JUDY WOODRUFF: Good evening.

I'm Judy Woodruff.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: one-on-one.

I ask U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell about Congress' struggle to extend economic relief from COVID-19 and more.

Then: technically speaking.

Leaders of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google face congressional scrutiny over whether they have too much power in American life.

Plus: Trump and Russia.

Questions arise over the president's deferential behavior toward Vladimir Putin, despite a Russian military unit paying Taliban fighters to kill U.S. soldiers.

And economic side effects.

Many COVID-19 patients develop secondary infections at a time when the pharmaceutical industry struggles with an increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

DR. HELEN BOUCHER, Tufts Medical Center: The need to have a robust renewable pipeline of antibiotics has really never been greater.

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

(BREAK) JUDY WOODRUFF: The nation's toll from COVID-19 has reached a new high, passing 150,000 dead.

But hopes for a new relief package have fallen to new lows, with federal jobless benefits and eviction protections ending this weekend.

President Trump already said that a trillion-dollar Republican bill is largely irrelevant.

Today, he dismissed Democrats' $3 trillion bill as a big bailout for poorly run cities.

The White House said there is no deal in sight.

And each side blamed the other.

MARK MEADOWS, White House Chief of Staff: It seems like Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi are very content on allowing things to expire and try to use them for leverage to extract other Democrat wish list items.

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): The Republicans don't even have a bill that the Senate Republican Conference uniformly supports.

The president said it's semi-irrelevant.

What is there to negotiate?

They have put forth a fiction of a response.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Meanwhile, another member of Congress has come down with the virus.

Texas Republican Louie Gohmert tested positive at the White House today and canceled plans to fly to Texas with the president.

Gohmert passed close by Attorney General William Barr outside a House hearing yesterday.

Barr was getting tested today, as a precaution.

With 23 million Americans out of work, the stakes are dire for many families if more help is not on the way.

There remain deep divisions among lawmakers.

To shed light on where things stand, I spoke just moments ago with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Mr.

Majority Leader, thank you very much for joining us.

The chief of staff at the White House, Mark Meadows, has just said in the last few minutes that they are nowhere close to a deal between the two sides on COVID relief.

Given the division among Republicans, members of your own party, does that mean these benefits, additional unemployment benefits, are going to lapse on Friday?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): Well, I certainly hope not.

Neither side would like for that to happen.

And, you know, many things around here happen at the last minute.

This is only Wednesday.

So, hope springs eternal that we will reach some kind of agreement, either on a broad basis or a more narrow basis, to avoid having an adverse impact on unemployment.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, speaking of a more narrow basis, our Lisa Desjardins has reported that something like 20 members of your Republican Caucus have problems with the proposal, the larger Republican proposal, that you outlined the other day.

Given that, are you seriously looking at some sort of slimmed-down short-term deal here?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Well, we're looking at all options.

Of course, the -- Secretary Mnuchin and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows are doing the negotiating with the Democrats.

But you're right, Judy.

About 20 of my members think that we have already done enough.

They are deeply concerned, and it's understandable, about the size of our national debt now, which is as big as our economy for of the first time since World War II.

And so I do have a reasonable number of members who don't think we ought to do another package.

That is not my view.

And it's not the majority of our conference view, nor is it the view of the president.

We have divided government, so we have to sit down with the Democrats and work out something.

And, hopefully, we will begin to do that before the end of the week.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, what is going to make the difference?

Because, today, none other than the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jay Powell, is again saying, the economy needs the kind of boost that it got in the spring from the congressional COVID relief package.

He's urging Congress to do something like that again.

How do you turn your members around who say, we have already done enough?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Well, I agree with the chairman of the Fed.

We need to do more.

I'm sure he didn't put a number on it.

The issue is how much.

The Democratic House wanted to add $3 trillion to the national debt, as much as we added back in March and April.

We think that's clearly far beyond what is necessary to get us through this next period, as we continue to wrestle with the coronavirus, which is simply not going away any time soon.

We all know that.

And until we get a vaccine, we can't begin to put this in the rearview mirror.

So, the economy does need more help.

We have divided government.

We have to talk to each other and we have to try to get an outcome.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You have made the argument steadily, Mr.

Majority Leader, that the reason the benefits, these additional $600 a week in benefits, shouldn't be conditioned is that it's incentive for many people not to go back to work, just to stay home.

But we have looked at what economists are saying.

They're saying, there's just no measurable evidence that people are staying home because of that.

They say, if they are staying home, it's because they don't have a job to go back to, or they don't have child care, or they have a serious worry about getting sick.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: I don't know which economists you're talking about, but a huge percentage of people in that category are choosing based upon the fact that they can make more staying at home, not an irrational decision when you look at the numbers, are reluctant to go back to work.

So, unemployment insurance is extremely important, particularly at a time of high unemployment, like we have now.

And it ought to be operating like it has traditionally.

But to pay people more to stay home than to go back to work, we think, is a mistake.

And I don't know which economists you're citing, but there are huge numbers of small business people all across the country, almost without exception, telling us, and I'm sure telling the Democrats as well, that this is a deterrent to getting back to work.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, there are a number of them.

