GEOFF BENNETT: Good evening.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

Amna Nawaz is away.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: the politics behind the $8 billion Paramount-Skydance merger just approved by the FCC.

The president signs an executive order to combat homelessness by making it easier to forcibly put people in mental health facilities.

And controversial private companies that run immigration detention centers could soon cash in on a windfall from Republicans' new spending plan and the Trump administration's goal of boosting deportations.

JAMILES LARTEY, Staff Writer, The Marshall Project: In terms of what the administration has publicly emphasized and prioritized, we have not seen any meaningful new safeguards aimed at preventing abuse.

(BREAK) GEOFF BENNETT: Welcome to the "News Hour."

In Israel today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he's considering alternative options to cease-fire talks with Hamas.

That comes after Israel and the U.S. pulled their negotiating teams out of talks in Qatar yesterday.

And it echoes a statement by White House special envoy Steve Witkoff, who said Hamas was showing what he called a lack of desire to reach a deal.

Hamas says negotiations are set to resume next week.

But, while leaving the White House today, President Trump suggested Israel's only option is to escalate the war.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: It got to be to a point where you're going to have to finish the job.

So now we're down to the final hostages.

And they know what happens after you get the final hostages.

And, basically, because of that, they really didn't want to make a deal.

I saw that.

So they pulled out.

And they're going to have to fight.

GEOFF BENNETT: On the ground in Gaza, health authorities say nine more Palestinians died of malnutrition in the past day.

All told, officials say hunger has claimed more than 120 lives since the start of the war, most of them children.

This week, Israel showed journalists what it says is aid piled up by the border waiting to be distributed by the United Nations.

But the U.N. says its operations are limited by Israeli military restrictions and looting.

European diplomats met with Iran's deputy foreign minister today in an effort to restart negotiations over limiting Tehran's nuclear program.

It was the first round of talks since Iran's 12-day war with Israel last month, during which U.S. bombers damaged Iran's nuclear sites.

Today, representatives from Britain, France and Germany left the Iranian Consulate in Istanbul after four hours of talks.

All sides pledged to meet again.

European leaders warned that they will reinstate harsh sanctions on Iran by the end of August if progress is not made on reaching a deal.

Tens of thousands of people have fled fighting between Thai and Cambodian forces as the violence entered a second day.

At least 15 people have died so far in the worst fighting along their shared border in more than a decade.

Today, the Thai military launched what it called appropriate supporting fire after accusing Cambodia of heavy artillery attacks.

Cambodian officials, meantime, blamed Thailand for the uptick in violence.

The conflict has left nearly 60,000 people displaced so far.

Thailand's acting prime minister said today the situation could -- quote -- "escalate into a state of war."

Here at home, Ghislaine Maxwell's attorney says she's wrapped up a second and final day of questioning by Justice Department officials.

The former girlfriend and longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.

The interviews come as the Justice Department is trying to push back on criticism that it's concealing aspects of Epstein's case, including his past relationship with President Trump.

This morning, when asked by reporters, President Trump said he hasn't considered pardoning Maxwell, but added that he's - - quote -- "allowed to do it."

Later, her lawyer responded to that statement, referring to the president as the ultimate dealmaker.

DAVID OSCAR MARKUS, Attorney For Ghislaine Maxwell: We haven't spoken to the president or anybody about a pardon just yet.

And, listen, the president this morning said he had the power to do so.

We hope he exercises that power in the right and just way.

GEOFF BENNETT: Maxwell's attorney went on to say the DOJ's interview covered -- quote -- "every possible thing you could imagine."

The department has said it intends to share more details about what was said at a later date.

The Department of Education says the Trump administration is releasing more than $5 billion in frozen education funds.

Officials had held up more than $6 billion in grant funding to ensure that the spending was in line with White House priorities.

The money went to programs for adult literacy, English language instruction, and other initiatives.

Last week, the Education Department said it would release more than $1 billion, and that was following criticism from a group of Republican senators.

Officials say the remaining funds will be distributed to states starting next week.

On Wall Street today, stocks ended the week on solid footing.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained more than 200 points.

The Nasdaq added 50 points to close at a new record.

The S&P 500 also ended the day at a new all-time high.

And still to come on the "News Hour": Elena Kagan speaks out against her fellow Supreme Court justices' lack of explanation in recent rulings; David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart weigh in on the week's political headlines; and a traveling exhibition showcases the highly influential work of the late artist Ruth Asawa.

The FCC approved Skydance Media's $8 billion bid to acquire CBS News' parent company Paramount.

The green light from Trump's FCC comes after Paramount agreed to a $16 million settlement over a lawsuit brought by the president.

Mr. Trump accused the CBS News program 60 Minutes of deceptively editing an interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

What's more, as part of the deal, Skydance agreed to address the Trump administration's concerns about alleged bias at CBS.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr spoke about the merger and the administration's approach earlier today.

BRENDAN CARR, Chairman, Federal Communications Commission: President Trump is fundamentally reshaping the media landscape.

And the way he's doing that is, when he ran for election, he ran directly at these legacy broadcast media outlets, ABC, NBC, CBS.

For years, government officials just allowed those entities with execs sitting in Hollywood in New York to dictate the political narrative.

And he has fundamentally changed the game.

And you see that really having consequences that are just rushing all through media.

