GEOFF BENNETT: Good evening.

And I'm Geoff Bennett.

Amna Nawaz is away.

On the "News Hour" tonight: New propaganda video of hostages being held by Hamas ramp up the pressure on Israel to reach a cease-fire.

We speak with the cousin of one of the hostages forced to dig his own grave.

MATAN ESHET, Cousin of Evyatar David: They actually managed to break his spirit using these horrible terror tactics of starving him deliberately.

GEOFF BENNETT: Recent trade deals come with a promise to buy U.S. energy in exchange for lower tariffs.

But how realistic are those pledges and can the president deliver on his plans?

And a worrying decline in maternal mental health -- what the research and mothers themselves say could be the cause.

MEAGAN RICO, Kansas Mother: I lay awake at night worried about my children's future if worse things happen in our economy or if things get more difficult for us.

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

We begin tonight in Texas, where the state's attorney general is ramping up pressure on House Democrats who left the state to block a vote on a new congressional map.

Ken Paxton says he's seeking court orders to declare the Democrats' seats vacant if they aren't back to work by Friday.

STATE REP. DUSTIN BURROWS (R-TX): There being 94 members present, a quorum is not present.

GEOFF BENNETT: For a second day in a row, the state's legislature failed to reach a quorum.

The map the Democrats are trying to block would help give Republicans as many as five more seats in next year's midterm elections.

Some of the Democrats are in Illinois.

They said today that the redrawn map would disenfranchise voters of color and that they're not backing down.

Right STATE REP. RAMON ROMERO JR. (D-TX): Right now, there's folks saying that we walked out.

And I think everyone behind me will say we're standing up, and as Texans would say, we're standing tall.

There's others that are saying and warning us that they're going to arrest us or make us pay fines.

I will pay that price for America.

GEOFF BENNETT: Today, Republican Texas Senator John Cornyn called on the FBI to take -- quote -- "any appropriate steps" to help law enforcement find and arrest the Democratic lawmakers.

President Trump was asked about that today as he signed an executive order related to the upcoming Olympics.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: Well, they may have to.

They may have to.

No, I know they want them back, not only the attorney general.

The governor wants them back.

GEOFF BENNETT: President Trump has been pushing for Texas to redraw its congressional map.

Earlier, he said in an interview with CNBC that Republicans are, in his words, entitled to five more seats since he won the state in last year's presidential election.

In Central California, a massive wildfire has exploded in size to nearly 130 square miles and is still barely contained.

The Gifford Fire started on Friday and is tearing through the state's Los Padres National Forest.

It's threatened hundreds of homes in both San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.

More than 1,000 firefighters are battling the blaze and contending with hot, dry conditions and whipping winds.

At least three people have been hurt.

The Gifford Fire is just one of dozens of wildfires currently ravaging the region.

The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Justice Department today for files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The Republican-led committee is also seeking depositions from Bill and Hillary Clinton, plus former FBI directors James Comey and Robert Mueller and attorneys general from the last three administrations, both Democrat and Republican.

It's the latest escalation in the political battle over Epstein after the DOJ said recently that it would not release any more files from its investigation.

That angered many Republicans, even as President Trump has tried to distance himself from the case.

The FBI says that violent crimes in the U.S. fell for a second year in a row in 2024.

Data out today shows a 4.5 percent decline in such crimes overall.

That includes a nearly 15 percent drop in murder and non-negligent manslaughter and a 1.5 percent fall in hate crimes, though experts say those figures are still the second highest in the 30 years of data collection.

Today's report did not provide reasons for the declines, though they align with a general trend of lower crime numbers since the days immediately following the COVID pandemic.

A U.S. Coast Guard investigation has found that the deadly Titan submersible implosion could have been prevented.

The report says that OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush ignored safety warnings and design flaws, which may have led to criminal charges had he survived.

Rush and four others were killed when the Titan imploded as it descended towards the wreck of the Titanic back in June 2023.

Turning now to the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with senior security officials today to discuss options for - - quote -- "continuing the military campaign in Gaza."

It comes a day after he hinted at taking an even tougher military approach in the territory.

Meantime, Gaza health officials say Israeli strikes in Central and Southern Gaza killed at least 45 people in the last day, including dozens who were seeking aid.

All told, authorities say the death toll has surpassed 61,000 since the October 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel started the war.

The president of neighboring Egypt is calling for an end to the conflict.

ABDEL FATTAH EL-SISI, Egyptian President (through translator): The war in Gaza is no longer a war to achieve political goals or to release hostages only.

This war has long since surpassed any logic or justification, and has become a war of starvation, genocide, and the liquidation of the Palestinian cause.

GEOFF BENNETT: Criticism is also coming from former top Israeli officials.

In a video posted to social media, the previous heads of the internal security service, spy agency and military all criticized what they say is the government's prolonging of the conflict, with one calling Netanyahu's war objectives a -- quote -- "fantasy."

On Wall Street today, stocks pulled back after the latest worrying report on the U.S. economy.

The Dow Jones industrial average gave back about 60 points.

The Nasdaq fell more than 130 points on the day.

The S&P 500 also ended lower.

And if you're feeling a bit squeezed for time today, there could be a good reason for that.

