JOHN YANG: Tonight, on PBS News Weekend, how anger over the war in Gaza may have shaped some voters choice for president.

Then, what a second Trump term could mean for climate change and the environment in the United States and around the world.

And how administrators and law enforcement are grappling with growing threats against schools.

WOMAN: Threats are a factor of life now in schools and they have a profound impact on the students that are there, to the teachers, to the functioning of the schools.

(BREAK) Good evening.

I'm John Yang.

Democrats have held onto one more Senate seat.

Overnight, Nevada's Jacky Rosen was declared the winner in her bid for reelection.

We still don't know the size of the Republicans majority in the Senate.

The race in Arizona has yet to be called and there's the possibility of a recount in Pennsylvania.

Also still unknown is which party will control the House, 23 races are still too close to call.

So far, Republicans have 212 seats and Democrats 200, 218 are needed for a majority.

And President-elect Trump won another state.

He was declared the winner in Nevada overnight.

It's the first time in 20 years the state has gone Republican.

Only Arizona remains to be called.

And the White House said today that President Biden will host the President-elect in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

It's a tradition that Mr. Trump broke four years ago after Mr. Biden defeated him.

Qatar is suspending its efforts to mediate a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, saying that neither side is negotiating in good faith.

This comes hours after two Israeli airstrikes in Gaza killed at least 16 people, including women, children and local journalists.

One hit a school turned shelter in the east.

The other hit tents in a hospital courtyard in the south.

YOUSEF AL-NONO, Displaced man (through translator): They attack unarmed people, displace people, keeping to themselves.

But nothing can be said except we can only rely on God.

May God grant us patience.

Even if we all get killed, we will stay steadfast here.

JOHN YANG: And the United Nations warns that famine is imminent in northern Gaza.

The agency's World Food Program says the price of food is 10 times higher than it was before the war, if it can be found at all.

On Israel's other front in Lebanon, airstrikes hit several buildings in the coastal city of Tyre.

At least seven people were killed and 46 others injured.

Several buildings were destroyed.

The Israeli military says it was targeting Hezbollah command centers and offices.

Twenty-six people were killed and dozens injured in Pakistan when a suicide bomber blew himself up on a train platform in Ketta.

A separatist group claimed responsibility.

They said the target was troops who were at the station.

The station has a gate meant to detect explosives, but there are other entrances that don't have the same security measures.

On both U.S. coasts, dry, windy conditions are sparking dangerous wildfires.

In New Jersey, blazes are threatening structures and creating hazy conditions.

At least four fires are burning, though no evacuations have been ordered.

And firefighters in Southern California say lighter winds are helping them battle the Mountain Fire, which broke out on Wednesday.

It's destroyed more than 130 structures, most of them homes.

Thousands of people have been evacuated.

The FEMA administrator said today she's fired a worker for advising her assistance team not to go to homes with signs supporting Donald Trump.

This was in the aftermath of September's Hurricane Helene.

In a statement, Administrator Deanne Criswell said the former employee's actions were reprehensible and vowed to take steps to make sure it doesn't happen again.

And 21st century technology is unlocking the mysteries of one of history's most famous volcanic disasters.

Narratives about victims of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the year 79 have been based on where they were positioned in the ruins of Pompeii.

But DNA testing shows that four bodies found in a group once thought to be a family are actually unrelated, and what was thought to be a mother and her child are in fact an adult male and a biologically unrelated boy.

Researchers say new ways of processing genetics will allow them to continue to paint a more accurate picture of Pompeii.

Still to come on PBS News Weekend, what the new Trump administration is expected to do with climate policy.

And how schools are navigating a spike in threats of violence.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Many of Vice President Kamala Harris rallies in the closing days of the campaign were interrupted by people angry about the mounting death toll in Gaza and Lebanon and the Biden administration's support for Israel.

That anger may have been expressed at the polls in Dearborn, Michigan, where 55 percent of the residents are of Middle Eastern descent.

Four years ago, President Biden got 69 percent of the vote.

This year, Harris got 36.

James Zogby is the president of the Arab American Institute.

