The Debrief with Major Garrett: Recent Episodes
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How'd we get here? Where are we going? What does it all mean? CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Major Garrett takes a step back from the daily gush of headlines for a deeper look into the issues of our time. New episodes are available right here, first thing Tuesday mornings.
In this mini-Debrief episode, Major reflects on his experience covering the September 11th, 2001 attacks as a member of President George W. Bush's travelling press pool, and the impact of 9/11 on American society and politics.
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Washington, D.C. has a language all its own. Words that mean something here in the nation's capital mean something completely different or nothing at all everywhere else.
We're talking about sequestration and reconciliation, fiscal cliffs and super-secret SCIFs. Even SALT, COLA and iced tea - things normally found in your kitchen - have alternate definitions in the federal city.
It's the accumulated language of legislating and regulating, the vernacular of those in power.
There's also another language native to Washington, D.C., a city with vibrant culture, history and diversity. Ordinary Washingtonians living just blocks from these centers of federal power speak it fluently.
So get cised, Moe, and gavel in the season one finale of The Debrief with Major Garrett, featuring Dave Dildine of WTOP Radio, Alexandra Petri of The Washington Post, D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, co-author of Dog Whistles, Walk-Backs, and Washington Handshakes Chuck McCutcheon and Grammy-nominated artist and DC-native Kokayi.
A note to our audience: The Debrief will return with new episodes at a date TBD. We thank you for listening and can't wait to bring you season two. The Debrief is produced by Jamie Benson, Sara Cook, Arden Farhi, Jake Rosen and Ellee Watson.
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Without question, 2020 was a remarkable and remarkably miserable year for so many. It had a little bit of everything: disease, fire, political upheaval, social unrest, economic devastation. Oh, and murder hornets.
More than 340,000 Americans died from covid-19. Unemployment reached nearly 15% and hunger in America surged.
But there's another year in relatively recent human history that surpassed the suffering and significance of 2020.
1945.
Between April and October that year, an American president died, the US dropped two nuclear bombs, a world war ended, the United Nations was founded and George Orwell published Animal Farm.
And in the 5 other months that year, 75,000 Americans perished in the Battle of the Bulge. Auschwitz was liberated. US forces took Iwo Jima. The Nuremberg trials began. And the first computational computer came online.
Major Garrett looks back at 1945, a year that devastated and shaped the world.
Interviews with historians and authors Jay Winik, A.J. Baime and Michael Kimmage, director of the Harry Truman Library, Kurt Graham, and director of the Franklin Roosevelt Library, Paul Sparrow.
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100 days is an unusual unit of measurement for anything. Normally, we'd just say "about three months." Is there anything besides a president's time in office we measure in 100-day increments?
Candidates make pledges for steps they will take once in office during that timeframe. Pundits, political scientists, and historians count the bills signed, executive orders issued, promises kept and promises broken in those first few months.
First coined by former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, "the first 100 days" have been used as a yardstick for all presidents since. They are a lens through which we measure a president's style, the success of their transition, the mettle of their leadership, and their sway over Congress.
As we approach President Biden's 100th day in office this week, Major Garrett examines the beginning of Biden's administration -- his handling of compounding pandemic, economic, climate, and immigration crises, the legislative battles waged in Congress, and executive actions uprooting the policies of his predecessor. Major also embarks on a historical comparison of this benchmark for all modern presidents since FDR.
Joining us this week: Dr. Barbara Perry, Director Director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, and CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Nancy Cordes.
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Even climate change skeptics agree global temperatures have risen and ice sheets are melting in the arctic and Antarctic. But they disagree that weather patterns are becoming more extreme and downplay the role of human activity on our warming planet.
As Earth Day approaches, the second episode of our two-part series examines the impact of climate change not only on the planet but on people, and the debate over what to do about it.
This week, Major Garrett speaks with experts in national security, the automotive industry, and climate research.
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The Earth is changing at a faster pace than at any point in the history of human civilization. Industrialization and increased carbon emissions have caused the global temperature to rise by over a degree Celsius since the turn of the last century.
