GEOFF BENNETT: Good evening.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

Amna Nawaz is away.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: Congress works to push through the deal that would raise the debt ceiling and curb spending.

A major opioid settlement grants the family behind Purdue Pharma immunity from civil lawsuits in exchange for money to treat addiction.

And certain groups of Asian Americans who are disproportionately affected by police violence open up about their often-overlooked experiences.

VINNY ENG, Son of Cambodian Refugees: It was just an incredible amount of force applied at a situation when what really was needed was for someone to provide care.

(BREAK) GEOFF BENNETT: Welcome to the "NewsHour."

The U.S. House is set to vote on a debt ceiling deal tonight, after Republicans got some help from Democrats to pass a crucial hurdle.

The vote follows weeks of heated negotiations and criticism from the right and the left.

Lisa Desjardins has been tracking it all on Capitol Hill and joins us now.

So, Lisa, there has been lots of action on the House floor already today.

Bring us up to speed on what happened.

LISA DESJARDINS: Geoff, you know, as many people know, the delivery process can be complicated in some instances, and that is the situation here now.

This was a critical moment in the lifespan of this debt bill.

It had to get past a hurdle, allowing it to even come up for debate on the House floor.

Usually, what happens is, the party in charge decides which bills come to the floor, and they all vote to make that happen.

But as we have been talking about, there were two dozen-plus Republicans who oppose this bill and wanted to block it.

So what happened?

A slew of Democrats in the middle of the vote changed their vote, 50-plus of them, in order to help this debt deal continue to move forward.

It was a bit of quick drama.

But the Democrats said: We needed to do this.

We felt like this is too important for our country.

Now, what this all shows, what happened today, is that, number one, this is a very high-wire act that both parties are trying to conduct here.

And, number two, it is in fact bipartisan, that this bill moving through, its survival depends on both parties.

GEOFF BENNETT: So, we are a short time away from the big test, which is the House vote on the bill itself.

Are the votes there right now, Lisa?

LISA DESJARDINS: I'm looking at my watch and looking at my phone as House members get back to me.

I have been checking in all day with folks who were undecided yesterday and this morning.

And I will say, in just the last hour, several of them, one Republican and two Democrats, have said they are now voting yes for this bill.

That seems to be the way the moment some has gone over the past day.

It hasn't been easy for either side.

And we do think that this vote will matter, especially -- even if it passes, as it is expected to do, for Kevin McCarthy's leadership.

We will be counting how many Republicans vote yes.

He needs a clear majority of his conference, or else his job could be at stake as well.

GEOFF BENNETT: Remind us of the major issues here, Lisa, the concerns that Republicans and Democrats have about how this bill will affect everyday Americans.

LISA DESJARDINS: That's right.

I think one thing about this is that -- first, that the reason so many people are undecided is because they are thinking about those stakes.

I want to first play the sound of two sort of the leaders of both sides showing how bipartisan this was, or sort of neither side is exactly ecstatic about this, but both are saying that they have to move forward.

Here's what we heard on the floor today.

REP. TOM COLE (R-OK): It is not a perfect bill, but it does represent a compromise between the administration and Congress that's necessary in divided government.

Nobody got everything they wanted.

But the end result is a truly historic bill.

REP. KATHERINE CLARK (D-MA): There is no perfect negotiation when you are the victims of extortion.

Nobody likes to pay a ransom note.

And that's exactly what tonight's vote is, our payment on the ransom of the American people.

LISA DESJARDINS: And what's interesting is, of course, those are two leaders who are both in support of this bill.

To your question, what's at stake here, why are there still undecided votes, let's go over this again.

It's so important.

At stake in this bill, first and foremost, two years of federal spending.

That is trillions of dollars that will affect most every aspect of American life.

Food benefits, food stamps, the SNAP benefit for hundreds of thousands of people, the way the benefit is changing will mean some thousands of people lose the benefit and thousands of others will receive it.

Now, there's also major energy projects that are at stake in this bill, because permitting would potentially move more quickly.

On the other end, there are those on the left who say that there's a problem there because the extent of environmental reviews for those huge projects would be much more shallow.

And they're worried about the environmental impact.

So, you take all that together, Geoff, and you really have especially misgivings from some Democrats, worried about the environment and worried about this food stamp programs.

Pramila Jayapal, the head of the Progressive Caucus, for that reason said she's a no-vote on this bill.

And I want to talk about one other Democrat, Jahana Hayes of Connecticut.

She's a former national schoolteacher of the year.

Had a very powerful moment with her today, when she said: Listen, I'm thinking about my constituents who might lose their food stamp benefits.

I'm thinking of especially older women.

She thinks older women of color, she said: They don't have any lobbyists.

They only have me.

So, a very emotional vote for some of these members.

GEOFF BENNETT: So as we're tracking what's happening in the House, the Senate has to act quickly on this as well in order to meet the deadline.

What's the state of play in the Upper Chamber?

LISA DESJARDINS: It does feel like the votes are there in the Senate as well.

The divide, Republicans and Democrats, still has to shake out.

The question their, Geoff, as always, is the timing.

The Senate does not move quickly, but they don't have a lot of time.