GEOFF BENNETT: For a closer look, we're joined now by Dylan Byers, senior correspondent for Puck News.

Dylan, thanks for being with us.

DYLAN BYERS, Media Reporter, Puck News: Thank you for having me, Geoff.

GEOFF BENNETT: So, as we said, this deal comes on the heels of Paramount paying $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by President Trump, prompting accusations that the company essentially paid for merger approval.

Based on your reporting, what's the deal?

Was this a payoff dressed up as a settlement?

DYLAN BYERS: Well, look, it certainly seems that way.

I mean, all available evidence suggests that the answer is yes.

And I would say, in the business community, certainly in the media community right now, there's quite a bit of anxiety about a sort of pay-for-play regulatory environment, in which case, if you need any deal to get done, any merger, any acquisition, you might be forced to cough up -- the number seems to be -- whether it's Disney or Paramount, the number seems to be $16 million to the Trump Presidential Library.

Now, this is one of those things that has the benefit of, there are a lot of -- you can point to a settlement.

You can point to FCC approval.

You can point to the fact that those came within days of each other and that the regulatory review process for this took a lot longer than it otherwise might have.

And you can draw your own conclusions there.

But, of course, this is one of those things where, without the hard evidence, without the smoking gun, it's the sort of thing that the administration and the FCC is going to be able to get away with.

And in many ways, I would just cite the dissenting voice, the lone FCC commissioner who actually voted against this deal, who talked about overreach by the FCC and capitulation by Paramount.

And so long as everyone plays ball here, so long as Paramount is willing to make that $16 million settlement, so long as Skydance, the new owners who are coming in, are willing to agree to certain FCC provisions, like getting rid of DEI or hiring an ombudsman to ensure that there's no bias at the network, and allowing FCC to dictate editorial controls, then you run into a position where, call it what you will, this is the way that deals get done, at least so long as Trump is in office.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, I was going to ask you that.

Is this sort of the new template for future media deals, this sort of new era of political appeasement?

You mentioned two of the things that Skydance agreed to.

They're also agreeing to a comprehensive review of CBS, and they say they're going to ensure viewpoint diversity, in addition to getting rid of DEI at Paramount and installing an ombudsman to check for complaints of bias.

DYLAN BYERS: That's right.

And then I would say, on top of that, the president himself has claimed that Skydance has agreed to an additional $20 million in public service announcement commitments for PSAs presumably for causes that are near and dear to the president's heart.

Now, I should note, Skydance is not commenting on any of that and has not confirmed that.

But, yes, is there a new landscape here?

Sure.

So long as business leaders, media leaders are willing to make these allowances in order to do business, and so long as Trump and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr are able to leverage the power of their offices in order to exact these settlements or these allowances, then, yes, that is the landscape.

I think what is going to be very interesting, the most recent lawsuit that Trump has filed has been against The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch, who, in sort of a strange plot twist, may actually be the one media baron who has both the fortitude and the market position to actually stand up to this president and not capitulate, which would be very interesting.

GEOFF BENNETT: I know, from reading your reporting every night, that you're closely following what all of this means for 60 Minutes.

So bring us up to speed there.

DYLAN BYERS: Yes, well, look, 60 Minutes is obviously a very proud institution, a pillar of American journalism.

And it has been somewhat debilitated throughout this whole process.

The boss of Paramount, Shari Redstone, in order to get this deal done, she tried to meddle a little bit in the one sacrosanct editorial process there.

We saw the executive producer, Bill Owens, there leave.

They have since appointed a new executive producer.

But I think the big question here is, what do the new owners want to do with 60 Minutes?

In many ways, because 60 Minutes is such a powerful brand and a pillar of American journalism, and because the kind of journalism it does is a little more evergreen than, say, nightly broadcast news, you might have -- you might actually have in 60 Minutes something that is able to endure under the new ownership, although it will have to -- the bigger challenge for it is not the political challenge or the bias challenge.

The bigger challenge for that will, of course, be figuring out how to make that endure as a profitable business in a new landscape, where, of course, increasingly people are watching more on streaming, on digital, less so on linear television.

GEOFF BENNETT: And, Dylan, this all feels like a major win for President Trump in his long-running fight against the media.

Help us understand how we should look at the scope of that campaign of his and the many fronts on which he is waging it.

DYLAN BYERS: Yes, look, I think indisputably this has been a win.

As you heard Chairman Carr say, he ran against legacy media, mainstream media, what he certainly would call the liberal media.

And he is winning this on multiple fronts.

He extracted a settlement from Bob Iger and Disney.

He extracted a settlement from Shari Redstone and Paramount.

They have succeeded in cutting funding, of course, for PBS and NPR, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

So he's winning this on multiple fronts.

I think the key is, in all of these cases, he had the leverage and he had the power.

And, again, I would encourage your viewers to take a closer look at his lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal, because that may be an area where he does not have the same leverage and the same power, particularly because, of course, Rupert Murdoch is the proprietor of FOX News, which has very much been in the president's corner during this administration.

GEOFF BENNETT: Dylan Byers, senior correspondent for Puck News, thanks again for joining us.

We appreciate it.

DYLAN BYERS: Thank you.

GEOFF BENNETT: President Trump signed an executive order that makes it easier for states to remove homeless encampments and force homeless people into mental health or addiction treatment programs.

