JUDY WOODRUFF: Good evening.
I'm Judy Woodruff.
On the "NewsHour" tonight: President Trump is set to deliver his first State of the Union address before a nation deeply divided.
Then: The Trump administration decides not to implement new sanctions against Russia, but releases a list of rich influential Russian businessmen, sparking anger from the Kremlin.
And dreamers in school -- how educators are addressing the unique challenges of their immigrant students who came to the U.S. as children.
YEMINA ARELLANES, Teacher: We're still trying to rebuild that trust and let them know that it's OK to come to us, that we're not going to work against them and that we're not going to turn them in.
JUDY WOODRUFF: All that and more on tonight's "PBS NewsHour."
(BREAK) JUDY WOODRUFF: President Trump speaks to Congress and the nation tonight on his view of the state of the union.
White House officials say that he will tout economic progress and call for bipartisan agreement on immigration.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy says Republicans hope for a strong message.
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA), House Majority Leader: The number one question I want the president to ask tonight to the American people: Are you better off today than you were two years ago?
Because I think that answer could be very strong and probably put partisanship aside and have other people start working with us, so we can solve the other problems that are before us.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Democrats, in turn, say the country is more divided than ever.
And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says credit for economic progress should go to the last president.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY), Minority Leader: The president thinks our economic recovery is all thanks to him, when reality is that he owes a lot of it to Barack Obama.
Two words I don't think we will hear tonight on the economy: Thanks, Obama.
Second, we expect the president to talk about bipartisanship, but throughout his time in office, he's failed to walk the walk.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Massachusetts Congressman Joe Kennedy, grandson of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, will deliver the official Democratic response.
And I'm joined now by White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor and our Capitol Hill correspondent, Lisa Desjardins, for a look ahead to tonight's speech from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Hello to both of you.
Yamiche, you are outdoors.
I'm going to go to you first.
What are you hearing about what the president is going to say?
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Well, a White House official tells me that the speech is going to be about 50 minutes and that several people worked on the speech, including H.R.
McMaster, the national security adviser, Gary Cohn, the chief economic adviser, Stephen Miller, as well as Vice President Mike Pence.
The theme is supposed to be building a safe, strong, and proud America.
He's supposed to be talking about several topics, including immigration, national security, jobs, infrastructure and trade.
Some of the guests that the White House is bringing is really going to bring home that point.
They're talking -- they're bringing people that have benefited from the Republican tax plan.
They're also going to be bringing somebody who adopted a child that was affected by the opioid crisis.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Yamiche, you were telling us that it's notable what the president is not expected to talk about.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: The president is not expected to talk about some of the main issues that Americans are speaking about, and this is the MeToo movement and sexual harassment all across this country.
He's also not going to be talking about the Russia investigation and Robert Mueller.
Of course, there have been so many reports out there that he might be trying to fire the special investigator.
Then he's also not supposed to be talking about the spike in hate crimes.
There is a lot of division in the country with race relations and people talking about that all the time.
But the president said in a luncheon that me and you attended this afternoon that he wants to unify the country.
So, it is going to be interesting to see whether or not he can do that.
He said that usually major events, catastrophic events, essentially, are what bring Americans together.
But he wants to do that without having Americans suffer.
JUDY WOODRUFF: That's right.
And he also commented at that lunch on what he'd learned as president about having -- it's important to have heart, as well as being concerned about money, which was an interesting comment.
Lisa, to you now.
This State of the Union address comes at a time of, I guess you would have to say some high-stakes decisions that are about to be made in Congress.
Are Republicans looking to the president to help get some legislation they want passed done?
LISA DESJARDINS: Absolutely.
And I think that touches on the sort of strange dynamic I feel tonight.
I have covered many State of the Union addresses, but this one, the drama is not the speech.
The drama are the deadlines that Congress faces, to pass an immigration bill in the Senate by next week, also to have a budget deal, much less a president who seems to be at war to some degree with the FBI over a Russia investigation.
Those things are day-to-day here at the Capitol.
This is something that Republicans think will not be affected by the speech.
What they want from this president is for him to presidential, to be moderate, the things the White House indicates it's doing, but to some degree, Judy, expectations for Republicans are low to middle range.
They're setting those expectations that way so that the president can overcome them.
But the speech also presents a problem for Republicans, Judy.
They have a real divide on immigration.
Today, Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona asked the Capitol Police to ask for identification of every guest tonight, and if they find someone who was an undocumented immigrant here, as there will be many guests tonight, he has asked Capitol Police to remove them and arrest them.
That's different from other Republicans, including Republican Carlos Curbelo, who has invited an undocumented dreamer, someone who has status, but it shows the divide here for Republicans in this speech and time right now.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, it will be interesting to see what happens.
And, Lisa, what about the Democrats?
We know many of them are not happy with this president.
Some of them, I guess, are not planning to attend.
Some of them are going to wear various colors to show their displeasure.
What are they looking for?
LISA DESJARDINS: Well, take what Yamiche towed you about the things the president is not talking about, the MeToo movement, for example, those are things -- and the Russia investigation, the Russia sanctions -- those are the things that the Democrats are talking about today.
They are the things they are challenging him on.
You will see a lot of Democrats, especially women, Nancy Pelosi, wearing black tonight to support the MeToo movement.
You will see red buttons.
Those are for Recy Taylor, the woman that Oprah mentioned at the Golden Globes was gang-raped, African-American woman in the 1940s.
Sort of this idea of bringing up minority and women's issues is something Democrats you're going to see from Democrats tonight.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, both of you are going to be with us for the rest of the night.
And we look forward to it.
Thank you, Yamiche and Lisa.
