GEOFF BENNETT: Good evening.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

Amna Nawaz is away.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: An earthquake in Eastern Afghanistan strikes a nation already in dire need of humanitarian aid, killing hundreds and injuring thousands more.

SHERINE IBRAHIM, Afghanistan Director, International Rescue Committee: Roads have been blocked, landslides have occurred, and it is becoming extremely hard to reach those who need the support most.

GEOFF BENNETT: A judge halts planes set to deport unaccompanied minors back to Guatemala.

We speak with a lawyer representing some of the children.

And how medical advancements have evolved to aid some children with a rare genetic disease.

(BREAK) GEOFF BENNETT: Welcome to the "News Hour."

A 6.0-magnitude earthquake hit Afghanistan late Sunday night, devastating entire villages.

Thousands are believed to have been killed or injured, with hundreds feared trapped under the rubble.

The quake's epicenter was in the Eastern province of Kunar, over 100 miles from the capital of Kabul.

William Brangham has our report.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: In a matter of seconds, a multistory building in Eastern Afghanistan reduced to rubble.

Through the night, people searched for their loved ones, often with their bare hands.

The morning revealed the scale of devastation.

Entire villages vanished, smashed into debris.

"This is my village.

It's all collapsed now," he said.

A wounded man walked out after being trapped for hours, a child inconsolable over the loss of his family.

AHMAD GUL, Afghanistan Resident (through translator): This was my brother's house, and he, along with three of his children, were martyred.

My other brother, together with his sons, was also martyred there.

This is the condition of our home.

Our dead are lying there on the ground.

MAN (through translator): Children are trapped under the rubble.

The elderly are under the rubble.

Young people are under the rubble.

We need help here.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: But getting help to them is very difficult.

This is rough, unforgiving terrain, challenging to access even in the best of times.

The quake was shallow, barely five to eight miles down, and the shaking collapsed unreinforced mud-and-brick homes, leaving a wide trail of destruction.

Since there are no emergency workers, villagers carry the wounded out on bamboo beds.

The Taliban government has sent helicopters, but resources are scarce and the tragedy overwhelming.

SHERINE IBRAHIM, Afghanistan Director, International Rescue Committee: That's just a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed in order to get people to safety and to normalize and stabilize the thousands of people who have been impacted by the earthquake.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Sherine Ibrahim is the country director for the International Rescue Committee in Afghanistan.

She spoke to us from Kabul.

SHERINE IBRAHIM: Roads have been decimated, roads have been blocked, landslides have occurred, and it is becoming extremely hard to reach those who need the support most.

Many of these communities have been partially or completely decimated, which actually means that it may be too late for us to get to a place and to a point where we are able to save lives as quickly as we would like.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Four years of Taliban rule has left Afghanistan isolated globally, and foreign aid has largely disappeared, even as the country endures a severe drought, along with widespread hunger and poverty; 23 million people, nearly half the country's population, is in need of aid.

SHERINE IBRAHIM: The humanitarian actors are on the ground.

We are ready.

We're prepared.

We are responding as of today.

However, the resources -- given the multiple crises that Afghanistan faces, the resources are quite stretched.

My appeal is to set aside the politics and clearly to support the humanitarian effort that is currently under way in Afghanistan.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: For a country that's already endured so much, this earthquake has left yet another landscape full of loss.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm William Brangham.

GEOFF BENNETT: We start today's other headlines overseas.

China welcomed leaders of some of its closest allies to an annual security summit today.

Member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO for short, presented a show of unity aimed at offering a counterbalance to America's role in global affairs.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi were all smiles and even held hands as they were welcomed by China's President Xi Jinping.

In his remarks, Xi called on countries to reject Cold War thinking and laid out his vision for an expanded SCO.

XI JINPING, Chinese President (through translator): At present, the international landscape is marked by intertwined changes and turbulence.

China is willing to work with all parties to take this meeting as an opportunity to jointly promote the SCO in entering a new stage of high-quality development and high-level cooperation.

GEOFF BENNETT: Xi announced plans to speed up the creation of a development bank run by the SCO and pledged more than a billion in loans.

China also invited most of the leaders to stay through Wednesday for a massive military parade to mark 80 years since Japan's surrender in World War II.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is also due to attend.

The European Commission is blaming Russia for jamming the GPS signal of the commission president's plane.

The flight carrying Ursula von der Leyen was on approach to a city in Southern Bulgaria yesterday when the incident occurred.

Authorities say the pilot and air traffic control were eventually able to land safely using backup navigation aids.

Von der is an outspoken critic of Russia's president and the war in Ukraine.

The flight was part of a four-day tour of E.U.

nations that border Russia, which continued today.

Russia has not commented on the incident.

In Gaza, health officials say Israeli strikes killed at least 31 people today across the territory, as Israel's military pushed on with its plan to seize Gaza City.

Blasts have echoed across the area since it was declared a combat zone last week.

