JUDY WOODRUFF: Good evening.

I'm Judy Woodruff.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: immigration limbo.

Republican lawmakers' attempt today to come up with an immigration fix falls flat, as children separated from their parents hang in the balance.

Plus, we continue our reports from the U.S.-Mexico border with a federal judge tasked with deciding the fates of immigrant families.

And Making Sense of e-sports -- inside the economics of how the competitive video-gaming world is changing the sports landscape.

JASON LAKE, Founder, compLexity Gaming: The beautiful thing about e-sports and about gaming is, you don't have to be 6'3'' and 220 to have a shot.

You don't have to be 6'9'' to dunk.

Anybody can come, male, female, any race, any gender.

As long as you have some basic physical functionality, it's a level playing field.

JUDY WOODRUFF: All that and more on tonight's "PBS NewsHour."

(BREAK) JUDY WOODRUFF: Immigration and the plight of separated families remain topic A tonight in Washington and at the U.S. southern border.

But Republicans are still divided over how to change immigration law, and more than 2,300 children are still being held separately from their parents.

Congressional correspondent Lisa Desjardins begins our coverage.

LISA DESJARDINS: Mixed reactions came from across the country today, after President Trump's reversal on family separations.

From protesters in Milwaukee, angry that entire families will be detained.

WOMAN: This has long term, devastated effects.

LISA DESJARDINS: To a sense of relief from undocumented immigrants staying in a private shelter in McAllen Texas.

WOMAN (through translator): This is good news for the Hispanic community, because no one has the right to separate children from their parents.

Seeing so many kids crying and asking for their moms was simply unfair.

LISA DESJARDINS: From the White House came a new outreach on the issue.

First lady Melania Trump made a surprise visit to McAllen today, touring facilities holding unaccompanied minors, including a few who were separated from parents a result of her husband's immigration crackdown at the border.

MELANIA TRUMP, First Lady: Very happy and they love to study.

And I love to go to school.

And I would also like to ask you how I can help to these children to reunite with their families.

LISA DESJARDINS: The first lady decision's to wear a jacket while leaving Washington today, with writing on the back that said "I don't really care, do you?"

prompted questions.

But her spokesperson maintained that there was no hidden message.

On her trip, Mrs. Trump was joined by Alex Azar, secretary of Health and Human Services, the department tasked with overseeing the children after they're apprehended by Border Patrol.

An HHS official confirmed that, for now, children separated from parents are still going to foster care homes and facilities all across the country.

As for President Trump: DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: We don't want to have children separated from their parents.

LISA DESJARDINS: He defended his actions in a Cabinet meeting today, but seemed to give conflicting statements on whether families would stay together, saying both this: DONALD TRUMP: I signed a very good executive order yesterday, but that's only limited.

No matter how you cut it, it leads to separation, ultimately.

LISA DESJARDINS: And this: DONALD TRUMP: I'm directing HHS, DHS, and DOJ to work together to keep illegal immigrant families together during the immigration process and to reunite these previously separated groups.

LISA DESJARDINS: U.S. Customs and Border Protection stated today that it would now attempt to keep families together, but detained, as it continues to refer for prosecution adults who cross the border illegally.

But people those who deal with the families involved are deeply concerned.

They say the new order ignores those already separated.

Sergio Garcia is a public defender in Texas.

SERGIO GARCIA, Pardon Attorney: To me, it doesn't mean anything.

And for my clients, it doesn't mean anything.

LISA DESJARDINS: "NewsHour" talked with Garcia about the more than 2,300 children separated from their families, asking, what is the chance that their parents will ever see them again?

SERGIO GARCIA: I think it's almost none.

And the reason why I feel like that is because there is -- as you probably know, parents who come and ask questions about asylum, who ask questions about immigration, they're being detained right now.

They're being turned away people who are actually seeking information, like asylum information, which is a right that they have.

They have a right to make that claim.

So, I would say zero.

LISA DESJARDINS: Still in question, the legality of the president's executive order.

The Department of Justice today asked a federal judge to change the rules governing the process and all what families who enter the country illegally to be held indefinitely, for longer than the current 20 days, in an effort to keep them together.

Meanwhile, in the legislative branch, the House of Representatives voted down one conservative immigration proposal and delayed a vote until tomorrow on a Republican compromise that would make the president's new policy of detaining families together permanent.

And, Judy, that compromise bill doesn't just deal with the topic of child separation, but also a possible path to citizenship for dreamers, those kids brought here legally as children, and also money for the border wall for the president.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Lisa, tell us more about what's going on behind the scenes at the Capitol.

You have been there.

I know you spent today all day today, yesterday there.

Why are they having such a hard time coming together on this immigration issue?

LISA DESJARDINS: Well, I think we see the classic divide the Republican Party has had for a long time now.

This movement of this big vote until tomorrow tells us two main things, Judy.

It tells us that, one, they do not have the votes for this compromise tonight, but, two, that they think they might get them by tomorrow.

Key in this will be the conservative Freedom Caucus.

However, they feel like there is some conservative momentum, a move toward limiting immigration more than this compromise bill does.

Now, if this compromise bill fails tomorrow, that means that attention turns to the Senate and a possible narrower solution for this child separation issue.

I think, overall, Judy, in the past two days, it's been so wild.

Today, the joke at the Capitol was it felt like and really was the longest day of the year.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But it sounds like they're not close to pulling this off, to coming to an agreement.

