AMNA NAWAZ: Good evening.

I'm Amna Nawaz.

Geoff Bennett is away.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: Fourth of July celebrations are marred by mass shootings in multiple cities across the U.S. We examine how the founding fathers and the American Revolution have become a part of the current political divide.

And a new reporting project reveals more than 100 U.S. leaders lawmakers, presidents, governors, and justices have ancestors who enslaved people.

TOM LASSETER, Editor, Reuters: I think America right now, both in terms of legislation, debate, and just public sort of conversation, is grappling with a number of issues that touch on the legacy of slavery in America.

(BREAK) AMNA NAWAZ: Welcome to the "NewsHour."

This Fourth of July has brought all of the annual festivities and fireworks.

But it's all happening in the shadow of more mass shootings, including two last night.

Today, President Biden branded the attacks tragic and senseless and renewed his plea for new gun laws.

As the country marks this Independence Day, more American communities are mourning victims of gun violence.

Last night, a heavily armed gunman wearing a bulletproof vest opened fire in a Philadelphia neighborhood, killing five people.

TIM EADS, Witness: There was a shooter right there behind my red car shooting a pistol into the street.

Within seconds, there were like 50 cops on this corner.

AMNA NAWAZ: The shooting spanned several blocks.

It ended when police caught up to the suspected gunman in an alleyway.

DANIELLE OUTLAW, Philadelphia Police Commissioner: What was supposed to be a beautiful summer evening, this armed and armored individual wreaked havoc, firing with a rifle at their victims, seemingly at random.

AMNA NAWAZ: Police found multiple victims in the street, and one who was chased into his home and shot to death.

Two additional victims, a 2-year-old and a 13-year-old, remain hospitalized in stable condition.

More than 1,000 miles away, in Fort Worth, Texas, an Independence Day festival ended in terror last night when a shooter opened fire in a crowd of hundreds and chaos erupted.

CAPT.

SHAWN MURRAY, Fort Worth Police Department: A lot of vehicle traffic, a lot of foot traffic.

As you can tell, still fireworks were being shot off, lots of people just trying to flee the area.

AMNA NAWAZ: Three people were killed and eight others wounded.

The gunman remains at large.

Meanwhile, in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, today... NANCY ROTERING, Mayor of Highland Park, Illinois: Last summer's shooting was the bloodiest day we have ever experienced in Highland Park.

AMNA NAWAZ: ... a community gathered to remember the seven people killed in a July Fourth parade mass shooting last year.

NANCY ROTERING: We deeply mourn those who were taken from us, and we will forever honor and be true to their memories.

It is impossible to make sense of the chaos as we look backwards, but what we can do is continue to support each other.

AMNA NAWAZ: The city's parade celebration was canceled this year.

Instead, residents walked the route, moving forward together one year later.

In the day's other headlines: Extreme heat baked the West and south again, as millions of Americans spent the holiday outdoors.

In Phoenix and other cities, people have flocked to public splash parks this week in temperatures topping 110 degrees, with more to come this week.

Heat waves are also scorching China and North Africa.

And scientists with the U.S. National Weather Service report that, yesterday, July 3, was the hottest day on record worldwide.

Despite the heat, presidential candidates turned out for July 4 events around the country.

Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis joined parade-goers in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.

Former Vice President Mike Pence walked alongside locals at a parade in Urbandale, Iowa.

And, in Washington, President Biden hosted a late-afternoon White House barbecue for active-duty military families.

In Israel, a Palestinian man drove his car into a Tel Aviv bus stop today and stabbed people in the crowd, wounding eight.

Police arrived shortly afterward.

They said an armed civilian shot and killed the attacker.

The extremist group Hamas claimed responsibility.

And in the occupied West Bank, smoke rose over Jenin as Israeli troops began withdrawing after a two-day hunt for militants.

The Israel Defense Forces said a soldier was shot and killed this evening in the ongoing conflict.

Palestinians say 10 Palestinians have been killed there in recent days.

Russian President Vladimir Putin worked today to calm concerns about his government's stability.

It came at an Asian security summit, his first such gathering since a short-lived revolt.

Putin spoke via video link to a group including China, India, and Pakistan, and sent a message of Russian solidarity.

VLADIMIR PUTIN, Russian President (through translator): The Russian people are united as never before.

Russian political circles and the whole of society clearly demonstrated their sense of responsibility for the fate of the fatherland when they responded as a united front against the attempted armed mutiny.

AMNA NAWAZ: Putin's comments came as Russian officials said they foiled a Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow.

A prominent Russian journalist, Elena Milashina, was brutally beaten today in Chechnya.

It happened in Grozny, capital of the Southern Russian region.

Masked men hauled Milashina out of a car and clubbed her.

Later, video showed the journalist in a hospital with her head shaved for treatment.

Green antiseptic covered her face, and she was bruised.

Milashina has gained acclaim for exposing human rights abuses.

Hong Kong's government is warning that eight pro-democracy activists, now living abroad will be pursued for the rest of their lives.

It's the latest sign of China's willingness to hunt dissidents overseas.

The eight were charged Monday with national security offenses.

But, in London today, one called the accusations a badge of honor.

FINN LAU (Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Activist): They want to use this as a way to discourage other Hong Kongers, Hong Kong political dissidents, from continuing advocating for democracy in Hong Kong.

