GEOFF BENNETT: Good evening.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

AMNA NAWAZ: And I'm Amna Nawaz.

On the "News Hour" tonight: DONALD TRUMP, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. President-Elect: If this deal's not done with the people representing our nation by the time I get to office, all hell is going to break out.

AMNA NAWAZ: President-elect Donald Trump issues a threat to Hamas and advocates for making the Panama Canal, Greenland, and even Canada part of the U.S. GEOFF BENNETT: Facebook and Instagram end their fact-checking programs, a move critics say will pave the way for a spike in misinformation.

AMNA NAWAZ: And two years after protests erupted in Iran, women speak out about the threats and oppression they still face.

MARYAM, Iranian Activist (through translator): We all share the same story, demanding our rights, demanding control of our bodies.

AMNA NAWAZ: Welcome to the "News Hour."

With Donald Trump set to enter the Oval Office in just two weeks, the president-elect expressed his desire to expand the American territory he'd govern through the use of military and economic force, if necessary.

GEOFF BENNETT: It was part of a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, where he also proposed renaming a body of water that already has a name that predates the founding of the United States.

DONALD TRUMP, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. President-Elect: We're going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring.

That covers a lot of territory.

The Gulf of America, what a beautiful name.

GEOFF BENNETT: Mr. Trump also attacked his perceived political enemies as he battles legal challenges before he takes office again.

Our White House correspondent, Laura Barron-Lopez, joins us now.

So, Laura, what were the other takeaways from Mr. Trump's press conference today?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Well, this was a one-hour-long, rambling press conference, Geoff.

And in it, the president-elect talked about using force to gain control over countries and territories.

He raised the possibility of using military force to secure Greenland and the Panama Canal.

He also talked about using economic control to pressure Canada to acquire it.

And he said that -- as you played there, Geoff, renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

And he also said that -- quote -- "all hell will break out" if Hamas doesn't release hostages by the time he takes office.

In addition to that, he said that he wants to use tariffs at a high level against Denmark to try to pressure it to cede control of Greenland to the United States.

And on that idea of the annexation of Canada, Geoff, outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that -- just outright rejected it on X, saying that there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that it would happen.

GEOFF BENNETT: OK, well, as the president-elect was speaking to reporters, Judge Aileen Cannon temporarily blocked the release of special counsel Jack Smith's final report on his classified documents investigation.

What did Mr. Trump have to say on that front?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The president-elect called it great news.

And he used this press conference to also rail against not just all the legal cases that were brought against him, but special counsel Jack Smith.

DONALD TRUMP: It's called weaponization of justice.

And it's happened at a level nobody's ever seen before.

So many -- I defeated deranged Jack Smith.

He's a deranged individual.

I guess he's on his way back to The Hague.

And we won those cases.

Those were the biggest ones.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And so Trump did not win those cases, Geoff.

Jack Smith dropped the cases against him because of the fact that Donald Trump won the election.

The president-elect was also asked if he would pardon January 6 rioters who assaulted police officers, and he didn't answer that question.

He said that rioters came to the Capitol with not one gun.

And that's not true, because multiple rioters were charged with carrying firearms.

And as well, we should note, Geoff, that today an appeals court rejected the president-elect's efforts to delay the sentencing in the New York hush money trial, which is scheduled for Friday.

So, overall, he injected a lot of grievances in this press conference against his perceived political enemies.

GEOFF BENNETT: Meantime, we are set to see confirmation hearings begin for Mr. Trump's Cabinet selections.

Those are going to start as early as next week.

Tell us more about that.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So, next week, we have a number of key confirmations on the docket, starting with defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth on January 14, secretary of state nominee Marco Rubio on January 15, and the ambassador to the United Nations nominee, Elise Stefanik, on January 16.

And then the attorney general nominee, Pam Bondi, is likely -- her confirmation hearing will likely happen after January 20, after the inauguration.

I spoke to a GOP Senate aide on the Judiciary Committee who said that they had wanted to hold that as early as next week, but they are still waiting on some financial documents and background checks for Pam Bondi.

And so it's very likely that it'll have to go into after president-elect Donald Trump takes office.

And then, lastly, Geoff, an aide on the Senate Intel Committee was telling me that it looks like Tulsi Gabbard is going to have to wait a bit longer for her confirmation hearing.

Republicans had wanted it to be next week, but it looks like Tulsi Gabbard to be the director of national intelligence is going to have to wait a bit longer.

GEOFF BENNETT: OK, Laura Barron-Lopez, our thanks to you, as always.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Thank you.

AMNA NAWAZ: We start the day's other headlines in Southern California, where residents are fleeing a fast-moving wildfire in the hills of Los Angeles.

Fire crews are trying to contain the Palisades Fire, which has exploded in size to more than 700 acres.

Smoke from the blaze can be seen from miles, with traffic jammed up as locals try to flee the area.

The National Weather Service is warning of life-threatening, destructive gusts of wind in the coming days that could whip up such wildfires even further.

Forecasters say the windstorms could be the worst in a decade.

In the meantime, a so-called polar vortex is bringing below-freezing temperatures as far south as the Gulf Coast.

The frigid air comes as millions in Central and Eastern parts of the country dig out from a winter storm that snarled roads and toppled trees.

Washington, D.C.'s most significant snowstorm in six years shut down the federal government for a second straight day.

And more than 175,000 people are still without power across the Midwest and Tennessee Valley.