It may be one of the Earth's shortest days on record.

A typical day that is a full rotation of the Earth is, of course, 24 hours or 86,400 seconds.

But scientists say today may be 1.25 milliseconds faster.

If confirmed, that would make it one of the shortest days since records started back in 1973.

Scientists can't say for certain why the Earth is spinning faster, but they believe the motion of the Earth's core and changes to the oceans and atmosphere could be factors.

Well, still to come on the "News Hour": we examine the staying power of QAnon conspiracy theories during this Trump administration; Bangladesh marks one year since widespread protests led to the resignation of that country's leader; and author Garrett Graff discusses his new book on the development of the atomic bomb.

This weekend, Hamas released a haunting video of 24-year-old Evyatar David, an Israeli hostage abducted from the Nova Music Festival during the October 7 terror attacks.

In the video, which is undated, David appears so emaciated and so pale, his own father said he didn't recognize him.

David was filmed by his Hamas captors as he was forced to dig his own grave in a cramped underground tunnel.

We are not showing the video since David's family says he's the victim of a vile propaganda campaign.

They're pleading for urgent international intervention.

His cousin, Matan Eshet, joins us now from Tel Aviv.

Thank you for being with us.

And I am deeply sorry for the pain and the anguish your family is enduring.

I read that your family believes that Evyatar only has a few days left to live in that condition.

Have you heard anything else about his health and condition since the release of that video?

MATAN ESHET, Cousin of Evyatar David: We have not heard anything new since the release of the video.

We only heard estimations being made by physicians and nutritionists saying he looks like he lost more than 50 percent of his body weight, saying that he has more days to be saved, not talking about the condition that other hostages who came back that were with him said that he already had more than 150 days ago.

GEOFF BENNETT: He was shown with another hostage, 21-year-old Rom Braslavsky.

They appear, as we said, emaciated, weak.

They're begging for their lives, begging to be freed.

What went through your mind as you watched that video?

MATAN ESHET: First of all, it was terrible.

I was terrified to see my cousin like that.

He barely looks like my own cousin.

He doesn't even sound like him.

And I could see in his eyes the loss of hope and the fact that they actually managed to break his spirit using these horrible terror tactics of starving him deliberately, of giving him no stimulate, of having no sun, of having no hope of being survived.

I saw a broken man.

GEOFF BENNETT: I know that Evyatar's brother met with President Trump's envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, during Witkoff's recent trip to the region.

What message did he receive?

MATAN ESHET: We did receive the message that the U.S. government and the Trump administrations are still trying to make sure that the hostage - - the hostages deal will be brought forward.

They aren't sure and they couldn't really talk about the stages of the negotiations, but we are really hopeful that, after this horrible video, it will push the world leaders to put pressure on Hamas to make sure that they agree to a full deal that will return all of the hostages.

GEOFF BENNETT: Has the Israeli government contacted your family?

And if so, what did they say?

MATAN ESHET: I'm not aware of contact being made, but, for us, it doesn't matter.

The biggest thing that they could say is (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) but in the end what we need is to make sure that everybody will understand Evyatar's situation and that he will be brought back home as soon as possible, get some food and some medical attention that he desperately, desperately needs.

GEOFF BENNETT: By releasing that propaganda video of starving hostages, Hamas is clearly trying to capitalize on the international furor over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Israel is accused of restricting aid.

Hamas is accused of hoarding and diverting that aid that gets through.

How do those competing narratives complicate the effort to secure the release of the hostages?

MATAN ESHET: I think it gives Hamas power by seeing that the world believes their propaganda, saying there is not enough humanitarian aid getting into the Gaza Strip, while neglecting the effect of Hamas of taking the humanitarian aid, of not giving it to the people, taking it to their own terrorist people, and to make sure that they have more profit.

So, they take the humanitarian aid and take it to their own tunnels or sell it again on the street in extremely high prices, and then they just cause the people to starve again.

You can see in the video that the terrorist's hand is so much bigger compared to Evyatar.

So, even if they don't have the luxurious amount of food that the Western world have, they are still deliberately malnourishing and not giving and starving Evyatar and all of the other hostages.

GEOFF BENNETT: You said that you can see in the video that the terrorist's hand is much larger than your cousins.

Is that right?

MATAN ESHET: Yes.

Yes.

You can see.

There's a moment where they cynically show how the terrorist is, like, sharing his own food, giving Evyatar some canned food.

And you can see in that moment that the terrorist's hand is big, is muscular.

He looks like he has been outside.

He has normal tan.

And I think his forearm is the same with -- as Evyatar's legs, basically.

GEOFF BENNETT: Which should the world know about your cousin, Evyatar?

MATAN ESHET: Before October 7, Evyatar was the most beautiful soul you could ever meet.

He loves music and he loved his friends.

And he's like the mitigator in his home.

But, right now, Evyatar is being treated like less than a human being in a terror tunnel being physically and mentally tortured, being starved, being beaten, being made to dig his own grave.

Evyatar is the missing piece of the puzzle for our family.

Every person has this family member that fits just right into the family, make sure everything goes smoothly as it should be.

And this is the pieces we're missing right now.