Over the next couple of days, we will see if this vote will move quickly, perhaps as soon as Friday for a final vote, or it may take several days past that.

We could get close to the deadline.

We're going to have to watch that very carefully.

GEOFF BENNETT: A very busy Lisa Desjardins covering it all for us tonight on Capitol Hill.

Lisa, thanks so much.

LISA DESJARDINS: You're welcome.

GEOFF BENNETT: In the day's other headlines: The Kremlin accused Ukraine of striking more targets inside Russia, including oil facilities and a border town.

The governor of Russia's Belgorod region reported cross-border shelling.

To the south, officials in Krasnodar said drone attacks hit two refineries.

Social media footage showed a huge fire at one of the refineries lighting up the sky.

Ukraine did not confirm or deny any involvement in the attack.

The U.S. and South Korea today condemned North Korea's attempts to launch its first spy satellite.

The North admitted the launch failed, but vowed to try again.

South Korea's military said it located wreckage after the missile plunged into the sea.

Official photos showed a white metal cylinder described as part of the rocket.

In Washington, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby warned the launch is a threat regardless of the outcome.

JOHN KIRBY, NSC Coordinator For Strategic Communications: With each and every one of these launches, whether it fails or succeeds, Kim Jong-un and his scientists and engineers, they learn and they improve and they adapt.

And they continue to develop military capabilities that are a threat, not only on the peninsula, but to the region.

GEOFF BENNETT: In South Korea, the launch triggered air raid sirens and an evacuation alert in Seoul.

Officials said later the alert was sent in error.

Sudan's army is suspending peace talks with a paramilitary force it's been battling for six weeks.

The military accused the rival group today of repeatedly violating cease-fires.

That conflict has killed hundreds of people and forced 1.6 million people from their homes.

Back in this country, jury selection began today in Florida for a former sheriff's deputy in the Parkland school shootings of 2018.

Scot Peterson reached a classroom building just after gunfire erupted, but he never went inside.

He's charged with felony child neglect.

In a six-minute assault, a teenage gunman killed 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The gunman is now serving life in prison.

And on Wall Street, nagging worries about the global economy and inflation pushed stocks lower.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 134 points to close at 32908.

The Nasdaq fell 82 points.

The S&P 500 slipped 25.

Still to come on the "NewsHour": a new anti-gay law in Uganda that threatens the death penalty sparks international outcry; Judy Woodruff examines tested strategies to bridge America's partisan divide; and a Brief But Spectacular take on transforming the foster care system.

A federal appeals court has ruled that the billionaire owners of Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family, will be protected from civil lawsuits linked to the opioid crisis in exchange for a $6 billion settlement.

Purdue, which filed for bankruptcy in 2019 amid thousands of lawsuits, made drugs like OxyContin and is blamed for fueling the opioid epidemic.

William Brangham has more.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Geoff, Purdue's opioid sales earned the Sackler family billions of dollars.

And the $6 billion that they will pay in this settlement will be given to state, cities and individuals harmed by opioid addiction and overdoses.

It also requires that the Sacklers give up control of Purdue Pharma.

In total drug manufacturers, pharmacies and distributors have pledged around $54 billion to state, local and tribal governments for their respective role in the opioid epidemic.

So, to understand where that money might be spent, we are joined by Aneri Pattani.

She is tracking all of this for KFF Health News.

Welcome to the program.

Just remind us of the contours of this deal, the Sackler settlement, what it means for the Sacklers and what it means for the people who are suing them.

ANERI PATTANI, KFF Health News: So, this deal has been in the works for a long time.

There's been almost a year that folks have been waiting on this next step in the bankruptcy.

And with the federal judge in New York clearing this for the next round, what it means is that the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy for the company can move forward.

And when the bankruptcy moves forward, for people who filed lawsuits for the governments, state and local governments, they will be getting payouts from a total of $6 billion about.

And what it means for the Sacklers is that the individual Sackler family members are protected from any lawsuits against them.

So that was sort of the trade-off in moving this deal forward that the judge OKed.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I mean, it seems like there are these two competing forces here, the very demonstrable anger against the Sackler family, for which there's a good documentary evidence that they knew how bad this crisis was and yet kept going forward, and yet also this desire on behalf of all these states and communities to get that money to try to ameliorate.

That's a very difficult tension to navigate.

ANERI PATTANI: Yes, I think I have been hearing this from a lot of folks, where people have been waiting for this bankruptcy to move forward for a long time.

Individual families want the money, right?

I hear from grandparents who are raising their grandkids because their sons or daughters died of the opioid crisis.

And those bills are coming in now, right, like the caring for them, their school, their health, whatever it is, families that are dealing with funeral costs for people who have died of overdoses, so they need the money now.

And then there -- you talk about the governments that want to start addiction treatment programs or recovery housing.

But, at the same time, the way this money is moving forward and actually getting out to people is by protecting the Sackler family from any personal responsibility.

And those same family members who want the money and the same communities that need it also feel like there should be some personal responsibility for what happened.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Right.

And, like, I guess that's just what they're going to have to live with now, that the money comes in it comes with this other stipulation.

