GEOFF BENNETT: Good evening.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

AMNA NAWAZ: And I'm Amna Nawaz.

On the "News Hour" tonight: With his return to the White House, President Donald Trump moves full steam ahead on his promised overhaul of U.S. policies.

GEOFF BENNETT: That includes an immigration crackdown.

We delve into the policies that led to this moment and how the Trump administration is setting the groundwork for mass deportations.

JOHN SANDWEG, Former Acting ICE Director: The more you push the agency to say, increase the total, that pushes you towards the lowest-hanging fruit of the immigration system, which are not the hardened criminals.

AMNA NAWAZ: And rioters who storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6 walk free after President Trump issues sweeping pardons.

(BREAK) AMNA NAWAZ: Welcome to the "News Hour."

In less than 24 hours, President Donald Trump unleashed a wave of executive actions, some that will take effect immediately, some that will be challenged in court, and some whose potential impacts are more vague.

GEOFF BENNETT: And the president promises more executive actions in the near future.

That's as his Cabinet takes shape and as he moves to purge the federal government of those he views as disloyal to him.

On the second day of President Donald Trump's second term... MAN: Take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts.

GEOFF BENNETT: ... he and his family attended the National Cathedral prayer service, a bit of tradition for a president who so often defies them.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: So this is a big one.

GEOFF BENNETT: Within hours of taking the oath of office, a historic blitz of executive actions signed on his first day.

DONALD TRUMP: We're getting rid of all of the cancer.

I call it cancer, the cancer caused by the Biden administration.

GEOFF BENNETT: Nearly 80 of them, immediate reversals of Biden era policies, as well as withdrawals from things like the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization, many more of them also controversial.

DONALD TRUMP: So this is January 6.

These are the hostages, approximately 1,500 for a pardon, full pardon.

GEOFF BENNETT: With the stroke of a pen undoing the largest criminal investigation and prosecution in U.S. history, blanket pardons or commutations of sentences for those charged with crimes for the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, among them, rioters who violently attacked police and more than a dozen members of far right groups, including Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, who are convicted of seditious conspiracy in plotting the Capitol attack.

At a rally before signing the order, President Trump repeatedly referred to January 6 rioters as hostages, while standing on stage with families of Israeli hostages.

DONALD TRUMP: We're going to release our great hostages that didn't do -- for the most part, they didn't do stuff wrong.

GEOFF BENNETT: In a memo today, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger took objection to that: "When people attack law enforcement officers, the criminals should be met with consequences, condemnation, and accountability."

On the issue of immigration, President Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border.

Cities like Chicago and Washington, D.C., are now bracing for widespread raids to deport unauthorized immigrants.

TOM HOMAN, Trump Administration Border Czar: I wouldn't call them raids.

They're targeting enforcement operations.

They know exactly who they're looking for.

They know pretty much where they will find them.

There's going to be more collateral arrests in sanctuary cities because they forced us to go in the community and find the guy we're looking for.

MAN: It's an executive order relating to reforms to the federal work force, including to the Senior Executive Service.

GEOFF BENNETT: Another sweeping executive order will make it easier to fire federal employees considered disloyal to the administration, converting career federal workers into essentially political appointees the president could fire at will.

Mr. Trump already taking action that front, posting on his social media platform that he will be firing more than 1,000 political appointees across the government, as his new administration ousted U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan, the first woman in charge of a U.S. military branch, a top Trump DHS official accusing her of -- quote -- "leadership deficiencies for prioritizing diversity initiatives over border security."

And President Trump continues to threaten tariffs against China, Canada and Mexico, saying he may even go beyond that.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, you put a universal tariff on anybody doing business in the United States because they're coming in and they're stealing our wealth.

They're stealing our jobs.

They're stealing our companies.

GEOFF BENNETT: Today, the president continued his breakneck pace of laying out his priorities and staffing up his new administration, sitting down with Republican House and Senate leadership to discuss the legislative agenda of the new Congress.

MARCO RUBIO, U.S. Secretary of State: Marco Rubio... J.D.

VANCE, Vice President of the United States: ... do solemnly swear.

MARCO RUBIO: ... do solemnly swear.

GEOFF BENNETT: And he already has his first Cabinet member, newly sworn in Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was confirmed by the Senate unanimously last night.

Two more Cabinet picks had hearings today, Elise Stefanik for the U.S. ambassador role at the U.N. and Doug Collins to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs.

And others like defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth and Mr. Trump's pick to lead Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, could see their final confirmation votes this week.

AMNA NAWAZ: Let's delve more now into President Trump's moves, specifically on immigration, including executive orders to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented parents and declare cartels terrorist organizations.

Our White House correspondent, Laura Barron Lopez, has been tracking it all and joins us now.

So, Laura, less than a day into Mr. Trump's presidency, we have already seen some legal pushback to some of these immigration-related executive actions.

What's the latest on that?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: That's right, Amna.

we have -- there are lawsuits filed already by the ACLU, as well as 18 attorneys general in Democratic-led states, specifically challenging that executive order you just talked about that is attempting to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented parents who were born here in the United States.

Many legal experts say that that executive order directly defies the 14th Amendment.

So far, there's no lawsuit yet against Donald Trump's other executive order that declares a national emergency at the border, which would allow him to bypass some legal statutes and use military and send troops to the border.