But let me just be very specific.

We put a call-out through social media, asking people to let us know about unemployment benefits.

We had something like 2,000 people responding, including a woman named Latrice Wilson (ph).

She's from Kentucky, your home state.

She says that $600 additional a week allows her to pay for the medicine she needs for her autoimmune disease and to pay for her daughter to continue to go to college.

What do you say to someone like Mrs. Wilson?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: What I'm saying to Mrs. Wilson is, you're probably going to be eligible for the $1,200 additional cash payment that we would make under our proposal, the same as back in the CARES Act, direct cash straight into your pocket out of our package.

So, yes, those are people who do have significant concerns.

And we address that with $1,200 direct cash payment.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Let me ask you about a number of other things very quickly.

Government reports are right now, Mr. Leader, that as many as 26 million Americans, most of them with children, say they aren't getting enough to eat these days.

We know that, for very young children, that can be incredibly harmful.

Democrats -- the Democrats' plan right now increases food stamp, or SNAP, benefits by 15 percent.

The Republican proposal would not extend those increased benefits.

Why not?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Well, I'm sure, when we sit down to talk to the Democrats, that will be an area we discuss.

But, of course, one thing that is extremely important to make sure children are well-fed is to get them back in school.

And we actually put more money in our proposal than House Democrats for education.

That's both K-12 and college.

And to the extent that these local school districts are allowed - - make the decision to let their children come back to school, that will take care of a lot of the -- for many of these kids, the best meal they get of the day is the one they get at school.

So, getting them back in school, I think, is an important step in the right direction.

JUDY WOODRUFF: There's also a question about housing.

Democrats would ban evictions, continue to ban evictions.

Are you prepared, as early as this -- next week, in coming weeks, to see people thrown out of their house or apartment because they can't afford to make rent or mortgage payment?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Yes.

And I think that is the sort of thing we ought to be talking about with the Democrats to try to get to a solution.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Aid to state and local governments, Mr.

Majority Leader.

Democrats are asking for a trillion dollars almost in aid to pay these front-line workers, people who are out there working because they have to, despite the coronavirus.

The Republican bill, nothing in there for these state and local government workers.

Why not?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Judy, as you know, every state budget has two really big items, education and Medicaid.

Our proposal puts more money in for education than the Democratic proposal.

Education aid is aid to state and local government.

And so we think that is a excellent way to infuse cash.

In addition to that, the previous $150 billion that we sent down to states, much of which has not been dispensed yet, we would change the formula -- change the proposal to allow them to use it in any way they choose, even including revenue replacement.

So, in both of those ways, we think we provide additional assistance to states and localities.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Two other very quick things.

You have said you don't like the idea that there is $1.8 billion in this plan for a new FBI building in Washington, coincidentally, across the street from the Trump Hotel.

You said you want only COVID material in this bill.

Why not just say no to the White House on this?

And, by the way, there's money, 8 -- another $8 billion in this bill for military materiel, F-35 fighters, and so forth.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Yes.

Well, in the House bill, for example, there's a tax cut for high-income people in blue states and all kinds of things related to marijuana and the legalization of assistance -- assistance to illegal immigrants.

I mean, my point was, Judy, I think all of the things that are not related to the COVID-19 fight ought to come out, whether it's the FBI building or whether it's a tax cut for wealthy people in blue states.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, can you just say no to the White House on the FBI?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: I would say no to all of these unrelated COVID-19 items that both sides have made an effort to inject into the debate.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, finally, in the wake of more members of Congress testing positive for COVID-19, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is saying she is considering a requirement that everyone on the House side of the Capitol wear a mask.

Would you consider that kind of requirement in the Senate?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Well, we have had good luck without a requirement.

I believe just about every one of my members is wearing a mask.

And we have since the 1st of May, when we resumed.

And I think we have been following the guidelines of the Capitol physician, properly socially distanced, wearing a mask, which I had on until I stepped up to the microphone to talk to you.

And we have had good compliance with that on the Senate side, without a mandate.

And so we're getting compliance the voluntary - - in the old-fashioned way.

Everybody is doing it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Would you consider a requirement, though, if necessary?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: It appears not to be necessary, since everybody seems to be doing it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: All right, we will leave it there.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: OK. JUDY WOODRUFF: The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, thank you very much.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And just moments ago, after that interview, the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, announced that everyone, both members and staff, are now required to wear a mask in the entire House of Representatives complex.

In the day's other news: Federal agents will begin withdrawing from downtown Portland, Oregon ,tomorrow, in a deal with state and local leaders.

Federal agents and protesters have clashed nightly at the federal courthouse.

But U.S.

Homeland Security officials said state and local police will guard the site instead.

KEN CUCCINELLI, Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security: Our additional officers that have been brought to Portland will still be in downtown Portland.

They will simply not be at the courthouse, and they will not be engaged if they are not needed.

And our hope is, of course, for all of us, that will not be needed.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Portland's Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler praised the end of what he called an illegal occupation.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department formally announced that it will be sending teams of investigators to Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee.

Their stated mission is to aid police fighting violent crime.

Members of Congress grilled CEOs of four tech giants today on whether they are too dominant.

