AMNA NAWAZ: Good evening.

I'm Amna Nawaz.

GEOFF BENNETT: And I'm Geoff Bennett.

On the "News Hour" tonight: More Palestinians in Gaza are killed while seeking aid.

We speak with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who says his country is committing war crimes.

EHUD OLMERT, Former Israeli Prime Minister: This is becoming like a private war for the prime minister trying to somehow escape from the possible ramifications of ending the war now.

AMNA NAWAZ: Democratic and Republican mayors weigh in on the nation's worsening housing crisis.

GEOFF BENNETT: And a former staffer from Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency breaks his silence, describing confusion in the effort to dismantle the federal work force.

SAHIL LAVINGIA, Former DOGE Staffer: It was unclear who was in charge.

At the end of the day, I guess Trump is in charge.

But I think DOGE will sort of continue to do what it was doing.

(BREAK) GEOFF BENNETT: Welcome to the "News Hour."

It's designed to deliver food to the most desperate, but for the third time in three days, Gazans faced gunfire outside a new humanitarian aid site.

Today, as many as 27 Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers.

That's according to Palestinian health officials and the International Red Cross.

AMNA NAWAZ: Some half-a-million people in Gaza are extremely food-insecure and are on the verge of famine.

Nick Schifrin begins our coverage.

And a warning: Images in this story are disturbing.

NICK SCHIFRIN: This morning in Gaza, they set out to end their hunger.

They died hungry, more than two dozen killed before they could pick up food.

Some died anonymously, their body bags marked "Name Unknown" next to the time of death.

For others, irreplaceable loss.

Ahmed Zadan (ph) will never again see his mother.

"Mom, please come back to me," he says.

"Please come back."

Relatives say Reem Ahmed (ph) was killed trying to feed her family.

Another son lays his head on his mother's body one last time.

For Gazans, accessing the barest of necessities, beans, pasta, rice, has become a daily gamble with their lives.

Often for crumbs.

Rasha Al-Nahal shows what little she managed to collect.

RASHA AL-NAHAL, Displaced Gazan (through translator): We don't get anything.

We see people getting killed in front of us and end up leaving empty-handed.

We're tired and we can't take this anymore.

We'd rather die than deal with this.

Death is more dignified to us than what's happening to us.

NICK SCHIFRIN: The new sites are run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which funnels Gazans into small areas secured by private American contractors.

The sites lie within exclusive military zones, and Israeli soldiers are right outside.

Today, Israeli troops fired about a third of a mile from the humanitarian site only to protect themselves, said spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin.

BRIG.

GEN. EFFIE DEFRIN, Israeli Defense Forces Spokesperson: Earlier today, IDF forces carried out warning fire approximately half-a-kilometer from the aid distribution center targeting a few individuals who were approaching in a way that posed a security threat.

We are not preventing Gaza residents from accessing the aid distribution sites.

The IDF is committed to uncovering the truth and will examine any incident that requires review.

NICK SCHIFRIN: But it's not the first time Israeli troops have fired outside GHF sites.

And on multiple occasions, aid distribution has descended into chaos.

U.N. and aid officials oppose these sites because they do not adhere to traditional humanitarian principles, International Rescue Committee's Ciaran Donnelly told me last week.

CIARAN DONNELLY, Senior Vice President, International Rescue Committee: The way that it's been organized, with limited distribution sites, forcing people to concentrate themselves in fundamentally undignified and inhumane conditions to receive food, just simply doesn't meet that very basic test for good humanitarian work.

NICK SCHIFRIN: But Israel and the U.S. argue Hamas has been stealing aid to fund its attacks and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which opened a female-only distribution site today, is the best way to feed a hungry population that is terrorized by Hamas, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said today.

TAMMY BRUCE, State Department Spokesperson: They wouldn't need to be there if Hamas would lay down their weapons and release all the hostages and the bodies that they're also holding.

NICK SCHIFRIN: But the war goes on, as does daily displacement of families, who are forced to find whatever food they can.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Nick Schifrin.

GEOFF BENNETT: The day's other headlines start in South Korea, where liberal opposition leader Lee Jae-myung won his country's presidential race.

(CHEERING) GEOFF BENNETT: Members of his party celebrated tonight after a joint exit poll showed Lee was projected to beat his conservative opponent, who came out later to concede.

The snap election follows conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol's removal from office.

His short-lived declaration of martial law last year sparked political upheaval that deeply divided South Koreans.

On the heels of tonight's victory, Lee promised supporters he will reunite the country.

LEE JAE-MYUNG, South Korean President-Elect (through translator): While politicians may clash over interests and draw lines between factions, the people are not bound to follow those divisions.

People are the master of this nation, and politicians are workers who are responsible for people's lives.

Political quarrels may not be avoidable, but people don't have to be divided and hate each other.

GEOFF BENNETT: Lee will be sworn in as president tomorrow to start a five-year term, instead of waiting the normal two-month transition period.

Turning to the war in Ukraine, two days after Ukraine launched a wave of drone strikes deep into Russia, Kyiv says it damaged the foundation of the Kerch Bridge that connects Russia to occupied Crimea.

The Ukrainian Security Service released video that it says shows the blast, though it has not been independently verified.

Here in the U.S., budget officials have sent the first so-called rescissions package to Congress.