But sending military to the border is likely to also be fought in court.

And it could clash with an 1870s law that prohibits active military from being enforced -- from enforcing civilian laws.

And many of the immigration advocates that we spoke to today said that these lawsuits are trying to slow down these (AUDIO GAP) to get injunctions.

And another thing we should point out on that birthright executive order, Amna, is that many immigration lawyers, immigration advocates are concerned that it could not just impact undocumented -- children of undocumented migrants born in the U.S., but also children who are born to parents who are here legally on work or education visas.

AMNA NAWAZ: Laura, are the court challenges here part of the White House strategy?

I mean, is there a look ahead that potentially, if they end up before a conservative-leaning Supreme Court, the issue could go their way?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Yes.

The administration and sources close to the administration that I have talked to expected legal challenges.

They didn't really think that these would go without legal challenges, and they feel as though they could potentially get in front of friendly judges, including that conservative-dominant Supreme Court.

Now, one other law -- or one other action that could very well end up being challenge, Amna, is whether or not the president decides to invoke the Alien Enemies Act.

He said yesterday in his address that he would.

So far, it appears as though he hasn't yet.

And, with that action, lawyers and constitutional scholars are concerned that he may very well use powers under the Alien Enemies Act to not just target undocumented migrants, but to also target migrants who are here lawfully, and he could use it to deport and detain them.

So there are a lot of unknowns here.

We also don't know how many troops could be sent to the border or when they could be sent to the border.

The administration has not provided those specifics yet, Amna.

AMNA NAWAZ: Well, President Trump had mentioned that there could be a wave of immigration raids in his early days.

We saw his border czar, Tom Homan, mention the same thing.

When are those raids expected?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Tom Homan said today on CNN that there are actions already being taken, that ICE essentially has its handcuffs off, and he said to CNN that it is not just going to be criminal migrants that are here or migrants that pose a public safety threat.

He did say that if -- as ICE is conducting arrests, if there are undocumented migrants who are not criminals, who have no criminal record, if they are around, then ICE will arrest them as well, and they could be deported and detained.

He has said in the past that all people are on the table here.

Our colleague as well, Amna, Ryan Connelly Holmes has been talking to people in Chicago, where one of the raids could very well take place, specifically Lawrence Benito, who runs the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, who is trying to help prepare immigrants there.

LAWRENCE BENITO, Executive Director, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights: Regardless of immigration status, people are afforded certain rights to remain silent, not let people into their homes, making sure that they have a right to an attorney, to receive counsel.

We understand how ICE operates.

We have a plan in place.

We have been doing this work for a while.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And just today, Amna, the Homeland Security Department rescinded a Biden era memo that told ICE not to target migrants near what they designated safe spaces such as churches or schools.

AMNA NAWAZ: Laura, also, yesterday, we saw the CBP-1 app, which migrants had been using as a legal means to get asylum appointments at legal points of entry at the U.S. southern border, shut down right away by the Trump administration almost immediately after they took office.

What has that meant in terms of the practical impact at the border?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: I spoke to a refugee worker, Amna, located in Tijuana today, who said that there were so many migrants (AUDIO GAP) border for those appointments through that CBP-1 app through -- to get legal entry, that they had sold their homes, that they had sold some of their belongings, that they had quit their jobs in order to make it to the southern border for those appointments.

And now they're left with no options and they're not sure what to do.

In addition to shutting down the CBP-1 app, Amna, the president also stopped refugee resettlement admissions.

And I was talking to an active-duty military member of the 82nd Airborne, who said that this impacts his family directly.

His family is in Afghanistan, and he's been trying to get them out, that -- we're talking about the Afghans who helped America during the war there.

And he's very upset and troubled by the fact that this executive order, which appears to be indefinite, could -- is impacting his family, and they're looking to the president to reverse course.

AMNA NAWAZ: That's our White House correspondent, Laura Barron-Lopez.

Laura, thank you.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Thank you.

GEOFF BENNETT: More now on President Trump's move to pardon or commute the sentences of the more than 1,500 January 6 defendants, mass clemency for his supporters, like David Dempsey, who was sentenced to 20 years for two counts of assaulting police officers with a dangerous weapon, seen here outside the U.S. Capitol threatening to lynch elected officials.

Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola, who was serving a 10-year sentence for being one of the first to break into the Capitol, using a stolen riot shield to break a window.

Scott Miller, who can be seen in the brown jacket near the entrance beating police with a pole, he was serving a 5.5-year sentence, and Jacob Chansley, otherwise known as the QAnon Shaman, who pleaded guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding after trespassing on Capitol grounds.

For more on the implications, we're joined now by former GOP Congressman and adviser to the House January 6 Committee Denver Riggleman.

Welcome back to the "News Hour."

FMR.

REP. DENVER RIGGLEMAN (I-VA): Yes, thanks for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: These pardons, I mean, this is a real body blow for the U.S. justice system in the sense that this was the single largest criminal investigation in U.S. history.

Nearly every FBI field office, nearly every U.S. attorney's office were involved in these prosecutions.

Now all but 14 people have been pardoned.

The other 14 had their sentences commuted.

How does all of this land with you?

FMR.

