March 27, 2024 - PBS NewsHour full episode

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Good evening.

I'm William Brangham.

Geoff Bennett and Amna Nawaz are away.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: Investigators try to understand what went wrong leading up to the deadly Baltimore bridge collapse.

Then, a look at the tenuous nature of Trump's newest business venture, turning his social media platform into a publicly traded company.

And a normally raucous holiday in Israel is tempered by the war in Gaza and the loss of loved ones.

SAMAR, Jerusalem Train Theater: Even though we are so sad because everything is going on in here and the hostages, we still want to make people happy and let them forget for a second.

(BREAK) WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Welcome to the "NewsHour."

So far, two bodies have been recovered from the river where a bridge collapsed yesterday in Baltimore.

As the search for the remaining unaccounted for continues, divers are navigating treacherous waters, hoping to recover what remains of those lost.

The city of Baltimore woke up again this morning to the mangled ruins of the Francis Scott Key Bridge shrouded in fog.

The initial search-and-rescue mission has turned to a search-and-recovery mission.

GOV.

WES MOORE (D-MD): These divers have been back in the water for hours now.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Maryland Governor Wes Moore said divers and recovery crews are braving treacherous conditions in the depths of the Patapsco River to search for those missing, who are now presumed dead.

GOV.

WES MOORE: They are down there in darkness, where they can literally see about a foot in front of them.

They are trying to navigate mangled metal.

And they're also in a place that they -- it is now presumed that people have lost their lives.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Around 1:30 Tuesday morning, the Dali, a nearly 1,000-foot-long cargo ship, lost power as it was piloting out of the Baltimore Harbor.

The vessel was able to issue a mayday call, allowing police to halt bridge traffic.

EMERGENCY DISPATCHER: I need one of you guys on the south side, one of you guys on the north side.

Hold all traffic on the Key Bridge.

There's a ship approaching that has just lost their steering.

There's a crew up there.

You might want to notify whoever the foreman is, see if we can get them off the bridge temporarily.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: But the work crew that was on the bridge wasn't able to evacuate in time.

Last night, a vigil was held for those who couldn't be rescued, immigrant construction workers from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.

PETE BUTTIGIEG, U.S. Secretary of Transportation: Thank you.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: At the White House today, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg laid out four objectives his department is focusing on now.

PETE BUTTIGIEG, U.S. Secretary of Transportation: Reopen the port, deal with the supply chain implications until the port does reopen, rebuild the bridge, and deal with the surface transportation implications until the bridge is rebuilt.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: But he couldn't give a timeline for the reopening of the bridge.

PETE BUTTIGIEG: We just don't know yet, especially in terms of their foundational infrastructure.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Or the port.

PETE BUTTIGIEG: Again, too soon to venture an estimate.

The vast majority of the port is inside of that bridge, which means most of it cannot operate.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: For now, other Baltimore roadways are absorbing the estimated 31,000 vehicles that normally cross the Key Bridge every day.

Meanwhile, investigators have recovered the cargo ship's black box, as they begin to piece together what went wrong.

In the day's other headlines: Hunter Biden asked a federal judge in Los Angeles to dismiss tax evasion charges against him.

Prosecutors say the president's son failed to pay $1.4 million in taxes.

His lawyers say the case is politically motivated, forced by pressure from Republicans.

The trial is tentatively scheduled for June.

In Atlanta, three white men who chased and killed a Black man, Ahmaud Arbery, urged a federal appeals court today to reject their hate crime convictions.

In 2020, Greg McMichael, his son Travis, and a neighbor, William Bryan, went after Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia.

Travis McMichael ultimately shot and killed him.

The three men have also been convicted of state murder charges.

The U.S.-Israeli split over the war in Gaza may be easing.

The White House confirmed today that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to reschedule the talks that he canceled this week.

The focus was to be the planned Israeli offensive into the city of Rafah, something the U.S. has warned against.

In Jerusalem today, Netanyahu met with U.S. lawmakers and defended the cancellation as a necessary signal after the U.S. led a cease-fire resolution pass in the U.N. Security Council.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, Israeli Prime Minister: My decision not to send a delegation to Washington in the wake of that resolution was a message to Hamas.

It was a message first and foremost to Hamas: Don't bet on this pressure.

It's not going to work.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Netanyahu also dismissed fears that attacking Rafah would endanger thousands of refugees.

He said -- quote -- "People just move.

They move with their tents."

Meanwhile, Israel and Hezbollah fighters in Southern Lebanon traded heavy new attacks along the border.

Israeli airstrikes killed 12 people in Lebanon overnight and today.

Hezbollah responded with rockets, killing one person in Kiryat Shmona in Northern Israel.

Survivors voiced anger and desperation.

OMRI LUZIA, Kiryat Shmona, Israel, Resident (through translator): We have been abandoned, abandoned.

If I had been here 40 minutes ago in this place -- I don't hear even one plane from Israel's air forces.

There's a crater in the middle of the street.

There's damage here to an entire building, and I'm one of the tenants.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So far, border clashes have killed 20 people in Northern Israel and more than 240 in Lebanon, including civilians and fighters.

The United Nations reports nearly 20 percent of all the food in the world goes to waste.

These findings tracked progress towards cutting food waste in half by 2030.

The report found 783 million people around the world do not have enough to eat.

At the same time, it said the average person wastes 174 pounds of food each year; 60 percent of that total comes from households and the rest from restaurants and retailers.