This seemingly small increase has had a massive impact. Melting ice sheets are causing sea levels to rise. The oceans are warming due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Extreme weather events are becoming more and more frequent. Species are dying at record rates.
This may sound dire -- and the calls for greater immediate action are growing louder. But there's cause for hope.
In part one of our two-part series, Major speaks with climate experts, policymakers, and advocates who see the climate crisis as a unique opportunity for equality and a greener and more prosperous future.
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As the NCAA's March Madness ends, athletes for both men's and women's basketball teams face the harsh reality that has plagued student-athletes for years: their sweat, tears, and hard work draw millions of viewers, and millions more in revenue for the NCAA, television networks, and universities, but no money for themselves or their teammates.
The Supreme Court is taking a new look at the NCAA's amateurism rules and should have a ruling by summer, but as state legislatures move to create a more equitable system for college athletes the NCAA finds itself in a bind.
Major Garrett dives into the steep racial and gender inequalities within the NCAA's current system, growing calls for change regarding compensation, and what the future could look like for collegiate athletes.
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Last week, Georgia's Republican governor signed into law sweeping changes to the state's voting procedures. The legislation, which passed with only Republican support, mandates photo ID for mail-in ballots, trims the window for requesting an absentee ballot and places new restrictions on ballot drop boxes, among other provisions.
Iowa also adopted more restrictive voting laws earlier this month. Instead of 29 days to vote early in person, voters will now have 20 days, and polls will close an hour earlier.
The changes to voting laws, led by Republican governors and GOP-controlled state legislatures, come in the wake of the so-called "Big Lie" -- that the election was rigged, Donald Trump actually won, and was fraudulently denied a second term.
And yet, 2020 was arguably the most successful election in history. Never before has an election been more secure or had more people participate. Not to mention it was conducted amid a global pandemic.
This week, Major Garrett looks at the state of voting rights in 2021. What's changed since the November election? Have we made it easier or harder to vote and why? And what changes could be coming?
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We wanted to mark the one-year anniversary of pandemic lockdown without doing a year-from-hell retrospective. So we decided to explore a relationship to something that might embody how the pandemic has changed our habits and led us back to some old ones.
Perhaps no relationship with any common object has changed as much as it has with paper. Think about it. We're using less at work and more at home. Our screen-weary eyes long for printed books and puzzles.
We're writing more letters. Many of us voted at home with mail-in ballots. Those Amazon boxes are piling up and our consumption of disinfectant wipes and paper towels has skyrocketed.
And who can forget the great toilet paper shortage of 2020?
This week, Major Garrett marks one year of the pandemic and paper.
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The new administration is grappling with a decades-old problem: how to deal with the surge of migrants at the southern border. With President Biden’s new policy of not turning away unaccompanied minors, the number of children arriving at the border has rapidly increased, up nearly 30% in the last week alone.
Over 4,200 children are currently being held in overcrowded Customs and Border Protection facilities, and nearly 3,000 have been in CBP custody for longer than the 72 hours required by law.
Some children in these jail-like facilities meant for adults have described being hungry, taking turns sleeping on the floor, showering once in 7 days, and not seeing the sun.
Coronavirus precautions in Health & Human Services shelters, which provide medical services, educational resources, and counseling, mean fewer available beds – leaving officials scrambling to find space for unaccompanied minors.
This week, Major explores the influx of migrant children arriving at the border – what is driving them here, the conditions they face along the perilous journey, what awaits them once they arrive, and the Biden administration’s response to this humanitarian crisis.
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A trillion of anything is hard to fathom. It's a million millions. Or a thousand billions.
Now double it.
This week, the House of Representatives is expected to pass the nearly $2 trillion COVID relief package and a signature from President Biden will make it law. The legislation will send money just about everywhere - to families struggling to get by, to states and cities where tax revenue has fallen, to restaurants and to the unemployed.
The White House is calling it the most progressive bill ever passed because it will also provide money for Obamacare premiums, tax credits for parents, money to fight hunger and funding for schools for years.
