GEOFF BENNETT: Good evening.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

Amna Nawaz is away.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: The death toll from the devastating Maui wildfires rises, as search crews comb the disaster area and fire containment efforts continue.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus pressures President Biden to investigate the separation of fathers from migrant families at the Southern border.

And we go inside Japan's Fukushima nuclear complex 12 years after a catastrophic meltdown to check on the complicated cleanup.

LAKE BARRETT, TEPCO Adviser: This is a multibillion-dollar-a-year effort being spent at Fukushima right now.

It's going to take some time to complete this work.

(BREAK) GEOFF BENNETT: Good evening, and welcome to the "NewsHour."

As disaster recovery efforts ramp up across Maui, so too has the painstaking search operation.

That confirmed death toll now stands at 106 people.

But with most of the victims still unidentified, families and friends of the missing are left fearing the worst.

It's been one week since the first fires tore through Maui, turning vibrant communities like Lahaina into scorched ghost towns.

Days after evacuating, residents are gradually returning to survey the damage and rebuild their homes and their lives from the ground up.

KEIT MA, Lahaina Resident: Not just me lost everything.

It's, yes, everybody.

Everything's gone.

GEOFF BENNETT: Official say two regions of the island are still ablaze.

As of Tuesday night, the Lahaina fire on Maui's western coast is 85 percent contained and the Upcountry Kula fire only 75 percent contained.

In Lahaina, search teams aided by cadaver dogs have been recovering human remains from destroyed buildings and burnt cars.

So far, crews have scoured some 32 percent of the search area, and they're racing against the clock.

Forecasters say a high windstorm this weekend could hamper their efforts.

Today, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell spoke from the White House.

DEANNE CRISWELL, FEMA Administrator: Given the conditions and the need for additional resources, we will have at least 40 canine search teams on the island, in addition to hundreds of search-and-rescue personnel, with more on the way.

GEOFF BENNETT: As coroners begin the process of identifying the dead, officials have called on family members to help, urging relatives of the missing to submit DNA samples.

Authorities have started to notify the victims' next of kin.

Among the deceased, 79-year-old Buddy Jantoc, 68-year-old Franklin Trejos, and 60-year-old Carole Hartley, all longtime residents of Lahaina.

The wildfires were propelled by high winds from a distant hurricane.

What caused them is still under investigation.

SHANE TREU, Maui Resident: Fricking power line just went down.

GEOFF BENNETT: As the fires tore through the island, Maui resident Shane Treu recorded smoke billowing outside his house after a utility pole snapped.

SHANE TREU: I look, there's a power line right there.

And shortly after, the thing was just arcing away on the ground, landed right in dry grass, so sparks, and then there was a fire.

GEOFF BENNETT: The state's primary energy provider, Hawaiian Electric, now facing multiple lawsuits, alleging the utility company kept power on, despite high wind warnings.

Meantime, President Biden says he will travel to Maui on Monday to survey the damage firsthand.

Historic landmarks, art and artifacts have been destroyed.

The cultural loss has been significant, especially for Hawaiians who have generational ties to Maui.

Noelani Ahia here has been helping with recovery efforts in Lahaina.

She's an activist and co-founder of Mauna Medic Healers Hui.

Thank you for being with us.

What has the last week been like for you, your friends and your family?

NOELANI AHIA, Mauna Medic Healers Hui: It's so difficult, because we have this incredible devastation.

Our beloved Lahaina town is now a graveyard with over 100 dead that we know of and potentially hundreds more.

There are still over 1,000 people missing.

So it's this incredible grief and shock and trauma.

But, at the same time, there's been this enormous uprising of community support and community care and grassroots organizing to get supplies and medical care and take care of basic needs of people who have been stuck in Lahaina since the fires.

So our team has deployed out there and has been taking care of people.

But the entire community is wrapping its arms around each other and loving each other up and taking care of one another.

So there's this incredible beauty at the same time as this incredibly deep pain.

And it's a lot to carry right now, to be honest.

GEOFF BENNETT: Maui has for decades been a magnet for tourists.

But for people who live there, especially native Hawaiians, it's been home -- it's been a home with a rich history.

Tell us about that.

NOELANI AHIA: It's such a rich, rich history.

And it's unfortunate that it that it gets painted as a tourist town, because that's sort of the bane of our existence in Hawaii.

In Lahaina, as Moku'ula and Mokuhinia, which was an ancient fish pond that had an island in the middle, Moku'ula, and our ali'i, or our monarchs, chose that place to go reside.

In fact, our first Constitution during the kingdom era, in the mid-1800s, was written there in that area, and it's just a very sacred area.

Adjacent to that is the cultural center and the Na 'Aikane o Maui Cultural Center, which burned to the ground.

And that was a place of solidarity for our people.

It was a place to learn.

It was a place that had artifacts, old maps, research materials, genealogy.

Many of us can trace our genealogy back generations.

In fact, I go back 22 generations to one of the families that lived in that area, Moku'ula and Mokuhinia.

GEOFF BENNETT: There are Maui fire survivors who say they're getting phone calls from real estate developers and real estate investors who are trying to swoop in and buy up land where people's homes were destroyed.

How real is the fear that outsiders will try to cash in on this tragedy, and change Maui, change Lahaina, as you knew it?

NOELANI AHIA: Well, it's a very real fear.

And it's a founded one because it's already happened.

The Maui that people know today is not the Maui of days of old.

