August 3, 2024 - PBS News Weekend full episode

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Tonight on PBS News Weekend, a new report dissects U.S. Secret Service actions and missteps during the capital attack on January 6.

Following Donald Trump's attacks on Kamala Harris's race, a look at black identity and the history of race and politics.

And as demand for copper and lithium grows the increase in mining is posing new threats to Native communities here and around the world.

MAN: These kinds of places shouldn't be lost because of its loss is lost forever and it will never come back.

(BREAK) LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Good evening.

I'm Laura Barron-Lopez.

John Yang is away.

Concerns of a wider conflict in the Middle East are escalating.

Today, Iran said in the statement that it will exact severe revenge at the appropriate time.

This after an attack in its capital killed the visiting Hamas leader.

Iran blames Israel and the US.

The veiled threats are prompting the Pentagon to send additional Navy destroyers to the Middle East.

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli Defense Forces said it killed another Hamas leader today.

The IDF had a car that it says held the leader and four other Palestinian militants on their way to carry out an attack.

The Defense Department revoked a controversial plea deal that took the death penalty off the table for the accused mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

In a memo, defense secretary Lloyd Austin said responsibility for the decision should be left with him, not the official appointed to oversee the cases.

Prosecutors initially struck deals with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his accused accomplices over concerned some evidence gathered through torture would not be admissible in court.

The victims of the devastating wildfires on Maui could soon get helped to rebuild.

Hawaii's governor announced a settlement Friday worth more than $4 billion.

It would pay out the families of the more than 100 people killed and the thousands displaced last August.

The massive fire remains under investigation nearly one year later.

The settlement needs to be finalized in court before the victims may receive payment.

Olympian Simone Biles is living up to her nickname is one of the greatest of all time.

The gymnasts earned her seven gold medal and 10th overall in Paris today during the women's vault final.

Later in the day, Team USA picked up another gold in the pool.

Swimmer Katie Ledecky race past the competition for the women's 800 meter freestyle.

This is her ninth gold in four Olympic Games.

Still to come on PBS News Weekend, the history of racial identity in American politics, and the impact of mining on indigenous communities in the U.S. and around the world.

(BREAK) LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The Secret Service is in the hot seat again, this time over its actions before and on January 6, a new report from the Homeland Security inspector general lays out several things the agency could have done better from detecting a viable pipe bomb within 20 feet of then Vice President Elect Kamala Harris to reporting signs of potential violence, like rally goers wearing ballistic helmets, body armor and other military grade equipment.

Joining us is Washington Post's investigative reporter Carol Leonnig.

Carol, thank you so much for your time.

This report, Secret Service officials never testified before the House committee investigating January 6.

And now this report seems to leave more questions than it does answers.

What are your main takeaways from it?

CAROL LEONNIG, Washington Post investigative reporter: You know, we knew some time ago that there had been a pipe bomb laid outside of both the RNC special offices on Capitol Hill and the DNC minutes before Kamala Harris was going to be coming out and was in that building.

She was spirited out of the building.

It was known at the time, but this sort of concretizes this makes it official.

It's no longer just reporters, learning it from their sources, but it's actually the government affirming this.

The pipe bomb investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office in DC has been one of the most labor intensive investigations in recent memory and most labor intensive for one that did not reach an answer.

The FBI has still not discovered who were the people or persons who laid this this potential explosive that could have gone off in both locations in the minutes before the Capitol was actually reached and its security line was pressed through by protesters and supporters of Donald Trump's that day after they stormed away from his rally and towards the capitol as he urged them to do.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And Carol, I want to ask you because you have a new exclusive out about a secret investigation into whether Donald Trump received cash from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi alleged.

And allegedly, if you could walk us through exactly how did $10 million possibly get from the Government of Egypt to then President-Elect Donald Trump?

CAROL LEONNIG: What happened and what was jaw dropping for U.S. government investigators, federal prosecutors, FBI agents, was the CIA in early 2017 alerted the Department of Justice, that they had credible intelligence from an informant and corroborated by additional intelligence gathering, that el-Sisi had plans in late 2016, to basically inject or illegally give $10 million to Donald Trump's reelection efforts that essentially he wanted to help Donald Trump get elected and he was going to do this with $10 million under the table.

Investigators looked and looked and looked to figure out if this intelligence was true, could they figure out was this money ever spirited to Donald Trump?

Did he in their words, accept a bribe?

