JOHN YANG: Tonight on PBS News Weekend, what a federal court ruling means for the future of protecting communities of color from pollution in Louisiana's Cancer Alley.
Then, Americans navigate family planning, concerns about finances, childcare, and even the planet's future, and how Wisconsin is trying to save its freshwater mussels from drought and warming temperatures.
WOMAN: I was no longer picking up a mussel and placing it gently in the water.
I was throwing as fast as I could.
(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Good evening.
I'm John Yang.
The United Nations is calling for a full investigation into the death of a young Turkish American protester on the West bank.
Witnesses say Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was shot in the head during a demonstration against expanding Israeli settlements.
And in Gaza, Israeli airstrikes are blamed for the deaths of more than a dozen people who were taking shelter at a school and at a refugee camp.
Israel says it was targeting a Hamas command center.
Outside the combat zone, pauses in fighting in central and southern Gaza have allowed aid workers to administer polio vaccines to 354,000 children.
That's more than half the UN's goal.
In Ukraine, Russian drone attacks are getting dangerously close to the country's capital.
Ukraine's air force said that across the country overnight, it shot down nearly 60 long range drones.
Debris and shrapnel fell onto streets in Kyiv, some of it narrowly missing the country's parliament building.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in Italy today.
He's meeting with European leaders to try to shore up support and ask for more aid.
Both presidential candidates were in crucial swing states today.
Vice President Kamala Harris took a break from debate prep in Pittsburgh to talk with voters at small businesses.
And former President Donald Trump was in Wisconsin addressing supporters at an airport tarmac rally from behind bulletproof glass.
The candidate's first debate is on Tuesday.
The CDC says the risk from bird flu remains low, despite a new case in Missouri.
The 14th person infected this year is the first with no known exposure to farm animals that can carry the virus.
The patient's recovered after being treated with antiviral medications in a hospital.
Boeing's troubled Starliner capsule is back from space without its two test pilots.
Overnight, the fully automated craft parachuted into the New Mexico desert.
The capsule malfunctioned on its way to the International Space Station, and NASA decided it was too risky for astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to fly it back to Earth.
They remain on the space station on our return home next year.
The Starliner capsule will be transported to the Kennedy Space center in Florida to try to figure out what went wrong.
And the United States picked up 15 medals, including four golds at the Paralympics in Paris today.
Swimmer Jessica Long won her 31st Paralympic medal with first place finish in the 100 meters butterfly.
Fiona Howard and Rebecca Hart both took gold in paraequestrian, and Team USA's sitting volleyball team beat China for their third consecutive gold.
Still to come on PBS News Weekend, how Americans are navigating family planning and an effort to save mussels in Wisconsin from the effects of months of drought.
(BREAK) JOHN YANG: A large number of studies have shown that the burden of air pollution in the United States is not evenly shared.
It falls disproportionately on racial minorities, especially blacks.
In 2022, the Biden administration began investigating whether Louisiana's approval of where industrial plants are located disproportionally affected minorities in that state, even unintentionally.
But last month, the federal judge said the administration can't do that and can only investigate regulatory decisions that are intentionally discriminatory.
While that ruling is limited to Louisiana, 23 Republican governors had already asked the EPA to scrap that approach.
Beverly Wright heads the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice.
This case started in St. John the Baptist Parish in Louisiana.
Tell us more about that place, what it looks like and who lives there.
BEVERLY WRIGHT, DEEP SOUTH CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: It came out of St. John Parish, but the site is the same across what is called Cancer Alley, where we have the third highest cancer rate in the nation and 85 miles stretch of land between New Orleans and Baton Rouge with over 156 petrochemical plants and six refineries, over 200 million pounds of pollution, that number is almost comparable to the amount of pollution in the state of Texas.
All of the research basically shows that it was intentional.
And we can show places where white community members were actually moved away from areas while black people were left to languish in pollution as they expanded the plants.
St. John Parish was one of the communities that actually brought administrative Reagan down for what he called a journey to justice tour.
And he was able to see with his own eyes, smell and feel the stench of these facilities, and then look at the data that showed, for example, a public school down the road from a facility called Denka that produced very dangerous chemicals.
And that was the one that were really working to get not so much shut down, but certainly getting them to reduce the amount of ethylene oxide that they were putting into the air, harming children.
JOHN YANG: The judge who handed down this ruling also wrote in his order that pollution doesn't discriminate.
But in a separate section, he said, when a decision maker has to consider race, it has indeed participated in racism.
In other words, considering the race when you're talking about where these plants are cited, that's racism.
What do you say to that?
