AMNA NAWAZ: Good evening.

I'm Amna Nawaz.

GEOFF BENNETT: And I'm Geoff Bennett.

On the "News Hour" tonight: President Trump visits communities recovering from floods and wildfires and suggests a complete overhaul of how the federal government responds to natural disasters.

AMNA NAWAZ: The indigenous Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina gets a presidential endorsement for its long-awaited federal recognition.

We speak with the group's tribal chairman.

JOHN LOWERY, Chairman, Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina: Right now, we are pretty much treated as second-class Natives.

And with our full federal recognition, we will no longer be second-class Natives.

AMNA NAWAZ: And the family of Holocaust survivors' search for answers 80 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

AUDREY HYAMS ROMOFF, Daughter of Auschwitz Survivor: This place has dominated my whole life.

This place destroyed my family.

And the echoes of this place continue to destroy my family.

GEOFF BENNETT: Welcome to the "News Hour."

President Donald Trump set off for the first trip of his second administration today, touring multiple disaster zones.

AMNA NAWAZ: The president is in California tonight, where he will survey damage from the wildfires that are ravaging the Los Angeles area.

But, first, he stopped in North Carolina, four months after Hurricane Helene, and threatened the future of FEMA.

Laura Barron-Lopez begins our coverage.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: This morning, President Donald Trump touching down in Western North Carolina, stop number one of a cross-country disaster tour.

Hurricane Helene brought historic, catastrophic floods to the state last September.

Four months later, Trump again made the recovery political.

On the tarmac in Asheville, Trump questioned the need for a federal response.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: To have a group of people come in from an area that don't even know where they're going in order to solve immediately a problem is something that never worked for me.

I'd like to see the states take care of disasters.

Let the state take care of the tornadoes and the hurricanes and all of the other things that happen.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Shortly after, Trump said he would sign an executive order to gut FEMA.

DONALD TRUMP: I think we're going to recommend that FEMA go away.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Eliminating the agency would take an act of Congress.

And while FEMA assists states in disaster response, it's only at the request of governors.

By afternoon, Trump was shaking hands with families in storm-battered Swannanoa, a small town outside Asheville.

DONALD TRUMP: You need your riverbanks fixed.

You need a lot of roads fixed, and we're going to get it done in rapid time.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: All this while in Washington... DONALD TRUMP: In my second term, we will again stand proudly for families and for life.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: ... the annual March for Life, where Trump made a simultaneous virtual appearance via prerecorded video, crowds of anti-abortion protesters watching on.

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): We believe that every child has the right to life.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The event featured a lineup of Washington's new Republican leadership... J.D.

VANCE, Vice President of the United States: We are proud to march with you.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: ... including Vice President J.D.

Vance.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, the Senate is set to hold a final confirmation vote on Trump's nomination for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth.

Two senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, were the only Republicans to vote against Hegseth in yesterday's procedural vote.

Hegseth can only afford to lose one more Republican if all Democrats vote no.

Before departing the White House this morning, Trump said he has his eyes on the narrow margin.

DONALD TRUMP: I don't know what's going to happen.

You never know with those things, but Pete's a very, very good man.

I hope he makes it.

I hope he makes it.

But I was very surprised that Collins and Murkowski would do that.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The next leg of Trump's disaster tour will be in Southern California, where he plans to visit areas flattened by wildfires and others still under active threat.

DONALD TRUMP: They turned off the water.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Today, the president repeated claims that California mismanaged its water flow and falsely blamed a rare type of fish.

DONALD TRUMP: Everyone's trying to figure out, why aren't they turning it back.

They say it's the delta smelt.

It's a fish, but I find that hard to believe.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Fire and water officials have refuted Trump's claims, saying fish conservation efforts in Northern California did not impact water availability in the southern part of the state.

Still, the president threatened to condition aid to California unless the Golden State complies with his demands.

DONALD TRUMP: I want to see two things in Los Angeles, voter I.D., so that the people have a chance to vote, and I want to see the water be released and come down into Los Angeles and throughout the state.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Governor Newsom's office responded to the president's demands on social media, saying, "Conditioning aid for American citizens is wrong," and that California does require identification to be registered to vote -- Amna.

AMNA NAWAZ: Laura, tell us more about what we should understand about the conditions that President Trump is laying out here and also what experts are saying about the claims he's making to justify that.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So, first, I want to say that this has been a long-running fight that the president has picked with Gavin Newsom and with California.

But in addition to the voter I.D.

and redirecting water conditions, the president has suggested that California needs to end those protections for the endangered delta smelt that we mentioned, even though fire and water policy officials and emergency management experts that we spoke to all say that Trump's attacks on Newsom and on California are either misleading or outright false.

And they say that Trump's proposed conditions are not necessarily rooted in science or recovery.

And it's also inaccurate that water is somehow being withheld.

The issue is more about how dense and urban the city of Los Angeles is and the ability to fight the fire there.

And a number of California Republicans in the House themselves have said that they believe that aid should not be conditioned.

AMNA NAWAZ: There are, we should point out, some kinds of conditions, some forms of condition disaster relief that are becoming more bipartisan and more popular.

Tell us about those.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: There is a growing consensus among emergency management experts and former FEMA officials that conditions could be needed, as well as changing the federal relief system, that that is also warranted.

