GEOFF BENNETT: Good evening.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

AMNA NAWAZ: And I'm Amna Nawaz.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: India begins its official investigation into the train crash that killed hundreds, a disaster that highlights the country's aging and dangerous rail infrastructure.

GEOFF BENNETT: Journalists at newspapers owned by Gannett walk off the job to protest the media company's pay and working conditions.

AMNA NAWAZ: And a small town in Texas finds itself embroiled in controversy, as national politics fuels local pushback against LGBTQ rights.

DENISE RODGERS, Taylor Pride: Literally just children doing crafts and art and having fun and existing, and they still show up to protest just their existence and them gathering.

(BREAK) AMNA NAWAZ: Welcome to the "NewsHour."

New findings out tonight show the main cause of the climate crisis is rapidly getting worse.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit record levels in the spring, the highest in more than four million years.

GEOFF BENNETT: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also reports the build-up of the heat-trapping gas is accelerating.

This year's rate of increase was one of the largest ever, and due almost entirely to burning coal, oil and gas.

AMNA NAWAZ: In the day's other headlines: Survivors and families in eastern India are demanding answers after a rail disaster that killed 275 people.

Investigators focused on the cause today as relatives waited for the remains of loved ones.

Stephanie Sy has our report.

STEPHANIE SY: The search for survivors is waning, but the search for answers continues.

Today, as repair workers dug through the mangled wreckage, investigators launched a two-day probe into what caused one of the deadliest train disasters India has seen in decades.

ANANT CHOWDHARY, Commissioner of Railway Safety: The inquiry is under way.

We have called all the witnesses for the inquiry, and after the inquiry is over, only then we will know what is the reason for the accident.

STEPHANIE SY: Early findings point to a signaling error that led a train to mistakenly switch tracks.

Officials say a southbound passenger train collided with a stationary freight train in the Eastern District of Balasore,.

That caused several cars to derail, striking a third train speeding by.

In the days since, only a fraction of the dead have been identified.

A shortage of morgues forced about 100 unclaimed bodies to a hospital in Bhubaneswar, over 100 miles from the crash site.

Distraught relatives lined up outside to identify loved ones as their images, barely recognizable, popped up on a TV screen.

UPENDRA RAM, Father of Crash Victim (through translator): I will die remembering him.

I will die here if I don't get his body.

I just want to take his dead body and go back home.

STEPHANIE SY: For others, the grief has already begun to set in; 20-year-old Bijay Lakshmi lost her husband in the crash.

Unable to speak, her mother-in-law described her state of shock.

SAVRITI SAHU, Mother of Crash Victim (through translator): She is just not in a position to talk.

She has not eaten anything.

She has not drunk anything.

She has not even taken water.

It is such a huge calamity.

Such grief and pain.

She got married barely a year ago.

STEPHANIE SY: As families across India mourn, rail upper operations resume.

Trains crawled past the crash site, with passengers gazing out at the remains of a tragedy yet to be explained.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Stephanie Sy.

AMNA NAWAZ: India's huge rail network dates back to the British colonial era and has several hundred accidents every year.

In Ukraine, a surge in ground assaults by government forces fueled speculation today that a long-expected counteroffensive is finally beginning.

Russia's military claimed it repulsed attacks at five points in the Donetsk region on Sunday.

Russian video purportedly showed its forces throwing back the attackers.

Ukraine said its troops were gaining ground, and U.S. officials backed that claim.

The U.S. and India have set out a road map for upgraded military cooperation to counter China and other challenges.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in New Delhi today and held talks on improving defense and security ties over five years.

The agreement comes weeks before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes a state visit to Washington.

In the meantime, the U.S. denounced what it called an unsafe maneuver by a Chinese navy ship in the Taiwan Strait.

It happened Saturday as an American destroyer and a Canadian frigate were transiting the disputed waterway.

Video taken on board those ships showed the Chinese vessel cutting within 150 yards of the U.S. warship.

Today, the White House condemned the maneuver.

JOHN KIRBY, NSC Coordinator For Strategic Communications: When you have pieces of metal that size, whether its in the air or on the sea, and they are operating that close together, it wouldn't take much for an error in judgment or a mistake to get made, and somebody could get hurt.

And that's just got to be unacceptable.

And it should be unacceptable to them as well.

AMNA NAWAZ: This was the latest in a series of incidents between the U.S. and Chinese militaries in recent weeks.

Search teams in Davenport, Iowa, have now recovered the bodies of three men missing in last week's apartment building collapse.

The police chief said today there's no indication that anyone else is missing.

A large section of the century-old building came down on May 28.

Today, one of the tenants sued the city and the building's owners, charging they failed to warn anyone of the danger.

A separate investigation is focusing on why a small business jet buzzed Washington, D.C., on Sunday before crashing in Southwestern Virginia.

Fighter jets were scrambled, but they reported that the plane's pilot appeared to be unconscious.

Aerial footage showed the crash site on a heavily wooded mountainside.

Remnants of the shattered plane littered the ground.

All four people on board were killed.

The Biden administration announced $570 million in grants today to eliminate railroad crossings in 32 states.

The funds will help build bridges and overpasses.

In some places, trains stretching more than two miles can block crossings for hours.

And, on Wall Street, stocks edged lower as economic growth and may fell short of expectations.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost nearly 200 points to close below 33563.

The Nasdaq fell 11 points.

The S&P 500 was down eight points.

And a former FBI agent who spied for the Soviet Union and then Russia for 16 years has died.

