Desperately needed humanitarian aid begins to flow into Gaza as President Trump travels to Israel ahead of a potential hostage release. Meanwhile, farmers in Minnesota face mounting struggles after China’s boycott of U.S. soybeans, and a new film explores George Orwell’s legacy — asking whether his chilling predictions about truth and power are coming true today.#Gaza #TrumpIsrael #HumanitarianAid #PBSNewsHour #ChinaUS #SoybeanCrisis #GeorgeOrwell #1984 #GlobalNews #WorldUpdate #Politics #Documentary #FreedomOfSpeech
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00:00Tonight on PBS News Weekend, desperately needed aid begins to flow into Gaza as President Trump
00:10heads to Israel in anticipation of the hostage release. Then farmers in Minnesota struggling
00:17to stay afloat as China boycotts U.S. soybeans. And a new film about the life and legacy of
00:23George Orwell that argues his greatest fears could be coming true.
00:29It suffices to watch the news every day, you know, to hear elected officials trying to
00:35convince you that what you are seeing is not what it is. You have to keep, as I always say,
00:41your common sense. Two plus two is always four.
00:53Major funding for PBS News Weekend has been provided by the ongoing support of these individuals
01:07and institutions, and friends of the NewsHour.
01:30This program was made possible by the contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.
01:40Good evening. I'm John Yang.
01:43President Trump leaves Washington and the government shutdown behind to highlight a diplomatic deal-making
01:48accomplishment in the Middle East, the anticipated release of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
01:54This afternoon, he left the White House, headed to Israel.
01:57This is the first time everybody is amazed and they're thrilled, and it's an honor to be involved.
02:03And we're going to have an amazing time, and it's going to be something that's never happened before.
02:09Tomorrow, Mr. Trump is to meet with hostage families and address the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem.
02:14Then he'll fly to the Egyptian Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh for a summit of Arab leaders who backed the agreement.
02:21Inside Gaza, the Israeli military pulled back to a new defensive line as part of the cease-fire.
02:26And desperate Palestinians swarmed aid trucks, not even waiting for them to stop before clamoring for supplies.
02:35The next steps are unclear, as many details about the future of Gaza have yet to be worked out.
02:40Anshel Pfeffer is the Israel correspondent for The Economist.
02:43He's based in Jerusalem.
02:45Anshel, the release of the hostages, as expected tomorrow, is going to close a chapter, a two-year chapter that's been painful on both sides,
02:53both in Israel and in Gaza, albeit in different ways.
02:55What's the mood in Israel where you are, and is there any way you can tell what Gazans are feeling?
03:00Well, the mood in Israel is both expectant, but also there is concern that something can go wrong at the last moon.
03:07And the vigils I went to over the last couple of days were all, hopefully this is the last time we're standing here.
03:14And these are people who have no personal relationship or acquaintance with the hostages.
03:20This is really so much a representation of Israeli society, which has been gripped by the hostages' saga for the last two years.
03:29I'm not on the ground in Gaza.
03:31I was there on an embed a week and a half ago, but it's very clear that the situation there is the beginning of a very long road of reconstruction.
03:42The entire neighbourhoods, at least one Gazan city, have been flattened in this war.
03:49So many of those who you've seen in the footage, hundreds of thousands who are streaming back, mainly to Gaza city and to parts of Hanunis, are not going to discover their home standing.
04:01And they'll have to camp out for a long time on the rubble where their homes once stood.
04:07And so this is going to be a very long process, which is exacerbated, as we've seen in the last couple of days, by Hamas fighters coming out from various hiding places and trying to reassert themselves.
04:20There seems to be a power vacuum in parts of Gaza with the reports over the last few hours of fighting between Hamas and some of the clans who wanted to take control of their areas.
04:31So I think that hopefully what will be tomorrow on the agenda in the conference in Egypt, which Donald Trump is going to chair, will be about how to try and maintain control of those areas in Gaza.
04:46And does this move us any closer to what Gaza will look like after the war?
04:51Who will run it? Will Hamas lay down their arms? What their role would be?