Today, Palestinians in northern parts of the city packed up and fled after Israel ordered them to move south.

Many Gazans say they're now facing violence and hunger at the same time.

KHALED AL-MASRY, Gaza City Resident (through translator): I want to find a place where I can stay with my sons and daughters.

I don't know where to go.

Moving out requires money.

I can't even find something to eat.

It's been two months without food.

I don't know where to go.

GEOFF BENNETT: Meantime, the world's largest professional organization of scholars who study genocide said today that Israel's actions in Gaza fit the legal definition of genocide.

Israel strongly rejects the accusation.

Here at home, the Labor Day holiday saw unions and other groups holding what they called Workers Over Billionaires protests in cities across the country.

(CHANTING) GEOFF BENNETT: The outcry was especially vocal in Chicago, where President Trump has threatened to send in National Guard troops and federal agents to crack down on crime.

Organizers aimed to have protests take place in every U.S. state, roughly 1,000 gatherings in total.

At one event in Chicago, union leaders spoke out against policies that favor corporate greed and the consolidation of power.

RANDI WEINGARTEN, President, American Federation of Teachers: Whether it's Tesla or Target or Valor, what has happened in this country is that the billionaires don't understand that this country was created in protest and in resistance to fight off a king, not to recreate a king.

(CHEERING) GEOFF BENNETT: Ahead of the protests, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the president's record on labor, saying -- quote -- "We finally have a president who fights and delivers for the American worker every single day."

President Trump says he will award Rudy Giuliani the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

On social media, Mr. Trump called him the greatest mayor in the history of New York City and an equally great American patriot.

The president's announcement comes just two days after Giuliani was badly injured in a car accident in New Hampshire.

He suffered a fractured vertebra and other injuries.

Giuliani was once considered America's mayor, but more recently was disbarred and faced criminal charges related to his actions following Mr. Trump's 2020 election loss.

Wall Street was closed today for the Labor Day holiday, but it was a big day for the crypto market with the launch of the Trump family's digital token.

Traders could buy and trade some of the cryptocurrency issued by World Liberty Financial, which was co-founded by Trump's sons Eric and Don Jr., among others.

Eric promoted the token as recently as Friday at a Bitcoin conference in Hong Kong.

Today's launch reportedly means a windfall of billions of dollars for the family.

The White House has often denied any conflict of interest for the president.

And longtime White House correspondent Mark Knoller has died.

Over a five-decade career spent mostly with CBS, he covered multiple presidents and was regarded for his encyclopedic knowledge of the presidency.

He gladly and generously shared that wisdom with fellow journalists, myself included, and even White House officials when they came asking.

CBS called him the hardest-working and most prolific White House correspondent of a generation.

A cause of death was not disclosed, but Knoller had reportedly suffered from diabetes and was in poor health.

Mark Knoller was 73 years old.

Still to come on the "News Hour": Tamara Keith and Amy Walter break down the latest political headlines; actor David Duchovny discusses how his life and career influenced a new book of poems; and 50 years after "Jaws," the science that's dispelling some long-held myths.

Tonight, dozens of Guatemalan migrant children are back in federal custody after a late-night court order temporarily halted their deportation.

The ruling came after the unaccompanied minors had already been boarded on planes bound for Guatemala.

Lawyers filed an emergency motion overnight, prompting the judge to be awakened at 2:30 Sunday morning to intervene, saying -- quote -- "I have the government attempting to remove unaccompanied minors from the country in the wee hours of the morning on a holiday weekend, which is surprising."

For now, a temporary restraining order blocks the deportations of hundreds of such children for at least two weeks.

We're joined now by Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, which is representing some of the migrant children.

Welcome back to the program.

KICA MATOS, President, National Immigration Law Center: Thank you for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: So the U.S. has deported unaccompanied migrant children before.

So what makes this case in particular stand out?

KICA MATOS: What makes this case stand out in the most egregious ways is that our government in the dead of night ordered the shelters to wake these children up between 2:00 and 4:00 in the morning to put them on buses so that they could be transported to Texas, the airport, loaded on planes and deported to Guatemala without making sure that these kids avail themselves of the legal protections and the constitutional rights that they have.

Now, understand, none of these kids had received a final deportation order.

These are kids whose cases are going through the system.

And our government decided that they were going to simply yank away these legal and constitutional protections and send them to Guatemala.

The youngest kid that we spoke with is 7 years old.

These are all unaccompanied children, who are particularly vulnerable.

That is what makes this case so outrageous.

GEOFF BENNETT: And what's the argument that you're presenting on behalf of the children that you're representing?

KICA MATOS: Our argument is really quite simple, right?

It is that the government is engaging in lawless and reckless behavior and it is stripping these kids of the constitutional protections that they have and the laws that our country has in the books to make sure that these kids have the right to go before a judge and have the right to legal representation.