Forecasters say they may not see relief for days.

DAN DEPODWIN, AccuWeather: Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, those places aren't going to get about freezing until this coming weekend.

So you have about five days or so or more of below freezing temperatures, and that means the ice and snow will not melt.

AMNA NAWAZ: And there's another major winter storm brewing that could bring more snow and ice to the Central and Eastern U.S. and as far south as Texas.

In Western China, a devastating earthquake has killed at least 126 people.

The 7.1-magnitude quake struck shortly after 9:00 a.m. local time in Tibet near the border with Nepal.

Emergency responders rushed to isolated villages to search for survivors.

The closest city to the epicenter is Xigaze, where streets are now littered with debris from crumbled buildings.

City officials say they activated the highest level of emergency response.

LIU HUAZHONG, Deputy Mayor of Xigaze, China (through translator): Moving forward, we will fully implement the important instructions given by General Secretary Xi Jinping.

We will spare no efforts to conduct thorough searches for trapped people, provide medical care, offer essential relief, and ensure the basic needs of affected residents.

AMNA NAWAZ: Chinese state TV says that more than 1,000 homes were damaged in the remote region and nearly 200 people were injured on the Chinese side of the border, in addition to those killed.

In Florida, authorities say that two bodies were found dead in the landing gear compartment of a JetBlue aircraft.

The airline says they were discovered last night during routine postflight maintenance at Fort Lauderdale Airport following a flight from New York.

Police say both individuals are believed to be men, but provided no further details.

JetBlue says it's working with authorities to understand what happened.

It comes just weeks after another body was discovered in the wheel well of a plane, that time on a United Airlines flight from Maui to Chicago.

The man accused of burning a woman to death last month in a New York City subway car pleaded not guilty to murder and arson charges today.

Sebastian Zapeta appeared for his arraignment in a Brooklyn court this morning.

A police transcript shows Zapeta told officers he has no recollection of the attack and said he was -- quote -- "very sorry" when he saw himself in the footage.

Zapeta said he had been drinking heavily throughout the night.

Prosecutors are seeking the maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.

The Biden administration announced today that unpaid medical bills will no longer appear on credit reports.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says the change will remove $49 billion from the reports of some 15 million Americans.

That's estimated to raise credit scores by an average of 20 points, which could help thousands of people secure loans and mortgages each year.

In a statement, Vice President Kamala Harris said: "No one should be denied economic opportunity because they got sick or experienced a medical emergency."

On Wall Street today, stocks slipped amid new worries about the pace of Fed rate cuts this year.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost nearly 180 points on the day.

The Nasdaq sank 375 points, or nearly 2 percent.

The S&P 500 also ended firmly in negative territory.

The late President Jimmy Carter is lying in state tonight at the U.S. Capitol following a journey from his beloved home state of Georgia.

To the tune of "Amazing Grace," Carter's casket left his presidential center in Atlanta for the journey back to Washington.

Once there, his motorcade stopped at the U.S. Navy Memorial, where it was transferred to a horse-drawn carriage.

Carter was the nation's only Naval Academy graduate to rise to commander in chief.

Then, it was on to the U.S. Capitol, where members of Congress and Vice President Kamala Harris paid their respects this afternoon.

The public can visit starting tonight.

Carter will remain there until his state funeral at Washington's National Cathedral on Thursday.

And singer-songwriter Peter Yarrow of the folk music group Peter, Paul and Mary has died.

Yarrow co-wrote the group's best-known song, "Puff, the Magic Dragon."

In the early 1960s, he joined forces and harmonies with Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers.

Together, they created hit versions of Bob Dylan's "Blowin in the Wind" and Pete Seeger's "If I Had a Hammer," among others.

A social activist on and off the stage, Yarrow was involved in the civil rights movement and campaigned against the war in Vietnam.

Peter Yarrow suffered from bladder cancer in his later years.

He was 86 years old.

Still to come on the "News Hour": the U.S. says Sudan's rebel forces have committed genocide; Minneapolis agrees to more oversight of its police department four years after George Floyd's murder; and we examine how U.S. foreign aid does and does not make an impact around the world.

GEOFF BENNETT: Facebook and Instagram's parent company, Meta, announced today it's ending third-party fact-checking on its platforms, calling the decision a return to a -- quote -- "fundamental commitment to free expression."

Meta's fact-checking program was rolled out in the wake of the 2016 election.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today the rules had become too restrictive and prone to overenforcement.

MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO, Meta: We built a lot of complex systems to moderate content.

But the problem with complex systems is, they make mistakes.

Even if they accidentally censor just 1 percent of posts, that's millions of people.

And we have reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship.

The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.

So we're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression our platforms.

GEOFF BENNETT: To discuss the implications of this shift, we're joined now by Renee Diresta, associate research professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.

Thanks for being with us.

RENEE DIRESTA, Associate Research Professor, McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University: Thanks for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: So, let's set the stage.

Why did Meta initially put this fact-checking program into place?

And was it effective?

RENEE DIRESTA: Yes.

So, it was launched in December 2016 in response to widespread criticism of fake news that had gone viral quite a bit during the 2016 presidential campaign.

And the platform faced a lot of backlash in response to that.

So the fact-checking initiative was launched as part of Facebook's efforts to kind of restore its brand, restore trust.

It partnered with the third-party fact-checking organizations that were certified by the International Fact-Checking Network.

So, it went to existing organizations that were already quite reputable.