REP. DENVER RIGGLEMAN: It's heinous.

We have insurrectionists that were actually pardoned.

And I think it's just ludicrous that that's happening in the United States of America.

And I don't think it's just a body blow against the Department of Justice.

I think it's a body blow against the American people.

And the fact is that the Republican Party can't claim to run on law and order ever again.

And, for me personally, knowing what happened that day, that these coup-like movements and these insurrectionists are being pardoned by the president of the United States, I think it rattles our allies also.

And it really shakes the foundations of everything we stand for as Americans.

GEOFF BENNETT: What's the real-world impact of these pardons and the fact that these rioters are being released from prison?

FMR.

REP. DENVER RIGGLEMAN: Well, I think the real-world impact are, these individuals are back in their communities, where they can organize, they can run for office, January 6'ers that are presented with medals, that they actually get positions within certain government offices, maybe on the staffs of congressional representatives who support this kind of nonsense and this kind of insanity.

I think that's the real world implications.

And also, when you look at U.S. Capitol Police and those that were attacked that day, it's really this baseline disrespect against law enforcement, right?

It's not back the blue.

It's screw the blue.

And I think that's what you're seeing from the GOP today.

And, for me, how are they going to recruit the type of people that they need when they see that there's nobody backing them up, especially when they were trying to protect the Capitol, and our most -- my goodness, our most, I would say, enshrined and valuable institutions that were attacked that day by really ignorant, violent insurrectionists?

GEOFF BENNETT: You were extended one of the preemptive pardons that former President Biden issued to members and staffers on the House January 6 Committee.

How did that process play out?

Did you have to request it?

And once you got it, did you have to accept it?

FMR.

REP. DENVER RIGGLEMAN: It's pretty interesting.

I had no idea.

I didn't even know until the morning of, and I got a text message with an actual picture of the blanket pardon to all January 6 Committee members.

That really was the extent of it.

I guess I'm supposed to get a hard copy.

So I was never asked if I wanted a pardon.

If they would have asked me, I would have said no.

It just really chafes me that I have to have a preemptive pardon and sort of be in the same boat as a bunch of violent mouth-breathers, like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, that broke the law and went to jail.

And we have to worry about political retribution for doing our duty.

And as somebody who served in the United States military, took the oath there, was enlisted, and as a commissioned officer, somebody took the oath as United States Congressman, as a J6 Committee member, it really does make you feel like a stranger in your own country when you have to worry about a preemptive pardon on actually trying to protect our institutions.

And I would do it all over again.

So, no, I -- there was no consultation.

It just happened.

And I got it through a text message.

GEOFF BENNETT: Does the former president's novel and sweeping use of the pardon pen make it harder to criticize Donald Trump for the pardons that he issued?

FMR.

REP. DENVER RIGGLEMAN: No, I think when you have preemptive pardons of people who try to uphold the law, people who were actually doing their work under a United States Congress resolution, and when you have pardons of violent, superstition-driven fantasists who would rather attack the Capitol than have the rational ability to tell fantasy from fiction - - or fantasy from fact, those who literally believe that the "Lord of the Rings" is a documentary, I think that's the difference here.

It's really hard, right, to even compare the preemptive pardons from Biden for January 6 Committee members and congressional members to pardons of violent criminals that have no ability to discern fact from fiction.

I think it should absolutely frighten the American people.

GEOFF BENNETT: The Trump team's view is that people shouldn't be surprised, given that Donald Trump broadly previewed this during the campaign.

And they tend to think that the reaction in the rest of the country will be different than it is here in Washington, where January 6 seems to loom larger in people's thinking.

And you can take it a step further and ask the question.

If Donald Trump didn't pay a price for allegedly inciting the Capitol riot, he's now protected by the presidency, why should the foot soldiers?

FMR.

REP. DENVER RIGGLEMAN: You know, that's maybe the one thing that he did was, his pardon actually showed that he thought he was responsible for it.

And I think that's something we can look at.

I mean, obviously, he didn't do it for any noble reason, but he was ultimately responsible for what happened on January 6.

And as far as the foot soldiers, are we saying that people that are of sound mind actually think that QAnon is a real thing?

If you think about that -- what happened that day, that was purely based on conspiracy theories.

Every single person that day, whether they attacked the Capitol or not, believed in something that was false.

They believed in this sort of cultlike thing, right, that the election was stolen, whether it was through German servers or through broken algorithms or space satellites or NSA or CIA or white vans with ballots, all the ludicrous, ridiculous things that was pushed into the ecosystem by Trump and his minions.

So, yes, it should scare the hell out of people that you have somebody up there, right, that pardoned a bunch of violent people, where he's actually sort of saying, yes, it was me.

You know, I'm the one who told them to do it.

And so, for me, I don't care how other people react in Washington, D.C., or care how other people react outside of Washington, D.C. What I care about is truth.

What I care about is fighting corruption.

And what we're seeing in the Republican Party now is such a deep rot that I don't know if you can actually take it out.

So, for me, I would rather be alone telling the truth than with many following a lie.

GEOFF BENNETT: Former GOP Congressman and the House January 6 Committee adviser Denver Riggleman, thanks for being with us.

FMR.

REP. DENVER RIGGLEMAN: Thank you.