In Thailand, a landmark marriage equality bill breezed through the lower House of Parliament today.

If the Senate agrees, the country becomes the first in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex unions.

Lawmakers waved rainbow flags as the votes came in.

The measure would recognize the rights of all wedded couples regardless of gender.

Back in this country, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Disney reached a settlement over overseeing Walt Disney World's future development.

The legal fight broke out after Disney opposed a state ban on teaching about sexual orientation and gender in early grades.

In Orlando today, the Republican governor said everyone wants to see the region grow.

GOV.

RON DESANTIS (R-FL), Presidential Candidate: This oversight tourism oversight board in that district is a big part of that.

And I think that there's going to be ways where we can do things that are in the best interest of the state of Florida.

And I think Disney can be a part of that.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Under the deal, a new governing board will work out new development plans.

And on Wall Street, stocks rebounded after a three-day lull.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 477 points, more than 1 percent, to close at 39, 760.

The Nasdaq rose 83 points.

The S&P 500 added 45.

And former Connecticut Senator and vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman died this afternoon in New York City.

The longtime moderate Democrat served in the Senate for more than 20 years.

He was Al Gore's running mate in the 2000 presidential election.

He was officially listed as an independent during his final term in office.

Most recently, Lieberman was leading the search to find a presidential candidate for the third-party group known as No Labels.

His family said he died of complications due to a fall.

Lieberman was 82 years old.

Still to come on the "NewsHour": how a second Trump presidency could impact the LGBTQ+ community; Judy Woodruff speaks with Tennesseans from across the political spectrum who are trying to curb gun violence; and scientists work to harness the power of artificial intelligence to combat climate change.

Donald Trump's social media platform, TRUTH Social, made its public debut on the Nasdaq yesterday.

The stock price soared, reportedly powered by supporters looking to invest in the former president's business.

But the platform's stock success does not seem to match its own financials.

TRUTH Social lost $49 million last year.

It also has far fewer users than any other social network that has gone public.

The tech research firm SimilarWeb estimates TRUTH Social had about five million users last month.

That's compared to more than three billion on Facebook and two billion on TikTok.

Dan Alexander is a senior editor at "Forbes" who has spent years covering the former president's sprawling business empire.

And he joins us now.

Dan Alexander, thank you so much for being here.

What was your reaction yesterday when you saw that TRUTH Social stock price just shoot through the roof?

DAN ALEXANDER, "Forbes": Well, it was a reminder of what happened in 2021, when this idea of creating a Trump-branded social media network first hit the news.

And at that moment, it was part of a SPAC deal.

And the SPAC, similar to what you saw happen with the stock yesterday, shot through the roof.

And that lasted for about two days.

And then it gradually over time started to step down and down and down.

And if history repeats itself, that means that a lot of the people who are buying in today and yesterday are set to lose money.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The thing I don't quite get is that a company with these sorts of financials, how is it that it ended up with this valuation in the multiple billions of dollars?

DAN ALEXANDER: Well, something's worth what people are willing to pay for it.

And there are a lot of people right now who are extremely excited about the idea that they can buy stock and therefore become sort of a business partner of Donald Trump.

Now, that doesn't have anything to do with the financials.

It doesn't have much to do with the future of the company.

There's no serious stock analyst who would say that this valuation makes sense.

But, nonetheless, if enough people are excited about something, then what you have is mania, and people get excited and they bid it up to a crazy price, which is where we are.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Now, we know the former president has got this nearly half-a-billion-dollar civil fraud judgment in New York.

He's got $80 million owed to E. Jean Carroll.

He's got enormous legal bills.

On some level, if people are enthusiastic about the former president and they want to find a way to fill up his wallet, like investing in his company, what is -- there's nothing really wrong with that, is there?

DAN ALEXANDER: No, I mean, it's just a risky move.

People are free to spend and potentially lose money as they please.

If they choose to buy these stocks at overvalued prices, OK, then so be it.

If people are donating to a presidential campaign, their return on investment is going to be zero.

So, if people are donating or investing in Trump's social media network, at least they're not going to get totally wiped out, at least in the short term.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, I understand you did just a quick calculation.

Do you have a rough sense of what TRUTH Social going public did for Donald Trump's net worth?

DAN ALEXANDER: Yes.

So, right now, at this very moment, Donald Trump is worth over $7 billion, and over $5 billion of that is because of this social media company.

So, the vast majority of his fortune right now is tied up in these illiquid shares that he holds in a fledgling social media company that people are unreasonably excited about.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, illiquid, meaning he can't tap into that just yet; is that right?

DAN ALEXANDER: Yes, and that's a key point.

He has lockup provisions as part of this deal, which prevent him from either selling or borrowing against those shares for roughly six months.

Now, maybe something happens where they can tweak the rules, but, in doing so, they would essentially be inviting shareholder lawsuits.

And I think it would be difficult for them to be able to change it.

What Trump is hoping for here is that the stock price will be able to hang on for those six months, maybe not at its sky-high level that it is right now, but, even if it dropped by 50 percent, that's still an enormous amount of money for him that he can, sell those shares, part of them, nearly all of them, whatever, and cash in a huge amount of money, money that he hasn't seen in years.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Now, I know, as I mentioned, you have covered Trump's previous businesses for many, many years.

You even wrote a book about it.

Does what you're seeing here parallel any of those previous business ventures?