Republicans have called the bill "wasteful," "bloated," and a "slush fund." None are expected to support it, which would make this the only pandemic relief package to pass without bipartisan support.
Major Garrett digs into the politics and process of passing the American Rescue Plan, and attempts to answer the titular question: $2 Trillion for what?
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Little by little the restaurant industry has begun to creep back to life. At the low point of the pandemic-induced recession, more than half of the industry's 15 million employees were out of work, a haunting statistic. Roughly 110,000 eating and drinking establishments closed temporarily or for good.
We all hate to lose our neighborhood favorites. But maybe during the pandemic you also found a brand new pizza joint that takes orders and delivers via app.
Now what if that pizza place wasn't really a place at all?
This week Major digs into ghost kitchens, pop-ups and other food-industry innovations spurred on by the pandemic. Join us for a most delicious ghost story, if you dare.
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As if the coronavirus pandemic hasn't wrought enough anguish on our country, there's a disturbing viral side effect that has no vaccine cure or therapeutic treatment. Americans are being attacked by other Americans. They're being beaten, spat upon, yelled at, shunned and hounded with racial slurs. Some have died, others have been hospitalized.
The victims: Asian Americans. Their crime: the way they look.
Roughly 3000 incidents of hate against Asian Americans have been recorded since the pandemic reached full bore last March, according to one group that tracks these cases. And those are just the incidents victims reported.
This week, Major Garrett explores what's behind the surge in anti-Asian racism, what can be done about it, and the long history of prejudice against these ethnic groups in the United States.
Major speaks with pro basketball player Jeremy Lin, US Congressman Ted Lieu, CBS News correspondent Weijia Jiang, and others who have experienced this discrimination firsthand.
For more on this topic, visit:
https://stopaapihate.org/
https://www.standagainsthatred.org/
https://hateisavirus.org/
https://www.ncapaonline.org/
https://acttochange.org/#about
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For the second time in just over a year, the Senate elected to acquit Donald Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors, this time over his role inciting the lethal January 6th melee at the Capitol.
The vote was the most bipartisan exercise of its kind. Seven Republicans joined all 50 Democrats and independents to convict the former president.
The outcome, though never seriously in doubt, provided a view into the future of the Republican Party. Yes, Donald Trump's relentlessly loyal base still has a grip on the GOP, but a small yet significant faction is ready to move on.
Even Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell - in words - laid blame at Mr. Trump's feet for provoking the January 6th riot. In deed, McConnell voted not guilty, showing that breaking up with the president and his followers is hard to do.
Major Garrett looks back at the week that was in Washington and what it means for history and the future.
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While we were putting this episode together, we quickly realized the vast, convoluted scope of QAnon, its tantalizing effect its followers and the bit players who conspired to propagate the lie were bigger and more twisted than we'd imagined. QAnon, we learned, is many things to many people.
So we decided to focus on a question we kept encountering: what to do about the untold legions who have fallen for QAnon's intoxicating allure. Could they be disabused of their beliefs and brought back to the mainstream?
There is a temptation to lash out at these destructive - and so obviously false - conspiracy theories and the violence they helped unleash upon the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. But the wiser course, experts told us, is to walk toward QAnon believers with compassion and empathy.
In this episode, Major meets Jitarth Jadeja, a thirty something Australian who spent two years locked in QAnon's vice grip. When he emerged, chastened and deeply shamed, Jadeja made it his mission to help pull others out of the rabbit hole.
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If your friend tells you it's going to rain tomorrow, and it turns out to be sunny, that's misinformation. Your friend was misinformed or the forecast changed.
But if your friend tells you it's going to rain lizards, that is disinformation. And disinformation – deliberate falsehoods spread to mislead the public – has never been more prevalent.
The 2016 election was marred by a hostile foreign actor engaged in a coordinated disinformation campaign. In 2020, homegrown disinformation - amplified by the highest levels of government - permeated social media and contributed to one of the most shameful episodes in US history: the deadly assault on the US Capitol.
