WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Good evening.

I'm William Brangham.

Geoff Bennett and Amna Nawaz are away.

On the "News Hour" tonight: President Trump moves forward with plans to make it easier to fire thousands of federal workers if they disagree with his policies.

The lawyer for the man mistakenly deported to El Salvador speaks about the refusals to return him to the U.S. And the Supreme Court prepares to hear a case that could eliminate free access to dozens of preventive health care treatments.

DR. MARK FENDRICK, University of Michigan School of Medicine: When Americans had to pay more for everything, we saw that lots and lots of people were deferring essential preventive services.

(BREAK) WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Welcome to the "News Hour."

President Trump today advanced his plans to make it easier to fire tens of thousands of federal workers.

On social media, he said he would move forward with a rule previously known as Schedule F, which the administration said - - quote -- "will allow agencies to quickly remove employees from critical positions who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or undermine the democratic process by intentionally subverting presidential directives."

Our White House correspondent, Laura Barron-Lopez, joins us now with the latest.

Laura, President Trump promised that he would do this.

So what does this do and how many workers would this affect?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So, Schedule F changes the job classification of nonpartisan federal workers, designating them as political appointees.

And so, bottom line, it makes it easier for the president to fire anyone that he considers disloyal and replace them with complete loyalists to his cause and to his agenda.

Now, Schedule F was a part of the Project 2025 blueprint from The Heritage Foundation.

And OMB Director Russ Vought was key in drafting this during the first administration, but they were not able to implement it during the first administration.

And Russ Vought said throughout the campaign that they wanted to traumatize federal workers.

And the White House estimates that this will impact some 50,000 federal workers that could be laid off, but government experts say that that's probably a minimum.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So what happens next?

And has there been, I imagine, pushback to this?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: There has been pushback.

But so first what happens is a White House official said that agencies have until April 20 to hand them the list of who they think should be reclassified in their agencies.

But Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said that: "This is another in a series of deliberate moves by this administration to corrupt the federal government and replace qualified public servants with political cronies."

AFG says that they are going to sue the administration, and they're the largest union representing federal workers.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So this is part of a much bigger picture of Trump's war with the federal government.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: It is.

And so this all comes as President Trump and Elon Musk's team have instituted firings across the board.

Yesterday, the Trump administration moved to fire some 1,500 employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

That's most of the agency, William.

And, today, a federal judge pause those firings, calling it deeply concerning and that the firings violated an earlier injunction.

Now, when you -- based on our reporting, as well as a New York Times analysis, when you zoom out, essentially, there are more than 132,000 workers that have either been fired or pressured to take buyouts since Trump has taken office.

We spoke to Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at University of Michigan, who said that this essentially just defeats the purpose, this Schedule F, of a nonpartisan civil service.

He said that in the end goal this is about impose imposing loyalty tests and that targeting bureaucracy in this way is a hallmark trait of authoritarian regimes.

Practically, it could also mean that there's some favoritism that is instituted when it comes to who gets government contracts.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Laura Barron-Lopez, as always, thank you so much.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Thank you.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: We begin the day's other headlines with the latest on the international effort to secure a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

As those negotiations have stalled, there is a new ultimatum from the Trump administration.

Earlier today, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrapped up a marathon series of talks in Paris with both Ukrainian and top European officials.

Rubio, on his way out, said the U.S. may -- quote -- "move on" from trying to broker a peace deal if progress isn't made soon.

MARCO RUBIO, U.S. Secretary of State: We're not going to continue with this endeavor for weeks and months on end.

So we need to determine very quickly now, and I'm talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable over the next few weeks.

If it is, we're in.

If it's not, then we have other priorities to focus on as well.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: In Washington, President Trump echoed that warning, but stopped short of saying he's ready to walk away.

He pushed back against the suggestion that Russia is taking advantage of his patience.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: I know when people are playing us, and I know when they're not, and I have to see an enthusiasm to want to end it.

And I think I see that enthusiasm.

I think I see it from both sides.

But you're going to know soon.

QUESTION: Do you think Russia is playing you?

Do you think Russia is playing you?

DONALD TRUMP: No, nobody's playing me.

I'm trying to help.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All of this unfolded as the war grinds on.

Russian missiles today rained down on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

Officials say one person was killed and nearly 100 others were wounded.

In Yemen, Houthi rebels say U.S. airstrikes overnight killed at least 74 people and injured more than 170 others.

The strikes targeted an oil port on the Red Sea.

It was the deadliest known attack yet in America's campaign against the Houthis.

The Iranian-backed militants released video that showed massive fires on the ground and fuel trucks in flames.

The U.S. military has not said whether any of the casualties were civilians.

Power has been mostly restored in Puerto Rico almost two days after a blackout put the entire island in the dark.

More than one million customers lost their electricity on Wednesday, and over 400,000 of them were also without water because of the outage.