LISA DESJARDINS: Unclear.

This compromise bill has a chance tomorrow, but it's still uphill.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Very quickly, the jacket the first lady wore today got some attention.

You talked about it had a message.

Or it sad on the back, the style, "I don't care, do you?"

The White House said no hidden message, but the president's been tweeting about it.

LISA DESJARDINS: Well, apparently, it was an open message.

The tweeted just a minute ago, that the jacket that that phrase, "I really don't dare, do you?"

refers to the fake news media.

He tweeted that Melania Trump is showing that she no longer cares about the media and what the media says.

So, maybe not a hidden message.

The president says it was a message about the media.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Interesting.

From different than what her office had said.

LISA DESJARDINS: That's right.

Yes, they did -- they said there was no message, essentially, there was no implication.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Lisa Desjardins, thank you.

LISA DESJARDINS: You're welcome.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And we will have a conversation with an immigration judge near the border in Texas after the news summary.

In the day's other news: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states may legally force online shoppers to pay sales tax; the 5-to-4 decision overturned two longstanding precedents that allowed online retailers not to collect sales tax in many cases.

A number of states argued that, as a result, they have been losing billions of dollars in revenue each year.

In Israel, the wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was charged with fraud today.

Sara Netanyahu is accused of using some $100,000 in public funds to pay for meals from restaurants and celebrity chefs.

Her lawyers call the charges -- quote -- "baseless and delusional."

The prime minister also faces a series of corruption investigations.

Turkey is headed toward a crucial election Sunday and the president today appealed for support.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants a new term with greatly expanded powers.

Early voting is already under way, but polls show the presidential and parliamentary races are tightening.

Erdogan's opponents are warning against one-man rule.

Back in this country, the Trump administration proposed merging the U.S.

Departments of Education and Labor.

Budget Director Mick Mulvaney spoke at today's Cabinet meeting, and laid out an extensive plan for reorganizing the government.

He called for creating a single Department of Education and the Work Force.

MICK MULVANEY, White House Budget Director: We think that makes tremendous sense, because what are they both doing?

They're doing the same thing.

They're trying to get people ready for the work force.

Sometimes, it's education.

Sometimes, it's vocational training.

But they're all doing the same thing, so why not put them in the same place?

JUDY WOODRUFF: The plan also would create a single food safety agency, among other changes.

Many of them will first need congressional approval.

The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly approved a new farm bill today that sets tougher work requirements for food stamp recipients.

The larger bill renews a broad array of crop and nutrition programs.

It now moves to the Senate, which favors a more modest measure without the tougher food stamp provisions.

The CEO of technology company Intel has resigned over a consensual relationship with an employee.

The company said that Brian Krzanich violated its non-fraternization policy.

It gave no details.

Krzanich joined Intel in 1982.

He became CEO in 2013.

Trade tensions again kept Wall Street on edge today.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 196 points to close at 24461.

The Nasdaq fell 68 points, and the S&P 500 slipped 17.

From New Zealand today, word of a happy arrival.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gave birth to a baby girl.

Later, she posted a picture with her seven-pound newborn alongside her partner, Clarke Gayford.

The late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was the only other world leader to give birth while in office.

And on a sadder note, Koko, the famed gorilla who knew sign language, has died at a preserve in California.

She was born at the San Francisco Zoo, and learned to sign as part of a project with Stanford University.

Her capacity to communicate and show emotion gained renown, and was featured in documentaries.

Koko the gorilla was 46 years old.

Still to come on the "NewsHour": how the immigration debate is playing out in court; Navajos seek to draw new political lines by rewriting the election map; and much more.

Now: one judge's take on the immigration debate and how the Trump administration's family separation policy has been playing out in his courtroom.

Amna Nawaz sat down earlier today with Judge Robert Brack.

He's a federal district judge based in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

AMNA NAWAZ: The vast majority of the work you do here, of the cases you see in your courtroom deal with immigration.

You have a front-row seat to how the changes in policy affect what you do.

You said it looks like we're in the death throes of a system that's been on life support way too long.

What did you mean by that?

JUDGE ROBERT BRACK U.S. District Court of New Mexico: So, I think we all agree and have for many years that our immigration system is broken.

And as heartbreaking as this crisis along the border was this last couple of weeks, a guy that shows up here every day and does this every day has to find hope somewhere.

And I'm thinking, I'm hoping that maybe the moral outrage associated with what's happened will be the thing that finally -- the catalyst that finally makes us look hard at this immigration system that we all agree needs to be fixed.

And if that's the case, then this was the last gasp, you know, of that system, and maybe we can replace it with something that makes sense, that's humane and compassionate, and still addresses our security needs and our labor needs.

AMNA NAWAZ: Most federal judges, I think, don't speak out about these kinds of things, it's fair to say, but you have been writing letters over the years.

You wrote one first in 2010 to President Obama.

You have written many since then.

Why?

Why are you talking about this right now?

JUDGE ROBERT BRACK: I'm not comfortable doing it, and I never set out to be the spokesman for the federal judiciary on this issue.

And the fact is, judges have a constitutional lane that they need to stay in, and I'm trying to be sensitive to that.

I have been promised, we as a nation have been promised immigration reform ever since I have been here, 15 years.

Fits and starts.

Never has happened.

In my view, I am just reporting back from the front lines about what I see and what I know and how I experience the immigration problem.

