April 20, 2024 - PBS News Weekend full episode

JOHN YANG: Tonight on PBS NEWS WEEKEND.

Volkswagen workers in Tennessee overwhelmingly vote to unionize in a big win for the labor movement.

Then, as polls open in the world's largest election, what's at stake for India and its allies?

WOMAN (through translator): I feel very happy after casting the vote.

I come here every time, and I was waiting for this day because this is in the interest of my nation.

JOHN YANG: And the Israel-Hamas war has claimed the lives of more journalists than any other conflict in history.

So what can be done to protect the men and women who report from the front lines?

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Good evening.

I'm John Yang.

A highly unusual bipartisan coalition in the House has overwhelmingly passed a long delayed $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

The sudden spurt of activity comes after months of dysfunction and delay.

On the House floor, Democrats stood and cheered while waving Ukrainian flags.

Earlier, lawmakers turned back an amendment from ultra-conservative representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia that would have stripped out the $60 billion for Ukraine.

That money was a sticking point.

House Republicans had said border security was more pressing.

To appease them, House Speaker Mike Johnson held a separate vote on a border security bill, and it failed to get the support it needed to pass.

The House also approved language that could lead to a U.S. ban on TikTok, the popular social media platform.

The entire measure now goes to the Senate.

Late last night, the Senate approved a two-year extension of a controversial surveillance law that's part of FISA.

That's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The 60 to 34 vote came minutes after the provision expired.

It sent the measure to President Biden for his signature.

This means the government may continue to collect without a warrant the communications of foreign targets, even when they're communicating with Americans.

Privacy and civil rights advocates have long wanted to require the government to get a warrant to do that.

An Israeli airstrike in a house in Gaza's southern city of Rafah overnight killed at least nine people, six of them children.

That's according to hospital officials.

More airstrikes today in central Gaza killed at least one civilian in a refugee camp.

Iraq is investigating the source of an overnight explosion at a base used by pro-Iranian militias.

Israeli officials and the U.S. military both say they weren't involved.

It came less than a day after a suspected Israeli strike near an Iranian nuclear site.

And former Arkansas governor and us Senator David Pryor has died.

Pryor was one of the state's most popular politicians.

He went undercover to investigate nursing homes and was the chief sponsor of the taxpayer bill of rights.

He had survived a heart attack, a stroke, and COVID-19.

His son, former U.S. senator Mark Pryor said he died of natural causes.

David Pryor was 89 years old.

Still to come on PBS News, what's at stake for India and its allies in this six-week long election and what can be done to protect journalists reporting on the front lines of deadly conflicts?

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Workers at Volkswagen's plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, have overwhelmingly voted to join the United Auto Workers Union.

It's the first time workers at a foreign carmakers plant in the American south have unionized.

It gives the UAW a foothold in the least unionized region of the country.

New York Times reporter Noam Scheiber has covered labor unions for nearly a decade.

Noam, how big a deal is this?

NOAM SCHEIBER, The New York Times: This is a really big deal.

The UAW had spent decades failing to organize some of these big plants in the south, despite spending millions and millions of dollars, and in some cases, years and years, only to have the vote fail and, you know, have the election lose and have to go back to the drawing board.

So this is a really big breakthrough for the UAW.

JOHN YANG: And what's the significance of it?

NOAM SCHEIBER: Yeah, so the UAW is now involved in a major campaign to try to organize unorganized auto facilities, really, across the country.

And there are many of them, not just Volkswagen, but Japanese automakers like Toyota, Honda, Korean automakers like Hyundai, and, of course, Tesla and domestic electric vehicle makers.

This is a really big moment for the auto industry as we transition to electric vehicles.

The UAW is really concerned that wages and work standards will collapse basically as we make this transition, unless they're able to unionize all these non-union automakers.

So this is a really big step toward doing that as we make this transition.

JOHN YANG: As you mentioned, the UAW has been trying to do this for a while and failing.

And at this plant, workers twice voted in the past 10 years not to unionize, voted against the union.

What was the difference this time?

NOAM SCHEIBER: Yeah, so in the past, there was an election in 2014 and another one in 2019.

At various points, the company has pushed back pretty aggressively.

And when the company has not pushed back aggressively, the local political leadership has.

At one point in 2019, the governor of Tennessee came and addressed the workers on the factory floor and essentially told them why unionizing would be a mistake.

Other politicians in the state told them that they could threaten the ability of the plant to grow in the future and receive state subsidies.

This time, the climate was a lot more subdued.

The company was pretty tame, really.

More or less stood down, let the workers make the decision.

The election happened very quickly, so that did not give the kind of political establishment in the state as much time to mobilize against it the way they had in the past.