So this is something that I am afraid of, but I hope that, well, many of us, the eight of us could serve as a role model to keep on fighting.

AMNA NAWAZ: The other dissidents now live in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

China has announced limits on exports of gallium and germanium, two metals widely used in computer chips and solar panels.

It follows U.S. curbs on selling advanced chips and other high-tech goods to Beijing.

China is the world's largest producer of the metals, and the U.S. gets half of its supply from there.

And the Secret Service is investigating how cocaine powder got into the White House.

News accounts today said agents found the powder Sunday evening in part of the West Wing that's open to tour groups.

The president was at Camp David at the time.

The discovery caused a brief evacuation to make sure the powder was not explosive.

Still to come on the "NewsHour," we delve into a Russian mercenary group's activity across Africa; how prescription drug shortages are increasingly disrupting patient care; a new podcast examines the sugar industry's mistreatment of workers; a book chronicling the espionage battle between Russia and the West offers modern lessons; plus much more.

The American Revolution and the founding founders, two parts of U.S. history celebrated on July Fourth.

In recent years, they have also become political and ideological tools, including at times of some extremist groups on the right.

Lisa Desjardins has more.

LISA DESJARDINS: 1776 is a symbol of freedom, reason, and the founding of this country.

But two centuries later, that date, 1776, was a rallying cry for rioters disrupting a national election at the Capitol.

PROTESTERS: 1776!

1776!

RIOTERS: 1776!

1776!

RIOTERS: 1776!

LISA DESJARDINS: It is an example of how the politics and rhetoric around the founding has become inflamed and can eclipse the actual history involved.

Joining me to discuss are Amy Cooter, the research director at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute, and Jim Grossman, historian and executive director of the American Historical Association.

Amy, I want to start with you.

July Fourth celebrates our history of men who were radical in their time in the founding, but I want to talk about the group you study now, those were in militias, those who are extremists.

How do they use 1776 for their own purposes?

AMY COOTER, Senior Research Fellow, Middlebury Institute: For them, 1776 has been important for longer than important for much longer than what we just saw with January 6.

For them, it is kind of their reason to be in the militia, their reason to be as a man in society.

They really see themselves as acting in the lineage of the founding fathers and think that true patriots have this obligation to honor them and honor that date.

LISA DESJARDINS: Jim, I want to talk also more broadly about the political bloodstream, because talking about the founding fathers is political boilerplate, but especially in recent times for conservatives.

And I want to play this video.

This is South Carolina, Tim Scott, presidential candidate and Republican, his July Fourth message out this year.

SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC), Presidential Candidate: Our founding fathers were geniuses who should be celebrated, not canceled.

LISA DESJARDINS: Obviously, there was genius involved in the founding of America.

But I wonder how you see the positives and negatives versus the rhetoric which is sort of amped up about the founding fathers.

JIM GROSSMAN, Executive Director, American Historical Association: The problem here is an inclination among many people to see things as black and white, to see things as just, it's either this or it's that.

And people talk about teaching the glory and the glory, for example, of American history.

Senator Scott says they should be celebrated and not canceled.

They shouldn't be understood.

And that doesn't mean celebrated.

It doesn't mean canceled.

Their ideas were brilliant.

There is no question that the founding documents were, in fact, revolutionary.

They contained insights into liberty, into freedom.

But these men also -- they were men.

There weren't any women present.

These men also were mostly men who owned, bought and sold other human beings.

And they lived and had grown up in a world where it was OK to own, buy, and sell other human beings.

And to understand what they wrote and to understand them, we have to understand that.

This is not a theory.

This is a fact.

LISA DESJARDINS: Amy, one thing we're talking about here is patriotism that could morph into nationalism.

Can you talk about those two ideas and what happens there?

AMY COOTER: Right.

So, social scientists distinguish between patriotism as being a love for one's country, versus nationalism, which basically is this negative comparison to everywhere else.

It's not just, I love my country, but it's better than everywhere else.

Everywhere else is bad, in a sense.

And patriotism in the militia world and beyond kind of appeals to our founding and paints us as this proverbial city on a hill, without looking, as Jim said, at some of the negatives that go along with the positives.

LISA DESJARDINS: Jim, I'm wondering, why do you think this is bubbling up now, this sort of particular -- and, of course, it's not unique in American history to be having this divide.

But why are we seeing this sort of form of it now?

What in the last 50 years could have led to this?

JIM GROSSMAN: We're seeing this now because - - and 50 -- 60 years is about right -- because, during the 1960s, things changed in ways that upset many Americans.

Between the 1965 immigration changes, changes in immigration law, feminism of the 1960s, and the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act and civil rights activism, for many Americans,this is not the country that they thought it was or that it should be,because women are not acting the way their wives and daughters and mothers acted a generation before the 1960s, African Americans asserting rights that, quite frankly, were not granted to them before the 19 -- before the 1950s and '60s, and the opening of the doors to millions of immigrants since 1965.

This is not the country that we were.

So I think it goes back to the '60s as to what has changed.

LISA DESJARDINS: Amy, I want to -- I saw you nodding during some of that How do race and identity, in particular, factor in with what you're seeing with militia groups and extremists?

AMY COOTER: With most militia groups I have studied, they are not overtly racist at the group level, in the sense of being white supremacists, being the same as neo-Nazis.