And I'm hopeful that this information that I'm providing will inform a debate that will finally happen.

AMNA NAWAZ: No other federal judge comes close to your sentencing record, right?

Over the last five years, I was reading that basically you sentenced nearly 6,000 defendants for felony immigration violations.

And your critics will say you are then sending them back to the same system they were fleeing, which is not necessarily compassionate.

They say that that will be your legacy.

What do you say to that?

JUDGE ROBERT BRACK: Well, you know what?

There's some truth in that.

As a federal district judge, I'm the only one down here that can sentence the people that come before me.

And I guess I could say, as some of my critics have recently said, if I'm conflicted in this way, I should quit.

Well, maybe there's some credence to that thought, but here's the thing.

If I'm not sitting here, somebody else is.

And those people are going to be sentenced.

This system is -- it's a monster that has to be fed every day.

AMNA NAWAZ: There's been so much attention paid to the family separation policy.

And there is also a lot of conversation now that the president has issued orders for that to end, that that crisis is now sort of behind us.

Do you believe that it is, based on what you have seen in your courtroom?

JUDGE ROBERT BRACK: So, I have seen an uptick in cases involving families separated at the border in the last 30 days.

And I hope that I don't see those anymore.

Obviously, there's an issue of how to reunite the 2,000 kids and their families, you know, their parents, in the meantime.

Do I think that's going to be the end of it?

I have seen -- as I said, we have had fits and starts with this immigration problem for a long time.

And if it's not this, it's something else.

The family separation I'm talking about -- and it is most heartbreaking -- is the folks that have been here for 10 years or 20 years.

We had one today 30 years.

They have lived here, you know, most of their lives.

No criminal history.

They have felt so comfortable under the prior system, the prior non-criminal prosecution system, that they put down roots here.

And they have American citizen children and they have American citizen wives in many cases.

And I preside over a process that tears them apart.

I'm a husband and a father.

And I'm saying to another husband and father just across the bench from me, you can't ever live with your family again.

And I thought, what must it be like to hear those words?

Because I can't imagine hearing -- have someone else tell those words -- say those words to me.

And I just -- it's heartbreaking.

And if it doesn't break your heart, then, well, you don't get it.

AMNA NAWAZ: Judge Brack, thank you so much for your time.

JUDGE ROBERT BRACK: My pleasure.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Amna joins us now from near the border.

Amna, that was such a powerful interview with the judge.

You were in his courtroom this morning.

You spent some time watching him work.

Tell us about what you saw.

AMNA NAWAZ: Yes, Judy, we spent about an hour-and-a-half with him earlier today.

Just to give you a sense of how these things generally work, proceedings began at about 8:45.

They wrapped up by 10:20.

In that time, 13 cases were heard by Judge Brack, all men, except for one woman.

That, by the way, is considered a light day here in the district court.

To give you a sense of what it looks like, all the defendants were there in colorful jumpsuits.

Those are -- they have been issued in detention and in county jail, wherever they're being held.

They're all handcuffed at the wrist.

They're all shackled at the ankles.

And what stood out to me really was what they had in common.

None of the people presented before Judge Brack today had any kind of criminal history prior to the criminal conviction that led them to Judge Brack's courtroom today, that being an immigration-related case.

But, of course, it's the details in all of these stories that really stick out to you that separate these stories from one another.

I will share some of those with you right now.

We're not allowed to report inside the courtroom.

I did take extensive notes.

But there was a 19-year-old young man from Guatemala.

He had tried twice to enter the United States, both times unsuccessfully.

He was apprehended held for 35 days, is now being deported to Guatemala.

There was a young mother from Honduras.

She left behind four children with her sister there to come to the States and work.

And she was doing so for the last six years in Atlanta before she was apprehended, is now being sent back to Honduras.

And there was also, finally, Judy, a 27-year-old man from Mexico who came to the U.S. when he was just 7 years old.

He lived here for 20 years, went to school here, started working here, earning for his family.

He went back to get married and then illegally with his wife, who is now four months pregnant.

They are both now being prosecuted and will be deported back to Mexico.

Judge Brack today said he is trying to do everything he can to make sure they're at least going to be both deported together -- Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Wow.

One can understand how he's developed some strong views on this.

So, Amna, we heard him refer to the fact that there's this unanswered question about how these children who have been separated from their parents are going to be pulled back together.

And I should say, as I ask you this, we just have learned in the last hour or so that the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said in an interview today that it wasn't the intention of the Trump administration to separate families, to separate out the children.

But what do we know at this point about how that process is going to happen?

AMNA NAWAZ: Well, it may not have been the intention, but I guess anyone who is familiar with the law would tell you that that was sort of an inevitable consequence, that any parent or guardian who is being prosecuted would inevitably have the children they are caring for separated from them.

I will share with you one story that came up in the final minutes of the docket here in Judge Brack's courtroom.

It was a man named Federico.

He's from Guatemala.

He's 51 years old.

He and his son came together.

And when they were apprehended, his son was forcibly taken from him.

He's been held for 38 days in government custody.

The father has.

And I had a chance to speak with his public defender.

In all of that time, he has not had contact with his son once.

Most of the time, he didn't even know where his son was.

The lawyer was able to show me 60 pages -- that is 6-0 pages -- of e-mails in which she and other people on her staff, other immigration lawyers they're working with, have been trying to navigate the government system to figure out where the son is.

