GEOFF BENNETT: Good evening.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

Amna Nawaz is away.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: The death toll from the devastating Maui fires rises to nearly 100, as officials warn residents not to return home due to risk of toxic exposure.

Former President Donald Trump overshadows his campaign rivals, as Republican candidates make their pitches to Iowa voters.

And a highly respected conservative judge who advised former Vice President Mike Pence regarding January 6 continues his call for accountability.

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG, Former Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge: January 6 and what the former president is not politics.

It's literally crimes against the United States of America.

(BREAK) GEOFF BENNETT: Good evening, and welcome to the "NewsHour."

The death toll from the Maui wildfires continues to climb.

At least 96 people are now confirmed dead.

And officials warn that number may rise further as the rescue effort continues, with just a fraction of the affected area searched so far.

Search and recovery efforts are continuing tonight following the nation's deadliest wildfire in more than a century.

As officials survey the devastation, residents continue to look for missing loved ones.

JUNE LACUESTA, Maui Resident: I would like to find Kihanu (ph) family, Coloma (ph) family and Villegas (ph) families, which is three more -- three days now that everybody's looking for them.

GEOFF BENNETT: Hundreds of people remain unaccounted for.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell spoke to reporters at the White House today.

DEANNE CRISWELL, FEMA Administrator: We have sent more personnel, as well as more cadaver dogs to come into the area.

And they are working in conjunction with the Maui Fire Department and the Sheriff's Office to make sure that we are doing this in a very methodical way, but one that is also very respectful of the community to make sure that we find everybody.

The fire started last Tuesday when strong winds from a distant hurricane gusted across the island.

Once the blazes started, they spread quickly, expanding roughly one mile every minute.

Flames engulfed the historic town of Lahaina without warning.

Some people had to jump into the ocean for safety.

This Maui resident tried to escape by car with her family, but they got stuck in traffic.

And she had to make an impossible decision.

AKANESI VAA, Lahaina Survivor: So, I look to my left, and I'm literally right next to this car where this grandmother is yelling for help.

And she's just telling me: "Please, help me.

I have a baby."

And I just -- at that time, I'm like, what do I do?

GEOFF BENNETT: Her husband helped their kids and the grandmother while she took the baby.

AKANESI VAA: I grabbed her.

She had -- she was sitting on a blanket.

I wrapped her with the blanket.

And I told my kids: "You guys, run.

Don't turn around and look for me."

And my 9-year-old couldn't.

She just kept telling me: "Mom, I can't.

Please, mom."

GEOFF BENNETT: The family, grandmother and baby all made it to safety.

The fires destroyed nearly 3,000 structures, causing an estimated $5.5 billion worth of damage.

Now some residents are waiting in long lines to return home.

Meantime local officials, as well as the whole at the tourism agency, are strongly discouraging nonessential travel to Maui for the foreseeable future.

In the day's other headlines: Prosecutors in Atlanta Georgia started presenting the findings of their election interference probe to a grand jury.

They argue that former President Trump and his allies tried to illegally overturn the state's 2020 election results.

Security was tight outside the Fulton County courthouse as an indictment decision looms.

If charged, this would be Mr. Trump's fourth indictment in less than five months.

In Northern India, heavy monsoon rains turned deadly today after a string of floods and landslides killed at least 48 people and trapped many others.

Rescuers sifted through the aftermath of a landslide, removing boulders from a steep slope with their bare hands.

Meantime, state officials say the floods are showing no signs of easing.

MUKESH AGNIHOTRI, Deputy Chief Minister, Himachal Pradesh, India (through translator): The situation here is bad.

There are continuous floods and the rivers are overflowing.

There are flash floods, villages are being flooded, and people's homes have been affected.

GEOFF BENNETT: Floods are common this time of year in India's Himalayan region.

But experts say glacial melt brought on by climate change has made conditions far worse in recent years.

A senior health official in Ethiopia says an airstrike on a bustling town square has killed at least 26 people.

The attack happened Sunday in the country's Amhara region.

More than 55 people were wounded.

It comes as local militia members have been clashing with the Ethiopian army that's trying to disband them.

In Ukraine, three waves of Russian drone and missile strikes rocked the port city of Odesa.

Russian forces have targeted the area since the Kremlin backed out of the Black Sea grain deal last month.

A supermarket was set on fire in one early morning attack.

The Ukrainians said they intercepted 15 drones and eight missiles.

By daylight, the extent of the damage became clear.

MYKHAILO, Odesa Resident (through translator): There's nothing left inside.

Everything was burnt down.

Some animal feed was intact.

Otherwise, everything is gone.

Thank God it wasn't a residential building that was hit.

We will restore everything.

GEOFF BENNETT: Meantime, the U.S. State Department announced another $200 million in military aid to Ukraine.

It will include air defense munitions, artillery rounds and anti-armor capabilities, among other things.

Six white former Mississippi law enforcement officers have pleaded guilty to state charges of a racist assault.

In January, they invaded a home, brutally tortured two Black men for hours, and then staged a cover-up that led to false charges.

The officers recently admitted their guilt in a related federal civil rights case.

A judge in Montana has ruled that young people have a constitutional right to a clean environment.