That's just not what we see with this particular movement.

But just like many other white Americans who aren't part of militias, they have received a partial view of history through their educational process.

They have not learned about slavery.

They have not learned about Native American genocide, and they have not learned why those things still impact people very differently today.

And so when we have conversations about Critical Race Theory or about transgender rights, it's really easy for those things to become kind of buzzwords that are dismissed without much in-depth investigation into what they really mean and some of the concepts behind them.

It's all too easy to use that as sort of an excuse to fight back against what they see as too rapid social progress, but package it in a way that at least comes across as appealing to a broader swathe of America.

LISA DESJARDINS: Jim, as we're wrapping up, I want to focus on a survey that your group did looking at how Americans learn history.

They told you that they see history as facts, what, where, when, versus historians, who think of it as a conversation, looking at primary documents, and that Americans mostly get their history from sources of entertainment.

What does that tell you about how we understand our history?

JIM GROSSMAN: I think it tells you that historians have some work to do, that we have to do a much better job of connecting with the American people.

And, in fact, this is one reason why the American Historical Association has recently issued guidelines suggesting to colleges and universities that more professional credit go to historians who are writing and speaking to the general public, rather than just to one another.

So I do think that those surveys do suggest that we, as historians, have a lot of work to do.

We do have to help Americans understand that facts are not very useful unless we know how to ask the right questions about them.

LISA DESJARDINS: Well, I think this conversation was very useful.

So, Jim Grossman, Amy Cooter, thank you to you both for a complex conversation, and happy Fourth of July.

AMY COOTER: You too.

JIM GROSSMAN: Thank you.

AMNA NAWAZ: More than a week after the failed mutiny by Wagner mercenaries in Russia, there are lingering questions about the future of the paramilitary group.

Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has not been seen since agreeing to halt the rebellion and go to Belarus.

Last week, new satellite images showed what appeared to be newly built military bases in Belarus that could house Wagner mercenaries.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has imposed sanctions on gold companies suspected of funding the group's activities, including in Africa, where thousands of Wagner fighters have been deployed since 2017.

Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wagner troops could remain in the continent.

SERGEY LAVROV, Russian Foreign Minister (through translator): The fate of the agreements between those African countries and the Wagner private military company is up to the leadership of those countries to decide.

How much are they interested in to continue such cooperation to ensure the security of the authorities?

AMNA NAWAZ: For more on the group's activities, we're joined by Kimberly Marten a professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University, and an expert on the Wagner Group.

Kim Marten, welcome to the "NewsHour."

Let's begin with the latest from Prigozhin.

We haven't seen him since that attempted mutiny.

But we have heard from him.

In a Telegram post, he thanked those who supported him.

He said the mutiny was aimed at -- quote -- "fighting traitors and mobilizing our society."

What do you make of that statement?

KIMBERLY MARTEN, Barnard College and Columbia University: Well, the tape itself was very odd.

And, of course, we don't know when it was actually posted.

But it was short.

And it was very different from other things that he posted, because there was no combativeness in it, as we're used to hearing from him, no swear words.

It was very short and sweet and cooperative.

And so it was sort of -- there wasn't much to it, but it sounded very atypical for Prigozhin.

AMNA NAWAZ: What do you make of how Putin has responded to that attempted mutiny, and also what it says about his leadership and his concerns at this stage in the war in Ukraine?

KIMBERLY MARTEN: Well, now it's really out of the headlines in Russia itself.

And so things are going on as if it never happened.

But I think, at the time, it made Putin look very weak, because he was slow to respond and because the Wagner march to Moscow was allowed to make as much headway as it was.

He seemed unprepared.

And he seemed frightened at first.

I think what we will see going forward is that Putin's leadership has been weakened, and there may be other people who try to take advantage of that, not by launching military coups, but by attempting to get around what Putin wants and weakening his authority in various ways.

AMNA NAWAZ: So what about these Wagner troops in Africa?

They have been there for a number of years.

Where are they and what exactly are they doing?

KIMBERLY MARTEN: Well, if you listen to some media reports, you would think that they were everywhere in Africa.

But, in fact, there are only four countries where they have any substantial presence.

Their most successful presence is in the Central African Republic, where they have about 1,000 troops, more or less.

And they have essentially taken over security duties in the country, because President Touadera has allowed them to do that.

So, the evidence indicates that they are actually commanding forces that are in the outlying areas of the Central African Republic, which has been helpful to try to Touadera, because they put down rebel movements.

The other second largest -- well, large presence is in Mali.

And, there, it's less clear that they're going to be successful.

They're obviously trying something very similar, where they are supporting the current military junta in its control over the country.

But Mali is facing two separate Islamist insurgencies.

There's a lot of rebel activity.

And while Wagner would like to get access to raw material contracts there and more gold, it's not clear that they will be successful, because the gold in Mali is mostly controlled by large Western firms that are quite sophisticated.

And the other two areas in Africa that we know Wagner is currently located, there are probably a few dozen forces in Sudan, where they don't seem to be engaged in combat in the current civil war.

But, again, they are engaged in the gold trade.

And then the fourth place they are is in Libya, in Eastern Libya, working with the warlord there, Khalifa Haftar, and ensuring, with their air defense systems, that he can stay in place, and then also guarding oil and gas resources that Russia might find useful in the future.