And in the day's other news: A major health care announcement triggered a significant sell-off on Wall Street.
Health insurers, drug makers and distributors were all hit hard after Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and J.P. Morgan Chase announced a new venture aimed at providing quality health care at a reasonable cost.
The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 362 points, nearly 1.5 point, to close below 26077.
The Nasdaq fell 64 points, and the S&P 500 lost 31.
House Speaker Paul Ryan is defending an effort by congressional Republicans to make public a classified memo on the Russia probe.
The House Intelligence Committee voted last night to take that step, over the Justice Department's objections.
Some Republicans say the memo shows improper surveillance by justice and the FBI and an effort to conspire against President Trump.
REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WI), Speaker of the House: There may have been malfeasance at the FBI by certain individuals.
So it is our job in conducting transparent oversight of the executive branch to get to bottom of that.
Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
And so what we want is all this information to come out, so that transparency can reign supreme and accountability can occur.
JUDY WOODRUFF: President Trump has the final word on releasing the memo, and he's said he favors doing so.
But the White House said today that it will run a legal and national security review before a final decision.
The Trump administration will not implement new economic sanctions against Russia, for now, for interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
The State Department said late Monday that existing measures are already working.
But the Treasury Department published a list of Russian officials and wealthy businessmen who could be targeted.
Today, in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin called the list a hostile step.
VLADIMIR PUTIN, Russian President (through translator): What's the sense of these actions?
I don't understand.
But it is, of course, an unfriendly act.
It complicates the already difficult situation in Russian-American relations, and of course, harms the international relations as a whole.
It is complete stupidity to reduce our relations to zero.
JUDY WOODRUFF: We will take a closer look at all of this a little later in the program.
The United Nations Children's Fund is warning that stepped-up sanctions on North Korea could mean nearly 60,000 children will starve.
UNICEF says that the penalties are making it harder to ship food, fuel and medicine to the North.
The sanctions target the North's nuclear and missile programs.
The Taliban today condemned President Trump's rejection of truce talks in Afghanistan.
Mr. Trump had cited a spate of deadly attacks.
In a statement today, the Taliban said the U.S. strategy is simply more war.
In Yemen, there's new trouble for a coalition led by Saudi Arabia against Shiite rebels linked to Iran.
Fighters who'd been part of the coalition seized the port city of Aden today, after two days of fighting.
They surrounded the presidential palace and accused the Saudi-backed government of corruption.
They also want a separate state in Southern Yemen.
Tens of thousands of Kenyans turned out today for the mock-inauguration of opposition leader Raila Odinga as alternative president.
President Uhuru Kenyatta won October's election after the opposition boycotted.
Today, Odinga supporters swarmed a Nairobi park as he took his oath and declared defiance of the government.
RAILA ODINGA, Opposition Leader (through translator): Today is a historical day in our country of Kenya.
For the first time, Kenyans have taken the decision to remove themselves from a dictatorship government that came through the stealing of votes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Kenya's government cut live transmission of three TV channels airing the event, and branded it treason.
Police also fired tear gas at demonstrators who were nearby.
There's new fallout from Larry Nassar's sexual abuse of young women athletes.
Texas will now investigate the Karolyi Ranch training center, where some gymnasts say the former sports doctor molested them.
Michigan State University is expected to name former Governor John Engler as interim president amid allegations that the school ignored Nassar's abuse there.
And Congress is set to mandate that athletic groups quickly report claims of abuse to the police.
Volkswagen has suspended a top executive today after disclosures of diesel fume experiments using monkeys.
Initial reports had said that humans were also used, but the executive now says that he rejected that idea.
Instead, monkeys breathed in fumes for four hours to test emission controls.
This follows the 2015 scandal over V.W.
's cheating on emissions tests.
And get set for a three-in-one lunar show early tomorrow.
First, a blue moon, the second full moon in the same month.
At the same time, it will be a supermoon closer than usual, and appearing bigger and brighter.
And, finally, there will be a total lunar eclipse, but in only part of the country.
It all happens before dawn Wednesday, mostly over the Western U.S. and Asia.
Still to come on the "NewsHour": our preview of the State of the Union continues with Georgia Republican Senator David Perdue; a historical look at presidential speeches; plus, why the U.S. government is publicly naming businesspeople with close ties to Vladimir Putin; and much more.
As we learn more about President Trump's speech, and his plan to strike a bipartisan tone, I spoke with one of his closest allies in congress, Republican Senator David Perdue of Georgia.
And I started by asking, what will be the president's main message tonight?
SEN. DAVID PERDUE (R), Georgia: Judy, I think we're going to see an upbeat and optimistic president tonight, like we saw in Davos last week, where he sent the world a message that America was open for business and that America first did not necessarily mean America alone.
So, I think he's going to lay out his agenda from last year and the results that we are seeing, but also very carefully lay out and articulate his priorities for 2018.
JUDY WOODRUFF: We know that he's going to talk about immigration, among other things.
You have said that the president's proposal hits, I think you used the words, a sweet spot, that it's a middle ground.
But, as you know, the critics on the left say that it's too harsh in breaking families apart, that it spends to much on a border wall.
Then you have critics on the right saying that it is too -- that it is unacceptable to give undocumented young immigrants a path to citizenship.
How do you bring these two sides together?
SEN. DAVID PERDUE: What the president did, Judy, is lay out a framework for our conversation here in Congress to finally, once and for all, deal with the DACA situation, but make sure that we eliminate the causes of the situation in the first place.
And that is that we have to deal with what created this chain or the family immigration system that we had since 1965.
Actually, Tom Cotton and I put a bill in a year ago -- it's hard to believe it's been that long, but a year ago -- to actually move toward what Bill Clinton wanted and Barbara Jordan back in the '90s.
