JUDY WOODRUFF: Good evening.

I'm Judy Woodruff.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: crime and punishment.

President Trump grants clemency to several high-profile convicted criminals.

Then: campaign shuffle.

A new "PBS NewsHour"/NPR/Marist poll has Bernie Sanders on top and propels Michael Bloomberg onto the next Democratic presidential debate stage.

Plus: crisis in Syria.

Nearly a million people are displaced and on the run from bombings in the largest movement of people in that brutal war.

And different by design -- exploring a museum exhibit that mixes art and science to create a new sensory experience.

SARAH SCHLEUNING, Curator, Speechless: Different By Design: When we can offer experiences and opportunities that may change the way that they see and perceive what art is, what a great thing to be, to not be locked in a box.

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

(BREAK) JUDY WOODRUFF: President Trump today pardoned or commuted the sentences of 11 mostly prominent people after determining they served enough prison time or were treated unfairly.

This comes as the president has also sharply criticized his Department of Justice for its handling of the recent case of his longtime adviser Roger Stone.

William Brangham looks at the president's powers as they relate to delivering justice.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: After serving about eight years of a 14-year sentence, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was due to be released today from this prison in Englewood, Colorado.

It marks perhaps the highest-profile commutation that President Trump has issued since taking office.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: He served eight years in jail.

It's a long time, very far from his children.

They're growing older now.

They're going to high school now.

And they rarely get to see their father outside of an orange uniform.

That was a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence, in my opinion.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Blagojevich, a Democrat, was found guilty in 2011 of 18 counts that included seeking to sell an appointment to President Obama's old Senate seat.

The conviction came just months after Blagojevich appeared on Mr. Trump's reality show "Celebrity Apprentice."

In a state often known for corruption - - four of its last 10 governors have gone to prison -- Blagojevich's sentence was the longest for an Illinois politician.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot today decried the commutation.

LORI LIGHTFOOT, Mayor of Chicago, Illinois: This is a man who was a governor of our state.

He committed crimes, as found by a jury of his peers.

He's got to accept responsibility for that.

President Trump is probably the least credible person to make this decision.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: In addition to Blagojevich's commutation, President Trump today pardoned seven people, including former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who served three years for tax fraud, and financier Michael Milken, who pleaded guilty to violating U.S. securities laws in 1990.

All of today's announcements come after Attorney General William Barr altered the sentencing recommendation for Mr. Trump's longtime ally Roger Stone.

Stone had been convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering and faced a possible seven to nine years in prison.

Via Twitter, the president criticized that as far too harsh.

Barr subsequently said the president's criticisms were making it -- quote - - "impossible for me to do my job."

So, for a closer look at the president's recent moves, I'm joined now by two former federal judges.

Nancy Gertner was appointed by President Clinton and served as a U.S. district court judge in Massachusetts for 17 years.

And Paul Cassell, he was appointed by President George W. Bush and served as a U.S. district judge in Utah for five years.

Judges, welcome to you both.

Thank you for being here.

Nancy, to you first.

Let's talk about the pardons and the commutations that the president issued today, 11 different people that sort of span an unusual political gamut.

What do you make of the president's move today?

NANCY GERTNER, Harvard Law School: Well, in a regime that has been for the past 30 years an extraordinarily punitive regime, the pardon power is really critical.

The clemency power is really critical and important.

Most other presidents had a process for it, had standards, had a pardon attorney, had a process within the Department of Justice.

I don't know that the president has that kind of a process.

And the purpose of that process is to make sure that pardons are not doled out because of political influence or just celebrity status.

So that is a problem with the deploying of this very, very important clemency tool.

And the question is whether the people on the list today are the most deserving or just the most famous.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Paul Cassell, what do you make of this?

I mean, certainly, the president does have unlimited power to pardon people.

Oftentimes, though, it does come into a decision about who is pardoned and when they are pardoned.

Do you discern any motive behind the president's actions today?

PAUL CASSELL, University of Utah College of Law: Well, I think one good thing about the president's actions today is that he took them well before the next election.

And so the electorate will have a chance to decide whether he's wisely using this presidential power to commute sentences, along with many other things the president is doing.

Some of the pardoned decisions in the past have been made by presidents on their way out the door.

And so this one will at least be reviewable.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Let's turn now from these pardons to this question of the ongoing controversy within the Department of Justice.

As we know, Roger Stone was convicted of lying and witness tampering, among many other things.

The prosecutors in that case recommended that he serve somewhere between seven to nine years.

President Trump strongly criticized that on Twitter.

And Attorney General William Barr then stepped in and overruled that recommendation and said, no, no, no, that was far too harsh.

Those four prosecutors have now all left and resigned from that case.

Nancy Gertner, what do you -- help us understand, is it unusual for an attorney general to overrule their line prosecutors in a case like this?

NANCY GERTNER: It is extraordinarily unusual.