Officials say a major transmission line failed, but it remains unclear what caused that.

This was the second massive blackout to hit Puerto Rico in the last four months.

And in another court ruling over the power of the executive branch, in Wisconsin today, the state Supreme Court upheld a very unique partial veto power that the governor has.

Governor Tony Evers used that power back in 2023 to lock in a school funding increase for the next 400 years.

At the heart of the case was Evers' ability to veto even the tiniest parts of a bill to dramatically alter its meaning.

By striking individual words and numbers in the legislation, he approved more school revenue increases until literally the year 2425.

Wisconsin's Supreme Court has been embroiled in national politics recently, with Elon Musk pouring millions into a race to back a conservative judge who lost.

It was the most expensive judicial contest in American history.

Still to come on the "News Hour": the lessons the U.S. could learn from one Canadian city that removed fluoride from its water supply; the potential impact of deep-sea mining, as the Trump administration considers pushing ahead with the practice; David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart weigh in on the week's headlines; plus much more.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration last month, is no longer being housed at the mega-prison known as CECOT.

He was moved last week to another detention center in El Salvador.

For the first time since his deportation, his family and the world also saw photos of Mr. Abrego Garcia and heard a firsthand report of his condition after Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen met with him yesterday in El Salvador.

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD): He was moved to another detention center in Santa Ana, where the conditions are better, but he said, despite the better conditions, he still has no access to any news from the outside world and no ability to communicate with anybody in the outside world.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Meanwhile, the fierce legal battle over his status continues.

The Trump administration alleges, despite wrongfully deporting him, that he's affiliated with the MS-13 gang and there's nothing they can do to bring him back.

An appeals court yesterday called that shocking and wrote -- quote -- "The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order."

So, for the latest on this case, we turn to one of Abrego Garcia's lawyers.

Rina Gandhi is an attorney with the immigration law firm Murray Osorio.

Rina, thank you very much for being here.

Yesterday, Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland saw your client.

Have you been able to do the same?

Have you spoken with him?

What can you tell us about his current condition?

RINA GANDHI, Attorney For Kilmar Abrego Garcia: Unfortunately not.

We have not been able to speak with him, although we are very grateful that Senator Van Hollen was able to speak with him, let him know probably for the first time that people are fighting for him, that his community is fighting for him, and to confirm that he is in fact alive and there.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: What was the reaction of his wife and family to seeing pictures and getting confirmation that he was at least still alive?

RINA GANDHI: I think, as seen in Jennifer's statement, the family was very ecstatic to see him, but it's bittersweet.

He's not home yet, so our job is not done.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: As you well know, as the legal and public pressure about this case has been ramping up, the Trump administration has put out a series of statements and documents to back up their allegations that your client was in the U.S. illegally, that he was violent towards his wife, and that he is a member of MS-13.

And they argue that sending him to El Salvador makes the United States safer.

Have you seen the government's evidence?

And what can you say about that evidence?

RINA GANDHI: We have certainly seen the evidence they have posted on social media.

However, this has not been brought to a court of law.

And that's the crucial issue here in this case.

This is about due process.

There is a regular procedure to go through where they're welcome to bring forward whatever claims they feel they can and let a judge decide.

Let Mr. Abrego Garcia have a say, tell his side, explain the real situation, as the courts have in the past already reviewed his history.

He had a huge two-day hearing where it was extensively reviewed.

And the Trump administration back in 2019 chose not to appeal, chose to release him.

So to change their tune now, it's a little disingenuous.

And I think we would ask them to follow what the Supreme Court is asking, is ordering, rather, and to bring him home.

And let's do this in a real court.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Can you address those allegations that the president again made from the White House today that the president is certain that he is a member of MS-13?

Again, we have all seen the evidence they have put forward, but what is your response to that allegation?

RINA GANDHI: It's interesting that he would know that, but that was not put forward by his government in the court in 2019.

And it's interesting that it has not been put forward in a court of law here under the right procedures.

And instead they chose to simply remove him unlawfully.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I hear what you're saying that he was not given due process before he was deported and sent to El Salvador.

But given that he is now in El Salvador, in this new prison, and the president of that country has said, we're not going to send him back, and the president of this country says he is powerless to bring him back, what does due process look like for your client now?

RINA GANDHI: It looks like an ask.

It looks like an ask.

I think, as Senator Van Hollen confirmed earlier today, the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador has not been given instructions to make any kind of an ask, to make those liaison requests.

We heard in the White House when President Bukele was here, he stated, what am I going to do, smuggle him in?

That's not the ask.

The ask is, allow the United States to receive him and let's bring him home on one of our many ICE airplanes, and let's have a real court case.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: As I mentioned, several of the courts have now pressed the administration for further action and further evidence.