In a social media post, the Office of Management and Budget said the measure contains what it calls billions in wasteful foreign aid and federal funding for NPR and PBS.

All told, the package would eliminate some $9.4 billion that had already been allocated by Congress.

That includes more than $8 billion in foreign aid cuts, plus more than $1 billion that was set aside for public media, including PBS, which airs this program.

The package requires a simple majority in the House and Senate to pass.

The mayor of Newark sued New Jersey's top federal prosecutor today over his arrest outside of an immigration detention center last month.

Ras Baraka accuses interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba of pursuing the case for political reasons.

She says - - she was appointed by President Trump.

Baraka is running for the state's Democratic nomination for governor.

His lawsuit came on the same day that early in-person voting started.

Cell phone video from may showed a chaotic scene outside of the detention facility in Newark, where Baraka was arrested on a trespassing charge that was later dropped.

U.S. immigration officials detained the family today of the man accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on social media that officials are investigating whether they knew about Mohamed Sabry Soliman's plans.

According to court documents, he told authorities that no one knew his intentions.

Soliman injured 12 people on Sunday who were marching in support of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

Officials say he's an Egyptian national living in the U.S. illegally.

The immigration status of his family is not clear.

There is smoke and storms in the forecast for tens of millions of Americans from the U.S.-Canada border all the way to the Gulf Coast.

Severe storms dumped hail and several inches of rain in the middle of the country today, with nearly 20 million people under flood alerts.

Those storms are colliding with a massive plume of wildfire smoke from Canada that remains visible from space and is still prompting air quality alerts across the Upper Midwest.

Meantime, a giant cloud of dust from the Sahara Desert is currently clouding parts of the Caribbean as it heads toward Florida.

It's expected to spread across the Gulf Coast region later this week.

On Wall Street today, stocks inched ever closer to record highs.

The Dow Jones industrial average added more than 200 points, or about half-a-percent.

The Nasdaq rose more than 150 points on the day.

The S&P 500 also ended in positive territory.

And today marks 100 years since the iconic Goodyear Blimp first took flight.

NARRATOR: There it goes.

The blimp is suddenly... GEOFF BENNETT: The Ohio-based company began making airships for the U.S. Navy back in 1917.

And in 1925 its first branded blimp took to the skies outside Akron.

Since then, they have become a larger-than-life staple of American culture, hovering over sporting events and national celebrations.

There are currently four Goodyear Blimps in the world, one of them in Germany and three here in the U.S.

In fact, there are fewer blimp pilots in the world, just 10, than astronauts.

Still to come on the "News Hour": a former employee of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency speaks out about his work; and basketball legend Candace Parker discusses her new memoir.

One of the strongest condemnations of Israel's ongoing offensive in Gaza has come from its own former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who served from 2006 to 2009.

Last week, he wrote a scathing op-ed in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz with the headline: "Enough Is Enough.

Israel Is Committing War Crimes."

I spoke with him earlier today.

Ehud Olmert, welcome to the "News Hour"?

EHUD OLMERT, Former Israeli Prime Minister: Hi.

GEOFF BENNETT: I want to begin with the day's news.

The Israeli military said its forces opened fire this morning near crowds of Palestinians walking toward a new food distribution site in Southern Gaza more than two dozen people reportedly killed.

This is the third such incident in as many days.

What's your assessment of the way Israel is relying on this new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to distribute food and assistance?

EHUD OLMERT: You know, I have to be honest with you.

I don't know.

It seems to be in real chaos, and it needs to be taken care of in a more effective manner.

And I hope it will.

I don't think that there was any purpose in just shooting the people because someone wanted to kill them.

But in the context of this chaos, it happens.

Unfortunately, it has to be changed in a much better way.

And this is incumbent upon us to do it, and I hope we will do it.

GEOFF BENNETT: On the matter of your op-ed, what prompted your shift from previously defending Israel's actions in Gaza to now condemning them as war crimes?

EHUD OLMERT: I absolutely supported the Israeli counteroffensive after the 7th of October, for obvious reasons.

All of the world supported Israel because this was inevitable and unavoidable.

However, it happened 20 months ago.

And since then, a lot have happened.

And the fact is that, after 20 months there is a growing understanding in Israel by many former leaders of the army, the Mossad, the Secret Service, the generals.

Almost everyone says that we have done everything that we can do in the military operation.

This is becoming like a private war of the prime minister trying to somehow escape from the possible ramifications of ending the war now because of political considerations.

When this happens, you have to ask, what is the right of the country, the government to send soldiers to risk their lives?

What is the basis for endangering the lives of the hostages?

And also what is the basis for possibly killing non-involved people around the Palestinians?

And I think that it is my responsibility, considering my background and the responsibilities I had for the state of Israel, to spell it out, so that there will be as many people across the world that will know that there are other voices in Israel, not just the messianic groups of thugs which support the government, but that the majority of the Israelis think that enough is enough.

We have to stop the war, we have to bring back all the hostages that we can, and we have to try and see how we can change the realities on ground, so that Hamas will be prohibited from any further control on Gaza, with the cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Jordan others, and hopefully in the near future also embarking on peace negotiations with Palestinians for a two-state solution.

GEOFF BENNETT: When you accuse the current government of committing war crimes, be specific.

What are the crimes as you see them?