The lawsuit was filed by 16 plaintiffs ranging in age from 5 to 22, who argued the state's lawmakers weren't doing enough to combat climate change.

It's the first youth-led climate case to reach trial in the U.S. and sets a powerful precedent for similar cases to come.

Michael Oher, the former NFL tackle depicted in the book and movie "The Blind Side," filed a petition in Tennessee today alleging he was never actually adopted by the family who took him in.

He said they misled him into signing papers, making them his conservatives, and not his adoptive parents.

Oher accused them of making millions of dollars off his life story.

On Wall Street, stocks closed higher today.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 26 points to close it 35307.

The Nasdaq rose 143 points.

The S&P 500 added 25.

And Clarence Avant, the legendary music executive known as the Black Godfather of Entertainment, died Sunday at his home in Los Angeles.

Avant helped launch the careers of musicians like Quincy Jones and Bill Withers.

He was a power broker in music and also sports and politics.

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021.

Clarence Avant was 92 years old.

And still to come on the "NewsHour": Tamara Keith and Amy Walter break down the latest political headlines; a police raid on a small town in Kansas draws widespread condemnation; author Douglas Martin gives his Brief But Spectacular take on paying attention to everyday things; plus much more.

Every food imaginable is available on a stick at the Iowa State Fair, but the state's largest gathering also serves up a heaping helping of politics and a summer preview of what's to come in 2024.

Lisa Desjardins has this report from the nation's first race for the Republican presidential nomination.

LISA DESJARDINS: This is Iowa's happy place, where one million people come to taste fried food, contentment, and belonging, and where Republicans running for president... GOV.

RON DESANTIS (R-FL), Presidential Candidate: There's so nice in Iowa in the Midwest, but, normally, all I got to do to get Midwest nice is go to Fort Myers in January.

(LAUGHTER) LISA DESJARDINS: ... have their own comfort zone.

MIKE PENCE (R), Presidential Candidate: President Joe Biden has weakened this country at home and abroad.

GOV.

RON DESANTIS: On day one, we take all Biden regulations and executive orders and throw them in the trash can.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) LISA DESJARDINS: President Biden is the easy target.

Much harder for this field?

Confronting the former president.

DONALD TRUMP, Former President of the United States: So the other candidates came here, they had like six people.

LISA DESJARDINS: Donald Trump has a commanding lead in polls and a killer instinct, swooping into the fair and overshadowing his closest opponent, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

This is what all the other candidates are up against, enthralled, standing room overflow crowds watching every step that the former president takes here at the fair.

RAEA KRULL, Iowa Voter: Make America great again is what he was all about.

And I think he was on the way to doing that.

JOANIE PELLETT, Iowa Voter: I'm just a solid Trump supporter.

I love all of his policies.

I love everything that we had for those four years.

LISA DESJARDINS: There's more than voter sentiment.

Team Trump is better organized than in 2016, when he was second in the Iowa caucuses.

They're collecting caucus pledge cards at his events and have troops of volunteers in Trump T-shirts as walking ads.

Can anybody beat Donald Trump in this state?

JIMMY CENTERS, Iowa Political Strategist: It's going to be hard.

The president currently has a significant lead, 24 points by the latest New York Times poll.

But Iowans are willing to kick the tires.

LISA DESJARDINS: Iowa Republican strategist Jimmy Centers notes traditional thinking, that the top three caucus finishers have a shot at the nomination.

But, this year, he thinks it will be two, at most.

JIMMY CENTERS: There is a lane for someone to come up to challenge the former president.

That said, you got to get going and you got to get going fast.

LISA DESJARDINS: Fighting hard for that lane is DeSantis, campaigning on his record in Florida.

GOV.

RON DESANTIS: We are going to safeguard the rights of parents in this country.

LISA DESJARDINS: Including his shakeup of the education system there.

DeSantis' crackdown on how schools can teach about race, slavery and LGBTQ issues is popular with social conservatives.

But those things and his moves to restrict abortion and transgender care have brought sharp reaction from others, like these protesters who have followed him around the state.

For some DeSantis supporters, like the Bahrt family, it's more simple.

They don't trust or want Trump anymore.

MICHAEL BAHRT, Iowa Voter: There are probably four or five other candidates in this race that they say good things, but I think that he has the better chance of winning of any of them.

LISA DESJARDINS: Chances helped by some of the strongest organization in Iowa, including the Never Back Down super PAC backing DeSantis.

He is firmly in second place.

But competition is coming up fast behind him.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old businessman, is surging here.

And as he barnstorms the state as a younger version of Trump, Ramaswamy knows Iowa is critical.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY (R), Presidential Candidate: There's nothing like this.

And so we're counting on this for saying that I get to at least tell the people who I am and what I stand for.

LISA DESJARDINS: He's pitching the idea of Trump without the baggage.

TODD SHANNON, Nebraska Voter: I'm leaning towards Vivek at the moment over Trump.

LISA DESJARDINS: Over Trump?

TODD SHANNON: Over Trump, yes.

The reason why is because he has most -- many of the same policies and in many ways he's more extreme.