AMNA NAWAZ: Kim, knowing the relationship between this Wagner paramilitary force and the official Russian defense forces and the military there, what does their presence in Africa say to you about Putin's larger foreign policy?

KIMBERLY MARTEN: Well, they have all been put there with the support of Russian state ministries of various kinds, and so they are acting on behalf of Russia's foreign policy interests.

They have never really been a completely private company.

That's been sort of a fig leaf put over what they're doing.

And what it means is that Putin is able to establish a relatively large presence in Africa for Russian security forces in particular, and then also in terms of getting gold and other potential precious natural resources, without having to spend a lot of money and without having to put the Russian uniformed military at risk for casualties, which makes it much easier to sell to the home audience, if you can just say it's a bunch of people who are private actors who are out making money.

And we have to remember that, up until 2014, Russia really didn't have much of a remaining presence in Africa.

It never left the continent entirely.

But its presence there has been relatively insignificant, in comparison to the West, China, Turkey, the UAE, and other actors.

And so it's a way for Putin to keep control in some areas there at relatively low expense and low risk.

AMNA NAWAZ: You mentioned the gold companies.

I have to ask, is this a military and security operation that Prigozhin is running an Africa or a business one?

KIMBERLY MARTEN: It's both, and they are really melded together.

And remember that Prigozhin himself has no combat experience, and not really any business experience.

So, he probably got assigned to do this as a middleman, as a contractor because of his relationship to Putin that goes back to the early 1990s in St. Petersburg.

And so, as far as we know, the contracts that are in place in places like the Central African Republic and Mali and Sudan and, to a lesser extent, in Libya have forces that are associated with Wagner guarding the mines, and then personnel that are associated with Prigozhin's more commercial businesses engaged in the trade and the transport of those materials and perhaps in the processing of them as well.

AMNA NAWAZ: Fascinating look at a group I'm sure we will hear more about.

That is Kimberly Marten, professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University, joining us tonight.

Kim, thank you for your time.

KIMBERLY MARTEN: Thank you, Amna.

AMNA NAWAZ: The U.S. is in the midst of an ongoing prescription drug shortage, with more medications in short supply for longer stretches of time.

Laura Barron-Lopez has more on what's behind it all.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Amna, drug shortages in the U.S. are the highest they have been in the last nine years.

Based on the most recent data, drug shortages increased by approximately 30 percent between 2021 and 2022.

Medications currently in short supply include chemotherapy drugs, antibiotics, ADHD medication like Adderall, and other critical drug drugs used to treat a variety of conditions.

It's a reality making treatment decisions difficult for doctors and patients.

Erin Fox is tracking the shortages.

She's a national expert on drug shortages at the University of Utah.

Erin, thank you so much for joining us.

Can you help us understand what is happening here, how severe the current drug shortages are, and how many drugs are actually in short supply?

ERIN FOX, University of Utah: So, I think, when people think of a shortage, you think of something that is completely, 100 percent out.

And that's not the case with the drug shortages that we have right now.

You can usually get some, but it's not enough.

And so that means that some patients are getting rationed care, some patients are able to access medicines and others aren't.

And so that's a really frustrating situation right now.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Out of the drugs that are in short supply, which ones are having the most detrimental impact on patients?

ERIN FOX: I think the most frustrating and the most detrimental to patient care are the chemotherapy shortages.

We just don't have alternatives for these agents.

And it's one thing to have cancer and be struggling with that.

But then to add on the fear that your treatment will not be available, or you may get a lower dose, or your treatment just may be delayed in some way, that's really frustrating.

So I think those are probably the most impactful we have right now.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And what is actually causing these shortages?

Is it manufacturing?

Is it competition with China, labor shortages?

What exactly is creating this situation?

ERIN FOX: That's a good question.

In a lot of cases, we don't know the true root cause of many of these shortages.

Drug companies are allowed to keep that a secret.

But we do know from FDA's data that, most of the time, it's a manufacturing problem, a quality issue at the factory.

And that's exactly what's happening with the chemotherapy shortages.

There was a factory in India that had some really severe quality problems last December.

They had to close to fix those.

Unfortunately, the other companies can't make up the difference and really have an uninterrupted supply.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Transparency is something that some lawmakers in Congress are hoping to address.

They want to pass legislation specifically to fix that chemotherapy drug shortage that you're talking about, though it's unclear if there are actually enough votes currently to get that done.

One of the measures, in particular, would grant the FDA new authority to require drugmakers to alert them if there's demands in certain drugs amongst the population.

Would a measure like that actually fix this problem?

ERIN FOX: It probably wouldn't fix the chemotherapy shortage problem, because FDA knew that there was a manufacturing problem already.

But the demand shortages that we saw for things like children's pain relievers, the amoxicillin shortage, some common antibiotic shortages that we have seen over last winter, that really would help.

In those cases, we did have big spikes in demand.

FDA was not aware.

And so FDA couldn't use their usual toolkit that they have to try to prevent those shortages from happening without that extra awareness.

So I do think that would be helpful.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Beyond that, if you could wave a wand and transform this drug supply system that we have, what specifically needs to change to make sure that shortages like this don't happen again?

ERIN FOX: You know, right now, with many of these products, the only competition point between these generic products that are pretty low-cost and low-margin is price.