AMNA NAWAZ: Now let's turn to congressional correspondent Lisa Desjardins, who was in the Capitol during that insurrection four years ago and joins us now.

Lisa, what are you hearing in terms of how lawmakers are reacting to those pardons?

LISA DESJARDINS: That's right.

Democrats on Capitol Hill openly outraged over those pardons.

Republicans also, privately, most of them that I talk to are also very unhappy and frustrated, but they're navigating this world where Donald Trump is the president and the leader of their party.

They have been navigating the idea of, how do they express this in public?

Remember, these are people who personally were fearful for their lives by these same attackers.

They know police officers, as do I, who were harmed, over a 100 of them harmed.

These are people who were pardoned who smashed police officers with bats and the like.

So, today, we did hear some Republicans coming out a little bit more, trying to navigate this world and expressing that they are openly frustrated.

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): I'm about to file two bills that will increase the penalties up to and including the death penalty for the murder of a police officer and increasing the penalties and creating federal crimes for assaulting a police officer.

That should give you everything you need to know about my position.

It was surprising to me that it was a blanket pardon.

Now I'm going through the details.

LISA DESJARDINS: Senator Tillis also criticized President Biden for his pardons.

But this is a lesson to members of Congress that Donald Trump, his priorities is not them.

His priorities is him, his supporters, and that he doesn't compromise and he doesn't care if they tell him he shouldn't do this.

AMNA NAWAZ: Meanwhile, Republican leaders in Congress had their first strategy session with President Trump at the White House today.

What should we know about that?

LISA DESJARDINS: It was an important meeting.

There is strategy talk.

They were there for two hours.

But I want to point out something about this dynamic here.

President Trump comes in with four years of experience in office.

Let's look at those who met with today.

Speaker Mike Johnson, he's been in office just over a year.

John Thune, the new majority leader, just for 18 years -- 18 days.

And as Amy Walter and I both like to talk about, 68 percent of the House arrived after 2016.

So Donald Trump here, Congress really kind of works with him more than him working with them at this point.

AMNA NAWAZ: Finally, I know you're tracking the confirmation process for his nominees.

Where do things stand?

LISA DESJARDINS: Right.

So we expect more confirmations this week, especially Pete Hegseth for the Department of Defense.

We could see that confirmation this weekend.

That looks like where it is.

What we don't know anything about is two of the big high-profile nominees, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, and also RFK, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for Health and Human Services.

No hearings have been scheduled.

We have not seen them on Capitol Hill for a few days.

So we're not sure where that stands.

But, so far, everyone in the Trump administration says they're gung-ho for them, but no update on timing for them.

AMNA NAWAZ: All right, our congressional correspondent, Lisa Desjardins, thank you so much.

LISA DESJARDINS: You're welcome.

AMNA NAWAZ: We start the day's other news with a prisoner swap between the United States and the Taliban.

As one of his final acts in office, former President Biden secured the release of 42-year-old Ryan Corbett, seen here with two of his children, as well as another American, William McKenty.

In a statement, Corbett's family thanked Biden and the Trump administration for -- quote -- "bringing him back home after what's been the most challenging and uncertain 894 days of our lives."

The men were freed in exchange for Khan Mohammad, a Taliban member who'd been jailed in the U.S. on narcotics charges since 2008.

He arrived in Kabul earlier today a free man.

In Israel, two top generals resigned today over the military's failure to stop the October 7 Hamas attacks.

One was the top commander for Southern Israel in Gaza.

The other was Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi.

Halevi is the senior most Israeli official to quit over the attack that killed some 1,200 Israelis and triggered the war in Gaza, which is now paused in a cease-fire deal.

On the ground in Gaza, meanwhile, nearly 900 humanitarian aid trucks rolled in today as part of that agreement.

In the southern city of Khan Yunis, displaced Palestinians lined up for food and essential supplies.

MOUNIR ABU SEIAM, Displaced Palestinian (through translator): After seven months, it's the first time I have received a food basket from the U.N.

But it's not enough, maybe only for a day or two.

We need sheets for tents.

And, most importantly, we want things that will warm us in the winter, like blankets and mattresses.

AMNA NAWAZ: The cease-fire does not extend to the occupied West Bank, where Israel says it's launched a - - quote -- "significant and broad military operation" targeting Palestinian militants.

Health officials there say at least nine people were killed today and dozens more wounded.

U.N. Chief Antonio Guterres called on security forces there to use -- quote -- "maximum restraint."

In Turkey, officials are investigating a hotel fire that killed at least 76 people.

The Grand Kartal Hotel is located in the country's northwestern Koroglu Mountains, roughly 200 miles from Istanbul.

It's believed that the blaze started overnight in the restaurant of the popular ski resort.

Part of the resort sits on a cliff, which complicated efforts to extinguish the flames.

More than 50 people were injured, as panicked guests reportedly jumped out of the windows and tried to climb down bedsheets to escape the fire.

MEVLUT OZER, Witness (through translator): It was like the apocalypse.

You cannot focus on one place, one person.

The flames engulfed the hotel immediately, in half-an-hour.

They engulfed it very quickly.

AMNA NAWAZ: The fire came at the start of a two-week school holiday, when hotels in the area are full.

Authorities have detained four people for questioning, including the hotel's owner.