I think those two things really helped.

And then there's just a general climate that's become more favorable to labor over the past three or four years.

If you look at Gallup polling, the support among the public for unions is very high, almost historically high, nearly 70 percent, and certainly higher than it was ten years ago.

JOHN YANG: You mentioned before the VW vote, six southern governors, all Republicans, issued a joint statement saying that unionization threatens our jobs and the values we live by.

And then last night, President Biden congratulated the VW workers and said, there is nothing to fear from American workers using their voice and their legal right to form a union.

Is there a chance this would get caught up in presidential politics?

NOAM SCHEIBER: Yeah, I don't know if presidential politics, because I'm not sure if Donald Trump will try to argue that unions are a mistake.

But certainly there is a political resonance to this.

Southern governors, southern state legislatures have really invested in this idea that American manufacturing should relocate in the south, where there aren't as many unions, where wages are a little lower, they have a little more flexibility, not as much regulation.

And the UAW and a lot of Democrats see that as a problem for workers because you can always sort of threaten to move your company to the south if workers push back too much in other regions of the country.

So the UAW and I think a lot of left to center politicians think that this is really important for restoring leverage, not just to workers in the south, but to really all other parts of the country where manufacturers could threaten to go to the south.

JOHN YANG: And to that point, is there a chance that this could spread to other industries, non-unionized factories in other industries in the south?

NOAM SCHEIBER: Yeah, I think there is a good chance.

A lot of these communities where the plants are located, they're pretty small communities.

They're tight knit communities.

The people have relatives, close friends, who work at other manufacturers, even in retail fast food, they tend to draw from a similar (inaudible).

And so I do think that, you know, as one expert told me, there is no greater motivation for trying to unionize than when you see it succeed elsewhere.

Often people are very afraid and reluctant to do it, but then when they see a sort of proof of concept, they start to believe it's possible for them, too.

So you can see how it could trickle out to other industries and other workers.

JOHN YANG: Noam Scheiber of the New York Times.

Thank you very much.

NOAM SCHEIBER: Thanks for having me.

I appreciate it.

JOHN YANG: In India, the world's largest election is underway.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is heavily favored to win a third term.

But his consolidation of power and crackdown on dissent have some questioning his commitment to democratic values.

JOHN YANG (voice-over): From the state of Tamil Nadu in the south to West Bengal in the northeast, voters in the world's most populous democracy are casting their ballots.

SARASWATI GURING (through translator): I feel very happy after casting the vote.

I come here every time and I was waiting for this day because this is in the interest of my nation.

JONH YANG (voice-over): Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP Party are heavily favored to win a third term.

His approval rating is at a staggering 75 percent.

He's touting himself as the driver behind the nation's rising economy.

That brings in the support of the business elite, while generous welfare programs appeal to the impoverished majority.

There's also Modi's Hindu nationalism in this overwhelmingly Hindu nation.

It's emboldened Hindu nationalists to attack minority Muslims and Christians.

MARY DAS (through translator): The first thing I came to vote for is to have a country without any religious disharmony.

We've all come to vote.

Hindus, Muslims, Christians, we're all together and this unity should grow.

JOHN YANG (voice-over): Modi's critics point to rising unemployment and a widening gap between the rich and poor.

The opposition is unified behind the National Congress Party, which governed India for decades after the nation gained independence from England.

The coalition is led by Rahul Gandhi, the son, grandson and great grandson of Indian prime minister.

His backers say Modi is using the government for political ends, targeted corruption investigations, freezing bank accounts and putting party leaders in prison.

Staging an election with nearly a billion eligible voters is a massive undertaking, about a million polling places and 12 million election workers.

By law, every voter must be within 2 kilometers or a little more than a mile of a polling station.

To set them up, officials trek over rough and mountainous terrain and across rivers.

As the first phase of voting began Friday, lines were long despite a summer heat wave.

SWATI KAMLESH GAUR (through translator): Everyone feels very hot indeed, and the sunlight is quite harsh.

However, despite the harsh conditions, we are coming to vote.

ATINDER SINGH (through translator): If the new government is able to solve unemployment, then it will be good.

GAJE SINGH (through translator): I want the new government to be devoted to the service of the nation, the poor, the common man.

JOHN YANG: Voting will take a total of six weeks, so results won't be known until June 4.

Earlier, I spoke with Irfan Nooruddin.

He's a professor of Indian Politics at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.

I asked him what the issues were that are on voter's minds.

IRFAN NOORUDDIN, Professor of Indian Politics, Georgetown University: Many of the issues are the same that exist anywhere in the world.

