JOHN YANG: Tonight on PBS News Weekend, the president-elect tapped strong Trump loyalist and FBI critic Kash Patel to head the agency.

Then, with high grocery prices across the country, how a food bank in Texas is providing nutritious food for those in need.

MAN: For a long time, I would say probably five or six years, were serving an average of 50 families a week.

Ten years later serving about 220 families a week.

The rising cost of things has I think, brought more and more families to us.

JOHN YANG: And as Americans gather for the holidays, how to navigate political differences and find the good in everybody.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Good evening.

I'm John Yang.

President-Elect Trump continues stalking his new administration with staunch loyalists.

He said this weekend he'll nominate Kash Patel to be FBI director.

Patel is an ardent supporter of Mr. Trump and says the FBI is part of what he calls the deep state conspiracy against the president elect and his allies.

On social Media last night, Mr. Trump said Patel played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability and the Constitution.

The job requires Senate confirmation.

Ryan Reilly covers the Justice Department and federal law enforcement for NBC News.

He's the author of "Sedition Hunters: How January 6 Broke the Justice System."

Ryan, tell us who Kash Patel is.

What's his background?

What's his relation to a relationship with Mr. Trump?

RYAN REILLY, NBC News: Yeah, so he started off as a staffer with Devin Nunez, which is really what sort of got him into Donald Trump's orbit.

And I think what he's most known for is being willing to do sort of whatever Donald Trump would like him to do.

And I think the difference between him and most folks in federal law enforcement and within the FBI is that within the FBI, you sort of follow the facts where they lead you and then you reach a conclusion based upon those facts.

And I think with the issue with Kash Patel here is that he sort of reaches the conclusion ahead of time and then tries to implement something that would justify what he wanted to reach in the first place to begin with.

Right.

So I think a lot of the conclusions he comes up with, it's sort of the accusation upfront as opposed to necessarily the facts.

And we've seen that repeatedly with Kash Patel, who has also authored a children's book, actually, that stars Donald Trump as king and features himself as a wizard sort of helping out the king.

So that's definitely the dynamic that this brings to this FBI nomination.

And of course, we should say that Chris Wray still has many years left on his term.

And if were under normal order, this wouldn't be something that would be under consideration, because Chris Wray still has several years, and he was appointed, you know, seven years ago roughly by Donald Trump himself.

So that term isn't at its end yet.

And we don't know whether or not he will be fired, whether he will resign, how exactly his term will come to an end.

JOHN YANG: Ryan, earlier this year, Kash Patel talked to a podcaster named Sean Ryan about what he thought about the FBI.

Let's take a listen.

KASH PATEL, FBI-Director-Designate: I'd shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopening the next day as a museum of the deep state.

And I take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals.

Go be cops.

You're cops.

Go be cops.

Go chase down murderers and rapists and drug dealers and violent offenders.

JOHN YANG: You know, since 2016, practically, the FBI has been sort of roiled with turmoil.

What do you think the reaction is going to be to something like this?

RYAN REILLY: Yeah, I can't imagine a lot of FBI employees had necessarily a great Thanksgiving weekend because this is really something that I think would be pretty destructive to the bureau itself and to their way of going about business.

I think the important thing is looking at broadly what the FBI does.

Of course, we hear a lot about these political cases, these cases that relate to politics, because Donald Trump is complaining about them a lot.

You have individuals like Kash Patel who are creating a media empire, so to speak, based upon these accusations against the FBI and making children's books off of them and that sort of thing.

But that's not really what the FBI fundamentally focuses on at its core.

That's a small portion of the work that they do overall.

I think that you definitely have to keep that perspective in mind when he talks about this notion of sending everyone back out to their field offices.

Sure.

I mean, headquarters is rather large and that's certainly a discussion to be had about whether what that balance would look like.

And I think fair minded folks can have that discussion, but it's just not a reflection of what the Bureau actually looks like.

I think on a day to day basis, this notion that they're solely focused on going after Donald Trump, especially because you have so much ideological diversity within the bureau, so to speak, and including some people who are strong supporters of Donald Trump and individuals who resisted going after these January 6th defendants, for example.

So I don't think it really accurately reflects what the reality of the FBI is today.