A rare winter storm is hammering parts of Texas and the Northern Gulf Coast.

Authorities have announced the first ever blizzard warnings for several coastal counties near the Texas-Louisiana border.

The famous streets of New Orleans are expecting as much as six inches of snow, as is Houston.

Meteorologists are calling the storm historic.

The governors of Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida have all declared states of emergency.

Further north, a large part of the country is still facing dangerously cold temperatures.

Subzero windchills are expected from the Dakotas and Upper Midwest across the Great Lakes and through the Northeast.

On Wall Street today, stocks rose as investors adjusted to the new Trump presidency.

The Dow Jones industrial average added more than 500 points on the day.

The Nasdaq tacked on more than 120 points.

The S&P 500 also saw solid gains.

And Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and writer Jules Feiffer has died.

His weekly strip, "Feiffer," which was initially called "Sick Sick Sick," ran in "The Village Voice" for more than four decades starting in 1956.

He wrote comics, plays, children's books and screenplays in a tone often neurotic, sardonic and spot-on.

His best-known screenplay was "Carnal Knowledge" about the exploits of two men as they navigate a changing romantic world.

The 1971 film version starred Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel.

Jules Feiffer died at his home in Upstate New York.

He was 95 years old.

Still to come on the "News Hour": why the Trump administration has withdrawn from the World Health Organization; the inspiration behind one visual artist's provocative work; and we remember the victims of the deadly wildfires in Southern California.

AMNA NAWAZ: As part of his blitz of executive orders issued yesterday, President Trump also delivered on a campaign promise to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization.

The White House accuses the who of mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic, bias towards China, and says the U.S. is forced to pay more than its fair share to support the international organization.

For more on the potential implications of this, we're joined now by Lawrence Gostin, law professor and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center at Georgetown University.

Lawrence, welcome back.

Thanks for being with us.

In your Washington Post op-ed today, you said leaving the WHO would be what you called a grave mistake that would hurt Americans.

How so?

What's the potential harm here?

LAWRENCE GOSTIN, Georgetown University: Well, thank you for having me.

I believe this is a truly historic decision.

The United States really formed the World Health Organization in 1948, and has been its most influential and greatest funder for 75 years.

This is going to make America decidedly less safe, less secure.

And it's hard for me to think of any national advantage that we get.

I only see us alone and isolated, not stronger.

AMNA NAWAZ: You mentioned the U.S. has been its greatest funder for WHO.

If you take a look at this graphic, we should just point out, look at the top 10 sources of funding there, the U.S. there at the top, but there's other groups like the World Bank, the Gates Foundation, countries like Germany, U.K. and Japan.

But the U.S. is responsible for someone-sixth of the organization's budget.

So is President Trump's characterization that the U.S. is shouldering an unfair financial burden here wrong?

LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Yes, actually, I think it is wrong, but it's not totally wrong.

Let me explain.

The WHO has a budget of roughly one-quarter of the U.S. CDC.

So, for a global institution, it's chronically underfunded.

It doesn't have the resilience and funding that it needs to put out fires all over the world.

So the United States shouldn't pay less, but other countries should pay more.

China should, India, the Gulf states, many other middle-income countries.

So I think that Trump would do a much greater service to the United States and the world if he stayed in and he negotiated a deal.

Yes, let's make WHO more resilient.

Let's fund it better.

Let's make it more powerful and let's make it more accountable with financial oversight.

But leaving it would gravely damage United States' national interests and world health writ large.

It's not really like the border, where you can kind of seal off the Mexican border so that you can stop immigrants.

Germs don't know borders.

And a United States without WHO is a United States alone and isolated and more fragile and vulnerable.

AMNA NAWAZ: Pulling out of the organization means that the U.S. would lose access to the World Health Organization's global public health data too, which you said would leave agencies like the CDC flying blind.

Help make that real for us.

What is the potential harm that you are worried about?

LAWRENCE GOSTIN: I see this as the greatest self-inflicted wound that this executive order has put for us.

I mean, it is a grave wound to WHO, but I think it's a more grievous wound to the United States.

Here's why.

The World Health Organization leads a vast network of public health agencies, laboratories, and international scientists that constantly track novel outbreaks and shares data.

Without that, CDC doesn't have an early warning.

We can't respond.

And so we're weaker.

We're less prepared.

But here's more.

And I think it's really important.

Our pharmaceutical industry, the NIH, needs these data to develop vaccines, therapies, and other lifesaving tools that we rely on.

If you remember back to COVID-19, and Operation Warp Speed, and Trump gets a lot of credit for that, we were in front of the line for vaccines.

We may be near the back of the line because we're not going to get data about how these viruses are evolving, what we can do to respond to them and create vaccines.

AMNA NAWAZ: Lawrence Gostin, thank you so much for joining us tonight, professor and director of the World Health Organization's Collaborating Center at Georgetown University.

Thank you.

LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Thank you.

GEOFF BENNETT: As we have discussed, President Trump has signed several executive orders making sweeping changes to the immigration system.

Immigration was one of voters' top issues in the presidential election, with many supporting President Trump's message that the current system is broken.

But how did we get here?

Laura Barron-Lopez takes a deep dive into the history of immigration policies and laws that have led to the complex system we have today.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Since its founding days, the United States had mostly open borders, welcoming immigrants from across the world to work and build lives here.