But they say that the conditions have to be focused on infrastructure and recovery, like what kind of materials are used to make homes more resistant to fires and floods.

There should be no vegetation near buildings.

Wider lanes are needed for evacuation, asphalt that's resistant to heat.

Essentially, how you build, where you build, and the materials you build with is what conditions should be used.

And experts I spoke to like Jesse Keenan, who's the director of climate change and urbanism at Tulane University, said opening the door to conditions that have nothing to do with recovery like voter I.D.

could also end up hurting red states.

JESSE KEENAN, Director of Climate Change and Urbanism, Tulane University: At the end of the day, in this country, red states and counties have many more presidential declarations than Democratic and blue states and counties.

And this weaponization, this anti-California bias in your policymaking is only going to come back to hurt you when you begin to apply this to Texas, to Louisiana, to Mississippi.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: But I also spoke to former officials who worked in Donald Trump's first administration who said that he may simply just decide to apply conditions to blue states like California and leave red states alone.

AMNA NAWAZ: Well, speaking of his first administration, we should remind folks that, in that first time in office, he made similar threats, delayed aid while in office.

Remind us how that played out then.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: In his first term, Donald Trump delayed billions in aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

And his White House also obstructed an investigation, according to an internal watchdog, into why those billions were delayed.

He also diverted FEMA money from FEMA to deportation of migrants to Mexico.

And former Trump officials revealed last year that, during his first term, he withheld aid to California and that he didn't change his decision until he was shown by staffers that where the wildfires had hit in Orange County, he was shown congressional maps and realized that there were Republican voters in those areas and then decided to release the funds.

And I spoke to Kevin Carroll, who served in the Homeland Security under Trump's first term, and said that the president makes decisions like this based on whether or not he believes that the areas affected have voters and people that supported him.

AMNA NAWAZ: So, Laura, if there were no federal help from California or other states, if disaster relief was left up to the states as President Trump is articulating, what would be the consequences?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Jesse Keenan of Tulane added that states are left on their own -- if they're left on their own to handle these extreme disasters, it would significantly hurt local economies, whether it's blue states or red states.

JESSE KEENAN: If the federal government pulls out, home prices go up, rents go up, the cost of living goes up, your taxes go up.

It's a terrible situation in economic terms.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Overall, the experts that I spoke to acknowledge that, yes, FEMA is stretched thin, but to do away with FEMA potentially entirely, as the president is suggesting, is unsustainable and would hurt a number of states, because, ultimately, states need that recovery help from FEMA.

It helps recovery go faster and it's something that they rely on significantly, Amna.

AMNA NAWAZ: All right, our White House correspondent, Laura Barron-Lopez.

Laura, thank you.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Thank you.

GEOFF BENNETT: Late today, the U.S. State Department suspended all foreign assistance around the world for at least three months.

It affects tens of billions of dollars for programs that extend from military assistance to Ukraine to supporting police in Mexico who are supposed to stop fentanyl from coming into the U.S. Nick Schifrin is following this all and joins us now.

So, Nick, what does this direction actually do?

NICK SCHIFRIN: Geoff, the direction is contained in a memo that hasn't been made public.

The State Department hasn't even acknowledged it publicly, but "PBS News Hour" obtained the memo.

And it says the U.S. government -- quote - - "shall not provide foreign assistance funded by or through the Department and USAID without the secretary of state's authorization."

And -- quote -- "For existing foreign assistance awards, contracting officers and grant officers shall immediately stop -- issue stop-work orders."

It says, within 30 days the department will develop review standards.

Within 85 days, it will complete a comprehensive review and within 180 days all U.S. foreign assistance will be aligned with President Trump's vision.

Bottom line, Geoff, every dollar being spent in terms of U.S. foreign assistance around the world is now being paused.

There are a few exceptions, foreign military financing for Israel and Egypt and emergency food assistance around the world.

GEOFF BENNETT: So what programs could this suspension affect?

NICK SCHIFRIN: We're talking about everything, including security assistance around the world.

So $40 billion is generally the total that's cited in terms of total foreign assistance.

About half of that is military assistance.

So this affects security assistance or some of the security assistance, certainly, to Ukraine, to Taiwan, to Jordan.

These are key U.S. allies and partners around the world.

And it's not just weapons.

It's things like training.

But on top of military assistance, this is what the U.S. government calls security assistance.

So that's police.

There's some $2 billion for policing around the world.

And so, as you identified at the top, some of this is for Mexican police who are supposed to go after the cartels that have just been labeled foreign terrorist organizations, who are supposed to interdict fentanyl that has affected so much - - so many communities in the United States.

So this really goes so far across the world, West Africa against counterterrorism funding through this program.

So there are big questions about how much -- how long this will last, how the Trump team will resume it.

They say that they simply don't have enough visibility into all of these programs.

They need to pause it in order to better understand it and align it with their vision.

GEOFF BENNETT: Nick Schifrin with this late-breaking news, our thanks to you, as always.

0:14:17.105,1193:02:47.295 NICK SCHIFRIN: Thank you.

GEOFF BENNETT: The day's other headlines begin in the Middle East, where Hamas announced the names of four Israeli hostages it intends to release tomorrow as part of their cease-fire deal.

Daniella Gilboa, Karina Ariev, Liri Albag, and Naama Levy are all soldiers.

They were kidnapped by Hamas from an army base in Southern Israel during the October 7 attacks.