And it worked to incorporate adding context.

They came up with a moderation framework called remove, reduce, inform.

Remove is when content is taken down.

Reduce is when it's reduced in distribution, it's not pushed out to as many people.

And the fact-checking piece was a really big part of inform, which tried to add a little bit more information to the stories that were going viral or articles that people were seeing in their news feed.

GEOFF BENNETT: Meta says it's moving to a community notes practice, similar to what we see now on Elon Musk's X, formerly Twitter.

What has the impact on that platform been?

Can community notes be as effective as fact-checking?

RENEE DIRESTA: It's a little bit mixed.

So it's very hard to know what the impact of community notes is on X.

It's hard for us on the outside as academics and things to see it because a lot of data access and transparency has been reduced.

I think that community notes is a great way to restore legitimacy to content moderation, but it doesn't necessarily actually do the job that fact-checking did in quite the same way, so better to have it as a complement.

And that's because it's often slow.

It addresses just a very small fraction of the content.

It really relies on people wanting to sit there and feeling like they should go and perform that almost, like, platform community service.

On X, oftentimes, that means that you will see it happen on highly contentious political content, where people feel like some sort of emotional response.

They want to go correct the record about their guy, that kind of thing.

And so you see efforts to get community notes on that type of political content.

But on the flip side, it's platforms asking users to do work for them, and it is not necessarily going to catch all of the kind of topical coverage that a professional journalist fact-checker might have more access to the ability to call somebody up and ask them if something is true, the ability to send somebody into a conflict zone to see if something is real.

So it should be a complementary process, but because this has become so politicized, we're seeing it broached as a replacement, rather than a complement.

GEOFF BENNETT: Let's talk more about the political dimension here, because Zuckerberg in his video statement, as we saw, he framed this policy shift as a reaction to Republicans' November victory.

And we heard him say -- he called it a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.

We know he's visited Mar-a-Lago, he's dined with president-elect Trump, he's donated to the Trump inaugural fund.

He just named Dana White, the CEO of UFC and a long time Trump ally, to Meta's board.

And here's what the president-elect, Donald Trump, said today when he was asked about this shift by Meta.

DONALD TRUMP, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. President-Elect: Honestly, I think they have come a long way, Meta, Facebook.

I think they have come a long way.

QUESTION: Do you think he's directly responding to the threats that you have made to him in the past?

DONALD TRUMP: Probably.

Yes, probably.

GEOFF BENNETT: So what are the downstream implications of the political motivation behind all this?

RENEE DIRESTA: It is probably in response to the threats that -- and we call that jawboning, and we actually should see that as bad.

We should see it as bad when the left does it and we should see it as bad when the right does it.

We should not want to see platforms who are supposed to be providing a service of value to their users, right, who are supposed to be facilitating a speech environment that protects the user, that creates a good experience for the user.

That's what the platform should be doing.

Working the referees, trying to make the people deciding the calls advantage your team, that's what's actually happening here, right?

It is capitulation to ref-working.

And what you see, if Meta had come out and said, we are launching this fantastic new community notes initiative, that would have been absolutely great.

And that would have been just a routine feature set policy shift from a large social media platform that does that constantly.

But it was the tone of the communication.

It was the specific language used in it that was very transparently saying, we are doing this in response to a shift in the political winds.

And I just don't think that we should want to see our social media platforms quite so buffeted by political winds.

GEOFF BENNETT: Renee Diresta, thanks for your insights.

We appreciate it.

RENEE DIRESTA: Thank you.

AMNA NAWAZ: The Biden administration has determined that the Rapid Support Forces rebel group in Sudan is committing genocide.

And the Treasury has announced new sanctions for the group's leader and affiliated companies.

It's the latest escalation for Sudan, which aid groups say is facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the world right now.

She can no longer hold her son, so Zaytona Yacoub clings to the clothes he left behind.

ZAYTONA YACOUB, Displaced Sudanese (through translator): I found his body stiffened.

I carried him and ran to my neighbor, and I asked her to have a look at him.

She told me: "Your son is gone."

AMNA NAWAZ: Seven-and-a-half-year-old Zaki (ph) died of starvation.

His family, like millions, displaced by years of fighting in Sudan.

Zaytona is now among the masses mourning a loved one in this war.

Today, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that a genocide took place in Sudan, singling out the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, as fueling some of the worst violence.

In a statement, Blinken said: "The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys, even infants, on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence."

Blinken accused those same militias of targeting and murdering innocent people, escaping conflict, and preventing civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies.

Ahmed Mohammed helped to dig the graves and bury the dead near Khartoum.

AHMED MOHAMMED, Sudan Resident (through translator): Most of those people died because of disease and starvation.

RSF fighters deprived us of everything.

AMNA NAWAZ: The U.S. Treasury Department levied sanctions on RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan, also known as Hemedti, plus seven RSF-owned companies based in the United Arab Emirates.

The RSF stems from the government-backed Janjaweed militias, a largely Arab force that brutally crushed an uprising of non-Arabs in the 2000s, killing hundreds of thousands of people.

In 2004, the U.S. declared that war in Darfur a genocide.

Years later, a 2020 peace agreement was quickly undone by a coup and subsequent fighting the following year, and, by 2023 a full-blown civil war, as the RSF fight the Sudanese military for control of the country.

The war has accelerated an already dire humanitarian crisis.

Millions of Sudanese are short on food, water, and electricity, and the medical system is on the verge of collapse.