Our Lisa Desjardins explains.

LISA DESJARDINS: President Trump's order lays out his goal clearly.

He wants to move more people who are homeless into long-term institutions and hospitals, including involuntarily.

He also plans a dramatic shift in federal funds, away from programs that place people into housing first and instead pushing for tougher, immediate requirements for treatment.

Homeless rates have been steadily rising since 2017.

A federal count found that more than 770,000 people were living in shelters or outside on a single night last year.

For more on this latest executive action and what it may mean, I'm joined by David Ovalle, national reporter focusing on opioids and addictions for The Washington Post.

There is a great deal in this order, David.

First, does President Trump have the power to either encourage or tell states that they need to put more people in institutions, even involuntarily?

DAVID OVALLE, The Washington Post: Well, no, not specifically.

And that's one of the interesting things about this order is that he's really -- they're really trying to incentivize and push states into doing this.

Remember, states set the -- their particular laws.

They set their criteria for how they handle involuntary commitments.

So, really, this is a state issue, but the federal government certainly has a lot of sway.

And they can -- for example, in the executive order, they talk about prioritizing grants for states that -- or jurisdictions that comply with this order and crack down on open air drug use and other things to combat - - quote, unquote -- "vagrancy" on the streets.

So, certainly, there are sort of incentives they can do to kind of push states to doing this.

And, certainly, Trump has a lot of sway, particularly among red states.

So if states feel like they're going to benefit by implementing a more robust involuntary commitment program, then they just might.

LISA DESJARDINS: What does President Trump say he is trying to do here?

And how does that mesh with what we know about substance abuse and mental illness in this population in particular?

DAVID OVALLE: Well, I think Trump's message is something that does resonate with a lot of people, particularly as we have seen in cities where there are people camped out on sidewalks, where there are people who are clearly grappling with mental illness in a very visible,public way.

And so, whether you're seeing it firsthand or you're watching it on TV, certainly, this is something that concerns people, right?

But, of course, in a very Trump way, it's also sort of loaded with very fear-inducing language, right?

It's vagrancy.

It's people are having violent confrontations on the street.

And when you talk to advocates for the homeless, advocates for people with mental -- who are dealing with mental illness, they point out that most people that are dealing with mental illness are not getting arrested.

They're not violently lashing out at people.

But it's when these things happen in a very high-profile way, like we have seen happen in New York City, for example,they tend to grab a lot of headlines.

So these are real fears that manifest themselves in our cities, but it kind of gets really amped up by some of the rhetoric.

LISA DESJARDINS: Where are the advocates on the tension here?

Obviously, there's a public concern.

You talked about that.

But what are their concerns about this idea of stepped-up involuntarily moving people into hospitals?

DAVID OVALLE: Well, I think the overarching fear is that we might return to decades -- to policies of decades past, where people were unjustly and unfairly being held in asylums for months and years against their will and not really getting the right kind of treatment or maybe they weren't supposed to be there in the first place.

So that's sort of the overarching fear.

But I think the fact that there's -- it's -- there's a lot of public health dollars that are being cut right now.

And so some of that money, they say, should be better spent on helping people in treatment and not just locking them away sort of indefinitely.

LISA DESJARDINS: You know, I spoke to a man who's almost 80 who's experiencing homelessness now, has for a long time.

He is one of those roughly one-third in that population.

He's also dealt with serious mental illness, as we're talking about.

And he said he just does not think there's room in the system, in the hospitals, in shelters for these kinds of populations.

What do we know about that?

DAVID OVALLE: Right.

Well, there is limited bed space.

And, in Florida, where I'm normally based, you see there's been a lot of forensic hospitals that have closed because there has been this push in recent decades to get people out into the community and to get them getting treatment out in the community, and not in a locked-up facility.

So there really is not a lot of bed space.

And with budgets being strapped the way that they are these days, particularly with cuts coming from D.C., it's going to -- states and communities are going to be hard-pressed to really build those facilities and be able to meet the needs of the people that are looking to be -- that people want to put away.

LISA DESJARDINS: David Ovalle, thank you for your reporting on complex issues.

We really appreciate you talking with us today.

DAVID OVALLE: Thank you.

GEOFF BENNETT: The ramifications of President Trump's sweeping tax cut and spending law are starting to play out.

That includes cuts to several federal programs, while significantly increasing spending in other areas, like immigration enforcement.

Stephanie Sy has more.

STEPHANIE SY: That's right.

Specifically, the bill allocates $170 billion toward immigration enforcement, including a 265 percent increase in the national immigration detention budget, which will be used to double bed capacity, largely through private detention facilities.

Currently, ICE is detaining more than 56,000 immigrants around the country.

Joining us to discuss the potential impact of these changes is Jamiles Lartey, a staff writer who has been reporting on this story for The Marshall Project, a news organization focused on criminal justice.

Jamiles, thanks for joining the "News Hour."

So, $45 billion in taxpayer dollars going to building more immigration detention facilities.

Mind you, most of these detainees have not had any criminal convictions.

What's the impact of that kind of investment?

JAMILES LARTEY, Staff Writer, The Marshall Project: Yes, I mean, so the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a budget authorization.

And there are still appropriations and procurement processes that have to come in terms of how that money is spent.