And that is move us more toward a merit-based immigration system that protected the immediate family, and this system is more like what Canada and Australia have been doing for decades.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So you think the two sides are going to come together?
Because, right now, they seem pretty implacably opposed.
SEN. DAVID PERDUE: I think any time you have two parties like this opposing it the way that have been on the president's framework, it tells me that the president did hit that sweet spot that I was talking about.
And we're going to find out, on both sides, Judy, who is serious about solving this problem once and for all.
Eighty percent of America wants a secure border and a wall in places where it's necessary.
Two-thirds of America wants to solve the DACA problem, but only if you end chain migration and diversity lottery and protect the immediate worker's family, at the same time providing for border security.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Senator, we're told the president is also going to talk about the need for infrastructure-building.
He's going to call for a mix of government and private capital to come together to repair roads and bridges and so forth.
But we know that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, other Democrats are saying to rely on private developers is going to leave out large chunks of the country, that it's going to lead to tolls and taxes in different local jurisdictions.
It's going to lead to private developers having too much say over infrastructure.
How do you respond?
SEN. DAVID PERDUE: The truth of the matter is, Judy, with our debt, we have lost that option, frankly.
The only way Chuck Schumer is going to get that financing done that way is more taxes.
And we know what that does to the economy.
We have got examples right now, like Power Africa, where our U.S. Department of State invested $8 billion and attracted $48 billion, and is going to bring power to Africa over the next decade in a public-private partnership.
We have the same opportunities in the United States.
What the president is going to do tonight, I believe, is lay out his priorities, which will be focused on investments that will yield returns by growing the economy.
And in so doing, I think we will find a way to pay for it.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Senator, different subject, and that is Russia.
We know that last night the State Department announced that it is not going to impose sanctions on Russia that Congress overwhelmingly passed in mid-2017.
They say the legislation itself is enough of a deterrent.
What's your view of that?
SEN. DAVID PERDUE: Well, I think we have got to be very serious with not only Russia, but North Korea, Iran, and other nefarious actors around the world today.
The world is more dangerous than any time in my lifetime anyway, and at the same time, we have got to rebuild our military.
We're going to hear that tonight.
Specifically, with regard to Russia, they need to know we're serious about messing with our election process.
This is a democracy.
And that won't be tolerated.
And Republicans and Democrats are aligned on that.
I'm anxious to get these Intelligence Committees' reports done, though.
I think we need to get past this, get this, an independent investigation, over and done with.
We have been doing this almost a year now.
So, it's time to get these results in and tell the American people where we are and build a defense against that next activity.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, are you all right with their not imposing the sanctions now on Russia?
SEN. DAVID PERDUE: I voted for these sanctions.
I think they should be employed.
But I think it's part of a bigger picture.
I'm willing to give the secretary of state and the president some latitude on this, Judy, only because it's part of a bigger equation with North Korea and China particularly right now.
But also we're looking at the Iran nuclear deal to see how to hold that coalition together.
There's no question that we need more serious sanctions against Iran, and also North Korea, and I believe against Russia, if they don't help us with North Korea.
So the calculus here is, I believe, is Russia going to help us with North Korea?
Are they going to respond to this act by the president?
And we will see very, very quickly.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally, Senator, I want to ask you about your constituents in Georgia.
The Gallup Organization came out with a poll.
They have looked at all 50 states at the support for the president over the past year on average.
And in the state of Georgia, which you represent, they said, on average, 41 percent of the people approve of the president's performance, 53 percent disapprove.
How do you explain that?
SEN. DAVID PERDUE: You know, that same poll had me losing by almost nine points, Judy.
I think I won by over eight points.
I don't put a lot of credit in that, because this president doesn't fit the mold of the traditional Washington established president.
He's an outsider.
He's a business guy.
I'm not worried about popularity polls.
I'm worried about results, like he is.
And right now his agenda is providing results.
The work that we did on regulation last year, the work we did on energy and taxes is producing results; 2.5 million new jobs were created last year.
That is not lost on people in my state and across the country.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we're going to leave it there, and we are certainly all going to be watching the president.
Senator David Perdue of Georgia, thank you.
SEN. DAVID PERDUE: Thanks, Judy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Ahead of the president's address to Congress and the nation tonight, we spoke to people around the country about how they see the State of the Union.
To walk us through how these Americans are grading President Trump and what their responses can tell us about this fall's congressional elections, I'm joined by Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report, no stranger to this program.
So, Amy, we're going to start with a video from a man named Austin Erdman.
He's a farmer from Stockton, California.
He told us the president has done a good job in his first year, particularly on the issue of immigration.
AUSTIN ERDMAN, California: I believe it is unfair to grade the president at this time, because his proposed policies have not yet been fully formed and implemented.
I also believe that the president is on the right track in pursuing immigration policies that will defend and protect all American citizens and our democracy.
I also believe that laws, rules and regulations need to be implemented to secure our borders and to protect our citizens.
And we need to implement strategic screening processes to ensure that, best as possible, that our law-abiding, productive people enter our country legally.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Amy, we know the president is expected the talk about immigration tonight.
We know there is a big divide here in Washington about it.
What are people out in the country saying?
AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: Well, Judy, the team here at PBS talked to about a dozen voters.
And the issue of immigration came up more than any other.
Not surprising, Americans are as polarized on this issue as we see members of Congress.
What we saw there was someone who supported the president and also supported his position on immigration.
We heard as well from a woman in Southern California named Sabrina.
She too liked the idea of more border security, but, like we saw here with Austin, she does want to see more than just border security.
She said she likes that the president's protecting illegal immigrants from taking resources away from American citizens.