One court said its defiance of the order to facilitate his return called that shocking and wrote also -- quote -- "Facilitate is an active verb" and it does not -- quote -- "allow the government to do essentially nothing."

The administration has said that even if he were brought back to the United States, that the U.S. would then deport him again immediately.

Would you still be willing to go through that process?

Would that be welcome?

RINA GANDHI: Yes, because that is the correct process.

Mr. Abrego Garcia has been granted protection from El Salvador.

We have returned him to that very country that he won his case based on.

So, if they want to take that away from him, then they have to go through the correct procedures.

And if a judge decides, then that's what the judge decides.

But no judge has been able to make that decision.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Given that your client has been labeled a dangerous, violent terrorist by the president of the United States, do you worry that, if he were to come back to the United States, that his safety would be in jeopardy?

RINA GANDHI: Based on the statements made by the White House in various forms, yes, but I also believe in our community.

The community has really come together.

We have had contact from different levels of government within Maryland.

And I believe that he wins his case in a court here and he is going to be able to live a relatively normal life, despite the trauma that he's endured.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, that is Rina Gandhi, lawyer for Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Thank you so much for your time.

RINA GANDHI: Thank you.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday, challenging the constitutionality of a provision in the Affordable Care Act that requires most private health insurance plans to cover preventive care at no cost to the patient.

As Laura Barron-Lopez reports, the case could have a profound impact on the health care millions of Americans use to stay healthy and prevent disease.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Attorney and queer activist Preston Mitchum has been taking pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, to prevent HIV every day for about a decade.

PRESTON MITCHUM, Washington, D.C., Resident: Just being able to wake up and have a piece of mind has to be the number one benefit for me about why I still take it.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: PrEP reduces the risk of getting HIV from sex by about 99 percent and from injection drug use by at least 74 percent.

PRESTON MITCHUM: For me, there's always going to be a benefit to understanding what you need for your body to be healthy.

I know it's really important for me to protect my body and not only my body, my partner's bodies along the way.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The medication was first approved in 2012 and is now available in two forms.

MAN: One, two.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: A shot every other month or a daily pill.

DR. KYLE BENDA, Whitman-Walker Health: PrEP and preventive care is kind of the cornerstone of what we do here at Whitman-Walker.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Dr. Kyle Benda is a director of medical operations at Whitman-Walker Health, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., that offers primary care and specializes in HIV treatment.

He credits PrEP with helping to reduce new cases of HIV in the nation's capital by 12 percent from 2012 to 2021.

DR. KYLE BENDA: While our HIV treatments are amazing and life with HIV is very different than I think what a lot of folks may think of, for the health of our population, prevention of HIV is paramount.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Still, the cost of the drug is so high that, without financial help, for most people like Preston Mitchum, PrEP would be out of reach.

PRESTON MITCHUM: When I first got the actual prescription and they rang it up, it shot up.

It was like $2,000, $2,100.

I was like, there's no way I can afford this.

No way.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: But since 2021, because of a provision in the Affordable Care Act, Mitchum's insurer and almost all health plans have been required to fully cover the cost of PrEP, which can total up to $30,000 a year.

Soon, that could change.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Monday in a case that could eliminate not just free access to PrEP, but cost-free access to at least two dozen other preventative health care treatments.

DR. MARK FENDRICK, University of Michigan School of Medicine: Millions and millions of people would be impacted.

These incredibly popular, but potentially under-the-radar services, like mental health screenings, cancer screenings, cardiovascular, G.I.

conditions, will all be impacted if the Supreme Court rules that health plans no longer have to cover these services 100 percent without out-of-pocket expenditures.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Medical professor Dr. Mark Fendrick helped draft the preventative care provision in the Affordable Care Act now at the center of this case.

DR. MARK FENDRICK: We noticed that, when Americans had to pay more for everything, we saw that lots and lots of people were deferring essential preventive services because they had to pay large amounts of out-of-pocket costs.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The original suit was brought by two Christian-owned businesses and six people in Texas who argued that covering PrEP in their health plans conflicts with their religious beliefs, claiming the drugs - - quote -- "facilitate and encourage homosexual behavior, prostitution, sexual promiscuity, and intravenous drug use."

NICHOLAS BAGLEY, University of Michigan Law School: This lawsuit is part of a much broader pattern of challenging the Affordable Care Act that stretches back to the moment that it was signed.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Nicholas Bagley is a law professor at the University of Michigan who has followed the case.

He says, in 2022, the plaintiffs were granted religious exemptions and no longer have to provide PrEP under their insurance plans.

What the Supreme Court will now consider goes beyond religious freedom arguments and could have a much larger impact.

The businesses and conservative Christians who filed the lawsuit also want to get rid of the preventative care requirement altogether.