So when you look at this colossal sticker price, I don't think we can confidently say what the impact is yet.

It's only been a few weeks.

With that being said, the intended impact is quite clear.

And that includes a more than more than doubling the immigration detention bed space in the country from about 40,000 to over 100,000.

That includes the administration moving forward with contracts on massive tent complexes at places like Fort Bliss in Texas, opening previously shuttered facilities.

And that includes funding to entice and coerce local officials to assist or at least stay out of the way of ICE enforcement efforts across the country.

STEPHANIE SY: And, in that sense, it can really change sort of the law enforcement environment in some municipalities.

Now, 85 percent of the immigrants detained are in these private facilities.

You have sat in on the earnings calls of the companies that run them.

What's been their reaction?

JAMILES LARTEY: Well, look, private prisons, by definition, have a fiduciary obligation to shareholders to maximize profit, right?

So, in that context, let's just use common sense.

Every medical service not rendered, every food item not purchased, every accommodation not provided serves the interests of shareholders, up until the moment that conditions get so bad that the government cancels the contract or a lawsuit forces them to pay out.

So, in immigration detention, that tipping point almost never comes.

Contracts are routinely renewed even after serious violations.

That's something that predated the Trump administration.

But as this administration pursues its hard-line and often performatively cruel approach to enforcement, it seems like it's only likely to become more common.

In terms of how the companies are reacting, they're excited, right?

That's the simple answer.

They're excited and they see this as an opportunity to be more financially successful than they have ever been.

STEPHANIE SY: You called it performatively cruel.

And groups like Human Rights Watch have called out the conditions in holding facilities and describing the treatment as degrading and dehumanizing.

Aren't those accusations, though, also implicating government-run facilities, not just private ones?

JAMILES LARTEY: Absolutely, and that's a critical point.

Whether we're talking about immigration detention or prisons more broadly, there's often a lot of focus on private companies because of the, I think, obviously unseemly incentives at play.

And while those dynamics are something that I think people are rightfully probing, it's definitely important to acknowledge that the government is perfectly capable of creating inhumane, unconstitutional conditions on its own.

STEPHANIE SY: The DHS provided us with a statement, which I'm going to read in part.

They say -- quote -- "Any claim that there are subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false.

All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers.

Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE" -- end quote.

And they also added that what they call lies about these detention facilities have led to an 830 percent increase in assaults on the men and women of ICE.

Has the Trump administration put in place any additional checks or accountability as it expands these facilities?

JAMILES LARTEY: Yes, I mean, I can't speak to every internal policy memo that may exist somewhere within DHS, but in terms of what the administration has publicly emphasized and prioritized, we have not seen any meaningful new safeguards aimed at preventing abuse.

In fact, what we have seen here are moves that cut the other way, limiting access to facilities by members of Congress, shortening or weakening inspection protocols, and deepening reliance on private prison contractors who operate with less transparency.

So, whatever internal efforts or reforms may exist, they're not what's being highlighted or reinforced publicly.

STEPHANIE SY: Jamiles Lartey with The Marshall Project, thank you for joining us.

JAMILES LARTEY: Thanks for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan is urging her colleagues on the bench to be more transparent as they make more emergency decisions, including those involving President Trump.

At an event in California, Kagan criticized how the court has handled a flood of appeals from the Trump administration on their emergency docket.

The emergency docket, also known as the shadow docket, is a process the Supreme Court uses for urgent cases that are decided quickly with no oral arguments.

ELENA KAGAN, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice: As we have done more and more on this emergency docket, there becomes a real responsibility that I think we didn't recognize when we first started down this road to explain things better.

I think that we should hold ourselves sort of on both sides to a standard of explaining why we're doing what we're doing.

GEOFF BENNETT: In the first six months of President Trump's second term, the conservatives on the court have sided with him on several key policies, including allowing the administration to continue mass firings at multiple government agencies and to cancel certain federal grants.

But those decisions have come with little to no explanation for their rationale.

For more on all this, we're joined now by SCOTUSblog co-founder and "News Hour" Supreme Court analyst Amy Howe.

Always great to have you here.

AMY HOWE: Thanks for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: So, before we get into the details of how the court is using this emergency docket, explain exactly what it is.

AMY HOWE: So one way to think of it is to think about what it's not.

And most people, when they think of the Supreme Court, think of the decisions, like the decision on affirmative action or the decision on same-sex marriage, in which the court agrees that it's going to take the case.

There's extensive briefing, usually over the course of a couple of months.

The court hears oral arguments in open court and then issues a decision in open court.

The justices read a summary.

There's a lot of news coverage.

And the emergency docket or the shadow docket, as it's sometimes called, happens outside of all that process.

And, as you mentioned, it often is a request from the federal government, but it can be from private parties or from states, for the Supreme Court to step in and do something quickly.

And often it's to put a lower court order on hold, and while the litigation in that dispute plays out, and that it can happen pretty quickly.

There's just usually a couple of briefs in the case.

There's no oral argument.

And many times the Supreme Court will issue a one-paragraph order or a very short order with little to no explanation.

And so a law professor at Chicago coined the term the shadow docket because it happens in the shadows.

The justices, some of them hate the term because they -- it sort of makes it sound a little bit nefarious.

GEOFF BENNETT: Yes.