We have already -- Kanaka Maoli have already been displaced by the plantations with land theft and resource extraction, taking our water away, and then the whaling industry, and then overtourism, hyperdevelopment for wealthy outsiders that come in and buy up large swathes of land and develop and bank water for that.

So, for Kanaka Maoli, we are very well aware of the threat of outside moneyed influences coming in and further removing us from our ancestral places and continuing a system of settler colonialism where the design is to destroy the indigenous, the indigeneity and replace it in the settlers' image.

And it's a very real fear that's happening right now, with people getting these phone calls.

GEOFF BENNETT: In the long term, how should officials focus the repair and rebuilding effort to meet the needs of native Hawaiians, not just trying to clear the way for tourists to return?

NOELANI AHIA: Right.

Well, the administrations, both local, state and federal, really need to listen to the Kanaka Maoli people and center our voice.

This is an opportunity for us to restore Lahaina to what it once was.

In fact, I have an elder who said he woke up the day after he found out his carving collection was lost.

And he told me that he dreamt of seeds.

He dreamt that we were planting seeds of our indigenous plants that were geologically connected to of our kalo plant, of our medicines and other things that makes us Hawaiian that have been stripped from us for so long.

So I think that dream, that vision, that prophecy holds a future for us that we can gather around and believe in and work towards.

GEOFF BENNETT: Noelani Ahia, our hearts go out to you and all of those affected by the wildfires in Maui.

Thank you for your time.

NOELANI AHIA: Thank you so much for having me.

Aloha.

GEOFF BENNETT: In the day's other headlines: Ukraine resumed operations at ports along the Danube River today after a night of Russian drone strikes.

The Danube flows through the southern edge of the Odesa region and borders Romania, a NATO member.

Photos showed extensive damage to port infrastructure.

The strikes mainly targeted grain silos and warehouses.

The attacks come weeks after Russia ended its participation in a deal that allowed the export of Ukrainian grain.

In Libya, officials say 55 people were killed during intense militia clashes in Tripoli.

Fighting started Monday when a senior commander was allegedly detained by a rival faction, then released late yesterday.

Battles between militia members emptied the streets.

It was the deadliest fighting in the capital in years after nearly a decade of civil war.

A powerful explosion in the Dominican Republic has now claimed the lives of 25 people.

Some 60 others were injured.

The blast went off Monday at a bakery in San Cristobal.

Firefighters are still working to extinguish the flames.

The country's president vowed to get to the bottom of what happened.

LUIS ABINADER, President of the Dominican Republic (through translator): An investigation will be carried out to determine the origin and causes of this terrible accident.

In the meantime, it is up to us to save the lives of those who have been affected, and we will do so without any limit of resources to save every human life we can.

GEOFF BENNETT: Local authorities are investigating claims from residents that the building housed a factory that was operating illegally.

There's word tonight that U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken spoke by phone today with Paul Whelan.

The American citizen has been wrongfully detained in Russia for more than four years.

CNN was first to report the story and said Blinken assured Whelan the U.S. was working hard to bring him home -- quote -- "as soon as possible."

This is the second time the two have spoken.

A U.S. appeals court in New Orleans ruled today that access to the abortion pill mifepristone should have some restrictions.

The decision would outlaw telemedicine prescriptions and sending the drug by mail.

Access to the pill won't change for now.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued an order in April to keep it available while litigation continues.

The Justice Department said it -- quote -- "strongly disagrees" with today's decision and will seek the Supreme Court's review.

A prosecutor in Kansas says police should return items seized during a raid on a local newspaper last week.

Law enforcement stormed the office of The Marion County Record after claims that one of its staff members obtained information illegally.

The attorney said there isn't enough evidence to link the alleged crime with the seized items or with that newsroom.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of President Biden signing the Inflation Reduction Act.

The sweeping legislation includes measures to address climate change, lower the cost of prescription drugs and create jobs, among other things.

At a White House ceremony today, the president touted what he sees as the law's impact.

JOE BIDEN, President of the United States: This law is one of the biggest drivers of jobs and economic growth this country has ever seen.

We're investing in all of America, in the heartland and coast to coast.

The friend said, look, you're investing more in red states than in blue states.

Well, I made a commitment.

This is about all of America.

GEOFF BENNETT: The president said the law will significantly cut U.S. carbon emissions and has already created 170,000 clean energy jobs.

A former fund-raiser for Republican Congressman George Santos has been charged with wire fraud and identity theft.

Sam Miele is accused of scheming to defraud donors and raise money for Santos' campaign by impersonating a high-ranking aide to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Miele pleaded not guilty to the charges today in a Brooklyn federal court.

And stocks gave up more ground today on Wall Street.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 180 points to close at 34766.

The Nasdaq fell 156 points.

The S&P 500 shed 33.

And still to come on the "PBS NewsHour": a new study estimates nearly half of U.S. tap water is contaminated with so-called forever chemicals; a longtime reporter on Ukraine gives his perspective on the country's fight against Russia; members of a women's professional football team speak about the opportunities and challenges facing that sport.

Reports of inhumane treatment, from the separation of families to razor wire on river buoys, has put a spotlight on the tactics of Operation Lone Star, Governor Greg Abbott's effort to control migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez joins us now to explain.

So, Laura, Eagle Pass is this key border community where Texas Governor Greg Abbott is carrying out this program known as Operation Lone Star.