GEOFF BENNETT: Some of these children are on the cusp of turning 18, and the Guatemalan government welcomed the return partly out of concern that, once they turn 18, they'd be transferred to ICE detention.

And the Guatemalan government says it's ready to receive as many as 150 children a week, arguing that that's better than seeing them transferred to ICE detention here in the U.S. Is that an acceptable resolution, in your view?

KICA MATOS: It is not an acceptable resolution, in our view.

Let me share what we have learned from the kids that we spoke to.

And we have affidavits from these children.

Each and every one of these children did not want to be returned to Guatemala.

They feared the possibility that they would be once again threatened with violence.

Some of these kids received death threats.

Some of these kids have been neglected by their parents.

Some of these kids have faced tremendous amounts of trauma and abuse.

And our position is really simple.

These kids have legal rights and they want to avail themselves of legal rights.

The government's position is spurious and, quite frankly, ridiculous.

And what I will say is, if these kids did want to return to Guatemala to be reunited with the parents, that is a decision that the judge makes, not the federal government.

GEOFF BENNETT: What can you tell us about the nearly 2,000 migrant children who are in government custody, HHS custody?

A large percentage of them are from Guatemala.

Is that right?

KICA MATOS: Yes, my understanding is that many of these kids are from Guatemala.

These kids are from Central America.

They're from South America.

They're from all over the globe.

And they're all -- what unifies these kids is that they're all uniquely vulnerable, and they all have the rights to protections, legal protections that our government is meant to afford them.

GEOFF BENNETT: Stephen Miller, the architect of President Trump's hard-line immigration approach, blamed the migrants' predicament on the lax immigration policies of the Biden administration.

He said: "These are smuggled miners orphaned in America by the Biden administration that Democrats are refusing to allow back home with their families."

What particular concerns do you have about the migrant children in federal custody, given the Trump administration's overall approach to immigration enforcement?

KICA MATOS: Well, let's remember that Stephen Miller is the architect of the family separation plan under the first Trump administration.

But it's galling to us, and now they're wrapping their defense of what is indefensible by saying they were concerned about these kids and they want to ensure that they're reunited with their families.

But what the government was in essence doing was yanking away the legal protections that these vulnerable kids have.

It should shock the conscience of all Americans that our government in the dead of night was targeting vulnerable children and trying to strip them of the protections that they have.

And the final thing that I would say is, this really exposes the hypocrisy of our government right now, because, for the longest time, they were saying, we're going after the most outrageous criminal immigrants, and that's who we're targeting for deportation, when, in fact, this weekend shows us that they know no bounds.

And their intention was to yank away their rights and send them to a country where they feared for their lives.

GEOFF BENNETT: Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, thanks again for joining us this evening.

KICA MATOS: Thank you for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: As another part of the Trump administration's mass deportation push, immigration enforcement officials have conducted arrests outside courtrooms as people show up for hearings with immigration judges.

The detentions have led to sometimes dramatic scenes, with families pleading to let their loved ones go and confrontations with officers.

We spoke to one photojournalist who spent weeks documenting arrests at federal facilities in Manhattan.

VICTOR BLUE, Freelance Photojournalist: Folks who immigrate here to the United States from their home countries believe deeply in the promise of this country, a promise of America.

And to watch their faith in that promise kind of suddenly whisked away from them as they're carted off to detention is one of the most surprising and one of kind of the most bracing things to witness.

My name is Victor Blue.

I'm a freelance photojournalist.

And I'm based in Brooklyn, New York.

I have been working on immigration coverage pretty much since I kind of started my career over two decades ago.

I got my start in Central America.

I was able to kind of gain a real understanding of the context and the communities and the dynamics that people were leaving to emigrate to the United States.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: We will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of the United States.

VICTOR BLUE: It became obvious pretty quickly this new administration was going to have a quite a different posture towards immigration enforcement.

I spent the better part of July and little over the first week of August attending court every day.

Early in the morning, there's a long line of immigrants who arrive for their court appointments.

The agents are waiting outside.

The agents usually are carrying a kind of sheaf of papers.

They include a photograph of their target, the person that they're looking for.

When the immigrants leave the courtroom, if they're on that list of targets, they kind of quietly ask them to come with them, maybe take them by the elbow and kind of lead them, maybe not.

Oftentimes, they don't even need to.

The immigrants just go with them into the area, the bank of elevators or a stairwell, and then kind of head down to the 10th floor detention center.

That was the thing that was most surprising to me.

Of course, we have seen footage of kind of aggressive, violent, kind of tense detentions, but the vast majority of them are kind of deceptively quiet.

They haven't really realized yet that whatever decision the judge has made really doesn't matter at that point, that the agents have their marching orders and that they are going to be detained.

I remember watching that young woman enter the court.

When she walked out and was initially stopped by the agents, her face just fell and she immediately began to cry before they were able to completely slam the door of the stairwell.

I was positioned to make a picture, and she kind of looked back at me.

