AMNA NAWAZ: Good evening.
I'm Amna Nawaz.
GEOFF BENNETT: And I'm Geoff Bennett.
On the "News Hour" tonight: The leader of Hezbollah says Israel crossed a red line and vows retribution for the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies that killed some of its members.
AMNA NAWAZ: The Teamsters labor union decides not to endorse a presidential candidate for the first time in decades.
The head of the union tells us why.
GEOFF BENNETT: And political and environmental concerns clash in Papua New Guinea, where the controversial practice of deep-sea mining is moving forward, without the knowledge or oversight of some key government stakeholders.
GOV.
ALLAN BIRD, East Sepiek, Papua New Guinea: We don't have any offshore operations.
WILLEM MARX: Allan, we have just been on a vessel in the Bismarck Sea that is pulling up the ocean floor.
GOV.
ALLAN BIRD, East Sepiek, Papua New Guinea: Seriously?
WILLEM MARX: How do you feel about that?
GOV.
ALLAN BIRD: Shocked.
I had no idea.
(BREAK) GEOFF BENNETT: Welcome to the "News Hour."
The leader of Lebanese Hezbollah, labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S., told his followers today that they would exact revenge on Israel for two days of attacks that killed dozens and wounded thousands.
AMNA NAWAZ: In Beirut, pagers and walkie-talkies exploded on Tuesday and Wednesday, targeting members of Hezbollah, but also injuring others.
The "News Hour" is told that Israeli officials told their U.S. counterparts they planted the explosives.
And, as Nick Schifrin tells us tonight, they're bracing for retaliation.
And a warning: Some images in this story are disturbing.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Today in Beirut, Hezbollah buried its fighters and vowed vengeance.
And Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah promised to continue attacking Israel, so long as Israel continues attacking Hamas in Gaza.
HASSAN NASRALLAH, Hezbollah Leader (through translator): This will be confronted with a severe reckoning and just retribution in expected and unexpected ways.
I will not talk about a time, form, place or date.
NICK SCHIFRIN: But as he spoke, Israeli jets flew over downtown Beirut, and Nasrallah admitted that two days of unprecedented attacks on Hezbollah walkie-talkies and pagers had dealt the terrorist group a serious blow and compromised its security.
HASSAN NASRALLAH (through translator): Tuesday and Wednesday were heavy and bloody days for us.
They were also a big test.
The important thing is not to let the blow knock you down, no matter how big and strong it is.
NICK SCHIFRIN: U.S. officials tell "PBS News Hour" Israel hopes that blow to Hezbollah's communication network convinces the group to pursue diplomacy.
But there was no sign of that today.
In Israel, soldiers rushed their injured to the hospital after Hezbollah attacks that also killed sergeant Tomer Keren and Reserve Major Nael Fwarsy.
And Israel's military struck more than 30 Hezbollah sites with hundreds of rocket launchers, part of its shift away from Gaza, said Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.
YOAV GALLANT, Israeli Defense Minister (through translator): In the new phase of the war, there are significant opportunities, but also significant risks.
Hezbollah feels that it is being persecuted, and the sequence of military actions will continue.
NICK SCHIFRIN: U.S. defense officials say Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin postponed his upcoming trip to Israel as the White House once again urged restraint.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, White House Press Secretary: We are concerned about the tension and afraid and concerned about potential escalation.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Tensions in the occupied West Bank continue to escalate, as, today, Israel raided the northern town of Qabatiya, where smoke billowed from residential buildings and a school was surrounded.
Palestinian media reported three Palestinians were killed and a body was seen lying on the roof of one building.
Another video shows Israeli soldiers dragging, kicking and pushing two bodies off a rooftop.
The Israeli military said the raids targeted Iranian-backed militants.
For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Nick Schifrin.
GEOFF BENNETT: Turning now to the presidential election, both candidates were on the trail tonight, firing up their supporters, with Vice President Kamala Harris in Michigan and former President Trump in Washington.
AMNA NAWAZ: But we start our coverage with remarks from the current president earlier today.
While touting his economic record in Washington today, President Biden also gave a brief, but clear statement of support for Vice President Harris.
JOE BIDEN, President of the United States: And there's not a single damn job a woman can't do that a man can do, including being president of the United States of America.
AMNA NAWAZ: And warned of the economic ramifications of a second Trump presidency.
JOE BIDEN: It's clear, especially under my predecessor, that trickle-down economics failed.
And he's promising it again, trickle-down economics.
But it will fail again.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Good morning, everybody.
AMNA NAWAZ: Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats were fired up against the former president.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER: This is the Trump plan.
AMNA NAWAZ: Several members gathered to rail against the Project 2025 agenda crafted by Trump allies.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER: It would raise taxes, hurt American workers, compromise border security, threaten our democracy, and make America less safe.
AMNA NAWAZ: The former president has distanced himself from the conservative initiative.
DONALD TRUMP, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: A very big hello to New York.
AMNA NAWAZ: Last night, Trump addressed a packed arena on Long Island.
DONALD TRUMP: It hasn't been done in many decades.
It hasn't been done for a long time.
But we are going to win New York.
AMNA NAWAZ: New York is a Democratic stronghold in presidential elections and is not seen as within Trump's reach.
But he attempted to appeal to Long Island's suburban swing voters with fiery messaging on crime and immigration.
DONALD TRUMP: With crime at record levels, with terrorists and criminals pouring in, and with inflation eating your hearts out, vote for Donald Trump.
What the hell do you have to lose?
What do you have to lose?
AMNA NAWAZ: That included repeating lies about the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
DONALD TRUMP: We're getting them out of our country.
They came in illegally.
They're destroying our country.
We're getting them out.