What are the conditions like there right now?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: I spoke to Congressman Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat who recently went to Eagle Pass to see what the conditions are like there, these new tactics that the governor has deployed.

And this is what he said he saw.

REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO (D-TX): They have placed what I consider death traps along the Rio Grande River, this razor wire that's placed in such a way that migrants can come up against it and not see it, barrel traps with wiring so that people can get caught.

In fact, two weeks ago, there was a dead body that was found attached to one of those barrels.

They have got this saw-like device in the middle, which obviously is very dangerous.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The barrels that Congressman Castro is talking about right there are these floating barriers that Governor Greg Abbott has placed on the Rio Grande, which a lot of humanitarian and immigration advocates have had concern about because of the fact that migrants have to come across these when they're trying to cross the border.

There's also razor wire, sharp fencing that has been placed around these areas where migrants are trying to cross.

I also spoke to Uriel Garcia, who is a Texas Tribune reporter, and he said that he went down there recently as well and saw people getting injured as they tried to bypass specifically the fencing, this razor wire fencing.

Now, a former border chief that I spoke to said that that type of fencing has been used by the Department of Homeland Security in the past, but that these tactics by Abbott are getting a lot of attention because they have been deployed in recent months.

GEOFF BENNETT: Yesterday, you were first to report about this letter from Hispanic Democrats to the Biden administration demanding action on Operation Lone Star.

What exactly are they calling for?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Congressman Joaquin Castro was -- signed on to that letter that we were the first to report.

And it was directed to Attorney General Merrick Garland, as well as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

And Castro said that they want to see serious action from the Biden administration.

REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO: Many of us were shocked and outraged when Donald Trump started separating families.

Well, Greg Abbott has started to replicate a version of that now in Texas.

And there were reports that at least 26 families have been separated.

And we're asking the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice to make sure that there's no federal funding that's going towards family separation or towards any of these other activities that may violate human, civil or legal rights of people.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: We received no response from the Justice Department or the Department - - the Department of Homeland Security said that they also think there should be an investigation, but they didn't specify whether or not they would actually be investigating the separation of fathers from their wives and children.

GEOFF BENNETT: On this issue of Democrats calling on the Biden administration to take action, the DOJ has done that, haven't they?

Didn't the DOJ sue Texas over that floating barrier?

Where does that stand?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So you're right, Geoff, that the Justice Department has taken action on the floating barriers that Governor Greg Abbott put on the Rio Grande.

Now, the interesting part about this is that the Justice Department is saying that, of course, they don't have the legal authority to place those barriers on the Rio Grande.

And the binational agency that oversees that territory, this international Rio Grande territory, it's called the International Boundary and Water Commission, just put out a survey today that says that 80 percent of those buoys which, strung altogether, reach more than 900 feet, 80 percent of them are actually located on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, which would be an impediment, which would be actually a violation of Mexicans -- of Mexico's sovereignty of their territory.

And I spoke to Uriel Garcia, who is an immigration reporter for The Texas Tribune.

And he said that Governor Greg Abbott is defending the decision this way.

URIEL GARCIA, The Texas Tribune: What Governor Abbott has said is that Texas has the right to defend its borders, and that's the reasoning for setting up the wiring sending the troopers and setting up this water barrier.

They are not citing specific statute to say why they're doing this,.

How they have described it is, they have been equating migrants with drug cartels and saying that the mass migration is bringing drugs and also is an act of invasion.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And so invasion is the language that Governor Greg Abbott is using, as though there is an invasion that is attacking Texas, and that that means that he has the right to declare these declarations, to place the floating barriers there to block migrants.

And what comes next now is, there is a court hearing next week where the court will consider the Justice Department's lawsuit against the state of Texas.

GEOFF BENNETT: So this program has been in effect for two years now.

What's been the response on the ground.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Uriel Garcia, who had - - went to Eagle Pass recently, said that, previously, there were a number of people in that border community that actually supported Operation Lone Star.

But, since then, they have actually soured on this program from the governor.

And, in particular, he spoke to a farmer, a female farmer, who has private property there right along the border.

And she told him that she's not happy with this anymore.

URIEL GARCIA: When she started seeing what the wiring was causing, the policies causing physical harm and emotional tolls on the migrants themselves, she started having second thoughts, particularly when she saw a pregnant woman trying to get through the wiring, and no one was helping her.

Keep in mind, this is a Republican who voted for Abbott, and is now having -- is having regrets of allowing the state on her property to implement these policies.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: She's not the only one in Eagle Pass that told him that she has regrets about supporting this program.

There are other local elected officials there who also don't support it anymore because of the practices used by Governor Greg Abbott.

Now, I also asked Congressman Joaquin Castro, again, if he's been satisfied, though, with the Biden administration's response to everything that's happening on the ground in Texas, and he said, essentially, that he's not.

REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO: I'm a supporter of the president.

I want to see the president reelected next year.

But I am surprised and disappointed that President Biden has not spoken out about these human tragedies.

I think he should say something.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And, so far, we haven't heard directly from the White House about this call for more investigations and for the Department of Homeland Security to take more aggressive action to stop Operation Lone Star's tactics.

GEOFF BENNETT: Laura Barron-Lopez, thank you so much for that valuable reporting.

We appreciate it.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Thank you.

GEOFF BENNETT: Japan will soon begin the process of releasing radioactive water from the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.

As final preparations are being made, science correspondent Miles O'Brien got an exclusive look inside the facility.