NICHOLAS BAGLEY: They believe very deeply in religious freedom and are aligned with conservative causes and so are using this as an effort to push back on what they see as the excesses of the Affordable Care Act.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: But Dr. Fendrick warns that would have devastating consequences on American health care.

Under the ACA, a task force made up of 16 medical experts decides which preventative care services must be fully covered by most private insurance plans.

DR. MARK FENDRICK: One of the strengths of using the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is in fact they are an independent body.

They are very, very deeply vetted and they have expertise in clinical medicine, preventive screenings, population health.

These are the folks that I at least would like to be seeing making the decisions based on science and available evidence to determine what are those preventive services that should be covered at no cost to patients.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: But Thomas Berry of the Libertarian Cato Institute believes that the task force is unconstitutional because its members are selected by the secretary of health and human services, instead of nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

THOMAS BERRY, Cato Institute: In a democracy, where we elect a president, where we have a presidential election that pits two competing ideologies against each other, ultimately, the people have to have some say in the final decisions.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: He wrote an amicus brief supporting the Texas businesses and individuals who brought the suit.

Berry argues the task force makes rules without public accountability and that all of the health care coverage it's mandated since passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 should be rolled back.

THOMAS BERRY: Ultimately, the president has to have a clear line of authority to every other decision-maker within the executive branch.

If you have that bright line rule, the public can blame the one person that they had an opportunity to vote for, which is the president.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: If the Supreme Court disagrees with that argument and decides the HHS secretary can continue to control task force membership, Nicholas Bagley says that will likely mean that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will have more control over what exactly is covered by private insurance.

NICHOLAS BAGLEY: If the secretary wins this case, it's going to be because the court holds that he's got a great deal of control over this body.

And especially given his idiosyncratic, at best, beliefs about medicine and about the best kind of medical care, we have reason to wonder how he's going to exercise that authority and whether he's going to appoint people who are very far outside the medical mainstream.

DR. KYLE BENDA: Two procedures, PrEP patient.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Back in Washington, D.C., Dr. Benda is already bracing for the possibility that his patients may soon be paying for preventative care out of pocket, if they can afford it.

Ultimately, what do you think is the biggest risk if PrEP or other preventative care is no longer fully covered?

DR. KYLE BENDA: I think our greatest risk is of increased HIV and increased risk of chronic disease and a decrease in patient life expectancy, an increase in our costs associated with taking care of folks with chronic disease.

Our patients won't be able to live longer, healthier lives.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The justices will decide this latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act and the future of health care access for patients across the country by this summer.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Laura Barron-Lopez in Washington, D.C. WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Earlier this month, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced plans to end the federal recommendation that municipalities add fluoride to their drinking water.

The Environmental Protection Agency also said it was reviewing -- quote -- "new scientific information" about the risks of fluoridation.

Given this renewed debate, we wanted to hear one perspective from a community that did remove fluoride from its water, the Canadian city of Calgary.

Earlier this week, I spoke to Lindsay McLaren.

She's a professor of community health sciences at the University of Calgary.

And I began by asking her why we started fluoridating water in the first place.

LINDSAY MCLAREN, Professor of Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary: In regions of the United States and elsewhere, it was observed by local dentists -- this was back in the 1940s -- that people living in certain communities had kind of a staining of their teeth, and they -- but their teeth also turned out to be quite resistant to tooth decay.

And so it was determined, it was figured out that this was because of naturally high levels of fluoride in the drinking water.

And so that gave rise to the idea that we could actually do this intentionally and in a controlled manner as a public health intervention to improve the oral health of the population.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: We mentioned that some people have cited risks associated with this practice.

And the current HHS secretary in the United States, RFK Jr., he had a recent visit to the state of Utah.

Utah itself became the first state to ban fluoride in its water.

Here's what he said there.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary: In the era of fluoridated toothpaste and mouthwashes, it makes no sense to have fluoride in our water.

The evidence against fluoride is overwhelming.

In animals, in animal models, and in human models, we know that it causes I.Q.

loss.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, what about those arguments, one, that in the era of heavily fluoridated toothpaste, we don't need to add it to our water?

And, two, are there studies indicating that it causes I.Q.

loss?

LINDSAY MCLAREN: So the point about being in the era of widespread fluoride toothpaste is a good one.

But research and systematic reviews of research that have been conducted in this era consistently show that there is an added benefit of fluoridated water above and beyond the widespread use of toothpaste.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And then what about the studies that he cited about I.Q.

loss?

LINDSAY MCLAREN: The main thing to say there is that it's really not at all clear that fluoridation is associated with those outcomes at the levels that we're talking about for community water fluoridation.

There's many examples of things that are harmful or toxic at high levels, but that are innocuous or even beneficial at lower levels.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, turning to your experience, in 2011, the Calgary City Council voted to remove fluoride from its water.

You launched a study then as to what the downstream impacts of that was.

What is it that you found?