BEVERLY WRIGHT: I said it is ridiculous, and it's a specious argument that they're trying to use.
Everything shows that pollution does discriminate.
We can determine almost how long you're going to live by your address.
And the addresses of poor people and people of color are such that we live near the most dangerous polluting facilities.
Our air is worse.
And that's why I felt that we should have taken this further.
JOHN YANG: You've been critical of the EPA and the Justice Department here.
What do you think they should have done?
BEVERLY WRIGHT: Now, I'm not so much critical of EPA.
I'm critical of the Department of Justice, because I can imagine EPA doing the amount of work that they did on this particular case, sitting down with the state of Louisiana, coming to an agreement of how these things would be redressed, and then decide not to move forward.
And it's really just exciting, what I would call bad behavior all over.
It's like a kid getting, oh, I can get away with this.
Let me spread the word.
And so that same bad behavior is happening across the country, where you have these governors and these departments of environmental quality are making certain that the sighting of these really dangerous facilities are always closest to people of color.
And that has happened continuously in our society.
JOHN YANG: What's the next step for your group and your organization and people who are fighting this?
BEVERLY WRIGHT: So there are a number of ways that it can be attacked.
Of course, we can continue to raise our voices and interact with government.
That's how we got.
We've gotten anything that we've gotten done, but there are other ways to deal with it.
And I think that the EPA actually found another way, and that's called the Hanru (ph), where the Hanru (ph) really falls under the Clean Air Act, which basically says that you are supposed to reduce exposure of extremely hazardous chemicals to society in general.
So that's still on the table, where they still have to follow the rule, but making certain that the rules are followed, that the Clean Air act has within it some protective measures, and we have to identify what those measures are and push forward in that way to reduce exposure.
JOHN YANG: Beverly Wright of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, thank you very much.
BEVERLY WRIGHT: Thank you.
JOHN YANG: Last year, the U.S. birth rate hit a record low.
But data suggests that over the past 30 years, the number of adults who want or wish they had children has remained relatively stable.
So why aren't they having children or expanding their families?
Ali Rogin explores some of the complexities of today's family planning.
ALI ROGIN: Over the past few weeks, we've been speaking with Americans who say they want to have a child or grow their families about why they're hesitant to do so.
Their answers were varied and complex, just like the solutions they said would help them change their minds.
CATHERINE CLARK, Washington, DC: I always wanted kids.
I love kids.
But economically, I don't really know of anyone who can swing it anymore.
Even parents that are working full time, they can't afford childcare.
They don't have a village to help them raise them.
CECILIA LA TORRE RAMIREZ, Alexandria, Virginia: I'm grateful that we are in like, a stable financial situation.
Still, it's difficult to raise a child.
We don't have any family close by.
We have friends who also have kids.
So they are also busy taking care of their families.
It's difficult.
We don't have anyone.
TREVOR WILLIAMS, Tulsa, Oklahoma: Every year, there comes out a new statistic of whether or not we've hit the turning point for climate change.
And that's something that I take into consideration when it comes to starting a family, because I don't want to raise a child in a world that every year gets closer and closer to becoming uninhabitable.
CAZOSHAY MARIE, Phoenix, Arizona: In May of 2017, I was struck by a car that was traveling 48 miles per hour while crossing the street.
And as a result of that, I ended up with several long term disabilities and conditions.
And really through this experience, my son actually became a caregiver to me.
Our roles were kind of reversed, and so that's not something that I would willingly want to be in another position to do again.
Would I be able to handle the parent teacher conferences, the transportation, making meals, changing diapers?
As a disabled person, those are all considerations.
ERICA STALEY, Chicago, Illinois: Pretty much as soon after having my first child, I agreed that weren't going to try and have a second with all the other uncertainties.
And that was heartbreaking.
We really did want to, and were kind of hoping that could be possible, but it just wasn't.
We had met with a financial advisor, and he was pretty clear.
You're either going to be able to afford childcare or retirement savings like, you can't.
You're not really going to do both in the next five years just because of the cost.
CATHERINE CLARK: Everyone is incredibly stressed out.
Everyone's incredibly broke.
We're all trying to help each other.
We're all grasping at straws.
And I don't know if I want that for my future.
TREVOR WILLIAMS: My sister, I know she spends about a quarter of her salary every month on childcare expenses, even with daycare expenses and such like that.
I know there's additional things such as putting extra food on the table and covering medical expenses.
CAZOSHAY MARIE: There are a lot of things that I think that the government, the society and community can do to kind of help with some of those concerns that are not just for me as a disabled parent, but I think for anyone who would be considering or hesitant to expand their family, that would be just offering more support, more community based support, as well as just the resources for the practical knowledge, parenting classes, things of that nature.