They're going to be brought back to the country from which they came.
AMNA NAWAZ: According to the city of Springfield, its Haitian residents entered the country legally and are filling jobs and industries that need workers.
Tonight, the former president is in Washington addressing a summit for Israeli Americans.
Meanwhile, Vice President Harris is campaigning with Oprah Winfrey in battleground, Michigan.
It's the home of the National Uncommitted Movement, which mobilized hundreds of thousands of uncommitted votes during the Democratic primaries to protest Joe Biden over his policies in Gaza.
Today, uncommitted leaders announced that the movement will not be endorsing Harris.
ABBAS ALAWIEH, Uncommitted National Movement: Vice President Harris is unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear statement in support of upholding existing U.S. and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her.
AMNA NAWAZ: The group also urged its members not to vote for Trump.
It remains unclear what effect the non-endorsement will have come November.
GEOFF BENNETT: We start today's other headlines with the impact of the Federal Reserve's interest rate cut.
President Biden said today he expects rates to come down even further.
That's as the state of the economy, he argued, has reached a turning point during his presidency.
During that speech to the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., today, the president also said he considers the Fed's cut a vindication of his economic policies, but added that there's more work to be done.
JOE BIDEN, President of the United States: So, let's be clear.
The Fed's low interest rates isn't a declaration of victory.
It's a declaration of progress.
It's a signal we have entered a new phase of our economy and our recovery.
GEOFF BENNETT: Investors on Wall Street celebrated the Fed rate cut today with stocks surging to new highs.
The Dow Jones industrial average jumped more than 500 points to close above 42000 for the first time ever.
The Nasdaq surged 440 points.
The S&P 500 also spiked to a new closing high.
Earlier in the day, we also got a mixed batch of new economic data, positive news from the job market, but troubles in the housing sector.
The numbers of Americans filing for initial unemployment benefits fell by 12,000 last week compared to the week before.
Overall, new claims hit a four-month low, which signals ongoing strength in the labor market.
Separately, existing home sales dropped 2.5 percent in August to their lowest level in 10 months as home prices remain near record highs.
The Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina says he won't quit the race despite a shocking report about comments he allegedly made on a pornographic Web site more than a decade ago.
According to CNN, Mark Robinson called himself a Black Nazi on a message board back in 2010.
He also voiced support for bringing back slavery and made comments that were -- quote -- " gratuitously sexual and lewd in nature" between 2008 and 2012.
Before CNN's publication, Robinson posted a video to social media saying the words were not his and that he is, in his words, staying in this race.
Robinson currently serves as lieutenant governor of North Carolina, a state fiercely contested by both presidential candidates.
The death toll from the devastating flooding across Central Europe has risen to 24 across the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, and Austria.
And heavy rains and flooding have now moved to Northern Italy.
More than 1,000 people were evacuated.
Trains were suspended and schools were shut across the affected areas.
Italian officials urged residents to be patient during the recovery.
NELLO MUSUMECI, Italian Minister of Civil Protection (through translator): Let's hope the bad weather will mitigate in the next few hours.
But we can't have big expectations because it's such a fragile and vulnerable territory.
It is always exposed to natural attacks.
GEOFF BENNETT: The same region was also hit by rain and mudslides last year, which killed 17 people and caused roughly $9 billion worth of damage.
A Hong Kong court handed down the first two sentences under a new national security law.
One man was given 14 months in prison for wearing a shirt with a protest slogan, and another got 10 months for writing pro-independence messages on bus seats.
The offending T-shirt had direct links to the anti-government protests that swept the city back in 2019.
The new law took effect in March and imposes harsher punishments for seditious acts.
Critics say it limits freedom of expression.
And still to come on the "News Hour": why presidential candidates' proposals to stop taxing tips might not benefit workers as much as they seem; the politics behind the controversial effort to mine the ocean floor; and attorney and activist Maya Wiley discusses her long career in a new memoir.
AMNA NAWAZ: With the race for the White House as close as ever, the election could come down to a small number of undecided voters.
But in a hyperpartisan political climate, who are those people that are still unsure?
NPR's Domenico Montanaro spoke to a handful of undecided voters who have responded to our regular PBS News/NPR/Marist poll.
He's here to walk us through what they're thinking.
Good to see you.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, Political Editor, NPR: Good to see you too.
AMNA NAWAZ: So, when we talk about undecideds, how many people are we -- how big is this bloc?
And how are they still undecided?
DOMENICO MONTANARO: It is a tiny slice of people.
We're talking in recent years anywhere from 6 percent who are genuinely persuadable to maybe the low teens, right?
And really in this election, given how people know so much about Donald Trump, in particular, and when President Biden was running, it was a really, really small number of people.
I mean, in our poll, it was like 3 percent of people who were undecided.
And then when Harris got in, we saw a dip in that, and there were more people who moved to be undecided.
But still it was only about 9 percent of people.
But immediately after that as soon as they started to see a little bit more about Kamala Harris, people started to make up their minds.
AMNA NAWAZ: So in these big election events, post-debate, for example, where are they now and what should we take away from the shifts you're laying out?
DOMENICO MONTANARO: Well, so in the NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, we had 46 people over the last several months who said that they were undecided.
And what I did was reach out to 10 of them and we had five men, five women.
And after the debate -- this was all-post debate - - four of them said that they're now leaning toward Kamala Harris or that they're voting for her.
Two of them said that they were leaning toward Trump.
Four of them are undecided still and three of them very well might not vote at all.
What I found really interesting about this when I started to look at it, clear takeaways, two things.
One, the debate was really, really important for Kamala Harris, because there were a lot of people who just didn't know enough about her, needed some reassurance maybe, and then starting to make their decisions.
