PBS News Hour

JOHN YANG: Tonight on PBS News Weekend, from railroad tracks to draw bridges how extreme heat is affecting the way Americans get from place to place, then how U.S. officials are fighting foreign propaganda on social media.

And an investigation uncovers abuse and mistreatment at some youth residential treatment centers.

MAN: My group home experience is something that I still carry with me to this day my body is covered in scars from some of those fights.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Good evening, I'm John Yang.

Death and destruction in southern Gaza today.

Palestinian officials say a targeted Israeli airstrike killed at least 90 people that would make it one of the deadliest attacks of the war.

Israel says the target was Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif thought to be the chief architect of the October 7 attacks.

Hamas says he wasn't in the area at the time of the strike.

Israeli officials don't deny that it took place in a part of Khan Younis that was designated as a safe place where displaced Palestinians were living in tents.

ABDALLAH ABU MADI (through translator): End this war, this is enough.

There is no safe zone in Gaza.

End this war, have mercy on us and our children.

We are getting killed every minute.

JOHN YANG: In addition to the dead hundreds of others were wounded.

Hamas says the attack is proof that Israel isn't interested in a ceasefire agreement.

President Biden was again working to shore up support today speaking virtually with groups of moderate and Progressive House Democrats.

Vice President Harris was on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania.

She told a town hall organized by an Asian American group that this is the most important election for American democracy.

KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. Vice President: One thing we know about our President Joe Biden, he is a fighter.

We will continue to fight.

We will continue to organize, and in November we will win.

JOHN YANG: This week's PBS/News NPR/Marist poll of registered voters found no difference in support for Mr. Biden and Vice President Harris in head to head matchups with Donald Trump.

He'd supported by 50 percent of those polled, Trump got 48 percent against the President and 49 percent against terrorists.

Russia and Ukraine traded more attacks today.

Ukraine says Russian shelling killed four people along the front lines while Ukraine's latest long range drone attack started a fire in an oil depot deep inside Russia's Southwestern Rostov region.

In Paris Olympic organizers still intend to use the river Seine for some events despite concerns about its cleanliness.

Today, the French Sports Minister took a dip in an effort to dispel worries while years of efforts have improved the water quality data from city testing shows that as recently as last week, there were days of unsafe levels of fecal bacteria.

There was to be the venue later this month for the swimming leg of a triathlon and for marathon swimming.

And pioneering sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer has died.

Known simply as Dr. Ruth in the 1980s.

She talked plainly and candidly about things rarely discussed in public at the time.

She became a pop culture icon with her own TV and radio shows.

Born in Germany and orphaned by the Holocaust, her varied life experiences included being trained as a sniper in Israel's War of Independence.

Ruth Westheimer was 96 years old.

Still to come on PBS News Weekend, why children in residential treatment centers are vulnerable to abuse and U.S. attempts to crack down on Russian disinformation through social media.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: What forecasters are calling an extremely dangerous heatwave is persisting in the West.

And it's expected to extend triple digit temperatures to the Midwest and East this weekend.

Scientists say much of this heat as a long term result of greenhouse gas emissions, and it's affecting everything from the power grid to trains, planes and automobiles.

Kristina Dahl is principal climate scientists with a Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Kristina, let's start by focusing on trains, planes and automobiles, how this heat is affecting transportation and the transportation infrastructure.

Can you walk us through the sort of the big effects?

KRISTINA DAHL, Principal Climate Scientist.

Union of Concerned Scientists: Absolutely.

Heat affects all of these different types of infrastructure in different ways.

For our cars and trucks that are running on asphalt roads, asphalt can deform or buckle when it's extremely hot, so that can make road transportation difficult.

In terms of railroads, we know that rails can actually deform and buckle as well when it's hot.

Or if there are electric lines that the trains are connecting to overhead, those lines can sag.

And that can cause problems for the trains and operators have to slow the trains down.

When it comes to airplanes, there are a few different effects and happen, the tarmac at our airports can deform when it's hot, which causes problems as planes are trying to take off and land.