LINDSAY MCLAREN: So we designed a large-scale study where we collected data on oral health and a number of other things from several thousand kids in both Calgary, where fluoridation was stopped, and in Edmonton, which is the other large city in Alberta, which has several similarities to Calgary, with the main difference being that they had fluoridation in place and it was continuing.

About seven to eight years after the decision to stop fluoridation in Calgary, we observed quite a big difference in the prevalence of tooth decay among kids in the two cities.

So the percent of kids who had tooth decay in Calgary, where there was no fluoride, was 65 percent, whereas, in Edmonton, where fluoridation remains in place, it was about 55 percent.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, a decade later, voters there voted to put fluoride back into the water.

That has not happened yet.

So does your experience there help inform how Americans ought to be thinking about this decision?

LINDSAY MCLAREN: Certainly, in the Calgary case, we were fortunate to be able to build this study and to demonstrate that there are consequences to removing fluoride from drinking water.

It's not just an innocuous policy decision.

And so that information, I think, figured importantly in the decision to reintroduce the measure, which should be happening soon.

What I think I would also want to add here is that, if you decide as a community, if you have a kind of a grown-up conversation and decide as a community to not fluoridate the water, that is one thing, but you have to accompany that by a discussion about, what are you going to do instead?

Because tooth decay is not an innocuous health problem.

It's a serious health problem.

It's very common.

And, perhaps most importantly, it's almost entirely preventable.

And so what kind of a society are we if we don't prevent an entirely preventable problem that causes harm and pain to kids and to others?

So, sometimes, the discussion is quite incomplete.

It's just about fluoridation, but it's actually a bigger question around, how are we going to build sort of the public supports and resources that allow everyone to have good oral health and good general health?

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All, right that is Professor Lindsay McLaren at the University of Calgary.

Thank you so much for your time.

LINDSAY MCLAREN: Thanks for having me.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Trump's continued face-off with the courts has some questioning whether the U.S. has reached the point of a constitutional crisis.

On that and more, we turn to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart.

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

Good evening, gentlemen.

Nice to have you both.

I want to talk about President Trump and the courts.

The president has wielded his authority in, I think by any measure, an extraordinary way, slashing budgets and jobs across the federal government, targeting billions of dollars at colleges and universities, threatening major law firms.

On immigration, we have all been following that remarkable process.

But the courts, David, in many instances, have stood up to the president.

Do you think that they are doing their appropriate role of check and balance?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I think they are.

The question is whether Trump pays any attention to the courts.

And so, to me, watching the Trump administration is just watching the administration to say, we have decided stoplights don't apply to us.

Yellow lines down the middle don't apply.

We're just going to roll over it.

And you stop us.

And when you think constitutional crisis, you think, like, two sides facing off on the barricades.

But I have actually lived through a constitutional crisis.

When I was at The Wall Street Journal, I covered the end of the Soviet Union.

And it was obviously very different in many ways.

But one thing was interesting, the mental adjustment I had to make.

When I went to the Soviet Union... WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The mental adjustment.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, at the very end, because I grew up in a country where I assumed, if a law is passed, then things will change, it will be enforced, and it'll be a reality on the ground.

But at the very end of the Soviet Union, they would pass law after law, and nothing happened.

Nobody bothered to enforce it.

It never had any implementation.

So the laws were fictional, because people had lost faith in the laws, lost faith in the whole system.

And so what happens now is not that you get this big conflict, but Trump just says, we're going to arrest a guy who -- and give him no due process, and there's, like, no confrontation.

It just happens.

And nobody's there to stop it, because famously the judiciary doesn't have an army.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Right.

Jonathan, what do you think about that?

I mean, we had Georgetown Law Professor Steve Vladeck on the show.

He says, we're not quite there yet, because the Trump administration has not yet formally blown through, overtly ignored a direct court order yet.

But we also heard from the League of Women Voters, the nonpartisan organization, who this week -- I'd like to read you this quote.

They said -- quote -- "It has now been 87 days since the start of the Trump administration.

From the flagrant disregard for congressional authority and governmental checks and balances, to defying Supreme Court orders to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back home, one thing is abundantly clear.

Our country is in a constitutional crisis."

Where do you come down on that?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: I am glad you read that, because I was shaking, I was nodding in agreement with the League of Women Voters.

How can you say that the president hasn't defied court orders?

You have got Judge Boasberg, who is threatening to -- says yesterday that there's probable cause to charge the government or lawyers arguing on behalf of the government with criminal contempt.

Why?

Because the president of the United States and his administration ignored his order to not deport those folks to El Salvador.

So, I know there are these formal definitions of what a constitutional crisis is, but from where I sit in my "Schoolhouse Rock!"

knowledge of how our government is supposed to work... JONATHAN CAPEHART: ... we are in one.