Can they set up at least a phone call at the very least between the son and the father?

So, I called around to some public defenders who tried to figure out, is this normal, is this kind of thing happening a lot?

I asked one public defender in another region along the border, what's your success rate of reunification with parents and kids who are separate?

And I was told that is right now zero percent.

Another one said to me that this happens all the time, because here's the thing, Judy.

There are still 2,300 children in government custody who were forcibly separated from their parents.

And the children are now in a separate system.

The parents are being moved through the criminal system at such a pace that they are being prosecuted and deported oftentimes before they have had any chance to make contact with their kids, and they don't know when or if they will be able to again -- Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Amna Nawaz reporting from close to the border, every one a human story.

Thank you, Amna.

The forcible separation of children from their parents at the U.S. southern border has focused attention on the conditions of the detention of all young immigrants.

And now John Yang reports that there are troubling allegations about one facility housing immigrant teens in Virginia.

JOHN YANG: Judy, today Virginia Governor Ralph Northam launched an investigation into claims of severe physical abuse of immigrant teenagers at a juvenile detention facility near Staunton, Virginia.

Northam acted just hours after the Associated Press reported the claims made by immigrants sent to the facility by U.S. authorities.

One of the reporters who broke the story joins us now, Michael Biesecker, an AP investigative reporter.

Michael, thank you very much for joining us.

MICHAEL BIESECKER, Associated Press: Good to be with you.

JOHN YANG: First of all, tell us who these young people are in this facility and how they got there.

MICHAEL BIESECKER: Well, the six sworn statements that were filed as part of this lawsuit were from mostly kids from Central America and Mexico who crossed the border as unaccompanied minors and then were picked up by immigration authorities and put into the system under the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, which essentially puts these kids in shelters, in facilities that will house them while their immigration cases, often, you know, seeking refugee status, wind their way through immigration courts, which can take years.

JOHN YANG: And so these are similar to the children who have been forcibly removed from their parents along the border in the last few weeks, but not the same.

MICHAEL BIESECKER: This lawsuit was filed before the zero tolerance policy was announced in April separating parents from their children.

However, once those children are in the system now, they are classified as unaccompanied minors, and could end up at some of these same facilities, which is why we were looking at them.

JOHN YANG: And these young people were suspected of being gang members?

MICHAEL BIESECKER: Well, in many cases, they have mental issues that can cause them to act out, have behavioral problems that may have made it difficult for them to acclimate to being in less secure facilities.

So, what a program manager from this facility in Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, testified to before Congress back in April was that many of the kids that are labeled as being gang members, potentially violent criminals, they get them to the facility, they screen them, and they find out that they may not be gang members, they may not have created crimes.

They may just be young people who have some behavioral issues that need to be treated.

JOHN YANG: And what were the allegations that they made about their treatment?

MICHAEL BIESECKER: They're pretty severe and consistent between the six statements.

Several of the children said that they were strapped to what was called a safety chair, essentially a restraint chair with wheels, that a white bag was placed over their head, and that they were left in there for sometimes days.

Other teens and children, they ranged in age from 14 to 17, said that they -- their clothes were taken away, and they were confined for days on end to their cells, steel beds, told that a window where people could see in 24 hours a day, and without their clothes in the Virginia mountains.

And it was drafty.

JOHN YANG: And these come in a lawsuit that's been filed against them.

But you have got corroborating evidence, someone else to tell you the same thing?

MICHAEL BIESECKER: We were able to speak to someone in that facility who had been in that facility who had met face to face with these kids.

And that person reported seeing bruises and in one case broken bones, that, when she asked what happened, she was told that the guards had assaulted them.

And consistently, between the statements, the children said that they would be struck while they were in restraints, handcuffs and shackles.

JOHN YANG: And what's been the response from the facility?

MICHAEL BIESECKER: There's not been any.

In court documents, they deny all the allegations.

However, we have been unable to get any response from them over the last two days.

Also, the Department of Health and Human Services has yet to respond to our story.

And we reached out to them in advance of publication.

JOHN YANG: And, as you say, this goes back to the Obama administration.

And you did speak to officials who served at that time in the administration.

MICHAEL BIESECKER: We talked to a top official who oversaw the refugee resettlement program under President Obama.

And these allegations range from 2015 to 2018, so a span of years.

That official said he was unaware of any complaints about abuse at Shenandoah Valley, though he did say that he heard about them after leaving.

Had he heard about them while he was still in charge, he said he would have investigated them, and potentially terminated the contract, the federal contract, that pays approximately more than $4 million a year to house kids there, about 30 at a time.

JOHN YANG: And there has been congressional testimony about this?

MICHAEL BIESECKER: There has been congressional testimony from someone who worked at the facility.

And she said that, in some cases, the children there have behavioral problems that can be difficult to treat in what we could call a correctional setting, a prison-like facility, and that they would be better served in residential psychiatric treatment facilities.

However, those facilities are often hesitant to take a child with a history of behavioral problems or the potential for violence.

JOHN YANG: You call this a prison-like facility, but these children have not been convicted of any crimes.

MICHAEL BIESECKER: That's correct.

They're housed in the same facility with local juvenile delinquents that have been either charged or adjudicated with serious crimes.

However, they were largely segregated from those mostly white inmates, juvenile inmates.

And the Latino kids said that their facility was much more stark, they didn't have access to cushy chairs, they didn't have as good of food, they didn't have access to video game consoles, and some of the perks that were afforded to the mostly white detainees they said they were deprived of.