I think that her expression there, the fear and the kind of realization that the journey she'd been on had in large part come to a close was dawning on her.

For much of the time that I was going into the courts, there was a real reluctance on the part of the agents to detain parents of young children.

That's definitely changed over the course of my time in there.

And now it's not uncommon at all to see the detention of parents of young children, to see the family separated right there in the hallways.

And, of course, that's an unbelievably wrenching experience for the families, right, to have their family pulled apart right there in front of everyone.

My goal as a photojournalist, I'm not there to demonize or to celebrate anybody in this dynamic.

I'm there to further understanding.

We know that it affects the agents.

They tell us that it affects them.

Many of them tell us they don't like what they're doing.

We have had some tell us it's the worst job they have ever had.

It almost feels kind of like a historical anomaly to have a front-row seat to it, to be able to go in day after day after day with this kind of unprecedented immigration enforcement.

And I think that in the end is really going to be the value of our coverage, right, that we didn't just show up for the most sensational kind of moments that were there day in and day out, to kind of show folks the volume of what's happening.

And even if an arrest is quiet and isn't particularly sensational and isn't a particularly impactful photograph, every one of those arrests represents a real crisis for a family, a real crisis for an individual immigrant, a real break in their journey towards hopefully a better life and their journey towards joining the society that they have fought so hard to be a part of.

GEOFF BENNETT: It's a federal holiday, but things are about to get very busy this week with what appears to be a looming federal takeover of Chicago and more political fights over congressional redistricting.

Joining us now for Politics Monday is Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

Our thanks to you both for laboring on this Labor Day.

AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: You're welcome.

TAMARA KEITH, National Public Radio: Good to be here.

GEOFF BENNETT: All right, let's start with the story we mentioned first.

President Trump is again threatening to send troops into Chicago, with the Pentagon reportedly preparing a deployment from a nearby Navy base as soon as this week.

The governor, J.B. Pritzker, says that Trump is using the military to invade the state.

Tam, this appears to be a calibrated escalation of the limits of executive power.

What's the White House saying about it?

TAMARA KEITH: Well, the president has said that he can do anything, he's the president, and he was specifically talking about this.

But, in that same breath, he also said he wants to be invited.

He wants the governor to ask.

And the fact is that there are more limits on what he can do in a state where the governor has not invited the National Guard than, for instance, Washington, D.C., where the president has much more control.

What we know about the request so far is that it seems to be limited.

Now, that obviously could change, and President Trump has been known to say things and then change where he's headed.

But the Department of Homeland Security requested help from the National Guard for limited support in the form of facilities, infrastructure and other logistical needs to support Department of Homeland Security operations.

That's a lot of words to say they're not talking, at least in this request, about National Guard patrolling the streets in some sort of law enforcement capacity.

This would be much more limited, perhaps more similar to Los Angeles, where -- and that is still being litigated - - whether that was a proper use of the National Guard without the blessing of the governor or the mayor, but where National Guard troops were there in support of federal agents doing their thing, in that case, ICE.

GEOFF BENNETT: And, Amy, the story the president appears trying to -- that he's trying to tell is that these Democratic strongholds, whether it's L.A., New York, Chicago, Baltimore, that they are dangerous, they're lawless, their leaders are ineffective, and that he is the one that needs to come in and impose order.

Is that a message, a story that's resonating?

AMY WALTER: Well, we haven't seen a whole lot of polling on this, but the one poll that has come out recently from Quinnipiac last week showed that overwhelmingly majority of Americans do not like what they are seeing for what's happening in Washington, D.C., with the federal enforcement there and federal troops there.

Now, not surprisingly, Republicans very support in this poll, very, very supportive of it.

Democrats hate it, but it's independence that break probably about 60 percent -- I think the number was 61 percent against it.

And what that says to me is, this feels very familiar.

It feels like the first term too, where the president does things, takes actions that galvanize the base, that anger the opposition, but also really aren't appealing to the folks who are independent-leaning.

And that becomes a problem politically in the future, because if those voters don't believe that what the president's doing is actually helping them or dealing with the issues that they think are important, or if they think that he's doing something that they find that is out of bounds, those are the folks who could turn out and vote against Republicans next time around.

Or they're the ones who maybe voted for a Republican in the last election, but feel less excited or less interested in doing it now.

GEOFF BENNETT: Yes.

Well, let's shift our focus to the Senate map, because I have been waiting since last week to ask you about Senator Joni Ernst's decision not to seek reelection.

This all along had been thought to be a tough map for Democrats.

What does her decision not to seek reelection mean?

AMY WALTER: So it is a tough map.

Democrats would need to net four seats.

And to do that, they have got to hold on to two very vulnerable seats of their own in Georgia and Michigan.

The next -- if they do that, the most likely opportunities for them are two states that are blue and purple, Maine and North Carolina, held by Republicans.

Then they got to find two more.

And that's where it gets tricky, because the only states left on the board are deeply Republican, ones that Trump won by double digits.