DAN ALEXANDER: It does.

If you look back at Donald Trump's history, he is really a master at convincing people to throw piles of money at him, even when they should be wary.

And what's interesting is, if you look at this over the years, the sorts of people throwing those piles of money at him have become less and less likely to scrub the financials of the actual business.

So, if you go back to the 1980s, when he's building in Atlantic City, he's borrowing from A-list, names you would know, banks on Wall Street.

These are people who are going to scrub financials very carefully.

However, they didn't do it carefully enough in that case.

And there were several bankruptcies, and many of those lenders lost money.

Then he went to the public markets, which are known for being -- for putting some scrutiny in, but maybe not as much, or they're not as careful as banks are.

And, ultimately, his casino company, as a public -- publicly traded entity, went bankrupt twice, and those stockholders got wiped out.

Now, you have the latest iteration of this, where he's going back to the public markets, now capitalizing on his political supporters who want to be in business with him and also just on people who like trading meme stocks.

Some people like going to the casino.

Other people like trading meme stocks and just seeing what's going to happen.

These are not people who are going to be carefully looking at the financials and figuring out, OK, does this valuation make sense?

And do I think that this company is going to be profitable enough to justify my investment?

By and large, these are people who just say, hey, I want to be in business with Donald Trump and here's my opportunity to do so.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: It will be certainly an interesting six months to see how that progresses.

Dan Alexander of "Forbes," thank you so much for being here.

DAN ALEXANDER: Thank you.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: On the campaign trail, Trump has been talking about what he plans to do if elected in November, and that includes rolling back the rights of millions of LGBTQ people.

It's part of a wider playbook to undo many modern civil rights advances for minority groups.

White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez has been following this, and she joins us now.

Hi.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Hi.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, on LGBTQ rights, what has Trump said he wants to do?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Since launching his campaign, former President Donald Trump has targeted LGBTQ people, transgender people.

He's attacked gender-affirming care for minors, as well as their ability to play in sports.

And he says that he plans quick action if elected.

DONALD TRUMP, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: On day one, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing Critical Race Theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: That promise you just heard, William, has become a staple of former President Donald Trump's campaign rallies.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: How much of that, though, is just campaign rally rhetoric?

I mean, we know that kind of language excites a certain slice of his base.

How much of that is just him talking versus what he actually plans to do?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Well, it's not just campaign rhetoric.

And his allies have drafted a sweeping document titled Project 2025.

It's led by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, and it details a blueprint for a second term for Trump.

Specifically on restricting LGBTQ rights, what that details is reinstating a transgender military ban, limiting LGBTQ workplace discrimination protections.

Currently, under the law, sexual orientation, and gender identity are protected.

It would rescind health care protections for transgender people and urge Congress to define gender as male and female, fixed at birth.

Trump has repeatedly said, also, William, that he would ban gender-affirming care for minors.

And this playbook makes pretty clear that his plan -- this plan also is trying to stop any and all acknowledgement of an acceptance of gender identity and LGBTQ people, period.

And so, throughout this blueprint, there's some pretty striking language where government - - saying that government officials should only recognize marriages between a man and a woman and that a man and a woman are the ideal natural family structure.

Also, in addition to that, William, Trump has outlined a number of policies that essentially help minority groups and that they would be on the chopping block.

So, when it comes to Project 2025 cuts to diversity, what the plan would do is delete diversity, equity and inclusion from every piece of legislation, remove diversity, equity, inclusion offices from federal agencies, curtail the teaching of race and racism, and urge Congress to ban federal funds for Critical Race Theory training.

Essentially, William, Trump has vowed on the campaign trail to terminate all DEI programs.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Are all of those things that you listed, are those within the purview of the president?

Can he legally just go ahead and do those things?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So, technically, this relies on Trump, if he is reelected, enacting a legal concept known as the unitary executive theory, and that's outlined in Project 2025.

And it essentially suggests that Trump could basically just work around or ignore congressional oversight.

And we spoke to Kim Wehle -- she's the professor - - a law professor at the University of Baltimore - - about Trump's ability to carry out Project 2025.

KIMBERLY WEHLE, Former U.S.

Associate Independent Counsel: With Donald Trump, the question isn't so much what the law authorizes.

It's that if he has an army of employees that are willing to be loyal to whatever he wants and they implement what he directs, then the question is, is there going to be pushback through Congress, through the courts, through the voters?

If there's no accountability and pushback, then the answer to your question is, yes, then these things can happen, because there's nothing to stop him.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: As you heard Professor Wehle say there, this plan really relies on loyalists being installed across the board in government for him to be able to carry this out.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I mean, as you and others have reported, I mean, this -- these LGBTQ changes, proposed changes, are pretty sweeping.

But Project 2025 has a lot of other things.

Who is it -- you mentioned it's Heritage, but who else is behind this project?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So this draft blueprint playbook was created by roughly 100 right-wing organizations led by the Heritage Foundation.

And a number of these authors are actually people that worked in Trump's administration when he was president, including Peter Navarro, a former White House official, Roger Severino of the Health and Human Services department, and Ken Cuccinelli at the Homeland Security Department.

They have all contributed to drafting this.

They're contenders for a future Cabinet if Trump were to win reelection.

This is a 180-day manual of sorts, William, that outlines the ability for former President Trump to consolidate power under the presidency.