The other big takeaway is a gender divide is very, very real.
All four of the people who said that they're going to now be voting for Harris or leaning toward her or women.
AMNA NAWAZ: You spoke to one woman in Arkansas who spoke to this, right?
Tell us about her.
DOMENICO MONTANARO: Yes, I talked to Jene Proffitt of -- from Arkansas.
And she was very interesting.
She said: "I feel that Trump's disrespect for women is not befitting a president.
He is not someone I want my girls to look up to as a role model."
She's 45 years old.
She's a mother of five.
She did not vote in the 2020 election.
She did vote for Donald Trump in 2016.
I asked her if she's going to vote this time, and she said that she has made up her mind to vote for Kamala Harris because of how Trump talks about women.
I asked her, but you didn't vote last time.
How are you feeling about this election?
She said, I really want my girls to see that this is a right and that she feels very strongly about the fact that this is a right that she needs to exercise.
AMNA NAWAZ: Interesting here you're seeing gender plays a role here, but what are some of the other issues that you think are going to impact these undecided votes?
DOMENICO MONTANARO: Yes, I would say five of the people who I talked to just are not going to vote for Kamala Harris, but they have real hangups about Donald Trump.
And that's why I think some of them just may not vote at all.
One person that I talked to, Brady from Wisconsin, he's 30 years old, and he mentioned as did a lot of these folks about prices and immigration.
He talked mostly about prices.
He said: "I have probably a middle-class income for my family and it doesn't feel like it's getting any easier even as my wife and I have advanced in our careers."
So you're 30 years old, coming of age, you're trying to buy groceries, you're trying to get a mortgage, we know interest rates have been higher, and it's a real concern for people like Brady.
Heard from another person, John in Miami, in Florida, who said that he also just feels like it's just too much.
He's somebody who voted for Obama twice, says he worked the phones for him, but this time around he's just not sure what he's going to do because -- I think when you look at this, a little bit is -- and I don't know how much of it's gender, OK, and I think that's something to talk about.
But I also think that it's a little bit about incumbency.
In 2008, obviously, the economy wasn't doing very well.
George W. Bush was the president.
He was a Republican, so these guys went with the Democrat in Obama.
And this time around, you have Joe Biden who's in the White House, and even though Kamala Harris has really made the case for being a change agent, she's still tied to the administration.
AMNA NAWAZ: So the economy, immigration are clearly issues.
What about this key issue for Democrats we hear about, abortion rights?
Did you talk to anyone for whom that's a big issue?
DOMENICO MONTANARO: Well, one thing that we have seen in our polling is that abortion rights and Kamala Harris being trusted on abortion rights is by a wider margin than any of the other issues that Donald Trump has advantages on.
And this is definitely a key issue for multiple women that I talked to, including Dr. Linda Remensnyder from Illinois.
She said: "I watched her.
I listened to her.
I'm a woman, and women's knees are first, even before party."
She put the blame squarely on Donald Trump for the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
I talked to another voter in Idaho, a woman who said a lot of her family are MAGA, she said, but she said that she has never voted for Donald Trump.
She was very much a never-Trump Republican, never bought what Trump was trying to sell, even though she's a Republican.
Dr. Remensnyder in Illinois, also a Republican,and she said she was very much hoping Nikki Haley would run.
She was a little -- she didn't really feel like Kamala Harris answered all the questions in the debate, but she feels that she's much more credible than Joe Biden.
She had real concerns.
She's a retired doctor.
She felt like Joe Biden couldn't handle the job as president anymore, said Kamala Harris is a litigator.
She makes the case.
So she thinks that she can do the job.
AMNA NAWAZ: Fascinating look at a small, potentially significant slice of the electorate.
DOMENICO MONTANARO: Potentially the deciders, yes.
AMNA NAWAZ: NPR's Domenico Montanaro, always good to see you.
Thank you.
DOMENICO MONTANARO: You too.
Thank you.
GEOFF BENNETT: One of the nation's largest unions, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, says it won't make an endorsement in the 2024 presidential election, choosing not to throw the union's support behind either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump.
It's the first time the union has skipped an endorsement in a presidential race since 1996, having supported the Democratic nominee in each election since.
We're joined now by Teamsters general president Sean O'Brien.
Thanks for coming in.
We appreciate it.
SEAN O'BRIEN, General President, Teamsters: Thank you very much, sir.
GEOFF BENNETT: So you said one of the reasons why the Teamsters are withholding an endorsement is because neither candidate was able to make serious commitments to your union.
There are Democrats who will look at what the Biden/Harris administration has already done, including directing a $36 billion bailout to rescue union pension plans, Teamsters' pension plans from insolvency, and wonder, what more of a commitment do you need?
SEAN O'BRIEN: Well, listen, that's a great point.
President Biden and his administration did fix 300 pension funds that were critically in declining and on the verge of insolvency.
But there's a backstory to all this.
In 1980, in the Teamsters union, we had 400,000 Teamster truck drivers in the freight division.
Democratic legislation led by Senator Ted Kennedy and signed off by Joe Biden in 1980 passed trucking deregulation.
And we lost 400,000 jobs.
Companies went bankrupt.
And that caused a huge strain on pension funds that just kept -- each year, it kept getting worse and worse.
And, yes, they fixed the problem, but that problem was created by the people that fixed the problem, and they don't want to recognize that.
And I appreciate it.
My members appreciate the pension being fixed.
But I always tell people, I broke my mother's window playing street hockey in 1980, and for 40 years she's been asking me to fix it.
I finally fix it.
Should I look for praise for fixing a problem that I helped create?
GEOFF BENNETT: You were invited to address the Republican National Convention back in July, the first time a Teamsters leader had ever done so.