04:55But what we've seen in this very unique type of diplomacy that Trump and his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have been executing in the last few days is that they're taking it very much stage by stage.
05:09Last Wednesday night, they clinched an agreement, but that was an agreement on these very first stages, on the hostage release, on the ceasefire, the Israeli withdrawal from all these populated areas in Gaza.
05:21So that is now taking place. It's being implemented over the next 24 hours.
05:26The next stage, which is the immediate day after in Gaza, which government will take care of civilian affairs, it's supposed to be a technocratic, independent government without Hamas involvement.
05:39There is an as yet unspecified peacekeeping force, which is supposed to be there.
05:44We don't even know yet any of the countries which may be contributing soldiers.
05:48The United States has made it clear that it will be very much involved in this force, but will not have any boots on the ground.
05:55So whose boots will be on the ground?
05:57And that's important because the next most important stage is the disarmament of Hamas.
06:03Hamas haven't officially agreed to that yet, and there's all kinds of talks behind the scenes.
06:08If they'll hand over their weapons, which weapons they'll hand over, and to whom?
06:12Will they hand it over to an international force?
06:14Will it be handed over to the Palestinian Authority, which also has a role which is yet to be clarified in all of this?
06:23So some of these things may be thrashed out, or at least begin to be thrashed out tomorrow afternoon, but that's still not the long-term future of Gaza.
06:32That's just the next stage, weeks or months.
06:35And on the Israeli side, Israel has set some conditions, and these were recognized in the Trump plan, for when it will carry out further withdrawals.
06:45Getting the IDF to leave that area will also involve various milestones of stabilizing Gaza and disarming Hamas.
06:54So these are all very, very important issues which have yet to be dealt with in any kind of detail or any kind of agreement to be achieved regarding these issues.
07:04And Shel Pfeffer, The Economist in Jerusalem tonight. Thank you very much.
07:08Thank you for having me.
07:11In today's other headlines, on day 12 of the government shutdown, there's still no end in sight.
07:17Democrats say they won't vote to fund the government unless Republicans agree to extend tax credits that help low- and middle-income earners pay for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
07:27Republicans say they're open to talking about that, but only after Democrats agree to a short-term funding bill.
07:34On CBS's Face the Nation, Vice President J.D. Vance said the tax credits need to be reformed.
07:39Well, the tax credits go to some people deservedly, and we think the tax credits actually go to a lot of waste and fraud within the insurance industry.
07:47So we want to make sure that the tax credits go to the people who need them.
07:50House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the credits need to be extended by November 1, which is the start of the annual Obamacare insurance enrollment period.
08:00Russia attacked Ukraine's power grid overnight as part of its ongoing campaign to cripple the energy infrastructure before winter.
08:08Russia targeted multiple regions from Donetsk to Odessa. Two employees at Ukraine's largest private energy company were wounded.
08:16The Kremlin reiterated its long-standing concern about the United States supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine and said the war has reached a dramatic moment of escalation.
08:26Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would use the Tomahawk missiles to further military goals and would not target Russian civilians.
08:35Four people are dead and at least 20 injured after a mass shooting at a crowded bar in an island off South Carolina.
08:41Four of the injured are in critical condition.
08:44The Sheriff's Office says it happened early Sunday morning at Willie's Bar and Grill on St. Helena Island.
08:50Authorities said that when the shooting started, people ran from the bar to seek shelter at nearby businesses and properties.
08:57An investigation is ongoing.
08:59A strong nor'easter is churning its way up the East Coast, bringing damaging wind and heavy rain from North Carolina to New England.
09:07There have been flight delays and cancellations at airports from Washington, D.C. to Boston.
09:12New Jersey declared a state of emergency in anticipation of potentially major coastal flooding and wind gusts of up to 55 miles an hour.
09:21The Weather Service also warned of potential for scattered power outages.
09:26Still to come on PBS Newsweekend, how China's boycott of American soybeans is affecting farmers.
09:32And a new documentary showcases the life and work of visionary author George Orwell.