Robert Hanssen was found unresponsive today in his federal prison cell in Colorado.

He'd been sentenced in 2002 to life behind bars.

Robert Hanssen was 79 years old.

Still to come on the "NewsHour": Tamara Keith and Amy Walter break down the latest GOP campaign events in Iowa; more Republican-led states abandon an election database designed to combat voter fraud; a Florida professor breaks the record for days lived underwater; plus much more.

GEOFF BENNETT: Hundreds of journalists employed by Gannett, the country's largest newspaper chain, went on strike today.

Staffers from two dozen newsrooms from California to New York walked off the job, demanding livable wages and accusing Gannett leadership of decimating its newsrooms.

We're joined now by Steven Waldman, chair of the Rebuild Local News Coalition.

That's a nonprofit that aims to advance policies to counter the collapse of local news.

He's also co-founder of Report For America.

Thanks for being with us.

And this walkout, as we mentioned, it includes workers from about two dozen newsrooms, to include The Palm Beach Post, The Arizona Republic, The Austin-American Statesman.

Help us understand the significance of this labor action today.

STEVEN WALDMAN, Founder and President, Rebuild Local News Coalition: Well, this is really just a boiling over of this terrible situation that we're having with the collapse of local news.

In general, around the country, we have seen just a very dramatic retraction of newspapers shutting down, reporters being laid off.

And Gannett has really been right in the center of that.

They have shed almost half of the newspaper staff in just two years.

And this is the reporters trying to react as best they can to what's been happening, but it's kind of a reflection of a bigger problem, which is, America's local news system is collapsing.

GEOFF BENNETT: The NewsGuild, which represents about 1,000 Gannett staffers, they sent a letter to Gannett shareholders last month urging a no-confidence vote against Mike Reed, the company's chief executive and chairman.

What are the employees demanding exactly?

STEVEN WALDMAN: Well, they want new leadership that would be more likely to invest in newsrooms.

They want a strategy and leadership that will reverse the downward trend and reverse the trend of trying to get to financial stability by eliminating reporting jobs.

There are Gannett papers now that are daily newspapers that have no reporters on them, which is a pretty astonishing thought, a daily newspaper without any reporters.

So it's really gotten that bad, where the basic information that Americans need in their communities is in many communities very hard to come by.

GEOFF BENNETT: When we talk about the collapse of local news, a report last year from Medill's Local News Initiative found that, since the year 2005, the U.S. has lost more than a quarter of its newspapers, and is on track to lose a third by the year 2025.

What's lost when we lose local news outlets?

STEVEN WALDMAN: We're losing about two newspapers a week currently in this country.

And that almost understates the problem, because, in addition to the newspapers that are going out of business, the ones that are still there, you have the ones like in Salinas, California, where you have the daily newspaper with no reporters.

So those are kind of ghost newspapers.

And it's a profound impact on American communities.

It's been shown over and over again that, when local news goes away, you have more corruption, you have higher taxes, you have more polarization.

You actually -- it's actually -- this collapse of local news is related to the rise of polarization, because what happens is, that vacuum that's created by the decline of local information gets filled by national cable TV or social media.

So it's part of that trend too.

So you end up with both of threat to democracy and its nitty-gritty way of like, you just don't have information about who to vote for, no one's holding the mayor accountable.

But it also just leads to the community frays.

People don't know each other.

People aren't learning about their neighbors.

And it contributes to this fragmentation that exists.

So it's both the health of the democracy and the health of the community are both drastically harmed by the decline of local news.

GEOFF BENNETT: A decline in advertising revenue, a decline in print circulation, that has really hit local newspapers hard.

Is there a path back to profitability at all for these local news outlets?

STEVEN WALDMAN: We're seeing a new local news system growing up that has a real shot.

So it's mostly family-owned or locally owned papers, not owned by chains, and nonprofits that have been -- 350 have been created in the last few years.

And those two groups have found a formula to get to break-even, not necessarily wild profits like they used to have, but being a strong civic institution.

And what that means is that it's not going to be done just through advertising.

It has to be a combination of advertising, reader revenue through subscriptions, and probably philanthropy to help meet the -- make the lines meet.

And, actually, I would say probably taxpayer support in some cases is going to be needed to try to help save local news in some places as well.

GEOFF BENNETT: Steven Waldman is co-founder of Report for America and chair of the Rebuild Local News Coalition.

Thanks so much for your time.

STEVEN WALDMAN: Thank you for having me.

AMNA NAWAZ: The race for the 2024 GOP nomination is heating up.

One politician opted out today, but three others are waiting in the wings.

As Laura Barron-Lopez reports, most of the contenders were making the rounds in Iowa this weekend.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: One potential Republican candidate sitting out.

GOV.

CHRIS SUNUNU (R-NH): I have made the decision not to run for president on the Republican ticket in 2024.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Chris Sununu, a fierce Trump critic and the governor of first-in-the-nation primary state New Hampshire, choosing not to run against the former president.

GOV.

CHRIS SUNUNU: If you're not talking in resonance against the candidate who's right now winning by 20 or 30 points, then you're just potentially auditioning to be on his team.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: For the GOP hopefuls this weekend, an Iowa tradition, Senator Joni Ernst's annual Roast and Ride fund-raiser, one of the first 2024 cattle calls, where nearly all the Republican candidates made their case to early state voters.

Former Vice President Mike Pence teasing his official campaign launch set for later this week.