EHUD OLMERT: Running a war which is widely perceived to be illegitimate and unacceptable and nothing that is compatible to the national security interests of the state of Israel, endangering the lives of so many Israeli hostages, is a crime, because in such action people are killed, Israeli soldiers, hostages, and Palestinian, non-involved Palestinians in Gaza.

When the government is anxious to carry on when this is the perception, I don't know in any other way to describe it.

GEOFF BENNETT: The U.S. under former President Biden, now under President Trump, has strongly supported Israel, supplying it with bombs and other military weapons.

Given your view that Israel has committed war crimes, do you believe the U.S. bears any responsibility or is in some way complicit?

EHUD OLMERT: No, what I said is that no, not in the past, certainly not at the time of President Biden, not even in the time, most of the time of President Trump, that what we are doing now amounts to a crime, which has to be prevented.

It's enough that I put responsibility on the Israeli government.

I don't think that the American government is responsible for all the mistakes that we are committing.

GEOFF BENNETT: As a lawyer, do you believe that Israel's actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide?

EHUD OLMERT: No, not at all.

No, listen, don't push it far too far.

There are serious mistakes and negligence and arrogance, which -- the outcome of which are many casualties which are unjustified and unnecessary.

And, therefore, I'm charging the Israeli government with responsibility for this, but there is not any policy, there has never been any policy by anyone in Israel.

Even this government, which I entirely oppose, but I never accuse them, will never accuse them without any basis of trying to accomplish genocide.

This is not what we are facing.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, how can Israel balance what are legitimate security concerns with the need to uphold humanitarian principles in a conflict zone?

I mean, what policies, what approach would you recommend?

EHUD OLMERT: Look, everything is difficult, everything is complex.

We have achieved almost everything that a military operation can achieve.

We have eliminated most of the leadership of Hamas.

We have destroyed most of the tunnels, the launchers of the rockets and the rockets and the command positions.

More than 55,000 Palestinians were killed.

Many of them were Hamas fighters, and they deserve being punished for what they did.

But there are so many who were not part of any terrorist organization.

So at this point now, if we end the war, we bring back the hostages as part of an agreement.

We will release also Palestinian prisoners, and we will be committed to pull out from Gaza at the time when the security force made of Palestinians, of the Egyptians, of Jordanians, perhaps of Emiratis, of Saudis will take over in order to prevent any resurrection of Hamas into a command position.

This is what we have to do.

And, of course, within that framework, the humanitarian needs of the two million people living in Gaza must be provided generously.

GEOFF BENNETT: You are the only former Israeli prime minister ever convicted in a criminal court.

How do you respond to critics who say that your legal record undermines your credibility to speak out against the current government?

And why do you believe you have not just the credibility, but the moral authority to critique the current leadership and their approach?

EHUD OLMERT: I'm almost certain, that I didn't have this moral authority, you wouldn't have invited me.

And most of the Israelis who are searching to hear my opinion and have asked me to express my opinion.

Whatever happened, which is something that we don't have the right time now to discuss, has nothing to do with my performance as prime minister, which was widely respected at the time.

And I think that, based on my experience and my record as prime minister in charge of Israeli security for many years, I think that I have not only the right, but the obligation to say what I say.

GEOFF BENNETT: How has your critique been received in Israel?

And do you believe there is a political will there to shift course right now?

EHUD OLMERT: Well, I guess that quite a large number of Israelis do not like what I say, for obvious reasons.

And there are quite a few, perhaps many, that entirely subscribe to what I say and sent their messages in support of what I say.

Whatever happened and what ever happens now is part of a broader problem and crisis that we are experiencing.

As you all know, it started with the judicial revolution the prime minister tried to implement, and the hundreds of thousands of Israelis now for more than a year-and-a-half are rioting and are demonstrating on a daily basis.

I think we are moving forward rapidly into a position where the government will not be able to carry on.

They will have to run for early elections.

Prime Minister Netanyahu cauterized the Israeli society in a manner which is unprecedented in our history.

That's why I called and I say that the Israeli government declared war on the state of Israel.

It is weakening the state of Israel, and also these policies of the government, and particularly the perception that the war now is not what is really needed for the national security interest of the state of Israel, is endangering the hostages which are still kept by the Hamas, 58 of them, this perception, I think, makes it more and more into an illegitimate campaign that must be stopped.

And I believe that the majority of the Israelis will take the necessary democratic measures in order to stop it.

GEOFF BENNETT: Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, thank you for your time this evening sir.

We appreciate it.

EHUD OLMERT: Thank you.

AMNA NAWAZ: A bipartisan group of mayors and business leaders are teaming up to tackle housing issues nationwide.

Mayors and CEOs for U.S. Housing Investment is a public-private partnership that aims to find solutions for a lack of affordable housing in many U.S. cities and towns.

This year, they're meeting as the Trump administration looks to slash rental assistance programs and homelessness hits a record high nationwide.

Joining me now to discuss the effort are two mayors leading the effort.

That's Long Beach, California, Mayor Rex Richardson, a Democrat, and Clearfield, Utah, Mayor Mark Shepherd, a Republican.

Gentlemen, welcome to you both.

REX RICHARDSON (D), Mayor of Long Beach, California: Thank you.

MARK SHEPHERD (R), Mayor of Clearfield City, Utah: Thanks for having us.

AMNA NAWAZ: Thank you for being here.

Mayor Shepherd, so this is a first-of-its-kind bipartisan effort to come up with housing solutions.