It's extraordinarily unusual to have main Justice, you know, the upper echelons of the Justice Department, intervene in a case involving the line prosecutors.

Presumably the line prosecutors, the four who resigned, would have reviewed their recommendation already up the chain.

In addition, the way - - it's not just that he did it.

It's also the way he did it.

The notion that, after the president tweeted that, you know, these were rogue prosecutors, Barr stepped in and, you know, called for a second memorandum, very public display of displeasure with four prosecutors, asking -- you know, essentially rejecting their recommendation.

Their recommendation, I might add, although I might have disagreed with it were I on the bench, was a guideline recommendation, was actually consistent with the federal sentencing guidelines, which Barr conceded.

So, it's very unusual.

Usually, what a prosecutor would do in a situation like that would be go, before the judge and say, here's what the guidelines say.

I understand, Judge, that you have a right to go below this, and that would have been communicating to the judge that the department really doesn't likely stand behind the guideline sentence, that, in fact, the judge could go below it.

But what Barr did was a shot across the bow to other prosecutors, which was really, really troubling, that he would intervene when he did for someone who was obviously a political crony.

The precedent is very troubling.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Paul Cassell, what's your take on that?

Is this a shot across the bow, where the president is clearly trying to intervene to protect one of his buddies?

PAUL CASSELL: Well, Attorney General Barr has said that he didn't communicate with President Trump in making these decisions.

I think, if the attorney general can be criticized, it's simply because he's failed to keep these deliberations internal to the department.

The U.S. attorney's office for the District of Columbia was in a time of transition when the initial sentencing recommendations was made.

And I think his higher-ups, including the attorney general, looked at it.

They decided it couldn't be sustained.

And they stepped in to put forward a more reasonable recommendation, a more limited recommendation.

It's interesting to see that this is a situation where a lot of people who typically decry the severity of the sentencing guidelines are somehow now opposed to the Justice Department trying to find a bit more leniency in a particular case.

So I don't see that this has some kind of broader message involved at all.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Nancy Gertner, our understanding... NANCY GERTNER: If I might -- yes.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Please, go right ahead.

NANCY GERTNER: Yes.

The question is whether or not Barr will intervene on behalf of other people for whom the sentencing guidelines were ridiculous, whether or not he would intervene to tamp down on mandatory minimum sentences, or whether this is a one-of.

And if it's a one-of, then it is troubling.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Paul Cassell, there is -- our understanding is, tomorrow, there's a meeting of the -- a federal judges association.

And, reportedly, this is a meeting of this group of federal judges who are having a meeting because they are troubled, reportedly, by what has been going on at the DOJ and from the president.

Is that your understanding?

And if so, do you understand the concern from judges what at is happening in the country today?

PAUL CASSELL: Well, I understand the concern about the president having sort of running commentary on ongoing judicial proceedings, and specifically criticizing a judge by name.

I think that's very unusual and certainly not something that I think is the kind of activity that we like to see from the president.

On the other hand, though, I'm not sure whether the judges association is the best group in a position to make a criticism of what the president is doing.

Judges are typically above the fray and don't step into what are political controversies.

This has very clearly become a political controversy.

It's clear that Judge Jackson, for example, who's being criticized, has no lack of allies among members of Congress, even presidential candidates who are running against President Trump.

So I'm not sure it's something that the judges association needs to step in to.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Nancy Gertner, in just the short time we have left, what do you make of that?

Do you think that judges should stay out of this fray and just, look, we are on the bench, we will make judges' decisions as we see fit, and let the political fray be the political fray?

NANCY GERTNER: I think that they can stand up for the institution.

I think when the president makes the kind of comments that he did before a sentencing, sort of mid-proceeding, when he makes the kind of comment that he did trashing the judge who was hearing the case, and when he's making the kind of comments he did with respect to a political crony, judges should well be concerned about the interference with the bench as an institution.

Having said that, I doubt very much if they will say anything other than what Justice Roberts said when Trump was talking about, you know, Obama judges, and something that would be very different than what the chief judge of the district court said when she said these are, you know, independent judges who should be free to make independent decisions free from political influence.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Right.

NANCY GERTNER: So, that they're taking that position is fine.

I don't think that they will say much more than that.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, Nancy Gertner and Paul Cassell, thank you both very much.

NANCY GERTNER: Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In the day's other news: The coronavirus outbreak in China may be slowing, with new cases falling below 2,000 for two days running.

But, so far, some 2,000 people have died, including the head of a leading hospital in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak.

China is enforcing mass quarantines and stepped-up surveillance, but the World Health Organization stopped short of criticizing those measures today.

DR. MICHAEL RYAN, World Health Organization: What China are trying to do is, while they are getting success in putting out one fire, they do not want the fire to start somewhere else.

Now, you can argue whether those measures are excessive or whether they are restrictive on people, but you -- there is a lot at stake here.

There is an awful lot at stake here.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Meanwhile, 88 additional cases are reported on a quarantined cruise ship in Japan, for a total of more than 540.