The heads of Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple appeared by video at a House hearing.

As they did, President Trump threatened executive orders to roll back legal protections for the companies.

We will have much more after the news summary.

In Turkey, social media is coming under tighter controls.

The Parliament approved a law today ordering Facebook, Twitter and others to set up local offices and to police content.

Supporters called it a curb on cyber-crime and online abuse of women.

Critics and rights groups raised fears of censorship.

YAMAN AKDENIZ, Istanbul Bilgi University: These measures will have a chilling effect on the Turkish social media platform users.

And people will be scared to use these platforms, because Turkish authorities will have access to the users' data.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The law also requires companies to store user data in Turkey.

The U.S. military formally announced today that it will pull 12,000 American troops from Germany.

The move will leave 24,000 troops still on German soil.

President Trump has repeatedly denounced Germany for not spending more on defense and has pushed to withdraw U.S. forces.

We will get details later in the program.

The Eastern Caribbean is facing heavy rain and strong winds tonight, as a budding tropical storm blows through.

The weather system is expected to pass near Puerto Rico overnight, and to brush past the Dominican Republic tomorrow.

Puerto Rican officials are warning of the potential for landslides, flooding and widespread power outages.

The Federal Reserve warned today that the resurgence of COVID-19 cases is sure to be a drag on the economy.

Chairman Jerome Powell said that the Fed will use all the tools it has to help, but he warned that a recovery is linked directly to people's behavior.

JEROME POWELL, Federal Reserve Chairman: The path of the economy is going to depend to a very high extent on the course of the virus and on the measures that we take to keep it in check.

That is just a fundamental fact of our economy right now.

The two things are not in conflict.

You know, social distancing measures and fast reopening actually go together.

They're not in competition with each other.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The Central Bank announced no new policies, but did say that it plans to keep its benchmark short-term interest rate pegged to near zero.

Wall Street moved higher on the Fed's pledge to continue shoring up the economy.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 160 points, to close at 26539.

The Nasdaq rose 140 points, and the S&P 500 added 40.

And the annual Hajj pilgrimage is under way in Saudi Arabia, greatly scaled back by the coronavirus pandemic.

Some 1,000 Muslim worshipers began arriving today at Mecca's Grand Mosque, wearing face masks and praying at a distance.

The Hajj usually draws up to 2.5 million people.

Still to come on the "NewsHour": leaders of tech giants face congressional scrutiny over their impact on society; questions arise over the president's continued deferential behavior toward Vladimir Putin; the pharmaceutical industry struggles with an increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria amid the pandemic; and much more.

The leaders of some of the most powerful tech and social media companies got a grilling today from Democrats and Republicans alike.

Together, their devices, platforms and innovations are a part of our everyday lives.

The companies are valued at nearly $5 trillion.

And they generate hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue.

They employ significant numbers of workers.

And they include two of the world's richest people.

But, as Amna Nawaz reports, concerns over their practices and their unrivaled power are growing on the part of many lawmakers.

AMNA NAWAZ: Appearing virtually before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, the titans of tech, leaders from Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple, answered accusations that they're too big and too powerful.

REP. DAVID CICILLINE (D-RI): Many of the practices used by these companies have harmful economic effects.

They discourage entrepreneurship, destroy jobs, hike costs, and degrade quality.

Simply put, they have too much power.

AMNA NAWAZ: Amazon faces questions over giving its own products an advantage on its massive online marketplace.

Apple is accused of making it harder for app store rivals to compete.

Facebook is criticized for acquiring potential rivals, like WhatsApp and Instagram, and Google has been alleged to use its search and advertising systems to squash its competition.

Today marked the first time Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has appeared before Congress.

Bezos founded Amazon in 1994.

Today, it's worth more than $1.5 trillion and accounts for 38 percent of all online retail sales in the U.S.

He defended that growth today: JEFF BEZOS, Chairman, President & CEO, Amazon: We compete against large established players like Target, Costco, Kroger, and, of course, Walmart, a company more than twice Amazon's size.

Twenty years ago, we made the decision to invite other sellers to sell in our store, to share the same valuable real estate we spent billions to build, market and maintain.

AMNA NAWAZ: Tim Cook took over at Apple in 2011.

Today, it's the most valuable company in the world, at $1.6 trillion.

In the hearing, Cook portrayed his massive company as an underdog.

TIM COOK, CEO, Apple: Our goal is the best, not the most.

In fact, we don't have a dominant market share in any market or in any product category where we do business.

AMNA NAWAZ: Mark Zuckerberg founded the social networking site Facebook in 2004.

Today, more than three billion people use Facebook-owned platforms at least once a month, and it's worth $665 billion.

Zuckerberg today called the growth of apps like Instagram an American success story.

MARK ZUCKERBERG, Chairman and CEO, Facebook: It was not a guarantee that Instagram was going to succeed.

The acquisition has done wildly well, largely because, not of the founders' talent, but because we invested heavily in building up the infrastructure and promoting it and working on security and working on a lot of things around us.

And I think that this has been an American success story.

AMNA NAWAZ: Sundar Pichai has led Alphabet and Google since 2015.