What can you accomplish through this model that you couldn't do previously?

MARK SHEPHERD: I think, really, when you're bringing mayors and CEOs together, you're bringing the business community, as well as the municipal leaders together to give a message that it can be done.

None of this gets solved easily.

This is not an easy problem to tackle.

But it's a crucial problem to tackle.

And as you look across the country, you see the desperate need for housing that we have, both on the small scale in our smaller cities and, again, in our bigger cities.

It's everywhere.

And we're short about four million homes.

This allows us to take a message in and solutions and really be able to say, how do we come together to make things happen?

AMNA NAWAZ: So, Mayor Richardson, you're here because you're meeting with federal lawmakers.

Is this the kind of issue that's best handled through Washington or at the level you work at or at the state level?

REX RICHARDSON: Well, we're implementers on the ground.

We build housing in communities and cities, but we can't do it alone.

We're talking 3.7 million units of housing need to be built in the United States of America.

It's going to require bipartisan leadership on a national level.

And I think what's different about this approach is that you're bringing mayors together from both sides of the aisle, large cities, small cities, and business leaders, because, if you want to support jobs, you can build housing.

If you want to support families, build housing.

It's a bipartisan agenda that we should make a top priority for our country because it supports families.

AMNA NAWAZ: But, of course, what the federal government does impacts both of you on the ground and your constituencies.

Mayor Shepherd, we saw from the White House in the Trump budget outline that, among other things, it would cut HUD rental assistance programs by some $26 billion.

That's a 43 percent cut.

How would that impact folks in Clearfield?

MARK SHEPHERD: It would be catastrophic, to put it very nicely.

We need that assistance throughout Utah.

In my small community, we're 35,000, 36,000 people.

We rely on it.

We're a working-class community.

We're a blue-collar community, manufacturing mostly, and we're an Air Force community.

And so without that assistance, the gap just doesn't get made.

We need that assistance to make things happen.

AMNA NAWAZ: What about you, Mayor Richardson?

REX RICHARDSON: Our city's about a half-a-million residents.

We're a big port town.

We're concerned about housing production to make sure that families of all ages can live with dignity, but also concerned about national conversations on tariffs that affect not only our local economy, but the cost of build.

When we have additional tariffs, it can increase the cost of housing production, which is already expensive.

We believe that we should be moving in the other direction, making housing less affordable to build and more simple to finance.

So investing in working together to expand LIHTC, support more CDBG, reform CDBG home dollars, those are the things we need the federal government to do, while we, on the local level, we look at our own local sources of revenue.

We improve and streamline processes to build housing faster and bring people inside.

AMNA NAWAZ: I assume you meant more affordable to build.

REX RICHARDSON: Absolutely.

AMNA NAWAZ: You said less, but you meant more.

And California is interesting.

I have to ask you, because your governor has really been doing a lot.

He was slashing restrictions and environmental reviews to try to boost some of that housing building.

He also paired billions in state funds to get homeless people into housing and treatment with a real call for cities to shut down the homeless encampments.

There's some division among California Democrats on this.

Is this the right approach, in your view?

REX RICHARDSON: We're a public health jurisdiction in Long Beach, one of only three cities in the entire state with a public health department.

So we do both.

We lead with compassion, but we also acknowledge that we have to build housing and we have to have accountability.

That's what our residents want to see.

And so we believe in housing first.

We have built more shelter and interim housing than we have ever seen in the last five years.

And we're breaking housing records every single year.

But in order to meet the need in Southern California, which is one of the most impacted markets in America, we have to do more.

We have to do it at scale.

We have to streamline environmental reviews.

That's happening in the state level.

There's more that we can do across the country to make sure that we're all hands on deck to address this, this challenge.

AMNA NAWAZ: Mayor Shepherd, hurdles obviously exist in funding at the federal level, but also, locally, sometimes, we see people who live in these communities don't necessarily want to see affordable housing built in those communities.

Do you see that?

And how do you combat it?

MARK SHEPHERD: Sure.

I think we see that everywhere.

We refer to them as NIMBYs, not in my backyard.

I have got the BANANAs as well, to build absolutely nothing or anything anywhere.

They exist, but they don't understand.

There are ways to build housing and have it be dignified.

And that is crucial to this situation, is to build housing that isn't your standard tract housing, isn't your standard affordable, we will call it deeply affordable, that we all view as, oh, that's the low-income stuff.

We just finished a development in Clearfield that's about 400 units of both apartments and townhomes.

And I toured people through there, through the various new developments within the city and said, pick the one that's low-income.

And not one of them could pick this out.

So we went back and toured it, and they said, I cannot believe that this is low-income housing.

It was affordable.

It's the right place, and it's done right.

And it allows people to live with that dignity that they need to without saying, oh, yes, I live in the ghetto or in this deeply affordable housing.

AMNA NAWAZ: I have to ask both of you, because you're teaming up in a bipartisan way on this key issue.

If you could just tell me briefly, from where you sit, where else do you see opportunities for this kind of bipartisan work?

REX RICHARDSON: Well, I will tell you, start where your interests intersect.

Housing, Democrats and Republicans should be able to agree on this.

I will never forget, growing up, we had a two-bedroom apartment.

My mom had a room, my sister and brother shared a room, and I slept on the couch.

We made it work.

We all worked part-time jobs, and I paid the light bill.