The U.S. envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello, says some estimates suggest close to 150,000 people have been killed as a result of the conflict.

For more, we turn to Beth Van Schaack, U.S. ambassador at large for global criminal justice.

Welcome to the "News Hour."

BETH VAN SCHAACK, U.S.

Ambassador at Large For Global Criminal Justice: Thank you for having me.

AMNA NAWAZ: So, Secretary Blinken noted that, back in December of 2023, he concluded, both the RSF paramilitary forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces had committed war crimes.

He also said it was based on new information this designation of a genocide was made, that the RSF militias had committed genocide, and just the RSF militias.

What new information came your way today that you didn't have back in December of 2023?

BETH VAN SCHAACK: This war has been catastrophic on Sudanese civilians across Darfur and across the entire country.

And what we're seeing in Darfur in particular now at the hands of the RSF are targeted killings based upon ethnicity, statements in perpetrators' own words saying they want to eradicate particular ethnic groups from the region and entirely.

We see sexual violence rampant.

We see men and boys being killed, including infant boys.

So these are all indicia of genocide.

These are the types of things that prosecutors around the world will rely upon in order to infer that perpetrators are acting with genocidal intent.

AMNA NAWAZ: So, to be clear here, you saw statements of intent.

You saw the targeting of specific ethnic groups here.

And that's over the duration of the war or a particular time period in this war?

BETH VAN SCHAACK: Well, we're able to collect more information about these statements of intent and to see the conflict in the aggregate.

It's -- genocide is different from crimes against humanity and war crimes.

You have to show this special intent to destroy the group in whole or in part.

And that can be quite difficult when you don't have access to the ground.

AMNA NAWAZ: Well, as part of this new declaration now, there's sanctions, as we mentioned, from the Treasury Department against the RSF leader.

He's known as Hemedti.

Tell us about what the intended impact is there.

I mean, is this someone who has business investments or any kind of business deals with U.S. financial institutions?

BETH VAN SCHAACK: He has a huge network that he's able to rely upon, including a number of UAE-based, Emirati-based corporations, that are not only financing his activities, but also procuring weapons for the RSF.

And so these entities and wealthy individuals are participating in international markets, including the gold market, the oil market.

And so being able to sanction some of these individuals and entities make it much more difficult to tap into those financial networks.

And individuals who would want to transact business with those individuals or entities themselves may be subject to sanctions.

So it helps to contain outside forces that might be fueling the violence in Sudan.

AMNA NAWAZ: I understand reaching a declaration like this takes months of work and research and consideration.

As you mentioned, genocide has a very specific definition under that U.N. convention.

The bar here seemed to be, as you mentioned, the expressed intent to kill, the targeting of a specific ethnic group, the mass targeting of civilians in particular.

If that was the bar and it was met in Sudan, why has that bar not been met by your standards by Israel in Gaza?

BETH VAN SCHAACK: Well, every atrocity determination that the secretary does is based upon a consideration of the facts as we know them, the law that exists, and also the policy of the United States towards that particular conflict and what we're trying to accomplish in terms of the role that we're playing, whether it's bringing about a cease-fire, whether it's providing humanitarian assistance.

And so each individual determination stands on its own.

AMNA NAWAZ: But are you saying that some of these same things that you say were met here in Sudan, the expressed intent, which South Africa says in their accusation of Israel of genocide, they say that intent has been there by Israeli senior officials, the targeting of a specific ethnic group - - this is a specific ethnic group, Palestinians, who have been killed en masse in the last 14 months of war.

We know aid has been withheld.

All of these same things seem to have been met.

So, again, the question is, why hasn't that determination been made in Gaza?

BETH VAN SCHAACK: Well, we have disagreed with that characterization by South Africa at present, but we're still working very hard with the Israeli authorities and others to encourage them to make sure that their response to the horrific attacks of October 7 are directly in line with their humanitarian law, international humanitarian law obligations, and working very hard to try and bring about a cease-fire and to ensure adequate and much -- maximalist humanitarian assistance into Gaza and elsewhere.

AMNA NAWAZ: When you say you disagree with the South Africans, is that specifically on the intent that's been expressed?

BETH VAN SCHAACK: Yes.

It's on the basis for their claims under the Genocide Convention at present.

AMNA NAWAZ: There are a number of experts who will look and say you need to look at what Israel has done.

When 2 percent of the Palestinian population in Gaza has now been killed, that, to some, says intent.

You disagree?

BETH VAN SCHAACK: Well, that will go before the International Court of Justice, which has jurisdiction under that particular treaty.

And this will be the subject of litigation.

I'm sure that there will be multiple briefs put forward with various factual and legal predicates.

And so it will ultimately be for the judges to decide.

AMNA NAWAZ: Back to Sudan for a moment, is there any concern by you or your colleagues that the incoming administration could have a different view and possibly reverse this designation?

BETH VAN SCHAACK: Well, it's difficult to reverse a designation, because it is based upon such a strong basis of fact.

We have an enormous quantity of information that we rely upon, sources that we develop internally, but also open sources that other NGOs, the press, others have accumulated.

And so we don't -- the secretary doesn't stand up and say something constitutes a genocide lightly.

It's a very rigorous process.

And so I'm sure that the incoming administration can review the packages of material that went into this determination and will be convinced that this meets the standard of genocide.

AMNA NAWAZ: That's the U.S. ambassador at large for global criminal justice, Beth Van Schaack.