In the late 1800s, record numbers of migrants from Italy, Greece and Central and Eastern Europe made the journey on newly invented steamships to the United States.

Many, especially in America's now crowded cities, began to question the open door policy.

DAVID LEONHARDT, The New York Times: There was a huge backlash.

There was substantial antisemitism.

There was substantial anti-Catholic discrimination, particularly against Irish immigrants.

And so, over time, this political pressure built up and built up and built up.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: In 1924, Congress passed sweeping legislation restricting immigration.

DAVID LEONHARDT: Congress nearly closes the door, and the part of the door that's open is really just open to Western Europe.

Except for Western Europe, the quotas that existed for individual countries were almost laughably small.

Sometimes, it was, this country could have 100 people a year move to this country from places like Southern Europe.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The law, which favored mostly white Europeans, would dominate U.S. immigration policy until the 1960s.

JOHN F. KENNEDY, President of the United States: I think it is not a burden, but a privilege to make this really, as it was for them, a new world.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Building on a promise by President John F. Kennedy and making it part of the fight for civil rights, President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed to repeal the quota system.

He supported a bill that proponents said would not discriminate against people based on their country of origin.

And they stressed it would prioritize skilled workers and family members of people in the U.S., but would not increase the overall number of migrants.

DAVID LEONHARDT: Those promises were absolutely central to selling the bill, because the advocates of the bill understood Americans didn't want a huge increase in immigration.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Johnson signed it into law at the base of the Statue of Liberty and emphasized that it did not represent radical change.

LYNDON JOHNSON, Former President of the United States: This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill.

It does not affect the lives of millions.

DAVID LEONHARDT: The law did in fact transform our immigration system and, in particular, led to vastly more immigration.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Although the legislation contained annual caps on immigration, there was one important exception, family members of naturalized U.S. citizens.

DAVID LEONHARDT: So if I came and then I wanted to bring members of my family over in subsequent years, only I would have counted toward that quota in the first year, not my extended family members.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Immigration soon soared.

And, over time, family reunification became the largest type of legal migration to the country.

And the foreign-born population shot up from less than 5 percent in 1965 to just over 15 percent in 2023.

MAN: This is the only area in which the American farm labor supply falls short and is supplemented by Mexican citizens.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Johnson's administration also oversaw the end of a key legal pathway for migrants to work in the U.S.

The Bracero Program, which had been used since World War II to hire millions of temporary agricultural workers from Mexico, expired in 1964.

Those workers continued to cross the southern border, starting a decades-long rise in illegal immigration.

RONALD REAGAN, Former President of the United States: Future generations of Americans will be thankful for our efforts to humanely regain control of our borders.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: In 1986, President Ronald Reagan helped pass sweeping legislation that granted a pathway to citizenship to nearly three million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

This first modern attempt to crack down on the border failed to deliver and illegal immigration continued to rise through the '90s.

BILL CLINTON, Former President of the United States: We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: President Bill Clinton endorsed proposals by an independent commission to comprehensively reform the immigration system, but these went nowhere.

DAVID LEONHARDT: You saw pretty quickly opposition come from at least two sources.

So, one was what I would describe as the corporate right, who were worried about the idea of a reduction of immigration reducing the work force and potentially meaning that they might have to pay higher wages and then have lower profits.

And then the other opposition was from nonprofits and advocacy groups, particularly Latino and Asian groups, that basically said, we should have more immigration, not less.

And, over time, those groups within the Democratic Party would really become the dominant voice on immigration, at least until the last couple years, of saying more immigration is better.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Those tensions continued to plague efforts led by presidents on both sides of the aisle to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

THERESA CARDINAL BROWN, Bipartisan Policy Center: What comprehensive immigration reform referred to was essentially three major provisions.

One would have addressed the border and enforcement.

One would have addressed the status of the undocumented in the United States.

And then the third was changes to the legal immigration system.

The concept strategically was that, by putting everything together, there'd be something for every stakeholder group to like.

Unfortunately, it also meant that there were things that every stakeholder group could not like.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Congress failed to pass bipartisan bills proposed under George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Under President Obama, deportation soared to more than 400,000 in 2013.

Almost half of those people were deported under a process called expedited removal, which allows immigration officials to deport individuals without a hearing.

JOHN SANDWEG, Former Acting ICE Director: Those individuals were actually apprehended at the border trying to enter the United States.

ICE can remove those people very quickly without having to go through the immigration courts.

It artificially increases the total number of ICE deportations in a way that's a little bit misleading.

Unfortunately, it gave President Obama this kind of name, the deporter in chief.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: By 2016, the situation at the border had transformed.

Migration from Mexico began to drop, while increasing numbers of Central Americans began to surrender to border control and claim asylum.

Under U.S. law, anyone who claims asylum is entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge and cannot be deported.

THERESA CARDINAL BROWN: Many of them really are fleeing dire circumstances, whether that's due to extreme poverty or crime, corruption by their governments.

Many of them do have viable asylum claims.

And we have seen estimates of around 40 percent of the claims that do get through the system are approved.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Because of immigration court backlogs, this process can take years, and asylees are allowed to live and work in the country until their case is heard.