JOHN YANG: As you say, the FBI is a big organization.

What can a director do unilaterally without the support of the staff around him?

RYAN REILLY: Yeah, well, that's.

I mean, that's the interesting component of this because of course, it often is the FBI and the Justice Department working sort of hand in hand or sometimes there's a little bit of tension there.

Typically the FBI is following leads.

Often a lot of their work is assisting local law enforcement.

You know, they have these labs that have great technology that can assist a lot of local law enforcement.

So that's definitely what you sort of see the Hollywood image about the FBI being.

But truth be told, the FBI does have a lot of issues, especially I think, technologically.

They're just not as advanced as the Hollywood image might necessarily say.

So there's definitely some major issues, I think, on the horizon and even happening right now for the FBI.

There's this joke internally that the FBI has yesterday's technology tomorrow.

And I think that technology question is really going to be a key one going into the next several years of the bureau.

But if you have somebody heading it up who's sort of an overt partisan, that's going to definitely bring it in a different trajectory.

And I think you're going to see decline in trust in the FBI.

JOHN YANG: This morning on NBC's Meet the Press, Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, was asked about Patel, and this is what he had to say.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D) Connecticut: Kash Patel's only qualification is because he agrees with Donald Trump that the Department of Justice should serve to punish, lock up and intimidate Donald Trump's political opponents.

JOHN YANG: Murphy said he's going to organize opposition in the Senate.

Can Patel be nominated, or what's the nomination road going to look like for him?

RYAN REILLY: I mean, it's a question that I think is kind of up in the air right now because we did see enough Republican senators sort of stand up and say that Matt Gaetz wasn't going to be attorney general.

And I think what you have here is essentially the equivalent of the nomination of Matt Gaetz to be FBI director.

And that's the question that we're going to have to see play out.

But, you know, it's very easy to create these public pressure campaigns and very quickly have some of these individual senators get a lot of calls aimed at their office.

So that's something that you can really put the pressure on those senators, and there's really, you know, three or four of them they would have to lose in order for him not to go through.

So that's really, I think, a question that's up in the air right now.

But certainly Cash Patel is raising a lot of worries within the Bureau, broadly speaking.

JOHN YANG: NBC's Ryan Reilly, thank you very much.

RYAN REILLY: Thanks so much.

JOHN YANG: In other announcements, Mr. Trump said he'll nominate real estate executive Charles Kushner to be ambassador to France.

Kushner's son, Jared is married to Ivanka Trump, and he was pardoned by Mr. Trump in 2020 for tax evasion and retaliating against a witness.

The president-elect also said he'll nominate veteran Hillsborough County, Florida Sheriff Chad Chronister to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Both of those posts require Senate confirmation, and Mr. Trump said his senior advisor on Middle East and Arab Affairs will be Mossad Boulos, a wealthy Lebanese American businessman and the father of Tiffany Trump's husband.

The family of an Israeli American hostage met with the president of Israel today after Hamas released a video that shows him.

In the video, Edan Alexander said he'd been held for 420 days and referred to President-Elect Trump.

Today, Alexander's family said the 20-year-old spoke under duress when he accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of neglecting the hostages.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, where dozens of hostages are still believed to be held, an Israeli airstrike killed at least six people in a tent camp.

The strike hit near Muwasi along the coast once thought to be a relatively safe area for civilians.

ABU JIHAD ABU MAHADI, Relative Killed in Strike (through translator): May God have mercy on them.

They were all martyred, man.

I was just sitting laughing, joking and chatting with them online.

Suddenly I see a drone and then out of nowhere I find my sister torn apart.

Nothing left of her.

I bid her farewell.

What's happening man?

JOHN YANG: And a former Israeli defense minister who served under Netanyahu accused the government of war crimes.

Moshe Alon said the far right government is trying to annex and ethnically cleanse parts of Gaza.

Meanwhile, the U.N. Agency for Palestinian Refugees says it has paused aid deliveries to Gaza.

The head of UNRWA said the main crossing into Gaza is too dangerous and recent aid truck convoys have been looted by armed gangs.

The Syrian military is sending reinforcements to the northwestern part of the country today in hopes of blunting the insurgents momentum.

A British war monitoring group said the militants are making moves in parts of western and northwestern Syria after seizing most of Aleppo last week.