We have a president of the United States who on a daily basis blows past the guardrails, pushes as far as he can get to test the system.

And what has heartened me this week is hearing from Judge Boasberg and the judge who ruled yesterday in that beautiful seven-page opinion, where they are not just saying, this isn't the right thing to do.

They are pushing back just as aggressively from their respective federal benches.

And I think we will be better for it.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Do you think, David, that - - I have been reading some Republican voices saying specifically on this Abrego Garcia case that this might be a bridge too far, that they feel that this -- simply jumping over due process completely.

Do you think that there will be from the right some real critique that's meaningful?

DAVID BROOKS: It depends if you have the kind of job where you have to get elected to hold it.

DAVID BROOKS: And so one of the things I have been struck by is that a lot of things Trump has done, the experts have said, this is crazy.

And when Ukraine, the Zelenskyy meeting in the Oval Office, Republican and Democratic foreign policy experts said this is crazy.

The tariffs, Republican and Democratic experts said this is crazy.

The Garcia case, Republican and Democratic constitutional scholars say this is crazy.

But as for elected officials, I would say we have not yet seen that.

I have to assume, from what I know of them personally, is that they are personally appalled, but they're doing what they have been doing for the last -- all the years that we have -- Trump has been around.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Although we have seen some -- well, one.

I was going to say some, one Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who is no shrinking violet when it comes to going toe to toe with President Trump or standing up to her own leadership.

And she is on camera, on record saying, we're all afraid.

And that's... WILLIAM BRANGHAM: We actually have that.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Oh.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Let's play what she had to say.

This is Senator Lisa Murkowski, senator of Alaska.

Let's listen to what she said.

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): We are all afraid, OK?

I'm oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Retaliation is real.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: And that's what Republicans in the House and the Senate and all over the country, elected ones, have been dealing with since Trump one.

And I think the fact that we have that on camera from Senator Murkowski, I hope it will give other elected Republicans the courage to say even that, to acknowledge to the American people that, we see what's happening, we know what's going on, we know it's crazy and wrong, but, got to be honest, we're scared.

We're not quite sure what to do, although what they should be doing, we all know.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Well, you offered a prescription, David, in your column in The New York Times for this moment that we are in.

And you called for a civic uprising.

You said in this column, I want to read a bit of this, saying that the attacks that we have seen on institutions -- quote -- "are not separate battles.

This is a simple effort to undo the parts of the civilizational order that might restrain Trump's acquisition of power."

So how would that civic uprising form?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, the core argument is that Trump is really about amassing power.

And anything that might potentially restrain his power, he will destroy.

And that includes the court systems and anything part of that livens humanity.

It includes the universities, the scientific community, the truth, the media.

And so far, we have responded to all these things, NATO, in separate lanes.

We think the Fed is different than NATO, which is different from the universities.

But my point is, this is all one thing.

And if institutions and even sectors try to respond to this individually, they're doomed.

Even Harvard, with $52 billion in this endowment, you can't do it alone.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Though that was a signal moment.

DAVID BROOKS: That was a crucial turning point because it changed the minds of everybody in every university I have talked to since then.

They said... WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Oh, really?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

So... WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Post-Harvard, they have all said... DAVID BROOKS: Right.

A lot of them beforehand were like, well, Columbia made a deal, maybe that's right for us.

Once Harvard came out, I talked to a couple of university presidents who said, oh, this is where we need to be, because the Trump administration made it impossible for Harvard not to say no.

And that's what we're dealing with here.

And so the point I tried to make is, all these different sectors have to get together and inform one big civic movement.

And it can't be political.

It's not Democrats versus Republicans.

It's not left versus right.

It's institutions versus the destruction of our institutions of civilization.

And if you look down through history, there have been social movements, these kinds of civic uprising that have succeeded.

They have banded together across sectors.

They have a clear, simple message that appeals to a lot of different people.

They use things like lawsuits, protests, boycotts, all sorts of things, strikes, anything they can do.

But, basically, if you're head of a law firm or a university, any of these institutions, you're dealing with administrations, it's just about raw power.

So the question you have to ask yourself is, how do we amass power so they're not dividing us, so we're dividing them?

And that is a mass uprising.

And the one turning point, if you look even at the civil rights movement, when you do a nonviolent protest and the people on the other side attack you with violence, that tends to weaken them.

And then suddenly you're dividing them, some, obviously.

And so this is the kind of way we have to think, that it's time not just to think, well, maybe he will look at the other guy.

It's time we're all involved, we're all in this together, and we're going to amass power together.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Jonathan, do you think that that movement, that uprising is going to happen?

I mean, we saw protests recently.

There are major protest planned for tomorrow.

Do you think that there is this coalescing energy that David is talking about?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: I think it's happening.

And I think it started when people were showing up outside of USAID when they were going through hell.