And so we have had a race to the bottom.

And, sometimes, that creates an incentive to cut corners on quality.

And so what we need are measures that would allow these companies to compete more on quality, their ability to supply, their ability to have redundancy in their supply chains.

Those things could allow them to perhaps charge a little bit of a higher price.

And then it's worth it for hospitals to pay a little bit extra if they know they're going to have an assured supply of a higher-quality product.

And so we just really need to get away from this pass/fail system that FDA has set up, where the only competition point is price.

And let's look a little bit further onto quality measures.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Erin, is there anything that the Biden administration could do through executive action, as we were just talking about, because of the fact that Congress appears not settled at all on legislation?

ERIN FOX: You know, I think back to the Obama administration and some of the executive actions they took.

They did require a notification rule.

At that time, there was no notification required for companies to tell the FDA when they were having a shortfall.

So, certainly, that increase-in-demand notification might work for an executive order.

But, really, the changes that we need to happen are coming from Congress, coming from perhaps CMS, and also some public-private partnerships as well.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: That's Erin Fox of the University of Utah.

Thank you so much for your time.

ERIN FOX: Thank you so much.

AMNA NAWAZ: Although America declared its independence on this day in 1776, it would take nearly 90 years for Black people enslaved in this country to obtain their freedom.

A new reporting project from Reuters found that some of the most powerful people in the country today are direct descendants of powerful slave-owning early Americans.

I recently spoke with Tom Lasseter, an editor who worked on the Reuters project.

While he was seeking responses from Republicans and Democrats alike about his team's findings, he too was reckoning with new details about his own family's ties to slavery.

Tom Lasseter, welcome to the "NewsHour."

Thanks for being here.

TOM LASSETER, Editor, Reuters: Thanks for having me.

AMNA NAWAZ: So you spent years and years overseas as a foreign correspondent.

When you came back to the U.S. in 2020, you decided you wanted to focus on the legacy of slavery in America.

Why?

What drew you to that?

TOM LASSETER: Well, we moved to Washington shortly after the killing of George Floyd.

And sitting there in a corporate apartment in D.C., watching the coverage of the protests which followed, watching also sort of the protest and debate about the removal of Confederate statues, Confederate monuments, as sort of an outsider to my own country sort of watching these things, it just -- it occurred to me America was having a moment of reckoning, and that that part of that, at least, was the question of whether we have sort of fully explored the legacy of slavery in America.

AMNA NAWAZ: You sought to look into the family histories of our political and institutional leaders.

There's a number of details in your full report, but some of the findings, I want to hit the highlights here, eye-opening.

Among the 536 members of the last sitting Congress, 100 had ancestors who enslaved people.

That includes 28 senators.

You're talking about both Republicans and Democrats, President Joe Biden, every living former U.S. president, except for former President Trump, whose ancestors came to the U.S. after slavery was abolished.

Did the results surprise you?

TOM LASSETER: Well, I would say, first of all, that was very much an at-least number.

Those were the cases in which we could reach a high degree of confidence that the family tree that we built for that sort of American political notable was from the very first rung being the member of Congress or a member of Supreme Court goes back to the ancestor that we identified as having been an enslaver, and then that that ancestor had actually enslaved someone.

So we -- there were a great many other cases where we thought we had probably linked it, but just couldn't reach that -- sort of that degree of confidence.

AMNA NAWAZ: You reached out to a number of members of Congress and these other leaders as well for responses.

Did everyone respond?

TOM LASSETER: The majority of them did not.

The majority of them did not respond with either a statement or an interview.

But we did.

We reached out to each of the 118 people that we have -- we have named in this report.

AMNA NAWAZ: I wanted to ask you about one response in particular.

This was from former Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama.

He said -- quote -- "Hopefully, everybody in America is smart enough to know that slavery is abhorrent.

So the question then becomes, if everybody already knows it's abhorrent, what more can you teach from that?"

What did you make of that response?

And was that similar to other responses you have got?

TOM LASSETER: Well, I spoke with former Representative Brooks on the phone a couple times.

And his response was sort of a -- I would say sort of a type of.

You -- certainly, some people responded that, of course, the institution of slavery is a sort of a stain upon American history, it was -- it was morally wrong.

Everyone agrees about that.

But it does not have anything to do with the present day.

It does not have anything to do with me, the person speaking.

And so why -- why look at it?

Why?

Why sort of ask these questions about it?

AMNA NAWAZ: You got a different response from the likes of someone like Senator Tammy Duckworth, for example.

How did she respond?

TOM LASSETER: Senator Duckworth, I met with in her Senate offices.

She said: Part of my ancestry -- this is from her father's side, which is from Virginia - - fought in the American Revolution.

And if I'm going to talk about that publicly, if I'm going to claim that part of my heritage and be proud of that heritage, then I also have to look squarely at the fact that some of my ancestors enslaved people.

In her case, it was two separate ancestors, which she had not known before.

AMNA NAWAZ: Tom, you uncovered your own family history as part of your reporting and discovered that your ancestors had also enslaved Black people.

What was that like to make that discovery?

TOM LASSETER: It started with a memory as a teenager walking across a farm my family used to own in Forsyth County, Georgia, and walking past a water well, and my grandfather just sort of gesturing at it in an offhand way and saying: "The slaves built that."