MIKE PENCE, Former Vice President of the United States: I don't have anything to announce today, but I can tell you, when I have got time to announce, come this Wednesday, I'm announcing in Iowa.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Noticeably absent, current poll leader Donald Trump.

Other candidates like former U.N.

Ambassador Nikki Haley, took aim at the former president, though not by name.

NIKKI HALEY (R), Presidential Candidate: It's time for a new generational leader.

We have got to leave the baggage and the negativity behind.

We have got a country to say.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: A line she repeated during a CNN town hall last night, as she also attacked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for spending taxpayer dollars fighting Disney.

NIKKI HALEY: All this vendetta stuff, we have been down that road again.

We can't go down that.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Back in Iowa Saturday, DeSantis said the GOP needs to nominate someone who can win a general election.

GOV.

RON DESANTIS (R-FL), Presidential Candidate: We need to dispense with the culture of losing that has beset the Republican Party in recent years.

Iowa shows it can be done.

Florida shows it can be done.

We had red waves in 2022, the rest of the country not so much.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, a Trump detractor, instead directed his ire to the current president.

FMR.

GOV.

ASA HUTCHINSON (R-AR), Presidential Candidate: I'm running for president because Joe Biden's policy are the wrong direction for America.

People ask me, what would you do on your first day in office?

I will sign an executive order reversing Biden's executive orders.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: He was not alone.

South Carolina Senator Tim Scott pitched himself as the best candidate to take on Democrats.

SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC), Presidential Candidate: I scare the dickens out of the radical left and Joe Biden.

The proof of my life destroys their lies.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: For nearly two hours, eight GOP hopefuls took the stage.

Though one of the first big multi candidate events, it will hardly be the last.

All the candidates will likely be frequent fliers to the Hawkeye State, as they try to gain support and donors to qualify for the first Republican primary debate in August.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Laura Barron-Lopez.

GEOFF BENNETT: For more on how the 2024 Republican field is shaping up, we turn to our Politics Monday team.

That's Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

Well, hello, hello.

TAMARA KEITH, National Public Radio: Hello.

GEOFF BENNETT: Let's start our conversation about the 2024 race with a bit more about the politician who says he's not going to get into this.

That's New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu.

He wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post, part of which I will read.

He says this: "If Trump is the nominee, Republicans will lose again, just as we did in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

This is indisputable and I am not willing to let it happen without a fight."

He argues that he will have much more power and influence as a kingmaker in New Hampshire.

Is he right about that?

AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: Well, I do not think so.

I think there is about 10 to 15 percent of the Republican electorate that is interested in non-Trump candidate -- actually not just a non-Trump candidate, but an anti-Trump candidate.

They appeal to those voters, again, very, very narrow.

But for the rest of Republican voters, they are looking for maybe an alternative, maybe 50 to 60 percent looking for an alternative to Donald Trump.

They aren't looking for an anti-Trump.

That's why Governor Sununu had such a narrow lane in the very first place.

His ability in New Hampshire, also, I would put a question mark next to in terms of being a kingmaker.

In 2022, the candidates that he endorsed in primaries went on to lose to candidates who filled much more of the Trumpy category.

GEOFF BENNETT: And, Tam, I read some analysis this morning that there are basically three lanes, to pick up on what Amy's talking about.

That's the Trump lane, the Ron DeSantis lane and then the everybody else lane.

So what does it mean for this race to have three more candidates jump in this week?

TAMARA KEITH: One thing that is very clear is that Donald Trump did not clear the race.

He has a lot of people who are looking for a possibility of being the anti-Trump or the alternative to Trump or the candidate who can be president for eight years, and not just four years.

And they're all still feeling out exactly how much they draw that contrast.

And they're all being so careful about it, except Chris Christie, in theory, is going to get in and not be so careful about it and might break some glass.

But the others are being so careful, because, as Amy says, you can't be anti-Trump, when he is still this outsized figure in the party, even as he faces -=even as there was the insurrection, and even as he faces various investigations, and the drama and the chaos, that many voters have some reluctance about it still him versus the rest of the field, which is exactly what ended up being in 2015-2016.

GEOFF BENNETT: And listening to Nikki Haley in Iowa talking about, we have to leave behind the baggage and leave behind the negativity, Ron DeSantis talking about dispensing with the culture of losing.

AMY WALTER: Right.

GEOFF BENNETT: You're talking about Donald Trump, but they're not naming him.

(CROSSTALK) AMY WALTER: Without saying -- right, saying Donald Trump.

GEOFF BENNETT: I mean, is that going to be enough?

Is that enough?

AMY WALTER: We're going to find out soon enough, but I think they are trying to make the case that, hey, look, you can have all of the Trumpism that you love, but it can be more effective, either effective in bringing people into the party, independent voters we keep losing.

Or, with Ron DeSantis, I will be a culture warrior who's more effective than Donald Trump was on some of the things like Critical Race Theory, other issues that he's taken on in Florida.

But the thing about -- we all know around the table, the thing we know about politics is you can come up with a great idea in a test tube about what a campaign should be and what the voters want to hear.

But if they don't really think it's the right message, then it's not really going anywhere.

It is pretty clear there's some fatigue with Donald Trump from voters.

Doesn't mean that they don't like him anymore.

But there is the fatigue about, ugh, maybe the chaos and people, the divisions, all the things that he helped to sow that, if they can -- as to Tam's point, if they can keep that needle threaded, they might be able to convince voters who liked Donald Trump to pick somebody else as the nominee.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, Tam, looking ahead a bit, the Republican National Committee, they have announced the first 2024 Republican presidential primary debate.

