JOHN YANG: Tonight on PBS News Weekend, how critics say Republican drawn legislative district lines diminish the black and Latino vote, then cryptocurrency and terrorism, the role it plays in Hamas attacks on Israel and how global law enforcement is trying to stop it.

And goodbye to Washington's giant pandas.

Zookeepers hope it's not the end of panda diplomacy with China.

WOMAN: I know these animals.

I know them as individuals.

They mean so much to me, and I'm going to miss them.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Good evening.

I'm John Yang.

The Israeli military says it's closing in on Gaza City ground zero in the word of crash of Hamas, and tonight America's top diplomat is in the region trying to ease the Palestinian civilians suffering.

U.N. officials warned of malnutrition and starvation in Gaza, saying the average resident is surviving on just two pieces of bread a day.

In Washington DC and other world capitals including Berlin, Paris and London, pro-Palestinian marches and rallies called for an immediate ceasefire.

And late today Hamas said that more than 60 of the hostages its fighters took during the October 7 assault on Israel are missing after Israeli bombing, a claim that could not be immediately verified.

From Israel special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen has more and we warn you that some of the pictures are difficult to watch.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: In the Gaza Strip, a United Nations school near the northern Jabalya refugee camp offered this little refuge to those within.

Airstrikes hit tents in the school yard and an area where women were baking breads.

18,000 people are sheltering that.

MAN (through translator): Where should I go?

They have hit the shelters, those who are on the street in Gaza are hit while walking.

Since when does it become normal to strike shelters?

This is so unfair.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: The U.N. refugee agency could not verify the number of people killed.

But the Hamas run Gaza health ministry put it at 15.

This boy he says he carried a decapitated body away from the scene.

Palestinians also search for survivors of an airstrike on a residential area in the southern city of Khan Younis.

HARB AL-BARQY (through translator): We are steadfast in Gaza, even if only one citizen is left.

From there, the state will start again.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: As the civilian death toll rises, the Israeli military maintains it is only targeting Hamas fighters.

The Israel Defense Forces released new footage today of what it said with forces blowing up Hamas tunnels and clearing access routes for vehicles.

In Amman, Jordan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with his regional counterparts.

They urged him to push for an immediate ceasefire.

But Blinken stopped short reiterating his call for humanitarian pauses.

ANTONY BLINKEN, Secretary of State: It's our view that a ceasefire now, it simply leave Hamas in place able to regroup and repeat what it did on October 7.

It's also one of the reasons why humanitarian pause would be so important to make sure that we can maximize the assistance getting to the Palestinians, that we can make sure that people can move about safely that they can get to places where they're safe.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: But as strikes continue throughout the strip, Gazans question whether any such places exist.

For PBS News Weekend, I'm Leila Molana-Allen in Tel Aviv, Israel.

JOHN YANG: An earthquake in a remote area of Nepal has killed at least 157 people.

The 5.6 magnitude quake hit just before midnight Friday, when many people were sleeping, the collapse buildings and triggered landslides in a region where many villages can only be reached by flood.

Officials say the death toll will likely go higher.

And then a surprise visit to Kyiv European Commission president Ursula van der Leyen met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss Ukraine's path to join the European Union.

She praised Zelenskyy for making excellent progress in pursuing judicial and anti-corruption reforms while fighting its war with Russia, granting Ukraine E.U.

membership would signal continued international support for the nation.

Still to come on PBS News Weekend, how Hamas uses cryptocurrency to fund its attacks on Israel.

And Washington says goodbye to its giant pandas as they head back to China.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: In 2021, as they do every 10 years, each state redraw its congressional district lines to reflect the results of the 2020 census.

Now, two years later, the maps and more than a half dozen states are the subject of lawsuits from voting rights advocates, who say they dilute the voting power of black and Latino voters.

Last week a federal judge throughout Georgia's new district map and ordered the Republican controlled state legislature to try again.

In Alabama, federal court has rejected two maps devised by state lawmakers and appointed an expert to draw a new one.

Louisiana's redistricting is up in the air after the Supreme Court declined to speed up the redrawing of district lines to replace a map thrown out by a federal judge.

And last month the Supreme Court heard arguments about South Carolina's redistricting plan.

And now a ProPublica investigation highlights how some state legislatures are trying to shield the data lawmakers used to draw the maps data the courts say they need to judge whether the lines are discriminatory.

ProPublica reporter Marilyn Thompson wrote the story.

Marilyn, summarize quickly what you found and why it's significant.