JOHN YANG: Michael Biesecker at the Associated Press, thanks so much.

MICHAEL BIESECKER: Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now: How voting district maps are drawn can help determine which political party controls power.

The U.S. Supreme Court narrowly ruled in two cases this term, keeping in place boundaries in Maryland and Wisconsin.

A fight is still raging in one Utah county over current district lines and their effect on the voice of Native Americans.

From the University of Southern California's Annenberg Rural Reporting Initiative, Tommy Brooksbank has the story.

TOMMY BROOKSBANK: San Juan County is the largest county in Utah, about the size of New Jersey.

It stretches from the predominantly white Mormon towns of Monticello and Blanding in the north, to the vast Navajo Reservation in the south.

It is also the poorest county in the state.

REBECCA BENALLY, Commissioner, San Juan County: On the Navajo Reservation, the unemployment rate is around 72 percent.

TOMMY BROOKSBANK: Rebecca Benally's county district includes the Navajo Reservation.

She is currently the only Native American serving as one of three county commissioners, even though the Navajo are a majority of the total population.

But that could change when residents go to the polls for a special election in November.

Late last year, a federal judge ruled that the county voting districts had been gerrymandered, in violation of the Constitution, by lumping the Navajo into a single voting district.

The ruling was a huge victory for the Navajo Nation and for Wilfred Jones, a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

WILFRED JONES, Plaintiff: There were some tears that were shed at that moment for my family on my side.

TOMMY BROOKSBANK: Jones decided to sue because, he argued, Navajo residing within the county district that includes the reservation had been denied critical services.

His own sister died because there was no ambulance available like this one in the north to take her to a county hospital.

WILFRED JONES: And she had a heart attack and they couldn't get there until about an hour later, which was too late.

TOMMY BROOKSBANK: The old county commission map placed most of the Navajo population in the 3rd District, which guaranteed that the other two districts would have the final say on county issues.

The new map, drawn up by a court-appointed expert and put into effect in December, spreads that population around.

Reaction to the court's decision in the northern part of the county was swift and angry.

Kelly Laws is the Republican candidate for county commissioner in District 2.

That is the district that could potentially swing the three-member council majority to the Navajo.

He is furious the new district lines trisect the town of Blanding.

KELLY LAWS, Candidate for County Commissioner: This is a perfect case of gerrymandering at its very best.

And the part that's interesting is, how many other counties in the nation have had this done to them?

TOMMY BROOKSBANK: But the argument that gerrymandering has been replaced with more gerrymandering has been rejected by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which denied the county's most recent appeal.

The court says the new district boundaries fairly reflect the overall population.

New voting lines aside, the two parts of the county are still worlds apart.

On the Navajo Reservation, some people live without electricity or running water and school buses must travel over miles and miles of dirt roads.

In the northern part of the county, there are two big libraries, a community center on a golf course, and two hospitals.

Navajo residents are hopeful that the redistricting, which affects both the county commission and the school board, might bring more resources their way.

Curtis Yanito is a candidate for the school board.

He lives on the south side of the San Juan River, which he sees as just one more barrier to connecting with the northern part of the county.

He hopes the new district lines will mean more resources for reservation children.

CURTIS YANITO, School Board Candidate: I know that there's funds out there, but it just stops right there, where the border's at.

It doesn't come this way.

And all these funds that I have seen that happened in the past, it's just been out on that side.

TOMMY BROOKSBANK: The debate over redistricting is playing out against a long history of anger by white conservatives here over what they see as federal overreach.

In 2014, it was a face-off with the Bureau of Land Management over ATV use in recaptured canyon.

And more than a decade ago, federal agents swarmed into Blanding and arrested a number of citizens for illegal trade in Native American artifacts.

One of those arrested was a local physician, who later committed suicide.

Librarian Nicole Perkins still gets emotional about it.

NICOLE PERKINS, Librarian: The raids, when they came and raided Dr. Redd and his family and the other people here, you saw all the local people -- a lot of people said, well - - they came in with guns and vehicles and just like we were ISIS or something.

TOMMY BROOKSBANK: Today, that anger over federal intrusion continues, with county leaders planning to appeal to the federal court yet again over the new district boundaries.

If they lose that appeal, the battle for political control of the county comes down to the race for commissioner in District 2.

Wilfred Jones is optimistic that a Navajo candidate will qualify for the ballot and win that seat.

WILFRED JONES: We're in the 21st century here.

We should be able to vote as we please and voice our opinion.

TOMMY BROOKSBANK: If the Navajo win two of the three seats on the county commission, it would overturn more than a century of political domination by white residents.

For Jones, who was born before Native Americans had the right to vote in Utah, it would be a personal, as well as historic, victory.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Tommy Brooksbank in San Juan County, Utah.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now: the plans to revitalize the newspaper of note for the United States' second largest city, The Los Angeles Times.

Patrick Soon-Shiong is a multibillionaire surgeon, entrepreneur and part owner of the L.A. Lakers.

He has spent half-a-billion dollars to buy the paper, which has faced big setbacks in recent years.

As critical as it has been to the city of Los Angeles, the L.A. Times has struggled with huge financial losses, two-thirds laid off over time, three top editors replaced in 18 months.

And there've been multiple publishers.

Soon-Shiong is also an immigrant born to parents who had fled China during the occupation by Japan during World War II.