And why has the court been relying on it with increasing frequency?

AMY HOWE: The court's been relying on it with increasing frequency because the federal government, in particular, under the Trump administration the first time, then the Biden administration, and now the Trump administration again, has been coming to it with increasing frequency, sort of exponentially.

And just to give you a sense of how often, since January 20, between January 20, when he was inaugurated, and June 30 of this year, the Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on the emergency docket more than twice as many times as the George W. Bush and the Obama administrations came to the Supreme Court in 16 years.

And the reason behind that, why it's coming to the Supreme Court so often, why the Biden administration was coming so often before that is a little bit of a depends on who you ask.

The Trump administration and the Biden administration before that would tell you that they have to come so often because you have these out-of-control trial court judges that are putting their policy initiatives or their executive orders on hold.

Opponents of the administration would say it's because the administration is issuing these orders or policies that are lawless.

GEOFF BENNETT: And what is driving Kagan's criticism?

How have the justices historically handled matters that come to the emergency docket?

AMY HOWE: So there's a pretty long history, but for a long time -- and I have been covering the court now for quite a while -- there weren't that many orders on the so-called shadow docket.

And we would think of it when I first started covering the court in terms of capital cases, and they were things that were truly emergencies.

An inmate would come to the Supreme Court, say, at noon, and say, I'm going to be executed at midnight, and you need to act really quickly.

And the justices then would say, well, we don't have time to write a long explanation of why we're acting the way we are.

We just need to act before the execution is scheduled to occur.

And that's really sort of what you might call one ticket only, something that's only going to apply to this case.

Now, with the Trump administration and with the Biden administration before that, we still call it the emergency docket, but it's not really an emergency in the sense that it's something that's happening on this incredibly expedited timeline.

One of the cases this spring involving whether or not the president could remove members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board -- the answer was yes temporarily - - took six weeks from the time at which the first Trump administration -- the Trump administration first came to the Supreme Court asking them to put the lower court's order on hold to when the court actually acted.

So it's not a lack of time necessarily to write opinions, though someone else has suggested that perhaps the justices can't necessarily agree on the rationale, and that's why they don't write.

But that happens all the time when the court writes its opinions in the cases in which it hears oral arguments on the merits.

What matters in the end is the result, but the justices may have different reasoning in the end.

GEOFF BENNETT: And when these decisions, the results come with no opinions or explanations, what kind of strain does that put on the lower courts in trying to understand the decisions or apply them?

AMY HOWE: It can put quite a bit, and that's part of the reason for Justice Kagan's criticism.

This criticism has come from Justice Kagan, but there's been other critics of the emergency docket, including Stephen Vladeck, who appears on this program quite a bit and is probably the expert on the emergency appeals docket, that the court has not been providing an explanation.

For example, in one of the Trump administration emergency applications, the Trump administration offered three reasons why the court should grant it the relief that it was seeking.

And it did grant the relief, but we don't know why it did.

And that's hard for district court judges.

GEOFF BENNETT: I feel so enlightened.

Amy Howe, thanks so much for explaining all of this.

I appreciate it.

AMY HOWE: Thanks for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: As the debate over the Jeffrey Epstein files continues to cause a rift for Republicans, the Trump administration settles its fight with one elite university.

For analysis of the week's headlines, we turn now to Brooks and Capehart.

That's New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for The Washington Post.

Great to see you both, as always.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Hey, Geoff.

GEOFF BENNETT: So let's start with this deepening scandal surrounding the Epstein files and President Trump's ties to it.

There have been a number of revelations this past week.

There were the DOJ interviews with Ghislaine Maxwell occurring over two days.

What makes this moment different is that the controversy isn't just coming from outside critics.

It's creating, Jonathan, visible fractures within the president's own base.

Why does this Epstein episode seem to be breaking through, where other personal and political Donald Trump scandals have not?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Because it's a -- part of it is a conspiracy theory that the president used to his benefit and to his advantage to curry favor, to win supporters.

And they were expecting him -- we elect you.

We put you back in the White House.

You are going to reveal the cabal of pedophiles who they all assumed were all Democrats, and you're going to show this.

And you put in Kash Patel as FBI director.

You put in Dan Bongino as the number two.

They are the one -- Pam Bondi as A.G.

They all also fed this conspiracy theory.

They get inside and suddenly find out there's nothing there, and then told people.

People lost their minds, understandably.

When you have been fed a diet of garbage for years, and then the people come in and they say, well, actually there's nothing to see here, yes, folks are upset, very upset.

GEOFF BENNETT: How do you see it, David?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I can't believe anybody - - people are voting on this.

Like, there are some QAnon people who are upset.

And there are people in the Trump administration who did exactly what Jonathan said.

But I just can't believe any vote -- people vote and they make decisions about politics based on their real lives, not some crazy conspiracy theory.

And every August, we -- Washington goes crazy with some stupid story.

And then in September, we think, what was that all about?

And so this year, we're a little early.

We're doing it in July.

But the idea that there's something there incriminating Donald Trump, his friendship with Epstein ended in 2004.

The Democrats, Joe Biden administration, they had these files for four years.

You think, if there had been something, you think they would have done something.

The Justice Department, the courts, they have all said there's nothing actionable here.

And so the problem is that - - what Jonathan described, and then that Donald Trump went ballistic about it and ordered his own administration to somehow solve the problem.

