JOHN YANG: Tonight on PBS News Weekend, the future of noncompete agreements.
After the Federal Trade Commission votes to ban the practice, then Ecuador, once known as a major tourist attraction, is now a hot for violence and turf wars.
And a new book explores the history of climate change, uncertainty about the future of our planet, and a dose of hope for saving it.
WOMAN: We can choose to deal with it as constructively and wisely and as intelligently as possible, or we can throw up our hands or, alternatively, put our heads in the sand, and it will still come at us.
(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Good evening.
I'm John Yang.
Today, some universities move to shut down protests over the Israel-Hamas war, as students at other schools dug in and vowed to keep their demonstrations going.
In Northeastern University in Boston, officers in riot gear cleared an encampment without incident and arrested more than 100 protesters for trespassing and disorderly conduct.
School officials said what they called professional organizers had infiltrated the demonstration and that antisemitic slurs had been used.
Students disputed all that and said the slurs came from what they called counter protesters.
At other schools, including the University of Pittsburgh, students and they intended to keep their peaceful demonstrations going at least until Monday.
At Columbia University, students pressed their demand that the school divested from corporations and institutions they say support Israel.
WOMAN: You have the power to end this tomorrow, and the things that we need from you as students is real, intentional commitment to the demands we have placed on the table.
JOHN YANG: Late Friday, Columbia's policymaking body voted to investigate the school administration, saying students' rights had been violated.
And Columbia banned a student protester from campus for antisemitic comments he made in an online video.
The student has since said he was wrong.
In the Israel-Hamas war, Israeli airstrikes on southern Gaza have killed at least 13 people, four of them children.
A separate strike in a central Gaza refugee camp killed five people.
Israel says Hamas uses residential areas to shield militants.
Efforts continue for a hostage and ceasefire deal with Hamas in order to avert a promised Israeli ground invasion of Rafah.
Residents in parts of Nebraska and Iowa are sifting through the aftermath of a tornado outbreak.
Videos posted on social media show twisters churning up debris on Friday as they crossed fields, highways, and towns.
There were reports of several injuries, but no deaths.
There's a threat of tornadoes again tonight in Nebraska, as well as in Texas and Oklahoma.
And disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein is in a New York City hospital tonight for tests.
Weinstein, whose sex abuse case helped kick off the Me Too movement, had been sent to Rikers Island in New York City from his upstate prison ahead of a court appearance.
His 2020 rape conviction in New York was tossed out this week by an Appeals Court and a new trial ordered.
His conviction in a similar case in California still stands.
Still to come on PBS News, why once peaceful Ecuador is now a center of drug fueled violence.
And a new book investigates the landscape of climate change from a to z.
(BREAK) JOHN YANG: This week, the federal Trade Commission voted to bar companies from using what are called noncompete agreements to keep employees from taking new jobs with competitors or starting competing businesses.
The FTC estimates that 30 million Americans, or about one in five workers, are covered by these restrictions.
And they range from CEO's to hourly workers.
The day after the vote, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups went to court.
They're trying to block the new rule before it's to take effect in August.
Taylor Giorno is the business and lobbying reporter for The Hill, which covers politics and policy.
Taylor, why is the FTC, or why did the FTC say they're taking this step?
TAYLOR GIORNO, The Hill: Yeah, so the FTC first announced that it was going to propose a rule basically banning all existing and future noncompete agreements back in January 2023.
And they said that they were taking this step because it was under Section 5 of their mandate to basically take action on exploitative or exclusionary practices by businesses.
So, this is the culmination of about a year and a half of and 26,000 public comments, the overwhelming majority of which were very supportive of banning noncompete agreements.
And yeah, the FTC took this step this past week, and as you mentioned, business was not happy about it.
JOHN YANG: And talk about these noncompete agreements.
I think people think of them as being executives in finance or high tech, but it's more than that, isn't it?
TAYLOR GIORNO: At a most basic level, a noncompete agreement is an agreement that prevents a worker from leaving their job to take a job with a competing employer in the industry, or to start a competing business.
And a lot of people maybe think of these as something at the C Suite or executive level.
However, a 2019 study by the left leaning Economic Policy Institute found that about 30 percent of the workers that were covered under these agreements actually made dollar 13 or less per hour.
There was a disproportionate number of comments from the healthcare space.
This is also set to hit the tech industry, but it's going to hit, honestly, a lot of industries, including the media industry.
JOHN YANG: How did these become so popular?
Why are there so many of these and so many workers covered by them?
TAYLOR GIORNO: So businesses say that they really started putting these noncompete agreements in place because they wanted to protect trade secrets, which maybe makes especially sense at the executive level.