GEOFF BENNETT: The missing piece of the puzzle, that's a great way to describe your cousin.

Matan Eshet, thank you again for being with us.

We appreciate it.

MATAN ESHET: Thank you for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: With new tariffs set to take effect on Friday, President Trump continued to negotiate with several countries today.

The president of Switzerland flew to Washington in a late attempt to stave off tariffs of 39 percent on her country.

Earlier in the day, President Trump threatened to raise tariffs on India, saying he was upset over that country's purchase of Russian oil.

In fact, the president has said the new purchase of U.S. energy is key to some of the biggest deals struck so far.

But, as Stephanie Sy tells us, there are questions about whether those pledges will live up to the president's claims.

STEPHANIE SY: That's right, Geoff.

Energy agreements are a big part of the latest announcements.

Japan said it will invest $550 billion in American energy infrastructure and production.

And South Korea agreed to buy $100 billion in liquefied natural gas over the next four years.

But the deal really raising eyebrows is with the European Union, which apparently agreed to buy $250 billion worth of U.S. energy a year for the next three years.

David Goldwyn, a former top State Department energy official in the Obama administration, and now president of Goldwyn Global Strategies, joins me now to break all of this down.

David, so good to have you on the "News Hour."

There are people in your field who have crunched the numbers and they are calling this deal with the E.U.

unrealistic, even delusional.

Do you agree?

Can Europe buy that much American energy in that amount of time?

And can we export that much of it?

DAVID GOLDWYN, President, Goldwyn Global Strategies: Well, the short answer is no.

The numbers really are fantastical.

I think it's an aspirational agreement.

I think it's a strong political signal.

But the math really doesn't work.

The total U.S. exports of energy last year were $165 billion.

If we sent them all to Europe next year, it wouldn't approach $250 billion.

And commodity prices are lower in 2025 than they were in 2024.

And Europe itself, if they backed out all of all of Russian gas, that might be another it might be another $25 billion or $30 billion.

So you just can't get there from here in terms of the total numbers.

Europe would have to vastly increase its demand.

The U.S. would have to triple its exports.

And the reality is that Europe is working hard to reduce its dependence on hydrocarbons.

And at $65 oil, the U.S. oil sector is not growing.

So I think, from that point of view, it's impossible.

So I really think you can't get there from here either at $250 billion a year, not $750 billion in three years.

And even if Europe were to sign a 30-year take-or-pay contract, it wouldn't be delivered under a new agreement probably until starting in 2027 or maybe 2030.

So it's really politically impossible.

And by the time people find out, hopefully, we will be in a new administration.

STEPHANIE SY: I just want to unpack a few things you said there, David.

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said they want to replace their purchases of Russian LNG for American supplies.

That is what Trump wanted.

Isn't that a good thing geopolitically, even if it is aspirational, if it sends a signal to Europe in the future to get its LNG from the U.S.?

And doesn't it also sort of suit the goal of President Trump, which is for us energy dominance?

DAVID GOLDWYN: Well, absolutely.

We are already - - the U.S. already exports something like 25 percent of Europe's LNG.

But Europe's total purchase of Russian hydrocarbons, a small amount of oil and the rest of it gas, was something like $64 billion.

So, if they only bought from the U.S., which would be a little risky for them, you still wouldn't be getting to $250 billion a year.

So, absolutely, it's a good signal.

But the reality is, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Europe has already been diversifying towards U.S. LNG.

And the question of whether they sign any long-term contracts has more to do with how long Europe thinks it's going to use gas and how much.

And so this is not going to happen faster than European political consensus will allow.

So it's absolutely important and it's already happening.

You just can't get it to $250 billion a year or $750 billion in three years.

STEPHANIE SY: When looking at the overall strategy, though, of negotiating these so-called deals with countries, most of which are U.S. allies, is this approach an overall win for U.S. consumers and the larger economy?

DAVID GOLDWYN: I don't think that it is.

I mean, first, for President Trump, these tariffs are successful and that he's raising an enormous amount of revenue.

And so that was his goal and that's happening.

But all of that is coming out of the pockets of the American taxpayers, so I don't really think it's a win.

Also, the president's tariff policy is a dagger pointed at the heart of his energy dominance policy, because first you're punishing your primary markets in Europe and Asia by making their economies weaker, making it harder for them to export their goods.

Second, you're creating an enormous amount of distrust by bullying your allies into a very transactional approach.

I mean, the Europeans have had plenty of the use of energy as a tool of coercion from Russia.

If the U.S. starts to look like it's going to grant or withhold supplies depending on what it gets for issues unrelated even to energy, then the smart move for countries in Europe and Asia is going to be to diversify away from the U.S.

So I think it's a very risky and destructive policy.

And the third thing is that the tariffs are making the U.S. energy production, steel for pipes, copper for wires, the price of commodity inputs like copper, the price of even oil that we get from other countries, which is refined to make gasoline, all of that is becoming vastly more expensive because of the tariff policy and it's undermining the energy dominance policy.

It's no surprise that U.S. international energy companies like Exxon and Chevron are having their worst stock performance in years, worse than ever happened under the Biden administration, because of where prices are and because of where the economy is.

