosecuted should be made.

And that's part of why decisions about whether cases should proceed are ordinarily left to the professional judgment of the line prosecutors who investigated the case and charged it and why the more political actors at main Justice, who have the most contact with the White House, generally do not play a role in making those decisions.

The memo that contains this direction to dismiss the case makes very clear that the decision has nothing to do with the merits of the case, nothing to do with the strength of the evidence or with the validity of the legal theories.

Instead, what it says essentially is that Mayor Adams is a political ally and he is expedient to the president pursuing his immigration agenda, and, for that reason, the charges should be dismissed, although it also says that the charges should be reevaluated following the November 25 mayoral election by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, the permanent U.S. attorney, when and if that person is sworn in, and that the charges should be dismissed without prejudice, meaning that they could be refiled at some later date.

And so that holds over Mayor Adams' head the possibility that the charges could be restarted if in fact he does not comport himself in a way that is viewed favorably by the president and the leadership of the Department of Justice.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Mayor Adams has repeatedly accused prosecutors of bringing the corruption charges against him for his criticisms of the Biden administration's immigration policies.

But just last month, the Southern District of New York attorney, Danielle Sassoon, defended her case, saying that they have -- quote -- "concrete evidence" of crimes.

Her office declined to respond to a "News Hour" request about what may come next.

But, ultimately, what can happen to the Southern District of New York's reputation for independence here?

JESSICA ROTH: Well, I think the reputation could take a very large hit here if in fact they carry through on this dismissal.

Now, to be clear, at the end of the day, it is up to the attorney general and his deputy whether or not the charges will be dismissed.

The U.S. attorney's office will not be able to prevent that from happening, but I do think that it will take a reputational hit, depending on how this is handled before the judges in the Southern District of New York, who have for many decades placed a great deal of stock in the word of the U.S. attorney's office, including when the U.S. attorney says that they stand behind the case.

And because of these very clear political reasons for dismissing the case, I think that the Department of Justice as a whole is going to be viewed differently from the judges in the Southern District and elsewhere around the country, as we're seeing in many of these cases right now where the Department of Justice is standing up and taking positions that really go -- fly in the face of the facts and the law in many cases and the tradition of prosecutorial independents.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Jessica Roth, former federal prosecutor with the Southern District of New York, thank you for your time.

JESSICA ROTH: Thank you.

AMNA NAWAZ: With Democrats in the minority, they're searching for ways to serve as a check on Republican power in Congress and at the White House.

Andy Kim entered the U.S. Senate late last year after spending his entire working life in government service at USAID, the U.S. State Department, the National Security Council and the U.S. House.

This weekend, the New Jersey Democrat declared the country to be on the cusp of a constitutional crisis.

He joins us now from Capitol Hill.

Senator Kim, welcome to the "News Hour."

Thanks for joining us.

SEN. ANDY KIM (D-NJ): Yes, thanks for having me.

AMNA NAWAZ: So what does it mean to you to be on the cusp of a constitutional crisis?

What does that mean?

SEN. ANDY KIM: Well, it means that right now we're already in a place where the Trump administration is engaged in lawless activity through unilateral executive branch action, rather than coming through Congress.

We see the efforts of firing or putting on administrative leave employees that are now -- there are lawsuits there.

And one thing that I'm particularly concerned about is that I'm not sure that this executive branch, this administration will follow the law, even when given a court order to do so, given the vice president's statements about how they don't feel like they need to follow through with the orders of these judges.

That's deeply alarming.

That actually would be a full-blown constitutional crisis then.

AMNA NAWAZ: So when it comes to the administration ignoring court orders or acting outside the Constitution or usurping some congressional powers as well, the question the Democrats get asked a lot is, what can you do, right?

And here exactly is what House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries had to say on that on Friday.

Take a listen.

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): They control the House, the Senate and the presidency.

It's their government.

What leverage do we have?

AMNA NAWAZ: So, Senator Kim, what's the answer to that question?

What leverage do Democrats have?

SEN. ANDY KIM: Immediately after the election in November, a number of U.S. senators met with states' attorney generals in the Capitol.

We talked through a broader strategy, talked through what steps that they would plan to take when it comes to legislation, brainstormed some of the different things that we expected to see, given the research we have done on Project 2025, which has become their playbook.

And so far they are having great effect.

For instance, the first Trump administration, they lost 80 percent of their cases.

As you mentioned, I worked at USAID.

I have a lot of colleagues still there from my old days.

We were able to get inside information about what is happening.

We're feeding that into our investigative work, our oversight work.

And then, when it comes to legislation, we have seen in the past how poorly the Republicans, especially in the House of Representatives, are at actually governing.