As you and many others have been reporting, the Sackler money is just part of this other bit bigger pot of money from a lot of different - - from pharmacies, from distributors, from other manufacturers, 50-plus billion dollars that's out there.

Give us a sense of how that money is going to be spent, generally speaking.

ANERI PATTANI: Right.

So the money, as you said, is coming from a lot of different companies.

And they each have slightly different settlement agreements.

Most of them require that at least 85 percent of the money that any state gets be spent on what's called opioid remediation, essentially, programs that will address addiction as it exists now or prevent it in the future.

But what that actually looks like is really varying from state to state.

There are some state and local governments that are investing heavily in mental health programs, in prevention in schools, in addiction treatment for people who are uninsured, in naloxone.

There are others that are investing in their law enforcement, in police efforts and criminal justice, drug courts, things like that.

So it really runs the gamut and kind of depends on each local entity, what they think is important when it comes to addressing the opioid crisis.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I mean, which, on some level, you can understand.

You want to give communities the flexibility to say, hey, we really need the money for this.

But there are no stipulations as far as the term that you used as far as how this money has to be spent.

There's no -- it doesn't have to always go to what we most directly think of as drug prevention and drug treatment.

ANERI PATTANI: Yes, so the settlement agreements have this list called Exhibit E that puts out potential strategies that local governments might want to use.

And it includes a lot of the things that I just listed, but it's non-exhaustive.

So, if you're a government official, you can choose to use the money in something that's not on that list either.

And this is where you get into the loose interpretation sometimes.

So, there are some governments -- I reported on one local county in Tennessee that used a lot of the money to pay back their debt and their capital projects fund because they said, for years, we have been paying for improvements to the jail because it's been housing people largely due to addiction-related crimes.

And so how folks interpret what is related to the opioid crisis really varies widely.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This is kind of what the concern was back in the '90s with the big tobacco settlement too, that we don't know - - we think that money is going to go to tobacco prevention and smoking cessation, but not always.

ANERI PATTANI: Yes, exactly.

And most of that money didn't go to tobacco or anti-smoking programs at all.

In fact, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which tracks it, says about 3 percent of the annual payout.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Three percent?

ANERI PATTANI: Yes.

The rest of it has gone to everything you can imagine, like filling state budget gaps, transportation, paving roads and filling potholes.

In North Carolina and South Carolina, they actually used it to subsidize tobacco farmers.

The one difference I will mention, though, is, the tobacco settlement didn't have any requirements for the money to be spent on it, so sort of assumed that because the money was coming because of the public health crisis caused by cigarettes that it would be used for that.

But it wasn't actually a legal requirement.

In the opioid settlements, it does have that requirement that 85 percent of the money be spent on opioid remediation.

I think there's still a lot of questions about how that will be enforced and if that will really come true.

But that clause was in there because people did not want to see a repeat.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Interesting.

So, if I'm an individual or someone in a community, and I have been perhaps part of one of these suits and have been harmed in some very direct way, I don't really have a mechanism to say, hey, we need to be spending this money on this versus that?

ANERI PATTANI: You may.

It really depends where you're located.

So, first, I want to clarify, because I know a lot of people ask this, are the families getting money directly?

From the Purdue bankruptcy, yes, and from one other Mallinckrodt bankruptcy, they -- there are payments to individuals who filed claims.

But the vast majority of that $54 billion we talked about with opioid settlements is going to governments.

And so individuals can reach out to their county commissioners, can reach out to their elected officials, can reach out to their attorney general's offices and say, I think it should be spent in this way, but they won't have direct control over that.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Aneri Pattani of KFF Health News, thank you so much.

ANERI PATTANI: Thanks for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: Uganda has enacted one of the world's harshest anti-LGBTQ laws.

Same-sex relations were already illegal in Uganda, but a new law goes much further, including life imprisonment for anyone convicted of homosexuality, and, in some cases, it mandates the death penalty.

As Stephanie Sy reports, the new provisions have upended the lives of gay Ugandans, who now feel in danger.

STEPHANIE SY: The signing of the new anti-gay law by President Yoweri Museveni ushers in a dangerous time for Uganda's LGBTQ people.

The Anti-Homosexuality Act intensifies a long crackdown on sexual minorities.

Ugandan legislators, who passed the law nearly unanimously, say it's their prerogative.

ASUMAN BASALIRWA, Ugandan Legislator: If we don't stand our ground as a country, as a people, as a community, then we will completely have ceded our sovereignty.

STEPHANIE SY: The country's new bill is one of the world's most punitive.

It includes the death penalty for -- quote - - "aggravated homosexuality."

That includes the transmission of HIV through gay sex with children and disabled people.

It calls for life imprisonment for anyone convicted of homosexuality, up to 20 years of jail for the promotion of homosexuality, and up to seven years for landlords renting to homosexuals.

WOMAN: This is the time you're going to show us whether you're a homo or you're not.

(LAUGHTER) STEPHANIE SY: Uganda's Parliament originally passed an even harsher bill in March vetoed by Museveni.

The version approved by the president no longer criminalizes people for identifying as LGBTQ+, but still criminalizes their acts.

For queer activists, it's a tragedy.