But hot air also expands and becomes less dense.

And that makes it harder for airplanes to get to the level of thrust they need to be able to take off.

So when it's really hot, all of these forms of transportation can be affected.

JOHN YANG: And not only can be affected, but have been affected in years past.

KRISTINA DAHL: Yeah, many years now, because of climate change.

And the fact that it's making our summers hotter, we see these kinds of instances.

Amtrak's Northeast Corridor line, for example, in the Northeast U.S. has had to slow down train significantly to deal with heat.

In recent years, planes have been unable to take off from the airport in Phoenix, Arizona, because of heat, or infrastructure was largely designed for the climate of the past.

And that's not the climate that we're dealing with today.

And it's certainly not the climate we're going to be dealing with in the decades ahead because of climate change.

So we're seeing now that the ways that we've designed our infrastructure have some vulnerabilities.

And we are going to have to either adapt that infrastructure or our lifestyles to deal with those changes in climate we've experienced, or we're going to have to find ways to redesign and rebuild or develop new materials, so that we can continue to operate our planes, trains and automobiles, the way we're used to.

JOHN YANG: There's money in the infrastructure bill, for infrastructures, any of that going to help make this infrastructure more resilient, or perhaps design new plans.

KRISTINA DAHL: Absolutely.

The bipartisan infrastructure laws, a huge influx of money and resources to be upgrading and improving our transportation infrastructure.

That's really important, because we've long neglected the maintenance that our infrastructure requires.

And so there's a real backlog in our country.

And there's a lot of upgrading that needs to happen.

And so as companies and states and communities are updating their infrastructure with this influx of money from the bipartisan infrastructure law, the hope is that there'll be also taking account climate change, so that the infrastructure that we're investing in now is durable for decades into the future.

JOHN YANG: Are there certain areas or certain populations that are disproportionately affected by the effects of this extreme weather?

KRISTINA DAHL: Absolutely.

So most types of extreme weather hit communities that have long been disadvantaged by racism, discrimination, toxic pollution, extreme heat, is affecting people who live in urban areas without a lot of shade trees that often were the more affordable and more accessible areas for people of color to obtain mortgages, and, but these areas tend to be hotter, and so people are waiting for buses, at bus shelters where there's no shade, for example.

When we look at coastal infrastructure, a recent analysis by my team found that there are over 1,600 pieces of infrastructure in our country that are at risk from sea level rise, and that more than half of that infrastructure is in communities that are considered disadvantaged because of racism and pollution.

JOHN YANG: You talked about trees providing shade, but do they also help clean the air?

KRISTINA DAHL: They do.

Trees are incredible and it's what makes green spaces particularly in urban environments really important to be maintaining and to be building as it gets hotter and hotter on our planet.

So trees provide shade, but they also circulate water vapor in the atmosphere.

And so that can have a cooling effect in their vicinity.

So that's part of the reason why when we try to mitigate the urban heat island, which is the fact that cities get hotter than the surrounding areas, one of the best ways to mitigate that urban heat island is to plant trees.

JOHN YANG: Every time we do a segment like this, I get mail, saying, weather isn't climate and climate isn't weather, but there is a link isn't there between climate change and the weather we're experiencing?

KRISTINA DAHL: Absolutely.

So we will always have hot summers and cooler summers.

But climate change is shifting our weather patterns so that they are looking different over time.

So heat waves like the one the West has been experiencing the last week or so rapid intensification of hurricanes, those sorts of things that are considered extreme weather are becoming more and more likely because of climate change.

JOHN YANG: Kristina Dahl, the Union of Concerned Scientists, thank you very much.

KRISTINA DAHL: Thanks for having me.

JOHN YANG: Earlier this week, the Justice Department said that for the first time, it had disrupted a Russian propaganda campaign that used artificial intelligence and efforts to inflame election year divisions in the U.S. society.

Also this week, the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines issued the first of what she said would be regular updates about disinformation threats.

She warned that Iran was using social media to encourage pro-Palestinian protest.

