February 15, 2019 - PBS NewsHour full episode

Set in New York City in the 1970s, “If Beale Street Could Talk” is the film adaptation of a James Baldwin novel about Tish and Fonny, a devoted young couple almost torn apart by racism and wrongful imprisonment. Jeffrey Brown sits down with actress Regina King to discuss her Oscar-nominated performance as Tish's mother in the film, pledging to work with women and the hardest thing about parenting.

In our news wrap Friday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stopped force-feeding two asylum seekers at an El Paso detention center who had been on a hunger strike. Also, the top Pentagon official says the U.S. will not abandon the fight against ISIS, despite plans to leave Syria. In Germany, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said the U.S. will “continue to support” the coalition.

Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to analyze the week in politics, including the president’s national emergency declaration, how congressional Republicans are reacting to it, the 2020 presidential field and whether Democrats are pushing their platform too far to the left.

Although some Republicans have criticized President Trump's national emergency declaration, others endorse it. One of them is Kris Kobach, former Kansas secretary of state, who talks to Amna Nawaz about the “extraordinarily broad” nature of the National Emergencies Act, why a wall is a "force multiplier" and how we don’t know the true volume of illegal drugs coming across the U.S.-Mexico border.

In Syria, U.S.-backed Kurdish forces are retaking the final territory of the Islamic State. As the caliphate dissolves, however, what will happen to the 40,000 foreign fighters who joined the terror group’s ranks over the past few years? Many of them have been detained, but the path for prosecuting them, and preventing them from driving an ISIS resurgence, remains unclear. Nick Schifrin reports.

Pete Buttigieg, Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana, recently announced he has formed an exploratory committee to consider a run for the presidency in 2020. Only 37 years old and with no federal government experience, Buttigieg might seem an unlikely candidate. He sits down with Judy Woodruff to discuss tax policy, his new book and why he believes his generation's voices aren't being heard.

President Trump declared a national emergency Friday over immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, so he can redirect billions of dollars to build additional sections of wall there. Trump plans to take roughly $6 billion from the Defense Department and millions from other sources. Judy Woodruff talks to Yamiche Alcindor about expected legal challenges and why the president's data is problematic.