Every day, 90 percent of online searches happen on Google.

The company is valued at $1.5 billion.

He pushed back on questions about Google's search engine blocking competitors.

SUNDAR PICHAI, CEO, Google: We have always focused on providing users the most relevant information.

We rely on the trust for users to come back to Google everyday.

AMNA NAWAZ: For more than a year, the committee has investigated the companies through more than a million documents and hundreds of hours of interviews.

Washington State Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal cited one of those interviews in a question to Bezos.

REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-WA): A former Amazon employee in third-party sales and recruitment told this committee -- quote -- "There's a rule, but there's nobody enforcing or spot-checking.

They just say, don't help yourself to the data.

It's a candy shop.

Everyone can have access to anything they want."

Do category managers have access to non-public data about third-party products and businesses?

JEFF BEZOS: Here's what I can tell you.

We do have certain safeguards in place.

We train people on the policy.

We expect people to follow that policy, the same way we would any other.

It's a voluntary policy.

As far as I'm aware, no other retailer limits their use of data at all.

REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL: So, there's no actual - - there's no actual enforcement?

There's no actual enforcement of that policy?

AMNA NAWAZ: And while the hearing's stated purpose was antitrust... REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): I will just cut to the chase: Big tech's out to get conservatives.

That's not a suspicion.

That's not a hunch.

That's a fact.

AMNA NAWAZ: ... some Republicans on the panel focused on what they call censorship of conservatives by big tech.

Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin: REP. JAMES SENSENBRENNER (R-WI): Conservatives are consumers too.

And the way the Net was put together, in the eyes of Congress, is that everybody should be able to speak their mind.

AMNA NAWAZ: Zuckerberg pushed back: MARK ZUCKERBERG: Frankly, I think that we have distinguished ourselves as one of the companies that defends free expression the most.

We do have community standards around things that you can and cannot say.

AMNA NAWAZ: While, on the other side of the aisle, Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, asked what platforms are doing to combat hate speech and election meddling.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Is there nothing that can be done about the use of Facebook to engender social division in America?

MARK ZUCKERBERG: Since 2016, there have been a lot of steps that we have taken to protect the integrity of elections.

We have hired, I think it's more than 30,000 people to work on safety and security.

We have built up A.I.

systems to be able to find harmful content, including being able to find more than 50 different networks of coordinated inauthentic behavior, basically nation states trying to interfere in elections.

AMNA NAWAZ: Still, there was bipartisan concern the four tech giants are exerting too much influence.

REP. KEN BUCK (R-CO): I'm concerned that you have used Amazon's dominant market position to unfairly harm competition.

REP. VAL DEMINGS (D-FL): Google buys up companies for the purpose of surveilling Americans.

And because of Google's dominance, users have no choice but to surrender.

AMNA NAWAZ: And without action from Congress, that influence is unlikely to wane.

Let's dive now into a few of the issues raised at today's hearing.

We turn now to Dipayan Ghosh.

He leads the Digital Platforms and Democracy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School.

He also worked at Facebook, leading their efforts to address privacy and security issues, and later advised the Obama White House on technology policy.

And before we begin, we should note for the record that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is a funder of the "NewsHour."

Dipayan Ghosh, welcome to the "NewsHour."

Thanks for being here.

I think it's fair to say there's no question about the power and the reach of these four big companies, right?

But when it comes to the concentration of power and to the detriment of competition, what new information did we learn today about their business practices and about their behavior?

DIPAYAN GHOSH, Harvard Kennedy School: I think the good thing here is that both Democrats and Republicans on the committee really got to the details of how these companies work, how their corporate strategies work.

And, for instance, both Democrats and Republicans really tried to pin down how Facebook and Google and Amazon and Apple went through certain decisions around corporate development, went through decisions around how they strategized with the app store and how they thought about mergers and acquisitions.

And all of that really serves to support the imperative of holding these companies accountable on competition issues.

So, I think we learned quite a lot today.

AMNA NAWAZ: There is, of course, this political divide we just reported on, right, Democrats digging on those accusations of anti-competitive behavior, Republicans largely focused -- or some Republicans, at least, focused on what they're calling censorship of conservatives on these platforms.

Even President Trump, I should mention, weighed in during the hearing.

He was tweeting, saying: "If Congress doesn't bring fairness to big tech, which they should have done years ago, I will do it myself with executive orders."

Dipayan, as you were watching the hearing unfold and seeing that massive gap between the lines of questioning, what did you make of that?

DIPAYAN GHOSH: There's no doubt about this.

And you're absolutely spot on.

There is this divide.

And, traditionally, Republicans and Democrats have been coming at the issue of antitrust and market competition in the digital economy from different angles.

Democrats have cared more about economic equity, algorithmic discrimination, racism and bias, these kinds of things, whereas Republicans have been thinking, including President Trump and his former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, have been thinking more about these content-related speech issues, and, in particular, anti-conservative bias, which are allegations that tech companies and many other experts have wholly rejected.

I would acknowledge that certain Republicans on the committee have been asking really pointed technical questions about the market power of these companies, particularly Representative Armstrong from North Dakota.

But, for the large -- largely, we have seen this division.