So it goes beyond just having money for the wall that the president talked so much about in 2016.
But when you heard from the people who don't approve of the job the president is doing, particularly voters of color, they see what the president is doing, they cite immigration as one of the main reasons they say that they disapprove of the job that he's doing.
Talked to a woman named Blanche (ph) from Houston.
She says that Trump is being unfair to immigrants.
Another woman, Charlita (ph) from Cleveland, said it's not right what the president is doing to kick people out of the country that have been here for years.
So we're seeing the reason I think Congress is as polarized as it is, is in part because voters are, too.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Because the country is polarized, too.
AMY WALTER: Right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, now, one of the other themes you heard about in talking to voters was this concern about the president's temperament and some of the controversial comments that he's been making on Twitter.
So, we're going to hear now from a woman in Cincinnati.
Her name is Sarah Warner.
She was a reluctant supporter of Hillary Clinton, but now she says she disapproves of the job President Trump has done in office, but her concerns are bigger than just the president.
SARAH WARNER, Ohio: We are so divided right now because we can't get over him.
He's not the problem.
He's a symptom of the problem.
The problem is that our system is broken.
People on either side of the argument are angry because they want change.
We're not seeing that.
We're looking for it.
But we're not seeing it.
No one really likes him.
Like, no one, come on.
Think about it.
Do you really want that representing your country?
No.
But it's our complacency that's the problem.
So, what are you going to do about it?
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Amy, she's clearly not a fan of the president, but what are you hearing about the president's temperament from people who like President Trump?
AMY WALTER: Well, across the board -- and, Judy, we have been talking about this consistently from the beginning of his presidency, that even people who say they like him, they voted for him, boy, I wish he would get off Twitter, boy, I wish he would sort of dial it back on his rhetoric and his behavior.
But for people who dislike him, it's much more -- it's as much about him than just his behavior, but that they believe that it's dangerous, that what he's doing is more than just having a personality issue that they have a problem with.
There's a woman, Janet from Davenport, Iowa.
She says she thinks he threatens freedom of speech with his attacks on the media.
She calls him dishonest, an embarrassment.
But even those who are happy with him... JUDY WOODRUFF: Right.
AMY WALTER: We saw -- we had one interview with a man from Nevada who said, I love what he's doing for the courts.
I love that he's putting conservative jurists on there, but he keeps getting in his own way.
And he said, if he didn't have that, if he didn't have these self-inflicted wounds, he would be as perfect as he can be.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Wow.
So -- and we know the president tells everybody who will listen that if he can -- that as long as he can he's going to stick with social media, because that's his way of fighting back against the press that he thinks is overwhelmingly against him.
So, now, one thing, Amy, we have talked about this past year is the president thinks the economy is doing better and better and that he deserves a lot of the credit for that, low unemployment, tax cuts, just the overall strong economy.
How do people see that?
AMY WALTER: You know, it's interesting, Judy, because what we saw when talking to voters that, for those who supported the president, they cited the economy as a reason for supporting him.
There's a truck driver that we talked to, Aaron (ph) from Saint Louis.
He said, my 401(k) is going through the roof, and you know what?
I think these tax cuts are going to help me because my company that runs this trucking organization, they are probably not going the lay anybody off because they're going to have more money.
When you talk to folks who disapprove of the president, they don't talk about the economy.
What they talk about is the tax cuts that they believe are going to help corporations and hurt regular people.
One woman from Iowa said, I think they're just helping corporate farmers, not small farmers.
But, Judy, I think the person that really sums up really what 2018 is going to be, who sums up the tension really of 2018, is a man named Todd from Houston.
He thinks the economy is doing well, but he really dislikes the president's behavior and what it has done for the country, especially the divisiveness it's sown in the country.
And we are going to watch throughout 2018 how voters grapple with that: I feel better about the economy.
I don't feel good about the president.
Which one of those things is going to win out?
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, last question: Was there anything that you expected people to bring up that they didn't talk about?
AMY WALTER: There wasn't one word about Russia.
There wasn't one word about investigations.
There wasn't anything about impeachment.
It was really focused on the president's behavior almost more than anything else.
And we have been talking about this forever.
Right?
JUDY WOODRUFF: Sure.
AMY WALTER: It's his personality more than his policy that defines him.
But the economy, we expected.
Immigration,we expected.
But given the amount of time that is given to the Russia investigation and energy, especially in this town, no one -- to see that nobody even in passing brought it up was interesting.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And you are right.
It's getting an enormous amount of attention in the news media right now.
So, that is a particularly interesting thing, that they didn't bring it up.
Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report, thank you.
And you're going to be with us for the rest of tonight... AMY WALTER: All night.
JUDY WOODRUFF: ... to talk about the State of the Union.
Thank you.
And now we step back for a historical perspective on addresses to the nation.
The State of the Union is an uninterrupted opportunity for President Trump to outline his legislative agenda and his priorities.
To help us understand the potential significance of tonight, I am joined by presidential historian Michael Beschloss.
Michael Beschloss, welcome back to the program.
It's good to see you.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, Presidential Historian: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, a lot of eyes on the president tonight.
What sort of opportunity does the State of the Union present?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, it is most suited if you have got a president who has got something new, wants to tell the country, I want to move in a different direction.
For instance, 1941, in January, Franklin Roosevelt talked about the four freedoms that he wanted to see around the world.
What that told Americans was, this is a president who really is a lot more likely to want to get involved in World War II against Hitler than we expected.
Lyndon Johnson in '64 and '65 said, I want a war on poverty.
I want to go for civil rights and voting rights.
George W. Bush in 2002 talked about the axis of evil, what we should do to worry about North Korea, Iran, Iraq.
