GEOFF BENNETT: Good evening.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

AMNA NAWAZ: And I'm Amna Nawaz.

On the "News Hour" tonight: The White House pushes Russia for direct talks with Ukraine, but signs of compromise are still elusive.

GEOFF BENNETT: Competing claims from the Trump administration and D.C. city leaders about crime levels, as more federal troops are deployed to patrol the nation's capital.

AMNA NAWAZ: And at the height of wildfire season, thousands of firefighters face frontline dangers, including toxic smoke, with little to no protection.

HANNAH DREIER, The New York Times: If the Forest Service were to allow firefighters to wear masks, it would mean admitting that smoke is dangerous.

And that could cause a huge rethinking of the whole way the agency works right now.

(BREAK) AMNA NAWAZ: Welcome to the "News Hour."

The White House press secretary said today that Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed to President Trump that he would soon meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose country Russia invaded.

GEOFF BENNETT: And White House officials say one possible location for the summit is Hungary, led by Viktor Orban, a longtime Putin ally and critic of the Western coalition that's backing Ukraine.

Orban has repeatedly blasted both NATO and the European Union, which Hungary belongs to, for what he calls their overly aggressive support of Ukraine's defense.

Nick Schifrin begins our coverage again tonight.

NICK SCHIFRIN: In Eastern Ukraine today, firefighters rushed to Russia's target of choice, a residential apartment building, where not everyone got out in time; 200 miles to the west, the blood-orange sky of a Ukrainian sunrise mixed with the smoke of a city besieged.

Russia bombarded Ukraine once again today, leading Ukrainians, even in Kyiv's quieter streets, to distrust diplomatic efforts to find peace.

VOLODYMYR NOVYTSKYY, Kyiv Resident (through translator): It seems to me there will be some agreement, but I don't think it will be possible to say this is the end of the war.

Even if there is a truce, this enemy will not stop within the borders he has now.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: We will give them very good protection, very good security.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Yesterday, President Trump promised Ukraine long-term U.S. support.

DONALD TRUMP: We're willing to help them with things, especially probably if you could talk about by fair.

NICK SCHIFRIN: But, today, in a phone call with FOX News, President Trump created a new support ceiling.

CHARLIE HURT, FOX News Anchor: What kind of assurances do you feel like you have that going forward and past this Trump administration, it won't be American boots on the ground defending that border?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, you have my assurance.

I'm president.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Even without U.S. troops, Ukraine says the U.S. can help provide security guarantees by selling some $90 billion of weapons and investing in Ukraine's world-leading drone industry.

Already, a coalition of European countries created plans to send troops to Ukraine to help monitor any potential peace deal.

And now European countries will negotiate with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on what exactly the U.S. is willing to provide.

But European officials are resisting Russian demands for Ukraine to hand over its Eastern Donbass region, as President Trump discussed yesterday with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz last night: FRIEDRICH MERZ, German Chancellor (through translator): The Russian demand that Kyiv give up the free parts of Donbass is, to put it in perspective, equivalent to the U.S. having to give up Florida.

A sovereign state cannot simply decide something like that.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Russian troops and their separatist allies have failed to capture the entire Donbass, despite 11 years of fighting.

Today, Russian troops have momentum, and Russia's often repeated claim it's defending the Donbass' residents, despite launching a war there, will be part of the negotiations, said Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

SERGEY LAVROV, Russian Foreign Minister (through translator): Without respect for Russia's security interests, without full respect for the rights of Russians and Russian-speaking people living in Ukraine, there can be no talk of any long-term agreements.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Besides ruling out sending U.S. troops to Ukraine, President Trump also said it would be impossible for Ukraine to get Crimea back.

For a perspective on all the recent diplomatic meetings aiming to end the war in Ukraine, we turn to Pavlo Klimkin.

He was Ukraine's foreign minister from 2014 to 2019.

He's now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is currently in Kyiv.

Pavlo Klimkin, thanks very much.

Welcome to the "News Hour."

So, given President Trump's summits recently in Anchorage with President Putin and in Washington, D.C., with President Zelenskyy and other European leaders, bottom line, do you believe there is a diplomatic path to end Russia's war on Ukraine?

PAVLO KLIMKIN, Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister: Not the war itself, because, from all my experience, I don't believe in Putin and his entourage.

Changing their calculus on Ukraine, it's not about NATO enlargement.

It's not about territory.

It's about the simple point that they don't believe Ukraine does exist in any sense, in the sense of statehood, history, language.

So they won't give up on trying to destroy Ukraine.

NICK SCHIFRIN: And so, if you believe Russia maintains maximalist demands and a maximalist vision when it comes to Ukraine, do you believe this diplomatic effort is even worth it?

PAVLO KLIMKIN: Definitely.

And it's worth trying reaching a sort of cease-fire.

Another dimension for that is a new European security architecture, Europeans who should be, for me, present in any kind of security commitments and better security guarantees, but unfortunately we are not there.

NICK SCHIFRIN: So, when it comes to those security commitments, of course, European officials have been working on what they have called the coalition of the willing, sending troops, sending weapons, sending support to Ukraine.

But the question now is how far the United States will go to participate in those security guarantees.

And, today, President Trump ruled out U.S. troops to Ukraine.

But how important is it that the U.S. participate in those security guarantees, both for Ukraine to be able to defend itself and also for Zelenskyy to be able to sell to Ukrainians any package that he's going to need to sell?