MARILYN THOMPSON, ProPublica: Well, my story tried to look at what has happened in states where discrimination has been found.

And yet the process drags on so long, that minority voters who've been deprived of their rightful vote are left to vote under discriminatory maps.

And that happened to some effect, as you know, in 2021, because of these pending lawsuits, and now it's about to happen again with the same lawsuits that are dragging on indefinitely.

I wanted to find out why that's happening.

And a source along the way, told me you need to look at the issue of legislative privilege and the use of privilege to try to block the public from knowing what's going on in the redistricting.

JOHN YANG: What is legislative privilege?

MARILYN THOMPSON: Legislative privilege is a very old concept.

It's embedded in the U.S. Constitution and in the constitution of many states that basically holds that the legislature's work, needs to be private, in order to allow them to do the business of the public.

And that only in exceptional circumstances will the legislature have to reveal what it what it does.

Redistricting is interesting, because it's one of those circumstances in which the plaintiffs minority -- largely minority groups have to prove that there was deliberate legislative intent to draw lines a certain way.

Therefore, in order to prove intent, you got to see the evidence, and without the evidence, you got nothing.

JOHN YANG: Are judges accepting this?

MARILYN THOMPSON It varies, John.

It's quite interesting.

It sort of depends on the luck of the draw, like which judge you get, which three judge panel you get.

In the South Carolina case, for example, the judges basically rejected a lot of the privilege claims and what came out of that was, you know, a lot of inside shocking information about how the discussions went behind the veil.

Other judges are very firmly in the camp that we legislative privilege is a sacred right and they will not allow.

JOHN YANG: A lot of states are doing this, but it seems like it's spreading.

Where does this idea come from?

Does it just spring up in the minds of lawmakers?

MARILYN THOMPSON: It appears to be a very coordinated legal strategy.

We did not pinpoint one specific person who's promoting it.

But we certainly were able to see that the National Republican redistricting trust, which has been advising Republican states around the country on their redistricting battles, they played a major role in laying the groundwork for potential lawsuits, and what to do.

And then in the Texas case, which I examined at length, one of the key operatives from the Republican redistricting agency basically became a state employee in Texas and everything that he did they later claimed privilege to try to protect.

JOHN YANG: A lot of the examples you decide are Republican legislators doing this, are Democrats doing this anywhere?

MARILYN THOMPSON: Democrats are doing it.

Perhaps not as effectively in some cases.

I've been looking at Washington State, for example, which is Democratic controlled, and there has been an ongoing privilege fight there over the release of some redistricting records that plaintiffs say they need.

So it's not limited to one party.

But what I found and looking at redistricting more broadly, is that Republicans who have really had a sophisticated redistricting strategy, dating back to Lee Atwater, my old friend from South Carolina, they know what they're doing.

And they have been very effective at advising states, and leading the way on how to counter what they have described as your inconsistent, irrelevant democratic lawsuits.

JOHN YANG: You begin and end your story with a woman named Eva Binya (ph).

Tell us about her why her story is significant.

MARILYN THOMPSON: Well, she is one of the unnamed plaintiffs in the Texas lawsuit.

She's a wonderful woman, very active in the Fort Worth democratic women's groups, dedicated Hispanic activist, and she's been watching Hispanics get the short end of the stick in Texas and voting rights issues for many, many decades.

And she's finally but, you know, she was so fed up with it, and feel that her community is so deprived of its voice that she joined in on this lawsuit, and I found her as a result of that there are real victims in these redistricting cases.

JOHN YANG: Marilyn Thompson of ProPublica, thank you very much.

MARILYN THOMPSON: Thank you John.

It's a pleasure.

JOHN YANG: Shortly after the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned a small Gaza based virtual currency exchange called Buy Cash, Treasury said it had facilitated transactions for terrorist groups like the military wing of Hamas, using decentralized digital currencies like the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

Ali Rogin tells us how terrorist groups try to use cryptocurrency to avoid banks and launder money and how law enforcement is responding.

ALI ROGIN: Experts in terrorist financing say the military wing of Hamas was an early adopter of cryptocurrency soliciting Bitcoin donation starting in 2019.

Hamas told supporters that the transactions were anonymous, but all cryptocurrency exchanges are recorded on a public ledger called a blockchain, that allowed the Department of Justice to confiscate 150 crypto accounts associated with Hamas al-Qassam brigades in 2020.