That is the highest concentration outside China.

In Afghanistan, elections officials announced today that President Ashraf Ghani did win a second term in last September's vote.

Results had been repeatedly delayed, partly by accusations of fraud.

Ghani's rival, Abdullah Abdullah, rejected the outcome, and so did the Taliban.

That, in turn, could jeopardize a U.S. peace plan with the Taliban.

The United States imposed financial sanctions today on Russia's state-owned oil brokerage firm Rosneft.

The State Department said the company is helping Venezuela skirt an American oil embargo.

It marked an aggressive move against both Russian interests and Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, with more to come.

ELLIOTT ABRAMS, U.S. Special Envoy to Venezuela: There will be more steps and further pressure in the coming weeks and months.

The United States remains firmly committed to the people of Venezuela and to the cause of freedom there.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The U.S. and other countries say that Maduro's reelection in 2018 was illegitimate.

An appeals court in the Netherlands ordered Russia today to pay $50 billion for seizing the Yukos oil company in 2003.

Yukos' founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin and was jailed for more than a decade.

Company shareholders have been pursuing compensation ever since.

Moscow says it will appeal today's decision.

A court in Istanbul, Turkey, has acquitted nine opposition activists of aiding protests in 2013, in a bid to overthrow the government.

Outside the court, supporters applauded, and some shed tears, as the verdict was read today.

They argued the case was part of a campaign to stifle opposition voices.

ANDREW GARDNER, Amnesty International: It's a great verdict.

Acquittal was the only thing that could possibly be just.

This is a verdict which should have been given more than two years ago.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Later, one of the activists, philanthropist Osman Kavala, was detained again.

The Turkish state news agency said that he is suspected of ties to a failed coup in 2013.

Back in this country, the Boy Scouts of America has filed for federal bankruptcy protection, facing a storm of sexual abuse lawsuits.

Several thousand men have alleged that they were assaulted by Scoutmasters and other adult leaders decades ago.

The Chapter 11 filing lets the organization try to craft a sweeping settlement.

We will return to this later in the program.

A fresh round of heavy rain is expected to bring more misery to parts of the Southern U.S. starting tonight.

New flood watches are in force in Central Mississippi.

Some neighborhoods in the capital city of Jackson are already underwater from weekend downpours.

The new downpours could stretch from Eastern Louisiana to Western Georgia.

The state of Alabama has declared an emergency.

On Wall Street today, stocks slipped amid ongoing questions about economic effects of the virus outbreak in China.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 165 points to close at 29232.

The Nasdaq rose one point, and the S&P 500 slipped nine.

And NASCAR driver Ryan Newman is reported to be awake and talking at a Florida hospital after a terrifying crash last night in the Daytona 500.

In the final lap, Newman's number six car collided with the barrier wall, flipped over, and was hit by another car, and then skidded along the track in flames.

Officials say that his injuries were not life-threatening.

Denny Hamlin ended up winning the race for the second year in a row.

Still to come on the "NewsHour": new polling shakes up the Democratic presidential race; the reelection strategy behind President Trump's outreach to African-American voters; nearly a million Syrians are on the move in the largest displacement of that country's civil war; and much more.

Six of the remaining Democratic presidential candidates are set to debate tomorrow night in Nevada.

And, as Lisa Desjardins reports, there will be a new face on stage.

LISA DESJARDINS: After mounting calls for Michael Bloomberg to have to debate his opponents directly... SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN), Presidential Candidate: I can't beat him on the airways, but I can beat him on the debate stage.

JOSEPH BIDEN (D), Presidential Candidate: I'm going to get a chance to debate him on everything from redlining to stop and frisk to a whole range of other things.

LISA DESJARDINS: 2020 Democrats will get their chance tomorrow night in Las Vegas, during the ninth Democratic debate, which will be Bloomberg's first.

The former New York City mayor qualified for the debate after hitting 19 percent support in a new national "PBS NewsHour"/NPR/Marist poll out today.

Another headline in the poll?

Bernie Sanders' has a hefty double-digit lead.

Other Democrats, including those with strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, fell behind, like former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who criticized Sanders at a town hall in Las Vegas.

PETE BUTTIGIEG (D), Presidential Candidate: The politics that says, if you don't agree with me 100 percent of the time, you don't even belong, that's clubbing people over the head, telling them you have got to be just all the way over to the edge like us.

LISA DESJARDINS: The in-person campaigning is battling a tidal wave of TV ads, especially from Bloomberg.

He's funded a nearly $420 million ad blitz with his own fortune.

Bloomberg's record has come under fire in recent days for his past comments on stop-and-frisk policing policies targeting minorities and his treatment of women at his company.

Now several news outlets have surfaced Bloomberg's 2011 "NewsHour" interview with Jeffrey Brown about a program for young minority men.

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, Presidential Candidate: There's this enormous cohort of black and Latino males aged, let's say, 16 to 25 that don't have jobs, don't have any prospects, don't know how to find jobs, don't know what their skill sets are, don't know how to behave in the workplace.