DELOVIE "PAPA DE" KWAGALA, LGBTQ Activist: You are arresting us for literally doing nothing, for simply existing.

Where are we supposed to go?

How did we become refugees in our own country?

STEPHANIE SY: In other countries, including in South Africa, the outcry has been swift.

For months, civil society groups, the United Nations and Western governments implored Museveni not to sign it.

But his homophobic stance and rhetoric held steady.

YOWERI MUSEVENI, President of Uganda: Now, I want to congratulate the honorable members of Parliament on your stand on the ebitingwa.

That's what the Banyankole going to call -- they call homosexuals.

It is good that you rejected the pressure from the imperialists.

STEPHANIE SY: In a statement this week, President Biden called the bill -- quote -- "a tragic violation of universal human rights."

He said the administration would evaluate the implications of the law on all aspects of U.S. engagement with Uganda.

That includes potentially cutting foreign aid.

The U.S. provides Uganda nearly $1 billion each year, mostly in support of public health programs, including to combat HIV.

Earlier this year, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby warned, the fallout could be economic.

JOHN KIRBY, NSC Coordinator For Strategic Communications: That would be really unfortunate, because so much of the economic assistance that we provide Uganda is health assistance.

STEPHANIE SY: The U.S. sanctioned Uganda in 2014, after President Museveni signed a similar law that was later overturned in court.

But Uganda is only one of more than 30 African countries that bans same-sex relations.

Uganda's anti-LGBTQ sentiment is partially explained by the influence of British colonial rules.

And the bill follows a years-long crackdown on LGBTQ people that has also garnered broad support.

WILFRED GARAM, Ugandan Student: What the president did was the right thing, because we cannot take what other people are doing in their countries to what, to bring it to Uganda.

STEPHANIE SY: For more on this law, I'm joined now by Steven Kabuye.

He's the co-founder of Truth LGBTQ, a Kampala-based organization that provides mental health support and advocates for LGBTQ rights in Uganda.

Steven, thank you so much for joining the "NewsHour."

I know that this has been a tough time for you.

I heard that, yesterday, one of your colleagues was attacked just days after this bill was passed.

And I understand he has been hospitalized.

Tell us what happened.

And was this a homophobic attack?

STEVEN KABUYE, Co-Founder, Truth LGBTQ: Yes, yesterday, in the evening hours, as my colleague was closing up at our offices, he was attacked by a rogue -- by rogue people that injured him badly.

He almost lost his life.

And it was an homophobic attack because, in beating him, they were asking him to give out directions of where I am right now, because they were direct -- they directed the attack on me.

They thought they would find me around.

Since day since the bill was tabled by the Parliament, it has been -- it has been a habit online for these people to come out and tell me the moment: The bill is signed into law, we are going to attack and use you as an example.

So, when they attacked and they couldn't find me, they beat (WORD DELETED) very badly.

Right now, he is fighting for his life, but we pray he recovers very well.

STEPHANIE SY: I know that we were just showing some photos of how bad he is and the state that he's in.

And it's disturbing, I'm sure, for you to know that those attacks were meant for you.

You are an openly gay man in a country that now severely penalizes homosexuality.

This is the kind of danger you're in now, threats to your life?

STEVEN KABUYE: Yes, this is the kind of danger I'm in right now.

This is the kind of danger everyone is passing through right now that is in the LGBTQ community.

One, we ask for the international community not only to stop in condemning, but to do an action and stop this oncoming genocide on the LGBTQI community in Uganda.

STEPHANIE SY: The Biden administration has strongly condemned this law.

But, even in 2014, sanctions by Western nations, that hasn't seemed to stop the tide of this anti-gay legislation and now this severe criminalization in your country.

STEVEN KABUYE: This is not new to Mr. Museveni.

He is used to the sanctions.

He is used to the condemnation, because he has never respected human rights.

That's why we're asking for more action than condemnations, for more action than sanctioning the government, maybe sanctioning the individuals that participated in passing it and their families.

And we have American natives participating in this.

We have Sharon Slater, the head of Family Watch International.

She has participated directly into the passing of this Anti-Homosexuality Act.

But the U.S. government, it is quiet about her.

We want the U.S. government to come out and not only sanction some individuals, but sanction all, because, even if you sanction the speaker of Parliament in Uganda, others, you haven't sanctioned them.

They are going to -- the religious leaders are going to continue fueling this homophobia.

We are going to have more than 20,000 Christians coming together to celebrate Martyrs' Day.

And they are going to be led by religious leaders are typically homophobic that have been coming out openly to tell the public that it's OK to kill the gays.

So, we are in very great worry and in very great danger right now.

STEPHANIE SY: When you talk about the religious values that Ugandan legislators and leaders say buck and undergird this discriminatory law, what is your response to that?

They say these are African values.

Are they African values?

STEVEN KABUYE: When you sit down to have an open discussion with these people that say they are protecting African values, and you ask them what are really African values, they don't have a definition of it.

African values and African culture is diverse.

We have a lot of ethnic groups in Africa that have different cultures.

We have different ethnic groups in Africa that embrace homosexuality.