Look how much that has affected world history ever since then.
That's the best opportunity for a president in this situation.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Michael, do the words a president speaks at a State of the Union or at other important events, do they actually have the ability to move legislation, to get people behind him for whatever he wants to get done?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: If they give a great speech.
For instance, Lyndon Johnson in 1964, he really felt in his heart about poverty.
He helped to tell Americans, this is a disgrace that, in this prosperous country, there are so many people who are suffering.
That got Americans to lean on their members of Congress to move.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, you also have -- it's part of what we're all talking about tonight - - you have a nontraditional president in Donald Trump... MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Indeed.
JUDY WOODRUFF: ... but in a very traditional setting, making the speech, State of the Union, standing before the Congress.
Is there any historical precedent?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, the interesting thing, there is not, and especially because you have got a president who basically says -- is proud of the fact, much as it grieves me to say this, Judy, he says he's not very interested in history and doesn't read books.
So, this is very different from most presidents who study how other presidents have used this occasion.
And so if you think, is this someone who is going to write a speech, stick to it, and not get off the teleprompter, he probably will get off the teleprompter, and that could be the news of the night.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It's interesting, because, as we know, Michael, there is so much focus right now on the president -- how the president uses social media, what he says in his tweets... MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: ... and in his -- especially - - and in his other off-the-cuff remarks.
So, when you weigh a speech vs. the off the cuff, you really are looking at a different way of getting a message out.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: That's right.
And this is a reality TV star, and he knows that people are usually more interested in what seems to be spontaneous than what is on script.
And also he famously doesn't have a lot of self-discipline.
He gave a somewhat unifying, rather polished speech off the teleprompter to Congress last year, was widely praised for it and, as you remember, very quickly after that did a tweet about Barack Obama supposedly bugging Trump Tower that sort of stamped on his message.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, finally, Michael, I guess picking up on that, but this is a moment when there is this investigative cloud hanging over the president.
Is this a moment to shake that loose, or how do people see a president at a moment like this?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, Donald Trump has got two historical choices.
In 1974, Richard Nixon went before Congress and said, time to end the Watergate investigation.
He said, one year of Watergate is enough.
Twenty years ago, in 1998, Bill Clinton, just after the Monica Lewinsky episode began, went before Congress, gives this long speech, about 90 minutes.
People kept on waiting to hear what he was going to say about the scandal.
He didn't say a word.
And, as a result, Clinton's public approval rating, as measured by the Gallup poll, went up 10 points from 59 to 69.
So we will see which course the president chooses.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And we're hearing tonight the president doesn't plan to mention the Russia investigation.
So, we will be watching.
Michael Beschloss, thank you very much.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Thank you so much, Judy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Stay with us.
Coming up on the "NewsHour": how a community in Ohio is responding to the opioid epidemic; teachers' efforts to support so-called dreamers.
But, first, we return to the Trump administration's policy toward Russia.
John Yang has more on that and a look ahead to the upcoming presidential election there.
JOHN YANG: Judy, last summer, Congress overwhelmingly voted to sanction Russia for meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections.
Last night, the Trump administration said it is not imposing any of the sanctions because the threat of them is enough.
The measure also directed the Treasury Department to compile a list of Russian senior political leaders, heads of state-controlled industries and oligarchs worth more than a billion dollars in an effort to name and shame them.
Last night, the Treasury Department sent Congress a list of more than 200 names.
It includes Russian Prime Minister and former President Dmitry Medvedev, Igor Sechin, the chief of Rosneft, a Russian energy giant.
He is part of President Putin's inner circle.
And Oleg Deripaska, a billionaire aluminum magnate with alleged ties to corporate -- sorry - - to organized crime.
He is also the business partner -- or was the business partner of now indicted and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Joining us now to talk all about this is Andrew Weiss.
He worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations as a staffer on the National Security Council and in the state and Defense Departments.
He's now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Andrew, thanks for being here.
Let's begin with this list.
What's the point of it?
The Treasury Department was careful to say no one on this list is being sanctioned, so why did Congress want to draw it up, and what does being on that list mean?
ANDREW WEISS, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Well, you said a second ago that the core of the sanctions bill, which was approved last summer, was basically to tie the hands of the administration and to make sure that there would be no precipitous effort by the new administration to basically take the heat off of Vladimir Putin for what he's done in Ukraine, what he's doing in Syria, what he did in our election.
As an added sort of attempt to kind of needle this administration to do whatever they could to create so much sort of negative valence around Russia's business and government figures, they said compile a list and show us how dirty these people are.
That wasn't something that the administration was enthusiastic about.
They have resisted this entire sanctions bill tooth and nail.
And then when the time came to finally deliver the report to Congress, they basically said, here's a list we have cut and pasted out of - - basically out of open sources to make the effect as limited as possible.
JOHN YANG: You say that they have fought this sanctions bill tooth and nail.
Yesterday, the State Department said that the threat of sanctions was deterrence enough against the Russians for meddling in the elections.
But then Mike Pompeo, the CIA director, said they are already trying to meddle in the 2018 elections.
So, what do you say -- what's your response or how do you take that?
ANDREW WEISS: Well, dysfunction and incoherence are now the norm in the Trump administration's foreign policy.
So, the fact that you have basically an administration where no one really trusts them on Russia policy, people basically hear what Donald Trump says.
He talks continuously, including last week, about the possibility of a new reset with the Russians.
He continues to exaggerate Russia's relevance for our foreign policy agenda.
And then you have people down below inside the bureaucracy who want to show that they're tough and who want to show that Russia's behavior will have consequences.
You can't combine those two approaches.
JOHN YANG: How is this being interpreted in Russia?