Nina Jankowicz is Co-Founder and CEO of the American Sunlight Project, which studies the threat of online disinformation.

Nina, AI, this new tool that everyone's been using now, but now the Russians are using this, how significant is this?

NINA JANKOWICZ, Co-Founder and CEO, The American Sunlight Project: Well, I think it's a logical next step, right?

Russia has been engaged in these sorts of influence activities for decades, they were ahead of the curve with online disinformation back in 2016.

And if a tool comes along to make it easier for them to influence the American public, they're certainly going to use it.

And that's exactly what they did here.

Allowing AI to create images for social media accounts, and even populate them with content that audiences in the United States might be vulnerable to.

JOHN YANG: Makes it easier for them, does it make it harder to deal with or combat?

NINA JANKOWICZ: Well, I think in this case, you know, the Justice Department along with foreign allies was able to identify this campaign.

That's a good sign.

But I think what makes it more difficult for American audiences is that again, these messages are going to be specifically tailored not only to look like real social media posters, but they're going to be tailored to be most effective to certain vulnerable audiences, across certain lines.

So for instance, anti-Ukraine messaging or a messaging that might be pro-gun control, that's really easy to create and populate using information that already exists online.

JOHN YANG: Are there other ways that their efforts have become more sophisticated since we really started paying attention to it in 2016?

NINA JANKOWICZ: Yeah, the thing that I was surprised about with this DOJ announcement is actually that it's a little bit back to basics for the Russian government, using these sorts of troll networks, bot networks that they've used before, seemingly not particularly effective.

But what has become more effective for them over the past couple of years, is the fact that the Internet has become more fractured.

We're all on a lot of different platforms, Twitter.

Now X is not as popular as it used to be.

People are finding community in groups and other closed spaces online that are harder to monitor.

And that's good for our foreign adversaries.

JOHN YANG: Now, I know you had been part of a Biden administration effort to deal with this.

This -- is the government the right way to do it.

Do they have the proper tools to deal with this?

NINA JANKOWICZ: Well, I think when it comes to foreign interference, absolutely, the government needs to be the one that is communicating to the American people about it.

However, John, one thing that worries me is that since 2020, we've seen a lot of attacks on disinformation, researchers outside of the government.

And frankly, the social media companies have pulled back from their efforts to identify this stuff.

A couple of years ago, if an announcement like this came out, we would have seen a coordinated release from Twitter with a dataset detailing what these accounts were up to those days are gone.

And so while it's good that the government is pushing back on foreign disinformation, there are a lot of threats that are going uncovered because, frankly, there's been this political push to villainize the disinformation research community over the past couple of years.

JOHN YANG: I mean, given that, what more should or could social media platforms be doing about this?

NINA JANKOWICZ: Well, I think we need to see more transparency from social media platforms again, we used to see data sets coming regularly from Twitter now X, I would welcome Elon Musk to return those data sets to the public eye I would like to see Facebook and many of the other platforms YouTube, TikTok, where so many people are getting news and information, regularly speaking to the public not only about foreign threats, but about other myths and disinformation that we're seeing that might affect national security, public health and public safety.

JOHN YANG: Should the government regulation push the social media platforms to do the things you're talking about?

NINA JANKOWICZ: Well, this is exactly what Europe has done with their Digital Services Act.

Europe has said to the platform's you need to give researchers and journalists et cetera, access to data about what's going on, on your platform so they can communicate to the public about it.

And you need to run risk assessments when you're introducing new technology that's not regulating speech in any way.

That's just putting some guardrails on these extremely powerful companies that are, frankly, overseeing much of our public discourse today.

And I think that that's something that the United States should have entertained a long time ago.

JOHN YANG: You talked about mentioned Elon Musk, in addition to not releasing a lot of information, he essentially says that X should be for a free for all, but anything that people want to post should just go out.

What do you think about that?

NINA JANKOWICZ: Well, I think there's been some extremely harmful content, including, you know, information about his whereabouts that he's taking down.