So it's a very Pyrrhic victory.

STEPHANIE SY: David Goldwyn, president of Goldwyn Global Strategies.

David, thanks for sharing your perspective with us.

DAVID GOLDWYN: My pleasure.

GEOFF BENNETT: As we have reported, President Trump's allies in Congress are hoping that files tied to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation will shift attention or raise new questions about figures beyond Donald Trump.

William Brangham reports now on how the president's promotion of fringe theories has helped keep the Epstein case in the public eye.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: On the campaign trail and in office, President Trump has a habit of courting unfounded conspiracies.

That includes QAnon, the belief that some hidden figure in the government, Q, is explaining how Donald Trump is waging a secret battle against dark, nefarious forces, including a cabal of child sex traffickers.

This belief evolved from online obscurity to now where you regularly see QAnon signs at Trump rallies, and the president reposted a QAnon meme on social media as recently as last week.

So to understand how President Trump's amplification of QAnon fuels speculation about Jeffrey Epstein, we are joined by Will Sommer.

He's a writer at The Bulwark and author of "Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America.

Will Sommer, so good to have you on the program.

There is clearly an ideological connection between Jeffrey Epstein and QAnon.

And, Will, we can talk about that.

But, first, remind us, how did QAnon move from the fringe into this more prominent place in our politics?

WILL SOMMER, Senior Reporter, The Bulwark: Sure.

So QAnon started in October 2017 with these anonymous posts on an Internet message board from a figure calling themselves Q.

They said that the world was run by a cabal of pedophiles in the Democratic Party and Hollywood and banking, and that Donald Trump would someday send all those people to Guantanamo Bay and sort of reign as a sort of a dictator in a utopia.

And so this -- QAnon believers sort of teamed up with Q and started reading through all the clues.

And that's the origins of QAnon, but it was really on the fringe until 2019, 2020, when things like Jeffrey Epstein's death and the pandemic really drove a lot more people into conspiracy theories.

And a lot of that too was people like -- were Donald Trump and his allies embracing conspiracy theories.

Trump spoke very positively about QAnon believers during the 2020 campaign.

So it's been a very symbiotic relationship between Trump and QAnon.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: As you're mentioning, Jeffrey Epstein is both a real case of an elite figure engaging in sex trafficking and abuse of young people wedded to this added conspiracy of unfounded claims and unverified allegations, including this idea of a client list full of boldfaced names that has yet to be released.

How do QAnon adherents look at this marriage of both facts and speculation?

WILL SOMMER: Yes, I mean, I think the best conspiracy theories are often based in a grain of fact.

And, in this case, I mean, Jeffrey Epstein really did abuse women and young girls.

He really did pal around with powerful and very wealthy people for kind of mysterious reasons that really haven't been explained.

And so if you take that kernel of truth, then QAnon believers latch onto it and they spin all of this stuff out of it, the idea that Democrats were involved in Satanic rituals or drinking children's blood, things like that.

And so they see Jeffrey Epstein as almost like a moment where they got a glimpse of what the cabal or the organization controlling the world was really up to.

And so that's why they put so much faith and so much effort into trying to get things like the client list or the Epstein files released.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I want to play two clips of Donald Trump talking about this particular issue.

The first is from September of last year, when Trump was -- suggested that he will release this alleged client list.

And the second, this was just after the floods in Texas, shows him sort of getting irritated that this question is still lingering.

Let's listen to those.

QUESTION: It's just very strange for a lot of people that the list of clients that went to the island has not been made public.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: Yes, it's very interesting, isn't it?

Probably will be, by the way, probably.

QUESTION: So if you're able to, you will be... DONALD TRUMP: Yes, I would certainly take a look at it.

Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

This guy's been talked about for years.

You're asking.

We have Texas.

We have this.

We have all of the things.

And are people still talking about this guy, this creep?

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: It's like the Frankenstein monster here.

You help build the thing and then lament when it comes to get you.

WILL SOMMER: Yes, absolutely.

I mean, Trump and people like Kash Patel, Dan Bongino and the FBI, J.D.

Vance, all of these people raised the profile of the idea of the client list.

And they said, this is a really important thing, and we will release it.

We will consider releasing it.

Pam Bondi said the client list was on her desk after taking office.

And then suddenly Trump says, whoa, whoa, whoa, like, what are you talking about?

Who cares about that?

And then he goes on to even insult his supporters for being interested in it.

And so it's a very strange turnabout that I think has been really challenging for people like QAnon believers.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Do you have a sense of whether or not this is going to go away?

Will these questions be answered?

Is there a way to answer them to put, to rest these concerns?

WILL SOMMER: I don't think there's really any putting this genie back at the bottle.

I think both QAnon believers, I think Trump supporters more broadly are going to be very interested still in Epstein.

And I think, maybe most worryingly for the president, I think a lot of independent voters who maybe weren't that politically interested, but really latched on to the Epstein case because of its emotional resonance and the idea that there was this mystery at play, that something was being covered up, I think those people are still really interested in it.

And if it seems like the president is involved in a cover-up or it seems like Republicans are dragging their feet on finding out what happened or releasing information to the public, I think that will continue to be an issue.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Last question, Will.