However, particularly post pandemic.
And as the economy has shifted towards a more pro-labor movement, it's been a very effective tool to keep workers in their current position.
And that was also one of the arguments that was cited by the big business groups that sued the FTC to block the rule basically, they're saying, hey, we've invested a lot of work money in these workers, training them, putting time in on them.
We don't want them to go to our competitors and basically use all that training we gave them to compete against us.
JOHN YANG: What does the FTC and what do employer groups and workers groups say are going to be the practical effects of this?
TAYLOR GIORNO: The FTC was very clear.
This is going to be a very good thing for workers.
It's going to allow them to change jobs more freely.
It's going to allow them to seek higher pay.
I believe when the FTC did its estimates about, they estimate that workers collectively in the United States are going to earn about $300 billion more each year because they're allowed to change jobs.
That shakes out to about $525 person.
They also say that it is going to promote competition and entrepreneurship.
The FTC estimates that if employers or employees are allowed to leave their jobs and start competing businesses, that they're going to be about 8500 new businesses started each year.
JOHN YANG: And then what do the business groups say?
TAYLOR GIORNO: The business group say, no, this is going to be actually very harmful for competition because it's going to make it harder for us to retain our employees as well as basically make it so that it's going to, maybe there will be people that are going to use our trade secrets to compete against us, particularly in the tech space.
This is an issue of concern.
You know, you've got a tech sector group that's a startup that's basically got this new interesting technology.
They don't want people leaving and starting a new company with that technology.
However, it is worth noting that both the FTC and legal firms have identified there are definitely ways that businesses can get ahead of those.
They can have employees signed non-disclosure agreements or confidentiality agreements.
Those are not basically banned under this new rule.
JOHN YANG: President Biden, of course, running for reelection, getting a lot of support from labor.
How does this fit in with his overall agenda?
TAYLOR GIORNO: So unions in particular have been very supportive of this proposal.
The AFL-CIO was one of the early backers, as well as anti-monopoly groups in DC like the American Economic Liberty Project.
And President Biden has really cast himself as the most pro-union, pro-worker president in history.
We saw him last fall on the picket line of the United Auto Workers strike, and this really fits into his messaging as heads into a very critical reelection year.
He can point to both this move made by his administration as well as other efforts that they've made to go after price gouging or basically an imbalance towards the corporations.
So this will definitely may not be resolved before the election, but you can expect to hear about it.
JOHN YANG: You say it may not be resolved before the election.
What's the timeline?
What's the road ahead?
TAYLOR GIORNO: So when the FTC voted to pass the rule on Tuesday, they basically set in place 120-day clock.
However, because the Chamber of Commerce and these business groups, as well as a few other groups, have now come out and basically sued the FTC, that sort of extends that timeline while these challenges make their way through the courts.
So unless there is a certification of petition to the Supreme Court, this may drag out past November.
The FTC rule stipulates that employers have to reach out to both previous and current employees that are covered by these noncompete agreements to basically let them know that they're null and void.
So anybody wondering, hey, when is this going to affect me, you should be hearing from your current or former employer.
JOHN YANG: And are there state rules governing these?
TAYLOR GIORNO: Yeah, so that's one of the things that the business groups are saying.
They're saying, hey, this is not something that has been traditionally regulated at the federal level, and that is true.
There's currently sort of this patchwork system across states.
So there are about three states plus the District of Columbia that currently don't recognize noncompete agreements.
And then there are a few more, like Colorado, that basically limit the use of noncompete agreements.
This is much more of a blanket sweeping.
No matter what state you're in, this is our federal policy on this.
So it'll be a very interesting challenge of federal versus state power to see which way the courts decide to lean.
JOHN YANG: Taylor Giorno of The Hill, thank you very much.
TAYLOR GIORNO: Thank you for having me.
JOHN YANG: It wasn't that long ago that Ecuador was a beacon of stability in a region known for political unrest and drug trafficking.
But it's become one of Latin America's most violent countries, with increasing violence and murders.
As Ali Rogin reports, many Ecuadorians are turning to their young political outsider president to turn things around.
ALI ROGIN: Ecuador is in a state of war.
That was what 36-year old President Daniel Noboa said in January as he declared a state of internal armed conflict against his country's drug cartels.
In the past year, the small south American nation saw the assassination of a presidential candidate, the escape of numerous gang members from prison, including the leader of one of the country's most powerful drug cartels, and a brazen armed takeover of a local TV station during a live broadcast.
President Noboa came under an international scrutiny after armed police raided the Mexican embassy in the capital Quito earlier this month.
They arrested a former Ecuadorian vice president who sought asylum in the embassy after being indicted on corruption charges.