ERICA STALEY: If universal child care was an option, and we didn't have to worry about that, if universal healthcare was an option, and I wouldn't have to wonder if I can anticipate regular maternal care, high quality maternal care, while I was pregnant, then, yeah, we absolutely would have made an effort to expand our family.
For sure.
CATHERINE CLARK: We need rent subsidies because no one can afford it.
We need to be able to get the cost of food and housing under control because right now they are spiraling out.
CECILIA LA TORRE RAMIREZ: I think we need to have paid leave for all because many families are the sandwich generation.
You have to take care of your parents who are elderly, and you have to take care of your kids.
People work really hard.
It's not that we don't work hard, but it's not enough.
ALI ROGIN: For more on this topic, I'm joined by Karen Guzzo, a family demographer and the director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina.
Karen, thank you so much for being here.
First of all, tell us about this moment that we're in.
Is it different than other times in this country's history that we've seen declines in fertility?
KAREN GUZZO, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: That's a great question.
And so what I would say is we've seen fertility fall below what we call replacement level before, and the United States has come back up above this, above that sort of mythical two children per woman level.
What's interesting now, though, is that it's been sustained declines pretty much year after year since the Great Recession.
And so we're starting to think, as demographers, maybe the decision making that goes into whether people have children or going to have another one has changed.
ALI ROGIN: What are the factors weighing on people's minds these days?
KAREN GUZZO: Well, people are certainly not being selfish about deciding to have kids.
They're actually being really deliberate having children.
And so they're worried about their ability to combine work and family, their ability to provide for their future children, their ability to afford to give sort of a lifestyle that will suggest that their kids have opportunities for success in the future.
So they want to be able to afford to buy a house.
They want to send their kids to safe and reliable childcare centers and then ultimately safe schools.
They want a world in which they think climate change will not delay their children's chances of success.
And so they're giving these factors a lot of thought, and they're hard to measure.
In sort of the typical surveys that we used to use and some of the earlier theories, we had to kind of understand fertility.
ALI ROGIN: There's been a particularly steep decline in terms of births from people who are much younger to what do you attribute that?
KAREN GUZZO: The research really shows that for teens and those in their early 20s, traditionally, those births have largely been sort of unplanned and unintended.
And so, these are births that people are able to avoid having, avoiding getting pregnant in their late teens or early 20s, when perhaps they have less stable relationships, when they have fewer economic resources.
So this is good news.
The problem is that if people are avoiding having births at ages and in circumstances where we might think they are not ready to be parents, is to try to understand when they think they will be ready to have kids and make sure that we as a society have those conditions in place for them.
We need to make sure that they reach their later 20s and their 30s and feel like, okay, now I have what it takes to be a good parent, and I have the resources and life circumstances where I can, you know, go ahead and make those decisions.
ALI ROGIN: Sometimes we hear of people in these categories being labeled as selfish, or they're being insinuations that they're being selfish.
What do you make of those conceptions?
KAREN GUZZO: That's really not the case.
My research and the research of many others is showing that people have the set of prerequisites in mind that they want to be able to meet, to make sure that they are able to be good parents, that they are able to provide what their kids need, that they can meet the needs of their relationships and their family and friends.
And so they're really being quite considerate about this.
Being a parent is really hard in the United States, and we have declining social mobility.
And so people are being very careful about this.
If they think they can't give their kids good opportunities, they're willing to say, hold on, I should wait.
I'll wait till I have kids and tell them in a better circumstance.
ALI ROGIN: Lastly, what are some of the other solutions that other countries are trying to put in place to avoid continuously declining birth rates?
And is any of it working?
KAREN GUZZO: Well, there are countries that are offering cash allowances or tax breaks.
Those don't seem to be particularly effective.
The more effective policies are those that are kind of a package of deals.
So having a robust childcare infrastructure, one that people can find easily, they can afford it is high quality that's important.
Having parental leave for both mothers and fathers is important.
Most policies that are effective are the ones that grow the economy for everybody, but also have a strong social safety net that really makes sure that young people and young families have access to the resources they need, like childcare, like paid leave, but also aren't overburdened by housing costs or student loan costs.
ALI ROGIN: Doctor Karen Guzzo at the University of North Carolina, thank you so much for joining us.
KAREK GUZZO: Thank you for having me.
JOHN YANG: Wisconsin is coming back from its worst drought in decades.
Along with unusually high temperatures, it's affected wildlife in and along the state's rivers.
While spring rains under the drought recovery in some places has been slow.