Now, I think it's the lotto.

I can't remember who has the slogan of, if you don't play, you can't win.

GEOFF BENNETT: Yes, got to play to win.

TAMARA KEITH: Yes.

AMY WALTER: And that's kind of - - yes, you got to play to win, which is kind of what Democrats are doing here.

Yes, it's an uphill fight to win in those states.

But right now, Iowa is on the map.

And there were -- there have been a number of special elections held in that state this year, including one last week for a state Senate seat where the Democrat has outperformed what a Democrat had gotten there two years earlier.

So Democrats feeling hopeful for what they see there.

And open seats are harder for the party that's defending it to hold on to, because a new person has to come in and introduce themselves.

And there could be a difficult primary.

So, Democrats are putting more seats in play most recently with Ohio -- before this was Ohio, where Senator Sherrod Brown said he's running to try to get his seat back, so still uphill, but there are now candidates and opportunities.

If the winds are blowing the right way next year, it could work.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, on this Labor Day, we should mention that President Trump was elected on promises he would fight for workers.

Many labor advocates say, in fact, it's the opposite, that he's consistently put corporate interests ahead of labor.

And just last week, the president said he was not going to recognize the collective bargaining agreements with unions representing five agencies, to include NASA, the National Weather Service.

You see the others there on the screen.

Tam, how does the White House account for all of that?

TAMARA KEITH: President Trump has made little secret of his distaste for labor unions.

He feels that they are a tool of the left.

And the fact is that most labor unions have been aligned with Democrats for a very long time.

So the fact that they are going after unions, failing to recognize collective bargaining, that's not a surprise.

The way the White House portrays President Trump's policies is that they are pro-worker.

They describe the tariffs as pro-worker, an effort to onshore jobs, and really targeted at blue-collar workers, which are the very people where Republicans and President Trump have been able to make up some ground.

So whether Trump is pro-worker or not, I think, depends on whether it's the White House telling the story or whether it is Democrats and labor unions telling the story.

GEOFF BENNETT: And, Amy, what about the Democrats?

Because it was President Biden who bailed out the Teamsters' pensions, and yet the Teamsters still didn't endorse Kamala Harris.

And there are many union members who voted for Donald Trump based on cultural issues, and not because they thought Biden had the backs of labor.

AMY WALTER: Yes, there's been a disconnect for some time now between rank-and-file members and the leadership, leadership I think being much more Democratic-leaning than many of their members are.

At the same time, I think one of the reasons that the so-called blue wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin continues to be so competitive and where Democrats obviously won it in 2020, Biden did, Kamala Harris narrowly losing those states, is that they still do have a pretty heavy labor influence.

And while Harris did not do as well there as, say, Joe Biden did, she still won labor union -- people who say they are part of a labor union.

So we know we have a great reshuffling in this country of our political coalitions.

Democrats were long seen as the party of the working class.

It is now Republicans who are winning over many more of those types of voters.

But labor unions, in and of themselves, don't necessarily represent just all -- they don't represent all working-class folks.

And their influence continues to wane as fewer and fewer people are part of a union.

I think now it's less than 10 percent of Americans are a member of a union.

GEOFF BENNETT: Amy Walter and Tamara Keith, thanks so much.

We appreciate it.

AMY WALTER: You're welcome.

TAMARA KEITH: You're welcome.

GEOFF BENNETT: Now to the story of a rare genetic condition that is often fatal and the extraordinary efforts by parents and doctors to extend the lives of affected children through intensive interventions.

Alongside those advances come some difficult ethical questions.

Our Stephanie Sy has more.

STEPHANIE SY: It's an agonizing diagnosis for parents and families.

Trisomy 18, also known sometimes as Edwards Syndrome, is often fatal within weeks after a baby is born.

But advances in medicine and research have extended survival in some cases, raising questions about how to approach this rare chromosomal condition in and outside the womb.

Dr. Sheri Fink recently chronicled in The New York Times what happened to a young boy named Noah through the enormous efforts of his mother, Dr. Jacqueline Vidosh, and intense treatment.

Sheri Fink is also the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Five Days at Memorial," which is about patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital after Hurricane Katrina.

And she joins me now.

Dr. Fink, thank you so much.

This is a tremendous piece of reporting you did.

And you have been following some of these cases for years.

Tell me, what has changed the outlook for kids born with this disorder?

DR. SHERI FINK, The New York Times: Thank you.

I think it's actually been the families.

For many years, this was considered a diagnosis that was too lethal to treat.

When I went to medical school, that's what we learned.

And these families found each other.

They formed support groups when a child -- they would have a child, a child might survive against the odds.

And with the advent of the Internet and social media, parents who had kids who did survive found each other and started to, in some cases, request the same kinds of treatments that other children would get who didn't have the diagnosis.

Then research was done, and, more and more, there was evidence that accumulated that, in some cases, the medical treatments could extend life.