And I, sort of in a way that I think is typical for some white families in the South, sort of knew, but didn't know, had this memory, this piece of information, chose to do nothing with it for my adult life.

So I say that I did not realize I had ancestors who enslaved people.

But, also, I -- it was something that I could have explored and had sort of found out in any of those intervening years.

But, yes, I have at least five ancestors who enslaved people in three different counties in Georgia.

AMNA NAWAZ: As part of your work too, you met with a woman whose ancestors were enslaved by yours.

What was that meeting like?

What did you say to her?

What did she say back?

TOM LASSETER: Well, we met a couple times.

I wanted to sort of have something sort of to show, I guess.

And I had a packet of genealogical information tracing out her family tree, and then tracing out where her family tree intersected with my family.

And it named two of those enslaved people.

And I had been following those people forward.

And they were -- they were her ancestors.

AMNA NAWAZ: You know, when you began this, you mentioned your editors raised the question, by looking into our leaders' family histories, what can you learn about how they lead today?

What does their past, in other words mean, for America's future?

Do you feel like you could answer that question now?

TOM LASSETER: Well, I think America right now, both in terms of legislation, debate, and just public sort of conversation, is grappling with a number of issues that in one way or the other touch on the legacy of slavery in America.

I mean, most directly, there's reparations.

There's also, of course, a fair amount of debate about how this history should be taught.

We want to inform that debate with an establishment of a basic set of facts.

And from the beginning of this -- of this project, to me, the fact that I have grappled with both personally and more broadly is, slavery didn't just happen.

There were people who enslaved other people.

And, to me, the question was, well, who?

Who enslaved them?

What did it mean for those families?

What did it mean for the enslaved?

And what did it mean for the descendants of the enslaved?

And just to start out with, again, just an establishment of a basic set of facts.

AMNA NAWAZ: It's a stunning piece of work.

It's available to read online.

And the journalist is Tom Lasseter of Reuters.

Tom, thank you for being here and speaking with us about your work.

TOM LASSETER: Thank you for having me.

AMNA NAWAZ: Sugar is in many of the foods we eat every day, and that is not by accident.

The multibillion-dollar sugar industry is the subject of a new podcast from iHeartMedia and Imagine Entertainment.

Stephanie Sy has more.

STEPHANIE SY: The U.S. is the fifth largest sugar producer in the world, with more than 20 states supporting the industry.

The average American consumes more than 100 pounds of sugar in a year, according to the USDA, more than citizens of any other country.

And there is broad scientific consensus that too much sugar contributes to disease, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease and fatty liver disease.

Celeste Headlee is host of the podcast "Big Sugar."

And she joins me now to talk about the industry's political power and the impact that's had on workers and public health.

Celeste, thank you so much for joining the "NewsHour."

So, I understand the idea of your podcast came from previous reporting starting in the 1980s from Alec Wilkinson, who wrote the book "Big Sugar," and Marie Brenner, who in 2001 wrote an article in "Vanity Fair."

Why did you want to look at this issue again now?

CELESTE HEADLEE, Host, "Big Sugar": Well, because many of the issues that they were looking at, in terms of immigrant labor, visas, health care, the environment, they're still relevant today, and as well as the power that corporations and the people who are behind those corporations have over our politics.

So, especially as the farm bill is up, as it rarely is, it's up for reconsideration again -- it's only up for reconsideration every five years -- we felt it was time.

STEPHANIE SY: And, of course, the farm bill would include a package of subsidies, including a sugar program.

Let's get back to this question of migrant labor that the sugar industry had to contend and within the '70s and '80s, migrant workers who went to Florida mostly from Jamaica, 20,000 or so of them.

I want to play a clip from your podcast where an attorney for the workers talks about the dangers of the job.

GREG SHELL, Attorney: You're swinging a machete eight or 10 hours a day, it's going to slip, or you're going to be careless, or the field will be uneven, or any number of things that will cause you to accidentally cut yourself.

Every year, it was about a one-third of the workers were injured at work in a manner serious enough that it required them to miss at least one day of work.

That's an awfully high percentage of the work force to be injured during the year.

STEPHANIE SY: So, Celeste, that lawyer, Greg Shell, files a lawsuit on behalf of the workers, saying they're underpaid.

What changed as a result of that and other lawsuits?

CELESTE HEADLEE: Well, they ended up filing a class-action lawsuit on behalf of a large number of these workers.

And they discovered some incredible things.

At one point, they got a former U.S. sugar worker who gave us some -- them some detail showing that these workers had been underpaid, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

In fact, they had documents showing that the companies had budgeted only $3 per ton, when, in fact, they should have been budgeting over $5 per ton, if they were paying what the U.S. government had said that they had to pay.

So they had what seemed to have been a pretty tight case.

What ended up happening was that a number of the sugar companies settled.

One of the sugar companies owned by a couple of brothers from Cuba who had fled the Castro regime did not.

They kept it in court for years and years and years and years.

They ended up losing that case because of a centuries-old law, and they ultimately mechanized the fields.

That's sort of the core of what this story is about.

But it involves so much drama and intrigue.

And, ultimately, these poor workers, they were just out tens of thousands of dollars.

It's the kind of money that really could have transformed their lives.