My sister paid the phone bill.

We made it work.

But that same apartment today is three to four times as much.

So for a family to pull it together and make ends meet, it's much more difficult for them now.

So we have to make sure that we all focus on this issue so we don't create a catastrophe in our nation.

AMNA NAWAZ: Outside of housing, is there more place for bipartisan work like this?

MARK SHEPHERD: Absolutely.

We're sitting right in the middle of a budget discussion right now, and the House has done their piece and the Senate's doing theirs, and we have got to come together.

We have got to look at where money's being spent, the programs that are being cut, and do them right.

We need to save money.

We understand that.

We get it as a country.

There's things that have to be -- in order to balance a budget or get us to a point where we're not increasing our debt.

But it's how you do that and which things you do.And those are crucial.

We're cutting Job Corps right now.

In fact, we just got word that they're cutting Job Corps.

I have got a Job Corps center in Clearfield.

REX RICHARDSON: Right.

Absolutely.

MARK SHEPHERD: And it's not a, let's ease this through.

It's, we're shutting the doors.

You have got -- they were told, you have got a week.

Send the kids home.

Yes.

AMNA NAWAZ: We're going to have to have you both back to talk about these other cuts and the impact on your constituencies.

Thank you for being here today.

REX RICHARDSON: Thank you.

AMNA NAWAZ: Mayor Rex Richardson and Mark Shepherd, we appreciate your time.

MARK SHEPHERD: Thank you.

GEOFF BENNETT: Billionaire Elon Musk has returned to his business ventures full time after leaving the White House and his role with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency at the end of last week.

Musk has continued to break with his former boss over the budget bill being debated in Congress right now, writing on his social media platform today -- quote -- "This massive outrageous pork filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination."

The White House and Republican leadership on Capitol Hill rejected Musk's concerns.

During Musk's tenure in the Trump administration, DOGE was tasked with gutting the federal work force and publicizing its cost-cutting efforts.

Our White House correspondent, Laura Barron-Lopez, has more from a former DOGE staffer who is now speaking out about his short-lived experience.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Sahil Lavingia spent 55 days working for DOGE, specifically within the Department of Veterans Affairs as a software engineer.

Last month, he was let go after speaking to a reporter.

He says he was given no clear reason for his termination.

Since then, Sahil published a diary of his time working in the department, chronicling what he did and didn't accomplish.

Sahil joins me now.

Sahil, thank you so much for being here.

You joined DOGE in mid-March as a volunteer employee.

Can you start by telling us what you were brought in to do?

SAHIL LAVINGIA, Former DOGE Staffer: Honestly, at the time, I didn't know exactly what I was brought in to do.

I learned on day one what really I was going to do, which was to help cut contracts, to help build org charts to visualize the organization, and hopefully to spend a lot of my time shipping code as well.

And as a software engineer, I was hoping that I could come in and effectively build software in-house and also ideally hire some more software engineers in-house, make the federal government more competent.

And, technically, while we were making progress, VA was kind of surprisingly efficient in a way.

It was not as easy of a battle as we were expecting.

Software engineers tend to have a saying, we don't do things because they're easy.

We do things because we thought they were going to be easy.

That's kind of what happened at VA. LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So, throughout your time there, what was the overall mission of DOGE and how involved was Elon Musk or not in the day-to-day operations?

SAHIL LAVINGIA: There's sort of three legs of this stool, the first one being cutting contracts with federal government contractors.

Generally, you tend to have pretty expensive contracts for relatively mediocre software.

Then helping reduce the work force by that sort of 15 percent, though I learned later that DOGE doesn't really have any authority to do that.

And then the last one, the one that I was most excited about, was to actually ship software, to actually write new code, build new software that would allow us to save the government money, find waste, fraud, and abuse, these sorts of things.

Day-to-day, Elon was not super involved, at least from my perspective, at the VA. LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: You have said that you were disappointed because, at the Veterans Affairs Department specifically, you were unable to speed up veterans disability claims or make it an overall better experience for them.

Was that due to staff cuts?

What exactly made that so difficult?

SAHIL LAVINGIA: I think, at the end of the day, shipping software for the federal government was always going to be this big uphill battle.

And 55 days is just not a lot of time to do those sorts of things.

I think I would have been able to do those sorts of things over the course of 18 months, so for the course of the time frame that DOGE has been given to make a lot of these changes.

But, in my short time there, I was not able to do much.

Right now, it takes 133 days to process a claim.

Physically, you have to go get a test.

You have to get this paperwork.

You have to go find this thing.

And there's just a lot of different places where this data lies that you have to get it from.

A lot of these places don't talk to each other easily.

They speak different languages and different formats.

But the software is generally - - turns out not to be the bottleneck.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Elon Musk repeatedly said that DOGE was trying to seek out fraud, get rid of fraud, and that, in order to do that, DOGE needed access to sensitive government databases that has information millions of Americans or government workers.

At Veterans Affairs, did you find any examples of fraud?

Were you given access to sensitive government databases?

SAHIL LAVINGIA: I mean, I think it depends on what you consider sensitive.

As part of -- I was the -- my role at VA was senior adviser to the chief of staff.

So I did have access to, for example, like the H.R.

data, but I didn't have access to a lot of other information.

In terms of fraud, generally, we didn't find any examples of fraud, fraud meaning someone who broke the law, who was getting money they shouldn't have been getting.