You study conspiracies.

Where do you come down on the Epstein case?

Are there still unresolved questions?

WILL SOMMER: I think there is a lot that still needs to be answered about Epstein.

I mean, even in sort of the most sober vs. speculation mode I can be in, I think it is -- there was just some reporting suggesting that the video the Justice Department release of Epstein's jail didn't really prove that no one went up to his room the night he died.

It's kind of a useless video.

It's unclear why the Justice Department rushed it out and now won't answer questions about it.

Epstein got a very sweetheart deal in the George W. Bush administration, sort of inexplicably, that protected him from a lot of criminal prosecution.

Why was that?

I think these are pretty basic questions that reporters and other experts who have looked at the case have wondered about.

And so I think there are a lot of legitimate questions that remain to be answered.

And it's interesting that the Trump administration seems to want to close the door so abruptly.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Will Sommer of The Bulwark, thank you so much for being here.

WILL SOMMER: Thanks for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: The U.S. fertility rate hit another record low last year, with families having fewer children and a growing number of women opting out of motherhood altogether.

A new large-scale study might offer some clarity.

American mothers have seen a stark drop in their mental health.

Stephanie Sy is back with that story.

THERESA ENGLE, Ohio Mother: He is very rambunctious.

He is smart and he is funny.

STEPHANIE SY: Theresa Engle wouldn't trade being a mother to Theo for anything, but that doesn't mean it's easy being a parent to a child with autism.

THERESA ENGLE: He has days where he's very negative, and you just kind of absorb it and then you're thinking of all the things going on that you have no control over.

And I don't sleep well.

I really don't.

I have that -- the 3:00 a.m. thing where you're like, so many things are wrong and how can I fix it, and just feeling kind of powerless.

STEPHANIE SY: Taking care of Theo was a full-time job.

And without a paying job, the high cost of living is only creating more stress.

THERESA ENGLE: Things have become so precarious.

We don't get help.

We do have Medicaid.

That's it.

And the safety nets are slashed, cut.

It doesn't feel good.

STEPHANIE SY: This Ohio mom is far from alone.

We spoke to mothers throughout the country across race and socioeconomic status.

They told us they're overwhelmed, stressed out and lacking in necessary support and resources.

MEAGAN RICO, Kansas Mother: I lay awake at night worried about my children's future and my future and where things will go if worse things happen in our economy or if things get more difficult for us.

MICHELLE BRANDT, South Carolina Mother: Sometimes, my anxiety is so great, I feel stuck.

And it was actually my best friend, she was like, Michelle, I haven't heard you laugh in two months.

And she was like, I think you might have postpartum depression.

KRISTINA BERARDI, New York Mother: Maternity leave can be very isolating.

You're home all the time with a little person who wants and needs everything, but at the beginning can't even smile at you.

Currently, I feel stressed about is just the economy.

THERESA ENGLE: Women tend to internalize and put others first.

And our health, all aspects of our health become unimportant.

STEPHANIE SY: A recent study published in "The Journal of the American Medical Association" found a worrying trend.

Data from nearly 200,000 mothers of children of all ages found a decline in mental health.

Less than 26 percent of mothers reported excellent mental health in 2023, down from roughly 38 percent in 2016.

Mothers describing their health as just good rose from roughly 19 percent to 26 percent, and those who rated their mental health fair or poor rose from 5.5 percent to 8.5 percent.

JAMIE DAW, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health: It's unusual to see such a big change over such a short period of time.

STEPHANIE SY: Jamie Daw is an assistant professor at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and co-author of the study.

Was that something you saw equally distributed across sort of the measures that you looked at?

JAMIE DAW: Yes, these are really the kinds we're seeing across the board.

The thing to point out, though, is that not all groups were starting from the same baseline, right?

So you could have a similar decline, but we know that single moms, those whose children were insured by Medicaid, those of lower education in particular had much higher rates of fair and poor mental health.

STEPHANIE SY: Another significant outlier, mothers of multiracial children, who saw steep drops in their mental health.

Aesha Mustafa, mother of a 1-year-old daughter, says it can add additional mental strain.

AESHA MUSTAFA, Michigan Mother: The comments of like, you're going to have trouble with that hair growing up and like being prepared for these racialized comments, and like how do I handle that is a whole thing that makes motherhood as a Black woman more difficult and also raising a Black interracial child.

MELISA SCOTT, Certified Nurse Midwife, Michigan Medicine: A lot of places, pediatricians office are asking mothers to check boxes about their mental health, but then what?

There's nothing else.

Is she still active?

STEPHANIE SY: In between performing ultrasounds and blood pressure checks, certified nurse midwife Melisa Scott noticed something in her patients in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

MELISA SCOTT: People feeling a sense of isolation, people feeling like, I wish I had some mom friends.

I wish I could talk to somebody about some of these feelings that I'm having of sadness around X, Y and Z, also feeling like, I'm not sure how to navigate this.

STEPHANIE SY: Many of Scott's patients are Black mothers, who have higher mortality rates, worse physical health outcomes, and also saw a decline in their mental health.

LATRESA WILEY, Our Village: Any words of wisdom that you would like to give these moms who will be soon bringing their babies into the world?