But he doesn't make everybody go bat crazy when he talks, right?

LISA DESJARDINS: Problem for Ramaswamy, that voter is from neighboring Nebraska.

In Iowa, someone else is on the radar too.

MARTIN EVANS, Iowa Voter: Well, that guy from North Dakota, I think he'd be a good one too.

LISA DESJARDINS: That would be North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, a self-made Midwestern billionaire.

He brings an energy expertise and straightforward style.

Do you think former President Trump can be beat here and how?

GOV.

DOUG BURGUM (R-ND), Presidential Candidate: Well, if I didn't think there was a way to win, we wouldn't have entered the race.

So we're entering the race to win the race.

SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC), Presidential Candidate: Not on my watch.

LISA DESJARDINS: Also getting buzz, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott.

He goes to the fair this week, but beating him there was the state's former Governor Nikki Haley.

Voters are warm over, but Haley needs to be more people's first choice.

How do you gain ground, especially against former President Trump?

NIKKI HALEY (R), Presidential Candidate: Well, first of all, no one's been paying attention.

We held all our money not to spend it, because families are on vacation and kids are out of school.

It is now open season.

LISA DESJARDINS: Overall, candidates rarely take on Trump directly.

A particular exception... MIKE PENCE: I don't have to tell you about the steady assault on our liberties and our values.

LISA DESJARDINS: ... is his former Vice President Mike Pence, who faces a uniquely difficult problem.

MAN: You're a traitor!

LISA DESJARDINS: Multiple fair-goers accused him of treason for breaking with Trump on January 6 and certifying the official election results.

Pence takes on that charge as a strength.

MIKE PENCE: The American presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) MIKE PENCE: And I will always believe, by God's grace, I did my duty that day.

I truly believe it.

LISA DESJARDINS: But his problem remains.

How do you gain ground against him?

MIKE PENCE: Well, I just -- look, I'm -- I just say, stay tuned.

I'm so proud of the record of the Trump/Pence administration.

There are Iowa Republicans leery of the former president or worried his indictments could make it difficult to win a general election.

WAYNE BARB, Iowa Voter: Well, the interesting thing is, if he doesn't get them postponed, it's not going to be.

BRENDA BESONEN, Iowa Voter: My feeling is, Trump and Biden both need to step down.

Let's put it that way.

LISA DESJARDINS: But there are many who still believe Trump's narrative.

TOM FISHER, Iowa Voter: Pence stabbed Trump in the back.

You don't do that.

HEIDI REINHARDT, Iowa Voter: He has to make his entrance.

LISA DESJARDINS: Trump volunteer Heidi Reinhardt told us she loves what he did as president and will vote for him or no one.

How do you know that what he's saying is true?

HEIDI REINHARDT: We don't.

We don't know -- we don't know the other people are saying what they're saying either, but I follow behind him.

(LAUGHTER) LISA DESJARDINS: This is the lethal balancing act for the non-Trump candidates.

Many stay upright by avoiding talking about him, but not all.

FMR.

GOV.

ASA HUTCHINSON (R-AR), Presidential Candidate: Donald Trump is dangerous for our country.

LISA DESJARDINS: Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson is another Iowa hopeful, the one who is the most outspoken about the risk he sees from Trump.

FMR.

GOV.

ASA HUTCHINSON: He ought to step aside.

LISA DESJARDINS: What do you think is at stake for the party?

FMR.

GOV.

ASA HUTCHINSON: I mean, if we don't get this right, there won't be a Republican Party.

LISA DESJARDINS: In Iowa, a highly unusual fight, at turns raucous, at others wild.

(SHOUTING) LISA DESJARDINS: But these Midwestern voters are carefully considering their options.

CAROL EMAL, Iowa Voter: There's a lot of -- on both sides, a lot of interesting... LISA DESJARDINS: Interesting?

CAROL EMAL: Interesting people on both sides.

KIM TOTTS, Iowa Voter: Plus, even if somebody else doesn't get to be a candidate, they have got a lot of good ideas.

MAN: Right.

KIM TOTTS: So I think, especially for the debates and things like that, everybody needs to be heard.

LISA DESJARDINS: At one of the country's biggest fairs ahead of one of the biggest political contests, there is a clear front-runner hovering, but Iowans are listening to everyone.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Lisa Desjardins in Des Moines.

GEOFF BENNETT: While Republican presidential hopefuls duke it out in Iowa, President Biden hits the road to sell his agenda.

For analysis of the 2024 campaign, we turn to our Politics Monday team.

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

It's great to see you both, as always.

So we have got these Republican presidential candidates colliding in Iowa.

Let's talk about Ron DeSantis, because he's trying to reset his campaign.

And, Amy, you wrote a piece about his perceived failure to launch.

What did you find?

AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: Well, I did this by looking both at the polling, so what are we looking at by the by the data points, but also listening to what voters have been saying across the country, interviewing Sarah Longwell, who's been on the show many times, who's a strategist who interviews a great number of Republican voters.

And what it seems that Ron DeSantis, his biggest stumble, I would say, is -- was messaging and timing.

The timing was he decided to wait until earlier this summer to officially launch his campaign.