The women are expected to be released in exchange for a group of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

Also today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces might not withdraw from Lebanon by the deadline set in an agreement with Hezbollah.

The cease-fire deal reached in November requires Israeli troops to leave Southern Lebanon by Sunday while Hezbollah militants retreat north of the Litani River.

Lebanese forces agreed to patrol the buffer zone between the two sides with U.N. peacekeepers.

But the prime minister said in a statement today that Lebanon hasn't fully enforced the agreement yet.

The White House said today that an extension to the cease-fire is urgently needed.

Russia and Ukraine traded drone strikes overnight as the war enters its fourth year next month.

Eyewitness video from Russia's Ryazan region about 100 miles outside of Moscow shows people running from a burning oil refinery.

Russia's Defense Ministry says it's shot down 121 Ukrainian drones across the country, one of the largest such attacks of the war.

In an interview, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he's open for talks with the U.S. on the war in Ukraine and on energy prices.

VLADIMIR PUTIN, Russian President: We would better meet and have a calm conversation all issues of interest to both the United States and Russia based on today's realities.

We are ready.

GEOFF BENNETT: Meantime, Ukraine says at least three people have died following a Russian drone attack overnight that hit an apartment complex Southwest of the capital, Kyiv.

Several homes were also hit.

Such air attacks have become more frequent in Ukraine as Russia launches dozens of drones almost every night.

President Trump has ended the government-funded protection detail for Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The president said today his former adviser during the COVID-19 pandemic could hire his own security, adding that he wouldn't feel any responsibility if Dr. Fauci were ever harmed.

Fauci has received debt threats for his public health guidance during the pandemic.

He has reportedly hired his own private security team.

This week, President Trump also withdrew security protections for his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.

They have both been critical of Mr. Trump since serving his first administration.

A federal judge barred the leader of the far right Oath Keepers group, Stewart Rhodes, from entering Washington, D.C., without court approval.

It comes days after President Trump commuted his 18-year prison sentence for coordinating the Capitol attack in 2021.

Rhodes visited the U.S. Capitol earlier this week just after his release.

He met with at least one lawmaker and defended his actions.

The judge's order also applies to seven other people convicted of charges related to January 6 and bars them all from entering the Capitol Building or grounds without the court's permission.

The U.S. Supreme Court said today it would hear a case on whether to allow the nation's first publicly funded religious charter school to open in Oklahoma.

The case centers on a proposal by the Catholic Church in Oklahoma to establish an online school that would incorporate religious teachings into its curriculum.

It comes amid other efforts to insert religion into public schools, including a push in Louisiana to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

The case will likely be argued in front of the court this spring, with a decision by early summer.

The world's largest annual migration of humanity is hitting its peak.

It's the travel rush of the Chinese lunar new year, and, quite simply, many people are going home for the holidays.

LIU TAO, China Resident: Of course I'm happy.

After the whole year, the family's eager to get together and enjoy a good feast.

GEOFF BENNETT: Hundreds of millions of people will be traveling by train, plane and automobile in the run-up to Wednesday, which marks the official start of the new year in the lunar calendar.

China's government estimates that there will be nine billion trips during the 40-day travel period, most of them by car.

Train trips will top 500 million, and another 90 million people will be traveling by air.

On Wall Street today, stocks slipped a bit after recent gains.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell about 140 points on the day.

The Nasdaq lost nearly 100 points, or half-a-percent.

The S&P 500 stepped back from yesterday's all-time high, losing 17 points.

And it was, forgive me, pandamonium at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., today.

More than a year after the capital said farewell to its beloved pandas, zoo officials gave a grand welcome to a new panda pair.

As you can see, there was a brass band, a panda mascot, even a ceremonial countdown before their grand debut.

The two new giant pandas, Bao Li and Qing Bao, are on loan from China for the next 10 years.

They continue a tradition that goes back to the early 1970s, when pandas help soften the political edges of the U.S.-China relationship.

Panda Cam is also back, with 40 cameras capturing their daytime activities.

Still to come on the "News Hour": David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart weigh in on the week's political headlines;one family searches for answers 80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz; and a new winter basketball league founded by WNBA players tips off.

The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina got a major boost this week in its decades-long fight to become a federally recognized tribe.

President Trump yesterday signed a presidential memo directing the secretary of the interior to submit a plan for full federal recognition of the tribe.

That status would unleash hundreds of millions of dollars in support for the 60,000-member Lumbee.

Their chairman, John Lowery, joins us now.

Thanks for being with us.

JOHN LOWERY, Chairman, Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina: Thank you for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: So, how confident are you that this action by President Trump will finally result in the recognition that your tribe has sought for more than a century now?

JOHN LOWERY: Well, we are very confident.

As you may know, we have been through the United States House numerous times over the past decade, and we have always seemed to come up short on the - - in the United States Senate.

And we have never had this level of support directed from the White House, from the president himself.

And so we feel like, with him weighing in, with him letting Congress know that he would like to see us have full federal recognition, we feel like this will help us to finally cross the finish line and get this bill passed in both houses of Congress and send to his desk.

GEOFF BENNETT: Why have previous efforts fallen short?

JOHN LOWERY: We have been on this road for a long time.

During the '50s, during the 1950s, the United States was trying to get out of what they call the Indian business, and they were terminating relationships with tribes.