STEPHANIE SY: So, justice was not fully served even after the settlements, it sounds like.

I wonder if you see a connection between the ways migrant workers were treated in the sugarcane fields and the sugar beet fields and the ways migrant workers are treated today.

CELESTE HEADLEE: Although most of the sugar that is farmed in the United States is mechanized, it's still harvested by hands in many areas of the United States today.

And what's more, we are still subsidizing the growing of sugar, to the tune of billions of dollars through that farm bill that we talked about before.

In other words, we are paying growers millions of dollars to grow sugar.

And, as consumers.

We're paying more for our sugar when we get to the grocery store than almost any other nation is.

So, our sugar is expensive in a number of different ways.

And it's expensive in terms of labor itself.

So it's the type of issue that is costly.

And it's also costly to environment.

I mean, it's just there's layers upon layers to the story.

STEPHANIE SY: For its part, the American Sugar Alliance, Celeste, says your podcast presents a -- quote -- "antiquated and inaccurate picture of the sugar industry from the 1980s."

They say planting and harvesting is now mechanized and workers are unionized.

Do you think they have rectified the big problems?

CELESTE HEADLEE: I stand by our journalism.

They are correct that a quite a bit of our storytelling begins in the 1980s with the class action lawsuit that we were talking about.

This is an investigative story.

And so we begin in 1980s, but we bring it all the way forward to the present.

And, like I said, we were very careful in our fact-checking and the journalism.

And I stand by it.

It is very carefully done.

And you can rely on the facts that you get.

STEPHANIE SY: Celeste Headlee, host of "Big Sugar."

Thanks so much, Celeste.

CELESTE HEADLEE: My pleasure.

AMNA NAWAZ: For decades, the U.S. and Russia have been locked in a war of espionage, and compelling new details about those stealth operations are now coming to light.

Geoff Bennett recently spoke with author Calder Walton about the revelations in his new book, "Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West."

GEOFF BENNETT: Calder Walton joins us now.

Thank you for being with us.

CALDER WALTON, Author, "Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West": Thank you for having me, Geoff.

It's great to be with you.

GEOFF BENNETT: In the book you write about the 100-year intelligence war between Russia and the West.

Of course, Russia has a long tradition of espionage that dates back to Peter the Great.

The question is, why?

Why is spycraft such a vital part of Russia's existence?

CALDER WALTON: Well, it's a great question.

I think that there are probably lots of different answers.

The first and foremost, is there something inherent within Russian DNA that makes -- that makes Russians particularly interested and susceptible to espionage?

There could well be something in that.

But I think, more importantly, Geoff, the answer is that, since the early Soviet days after the Bolsheviks seized power in Moscow in 1917, the Soviet state was actually incredibly fragile and weak.

And the early Bolsheviks, Lenin and Stalin, used intelligence, foreign espionage, deception, disinformation as ways to punch above their weight on the international stage, particularly against their ideological enemies in the West.

So, espionage was something inherent within the Bolsheviks, who had been an underground party before seizing power.

And then, once in power, they did what they knew best, which was to continue on in the same tradition.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, fast forward to the current moment.

What should we make of the Wagner rebellion, that aborted mutiny against Vladimir Putin, recently?

Was that an intelligence failure on the part of the Kremlin?

And what does it say about Vladimir Putin's standing within Russia?

CALDER WALTON: I think we can definitely say that it was a colossal intelligence failure on the part of Putin, his regime and his intelligence services.

Why didn't the Russian security service know about this?

What does it say about Putin's rule himself?

Well, first and foremost, there, there was, is a challenger to his rule, it seems.

His rule has been dented.

For two decades and counting, Putin has ruled Russia with an iron fist, literally often eliminating his rivals.

That seems to have been challenged over the last weekend by Prigozhin.

I'm looking at events with a degree of pessimism, I'm afraid.

History shows that a wounded dictator is often a very dangerous dictator.

Putin's regime and his rule himself has been wounded.

Will he now try to do something dramatic in order to try to prove his strength to the Russian people and the rest of the world?

I'm afraid that history suggests it's exactly in those situations where dictators lash out and do something -- quote, unquote -- "bold."

GEOFF BENNETT: Returning to the book, you write about a clandestine operation in which Russia tried to kill a CIA informant in Miami who had been at a high-ranking Russian intelligence official.

And that represents quite an escalation, Russia trying to kill a valuable informant for the U.S. government on American soil.

Tell us about that.

CALDER WALTON: It absolutely does represent a dramatic escalation.

During the Cold War -- and we have to remember that Putin is a former KGB officer, so his world view is shaped by his KGB experience.

During the Cold War, there was always a bright red line by which Soviet intelligence would not conduct assassinations on U.S. soil.

Europe and Britain were different matters.

And this continued on into the post-Soviet era.

And Putin has -- until this story came out in my book, has adhered to that bright red line.

He challenged that.

And, as I showed in the book, Putin was and his intelligence services were in the late-stage planning of an assassination on U.S. soil, a dramatic escalation.

What does it say about him?

It shows that he was prepared to take risks, and that he was emboldened.

My big question, which I have not been able to answer, but other investigative journalists, I hope, are on the case, Geoff, is, did this risk calculation on his part, his emboldened behavior, contribute also to Putin's risk calculation about Ukraine?

This was in 2020.