So, this is -- they are just trying to justify their homophobia, but they are not protecting any African culture.

They're not protecting any religious culture that want to kill people and justifying their crimes against humanity with religion and culture.

STEPHANIE SY: Steven, what are you planning to do?

Is this law going to compel you to change the way you live, to change the choices you make, especially now that the penalty is perhaps your freedom?

STEVEN KABUYE: How can someone change from being gay?

That's the first question.

Can I change?

No, I cannot change.

I was born gay, and I am gay.

So, all right now we need, as the Ugandan LGBTQ community, we need help.

We call upon the international community to open its borders to the most vulnerable activists in Uganda, most vulnerable LGBTQI.

Let us at least have temporarily help, as we fight this draconian law.

STEPHANIE SY: Steven Kabuye, joining us from Kampala, thank you for sharing your experience and your thoughts with us.

And our thoughts are, of course, with your friend.

We hope he does recover quickly.

Thank you.

STEVEN KABUYE: You're welcome.

GEOFF BENNETT: The national focus on acts of police brutality often overlooks victims who are Asian American and Pacific Islander.

That's because data show that, as a whole, they experience low rates of fatal police violence, but new research shows the risks some in that community face are much higher.

Ali Rogin starts this report in Antioch, California.

It's part of our Race Matters series.

And a warning: Some images may be disturbing.

CASSANDRA QUINTO-COLLINS, Mother of Angelo: This is Angelo's room.

This is his altar.

ALI ROGIN: Cassandra Quinto-Collins visits her late son Angelo's bedroom often to help keep his memory alive.

CASSANDRA QUINTO-COLLINS: I turn the light on every night.

I say good morning to him every morning.

I don't know.

I'm just very sentimental.

ALI ROGIN: Of course.

CASSANDRA QUINTO-COLLINS: It's like I still feel like this is -- he's here.

ALI ROGIN: Angelo's younger sister, Bella, remembers him by watching old videos.

BELLA COLLINS, Sister of Angelo: He always wanted to entertain my friends and I.

You know, he would just do cartwheels outside the house with us.

ALI ROGIN: Happy memories growing up in the Philippines and the U.S., but his family says the Navy veteran's 30 years were also shaped by mental health issues.

BELLA COLLINS: He would have these infrequent episodes of fear and paranoia.

During those episodes, he wanted us to be together to make sure that nothing happened to us.

ALI ROGIN: One evening in December 2020, Angelo became paranoid and tried to restrain his mother and sister, something they say he'd never done before.

BELLA COLLINS: I really felt desperate for somebody to come and help de-escalate and just calm him down, because all of us were just really, really anxious.

ALI ROGIN: So, Bella called 911.

CASSANDRA QUINTO-COLLINS: This is where it happened.

He was laying here.

ALI ROGIN: Police handcuffed Angelo in Cassandra's bedroom.

Then, she says, they turned him on his stomach and knelt on him.

Within minutes, he was unresponsive.

She filmed her son being carried out to paramedics.

CASSANDRA QUINTO-COLLINS: That's when I panicked.

That's when I started asking, what's happening?

What's going on?

Does he have a pulse?

But nobody was answering me.

ALI ROGIN: He never regained consciousness and died three days later.

Angelo Quinto is part of a largely overlooked group of victims of fatal police encounters in this country, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, or AAPIs.

GABRIEL SCHWARTZ, Unfortunately of California, San Francisco: It's a hugely diverse community with dozens and dozens of countries of origin, really different histories of colonization and immigration.

And all of those things shape their exposure to the police and their interactions with police.

ALI ROGIN: Gabriel Schwartz is an epidemiologist who studies public health and policing at the University of California, San Francisco.

America's more than 25 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have roots in more than 30 countries and, as a whole, they experience the lowest rates of fatal police violence out of any racial group in the U.S.

But Schwartz says that hides a disturbing reality.

GABRIEL SCHWARTZ: At sort of the regional level, Pacific Islanders are experiencing levels of police violence that are lethal, on par with Native Americans, on par with Black Americans.

And the lower Southeast Asian Americans whose countries of origin were affected by the U.S. war in Southeast Asia.

Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Hmong people, are all experiencing much higher levels than sort of other Southeast Asians even or East or South Asians.

ALI ROGIN: Americans from Southeast Asia, like the Quinto family, and Pacific Islanders make up less than 40 percent of AAPIs in the U.S. Schwartz says their outsized risks are hidden when combined with other Asian Americans.

He believes the unique histories of both small communities may play a role in the higher rates of fatal police violence they experience.

VINNY ENG, Son of Cambodian Refugees: When my parents and my sisters boarded that plane to come to the United States in 1979, it was the first time they had ever taken a flight.

ALI ROGIN: Vinny Eng's family moved to Los Angeles after surviving three years in a labor camp run by Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime.

The Engs were part of the biggest resettlement of refugees in U.S. history.

Starting in 1975, more than one million people fleeing U.S.-involved conflicts in Southeast Asia moved to America.

VINNY ENG: For the 30 years following their arrival to Los Angeles, they were learning something new every day.

ALI ROGIN: There was no long-term or support for this wave of Southeast Asian refugees when they arrived in the U.S., and many struggled to get out of poverty.