And so we actually got caught up in that.

Because of that, we have been in this legal limbo now.

We have had a lot of support from different congresspeople in the past.

And so it's just a lot of work trying to get this bill passed.

GEOFF BENNETT: How would full federal recognition change the day-to-day lives of your 60,000 members?

JOHN LOWERY: Well, we have a tribal government now that is set up and we have a budget of over $40 million.

We already get some funds from different programs like HUD and energy and youth.

And so what we will be able to do is access additional programs, additional services.

We will be able to access programs within Indian Health Service, within BIA.

And there's also programs in other departments, Department of Transportation, USDA, Department of Energy.

We will be able to access those and we will be able to take those programs and provide them to our people.

So, we're definitely looking forward to being able to access those programs, access those sites for tribes and to put them in good use for our people.

GEOFF BENNETT: I want to ask you about the potential politics of this, because, just before he signed the order, President Trump had this to say: DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: I love the Lumbee Tribe.

They were with me all the way.

They were great.

GEOFF BENNETT: So he's suggesting there that the tribe backed his candidacy.

Is that the case?

And do you have any concerns about partisan politics potentially becoming mixed up with this quest for federal recognition?

JOHN LOWERY: I do not have a thought process that partisan politics can play a part in this.

Our tribe, I think as a whole, if you look at the vote statistics, I do believe that our people did vote for President Trump over Vice President Harris.

But, at the end of the day, I do not think partisan politics will play a role in this.

Our people have been politically active for years.

We voted for candidates from both parties.

We have had President Obama say he supported us, President Biden, President Trump.

So we have had people on both sides of the aisle all the way at the top who have said that they support us.

GEOFF BENNETT: What would full federal recognition mean to you?

JOHN LOWERY: You know, we are very strong and resilient people, and our ancestors worked hard for us just to be here today.

And we have stood the test of time.

We have been through colonial times.

We have been through sickness.

We have been through war.

We have been through the Civil War era.

We have been through the Jim Crow South.

We have even fought the KKK.

And we continue to stand here.

We continue to stand firm.

There's nothing that we cannot do as a tribal people.

And so I'm proud of us.

I'm proud of what our ancestors have been able to do.

And I will say this.

Right now, we are pretty much treated as second-class natives.

and with our full federal recognition, we will no longer be second-class Natives.

And, to me, that's the biggest fight is that the United States government will finally officially recognize us as who we are.

And that's why we're still here fighting this fight to ensure that not another Lumbee passes away as a second-class Native.

GEOFF BENNETT: John Lowery is chairman of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.

Appreciate your time this evening, sir.

JOHN LOWERY: Thank you very much.

I appreciate you.

AMNA NAWAZ: This coming Monday marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.

An estimated 1,100,000 people, mainly Jews, were murdered there during the Holocaust.

One of the youngest survivors was an 8-year-old polish girl named Rutka.

She moved to Canada after the war and took the name Rachel Hyams.

Decades later, she died by suicide.

And now Rachel's daughter has been retracing her mother's steps and allowed special correspondent Malcolm Brabant to come along on the emotional journey.

AUDREY HYAMS ROMOFF, Daughter of Auschwitz Survivor: Oh, my God.

LINDSAY ROMOFF, Granddaughter of Auschwitz Survivor: Take a deep breath.

AUDREY HYAMS ROMOFF: This place has dominated my whole life.

This place destroyed my family.

And the echoes of this place continue to destroy my family.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Audrey Hyams Romoff has spent a lifetime resisting the compulsion to come here.

AUDREY HYAMS ROMOFF: That station looks completely intact, no different than it did over 80 years ago.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Now supported by her daughter Lindsay, Audrey has traveled from Toronto to try to find answers to two unresolved family mysteries.

Why was her grandfather Aron killed during a fight in a cattle car on the way to Auschwitz-Birkenau?

But, more importantly, what drove her mother, Rachel, to suicide 63 three years after she and her mother, Regina (ph), survived this, the worst of all the Nazi extermination camps?

Rachel was just eight years old when she entered the gate of death.

Most people transported here from across occupied Europe went straight to the gas chambers.

But Rachel and her mother did not, as she told the Shoah Foundation 28 years ago.

RACHEL HYAMS, Auschwitz Survivor: I have this memory, and it's troublesome.

I see a door that is oval on top and straight on the bottom.

In my own mind, is that a door to a crematorium?

I know that our clothes are being taken away.

I knew that women were having their heads shaved.

MALCOLM BRABANT: This Russian film shot a week after the death camp's liberation shows the child survivors.

Among them somewhere is 80-year-old Rachel.

RACHEL HYAMS: It's been a journey.

It's not over.

I'm still grappling.

And the issue for me is, what do you do with the trauma?

We're all prisoners of our past.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Rachel grew up to be a nurse in Canada.

She married a doctor, Brahm (ph), and became more prosperous, dressing in bright colors as a counterpoint to her dark past, and she had children and grandchildren.

But, in 2008 in Montreal during a Jewish holiday, more than 60 years after Rachel escaped the gas chambers, the Nazis finally triumphed.

Seen here a decade earlier with mother, Regina, and husband, Brahm, Rachel was mentally unraveling.

AUDREY HYAMS ROMOFF: My father said, in a quiet voice, he said: "Your mother doesn't want to be here anymore."