JOHN SANDWEG: Smugglers seized upon this opportunity to start coaching people to make asylum claims.

Our inability to fund our immigration courts to handle all these claims created a magnet that drew more people here to this country.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: In recent years, this backlog has ballooned from just over 500,000 in 2016 to approximately 3.5 million last year.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists and some, I assume, are good people.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: An anti-immigrant agenda was central to Donald Trump's first run for president.

As president, he made wide-ranging changes to asylum procedures, including Title 42, which denied entry to asylum seekers under the justification of the COVID-19 pandemic.

JOE BIDEN, Former President of the United States: What we're doing now is attempting to rebuild, rebuild the system that can accommodate what is happening today.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: President Joe Biden reversed many of those Trump era policies and oversaw the largest immigration surge in recent history.

From 2021 to 2023, annual net migration, both legal and illegal, averaged 2.4 million per year.

JOHN SANDWEG: Our failure to enforce our laws at the border, to timely provide due process to people at the border and the perception that the border was out of control, I think that more than anything influenced the thinking of people where they would accept this insane rhetoric we're seeing today.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: On the campaign trail, President Trump stepped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric.

DONALD TRUMP: They're poisoning the blood of our country.

That's what they have done.

DAVID LEONHARDT: So the Republican Party became extremely anti-immigration, sometimes giving voice to false and racist conspiracy theories.

The way that Donald Trump appeals to nativism, the way he appeals to xenophobia, you absolutely can see echoes from that to the 1924 law.

It's absolutely there.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Trump and his advisers have promised radical changes to the immigration system, from gutting legal pathways like refugee admissions to launching the largest mass deportation program in American history.

President Trump's advisers claim they will prioritize deporting undocumented migrants deemed national security or public safety threats.

But experts say the deportation numbers Trump is talking about would go far beyond that, reaching a scale potentially never seen before in America.

JOHN SANDWEG: There is no way to do the mass deportations they're talking about and focus them exclusively on public safety threats.

The more you push the agency to say, increase the total, that pushes you towards the lowest hanging fruit of the immigration system, which are not the hardened criminals.

When you do a workplace raid, you don't get gang members.

You get people who show up for work every day because they're trying to support their family.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Laying the foundation for unprecedented action he can now take in office.

For "PBS News Hour," I'm Laura Barron-Lopez.

GEOFF BENNETT: It's a portrait of an artist capturing parts of his own history and ours.

He's been doing it since childhood and is now in the spotlight with his first national touring exhibition.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown talks with Vincent Valdez for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

JEFFREY BROWN: The paintings are often large in scale, almost cinematic in effect, the imagery confrontational, packing a punch, 120 works, now at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston by artist Vincent Valdez.

This is art as provocation?

VINCENT VALDEZ, Artist: It's art as truth.

It's the truth the way that I see it.

It's the truth that -- based off of my recollections and observations, my hard examinations about life in the world beyond these studio doors.

JEFFREY BROWN: The exhibition, titled Just a Dream presents 25 years of work, series of paintings, or what Valdez sees as chapters, that look at both personal and collective histories.

It is his first major survey, a chance for the 48 year old artist to take stock.

VINCENT VALDEZ: I was able to get a glimpse of the story that I have been telling, and that story, my subject has been life in contemporary America in both its tragedy and its triumph.

JEFFREY BROWN: You can see that in all the works over the decades.

VINCENT VALDEZ: Absolutely, not only my own personal reflection on contemporary American society, but my own active participation in contemporary America.

JEFFREY BROWN: These days, Valdez splits his time between Houston and Los Angeles, where we met in December at his studio filled with large-scale panels of paintings in progress.

On this day, he was at work on something smaller, a portrait of one set of grandparents, and on a series of drawings based on Kurt Vonnegut's classic anti-war novel "Slaughterhouse-Five."

His own engagement with art goes back to his childhood in San Antonio, Texas, first surrounded by done by a surrounded by work done by a great-grandfather, Jose Maria Valdez, hanging in his grandparents' house,then, beginning at age 10, as part of a project working on large-scale murals around the city.

WOMAN: Eleven-year-old Vincent Valdez is painting a scene of nature and animals.

JEFFREY BROWN: A year later, the young artist was featured in a local news story.

VINCENT VALDEZ: If there's still nuclear being dropped everywhere, will there still be animals?

JEFFREY BROWN: With murals, you get the enormous scale.

You get that kind of storytelling.

VINCENT VALDEZ: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: Clearly, those -- that impacted you.

VINCENT VALDEZ: Tremendously.

And it struck me like a thunderbolt, where it has to tell a story and it has to utilize storytelling as a means of communicating to the world around me, with the world.

And to go one step further, it has to be an opportunity for other human beings to see themselves reflected in these images.

JEFFREY BROWN: And so, in his exhibition, a series titled The New Americans, large portraits of community workers and others making a difference, another called Since 1977, with just the tops of the heads of U.S. presidents since the time of his birth, and a painted 1953 ice cream truck, a project Valdez did with musician Ry Cooder to honor the largely Mexican-American neighborhood torn down to make room for the building of L.A.'s Dodger Stadium.

There are darker stories of the so-called Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 targeting Mexican-Americans, and a group of paintings titled The Strangest Fruit, portraying young men, including friends of Valdez, dangling in the air, his intent, he says, to restore a history, documented, but little known, of the lynchings of Mexicans and Mexican Americans.