09:41This is PBS Newsweekend from the David M. Rubenstein Studio at WETA in Washington.
09:47Home of the PBS NewsHour, weeknights on PBS.
09:51JOHN YANG, JR.: Farm bankruptcies were already on the rise when President Trump's trade war added to the financial pressures on America's soybean farmers.
10:03To hear what's on their minds this harvest season, special correspondent Megan Thompson visited two farmers in Minnesota.
10:10MEGAN THOMPSON, Mother Nature has been kind this year to Ryan Mockentune,
10:15who farms about 2,200 acres of corn and soybeans near Brownton, Minnesota.
10:20Great weather has met better-than-average yields, and the sun was shining during his soybean harvest in early October.
10:26When you can get a run of a week straight of, you know, 80s weather with nice wind, I mean, you can combine a lot of beans.
10:32The weather's just been fantastic.
10:34What's not fantastic? Just as Mockentune brings his crops off the field,
10:39the world's largest soybean consumer, China, has stopped buying American beans.
10:44It's really nerve-wracking.
10:47The looming tariffs over us have made it just difficult to predict anything.
10:51Ed Usset is a grain market economist at the University of Minnesota.
10:56This is harvest time, and traditionally, our biggest sales are from September to the end of the calendar year.
11:03And, Usset says, the biggest chunk of those sales usually goes to China.
11:08Over the last decade, we've routinely sent a billion bushels to a billion two just to China every year.
11:16That represents 25 percent of the total soybean demand in the United States.
11:21But since May, China has bought zero American soybeans after the Chinese government slapped tariffs on them,
11:29a retaliatory move in the Trump administration's ongoing trade war.
11:33I'll finish this little strip turnaround.
11:35And as demand plummets, so does the price.
11:38Caught in the middle are farmers like Ryan Mockentune, whose great-great-grandfather started this farm in 1887.
11:45When we visited, he was just finishing up combining his first field of the day.
11:50Most every year, he puts his soybeans into big storage bins on his farm and sells them throughout the year,
11:56trying to eke out a bigger profit when and if the price rises.
12:00But this year, he's reversed course completely and is selling his haul right away at the local grain elevator.
12:07So on that load, I had 371 bushels of soybeans, got paid $9.13 a bushel.
12:13It's a dollar below what I got for most of my beans last year.
12:16My fear is that the price is even going to get worse and worse as we go along if we don't have that demand for soybeans.
12:24Mockentune is fearful because he's seen that happen before.
12:28In 2018, a similar trade war pushed prices down to around $8 a bushel.
12:34But it means he's selling his soybeans for less than what it costs to produce them.
12:38With the prices of fertilizer and farm equipment ever increasing,
12:42he figures he's losing about $100 per acre, or about $90,000 on his soybeans.
12:48It's overwhelming on how to manage all these costs when we plant on good faith that the market will be there to support all our costs.
12:59Yeah, it's emotionally demanding to try to balance all of it.
13:04Just a few miles away, Bob Lindeman is also veering off his usual harvest plan.
13:10With the beans we normally would sell right off the field, we're putting them into these bins.
13:14Unlike Mockentune, Lindeman's holding on to most of his beans.
13:18Crossing his fingers the market will improve.
13:21Oh, it's for sure a risk, you know, putting them in, the market could go down.
13:26I'm hoping that we can get some of these tariffs taken care of.
13:29But Lindeman doesn't have a place on his own farm to store the soybeans, so he's renting space from his neighbor, which will increase his costs.
13:38Right now we're using one, two, three, four, possibly five bins on his farm site.
13:43Not selling now means he may need to take out a federal loan for the first time in more than a decade to help pay his bills.
13:50And when he does sell, it'll take a lot of time and labor.
13:54I'll be hauling a load every second to third day from now until next fall just to get it all emptied out.
14:00I really don't want to be doing that, but we need to try and make every cent extra we can this year.
14:06Ed Usset, who advises farmers on these types of complicated decisions, says they're used to factoring in risk,
14:13but this level of uncertainty is making those decisions exponentially harder.
14:18There's a difference between uncertainty and risk.