But he was the hottest at the end of 2022, wondering if he had taken that momentum and built on it, announced earlier and kept driving that, rather than going back to Tallahassee doing his job as governor.

And the second is messaging.

It was clear in all of those focus groups that she had been conducting over the last year, what Republican voters, especially those who are in the camp of either I'm never voting for Donald Trump or I have liked Donald Trump, but I'm open to other alternatives, maybe 50, 60 percent of the electorate, what they were saying is, they liked Ron DeSantis because he looked electable and he could win swing voters.

DeSantis instead decided to focus his message on being the woke candidate -- or the anti-woke warrior, going after cultural issues, using his time at the governor's office to go after a whole bunch of those issues, and it kind of moved him off of that talking point that was really hitting home for those voters.

And then the indictments happened, and it just drowned everything else out.

GEOFF BENNETT: Tam, on the issue of momentum, how important is Iowa to Ron DeSantis or any other Republican at this point who wants or, I guess, really needs to show that they can mount a serious challenge to Donald Trump, who is the dominant force?

TAMARA KEITH, National Public Radio: It is the first opportunity to pierce the inevitability of Donald Trump.

And it may be one of the only opportunities, because momentum is a thing in primaries.

And, at the moment, he is the -- has the prohibitive lead in the polls.

I was in Iowa a couple of weeks ago.

I was on vacation.

I was riding my bike across Iowa.

So I saw a lot of back roads, a lot of front yards, a lot of driveways.

And what I will tell you is I saw a lot of Trump signs, and I saw nothing else.

Well, I did see one truck with Burgum taped to the side of it, but tons of Trump signs, Trump 2024 signs, brand-new ones, Trump 2020 signs with Mike Pence's name taped over and covered up.

The indictments have done nothing but consolidate support behind Trump among the Republican base.

And all of these other people are out there biting at his heels trying to get some attention.

And he showed up at the fair for like an hour-and-a-half and everybody's still talking about him.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, as we sit here, we are awaiting a potential fourth indictment from the DA in Fulton County, Georgia, related to Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the election.

It almost -- it feels kind of ridiculous to reduce this... AMY WALTER: Doesn't it?

GEOFF BENNETT: ... to what it means in terms of in terms of politics.

AMY WALTER: Yes.

GEOFF BENNETT: But, politically, what effect will it have?

AMY WALTER: It feels like we're just listening to white noise.

And you can hear that too from voters.

That's sort of what they're saying is, I don't know, what indictment are we on, what's happening?

And as you heard in Lisa's piece, you do have a segment of Republican voters who believe that all of this is targeted at Donald Trump, because these nefarious actors don't want him to run for president, don't want him to win again.

But I think, for the folks who are outside of that group of voters, they too don't really - - they have already made their mind up about Donald Trump and whether these are serious charges or not serious charges.

Does this move the needle?

Probably not.

I think the only thing that moves the needle is when we get to a place where we actually have potentially a trial.

And there was some news today that if, indeed, an indictment does come down from Georgia, this could be televised, unlike the federal cases.

That adds just an interesting new layer.

Not saying that it is necessarily going to get people to feel one way or the other.

But it would be -- just imagine this happening, a televised trial of a presidential -- potential presidential nominee going into an election.

We have -- we have just -- obviously, we have never seen anything like this.

GEOFF BENNETT: Indeed.

And, as for the Democrats, President Biden, members of the Cabinet, members of the administration are going across the country on this anniversary of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.

And then, separate from that, we now have a special counsel in the Hunter Biden case.

How does the Biden White House and the Biden campaign, how do they view all this?

TAMARA KEITH: So, I traveled with President Biden all last week as he went out West and tried to make the pitch for his policies.

And he also attended a couple of fund-raisers that are closed door, no cameras, no audio, but reporters could be there to watch.

And he's more revealing about his thoughts in terms of politics when he's in these fund-raisers talking to donors.

And what he said, a couple of things stand out.

One, he said, I'm not so sure we should have called it the Inflation Reduction Act, because people just don't understand what's in it.

And then he also said that he just doesn't feel like he's getting the credit he deserves.

But he's willing to be patient.

I think what I witnessed last week traveling with the president is exactly what his campaign is going to look like for the next year, which is him shouting from the rooftops trying to get people to pay attention and know what Congress passed and what he signed in those first two years in office.

GEOFF BENNETT: Hasn't this White House been saying that for like two years?

TAMARA KEITH: Oh, yes.

GEOFF BENNETT: And once people know what the what the infrastructure bill does, and once people know what the Inflation Reduction Act does, then you will watch the president's poll numbers go up.

TAMARA KEITH: And then, five years from now, when people actually know what are in -- what is in those bills, maybe they will.

But that is the challenge is that policies, individual policies, tend to be popular, but nobody knows what the Inflation Reduction Act is.

Nobody knows what the bipartisan infrastructure plan is or who voted for it.

And so that is the ongoing challenge.

And the other ongoing challenge is the entire time that the president was traveling, everyone was paying attention to Donald Trump and his legal travails and the latest and criminal thing that happened in this jurisdiction or that jurisdiction.

And no one was paying attention to anything that President Biden was saying in speeches that admittedly are pretty repetitive.