STEPHANIE SY: Tired of being unable to offer more support, Scott and her colleague, clinical social worker LaTresa Wiley, created a community for Black mothers beginning in 2019.

Our Village now includes over 200 moms and holds meetings twice a month in person and virtually.

MELISA SCOTT: We have rich women, poor women, all different types of women, some partnered, some unpartnered.

So it really presents a really diverse conversation.

And there is this unifying situation that happens because they're all Black women.

So it is very common that someone will say, I'm really struggling with X, breast-feeding.

And other women will come around here and just say, OK, how can I help?

There isn't the stigma that I see in a lot of mom spaces, even like mom blogs or Facebook or wherever.

STEPHANIE SY: Mustafa, who going into motherhood had a history of depression and anxiety, participates regularly in Our Village meetups.

AESHA MUSTAFA: Our Village has helped spark that joy of being in spaces with folks who look like me and then also making me get out in the community.

STEPHANIE SY: Do you think that mothers in general have enough support?

AESHA MUSTAFA: No, absolutely not.

I think, in general, across genders, parenthood is hard.

And then, with mothers, there's a lot of expectations of you control the domain.

So if you're out with baby, that baby's cold.

Why didn't you dress that baby?

That baby looks hungry.

Just constant criticism of how someone's doing that I don't see happening with dads, where with dads, it's like, oh, you took the kid to the library by yourself?

That's so great.

Look at you.

STEPHANIE SY: Whether it's from increased self-awareness, societal expectations or economic pressures, the mental health of mothers is a complex issue that Columbia researcher Jamie Daw says needs to be addressed.

JAMIE DAW: I would hope that our findings will help policymakers really prioritize this issue of supporting parents and not just early on in an early childhood, but throughout your parenting journey from zero to 18, and how this country could better support moms.

STEPHANIE SY: Until there is more support, moms like Theresa Engle's health will suffer.

THERESA ENGLE: I should be taking better care of myself, not skipping appointments.

This is more important than just being fit.

It's being here, being present.

STEPHANIE SY: Ultimately, it's not just the health of mothers at stake, but the children that depend on them.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Stephanie Sy.

GEOFF BENNETT: One year ago today, a popular uprising in Bangladesh deposed its long-serving prime minister.

The country now faces multiple long-term challenges related to climate change, public health, and, more immediately, political instability and the threat of tariffs.

In partnership with the Pulitzer Center, our Fred de Sam Lazaro recently traveled to Bangladesh and has the first of three reports.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Across Bangladesh's capital, the posters and graffiti are a reminder of the unrest that escalated sharply and violently last July.

By the time Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had fled into exile in neighboring India, at least 1,400 people had been killed and thousands injured, most of them students who led the protests.

MARIA RAHMAN, Student: It's we who accelerated the July revolution, not the political leaders, we the students, we the general people.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Twenty-two-year-old Maria Rahman was part of the marches.

She remains hopeful and patient.

MARIA RAHMAN: Change won't come overnight, but we have now the environment of democratic practice.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: That's fueled the hopes of 25-year-old grad student Abidur Rahaman.

ABIDUR RAHAMAN, Student: I want to see an inclusive Bangladesh where every political party tolerates each other.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: He says observant Muslims in this predominantly Islamic country were targeted by Hasina's regime.

It was accused of widespread human rights abuses, torture and forced disappearances against political opponents, journalists and perceived supporters of the faith-based Jamaat-e-Islami.

TAZIN SUMAYA, Student: I don't trust the police as much as I used to do.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Twenty-four-year-old grad student Tazin Sumaya says things in some respects have gotten worse in recent months.

TAZIN SUMAYA: As a woman, I'd say the security of people on the street has been really bad lately.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Frustration echoed away from the university campus as well.

We rode across Dhaka's Banani Lake to the informal slum settlement of Korail.

Mohammad Rubel is a boatman.

MOHAMMAD RUBEL, Boatman (through translator): What we had in the past a year ago and what we have now is the same.

We don't see any difference.

Life has not yet improved.

ALI RIAZ, Vice Chairman, National Consensus Commission: The expectation was too high.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Professor Ali Riaz, on leave from Illinois State University, heads a so-called Consensus Commission trying to coax some 30 political parties united only in their opposition to Hasina to agree on democratic reforms.

The goal was to topple Hasina, he says, with little thought for what then?

ALI RIAZ: It was spontaneous.

It was led by young people who have no previous experience, even no idea of governance.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Governance is especially challenging in this nation of 175 million people squeezed into a land mass the size of Iowa.

Born out of a bloody civil war of independence from Pakistan in 1971, the country has made progress reducing poverty.

Homegrown nongovernment groups have improved lives with microlending to start small rural enterprises and innovative public health programs.

There's been less luck with government.

NARRATOR: Now recognized as the leader of Bangladesh.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Founding leader Mujibur Rahman, Sheikh Hasina's father, was assassinated in 1975, ushering in decades of instability and autocracy under Hasina.

Following the uprising, military leaders invited Muhammad Yunus, whose work with microlending won him the Nobel Peace Prize, to lead an interim government.