And when I heard that, I didn't take it seriously.

And I didn't take it seriously because my mother had made these grand pronouncements all my life.

MALCOLM BRABANT: But later, with tragic symmetry, Rachel shut herself in the garage and started the car.

Her husband, Brahm, was also asphyxiated, possibly accidentally.

Their deaths remain a mystery.

There was no suicide note.

RACHEL HYAMS: I'm trying to deal with survivor guilt.

AUDREY HYAMS ROMOFF: People who have made this type of decision are really at peace, because they know that they're taking control and they're not going to be in pain.

And that's really hard for me to live with.

What should I have done that I didn't do?

So that really is much more present for me than the manner in which she decided to take her life.

MALCOLM BRABANT: The search for answers gains traction in the Archives of Tomaszow Mazowiecki south of Warsaw, where the Nazis crowned Audrey's family into a ghetto, along with 15,000 other Jews.

Historian Justyna Biernat has won accolades for revealing Tomaszow's dark past.

Only five of the town's Jewish children survived the Holocaust.

One of them was Rachel.

JUSTYNA BIERNAT, Historian: So, Aron with his family and your grandpa with your grand-uncle with -- so there were a few children, I mean, Abraham, Isaac, Hinda (ph) and Rutka.

And they were all together in one flat in the ghetto.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Builders were at work erasing the last traces of the block's former Jewish occupants, including Audrey's relatives, who spent more than two years here being terrorized and starved by the Nazis.

JUSTYNA BIERNAT: We know the most Grynszpan family were resettled here, and it was about 16 people from the Grynszpan family, and I think that about eight or nine in one flat.

LINDSAY ROMOFF: To know how many of them were sort of just packed in here is hard to wrap your head around.

AUDREY HYAMS ROMOFF: I talked about how I didn't think that my mother and my grandmother would want us to do this trip.

And I don't think they ever could have imagined that I'd be standing in this place, where they were.

And it's hard.

I just -- I don't know.

I feel the ghosts.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Nearby St. Wenceslas Church was built after the war to exercise ghosts.

It replaced a little wooden church where, in late fall 1942, over two days, 14,000 Jews from the ghetto were selected to be exterminated.

Scores were also massacred here.

Their bodies littered the churchyard.

Extraordinarily, wooden St. Wenceslas survived the war and has been moved a short distance away.

LINDSAY ROMOFF: I don't think I want to absorb the energy of this place because it's so dark.

And I carry a lot with me.

I don't need to carry this.

MALCOLM BRABANT: This church is born witness to one of the most evil things that happened during the Holocaust in Tomaszow Mazowiecki.

A Nazi officer sat in front of this building acting like a Roman emperor, giving the thumbs down to those Jews who were sent to the line of death and they were transported to Treblinka, a death camp, and gassed.

To others who were more privileged, he gave the thumbs up and they could survive, and those people included Audrey's family, because the Germans had a use for Audrey's grandfather, Aron Grynszpan.

JUSTYNA BIERNAT: We have got Aron Grynszpan here in the Jewish police.

MALCOLM BRABANT: And this is the wages ledger that proves Grynszpan was a low-ranking officer in the ghetto.

Across Poland, Jewish elders were ordered by the Germans to establish ghetto police forces to make them accessories to Nazi war crimes.

In Tomaszow, sons of good families were recruited in a vain attempt to mitigate the Germans' actions.

Grynszpan signed up on the same day as his best friend, Makal Grossman (ph).

JUSTYNA BIERNAT: The Germans knew what they're planning, right, that the ghetto will be liquidating.

And they knew that they will need hands for doing this.

MALCOLM BRABANT: As the liquidation of the Tomaszow ghetto approached, the Jewish police were given a pay raise.

JUSTYNA BIERNAT: Everyone needs to eat -- to eat and to be safe.

So perhaps money, it was low money, but it was the way to survive.

MALCOLM BRABANT: In Tomaszow's book of remembrance, Aron Grynszpan's friend, Makal Grossman, described how, on those two terrible days in 1942, Nazis mercilessly beat Jewish policemen as they shepherded their fellow Jews to the cattle cars.

One policeman forced to participate in the deportations was Henry Bierzynski.

HENRY BIERZYNSKI, Former Jewish Ghetto Policeman: This was part of the work, you see, of the police that they didn't like, you see, that we had to cooperate with the Germans.

They used us, under the threat of shooting us.

And we did have to do it, you see?

MALCOLM BRABANT: Bierzynski's rare account of life as a ghetto policeman is contained in "The Ghost Tattoo" written by his son Australian doctor Tony Bernard.

TONY BERNARD, Author, "The Ghost Tattoo": In terms of you and me, be absolutely clear.

If your grandfather had not been a ghetto policeman, you would not be here and I wouldn't be here, no two ways about it.

There were stacks of young, fit, healthy people who all went to Treblinka on those trains and didn't survive.

You really had to have this get-out-of-jail card.

RACHEL HYAMS: The question of our survival is something that I grapple with, and I will for the rest of my day.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Audrey and Lindsay are retracing Rachel's steps into Crematorium 3 in the fall of 1944.

AUDREY HYAMS ROMOFF: There was an incident that my mother could never explain when she was here, that they gathered all the children, and they had them undressed and they brought them into the gas chamber and then nothing happened.