In part one of this two-part series, Major Garrett explores disinformation: what it is, how it spreads, what’s being done to stop it.
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In a feat of human achievement, vaccine developers cracked COVID-19's scientific code in less than a year, testing and developing a shot that has so far proven effective against the deadly infection.
What's proving difficult now is getting that vaccine out of manufacturing facilities and into Americans' arms.
President Trump's Operation Warp Speed placed the onus on states and localities to figure out distribution. The Biden administration wants to the federal government to take a greater role in administering 100 million vaccines in 100 days. By springtime, anyone who wants a vaccine should be able to get one, the president said Monday.
Major Garrett explores the obstacles to mass vaccination, why some states are doing better than others and whether the Biden administration's goals are achievable.
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Every four years on January 20th, the United States sends a worldwide reminder: this is what democracy looks like. Our incoming and outgoing presidents traditionally share a limousine ride to the Capitol. They appear together before the assembled masses and then bid one another farewell.
What will the inauguration look like in 2021? Will our example of a peaceful transfer of power still shine as brightly in the dark, autocratic corners of the globe?
In the wake of the January 6th Capitol riot, there will be more national guardsmen protecting the inauguration than spectators on the Capitol's west front. President Trump won't attend. Security concerns and a raging pandemic will drain much of the splendor out of our quadrennial celebration.
Major Garrett looks at the subdued 2021 inauguration - what's the same and what's changed.
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History will record Wednesday's assault on our democracy as one of the US's darkest, most shameful episodes. Mob rule was the ambition of the marauding, counterfeit American patriots who laid siege to the Capitol on a false premise: that Donald Trump had won an election he so clearly lost.
For months, President Trump convinced his supporters that he could not lose. That if he did, the election was somehow rigged. And when he did, that widespread fraud in key states had tipped the election in Joe Biden's direction.
None of this was true, yet tens of thousands of supporters arrived in downtown Washington Wednesday morning to hear the president spread more falsehoods, erroneously claiming Vice President Mike Pence could flout the constitution and deliver four more years to Mr. Trump.
All of these fabrications, stirred with seething anger and ill-prepared security forces, yielded explosive and deadly consequences. Ultimately, our constitutional guardrails held on January 6, 2020, but at a frightening cost.
This week, Major Garrett looks back at that reprehensible day and how those in and around the Capitol experienced it.
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America's economy needs women. It also needs working parents. Coronavirus has taken a toll on both, but women with children have suffered more than men. They've lost more jobs, lost more in wages and some 2 million dropped out of the workforce entirely.
In early 2020, there were more women on payrolls in America than men. Then, as coronavirus swept the nation, 11 million women lost their jobs. Even as some of those jobs came back, balancing the stresses of working remotely, childcare and at-home learning became overwhelming for many.
In this week's episode, Major examines the "She-cession" - the pandemic's economic toll on working parents - and what can be done to ease the added burdens brought on by the pandemic.
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Yes, whatever you ordered online is taking longer than usual to be delivered. Be patient. Listen to our podcast while you wait. Your shipment will get to you. Eventually.
America's shipping networks are literally and figuratively filled to the brim. More people are shopping online because of the pandemic. Add to that peak holiday season gift-buying and millions of vaccines that need to get from the manufacturers into people's arms as soon as possible.
By one estimate, the US Postal Service, FedEx, UPS and Amazon are handling 100 million packages a day.
This week, Major Garrett explores the shipping industry and how the pandemic has brought never-before-seen volume and rapid industry change.
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If projections from news organizations felt insufficient and certified election results from state officials did not convince you, the electoral college has spoken. On Monday, 538 electors in 50 states and the District of Columbia confirmed Joe Biden will be the next president.
Biden's 306 electoral votes equaled President Trump's total four years ago. On January 6th, congress will meet to tally those state totals and two weeks later, Joe Biden will assume the presidency.
Despite calls to ditch the electoral college in favor of directly electing presidents by popular vote, the electoral college has proven durable amid this seemingly chaotic post-election period marred by charges of fraud, machine error and outright lies.