ANDREW WEISS: Well, right now, Russia is in a pre-election frenzy.
And so for Vladimir Putin to be able to say, see, the United States is targeting us, they want to bring us back to where we were at our low point in the 1990s, today, when Vladimir Putin was speaking on Russian television, he said all 146 million Russians are on this list.
So, what he's trying to do is a classic strategy - - he's done this consistently over the last 18 years in power -- of saying, the West is against us.
And if we rally behind me, I will keep Russia strong.
So, in many ways, we play into his hands.
JOHN YANG: The first round is March 18.
He's saying that this is an example of the United States trying to meddle in the Russian election.
ANDREW WEISS: Right.
And that, to me, has zero credibility.
And a former president of Estonia joke today: I don't know what's funnier, the sanctions being as empty as they are or you claiming you have an election.
JOHN YANG: And, also, what is going on with the sort of -- is this an effort on Vladimir Putin to sort of boost the turnout, to try to really get a big -- look like a huge mandate out of this election?
ANDREW WEISS: That's where the Kremlin is I think legitimately worried.
The lack of any real competitive political process, the lack of any drama about this election has basically put most of the Russian body politic into a snooze mode.
And there is very little to get them excited enough to return Vladimir Putin for his presumably fourth and final term with a big turnout or a big boost.
So, at this point, there's mostly inertia, apathy, and lack of alternatives that is cementing his rule.
JOHN YANG: And is the opposition trying to get turnout down?
ANDREW WEISS: Yes.
So, on Sunday, there were demonstrations across Russia convened by the Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who is calling for a boycott of election.
The Kremlin is clearly very concerned about that and is doing whatever it can to push him basically out of the news.
JOHN YANG: Andrew Weiss at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, thanks for helping us understand this.
ANDREW WEISS: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: When a county in Southern Ohio saw a sharp spike in the number of fatal opioid-related overdoses, they responded by forming PORT, the Post Overdose Response Team.
Esther Honig of Side Effects, which is a Public Media project, reports how Ross County, Ohio, has enlisted local law enforcement, addiction treatment services and the health department to work together and help curb overdoses.
ESTHER HONIG: Every Wednesday, morning in Chillicothe, Ohio, this overdose task force meets.
There's a police officer, a sheriff's deputy, and a social worker from a local addiction treatment center.
The group sets out to follow up with each person in Ross County who overdosed the week before.
Their mission?
Get them into treatment.
The program started after a string of fatal overdoses in 2016, and county leaders came together to find a solution.
DAVE WEBER, Ross County Deputy Sheriff: Out of the meetings came a decision that we needed some type of team to go out and speak with people that have overdosed, either their families or both family and the overdose victim.
And somebody named it PORT, which is a Post Overdose Response Team.
ESTHER HONIG: PORT allows law enforcement to take on the role of a social worker.
They talk to residents about addiction and help them find treatment, even if that means driving them to facilities out of state when there's nothing available in their area.
Today, the team follows up with just four overdoses.
In the past, they have had as many as 20.
DAVE WEBER: I would just like to come in one day, and we don't have any.
ESTHER HONIG: At their first stop, resident Chad Lurty is shocked when the PORT team tells him his friend struggles with addiction.
CHAD LURTY, Ohio Resident: I think very highly of him, and my heart's broke.
I had no idea he had a problem.
ESTHER HONIG: Recently, PORT began offering training on how to use the overdose reversal drug naloxone, also known as Narcan.
Dave Weber, one of the deputies, said that you're in a position to be really helpful in this situation.
CHAD LURTY: I will try.
I don't want to see anybody die.
ESTHER HONIG: And you think you might go through the Narcan training?
CHAD LURTY: I'm going to very seriously consider that.
ESTHER HONIG: Here in Ross County, the rate of fatal opioid-related overdoses is nearly double the national average and one of the highest in the state.
Now, PORT, with a relatively small budget, has managed to get people the resources they need in time to hopefully prevent more of these overdoses from happening.
Still, not everyone supports what they do.
DAVE WEBER: We have some people that are upset that we give them Narcan.
You know, they say that it was this person's choice to do it, you know?
But we kind of -- we don't buy that.
My response to them is, what if it were your son, daughter, wife, or husband laying on the ground?
Would you want us to turn around and walk away?
ESTHER HONIG: You guys need to go to them because these people are not in a situation where they can necessarily seek out help themselves.
DAVE WEBER: Right, right, yes.
When we first get there, they're reluctant to speak with us.
We explain what we're there for, and we're not going to arrest them.
We're not there in a law enforcement capacity.
And most of them open up and talk to us.
ESTHER HONIG: Jessica Lutz overdosed at a store with her daughters.
She remembers when the PORT team came to her door a few days later.
JESSICA LUTZ, Resident in Recovery: My doorbell rang, and I was scared to death, because here comes my mom, like, there's an officer and a woman at your front door and they want to talk to you.
And I walked out there, and the officer said - - he said, I'm not here to arrest you.
I'm just here to make sure she's OK. She would just like to talk to you.
And I met Tracy Hathaway (ph).
ESTHER HONIG: The social worker, who was also a recovering addict, convinced Jessica that there were resources that would help her get clean.
JESSICA LUTZ: There is hope that people can recover.
She was doing it.
There was this place of people that were doing it all the time that I didn't know existed, you know, all these recovery places that we don't hear about.
ESTHER HONIG: PORT got Jessica into outpatient care immediately, and after a month a bed at a nearby recovery center.
Right now, there are only a few programs like this in Ohio, but local lawmakers recently put aside over a million dollars to be able to replicate PORT in cities across the state.
And the stakes are higher than ever.
Each day, more than 142 people in the U.S. die from a drug overdose.