We did have one case where we were asked to look into something.

We were asked to look into someone who I think some other agency or something found out was 137 years old.

But we looked into it.

And in our systems, the health records showed that they were 75.

So, in our case, specifically at VA, we did not find actually any.

We were given one potential.

That turned out to be zero.

We didn't find any examples of fraud, which is great, right?

That's great news for the American taxpayer.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Do you think that DOGE and staffers like you, I know you only worked there for 55 days, but staffers across DOGE should be getting access that you're getting to sensitive government data, to data on Americans?

Because there are some Americans who have voice frustration with lawmakers about the access that DOGE is getting.

SAHIL LAVINGIA: I think if people are given access to sensitive data, then that access -- like, there should be a log of that access.

Like, I think it should be very clear to everybody like who's getting what access and why.

And I think a lot of the frustration that Americans are voicing, because they don't know, right?

I think they would feel much more comfortable if they actually saw all the paperwork I had to fill out and all the forms I had to fill out and the data that I actually had -- and was able to see, and you can make your own determination.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Elon Musk and President Trump say that DOGE's work is going to continue, even though Elon Musk is leaving as a special government employee.

What do you think the future of DOGE will be?

And who is exactly in charge?

SAHIL LAVINGIA: I have no idea.

To be honest, even when I was there, it was unclear who was in charge.

At the end of the day, I guess Trump is in charge.

But I think DOGE will continue to do what it was doing, which, frankly, to me wasn't that exciting.

We were sitting in on a lot of meetings around contract review, making sure that we weren't overspending on these big federal I.T.

contracts.

I think that should continue and will continue.

I guess there is this reduction in force that's taking place over the federal government that the VA has said that they're going to participate in.

It was moving incredibly slow.

I think, at VA specifically, more people were hired than fired during my tenure.

I hope DOGE ships a lot of software.

Unfortunately, I think the admin appetite for shipping software, instead of just cutting things, is relatively low.

Maybe that's partly why Elon and co. are parted ways in the last week or so.

So I assume that won't really happen, but I would be very gracious as an American if paying taxes became easier, if the sort of broad experience of dealing with Social Security improved, et cetera.

So I wish them the best of luck, but they just don't have a lot of resources to do what they set out to do in the beginning.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Sahil Lavingia, thank you for your time.

SAHIL LAVINGIA: Thank you.

It was fun.

Thanks for having me on.

AMNA NAWAZ: Three-time WNBA champion Candace Parker knows a thing or two about success and how to achieve it.

Since announcing her retirement last year after 16 seasons, the seven-time WNBA all-star, two-time MVP and television broadcaster has stepped into a new role as an author.

I spoke recently with Parker about her first book, an autobiography entitled "The Can-Do Mindset: How to Cultivate Resilience, Follow Your Heart, and Fight for Your Passions."

Candace Parker, welcome to the "News Hour."

Thanks so much for joining us.

CANDACE PARKER, Author, "The Can-Do Mindset: How to Cultivate Resilience, Follow Your Heart, and Fight for Your Passions": Thanks for having me.

AMNA NAWAZ: So the title of this book comes from your nickname that was given to you by your mom, it seems like, when you were growing up in Illinois, the youngest sister to two older brothers.

And, as I read, you were always trying to keep up with them and do everything that they were doing.

So your mom would say, you can do anything.

Tell me about that nickname and how it kind of became your mantra for life.

CANDACE PARKER: A hundred percent.

My mom was the true MVP in inspiring me to be able to believe that I could do anything and be anything.

And I think that mind-set was cultivated at a young age by both of my parents.

And so my name's Candace, and it shortened to Can.

And my mom extended it to Can Do.

When I doubted myself, whether it was tying my shoes, whether it was trying to knock down game-winning free throws, whatever it was, ACTs.

I still have that whisper in my head whenever I'm trying to do hard things.

And so it became a mantra, the acronym standing for community, authenticity, navigating that negativity, leaning into the dash, which is the journey, and both seizing and opening up opportunity for others.

AMNA NAWAZ: It is clear from the stories you tell that you were always a ferocious competitor.

But you also write about how your dad played a really big role in this, fueling you as you went.

He was very driven.

He also, we should note, helped push your brother Anthony to an NBA career himself.

We have heard a lot of stories, right, about parents who push their kids so hard, it's really more about the parent than it is the kid.

How do you maintain that balance?

How did you do it in your family, so it was making sure you wanted it more than he did?

CANDACE PARKER: You know, I can remember a huge lesson.

I just entered into middle school and there's a lot more homework than fifth grade.

And I told my dad, I was like I'm going to sleep.

I still have stuff to do, but I'm going to go to sleep, like, whatever.

And he came in there.

And you know that, like, I'm not mad, I'm disappointed?

CANDACE PARKER: That sparked that feeling of like, I do what I say I'm going to do.

I complete what I say I'm going to complete.

And I have to take that mind-set into anything I do.

And so I got up at 4:00 in the morning and finished all my work.

And my dad came home -- came downstairs and nodded his head.

So I think it's a balance.

Obviously, you want to make your parents proud.

But I think it's really the like fostering the environment to establish a mind-set that you have to have across whatever you decide to do.

AMNA NAWAZ: The I'm not mad, I'm disappointed is sometimes way worse than the I'm just mad.

I think we all share that.