And they have also outlined the qualifying criteria.

And so it's this.

Candidates have to register at least 1 percent in three national polls.

They also need at least 40,000 donors with at least 200 donors per state in 20-plus states.

And the candidates also have to sign a pledge agreeing to support the eventual party nominee.

Open question there, does Donald Trump participate?

Does he sign on to this pledge?

TAMARA KEITH: And does someone like Chris Christie, who says that he wouldn't support Donald Trump as president, does he sign on to this pledge?

GEOFF BENNETT: Yes, good point.

TAMARA KEITH: And this pledge is bigger than just that.

It also includes agreements to share data and voter file information with the RNC.

So there is kind of a lot at stake for these candidates in making that decision?

I think as, it was in the past, will Donald Trump show up?

I think this is a question that is frequently asked and that he loves having asked.

And will -- he didn't show up this weekend in Iowa.

Will that affect him negatively?

Or does it make him look like the big guy who doesn't need to show up?

If he appears on a stage with a minibus full of other candidates, which is what we're headed towards, then does that make him look small, when he is still -- many people in the Republican Party call him the president of the United States, not the former president?

So does appearing on a debate stage bust his mystique of being a winner?

And is he willing to do that?

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, these rules are more stringent than what Democrats required of their candidates back in 2020.

What is the RNC trying to achieve here?

AMY WALTER: Well, I think they would like to have as narrow of a stage as possible in order to make it an interesting debate, right?

You want to have the people on stage who have a reasonable chance of breaking through.

The other thing we know, though, about candidates even who today are pulling in very low numbers, some of those candidates break through that we didn't expect.

I don't think Pete Buttigieg early on was expected to do as well as he did, or some of the other candidates in the past who started off at a very low number.

But I think Tam is right.

It's not so much, can they hit the thresholds, the 1 percent?

Most of the these candidates are hitting 1 percent in the national polls.

They are -- they know how to get these donors through targeting.

But the question will be, does Donald Trump show up?

That is everything.

GEOFF BENNETT: Can we draw on your White House reporting as we wrap up our conversation here?

TAMARA KEITH: Yes, please.

GEOFF BENNETT: What's the word from the Biden campaign, the Biden White House?

What argument did they intend to make moving forward?

TAMARA KEITH: They are making an argument that the president made in an Oval Office address on Friday night, which is that here's a president who can get big bipartisan deals done, that America needs to be less divided, and that he is a messenger of that less divided America.

That same speech also, though, included him going after -- he didn't use MAGA Republicans, but he meant it -- going after Republicans and Republican policies that he disagrees with, saying, these are not the Republicans I can work with that I used to work with that I knew from the Senate.

And I think, notably, his campaign, don't expect to see big campaign rallies or big events anytime soon.

He's the president of the United States.

And his campaign is very few people being sort of scaffolded by the Democratic National Committee.

And they're not acting like they have a primary, because they're not going to have debates.

AMY WALTER: Yes.

GEOFF BENNETT: All right, Tamara Keith and Amy Walter, thank you both.

AMY WALTER: You're welcome.

TAMARA KEITH: Yes.

GEOFF BENNETT: In Texas, LGBTQ rights are under attack everywhere from the halls of the Capitol to the streets of small towns.

On Friday, Republican Governor Greg Abbott signed into law a ban on gender-affirming care for minors.

Republican lawmakers have also targeted drag performers.

Laura Barron-Lopez is back with her report from one Texas town where a fight over drag has exposed deep divisions.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Once a month in Taylor, Texas, LGBTQ families and supporters gather to make art, watch movies, and show off their talents.

It is a space for members of the Taylor Pride group to connect.

But wherever they go, the Taylor Area Ministerial Alliance follows.

MAN: I know you know that, and you suppress that truth and unrighteousness.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Known here as TAMA, the group of orthodox Christian churches protest these events, in their words, to evangelize.

And so they have every month, says Denise Rodgers, who founded Taylor Pride in 2020.

DENISE RODGERS, Taylor Pride: We are just trying to exist.

And they show up wherever we are every time.

Literally just children doing crafts and art and having fun and existing, and they still show up to protest just their existence and them gathering.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Now veterans and other groups stand guard outside the events.

And the Taylor police are stationed nearby to keep the peace.

DENISE RODGERS: Taylor is changing in a big way.

It is easy right now to say that Taylor Pride is part of the problem, because I think that we are probably the most noticeable change right now.

JEFF RIPPLE, Taylor Area Ministerial Alliance: Taylor is a typical rural community in a lot of ways, but it has changed a lot, I would say, recently.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Jeff Ripple is a pastor at the Christ Fellowship Church and a TAMA member, unapologetic about his anti-LGBTQ beliefs.

Shouldn't those kids have a place to be able to be who they are and to express their identity?

JEFF RIPPLE: I'm not saying they should not.

When I go to an event, whether it is the Pride event in June or whether it's to the library, I'm not out there because I hate anybody.

I'm out there because I actually love them.

And the reason I'm out there, in love, is because I actually believe what the Scripture says, that those lifestyles are opposed to God, they are deemed sinful by God, and those who practice those lifestyles will experience hell one day.

I mean, I believe that.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Both Ripple and Rodgers have put down roots in this railroad town, home to 17,000 people.

It is growing rapidly, with the construction of a major Samsung plant and rising costs in nearby Austin driving families out of the city, families like Alecia Marcum's.