PAVLO KLIMKIN: It's absolutely critical.

And the Europeans need a kind of U.S. backstop, U.S. support.

Without that, the whole idea, not only on security guarantees, but on security commitments is not going to happen.

United States' contribution is absolutely critical to any successful attempt to get out a real, sustainable cease-fire.

NICK SCHIFRIN: The other aspect, the other major aspect of the conversations here in Washington yesterday were about the map, Russia's demands that Ukraine give up the parts of the Donbass, the parts of the Donetsk province that Ukraine still holds and that Russia has failed to capture, despite 11 years of war.

First question here, why is the Donbass so important to the future of Ukraine?

PAVLO KLIMKIN: For us, it's about security, because we have all kinds of defense lines there.

It's, of course, about our emotions, because our guys gave pretty much everything on Donbass.

The idea to swap Donbass with something else would enact a wave of destabilization through Ukraine.

This war is about where Ukraine belongs.

So it's really fundamental to start with credible security guarantees and after that go on with any kind of discussions with Putin.

So, for me, the real point, the kind of starting point for the discussion should be a sort of understanding among us, our American partners and our European partners about security.

And, after that, we can discuss everything else.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Pavlo Klimkin, former foreign minister of Ukraine, thank you very much.

PAVLO KLIMKIN: Thanks a lot, Nick.

AMNA NAWAZ: In the day's other headlines: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard says that, at President Trump's direction, she has revoked the security clearances of 37 current and former government officials.

They include some who worked on a review of possible Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

In a memo, Gabbard accused the staffers of -- quote -- "politicization or weaponization of intelligence for partisan purposes."

The Trump administration has launched a sweeping effort in recent weeks to cast doubt on the intelligence community's findings that Russia interfered in 2016 in order to benefit then-candidate Trump.

Hurricane Erin is churning off the coast of Florida as a Category 2 storm as it slowly makes its way up the Atlantic coastline.

The massive storm is due to stay offshore, but it's expected to produce life-threatening surf and rip currents from Florida all the way to Canada in the coming days.

Along much of North Carolina's Outer Banks, there are tropical storm and storm surge warnings, and, in some areas, authorities have ordered evacuations at the height of tourist season.

Local officials are warning of rough surf and large waves that could reach 10 feet, which would make roads impassable.

ROBERT OUTTEN, Dare County, North Carolina, Manager: We encourage the local folks to leave as well because we're not going to be able to provide services.

If you have a heart attack, a medical event, house catches on fire, whatever, we can't get to you.

And so it's really important that people sort of heed the message.

This is going to be several days where we're not going to have the ability to move around in the villages.

AMNA NAWAZ: The biggest ocean swells along the East Coast are expected tomorrow and into Thursday.

Already, officials in North Carolina say at least 60 people had to be rescued from rip currents near Wilmington.

For the first time in 30 years, the American Academy of Pediatrics is offering vaccine guidance that differs from official U.S. recommendations.

In guidance issued today, the AAP is -- quote -- "strongly recommending" COVID-19 shots for kids aged 6 months to 2 years.

Vaccines are also advised for older children at their parents' discretion.

That differs from guidance established under U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which doesn't recommend shots for healthy kids of any age.

Instead, the administration says kids can get the shots in consultation with their doctors.

The State Department has reportedly canceled more than 6,000 student visas.

As first reported by FOX News, around 4,000 were pulled because of crimes including assault, driving under the influence, and burglary.

As many as 300 visas were revoked over what an official called support for terrorism, though no further details were provided.

The cancellations represent just a fraction of the more than a million foreign students who study at American colleges and universities.

But they are the latest example of the Trump administration's tough approach towards student visas as part of its broader immigration crackdown.

Nebraska's governor and the Department of Homeland Security announced plans today to open an immigration detention center in a farming area in the state's southwest corner.

Dubbed Cornhusker Clink, officials say the former inmate work camp will provide up to 280 beds for ICE detainees.

The announcement follows the opening last month of what the administration calls Alligator Alcatraz in the Florida Everglades.

That facility has been the subject of legal challenges by attorneys who say the inmates are not given due process and are forced to endure poor living conditions.

The centers are part of a broader effort to meet the infrastructure needs of the Trump administration's deportation push.

In the Middle East, Egypt says the ball is now in Israel's court after Hamas tentatively agreed to a cease-fire proposal put forward by Arab mediators.

But Israel has yet to offer an official response.

Hamas and Arab officials say the current deal would involve a 60-day truce, the release of some Israeli hostages and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, a surge of aid to Gaza, plus talks to permanently end the war.

A Qatari official said today the framework is similar to one Israel accepted in the last round of talks involving the U.S. MAJED AL-ANSARI, Qatari Foreign Ministry Spokesman (through translator): It is almost identical to what was agreed on previously by the Israeli side.

This proposal represents the best possible option to stop the bloodshed of our brothers in the Gaza Strip, especially considering the ongoing military escalation.

AMNA NAWAZ: In the meantime, hospitals in Gaza recorded 28 fatalities today, including women and children.

Some were killed in Israeli strikes and others while seeking aid.

Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry says more than 62,000 Palestinians have now been killed in the war.

Also today, a United Nations report finds that, of the record 383 aid workers killed last year worldwide, nearly half were in Gaza.

Air Canada says it will gradually restart operations after reaching a deal with 10,000 flight attendants on strike.

The agreement will guarantee pay for work done while planes are on the ground, a driving factor behind the walkout.