And he joins me now from Los Angeles.

Patrick Soon-Shiong, congratulations.

And you're investing in a newspaper at a time when few and fewer people are reading them.

Why?

PATRICK SOON-SHIONG, Owner, The Los Angeles Times: Well, I think it's important for democracy.

It's so important for education.

It's so important for this country.

And it's an institution that I think we need to protect.

And, to me, I grew up in apartheid, South Africa, and the only thing that was my respite was the newspaper, frankly.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, you know, you and I had a little bit of a conversation about this not long ago when we talked.

What is it about journalism today that you think you can make thrive?

Because we look across the country, newspapers are struggling, people are moving to digital.

What is your dream here?

PATRICK SOON-SHIONG: Well, the first thing is, there's a fundamental need of this issue of truthful news, right?

And I think that truly the -- and, as I said in my letter, I think fake news is a cancer of our times.

And, frankly, the social media allows this proliferation and metastasis.

I think the place where we need to find truthful information and journalistic integrity is in the newspapers.

But I think we also recognize that we have this problem of where technology has now taken over, where people want news where they want to read it, where they can read it, whenever, wherever they may be, and the digital mobile platform.

I still am of the old school.

I still, as I said, love the tactile feel of a physical print and what I call leisurely reading.

But we need to adapt and adopt very quickly in real time into this whole new world of digital age.

So, today, I think journalists need to have cross-technology skill sets.

They need to podcast.

They need to do what I'm doing here, TV interviews, and print.

And it's a very different life for the journalists.

But without journalists giving us good, real investigative reporting, I think we will have lost a lot in terms of these institutions.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you think you can do this and be profitable?

After all, it's a business.

PATRICK SOON-SHIONG: No, it is a business.

And I have said this is not a philanthropic exercise.

This is not an exercise of vanity.

This is an exercise where this business has to now as an institution survive.

The New York Times and The Washington Post have shown, in fact, if they create great, important stories with great journalists, they can adopt.

And we must.

And the answer is, I'm hopeful.

We are not concerned or scared of technology.

Part of my work in cancer doing genomic sequencing and cloud computing and machine vision and artificial intelligence, I think we can bring all this to bear and still create a model that thrives.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And you're working with a newsroom that has been -- that has lost, as we said, a large percentage of its staff, of its reporters.

You're dealing with a place that's been traumatized, virtually, in recent years.

What's it going to take to turn that around?

PATRICK SOON-SHIONG: I speak to my newsroom and I say this is like a battered child syndrome, right?

I completely get that.

They have been traumatized.

So, the first thing we did was, yesterday, we announced Norm Pearlstine as the executive editor.

The day next, we -- Kris Viesselman has come in as the transformation editor.

I think the idea is to actually strengthen the newsroom.

The journalists are our lifeblood.

So, this is the first time that we will have stability.

This is not a one-year program, 10-year program.

I see this as a lifelong program for us to really create stability.

So, I think, if we actually are able to attract best talent -- and California is a unique ecosystem to itself -- we will be able to do fine.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You do come to this, Patrick Soon-Shiong, as someone who didn't come out of journalism.

And you said yourself your investments have been in -- you're a physician.

Your investments have been in health care, in pharmaceuticals.

The L.A. Times itself has written a story about you earlier this year, controversies in your business career.

Were they accurate in those stories, and do you think your background is a fit for this?

PATRICK SOON-SHIONG: Well, first of all, that's one of the first things I told The L.A. Times newsroom.

They should feel to write anything and everything about me, completely independent of me as the owner, as long as it is fair and truthful.

I think that should be the standard for anybody.

Fairness, honesty and truthfulness is all any person could ask for.

But with regard to my background, I look upon journalists very much like scientists.

They love discovery.

We love discovery.

We love the truth.

We want to find the basis of the truth.

And we love publishing.

So, while my background has been in discovery, working with scientists and physician scientists, I look upon journalists as such.

If we're going to do opinions, however, we should very, very clearly say, this is an opinion, and everybody should be allowed to have their opinion, whether it be right opinion, left opinion, or middle road opinion.

So I think the opportunity for us now to create an educational forum, a forum that will inspire, a forum that will inform, and a forum that will provide entertainment, so to speak, even, sports, arts, lifestyle.

So I'm really excited.

It's a steep learning curve for me, but I'm really excited about this next episode of what I'm going to be doing.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the new owner of The Los Angeles Times and The San Diego Union, again, congratulations.

PATRICK SOON-SHIONG: Thank you so much, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: As traditional sports like baseball and football struggle with stalling viewership and an aging fan base, a new kind of sport has emerged with huge appeal for millions around the world.

Economics correspondent Paul Solman has the story from Austin, Texas, where he went to a three-day event for what's known as e-sports.

It's part of his weekly series, Making Sense.

PAUL SOLMAN: Pro sports, and they don't get any hotter than this, in the U.S, in France, in Poland.

The fans are in ecstasy and sometimes despair over e-sports, electronic sports.

That's right.

They're playing video games for money, big money.

Come on, you ask, this is sports?

Well, the Olympics are considering adding e-sports because they have mesmerized the digital generation, while traditional sports worry about decline.

MIKE VAN DRIEL, DreamHack: We're not really concerned anymore about this hangup of like, is it sports or not?

PAUL SOLMAN: We're at DreamHack in Austin Texas, Canadian Mike Van Driel here from Sweden to manage the event.