In April 2023, Hamas announced it would stop Bitcoin fundraising efforts, but as the Treasury Department's new sanctions show, terrorist groups, including Hamas, al Qaeda and ISIS are still finding ways to use cryptocurrency exchanges to raise and launder money and evade detection.

I'm joined now by Ari Redbord.

He's the Global Head of policy at TRM Labs, a blockchain analytics company that helps protect organizations against crypto related fraud and financial crime.

He's also a former senior Treasury official, and a former federal prosecutor.

Ari, thank you so much for joining us.

ARI REDBORD, Global Head of Policy, TRM Labs: Hey, thank you so much for having me.

ALI ROGIN: What makes cryptocurrency so attractive to terrorist organizations?

ARI REDBORD: You know, it's an important question, because no amount of funding should ever go to a terrorist organization when we're talking about terrorist financing and cryptocurrency it's always important to sort of start with crypto is a very small piece of a much larger terror financing puzzle that includes potentially hundreds of millions in nation state support, donations from a diaspora of individual donors, taxes that Hamas and other terrorist organizations levy on their populations.

And investment portfolios right in traditional currency.

Real Estate aren't even.

Terrorists financiers, like any other illicit actors are opportunists.

And they're using absolutely anything they can to raise funds, including crypto.

So Hamas has been added for a while, but it still represents a very, very small part of a larger effort from them to raise funds.

ARI REDBORD: What do we know about Hamas is use of cryptocurrency now as versus back in 2019, when they started raising these funds that?

ARI REDBORD: Yeah, no, absolutely.

And what we've seen over the last few years, is U.S. and Israeli authorities really target the financing of terrorism through crypto by Hamas.

And you can do that because as you said, crypto lives and moves on an open ledger, where every transaction is traceable, and immutable.

Today, what we're really seeing is since the start of the war.

We've seen mostly supporters of Hamas raising funds.

And when I say supporters, you know, those celebrating, you know, death to Israeli civilians or promoting different acts of terror or supporting different acts of terror.

ALI ROGIN: What are the tools available to both U.S. bodies, but also internationally in rooting out bad actors from using cryptocurrency?

ARI REDBORD: Every law enforcement agency in the US and more and more globally, are using Blockchain intelligence tools like TRM, to track and trace the flow of funds.

So I was a prosecutor at DOJ for many years.

And I used to investigate cases involving networks of shell companies and (inaudible) and high value art and real estate.

There's no TRM to trace and track those things on an open ledger.

And what we've seen now is authorities globally, trace and track the flow of funds from hacks by nation state actors like North Korea, by sanction Russian oligarchs.

And now in this terrorist financing context, we've seen some really good outcomes even since the start of the war, where Israel has been able to seize back some of the fundraising done by Hamas and other terror organizations.

ALI ROGIN: Now, certainly Hamas, other organizations are always trying to adapt around the regulations that exist.

So what if any vulnerabilities exist that Hamas might exploit in the future?

ARI REDBORD: Yeah, no, look, I think that what it's so important is just cut out any avenue of possible terror financing or ways in which Hamas can move funds.

You know, the reality is today, you cannot use crypto very easily in the real world to buy things.

So what a terrorist organization or any other illicit actor needs to do is convert cryptocurrency to traditional currency in order to use it.

We need to cut off their ability to do that.

And that means having really robust compliance controls on the on and off ramps, essentially the cryptocurrency exchanges.

And that's really where regulation comes in.

If you're a cryptocurrency business, if you're a large exchange that is in the United States or touches U.S. persons, you are required to have compliance controls for anti-money laundering, and most of them do today sort of the large compliant exchanges that we think of.

ALI ROGIN: But then the ones that don't, what do they look like?

ARI REDBORD: That's the really important piece, right?

You're only as strong as your weakest link.

And you have these sort of robust compliance controls at the large exchanges.

But there is an illicit underbelly of non-compliant exchanges out there in the world.

Many are Russia based, Chatex and SUEX, Chatex and Garantex all designated sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department, all Russia based that we're allowing ransomware payments, sanctioned activity to go through.

So it's a combination of ensuring that those off ramps are strong that compliance controls are in place at the compliant exchanges, but also go after the bad actors in the space who are facilitating this type of money laundering.

ALI ROGIN: Ari Redbord with TRM Labs.

Thank you so much for your time.

ARI REDBORD: Hey, thank you.

JOHN YANG: For many, it's a bittersweet farewell.

The giant pandas at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington D.C. are heading home amid rising tensions between the United States and China.

But zoo officials hope it's just a pause and panda diplomacy and not the end of it.