She left Austin for Taylor in 2014 and earlier this year opened a restaurant.

She believes most of the community supports Taylor's LGBTQ residents.

ALECIA MARCUM, Taylor Resident: I think that we should be all-inclusive here.

As a business owner here, my first and foremost mission is to serve the community in every sense of the word.

And that means all of the community.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Up the road, and Angelica Salazar runs a hot dog stand with her husband.

She was born and raised in Taylor and worries some newcomers are forcing the city too far left.

So, what do you think about the LGBTQ community in Taylor?

ANGELICA SALAZAR, Taylor Resident: They're very progressive.

I love their commitment.

The only thing is, I don't want to be pushed onto people that are not in that lifestyle.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Some Taylor residents point to a single event when they describe the divisions here, the town Christmas parade, which has come down this street for decades.

That, they say, is what put Taylor on the front line of the war on LGBTQ rights.

In 2021, for the first time, the line of Christmas floats on Main Street, including one from Taylor Pride, which carried drag queens.

One of the performers was Felicia Enspire.

FELICIA ENSPIRE, Drag Performer: We were cheered and clapped for the entire parade.

I felt like everyone enjoyed it.

We didn't hear any kind of backlash at all, until the following year, and it's like it exploded all over Facebook out of nowhere.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: That explosion happened in the months leading up to the 2022 Christmas parade.

TAMA which put on the parade with the city, didn't want any float with drag queens.

JEFF RIPPLE: Drag queens in a Christmas float is not consistent with Christianity as we believe it.

And so, last year, in the entry forms, we simply made a notation that said all entries must conform with traditional family and biblical values.

And that created a firestorm.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Residents like Angelica Salazar agreed with the exclusion of drag performers from the parade.

ANGELICA SALAZAR: I would say keep the drag queens out of it because I equate drag queens with strippers, and keep it age-appropriate.

Go ahead, have your float like everybody else has her float, but keep the drag queens out of it.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The city and Mayor Brandt Rydell stepped in when they found out TAMA changed the rules to exclude Taylor Pride.

BRANDT RYDELL, Mayor of Taylor, Texas: given that we're a community that is very open and welcome, embracing -- in fact, our parade at its best includes people from throughout the community -- we were put into a difficult situation there to make a call on how we're going to handle the parade.

So we did not want to disrupt their parade, but, then again, we did not want to be discriminatory and excluding those who wanted to participate in the parade as they had in the past.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So, last year, there were two back-to-back parades, one sponsored by the city that included Taylor Pride's float with drag queens and one sponsored by TAMA that didn't.

It was a short-term local solution, as attacks on drag performers have increased fueled by Republicans on the national stage.

GOV.

RON DESANTIS (R-FL), Presidential Candidate: Florida is where woke goes to die!

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): We have had enough of drag queens gyrating in front of children.

REP. MATT GAETZ (R-FL): How much taxpayer money should go to fund drag queen story hours on military bases?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The agenda has taken hold in Texas.

BRIGITTE BANDIT, Drag Performer: My name is Brigitte Bandit, and I'm speaking in opposition to S.B.12.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Where a ban on drag performances in front of kids was among the dozens of anti-LGBTQ bills introduced by Republicans this session.

STATE SEN. BRYAN HUGHES (R-TX): Drag shows are sexually explicit and expose children to issues of sexuality and identity that should be reserved for adults.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Opponents a drag is an art form, not overtly sexual, and that parents should decide what's appropriate for their kids.

Ultimately, the explicit reference to drag was removed from the legislation due to fear of legal challenges.

FELICIA ENSPIRE: Even though it doesn't specifically say drag anymore, it's still going to be a tool that can be used to target drag queens and the LGBT community as a whole.

These people can try to get us to go back into our closets and tone ourselves down or act and behave differently than what they consider to be normal and everything, but queer people have been around since the beginning of humankind, and we're not going anywhere.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Last month, Taylor officials approved the city's first ever policy for events like parades.

It says: "Events co-sponsored by the city must align with Taylor's mission and vision," which means they will effectively be open to everyone.

So what do you think a Christmas parade in 2023 will look like?

BRANDT RYDELL: I think the city will have a Christmas parade, and we will be inclusive of all groups that want to participate.

And we would love for TAMA to be involved in that as well.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: But that may be wishful thinking.

JEFF RIPPLE: I would like to see a TAMA parade with biblical values.

What the city does apart from that is their business.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: But Denise Rodgers says what's happening in Taylor and across Texas is about more than parades.

DENISE RODGERS: It's really about eradicating an entire class of people.

PROTESTER: You should all be in jail.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And she says the rising anti-LGBTQ efforts in red states across the country are being acutely felt by LGBTQ youth.

DENISE RODGERS: They're feeling less supported.

They're feeling that there's less resources.

And we worry about that.

The kind of help they're reaching out for is -- we have a lot of scared youth, for sure.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Rodgers says that's why Taylor Pride won't stop holding events.

WOMAN: Good job, buddy.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Even as people challenging their very existence stand at the door.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Laura Barron-Lopez in Taylor, Texas.

AMNA NAWAZ: A new investigative report reveals the roots of a growing movement to unravel a critical election integrity tool.

The tool is called ERIC, or the Electronic Registration Information Center.

Simply, it checks voter registration rolls from participating states against databases from other agencies, like Social Security or a state DMV.

That helps states keep track of voters who have passed away or moved into or out of the state, translating into a more accurate and up-to-date list of eligible voters.

NPR's Miles Parks has covered election security for years.