But the problem was, although they found a debate, Tyro bank had made a bizarre withdrawal of cash, exactly matching the intelligence $10 million pulled out of essentially Egyptian CIA's account, just as the intelligence suggested they found this withdrawal of cash stuffed into duffel bags, five days before Donald Trump became president.

But the problem for investigators in the United States was they wanted to get Donald Trump's records, his bank records to determine did that money from Cairo that was so suspicious $10 million in U.S. bills, did it land in Donald Trump's accounts?

And U.S. attorney and basically said no, I'm not going to let you subpoena those records.

You don't have enough evidence to do that.

And Bill Barr, the attorney general at the time, was very suspicious of this request to subpoena for records and express doubts about whether or not this case was justified.

In the end, the prosecutors and the FBI agents threw up their hands.

They said they couldn't do this investigation without getting that information.

And they were despondent because they felt they had a lot of evidence suggesting this could be true.

They had to find out if it was and they were never allowed to do that.

LAUREN BARRON-LOPEZ: It's pretty stunning, Carol.

I mean, Egypt has been in the news a lot lately, namely because Democratic Senator Bob Menendez was convicted just last month of acting as a foreign agent for Egypt.

Is there a possible pattern here of Egypt's efforts in trying to influence U.S. politicians?

CAROL LEONNIG: The key linchpin in all of this, Laura, is again, Egypt's general intelligence agency, essentially, el-Sisi CIA.

This is an important spy network that Sisi has relied upon to pressure and push for his agenda abroad, especially in the United States.

What Menendez is bribery conviction and trial showed was the general intelligence services top officials were reaching out and making friends with Menendez and trying to steer him to push specific things that were important to Sisi on the world stage.

They went so far as Menendez actually giving them some important information that was pretty sensitive about employees of our government who are in Egypt, which was pretty sensitive information.

And it went so far that he took a lot of money from people who are operating at Egypt's bidding, and he was accused of being a foreign agent of that country.

The general intelligence service, once again, Sisi's CIA was the entity that the U.S. Intelligence said would be used to spirit this money for Donald Trump.

And the general intelligence service account is where that bizarre $10 million cash withdrawal came from.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Carol Leonnig of The Washington Post, thank you for your time.

CAROL LEONNIG: Thank you, Laura.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Earlier this week, speaking to a gathering of Black Journalists, former President Donald Trump questioned vice president Kamala Harris's racial identity.

DONALD TRUMP, Former U.S. President: And now she wants to be known as black.

So I don't know is she Indian or is she black?

WOMAN: She is always identified as a black woman and she went to a historically black college.

TRUMP: But you know what?

I respect either one.

I respect either one, but she obviously doesn't, because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went -- she became a black person.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: It's not the first time Mr. Trump and other Republicans have accused a politician of color of not knowing their own race or ethnicity.

Trump's comments on Wednesday echoed his lies about Harris in 2020 and Barack Obama during his presidency, that they were not natural born American citizens.

Peniel Joseph is the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the University of Texas at Austin.

He's also author of "The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the 21st Century."

I want to first note that back in 2020, Donald Trump's campaign spokesperson said that Kamala Harris is a black woman, and pointed to donations that Trump had made to her earlier campaigns is evidence that he is not racist.

But again, these are not the first instances of Trump questioning Harris's identity and her race.

What is behind this?

PENIEL JOSEPH, The University of Texas at Austin: I think this is a long standing tradition of questioning the citizenship, the dignity, the authenticity, of black political figures.

When we think about Kamala Harris, in this context, what Trump is doing is really talking to his own base.

He's talking to white voters who are aggrieved by this idea, which is false, that they are being replaced by people of color, sometimes they feel they're being replaced by Jews.

So there is this racist, antisemitic strain that he is tapping into by saying she doesn't know whether she wants to be South Asian, she doesn't know whether she wants to be black.

He's signaling to his followers, that this is the coming wave that I'm here to protect you again.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: As you noted, Donald Trump isn't the only white politician to question the identity of people of color, or try to define who is or isn't really black.

But how far does this go back?

Where did it start?

What's the history of it?

PENIEL JOSEPH: Well, the history of questioning people's racial identity goes back to Antebellum America where, in certain context, African Americans who are mixed race tried to get their rights legally acknowledged by courts.

And in this country, we really have a one drop rule where whether your mother or father was white, you were legally defined as black as a species of property, who could not be willed any estates who couldn't be an air of a white person who couldn't run for public office who couldn't sit in juries.

Now, when we fast forward to the 20th and the 21st century, as we know, there's a whole bunch of African Americans of mixed race heritage, but they're still identified as black in this country.