And I hope that we can get to more bipartisan action.

AMNA NAWAZ: There were a couple of lines of questioning I'd love to get your take on.

There was one in particular directed at Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

That was coming from Washington State Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.

The exchange here was based on e-mails that she says showed the committee Zuckerberg was essentially threatening to overrun Instagram with a similar photo product they were developing, even as Facebook was trying to buy Instagram.

Take a listen to this exchange.

REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL: Do you copy your competitors?

MARK ZUCKERBERG: Congresswoman, we have certainly adapted features that others have led in, as have others copied and adapted features that we have... (CROSSTALK) REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL: I'm not concerned about others.

I'm just asking you, Mr. Zuckerberg.

Since March of 2012, after that e-mail conversation, how many competitors did Facebook end up copying?

MARK ZUCKERBERG: Congresswoman, I can't give you a number of companies.

AMNA NAWAZ: Dipayan, we know Facebook went on to acquire Instagram for about a billion dollars in cash and stock.

But this allegation that Zuckerberg was threatening to basically overrun the company, right, saying, be acquired, or we will end you with our own product, is that fair?

Is that what happened here?

DIPAYAN GHOSH: I think -- I think it's fair to assume that that may be what happened.

Of course, I'm not privy to Mark Zuckerberg's specific thoughts, nor was I the founder of Instagram, either of the two founders of Instagram.

But I think -- I think it's fair to assume that the company did really put pressure on Instagram and tried to really get at understanding what its business model was, how it was trying to engage people, and certainly tried to try to copy some of its features, which I think, to be fair, Mark Zuckerberg essentially acknowledged I think it's -- I think it's a problem.

And the reason that we see it happening over and over again -- there were similar themes around questions asked of Amazon, and I think similar themes around Apple and Google as well.

The problem here is that these are companies that have monopolized huge swathes of the digital media ecosystem today.

And if they're - - if they're copying small would-be rivals and (AUDIO GAP) own business, that really presents serious challenges to innovation in the very long run.

AMNA NAWAZ: Well, there's the issue of copying products.

There's also the issue of pushing your own products over your rivals, right?

There was another exchange I want to play for you with Amazon's Jeff Bezos, this one coming from Congressman Jamie Raskin.

And he was asking, basically, if Amazon uses its platform, its massive platform to push its own products over rival products.

He was asking specifically about the Alexa voice service in this exchange.

Take a listen.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN: Alexa-enabled smart speakers make up over 60 percent of the smart speaker market.

Mr. Bezos, when I ask Alexa to play my favorite song, Prime Music is the default music player.

So, has Alexa ever been trained to favor Amazon products?

JEFF BEZOS: I don't know if it's been trained in that way.

I'm sure there are cases where we do promote our own products, of course, a common practice in business.

And so it wouldn't surprise me if Alexa sometimes does promote our own products.

AMNA NAWAZ: So, Dipayan, here is the big question.

Is this just good business, right, promoting your own product on your platform, or is it anti-competition behavior?

DIPAYAN GHOSH: I think I think what the Internet companies have really waded into is a situation where they didn't quite recognize their market power.

And, yes, they did engage in harmful business practices.

We see this in the case of Amazon, which has this monopoly.

We have seen this in the case of Facebook.

And Facebook was questioned about Onavo.

We have seen companies kind of spy on rivals, try to copy them, try to understand how their would-be rivals or smaller competitors might try to approach consumers, and then essentially just subsume them or suppress them.

And those are the kinds of things that are - - that are really damaging to competition, innovation, and consumer -- the price to consumers.

And I think there's no doubt that Amazon has really screwed with the markets and attempted to shut down smaller companies, at their expense and to Amazon's benefit.

And that is precisely what this committee really needs to get to the bottom of with this full investigation.

AMNA NAWAZ: Dipayan, very briefly, it feels like every time big tech comes under the scrutiny of Congress, we ask this question, which is, do the laws and the rules that we have in place, the way we define antitrust, for example, do those keep up with the problems that are presented to us by big tech today?

DIPAYAN GHOSH: I don't think they have.

I don't think they have kept up.

Let's be real here.

We have antitrust and competition policy enforcement regimes in place in the United States, and they do reasonably well with certain marketplaces, with certain consumer markets.

But the digital economy is something totally different, where we're dealing with a new currency, in the form of people's attention and people's personal information.

And our regulatory regime has not stayed in line with that.

It is way behind where the digital economy is today.

And I think, though, with this hearing being the start to a broader conversation about how we need to develop a stringent regulatory regime for a digital - - for the digital economy, through privacy and through transparency and through interoperability and data portability and competition, and potentially even conditions on mergers and acquisitions, and potentially breakup, we are -- we're going to see these companies having their feet held to the fire.

And the committee will see to it, I think, in the long run.

AMNA NAWAZ: That is Dipayan Ghosh of the Digital Platforms and Democracy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Thanks so much for your time.

DIPAYAN GHOSH: Thank you.

Thank you for the conversation.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In an interview released today, President Trump said that he had not challenged President Vladimir Putin over Russian efforts to pay the Taliban to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

The two leaders spoke just last week, for the seventh time in recent months.