STEPHANIE SY: I read in your piece that the treatments had initially been providing comfort or even palliative care and that there was a paradigm shift to interventions that could extend kids' lives, sometimes even into adulthood.

And those were existing treatments that were already out there?

DR. SHERI FINK: So, yes, well I think the field of medicine at the start of life, neonatology and the kinds of interventions that children who are, say, born early, that whole field has really developed.

So it's really those types of interventions, support for breathing if a baby is born and has difficulty breathing, interventions like heart surgery on the smallest babies.

So that has evolved over the years.

And I think comfort care very much is still an option for these babies and many of the doctors, even though there has been this paradigm shift in terms of offering families the choice of interventions in some cases depending on the child, but they also feel that comfort care is appropriate, that some families will want to pursue that, will feel that the burdens of treatment, for example, might be too great.

Or because the children do have a lot of medical complexity and they will have many disabilities, the big change in the last few years has been the wider acceptance among the medical community that a disorder that was considered lethal, that was considered not treatable now, to some extent, the idea now is that it was a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In other words, if a baby is born, has lots of medical needs and doesn't get treatment, then, of course, they will pass away.

And now it's known that in some cases those interventions could actually help the child to live longer, but still with significant medical complexity and disabilities.

STEPHANIE SY: Yes, and you describe this 4-year-old Noah in detail, the deliberations, first of all, that went into it even when Noah was still in his mother's womb.

It was one step at a time.

And there's this part of the piece where you say the mother wanted to see if he was going to be a fighter, but he comes out of the womb and he stops breathing.

So describe that case and what it illustrates.

DR. SHERI FINK: Well, Dr. Vidosh, Jacqueline, she was like any other doctor.

She was an obstetrician and had learned that this was a lethal, fatal diagnosis.

She said that she warned when she received the prenatal -- because this is typically diagnosed with prenatal testing, about 1,000 babies a year in the U.S. And so slowly she had to make decisions about what to do.

She -- when Noah was going to be born, as Jacqueline found a support group called SOFT, the support group for trisomy 13, 18 and associated disorders, found a lot of medical information there, started reading the medical literature, she and her husband decided at the time that they were going to give Noah what any other child who might be born and need some support, they were going to give him a chance to kind of see if he would stabilize, see if he could survive, see if he was a fighter, as they said.

And so they went in initially thinking they wouldn't do any sort of medical interventions to accepting this idea of giving him breathing support when he was born.

And he did respond to it.

But, yes, he would have passed away if he hadn't had that when he was born.

And then there were many other choices that they then faced that resulted from that first choice to give him a chance of survival.

STEPHANIE SY: Dr. Fink, what do you think, after all these years of reporting on this disorder, are your main takeaways and what do you think the main takeaways should be for parents and families that may be looking at this diagnosis?

DR. SHERI FINK: Well, I spent time with children like Noah and other children.

And I think one of the big changes was also research into the families themselves.

I think there's often an assumption that, if a child is severely disabled, cognitively disabled, in this case, most of these children or almost all of them are nonverbal, that these deep questions of what is a worthwhile life or is that child happy, for example.

And what is incredible about these kids is that their families talk about them as being a very happy disposition, that they communicate, that they engage.

So, whereas they might not have the words that we have, they might -- they still can meet developmental milestones.

They laugh.

They hug their families.

It sounds like such a scary diagnosis, something so profound that could affect the child's health and their ability to develop.

But, in fact, there's something so beautiful about the devotion of the families that do decide to try to offer their children the best chance of surviving.

And, also, I think we really need to respect families who say that this doesn't meet their values or that they feel like, in their child's case, that that wouldn't be the right choice to choose heart surgery, for example, to repair the heart or to choose a ventilator, a tracheostomy.

So, to me, it really comes down to speaking to different families who've made different choices and understanding and empathizing with all of them and also just being blown away and impressed by the love that all of these families that are faced with a diagnosis that is unexpected and, of course, very, very difficult, that they go on and can have amazing lives when they're offered choices.

So that is my big takeaway.

STEPHANIE SY: Thank you so much.

That is Dr. Sheri Fink joining us.

GEOFF BENNETT: Actor, writer, musician, and now poet.

David Duchovny, known to audiences for his roles in "Californication" and "The X-Files," turns his attention to something more intimate, poems that wrestle with love, loss, memory, and the passing of time.

It's a meditation on what it means to grow older, to look back, and to wonder what still lies ahead.

I spoke with him recently about his book "About Time."

David Duchovny, welcome to the "News Hour."

DAVID DUCHOVNY, Author, "About Time": Thank you for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: I couldn't help but laugh at the way you open your book.

You write: "I know what you're thinking, just what the world needs now, a bunch of poems from an actor."

What drew you to poetry at this point in your career?

DAVID DUCHOVNY: Well, I have been writing poems my whole life, really, and just stuffing them in drawers.

And so this collection really represents probably at least 20, 25 years of just writing poems when they come to me.