En noboas mano dura, or strong hand, got even stronger last week after voters approved a referendum increasing his authority.
They include measures allowing him to deploy the military against gangs more easily, extradite accused criminals, and lengthen prison sentences for convicted drug traffickers.
Carolina Jimenez Sandoval is president of the Washington office on Latin America, a research organization which advocates for human rights in the region.
Carolina, welcome back to PBS News Weekend.
Thank you so much.
Why is gang violence in Ecuador right now spiraling so far out of control?
CAROLINA JIMENEZ SANDOVAL, Washington Office on Latin America: Well, more than gun violence, I would say, is organized crime violence.
Unfortunately, in the last few years, the Ecuador as a country has started to play a different role in the international drug trade.
We need to think about the country's geographic location.
It is basically a sandwich between Colombia and Peru, and these are the world's largest coca growers and cocaine producers.
For many years, Ecuador has been a transit country for drug trade.
But the control of the drug trade was done mainly from Colombia by the FARC, the rebel group.
Once this guerrilla group demobilized, when Colombia signed a peace agreement in 2016, there was a major vacuum.
Who will control this very profitable business, illegal business.
And that's when we started seeing Ecuador becoming more and more violent.
And as you know, Mexican cartels, Colombian cartels, and even Albanian cartel entered the country forcefully.
To feel that vacuum left by the former FARC group, we have seen, really a tough war in which cartels fight each other and they also fight the government.
And unfortunately, you know, normal citizens are paying the consequences.
ALI ROGIN: And a lot of the government's efforts to quell this violence has taken place around and inside the prisons.
So let's talk about the role that the prison system in Ecuador is playing in the proliferation of violence and also in efforts to try to reduce it.
CAROLINA JIMENEZ SANDOVAL: I think the first thing we need to acknowledge is that the prison system in Ecuador has been in crisis for many years.
And if you take the numbers given by Human Rights Watch, since 2021, at least 400 people have been killed in prisons across Ecuador.
So this number is really alarming.
But the truth is that prisons have also become the center of operation of major cartels.
They use prisons not only to organize their business, but also to recruit new members.
So despite efforts from the government to control the penitentiary system, it is very clear that organized crime has the upper hand in prisons.
Unfortunately, you know, the mano dura that you were speaking about earlier, the iron fist policies of the government often increase violence in prison.
They don't really reduce ill treat mineral torture and many other things that are happening to detainees.
ALI ROGIN: So let's talk a little bit more about that mano dura policy.
How is it playing out in Ecuador right now?
CAROLINA JIMENEZ SANDOVAL: It is the all and felt strategy of militarizing citizen security.
We have seen this strategy being implemented in different Latin American countries.
Mexico is perhaps the best example.
And basically President Naboa, after the referendum, now has much more power to maintain the military in the streets.
The military will be carrying security operations together with the police.
And what tends to happen in these cases is that the military, who are created to play a very different role, not a role of the civilian police plays, usually provide short term gains.
The military are not prepared to deal with organized crime, are not prepared to substitute civilian police.
And human rights violations in this type of strategies are always at the forefront of the military work.
And Mexico is perhaps one of the best examples we have seen.
ALI ROGIN: What about the United States role here?
How is what's happening in Ecuador affecting the international drug trade as it relates to the United States?
And is the United States helping at all to address these issues?
CAROLINA JIMENEZ SANDOVAL: When we saw a major spike of violence in January this year, and the president of Ecuador declared at a state of emergency, almost immediately after this happened, a high level delegation of American government officials flew to Quito, and we saw the south commander, General Laura Richardson, promised that military aid was going to be part of the U.S. policy towards Ecuador and everything from, you know, providing military equipment to FBI advisors.
So there is a package in the making.
Of course, it is important to have a strategy against the drug trade, but we certainly hope that the U.S. will not focus exclusively on supporting a military approach.
It is necessary to professionalize the police to support an independent and functional judicial system, to support civil society in the free press, which is more important than ever when this crisis happened.
And honestly, we don't think this is going to change if the current global prohibition regime of, you know, around drug policy continues to be fueling the violence that it has fueled for so many years.
So unless we have a real conversation about reforms to the global policy related to drugs, I'm afraid that we will continue to see the violence that Latin America has seen for over five decades now.
ALI ROGIN: Carolina Jimenez Sandoval, the president of the Washington office on Latin America, thank you so much for joining us.
CAROLINA JIMENEZ SANDOVAL: Thank you for having me.
JOHN YANG: This week, the Biden administration finalized new rules ordering power companies to slash greenhouse gas emissions from coal burning plants.