14:21Risk is something you can measure.
14:23Uncertainty?
14:25Is this trade war going to be resolved in the next month, six months, one year?
14:31Your guess is as good as mine.
14:33In September, on a call with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Trump discussed TikTok, not soybeans.
14:40And he's threatened to cancel an in-person meeting with Xi later this month.
14:44In the meantime, his administration is said to be putting together a multibillion-dollar bailout package to help make up farmers' losses.
14:52And we're going to take some of that tariff money that we made, we're going to give it to our farmers.
14:56Ryan McIntun appreciates the help, but...
15:00Nobody likes a bailout.
15:02It's a short-term band-aid.
15:04We need long-term fixes.
15:06And he's worried about long-term damage to the export markets because China has now found other trading partners in Argentina and Brazil.
15:14Ed Usset's also concerned.
15:16China is learning something.
15:18They have an incredible appetite for soybeans.
15:21And they can feed all their needs from South America.
15:25That's what they're learning right now.
15:27Farmers want to sell more of their products here in the U.S.
15:31and are hopeful about a Trump administration plan to boost biodiesel made from American soybeans.
15:36Renewable diesel, it is expanding quickly in the United States.
15:41But it's not covering that gap anytime soon.
15:44And so, as farmers in Minnesota move on to harvest their corn crop,
15:49they want their leaders in Washington to understand what's at stake.
15:53Well, I'd say let's not worry quite as much about TikTok and this and that.
15:57Let's worry about this ag sector.
15:59You keep agriculture healthy, it keeps a lot more jobs and a lot more people financially set throughout this United States.
16:07When farmers are profitable, we spend our money on new equipment, which turns around and helps our economy.
16:15To do that, though, we need profitability.
16:17We need certainty.
16:19We need a vision of a future of where farming will be someday.
16:23For PBS News Weekend, I'm Megan Thompson in Broughton, Minnesota.
16:29George Orwell's writings, warning of the dangers of totalitarian and authoritarian states, gave the English language the term Orwellian.
16:45A new documentary argues that Orwell's greatest fears are coming true.
16:50William Brangham talked with the director about his new film, which is in theaters nationwide.
16:55The very concept of objective truth is fading out of this world.
17:00I'm going to set down what I dare not say aloud to anyone.
17:05This prospect frightens me much more than bombs.
17:08In his new film, Orwell, 2 plus 2 equals 5, director Raoul Peck offers what is in part a biography of the visionary novelist, essayist and social critic George Orwell, best known for 1984 and Animal Farm.
17:24But Peck's film also serves as a jarring reminder of Orwell's clearest warnings about inequality, the pernicious nature of the surveillance state and the links to which leaders will distort the truth to retain power.
17:38Raoul Peck joins us now.
17:40Welcome back to the program.
17:42One of your last films about James Baldwin was incredibly timely in its moment.
17:48This film, even more so, as I think audiences are now seeing, when did you realize that Orwell, that this film was the moment for now?
17:58Well, as a filmmaker, you know, it takes us three, four, five years to make a film, so we never know when it will end.
18:05But what we do is to make sure that our film will survive any time and that the coincidence that it comes out right now shows us how not Orwell predicting the future, but how clear he was through his own experience in arbitrary moments or authoritarian regimes.
18:30He deconstructed the whole machine, the whole toolbox of those appearances, and unfortunately, it rings so truthful today.
18:42I know. As I was watching the film, the words in this film, one might call them narration, although they're not really that.
18:49Freedom is slavery.
18:51As you're listening to him speak, overlaid with images of modern day, several times watching the film, I had to remind myself,
18:59these were words written almost half a century ago.
19:02Absolutely. And that was the scarier part.
19:06We had that editing the film, you know, and even dealing with the text, because I started with the text.
19:13And going through all, that was the extraordinary occasion that I had access to everything Orwell, everything he had written.
19:21And going through those texts, you could see, oh, my God, he's describing something I saw yesterday.
19:28And that's an out of body experience.