Kamala Harris went to Howard University, Historically Black College.

She's at aka Alpha Kappa Alpha, which is part of the Divine Nine, historically, African American sorority and fraternities.

She's lived her life as a black woman.

In this context, the move to undermine the authentic experience of black people plays out in different contexts, both culturally, politically, economically.

In this context, it's the denial that a black woman could be President of the United States, because in certain ways that racial and gender barrier are one of the last symbolic barriers that we have to break.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: I wanted to ask you about a Pew survey that dates back to 2022, where it found that race is very much a part of the identity for black Americans and how they connect to others.

It found that 76 percent of black Americans say being black is extremely or very important to how they think about themselves.

So what happens to black Americans when someone who is in a leading position like Donald Trump just openly questions who is or isn't black?

PENIEL JOSEPH: Well, I think it makes black Americans think about the solidarity and the unity of their shared history, right.

And so in certain ways, Trump and these allegations against Kamala Harris, just like the allegations against Barack Obama, that he wasn't an American citizen, are a distraction.

And the late great Nobel Prize winning writer Toni Morrison always reminds us that racism is a distraction, it distracts us from the work that we need to do.

So I think right now, all the reaction that we're seeing is that the black community is really solidly behind the Vice President, but also other groups are as well.

So, I think it's having the opposite effect.

But again, I don't think it's intended to be directed to black people.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: When I covered the 2019 Democratic primary, even Democratic primary voters said to me that they weren't sure if the country was ready for a woman president or was ready for a woman of color to be president.

Do you think that it's different now?

PENIEL JOSEPH: Well, yes, I mean, I think the country is always battling between two stories, it's telling itself.

One story is a reconstructionist story that celebrates multiracial multigender democracy.

The other is a redemption story that really is about fear, anxiety, a racial caste system that subordinates black people, women, people of color, Jews, people who are otherwise in our society.

And I think with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, that really opened up this third Reconstruction period in the United States, where we've been pushing for an embrace of multiracial democracy, yet those redemption is forces are still there, as we've seen, with the Vice President's run to be the first black woman and South Asian woman president.

It brings us closer to that idea of an aspirational America where we embrace multiracial democracy, and we find strength in the difference in the diversity within our country.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Professor Peniel Joseph of the University of Texas at Austin.

Thank you for your time.

PENIEL JOSEPH: Thank you.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: From computers to car batteries, minerals extracted from the earth helped power many of our devices.

But what about communities whose land is at the center of acquiring these minerals?

Just this week, Arizona governor Katie Hobbs halted plans to transport uranium through Navajo Nation after the Tribe raised concerns about how it could affect the reservation.

Ali Rogin reports on the fight between companies seeking minerals from these lands, and the indigenous tribes fighting to preserve them.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): For Wendsler Nosie and fellow members of the San Carlos and other local Apache tribes, the Oak Flat campground outside Phoenix is the site of sacred ceremonies, and the resting place for many ancestors.

WENDSLER NOSIE SR., Member, San Carlos Apaches: This is the home of our DETs where the DET's live.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): But it's also home to billions of pounds of copper, making it valuable to mining companies.

Earlier this year, a federal court ruled in favor of developers looking to extract copper from deep underground.

WENDSLER NOSIE SR.: They have to think this through because there's not going to be copper here forever.

And once it's all gone, then the whole stuff is contaminated forever.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): Mineral mining has become a booming industry across the country and the world.

As the demand for electric vehicles and the batteries that power them rises, so does the need to ramp up the supply of the minerals needed to make them.

In recent years demand for nickel, lithium, cobalt and Copper has grown exponentially.

Between 2021 and 2023, the price for one ton of lithium and U.S. markets nearly tripled, reaching a high of $46,000 per ton last year.

RICK TALLMAN, Payne Institute for Public Policy: Everything we see touch and feel in our modern life comes from minerals.

And that's everything from the computers we're talking on to the chairs we're sitting in, even everything down to our smartphones comes from minerals.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): Rick Tallman is a senior adviser to the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines.

RICK TALLMAN: Critical minerals necessary for the energy transition.

The ones that people talk about the most that they're most focused on, are lithium and graphite and the demand is soaring, primarily because of electric vehicle demand.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): Tallman says more than 300 new lithium mines worldwide are necessary to keep pace with the demand for electric vehicles.

The Biden administration has prioritized a transition to renewable energy setting a goal for half of all new cars to be electric by 2030.