He joins me now to unpack what he found and the potential impact on voter rolls across the country.

Miles, good to see you.

MILES PARKS, NPR: Yes, thanks for having me.

AMNA NAWAZ: So, this system is created to improve the accuracy of voter rolls, to help prevent voter fraud.

Do we know if it was working?

MILES PARKS: I think election officials, both Democrats and Republicans, say it was.

You know, I have been covering voting for close to six years.

I had never heard anyone criticize ERIC up until last year.

And I should note, the program in 2021 caught more than three million records that were out of date for people who had moved states.

AMNA NAWAZ: So there's evidence that it was working and support on both sides of the aisle, as you say.

MILES PARKS: Absolutely.

AMNA NAWAZ: But there were as many as some 33 member states and the District of Columbia taking part at some point.

And then an exodus of sorts began.

Your team uncovered video of one official in Louisiana, the secretary of state in January of 2022, announcing at an event Louisiana would be quitting the program.

Here's that moment.

KYLE ARDOIN (R), Louisiana Secretary of State: This week, I signed a letter, sent a letter to the Electronic Registration Information Center suspending Louisiana's participation in that program.

MAN: Yes!

(APPLAUSE) AMNA NAWAZ: Miles, it's the applause that struck me in this clip.

How did people know about this program?

Why did they care and why did they want to be out of it?

MILES PARKS: When I watched that clip, I was struck, because I thought I was the only person who knew what ERIC was.

And then you have got this roomful of people who are super passionate about it.

It's important to note, a week before that event, a far right Web site called the Gateway Pundit started writing articles about ERIC, saying, basically, it was a left-wing conspiracy to help Democrats steal elections.

None of that was true.

But it started moving towards becoming a pressure campaign over the last year, where we saw it start on this fringe far right Web site, make its way to all of these local -- like that video shows, local integrity groups that have popped up since 2020 all over the country, and found its way to state lawmakers, to state election officials, to their e-mails, to their phone calls.

We just saw this entire pressure campaign built around ERIC until clearly a number of states thought it was untenable.

AMNA NAWAZ: How did it spread so quickly?

Like, who was talking about it?

And how many more groups like that one are there out there?

MILES PARKS: Well, so our investigation centered on a key Trump ally named Cleta Mitchell.

You might remember her.

She is a very influential attorney, Republican election attorney, who now hosts a podcast about voting that she used to spread a lot of anti-ERIC misinformation.

She also runs a coalition of these sorts of grassroots groups all over the country.

And she was basically telling all these people, go to your state lawmakers, tell them to withdraw from ERIC.

And now she and a lot of the people in this world are claiming victory.

AMNA NAWAZ: So, when you look at the map, right, we mentioned there were some 33 states in the District of Columbia at some point taking part in this ERIC program.

And you see they're highlighted there, the member states at some point.

Next, we're going to show you the eight states that have since left, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, Louisiana, West Virginia, Virginia, Florida, and Alabama, all Republican-led, we should point out.

This program works when states take part in it, right?

So what are we talking about in terms of potential impact when states leave the program?

MILES PARKS: I mean, what we're talking about is less efficient and less secure elections.

That's what every election official has told me.

That's what every election expert has told me.

So, over time, if you have slight inaccuracies in your voter rolls, it's not going to be the next day after a state pulls out, the entire election system is just going to collapse.

What it means is, over time, it can mean longer lines at precincts because they're less targeted for where people are actually living.

It can mean election mail, which can be information, it can be mail ballots, getting sent to the wrong places, which can be a security issue, as well as in inefficiency.

Taxpayer dollars are going to pay for mail that is not being received by voters.

So there's all these different downstream effects from having less accurate voter rolls.

But the election experts I talked to were just as concerned about what this says about the power of the election denial movement in this country.

We have seen this growing group of people motivated by former President Trump to push these ideas that the 2020 election was stolen.

We have not seen them get a lot of victories in terms of policy.

We haven't seen a lot of states go back to hand-counting ballots or anything, or get rid of mail voting or early voting, other things that these people want.

But this is something that they kind of planted their flag on last year, and we're seeing states respond.

AMNA NAWAZ: Is it fair to say -- and people should go to the Web site and read your full report for all the incredible reporting you have done -- these are groups that are arguing they want to prevent voter fraud.

They want to protect election integrity.

By your reporting, it seems like, by leaving this program, they're actually doing the opposite.

MILES PARKS: And that's really the common through line with a lot of the election denial movement, frankly, is pushing for policies in the name of election integrity that are actually hurting election integrity.

I mentioned hand-counting ballots is something that is a big priority for a lot of these people.

We know from research that hand-counting ballots is a much less accurate way than using machines to count them.

AMNA NAWAZ: Miles Parks, is it fair to say we will see other states leaving as well?

MILES PARKS: It's very possible.

Texas looks like they're up next.

AMNA NAWAZ: All right, we will continue to follow it all.

Miles Parks of NPR, fantastic reporting.

Thank you for joining us to talk about it.

MILES PARKS: Thanks for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: And we will be back shortly to hear from a professor about why he's living underwater.

AMNA NAWAZ: But, first, take a moment to hear from your local PBS station.

It's a chance to offer your support, which helps keeps programs like ours on the air.

GEOFF BENNETT: For those of you staying with us, we take a second look at a key part of Florida's economy.

That's oranges.

This year, the state is projected to have an especially bad citrus harvest.