So it's not entirely true that he believes that it should be a free for all that's a talking point that he uses to appeal to his, you know, his constituents as it were on X. I think that every social media platform needs to have some rules around content moderation, because there are harmful things that happen online that endanger people's safety, endanger people's health and frankly, are misinforming people ahead of a critical election in November.

So I'd like to see more accountability from those platforms including X. JOHN YANG: Nina Jankowicz, which Thank you very much.

NINA JANKOWICZ: Thanks for having me.

JOHN YANG: Every year, more than 50,000 children in foster care across the country are sent to residential treatment facilities, some for mental health services, but some simply because the foster care system is out of room.

A Senate investigation looked into four of the largest operators of these facilities and found that children in their care are sometimes subjected to abuse and neglect.

Here's Ali Rogin.

ALI ROGIN: Children in the care of residential treatment facilities are at risk for sexual physical and emotional abuse as states failed to track mistreatment in centers run by some of the country's largest behavioral health companies.

These places house children and teens who need specialized care and mental health treatment as well as young people from foster care and the juvenile justice system.

A recent Senate investigation revealed that despite receiving payments from Medicaid and taxpayer funded programs, many of them have put profit before safety.

We spoke to a handful of people who lived in these types of facilities when they were younger.

AMAL KHAROUFI: There was no like immediate need for me to be in a treatment facility.

It was just my foster parents didn't want to deal with me anymore.

And there was nowhere else to place me so it was just easiest place to put me in.

ANDREA MILLER: My sister and I abruptly removed to a residential treatment facility.

We were placed in this high level facility not because of any behavioral concerns, but because there was a lack of any other placement options.

MIRIAH PAYNE: My mom was working three jobs at the time and was really trying her best to, you know, give us what we needed.

And she looked at a treatment facility because my sister was not coming home, she was running away with her friends and you know, she wanted better for her.

So she had admitted her into one of these facilities.

STORMY LUKASAVAGE: My first night in that group home, one of the staff ended up fine the next day, just sleeping with a bunch of youth in the bathtub.

That was just day one.

JULIA STUMLER: Staff was monitoring you 24/7.

They check on you every 15 minutes at night.

You know during the day, you're not allowed to just like walk outside.

ANDREA MILLER: Going in with someone that you have a very close bond with we weren't allowed to touch so there was no hugging allowed, you know, even in moments of discomfort for us to fall in line or just stay well behaved.

A lot of times they would threaten to separate us.

AMAL KHAROUFI: I don't understand why certain people are hired into these facilities, but it's very obvious that they shouldn't be.

I was forced put on drugs and overly medicated at eight years old having to wean myself off of it was hard to.

JULIA STUMLER: But the staff just really aren't sure what to do or how to handle a situation and it seems immediate, like they'll resort results to like giving someone a shot.

ANDREA MILLER: They will threaten you that they're going to put you in a hold or physically restrain you for not doing something that they want you to do.

MIRIAH PAYNE: She wasn't provided what she was actually needed she was more reprimanded and that's not what facilities should be.

STORMY LUKASAVAGE: My group home experience is something that I still carry with me to this day, my body is covered in scars from some of those fights.

JULIA STUMLER: It was really, really hard time to go through just because like as a child, it's like, who do you tell in these facilities, everyone's so interconnected.

AMAL KHAROUFI: People need to really get down in there and figure out what's going on in these facilities and what's not working, because obviously, something's not working.

STORMY LUKASAVAGE: These are going to be the citizens of tomorrow, that go through this system.

They could be anyone's kids.

That's how easy it is to be forgotten about.

MIRIAH PAYNE: These are people that may need extra help and extra care.

And we have to make sure we're paying attention to that.

ALI ROGIN: For more on the conditions that some young people face in these residential treatment facilities I'm joined by Sixto Cancel founder and CEO of Think of Us, a nonprofit aimed at improving conditions for youth in child welfare systems.

Thank you so much for being here.

I want to ask you first, what problems were these sorts of residential treatment facilities created for?

And is there agreement that these types of facilities are the best way to address these problems?