He doesn't make news when he's out there pitching the public on his policies.

GEOFF BENNETT: So then how can this White House make policy cool again?

(CROSSTALK) AMY WALTER: Yes, well, it's about a contrast.

That's what campaigns are for, right?

GEOFF BENNETT: Yes.

TAMARA KEITH: Right.

AMY WALTER: And so I think you're going to hear as we get into the campaign less about, isn't this great?

Isn't this great?

Let me tell you, I'm going to convince you that it's great, Geoff, and more about here's what we're doing for you, here's what my opponent is doing that's going to hurt you, or they're not focusing enough on you.

The interesting thing, I do think that the contrast between a president going out and selling an economic plan and his economic successes versus the trials was a good contrast.

But the Hunter Biden's story also made the news, and that sullied it a little bit.

It didn't make it as clean of a contrast between these two.

GEOFF BENNETT: So, they're trying to make the election a choice, not a referendum on President Biden.

AMY WALTER: Absolutely.

TAMARA KEITH: As always.

GEOFF BENNETT: That's true.

Tamara Keith and Amy Walter, it's great to see you both.

AMY WALTER: Good to see you.

GEOFF BENNETT: An influential group of Republican legal voices today endorsed the January 2024 trial date proposed by special counsel Jack Smith in his 2020 election interference case against former President Donald Trump.

The group included former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appointed by George W. Bush, and J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal appellate judge and one of the nation's leading conservative legal minds.

Judy Woodruff recently visited Judge Luttig at his home in Colorado as part of her ongoing series America at a Crossroads.

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG, Former Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge: I understood the gravity of this matter.

And I understood from my lifetime of experience in and around those offices and those institutions that this was catastrophic for America and for American democracy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Retired Judge Michael Luttig is one of the most influential conservatives to have served in the federal judiciary.

He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia while he was on the appellate circuit, served as assistant counsel to President Ronald Reagan, and was the assistant attorney general under President George H.W.

Bush, who later appointed him to the United States Court of Appeals.

He was twice considered for nomination himself to the Supreme Court.

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG: I felt that I had a profound obligation to the country to speak and to explain all of what had happened.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well-known in Republican legal circles, Luttig burst into public view when, on January 5, 2021, he advised then-Vice President Mike Pence to defy former President Trump's plea not to certify the 2020 election results.

REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): Judge Luttig, thank you as well for being here with us today.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Luttig spoke about it in dramatic testimony more than a year later before the House January 6 Committee that was investigating the insurrection.

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG: Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Challenging Trump so publicly thrust him into the hot lights of American politics, where he's been ever since.

We sat down with Judge Luttig at his home in Vail, Colorado, to talk about where the country is in the aftermath of the past two-and-a-half tumultuous years.

You have been saying for months that Americans have lost their moral compass and that, with this loss of direction, Americans have lost all perspective.

What brought you to that conclusion?

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG: For almost 250 years, Judy, there was all but a consensus among the American public on the fundamental values and principles on which America was founded.

And then, all of a sudden, it seems we don't agree on anything at all.

We have not talked to each other as friends and fellow citizens, Americans who share the same destiny and have the same hopes and dreams for America for six or eight years now.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And that being the case, you're - - you're still confident that there's more that we have to agree carry on?

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG: I am.

I know that there's more that we agree on than that we disagree on.

Our officials and our elected leaders have talked to the nation and talked to we Americans as if we were enemies of each other.

And we have never been enemies of each other.

Over the timeline of the past 10, 15, 20 years, leaders on both sides of the aisle have failed us.

But, as of today, and for the past two-and-a-half years, since January 6, 2021, it has been the Republicans who have reprehensibly failed us as Americans.

On January 6, the former president and the Republican allies, his allies and supporters, declared war on American democracy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How much responsibility does former President Trump himself bear for all this?

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG: He bears a disproportionate share of responsibility, if not the entire responsibility.

The former president sought to overturn an American election which he had lost fair and square.

For four years, these claims by the former president and his Republican allies have corroded and corrupted American democracy and American elections.

Vast, vast numbers of Americans, into the millions, today no longer believe in the elections in the United States of America.

They no longer believe in the institutions of law and democracy in America, the very pillars of our foundation.

And many of those people have begun even to question the Constitution of the United States.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But you're saying the damage done has been far, far greater than former President Trump, January 6, and the immediate actions that were taken in that time period?

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG: Yes, there's no question.

Never again will the world be inspired to - - by America and America's democracy in the way that it has been for -- since our founding almost 250 years ago.

But the indictment and prosecution of the president doesn't end or even begin to resolve this matter.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How much does it matter what the verdict of that trial is?

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG: All that matters is that the president will be tried for these grave offenses.

Had he not, he would have made a mockery out of the Constitution and the rule of law.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But do you worry that whether there's an acquittal or a conviction, what the effect could be?

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG: We can expect that if the president were to be acquitted, that he and all of his supporters would claim that that was vindication that he was right that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

Were that to be the case, I don't believe that American democracy could be saved, at least in the near future.

JUDY WOODRUFF: That's a -- that's a terrible statement to hear from you.