The preponderance of the poems are more recent, but there's some old ones in there.

So it's just something that I have always done and been interested in.

GEOFF BENNETT: And do you also say that: "Poetry is not useful, and that's exactly why we need it?"

Why?

DAVID DUCHOVNY: Well, this idea of use or utility, it's interesting to me, and especially educationally.

We want to get educated to be able to work, to have a job of some kind.

But we have kind of, which is great, and it's necessary.

But we have lost sight of educating a mind, how to think, or a soul, how to feel.

And the disciplines like English literature, I feel, and philosophy are the disciplines that educate the soul.

So that's not useful.

That's not considered useful anymore to learn how to think.

GEOFF BENNETT: Yes.

And poetry often asks so much more of a reader, slowness, attention.

You find utility in that?

DAVID DUCHOVNY: I find mystery in words.

I find mystery in expression.

And the more mysterious you can make your words, not intentionally, but just because it's so difficult to put your finger on the deepest truths and the deepest emotions that we have, then the truer that it is.

So, the mystery that you're talking about, I think, is inherent in the poetic enterprise, which is, how do I say what can't be said?

GEOFF BENNETT: What are the central themes that tie this book of poetry together?

DAVID DUCHOVNY: Like I said, they encompass like 20 years of my life, so there's the death of parents.

It's not going to sound like a real joyride when I go over it, I think, obviously, the death of my father, my -- the death of my mother as well, the birth of my kids, the raising of my kids, and then, yes life, death, birth, all the big-ticket items, you know?

GEOFF BENNETT: Twenty-five years, is there a specific poem that feels most personal to you?

DAVID DUCHOVNY: I mean, they're all very personal, but that -- to me, that's not -- the allure is not what is personal to me.

What -- the allure of writing a good poem is, how can I make what's personal to me personal to you?

How can I write something so personal objectively enough so that you feel like it's about you?

There are poems that are more -- in this collection, more tied to times in my life maybe that are -- that are -- feel more emotional to me, like the birth of my children or when they were young and trying to figure out, how do I teach them, how do I reach them, how do I raise them?

There's "Carbon Canyon," that poem which I like very much, which is where I'm walking with my daughter, who's about 3 or 4 years old, and we come across a carcass of a field mouse, and start talking about life and death.

Being a young father, I think, oh, this is a great opportunity for me to teach her about death and impermanence and all those things.

And I start to, but she doesn't see it that way.

And then, as I lean down further, I see all these ants going in and out of the carcass.

And it's terrifying to me.

It's gross that now that I'm in this conversation and now I have got to tell her about the way we're all eaten and worm food.

And it's just -- it's too much, I know.

And so I go to take her away from the spectacle of it.

And the end of the poem goes, she says: "Daddy, look, the ants, there's so many of them."

I say: "'Yes, I see.

Maybe we should let the mouse sleep, let her sleep.'

I take her hand to lead her, though I don't know where.

I know I am blind and unprepared, a child leading a child.

And the little one stops and smiles and points back to the carnage: 'No, the ants, daddy, the ants.

Look how much they love her.'"

GEOFF BENNETT: How does your creative process in writing poetry differ from writing novels or music, which you have done, screenplays, even acting?

DAVID DUCHOVNY: The poems, I mean -- ideas come from anywhere, and they kind of announce themselves.

And it's up to the maker to figure out what's the form, what's the best form for that thing, that idea, that feeling that came.

So that's something I will ask myself, like some big ideas or like plot ideas, and I'm like, oh, that's a movie or that's a novel.

Some smaller ideas are just thoughts or feelings or even a phrase, a turn of phrase that catches me.

And I will go, well, that's a poem or a song.

That's -- it's like a strobe light.

It's just one moment.

It's not an epic poem.

It's not the Iliad or the Odyssey.

It's really just a small shot in the dark.

GEOFF BENNETT: Having written these poems over the last nearly three decades, what has it taught you about yourself?

DAVID DUCHOVNY: That I keep trying to figure certain things out, I think.

I think, in the introduction, I say a poem is very optimistic, because it's setting out to say something that can't be said and hoping that maybe this time I'm going to say it right.

So, I think I remain kind of committed to seeking and committed to try to say things right or to try to figure out myself or the world around me.

So I would say that maybe I don't appear to be the greatest optimist in the way I present myself, but I would say that the fact that I continue to write poetry or believe in it is optimistic.

GEOFF BENNETT: The book is "About Time" by David Duchovny.

Thanks so much for speaking with us.

We appreciate it.

DAVID DUCHOVNY: I appreciate it.

Thank you.

GEOFF BENNETT: This year marks the 50th anniversary of "Jaws," Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster about a ravenous great white shark.

The film, which drew big crowds during a special rerelease this weekend, terrified audiences back then, packed theaters and left behind a lasting fear of sharks.

But while many Americans remain afraid of them, shark attacks are rare and the species itself is widely misunderstood.