MILES O'BRIEN: Twelve years after the historic meltdowns, what was the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remains a complex, highly hazardous toxic waste site.

Upwards of 5,000 workers are here every day innovating and orchestrating the most complicated, expensive nuclear cleanup in history.

It's interesting to see it after seven years.

It's changed quite a bit hasn't it?

LAKE BARRETT, TEPCO Adviser: Yes.

Well, a lot of things have happened here.

MILES O'BRIEN: Yes, to say the least.

LAKE BARRETT: A lot of progress.

MILES O'BRIEN: And to say the least.

My guide for my seventh visit to Fukushima is nuclear engineer Lake Barrett.

He led the cleanup for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission after the Three Mile Island meltdown in Pennsylvania in 1979.

He is now a paid consultant to the Toyota Electric Power Company, TEPCO, which owns Fukushima and manages the decommissioning.

LAKE BARRETT: So this is very similar, in my opinion, to sort of like putting a man on the moon.

MILES O'BRIEN: Are there moonshot resources being applied to this?

LAKE BARRETT: This is a multibillion-dollar-a-year effort being spent in Fukushima right now.

It's going to take some time to complete this work.

MILES O'BRIEN: Are you going to live to see it?

LAKE BARRETT: Probably not.

MILES O'BRIEN: We began our tour as close to the meltdowns as humans can dare.

So, the rusty steel frames of the structure... LAKE BARRETT: That's the original structure where it was blown off by the hydrogen explosion.

They have to build a steel structure all the way around.

There will be hundreds of tons of steel, because it has to hold up 100-ton cranes to be able to dig down into inside the building eventually.

MILES O'BRIEN: The ultimate goal here is to develop robotic technology to safely remove, contain and store the wreckage of the three nuclear reactors, piles of degraded concrete, melted steel and uranium, with all of its radioactive isotopes.

The lava-like piles are called corium.

Not too far from us humans, can't be, and we're OK. LAKE BARRETT: Right.

We can't go in there because the radiation levels are too hot.

MILES O'BRIEN: Catching even a fleeting glimpse of the corium with robots is an extraordinary challenge.

Intense radiation bombards the electronics with gamma rays, often rendering them useless.

And the path to robot ruin is a treacherous labyrinth.

We don some protective gear on a mission to better grasp the embedded obstacles.

LAKE BARRETT: We're inside the primary containment vessel.

MILES O'BRIEN: We were inside Fukushima Daiichi unit number five.

Unscathed by the disaster, the reactor is a near replica of the three that melted down.

LAKE BARRETT: This is unit five.

We're standing outside the pedestal that holds up the 400-ton reactor vessel.

MILES O'BRIEN: It was like being a mouse inside an engine, a three-dimensional maze better suited for a contortionist.

So, where are we, Lake?

LAKE BARRETT: We are underneath the unit five reactor vessel.

These are the control rod drive mechanisms above us.

MILES O'BRIEN: That's where the reactor is.

In its sister units, this location is where the meltdowns got real.

LAKE BARRETT: The reactor vessel with eight-inches thick steel, OK, it melted through the steel under high pressure.

It ejected down here, almost like an explosive volcano, very high-temperature gases, around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

MILES O'BRIEN: Twenty feet below is a concrete floor between 10-and-14-feet-thick, a good thing, because that's where the corium piles now sit, underwater.

LAKE BARRETT: Water is injected at the top of the reactor vessel, you know, 40 50 feet above us, and it trickles down through this fuel debris onto the floor.

MILES O'BRIEN: This steady stream of contaminated water has created a sorcerer's apprentice-style problem here.

At first, they were generating between 130,000 and 160,000 gallons of radioactive water each and every day.

In 2016, they completed a so-called ice wall, a $300 million subterranean perimeter of pipes cold enough to freeze the soil and keep much, but not all of the groundwater at bay.

The site now generates tainted water at a daily rate of about 25,000 gallons.

Akira Ono leads the decontamination and decommissioning effort.

AKIRA ONO, TEPCO (through translator): If you ask me if we can make it zero, I think it's not easy.

Although the amount is less, water will continue to be contaminated.

MILES O'BRIEN: All that water, now 340 million gallons of it and growing, sits cheek to jowl in a tank farm.

Lake Barrett and I walked through it.

LAKE BARRETT: There's about almost 1,100 tanks here today.

MILES O'BRIEN: So, if you left these tanks as they were, how long would it take before they would be not radioactive at all?

LAKE BARRETT: Now, it depends on how low is low.

To be drinkable, it's going to be many, many decades, 100 years or so.

But that's not really plausible at this stage.

MILES O'BRIEN: You can't keep building tanks here?

LAKE BARRETT: There's no room.

MILES O'BRIEN: TEPCO says it needs to make room to build structures designed to safely contain debris that will be radioactive for centuries.

AKIRA ONO (through translator): We have to build a variety of facilities for smooth decommissioning going forward.

It is essential to start emptying and disposing of the tanks at the stage where we are now to secure vacant lots.

MILES O'BRIEN: Before the water is tanked, it flows through a series of sophisticated treatment facilities designed to remove about 100 radioactive isotopes.

To visit the largest treatment facility, we had to add even more protective clothing.

If one of these pressurized pipes sprung a leak, our radioactive contamination risk would be very high.

LAKE BARRETT: This is called the advanced liquid processing plant.

MILES O'BRIEN: These facilities can collectively process about 300,000 gallons of water each day.