As Nick Schifrin reports, this comes as the administration also cemented plans to withdraw and redeploy American forces in Europe.

NICK SCHIFRIN: President Trump often questions and criticizes the u.s intelligence community and praises Russian President Vladimir Putin.

And when he spoke to Putin on July 23, he did not raise the intelligence community's investigations into Russian payments to the Taliban to attack U.S. troops, as he told Axios on HBO's Jonathan Swan.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: We did not discuss that, no.

JONATHAN SWAN, Axios: And you have never discussed it with him?

DONALD TRUMP: I have never discussed it with him, no.

I would.

I'd have no problem with it.

But, you know... (CROSSTALK) JONATHAN SWAN: But you don't believe the intelligence.

It's because you don't believe the intelligence?

That's why?

DONALD TRUMP: Everything -- you know, it's interesting.

Nobody ever brings up China.

They always bring Russia, Russia, Russia.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Former intelligence officials tell "PBS NewsHour" the Taliban received Russian military intelligence money to target U.S. service members.

Officials debated the intelligence, and commanders say the bounties did not likely result in deaths.

But it was an increase in Russian support to the Taliban, as already detailed in 2018 by then top commander General John Nicholson.

GEN. JOHN NICHOLSON, Former Commander U.S.

Forces, Afghanistan: I mean, we have had weapons brought to this headquarters and given to us by Afghan leaders and said, this was given by the Russians to the Taliban.

JONATHAN SWAN: John Nicholson, former head of forces in Afghanistan, said -- and this is when he was working for you -- that Russia is supplying weapons to the Taliban.

Isn't that enough to challenge Putin over the killings of U.S. soldiers?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, we supplied weapons when they were fighting Russia too.

When we were -- when they were fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan... JONATHAN SWAN: That's a different era.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, it's a different -- I'm just saying.

NICK SCHIFRIN: In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to prop up an unpopular communist government.

The United States supported and armed Afghan fighters known as mujahideen, who targeted Soviet troops.

In 2001, the United States was attacked and waged war in Afghanistan because that's where 9/11's planners plotted.

President Trump's moral equivalence is inaccurate, says Doug Lute.

LT. GEN. DOUGLAS LUTE (RET.

), Former U.S.

Ambassador to NATO: The equivalence here is inappropriate, because the situation is exactly reversed from what it was 30 or 40 years ago.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Lute is a retired lieutenant general appointed by President Bush to coordinate the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and by President Obama to be NATO ambassador.

He said both his former bosses would have demanded more information about the bounty program and responded, even if the intelligence was uncertain.

LT. GEN. DOUGLAS LUTE: It's unimaginable to me that the president has -- that this has been public for weeks, and probably available to the president for many weeks before that, and yet he's done nothing, to include not even raising it in multiple calls with President Putin.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Today, President Trump added he would be -- quote -- "very angry" if the bounties story were true.

His administration has sanctioned Russian officials for election interference and chemical weapons attacks.

But he has also reverted to moral equivalence on Russia before.

BILL O'REILLY, Former FOX News Anchor: Putin is a killer.

DONALD TRUMP: There's a lot of killers.

We have got a lot of killers.

What, you think our country is so innocent?

NICK SCHIFRIN: Another presidential instinct and priority, reducing U.S. troops overseas.

Today, the administration announced it would withdraw nearly 12,000 troops from Germany and bring half home.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said thousands of service members would move toward Russia's borders and enhance deterrence.

MARK ESPER, U.S. Defense Secretary: We're following in many ways the boundary east, where our -- where our newest allies are, so, into the Black Sea region.

We talked about additional forces into Poland.

And I think there are opportunities to put forces into the Baltics.

That's why it's the strategic laydown that enhances deterrence, strengthens the allies.

NICK SCHIFRIN: But, just minutes before, President Trump said the decision was punishment for Germany's failing to fulfill its promise to spend 2 percent GDP on defense.

DONALD TRUMP: So, we're reducing the force because they're not paying their bill.

It's very simple.

They're delinquent.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Today, a senior ally to German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the reduction would weaken NATO.

And the unit that will return to the U.S. is the most capable ground force in Europe.

LT. GEN. DOUGLAS LUTE: It is, in itself, the most flexible deterrent package that is in place today.

So, to remove it from Germany and move it to the United States, it does not provide the same reassurance as having American soldiers live in Europe, be there 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

NICK SCHIFRIN: But reassuring Western European allies and overcoming bipartisan concerns about troop drawdowns and his relationship with Vladimir Putin have never been President Trump's priorities.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Nick Schifrin.

JUDY WOODRUFF: It turns out the coronavirus crisis has a menacing medical side effect that's receiving little attention thus far: the secondary bacterial infections that it causes.

And that, in turn, raises acute economic issues that are causing a crisis in the antibiotics industry.

Our economics correspondent, Paul Solman, has the story.

It's part of our regular series, Making Sense.

PAUL SOLMAN: How valuable was the company at its height?

LARRY EDWARDS, CEO, Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals: About $1.4 billion.

PAUL SOLMAN: And today?

LARRY EDWARDS: A little over $8 million.