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG: I understand.

I understand.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Former President Trump, as you know, is already saying he's not guilty.

He believes he's being treated unfairly in all this, especially in contrast to President Biden's son Hunter Biden.

He has said that he's being treated much worse by the judicial system.

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG: The issue with Hunter Biden and the issue with the former president, they are not similar in any way at all, let alone in gravity or consequence.

It's the incumbent president's son and the personal conduct that he's being charged -- accused of is of a pedestrian nature by comparison to what the former president has now been indicted for.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Returning to something that you have spoken about in this interview, a big part of today's problems with what we're facing as a country has to do with political leaders, elected officials.

What about individuals like the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, like Senator Lindsey Graham, who are leaders in the party, but have not so far spoken out clearly against former President Trump?

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG: Any leader, Republican or Democrat, who has not spoken against January 6 and the former president's role in it has betrayed their oath.

January 6 and what the former president did is not politics.

And it certainly is not partisan politics.

This is far above and beyond politics.

And, as we now know, it's literally crimes against the United States of America.

But all of our politicians, and especially the Republicans, have regarded it as nothing more than politics.

In that respect, they have failed Americans.

It's critical to American democracy that you have two very strong political parties who are competing against each other on the issues, the public policy issues before the nation.

We can't have one party who is supporting and defending what occurred on January 6, together with the president of the United States who caused January 6.

We can't have that.

We cannot function until the Republican Party comes to its senses.

And, in my view, I don't consider the Republican Party a political party in the United States at the moment.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Luttig added that he believes the country can't be set on course again unless a number of those elected officials lose their jobs.

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG: What we need to do is remove our power from our elected officials who have betrayed us as Americans and send to Washington others who better understand than today's officials that their power is our power.

JUDY WOODRUFF: When you think about what the country does to heal this moment of extreme polarization, what comes to mind as solutions?

What needs to be done?

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG: Someone who has the moral wherewithal to speak and be heard by the nation has to speak.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Is there anyone on the scene right now that can fill that?

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG: There is not, not one single leader in America today, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So what does that portend?

J. MICHAEL LUTTIG: That alone portends hopelessness, right?

But we have to be eternally hopeful.

JUDY WOODRUFF: For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Judy Woodruff in Vail, Colorado.

GEOFF BENNETT: Police officers in Marion, Kansas, are facing scrutiny after raiding the newsroom of the town's local newspaper.

As William Brangham reports, press freedom advocates say it's a clear violation of the First Amendment.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Geoff, Marion, Kansas is a town of roughly 2,000.

Its paper, The Marion County Record, has five full-time employees.

On Friday, as you can see in this video, police raided the newsroom, took photos and confiscated computers, cell phones and other materials.

Police say they executed the search warrant as part of an identity theft investigation.

But the newspaper has rejected that accusation.

The newspaper's publisher and editor said that his 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, collapsed and died following a separate raid on the house that they shared.

She was co-owner of the paper.

Eric Meyer is the publisher and editor of The Marion County Record, and he joins us now.

Eric, I'm terribly sorry about your mother's passing and this whole ordeal.

And I just wonder how -- how are you holding up?

How your colleagues holding up?

ERIC MEYER, Publisher and Editor, The Marion County Record: I will be honest with you.

The shock of the raid and all of the attention it's received afterward really hasn't left me almost any time to reflect on my mother's death.

So it's pushed it off a little bit.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I mean, the details of this case are complicated, that a local restaurant owner alleges that someone at your paper illegally obtained personal damaging information about her about a previous drunk driving case.

She went to the police, the police got the warrant, and they executed that warrant.

Is that true?

Did anyone at the newspaper illegally obtain this information?

ERIC MEYER: Not illegally.

But what really happened was a source sent us that information.

We were worried whether it was authentic and attempted to verify that it is factual information.

We then informed the police that we had -- that the source had sent us this thing, because it was possible that the source had obtained it from police records, rather than where she said she did.

We notified the police of that Friday before the raids.

A week later, they did not ask any question.

We offered at the time, if you think there's a case you want to pursue, we will give you any more information you want.

That didn't -- they didn't talk to us, didn't say a word to us until they showed up at our doors on the following Friday morning.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I mean, more than 30 news and press freedom organizations, as you know, have condemned this raid, arguing -- quote - - "that there appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of this search."

You have suggested that the extremity of this action was partly because of your other reporting about local officials.

Can you explain what you mean?

ERIC MEYER: Well, this is, as with most small towns, a very divided community in some regards.

And it's more so than others.

There's also other stories we have been pursuing, including stories we haven't published, because we haven't found enough support for them.

But we were doing investigation into the chief of police, for example.

We -- his background.

We did some work about his budget and how we didn't quite make sense of that.

So there are other things that we have done reporting on that maybe they took that.

We have some suspicion to believe that.

The document itself, the one that was obtained, that they say we stole the identity of, a copy of it was sitting on my desk right next to my computer, and they didn't seize it.

They didn't find any copies that we had downloaded and printed, because we didn't print them.

We just looked to see if this the same document that we'd seen shown up.

That's not criminal intent.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, are you planning on taking legal action against the police force for this raid?