This week on The Debrief, Major Garrett explores the electoral college. How did we get this system? What does slavery have to do with its origins? Should we change the way we elect the president?
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More Americans are hungry now than at any time since the Great Depression.
Let that sink in.
The uptick is yet another awful consequence of the covid outbreak. Watch the evening newscasts recently and you've probably seen lines of vehicles snaked around stadium parking lots-turned-food distribution points. Maybe you've volunteered at one of those sites. Maybe you've waited in those lines yourself.
By nearly any metric, hunger in America is at crisis level. Food banks are stretched. Children who would normally get free or reduced priced meals at school aren't in school. Congress is gridlocked.
There's no shortage of food in America. Food producers churn out plenty. Getting it to people when and where they need it and at an affordable price remains the challenge.
This week Major examines food insecurity in America. What are its causes? What's being done to combat the crisis? How can government help?
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This month, three major vaccine developers reported preliminary data showing their covid-19 vaccines were highly successful in protecting participants in late-stage clinical trials. This news may feel like a lone bright spot in a year of ugly - and deadly - pandemic-related headlines. In a matter of weeks, the Food and Drug Administration could sign off on emergency use of these vaccines, making them available to vulnerable populations, health care and frontline workers and eventually the general population.
So how does the vaccine work? How quickly can we get it from manufacturing facilities to end users? What are the risks and side effects? How can we trust it's safe? Major explores these questions and more this week on "The Debrief."
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For those who lived through it, the presidential election of 2000, might seem comparable to what is going on now.
It is not.
Then, fewer than 600 votes in Florida separated George W. Bush and Al Gore. Voter intent was in dispute (hanging chads anyone?). The election hung on the outcome of the vote in one state.
Today, thousands - and in some cases tens of thousands of votes - separate Joe Biden and President Trump in several states. Voter intent is well-established. President Trump's legal challenges are themselves challenged - most on account of non-existent facts. Biden maintains a commanding lead in the electoral college and will be sworn in as president at noon on January 20, 2021. Mr. Trump need not concede.
Since our country's founding, we have had our share legitimately contested elections. 2020 is hardly one of them. This week on The Debrief, Major explores the history of too-close-to-call presidential races and how America has resolved democratic disputes far more complicated than the 2020 election.
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Election night in America is usually just that. A night. Just one night.
Not in 2020. Not in a pandemic-afflicted year when so few things seem normal.
This is the story of the people at CBS News who brought you Election 2020 coverage that started on Tuesday and ended Saturday. At 11:25 AM eastern time, CBS News Elections and Surveys Director Anthony Salvanto piped into the internal communication channel at CBS News with a historic projection, "Joe Biden: win, Pennsylvania. Joe Biden elected president."
Those sentence fragments put to rest four days of national uncertainty. The race had been close, and while the president promised legal challenges, voters had spoken clearly: Joe Biden would be the next president.
Join Major Garrett for a behind the scenes look at CBS News's coverage of four days in November that shaped history.
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The last time an incumbent president lost re-election, Google, Netflix and friend weren't verbs. The year was 1992. And it was Major's first time covering a presidential race - incumbent Republican George H.W. Bush against Arkansas Governor and Democratic upstart Bill Clinton.
Let's be clear: we don't know who is going to win in 2020.
But the parallels between the 1992 and 2020 elections are striking. In this episode, Major reflects on the Bush-Clinton race, what's changed and what remains the same as America renders its verdict on the first term of the Trump presidency.
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America is voting. And it's doing it in record numbers.
With a week to go before Election Day, early voting totals have eclipsed 2016 levels. Turn out in Texas is already 82% of overall participation four years ago. In Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, it's 66%. Experts predict turnout will only accelerate the closer we get to November 3rd.
Our debut episode in July examined the challenges posed by voting in a pandemic. Would there be enough poll workers? How about enough funding? Could states adopt new laws to accommodate voting procedures with expanded absentee access? Would those changes lead to widespread fraud?