LAKE BARRETT: It's a chemical process, not a nuclear process.

So it's like an ion-exchange resin in a home water softener.

MILES O'BRIEN: I like that analogy, a giant home water softener.

LAKE BARRETT: In chemistry terms, that's what it is for specific ions.

Normally, at home, it's iron you want to take out.

This is taking out other isotopes as well.

MILES O'BRIEN: He says it removes 99.9999 percent of the radionuclides, trace levels, with one exception, an isotope called tritium.

LAKE BARRETT: So, chemically, it's water.

So it doesn't remove it at all, so it doesn't change the tritium at all in the system.

MILES O'BRIEN: Tritium is a mildly radioactive form of hydrogen that occurs naturally.

It is luminescent, used to light watch dials, aircraft gauges and exit signs.

It reacts with oxygen just like regular hydrogen, creating water that is radioactive, so-called tritiated water.

KEN BUESSELER, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute: Removing tritium itself is very expensive and very hard to do on this scale.

It's never been done before.

MILES O'BRIEN: Marine radiochemist Ken Buesseler is a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

KEN BUESSELER: Ultimately, you can't just keep collecting more and more water.

What's being considered also is releasing some of this water back to the ocean.

MILES O'BRIEN: Every nuclear power plant in the world routinely discharges tritium.

And now TEPCO and the Japanese government are planning to do the same here.

This has triggered a chain reaction of anger and concern from fishermen nearby and other countries throughout the region.

More on that when we continue our series.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Miles O'Brien in Futaba, Japan.

GEOFF BENNETT: A recent government study estimates that nearly half of America's tap water could contain toxic forever chemicals known as PFAS.

As Stephanie Sy reports, there are thousands of these chemicals, and exposure to them can lead to serious health effects.

STEPHANIE SY: Amna, last month, the U.S. Geological Survey tested the nation's drinking water and found at least 45 percent of samples had one or more forever chemicals.

The study also found contamination centered in urban areas and near industrial sites.

These chemicals have been used in many everyday items since the 1940s, from nonstick cookware to cosmetics to rain jackets.

PFAS are also widely used as a firefighting chemical.

3M, a PFAS manufacturer, recently proposed a more-than-$10 billion settlement to address claims by hundreds of cities that want the company held liable for contaminating public water supplies.

But litigation continues, and 3M will continue to make the chemicals until 2025.

For more on the possible harms of PFAS and what can be done, I'm joined by Jamie DeWitt, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at East Carolina University.

Professor DeWitt, thank you for joining the "NewsHour."

There have been studies showing that all of us have some level of PFAS in our bodies.

How much should we worry about this?

JAMIE DEWITT, East Carolina University: Well, PFAS are a very large group of chemicals.

There's about 14,000 individual chemicals.

And they're associated with many of the chronic diseases that take people's lives today.

So, people should be concerned.

But they should also be concerned about all of the different chemicals that are in the environment that are leading to chronic diseases that we experience in our lives today.

STEPHANIE SY: Well, that's just it.

There are so many different chemicals, we sort of all assume, in the air, in the water.

What makes PFAS particularly insidious and toxic?

And you said that PFAS have been linked to certain cancers and disease.

At what levels of exposure?

Do we know that?

JAMIE DEWITT: So, we know that exposure to PFAS are particularly problematic because they're very persistent.

That means that they last for a very long time in the environment, maybe longer than any other chemical synthesized to date.

They also tend to last for a long time inside of our bodies, giving them the opportunity to interact with different parts of our bodies to lead to those diseases.

And they have been linked to diseases such as kidney cancer and testicular cancer and a host of other diseases.

In the world of toxicology, we call them multisystem toxicants because they can affect many different parts of the body.

STEPHANIE SY: And from what I understand, at least so far, the research says it has to be pretty high concentration of PFAS for there to be this linkage.

Do we know what communities and areas of the country are at higher risk of exposure to PFAS?

JAMIE DEWITT: We do know that people who live in areas where there is known contamination to their drinking water and people who work for PFAS have higher concentrations of them in their bodies.

In 2022, the National Academies came out with a report for clinicians, health care providers who might be treating people who are exposed to PFAS, and they had some specific recommendations for elevated standards of care that health care providers could give to patients who had concentrations greater than 20 nanograms per mil of seven different PFAS in their blood.

Twenty nanograms per milliliter is a very small amount.

STEPHANIE SY: The Biden administration's EPA, as you know, has taken several actions to highlight the dangers of PFAS.

In fact, they have just announced $5 billion in grant funding to states that want to address PFAS in the environment.

How much can that help?

And should some of these chemicals be banned outright?

JAMIE DEWITT: Well, efforts to limit some of the PFAS that are being proposed by the Biden administration are really good step forward.

Even though only six PFAS are being recommended for regulatory action, if the technologies in place to filter out those six PFAS are implemented, then those technologies also will work to filter out a huge number of other PFAS.

So it is a good step forward.

There are some efforts at levels of individual states and in different countries in the European Union, for example, to ban or phase out what are considered to be nonessential uses of PFAS.

STEPHANIE SY: Is there any at-home technology that the average person can use if they want to reduce their PFAS exposure, especially in their drinking water?

I mean, can you use water filters and things like that?

JAMIE DEWITT: Yes, that's a really good question.

And that's a question that a lot of different scientists studying PFAS removal and remediation get asked.

There are some filters that you could buy at a grocery store, for example, that have carbon filters in them.