When you have a democratic election, jobs are the number one concern expressed by voters the economy shows great signs of improving at the macro level, but at the individual level, especially among the less skilled population and the rural population, job distrust remains high.

There are also concerns about food inflation and food security.

But overall, the ruling party is projecting an image of success in transforming the India of the past into an India that is now a global player, a partner of the United States, and asking voters to continue trusting them to lead India to middle income status and an advanced democracy.

The big question for the opposition is whether they can get voters to focus on increasing religious intolerance and what they argue is democratic backsliding.

JOHN YANG: You mentioned unemployment, you mentioned inflation.

You mentioned the gap between the rich and the poor.

If this were an American president running for reelection, this would be trouble for him.

Why is Mr. Modi so far ahead in the polls?

IRFAN NOORUDDIN: Mister Modi has done an incredible job of managing the narrative around these issues.

So while jobs and rising inequality are things that voters express some concern about, they are also bought into a narrative that India's economy has taken a wild change and is now headed in the right direction under his leadership.

But a large part of it is also that the opposition does not seem to offer most Indian voters a very credible alternative.

And so maybe it is also that they don't think that the other guys would do any better and are willing to try Mr. Modi, at least one more time.

JOHN YANG: You mentioned also India's relationship with the United States.

What's at stake for the United States in this election?

IRFAN NOORUDDIN: Well, India has emerged as a major partner for the United States economically.

And then you have the geopolitics, you have China, which for both the Trump administration and the Biden administration now has emerged as sort of the single biggest strategic threat for the United States.

And in that way, India seems to have a clear, different logic, which is this is a way for the United States to have a major democratic partner in the region that can help balance against an aggressive, rising China.

So what's at stake?

Well, have we really gotten the bet right on India?

Will India be the partner that we need in the region?

It'll be very awkward and embarrassing for an American president that has invested India to see India backslide into autocracy.

And so one could argue, without maybe overstating it, that in the long run, America's credibility when it comes to talking about issues of democracy and human rights is also at stake and that India is a large part of that larger global narrative.

JOHN YANG: You talk about a democracy in India, but Freedom House rates India as only partly free.

Leading up to the election, Mr. Modi has -- his opponents say that he's gone after the opposition using the tools of government.

How committed do you see Mr. Modi to the democratic values?

IRFAN NOORUDDIN: Mister Modi is a committed electoral democrat.

And by that I mean, you know, he wins elections.

He does it very successfully.

The election itself will be free and fair in the context of the election day voting.

India does this very, very well, in spite of the incredible logistical challenges of holding an election for 950 million eligible voters.

But the free and fair question is also one of has the opposition had a level playing field in getting its message out to the citizens of the country to say, hey, we are a credible alternative?

Here's how we can critique the record of the existing government.

And there are some concerns.

The media, by and large, is not offer critical takes on the Modi government's record.

And the opposition, I think feels between the arrests of senior leaders and the use of the tax authorities to freeze assets of prominent opposition parties, then maybe the playing field hasn't been as level as we would like.

And I think that's going to raise a lot of concerns for international observers of this election.

JOHN YANG: How troubling or how worrying is the religious violence we've seen India lately?

IRFAN NOORUDDIN: Tremendously concerning.

India's great contribution to democracy over the last 70 years has been a model of a multiethnic, multi religious country that manages to still have peaceful elections on a regular basis.

And so any encroachment of religious tension and religious violence into that public domain is very sad, but also makes you worry as to what the future might hold.

There has been a rising majoritarianism within the Indian population that has now really been manifested by the BJP, the ruling party.

So there are open appeals on the grounds of religion.

Prime Minister Modi inaugurated a massive temple in the city of Ayodhya in February to break fanfare, but one that really saw a political figure crossing a line into religious authority in a way that we haven't seen before.

There is rising attacks on Muslim minorities and other minorities, Christian minorities India.

There is a reason to be worried about rising violence and increased impunity on the part of religious vigilantes who really act quite boldly to attack anyone that they don't see as conforming to their vision of what India is, a world in which 200 million Muslims and another 50 million religious minorities are worried that at any given moment they might be attacked without any protection of the state machinery of law and order, the judicial system is one in which those citizens become second class citizens in their own country.

That is not what we imagine for a functioning democracy.

JOHN YANG: Irfan Nooruddin of Georgetown University, thank you very much.

IRFAN NOORUDDIN: You're very welcome.

Thank you.

JOHN YANG: The Israel-Hamas war is inflicting a devastating toll on civilians.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians and more than 1,000 Israelis have been killed since October.

Among them are journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says it's the deadliest conflict for reporters, photographers and camera operators since the group began tracking casualties in 1992.