Thank you so much for your time.

BETH VAN SCHAACK: Thank you for covering this issue.

GEOFF BENNETT: Today, France's foreign minister said three French detainees being held by Iran face conditions that fall within the definition of torture.

Human rights groups have long decried how Iran treats its prisoners.

An opposition group recently said Iran executed 1,000 people last year.

That's the highest number in the country's modern history.

Nick Schifrin and "News Hour" producers spoke to protesters inside Iran, especially female demonstrators who have paid a heavy price in and out of jail, but remain undaunted.

NICK SCHIFRIN: It was a moment when hope was contagious, and Tehran students sang a song for freedom, among them, a woman we're calling Maryam to protect her identity.

MARYAM, Iranian Activist (through translator): Our women have gained more courage and boldness to demand for their rights and their right to control their bodies against the system of the Islamic Republic that is patriarchal and anti-women.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Maryam is an unlikely protester.

Her father is a retired officer in the regime's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, so her fight began at home.

MARYAM (through translator): I come from a home that is more traditional and religious.

Until last year, I was still wearing a chador in front of my parents, which is a more heavy-duty form of hijab in coverage.

But now I go to many places without even a headscarf.

It becomes very hard to live in this home.

But, anyway, I was stubborn enough.

I could survive it until this age.

NICK SCHIFRIN: She considers her work a continuation of protests that began in 2022 and became known as Woman, Life, Freedom, sparked by police who detained and are accused of beating to death Mahsa Amini over improperly wearing a headscarf, a headscarf that, in our interview from an undisclosed location, Maryam chose not to wear.

MARYAM (through translator): I'm still learning from the bravery of women all over Iran, in the small towns and villages who stood up, the women who demanded rights, and with bravery screamed, "Woman, life, freedom."

NICK SCHIFRIN: She fell in love with a fellow protester.

They were both sent to the notorious Evin prison.

When they got out and got married, the authorities came for their marriage.

MARYAM (through translator): They put pressure on my partner.

They told him his charges could be reduced by divorcing me, and pressured him, and, at the end, he chose to leave me.

I felt the pain of how deep the patriarchy goes in the skin and bones of Iranian men.

But I'm not sad about this.

In my opinion, the women of Iran every day, every second, every moment, are doing a big job and should not be hidden from the eyes of the world.

NICK SCHIFRIN: But that's exactly what she says authorities were trying to accomplish when we last spoke to her.

MARYAM (through translator): I have been receiving phone calls and death threats from the Iranian paramilitary and groups who support the government.

And in the last anonymous phone call my father received, they told my father that I was a prostitute and that, if he can't discipline me, then they will take matters into their own hands.

NICK SCHIFRIN: About three weeks after this interview, Maryam was again arrested, accused of spreading propaganda against the state and insulting officials and agents, which means she once again faces conditions that are wretched.

Iran's prisons teem with tales of torture.

MR. H, Former Prisoner (through translator): The first five days I was in prison with IRGC, I was only getting beaten, beaten and shocked, to the point, that six months after I was released I am still finding blood in my urine.

NICK SCHIFRIN: A man were calling Mr. H with bruises like these was arrested on charges similar to Maryam's.

He served in solitary confinement for nearly two months.

MR. H (through translator): On the fifth day, for almost eight hours, I had a noose around my neck and kept on the tip of my toes.

Twice, I let myself go hoping to just end it all.

But there was someone standing behind me that would return me to my stool.

The situation was such that you wished for your death.

NICK SCHIFRIN: The number of detainees facing that fate rose dramatically after 2022, more than fit in Iran's jails.

We're calling this man Arsalan.

ARSALAN, Iranian Activist (through translator): They filled at least 10 times the capacity of the prison.

They filled places like factories, where they had no beds.

They were all made to sleep next to each other on the ground just to fit them all in.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Arsalan helped lead the 2022 protests and was arrested briefly in the summer of 2023.

He says many young protesters were tortured into forced confessions.

ARSALAN (through translator): They would give them sleeping pills.

And when they were all sedated, they would then bring them into interrogations, when they weren't even aware of what they were saying or being accused of.

The people of Iran want things that people everywhere in the world want.

There are certain human standards that are the same everywhere.

And the people of Iran want the same.

We don't have any other way but to fight.

And I know that there is a price to pay, and we are willing to pay it, me and many others.

MARYAM (through translator): We all share the same story, demanding our rights, demanding control of our bodies, demanding control of our womanhood, that we build our future ourselves, that others don't decide for us.

Others don't have the right to decide our destiny.

NICK SCHIFRIN: A destiny she is trying to control, despite the regime's crackdown.

She is leading hunger strikes inside prison and continuing a fight for freedom.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Nick Schifrin.

AMNA NAWAZ: The city of Minneapolis approved a police reform agreement yesterday with the federal government 4.5 years after the murder of George Floyd.

Stephanie Sy has more now on the context around that deal and others like it.

STEPHANIE SY: Amna, the agreement, known as a consent decree, allows a court-appointed monitor to oversee changes to the Minneapolis Police Department.

Among other directives, it requires officers to intervene when they see a colleague break department rules.

If approved by a judge, it would become the 16th such settlement that the Department of Justice is now enforcing with police agencies.

But the future of federal oversight over local police is murky, as president-elect Trump gets set to return to the White House.

For more on all this, we're joined by Alex del Carmen.

He's a criminologist at Tarleton State University in Texas and has served as a consent decree monitor himself.