In this story that originally aired on "PBS News Weekend," William Brangham takes a look at what's driving this decline and how it threatens a way of life for many Floridians.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: In Central Florida, orange groves stretch as far as the eye can see.

What's not so visible is the disease that is slowly killing one of this state's biggest industries.

So if I didn't know better, I would look at this and think, like, oh, this looks like you got a lot of fruit.

The tree looks pretty decent to me.

FRANK HUNT: It looks like a lot of fruit because you don't know how much fruit should be on the tree.

These trees are suffering.

They are not generating an economic crop.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Frank Hunt is a third generation citrus grower.

His grandfather Dealy started the Hunt brothers family business in Lake Wales, Florida, a century ago.

Because all that fruit that's dropped, that's waste.

FRANK HUNT: Yes, that's waste.

You can't do anything with it.

And probably 50, 60 percent of the crop that was set ultimately drops on the ground before it's harvested.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: An insect borne bacteria has infected virtually every orange tree in his groves.

FRANK HUNT: Some trees take a little longer than others to die, but we're basically fighting a losing battle trying to sustain the tree.

The plastic bins would be set on the conveyor.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: For the Hunt Brothers business, it's had a devastating impact.

So this would have been loaded with oranges.

FRANK HUNT: Full conveyor.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Climbing up the road, FRANK HUNT: Full conveyor.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Millions of oranges were once processed, sorted, and shipped from this packing house.

So if I had been here at its peak, what would this have sounded like or looked like?

FRANK HUNT: We wouldn't have been talking right here because the machinery is such that you'd have that rubber machinery and the conveyors running that where we're standing, actually, was the packing area.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Last year, the conveyor belts were turned off, doors shuttered, and 50 workers lost their jobs.

You got a couple of cobwebs here.

I mean, this has got to feel like -- FRANK HUNT: Well, this is the first time I've walked back here in a while, so we start crying, y'all forgive me.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And this year, Florida projects its orange harvest will be the lowest since the 1930s.

MICHAEL ROGERS, Citrus Research And Education Center, University of Florida: I look back to when I first started working in citrus in 2004.

Florida produced over 220 million boxes of oranges.

WILLIAM BREANGHAM: Michael Rogers is the director of the University of Florida's Citrus Research and Education Center.

MICHAEL ROGERS: Fast forward 20 years, and we can't produce enough oranges.

We're down to a 16 million box crop from 220 million down to 16 million.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: While several factors are to blame for this crisis, hurricanes Ian and Nicole damaged a lot of trees when they tore through Florida last year.

Rogers says the main issue is this blight, which is known as citrus greening disease.

It's spread by tiny insects known as psyllids.

While nearly impossible to see with the naked eye, their impact has been catastrophic.

MICHAEL ROGERS: Pretty much all the trees in commercial groves now in Florida are infected with this disease.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All of them?

MICHAEL ROGERS: Yes.

The ones that aren't were planted yesterday is what I tell people.

WILILAM BRANGHAM: Wow.

MICHAEL ROGERS: Because it doesn't take long for them to become infected.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The disease slowly kills the roots, which starves the tree of nutrients, and it often changes the color and ruins the taste of the fruit.

That is, if the fruit doesn't fall from the limb first.

Far too early to be harvested.

MICHAEL ROGERS: Before you see any symptoms of this disease in the plant, we'll lose 30 or 40 percent of the root system.

The leaves start to get these modeled appearances.

They don't look nice dark green.

They look weak and stunted.

WOMAN: A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Since the vast majority of Florida's oranges are squeezed into juice, this disease has also squeezed wallets.

Orange juice is just the latest staple to slam inflation weary consumers.

Whether it's fresh squeezed or concentrated, retail prices have hit record highs for both.

ARCHIE RITCH, Business Owner: It's blueberry puree.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Citrus greening is also hit smaller growers especially hard.

ARCHIE RITCH: Most all of your mom and pop, I would say farmers that had 10, 20, 40, 80 acres, they're very few and far between.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Archie Rich runs this general store in Haynes City, Florida selling his fruit and his freshly squeezed juice directly to customers.

On top of citrus greening, last year's hurricanes left him with his worst orange heart harvest since he started here in 1992.

Five years from now, ten years from now, are you still growing citrus in Florida?

ARCHIE RITCH: It's hard for me to imagine Florida without having citrus.

I don't think it'll ever get back to where it was.

BRENDA EUBANKS BURNETTE, Executive Director of the Florida Citrus Hall of Fame: This threat we've never dealt with anything this severe, this capacity where it has just brought our industry basically to its knees.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Brenda Eubanks Burnette runs the Florida Citrus Hall of Fame.

She's been involved in the industry since 1981 when she was named Florida's Citrus Queen.

BRENDA EUBANKS BURNETTE: Once the queen always is queen, I guess.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I don't think I've ever interviewed a queen before.

Eubanks Burnette says citrus has always been a part of the state's DNA and she remains optimistic about the future.

BRENDA EUBANKS BURNETTE: We're seeing people investing back into the industry so hopefully it's not something that's going to be completely going away.

There were some times when we did not think that were going to have an industry here in Florida.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Back at the University of Florida's citrus research facility several solutions are being tested.

One is growing trees under these gigantic protective canopies.

They're covered with a mesh that's fine enough to block the insects but still allow rain and sunshine in.

Another is developing new blight resistant varieties of citrus trees.

MICHAEL ROGERS: There's a lot of things that we can do that are short term fixes to try to keep these trees healthy.