In this episode, thirteen weeks later, we answer those questions. We've come a long way since July, but have we come far enough?
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"To Bork" someone, according Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, is "to attack or defeat (a nominee or candidate for public office) unfairly through an organized campaign of harsh public criticism or vilification."
The phrase entered the lexicon after Ronald Reagan's nominee to the Supreme Court, Robert Bork, faced a bruising confirmation process in 1987. By all accounts, Bork was a qualified jurist, but Senate Democrats, then in the majority, feared his conservative ideology would swing the court to the far right. The result? A 42-58 vote to reject Bork's nomination divided mostly along party lines.
Bork's failed nomination foreshadowed partisan nomination battles for decades to come. No better example can be found than Barack Obama's pick Merrick Garland, who was denied even a hearing, less a vote.
As Senate Republicans inch closer to confirming Judge Amy Coney Barrett days before the 2020 election, Major Garrett explores Robert Bork's failed nomination and how its legacy endures some thirty years later.
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President Trump's campaign stop in Florida Monday marked the first time he'd left the White House after checking into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center ten days earlier. The president announced his positive covid-19 test result on October 2nd. Thereafter, his doctors provided cherrypicked details about the president's condition that painted a picture of the 74-year old president triumphing over a disease that has killed more than 210,000 Americans.
Missing were key details like when the president had last received a negative test result or whether his lungs suffered damage.
President Trump is far from the only president to endure a health scare in office. He's also not the first to conceal important details about it.
John F. Kennedy denied having Addison's disease...even though he did. During the 1944 campaign, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's doctor wrote his health was so poor, he would be unlikely to complete another term. The memo was kept secret. Roosevelt died the next year, 5 months after being re-elected. Grover Cleveland went as far as to schedule a fake fishing expedition so he could have oral surgery on board the boat and hide it from the American people.
Major Garrett examines presidential health and secrecy. What is the proper balance between patient privacy, national security, politics and the public's right to know about the wellbeing of its elected leader?
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Attention political junkies: we are taking a poll. How many of you like to know trends and results of the presidential race on election night? How about who’s up or who’s down during the race? Or what sorts of voters voted for a given candidate?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, you can thank a pollster.
For this episode of “The Debrief with Major Garrett,” we pull back the curtain on polling and election night projections. How do they do it and why is it - mostly - accurate?
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During his convention speech in 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump proclaimed, "Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it." Not congress, nor the courts, nor the states or any other institution we vest with power. Just a would-be President Trump.
The bounds of presidential power have been defined and redefined since the nation's founding. George Washington and Alexander Hamilton sparred with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison over then-President Washington's view that he, not congress, could decide whether to engage in a foreign war.
Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus because, he argued, it was necessary to snuff out rebellion in order to win the Civil War. An executive order from Franklin Delano Roosevelt made it US policy to intern Japanese people and their descendants during World War II, even though nearly two thirds of those jailed were American citizens.
When congress failed to act on immigration, President Barack Obama's executive action created the DACA program for children brought to the United States illegally by their parents. President Trump unilaterally redirected military funds to build a wall on the southern border, after congress declined to fund it.
Major Garrett explores presidential power and its limits, uses and abuses. Can the president do that?
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In one week, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden will meet on the same stage in Cleveland for the first of three presidential debates this fall. In a political year marked by so much that is abnormal, the debates should finally look like something recognizable.
For this week's episode, Major Garrett dives into the relatively short history of presidential debates and how they've changed since John F. Kennedy debated Richard Nixon in 1960 in a made-for-television event.
How are the moderators chosen? What do candidates do to prepare? And why do some debate moments live forever?
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On March 11th, the sports world - led by the NBA - started to shut down. Coronavirus fears prompted the NCAA to cancel March Madness. The Masters was postponed. Baseball, hockey and basketball, put on hold. What followed was perhaps the quietest spell in modern sports history.
By midsummer, professional sports started to creep back to life and this past Thursday they reached a crescendo when all four major sports leagues - the NBA, NHL, NFL and MLB - held competition along with golf, tennis, women's basketball and more.