19:31But that showed how deep his analysis was, how he was able to deconstruct the whole pattern of defense and authoritarian behavior.
19:45And he said, you know, it doesn't have to be an authoritarian country for this to happen.
19:51It can happen within democracies as well.
19:54And it's a slow burn where you don't even realize what is happening.
19:59There's not an announcement.
20:00The trumpets come and say, here comes the totalitarianism.
20:04No, it's step by step.
20:07And each time the civil society accept that facts are not truthful anymore, that there are alternative realities,
20:18that words don't mean the same thing anymore, or that words are forbidden, that books are banned.
20:25Those are part of the toolbox of every authoritarian regime.
20:30When there is a dictatorship or a push somewhere, the first thing they do is to burn books or attack the media or, you know, capture the TV stations.
20:44So it's weird to be leaving this in the United States.
20:50And Orwell says something very, very truthful when he said the degradation of language is the condition for the degradation of democracy.
21:02And now we are in a world where even words are being, you know, put aside.
21:08Certain words we are not allowed to use in the administration anymore, as if the function of that word would disappear.
21:16You know, it's basically closing your eyes.
21:19So it's a very weird place for democracy right now.
21:23I mean, you are clearly arguing, both in this film, that we are in one of those moments that Orwell warned us about,
21:29where governments will insist that 2 plus 2 equals 5.
21:34Do you really believe that?
21:35Do you think we are in one of those moments?
21:38Well, it's suffice to watch the news every day, you know, to hear elected officials trying to convince you that what you are seeing is not what it is.
21:50Or that you shouldn't use that word to describe something that obviously is an abuse of rights.
21:58When you attack academia, when you attack the justice system, when you attack the journalists or the networks, those are known tools to degrade democracy.
22:12So, at one point, you have to accept this is what's going on.
22:16You know, you can't continue to tell yourself, well, he's saying 2 plus 2 equals 5, maybe they might be right.
22:26No.
22:27You have to keep, as I always say, your common sense.
22:302 plus 2 is always 4.
22:33And that arithmetic formula is arithmetic.
22:36It's not a matter of opinion.
22:38You know, it's a fact.
22:40Given that, and your belief that we are in one of those moments, how do you explain the relative lack of outrage from people?
22:50First of all, contrary to what is declared every day, it's not a landslide victory.
22:57You know, there is 1% difference between the electoral votes.
23:03And second, people are stunned.
23:07A lot of people are stunned when suddenly all the limit that you knew, all the rules that you knew,
23:17when even the language that you knew doesn't mean the same thing, it's hard to react.
23:24And I understand that.
23:26When you lived for so long in a republic that was more or less peaceful, where there was a balance of power.
23:34You know, Congress had its job, the executive branch had its job, the justice had their job, cut it for them.
23:42And you start to see a dysfunctionment.
23:45People whose presence is to make sure that everything is running correctly, are not doing their job.
23:55Parliamentary are afraid to tell what they actually believe.
24:00They would take the floor when they know they are not going for re-election.
24:05All those little signs, you know, when you have to think twice before saying something in front of a microphone.
24:14Those are signs, you know, I come from Haiti.
24:16I grew up in a dictatorship.
24:18And I remember my parents, you know, whispering in the living room.
24:22And now I'm seeing friends that they don't have certain discussion openly anymore.
24:29Because they don't want to lose their jobs or for some reason they don't want to be catalogued in one camp or the other.
24:36Those are very scary signs.
24:39And when you come from the third world, you have some instinct to decipher those signs very early on.
24:48The film is Orwell, 2 plus 2 equals 5.
24:51Raul Peck, thank you so much for being here.
24:53Thank you for inviting me.
24:55Now on the NewsHour Instagram account, Politifex, I'm sorry, Ellen Hine debunks Republican Senator Josh Hawley's claims that the Biden administration tapped the phones of some Republican senators during its investigation of the 2020 election interference.
25:21All that and more is on the NewsHour Instagram account.
25:25And that is PBS NewsHour News Weekend for this Sunday.
25:29I'm John Yang.
25:30For all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us.
25:32Have a good week.
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