LISA DESJARDINS: That's the other undeniable dynamic, the importance of diversity.

Some 40 percent of Nevada caucus-goers in 2016 were people of color.

And candidates today are directly appealing to them now.

TOM STEYER (D), Presidential Candidate: Democrats are supposed to represent working people.

Democrats are supposed to represent black people and Latinos.

LISA DESJARDINS: The hopefuls face off each other again when the state holds its caucuses this Saturday.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Lisa Desjardins.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And for a closer look at the results from that latest "PBS NewsHour"/NPR/Marist poll and what those numbers mean for the state of the 2020 race, I'm joined now by Domenico Montanaro.

He's the senior political editor at NPR.

And we welcome you back to the program.

DOMENICO MONTANARO, Political Editor, NPR: Thank you, as always.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, let's look at these numbers, Domenico.

We're going to put the numbers of this "NewsHour"/NPR/Marist poll up, as we just mentioned, Bernie Sanders on top, 31 percent, Michael Bloomberg shooting up into second place.

What do you see with these numbers?

DOMENICO MONTANARO: Well, the key here, it's pretty remarkable.

You see Bloomberg having spent more than $300 million.

We're hearing over $330 million now from Ad Analytica.

And what he's been able to do is flood the airwaves quite literally, build his profile.

And he's gained 15 points in our polling since December, the last time we asked that.

He's leapfrogged right over Joe Biden, the former vice president, who had been the far-and-away poll leader for a long time.

And, remember, when I would come on and talk about how national polls, they don't really matter all that much, you got to look at the states, and those things will move, that's what's happened here.

And you see Warren down, Pete Buttigieg, really surprisingly, at 8 percent, down five points, after two very good showings.

A lot on the line in Nevada and South Carolina for them.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Yes, it's interesting, because Pete Buttigieg, just as one example, came in first, just barely ahead of Sanders in Iowa, did well, right behind Sanders, in New Hampshire.

But that's not reflected here.

DOMENICO MONTANARO: Yes.

He is the pledged delegate leader, and he's at 8 percent in the national polling.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Yes.

DOMENICO MONTANARO: And the reason why national polls start to matter a little bit more now is because we're only a couple weeks away from Super Tuesday, March 3, when 14 states are going to hold contests.

You're going to have more than a third of all the delegates at stake up for grabs in one single day.

It really is like a national primary.

And you have Mayor Bloomberg, having advertised in all of those states, spending all that money.

And he can do it at will because he's worth billions.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The other interesting thing - - in fact, there's several interesting things to look at, but Amy Klobuchar.

DOMENICO MONTANARO: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Here's somebody who did better than expected in both Iowa and New Hampshire.

But you see her in single digits in this... DOMENICO MONTANARO: Yes.

Well, look, if you add up Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Biden, and Bloomberg together, they get to about 51 percent.

You add up Sanders and Warren for that progressive lane, you're at about 43 percent.

So you see that there are sort of -- there's this filter where they're really sort of struggling to get out of each other's way.

Klobuchar and Buttigieg in particular need to distinguish themselves, because they have had a very difficult time breaking through with voters of color.

You have two states in Nevada and South Carolina where, overwhelmingly, you're going to see way more voters of color, way more diverse states; 41 percent in 2016 in Nevada were non-white in the Democratic electorate, and, in South Carolina, two-thirds non-white, 61 percent African-American.

They are only at 4 percent and 3 percent respectively in our poll with black voters.

They got to do better than that if they want to win the nomination.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, speaking of African-American voters, Domenico, Vice -- former Vice President Biden was doing very well, has been doing very well in South Carolina.

DOMENICO MONTANARO: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Here's somebody who was leading in every -- almost every single national poll show.

DOMENICO MONTANARO: That's right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And here you see now there have been a couple polls, including this one out today, that shows him running third, and at 15 percent.

Now, this is a Nevada poll... DOMENICO MONTANARO: That's Nevada.

JUDY WOODRUFF: ... which has him down a little bit, still in second place.

DOMENICO MONTANARO: Right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But what do you -- how do you account for what's happened to Vice President Biden?

DOMENICO MONTANARO: By look, Biden still has support of African-Americans.

In our poll, he has 31 percent of the black vote, Bernie Sanders, though, right on his heels at 28 percent, so margin of error difference, really, between the two of them.

I think that's the most undertold story of this entire election is how much Bernie Sanders has been able to win over voters of color, especially voters of color under 45.

Voters under 45 generally, it's like no other candidate exists.

He's got more than half of voters under 45 in our polling.

And Biden was somebody who promised he could win over those working-class white voters, and he couldn't do it in a place like New Hampshire.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Exactly.

DOMENICO MONTANARO: And it makes his electability case very difficult.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So much volatility, so much change, so much to watch.