And I spoke to Professor Thomas Zimmer at Georgetown, who studies authoritarian regimes, and he explained that Trump wasn't necessarily able to institute this in 2017, when he first took office, because he didn't have the amount of loyalists that he plans on having across the board.

And with these new loyalists, Zimmer said, he can advance a white Christian evangelical ideal of American society.

THOMAS ZIMMER, Georgetown University: This is not going to beat Trump presidency part two, just more of the same.

This is qualitatively something very, very different.

It is opposed to egalitarian democracy because it fundamentally does not agree that all people are equal or deserve to be treated as equal citizens.

Only those who belong to the -- quote, unquote - - "true people," to real America, deserve that.

And so everyone else needs to either be purged from the nation or, at the very least, accept their sort of lesser place in society.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Professor Zimmer added that that type of purging he's talking about takes roots in the McCarthyism of the early 1950s, where they essentially tried to sweep away anyone across American society that would deviate from perceived norms.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Laura Barron-Lopez, such important reporting.

Thank you very much.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Thank you.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This week, for the first time in more than 40 years, Jerusalem held a parade for the Israeli holiday of Purim.

It's traditionally a party for kids and adults, but, this year, the war has muted the festivities and even caused controversy over that parade.

Nick Schifrin and producer Karl Bostic talked with Israelis about holding a subdued celebration in a time of war.

NICK SCHIFRIN: It is a 2,500-year-old holiday, a celebration of an ancient Jewish victory over persecution.

Purim is Carnival meets Halloween.

But even in a country always on alert, October the 7th shattered Israelis' sense of security and even faith in having fun.

Past the Waldo hats, next to the Lion King float, a reminder of how long Hamas has held Israeli hostages.

Reuven Rivlin is Israel's former president.

REUVEN RIVLIN, Former Israeli President: People are asking, in those days, when you have so many people, and you have those who were kidnapped in Gaza still, why should we celebrate?

NICK SCHIFRIN: And so Jerusalem's mayor solved a storm of criticism by embracing hostage families.

He announced not a Purim carnival, but a united Purim procession.

It was led by hostage families, surrounded by the symbol of the kidnapped, a yellow ribbon, and a tribute to those prevented from being here.

GIL DICKMANN, Hostage Family Spokesman: When I heard about the parade for the first time, I also thought it wasn't a good idea.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Gil Dickmann is a hostage family spokesman.

His cousin 39-year-old Carmel Gat has been a Hamas hostage for 173 days.

GIL DICKMANN: We're here because we have to make sure that all Israelis remember that there are hostages in the hands of Hamas, and that the whole world remembers that we have to do everything we can to make sure that they come home as quickly as possible.

NICK SCHIFRIN: And yet the show must go on, if only as a show of defiance, especially for kids.

Each float, including the king produced with plastic, was crafted by children, and this king had a queen, 13-year-old Tamara.

TAMARA, Jerusalem Train Theater: After the war, everyone felt, like, a little sad, and I think it's very important to don't forget the holiday that we have, and I want to be a part of it.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Or the not-so-little mermaid singing "Little Mermaid" in Hebrew made by 15-year-old Samar.

SAMAR, Jerusalem Train Theater: Even though we are so sad because everything is going on in here and the hostages, we still want to make people happy and let them forget for a second about what is going on in here and be happy.

NICK SCHIFRIN: In Tel Aviv, happiness for the Keler family is embracing the dark side.

That's dad Uri (ph) as a Stormtrooper.

The Darth Vaders are mom Ronny and 7-year-old Adar (ph).

Here too there are reminders of the hostages, but also the opportunity for boys to be boys.

RONNY KELER, Tel Aviv, Israel, Resident: There is this duality that you just live on a daily basis.

On one hand, you have got a kid that you need and want that they will feel normal, they will feel safe, and they will experience life and the tradition like Purim.

And on the other hand, you will just think of the hostages in Gaza.

NICK SCHIFRIN: The Tel Aviv event was festive, but relatively small, a way for families to be together six months after the worst terrorist attack in Israel's history.

RONNY KELER: All the people that's paid with their life and all the sacrifice that were made, at the end of the day, they will all want that we will have a life in here.

NICOLE CARBONE, Daughter of October 7: This year is going to be different.

It's not going to be the same again.

NICK SCHIFRIN: That sacrifice is felt all too acutely by Nicole Carbone.

This is the road to Southern Israel... NICOLE CARBONE: They opened up this gate.

NICK SCHIFRIN: ... and Kibbutz Be'eri.

On October the 7th, Hamas gunmen stormed into Be'eri.

Across the street from that gate was the house where Carbone grew up.

NICOLE CARBONE: This was my room.

This is where they entered.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Carbone shows us her childhood room that led to the safe room that wasn't safe enough.

The gunmen kicked it in.

That's his boot print.

And inside was her mother, Galit.

NICOLE CARBONE: My cousin called my sister and she called me and she said that they found mom in the kibbutz, and she's dead.

And it was -- it was terrible.

NICK SCHIFRIN: That day in Be'eri, gunmen massacred more than 100 residents and kidnapped more than 30.

NICOLE CARBONE: Everything is just burnt.

NICK SCHIFRIN: This is all that's left of her father's house.

Her parents were divorced.

Despite it all, her heart will always be here.

NICOLE CARBONE: Lucky he got out in one piece, healthy and safe.

But they burned out the whole house.

You can see inside everything is just black.

MAN: In other words, five months later... NICOLE CARBONE: Crazy.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Before the terror, Purim was one of Carbone's favorite holidays.