That's more than the number of people who die from gun violence and car accidents combined.
It's something that Jessica doesn't take for granted.
She came from rehab and credits PORT with having saved her life.
JESSICA LUTZ: Just to have that conversation after something like that happens, and no matter who you are, that's so scary.
We don't want to die.
We just don't know how not to use.
And to find somebody that understands that and knows that we don't want to wake up and do these things every day, we don't -- there's no pleasure in what we have to go through each and every day, just to listen to that conversation and know that it really can happen is what changed everything for me.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Esther Honig in Chillicothe, Ohio.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The deadline to work out an immigration agreement is a little more than a week away.
One of the key dividing lines, what to do about dreamers.
President Trump has said he plans to scrap the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, this spring unless a deal can be worked out.
In California and other states, teachers are on the front lines and student anxiety is on the rise.
We have a story from one of our Student Reporting Labs.
It's reported by Fernando Cienfuegos.
He's a junior at Northview High School in Southern California.
It's for our weekly segment Making the Grade.
PAULINA, Student: Northview When DACA got rescinded, I didn't really know where to go.
It was just a very numb feeling.
FERNANDO CIENFUEGOS: Paulina Garcia is a recent Northview High School graduate and DACA recipient.
She attends Mount San Antonio Community College.
She says her high school teachers were critical in helping her get there.
They outlined the steps she had to take as an undocumented student to get to graduation.
PAULINA: If I didn't have Ms. Arellanes, I think I wouldn't have been as inspired to continue on my education.
She would constantly give me paperwork and paperwork about dream, the DREAM Act, dreamers' financial aid.
And that was very, very helpful, because I didn't know where else to get that information.
Just the immense amount of belief they had in me.
YEMINA ARELLANES, Teacher: Are you going to mention why you just began working this year?
PAULINA: I just starting working this year I barely got my DACA this year.
So, I'm just... YEMINA ARELLANES: But you are not going to put it in the statement?
FERNANDO CIENFUEGOS: Yemina Arellanes teaches economics and provides college advising at Northview High School in Covina, California.
She is one of a growing number of educators who independently sought training to support undocumented students.
YEMINA ARELLANES: What motivated me to help undocumented students here at Northview was actually seeing the need.
They really didn't know where to go.
FERNANDO CIENFUEGOS: The Trump administration's approach towards immigration actually scares some students.
YEMINA ARELLANES: They have got a deep-seated struggle going on within them, because as hard as they work and as much as they want to be educated, they have this fear inside that perhaps within the next few years, no matter how educated they are, they might be removed from this country.
We're still trying to rebuild that trust and let them know that it's OK to come to us, that we're not going to work against them and that we're not going to turn them in.
FERNANDO CIENFUEGOS: An estimated 271,000 undocumented students are enrolled in the California K-12 public school system, the largest number in the country, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that undocumented children have the right to a public education.
Immigration advocates say that these students are a special needs group who would benefit from schools providing counseling, legal advice, and federal immigration policy information to their student body.
Claremont Graduate University Professor William Perez studies the social and psychological development of immigrant students.
He says teachers need tools.
WILLIAM PEREZ, Claremont Graduate University: They're in desperate need of information about all the legislation.
Teachers go online and they will Google things, or they will find out about Webinars or they will find out about something that -- where they can go and sort of educate themselves.
But being done in a very unsystematic way.
FERNANDO CIENFUEGOS: Dr. Perez has launched the nation's first allies-to-dreamers certificate program.
The course trains educators how to support undocumented students transitioning to college and into the work force.
WILLIAM PEREZ: Teachers need to be well-equipped to be able to be responsive to their students.
FERNANDO CIENFUEGOS: Despite supporting undocumented students, some conservatives, like Santa Ana School Board member Cecilia Iglesias, believe academics should be the focus.
CECILIA IGLESIAS, Santa Ana School Board: Santa Ana, traditionally, historically, we have been underperforming, which means failing our kids.
And in the past 10 years, we have been on program improvement.
And those are the things we should be talking about.
That's why we were elected.
If we wanted to go into be affecting immigration policy, we should go into Congress.
Politics should never come into it when it comes to education.
FERNANDO CIENFUEGOS: Still, teachers like Yemina Arellanes say more must be done.
YEMINA ARELLANES: I wish that the district would really work to educate our teachers, perhaps bring in some guest speakers of students who have graduated and have succeeded who were undocumented, so that everybody can see that our kids and other kids that are undocumented, they make it, they make it, if they have the support from the adults.
FERNANDO CIENFUEGOS: For the "PBS NewsHour"'s Student Reporting Labs, I'm Fernando Cienfuegos in Covina, California.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Now to the "NewsHour" Bookshelf.
So, when do you work best?
Are you a night owl or an early bird?
Jeffrey Brown explores these questions with author Daniel Pink.
JEFFREY BROWN: There are plenty of how-to books out there.
Now comes a when-to, the best time of book the take an exam, say, or have a medical procedure, and big life decision, getting married, getting divorced, quitting a job.
The book is titled "When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing."
And author Daniel Pink joins me now.
Dan, hello.
DANIEL PINK, Author, "When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing": Hello, Jeff.
JEFFREY BROWN: Let me start with a when question for you.
When did you get interested in this, and why?
DANIEL PINK: Well, I realized that I was making all kinds of when decisions myself, so things like, when in the day should I exercise?
When should I abandon a project that's not working?
And I was making them in a pretty haphazard way.
And I figured I could make them in a better way.
And I started looking at this research.
And there is a mountain of research out there across many, many domains that allow us to make evidence-based, systematically smarter, shrewder decisions about when to do things.
JEFFREY BROWN: Smarter, shrewder.