And after a little while, they took them back out and brought them back to the barracks.

MALCOLM BRABANT: One possible explanation is that the children were saved by Hitler's deputy Heinrich Himmler's order that gas chambers cease operations.

In a futile attempt to cover up the Nazis war crimes before abandoning Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Germans blew up Crematorium 3.

Only Crematorium 1 remains intact.

AUDREY HYAMS ROMOFF: Oh, God.

The ovens were hard.

Mostly, all I thought about was children.

You know my mother was a child survivor, and I thought, how many children were in here that didn't just survive like my mother did?

It's strange.

The gas chamber or whatever, I mean, it's just a space, and you know that the stains on the walls, what the history of that is.

But to turn the corner and see where they burned the bodies, that's been horrible.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Eighty years on, a Third World War seems closer than ever.

LINDSAY ROMOFF: With the right set of circumstances, there's a lot of hate in this world, and people are capable of doing horrible things, and I don't think that we have passed that point in our in our humanity that this is an impossibility.

AUDREY HYAMS ROMOFF: We're here to honor them, and if they can see us, to say we came back here.

Don't be mad at me.

We remember you.

We remember everything that was lost here.

And we continue to walk with the grief beside us, just like my mother walked with the grief beside her.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Audrey's and Lindsay's pilgrimage didn't yield the definitive answers they were seeking, but they left with greater understanding.

AUDREY HYAMS ROMOFF: It's painful to be here.

It's good that I came, but I never want to come back.

MALCOLM BRABANT: For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Malcolm Brabant in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, it has been a busy first week for the Trump administration.

To delve into what President Trump has prioritized since reentering the White House, we turn tonight to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart.

That is New York Times columnist David Brooks, and Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for The Washington Post.

It's good to see you both.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Hey, Geoff.

GEOFF BENNETT: So President Trump is acting on his campaign promises at the quickest pace in recent memory.

Jonathan, what do these past few days suggest to you about how the next few years might go?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Well, look, all the things he's doing from the pace to what exactly specifically he's doing, he told us.

He told us exactly how these first few days were going to go.

So that is not what's surprising.

What is surprising to me is just sort of the level of meanness in some parts, smallness in other parts, but also aggressiveness in other ways.

And I'm thinking about his moves on immigration, his moves of snatching the security details from Pompeo... DAVID BROOKS: Bolton.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Bolton.

DAVID BROOKS: Fauci.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: And Dr. Fauci.

I mean, this is -- it is startling.

But I also - - politically, I understand why he's moving so quickly and so broadly, because the clock is ticking.

His term is four years on paper.

But the way politics runs in this town and in this country, he's got maybe a year-and-a-half, maybe two if he wants to get over the finish line a lot of these things.

But I will point out, there are two specific promises he did not keep.

He didn't end the war in Ukraine on day one, and he didn't lower prices on day one.

GEOFF BENNETT: When we spoke before the inauguration, David, you said you weren't going to pre-panic, that you were going to wait and see what Donald Trump does.

How are your nerves?

DAVID BROOKS: I'm still in pre-panic mode.

I haven't panicked yet.

I thought the Fauci, Bolton, and Pompeo, taking away the security detail was small and vicious and ugly.

There are other things I liked.

They reformed NEPA, which is the National Environmental Policy Act, which is a Nixon era thing that got expanded under Carter.

And that really was, these are environmental regulations that really did restrict home building.

They restrict green energy plants.

They restrict manufacturing.

And so one of the reasons we have high housing prices is because it's very hard to build in a lot of places, especially places like California, because of NEPA and other things.

Kamala Harris said she was going to deregulate.

I'm not sure she could have been able to do it, but Trump did it.

And so we have much greater grounds to hopefully the home building.

And housing can be affordable for young people.

So that's a very positive thing that Trump people did.

On immigration, I obviously don't approve.

He's doing what he said.

And I understand why people who are undocumented in this country, the 13 to 15 million are scared, terrified out of their minds.

I totally understand that.

But it should be said that the way politicians talk about immigration and the way policy experts talk about it is totally different.

They can talk about mass deportation.

But we have 750 immigration judges for a country of 330 million.

Some of these judges have backlogs of like six years, eight years.

Who's going to pick up people?

The military, the National Guard, they don't want to do this.

They have a recruiting crisis already.

So the changes that are going to come on the immigration front are going to be a lot slower and more drawn out than a lot of people may think.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Although, I mean, on the campaign trail, he said, we're going to go after violent undocumented immigrants, or, as he says, illegal aliens.

But between the Laken Riley Act and other things, the definition of who they're going after has broadened to the point where, yes, immigrant families, families where some are documented and some are undocumented, yes, the terror in those families is real.

GEOFF BENNETT: Let's talk about the pardons, the January 6 pardons, for nearly all of the defendants, and then the president commuted the sentences for the remaining, I think it was four.

It suggests that Donald Trump doesn't feel any real constraints.

I mean, he's even considering inviting some of these pardoned rioters to the White House.

What's the impact, David, of that sense of impunity?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I mean, the Proud Boys, this was a guy, one of the leaders, this was a guy who was supposed to be in prison until 2040.

There's not like some misdemeanor.

And so these are serious violent criminals that he pardoned.

And it's basically a middle finger to the Capitol Police, to law and order in general.

And it's a big sign that I value Steve Bannon's opinion over rule of law.