SIXTO CANCEL, CEO, Think of Us: You know, there are young people who experienced foster care and at no fault of their own, they have been removed and placed in foster care because of extreme physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse.

And there are times where we need to address that trauma and short term quality residential treatment is needed.

But that's not what we're seeing today.

What we're seeing today is that there are states and young people being put in facilities where it is as a housing option.

ALI ROGIN: Many of the people that we spoke to said that these facilities are like prisons, what are the conditions there?

SIXTO CANCEL: There are research that shows that when young people aged out of foster care, but they are two times more likely to experience PTSD than an Iraq war veteran.

Our young people told us stories about how when they woke up, they were subjected to a strict schedule, make forced to eat things restrained, sedated, that the rules were so strict that they couldn't actually live life.

ALI ROGIN: And this Senate investigation used many of the findings from your own report, which featured firsthand accounts from people who have been through this system.

Why is it so important to focus on the voices of the people that went through the system?

SIXTO CANCEL: For decades, there has been this argument about whether children need to be raised in families or whether they can be raised in facilities responsibly.

But when we heard the stories of every single one of those young people, whether it's our report or other reports from other sectors of young people living in these facilities, what we heard was a great injustice, that they were maltreated that they were beaten on by staff that they were sexually abused by others in those facilities.

ALI ROGIN: Why is it so difficult to gather the evidence required to really show the conditions in these facilities?

SIXTO CANCEL: We have to be believed, even when I was 13.

And I was trying to speak out about the abuse that I was experiencing in a foster home, I had to literally tape a recorder to my chest, to be able to get the evidence, the system is broken, there's no way that we can fundamentally say, hey, this is happening to me.

And I need you to investigate.

And this is why we need Congress to make sure that they're putting in the levers for us to be able to have a voice that is obligated to be heard.

ALI ROGIN: The issue here seems to be endemic to the business model, where are these facilities are turning massive profits is that part of the issue?

SIXTO CANCEL: Facilities get paid for how many beds are filled per night, these facilities on average are making $1,000 per night per kid.

So if there's not a kid sleeping in that bed, they don't get to be there.

One facility takes $30 million to run.

And yet they're bringing in over $200 million a year.

ALI ROGIN: Part of the issue also seems to be that states are not doing a good job of monitoring abuses at these facilities, what needs to change there?

SIXTO CANCEL: States need to hold residentials accountable.

But most importantly, states need to use the option that works.

The option that works is placing children with their family members.

It shows that they have less behavioral health issues, it shows that it's much more productive to society.

ALI ROGIN: It really sounds like part of the issue is relieving the pipeline of children that are sent to these facilities.

If you remove some of the stress on the system, you get the children who really need that care into the facilities and others, as you've been saying into foster situations where they're being looked after by a member of their own families or other kin.

SIXTO CANCEL: Faiths are struggling to find enough foster parents.

But the reality is, is that these children have actual family members who can step up for them.

So if we place those children with the right supports the nonprofit's who can come out and support those families, then we won't see many of them go into these facilities.

In fact, the federal agency over Child Welfare said that over 40 percent of these children don't actually need to be in a residential treatment center.

ALI ROGIN: We heard back from two of the companies investigated by the Senate, one of them Universal Health Services said the Senate report is quote, incomplete and misleading and provides an inaccurate depiction of the care and treatment provided.

Another group Devereaux claims The report's findings do not apply to them saying the facts disprove any suggestion of unmediated or systemic abuse or neglect at Devereaux.

What do you make of those responses do you think these organizations are being held accountable?

SIXTO CANCEL: What I would tell Congress and what I would tell the American public is to believe the people who have been sexually abused, believe the people who have been physically abused.

This is not a one off case.

There is a systemic issues within these companies and there are records and human beings who will tell you what they have experienced.

ALI ROGIN: Sixto Cancel founder and CEO of Think of Us, thank you so much for being here.

SIXTO CANCEL: Pleasure is mine.

JOHN YANG: And that is PBS News Weekend for this Saturday.

I'm John Yang.

For all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us.

See you tomorrow.