That subtitle, "Science," right?
DANIEL PINK: Sure.
JEFFREY BROWN: So, that's the data that you're looking at.
DANIEL PINK: Oh, yes, yes, yes.
It's data that comes in the field of economics, social psychology, but also cognitive science, anesthesiology, endocrinology.
There's a whole field of chronobiology.
Linguistics gives us some clues.
So, this research is all over the place.
But in these different disciplines, they're asking very, very similar questions.
JEFFREY BROWN: All right, so daily routines first.
You're teasing out some of the patterns of our lives.
DANIEL PINK: Well, what it shows is that both our mood and our performance follow a fairly regular pattern across a day.
So we usually have a peak, a trough, and a rebound.
So our peak for most people is in the morning.
You have a trough in the early afternoon, and then we have this rebound, recovery period later in the day.
Now, for people who are night owls, they go through it in the reverse order.
But what the research tells us is that we should be doing our analytic work, our heads-down, lockdown work during the peak.
During the trough, it's not good for very much.
We should be doing our -- we should be avoiding going to the hospital and answering our routine e-mail.
And then, during the recovery, we have an elevated mood, but we're less vigilant than during the peak.
And that makes it a very good time for things like brainstorming and other kinds of creative work.
And just moving our work just a little bit can make a big difference.
There's research showing that time of day explains about 20 percent of the variance in human performance on workplace tasks.
So timing isn't everything, but it's a big thing.
JEFFREY BROWN: So the important thing is knowing who you are, in a sense, right?
DANIEL PINK: Yes.
Some of us have what are early chronotypes.
We're larks.
Get up early, go to sleep early.
Some people have evening chronotypes, owls, go to sleep late, wake up late.
Most of us are kind of in the middle, what I called third birds.
But the people who are larks and third birds peak, trough, recovery fairly predictably.
The people who are owls, recovery, trough, peak fairly predictably.
JEFFREY BROWN: There is so much fun to reading this, and then there's the scary things like, don't go have a medical preening in the afternoon.
That's not a good idea.
DANIEL PINK: That is really not a good idea.
It's kind of alarming if you look at some of the research.
Anesthesia errors, four times more likely at 3:00 p.m. than at 9:00 a.m. Endoscopists find half as many polyps in routine colonoscopies in afternoon exams vs. morning exams.
Nurses less likely to wash their hands, physicians more likely to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics in the afternoon.
JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.
So, speaking of afternoon, taking breaks is clearly -- breaking up the day, which leads to the question of naps, for example, everyone is familiar with that.
But you're not talking just about taking a nap, but very specific amounts of time, right?
DANIEL PINK: Yes.
The research on naps shows that naps are actually good for us.
I'm a convert on this in that any time I took a nap myself, I would always wake up feeling both groggy and deeply ashamed of myself.
(LAUGHTER) JEFFREY BROWN: Right.
DANIEL PINK: So, for being so lazy.
And it turns out I was doing it wrong.
The ideal nap... JEFFREY BROWN: We don't have the siesta idea.
DANIEL PINK: No, not at all.
No, I have both the hyper-puritanical and hyper-masculine approach to things, which is a toxic mix.
But what we know about naps is that 10 to 20 minutes is actually the ideal time to take a nap.
You get all of the benefits of a nap.
I think of naps as Zambonis for our brains.
They basically smooth out the nicks on our mental ice.
But without any of what's called sleep inertia.
And the ideal nap is something called the nappuccino, where you have a cup of coffee first.
Set your alarm for maybe 25 minutes.
Take a nap.
By the time you wake up, the caffeine will be hitting your body.
JEFFREY BROWN: Yes, I read this.
And this one really hit me.
DANIEL PINK: It works.
JEFFREY BROWN: It works.
Drink the coffee, then take the 20-minute nap.
DANIEL PINK: Right.
JEFFREY BROWN: Now, at the end of every chapter, you have what you call the time hacker's handbook.
And you are really giving people tips.
You think it's practical enough that we can change our lives.
DANIEL PINK: Sure.
Absolutely.
I don't think you can transform your life.
If you are overweight and lazy, changing your approach your time isn't convert you in that way.
But what I'm trying to do here is that there's some really amazing science out there that gives us insights into who we are.
But I find that if you can take some of that science and put it into place in your own life, it's meaningful and you understand the science better.
JEFFREY BROWN: Have you changed your own life, found time?
DANIEL PINK: Oh, absolutely.
So, I am a convert on breaks.
I always write down two breaks in the afternoon that I'm going to take.
I make a break list.
I have also been a convert on good news and bad news.
I always gave the good news first, because I wanted to be a nice guy.
But what you really want to do is give the bad news first, end on that elevation.
That's one thing that endings do for us.
So, I have become not only a break-taker, but the king of delivering bad news first.
(LAUGHTER) JEFFREY BROWN: The book is "When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing."
Dan Pink, thanks so much.
DANIEL PINK: My pleasure.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Fascinating.
I'm getting that book.
Online right now, you can read something else.
And that is about the famous Mississippi prison that became a haunted setting in Jesmyn Ward's National Book Award-winning 2017 novel, "Sing, Unburied, Sing."
Plus, tomorrow on the "NewsHour," we will speak to Jesmyn Ward as part of our new Book Club, in partnership with The New York Times, Now Read This.
And that's the "NewsHour" for now.
Please join us tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern for special live coverage of President Trump's first State of the Union address.
Early excerpts show that Mr. Trump will call on Democrats to work with him and Republicans on immigration and infrastructure.
Follow along online for additional analysis.
I'm Judy Woodruff.
For all of us at the "PBS NewsHour," thank you, and we'll see you soon.