GEOFF BENNETT: And he commuted, I should have said 14.

One of the things I have heard from Trump allies, and you mentioned this too, Jonathan, an argument-ender, was that the president said he was going to do this.

He's entirely transparent.

And they also point to his decisive victory, that he won every battleground state, won the popular vote and the Electoral College with the knowledge among the American people that he was going to do this, all of this, pardon the January 6'ers and the whole thing.

How do you quibble with an argument like that?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Yes, the president has absolute pardon power, and he is within his right to do that.

But what -- where I am so enraged by this, I am so tired of being jaw-boned by people who are constantly talking about backing the blue and how they're so for law enforcement and how those of us who want some accountability for police when they get things wrong, that somehow we are anti-police.

And yet here's this guy who just pardoned people who we all watched with our own eyes on January 6, 2021, beat and savage law enforcement officers.

Five law enforcement officers died as a result of injuries and other things that happened on January 6.

And he goes and he pardons them?

I do not want to be lectured by Republicans, and I think I speak for a lot of people who are center-left and Democrats.

Do not lecture us about your support for law enforcement when you back a president who just did what he did on the January 6 people.

GEOFF BENNETT: Do the pardons take that cultural issue off the table for the GOP?

DAVID BROOKS: You mean defending January 6 or -- oh, I mean, even the people I know who are pro-MAGA, very pro-Trump, they thought January 6 was a terrible atrocity.

And so he's not only catering to his base.

He's catering to the edge of his base.

And it should be said, in our Constitution, we have a wonderful Constitution, but the pardon power of the presidency is like in my top three bad things that are in there, because every president has abused that power, including Joe Biden just a few weeks ago.

Donald Trump, of course, takes it to the next level.

But the crucial element of the Trump presidency is his attempt to have what I called on our show on Monday an electoral monarchy, that all power is personal.

I don't have to follow the norms and rules of the Constitution because I'm king.

And the January 6 pardons were a perfect exemplification of that.

GEOFF BENNETT: And you could argue, Jonathan, that the swing state voters who were angry about high grocery prices, angry about the high cost of living, housing prices and the rest, they're still waiting to hear what Donald Trump will do on that issue in particular.

Does that provide an opening for Democrats in any way?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: I mean, sure, but let's keep in mind we're only four or five days into the new Trump term.

I would say let's give it another -- let's see what next week holds.

Maybe he will do something then.

But if he doesn't move specifically on bringing down prices and addressing those economic concerns of the American people writ large, but of his voters in particular, then, yes, Democrats should jump out there and point out the fact that he's kept a lot of his promises, but he hasn't kept the promises that everyone says got him elected president.

GEOFF BENNETT: And he's been clear -- to your point about keeping a lot of his promises, he's been clear about trying to dismantle the U.S.-led the global order, telling the Davos elite this past week that you either do what's what's in our best interests, and if you don't want to play ball you're going to pay a price in the form of tariffs.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, my small violin for the Davos elitists.

I would say a couple things on foreign policy.

The first, one thing that's I think that's been undercovered that has been truly terrible, maybe the most terrible thing for me, is the decimation of the national and national security staff, some of the intel staff.

These are career people for patriotic people who work like 70-hour, 80-hour weeks.

They serve every president.

And they have expertise.

You take all those people.

A lot of people showed up and they were asked to go home and we don't know if you're ever coming back.

And so who's going to run our foreign policy?

Get somebody who -- people who don't know anything about intel?

You can't learn intel by sitting on a college campus.

You have to be in the intel community.

And so I worry about the decimation of our human capacities.

I have some hopeful thoughts about just the vibe about Russia these days.

Russia has -- they're winning very gradually the war in Ukraine, but at tremendous economic cost, human cost, cost to the regime.

And you see these little vibes that maybe Putin and Ukrainians can come to the deal, which is what Putin wants -- or what Trump wants.

That may happen.

That may be a little hopeful glimmer.

GEOFF BENNETT: What do you make, Jonathan, of Donald Trump's effort to dismantle and undermine organizations that were set up after World War II to make the world safe for democracies and to promote prosperity?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Set up after World War II under - - with whose driving force, whose leadership?

American leadership.

I mean, we have had largely peace in the Western Hemisphere because of those institutions, because the United States and the establishment back then understood that a peaceful, prosperous world has to be one that's at peace and that also has the imprimatur of American democracy, meaning respect for the rule of law.

People should be free to vote for the governments, vote for their leaders and that there should be human rights and a free press, a free, uninhibited press that holds those governments accountable.

And what's so dangerous about now a second Trump administration is that he has shown through his actions in his first term and most definitely now, five days in, that he is running completely counter to that.

And so what -- how does the world look at the United States and those institutions now?

Can those institutions hold without American leadership and an American president who cares about those institutions?

GEOFF BENNETT: Jonathan Capehart and David Brooks, our thanks to you, as always.

Have a good weekend.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Thanks, Geoff.

DAVID BROOKS: You too.

AMNA NAWAZ: Women's basketball has seen an overdue surge in popularity in recent years.

Last year's WNBA Championship was the most watched finals game in the league's 25-year history with 3.3 million viewers.

Now a new professional three-on-three league called Unrivaled launched last week in Miami is building on that success.

Games air on TNT and truTV and stream on Max, part of a six-year deal worth $100 million.