REZA KIBRIA, Economist: There was probably no one else who could command the support of the people of Bangladesh.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: However, economist Reza Kibria says Yunus has done little to change the systemic problems that have long plagued the country.

REZA KIBRIA: The level of corruption in the country is perhaps no less than in Hasina's time, which is saying a lot.

It's just a new set of people, and not saying that the head of the government is involved in any corruption directly, but he must bear some of the blame for the mismanagement.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Is he powerless to control it, unwilling?

REZA KIBRIA: Rather than powerless, he's not a person who is ready for the rough-and-tumble of running Bangladesh.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: After initially agreeing to an interview, Yunus declined to participate in this report.

Ali Riaz agrees a political culture of kleptocracy has survived the Hasina regime, when billions were siphoned out of the country from government coffers.

ALI RIAZ: I have to grab things, I have to capture things, this mentality of the political party activists, especially at the grassroot level, this is my moment, this is my opportunity.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Meantime, the country's industrial mainstay, garment-making, it's second only to China in size, has its own challenges.

Many factory owners have fled the country for fear of retribution for their loyalty to the Hasina government.

It's left tens of thousands of workers unemployed and owed wages.

TANZIRA, Garment Worker (through translator): On February 9, they just closed the factory.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Under a monsoon downpour, I talked to Tanzira, a mother of two daughters who uses only one name.

She said she's owed two months' salary, plus severance pay.

TANZIRA (through translator): I have to pay school fees, rent, other essentials, and I have no money.

My daughters are in school and they tell me, don't send us to school.

The teachers insult us because the fees are overdue.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: She and hundreds of others were camped outside the garment industry association's offices.

The group's president says it's limited in how much it can help.

But Mahmud Hasan Khan says there's an even bigger threat, how tariffs imposed by the U.S., the largest market for Bangladeshi garments, will ricochet here, especially if rising prices cause American consumers to cut back.

MAHMUD HASAN KHAN, President, Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association: Buyers over there have buying capacity that is limited.

So if consumption goes down, then order placement will be less.

Then, if order placement less, then the factory -- some factory may shut down.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The tariffs are pegged to the balance of trade, and Bangladesh sells more to the U.S. than it buys from it.

It has offered to purchase more U.S. cotton, wheat and soybeans and is considering an order of Boeing commercial aircraft.

But Reza Kibria says the country has few other options.

REZA KIBRIA: We don't buy too much in the form of aerospace equipment or U.S. cars.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: You just can't afford it.

REZA KIBRIA: We never have been able to afford it and it's not going to happen in the near future.

So the poor in this country will suffer from these tariffs.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Muhammad Yunus wants a new government to take on the tasks ahead and today announced that elections will be held next February.

It won't be easy.

Sheikh Hasina, whose party is banned from participating, remains active on social media from India, which has not moved on a request to extradite her to stand trial.

REZA KIBRIA: Until she is brought to justice, it's very difficult for Bangladesh to return to a normal, stable path.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The country's election commission said it will soon release a specific timeline for the campaign to begin.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Fred de Sam Lazaro in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

GEOFF BENNETT: Fred's reporting is a partnership with the Under-Told Stories Project at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

Eighty years ago this week, the U.S. altered the course of history when, for the first time ever, it dropped the extraordinarily powerful atomic bomb on Japan.

It ultimately led to the end of World War II.

The motivation and secrecy surrounding the development of that world-changing weapon and the devastating consequences of its use are the focus of a new oral history out today from author Garrett Graff.

He recently sat down with Amna Nawaz to discuss his book "The Devil Reached Toward the Sky."

AMNA NAWAZ: Garrett Graff, welcome back to the "News Hour."

Thanks for being here.

GARRETT GRAFF, Author, "The Devil Reached Toward the Sky": Thanks for having me.

AMNA NAWAZ: So you have compiled these incredible oral histories for some of the biggest moments in world history, D-Day, 9/11.

Why did you want to apply that approach to this, to the making and actual deployment of the first atomic bomb?

GARRETT GRAFF: Yes.

August, of course, marks the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the bombing of Nagasaki, the end of World War II.

And so this is a moment where we have, effectively, every first-person memory of the atomic bomb we're ever going to have.

And so this is trying to sort of tell the story of the Manhattan Project through the eyes of the scientists at a moment when they don't know who's going to win World War II yet.

They don't know whether Adolf Hitler is going to get the first atomic bomb.

They don't even know whether an atomic bomb will work.

AMNA NAWAZ: And you do begin with the accounts and the stories of many of those scientists in Germany and in other nations, Albert Einstein, as you mentioned.

Even Sigmund Freud is quoted in there in the early 1930s.

They're commenting on the rise of Adolf Hitler in that moment.

Why start with that?

Why are their voices... (CROSSTALK) GARRETT GRAFF: Yes.

When we talk about the atomic bomb today, we instantly think of Japan.

We think of the war in the Pacific.

But understanding the roots of the Manhattan Project, it's all about the war in Europe.

It's about these mostly Jewish refugee scientists fleeing the enveloping cloak of fascism in Europe, coming to the United States and desperately trying to get the attention of the U.S. government and the U.S. military to launch a all-hands-on-deck atomic bomb effort because they are afraid Adolf Hitler will get the bomb first.