ERIC MEYER: Well, we obviously want our equipment back, and we'd like to have it back sooner, rather than later, because we're struggling right now to publish this week's paper.

But the bigger issue is, this kind of stuff can't stand.

We can't allow police to come running through newsrooms and seizing things and looking.

And there's nobody watching the police at this point.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Your mother, as you mentioned, she was co-owner of the paper.

And in an article this weekend about her passing, the first sentence reads that she was -- quote - - "stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by shock and grief."

Do you really believe that this event is what precipitated the end of her life?

ERIC MEYER: Contributed.

I don't know that it caused it entirely.

But it's not only I believe that.

The coroner who handled her case, and who was her family physician for many years, thinks so too.

She was so distraught.

When you're 98 years old, your world shrinks a bit.

She lived in that house for almost 70 years.

It was her castle.

It was her safe place.

To have police officers come and stand and watch her for two hours waiting for other officers to come and search her material, because we had to conduct these raids as if it was against some Medellin drug cartel, simultaneous raids at three locations, and so on and so forth.

The officers there were nice, the ones that were there initially, but then when seven of them descended on her house, she just sat most of the evening: Where are all the good people?

Where are all the good people?

And how come they haven't done something about this?

Why are they allowed to do this?

She worked at the newspaper for 50 years.

We bought it 25 years ago.

My parents and I jointly bought it 25 years ago to keep it from going under chain ownership, the great part of her life, the dedication to the community and the dedication to community journalism that said, hey, you can make more money buying something, buying stock or something like that, rather than buying a newspaper company.

But we wanted to do it because it benefits the community.

And this is like the whole -- everything -- your back was turned on.

So, the last 24 hours of a 98-year-old woman's life was devoted to pain and anguish and a feeling that all her life didn't matter.

I think, if she were alive today, she'd be pleased that her death has brought some attention to this story, and in a positive way.

But she's not alive now.

And who do you see about that?

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Eric Meyer, publisher and editor of The Marion County Record, I'm very, very sorry for your loss.

And I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us.

ERIC MEYER: Thank you, William.

GEOFF BENNETT: We will be back shortly.

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

It's a chance to offer your support, which helps keep programs like this one on the air.

For those of you staying with us, John Legend is continuing with his special An Evening With John Legend performances this summer, performing while telling his own story.

At the age of 44, he is the very portrait of success, having achieved the so-called EGOT, two Emmys, 12 Grammys, an Oscar, and a Tony.

He's the first Black man and second youngest person ever to do so.

Jeffrey Brown met up with the legend, with John Legend, for our arts and culture series, Canvas, and has this second look.

JEFFREY BROWN: Just a man and his piano at the afternoon sound check on the stage of the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts outside Washington, D.C., and, that night, before a packed crowd.

John Legend is doing something new in his latest project, singing songs that influenced him and that brought him fame, but also telling personal stories of how he got there.

JOHN LEGEND, Musician: In addition to selling delicious fries, McDonald's did outreach to the Black community in the form of a Black History Month essay competition called Black History Makers of Tomorrow.

I wrote this essay when I was 15 years old, and I said I was going to try to make history by becoming a successful artist and using my success to try to make the world better.

And I still feel that same sense of mission, and I'm going to keep doing it.

JEFFREY BROWN: The other thing you talked about was living up to this name that you chose.

JOHN LEGEND: Yes, I'm trying every day.

(LAUGHTER) JEFFREY BROWN: John Legend.

In fact, he was born and grew up as John Stephens.

But, as John Legend, he's sold millions of albums since his 2004 debut, "Get Lifted," and his 2013 love song, "All of Me," an ode to his wife, model, cookbook author and TV personality Chrissy Teigen, has some two billion streams on Spotify.

A throwback in part to the rich tradition of soul and R&B, he's also known for collaborating with many of this era'S biggest hip-hop stars, including at this year's Grammy Awards, where he joined Jay-Z and others in a rousing show-ender.

What is it that you're bringing to that?

JOHN LEGEND: Well, I'm bringing soul, I'm bringing gospel, I'm bringing all of my own personal experiences to that performance.

And that's what they have me there for.

They don't need me to rap.

(LAUGHTER) JOHN LEGEND: But they need me there to bring that soul and the musicality.

And I think I have always brought that in my collaborations with hip-hop artists.

JEFFREY BROWN: He's celebrity coach on the hit singing competition series "The Voice" and celebrity husband, as well as dad, to the couple's three children.

And he clearly thrives on performing.

JOHN LEGEND: I feel so connected to the audience.

I feel so close to the music, and it feels like I'm just being fully myself up there.

JEFFREY BROWN: On stage now, a stripped-down version of John Legend.

It's just you and the piano.

You like that?

JOHN LEGEND: Yes.

I love it.

It takes me back to being a little boy.

It takes me back to the church in some ways where I grew up, takes me back to my family, where I started to learn to play the piano in our home.

JEFFREY BROWN: He grew up in Springfield, Ohio, in a deeply religious household,a happy one at first, but then frayed when John was 10 and his mother, suffering depression and then addiction, left the family.

He barely saw her for 10 years.

JOHN LEGEND: That was a tough time.