I mean, I have seen Speaker Mike Johnson in -- work in person.

And I will tell you, it's not impressive.

They need the Democrats, honestly, for a lot of legislation to be able to get passed.

And those are the points that we're going to continue to push on going forward.

AMNA NAWAZ: So the court battles, obviously, will take a while to play out.

And I hear you on that for, but in terms of what Democrats can do, I mean, how far are you willing to go?

You mentioned maybe not working with Republicans as much to help pass legislation.

Are you willing to shut down the government to make your point?

SEN. ANDY KIM: Well, look, the Republicans are the ones that control whether or not the government shuts down.

And I think that was the point that Hakeem, the leader, Jeffries, wanted to get across is, when they control the White House and that -- the majority in both the Senate and the House, that's on them.

Now, as I have said, they have not been able to pass any continuing resolution or budget on their own over the last two years.

So, if they... AMNA NAWAZ: So, to that point, you could help force a shutdown.

Are Democrats willing to do that?

SEN. ANDY KIM: No.

Look, it's not about us forcing a shutdown.

It's about whether or not they are actually engaged in a bipartisan effort to be able to move forward.

If we're going to do this, we need to make sure that we have assurances that we're not going to see the continued actions like what we're seeing with Elon Musk, these funding freezes.

That's what the American people deserve, and that's what they want.

I just did a town hall last night with over 1,000 people on it, and people were just absolutely horrified about these actions that are happening.

I worked through multiple government shutdowns.

It's the last thing that we want.

I don't want to see a shutdown.

But what we're seeing right now is, Trump is already trying to shut down the government.

He's already trying to dismantle it.

And that's what the American people need to see, just the lawlessness that is involved in that type of unilateral action.

AMNA NAWAZ: You know, on the USAID issue, we have seen some Democratic lawmakers and a few federal workers here outside the building protesting that.

There are some senior Democrats, though, who say this is exactly the fight that President Trump wants.

David Axelrod said, when you talk about cuts, the first thing people say is, cut foreign aid.

Rahm Emanuel said: "While I do care about USAID as a former ambassador, that's not the hill that I'm going to die on."

I guess the question is, are Democrats taking the bait from Trump on this?

SEN. ANDY KIM: No, look, I mean, I think it's important that we push back across the board.

First of all, when it comes to USAID, we set the record straight.

We say it's 0.5 percent of our government budget.

But there's a reason why USAID is in the Reagan Building, because President Reagan was a strong supporter of development and humanitarian assistance being part of our tools alongside diplomacy and the military.

In fact, Marco Rubio, when he was a senator, was a strong supporter, said that USAID is not charity, that this is a part of our national interest and our national security.

So that's the kind of information the American people need to hear about this.

I am pushing forward on that because I used to work there.

Other Democratic leaders will lean in on whether it's CFPB, FEMA, Department of Education, other aspects.

Each of us can be able to engage and tell that story to the American people.

AMNA NAWAZ: Are you confident that the American people are where you are on this issue, though?

Because, as I said, we didn't see a lot of protests to USAID essentially being shut down.

We have seen ramping up of immigration arrests, and we haven't seen many protests to that.

There hasn't been much of a response either even to the pardoning of January 6 rioters, which was not popular when people were asked about it in polls, but was done anyway.

So do you think that the American people are seeing these issues the same way that you are?

SEN. ANDY KIM: I think they are more and more so.

The average American, when they hear about cuts to government spending, they will say, OK, that sounds reasonable.

But when you actually explain what is behind that, when the funding freezes will affect Meals on Wheels for seniors that are hungry and food-insecure, or about childcare, or Head Start, those are specific things where the American people say, no, no, that's not what we're on board with.

AMNA NAWAZ: Democratic Senator from New Jersey Andy Kim joining us tonight.

Senator Kim, thank you.

It's good to speak with you.

SEN. ANDY KIM: Yes, thank you.

AMNA NAWAZ: And now to our ongoing arts and culture series, Canvas.

It's not every day that a director's debut feature film earns an Academy Award nomination for best picture, but that's exactly what happened for RaMell Ross and the movie, "Nickel Boys."

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown spoke with Ross about his distinctive style.

ACTRESS: Elwood, look at me, son.

JEFFREY BROWN: In the film "Nickel Boys," it is we who are asked to look.

ACTRESS: He said what we have here is a classic miscarriage of justice.

JEFFREY BROWN: Forced to look at the world through the eyes of two young Black men living in an often brutal time and place in the Jim Crow south.

The camera perspective is from the point of view of the characters themselves, not us looking at them.

ACTOR: Where'd you come from?

JEFFREY BROWN: Director RaMell Ross.