The loudest moments of all? Athletes' calls for social and racial justice after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Milwaukee.
Major Garrett chronicles the last 6 months in the pandemic-plagued sports world. What we've lost. What we've gained. And how we've changed.
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The economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic are all around us - millions out of work, businesses shuttered for good, gridlock on Capitol Hill preventing more aid from flowing to those in need. The trillion-dollar travel industry has been hit as hard as any.
International routes, which used to account for about half of American carriers' business, are virtually non-existent now. Here at home, airline passenger volume and hotel occupancy are limping along. Without help from the federal government, major American carriers have said they'll have no choice but to scale back their workforces in October. About a quarter of hotel properties in the US are behind on mortgage payments. Cruise ships are docked in port or headed for the scrap yard.
This week, Major takes a trip down the long, hard road ahead for the travel industry.
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Fifty seven years after Martin Luther King, Jr. led the March on Washington for civil and voting rights legislation, protesters returned to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial last week to demand justice for African Americans killed by police. The event, organized by King's oldest son Martin the third and Reverend Al Sharpton, attracted tens of thousands of demonstrators including the families of several victims.
Between a global pandemic, outcry over the police-involved deaths of George Floyd and Jacob Blake and the attendant political fallout, the summer of 2020 isn't one that will soon be forgotten. Major Garrett explores how the civil rights movement of the 1960s led to the renewed push for equality today. How we got here. Where we're going. And what it means.
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8 months into the coronavirus pandemic, Major explores the question: was this a lost summer?
It was certainly a summer of loss. Carefree summer fun, travel, social gatherings: lost. Students' ability to learn: lost. Millions of jobs: lost. Tens of thousands of lives: lost.
On Episode 5 of "The Debrief," Major looks at where we stand in the fight against COVID-19 — what we've learned about the virus, what opportunities we missed, and what progress we've made as we prepare to head into the fall.
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The Democratic convention Monday night featured four prominent Republicans who will be casting ballots this fall for former vice president Joe Biden. Critical to Donald Trump's election in 2016 was a coalition of Democrats - especially in the industrial midwest - who abandoned their party loyalties and boarded the Trump train.
Will they stick with the president in 2020 or come home to Biden and the Democrats? Are they up for grabs?
On Episode 4 of "The Debrief," Major looks at party switchers and their impact on presidential elections now and as far back as 1800 when Democratic Republican Thomas Jefferson edged out Federalist Aaron Burr after an endorsement from a prominent crossover voter.
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It is perhaps the biggest question on the minds of Americans these days. How can we re-open schools safely?
After just a few days of in-person classes at North Paulding High School in Georgia, and photos that showed crowded hallways with maskless students, the school shut down for a two-day deep clean. Classes went online temporarily. Nine teachers and students tested positive for coronavirus.
Across the country, teachers, students, parents and administrators are grappling with the realities of a pandemic that won’t relent. How much risk is too much? Or is the greatest risk not returning to in-person school?
Major Garrett explores these questions and more in episode three of The Debrief.
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Under normal circumstances, delegates would be dancing in Charlotte and Milwaukee in a matter of days.
But in the era of coronavirus, gone are the balloon drops, the back slapping, the ladder climbing and the back stabbing.
Instead, social distancing, masks, hand washing and uncertainty.
Major Garrett explores what this year’s Republican and Democratic National Conventions will look like and how we got here.
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The 2020 election is less than a hundred days away. And the coronavirus pandemic shows few signs of abating. Americans have voted during world wars, recessions and the last pandemic. So how to uphold the most basic tenet of democracy this November?
Join CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Major Garrett for a deep dive into the challenges of holding a national election amid a global health crisis.
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We can't slow down the torrents of news bulletins, but we can go deeper than the breathless headlines of the day. That's what The Debrief with Major Garrett aims to - context, history, clarity. Every new show promises something new. We promise something enduring. How'd we get here? Where are we going? What does it all mean?
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