And while DreamHack Austin drew a crowd of only 30,000, $30 just to watch, $89 if you also BYOC, bring your own computer to play in the amateur pen.

But you know how times many fans will tune in online?

MIKE VAN DRIEL: I mean, easily 100 million.

PAUL SOLMAN: A hundred million?

MIKE VAN DRIEL: Yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: The box office take in Austin, nearly a million dollars.

But this is just one of the dozen or so events DreamHack hosts every year.

MIKE VAN DRIEL: We're doing two events in the U.S., two events in Spain.

And then in two weeks from now, we will be at kind of the original event in a Jonkoping, Sweden.

PAUL SOLMAN: And how many people come to that?

MIKE VAN DRIEL: About 55,000.

PAUL SOLMAN: In Jonkoping.

That's standing room only at Yankee Stadium.

Moreover, while we were at DreamHack, a separate tournament was taking place at a resort in Wisconsin.

And there were others all over the world.

MIKE VAN DRIEL: So many events happen on the same weekend, because there's not enough weekends.

PAUL SOLMAN: Following the fans, of course, the money.

Growing at 40 percent per year, e-sports figure to gross nearly a billion dollars by the end of 2018, 40 percent or so from sponsorships, 20 percent from ads, another 20 percent from media rights.

At DreamHack, signs of the new money were everywhere, high-tech cameras on cranes.

So-call casters call the action play-by-play, streamed live worldwide, as the pro gamers play for rich prizes, in addition to their substantial salaries.

SHAHZEB KHAN, ShahZaM: They're well over six figures.

And then the sky's the limit with prize money.

PAUL SOLMAN: That's ShahZaM, Shahzeb Khan, a star whose pro e-sport is Counter-Strike, where five terrorists try to plant bombs and five counterterrorists try to deter them permanently.

Whoever neutralizes the opposing team first wins.

ShahZaM plays for compLexity Gaming, one of scores of pro e-sports teams in various leagues playing different e-sports video games, Dota 2, PUBG, Overwatch, League of Legends.

They all compete for top talent, like ShahZaM.

Last year, compLexity was bought by Dallas Cowboys football boss Jerry Jones, who's been joined by traditional sports moguls like Bob Kraft of the New England Patriots football dynasty, who's invested in a league for the video game Overwatch.

Team compLexity, which makes its money from corporate sponsors and its cut of tournament winnings, provides plenty of support.

SHAHZEB KHAN: We have got a personal fitness sports psychology coach.

He helps us with pretty much everything we need, in terms of like even teaching some of the players how to cook, getting advice on like fixing your posture.

PAUL SOLMAN: Hey, posture is key, if you sit as much as these guys do, practicing eight to 10 hours a day.

But, look, says the entrepreneur who founded and then sold the compLexity team, Jason Lake: JASON LAKE, Founder, compLexity Gaming: The beautiful thing about e-sports and about gaming is, you don't have to be 6'3'' and 220 to have a shot.

You don't have to be 6'9'' to dunk.

Anybody can come, male, female, any race, any gender.

As long as you have some basic physical functionality, it's a level playing field.

PAUL SOLMAN: There is one physical hazard, carpal tunnel syndrome.

Daniel Rodriguez, AKA ChuDat: DANIEL RODRIGUEZ, ChuDat: If I play for about one or two hours, my fingers are pretty much - - they just start to hurt.

PAUL SOLMAN: ChuDat is a star at Super Smash Bros. Melee, a mostly gun-free mano-a-mano affair released way back in 2001, but ChuDat's e-sport was shelved for a sequel, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and both he and the game appeared to be obsolete.

DANIEL RODRIGUEZ: I tried picking up the game.

I tried playing.

I was no good at it.

So I had to kind of like drop Smash and I had to focus on like my real life, so I got a job and then I went back to school.

PAUL SOLMAN: Luckily, a 2013 nostalgia documentary revived Melee and Rodriguez's career, for the time being.

DANIEL RODRIGUEZ: People think that this game will dry up and it will just like completely disappear.

PAUL SOLMAN: Well, what do you do after that?

DANIEL RODRIGUEZ: I got to go back to school and get a job.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, unlike baseball or golf, video games go, video games come, and sometimes quickly.

The video game of the moment, soon to become a pro e-sport with a league of its own, Fortnite, a shoot-em-up featuring a battle royal, 100 players drifting down to an island and then sniping away to emerge as sole survivor.

With promised tournament prizes of $100 million next year, Fortnite threatens to become the biggest e-sport of them all and was plastered on screens throughout DreamHack.

Released less than a year ago, the game already has 50 million players, in part because it's free, while a typical video game costs $50 to $60.

So how can it offer $100 million in prizes?

Because Fortnite has turned out to be a superb virtual merchandiser.

Matthew Adams, playing Fortnite at the BYOC area of DreamHack, is one of its customers.

MATTHEW ADAMS, Gamer: You can earn dances and buy them.

Like, here's a break-dance.

PAUL SOLMAN: A break-dance.

MATTHEW ADAMS: Like in old times, like disco.

PAUL SOLMAN: And you could either earn those dances for your character or you can buy them?

MATTHEW ADAMS: Yes, or you can buy them in the shop.

PAUL SOLMAN: And how much is a dance cost roughly?

MATTHEW ADAMS: Like two dollars.

PAUL SOLMAN: Two bucks a dance.