The strike began over the weekend, affecting some 130,000 travelers each day during the peak summer travel season.

Overall, nearly half-a-million travelers had their plans disrupted.

The airline says flights will resume tonight, though it may take a week or more for service to be fully restored.

On Wall Street today, stocks struggled amid a sell-off in big tech stocks.

The Dow Jones industrial average added just 10 points on the day.

The Nasdaq fell more than 300 points.

The S&P 500 ended lower for a third straight session.

Still to come on the "NewsHour": we examine the causes behind stubbornly high beef prices; Russian misinformation finds increasingly sympathetic ears among the religious right in the U.S.; and a new biography of legendary author James Baldwin through the lens of love.

President Trump paints the nation's capital as a city beset by crime, declaring an emergency and calling in National Guard troops under those emergency powers.

D.C. leaders contend there is no crisis, pointing to crime rates trending down now at a 30-year low.

Charles Lehman of the conservative Manhattan Institute argues neither side is telling the complete truth.

He joins us now to discuss the extent of Washington's challenge with crime and how both the locals and feds could pursue smarter solutions.

Charles, welcome to the "NewsHour."

Thanks for joining us.

CHARLES FAIN LEHMAN, Fellow, Manhattan Institute: Thanks so much for having me on.

AMNA NAWAZ: So, this D.C. takeover, as you have heard, was justified by the president as a response to crime.

From what you have looked at, how you have studied it in your view, was that takeover justified?

CHARLES FAIN LEHMAN: That's a big complicated question.

I think whether or not it's justified comes down to how those resources get used, how MPD, the city's police department gets used, how the additional federal agents get used.

The reality is that there is a history of local-federal cooperation on law enforcement issues that have yielded real results.

This is obviously a much more aggressive approach on the president's part.

That doesn't mean it can't work.

The capital is ultimately subject to the whims of the federal government in a way that no other city in the United States is.

But a lot depends on how the folks at the federal level, and, to some extent, they're still cooperating, entities at the local level are thinking about where they deploy their resources, where the real problems are, what problems they're trying to solve, and how they cognize success over the next 30 days.

AMNA NAWAZ: So if you were looking at where some of those troops and forces were deployed, if it was to address crime, where should they be deployed and is that where they're actually showing up?

CHARLES FAIN LEHMAN: The reality is that in every city in the United States, in every city on Earth, crime is a highly concentrated phenomenon.

That's one of the few iron laws of criminology.

In about 10 percent of the blocks in a city, you will see about 50 percent of the crime.

And that's true in D.C. as well.

I have done some research that shows more than half of homicides in 2023 were in just two wards, Ward 7, Ward 8.

Just 10 blocks, not 10 percent, just 10 blocks were home to 14 percent of homicides in that year.

So a lot of what the city would like to be able to do, what the federal government ought to be able to do is to concentrate resources there.

There are mixed signals about where we're seeing federal resources.

There's obviously a lot of social media footage of agents in strange places on the National Mall, on U Street.

It's a little bit hard to generalize from that.

The messaging from the administration is, we're taking criminals off the street.

Again, it's a little bit hard to get a systematic sense.

So the other question in my mind that isn't all answered is, is deploying these federal troops in non-major crime areas freeing up constrained MPD resources to go to those more major crime areas, Ward 7, Ward 8, Northeastern D.C., areas where you have serious entrenched gang violence problems?

I think we have mixed messages about whether that's really happening and it's a little bit hard to tell in the proverbial fog of war.

AMNA NAWAZ: I mean, there's also this issue of the statistics themselves, right?

You have seen the president call the crime numbers in D.C. fake crime numbers.

He said that online.

His Department of Justice is now reportedly investigating those numbers.

We should point out there was a 2020 lawsuit that was recently settled by D.C. police in which there was a former sergeant who claimed that the MPD, the D.C. police here, misclassified crimes, that districts were competing to get their crime stats down.

I guess the question is, are the stats dependable?

Is the president right in saying that these crime numbers are fake?

CHARLES FAIN LEHMAN: I'm relying here in part on research by a guy named Jeff Asher, who's a crime analyst based out of New Orleans whose data I and lots of other people go to for this.

And he's pointed out that -- there are some oddities in the data that MPD publishes.

They seem to be counting violent crimes differently, i.e., categorizing different things as violent crimes in the data that they publish versus the data that they give to the FBI.

And if you look at the FBI's data, they have seen a decline in violent crime, but it is much smaller than the decline that the city's data seems to suggest.

That's a discrepancy.

It's a reason to sort of question the fervor of city officials when they say, we don't have a crime problem.

On the other hand, it's a little bit hard to claim some malign cover-up when they're reporting the true numbers to the FBI.

And more to the point, it seems like the two consistently really strong indicators in the data, homicide and auto theft, are following the same trends no matter how you look at it.

It's also just quite plausible that D.C. is seeing the same trends that many other big cities are seeing, which is a large and consistent decline in violent crime.

So I think that there are legitimate questions about the magnitude of the drop.

I think that the city's strongest claims are probably overstated.

I think it is very hard to make the case that the data themselves are less reliable than any other crime number, which are always subject to a variety of caveats.

AMNA NAWAZ: There's also this issue, of course, of National Guard troop deployment.

We're now seeing more Republican governors step up to say that they will be sending their own National Guard troops to D.C. That includes West Virginia, Ohio, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee.

They don't have the same law enforcement authority that local officials do.