Those do a decent job of filtering out some PFAS, but you have to be very good about changing out your filter.

And for those who can afford it, reverse osmosis, such as under the sink, or whole-home reverse osmosis can also be very good at filtering out many different PFAS.

But those are often out of reach for many individual homeowners because of their price.

STEPHANIE SY: Jamie DeWitt, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at East Carolina University, thanks so much for joining us with your expertise.

JAMIE DEWITT: Thank you.

GEOFF BENNETT: It's now nearly 18 months since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Tens of thousands of people have died as the brutal war grinds on.

But even before the total invasion, this war has been going on for nearly a decade.

Nick Schifrin speaks now with a journalist who's lived in Ukraine for many years.

NICK SCHIFRIN: In the last decade, it's become clear that Ukraine's fate may very well help determine how the future is written, beginning in the 2013-2014 uprising that evicted a pro-Russian leader and became known as the Revolution of Dignity, the subsequent Russian land grab of Crimea and annexation by Moscow, then the Kremlin-provoked war in Eastern Ukraine, and, of course, more recently, the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

At stake throughout, the modern idea that borders cannot be redrawn by force, the survival of democracy in the post-Soviet space, and, in Ukraine's resistance, the changing face of warfare.

Few Americans have had more of a front row seat to that first draft of history than Christopher Miller, currently the Ukraine correspondent for The Financial Times, who has been reporting from the country for 13 years, and has just released a book, "The War Came To Us: Life and Death in Ukraine."

Christopher Miller, thanks very much.

Welcome to the "NewsHour."

CHRISTOPHER MILLER, Author, "The War Came To Us: Life and Death in Ukraine": Pleasure to be here.

NICK SCHIFRIN: The book begins and ends in the city that the world knows as Bakhmut, but you knew it as Artemivsk, its name when you arrived in 2010 as a Peace Corps volunteer.

In 2022, Bakhmut became the epicenter of the longest battle since the full-scale invasion.

You visited your old apartment on the front line at some point in the last few months.

And then you told friends who had fled the city: "The place we knew is gone forever."

How has the war that began in Ukraine's east in 2014 and, of course, continues in the full-scale of invasion changed the country forever?

CHRISTOPHER MILLER: Well, that's a big question.

In just about every way imaginable.

It's now a country of millions of people that are essentially all at war.

It's an existential fight that they are waging against a Russian invading force.

This is a country filled with friends and people I know who have become fighters, soldiers, essentially.

They were once teachers.

They worked for the government.

They worked for NGOs.

They were cab drivers, and now they have taken up arms to defend their country.

It's a country that went from peace -- and not a perfect peace -- to war and been completely upended.

NICK SCHIFRIN: And one that is more proud in its national identity than ever before?

CHRISTOPHER MILLER: You know, many Ukrainians have always been very prideful of their country, proud to be Ukrainians, but no more so than then right now, when they are a country more united than ever against a common foe, and I believe doing a very good job of defending their country on the front lines.

NICK SCHIFRIN: For sure.

When you arrived in the Donbass as a Peace Corps volunteer so many years ago, you write that people there didn't think Kyiv cared very much about them or even considered them true Ukrainians.

Do you think, as you would later write in the book, that that provided an opening for Putin to launch the Russian invasion in Eastern Ukraine in 2014?

CHRISTOPHER MILLER: It did.

I think Putin found some fertile ground to exploit in 2014, which is why we saw some local Ukrainians take up arms against their own government and join these covert Russian forces, soldiers without insignia, and become a part of what the Russians presented at the time as a separatist uprising.

NICK SCHIFRIN: And that invasion, of course, followed what we now call the Revolution of Dignity, the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv, that you covered extensively.

And you write about how those protests became so much more than what caused them, the then pro-Russian president deciding whether or not to be closer to the E.U.

in terms of trade.

How did those protests become much more about the identity of the country itself?

CHRISTOPHER MILLER: Yes, this was a revolution that began as a protest against the turn from the West toward Russia by the pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych.

And it was the violence, state violence, perpetrated by his security forces that transformed it into a revolution.

This was a revolution that was bootstrapped using kitchen utensils, digging up paving stones to defend themselves against attacking police forces.

And it was actually that spirit of the Maidan that responded in 2014 to that first invasion of Eastern Ukraine and became the volunteer forces and later the official military forces, many of which we're now seeing in 2022 defending the country against regular Russian forces now invading the country.

NICK SCHIFRIN: You write that, in the first days after the full-scale invasion, that a senior official admitted to you it was a really close call, that Moscow could have succeeded.

How close was it?

CHRISTOPHER MILLER: Very close, as close as a couple of gates around the presidential administration and a few cars moved in front of those gates to keep some of the Russian special forces that had managed to sneak into the city and take up positions inside of apartments in the government quarter.

This was a lot of luck on Ukraine's part.

They were fortunate that the Russians bungled this invasion.

They made a lot of bad decisions.

They were using old maps en route to the city.

They got lucky that volunteers and ordinary citizens stood up very quickly and took up arms to defend the capital.

A lot of the more experienced Ukrainian military forces were actually in the south and the east of the country, where they expected an invasion.

NICK SCHIFRIN: And then the east, Bakhmut, the battle that has raged for so long that we talked about at the beginning.

When you saw the city the last time, what did it look like?

Was it at all recognizable to where you used to live?