Alex del Carmen, thank you so much for joining the "News Hour."

So, as you know, this consent decree in Minneapolis is the result of a DOJ report from 2023 that found routine racial discrimination and unjustified use of deadly force in the city's police department.

How do consent decrees work to address these types of problems?

ALEX DEL CARMEN, Tarleton State University: Typically, DOJ would not be involved in a situation like that unless there was reason to, right?

So in this particular case, we all saw, obviously with horror, what happened to George Floyd.

And as a result of that, DOJ felt compelled to go into this police department and begin the investigation.

It's what they call a pattern or a practice investigation, which means, is this problem pervasive in the entire department?

And, if so, to what degree and what areas of policing should be looked at?

STEPHANIE SY: The ostensible goal of a consent decree is to make sure that a police department abides by the Constitution, that there is lawful police behavior.

How effective are consent decrees at doing that?

ALEX DEL CARMEN: Well, it depends on who you ask, right?

Those individuals that are opponents of the consent decree, they say that it is -- it costs too much money, that cities have to essentially pay for it, and that there's not necessarily a duration or a limit on the amount of time in which a decree expire.

Even though there is a goal that some of them should finish within a certain amount of time, seldom do we ever see that they finish within that timeline.

And others have actually even argued that crime goes up, that the morale of police officers goes way down when these take place.

Now, those that actually support the consent decree, conversely, say that consent decrees are really important because there are times that the federal government has to intervene in order for a police department to be reformed.

And we have seen that throughout the history of our nation, where, at times, the federal government has had to send federal agents in order for civil rights to be protected.

Secondly, some of them actually, those that propose consent decrees, argue that resources for police officers actually increase, because now you have a court order that mandates for some of these resources to be given to officers, that best practices are put into play, and that the police department gains in terms of credibility with the community.

So it's a mixed bag.

It depends on who you ask.

STEPHANIE SY: Is there a sense that having a consent decree can prevent the type of incident that we saw with George Floyd and with others, that a consent decree can be effective at addressing, for example, systemic racial discrimination in policing?

ALEX DEL CARMEN: So the rationale is that, yes, in fact, that they can do that, right?

So, what typically happens in these consent decrees is, once the investigation takes place, as we saw the case yesterday in Minneapolis, they enter into an agreement with the city, in this case, DOJ does, and then it goes up before the federal judge.

And, as you noted, once the federal judge approves that, then they have to select the monitor and a team of individuals that are national or international experts that actually show up at the scene, and they begin to regulate and monitor the behavior of police officers, policies, procedures, academy trainings and whatnot.

And so, in concept, what this does is, it sort of changes the culture and the level of expectation of policing that would actually have been in place up to that point.

So the idea is, is that you are going to reform the police department from within, that you are going to affect the culture and that the outcome is going to be radically different in years to come.

STEPHANIE SY: The Department of Justice in the first Trump administration did not pursue or support consent decrease at all.

Assuming that continues to be the case in a second Trump term, what are the options for communities that do feel like they are dealing with a problematic police force?

What are the other tools or options that they have?

ALEX DEL CARMEN: So what's happened since the last Trump administration is that many states throughout the United States, the legislators have actually empowered the attorney generals of those particular states to actually sue the police departments and put them under some form of a consent decree if agreed.

And so what that means is that now you have roughly over 20 states in the U.S. that have attorney generals that have the legislative given power for them to sue local police agencies and enter into an agreement, if the agreement actually is substantiated in the court of law.

This happened actually in Illinois, where we saw the -- during the first Trump administration, that the attorney general of the state of Illinois actually sued the Chicago Police Department, and the U.S. DOJ did not want to enter into that particular case.

In fact, they actually filed a motion against it, but yet the federal judge ruled in favor of the attorney general, and a consent decree is in place now, even though the DOJ is not the plaintiff in this particular case.

I think we're going to see a little bit more of that in the next four years, as it is clear to me that the next administration is going to simply not engage in the practice of consent decrees across the U.S. STEPHANIE SY: Alex del Carmen, a criminologist at Tarleton State University in Texas, thanks so much for joining us with your insights.

ALEX DEL CARMEN: Thanks for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: The U.S. has long been one of the world's largest donors of foreign aid, but, in recent years, its effectiveness has been called into question by a chorus of critics, who say the impact of assistance programs falls well short of their intended goals.

They blame what some have called the aid industrial complex.

Fred de Sam Lazaro begins the first of three reports now.

It's part of his series Agents for Change.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It is the softer side of American foreign policy and power, seen in the world's most distressed places, its message from the American people on every bag of grain, every can of cooking oil, on posters in remote health centers.

And at barely 1 percent of the federal budget, it's a good bargain for the American taxpayer, says the head the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, the primary conduit for foreign aid.

SAMANTHA POWER, USAID Administrator: Americans have so much to be proud of.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: At this Senate hearing, Administrator Samantha Power cited a program that has provided antiretroviral drugs to HIV patients for two decades.

SAMANTHA POWER: PEPFAR, George W. Bush's tremendous creation, 17 million people alive today, lives saved because of the generosity of the taxpayer.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: But overseas assistance programs have long come under fire from some conservatives, like Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, who see them as wasteful and misplaced.

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): We should be conserving our resources, conserving them for our country.

There is not a great deal of evidence that the money that we launder throughout the world really over time has been of benefit to us.

There's a great deal of evidence that much of it has been stolen.