Data shows that global levels of the three main heat trapping greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, all reached record highs in 2023 for the second year in a row.
And experts say there's no end in sight.
But a new book says there is reason for hope.
William Brangham spoke with its author.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Climate.
Change from A to Z.
That is the premise of a new collection of 26 essays, one for each letter of the Alphabet, like c for capitalism or K for kilowatt, Q for quagmire.
Journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning author Elizabeth Kolbert wrote the words.
Artist Wesley Alsbrook did the illustrations, and together they delve into everything from the history of climate change to the deep uncertainty about its future, from sobering facts about our warming planet that may seem overwhelming to innovations to fuel our optimism.
The book is called H is for hope.
And Elizabeth Kolbert joins us now.
Elizabeth, welcome back to the program.
You are one of the journalists who has helped me and so many of us understand the climate crisis and the ecological crisis that we are living through right now.
When I saw a book by you that was trumpeting hope, I was really struck by that.
I mean, given everything, you know and everything that you document in this book, how did you land on hope?
ELIZABETH KOLBERT, Author, "H Is for Hope": I mean, you used the word overwhelming, and I think the climate crisis can seem overwhelming to people.
It's a science story, it's a technology story, it's a political story, it's a geopolitical story.
And so the goal of the book, which is really following the style of a children's book, but is not a children's book, breaking things down by Alphabet, was to break the story down into pieces and put it back together again.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: It is shorter than most of your works, and it is constructed in this way with some chapters being quite brief and yet illustrated beautifully by Wesley Alsbrook.
It isn't a children's book, as you say, but I'm curious as to why you chose this format.
ELIZABETH KOLBERT: There's a lot of, I hope, resonance is there.
I sort of was wanting to play with a lot of different ideas.
So I hope there's a certain amount of playfulness in the book.
And one of them was playing with this antiquated form of an ABC book to deal with a question that is very much a present day question and also very much a question of our future.
So bringing those sort of different styles together.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You talk a lot about the narratives and the stories that we tell about climate change.
One of the many that really leaps out in this book is the chasm between the rich and the poor, both in our emissions and the impacts of those emissions, the millions of people who are now refugees because of climate change.
Why do you think that narrative has not moved people?
ELIZABETH KOLBERT: Well, that's a really good question.
And especially since the issue of immigration is so much a hot button issue in our own politics, we should be having a much more sober and thoughtful conversation about all of these issues and how climate change, how continuing to burn fossil fuels is going to drive a refugee crisis the likes of which the world has possibly never seen before, is something that all of our politicians should be discussing once again, not in a way, not in the sort of way that unfortunately, they're discussing immigration today, but in a much more considered, thoughtful way.
Because we are looking at a future in which many, many millions of people are likely to be on the move, because the places that they have lived for many centuries are going to become very difficult to live in.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I want to ask you a little more about Wesley Alsbrook's artwork, because it is such a striking parallel to your words.
One of the drawings is an image of our earth, the great globe, inside of a snow globe.
And it's part of the chapter V for Vast, where you talk about the irony here that our taming of nature, quote, unquote, with oil and gas and electricity and heating and transportation, has now come back to haunt us in the sense that it has, as you say, put nature firmly back in charge.
Can you tell us about that illustration and that message that's coming through there?
ELIZABETH KOLBERT: Well, that chapter is a reference to this very famous quote from the 1950s from one of the first people, Roger Revell, to raise the alarm about climate change.
And he called what we were doing a vast experiment.
And that vast experiment, that vast unsupervised experiment continues.
And so I think what Wesley was driving out with that wonderful illustration of the globe inside a snow globe was, we are shaking this thing, and that thing is, unfortunately, the whole planet.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Your shortest chapter D for Despair.
I'm going to read it in full.
Despair is unproductive.
It's also a sin.
That could easily have been the title of your book, but you obviously chose the opposite.
What cumulative effect do you want people to take away from this work?
ELIZBETH KOLBERT: Well, I think the cumulative effect that I want people to take away is we are dealing with this problem one way or the other.
It's coming at us, and we can choose to deal with it as constructively and wisely and as intelligently as possible.
Or we can throw up our hands, or alternatively, put our heads in the sand, and it will still come at us.
So those are the choices that we face.
They're not necessarily the choices that we would have chosen, but those are the choices we face.
And that is why I think despairing about it is not productive.
We really need to focus on what we can do and get it done.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The title of the book is "H Is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z."
Elizabeth Kolbert, great to talk to you again.
Thank you so much.
ELIZABETH KOLBERT: Oh, thanks for having me.
JOHN YANG: And that is PBS News Weekend for this Saturday.
I'm John Yang.
For all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us.
See you tomorrow.