Researcher Gabriel Schwartz says that legacy may increase the likelihood of potentially fatal police interactions.

GABRIEL SCHWARTZ: Because that then makes communities have higher rates of poverty, higher rates of discrimination in education, in the work force, people are poorer.

People are living in neighborhoods that are more overpoliced, and that puts them in the path of the criminal legal system.

ALI ROGIN: Schwartz says that America's Pacific Islander communities also face those acute outcomes in part because of their history.

GABRIEL SCHWARTZ: Many Pacific Islanders are here because of U.S. colonization that has made the economies of the Pacific islands much more reliant on the United States, have fewer opportunities than they otherwise might have.

ALI ROGIN: Gaynor Siataga is a Samoan-Latina community advocate in San Francisco.

GAYNOR SIATAGA, Director, Pacific Islander Resource Hut: So Pacific Islanders here in the city have the highest disparities in everything.

ALI ROGIN: She says police killings were a fact of life growing up.

GAYNOR SIATAGA: I have seen it firsthand.

I had four folks that are very close to me, family, all shot and killed by police.

ALI ROGIN: Several of her family members were incarcerated, and she joined a gang when she was 11 after being sexually assaulted.

GAYNOR SIATAGA: It was just it was a group of folks that were way older to me that I finally was able to share this secret with.

Like, as a kid, you don't know what's wrong or right.

ALI ROGIN: Gang life led to repeated violence, she says GAYNOR SIATAGA: The first time I was shot was 13.

ALI ROGIN: And run-ins with law enforcement.

GAYNOR SIATAGA: They even had my picture on the dashboard, you know, and I was just a kid.

ALI ROGIN: It's a cycle Siataga is now trying to stop.

GAYNOR SIATAGA: You know, we have everything you could want here, the one-stop shop.

ALI ROGIN: Today, she heads The Hut, a new space dedicated to addressing the stark disparities in her community.

Here, Pacific Islanders can access or be referred to tailored services, from a Pacific-language library, to immigration assistance, to career training.

GAYNOR SIATAGA: There's some things that causes the behaviors or the life that many of us are living right now.

And that's what I'm addressing.

ALI ROGIN: On top of economic support, Schwartz says targeted mental health services are also needed.

GABRIEL SCHWARTZ: People are dealing with mental health crises with fewer mental health resources.

All of those things make it more likely they're going to be interacting with the police.

ALI ROGIN: Vinny Eng experienced that first hand.

His sister, Jazmyne, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and psycho-dissociative disorder, he says, partly caused by her childhood experience of working in a labor camp.

VINNY ENG: That trauma of the experience of surviving such unspeakable experiences left unresolved can lead to potentially violent outcomes.

ALI ROGIN: In 2012, at age 40, Jazmyne was shot and killed by L.A. sheriff's deputies after she had an episode of paranoia at her community clinic.

VINNY ENG: It was just an incredible amount of force applied at a situation when what really was needed was for someone to provide care.

BELLA COLLINS: One thing I'm still working on is the Web site.

ALI ROGIN: Back in Antioch, Angelo Quinto's family has spent the last two-and-a-half years advocating for reform.

In 2021, they helped pass a new state law banning police restraints which impair breathing.

CASSANDRA QUINTO-COLLINS: He's not here to tell his story.

The advocacy we're doing right now is to prevent other families go through what we are going and what we went through.

So, hopefully, his story helps.

ALI ROGIN: And earlier this month, the city of Antioch launched a new crisis response team that 911 dispatchers can send to respond to low-level mental health crises and disputes.

The team is named after Angelo.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Ali Rogin in Antioch, California.

GEOFF BENNETT: Over the past few years, this country has seen a dramatic rise in partisan animosity, with dangerous implications for the health of our democracy.

Judy Woodruff profiles some of the work being done to understand what's driving that trend and what might be done to reverse it.

It's part of her ongoing series America at a Crossroads.

MAN: I would describe my political views as part of the new right.

WOMAN: I would say that I'm left.

JUDY WOODRUFF: If researchers are right, this Heineken beer commercial, which first premiered in 2017, holds important lessons for our democracy today.

WOMAN: It's absolutely critical that trans people have their own voice.

MAN: That's not right.

You can't -- you're a man, be a man, or you're a female, be a female.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In it, people on different sides of the political divide in the United Kingdom are interviewed about hot-button issues, then paired up and asked to build a bar, a task designed to create a sense of teamwork.

Through a series of prompts, they get to know each other.

WOMAN: We know each other better than people who've known each other for 10 minutes should.

MAN: You seem quite ambitious and positive, and you have got this really -- got a glow.

I'm trying to say, your aura is pretty cool.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And then are shown clips from the interviews they gave earlier.

MAN: So, transgender, it is very odd.

We're not set up to understand or see things like that.

WOMAN: I am a daughter, a wife.

I am transgender.

JUDY WOODRUFF: An awkward moment, and then a question posed: Do they want to continue to talk over a beer or walk away because of their differences?

MAN: I'm only joking.