But these men bear markers, such as clothing, of contemporary life.

VINCENT VALDEZ: The message that a series like this conveys to the viewer, it engages the viewer in becoming more curious about, what does the past have to do with the present?

Well, it is exactly this.

The past is still very present in 21st century America.

JEFFREY BROWN: Perhaps his most provocative work, at 38-feet-long, a gathering of Klansmen.

Again, we see signs that the time is now.

And, again, Valdez has grounded the image in his own experience.

VINCENT VALDEZ: I was confronted by the Ku Klux Klan when I was 16 years old in front of the Alamo in downtown San Antonio, Texas, you know, one of them leaning over to me while carrying an American flag, peering at me through those socket holes in the hood and saying, "You don't belong here."

You're forced to walk around front to back in order to see a single image at one moment.

JEFFREY BROWN: Valdez wants us to feel the paintings' size and presence.

He took us to see two newer works now on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, part of a large exhibition featuring many artists titled Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968.

His contribution, a kind of diptych.

Michael Jordan mid-flight on one side, on the other, former National Security Council official Colonel Oliver North testifying about his role in the Iran-Contra scandal involving secret weapons transactions, two strangely parallel images from the same time, 1987-'88, that present both larger American history and Valdez's own.

VINCENT VALDEZ: These historic moments unfolding on my mom's television screen as a child.

I remember trying to consider what it meant to be not only an American, but as a young Chicano, a Mexican American in South Side San Antonio, what my role, where I fit in within this context of American history.

How does a scene like this unfolds here affect me in my daily life, in my community?

And so it was a very dizzying effect for me.

JEFFREY BROWN: Which you are recreating for us.

VINCENT VALDEZ: Sure, exactly.

JEFFREY BROWN: Also deeply personal, he says, a desire to share with others the active making art and the commitment it requires.

VINCENT VALDEZ: In some ways, I have created this life force inside the studio that really entirely commands and dictates my life.

But in this way, I try to share this kind of absolute love and devotion that I have for painting and drawing, in an age where there are short attention spans, where maybe there is -- where it becomes a rarer occurrence to understand what patience and discipline really is.

JEFFREY BROWN: The exhibition Just a Dream by Vincent Valdez is at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston through March 23, when it travels to MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts.

For the "PBS News Hour," I am Jeffrey Brown.

AMNA NAWAZ: Well, it's now been two weeks since the wildfires began ravaging parts of Southern California.

And at least 27 people have lost their lives.

As we learn more about the victims, we remember some of those who were lost and the legacies they leave behind.

We begin tonight with these nine stories.

Fifty-five-year-old Randall Miod was an avid surfer and life of the party, according to his mother, Carol, who begged him to evacuate.

The last thing he told her was: "Pray for the Palisades and pray for Malibu.

I love you."

Anthony Mitchell, 67, was a retired amputee.

His son Justin was in his early 20s and had cerebral palsy.

Mitchell was waiting for an ambulance to evacuate them.

Mitchell's daughter, Hiji, told reporters -- quote -- "He was not going to leave his son behind, no matter what."

Victor Shaw, 66, lived in Altadena and died with a garden hose in his hand.

He was shy in nature, but had a deep affection for his sister Shari, who attempted to get her brother to safety before barely escaping herself.

SHARI SHAW, Sister of Victor Shaw: I went down the street and there was a police car and I flagged him.

And I said: "My brother's in the house.

I need help."

And he told me to get out.

He said: "Go."

AMNA NAWAZ: Erliene Kelley, a retired pharmacist, lived in the family's Altadena home for decades and insisted on staying.

Her granddaughter Briana told reporters -- quote -- "My grandmother was really active.

I thought she would be 99 just walking around."

Kelley was 83 years old.

Arthur Simoneau, 69, died trying to save his home.

He was a hang gliding enthusiast and known as a free spirit.

His friend Steve said -- quote - - "Arthur was a good friend to me and a great pilot.

It's because of Arthur that I visited many places I may not have gone otherwise."

Ninety-five-year-old Dalyce Curry was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the 1920s but was always destined for Hollywood.

Her granddaughter, also named Dalyce attempted to get to her grandmother's home as the fires burned, but was unable to.

DALYCE KELLEY, Granddaughter of Dalyce Curry: So I will live with that regret for the rest of my life that I should have did something else.

AMNA NAWAZ: Rodney Nickerson was a grandfather of four and known as a leader at his Baptist church.

His daughter Kimiko told reporters -- quote -- "The last thing he said to me as we encouraged him to leave was: 'Don't worry, I will be here tomorrow.'"

Nickerson was 82.

Thirty-two-year-old Rory Sykes overcame so much in life.

He was born blind and with cerebral palsy, but after numerous surgeries, he regained partial eyesight and learned to walk with help.

His mother, Shelley, wrote on X -- quote -- "Despite the pain, he still enthused about traveling the world with me."

GEOFF BENNETT: Our thoughts are with those families and all those who suffered losses in the fires.

That's the "News Hour" for tonight.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

AMNA NAWAZ: And I'm Amna Nawaz.

On behalf of the entire "News Hour" team, thank you for joining us.