Ali Rogin tells us what's driving this mounting death toll.

ALI ROGIN: Reporting from war zones has always been risky, but now experts say it's never been more dangerous.

At least 97 reporters, 92 of them Palestinian, have been killed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

Dozens more have been arrested, injured or vanished.

Jodie Ginsberg heads the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Jodie, thank you so much for being here.

Tell us about what it's like right now for Palestinian journalists on the ground in Gaza to do their jobs.

JODIE GINSBERG, Committee to Protect Journalists: It's extraordinarily difficult for journalists in Gaza right now to do their jobs.

It's been seven months of war, seven months when they've not been able to leave.

No one else has been able to get in.

So they are bearing the brunt of the reporting.

They are reporting the war and living the war.

So they're subject to the same bombings, the same attacks.

In some cases, we believe journalists have been deliberately targeted.

So they're operating in extraordinarily difficult conditions.

Shortages of food, shortages of fuel.

Obviously, equipment is beginning to degrade.

So it's becoming harder and harder to report out from Gaza and more dangerous.

ALI ROGIN: You mentioned that there is evidence that some of these journalists were deliberately targeted.

Tell us a little bit more about that.

What do we know?

JODIE GINSBERG: So we know that in at least three cases journalists have been targeted, as the case of the Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah, who was killed on the border with Lebanon by Israeli fire.

And there have been several independent reports that demonstrate it was quite clear that he was a journalist, visible as a journalist.

Israel have admitted to targeting two journalists traveling in a car, Mustafa Thuraya and Hamza Al Dahdouh.

It alleged that they were terrorists, but we've seen absolutely no credible evidence for that.

And we believe there are other cases where it's probable that journalists have been deliberately targeted.

ALI ROGIN: Of course, this is an active war zone, but at this point, what would CPJ like to see in terms of seeking accountability for journalist deaths at the hands of the Israeli military and Hamas?

JODIE GINSBERG: Well, obviously, we want to see transparent investigations into all of the killings of journalists since the start of October 7 and any killings of journalists in the region before that.

We continue to stress that journalists are civilians and should never be targeted.

We continue to call for international access to Gaza.

It's really important that we have foreign media also able to get in, able to get a picture of what's happening inside Gaza.

ALI ROGIN: And on that issue of international access, Israel has only allowed entry by international journalists in very controlled situations.

And much of the bulk of the reporting has been done by Palestinian journalists as well as citizen journalists.

So why is it so important that international journalists have full access to war zones to report out?

JODIE GINSBERG: It's really important that we have international media in any war because that's a way to be able to demonstrate and to verify the information that is being gathered by local reporters.

Whenever you have only local reporters in a war setting enables one side to claim that perhaps those journalists are unreliable.

They're domestic reporters.

They might have biases and having international media from a number of different kinds of organizations allows us to verify and corroborate the material that's being shared by local journalists.

The attacks that we've seen on journalists, the repeated communications blackout, some of the legislation that Israel has introduced, for example, giving it the power to ban foreign media outlets in which the prime minister has already said he would use against outlets like Al Jazeera.

All of those speak to an environment in which freedom of the press is curtailed, and that's the actions of a dictatorship, not the actions of a democracy.

ALI ROGIN: What measures would you like to see implemented today to protect these journalists better?

JODIE GINSBERG: Well, we've been part for a long time, of course, for a humanitarian ceasefire.

We think it's very important that equipment be allowed into Gaza so that journalists can replace damaged laptops, damaged equipment.

We want to see personal protective equipment, so those flak jackets that you often see with press written across them, none of that material has been allowed into Gaza, helmets and so on to keep journalists safe.

And it's very important that we continue to speak out in solidarity with our Gaza and colleagues as well.

ALI ROGIN: And pulling out the scope a little bit, why is it so important that a free and safe press exists?

JODIE GINSBERG: Well, we always say that truth is the first casualty in war.

It's important that we have journalists to provide information so that we, as ordinary citizens, as ordinary, as members of the public, have the information we need to live our everyday lives.

All of that information is information that journalists are providing day in, day out.

And it's vital for us if we want to live in free and democratic society.

ALI ROGIN: Jody Ginsburg, head of the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists, thank you so much.

JODIE GINSBERG: Thank you.

JOHN YANG: Now online, how restoration efforts Indonesia are saving coral reefs and could potentially restore those ecosystems.

All that and more is on our website, pbs.org/NewsHour.

And that is PBS NEWS WEEKEND for this Saturday.

Tomorrow, we found find out how a Supreme Court case on laws limiting homeless encampments could reshape policy around the country.

I'm John Yang.

For all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us.

See you tomorrow.