William Brangham is back with more.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: On one hand I mean, it makes perfect sense why many of us fear sharks.

But the fact is, the general public really doesn't know all that much about these ancient creatures.

So to sort out some common misconceptions, we are joined by Keith Cowley.

He's a shark historian and conservationist.

Keith, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks to movies like "Jaws" and more recent shark movies, as well as The Discovery Channel's seemingly ubiquitous "Shark Week," it is no wonder that Americans view sharks as these ravenous, bloodthirsty killers.

Overall, though, when you look at the species, how accurate a portrayal is that?

KEITH COWLEY, Curator, Living Sharks Museum: Well, I don't think it's an accurate portrayal at all.

Of course, we all fear that which is primal, whether it's lions, tigers or bears or sharks.

We have a visceral reaction to this idea of a toothy predator in a domain that we can't control.

Historically, we have always been very intrigued.

I think, as different networks and different programs continue to produce content that taps into that, sharks are always going to be a topic of conversation worldwide.

But I don't think this is the right message to send in the majority of cases.

But it can be a gateway to talk about the actual science and the real life behind the sharks.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I mean, a lot of your work is about helping us understand sharks better, to understand them, even demystify them.

What do you think that the -- most of the rest of us don't quite get yet?

KEITH COWLEY: Well, I mean, I'm guilty of this too, especially as a youngster.

When you cherry-pick that one animal that really excites you and you pull it out of its environment mentally and in your heart, of course, when you're really passionate about it, it's easy to forget that they're actually a core member of a complete ecosystem.

And without the rest of the organisms in that ecosystem, the shark doesn't survive.

And without the shark, the rest of that ecosystem doesn't survive.

So I think, in order to better understand the shark and sort of shed our fear of it, we start to get to learn the environment that the shark lives in and demystify it, if you will.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Sharks are also at risk now, with nearly a third of the species that are currently threatened with extinction.

What is it that is threatening sharks today?

KEITH COWLEY: Yes, the biggest threat facing sharks today, unfortunately, is overfishing.

That's what the data shows for us.

And that means it's a human threat.

So the issue is that there are lots of improved types of fishing gear being utilized all over the world.

And there's a lot of different types of indiscriminate fishing going on as well.

So sharks end up as bycatch.

Sometimes in places where sharks are not protected, they're being overfished.

And, unfortunately, they're being overfished to the speed that we're not even ready to study all these different species.

And we're just scratching the surface of really getting to know them.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: People always want to know, is there something that they can do in their own consumer behavior that can protect sharks?

Is that -- oftentimes, that's like what kind of fish they buy or eat.

Is there anything that you would counsel people to do who care about shark preservation to change about their own habits?

KEITH COWLEY: Yes, I think, as a whole, it's probably a healthy, good practice to read the ingredients on everything we consume.

It's really important to know where our food comes from.

We do a relatively good job in the United States with that, but sometimes things get renamed or mixed in with other ingredients that we think are one thing and happen to be another.

Sharks are a whitefish that tends to get lumped in with fish and chips in other countries.

Sometimes, you see it as a fried bite.

Obviously, shark fin soup is a major issue in other countries, shark liver oil and other products.

But as far as the consumer is concerned, I think it's just important that you know where your food is coming from.

We prefer you don't buy shark products or anything that's related to shark just because we are trying to protect them as a species overall.

Unfortunately, we had hunted them down to near extinction around the world after "Jaws" in 1975.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: We know that sharks, generally speaking, are not that aggressive towards people.

There's I think it's roughly 100 attacks per year, compared to the millions of people that get into the ocean every year.

But let's just say someone does encounter a shark.

What are they supposed to do?

KEITH COWLEY: I always tell folks that come into the museum that ask me this question that anything I tell you to prepare yourself for an interaction with a shark, you're going to forget immediately when it happens.

So there's a lot of folks out there trying to give some great advice about interacting with sharks.

There's a lot of different conditions that can occur when sharks might be in our proximity.

And, unfortunately, there's no foolproof answer to that question.

I think what's more important to take away from that is that the odds are extremely slim.

I mean, I think, be aware of your surroundings.

There's a lot of communities that are doing some great public outreach to help people become more educated in the situation that they're putting themselves in.

For example, in Cape Cod, in the waters off Cape Cod, where sharks, great white sharks, in particular, are cruising in seven to 10 feet of water all day long, there are some scenarios where you don't really need to put yourself at risk.

But, in most oceans in the United States, this is not an issue that you have to be concerned with.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, Keith Cowley, shark historian and conservationist, thank you so much for your time.

KEITH COWLEY: You're welcome.

Thank you for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: And there's a lot more online, including a look at President Trump's order that aims to end cashless bail and what it means for people charged with crimes.

That's at PBS.org/NewsHour.

And that is the "News Hour" for tonight.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

For all of us here at the "News Hour," thanks for spending part of your evening with us.