So, what kind of a difference can be made from their deployment when it comes to crime?

CHARLES FAIN LEHMAN: Right.

I think there's a good way to do this and a bad way to do this.

And again, the question for me is always, what are the tactics?

What's the strategy?

How are we thinking about what we know about policing?

The bad way to do this is as a show of force.

If you put a bunch of National Guard units in low-crime areas and you're just sort of trying to show off and say, look at what we can do, it's just a partisan boxing match, where the city is being used as the punching bag, to mix my metaphors.

That's not a good use of resources.

On the other hand, one of the major ways that law enforcement or non-law enforcement officers work is that they're deterrent.

If you put, to use the criminological language, a capable guardian in a place that is otherwise likely to be at risk for crime, you will reduce crime, even if they don't necessarily have the powers of arrest.

More importantly, you can use them to free up MPD officers, who do have the power of arrest.

They're below -- the MPD, the D.C. police department, is substantially below historical highs of sworn staffing.

They could really use the manpower.

And so, to me, the question is, are they trying to show off or are they trying to act as a supplement?

Are they trying to give MPD the breather that they need to really go after the major problems?

And that's the core, decisive factor.

AMNA NAWAZ: As you have probably seen, the administration is arguing, it's already working, the strategy is working.

We saw the attorney general, Pam Bondi, today online tout the success that they have seen.

She said 52 arrests were made last night, including, in her words, an MS-13 gang member.

She also claimed that there have been 465 arrests and 68 guns seized since this takeover began.

Charles, do those numbers say anything to you?

Do they say progress, that this is working?

CHARLES FAIN LEHMAN: Look, the reality is, you always need more context for a number like that.

You think about this, whether it's guns seized, or drugs taken off the street, or people justly arrested, that's good, that's great.

You need to have a sense of where the city was prior to this intervention.

And so just sort of giving those raw counts doesn't necessarily paint the full picture.

The things that I will be looking at over the next month and next several months is, where do the local crime trends seem to be going?

And how do they fit against what was happening prior to the intervention?

There's a real interesting opportunity here for what social scientists think about as a natural experiment, where there's been a sudden intervention.

And we will be able to compare D.C. before and after this to other cities to learn about what this intervention did.

You're not really going to get that information just looking at raw counts of arrests.

To some extent, you can go and talk to people.

I expect to be doing that.

Other journalists expect to be doing that, see how they're feeling, see what their sense of safety is.

But I will be waiting for more data to really draw a conclusion.

AMNA NAWAZ: All right, Charles Lehman of the Manhattan Institute, thank you so much for joining us.

Appreciate your time.

CHARLES FAIN LEHMAN: Thanks again.

GEOFF BENNETT: Beef prices have soared to all-time highs, with many families feeling the squeeze.

Economics correspondent Paul Solman looks at the factors driving prices higher.

PAUL SOLMAN: Got a beef with beef prices?

You have got company.

JANET SMITH, Shopper: I was looking at the price of a pound of ground beef and three months ago, it was $4.99 a pound.

And a week ago Saturday, it was $7.99 a pound.

PAUL SOLMAN: And it is not just beef.

WOMAN: It seems lately like every time I go into the store, I have sticker shock.

It's alarming to me.

I'm almost afraid to go in there, what I'm going to find.

PAUL SOLMAN: Almost 90 percent of Americans now say they're stressed about grocery prices, which have been up for three main reasons.

PHIL LEMPERT, SupermarketGuru: Because of tariffs, because of weather and climate conditions, because of the labor costs.

PAUL SOLMAN: And shoppers have been paying more for a number of years.

PHIL LEMPERT: Since the pandemic, food prices are up over 26 percent.

So we're having sticker shock every time we go to that cash register.

PAUL SOLMAN: Official grocery prices actually dipped slightly last month.

But one food that keeps climbing on a monthly and yearly basis is beef.

Ground beef is up 11.5 percent since just last year.

PHIL LEMPERT: Ground beef is the highest price that it's ever been.

CPI data started being collected in the 1980s.

This is the first time it's over $6 a pound.

And when we look at beef and veal prices, they're up over 10 percent.

PAUL SOLMAN: As of July, beef and veal were up 11.3 percent over the last 12 months.

Why?

DAVID ANDERSON, Texas A&M University: It's kind of the age-old economist answer, supply and demand.

We're producing less beef.

At the same time, consumers are demanding beef.

We really have had growing demand for beef for a decade.

ACTRESS: Where's the beef?

PAUL SOLMAN: Americans have long loved burgers, steaks, all kinds of beef.

But there's also a new reason.

WOMAN: OK, have you seen these viral high-protein beef bowls?

DAVID ANDERSON: As we move to more protein in our diet, I think that's part of this overall complex of growing beef demand.

PAUL SOLMAN: Though, when prices sizzle, some folks substitute.

JANET SMITH: I buy less meat.

And now we're looking at more beans or tofu, which my family isn't -- especially the guys, aren't super happy about.

PAUL SOLMAN: But, overall, consumers seem committed to beef, even if they're buying different cuts.

DAVID ANDERSON: Folks that move from a high priced beef items, think a rib eye, to a lower-priced New York strip or a flat iron steak or something like that.

So we have substitution within beef, not always to other meat items.

PAUL SOLMAN: OK, enough about demand.

What's on the supply side of the equation?

DAVID ANDERSON: Our herds have been declining, and that's really catching up to us in terms of the total number of animals going to a meatpacker.