CHRISTOPHER MILLER: I could still make out cafes that I had been to.

I visited my old apartment buildings to see what shape they were in.

It was a city without people.

The only people on the streets were soldiers and military vehicles.

And there's this moment that I wrote about in the book where I'm having a conversation with a soldier and they're digging trenches in the city center.

And we just stood there both, I think, taking in the moment and shaking our heads in disbelief, disbelief that it could happen decades later, trenches, World War I/World War II-style warfare in the middle of the city.

NICK SCHIFRIN: And atrocities that we have seen so extensively throughout the country.

And you quote a poem from a prominent Ukrainian writer and poet, Oleksandr Irvanets, who fled the Russian massacre in European.

And the poem is this: "I won't forgive anyone.

We will overcome everything and endure."

Does that mean that the only true justice that Ukrainians see is victory?

CHRISTOPHER MILLER: It's really difficult for Ukrainians right now to think about any justice, any peace that doesn't see Vladimir Putin and his generals imprisoned or on trial facing justice for the atrocities they have committed.

They have lost family members.

They have lost soldiers.

They have lost homes.

They have seen their cities completely razed to the ground.

It's too much for them to consider anything less than a victory.

And that's what they have said and shown they are willing to fight and die for.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Christopher Miller.

The book is "The War Came To Us: Life and Death in Ukraine."

Thank you very much.

CHRISTOPHER MILLER: Thank you.

GEOFF BENNETT: And we will be back shortly with a look at the successes and challenges facing a women's football team.

But, first, take a moment to hear from your local PBS station.

It's a chance to offer your support, which helps keep programs like ours on the air.

For those of you staying with us, we reprise a story from earlier this summer that continues to resonate.

As India takes on the title of the world's most populous nation, a question that looms, thanks to climate change, is how to feed 1.4 billion people.

Small-scale farming families says crops are withering under record high temperatures, cycles of drought and extreme rainfall, and pest infestations.

In partnership with the Pulitzer Center, Fred de Sam Lazaro reports for his series Agents of Change.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The consultation is usually brief, with a quick diagnosis.

WOMAN (through translator): When they get big, they infest the field.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: And prescription for a new insecticide spray.

WOMAN (through translator): So two milliliters in each liter of water.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: This plant clinic is one of several so-called village knowledge centers set up by the nonprofit M.S.

Swaminathan Research Foundation to help farmers cope with myriad challenges, especially those brought on by the changing climate here.

KUPPUSAMY SUBRAMANIYAN, Farmer (through translator): Before, we used to have pests, but now the quantity or number we have to deal with is much higher.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Like most small scale family farmers, K. Subramaniyan doesn't have irrigation systems, relies entirely on rainfall, and must deal with increasingly unpredictable weather conditions.

KUPPUSAMY SUBRAMANIYAN (through translator): Ten years ago, we had clear seasons, rain in the rainy season.

We could plant when the sun was out.

Now rain has become very erratic.

There's too much rain.

Sometimes, there's no rain.

Sometimes, it even rains during the harvest, and that causes more losses.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It's been unseasonably hot in March and April, which he worries will add stress on the crop.

But to protect his burdened paddy fields from pests, it's ringed with rows of unrelated species like lentils to repel bugs, an approach he learned after consulting with the Swaminathan Foundation, where veteran scientist G.N.

Hariharan is a leader.

G.N.

HARIHARAN, Executive Director, M.S.

Swaminathan Research Foundation: It is a two-way process.

So, by listening to them or sitting with them, we can understand what exactly the issues are.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The goal, he says, is to help farmers adopt sustainable practices and to develop hardier crops, one example, cultivating more saline-tolerant species of rice, a key staple crop in a country with 4,600 miles of coastline.

G.N.

HARIHARAN: When sea level is increasing, most of our production system along the coastline are going to get inundated with seawater.

And, after that, the area will be salinized, and our normal crops cannot be grown.

DR. SOUMYA SWAMINATHAN, Chair, M.S.

Swaminathan Research Foundation: The foundation has focused on resilience and adaptation.

We know that, already, there are changes which cannot be reversed.

And, therefore, there has to be adaptation.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. Soumya Swaminathan is a pediatrician and, until recently, the World Health Organization's chief scientist during the pandemic.

She now chairs the foundation named after her father.

DR. SOUMYA SWAMINATHAN: The whole aim was to really take science to societies.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Nearly 60 years ago, M.S.

Swaminathan used science to launch India's so-called Green Revolution.

It transformed India into one of the world's leading producers of major crops, like wheat and rice.

However, the widespread use, most experts say overuse, of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides has degraded soil quality.

That's pushed farmers to use even more chemicals to sustain productivity and contain disease.

Climate change has further aggravated the problem.

Soumya Swaminathan says the challenge now is to bring a balanced approach to India's food production.

DR. SOUMYA SWAMINATHAN: Keeping in mind that you have to feed 1.4 billion people, so the changes cannot be done in a way that compromises food production and the self-sufficiency that we have today.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The foundation's approach is to get critical information to farmers, sending audio messages with meteorological data to help inform what crops or seed varieties to plant and the best time to plant and how to diversify crops for income and improved nutrition, adding protein and vegetables.

DR. SOUMYA SWAMINATHAN: Today, we -- everyone has a mobile phone in their hands.

We have artificial intelligence, for example, that offers a lot of potential.

How do we see that those actually benefit, particularly the most small and marginalized farmers.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Arjunan Jayaraman says he has benefited.