I think we started seeing -- we're seeing it in the town halls in Republican districts, so much so that the leadership told Republican members of Congress don't hold town halls anymore.

We have seen it with the big rallies in red states convened by Senator Bernie Sanders and AOC in red states, I think just yesterday or two days ago in Montana, hundreds, if not thousands of people.

And then you look at what's happening.

And I know the courts and the judges are impartial, but they are also part of this pushing back on what's happening.

And then for Harvard to do what it did, I think sent a message not just to university presidents, but to the country that if Harvard -- if Harvard had folded, it would have been a devastating thing.

But it didn't happen.

And I would just say this one last point.

In Trump one, Adam Serwer wrote famously the cruelty is the point about the first Trump administration.

And I would argue that in Trump two, it's now the cruelty is the policy.

And I think what we're seeing around the country is people pushing back against Trump two.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Jonathan Capehart, David Brooks, always good to see you both.

Thank you.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Thanks, William.

DAVID BROOKS: Good to see you.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Along certain parts of the ocean floor lie a bounty of rare minerals and metals, critical components for batteries, electric cars and other electronics.

But mining for them in the deep sea is a controversial and potentially destructive process.

Special correspondent Willem Marx detailed the process and the stakes in a series of "News Hour" reports last year.

Marx now has a new piece in "Scientific American" on the controversy.

And he joins us now.

Willem, thanks so much for being here.

Before we get to the debate over this mining practice, tell us a little bit more about what is down there and why there's such a strong incentive to go get it.

WILLEM MARX: Well, there's a variety, William, of deposits all over the planet from various depths in our various oceans.

And those often include very valuable metals, things like copper, cobalt, zinc, lead, what's known as rare earth minerals.

Some of the deposits contain gold and silver.

And so the incentive, as is often the case with mining, is around money.

But, as you mentioned, at the moment in this era where we're transitioning as a species essentially away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, some of these metals, in particular, things like cobalt, like copper, are crucial not just for electric cars, but also for electric power, building infrastructure, grid for our electricity systems.

And so there's a huge incentive for miners, given high prices for some of these metals, to spend money and try and find new deposits.

And one area that has until now really been entirely untapped is at the bottom of the ocean.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: As you detailed in your stories for the "News Hour," it's quite a process to bring that treasure from the ocean floor up to the surface.

What did you see?

And what else, what other kinds of procedures do mining companies use?

WILLEM MARX: So, a lot of this is really quite experimental at this stage.

It's not been done at huge scales until now.

There's a number of different companies out there who've looked at developing a variety of techniques.

The vessel that we visited in Papua New Guinea last year was trialing a new system that essentially sent a huge 12-ton hydraulically-powered claw a mile down from a surface vessel.

And at the bottom of the ocean, as it hit the seafloor, that claw would dig into the surface and try and pull up anywhere from two to three to as much as six or seven tons of material, and then essentially hoist them a mile back up to the surface with the help, I should add on, on the floor of a remotely operated vehicle, essentially an unmanned submersible, that would guide it into the right position.

And it was a really intricate, complex task.

You had a winch operator on the surface vessel coordinating with the individuals who were piloting this remotely operated vessel a mile down beneath them.

And there was a bit of a dance to try and make sure that the jaws closed around the surface successfully.

Some of the other operators are looking at trying to more or less hoover, vacuum up the material from the floor.

There are different types of deposits, some of which are like small rocks.

And they want to try and hoover those up, vacuum those up along these huge hoses up to surface vessels, clean out the gunk, deposit that gunk back into the ocean.

And that leads, of course, to some of the concerns about the environmental impact as well, as you might imagine.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: President Trump has reportedly expressed interest in assigning an executive order to speed this process along.

Is there a governing authority that has any jurisdiction over this?

And what might an American president's executive order do to that process and to this industry?

WILLEM MARX: It's really complex.

It's rooted in a treaty that was signed more than four decades ago known as the Law of the Sea, to which the United States is not currently a party.

But to try and break it down as clearly as possible, within 200 miles of every coastal country's shoreline, they are able to exercise what's known as exclusive economic control.

These are exclusive economic zones, particular to each coastal nation.

And within that area, those governments have jurisdiction over essentially what happens in their oceans, whether that's mining or fishing.

Beyond 200 miles, nautical miles, I should add, from a shoreline, you enter what are known as international waters.

And under this treaty the Law of the Sea, those international waters are under the jurisdiction of a U.N.-affiliated body known as the International Seabed Authority.

It's headquartered in Jamaica and the Caribbean.

And that body has been promising for many years now to essentially set up a series of rules that will allow not just the exploration of these international waters, but potentially also the exploitation, that is, mining.

And for many years, they promised regulations.

And for many years, members of this nascent industry, deep-sea mining industry, have been waiting in vain for those new regulations to be issued.