But it also made me more independent and more driven as a musician.

You don't want those experiences to happen, but those experiences help create the person who you are.

And if you react to it in the right way, then you can grow from it, and it can inform and inspire your music, inform and inspire your drive and your ambition.

And that's what it did for me.

JEFFREY BROWN: In a social media age, Legend and Chrissy Teigen are sharers, with huge followings.

In 2020 they shared photos of what Teigen called a miscarriage at the time.

She has since said it was important to clarify, in light of the crackdown nationally on abortion rights, that it was -- quote -- "an abortion to save my life for a baby that had no chance."

Despite some criticism for oversharing, Legend says he is comfortable with their approach to personal and public life.

JOHN LEGEND: I keep plenty of my private life private, even though it feels like we share a lot.

For me and for my wife, so much of who we are as artists and as creatives is inspired by and driven by our family lives and our relationships with our family members.

And so it's all part of who I am.

It's all part of the stories I tell.

JEFFREY BROWN: You shared some difficult things.

JOHN LEGEND: Mm-hmm.

JEFFREY BROWN: A lot of grief in your family.

JOHN LEGEND: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: Did that help?

JOHN LEGEND: Yes.

I think it helped us, but it also helped people that we spoke to too, because, particularly when we went through pregnancy loss, there were so many people that came up to us.

And they still do.

JEFFREY BROWN: Because they felt it and they... JOHN LEGEND: Because they felt it too.

And they have gone through it a lot of times in silence.

A lot of times, people feel shame about it.

They don't want to talk about it.

And removing some of that stigma, especially because it's such a common occurrence, so many people experience pregnancy loss, but we don't hear about it very often.

JEFFREY BROWN: Legend also wants to move the needle politically.

JOHN LEGEND: We are in a time of reckoning.

JEFFREY BROWN: He's expanded his social activism efforts, focused on issues such as economic equity, education, and mass incarceration.

GIRL: I have never really had anyone ask, like, what are you are like what's your skin tone?

JEFFREY BROWN: His "Get Lifted" film and now book companies bring forward undertold stories and writers.

He performed at Joe Biden's inauguration, and says he's impressed with the president's legislative achievement, even while continuing to disagree over criminal justice policies.

And he's ready to engage what he sees as a conservative backlash after George Floyd's murder and the Black Lives Matter movement.

JOHN LEGEND: There's been this strain in conservatism that has looked at this new awareness, this new progressivism when it came on race and said, no, we don't want that.

And the backlash has been strong.

And so people on the side of progressive values, people on the side of us being one nation together under God, where we all have equality have to fight, just like the folks on the side of the backlash are fighting.

JEFFREY BROWN: At his concert, John Legend revealed his alternative life.

JOHN LEGEND: I take a job at a place called Boston Consulting Group.

JEFFREY BROWN: Unsure of making in music, he worked as a management consultant for several years after college, while recording and performing at night.

It might not have been so bad a life, he says now, but... JOHN LEGEND: Honestly, I love making music so much, it's such an inspiring and motivating thing to be able to do to get up in the morning and know that you can create something new that didn't exist before.

Not having that in my life, I couldn't imagine it at this point.

But I'm glad I made the decisions I made and I'm glad life worked out the way it did.

JEFFREY BROWN: For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Jeffrey Brown at the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts.

(APPLAUSE) JOHN LEGEND: Thank you!

GEOFF BENNETT: Douglas Martin is a poet, novelist and short story writer.

Tonight, he shares his Brief But Spectacular take on the art of paying close attention to the everyday.

DOUGLAS A. MARTIN, Poet: There's things that happen in our life that we think might make a good picture, and then we snap them on their - - on our phone, and they just actually do not read at all.

And so, for me, I try to write a haiku a day.

And I try to find one moment of something that I would want to take a picture of and that I know that will not be captured in technology.

On my way to run, the new bird on the porch tries to practice to fly.

I began as a slam poet, actually at 25.

And I'm doing this thing now where I'm building longer poems out of individual haikus.

A haiku is the Japanese poetic form.

We know it mostly in English as a three-line poem that adds up to 17 syllables, five, seven-line, five-syllable line.

But I play with this.

Purple Martin scuttles with worm across south north access my West, possible light rain, I can't tell, but the birds are flying.

So I will go.

One is called "A Run of Haikus."

And it's about the things that go through my mind as I'm doing the cardiovascular exercise I'm meant to be doing to keep my heart functioning.

And then these columns happen.

And I know as I'm walking home up the hill and cooling down, if there are things still going through my mind, and I can count it out and remember it, I indeed have a haiku.

Seek shadows under bridge, new sun, path, my footsteps light, echo, breathe into changes as I run uphill beside a sidestream down.

Some of the themes and ideas running through my mind are intimacy, sexuality, the animal world, how to make nontraditional family structures outside of conventional marriage, bloodlines, and how politics enter into the home in these quiet ways sometimes and then often in these very unquiet ways.

A world can be lost.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) DOUGLAS A. MARTIN: My name is Douglas A. Martin, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on the art of paying close attention to the everyday.

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

I'm Geoff Bennett.

Thanks for joining us.