This year, she won't celebrate, but she thinks that Israel still should.

NICOLE CARBONE: The real heroes is the people who try and get above all this grief and sadness.

For me, seeing other people in costume, it makes me smile.

It makes me more happy, but I just couldn't do it myself.

NICK SCHIFRIN: The war continues, but, for this Purim, there was a moment of joy, even through the tears.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Nick Schifrin.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Buying and selling a home could get quite a bit cheaper.

That's because the National Association of Realtors has now agreed to rewrite a number of the rules that regulate America's housing industry.

John Yang unpacks the details.

JOHN YANG: Typically, a person selling their house pays a commission of 5 or 6 percent of the purchase price to their agent, who then splits it with the buyer's agent.

But if a federal judge approves a proposed settlement, that's all going to change.

To resolve a lawsuit brought by some people who had sold their homes, the National Association of Realtors, the industry trade group, has agreed to abandon its rules about how commissions are set, advertised and paid.

Debra Kamin is a New York Times real estate reporter.

Her investigation into the realtors group last year led to the resignation of its president.

Debra, let's start with this question of the commissions.

What is the effect -- going to be the effect on someone who sells their home and someone who buys a home?

DEBRA KAMIN, The New York Times: So, we definitely know what the effect is going to be on someone who sells their home.

And commissions for them are going to go down.

In the past, when you sold a home, you were responsible for paying commissions to your agent, the seller's agent, and then that agent went ahead and split the commission with the buyer's agent.

That number was usually between 5 and 6 percent.

And as a result of the settlement, that number is going to go down.

So sellers are going to have more money taking with them from a home sale to go on to buy their next house.

For buyers, the onus for paying is probably now going to be on them, and that's where we're expecting this settlement to hurt the most.

JOHN YANG: Talk about how this lawsuit was brought.

Who brought it, and why did they bring it?

DEBRA KAMIN: The lawsuit was brought by a handful of home sellers in Missouri.

They're really average people.

One of them is a former police officer.

One of them is a former English teacher.

What they had in common is, they all sold a home in the past few years.

And when they sold that home, they did not feel that they were told or able to negotiate the commissions they paid to the real estate agents.

And they felt that the rules set by NAR made it so that they were not able to negotiate, and there might be antitrust violations.

And they contacted a lawyer, and they brought a class action suit.

And to the great surprise of the housing industry, they won, and now NAR has settled.

JOHN YANG: These homeowners have done some - - did something that the Justice Department was trying to do and hasn't been able to do.

DEBRA KAMIN: That is absolutely right.

These homeowners basically were able to make a change at NAR, when the Justice Department and also many small upstart real estate technology companies were not able to do so.

For many years, people have been trying to break this anticompetitive rule that the lawsuits alleged, and they were not able to.

The reason that the home sellers believe that they were successful is because, in a court of law, they were just a bunch of average Americans talking to a jury that was also comprised of average Americans, and, in that way, they had a leg up in these arguments, and they were successful.

JOHN YANG: I want to go back to you talking about the homebuyers.

They were not part of this lawsuit.

Is that right?

DEBRA KAMIN: That is correct.

Homebuyers were not part of this lawsuit.

It was brought only by home sellers.

JOHN YANG: I have read some real estate experts saying that there may be unintended consequences for first-time buyers.

DEBRA KAMIN: You're absolutely right, that, for first-time homebuyers, it is often very difficult to scrape together just the money you need to be able to get that down payment to buy that first home, especially now, when the housing market is so tight and so expensive.

And in the past, one thing that homebuyers did not have to worry about was paying their real estate agents.

So, as this settlement has its effects, one of the things we might see is that homebuyers now feel, oh, gosh, I also have to pay my real estate agent on top of everything.

But, most likely, what's also going to happen is we're going to see new models for compensation evolve out of this that didn't exist before, where the way that we pay real estate agents, particularly on the buy side, might be completely different.

It could be a flat fee.

It could be by the hour.

There's all sorts of ways to pay agents that never existed before because there wasn't a competition in the market that allowed those new methods to be introduced.

JOHN YANG: So this is going to change the way people buy and sell homes.

What about for the industry?

This is sort of breaking the trade groups' powers in a way.

What's the effect going to be on the industry?

DEBRA KAMIN: For the National Association of Realtors, they have had extreme power and dominance over the real estate industry for more than 100 years, and pretty much no one has been able to break them.

Now they stand to lose a lot of that power, namely because one of the primary reasons agents felt they had to join the National Association of Realtors was to have access to these things called MLSes.

These are multiple listing services where homes are bought and sold, and NAR subgroups control those databases.

One of the changes of the settlement is affecting the rules about listing homes on these databases.

So, so many agents are now saying, maybe we won't pay dues to NAR, we won't be members anymore.

And they stand to lose something like two-thirds of their members, by some estimates.

JOHN YANG: And, also, they're going to lose - - I mean, the industry as a whole, if the NAR is weakened, it seems to me, would lose a voice in Washington in sort of lobbying.

DEBRA KAMIN: It will lose a voice in Washington because NAR is also, in addition to being America's largest trade organization, they are America's most dominant political action committee.

They give more money to candidates who are pro their initiatives, and they spend more money fighting candidates who are against their initiatives than any other group.

So, yes, they have a hugely dominant arm in Washington.