RAMELL ROSS, Writer and Director: To do this means that you're aligning the subjectivity of the audience with the subjectivity of the character.

And that seems to be an undeniable way to get into the truth.

JEFFREY BROWN: The film is based on the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Nickel Boys" by Colson Whitehead, who based his fiction a grim reality, the real-life Dozier School for Boys, a reform school run by the state of Florida from 1900 to 2011, finally closed after hundreds of Black men came forward to tell of abuse, including floggings, forced labor, even killings.

And forensic anthropologists uncovered human remains in unmarked graves.

How did Ross see his role?

RAMELL ROSS: You have to give it to cinema and see what cinema wants to do with it, which is quite often very different from what language wants to do with it, or linguistic language.

JEFFREY BROWN: What cinema wants to do with it, that's an interesting term.

RAMELL ROSS: My goal is to listen to Colson's characters, with my co-writer of course, and figure out, for me, at least, what's the most visceral, the most open-ended, and the most unconscious way, ephemeral way, musical way to convey the information.

Sit and action.

JEFFREY BROWN: Working with co-writer Joslyn Barnes and cinematographer Jomo Fray, Ross gives cinematic life to two young men in 1960s Florida, with the civil rights movement in the background, rampant racism in their faces.

The unusual point-of-view perspective required creating special camera rigs placed on or around actors Brandon Wilson and Ethan Herisse to capture their lines of sight and movements, including the small, but important moments, what Ross calls the epic banal, that their eyes catch as they look around the room, a balloon hitting a ceiling fan, a TV report on space exploration.

RAMELL ROSS: It's the subjectivity of a young Black boy, and you know it's in a time period in which outside he's treated on the street differently from the relationship that he has now to the television and the technological advances, but yet it's just a moment in a boy's life.

JEFFREY BROWN: It's almost, says Ross, a way of giving cameras to Dozier's lost and dead themselves.

RAMELL ROSS: To be able to -- for boys whose lives were cut short, to give them the camera, to let them see, for the audience to see with them, to use the epic banal to give them moments of grace and moments of poetry was super meaningful, to point to the fact that their stories are less about their death and more about their life.

JEFFREY BROWN: If Ross is today obsessive about the camera, his first obsession was basketball.

A 6'6'' guard who played at Georgetown University and professionally abroad, he had dreams of the NBA.

But injuries forced him to change his life, first to still photography, then to film.

Are there similarities between basketball and filmmaking?

RAMELL ROSS: Yes, there's some very literal overlaps about the way that space is analyzed by the point of view, right?

Like, I played point guard.

You're dribbling down the floor, you're taking snapshots, you're using your body to control the space, it's about prediction, it's about time dilation.

JEFFREY BROWN: That's very point of view.

RAMELL ROSS: Very point of view.

JEFFREY BROWN: Dribbling down the court.

RAMELL ROSS: Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

It's about analysis.

In filmmaking, most often, you're considering this scene, but you're also allowing for the spontaneous to happen within a very controlled setting for a very specific outcome.

And so it's about space and spatial intelligence,essentially.

JEFFREY BROWN: So your obsessions of basketball and the camera, they have come together?

RAMELL ROSS: I mean, when I started making photographs, I was like, I found the perfect transition, yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: Ross' best known work to date was the 2018 documentary "Hale County This Morning, This Evening," which also made creative use of the different ways a camera can tell a story, using footage shot over several years of embedding himself in a rural Alabama community and also focused on young Black men.

In both films, he says, he's challenging the long history of how Blacks have been portrayed and thus seen.

RAMELL ROSS: I see myself telling the story of the production of Blackness.

JEFFREY BROWN: Production of Blackness.

RAMELL ROSS: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: Meaning?

RAMELL ROSS: The relationship between race and the camera.

I like to call the camera and the photograph the technology of racism, right?

Like, you have an idea that people are inferior, but how do you prove that?

How do you prove race?

You can't, because it's not true.

But what you can do is, you can photograph people with this nefarious idea in mind and then hand it to people that have no relationship to those folks.

You're incepting their brain with this idea and you're proving it with an image.

JEFFREY BROWN: You're in a sense subverting that image.

RAMELL ROSS: Yes, I think giving it more context.

I like to say I have never seen a Black man, but maybe I have only seen a Black man.

Blackness is a paradox that's reinforced by the camera.

It's both true and not true.

How do you deal with that?

To me, you dilute it.

You make sure that it's reflexive and you understand its depth.

You don't take it for granted.

JEFFREY BROWN: RaMell Ross' film "Nickel Boys" vies for two Oscars, best picture and best adapted screenplay on March 2.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Jeffrey Brown in New York.

AMNA NAWAZ: Another terrific conversation with Jeff Brown.

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.