DOMENICO MONTANARO: Yes, absolutely.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Domenico Montanaro, NPR, thank you very much.

DOMENICO MONTANARO: You're welcome.

JUDY WOODRUFF: While Democrats make their case to more diverse primary electorates, as we have just been discussing, in Nevada and South Carolina, Yamiche Alcindor has been reporting on how President Trump is hoping to make gains with black voters ahead of the November 5 general election.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: A stepped-up pitch to black voters.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: We're delivering for African-Americans.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Just in the past few weeks, President Trump has touted what he considers his biggest achievements for the black community.

Here he is in his State of the Union address: DONALD TRUMP: African-American poverty has declined to the lowest rate ever recorded.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) YAMICHE ALCINDOR: In a speech on opportunity zones in North Carolina: DONALD TRUMP: From the day I took office, I have been working to build an unlimited future for African-American communities.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: And a Super Bowl ad featuring a black woman being released after the president commuted her prison sentence.

WOMAN: I want to thank President Donald John Trump.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Only 8 percent of black voters went for President Trump in 2016.

But the president's 2020 campaign is hoping to up those numbers.

It is ramping up efforts to peel away just a percentage or two of black voters from Democrats in key battleground states.

And the president is confident his economic message is enough to bring black voters on board.

He told a crowd in Charlotte, North Carolina, that Democrats haven't done enough for African-Americans.

DONALD TRUMP: They want your vote.

And then the day after the election, they're gone.

That's the Democrats.

And I said, all these bad numbers, what the hell do you have to lose?

Then I went offstage, and my people told me, I don't know.

That's not nice.

I said, no, it's true.

(LAUGHTER) DONALD TRUMP: It's true.

What do they have to lose?

(APPLAUSE) YAMICHE ALCINDOR: But some of the president's outreach to black voters has come under scrutiny.

DONALD TRUMP: But, Janiyah, I have some good news for you.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: During his State of the Union address, President Trump awarded Philadelphia fourth-grader Janiyah Davis with a scholarship, appearing to tout a White House initiative to support school choice.

DONALD TRUMP: I am pleased to inform you that your long wait is over.

I can proudly announce tonight that an Opportunity Scholarship has become available.

It's going to you.

And you will soon be heading to the school of your choice.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) YAMICHE ALCINDOR: But it turns out the money for the scholarship came personally from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Also, Davis already attends a highly-sought after charter school.

Allies of the president also held a pro-Trump event where they gave away a total of $25,000 to a mostly black audience.

MAN: Come on down to the price is right, and get your $300, April.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Attendees praised the president after they collected the cash.

And, at the event, a White House official was awarded.

WOMAN: Four more years for President Trump.

Yay!

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: The event was organized by a nonprofit called Urban Revitalization Coalition of America.

A pro-Trump super PAC also gave the group a $238,000 grant.

It is run by Ohio Pastor Darrell Scott.

He also co-chairs an outreach program for President Trump's reelection campaign dubbed Black Voices for Trump.

A Trump campaign official told the "NewsHour" - - quote -- "These events are not affiliated with or sanctioned by the president's campaign."

JUDY WOODRUFF: And Yamiche is here with me now, along with Donald Sherman.

He's the deputy director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

It's a nonpartisan legal watchdog group.

Donald Sherman, welcome.

Hello to you, Yamiche.

So, let's talk about what we were just seeing, Donald.

And let me start with you.

Your organization has been looking to a few examples of the kind of thing the Trump Organization is doing.

Are there ethical concerns with regard to all this?

DONALD SHERMAN, Deputy Director, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: Absolutely.

First, it seems like the president suggested that the scholarship for Janiyah Davis was part of a government program.

But then we found out that it was paid for by the personal charity of one of his employees.

We're also interested to see whether the Department of Education officials were used in facilitating this donation, because then it makes it seem like they are actually grant officers for the secretary's personal charity.

In addition, the Urban Revitalization Coalition event is particularly troubling, one, because this is supposed to be a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) charitable organization.

And engaging in political activity, like voter registration drives aimed at upping African-American participation for the president, would violate IRS regulations for charitable oranges.

Finally, it would be a problem for White House and other government officials to attend political events using federal funds.

That would be a violation of the Hatch Act.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Yamiche, what is the Trump campaign, what are they saying about all this?

And, secondly, do they have a larger strategy, what is it, to reach black voters?

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Well, President Trump's outreach to black voters has long been something that has been criticized and controversial, going all the way back to 2016.

This time around, the 2020 Trump campaign is saying that, we're not affiliated with any of this.

I had a long conversation with Katrina Pierson.

She's a senior adviser to the Trump campaign and also someone who's working on black voters for Trump, Black Voices for Trump.

And she says, look, even if this was part of the campaign, this looks like it would be illegal.

So that's an admission on the campaign's part that there shouldn't be cash giveaways at these events.

But when you look at what the Trump campaign is actually doing -- and there are two things going on.