And it all fed into this part of his calculation about what he thought he could get away with on Western soil.

GEOFF BENNETT: Hmm.

Let's shift our focus to China.

What lessons can the West take away from its experience with Russia and apply to the new superpower conflict with China?

CALDER WALTON: The first lesson, it seems to me, from the first Cold War in the post-war years is that Western governments can effectively be in a cold war before they know it, before they're prepared for it.

This was one of the things that came through loud and clear in my research for the book, that in the post-war years, Western governments were thinking about how they could try to continue relations with the Soviet Union in a good way, and, in fact, Stalin and his intelligence services had dramatically different ideas.

This, it seems to me, is exactly the same position that we're in with China at the moment.

In recent years, there's been an attempt by which Western governments thought that, through economic development, China would perhaps democratize.

When you look at and understand the Chinese intelligence perspective, there was no such understanding that they wanted to be part of the Western club.

They wanted to completely upturn the existing rules.

And we're seeing that play out.

The second lesson is that the Chinese intelligence services are like the KGB on steroids.

They conduct espionage in a far more sweeping way than even the Soviet intelligence services did.

And the third lesson, it seems to me, Geoff, is that, although history is important, and I would argue and I paint a picture in the book about how we are in a new cold war, as far as intelligence is concerned, with China, the answers to this cold war don't lie in the past.

The future of this cold war and the intelligence and national security challenge for Western countries, including the U.S., from Chinese intelligence lies with commercial, open-source intelligence.

I think that we need to set up a new open-source intelligence agency specializing in commercially available intelligence, not clandestine intelligence.

GEOFF BENNETT: Calder Walton, the book is "Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West."

Thank you for being with us.

CALDER WALTON: Thanks for having me on.

AMNA NAWAZ: Ben Sheehan is a comedian on a mission to educate the public on civics.

A former executive producer in the entertainment industry, he pivoted to politics when he realized how little people actually knew about how government works.

He's since run multiple campaigns to get out the vote and authored the book "OMG WTF Does the Constitution Actually Say?"

Tonight, Sheehan shares his Brief But Spectacular take on knowing your power.

BEN SHEEHAN, Author, "OMG WTF Does the Constitution Actually Say?

: A Non-Boring Guide to How Our Democracy is Supposed to Work": Hi.

How's it going?

Sorry to interrupt.

I'm Ben.

That actually looks really good, what you're eating.

But I wanted to give you a couple of questions about civics.

Let me ask you the following.

What are the three branches of government?

How does the Electoral College work?

Who is your state's attorney general?

How many voting members are in the House of Representatives?

If you didn't do so well on the quiz, do not feel badly.

You are not alone.

In truth, less than 50 percent of adults today can name the three branches of government, probably including some congressmembers.

I grew up in Washington, D.C.

I was surrounded by government from a very early age, having two parents that worked in and with the federal government.

I was about 5 years old.

My mom had a napkin and a pen, and she wrote a number, 435 on one side, 100 on the other, drew a house, and that was my first lesson about Congress.

In 2016, I ran a company that made videos that helped get young people to register to vote.

We were able to register 50,000 voters just through online video.

In 2018, I realized firsthand how little people actually know about how government works.

I would be doing events for a state attorney general or a state secretary of state, and friends of mine would come to these events, and they would have no idea what I was talking about.

They didn't know the jobs even existed, let alone who was running to have them.

MAN: Schools ought to turn out good citizens.

WOMAN: Yes, good citizens.

BEN SHEEHAN: Coming out of World War II, there was a massive resurgence and interest in feelings of patriotism in the school system.

We had classes like American government, U.S. history, civics, foundations of democracy.

Fast-forward several decades later, some federal and state policies, like No Child Left Behind, Common Core, Every Student Succeeds created these incentives toward teaching and getting good test scores in reading and math.

And, as a casualty, civics has fallen by the wayside.

Only eight states require at least a year of civics in government at some point between kindergarten and 12th grade.

My book is called "OMG WTF Does the Constitution Actually Say?"

And there's also a kids version titled simply "What Does the Constitution Say?"

Not only is our Constitution the oldest national constitution in the world of any country, but we have the ability to change it.

And we have done that 27 times.

We have the right to free speech because of the Constitution.

We no longer have slavery because of the Constitution.

We no longer have to pay a tax in order to vote because of the Constitution.

And women and people over 18 have voting rights because of the Constitution.

The better a society is educated in civics, the better they can dictate a government that is supposed to, by design, represent their interests.

I think one of the biggest threats to our democracy is ignorance, not just not voting, but not understanding why we should even vote in the first place.

My hope for civics education in the future is that every state requires at least three years of it, you have to take some sort of exam to show proficiency in order to graduate, and that we make civics a part of our everyday lives from a cultural sense.

What gives me hope is seeing younger generations step up and participate in a way that I don't think recent generations have, and it really inspires me.

My name is Ben Sheehan, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on knowing your power.

AMNA NAWAZ: And you can watch more Brief But Spectacular videos online at PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.

And stick around tonight for PBS' very own July Fourth concert.

"A Capitol Fourth" features performances from musical guests and fireworks from the nation's capital.

That's tonight on PBS.

Check your local listings.

And that is the "NewsHour" for tonight.

On behalf of the entire "NewsHour" team, thank you for joining us.