Why are you withholding an endorsement from President Trump?
SEAN O'BRIEN: I went to the RNC not with an agenda other than to -- an endorsement.
I went there to talk about American workers, talk about our struggles, talk about what both parties need to do to win back the support of American workers and how valuable American workers are.
That -- speaking out at the Republican National Convention, we asked both the Democratic National Convention and the RNC at the same time, and we only heard back from the RNC.
I would have gave the same speech at the DNC had we been given the opportunity.
GEOFF BENNETT: You were pretty critical of Donald Trump after that interview he did with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, where Mr. Trump advocated for firing striking employees.
Was that a breaking point for you?
SEAN O'BRIEN: It certainly didn't help.
Look, I will never, ever allow people to fire workers for exercising their right to strike or organize, and I will call balls and strikes like I have done all along.
And former President Trump was out of line with his comments, and I expressed my feelings to him, but it resonated with our members, and that was one of the reasons that the international couldn't endorse President Trump either, amongst other reasons.
We didn't get a commitment on vetoing national right-to-work.
And, conversely, with Kamala Harris, we didn't get a commitment on protecting our members' right to strike under the Railway Labor Act.
So there were a lot of mitigating factors on why we didn't endorse nationally.
And, look, by the polling alone that we did, our members sent a clear message to the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
We are getting attacked from the far left because we didn't make an endorsement, and the far right is not happy that we are working with some Republicans to try and get some things done.
So this is an opportunity for both parties, Democrats to reestablish their commitment and look back and say, something must be broken.
Instead of looking to blame the leaders or the members, they should look in the mirror and say, how do we fix this?
We were the working people party at one time.
And it's an opportunity for Republicans, who claim they want to be the working people's party, it's an opportunity for them to prove it, support a version of the PRO Act, support bankruptcy reform, support issues that actually affect working people.
And our system is broken, and it needs to be fixed.
And the name-calling, the finger-pointing, it's got to end.
GEOFF BENNETT: Following the national Teamsters' non-endorsement, local Teamsters unions, as you well know, in the key battleground states of Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, announced their support for Harris, and there are nearly a dozen Teamsters locals and the Teamsters' national Black Caucus all supporting Harris.
Do you risk looking out of step with the union rank and file?
SEAN O'BRIEN: No, I definitely don't look out of step, because, remember, we represent Democrats, Republicans, and independents.
And, clearly, half of our membership Democrats and half are Republicans and some are independents as well.
So we have got to represent everybody equally.
The local unions, they're autonomous.
We're not a top-down organization.
We're a bottom-up organization.
Our members, the leaders, have the ability to put boots on the ground and support the candidates that they want to support.
The international, we just couldn't make that decision.
And we have a very, very qualified general executive board of leaders around the country, and the non-endorsement was overwhelmingly supported.
GEOFF BENNETT: Donald Trump is claiming this as a win.
Here's what he told supporters at a rally last night in New York.
DONALD TRUMP, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: Earlier today, I was honored to receive the endorsement of the rank-and-file membership of the Teamsters.
I love the Teamsters.
But this hasn't happened in so many decades.
We won the overwhelming majority of the local chapters and the members, and as a result, the national organization has refused to endorse the Democrat candidate for the first time in many, many decades.
GEOFF BENNETT: So is what he said, is that accurate?
SEAN O'BRIEN: No, we released polling data that showed that he was ahead in the poll.
It was an opinion of the members that actually took the time to poll.
It wasn't an official endorsement of the membership.
But the polling would suggest that people are favorable in voting for Trump, just as well as they may be favorable for voting for Vice President Harris.
GEOFF BENNETT: The Harris campaign has picked up the endorsement and the support of other unions, the United Auto Workers, the AFL-CIO, United Steelworkers.
What do you say to those who make the case that the Teamsters, in not endorsing at all, are trying to play both sides, trying to have it both ways?
SEAN O'BRIEN: We're certainly not trying to play both sides.
Look, those unions have their own policies, procedures.
Most of those unions -- you mentioned the AFL-CIO.
They jumped out in January for President Biden, some a little bit later in March.
We have a system.
We did something that we have never done before by polling our members.
We did three major polls.
We did a straw poll.
We did a Q.R.
polling of 1.3 of our million members, electronic poll, and then we also did research-based polling.
And the straw poll, narrowly, President Biden won.
And the other two polls that were participated by our rank-and-file members showed that President Trump, former President Trump, was leading in those polls significantly.
GEOFF BENNETT: Teamsters general president Sean O'Brien, thanks again for your time this evening.
SEAN O'BRIEN: Thank you very much, sir.
I appreciate you.
AMNA NAWAZ: Tax cuts and credits have been a popular theme during this campaign.
Former President Trump's latest proposal is ending a cap on the federal deduction taxpayers get for paying state and local taxes, a cap he implemented as president and a change that could cost more than a trillion dollars over a decade.
Both candidates have also proposed several tax breaks and have not always explained how to pay for them.
That's true of one idea Trump and Vice President Harris support, no taxes on tips.
Economics correspondent Paul Solman looked at what's behind that proposal and some concerns around it.
PAUL SOLMAN: Prince Chiketah (ph), bartender at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C., 80 percent to 90 percent of his income from tips.
Suppose they were no longer taxed?
PRINCE CHIKETAH, Bartender: That would be great.
PAUL SOLMAN: No taxes on tips.
It was a proposal first floated by former President Trump in June.
DONALD TRUMP, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: When I get to office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips.
PAUL SOLMAN: Vice President Harris adopted the idea in August.
KAMALA HARRIS, Vice President of the United States (D) and U.S. Presidential Candidate: When I am president, we will continue our fight for working families of America, including to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.