The campaign itself, officials, surrogates of the president, they're talking about the economy, they're talking about school choice, they're talking about bettering the lives of African-Americans and going around the country making that pitch.

When you listen to the president himself, though, he's still going back to the 2016 question that got into him into a lot of controversial conversations, which is, what do you have to lose as African-American voters?

He says his campaign thinks that that's not something that he should be saying.

But the president said, look, I did better than both the last Republican nominees, talking about the late Senator John McCain and Senator Mitt Romney, with African-American voters.

So I'm going to continue to do the things that I think will work.

And, as we saw in 2016, it worked.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Donald Sherman, picking up on this, we understand your organization has been looking into something that Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter, did a couple of years ago in pushing for these so-called Opportunity Zones.

Remind us what that was about, and what's the concern there?

DONALD SHERMAN: Sure.

So the reason why we filed a complaint with the Department of Justice related to Ivanka Trump's role in pushing Opportunity Zones is because her husband, Jared Kushner, has a $25 million stake in a company that is packaging investment vehicles through the Opportunity Zone program.

And so what that means is that Ivanka Trump's work for the Opportunity Zone program is essentially a conflict of interest that -- whereby this government program is funneling money into her pockets and her husband's pockets through this company that Jared Kushner still has an ownership interest in.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So that's an ongoing thing that you're looking at?

DONALD SHERMAN: It's an ongoing thing we have looked at.

We filed a complaint with the Department of Justice, but we're waiting on a response.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And one of the things, Yamiche, that we were just discussing, the president's - - one member of the president's Cabinet, one of the few senior officials in his administration who is black -- that's Ben Carson, the secretary, Housing and Urban Development -- he introduced the president recently, made a point of saying the president is not a racist.

To what extent is it a concern of the campaign that there is this perception out there that the president is discriminatory?

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Well, President Trump has done a number of things that have caused people to think of him as racist.

That's, of course, critics of the president calling him racist.

They say, one, that the president was a longtime birther, meaning that he was questioning whether or not President Obama was born in this country.

That was seen as a largely racist conspiracy theory, given that President Obama was born in the United States.

The second thing is the way that he's talked about immigrants.

He said that some of them are rapists and criminals.

He continues to use that language.

The president think that that's talking from a place of strength and that he's being plain-talking and talking to a certain segment of the population that's worried about that.

So there is this feeling inside the campaign that they need to defend the president's rhetoric.

And that's why you see someone like Ben Carson saying he's not a racist.

That being said, there are also critics of the president who say, the president isn't genuinely interested in upping his numbers with black voters.

They say, critics of the president, that he's really trying to convince white voters, including white women who helped him win in 2016, that he's not racist.

And by doing that, he is trying to speak to African-Americans and look like he's trying to appeal to a broad range of people, when, really, what he's trying to do is really comfort a lot of white the voters that have gone for him before.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Understanding whether there is some calculation in all of this.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Yes.

Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Yamiche, Yamiche Alcindor, Donald Sherman, thank you both.

DONALD SHERMAN: Thank you.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Thanks so much.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Only one pocket of resistance to the ruling Assad regime remains in Syria.

And since late last year, Bashar al-Assad's military, backed by Russia, has been pounding Idlib province relentlessly.

Now, nearly one million people are on the move in the freezing cold and out in the open.

As Nick Schifrin reports, in a war defined by displacement, this is the largest movement of people of the entire war.

NICK SCHIFRIN: They flee by the hundreds of thousands, 900,000 in just the last two months.

But now, after nine years of war, there is nowhere left to run.

They arrive by the truckload at camps in open fields.

Others flee to tents set up next to abandoned buildings by international humanitarian groups.

This is their final refuge, pushed north by Syrian and Russian forces against the Turkish border.

But the border is closed, and the internally displaced are trapped.

MOHAMMED YASSIN, Displaced (through translator): This is our 10th displacement.

Now we are getting ready to leave, but to go where?

We don't know.

We couldn't find a house.

So now we are just taking our stuff to the countryside.

Maybe we will just sit under an olive tree.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Some have found temporary homes by olive trees.

But the tents are thin, and the winter is harsh.

And, here, the only way to stay warm are flimsy sweaters, and the only fuel for the fire are shrubs.

HOORIYA AL-ESSA, Displaced (through translator): We fled from the air strikes, and we came here.

And now we are dealing with the snow.

We have no heaters, blankets, or mattresses, no firewood.

We don't have bread.

This entire camp is poor.

We have nothing.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Last April, the Syrian regime and Russian military launched a major campaign to recapture Idlib province, Syria's last opposition stronghold.

In December, the regime intensified its assault to recapture the M5 Highway, the country's most important commercial route.

Turkish forces are in Idlib resisting the regime.

And Turkey has pushed Russia diplomatically.

But those Turkish troops are preventing civilians from crossing the border.

And, yesterday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad predicted victory over Turkey and all the regime's enemies.