You do write about becoming a high school star, becoming a college star in your own right and realizing how big the gap is between the women's game and the men's game and the opportunities that would be ahead of you there.

You write in the book; "Why did men get to build careers and fan bases right here in the United States, while I had to go for four years of college, play in the WNBA, then fly halfway around the world to receive reasonable pay?"

I think it's fair to say we have seen huge leaps in the women's game, millions more people watching the NCAA Championship for women than for men, for example.

But is the gap closing as fast as you think it can?

Do you ever see it closing all the way?

CANDACE PARKER: I think that gap is closing, because now you're seeing values are set at a young age at this point as a result of NIL and the ability to make money off of your name.

So it's no longer an organization that can limit what your success can be or can not provide the visibility that is necessary to succeed.

And so now, instead of looking at women's sports as a charity as a whole, I think at society now is looking at women's sports as a business, and which it should have been a long time ago.

And so I'm just proud of the advancement of women's sports.

I think it's taken a lot of this generation being unapologetic in who they are and what they represent.

And as a result, I think the dollar signs are following that.

AMNA NAWAZ: Well, you have been a huge part of helping to push for that change.

We have also seen superstars like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese help to drive up interest and investment in this sport.

But there's also this whole rivalry narrative people have set up between the two of them that also has an undeniable racial component to it.

We know Angel Reese has talked about being made the villain in this whole story.

I just wonder how you look at all that.

CANDACE PARKER: I think, in the history of time right now, there's always been the case where there have been rivalries.

And I think that rivalries fuel leagues.

Now, when everybody has an opinion and an ability to express their opinion in social media and in Twitter, I think that it is our job, especially within the WNBA, to make sure that we regulate it.

And it is a difficult balance of welcoming rivalry and all that comes with it, but also stopping the other discussions.

Let's just be honest.

Women in sports, it's never just been about sports.

It's been about what you look like.

It's been about who you love.

It's been about how much money you make.

It's been about all of these other things other than just putting a ball in a hoop.

And so I think that this has brought even more light onto that.

But, at the end of the day, I think that rivalries can be great.

And within the league, it's just about how you cultivate it and making sure that we're holding the fans responsible.

AMNA NAWAZ: You write so intimately and personally about the impact that the legendary Pat Summitt had on you at Tennessee.

You write in the book: "Coach Summitt had the unique ability to teach me to be a great player while also modeling how to be a great human."

And it did lead me to wonder, did you ever, or do you ever think about coaching yourself?

CANDACE PARKER: In the words of my daughter, from the time she was little, she's like, "My mom does not have a lot of patience."

(LAUGHTER) CANDACE PARKER: And if there's one thing I'm working on and it is one thing my sons are testing me on is my patience.

I have improved, but I don't know if I have improved that much.

I would love to continue to have the mic in my face and continue to hopefully watch and impact the game from that standpoint.

I don't know.

I never say never, but I would bet that coaching is not in my future.

AMNA NAWAZ: You have got your hands plenty full in the meantime.

Candace Parker is the author.

The book is "The Can-Do Mindset."

Candace, such a pleasure.

Thank you so much for making the time.

CANDACE PARKER: Thank you so much.

GEOFF BENNETT: We will be back shortly with a report from our student journalists about a farm that's growing some unexpected crops.

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

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

GEOFF BENNETT: For those of you staying with us, we take another look now at editorial cartoons, a centuries-old tradition that's evolving along with the media landscape.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown reports for our series Art in Action, exploring the intersection of art and democracy, and our ongoing Canvas coverage.

ANN TELNAES, Political Cartoonist: I will go back and figure out which lines need more definition or strength.

JEFFREY BROWN: It's art in the service of strong political opinion, backed by hours of research.

It's funny, often using caricature, but with serious intent.

Ann Telnaes has been creating editorial cartoons for decades.

A self-described liberal, she's a Pulitzer Prize winner in 2001, a finalist in 2022.

ANN TELNAES: An editorial cartoon, even if the art is strong, if it doesn't have a strong point of view, then it fails.

Of course, if your art's good, that's even better, because then that will grab the reader faster.

JEFFREY BROWN: Michael Ramirez, who calls himself a constitutional conservative, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, another longtime leading practitioner of this craft.

MICHAEL RAMIREZ, Political Cartoonist: When people look at the editorial page, it's probably one of the primary things that they look at.

And, therefore, it has a sort of measure of influence.

In a Super Bowl ad, you have got about five seconds to capture their attention, another five seconds to make the sale.

The only difference is, instead of selling a commodity or product, I'm selling an idea.

JEFFREY BROWN: But, these days, who's buying?

Who's even seeing the work?

According to The Herb Block Scholarship, named after the legendary Washington Post cartoonist who died in 2001, the number of editorial cartoonists at newspapers, many of them syndicated nationally, dropped from more than 120 to fewer than 30 in the past 25 years.

One challenge, economic, amid the ever-shrinking newspaper business.

Another, ideological, amid national divisions so profound that many papers seek to avoid strong satire and opinion.

ANN TELNAES: There's less tolerance for satire, because satire involves things that aren't necessarily easy for people to accept, depictions of people, criticizing people.

JEFFREY BROWN: For Ann Telnaes, the tolerance factor, hit home directly.

Earlier this year, she quit The Washington Post, her employer since 2008, after experiencing a first.

One of her cartoons was spiked.