PAUL SOLMAN: On Capitol Hill, don't-tax-tips bills were introduced this summer, with bipartisan support.
What's the average tip you get?
PRINCE CHIKETAH: Anywhere between $15 and $20.
PAUL SOLMAN: For most Americans, a standard tip at a sit-down restaurant is 15 percent or less.
Who are the big tippers?
MAN: Families, parents who have kids, they tip really well.
JORDAN COLE-SANNI, Server: Most people tip me 20 percent, which is awesome.
PAUL SOLMAN: Server Jordan Cole-Sanni says tips account for 80 percent or more of her income.
What would your reaction be if tips were no longer taxed?
JORDAN COLE-SANNI: I think every penny counts.
So I think making more and not being taxed and being able to keep all the money that you work really, really hard for is always a positive.
PAUL SOLMAN: And what do the tippers themselves think?
MAN: Them being able to keep that amount and not having to pay later is something that I do stand with.
PAUL SOLMAN: Will that change your behavior?
MAN: It won't.
I'm happy to hear that they will take more of it.
PAUL SOLMAN: So, a policy with bipartisan support that benefits the low-wage worker.
What's not to like?
As I discovered, plenty.
ERNIE TEDESCHI, The Budget Lab, Yale University: The issue is that there aren't a lot of tipped workers in America.
PAUL SOLMAN: According to economist Ernie Tedeschi, tipped work accounts for just 2.5 percent of all employment.
ERNIE TEDESCHI: Even among low-wage workers, it's only 5 percent of the lowest-wage workers that are tipped workers.
PAUL SOLMAN: And more than a third of the lowest-wage workers don't have to pay any federal income tax, says policy analyst Erica York.
ERICA YORK, Tax Foundation: These are workers who already have a very low income tax burden, if they owe taxes at all.
They may not make enough to owe taxes.
If they do, they face the lowest marginal tax rates.
They qualify for tax credits that can offset some or all of that tax liability.
So, providing an exemption like this may not even be the best form of relief.
PAUL SOLMAN: But whereas the very lowest-wage workers wouldn't benefit much or at all, says Ernie Tedeschi, employers would.
ERNIE TEDESCHI: It shifts the burden of compensation away from the wage side, which the employers have to pay, to the tip side, which the customer pays.
PAUL SOLMAN: So if tips were tax-free: ERNIE TEDESCHI: They're going to be a lot more workers that want tipped jobs.
And so that's going to give employers the comfort and the ability to pay those workers a little bit less in wages than they otherwise would.
PAUL SOLMAN: As it is, post-pandemic, there's been a proliferation of electronic prompts for tips.
ERNIE TEDESCHI: Every single coffee shop I go to, every single fast-food place I go to asks for tips.
MAN: We're being asked now to tip for stuff that we never used to tip on before.
MAN: It's like a guilt factor where it's kind of like it's you just go ahead and like, I might do that at the moment.
PAUL SOLMAN: So you are susceptible to the guilt?
MAN: Yes, I -- definitely, the guilt does get the best of me, exactly, yes.
PAUL SOLMAN: You too?
MAN: Yes, I would say it's 100 percent guilt-driven.
PAUL SOLMAN: Phil Di Ruggiero (ph), for one, may be among those developing tip fatigue.
PHIL DI RUGGIERO, Washington, D.C.: A little bit tired of getting that at every point of sale.
PAUL SOLMAN: And since the proposal incentivizes tipping: ERNIE TEDESCHI: I think that's going to become more pervasive if this becomes law.
PAUL SOLMAN: Which could lead to unintended changes in consumer behavior.
ERNIE TEDESCHI: I think that there is a default assumption that consumers are just going to pay tips at the same rate that they have always been paying.
I don't know that that's going to be the case.
I think at some point consumers might get exhausted.
You're essentially asking customers to pay higher prices, when they have already gone through a period of four years where they have rebelled against higher prices.
PAUL SOLMAN: And as Steve Buscemi's Mr.
Pink made clear in "Reservoir Dogs," tips are discretionary.
STEVE BUSCEMI, Actor: I don't tip.
ACTOR: You don't tip?
STEVE BUSCEMI: No.
I don't believe in it.
ACTOR: You don't believe in tipping?
STEVE BUSCEMI: If they really put forth the effort, I'll give them something extra.
But just tipping automatically, it's for the birds.
PAUL SOLMAN: And how about this unintended consequence?
ERICA YORK: You could see a lot of income recharacterized to take advantage of the tax-free treatment.
It's hard to predict how many industries, how many occupations could find a way to involve tipping in the transaction.
ERNIE TEDESCHI: Let's say I'm a salesperson that gets a commission, or let's say that I'm somebody on Wall Street that gets a year-end bonus.
So I reclassify my commission as a tip, or I reclassify my year-end bonus as a tip.
The employer helps out because they will get a benefit.
And so everybody wins.
PAUL SOLMAN: Except the taxpayer.
ERNIE TEDESCHI: Except -- well, right, exactly, except for the taxpayer and the federal government.
That's the sort of creative tax accounting that's on the line here if we don't have good guardrails.
And I am not a lawyer.
I am not an accountant.
Now imagine what an actual smart accountant and an actual smart lawyer who's paid to do this 24/7 would come up with.
PAUL SOLMAN: Now, the Harris campaign says she would push for an income limit and strict requirements to prevent such behavior.
But here's yet another problem.
Even when it comes to the low-income workers the plan is supposed to help.
ERICA YORK: There's not really an economic rationale to say a waitress who's making $30,000 a year deserves a tax cut, while a cashier at a convenience store who's also making $30,000 a year doesn't deserve a tax cut.