PAUL SOLMAN: Highly touted biotech startup Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals in Watertown, Massachusetts.

We first visited three years ago, reporting on the scary rise of deadly drug-resistant bacteria and fungi, so-called superbugs, which infect, according to the CDC, some three million Americans a year and kill tens of thousands of us.

The good news, there were dozens of scientists in this lab alone working on several promising new antibiotics like Xerava, which, soon after our visit, won the gold medal for medications, FDA approval.

Now, it may seem strange to focus on antibiotics during a viral pandemic, since antibiotics don't kills viruses.

WOMAN: You're on the ventilator right now.

PAUL SOLMAN: But many COVID-19 patients develop potentially fatal secondary bacterial infections.

So, we returned to Tetraphase earlier this year, before masks and social distancing were mandated, to see how the antibiotics industry was progressing.

The results were shocking.

This lab is completely nonfunctioning.

I notice even the dust here.

LARRY EDWARDS: Yes, we had to let all of our research go.

PAUL SOLMAN: All of your research?

LARRY EDWARDS: All of our research is gone.

PAUL SOLMAN: All the scientists laid off.

Instead, CEO Larry Edwards had a skeleton staff trying to market and sell Xerava, and keep Tetraphase from going out of business, a fate that's now befallen two of the 12 companies that, over the last decade, also won FDA approval for new antibiotics.

You were at one of those companies.

ERIN DUFFY, Former Chief Scientist, Melinta Therapeutics: I was in one of those companies, yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: Erin Duffy was chief scientist at Melinta Therapeutics, translating the company's Nobel Prize-winning research... NARRATOR: Orbactiv prevents the cell from expanding and multiplying.

PAUL SOLMAN: ... into new superbug-slaying antibiotics.

ERIN DUFFY: That company has now filed Chapter 11.

PAUL SOLMAN: Was the drug that it was selling promising?

ERIN DUFFY: We had four very promising antibiotics, all for serious infections in the hospital.

PAUL SOLMAN: It simply amazed me.

While antiviral research is booming, the antibiotics market is broken, at the worst possible time, says infectious disease specialist Helen Boucher.

DR. HELEN BOUCHER, Tufts Medical Center: We know that, with the regular flu, influenza, our patients sometimes develop what we call secondary bacterial infections.

And, in fact, when they get to us in the hospital, that's often the dire consequence, and that's how we lose patients.

PAUL SOLMAN: The same is now proving true of the coronavirus pandemic.

According to a recent paper, half of those who died from COVID-19 in China also had drug-resistant bacterial infections, and thus a further cause for concern, that, as more and more COVID patients become seriously ill, antibiotic resistance will inevitably accelerate.

DR. JOHN REX, Infectious Disease Specialist: Going on long enough, COVID-19 and hospital pneumonia will drive resistance.

PAUL SOLMAN: Dr. John Rex is a retired pharma executive.

DR. JOHN REX: We're seeing people hospitalized on ventilators for extended periods of time.

And that's a setting where you're going to use a lot of antibiotics.

PAUL SOLMAN: You mean, because antibiotics are being used for the patients of COVID for a secondary infection or to prevent it, that means resistance building up more quickly?

DR. JOHN REX: Absolutely.

Any given antibiotic, really, you could think of it as having a relatively finite lifetime.

Resistance develops to everything.

DR. HELEN BOUCHER: So, this need to have a robust and renewable pipeline of antibiotics has really never been greater.

PAUL SOLMAN: Doctors like Boucher see the need all the time in their patients, like Larry Parente, heart transplant last August, followed two months later by a bacterial infection.

LARRY PARENTE, Heart Transplant Patient: A case of klebsiella, which is one of the more highly drug-resistant organisms out there.

PAUL SOLMAN: So drug-resistant, it's sometimes called a nightmare bacterium.

He was treated for two weeks with intravenous ertapenem, one of the very few drugs, if not the only one, for his infection.

A month later: LARRY PARENTE: It had come back.

So, what we thought was gone really was just sort of hiding.

You know, if you're limited to one or two drugs, and they don't work, then what do you do?

Where's your options?

PAUL SOLMAN: Today, after six months of nearly continuous I.V.

treatment, Parente now seems healthy, but he says: LARRY PARENTE: This can happen to anybody.

I personally know a gentleman that never got out of bed after surgery.

He just literally got an infection and was gone within a week.

PAUL SOLMAN: A new knee, a C-section, even a cut now puts you at risk, not to mention ventilators.

CEO Larry Edwards cites a University of Washington study that puts the number of deaths due to drug-resistant microbes at up to 162,000 Americans a year, more than triple the CDC's estimate, suggesting hospitals may be misreporting.

LARRY EDWARDS: They will say they died due to cancer and underlying factors, where a lot of times the underlying factor is the resistant pathogen or the bacteria that's killing the patient.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, why would they be misreporting it?

LARRY EDWARDS: They end up getting hit negatively on if they're showing that patients are dying due to a resistant bacterial infection, more than likely, the patient got that when they were in the hospital.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, between 50,000 and 162,000 deaths a year, as things stood, before the pandemic.