He's also director of Zogby Research, which conducts surveys in the Middle East.

That drop in Dearborn of support, was that all Gaza or was there something else going on?

JAMES ZOGBY, President, Arab American Institute: I think there were two factors.

Gaza and Lebanon obviously were central.

I think the other was a failure of the Harris campaign to reach out the candidate directly to reach out to Arab Americans.

There's a great Tip O'Neill story when he lost his first election and went to his neighbor and said, did you vote for me?

And she said no.

And he said why not?

And she said he never asked me.

They know Donald Trump and they, many of them know what to expect.

He came to them, he spoke to them, he risked it, she didn't.

And that makes a difference.

JOHN YANG: But if they're angry about Gaza and Lebanon, they were supporting a president who told Benjamin Netanyahu, do whatever it takes, 80 percent of those in the exit polls who said that U.S. support for Israel is not strong enough voted for Trump.

How do you reconcile that?

JAMES ZOGBY: Look, the question of looking at the polls, the Arab American polls, we found that there always has been a 35 percent or so Republican vote.

I mean, in every life a little rain must fall and we have Arab American Republicans.

The increase for Trump came from a punish Democrat vote.

They know what they're getting.

And yet they said, we're going to send a message to Democrats.

There also was, I think, another factor here, and that is in Hamtramck, for example, there was the LGBTQ book issue.

And the Republicans said to the mayor and to the imams, you know, we're with you on this.

We'll keep those dirty books out of the kids in school.

And that made a difference there, too.

So there were these factors of the Trump people speaking to them, Donald Trump coming personally to them, JD Vance going directly to them, and nothing from the Harris side.

She had good staff reaching out, but there's nothing like the candidate directly making an appeal.

JOHN YANG: Well, talking about that, I mean, the final Friday of the campaign, we saw Donald Trump in a halal cafe in Dearborn with the mayor of Hamtramck.

Is this outreach, is this sort of open dialogue, open door going to continue in the presidency, do you think?

JAMES ZOGBY: I don't think so.

And I think, you know, there's a reckoning that will come.

People have buyer's remorse.

It wasn't a shotgun wedding.

It was a blind date wedding.

Some of them know what they're going to get.

Some of them have hope against hope that they'll get something different, but frankly, they're not going to get anything different.

And I think Donald Trump's been very clear about that they're not going to get anything different.

But they were punishing Democrats or they were voting their Republican values and they were voting for the guy that came to him.

Look, this is a community that is hurting.

They're desperate.

And they're very traumatized by what's happening.

Somebody comes to them and says, I'm for peace and I'll be with you.

So they swallowed their doubt and they said, we're going to do it and we're going to teach the Democrats a lesson.

JOHN YANG: But you seem to be saying that they want peace, but they may not get it?

JAMES ZOGBY: They want peace.

But Donald Trump's idea of peace, I think, is the peace of a graveyard.

I don't think it's going to be a peace that's going to be based on justice or on any recognition of Palestinian rights.

He's never shown that to be the case.

His four year record is exactly the opposite.

And I think the steps that Netanyahu is taking in just the last two days, announcing that Gaza will be evacuated in the north and no one is going to come back to their homes, which have been destroyed mostly.

But he's also not going to let aid in because in defiance of the Biden administration requirement that aid come in because he said there's nobody left there.

Why?

Because he's evicted them all.

Netanyahu knows that with Trump, he'll be able to have a free hand.

He's already had a free hand with Biden, but a freer hand.

And people, I think, are going to be deeply disappointed by what Donald Trump will do and angry.

JOHN YANG: You're very active in the Democratic Party.

You're chairman of the DNC's Ethnic Council.

JAMES ZOGBY: Yeah.

JOHN YANG: What are you saying that the party should do to try to repair this damage, this relationship?

JAMES ZOGBY: Well, look, it's not just with my community, but with a whole bunch of ethnic communities that they need to repair.

Look, this is the white working class.

They're not the non-college educated whites that people talk about.

They're actually the immigrant ethnic communities that built the Democratic Party and feel abandoned by the Democratic Party.

And the Democratic Party has to have a more effective outreach to white voters.