And what President Trump seems to have been suggesting in the last few weeks when he has talked about this publicly, talking about an executive order that would essentially override the International Seabed Authority, to which the United States right now is not a member nation, and say to mining companies, you know what, we as the U.S. authorize you with a mining permit to go out and extract these types of minerals and metals from the deep ocean.

And that would throw this entire industry into an entirely new region in terms of what's possible for investors, what's possible for operators, and, until now, the status quo would be completely undermined.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, that is "News Hour" special correspondent Willem Marx.

Willem, thank you so much for being here.

WILLEM MARX: Thanks so much, William.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Maggie Doyne's decision to postpone college and work with refugees in India transformed her life and the lives of many others.

Her story has been captured through the lens of filmmaker and partner Jeremy Power Regimbal.

Here's Maggie and Jeremy's Brief But Spectacular take on family.

MAGGIE DOYNE, Co-Founder, Kopila Valley Children's Home and School: Growing up in New Jersey, my parents were a little bit off the beaten track with the no TV and the no Internet.

I was pretty lucky.

I had everything in the world, from a soccer team to play on to a really good public school to go to.

As I was graduating in 2005, everyone was going to college, college, college, college, college.

And kind of at the very last minute, I signed up for a gap year.

I ended up in the Northeast of India, and I was working in a refugee region.

It felt somehow easier to stay and take on something that was hard and challenging than it felt to just turn away and go back.

I moved to Nepal, learned the language, found my co-founder, Tope.

OK, this is Tope.

Hello.

TOPE MALLA, Co-Founder, Kopila Valley Children's Home and School: I know that life -- what is the hungry life, what is the freezing life, and what is the hard time.

MAGGIE DOYNE: Tope was from this region in Karnali of Nepal.

He'd grown up in orphan, and he had moved to India as a child porter when he was 10 years old.

He was working with refugees and migrants from his community in India, and when we met, instantly connected.

And he was like: "I want to go back to my home village.

I want to go back to my region and give back to kids like me."

First, we listened.

WOMAN (through translator): There is not enough food for everyone.

MAN (through translator): Ninety-five percent not food enough.

Ninety-five percent not food enough.

MAGGIE DOYNE: We made the decision to move away from this scratch-the-surface Band-Aid approach into holistic community-driven development.

There was this little strip of land for sale for $5,000, and I had been a babysitter in New Jersey, and I had my parents wire it to me, and that became Kopila Valley Children's Home.

Today, it's been home to over 90 kids.

In 2010, we opened our dream school for the region's most vulnerable children.

It is all about joy and nature and knowledge, and we tried to create a school that you would want your children to go to.

We ended up building a women's center and a food and farming group, and everything kind of started with one really small idea, but then built on and organically kind of changed and started to grow.

So, Jeremy was a filmmaker from Canada, and we ended up instantly connecting, and we fell in love.

And here he is.

Here's Jeremy.

Hey.

JEREMY POWER REGIMBAL, Filmmaker: Hey.

JEREMY POWER REGIMBAL: My name is Jeremy.

I'm the love interest in the story.

JEREMY POWER REGIMBAL: Over the past nine years, I have been capturing our journey and love story together.

And the film is called "Between the Mountain and the Sky."

I think it's about finding hope in the dark, even when the world seems like it's all against you.

MAGGIE DOYNE: Like, if you count the spots on their back, you know how old they are.

JEREMY POWER REGIMBAL: And just the idea of, what does it mean to be a family?

MAGGIE DOYNE: Our decision to have biological children happened really early, and all of a sudden, Ruby was there.

And we were definitely worried about like, what is it going to mean to bring a biological child into the family, and will there be jealousy or strange feelings?

But, again, like everything else, Ruby did fit perfectly.

JEREMY POWER REGIMBAL: We were just dropping Nisha, the first child that ever came to the house.

She was about to go on a gap year of her own.

Ruby's being buckled into the car seat, and just like this tiny baby that needs everything, and there's another child that's going off into the world and leaving us.

I was like, well, only another 53 kids to go.

MAGGIE DOYNE: The first cohort of children and graduates are out in the world.

They have gotten scholarships to some of the most prestigious colleges and universities, and they're bringing so much change into the world.

It's incredible.

My name is Maggie Doyne.

JEREMY POWER REGIMBAL: My name is Jeremy Power Regimbal.

MAGGIE DOYNE: And this is our Brief But Spectacular take on family.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You can find more Brief But Spectacular videos at PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.

Be sure to watch "Washington Week With The Atlantic" tonight on PBS.

Jeffrey Goldberg and his panel discuss why President Trump's would-be critics fear standing up to him.

And on "PBS News Weekend": As the popularity of synthetic hair braids soars, a new study finds carcinogens in some of the most popular brands.

That is the "News Hour" for tonight.

I'm William Brangham.

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

Have a great weekend.