We mentioned corruption.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The criticism no longer comes just from some Republicans, but increasingly from those who strongly favor foreign aid.

They say it helps buy goodwill, helps America's standing vis-a-vis Russia or China, keeps infectious diseases at bay, and helps turn dependent countries into trading partners.

At least, it's supposed to do that.

But, these critics say, only a small portion of aid dollars are actually spent in the countries targeted for help.

WALTER KERR, Co-Executive Director, Unlock Aid: It's actually less than 10 percent of our foreign assistance dollars flowing through USAID is actually reaching those communities.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Walter Kerr is with a group called Unlock Aid, formed in 2021 to draw attention to a system in which a relative handful of private companies called implementing partners are awarded most contracts by USAID.

WALTER KERR: One of the best things that government can do is to move away from measuring success in terms of outputs, how much money do we spend on a particular problem, and moving toward an orientation of results.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: A lot of people will be shocked to hear that that's not the case.

WALTER KERR: Well, it's true.

About 98 percent of USAID grants pay for activities and not results.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: And the results are not flattering, according to the agency's own inspector general's office, which studied USAID awards for three years, 2017 to 2019.

WALTER KERR: Forty-three percent of them failed to achieve about half of the intended results.

But in spite of that, they still got paid in full almost every time and sometimes more.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: He says one reason for these poor results is that implementer companies rarely work with the communities targeted for help or with local aid groups.

WALTER KERR: One study found that, when working with a local partner, as opposed to an international aid contractor, you could find savings upwards of 32 percent alone.

And that's a conservative estimate.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: And one reason that doesn't happen is compliance with strict guidelines written by Congress.

Here's Idaho Republican Senator Jim Risch.

SEN. JAMES RISCH (R-ID): Corruption with U.S. dollars will not be tolerated, and I'm glad to see detailed information that gives me confidence that our money is being used appropriately.

JUSTIN RICHMOND, Founder, IMPL.

Project: They went to the groups that can absolutely deliver on a contract every time, so that no one in this mix is accused of fraud, waste or abuse.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: But it's compliance.

It's not delivering results that improve people's lives.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: And that's the quiet part that no one wants to say out loud.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Justin Richmond is an army veteran who later worked with USAID in Afghanistan.

In 2015, he founded a nonprofit that collects and analyzes data on conditions in conflict-torn areas, working with local community leaders to learn what they see as the most pressing needs and to learn the root causes of the conflict or suffering.

He says he's found few takers among aid companies JUSTIN RICHMOND: The for-profits aren't properly subcontracting down to the experts.

They're keeping everything in-house, because, again, no one is checking on them.

No one is trying to have impact.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Richmond told me he once shared findings gathered in the conflict-ridden Sahel region of West Africa with the largest aid implementing company, Chemonics, data that he said would be useful to improve the outcome of development projects.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: She looked at it and at the end said: "This is phenomenal work.

You should really be proud, especially where you collected it.

Incredible.

But you got to tell me, why would we ever do this?"

I was speechless.

And she said to me: "If USAID isn't paying us to do that, we're not going to do that."

The client didn't even ask for it.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: We invited Chemonics to comment.

They declined, as did the main trade group of aid implementing companies.

SAMANTHA POWER: Moving forward, we are going to provide at least a quarter of all our funds directly to local partners over the course of the next five -- next four years.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: At the time Administrator Power made that pledge in 2021, local partners got just about 7 percent of award dollars.

The agency has moved to simplify the grant process, also requiring some new contracts to phase in locally-led control.

That percentage has since hovered near 10 percent, still well short of the target.

Power declined our request for an interview, as did Mark Green, her predecessor from the first Trump administration.

J. BRIAN ATWOOD, Former USAID Administrator: It's not easy.

It takes time.

Four years isn't enough time.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Brian Atwood was USAID administrator during the Clinton administration.

He traces some of the agency's current problems back to his tenure at the end of the Cold War.

J. BRIAN ATWOOD: People said they wanted a peace dividend.

The peace dividend didn't come out of the Defense Department.

It came out of USAID.

And so I lost 10 percent of our employees.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: At the same time, the agency added all of Europe's former Eastern Bloc nations to its workload, which continued to grow, he says.

J. BRIAN ATWOOD: When I was AID administrator, the overall budget was around $12 billion.

It's now more like $38 billion.

And we haven't seen an equal increase in the amount of staffing, what they call operations expenses.

And so the consequence was, they had to push everything out the door to larger organizations.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: That outsourcing has become the norm today, Atwood says, and it's easier to manage fewer, and, therefore, larger grants with companies familiar with the process.

All this has had the effect of shutting out a lot of innovation that could improve people's lives, says Unlock Aid's Walter Kerr.

WALTER KERR: You can look at some of the amazing organizations, entrepreneurs that are already active in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and deliberately identify them and begin to scale up their impact.

They're out there.

GREGORY ROCKSON, Founder, mPharma: We are able to trace every single drug in this warehouse right to the patient's home.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: One example he cites is mPharma, a chain of pharmacy-based clinics across Africa.

Founder Gregory Rockson says the big USAID contractors are not focused on delivering results, but rather on writing grants and glossy reports.

GREGORY ROCKSON: The goal was never to eradicate the problem, it was to create the appearance of eradicating that problem.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: That keeps the spigot of foreign assistance open, he says, but the dollars flowing mostly between the U.S. government and companies, most based in Washington, D.C.