BASHAR AL-ASSAD, President of Syria (through translator): The battle to liberate the Idlib and Aleppo countryside is ongoing, regardless of some of the empty bubbles of sound coming from the north, as well as the battle for liberating all Syrian soil, crushing terrorism, and achieving stability.

FOUAD SAYYED, Founder, Violet: They lost their homes, their equipment, and everything that they have.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Fouad Sayyed is the founder of Violet, a local organization trying to provide relief to displaced Syrians.

He says the airstrikes are closing in.

FOUAD SAYYED: They are so afraid from the everyday attacks or what will happen for them if the Syrian regime came to this area.

SALEH HAWA, English Teacher: They have been destroying hospitals while the sick people are inside them.

If he doesn't detain all the people, I think that he will kill everybody.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Saleh Hawa is an English teacher.

His story is the story of the Syrian war.

Back in 2012, he was a hopeful local council leader who helped lead an anti-Assad protest that pushed the regime from his hometown.

SALEH HAWA: We are looking forward to a better future.

NICK SCHIFRIN: But then his town, Haritan, was bombed by Russian and Syrian jets.

When we spoke again in 2016, gone were Saleh's hometown and hope.

SALEH HAWA: Most of the population of Haritan left the town because there was no single house which is safe right now.

We were let down.

America let us down.

NICK SCHIFRIN: His hope returned briefly in 2018, when Turkish troops entered Idlib.

SALEH HAWA: The Syrian people see that the only savior for them is Turkey.

Maybe, a few years ago, they hoped that America would do that.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Today those Turkish troops are still there, but Saleh says they cannot save the people of Idlib.

SALEH HAWA: Does the international community accept that all these people are killed just because they wanted their freedom, their dignity, their equality?

I'm calling for President, Mr. Donald Trump, please do something.

Please, I beg you.

Now more than one million people are going to be exterminated.

NICK SCHIFRIN: The U.S. supports Turkey's military presence in Idlib, and has called Russia's involvement unacceptable.

But, last week, National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien ruled out any intervention.

ROBERT O'BRIEN, U.S. National Security Adviser: The idea that America must do something, I just find that to be -- I don't even see that as being a real argument.

What are we supposed to do to stop that?

We're supposed to parachute in as a global policeman and hold up a stop sign and say, stop this, Turkey, stop this, Russia?

NICK SCHIFRIN: So all that Syrians like Abdullah Mohammad can do is to try to protect their children.

He teaches his daughter that, when she hears airstrikes... (LAUGHTER) NICK SCHIFRIN: ... she's supposed to laugh.

He's lied to her that they're only toy planes.

But the planes aren't toys, and the airstrikes are inching closer.

SALEH HAWA: The Syrian people being killed, being bombarded, every single day, their schools, their houses, their hospitals.

The infrastructure is completely destroyed, and nobody is doing anything.

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

JUDY WOODRUFF: Officials with the Boy Scouts of America say that their bankruptcy filing early today is the only way they can deal with a growing number of sexual abuse lawsuits and still maintain Scouting programs for its current members.

But, as John Yang reports, it's a bitter pill for former members who were abused as young Scouts.

JOHN YANG: Growing up in Florida, Juan Carlos Rivera loved being a Boy Scout.

JUAN CARLOS RIVERA, Abuse Survivor: I started to just learn everything about Scouting, camping and do the merit badges.

Whatever Scouting entailed, I was all over it, because I liked it.

It was fun.

JOHN YANG: By the time he was a young teen, he was a Life Scout, the second-highest rank, and was taking art lessons from an assistant to the Scoutmaster.

JUAN CARLOS RIVERA: And then one day, he summoned me to go upstairs in the house to a bedroom.

And that's when the incident took place.

That's when everything changed.

JOHN YANG: Rivera says that was the day he lost interest in Scouting and quit.

For 20 years, he never told anyone why.

He had been molested.

Now he's suing the Boy Scouts of America and is telling his story publicly for the first time.

JUAN CARLOS RIVERA: It angers me that it happened, because it was a part of my childhood that should have been innocent.

You know, I didn't seek it.

It just happened.

JOHN YANG: Rivera's case is among about 2,000 collected by an alliance of lawyers called Abused in Scouting.

They say each week brings as many as 70 new claims.

The oldest client is 93 years old, the youngest, 8.

Timothy Kosnoff is one of the attorneys.

TIM KOSNOFF, Attorney, Abused in Scouting: More than 95 percent of them are identifying perpetrators that have never previously been identified.

So, it's an amazing act of civic responsibility to come forward.

Most of these men have never disclosed this abuse to anyone.

JOHN YANG: In a statement, Scouts CEO Roger Mosby said the organization "sincerely apologizes to anyone who was harmed during their time in Scouting."

He said the Boy Scouts want to use bankruptcy to create a fund that will provide equitable compensation to all victims.

The organization's most recent IRS filing lists assets of $1.4 billion, including land for camping and hiking.