Why were they so prone to support Donald Trump?

Because they feel abandoned.

Because they feel that nobody is listening to them.

And they're mad at Democrats for NAFTA.

They're mad at Democrats for not paying attention when they lost their jobs.

Democrats made the choice of going for liberal, moderate Republicans when I'm not sure there are any right now.

And certainly Liz Cheney isn't the mediator to bring them on board instead of speaking to working class people about their needs and hopes.

No talk about universal health care.

No talk about raising the minimum wage.

No talk about benefits that are required and needed by working class people to bring jobs back.

Joe Biden had a good record.

But Kamala Harris didn't emphasize the job creation part for working class people.

That was what was needed.

And so, yeah, there's outreach needed everywhere, but among Arab Americans, bringing us in and talking to us.

Joe Biden never met with Arab Americans in his entire time.

When I've spoken to other presidents about it, they were shocked because they, Bill Clinton met with us every month or so, or Al Gore did.

Barack Obama met with us or people on his key staff did.

We had no outreach for Arab Americans in this White House.

It's too late.

JOHN YANG: James Zogby, thank you very much.

JAMES ZOGBY: Thank you.

JOHN YANG: During the campaign, President-elect Trump said he wants to get rid of virtually all of the Biden administration's climate change regulations intended to cut carbon emissions and to move away from fossil fuels.

He's also called for the repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden's signature climate law.

Even as the incoming administration's team drafts executive orders for the new president to sign on Inauguration Day, officials in the current administration are trying to lock in their policies.

Matthew Daley covers climate, environment and energy policy for the Associated Press.

Matthew, from the first administration, what can we expect on climate change and environment?

MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press: Well, I think there's a lot to expect.

Basically everything that President Biden has tried to do, President Trump is going to try to undo.

And you mentioned the Inflation Reduction Act, which is a terribly named law, but it's a very wide reaching law that basically tries to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to promote clean energy and has a lot of tax credits in there.

And so I think the President, the new president wants to repeal them.

I think he may have some trouble though, because not only, you know, is it in law right now, but a lot of the projects that are being developed for clean energy are in Republican held districts.

JOHN YANG: And even if he has both chambers, the House and the Senate, you're going to have members wanting to protect their homes.

MATTHEW DALY: Right.

Interestingly, a group of Republicans wrote the House Speaker Mike Johnson a letter saying, hey, leave this alone, we need these projects.

There's a big solar plant in Georgia, there's battery plants in Kentucky, there's all over the country.

There's a lot of clean manufacturing jobs.

And I think that kind of for jobs is something that everybody wants to support.

JOHN YANG: Early on in the campaign, especially when he was campaigning in Michigan, Mr. Trump would criticize the move toward electric vehicles away from internal combustion.

But now he's got Elon Musk on his side, the owner of Tesla.

Is that going to change things, do you think?

MATTHEW DALY: Well, one thing that, you know, former President Trump has, you know, has been known to not speak the truth.

And one of the things that he has said repeatedly is that there's an EV mandate which Biden has put in, but it's actually, there is no mandate.

What's happened is that the EPA has much tighter emission standards to try to get cars to pollute less.

But and to do that, you could buy more EVs, but there is no mandate.

But interestingly, his rhetoric on EVs has kind of softened since Elon Musk has become such a close friend.

And he says, well, Elon supports it, so maybe he won't, he sort of thinks maybe he won't be as critical of it as he has been.

JOHN YANG: The United Nations climate talks get started on Monday.

The Biden administration, of course, signed a number of international agreements dealing with climate change.

What's going to happen to them?

MATTHEW DALY: Well, I think, you know, the Paris Agreement, which was in 2015, in the first term, President Trump removed the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, which is a global agreement across, you know, all the industrialized nations.

And one of the first things that Biden did when he came in four years ago was put us back in that agreement.

Now we're going to, you know, there's a lot of U-turns.

I think that's what the global leaders have been complaining about.

Like, you know, when one administration comes in, they do one thing, the next one comes in and reverses it, and then you get another reversal.

There's a lot of see sawing back and forth.

And global climate agreements are one of the prime examples of that.