(LAUGHTER) ROBB WILLER, Stanford University: What's interesting, from our perspective, is that showing people this video was -- it was actually the number one intervention we found for reducing partisan animosity.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Robb Willer is a sociologist at Stanford University who directs the Polarization and Social Change Lab dedicated to studying what's driving division in this country and how we might overcome it.

ROBB WILLER: I mean, the way we think about it, polarization has essentially paralyzed certainly the federal government, but also a lot of state and local governments.

And so if you're working on a problem where you want to leverage the power of government to take action, most of the time, you're going to need to have some kind of plan to deal with polarization.

LUIZA SANTOS, Ph.D.

Candidate, Stanford University: Can people bringing people together to talk about their disagreements help?

JUDY WOODRUFF: On the day we visited, Ph.D. candidate Luiza Santos presented some early findings into her research on how participants on different sides of the political spectrum engaged in conversations online over divisive issues, like immigration, gun control and climate change.

LUIZA SANTOS: Conversations can actually reduce people's animosity, improve trust, and reduce moral disengagement.

JUDY WOODRUFF: To her surprise, she found participants were far better at disagreeing than she'd expected.

LUIZA SANTOS: Similar to other people, I had negative expectations about how these dialogues will go, and I think partially because what we see on social media and we see when we turn on our TV is just this really negative heated interactions with people who disagree.

So one of the reasons why is because people have such negative expectations that, when they find a reasonable person that disagrees with them on these issues, they're a bit shocked.

JUDY WOODRUFF: That's reflected in Willer's own research too, that the way Americans have sorted into political tribes with little contact across difference has led to strong stereotyping of the other side.

ROBB WILLER: Technology has definitely contributed to it.

People are more likely to be consuming information in a homogeneous-information environment.

There's also a phenomenon called the big sword, where Democrats or Republicans are increasingly likely to live in different parts of the country, to work in different occupations.

And so you're less likely to encounter somebody who is a friend of yours from high school or a friend of yours from your workplace or is an acquaintance in your neighborhood, who you have a positive feeling towards, but has a different party affiliation from you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Last year, Willer's team partnered with researchers from four other universities to take different approaches for increasing support for democracy over party, things like honoring election results, regardless of the outcome, ratcheting down partisan animosity, and decreasing support for political violence.

They crowdsourced hundreds of ideas from academics, activists and nonprofits, then tested 25 of them on a representative sample of Americans online.

MAN: I have been brought up in a way where everything's black and white.

But life isn't black and white.

WOMAN: Yes, well, I'm just me.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The Heineken beer commercial was among the most successful.

ROBB WILLER: I think it's a good example of something that's called vicarious contact.

So, one thing that can be helpful is for people to have a warm, direct interaction, cross a group divide and find their stereotypes disabused, develop a personal connection.

Sometimes, we can't do that.

We definitely can't do that easily at scale.

But what if you watched the same thing happened?

You know, what if you watch two people from either side of the divide have an interaction?

You then kind of vicariously have that interaction yourself.

GOV.

SPENCER COX (R-UT): We are currently in the final days of campaigning against each other.

CHRIS PETERSON (D), Former Utah Gubernatorial Candidate: But our common values transcend our political differences.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Other intervention that showed promise, politicians announcing their support for voting and elections, regardless of the outcome, something Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox did with his rival, Democrat Chris Peterson, during their 2020 race.

CHRIS PETERSON: Now, whether you vote by mail or in person, we will fully support the results of the upcoming presidential election, regardless of the outcome.

GOV.

SPENCER COX: Although we sit on different sides of the aisle, we are both committed to American civility and a peaceful transition of power.

ROBB WILLER: We found, when you show people that, that it increases people's commitment to democracy, people in the general public.

And, as you watch the video, it's a very powerful video.

It's a cool thing that they did.

Could we get high-level Democrat and Republican donors who care about Democratic stability to say, I'm giving money to this race, but if it is contingent on you participating in something like this?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Taking a different tack, yet another intervention highlighted how bad things can get when countries betray democratic norms, showing news clips of civil and economic unrest in countries like Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Russia, and Turkey.

ROBB WILLER: And when people saw this video, their reaction was, oh, I need to actually prioritize democratic norms more.

Democratic backsliding is not something to be trifled with, and they showed less support for democratic backsliding from their own party.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But Willer says the number one strategy for reducing support for political violence, simply accurately describing what members of one party believe to the other.

ROBB WILLER: Democrats estimate Republicans' support for political violence at levels that are 300, 400 percent higher than they really are.

And it's pretty much the same for Republicans perceiving Democrats' support for violence.

When you give people corrective information that fixes those misperceptions, you find that people then will ratchet down their own support for political violence.

It's almost as though people are supporting political violence at the levels they do because they don't want to bring a knife to a gunfight.

They assume they're in a gunfight.

When they find out they're not, they sort of stand down a little bit.

And we even find this -- effects can persist for weeks afterwards, even if you just give people small amounts of statistical information in an online survey.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I mean, you came up with that conclusion last summer of 2022.

Is it having an effect, I mean, in getting the word out that this is what you have learned?

ROBB WILLER: No, not really, I don't think.

(LAUGHTER) ROBB WILLER: Yes, we don't have a clear means to mobilize that information that we have learned about what works and what's true about what people think and put it into action.