But ultimately the solution is going to come in the form of a new variety, a new citrus plant variety that's resistant to disease whether it be through conventional breeding or genetic modification.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Today there is still no cure and many of these solutions aren't affordable for growers like Frank Hunt.

But he's not giving up.

Hunt says he's passing his 4,000 acres onto his son.

FRANK HUNT: The question would be is there anything for the generation after that?

And I don't know and I don't know what that'll look like.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: It's a question many here in Florida are now asking.

For "PBS News Weekend," I'm William Brangham in Lake Wales, Florida.

AMNA NAWAZ: Living under the sea is, for some, a nightmare, but, for others, it's an important undertaking to see what oceanic pressure does to the human body.

Our digital anchor, Nicole Ellis, spoke to one such person who's staying 22 feet below the surface of a lagoon in Key Largo, Florida.

He's already long outlasted a previous record for living underwater and hopes to make it to 100 days.

NICOLE ELLIS: A professor at the University of South Florida has been living underwater without depressurization for over 75 days and plans to stay a little while longer.

Joe Dituri, also known as Dr.

Deep Sea online, joins me now to discuss his journey and research under the sea.

So, this isn't your first time tackling something like this.

What motivated you to do it this time?

JOSEPH DITURI, University of South Florida: Oh, interesting question.

What motivated me to do this?

I would say it's the culmination of so far my life's work.

And this is basically just the pointy end of the spear.

We took all the 28 years of Navy experience, the Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, the zest for life and desire to explore, and we threw it all together, and we're like, what happens to the human body when you leave it in an isolated, confined, extreme environment?

We will find out.

NICOLE ELLIS: What do you miss most about being on land?

Or what have you grown to appreciate more?

JOSEPH DITURI: Oh, well, two things very much.

Tactile.

There's lack of tactile function here, the high-fives, the handshakes, the hugs.

There's not a lot of that going on down here.

And the second thing, which was a little bit surprising to me, the sunlight winds up being something that you really need.

You really do need it.

And I miss that.

And I forget how much I'm driven by the sun.

NICOLE ELLIS: This is obviously dedicated to and in homage to science.

And what are some of the scientific findings and things that you hope to accomplish through your research?

JOSEPH DITURI: My desire is to give a broader understanding to the world of the mechanism of action of hyperbaric medicine, such that we can apply it across a broad spectrum of things that are happening, like anti-aging for our aging population to increase their vitality and health, including Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, including a lot of things like traumatic brain injury.

NICOLE ELLIS: What is hyperbaric medicine?

And how does this contribute to our understanding of how this could help resolve different issues like traumatic brain injuries?

JOSEPH DITURI: Terrific question.

Yes, hyper means more than.

Baric means pressure.

So all we are doing is hyperbaric medicine.

All this is, is pressurizing somebody in -- with either oxygen or without oxygen.

So here I am underwater for 100 days.

And so far, my oxidative stress is cut by two-thirds.

Every single inflammatory marker in my body is cut by half.

And these are preliminary results, mind you.

They're only the first phase of them.

We have more blood work to do.

We have about 200 more blood, urine and saliva tests to do.

NICOLE ELLIS: So you have been down there for a while now.

What does a typical day look like for you?

JOSEPH DITURI: I wake up at probably around 4:30, 5:00 in the morning.

I have always been an early riser.

I come in, I have a couple of cups of coffee, because guess what, science does not happen without coffee.

Bottom line is, I will eat a bunch of eggs in the morning, I will do my checks, figure out all the science that I have to do for the day, and mix it in with whatever interview I happen to have or whatever outreach I have for the kids.

Mesh all that together, you wind up having about six hours' worth of science, about two or three hours worth of outreach, and about two or three hours worth of interviews or getting in line.

And then I always go for a dive.

Once a day, I get out of this habitat, go swim around the lagoon.

Yesterday, I found a seahorse.

It was great.

The day before that, oh, a manatee was in the lagoon, and I got some great video of the manatee.

NICOLE ELLIS: As a fellow diver, I am so envious.

But as you have mentioned, this is for a purpose.

And I'm curious to hear from you what you want the world to take away from what you're doing.

JOSEPH DITURI: We have a threefold purpose.

First, I want to find out what happens to the human in the isolated, confined, extreme environment.

The second part is, we're reaching out to the kids.

And when you speak with the kids about science, technology, engineering, and math, they're all high school, grade school kids.

And, at first, they're all frumpy, and they're sitting down.

But I tell you, by the end of the hour-long lecture, they're hanging on their seat and they're like, don't go, don't go.

I have one more question.

So we're getting them.

But -- and the third and final thing is, we're talking to experts.

Sixty to 70 percent of the world's oxygen comes from the ocean, and we should start taking better care of it.

And then I share that with the kids.

And we just raise awareness.

And it is World Oceans Week coming up.

NICOLE ELLIS: Would you do this again?

JOSEPH DITURI: Absolutely.

Not tomorrow, but I would do it again.

(LAUGHTER) NICOLE ELLIS: Dr. Dituri, thank you so much for joining me.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Nicole Ellis.

AMNA NAWAZ: I hope he makes it to 100 days.

GEOFF BENNETT: His enthusiasm is infectious.

(CROSSTALK) AMNA NAWAZ: Good luck to him.

Remember, there is much more online, including a look at how the congressional deal to raise the debt ceiling will impact federal student loan repayments.

GEOFF BENNETT: And that is the "NewsHour" for tonight.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

AMNA NAWAZ: And I'm Amna Nawaz.

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