PAUL SOLMAN: New York restaurateur Amanda Cohen eliminated tips years ago.
Instead, she charges a bit so she can pay all her employees a higher wage.
More fair, she thinks.
AMANDA COHEN, Chef and Owner, Dirt Candy: The prettier younger you are, the younger you are, the likely you are to make higher tips.
And the older you are and the darker your skin, you're less likely to make as much.
PAUL SOLMAN: But Cohen may have to drop her no-tip policy if tips are going to be untaxed.
AMANDA COHEN: How could I look at my servers and say, you would make a lot more money working at a tip restaurant because half of your wages won't be taxed anymore?
I just don't think I could find anybody to work for me.
PAUL SOLMAN: So, with all these caveats, why has the proposal been so readily embraced?
ERICA YORK: No tax on tips, it sounds like a good way to provide a tax cut to workers who work hard, who earn income, who need a break.
I think that's why it's catching on politically.
ERNIE TEDESCHI: This proposal is extremely popular in Nevada, which is heavily dominated by leisure and hospitality and gaming industry, as you might imagine, where tips are extremely important.
PAUL SOLMAN: And Nevada is a swing state.
ERNIE TEDESCHI: And Nevada is a swing state.
Exactly.
PAUL SOLMAN: In other words... KAMALA HARRIS: Hey, Nevada!
PAUL SOLMAN: ... political business as usual... DONALD TRUMP: People that get tips, you're going to be very happy.
PAUL SOLMAN: ... in sound bite America.
For the "PBS News Hour," Paul Solman.
GEOFF BENNETT: Governments often struggle to move quickly when it comes to regulating new industries or products.
One area where international organizations and governments around the world have failed to agree on regulation is far out at sea beyond national maritime boundaries.
That's meant the kind of deep-sea mining that we have examined this week is only legally permitted inside a country's territorial waters.
And the only country on Earth to allow it so far is Papua New Guinea in its waters of the Bismarck Sea off the island of New Ireland.
For the third and final part in this series, videographer Ed Kiernan and special correspondent Willem Marx show us how difficult it is for this impoverished Pacific nation to monitor deep-sea mining activities, even those that are occurring close to its shore.
WILLEM MARX: This summer, not far from the stunning coastline of New Ireland Province in the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea, the MV Coco was very likely the only ship anywhere on the world's oceans to be engaged pin the deeply controversial practice of deep-sea mining.
Twice a day for several weeks, it sent this giant claw a mile beneath the surface of the Bismarck Sea to help its crew haul up around 180 tons of copper-rich rock, while also stockpiling many times more than that on the nearby seabed.
This was an industrial-scale trial run to see if an even larger operation like this could one day continue long term by proving itself profitable enough for investors and sufficiently safe for the ocean environment.
The Coco sailed under charter for a company called Deep Sea Mining Finance, or DSMF, in partnership with another business, Magellan, where James Holt helped oversee this work.
JAMES HOLT, Offshore Manager, Magellan: We're underneath the jurisdiction of Papua New Guinea.
We're in national waters, so they have full responsibility for whether they give us permits or not.
WILLEM MARX: Papua New Guinea, often known as PNG, is among a tiny group of countries that's theoretically approved this kind of underwater extraction in its maritime territory.
It's not yet permitted in the Pacific's international waters, where the Coco and team from Magellan were conducting environmental surveys last November for another deep-sea mining firm called The Metals Company, when protesters from Greenpeace suddenly, unexpectedly appeared on the horizon.
The group's activists had kayaked right up close to the Coco before some harnessed in climbing equipment quickly clambered aboard.
LOUISA CASSON, Greenpeace International: The deep-sea mining industry has always tried to operate in the shadows.
WILLEM MARX: Louisa Casson took part in that protest and leads Greenpeace's campaign against deep-sea mining.
LOUISA CASSON: What we do need is a legally binding moratorium that can stop this industry from causing harm to the oceans, which is what an overwhelming amount of research is showing.
We're directly removing part of the habitat, including parts that life centers around.
So, you know, it is inevitably destructive.
And I think that is the core problem with deep-sea mining that no amount of P.R.
spin or political lobbying from the industry can get over.
WILLEM MARX: James Holt was also on board the Coco during the protest working and says he ultimately welcomes such scrutiny.
JAMES HOLT: It's good that we have got people out there monitoring what we're doing and that companies just can't go off and just start grabbing on the seabed without permissions.
So, Greenpeace have got an important part to play.
But I just hope that the evidence shows that we have got such a high copper content, and that, if the world has got to have more copper, and that getting it from the seabed is the way forward.
WILLEM MARX: Papua New Guinea was the first country on Earth to hand out a full subsea mining license back in 2011 to a Canadian business called Nautilus Minerals.
Inside the country's Parliament, some lawmakers soon began to raise concerns, including northern province governor, Gary Juffa.
GOV.
GARY JUFFA, Oro Province, Papua New Guinea: I was totally against it.
And I was mortified.
I'm not a scientist, I'm not an expert on mining or seabed mining or what goes on in the oceans.
But I did some research and I found out that this activity had not been carried out anywhere else in the world yet.
So we were going to be a test case, so to speak.
This didn't sit well with me.
WILLEM MARX: But in countless ministerial meetings and PowerPoint presentations, Nautilus made many promises.
MAN: The project has criteria it has to perform to.
WILLEM MARX: That it would create an innovative industry that could safely generate huge returns using specially constructed machinery.
PNG's government poured tens of millions of dollars into the idea, and the evidence of that vast, vanished investment is still visible, if you know where to look.
More than a decade after those bold promises of an entirely new type of mining deep beneath the ocean surface, the machines at the heart of that vision that promised to strip-mine the ocean floor are now rusting here in an empty lot on the edge of the capital city, Port Moresby.