That arm is one of the reasons it took so long for anyone to be successful in challenging them.

And if their membership goes down, the pool of people who donate to them is also going to go down.

So, yes, I think it's a very likely scenario that, in the future, their dominance in Washington is going to go down.

But it's also going to open the door for other groups to enter and perhaps have dominance in their own way.

There's a lot of changes that we cannot foresee yet.

JOHN YANG: Debra Kamin of The New York Times, thank you very much.

DEBRA KAMIN: Thank you.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: One year ago today, three little children and three adults were shot dead at the Covenant School in Nashville.

It was the deadliest school shooting in Tennessee history.

In the wake of that tragedy, a group of Tennesseans from across the political spectrum came together to find ways to reduce the harm of gun violence in their state.

Judy Woodruff reports from Tennessee as part of her ongoing series America at a Crossroads.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Tim Carroll is a firearms instructor in rural Harriman, Tennessee, who is passionate about guns and gun rights.

TIM CARROLL, Firearms Instructor: I'm a Second Amendment absolutist.

Having more guns out there is a good thing.

There are some folks in society who cannot protect themselves physically.

The firearm is the only way that that person can protect themselves.

JUDY WOODRUFF: When you think about a gun, what do you think?

ALYSSA PEARMAN, High School Teacher: I think it is a tool that is misused often and, in the wrong hands, can cause a lot of damage.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Alyssa Pearman is a high school English teacher in Jackson, Tennessee, who lost two of her students to gun violence less than a year apart.

How are their families doing?

ALYSSA PEARMAN: That was, like, the hardest part.

It's just -- it makes me cry every time.

But... JUDY WOODRUFF: Yes.

ALYSSA PEARMAN: ... when the casket closed, like, you hear their mom just scream.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I can't even imagine.

You might think these two would struggle to see eye to eye about anything to do with guns.

But Tim and Alyssa were part of a so-called citizen solutions session that gathered 11 Tennesseans from all walks of life for a three-day conference.

The goal of the session, held in the wake of a 2023 mass shooting at an elementary school, was to develop realistic proposals that could curb gun violence.

ALYSSA PEARMAN: If we went to high school together, we'd argue a lot.

It was really refreshing to be able to share my story and for people not to brush it off.

TIM CARROLL: I was really fortunate to be able to get that sort of perspective from folks like Alyssa, because, when I hear gunshots, it's somebody who's hunting or they're just out here shooting.

And when they hear gunshots, it's, something bad is happening.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The event was organized by the national nonpartisan nonprofit named Starts With Us, which aims to bring people from diverse backgrounds together to find solutions to the country's toughest issues.

TIM CARROLL: We're being fed a narrative that everybody hates everybody else.

When we sit down like we are today, we know that's not the case.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The Tennessee 11, as they call themselves, shared personal experiences and expertise, and ultimately came together last August to draft five proposals that they felt could help address gun violence.

EMERGENCY DISPATCHER: Nine-one-one.

What is the address of your emergency?

MAN: I -- all I saw was a man holding an assault rifle shooting through the doors.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What prompted their effort was the incident one year ago when a shooter killed three 9-year-old children and three adults at the private Christian Covenant School in Nashville, just one of 82 school shootings in the U.S. in 2023.

PROTESTER: When I say gun reform, you say now!

Gun reform!

PROTESTERS: Now!

PROTESTER: Gun reform!

PROTESTERS: Now!

JUDY WOODRUFF: Following the tragedy, students, parents and gun safety activists called on the Tennessee state legislature to act to prevent more gun violence.

STATE REP. JUSTIN JONES (D-TN): They can't stop the thousands of us here who are demanding change.

No action!

PROTESTERS: No peace!

JUDY WOODRUFF: Eventually leading to the controversial expulsion of two Black lawmakers from the Statehouse.

PROTESTER: I am a pleading mother.

I don't want anyone of you to feel what this feels like.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Then, in August of last year, Tennessee's Republican Governor Bill Lee called a special session to enact gun safety measures, but no proposal passed.

That same week, the Tennessee 11 convened to try to hammer out some solutions of their own.

Four of their proposals centered on measures that would not restrict access to firearms, things like promoting responsible gun ownership, broadening the role of police officers in schools, working to reduce trauma from gun violence, and increasing understanding of gun issues in schools, communities, and the media.

The one measure they agreed on that focused on restricting gun access became the most controversial, allowing the temporary removal of firearms from individuals based on the risk that they may commit a violent act.

ARRIELL GIPSON MARTIN, District Manager, Shelby County, Tennessee: You walk in a room, and you're hesitant at first.

You see people you have never seen before.

You know nothing about them, and your wall's up, right?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Arriell Gipson Martin, who took part in the solutions session, is a district manager in Memphis area local government who works in violence prevention.

She says she learned a new way to connect with those she doesn't agree with.

ARRIELL GIPSON MARTIN: You break bread together, right?

You have meals together.

You ask, hey, I heard you say that one thing in that room.

Can you tell me more about that experience?

Maybe we can meet in the middle.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And now it's several months later.

Do you still feel good, comfortable with what you all agreed on?

ARRIELL GIPSON MARTIN: Absolutely.

Absolutely.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Public polling done by Starts With Us, the same nonprofit that organized the sessions, suggested that those five proposals had majority support among Tennesseans statewide, some narrowly.

The plan was to then take these hard-won compromises to the state capitol to present lawmakers in this Republican-dominated state with a way forward.