Somersaults in the snow.

A first birthday party.

Simply eating a piece of bamboo.

Whether adorable or mundane, zoo visitors have been delighted by virtually everything that giant pandas have done since their first tumbles on U.S. soil more than five decades ago.

It was in 1972 that then-First Lady Pat Nixon welcome the furry tokens of goodwill from the Chinese government.

The gesture was sparked by a remark she made during President Richard Nixon's historic trip to China earlier that year, about her fondness for the rare species.

PAT NIXON, Former First Lady of the United States: Here at the National Zoo, they will be enjoyed by the millions of people who come from across the country to visit the nation's capitol each year.

I noticed Dr. Ripley is wearing a panda tie.

And I have my candle here now have you know, and I think pandemonium is going to break out right here at the zoo.

JOHN YANG: And did it ever.

Americans began a love affair with giant pandas leading to decades of scientific collaboration with China.

The original pandas Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing were gifts after they died in the 1990s with no surviving offspring, China began loaning more panda pairs for a fee.

Political reporter Michael Schaffer spoke with Ali Rogin about China's high price tag for providing pandas.

MICHAEL SHAFFER, POLITICO: China had a pretty lucrative business going and renting out its bears and rent a bear to zoos in rich countries for a lot of money.

And so the deal was with the two replacement behaviors, that they would come for 10 years, it would be $10 million, a million bucks a year.

And any cub that these bears produced would remain the property of the Chinese organization, the wildlife organization that sponsored this.

In the years since those the replacement rental pandas showed up.

American Chinese relations have gotten a lot tougher.

JOHN YANG: The first pair of replacements arrived in 2000.

And over the years produced for cubs that survived captivating crowds and earning legions of devotees.

JENNIFER SWANSON: Ever since the pandas came to Washington, I've made kind of a periodic trek here to see them.

And I just think it's really just it's so sad that they are all going to be leaving at the same time.

PAMELA WHITTED: Big panda fan.

Been in DC for 23 years now.

So, visited them many times in the baby's born over the years and it's really, really sad heartbreaking to see them go back to China and hopefully we can work something out the future for more pandas.

JOHN YANG: There are currently three pandas at the zoo, Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their three year old cub Xiao Qi Ji to prepare them for the return to China's zookeepers are doing crate training exercises, using honey flavored water as a reward.

Sometime in the next two weeks, FedEx will transport them to Chengdu China a 19-hour journey.

BRANDIE SMITH, Director, Smithsonian's National Zoo: Their departure is something we have been prepared for, you know, our entire lives her entire career with them.

JOHN YANG: National zoo director Brandie Smith is a former panda curator.

BRANDIE SMITH: Right now we are so focused on making sure that these pandas are returned to China and they return you know, happily and safely.

But I can't see beyond that.

I know these animals.

I know them as individuals, they mean so much to me, and I'm really going to miss them.

JOHN YANG: She says the pandemonium has real benefits.

BRANDIE SMITH: People won't conserve what they don't care about.

People have to care to conserve.

And so for me, it's been so important to teach people to care about these animals to want to conserve these animals, but also to feel good about it.

There's a joy in this, and there's also a success.

JOHN YANG: The giant panda was taken off the endangered species list in 2016, but is still considered vulnerable to extinction.

The number of pandas under human care worldwide has gone from 100 in 1980 to more than 600 in 2020 and now it's estimated there are more than 1,800 pandas in their natural habitat in China.

As U.S. Chinese tensions mount the future of panda diplomacy remains an open and complicated question.

Georgetown University professor Dennis Wilder was a China specialist with the CIA and the National Security Council.

DENNIS WILDER, Georgetown University: The Chinese are angry with us.

They're angry over the semiconductor restrictions, the number of sanctions that the Biden administration has placed on Chinese individuals.

Problems China is have now getting visas to the United States.

So it could well be possible that they're trying to send a signal.

JOHN YANG: But zoo officials are optimistic.

They're spending more than $2 million to upgrade the soon to be vacant panda enclosure.

Now online why Arab Americans in one Midwestern community feel betrayed by the U.S. response to the Israel0Hamas war, all that and more is on our website pbs.org/newshour.

And that is PBS News Weekend for this Saturday.

On Sunday what prescription and over-the-counter drug shortages mean for doctors, parents and patients caught in the middle.

And remember, set your clocks back tonight in our as Daylight Saving Time ends.

I'm John Yang.

For all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us.

See you tomorrow.