And then the underlying problem is that America seems to go through child abuse panics with some regularity.

When I was a baby reporter, there was something called the McMartin preschool case in Manhattan Beach, California, where an entire preschool was accused of this gigantic sex ring with children and the trial that went on for years before everybody was acquitted because there was nothing there.

But there's something about child abuse which is so horrific, it seems to captures people's minds and especially conspiracy mongers.

(CROSSTALK) GEOFF BENNETT: Go ahead.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Although I would say, in the case of Epstein -- the case you're talking about, nothing was there.

But in the case of Epstein, we're talking, I think it's like 1,000 victims here.

And so that's also what we shouldn't lose sight of in this whole conversation.

While, politically-, in Washington, we're all talking about how this has damaged the president, how Democrats are trying to take -- use it to their advantage.

At the root of this were girls as young as 12 who were trafficked and abused by Jeffrey Epstein and by Ghislaine Maxwell.

And that should -- we should never lose sight of that.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, that's a good point.

And that's one of the reasons they don't want to release the grand jury, because it's incriminating sometimes to the witnesses, to their families, pictures of them with their faces blacked out, with their clothing on.

So that's a very good point.

GEOFF BENNETT: And I hear you say this does not represent a shift in the loyalty calculus among Donald Trump's core supporters.

DAVID BROOKS: I would be shocked.

I would be shocked.

But there's obviously an active group around MAGA itself that they care.

But I -- people vote based on their lives, not on anything else.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, I want to shift our focus to the news this past week that Columbia University will pay more than $200 million to the federal government after several investigations and months of negotiations with the Trump administration.

And the settlement restores Columbia's access to some $1.3 billion in federal funding.

The university agreed to take steps to curb antisemitism on its campus.

Jonathan, what's your take on Columbia's decision to settle?

And what message does it send to other universities?

I didn't know until I was talking with our team there's some 60 universities right now in active conversations with the Trump administration about protests and discrimination complaints.

You see the list there.

What do you make of it?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: It's terrible.

I think we were talking about this months ago, when Columbia University did something, and I think David put his finger on it.

It was like, on the one hand, you feel for the universities because the money that's taken away is money that goes to research, that goes to fund really important things that are not just important to the university, but important for all of us, in terms of advancing knowledge and advancing science.

But, on the other hand, the fact that the president of the United States is strong-arming, pressuring universities to basically give up some piece of their academic freedom is what's so alarming.

And, again, so Columbia's paying $200 million -- or actually $221 million if you throw in the court fees -- in order to get back one-point-something billion in funding.

Not sure, if I were at Columbia, I would feel really good about that.

And this decision only sort of highlights what Harvard University has done from moment one, which is, we're not playing this game.

There's a bigger thing here.

And, yes, we're going to be hurt by it, but standing up for ourselves, standing up for academic freedom and also standing up for all those other colleges and universities that look to Harvard as the leader.

If Harvard crumbles, what does that mean for the rest of them?

And I think Columbia has ceded a lot of sort of academic moral authority by what they were forced to do.

GEOFF BENNETT: We spoke with Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan, on this program last night.

And he said that the Trump administration isn't just using this -- the issue of antisemitism to support and defend Jewish students.

They're using this as a way to chill speech that they find politically offensive.

How do you see it?

DAVID BROOKS: That's how I see it.

Michael Roth is right.

If I'm the leader of a university or of a nonprofit or of a foundation or of a private business, I'm thinking, this is an administration that uses extortionary power to try to destroy organizations or severely weaken organizations.

And so what's my response to that?

Well, there are two possible responses.

One, the one that's being chosen by most organizational leaders right now, is lay low.

It's so, well, maybe they won't pick on me, or maybe we will make a concession and they won't pick on me.

And if you go to a business conference and you hear what CEOs say about the Trump administration in private, I guarantee you it's nothing like what they don't say in public, because they're laying low.

That's one option, just hope they don't come for me.

The other option, which I thought we were going to have, is a broad coalition, not only of all universities, but all law firms, businesses, nonprofits foundations, anybody in any sector that could be part of the extortion attempt.

And they would say, we will band together.

There's strength of numbers.

If they come for one of us, they come for all of, sort of a domestic NATO Article V. And that's what I think needs to happen, because you leave Claire Shipman, the acting president of Columbia, out there all alone, well, of course she has no choice.

So there has to be a coalition.

And the coalitions that I have been hearing about are all defensive nature and quiet and private.

Somebody's got to take the fight back to the administration.

And it has to be organizational leaders acting together who collectively have a lot more power than they do alone.

GEOFF BENNETT: Building on that point, I mean, is this part of a broader pattern of using institutional levers, Jonathan, to weaken democracy?

Do you see this as a form of institutional capture?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Yes.

I mean, that's -- there's no need to explain anymore.

I mean, what have we been watching for six months?

He's been doing it to the media.

He's been doing it to academia.

He's been doing it to the military.

He's been doing it to the federal -- to the judiciary up and down the ranks.

Yes.

The simple answer to your question is yes.

And I think it's the sort of flood-the-zone nature of all of this, that we sort of lose sight of the fact that all of these things are chipping away at our democracy, all of them.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, that leads to our final topic, which is how Democrats increasingly are talking about all of this.