But some advocates say this green future is coming at the expense of indigenous communities whose historic land surrounded many of the reservoirs where these rare minerals are formed.

GALINA ANGAROVA, Executive Director, SIRGE Coalition: In many parts of the world, extractive companies are plowing ahead with mining projects without consulting with those communities.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): Galina Angarova is the Executive Director of the SIRGE Coalition, an organization that advocates for indigenous peoples environmental rights.

She says mineral mining can risk endangering these communities.

GALINA ANGAROVA: It introduces pollution, surge of various diseases, respiratory issues, cardiovascular problems, cancer, more.

It also leaves behind profound social impacts, including drug abuse, alcoholism, missing and murdered indigenous women.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): In fact, one study found a connection between the 2006 oil boom in the Bakken region of Montana and North Dakota, and attacks against Native Americans there.

The rate of violent victimization, which includes rape, assault and robbery increased 23 percent among Native people in the six years after the boom started.

But in the surrounding counties that didn't produce oil, such violence decreased by 11 percent.

Today, U.S. mining is regulated by a 19th century law written when westward expansion encouraged by the federal government was displacing indigenous people.

But in 2011, the U.S. adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which requires consent before starting a project on native lands.

But some legal experts say it doesn't go far enough.

LEONARDO CRIPPA, Senior Attorney, Indian Law Resource Center: There is a need to reassess the shortcomings of existing procedures so that they are sort of updated in light of current international law standards.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): Leonardo Crippa is a senior attorney at the Indian Law Resource Center.

LEONARDO CRIPPA: We are starting to see regressive legislative measures for the purpose of undermining rights are already protected by federal or provincial law for the purpose of paving the way and promoting the mining activities.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): It's a trend Crippa says is happening around the globe.

In the so called lithium triangle spanning Argentina, Chile and Bolivia, Indigenous communities sit on around 60 percent of the world's lithium supply.

Last year, Chilean President Gabriel Boric announced his plan to take control of the lithium supply by partnering with mining companies.

GABRIEL BORIC, President, Chile (through translator): Our challenges to make sure our country transforms into the number one producer of lithium in the world, increasing wealth, development and distributing it justly.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): But some Native leaders are skeptical about his approach.

CRISTIAN ESPINDOLA, Toconao Community Leader (through translator): What Boric proposes is irresponsible, because he isn't asking the indigenous people and this tone from the Chilean state to the indigenous people is constant.

It's not happening only now.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): Crippa who represents tribes in the lithium triangle says mining companies employ tactics to bypass land use laws and access the white gold below.

Companies are required to perform tests to determine potential environmental harm.

But Crippa says the reports are rarely translated into the tribes' native languages.

LEONARDO CRIPPA: They are not able to realize what is going on they are not informed there.

They have no means to access the information.

And as a result, this permit is granted to the company.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): Some indigenous communities are fighting back.

Last summer, hundreds of tribal members took to the streets in Buenos Aires, Argentina to protest mining and their territories.

MAN (through translator): It is looting.

It is plundering and irreversible damage to the Mother Earth.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): While some argue mineral mining will help address the climate crisis by moving away from fossil fuels.

Rick Tallman says it also creates an ethical dilemma with major consequences.

RICK TALLMAN: Across the world Indigenous people are going to be the most impacted by sourcing these critical minerals that all of us need for a successful energy transition.

But if we don't mind those minerals, they'll also be the most impacted by climate change if we fail.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): But Tallman believes there are more sustainable alternatives.

He says the U.S. could avoid producing new mines by making use of the thousands of abandoned uranium mines across Indian country where he says energy resources already exist.

But he says none of that work can be done without buy in from indigenous communities.

RICK TALLAMN: There is no possible pathway to a successful energy transition without the support and partnership and hopefully leadership from tribal communities and tribal nations.

ALI ROGIN: For Galina Angarova that collaboration is not negotiable.

GALINA ANGAROVA: Indigenous peoples are not necessarily opposed to the green transition or development in general.

Indigenous peoples are opposed to violating rights, destroying their way of life and harming the priceless landscapes that define who we are as peoples.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): Back in Arizona, Wendsler Nosie Sr. continues to traditions of his ancestors while he's still able.

WENDSLER NOSIE SR.: These kinds of places shouldn't be lost, because if it's lost, is lost forever and it will never come back.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): For future generations of local Apache tribes, that fear could soon become a reality.

For PBS News Weekend, I'm Ali Rogin.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And that's our program for tonight.

I'm Laura Barron Lopez.

For all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us.

See you tomorrow.

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