Government forces set up a defensive line and launched airstrikes into Idlib and Aleppo, killing at least 15 people.

Global talks broke down today without reaching a landmark agreement to curb plastic pollution as negotiators ran out of time.

The delegates were deadlocked on key issues, including the scope of the deal and limits on plastic production.

Each year, 400 million tons of new plastic is produced around the world.

That rate could climb about 70 percent by 2040 if nothing's done.

Negotiators plan to resume talks next year.

And as much as 2 feet of snow can't tackle Sunday Night Football for a loss in Buffalo.

The Buffalo bills offered fans $20 an hour and a hot drink to shovel out the stadium ahead of tonight's game against the San Francisco 49ers.

An early December storm continues to pound the area and cover the region with lake effect snow.

Still to come on PBS News, a food bank in Texas offers relief to those in need and how to navigate political divisions at holiday gatherings.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Across America, stubbornly high food prices are compounding the problems of hunger and food scarcity.

People are facing tough choices in order to stretch their budgets to cover basics like housing and childcare.

Blair Waltman-Alexin of Austin PBS and Isadora Day with Austin Vita look at how residents in one community are stepping up to help neighbors in need.

DAVID HORNING, Executive Director, Impact Now Dove Springs: Whew, it's hot.

See I ran everything as a volunteer for the first about eight years and we just got really, really busy.

So now this is actually my full time job.

I'm David Horning.

I am the executive director at Impact now Dove Springs.

We're the only food distribution that I know of in Dove Springs.

That's like a permanent location.

I'm here six days a week.

On Tuesdays in the mornings we pack all of our shelf stable food.

So we're packing cans, we're packing rice, we're packing beans.

We're usually packing about 220 bags.

On Fridays we pick up about 7,000 pounds of food from the food bank.

Saturday morning we get here at 7:45.

We pack all of our fresh and frozen foods.

WOMAN: Two in the backseat, guys.

DAVID HORNING: And then at 9:00 a.m. we open and we start distributing.

How many families?

Four or three.

MAN: Everybody's family.

DAVID HORNING: For a long time, I would say probably five or six years, were serving an average of 50 families a week.

Ten years later serving about 220 families a week.

The rising cost of things has I think brought more and more families to us.

YESSENIA, Food Bank Attendee (through translator): It brings a lot into our home.

It's a little bit, as we say in Venezuela, a little bit that gives.

So this is something to move us forward because I mean, the little money that comes into our home is not enough.

DAVID HORNING: Definitely hear lots of stories of families struggling to buy food.

SARI VATSKE, Central Texas Food Bank: Texas is now the second highest state in the country for food insecurity.

We're not insulated from the costs that other people are experiencing as well.

We're spending about $1.1 million a month to purchase food, which is just really not sustainable.

Unfortunately, we are anticipating this to continue.

Last year we estimated about 178,000 people were food insecure.

And this year we're anticipating about 208,000.

And that's just in Travis County alone.

DAVID HORNING: I feel like things are going to continue to increase.

I haven't seen it stop yet.

But giving them food to help feed their families is kind of what keeps me going.

I do.

I know who you are.

The people that we serve are just normal people.

They have kids, they have families, they have loved ones.

They just want to eat and be healthy.

And a lot of them also want to give back.

WOMAN: I'm a great staffer.

MAN: Excuse me.

DAVID HORNING: I would probably say 70 percent of the volunteers that we have were previously in line.

They realized that there was a need for support, so they offered to help.

They might still be getting food from us, but they wanted to do more themselves.

We love Dove Springs and we love helping people.

Good morning, Maria.

Doing okay.

How are you?

JOHN YANG: The presidential election laid bare political fault lines across the country.

Stark divisions that can be even more intense when they involve loved ones.

William Brangham looks at ways to handle this post-election stress and find a little holiday season hope.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: After an election, by definition, there's a winner and there's a loser.

Triumph one side, disappointment on the other.

When those two sides exist within one family, though, that can complicate any Thanksgiving or holiday gathering.

My next guest has some ideas on how to navigate these tricky waters and how to find the good in others.

Jamil Zaki is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and author of "Hope for Synics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness."

Jamil Zaki, so good to have you on the program.