MATTHEW ADAMS: Yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: Skins, the outfits players don, are $10 to $20 apiece.

As a result, Fortnite grossed $296 million on cosmetic items and weapons upgrades in the month of April alone.

How many hours a day do you play this?

MATTHEW ADAMS: Maybe like five.

I play a lot.

ZAC ADAMS, Father: I think that it will be as popular as baseball, basketball, and those sports.

It's just a matter of time.

PAUL SOLMAN: Matthew's dad Zac Adams is a pro athlete himself, a long-drive golfer who has hit a ball 450 yards onto a fairway.

He's taken up Fortnite to spend time with his kids.

But, now, wait a second.

Maybe Fortnite is the next big e-sport.

But doesn't the violence concern the father?

A 2015 review by the American Psychological Association linked video games to increased aggression, though it found no link to violent crimes.

ZAC ADAM: I think that the parents that do allow them to play should be responsible to bring that to the top of the list.

PAUL SOLMAN: Matt's dad said he wasn't worried about a Fortnite addiction.

But that was before the World Health Organization pronounced this week that such addictions can be a gaming disorder in extreme cases.

Do you worry at all about the addiction factor?

I asked him if he was addicted to the game.

And he said yes.

ZAC ADAM: Right.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

I mean, it's tough to like put my finger on that, you know, because if you balance your life with exercise, proper diet, and you're - - and you're doing things to keep yourself mentally healthy, you can have a hobby that maybe isn't necessarily an addiction, but it's what you do, you know, and it's what drives your life.

PAUL SOLMAN: I had one last question for Zac's son.

Do you have any dreams of becoming a professional gamer?

MATTHEW ADAMS: Yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: You do?

MATTHEW ADAMS: Yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: Do you think you have a shot?

MATTHEW ADAMS: Maybe.

PAUL SOLMAN: For the "PBS NewsHour" in Austin, Texas, this is Paul Solman, sticking to my TV economics career, at least for now.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Next, we turn to another installment of our weekly Brief But Spectacular series, where we ask people about their passions.

Tonight, in honor of LGBTQ Pride Month, we hear from YouTube contributor Jackson Bird.

He hosts the podcast "Transmission" and creates videos for transgender people and for everyone to better understand the transgender community.

JACKSON BIRD, Activist: I think it can be difficult for people to wrap their heads around gender, specifically cisgender people, people whose gender identity is congruent with the one that they were assigned to them at birth.

It can be difficult for them because they never had to question their gender, which is astonishing to those of us who are trans, because we spend so much of our time questioning gender and thinking about it in a very existential way, and wondering why is gender, and what is gender, and how did this happen?

When I was 25, I came out as transgender, which means basically I came out as a guy.

When I say that I'm a transgender man, what that means is that, when I was born, I was assigned female at birth.

I was socialized as a girl growing up.

It never really felt right.

From a young age, I just felt like I should've been born a boy.

I didn't share it with anyone.

I didn't think I could share it with anyone.

So, what I did instead was, think, well, this is the life I have to lead as a woman.

So, I will just try to be the best woman that I can be in whatever that means in a very stereotypical way from society.

Hi, my name is Jackson Bird.

And I am two years post-top surgery.

Why does he have his shirt on then?

Isn't the point of these videos?

His shirt should be off.

Ain't happening.

Here's why.

I have been making videos on YouTube for a long time.

And I started making them when I was kind of dealing with my gender identity and kind of knew at the back of my head that, if my audience continued to grow on YouTube, I would eventually have this pressure of having to come out publicly online.

There's something in the trans community called living stealth.

And only some trans people even have this privilege.

What it means is that you are perceived enough, you are read as the gender you identify as that, when you go out and about in your everyday life, people aren't going to question your gender.

For anyone who is not consistently read as the gender they identify as, it's so much harder, because they're going out in public every single day just living their lives, and having strangers on the street, on the subway, the cashiers at the grocery store giving them weird looks, maybe even dirty looks, making them, like, explain themselves anywhere they are.

So, that's an every single day, multiple times a day coming out process, on top of the very turbulent, traumatic one that you probably already had when you told your family and friends.

If you're watching this and you're wondering what you can do to help close the gaps of an inequality that exists between LGBTQ+ people vs. straight and non-transgender people, I think the biggest thing is to just see the humanity in us, to raise up our voices, especially in so many places of media and community and spaces where our voices are under-represented.

I didn't have any transgender role models growing up.

I hardly had any gay or queer role models growing up in Texas in the '90s.

I didn't even know that transgender men existed.

That lack of representation growing up made me literally feel like I was alone in the world and there was no one else like me.

So to now get to be the role model that I needed as a kid is just indescribable.

My name is Jackson Bird, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on providing a platform for transgender people.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And you can find additional Brief But Spectacular episodes on our Web site, PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.

And before we go, we're sorry to share this passing.

Charles Krauthammer, the syndicated conservative columnist and FOX News contributor, has died after battling cancer.

He'd not been on television for nearly a year, and wrote a public letter earlier this month announcing that he only had a short time to live.

Krauthammer, a former psychiatrist and paraplegic since a teenage diving accident, won the Pulitzer Prize for his commentary, and was a bestselling author.

Charles Krauthammer was 68 years old.

And that's the "NewsHour" for tonight.

I'm Judy Woodruff.

For all of us at the "PBS NewsHour," thank you, and we'll see you soon.