Just this past week, Beto O'Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, Rahm Emanuel, they're all pressing the case that Democrats have to fight back.

The question I have is, what does fighting back really mean in practice, Jonathan?

And how do you do that without alienating swing voters, moderate voters?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: At this point, when you fight, you're going to piss somebody off.

Excuse me.

And so I think -- when Donald Trump won in 2017 -- 2016, I spent the next year talking to all sorts of people, trying to understand, how did this guy win the presidency, when he ran -- he was opposite everything Republicans told me that they wanted in a president?

And the number one through line, the through line was, he fights.

And what Democrats are now demanding of their leaders is that they know -- I think Democratic Party faithful, they know that their leaders are in the minority, that there's not much that they can do.

But what are you -- you're just going to sit there and just let this happen?

We need you to stand up and fight, give voice to the fear and the anger and the frustration that's out there in the country, not just among Democrats, but just Americans who see this chipping away at democracy that they don't like.

So you have to fight.

And don't worry about ticking someone off or hurting a certain constituency.

In the end, it's about saving the country, saving our democracy.

And then you can put the pieces back together later.

But I think Beto O'Rourke is absolutely right.

If Democrats aren't willing to fight now, then it's going to be too late come 2028.

Stop waiting for a savior.

You are your own savior.

GEOFF BENNETT: What about that?

I mean, do Democrats risk abandoning their core - - their traditional brand of competence, norms, incrementalism even, in favor of something more combative?

DAVID BROOKS: Was competence one of their norms?

I did not know that.

(LAUGHTER) GEOFF BENNETT: Technocrats.

I mean... DAVID BROOKS: OK, that's fair.

Fair.

Yes, when I look at what the Democratic Party has and what they don't have, what they have is a lot of talent actually.

When we look at the people who are being talked about for 2028, Wes Moore, Andy Beshear, Kentucky governor, Rahm Emanuel, Pete Buttigieg, like, there's just a lot of talent.

It's a pretty good bench.

Cory Booker.

You can go on and on and on.

There are a lot of people, probably too many.

What they don't have is a vision.

Donald Trump had a vision: The elites betrayed you.

Ronald Reagan had a vision, free market, anti-communism.

Ronald Reagan happened because in the 1940s and the 1950s and 1960s, Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek and Bill Buckley built the conservative movement.

Donald Trump happened because in the '60s, '70s and '80s and '90s, people like James Burnham and Pat Buchanan and Christopher Lasch wrote a book called "Revolt of the Elites" 30 years ago.

Everything Donald Trump says is in that Christopher Lasch book.

You got to start with a vision.

And that starts with ideas.

Then you build a movement and then you build a whole group of people.

Democrats do not have a vision.

They had a vision, New Deal vision, which was, we're going to soften capitalism using government.

We're going to help marginalized people get access to the mainstream American life.

GEOFF BENNETT: And spend a lot of money to do it.

DAVID BROOKS: And that -- but those are important visions.

They're not right for this populist moment.

And so once you hit the populist revolution, Democrats have to have a vision for this moment.

And, to me, that takes a long time.

It's not going to be professional politicians who are thinking about fund-raising who are going to come up with your vision.

It's somebody out there who's already thinking about it, but it takes a while.

GEOFF BENNETT: I saw you taking notes.

We got 30 seconds.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Yes, they have a vision.

Democrats do have a vision.

They do have a vision for where they want to lead the country.

Their problem is that they spend too much time fighting with each other.

That's also part of the problem.

Stop fighting with each other.

Start focusing on what you need to do to save the democracy.

Band together.

And then you can worry about soothing hurt feelings.

GEOFF BENNETT: Jonathan Capehart, David Brooks, thanks so much.

Have a good weekend.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Thanks, Geoff.

You too.

GEOFF BENNETT: The work of artist Ruth Asawa, who died in 2013, is back in the spotlight with a major traveling exhibition now in San Francisco.

It's a celebration of her work, but also her extraordinary life.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown reports for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

JEFFREY BROWN: They are large looped wire sculptures hanging from the ceiling.

They can look like human bodies or shapes from nature.

And grouped together, they play off one another through shadows and light.

The works of Ruth Asawa come in many sizes and also many forms, including paintings and drawings, clay masks and bronze sculptures of hands and feet.

JANET BISHOP, Curator, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: Really, anything could be a viable material for art for Asawa.

JEFFREY BROWN: What does that tell you about her, I mean, as an artist, as a creative person?

JANET BISHOP: That she was incredibly open.

She had a very open, experimental, kind of expansive vision of what art could be.

JEFFREY BROWN: Janet Bishop is co-curator of Ruth Asawa: Retrospective, now at SFMOMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, more than 300 works from the 1940s into the 2000s.

JANET BISHOP: To me, she is absolutely one of the most accomplished artists of the 20th century.

JEFFREY BROWN: There's even an installation evoking the living room of the San Francisco home where Asawa worked and where she and husband Albert Lanier raised six children.

One of them, Paul Lanier, himself an artist, lives there today and recalls his mother constantly making and playing with materials and forms.

PAUL LANIER, Son of Ruth Asawa: She would love that word, to play.

And so she... JEFFREY BROWN: She did like that.

She used that word?

PAUL LANIER: Yes, she would say play and experiment with the work.