ADAM LUKE, Family Therapist: We are depending on you to choose the path that enables collaboration across lines of difference for the good of all Tennesseans.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The group invited over 100 Tennessee legislators to attend their session, but only 10 showed up.

ADAM LUKE: Crickets, you know?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Adam Luke is a family therapist and gun enthusiast who was part of the Tennessee 11.

ADAM LUKE: My House representative from my district shows up and then doesn't even want to have a conversation with me afterwards.

I had to chase him down the hall.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You chased him down the hall?

ADAM LUKE: Yes, because, as soon as I ended, he left the chambers quite quickly and didn't want to take, like, our information packet, anything like that.

And I do believe that this is when we start talking about the extremes, because is it really his unwillingness to have a conversation with me, or does he think it's political suicide to have a conversation with me?

JUDY WOODRUFF: The "NewsHour" reached out to a dozen Republican state lawmakers representing the home districts of the Tennessee 11, but none agreed to talk with us about these issues.

And when Adam Luke, the gun rights advocate, reached out to local gun organizations to share his excitement about the exchange of ideas that was happening, he encountered not just opposition, but threats.

ADAM LUKE: I was met with serious hostility.

I was hit with people calling my work phone and leaving unsettling voice-mails.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What did they say?

ADAM LUKE: Well, I mean, to put it plainly, that I was a liberal plant, that who the hell are you, who elected you to speak for me?

JUDY WOODRUFF: In fact, a conservative newspaper, The Tennessee Star, picked up the story criticizing the effort for being funded by an out-of-state billionaire.

The article claimed that the whole effort was designed to push a gun control agenda, and that some among the Tennessee 11 were partisan activists.

TIM CARROLL: I know that, if I start speaking out about this session and what I did, then I know that all of this could go away, right?

If somebody says Tim Carroll is working with the anti-gun folks to try to come up with new laws, that's all they will hear.

And they will say, you know what, Tim Carroll, don't go take classes with him, don't listen to anything he says.

I think that's why I fought so hard during the solutions sessions to come up with things that didn't infringe on our rights.

But I know that will be misconstrued in the gun rights community.

JOHN HARRIS, Executive Director, Tennessee Firearms Association: I can't explain why he would have that fear.

I mean, if he in fact is a strong Second Amendment advocate, the question becomes when you cross over from having the conversation to supporting a concept that may not reconcile with the Second Amendment.

JUDY WOODRUFF: John Harris is a lawyer and executive director of the Tennessee Firearms Association.

He says both the Second Amendment and the U.S. Supreme Court have been clear that there is little to no legal room to regulate firearms.

You have a motto or a line that is your... JOHN HARRIS: Tennessee'S only no-compromise gun rights organization.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Is that your position, no compromise?

JOHN HARRIS: Once it becomes clear that something is a constitutionally protected right -- and the Supreme Court clearly defines the boundaries - - why compromise?

TIM CARROLL: My goal of joining the citizen solutions session was to make sure my voice was heard, that my community, the gun community, that their voice was heard.

So I think there's a lot of us that are out there, but we're just quiet because we know that, if we speak up, we will be ostracized from our side.

And even though we're a pro-gun and showed up to this, the anti-gun community, they're not going to want to have anything to do with us either.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now, as the state marks one year since the Covenant shooting, with no new measures in place to reduce gun violence, some in the Tennessee 11 say it's time for listening and compromise.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Judy Woodruff in Harriman, Tennessee.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The dream of artificial intelligence, that is, machines that think like humans, is starting to become a reality.

Now, this development triggers a whole host of concerns about our jobs, about what's real and what isn't, and especially about whether we will be able to control a technology that suddenly has a very smart mind of its own.

But it's not all as grim as it seems.

As science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports, A.I.

may create new tools to address some of the most complex problems, and at the top of that list is the climate emergency.

MILES O'BRIEN: As the world grapples with the urgent threat of climate change, scientists and policymakers are turning to an unlikely ally, artificial intelligence.

From predicting extreme weather events to optimizing energy use, A.I.

is emerging as a powerful tool in the fight against global warming.

MAN: We fly over a scene of interest as detected by the camera connected to the A.I.

chip.

MILES O'BRIEN: In Orlando, Florida, a small weather forecasting company called MyRadar is working to combine some tiny satellites with artificial intelligence to detect fires long before they race out of control.

ANDY GREEN, Founder and CEO, MyRadar: Yes, it's not -- I would worry how long the boot-up time is to be.

MILES O'BRIEN: That's founder and CEO Andy Green.

ANDY GREEN: We're employing A.I.

to do something that a human can't.

We want it to look at the planet below on a 24-by-7 basis to look for disasters in the making.

MILES O'BRIEN: A confluence of technologies, A.I., coupled with the relentless miniaturization of sensors and the reduced cost of reaching low-Earth orbit, put this company on a trajectory to launch its own satellite constellation designed to spot fires early.

Sarvesh Garimella is MyRadar's chief scientist and CTO.

SARVESH GARIMELLA, CTO, MyRadar: Getting that early information and getting the fire identified and tracked is the challenge that we're trying to solve from space.

MILES O'BRIEN: The existing fleet of satellites flown by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA are not ideally suited for real-time alerting of a budding fire.

Either the image resolution is not granular enough or the satellite doesn't pass over a particular site frequently enough.