So supplies are declining.

Since April of this year, we have had weeks with beef production down 7 percent and 8 percent compared to a year ago.

PAUL SOLMAN: As with so many products in a market economy, there are constant ups and downs, cycles.

Beef's no exception.

DAVID ANDERSON: As prices go up and profits are there, we increase the size of our nation's herd, then that boosts production, prices go down and we start shrinking the size of the herd.

On average, that's about a 10-year process.

PAUL SOLMAN: But wait a second.

Prices are now at all-time highs, nominally, if not inflation-adjusted.

So, in a normal cycle, farmers would be growing their herds.

And yet, we have the fewest cattle in America since 1961.

What's going on?

In a word, the weather, specifically, drought.

DAVID ANDERSON: When a serious drought, long-term drought hits, eventually, we're selling off cows because there's no grass for them to eat.

And it's just too expensive to buy feed.

CALLI WILLIAMS, TW Angus: Ranchers were having to sell their cattle, which in the long run leads to fewer cattle available.

PAUL SOLMAN: Calli Williams and her husband run TW Angus near Mitchell, South Dakota.

CALLI WILLIAMS: Just looking at our ranch itself, we do not put up any of our own hay.

And so we buy the hay in order to feed the cattle on our operation.

And we can typically look at spending roughly, let's say, $100 to $120 per ton for that hay.

Well, during the drought, that had increased to $200 to $240 per ton.

That is a drastic increase in our input costs.

PAUL SOLMAN: Now, Williams and her husband have full-time jobs and subsidized their cattle ranch.

But one day they hope it will sustain itself.

CALLI WILLIAMS: We are very determined to make this ranch something that if our boys would like to continue ranching, it's something that they could continue running.

PAUL SOLMAN: So grow the herd by keeping the female calves, but not if it's too expensive at the moment.

So some ranchers are selling the calves.

DAVID ANDERSON: I have got a choice.

I can sell that calf today at record high prices and take the check today.

And I'm going to compare that to what I expect her earnings to be over her productive life as a cow.

What are her calves going to be worth in the future?

And so it's this balancing act.

And, so far, the check in hand today has been worth more than the future has been.

PAUL SOLMAN: Because of what it costs to keep the calves.

Even the Williamses are selling at the yearly cattle sale.

CALLI WILLIAMS: And typically that was all bulls that we offered for sale.

And last year we offered some females on that sale.

And so we will do that again this year.

PAUL SOLMAN: Now, higher beef prices aren't up solely due to lower domestic supply.

For example, the U.S. has banned imports from Mexico because of a flesh-eating parasite.

DAVID ANDERSON: The New World screwworm.

We import normally about 3 to 4 percent equivalent of our calves that are born in the U.S. from Mexico.

So that amounts to about 1.3 million head a year are sold from ranches in Mexico into the U.S. And so all of a sudden we have got even less beef production because we aren't getting the those calves going to feedlots and then to meatpacking plants in the U.S. PAUL SOLMAN: And then there are tariffs, on Brazil, for example.

DAVID ANDERSON: There have been some months where it was our largest import source of beef, largely lean beef trimmings for hamburger.

We have announced a 50 percent tariff on products from Brazil, and that includes beef.

That will be on top of the already, I think, it's 26.5 percent tariff on Brazilian beef.

So I think we will see imports from Brazil decline pretty dramatically simply because of that tariff.

Now, that also works to reduce our supplies of beef, which works towards keeping prices higher.

PAUL SOLMAN: And tariffs, along with volatile weather, higher labor costs, may also help push other grocery prices higher in the coming months.

PHIL LEMPERT: So much of our food is imported now, whether it's coffee from Brazil, whether it's cane sugar from Brazil, whether it's our produce from Mexico and from Canada.

Wrap all those things together and I think, between now and the end of the year, prices are going to go up probably another 5 percent.

PAUL SOLMAN: That would be a price rise that will, as usual, hurt most, those with already strained budgets, and one that very few Americans are likely to ignore.

For the "PBS News Hour," Paul Solman.

AMNA NAWAZ: At the height of wildfire season, thousands of firefighters regularly face a host of dangers on the front lines.

That includes confronting toxic smoke, sometimes with little to no protection.

And a new report says the effects can be dire.

Stephanie Sy has our look.

STEPHANIE SY: For years, the Forest Service has fought against efforts to better protect firefighters from toxic smoke, resisting recommendations to provide masks.

That's according to a new investigation from The New York Times.

As wildfire seasons grow longer and more intense, the health of wildland firefighters is under renewed focus.

Hannah Dreier reported this story for The New York Times and joins me now.

Hannah, thank you so much for joining the "News Hour."

So I understand you spoke to more than 250 firefighters for this report.

You were on the fire lines, and many of these firefighters you highlighted in the piece had major health issues.

So tell us, what kinds of patterns and similarities did you see among their illnesses and their links to wildfire smoke?

HANNAH DREIER, The New York Times: So I was shocked to find out that tens of thousands of wildfire fighters go out for weeks and months at a time in toxic smoke with no protection, no masks.

And, like you, say what I found is that many of them are getting very sick.

So I'm talking about otherwise healthy people who are developing rare cancers in their 20s.

These men are dying of cancer in their 30s.

They're being told by doctors in their 30s that they have ground-glass nodules in their lungs, that their lung tissue is dying.

And some of the people I spoke to are being told in their 40s that they now need double lung transplants.