He grows okra alongside the family's rice fields, and for years tried to control pests with chemical products.

Today, he has an organic approach.

The crop is robust, protected, it turns out, by marigolds and sunflowers, flowers that take the brunt of a pest that attacks the okra.

And Jayaraman now has his own beehives.

ARJUNAN JAYARAMAN, Farmer (through translator): When I was using inorganic methods of farming, the honeybee population declined because we used more pesticides.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Experts say the key challenge is to adapt and scale such models across a vast nation with varied landscapes, soils, social mores, and unpredictable weather.

ABHISHEK JAIN, Council on Energy, Environment and Water: It is a real day-to-day concern.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Abhishek Jain is with the Delhi-based Council on Energy, Environment and Water.

ABHISHEK JAIN: Almost eight in 10 Indians are living in districts which are going to be climate-vulnerable.

Areas which were traditionally flood-prone are becoming drought-prone, and areas which were traditionally drought-prone and becoming flood-prone.

So, almost 40 percent of India's districts are showing this swapping trend.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Exacerbating the challenges for the agriculture sector, a lack of workers.

To create employment for India's growing youthful population, the government has emphasized manufacturing, trying to lure multinational companies to build their factories in India.

That's likely to accelerate the urbanization of this country, with profound impacts on rural agricultural communities.

Arjunan Jayaraman says, farming is becoming increasingly lonely and devalued today.

ARJUNAN JAYARAMAN (through translator): We used to have plenty of people to work, because, in the home, the mother, the father, the child, all the siblings, they worked in the field.

But, today, they're going outside, working in companies.

Dr. Swaminathan says rural prosperity will be critical to India's future food security.

DR. SOUMYA SWAMINATHAN: Young people growing up in rural areas, perhaps in agricultural families, they need to see hope in pursuing an agricultural profession, but, at the same time, they also have a good physical and mental quality of life.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: That will require agriculture-based industries like food processing, which in turn require hefty investment in better infrastructure, storage facilities, roads and schools in rural areas.

And in a rapidly urbanizing country, Jayaraman says, he hopes people become more aware of where its food comes from, returning the traditional reverence he was raised with for farmwork.

He cites a Tamil proverb: If you don't have mud on your feet, you won't see food on your plate.

For the "PBS NewsHour" I'm Fred de Sam Lazaro in Puducherry, India.

GEOFF BENNETT: Fred's reporting is in partnership with the Under-Told Stories Project at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

Boston is known as a sports-loving city, but there's one team many might not know about.

The Boston Renegades are a pro women's tackle football team that has come to dominate their league.

Earlier this summer, they won their fifth straight title.

From the "NewsHour"'s Student Reporting Labs journalism training program, Sarah Youssef has their story.

DEANNA WALSH, Boston Renegades: So, I'm just like, ready.

I'm ready.

Let's go, you know?

(LAUGHTER) SARAH YOUSSEF: Fans love watching the Boston Renegades, a women's football team that has won multiple championships.

WHITNEY ZELEE, Boston Renegades: When you say or meet a woman who plays football, you can't quite picture it .You don't really know what that's going to look like.

Are you going to feel the same watching women plays you are when you're watching a man play?

DEANNA WALSH: It's like boiling water.

It's just like waiting to be kind of unleashed.

KATIE FALKOWSKI, Boston Renegades: And knowing that every single person team is going all in on their role together excites me.

And it's like there's an energy around that that is really beautiful.

SARAH YOUSSEF: I know that playing in -- or sport in general as a woman comes with some challenges.

So can you name some of those challenges that you face day to day?

DEANNA WALSH: The unintentional, like, sexism in a way, right?

So, any time I try to tell anybody about the sport that I play, the team I play for, the league I play in, they always think first, especially the men, is it that lingerie league?

WHITNEY ZELEE: I think one of the biggest challenges is feeling validated.

SARAH YOUSSEF: While NFL salaries range from $700,000 to many millions, the Renegades actually don't get paid a salary.

KATIE FALKOWSKI: Everybody here has another job.

And everybody here is really committed to this and make sacrifices and changes in their own life so that they can do this sport.

SARAH YOUSSEF: They have to pay over $700 a year.

And that doesn't even cover travel expenses and equipment.

KATIE FALKOWSKI: Well, man, I'd like to be getting paid.

Where there's not as many resources, even from the time were really little, you know, and so to overcome that and continue to play and to prioritize being an athlete, even when it's maybe not the most -- the easiest path.

WHITNEY ZELEE: Women's sports in general has a lot of great momentum behind it.

KATIE FALKOWSKI: And I think it's going to take people continuing to show up and have fun and love and embrace their love and passion for the game.

And so just do that and enjoy it and enjoy the journey.

DEANNA WALSH: Yes, let's go hit some people today, nicely, because they're our teammates.

We don't want hurt each other.

But let's go hit somebody.

(LAUGHTER) SARAH YOUSSEF: For "PBS NewsHour"'s Student Reporting Labs, I'm Sarah Youssef in Boston.

GEOFF BENNETT: And breaking late this evening, North Carolina's Republican-controlled legislature has approved a series of bills that restrict transgender athletes and gender transition care.

It also limits the teaching of LGBTQ issues in schools.

Democratic Governor Roy Cooper had vetoed the legislation, but the GOP supermajority overrode his decision.

And that is the "NewsHour" for tonight.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

Thanks for spending part of your evening with us.