This has obviously been a tumultuous year, a very divisive election.

How would you counsel someone who is potentially going to have a meal or a visit with someone who they might see as having completely contrarian views to their own?

How would you counsel them to go about that?

JAMIL ZAKI, Stanford University : I think first of all, let's acknowledge that this is a hard season.

It's A hard season in general, but when you add political division, it becomes even harder.

So I think it's natural to feel that apprehension.

But I think oftentimes we assume that people we disagree with must be far more different from us than they really are.

We assume they're more extreme, more hateful, more anti-democratic.

And I would say that replacing some of those assumptions with curiosity about what the people in our lives actually believe is a good place to start.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So let's say you are a little bit more certain that the person across the table does have starkly differing views.

Do you think it's a good idea for people to try to reach across the table metaphorically?

JAMIL ZAKI: I think it depends how they're reaching across.

Oftentimes we try to reach across the table with a sharp left jab, focusing on trying to convince other people that we're right and they're wrong, or even that our opinions are morally superior to theirs.

Well, when people see that you're trying to browbeat or convince them, guess what?

They can tell.

And their defenses go up.

A much more powerful and connective way to reach across the table is not with statistics or opinions, but with stories.

So for instance, if somebody holds an opinion that's really different from yours, you might ask, hey, how did you come to feel that way?

Research finds that when we share stories with one another, we might not end up agreeing, but we respect each other's positions more and often discover more common ground than we would otherwise.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I mean, I hear everything that you are saying, but I know, you know also that sometimes people hold on to these beliefs.

They will resist all of these entreaties to try to see goodness in the other, because if affirming to their own sense of self that they believe X. JAMIL ZAKI: I think that's right.

And it's easier, though, to do that with strangers or with people that we're not actually in contact with.

If you ask folks, Democrats or Republicans, what do you think people on the other side are like, they hold on to their deep and often quite negative opinions about that other side in the abstract.

When you present them with a real human being who's interested in them and wants to have a conversation, things often go differently.

In my lab, we brought Republicans and Democrats together for Zoom conversations.

After these conversations, we asked how did it go?

And they said it was delightful and informative.

They were shocked by how reasonable and open minded the person on the other side really was.

And that lowered the temperature on their own disdain or even their own hatred for the other party.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Do you think that there's some broader societal good if we as individuals do this type of bridge building that you're describing?

JAMIL ZAKI: We have lost sight of so much common ground that most Americans actually share, even ideologically.

We imagine because we've become so polarized and because the media often presents extreme versions of each side, that these sides have nothing in common.

If you look at people's attitudes on real political issues, it actually turns out that most Americans agree on a lot, but we don't discover that agreement if we never talk, if we avoid one another.

So those conversations that we have over the holidays, they can help us build coalition, understand that there's a lot that many Americans share and maybe start to figure out goals that we have in common and how we can work towards those goals.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Are there other things that you would suggest that people do to try to bridge these rockier divides?

JAMIL ZAKI: You know, the first thing that I would say is to just be a little bit humble about what you know and what you don't know.

You mentioned that in some cases I might know that my uncle or aunt has an opinion that's really different from mine.

And that's true.

Maybe I do know that about them, but I probably don't know that much about how they came to have that opinion.

And I might not actually even be right.

You know, there was a study that occurred right after the 2016 presidential election where researchers used geotagging to figure out where people were going for Thanksgiving dinner.

And when people crossed from a Republican area to a Democratic one, or vice versa, they stayed at dinner for an hour less than if they were having dinner with people who agreed with them.

We work so hard to avoid one another that we often miss out on even knowing the people in our lives.

So I guess I would just say that it's important to know what we don't know, and oftentimes that's more than we want to admit.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right.

Jamil Zaki of Stanford University, thank you so much.

JAMIL ZAKI: Thanks very much, William.

It was a pleasure.

JOHN YANG: Before we go tonight, a personal note.

My colleagues and I want to express our heartfelt thanks to executive producer Rachel Welford.

She's led this broadcast ever since it moved under the WETA umbrella nearly three years ago.

And now she's decided to move on.

Rachel, we're going to miss you, and we wish you all the best in your next chapter.

I'm John Yang.

Thanks for joining us.

Have a good week.