And this is all illnesses associated with smoke.

STEPHANIE SY: Of course, it's always hard to prove cause and effect when it comes to these health issues, but there were a lot of studies that you looked at that showed the links between toxic smoke and certain cancers.

You also reported, Hannah, that the Forest Service does not only not provide respiratory masks to these firefighters.

They aren't allowed to wear masks on the fire line?

Why is that?

HANNAH DREIER: That's right.

I mean, any other kind of firefighter, it would be unthinkable that they would go into a burning building without that mask and compressed air tank that we all know so well.

But for these guys who are out fighting wildfires, they are not supposed to wear masks.

They're told not to wear masks, even if they want to go and buy their own.

And the Forest Service, which employs most of the wildfire firefighters, says that that's because they worry about heat stress.

They worry that, if these guys had masks on, they might get heatstroke.

But, in other countries, wildland firefighters now do wear masks, and there have not been upticks and heatstroke at all.

We have internal documents where the Forest Service is saying, if these people wore masks, they might be less productive.

They might not work.

They might work only 80 percent as hard as they're working now.

And people who have worked in the agency say that that's part of what is actually going on here.

We also talk to people who spent years at the agency, and they say that if the Forest Service were to allow firefighters to wear masks, it would mean admitting that smoke is dangerous.

And that could cause a huge rethinking of the whole way the agency works right now.

It could be very expensive.

They could have to take lots of other steps to protect these guys from smoke exposure and ultimately hire more crews and spend more money.

STEPHANIE SY: And we know with our own reporting here at PBS that firefighters in the Forest Service in particular are already really short-staffed among wildland firefighters.

But you spoke to firefighters for this piece.

I have spoken to firefighters who simply don't like wearing them.

They describe them as hot and cumbersome,the types of masks that you just described urban firefighters wearing really, really difficult in wildfire conditions.

And then there's the culture of not wearing them.

So even if they were to change the guidance, even if they were to provide masks, did you get a sense that it would make a difference?

HANNAH DREIER: There is a cultural resistance to masks, absolutely.

This is a pretty macho culture.

It's a culture where people are trying to prove how tough they are and how they're not going to let down their teammates when they're out on a fire.

But what we have seen in other countries that now hand out these masks is that culture can change pretty quickly.

And nobody's talking about wearing a mask 16 hours a day.

People put these masks on when it's smoky, take them off when it's not.

They can take them off when they're doing very physical work.

But what I saw as spending time on the fire lines is that a lot of what they're doing is actually standing right next to a fire in the worst smoke conditions just watching the fire, making sure it doesn't jump the fire line.

And that's exactly when people are wearing these masks in other places.

STEPHANIE SY: Part of the problem is also the lack of long-term data on the health impacts of wildfire smoke on the entire firefighter population.

Is that what has to also change?

And how likely is that to change under the current federal government?

HANNAH DREIER: It's a really tough thing.

I mean, there's decades of studies that show that wildfire smoke in general can be harmful to your health, is associated with cancer, with lung damage.

But there are very few studies looking specifically at wildfire firefighters.

And part of that, again, goes back to what's been going on at the Forest Service.

They have been told for 25 years to start that kind of study.

This work actually did get started in 2023.

The federal government launched a cohort study of firefighters.

Unfortunately, in the first months of the Trump administration, all of the people doing that work were laid off.

Some of them have now been brought back, but they say that the work really remains disrupted.

STEPHANIE SY: That is Hannah Dreier with The New York Times joining us.

Hannah, thank you.

HANNAH DREIER: Thank you.

GEOFF BENNETT: Over the last decade, we have charted Russian propaganda efforts to affect elections here in the U.S. and overseas.

Those multilayered campaigns are also a key part of the Russian war against Ukraine.

AMNA NAWAZ: Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to portray himself and Russia as defenders of Christian and so-called traditional values.

And, as special correspondent Simon Ostrovsky tells us, those arguments have found an eager audience within certain sectors of American politics.

SIMON OSTROVSKY: This church burned down more than 10 years ago in a remote Russian village on the border with Kazakstan.

But since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the video has reappeared all across the Russian Internet.

Official sources are falsely claiming it shows a church in Ukraine, with the accusation that Kyiv is destroying churches and going after priests and parishioners across the country.

Although the story is untrue, the message that Ukraine is fighting against Christian values has turned into a powerful narrative used to justify the war to the Russian public.

Even the head of the Russian Orthodox Church calls the fighting a holy war and sends Russian soldiers off to battle with a promise of salvation.

But the story about a war against Christianity isn't just for Russians.

It was designed for export to their Orthodox neighbors, to disillusioned Europeans and increasingly to Americans, who see in it a reflection of their own culture wars and grievances.

Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene: REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): This is a war on Christianity.

The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians.

The Ukrainian government is executing priests.

Russia is not doing that.

They're not attacking Christianity.

As a matter of fact, they seem to be protecting it.

SIMON OSTROVSKY: Especially within the MAGA movement, Moscow is no longer the old adversary.

It's an anti-woke, anti-LGBTQ defender of Western civilization, a spiritual superpower.

Here are former Trump campaign strategist Steve Bannon and Blackwater founder Erik Prince on Bannon's show.

STEVE BANNON, Former White House Chief Strategist: Putin ain't woke.

He is anti-woke.

ERIK PRINCE, Founder, Blackwater USA: The Russians, people still know which bathroom to use.