We're going to be removing ourselves from the Paris Agreement, no question about it.

JOHN YANG: A lot of what President Trump wants, President-elect Trump wants to undo from the Biden administration are regulations, rules and regulations.

How easy is it to unravel those?

MATTHEW DALY: Well, I think we found out the first time around that it's not that easy.

And in fact, there is some fear among environmentalists that maybe he learned from his first term because there's a lot of regulations that he tried to undo that the environmental groups challenged in court.

And then they won and Trump lost.

And they think now that maybe with four years of experience, he may be more adept at doing that.

But the truth is, for better or worse, these regulations are hard to unwind.

And Biden found that in his case, when he was trying to undo some of the things that Trump did.

There's just an administrative.

You've got public hearing, you've got public notice, you've got time.

Everything takes a while, sort of in the government, there's just nothing moves quickly.

JOHN YANG: And what's the Biden administration doing to try to lock in what they've done?

MATTHEW DALY: Well, one thing that they're doing is parceling out these grants under the Inflation Reduction Act they've been doing, and also the bipartisan infrastructure law, which was approved in 2021.

They're just every day, every week, every hour, it seems like they're pumping out press releases and grants and to the point where we really can't cover them all because there's so many of them.

And then just the other day, President Biden was in Baltimore talking about another program called Clean Ports.

And he's trying to give tons of money to ports around the country.

And I think they will be able to do some of this, but there's only so much that they can do in the next, you know, two months to get it out the door.

JOHN YANG: So how much can the incoming Trump administration really undo and get rid of things that the Biden administration has done?

MATTHEW DALY: Well, a lot of administrative things they can undo.

And I think one of the things that's going to be a big challenge in the climate world is that Environmental Protection Agency is probably going to lose a lot of staff.

That's what happened under the first term.

People just don't believe.

If they think the President doesn't believe in the mission of the agency, then they quit.

And so you get a big brain drain.

And then they just are not replaced.

And also, if you do not fund programs to their full capacity, even if you don't undo them formally, you just don't give them enough money, they kind of die on the vine.

So there's ways that you can do it sort of underneath the surface.

JOHN YANG: What's the effect on policy, but also on the environment of having this whipsaw effect, President Trump undoing things that President Obama had done, Mr. Biden undoing things that Trump had done and now that reversed?

MATTHEW DALY: Yeah, I think that's kind of a problem.

I think what the advocates of clean energy say is that meanwhile, the whole time we're getting more solar power, we're getting more wind power, and interestingly, both sides support nuclear power.

So there's sort of the industry and kind of chugs along, but on the margins, things change a lot and just the emphasis changes.

And then beyond that, the, you know, the scientists are saying we only have so much time to reduce our carbon emissions because climate change is real.

Anybody who has seen the fires, the floods, you name it, just the wrath of Mother Nature has been coming at the world.

And I think you can't really ignore that.

JOHN YANG: Matthew Daly of the Associated Press, thank you very much.

MATTHEW DALY: Great.

Thank you.

JOHN YANG: Earlier this week, a possible school shooting in Wisconsin may have been averted when a 13-year-old was arrested after he tried to enter an elementary school with a bag containing a rifle.

It's a reminder of the wave of false threats facing schools nationwide and the fears, evacuations and temporary shutdowns they cause.

Ali Rogin explores how these threats are being addressed.

ALI ROGIN: The big question facing educators and law enforcement officials this fall is how to best deal with the latest series of threats of violence, shootings and bombings.

Some schools have resorted to using metal detectors and arming teachers.

Most threats turn out to be fake.

Many come from young people, and investigating them can be an expensive and tedious process.

In some places, these threats lead to hundreds of children being arrested and detained.

Kenneth Trump is a school safety consultant and heads the National School Safety and Security Services.

And Dr. Deborah Weisbrot is a professor of psychiatry at Stony Brook University.

Thank you both for being here.

Ken, let's start with you.

What sort of threats are you seeing these days?

How are they being communicated?

And how does this wave of threats differ from what you've seen in previous years?