Look, an obvious takeaway from COVID-19 is that our market-driven economy didn't invest in the necessary public goods for a virus, tests, masks, ventilators, treatments.

But we also haven't invested to counter the bacterial and fungal infections that increasingly plague us.

And it's led to the predictable market outcome: The antibiotics pipeline is going bust.

TED SCHROEDER, CEO, Nabriva: This is a huge problem.

And it's not getting better.

It just continues to get worse.

PAUL SOLMAN: Ted Schroeder is CEO of Nabriva, whose market value, its capitalization, has also cratered, despite its recently approved antibiotic.

TED SCHROEDER: I don't think anyone envisioned that the entire market cap of all the companies involved in this research would be half of what a single company was 2.5 years ago.

That's not just a decline.

That's a near collapse.

PAUL SOLMAN: At a moment of arguably the most dire need.

MAN: And I am very sorry for your loss.

PAUL SOLMAN: We will explore why in our next report.

This is Paul Solman in Boston.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally tonight, our Now Read This book club conversation.

Our July pick is a book that remains as relevant and powerful as when it was first written.

Jeffrey Brown talks with author and poet Claudia Rankine about "Citizen: An American Lyric," for our ongoing arts and culture series, Canvas.

JEFFREY BROWN: In 2014, American cities were convulsed in the aftermath of the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two of the killings that helped catalyze the Black Lives Matter movement.

That year, the book "Citizen: An American Lyric" was published, with prose poems, monologues, and imagery capturing the moment, but through a different lens: the inner lives and thoughts of individuals, the almost casual racism that permeates daily life for so many.

Author Claudia Rankine: CLAUDIA RANKINE, Author, "Citizen: An American Lyric": Racism is institutional, we know, but institutions are made up of people.

So, what are those thousand cuts that lead to the big institutional fails around racism?

I asked people who I knew, friends, other colleagues, to just tell me moments where they were going along in their day.

And, suddenly, somebody said or did something that reduced them to their race.

And so I collected these stories, rewrote them, got to the heart of what I was trying to portray.

JEFFREY BROWN: One of them that stuck with me, it's from a story called "Stop and Frisk."

A man is narrating his own experience as he's being pulled over by the police and keeps repeating this line to himself: "You are not the guy, and, still, you fit the description, because there is only one guy, who is always the guy fitting the description."

CLAUDIA RANKINE: And that line actually came from the person I was interviewing.

He said -- "And, of course, I wasn't the guy, but I was the guy who fit the description again."

And so that became a refrain as I sort of crafted that poem.

JEFFREY BROWN: You know, several of our readers asked about the form of the book, because you have prose poems, monologues, you have photographs and images.

What was the -- what was your thinking about how to structure the book?

CLAUDIA RANKINE: Well, I -- you know, I have always felt that visual artists have been able to portray these kinds of ways in which racism hits the body in ways that were so succinct.

You just saw it, you understood it.

And so I embarked on this collaboration with these -- the works of these visual artists without even them knowing, because I was just requesting the use of an image in the book.

But I really wanted people to engage all of their senses in the book, from their sight, to their reading skills, to their body, so that it really -- these moments really sat inside them.

JEFFREY BROWN: The book came out in 2014.

It was incredibly timely at that moment.

How do you look at what's going on now, in light of what you wrote then?

CLAUDIA RANKINE: Well, you know, Henry Louis Gates a long time ago wrote a book called "The Signifying Monkey."

And he said that African American writers were always in conversation with the time and with each other.

And I feel like "Citizen" was just the next book that looked at the same dynamic that Toni Morrison was looking at or Frederick Douglass was looking at or James Baldwin, obviously.

And so if I had published "Citizen" in 2007 or 2012 or 2015 or yesterday, it would have the same mirroring, relay effect, because those events have been going on and continue to go on.

JEFFREY BROWN: A number of our readers, of course, wondered if you if you see signs of hope now.

CLAUDIA RANKINE: The protests are incredible.

We saw in Portland mothers of all races putting themselves in front of the military and protecting justice in this country, in a sense.

And so that -- that is new.

The intergenerational, cross-race gatherings that we have seen during the quarantine is unprecedented in this country.

JEFFREY BROWN: When all of this is going on, when people are in the streets demonstrating, and so much happening in the country, what does poetry or literature do?

What can -- what does it offer?

CLAUDIA RANKINE: I think writers, as culture makers, are in that special place where they are able to say what is, and that's it.

They're not asking for something to happen or needing to create a transaction.

They're just saying what is.

In a sense, their work becomes a kind of record, but not the record of values, the record of experience.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, "Citizen: An American Lyric."

Claudia Rankine, nice to talk to you.

Thank you for being part of the book club.

CLAUDIA RANKINE: Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Great conversation.

And Claudia Rankine's new book, "Just Us: An American Conversation," will be published in September.

And for our August selection, something very different, "Beijing Payback," a geopolitical thriller and crime novel.

Author Daniel Nieh will join us here at the end of the month.

And we hope you will join us and other readers on our Web site and Facebook page for Now Read This.

It's our book club partnership with The New York Times.

And that's the "NewsHour" for tonight.

I'm Judy Woodruff.

Join us online and again here tomorrow evening.

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