STEVE BANNON: They know how many -- how many genders are there in Russia?

ERIK PRINCE: Two.

SIMON OSTROVSKY: Recent polls show that views on Russia are shifting on the right, with Republicans more than twice as likely to see Russia as a partner of the U.S.

While most Republicans and most Christians still support Ukraine, there's a subculture on the right and on the far left who are increasingly hostile, according to Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion And democracy.

Do you think it is worrisome or do you think it's overwrought?

MARK TOOLEY, President, Institute on Religion and Democracy: It is distressing that many people on the right are no longer adhering to traditional conservative values.

By most measures, Ukraine seems to be more religiously practicing than Russia is, so it's a pretext or an excuse for opposing Ukraine.

Certainly, President Reagan and others from the 1980s would be overwhelmingly supportive of Ukraine today.

SIMON OSTROVSKY: Here's one of Russia's most prolific propagandists, Vladimir Solovyov, interviewing notorious American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV, Russian TV Personality: They don't believe in God.

How can they believe in God than before LGBTQ+, minus, divide on something?

LGBT is (EXPLETIVE DELETED).

It has nothing to do with God.

ALEX JONES, Host, "The Alex Jones Show": A lot of Americans admire Russia and admire you and admire Putin because you have been able to fight this off.

SIMON OSTROVSKY: And among Americans who admire Putin, you can find the same fake footage of burning churches that were first circulated by the Russian state and its media outlets.

The interesting thing is how, on American podcasts and social media, the pro-Christian message is tailored specifically to advocate against America's support of Ukraine.

ROBERT AMSTERDAM, Attorney: All of this talk of democracy is complete farce.

So, this ongoing predation, raiding of churches, which the Ukrainians have pioneered, and if you go to our Web site, you will see hundreds and hundreds of churches and parishioners crying and screaming and priests being beaten.

And these are our allies.

These are the people we're funding.

SIMON OSTROVSKY: Canadian-American lawyer Robert Amsterdam has repeatedly made false claims about Ukrainians burning churches.

He says President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, is personally waging a war against Christians.

He doesn't mention that Zelenskyy's wife is Ukrainian Orthodox or that the couple has baptized both of their children in the faith.

One of Amsterdam's clients is the branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which has been accused of maintaining close ties with Russia.

Last year, it was ordered to merge with the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine by a controversial law that went into effect this May.

Katherine Kelaidis from the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies says the law was motivated by legitimate national security concerns.

And while the legislation may arguably have gone too far, it's been widely misrepresented by voices like Amsterdam to American audiences.

KATHERINE KELAIDIS, Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies: There are undoubtedly priests and bishops who are also acting as agents of the Russian state, who are involved in espionage.

And the fact that they exist, even though they do not constitute the majority, does make the institution itself a danger.

SIMON OSTROVSKY: Russia is selling a spiritual war in order to win a geopolitical one.

The fiction that Russia is a haven for white, straight, churchgoing families is smoothing the way for discussions about lifting sanctions on Russia and cutting off aid to Ukraine.

And in the polarized echo chambers of America's culture wars, that story is converting many.

Some of Russia's newest American fans may be surprised to learn that the fastest growing population in the country isn't Orthodox or even Christian, but Muslim.

And despite the church's central role in politics and foreign policy, last year, the actual percentage of Orthodox believers hit a 20 year low, with less than 1 percent of the population attending Christmas services.

For comparison, about 50 percent of Americans said they attended Christmas mass last year.

As previously reported on the "News Hour," Russian forces have targeted evangelical Christians in occupied Ukraine, shutting down Protestant and non-Orthodox places of worship.

This repression follows a long-established pattern in Russia of using terrorism laws to shut down hundreds of Jehovah's Witness, Protestant, and other non-Orthodox congregations.

But in the U.S., these stories just aren't getting the same kind of airtime.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Simon Ostrovsky in Washington.

GEOFF BENNETT: It's the first major biography of James Baldwin in more than three decades.

Writer Nicholas Boggs offers an intimate portrait shaped by the people who inspired him.

Drawing on archival research, original interviews, and newly uncovered documents, Boggs traces four of Baldwin's transformative relationships that depict him not just as a fearless social critic, but as an emotional, vulnerable man shaped by love.

I recently spoke with Nicholas Boggs about his book "Baldwin: A Love Story."

Thanks for being here.

NICHOLAS BOGGS, Author, "Baldwin: A Love Story": Thanks for having me.

It's great to be here.

GEOFF BENNETT: In this book, you structure Baldwin's life around four pivotal relationships.

Tell us about them.

NICHOLAS BOGGS: Well, the first one, really the origin one, is the painter Beauford Delaney, who he met in Greenwich Village when he was 16.

Delaney was 37.

He came to call him his spiritual father.

He changed his life.

He allowed him to see, as Baldwin put it, that a Black man could be an artist.

He'd never known that.

He also introduced him to blues and to jazz, music that was godforsaken in his household, but that he said actually taught him how to be a writer.

He saw it was actually Black music more than American literature that gave him his voice.

So Delaney was an important lifelong figure.

He went all the way through until his death in 1979.

Baldwin would sort of go back to him for advice.

Baldwin often would save him.

He would save Baldwin.

And they really formed this kind of alternative kinship structure that he needed.

He was very close to his family, but Baldwin lived so much of his life abroad, as did Delaney, who followed him to Paris.

But Delaney was that sort of that original, I would say, pivotal love figure outside of the family.