Deep-Sea Mining Finance took over Nautilus and its mining permit in 2019, then eventually partnered with Magellan's founder to restart the venture.
DSMF's listed representatives in 2019 included an Australian who pled guilty to insider trading and a Swiss man disqualified as a director on the Isle of Man amid money-laundering contraventions.
The pair in turn represented the company's two largest shareholders, an Omani businessman called Mohammed Al Barwani and Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov now under sanction in the U.S., Canada, and many other countries.
Natural resources in PNG have often benefited overseas businesses, but sometimes failed to support local communities.
Allan Bird is an opposition politician who says this must change.
A former mining executive, he was in high demand at a recent mining industry conference held in Port Moresby.
In a speech, he advocated for more overseas investment in his country.
Afterwards, we asked him about the permitting process for mining out at sea.
What about offshore?
GOV.
ALLAN BIRD, East Sepiek, Papua New Guinea: We don't have any offshore operations.
WILLEM MARX: Allan, we have just been on a vessel in the Bismarck Sea that is pulling up the ocean floor.
GOV.
ALLAN BIRD, East Sepiek, Papua New Guinea: Seriously?
WILLEM MARX: How do you feel about that?
GOV.
ALLAN BIRD: Shocked.
I had no idea.
I thought the whole thing was mothballed.
WILLEM MARX: You're a senior governor in this country.
GOV.
ALLAN BIRD: Yes.
WILLEM MARX: And the fact that you don't know about that, how does that make you feel?
GOV.
ALLAN BIRD: Deeply worried.
We're supposed to have mechanisms that ensure that such things go through a proper vetting and verification process, right?
I mean, we are supposed to be a credible country.
WILLEM MARX: PNG's licensing process involves several government agencies and ministries.
But few operate that transparently, as we learned when we sought out more information.
There's currently no minister for mining here in Papua New Guinea.
In fact, the man responsible for the industry right now is the prime minister.
When we asked him for an interview to discuss deep-sea mining, his office insisted there was an official moratorium on the practice, and he therefore refused to discuss it.
PETER BOSIP, Center for Environmental Law and Community Rights: When they're turning a blind eye, then it becomes an issue.
And this has been a common situation here in Papua New Guinea.
WILLEM MARX: Peter Bosip founded a public interest law firm, CELCOR, that works on behalf of local communities confronting commercial interests here.
PETER BOSIP: They're seeing us as a stumbling block.
We will stop this mining from going out.
So that's why they want to keep these things away from us.
WILLEM MARX: It sounds like you're telling me that the government here chooses the economy over the environment.
PETER BOSIP: That's exactly what is happening.
WILLEM MARX: Bosip's team has previously triumphed in cases against large foreign logging companies, whose projects tear up forests along the coastline and interiors of several provinces, including New Ireland.
For 12 years, his organization has been demanding to see the environmental assessments of Nautilus' deep-sea mining proposals.
These should be public, but, last year, government agencies refused to release them, despite a court order.
The managing director of one agency, the national environmental regulator CEPA, said he would meet with us, but soon stopped answering our calls.
The Mining Resources Authority, or MRA, also failed to disclose information related to Nautilus' license.
How long are you there for, a few more days?
We eventually reached the MRA's managing director, Jerry Garry, who was away from the capital.
He told us his team was responsible for monitoring all deep-sea mining activities.
JERRY GARRY, Managing Director, Mining Resources Authority: Every time when they are -- they have their vessel in the country, we do have state officers who are on board to monitor what they're doing.
WILLEM MARX: So who is the state officer on board right now?
Because we were on the vessel a few days ago.
We did not see anyone.
JERRY GARRY: We believe it would have been people -- officers from CEPA and MRA.
But if they are under way in country and if they have not informed us, then that would be a concern.
WILLEM MARX: So, right now, do you know that the vessel is in the country?
JERRY GARRY: I am not aware of the vessel in the country.
WILLEM MARX: And yet you're managing director of the Mineral Resources Authority?
JERRY GARRY: You're right.
I will deal with the problem now that you told me.
WILLEM MARX: Magellan insists they had government approval for their work.
And after our interview, Garry issued a statement about seabed mining to local media: "We now have the resources and the technologies to safely carry out exploration and also mining.
I understand the concerns, but every exploration and mining license goes through a very stringent process."
Environmental campaigners, including Jonathan Mesulam, a former teacher who lives on New Ireland dispute this.
JONATHAN MESULAM, Alliance of Solwara Warriors: There is no law in PNG.
There is no regulatory framework on seabed mining.
What they're using is on onshore, but we don't have any offshore mining.
That's specifically for seabed mining.
WILLEM MARX: Fisheries could remain a sustainable resource in the Bismarck Sea for centuries to come.
Mesulam worries that any deep-sea mining effort will eventually have to end, yet it could have lasting consequences for local coastal communities.
And given the lack of relevant legislation, there could be risks for the companies involved too, warns Allan Bird.
GOV.
ALLAN BIRD: Don't do it until you have a legal framework around which you operate.
That's the responsible thing to do, and not just for Papua New Guinea, but anywhere in the world.
WILLEM MARX: Magellan and DSMF say they will wait for a thorough analysis of the rocks brought on board before making their next move.
But even if a high copper concentration could make this kind of mining financially worthwhile, many will continue to question whether that could ever justify an uncertain outcome for life in and around the ocean.
For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Willem Marx in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
GEOFF BENNETT: In case you missed them, you can watch all of Willem Marx's pieces about deep-sea mining on our Web site, PBS.org/NewsHour.
Civil rights attorney Maya Wiley grew up in a household that prioritized activism.