SARVESH GARIMELLA: We're filling in the gaps by trying to launch low-Earth orbit satellites that will bring the revisit time down from 12 over 24 hours to sub-hourly.

MILES O'BRIEN: NOAA is providing $800,000 in funding.

The company is aiming to launch the first of its armada in October of 2024.

ANDY GREEN: The intent is to build out a full constellation of roughly 150 to 200 satellites or more, and that will give us the coverage that we need and the timeliness of the data that we want to get.

MILES O'BRIEN: The idea is to give users of the MyRadar app, including first responders, real-time warnings of fires.

SARVESH GARIMELLA: This one is the near-I.R.

hyperspectral camera.

MILES O'BRIEN: They will be equipped with high-resolution visible light and near-infrared hyperspectral cameras, as well as a thermal imager.

You can put that much into what is essentially a Rubik's Cube.

SARVESH GARIMELLA: Indeed, yes, so 10 centimeters on a side.

MILES O'BRIEN: That's kind of extraordinary, isn't it?

SARVESH GARIMELLA: It is.

It's really exciting.

MILES O'BRIEN: They call it HORIS, the Hyperspectral Orbital Remote Imaging Spectrometer.

In addition to the sensors, these cubesats will fly with artificial intelligence on board.

It's a way to solve a communications bottleneck.

SARVESH GARIMELLA: The onboard A.I.

piece of it means that, once we do detect a fire, we can process that information on board the satellite and send an alert directly to the ground without having to downlink the entire data set for somebody on the ground to process themselves.

A.I.

on board makes the mission possible.

MILES O'BRIEN: So what makes the A.I.

able to see fires so early?

It's a perfect use case for a so-called convolutional neural network.

Here's how it gets smart enough to spot specific things.

Take a dog, for example.

It combs through a picture with many virtual magnifying glasses.

Each one is looking for a specific kind of puzzle piece, like an edge, a shape or a texture.

Then it makes simplified versions, repeating the process on larger and larger sections.

Eventually, the puzzle can be assembled and it's time to make a guess.

Is it a cat, a dog, a tree?

Sometimes, the guess is right, but, sometimes, it's wrong.

But it learns from mistakes.

Labeled images are sent back to correct the previous operation, so the next time it plays the guessing game it will be even better.

ANDY GREEN: Ultimately, you get to a point where you can show a picture of a cat and say, is this a cat?

And then it will reply back to you and give you a yes-or-no answer with some degree of confidence.

It's essentially the same process for wildfires.

We will train the model that we use based on some existing data, and that provides it a good general understanding of what a wildfire might look like or what a smoky environment might look like.

And so, ultimately, in the end, we have a simple numerical model that says, this looks like a wildfire could be in place.

Let's alert somebody on the ground and take a look at it and potentially prevent it from spreading further.

MILES O'BRIEN: Artificial intelligence is not just being deployed for climate adaptation.

It is also a potent tool for mitigation.

At the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, they are applying A.I.

to the urgent hunt for green energy sources.

Is there anything like this in the world?

GERBRAND CEDER, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: Not in inorganic chemistry.

MILES O'BRIEN: Material scientist Gerd Ceder showed me the place he calls the A-lab.

GERBRAND CEDER: We deliberately did not define what the A stands for.

MILES O'BRIEN: So there is no B-Lab?

GERBRAND CEDER: Could stand for automated, autonomous or A.I.-driven.

MILES O'BRIEN: A.I.-driven robotic lab technicians are at work here around the clock testing recipes for compounds that might make better batteries to enable the transition to renewable energy.

Historically, it's been slow going, tedious trial and error.

GERBRAND CEDER: Somebody comes up with an idea, goes and tries it in the lab, iterates on that many, many, many times, and that's why it takes so long.

The average time to market is somewhere between 18 and 20 years.

MILES O'BRIEN: So how to speed things up?

GERBRAND CEDER: And what's the different branches?

MILES O'BRIEN: The solutions they seek are buried in millions of scientific papers.

GERBRAND CEDER: OK, so we should have results tomorrow or so.

MILES O'BRIEN: The lab has developed machine learning algorithms that sift through nearly all of the scientific literature on material science.

The A.I.

can see correlations and anomalies humans might not.

This allows it to predict the properties of vast numbers of hypothetical compounds, reducing the need for trial and error in the lab and saving time and resources.

GERBRAND CEDER: A person can never know what's been done in five million research papers, but that's the beauty of mathematics and of computing algorithms.

They essentially hold all knowledge in memory.

MILES O'BRIEN: To more efficiently test hypothetical compounds, they had built this robotic lab to mix and test the suggestions 24/7.

Ceder says what used to take months now happens in a matter of days.

GERBRAND CEDER: We really can innovate materials at a much, much faster scale.

We can't come up with solutions in 40 years, right?

We just have to get on with it.

MILES O'BRIEN: For many people, artificial intelligence is this.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, Actor: Come with me if you want to live.

MILES O'BRIEN: The Terminator, an existential threat.

But it might very well be an indispensable tool to confront the complex problems that threaten us most.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Miles O'Brien in Berkeley, California.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Miles and his team have been working on this subject for nearly a year now, and the result is a one-hour film called "A.I.

Revolution."

And it premieres tonight on "NOVA" at 9:00 p.m. Eastern here on PBS and available for streaming online.

And that's the "NewsHour" for tonight.

I'm William Brangham.

On behalf of the entire "NewsHour" team, thank you so much for joining us.