PBS Wisconsin's Nathan Denzin tells us about one species that's been hit particularly hard.
WOMAN: We reached peak drought severity in September of last year.
NATHAN DENZIN (voice-over): It's been a very dry few years for Wisconsin.
WOMAN: I started getting lots of phone calls from people saying, there's all these mussels out there and they're stranded, they're dying.
What can we do?
NATHAN DENZIN (voice-over): It's had a significant impact on a species we hardly think about.
WOMAN: I was no longer picking up a muscle and placing it gently in the water.
I was throwing them as fast as I could.
NATHAN DENZIN (voice-over): Much of southern Wisconsin was in a perpetual drought starting in the winter of 2021 through the spring of 2024.
ELLEN VOSS, Wisconsin River Alliance: Droughts are very stressful to aquatic organisms as well.
NATHAN DENZIN (voice-over): Ellen Voss is the climate resilience director with the Wisconsin River Alliance.
ELLEN VOSS: There's just less space for the things that animals and plants and insects and everything else need to survive.
NATHAN DENZIN (voice-over): One animal that can be squeezed out by low water is mussels.
LISIE KITCHEL, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources: They're basically just, you know, a mollusk with two shells, and they live in the rivers and lakes, rivers and streams of Wisconsin.
NATHAN DENZIN (voice-over): Lisie Kitchel is a mussel expert at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
LISIE KITCHEL: They don't have a brain and they don't have eyes, so they, you know, they can't just figure out where the deeper water is.
NATHAN DENZIN (voice-over): She says there are tens of thousands of mussels on the bed of the Wisconsin river, including 40 different species.
LISIE KITCHEL: They filter as much as ten gallons of water a day per mussel.
And when there are hundreds and thousands of them, they really help purify the water.
NATHAN DENZIN (voice-over): But when the drought reached its peak in September, mussels started to wash up on shore banks.
JEAN ANMUTH, Retired Scientist: What I was really looking for was actually historic artifacts because the water was so low.
I'd never seen it this low.
NATHAN DENZIN (voice-over): Jean Anmuth is a retired scientist for the Department of Natural Resources.
She lives near the Wisconsin River in Prairie du Sac, northwest of Madison.
She was also the first person to contact experts when she saw stranded mussels.
JEAN UNMUTH: Mussels are a huge part of the ecology of this river.
So I thought, hey, I better ring the alarm.
NATHAN DENZIN (voice-over): A natural question is to ask about how dams on the Wisconsin River affect water levels.
LISIE KITCHEL: Because we had such a drought year, the dam did not have water to release.
NATHAN DENZIN (voice-over): The dams along this river are not holding back water and cannot release anything more than they receive, meaning they can't add more water to help mussels at the lower end of the river.
Alliant Energy, which owns the Prairie De Sac dam, in a statement said, our license requires us to maintain the water level.
Therefore, we cannot release more water during drought conditions.
ELLEN VOSS: In this scenario, on paper, nobody did anything wrong.
Everybody was in compliance with their license obligations the entire time.
And yet the outcome was thousands or tens of thousands, we don't know, dead mussels on the river.
NATHAN DENZIN (voice-over): That meant the only solution to save the mussels was to physically walk the shore banks and throw them back into the river.
LISIE KITCHEL: There were thousands of mussels saved.
I mean, individuals were picking up 100 mussels a day, 300 mussels a day.
It was pretty amazing what people were willing to do.
JEAN UNMUTH: It was getting to where I was spending three to 4 hours.
Forget the artifacts.
I was no longer looking at that.
NATHAN DENZIN (voice-over): Anmuth saved more than 1,200 herself.
JEAN UNMUTH: Multiply that times 365 days a year.
And just those 1,200 muscles, you're filtering over 3 million gallons of water.
NATHAN DENZIN (voice-over): 2024 has been called a weather whiplash in the state.
In May, some parts of Wisconsin were still in a drought, but overall, the spring and summer are experiencing an unusually wet season.
Still, should it dry up again, they'll be ready.
ELLEN VOSS: There is a live phone tree muscle rescue alert system in place.
LISIE KITCHEL: They can also contact me anytime, and I can give them advice as to what to do.
NATHAN DENZIN (voice-over): Until the time comes to walk the shore banks again, experts eyes will be glued to the weather.
For PBS News Weekend, I'm Nathan Denzin in Prairie De Sac.
JOHN YANG: And we have an update from Paris.
Team USA picked up its 16th medal of the day when the men's wheelchair basketball team beat Great Britain for their third consecutive gold medal.
And with that is PBS News Weekend for this Saturday.
I'm John Yang, for all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us.
See you tomorrow.