Her parents' influence set her on a path to a lifetime of advocacy work, and yet sometimes left her wondering how best to fulfill the family legacy on her own terms.
Her memoir, published this week, is called "Remember, You Are a Wiley."
We recently sat down to talk about it.
Maya Wiley, welcome to the "News Hour."
MAYA WILEY, Author, "Remember, You Are a Wiley": Thanks so much for having me, Geoff.
GEOFF BENNETT: So much of this book is an untangling of your parents' influence.
Your father was a prominent civil rights leader and social activist, George Wiley.
Your mother, Wretha Wiley, was an academic and a civil rights activist in her own right.
How did their activism shape your life and shape your values?
MAYA WILEY: You know, they shaped me so profoundly that it felt so important to write this book.
And what I mean by that is that, when you're growing up with parents -- my father died when I was young, when I was 9 years old -- you know that they're impacting you, but they also spend a lot of time making sure we could be who we wanted to be and not insisting that we be who they were.
And I realized that what they really did was modeled what it meant to rise to the occasion of a time you're in, to recognize that to those who have been given much, much is expected.
That was a clear kind of value principle in my household growing up, and that the expectation is you would do it.
You would step up in any way you could.
And, for me, watching their activism, I remember it was both at times painful because I wanted or needed them, but also it made me incredibly proud.
GEOFF BENNETT: And theirs was an interracial marriage, and you write about your parents.
There was no cultural difference between them.
They were both raised in similar strict Christian traditions.
Your father's darker skin was an incidental problem, you write, for your mother, not a fundamental one.
How did your parents break free from the bonds of cultural expectation and racism, frankly, in the early 1960s and build a life together?
MAYA WILEY: Well, that was such a powerful part of what shaped me, because they were both in their separate ways growing up differently, my father in the North, my mother in West Texas, in a pretty racist Southern Baptist town.
I mean, they found their own paths to their voice and to their identities in a racist society on very different paths, but they ended up in the same place.
And I think it's that fact, what shaped them that made them so comfortable with who they were, despite how much the world was trying to make the penalties too high for them to be who they were.
It was an important life lesson to me.
And I realized how much of it had to do with just a refusal to go with the flow if the flow was wrong, if it was unjust.
They really, really, really challenged any injustice that they found, whether it was in their personal lives or in the lives of others.
And that was a very high bar that they set for me.
GEOFF BENNETT: I imagine that was particularly important for you because you write about how you were this mixed-race kid growing up in a Black neighborhood in D.C. who was sometimes bullied for having a white mother.
And yet, years later, you were the only Black lawyer out of 50 at the U.S. attorney's office when you worked there as a young woman.
MAYA WILEY: When I went to the U.S. attorney's office, I already knew that we had not yet arrived at that mountaintop that Martin Luther King talked about.
But I was certainly challenged in a way I hadn't been before because I was so fortunate to grow up in a way where I hadn't experienced anyone actually questioning my qualification.
I was - - well, some in college, for sure, and, in law school, sure.
But, professionally, that was a new low.
But, again, my parents had been through so much worse, had taken on and been challenged by so much worse.
And I just remember thinking, well, as long as I can stay true to who I am and show them, show them what I'm made of and show them that I'm going to be a lawyer, that when I leave that office, they're going to be sad to see me go, and that -- part of that was remembering I am a Wiley.
GEOFF BENNETT: A question about activism, which is such an ever-present theme in this book.
Activism comes, as you know, in so many forms, public protest, legal and political advocacy, community organizing.
You ran to be the mayor of New York City back in 2021.
So I have the question, which approach do you think is more effective, trying to effect change from the inside, from the seat of power, or from trying to effect change from the outside?
MAYA WILEY: I love that question, Geoff.
And I'm so grateful you asked.
Having been able to be on all sides of those senses, I will tell you this.
It is every single one of them.
There is simply not one thing that must happen.
You need the activism, you need the direct action of protest, of people who put their feet in the street to peacefully demand change, and have those demands be heard.
But you also have to have people who are helping to vindicate the wrongs in court.
You have to have the judges who understand what needs to be vindicated.
And you need the elected leaders that understand the power of the pen, who will listen to those in communities, those who are protesting and say, let's figure out the actual solutions to the problems you're raising.
GEOFF BENNETT: The book's title comes from a family mantra of yours.
It was your father's mother who would say, "Remember, you're a Wiley."
What has that meant to you over the course of your life?
MAYA WILEY: You know, it's been a challenge.
It meant a challenge to understand and what it means to be a Wiley, that sense of both pride but also that sense of responsibility.
Part of what she meant is, you -- those Black kids are going to be out in these white streets.
You need to show them who we are.
You need to be responsible to what that means, and trying to figure that out also as my parents kind of created their own definition of what it meant to be a Wiley that I needed to live up to.
I'm very proud to be George and Wretha Wiley's daughter.
And every day, I wonder, am I rising to the challenge they laid before me by not telling me what to do, but by showing me through their own example what it really means to be a Wiley?
And so it's something I have struggled with my whole life, but it's been worth every ounce of that struggle.
GEOFF BENNETT: The new memoir, "Remember, You Are a Wiley."
Maya Wiley, thanks so much for being with us.
Always a pleasure to speak with you.
MAYA WILEY: Thank you, Geoff.
The pleasure is mine.
GEOFF BENNETT: And there's a lot more online.
We hear from first-time voters in Michigan about what voting in this year's election means to them.
That's at PBS.org/NewsHour.
AMNA NAWAZ: And that is the "News Hour" for tonight.
I'm Amna Nawaz.
GEOFF BENNETT: And I'm Geoff Bennett.
For all of us here at the "PBS News Hour," thanks for spending part of your evening with us.