GEOFF BENNETT: And what led you to frame his life and work through the lens of love, rather than the more familiar focus of civil rights or the politics of the time?

NICHOLAS BOGGS: Well, I think love was politics for him.

I mean, I think love is everywhere in his writing.

It's in his essays, right?

"The Fire Next Time," he talks about how white and Black Americans must, like lovers, come to understand each other and confront the country's past and present.

All of his novels are love stories, from "Giovanni's Room," "Go Tell It on the Mountain," "Another Country," "If Beale Street Could Talk."

So I really wanted to understand why it was that we sometimes think of him as a great essayist, but the novels aren't as good, when, in fact, you have to read them together.

You couldn't understand "The Fire Next Time" without reading what he just did before that in another country, where he's looking at these interracial relationships and complexities.

And then he called for those kinds of coalitions "In The Fire Next Time".

"Giovanni's Room," he wrote "Preservation of Innocence," kind of about the perniciousness of homophobia.

He couldn't have written, "Giovanni's Room" without having written those essays.

So you have to look at everything together for Baldwin.

GEOFF BENNETT: And what about his personal connections to women like Toni Morrison, Lorraine Hansberry, Maya Angelou, Mary Painter?

NICHOLAS BOGGS: Thank you for asking that, because the risk, of course, in structuring the book to these four great loves with men is that it overlooks the very important fact that Baldwin was extremely close and influenced by many women.

Mary Painter, the American economist he met in Paris and wrote these incredible letters to there at the Beinecke that detail his creative process, his love life, their intersections.

Maya Angelou was also very important.

Toni Morrison came to the South of France, and he was writing "If Beale Street Could Talk," his first novel written from the first-person perspective of a woman, pregnant Tish.

He made some popcorn, took her down into his torture chamber, and read it out loud to her to get her opinion.

So she had a big influence on him, as did many Black feminists in the '70s and the '80s later in his career.

GEOFF BENNETT: How do his relationships, both romantic and platonic, how do they intersect with the civil rights and social justice themes that continue to make his work resonate today?

NICHOLAS BOGGS: Baldwin, they were the -- they were the relationships he had with others and also the relationship he had with himself.

So his journey to self-love was very complicated.

He writes about how love is a battle.

Love is a growing up.

It was for him because, growing up, he was told that he was ugly, right, that he was a sissy.

So he had this long journey to sort of seeing himself as worthy of love.

And so he knew that love was hard-earned.

It was hard-won.

And he kind of used this insight about himself and in his own relationships -- he was hard on his lovers -- he asked a lot from them as well -- to also say to Americans in general, right, this project, this -- of Americans grappling with their past was a love project, that only love, as he put it, would throw open the gates to kind of truly coming to terms and truly kind of meeting the moment of the civil rights movement.

GEOFF BENNETT: As you were writing this biography, how did you navigate the tension, assuming there was tension, between honoring his public legacy and then sort of revealing his private, sometimes difficult emotional interior?

NICHOLAS BOGGS: Well, because Baldwin had a -- even though he died too young, he had a very long career, and he changed his mind about many things.

So, for example, early on in his nonfiction, he was not writing about his personal life that closely, right, especially not his love for other men.

But by later in his career, in his late essays of "Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood, "To Crush the Serpent," both in "Playboy."

And then his introduction to his collected essays, "The Price of the Ticket," he's delving deep into his private life.

He's no longer being held up as the kind of race man.

He's no longer being held up as a spokesman.

This gave him a freedom to go back and look at his early relationships with men, the Spanish racketeer who fell in love with him when he was 16, the lovers he had in Greenwich Village.

So, here, he's able to -- he is writing about his private life.

So in a way, that was very freeing because it would have been different if I hadn't felt that he himself was heading in these directions later in his life.

GEOFF BENNETT: James Baldwin's relevance in many ways is at an all-time high, not just in the U.S., but around the world.

What is it about his message, his ideas on race, identity, love that speak so urgently to the present moment?

NICHOLAS BOGGS: Young people love Baldwin, and it's a wonderful thing to see.

And sometimes it gets simplified.

People say, well, they don't -- they're sound bites.

It's just sound bites.

They don't really read Baldwin.

I'm not sure that's true, but I do hope this biography helps more young people get introduced to Baldwin and read him.

I think what they love about him is that he's a truth-teller.

He tells it like it is, and he also speaks across so many constituencies.

Listen, this is a different era.

White people and Black people are friends.

They're hanging out in college, OK?

They're hanging out on the basketball court.

They're hanging out in life.

This country has become an incredibly multiracial country.

So I think Baldwin, the intersections that he was -- I think there was an interviewer who said, well, you're Black, poor, and gay.

Like, how did that impact you?

And he said, I hit the jackpot because he had all of these perspectives.

There's a lot of people out there who are having these conversations about the intersections between queer people, Black people, women, immigrants.

I mean, so Baldwin enables people to kind of attach to these various parts of him where we're all really speaking to each other as well.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, I will tell you, the book, at nearly 700 pages, it's a triumph.

Nicholas Boggs, congratulations, and thank you for being here.

NICHOLAS BOGGS: Thanks so much for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: "James Baldwin: A Love Story."

AMNA NAWAZ: And, remember, there's a lot more online, including a look at a new student loan rule that critics worry will hurt the pipeline for early educators.

That's at PBS.org/NewsHour.

GEOFF BENNETT: 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.