And maybe, if one piece came out really great, she wouldn't copy it and do it again, but she would learn from it and then make -- try something else to learn from one shape and take it into the next shape that she was doing.

JEFFREY BROWN: The child of Japanese immigrant farmers, Ruth Asawa was born in 1926 and grew up in Southern California.

And she herself helped with the work from an early age.

NARRATOR: Well, you see the extent of the damage in these authentic pictures.

JEFFREY BROWN: Soon after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entered World War II, her father was arrested and the rest of the family -- Ruth herself was aged 16 -- sent to an internment or incarceration camps, first in California, then in Arkansas.

After 16 months, she was allowed to attend college in Milwaukee and hoped to become an art teacher, but racial discrimination prevented that.

Instead, another life-changing turn, as friends encouraged her to enroll at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, a renowned progressive and experimental institution that nurtured many famous artists.

RUTH ASAWA, Artist: When he said, well, I'm the most successful figure.

JEFFREY BROWN: Asawa studied with and befriended such figures as Josef Albers and Buckminster Fuller.

In a 1978 short film, "Of Forms and Growth," Asawa described what she learned from Albers about understanding and working with specific materials.

RUTH ASAWA: What he was talking about was abstracting from the material.

Rather than being concerned with your own design ideas and forcing something into it, what you do is, you become background, just like a parent allows the child to express himself and the parent becomes sort of supportive.

JEFFREY BROWN: It was on a trip to Mexico that Asawa saw craftspeople making wire baskets.

She would first make her own and then explode them out into the large sculptures for which she became best known.

PAUL LANIER: I think, when she made those first pieces, just a lightbulb went off, and she recognized there was something special here, and then later on the world has discovered how special these pieces are.

JEFFREY BROWN: In fact, there was early recognition, with gallery shows in New York and inclusion in museum exhibitions in the 1950s.

But Asawa seems to have pulled back, doing things her own way, as she and Lanier, an architect she'd met at Black Mountain, committed to living and raising their family in San Francisco.

HENRY WEVERKA, President, Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc.: When I was a kid, it was just always interesting to go over my grandmother's house to see what was going on.

And it was either drawing, painting, folding paper, making dill pickles, squeezing orange juice, whatever it was.

There was always something being made.

JEFFREY BROWN: Henry Weverka, one of Asawa's 10 grandchildren and head of the family business handling her artworks, showed us another aspect of Asawa's artistic life, the public sculpture she created in and around San Francisco, including this one in Ghirardelli Square, so different from her more abstract work.

Weverka says his grandmother loved making something for families and children to enjoy, even if the people who commissioned it were at first unhappy.

They weren't expecting two mermaids, one of them nursing.

HENRY WEVERKA: So much so that it was actually installed in the middle of the night.

We had an amazing photograph of my grandmother standing on one of these turtles popping a bottle of champagne when it was finally installed.

JEFFREY BROWN: You mean sneaking it in?

HENRY WEVERKA: Essentially sneaking it in, in the middle of the night, yes.

NARRATOR: From these materials, she made the molds for casting the fountain.

JEFFREY BROWN: Asawa was also a passionate advocate for arts education in public schools, helping start a local organization that brought professional artists into the schools to work with young students and a public high school for the arts that now bears her name.

HENRY WEVERKA: What really I admire most about my grandmother is her ability to get to work, find like-minded people to work towards a shared goal.

And, in this case, it was expanding art education programming in San Francisco Public Schools.

JEFFREY BROWN: Asawa directly addressed her World War II experience in a 1990 public commission for a Japanese-American internment memorial in San Jose, showing the farmwork, the arrests, life in the camps.

Her son Paul worked on it with her, but, for the most part, he says, his mother didn't speak of her incarceration.

PAUL LANIER: She would talk about life on the farm, but, no, she did not talk about the internment at all.

JEFFREY BROWN: Does that surprise you?

PAUL LANIER: I think it's kind of a Japanese thing to not talk about such unpleasant things.

Yes, you get on with it.

JEFFREY BROWN: You get on with it.

PAUL LANIER: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: In 1985, Ruth Asawa was diagnosed with lupus, which eventually limited her energy, while also rekindling her love of painting.

The final galleries in the exhibition featured drawings and watercolors of flowers and plants.

JANET BISHOP: I have been hoping that people would be inspired not only by the art itself, which is truly remarkable, but how she lived her life, how important it was to her to shape the world she wanted to see.

JEFFREY BROWN: Asawa died in 2013 at age 87, and it's only since then that she's reached a much wider recognition, including a posthumous National Medal of Arts given by President Joe Biden, her own postage stamp in 2020, and now this retrospective that moves to New York's Museum of Modern Art in the fall, and next year to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Jeffrey Brown in San Francisco.

GEOFF BENNETT: There's a lot more online, including the latest "PBS News Weekly," which takes a deeper look at the global impact of USAID cuts.

That's on our YouTube page.

And be sure to watch "Washington Week With The Atlantic" tonight here on PBS.

The panel examines the latest in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and explains why it likely isn't going away any time soon.

And tomorrow, on "PBS News Weekend," we get the latest from an aid group operating inside Gaza, as the hunger crisis there intensifies.

And that is the "News Hour" for tonight.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

Thanks for spending part of your evening with us, and have a great weekend.