Then you have, most of all, I think social media platforms, but also cable news networks have a lot of potential influence, a lot of power, but the problem, not a lot of motivation to take action on this problem.

In fact, they may have the reverse.

They may be benefiting from polarization and from increasing it.

And then you don't have really any obvious actors who have an interest in and the means to effectively intervene on this problem.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, while we're waiting for cable news to change some of its typical ways of focusing on division in politics, while we're waiting on social media, while we're waiting on the donors to reward working together, rather than going to the extremes, what can people do?

What can individuals do, do you think?

ROBB WILLER: Well, I think one thing is to engage across lines of political difference in a respectful way, try to run towards the fire, rather than away from it, have conversations with your socialist or Tea Party-supporting uncle.

It's always the uncles.

I don't know why.

(LAUGHTER) ROBB WILLER: But whoever that person is in your family or your neighborhood, like, engage with them respectfully, and try to give them that interaction that they're not getting now, where they see that you can disagree with somebody, and it could still be a respectful conversation, JUDY WOODRUFF: Willer and others were heartened by the 2022 midterm results, in which many Republican candidates who promoted election conspiracies lost their races.

DONALD TRUMP, Former President of the United States: 2024 is the final battle.

That's going to be the big one.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And yet, with former President Donald Trump, who continues to deny his own loss in 2020, looking like the strongest contender for the Republican nomination in 2024, Willer says, we are not out of the woods yet.

ROBB WILLER: I think it's very possible it's going to get even worse before it gets better.

We haven't reached that point where powerful interests on the left and right, party leaders, high-level donors have realized, oh, we actually should be working together to work on this Pandora's box that we have opened up.

We haven't gotten there yet.

And that might be the way that it's most realistically going to happen, is that the harms of political division, destabilizing our society, our economy, that unites powerful interests to take some sort of action together.

But, in the near term, all we have is us.

And you can never tell what can happen from the results of collective action.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Amid some very real challenges, signs of hope that Americans can find a way forward.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Judy Woodruff in Palo Alto, California.

GEOFF BENNETT: Twenty-two thousand young people at night age out of foster care each year without family structures in place to support them.

It's an issue that Sixto Cancel is working to address.

He's the founder and CEO of Think of Us.

That's a nonprofit organization that aims to change child welfare systems across the country.

He's also experienced foster care himself.

Tonight, he shares his Brief But Spectacular take on what's known as kinship care.

SIXTO CANCEL, Founder & CEO, Think of Us: I think the hardest secret that a lot of people who've experienced foster care carry is that we all wish that we had family, and that we could be raised by people who truly are in our corner and who love us.

But, for so many of us, that's just not our story.

I was 11 months old when social workers placed me into foster care because of my mother's drug addiction and poverty issues.

I was adopted at 9.

And that adoptive family was supposed to be my forever family.

But, unfortunately, it was riddled with racism and extreme abuse.

The things that I had to do to prove what I was going through really fired a passion to me to say the system has to function differently.

I shouldn't have had to literally tape a recorder to my chest to actually tell the world what was happening to me and to be believed.

And so, when I turned 15, I joined the youth advisory board at the foster care agency.

And that's when I started to be able to give recommendations, to be able to work with the state legislators to understand how is it that you actually fix a broken system.

I started Think of Us and 2017 because I knew that the foster care system was broken.

And so many of us who have experienced it want to transform it.

The foster care system has about 400,000 young people in it at any time.

Where foster care really failed me was the fact that I could have lived with people who could have loved me.

Three years ago, I realized that I have four uncles and aunts who were foster adoptive parents who had been fostering longer than I had been alive.

And this whole entire time, I have actually could have been raised with family if we would have had prioritized family members.

When I think about the experiences that I had, I wish I was saying that they were unique, but they're not.

And I believe we can have different solutions to those things.

Kinship care is like a version of foster care.

But instead of it being an unrelated person that you don't know, it's an aunt, uncle, cousin, a sibling who's acting in that space of providing you care.

We now know that when children are placed with a relative, that they graduate high school more on time, that they have less moves, that there's less trauma, and that young people have their family members to be able to navigate life.

And without the human beings who are in our life to be there to guide us, how much opportunity do we really?

Recent laws and legislation allows for us to do things differently.

Now child welfare is able to actually provide services without having to separate a family.

How is it that you get a family the housing support, the mental health support, the things that will keep them together, instead of taking that child and having to place them in foster care?

And that's a very new function for the child welfare system.

And so, if we need to separate family, like, let's make sure we have exhausted every other option before we do that and, if we do have to separate family, that we place them with a relative.

This has the potential to really make our foster care system a family-first type system.

My name is Sixto Cancel, and this was my Brief But Spectacular take on prioritizing kinship care.

GEOFF BENNETT: And you can watch more Brief But Spectacular videos online at PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.

And join us here again tomorrow night, where we will look at how Republican presidential candidates are courting voters this week in states that hold some of the first primary votes next year.

And that is the "NewsHour" for tonight.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

Amna Nawaz is back tomorrow.

Thanks for spending part of your evening with us.