It pictured billionaire tech and media executives, including Amazon's Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Post, bowing with bags of money before incoming President Trump.

ANN TELNAES: I had not planned to quit.

I wanted to continue commenting on what I thought was important.

And I just realized I can't work like that.

JEFFREY BROWN: Michael Ramirez's work appears in both the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which publishes him six times a week, as well as The Washington Post, two times a week.

His moment of confrontation came when a cartoon about Hamas was pulled from the post Web site in 2023, accused of being racist in its caricature.

MICHAEL RAMIREZ: I do believe that political cartooning is a necessary element in self-governance.

Not only is it a catalyst for thought, but it's a call to action.

I want to promote liberty and democracy in our republic.

JEFFREY BROWN: Editorial cartooning itself has a long and varied history dating back to the 1600s.

SARA DUKE: This could reach people who weren't quite literate.

JEFFREY BROWN: We got a sampling from Sara Duke, curator of popular and applied graphic art at the Library of Congress, which holds 140,000 cartoon prints and drawings.

SARA DUKE: This is 1871.

And this is Tammany Hall in New York.

It's the Democratic stronghold.

And Boss Tweed ends up fleeing the United States.

JEFFREY BROWN: A key point, Duke says, editorial cartoons have always changed with the times and with new technology.

And that has affected their impact.

SARA DUKE: We had the copper engravings.

Maybe a few dozen could be printed and distributed.

And then we had the rise of the lithograph, and you had a few thousand.

And then you had Harper's Weekly.

Editorial cartoons at the peak of newsprint because they were distributed by syndicates, you're talking... JEFFREY BROWN: Millions.

SARA DUKE: Millions.

SARA DUKE: And now you're talking potentially millions via social media, Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook, all places to ingest editorial cartoons.

JEFFREY BROWN: In fact, Ann Telnaes left the post for Substack, an online platform where creators built a direct relationship with their audience through subscriptions.

She now has 91,000 followers, a readership and earnings, but arguably less influence, for now, at least, than at a major newspaper like The Post.

One thing she feels she does have, more freedom to say what she wants.

MICHAEL RAMIREZ: Today's cartoon is really a mirror of where I am.

It's so strange that, in today's politics, the roles have been reversed, this kind of reactionary populism on one side and then the extreme progressive ideas.

And I think most people are sort of caught in between.

JEFFREY BROWN: For both cartoonists, the stakes are incredibly high, a test of democratic values, and extend beyond the U.S. Telnaes spoke recently in the Netherlands for World Press Freedom Day.

ANN TELNAES: Autocrats especially do not like editorial cartoons.

They are the great equalizer, and they don't like being laughed at.

If editorial cartoonists all of a sudden go away, that means something else is following.

Other voices will be silenced.

And it's not that great a leap to go from an editorial cartoonist being silenced through threats or whatever to you sitting around having coffee with your friends and you're joking about politics nowadays, and you're making fun of the president or the prime minister or your local politician, and somebody reports you.

And then you get questioned about your political beliefs.

It's not that big of a jump.

JEFFREY BROWN: An urgent warning from one cartoonist offered with pencil and brush.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Jeffrey Brown in Washington, D.C. GEOFF BENNETT: Now to the story of a family farm in Hillsboro, Oregon, that is unlike most here in the U.S. AMNA NAWAZ: As part of our journalism training program, Student Reporting Labs, Sandeep Pillai spoke with the farm's owners about the connection between their South Asian heritage and the crops they grow.

LAKSHMI TATA, Manager, Edible Stories Market Garden: Me and my family own, operate Edible Stories Market Garden.

It's a small market garden in Hillsboro, Oregon.

We decided to try growing some vegetables that are used in South Asian cooking.

It just made it more meaningful for us to grow these foods that have some cultural heritage behind.

Both my husband and me were thinking of what all we should be growing.

And, of course, we have local farms that have -- at that time, 10 years ago, were growing what you get in the regular grocery store.

But then we said, why don't we try growing something that other people are not growing?

And over time, people started appreciating it.

It was something that connected them to their heritage.

AANANDHI GANESH, Farmer in Training, Edible Stories Market Garden: When my mom goes out, she will, like, pick vegetables, different types of Indian vegetables, and she will come back home, and she will cook that.

And she will be talking about how when she was in India how her mother or her grandmother would cook that, and she would be cooking in the same way.

On our farm, we grow many different types of vegetables, but a few ones are like doodhi, which is a gourd.

Many times, you just cut it up, boil it, use it for sambars, which is the type of soup, again, with many spices.

My least favorite is karela.

It's a bitter gourd.

It's extremely bitter.

We just chop it up and fry it.

And many -- you either really like it or really hate it.

LAKSHMI TATA: We are talking, breathing, thinking about the farm a lot.

So it is very stressful many a times.

And having a child, an only child, who doesn't have children to play with, it sometimes is very hard.

But, at the same time, I think we are just all happy being here and doing what we're doing.

I think all children should be involved in some way, just a raised bed, and tell them, this is a little seed and just see what happens, what the seed gives you, the power of seed.

It's just amazing.

AMNA NAWAZ: What a great story.

And that is the "News Hour" for tonight.

I'm Amna Nawaz.

GEOFF BENNETT: And I'm Geoff Bennett.

For all of us here at the "PBS News Hour," thanks for spending part of your evening with us.