AMNA NAWAZ: Of course, for anyone who saw the movie, the role of Robert Oppenheimer is no surprise in this, but you write that the choice of Oppenheimer to lead this effort would come to define the Manhattan Project in so many ways.

Why and how?

GARRETT GRAFF: We too often think that the whole thing is Oppenheimer and Los Alamos, but the weight of the Manhattan Project really takes place in places like Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington where we build these 100,000-person cities, secret cities, where we refine and manufacture uranium and plutonium at the scale of kilograms with work forces who don't know what they're doing, don't know how they're contributing to the war effort in these incredibly secret communities and factories.

AMNA NAWAZ: This is another part that fascinates me.

For the scale and scope of this project, these multiple locations, as you mentioned, for all the folks that are pulled together in this, including Oppenheimer, his wife, Katherine, so many others, the secrecy under which they had to work, there are literally signs posted in all the places that they work saying they can't say anything any time they leave the grounds.

How did such an enormous undertaking remain a secret?

GARRETT GRAFF: Yes, it has a lot to say about wartime patriotism.

It has a lot to say about how hard it was for information to travel, for news to travel in that pre-Internet era.

But a lot of it is also just need to know.

There's this fabulous part of the story where in Oak Ridge at those uranium plants, much of the work is actually done by these sort of high school girls that Tennessee Eastman, the company that's running the plant... AMNA NAWAZ: They're all local high school girls they hire to work there, right?

GARRETT GRAFF: They're all -- exactly.

This is who you can hire in '43 and '44 in America.

And they run these Calutron, these machines, and most of them learned the word uranium for the first time on August 6, 1945, when Harry Truman announces the existence of the Manhattan Project.

AMNA NAWAZ: There's a major shift, of course, when Hitler dies by suicide in April of 1945.

As you mentioned, Hitler had been the primary justification for that atomic bomb work for so many and those scientists.

You quote one, Emilio Segre, who's an Italian-American nuclear physicist, who says: "Now that the bomb could not be used against the Nazis, doubts arose.

Those doubts were discussed in many private conversations."

What were those doubts, and how does the target shift to Japan?

GARRETT GRAFF: What's so striking in the memories of the scientists who were working on it was a lot of them are sad that their work is too late, that they wish that the bomb had been ready early enough to drop on Berlin.

And it's only in those final months of the war, when Germany has already defeated or on its way to defeat, that they sort of wrap their heads around, oh, this is actually going to be used in Japan.

And that's when their doubts arise, because they -- again, these are European, mostly Jewish, refugee scientists, and a lot of them say, hey, we signed up to build a bomb to stop Hitler.

We don't want this thing used on Japan.

Like, that's not the fight that we intended to have here.

AMNA NAWAZ: After the bombings -- and you go into incredibly fascinating detail about the B-29 squadron that's pulled together to pull this off -- after the bombings, some of the most haunting things in the book are the recollections of the children in Japan, what they saw and what they remember from that day, some 5, 6, 7 years old,.

There's a ninth grader, you quote, in there who says: "It was like being thrown into an iron melting pot.

My face burned.

I jumped into the river.

One of my friends found me and asked how his face looked.

The skin was hanging down from his face like a rag.

I was too scared to ask him about my own face," just horrific descriptions of what unfolded on the ground.

Did the general American public know about the impact of the bombs?

Did they support it at the time?

GARRETT GRAFF: Yes, those final chapters are just this incredible juxtaposition of the triumph of the Manhattan Project workers, the bomber crews, the Enola Gay, which delivers the bomb to Hiroshima.

They land.

They get medals pinned on their chest, and then they go off to a literal barbecue party to celebrate the bombing, while Hiroshima burns behind them.

And the reality of that bomb was kept from the American public and kept from the Japanese public actually for years.

And it's really only through the work of journalists like John Hersey writing for "The New Yorker" in the summer of 1946 who bring that full picture back to the American people for the first time.

AMNA NAWAZ: The very last quote is from Albert Einstein.

And you quote him as saying: "I don't know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the fourth, rocks."

In looking back at the use of the atomic bomb, do you feel like you learned anything about where we are now or what the potential is for the use of a nuclear bomb now?

GARRETT GRAFF: Yes.

This year we have already seen conflict between India and Pakistan, the two largest nuclear arsenals in the world to ever come into direct conflict.

We have seen the U.S. and Israeli strikes on the Iranian nuclear program.

We're seeing the U.S. geopolitical instability prompt conversations about proliferation in Europe and Asia and countries like Korea, even some conversations in Japan, which was sort of once unthinkable.

And I think, for me, those searing survivor testimonies, one of the reasons I wanted to sort of tell that story right now, as that generation passes, is that I think we need to, as a society, as a country, as a people, recommit ourselves in this moment, where I think we're actually going to see more countries joining the nuclear club over the next decade, to fulfill the vision of those hibakusha, the survivors, that they be the last survivors of a nuclear weapon in our age.

AMNA NAWAZ: The book is "The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb."

The author is Garrett Graff.

Garrett, always great to see you here.

Thank you so much.

GARRETT GRAFF: Thanks for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: And that's the "News Hour" for tonight.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

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