I spoke to WNBA All-Star and co-founder of the Unrivaled league, Napheesa Collier, earlier this week.

Napheesa Collier, welcome to the "News Hour."

Thanks so much for joining us.

NAPHEESA COLLIER, Co-Founder, Unrivaled: Thank you.

AMNA NAWAZ: So this league was born from the joint force of you and your fellow WNBA star Breanna Stewart.

How is it that two WNBA rivals came together to start this league?

What was the void you were trying to fill?

NAPHEESA COLLIER: Yes, I think just we have both been in women's basketball for so long and the WNBA.

And I think, through that, we just saw the holes of what kind of works and what doesn't.

And for a long time, a lot of players had to play year-round basketball.

They would play in the WNBA, they would have maybe 10 days off and then they would have to go overseas.

So not only is that really hard on your bodies, where we were seeing really just terrible injuries.

Also, a lot of people don't realize that we make most of our money off the court.

And so brand building and being able to activate with those brands is really important for our livelihoods.

And when you're overseas, you essentially go dark for six months out of the year and you can't activate with those brands.

It really hurts us in that way.

And then, thirdly, I think you just see the explosion that is happening in women's sports right now.

It's growing at such a rapid pace.

And it feels like everyone except for the people who are putting the product on the court or the field or wherever it may be are the ones that are benefiting financially from that.

And so we kind of wanted to put all that together and we came up with Unrivaled, where we can hone our basketball skills, where you're getting better.

We have the best weight facilities, recovery facilities.

We have equity in the league, one of the first times ever that people who are playing in the actual league that they have that they're playing and have equity in it, and then also so heavy on content and brand building, which, again, is so crucial to how we make money.

AMNA NAWAZ: Tell me more about the financial piece of it because you guys are offering the highest average salary for professional women's athletes, right, some $220,000, higher even than the WNBA's regular based salary, plus equity, as you mentioned.

Where's the money coming from and how hard was it to bring investors in?

NAPHEESA COLLIER: Yes, I mean, the money is coming from those investors, people who believe in the product and believe in the financial plan that we have for this.

And I think that was something that we were really adamant about from the very beginning, is that we wanted to offer really competitive high salaries because we want to pay players what we deserve to be paid.

And then that also goes with the equity piece, where we're trying to create generational wealth here, where people have equity in hopefully what is a very successful, sustainable business.

And so that was something that we really had to work through in the very beginning.

It was something very important for us.

And so we went out and we got those brands who aligned with what we're thinking.

And I think even better than all of that, for so long, the narrative was kind of support women sports is the right thing to do.

Now, of course, it's the right thing to do, but it's also the smart thing to do financially.

And I think our investors realize both of those parts of it.

AMNA NAWAZ: OK, so for anyone who hasn't been able to see a game yet, walk us through it.

How is three-on-three different than five a side?

What do you love about this game?

NAPHEESA COLLIER: I love that, first of all, there's two baskets still.

So a lot of people don't realize it's not half-court.

We still have that up and down game, but it's about two-thirds the size of a regular court, but you're taking two people off of each team.

And so it just really opens the court up so much, where you get to use your skills.

And we have the best players in the world here.

If we want to see what they can do.

And so, especially for me, for example, I love working in the post.

Well, in the WNBA, it's really bogged down.

It's really crowded here.

I'm allowed the freedom to work more in the post.

And you can see my skill set more and you can see everyone's skill set.

And so I think that's what makes it really fun.

AMNA NAWAZ: I mean, the roster is incredible.

Among the league's 36 players, in addition, of course, to you and Stewie.

you have got stars like Brittney Griner, Angel Reese, Alyssa Thomas, Aaliyah Edwards.

Your league investors include people like the legendary coach Dawn Staley and tennis star Coco Gauff.

Your analysts include women like Candace Parker and Lisa Leslie.

This is really a league built by women for women athletes.

So how does that sort of change how it's run, how the athletes are supported?

NAPHEESA COLLIER: We have said from the very beginning this is a players-led league.

Everyone who's playing this year has equity in the league.

And so we're here for us.

We're here for the players, and so just working really closely about what that means and what that looks like.

What do you guys need for recovery?

What is going to make this the best situation for you to grow as a player and to get better?

And so I think you just see that, where everyone has a vested interest literally in this business.

And so not only do we want to get better, but we want to do whatever we can to support the league as well.

AMNA NAWAZ: Napheesa Collier, co-founder of the Unrivaled league, thank you so much for joining us.

And good luck this season.

NAPHEESA COLLIER: Yes, thank you.

AMNA NAWAZ: And, remember, there's a lot more online, including our digital weekly show, "PBS News Weekly," that recaps President Donald Trump's first week in the White House.

That is on our YouTube page.

GEOFF BENNETT: And be sure to watch "Washington Week With The Atlantic" tonight on PBS.

Moderator Jeffrey Goldberg and his panel discuss the wave of executive actions President Trump signed in his first days back in the White House.

AMNA NAWAZ: And on "PBS News Weekend": An A.I.

transcription tool used in hospitals has been found to make up words.

The risks that could pose to patients.

And that is the "News Hour" for tonight.

I'm Amna Nawaz.

GEOFF BENNETT: And I'm Geoff Bennett.

For all of us here at the "PBS News Hour," thanks for spending part of your evening with us.

Have a great weekend.