KENNETH TRUMP, National School Safety and Security Services: Well, having 40 years in this field, we see a contagion effect after every mass school shooting.

Typically, it peaks over a two or three week period, and those threats tend to come in one of two forms.

They're either threats that originate locally with students, former students, someone with a grievance against the school, or they turn to swatting threats.

Oftentimes computer generated threats that target multiple schools, multiple districts, sometimes multiple states, and originate from across state and international borders in some cases.

The vast majority of threats turn out not to be credible.

Every threat has to be treated seriously.

And schools need to have threat assessment teams, training and protocols in place, procedures for heightened security so that they can continue on when threats are not credible during the investigation, and strong communication procedures so that they can dispel the rumors, misinformation that tends to spread and become bigger than the threat itself.

ALI ROGIN: In terms of motivation, Deborah, you have worked with young people who have made some of these threats.

You've counseled educators and students who have been the subject of them.

Why is this happening more now?

DR. DEBORAH WEISBROT, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Stony Brook Medicine: What we have is the contagion that spreads through social media.

It spreads from one parent to another, from one student to another, and has taken on a whole new dimension of intensity in terms of the frequency that we're seeing.

Nonetheless, several weeks after there has been a shooting or a threat that's been highly publicized, you can see that these things sort of fade down to some degree.

But threats are a fact of life now in schools, and they have a profound impact on the students that are there, to the teachers, to the functioning of schools.

As a psychiatrist, I've been involved with threat assessment way back since the years of Columbine.

And that meant not just assessing the threat, but trying to understand who are these kids that are making threats, from the most benign threats to the most serious ones.

And the good news is that, as you were just hearing, the vast amount of threats are not serious.

Nonetheless, they're very disruptive, can be very frightening.

And in fact, a number of students who make even what look like not serious threats or call them jokes or just passing moments of anger have in fact, in our studies and clinical work, significant concerns psychiatrically.

They may have depression, anxiety, attention problems, impulse problems.

They may have been bullied.

So the threat itself actually can at times be a signal to other problems, which is why you're hearing that every threat needs to be still investigated and why that's such a challenge when we have so many of them.

ALI ROGIN: Ken, how are schools and how are law enforcement officials dealing with these threats?

KENNETH TRUMP: Well, we have to realize that the threats do disrupt the entire school community.

We're in a state of high ambiguity, uncertainty, and anxiety.

Parents are on pins and needles.

Educators and even law enforcement are very hypersensitive in some case, not just sensitive to these types of threats.

What we want to do is strike a balance of not overreacting, over arresting.

That drains law enforcement resources from the community where there are valid, credible, active, violent threats and concerns, and puts those resources into schools.

So a lot of times what we see is that schools are investigating.

And then when those cases do go to court, they're calling not only for the proceedings to move forward, as they do for kids, but they're also proceeding with restitution calls for paying back the cost of increased security, increased policing, the police time involved.

And the key thing is that parents and students need to understand and educators need to be a part of the conversation that once you press send, you can't put the threat back into the smartphone.

And our young people, who may initially interpret these as spontaneous actions and see them as a hoax or a joke, need to know that they're going to face a ton of bricks, unfortunately today.

But we have to have those conversations with kids ahead of time to let them know that there are serious consequences and that you just can't make these types of threats because it disrupts the entire school community.

The other point is that we're concerned that schools don't overreact.

We stress assess and then react, don't react and then assess.

We constantly see schools closing unnecessarily, prematurely, prior to assessment, or even school leaders saying publicly, we determined the threat's not credible, but we're closing schools anyway.

They're not closing because of the threat.

They're closing because of a school community relations and communication anxiety type of issues.

And that's not justification to close your schools.

So we have to find a better way to communicate proactively to avoid overreacting.

Assess and then react and not react and then assess.

ALI ROGIN: That is Kenneth Trump, school safety consultant and Dr. Deborah Weisbrot, professor of psychiatry.

Thank you both so much.

DR. DEBORAH WEISBROT: Thank you.

KENNETH TRUMP: Thank you.

JOHN YANG: And that is PBS News Weekend for this Saturday.

I'm John Yang.

For all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us.

See you tomorrow.