In following reports, we look at some Africa-based start-ups that have won praise for delivering aid.

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

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

AMNA NAWAZ: A globally renowned artist who uses elements of the natural world to make us see that world in new ways.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown spoke with artist Olafur Eliasson in Los Angeles our arts and culture series, Canvas.

JEFFREY BROWN: For nearly six months in 2003, the sun set inside a giant hall in London's Tate Modern museum, an artificial effect creating a strange otherworld, made from hundreds of lamps, a mirrored ceiling and a mist machine.

Called The Weather Project, this art installation was a sensation, attracting some two million visitors.

It's creator, artist Olafur Eliasson.

OLAFUR ELIASSON, Artist: My art is with the sort of what does it mean to see?

What does it mean to experience?

Can I see my own seeing?

You know, maybe it's not what I am looking at, but maybe its the looking itself.

Wow.

JEFFREY BROWN: Wow.

Can I see my own seeing?

OLAFUR ELIASSON: Yes.

Well, what is imagination?

Are we good at imagining things?

JEFFREY BROWN: Years later, Eliasson is still concocting forms and environments and still asking himself and us such questions.

We met this fall in Los Angeles, where a survey of his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art-Geffen is part of the Southern California-wide art event PST ART: Art & Science Collide.

He's titled this exhibition OPEN.

OLAFUR ELIASSON: And thought as a title, that's not bad -- if you see a banner somewhere that says "LA MOCA: OPEN.

JEFFREY BROWN: You like that because it means, come in?

OLAFUR ELIASSON: There's something about democratizing the accessibility to culture and to art, you know, to say you are open, come and see the exhibition, we are open.

There's also the openness, of course, of the visitor.

You know, are you open?

JEFFREY BROWN: Now 57, Eliasson grew up in Iceland and Denmark and has long been based in Berlin, where he works with a large team, including craftspeople, architects, archivists and researchers.

His often large-scale artworks are regularly shown in museums throughout the world, as well as in open landscapes, as here in Qatar in 2023 in a piece titled The Curious Desert, and in public spaces, including in 2008, a series of waterfalls in New York City.

These are works that capture the eye, for sure, but also, he hopes, our minds and emotions, especially when it comes to thinking about the most important phenomenon in his life as an artist, climate change.

OLAFUR ELIASSON: So I'm interested in climate change.

I'm in the environment, in nature, very interested in how do humans experience nature.

In Iceland, I saw Arctic nature, which is very fragile.

I saw that firsthand.

And with a little bit of change in temperature, it completely changed it.

So when I heard about, like, what is that, 30 years ago, when I first started to hear about climate change and global warming, I said, oh, I know that they -- I know what they're talking about.

And it so happened that my works dealt with the perception of nature and that evidently nowadays is the perception of climate change.

JEFFREY BROWN: Sometimes head on.

He worked with geologist Minik Rosing to bring free-floating centuries-old pieces of icebergs from a Greenland fjord to public squares in Europe, an intervention in urban life full of wonder and beauty, but also a warning as the ice melted over time.

In Los Angeles, he's exhibiting a different version of ice work, a series created by melting ice mixed with different colored paints.

OLAFUR ELIASSON: It's glacier ice, 20,000 years old glacier ice put there, and then some ink or some paint, and then it lays there for about a day.

So what each painting is, is a day of melting ice, 20,000 years gone in 10 hours.

JEFFREY BROWN: A serious message mixed with some humor for the artist himself.

OLAFUR ELIASSON: I love asking ice blocks to paint for me.

It's like, oh, do you want to paint together?

Yes, OK, you paint and I go and eat.

JEFFREY BROWN: The fun house aspect of Eliasson's work is on display here in large kaleidoscopes, playing with optics and light, but also in this work with trash that floats above us, the seas, space, maybe our daily lives.

OLAFUR ELIASSON: Maybe I want people to come in and more embrace this notion of wondering, right?

This is a wonder.

Imagine to make a wonder with trash.

I like that idea.

JEFFREY BROWN: Also crucial for him, our participation as what he calls co-producers of his work, making them come alive, bringing our own meanings and perceptions.

It goes back to his idea of being open to art and different ways of seeing the world.

OLAFUR ELIASSON: If we can expand a little bit the idea of how much can we actually see, what's the limits of my perceiving of the world, then maybe what seems to be very abstract is a little bit less abstract, because I kind of understand, if I open up my mind, if I challenge my way of seeing things, I can see more.

JEFFREY BROWN: Olafur Eliasson's exhibition OPEN remains on view until next July.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Jeffrey Brown at MOCA Geffen in Los Angeles.

AMNA NAWAZ: Well, this Thursday, President Jimmy Carter will be honored with a funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral.

GEOFF BENNETT: And we will be here with live coverage.

NARRATOR: President Jimmy Carter is being remembered for what he accomplished as president, but also for what he achieved following his presidency.

JOE BIDEN, President of the United States: He was a statesman and a humanitarian.

NARRATOR: Many looked up to him.

WOMAN: Jimmy Carter has always been a hero of mine.

WOMAN: He was just a good man, a decent man.

MAN: He was a great humanitarian.

He set the example for all of us.

NARRATOR: A PBS News Special, "Remembering Jimmy Carter," Thursday, January 9, at 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

GEOFF BENNETT: We hope you'll join us.

And that is the "News Hour" for tonight.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

AMNA NAWAZ: And I'm Amna Nawaz.

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