The Scouts are asking the bankruptcy court to halt existing lawsuits and set a deadline for new complaints.

TIM KOSNOFF: While it's unfortunate that these men probably won't get their day in court, or this will be their day in court, at least this means that we're moving forward, and these men will get compensation and closure.

JOHN YANG: The Scouts follow more than 20 individual Catholic dioceses and religious orders and USA Gymnastics in turning to bankruptcy in the face of sex-abuse lawsuits.

Allegations of abuse in the Boy Scouts go back decades.

In 1935, The New York Times reported on an internal red flag list of Scout leaders expelled for moral perversion.

Last year, testimony in an unrelated court case revealed Boy Scout files from 1944 to 2016, listing nearly 8,000 men believed to have abused more than 12,000 children.

Attorney Jeff Anderson discussed the disclosure on the "NewsHour."

JEFF ANDERSON, Anderson & Associates: We have known they have been harboring offenders and keeping these files.

We didn't have the precise number until we got it from the expert on the witness stand.

JOHN YANG: Most of the names have never been made public.

In 2012, an Oregon court unsealed documents in a sex abuse case that identified more than 1,200 Scouting volunteers accused of molesting young boys between 1960 and 1991.

KELLY CLARK, Attorney: These are files that document the history of allegations of abuse in Scouting and how the Boy Scouts responded to those allegations.

JOHN YANG: Legal and financial pressures on the Scouts increased last year, when more than 20 states enacted laws changing the statutes of limitations for abuse cases.

MIKE RECK, Attorney: This new brings out information, exposure and accountability that these institutions have been unable and incapable of doing.

JOHN YANG: Juan Carlos Rivera, now 53, never confronted his abuser and doesn't know where he is now.

He still struggles with what happened to him that day nearly four decades ago.

He says the Boy Scouts of America should worry more about that than its financial future.

JUAN CARLOS RIVERA: They need to man up and do the right thing.

I understand that they want to protect their assets.

That's fine.

But they need to put themselves in the positions of the people that were abused.

Money is OK, but the trauma that abused people have, that's lifetime.

That never, ever goes away.

JOHN YANG: Abuse allegedly suffered in a program whose stated mission is to teach young people ethical and moral values.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm John Yang in Washington.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And now a museum exhibition created by designers and brain researchers that challenges our senses demonstrating how we all experience art differently.

Jeffrey Brown reports from Dallas, as part of our ongoing arts and culture series, Canvas.

JEFFREY BROWN: It's a kind of playground inside an art museum, large room-sized works in which exploring the different ways each of us experiences the world around us is as important as the art itself.

Now at the Dallas Museum of Art, the exhibition is titled Speechless: Different By Design.

It's unusual, in that touching and much more is encouraged, even required.

SARAH SCHLEUNING, Curator, Speechless: Different By Design: I became interested in, what happens if we do an exhibition where it's interactive, where we encourage people to use all their senses?

JEFFREY BROWN: Unusual, too, in how it began, in a very personal way for curator Sarah Schleuning, when her now 6-year-old son Vaughn was first diagnosed with an expressive language disorder.

SARAH SCHLEUNING: Speechless is really quite literal, in that he was speechless for the first several years of his life.

And as we were navigating that as a family, we were trying to figure out -- I'm a hyperverbal person.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.

SARAH SCHLEUNING: And what happens when I - - the words that I use and how I express and communicate is no longer valid?

And I think that led me into these ideas of, what is disability?

What does that mean?

I didn't think he was different.

His sister doesn't think he's different.

But he gets out in the world, and people didn't know how to communicate with him, and it was very frustrating.

JEFFREY BROWN: And that led her to also re-think her work as a curator and how we all interact in different ways with art.

For this exhibition, she asked artist-designers to bring those differences to life.

Ini Archibong,a California-born, Switzerland-based designer, created an installation title The Oracle.

It's made up of 10 pill-shaped synthesizers crafted of blown glass.

Museum visitors can move them, subtly altering the sounds in the room, even the color and vibrations of a pool of water.

The console controlling all this, "Wizard of Oz"-like, is behind a wall.

Yuri Suzuki, Tokyo-born and London-based, created Sound of the Earth Chapter 2, a large sphere that requires the visitor to experience it up close.

Suzuki gathered audio by crowdsourcing on Instagram, with people around the world sending in clips of sounds of everyday life.

Here, sounds substitutes for visual imagery we might expect in a work of art.

And if I stay here long enough, I'm going to... MAN: Yes, then you will get a nice -- get sort of hug.

JEFFREY BROWN: OK.

Yes.

Yes.

Most playful of all, Misha Kahn, a Brooklyn-based artist and furniture designer, who filled a large room with strangely shaped sacs of hand-painted silk over vinyl, each covering a wood sculpture inside, and all of it constantly inflating and deflating, so the whole room seems to be breathing.

MISHA KAHN, Artist: Everything's touchable and you can kind of explore it.

And, for me, I wanted to find a way to sort of embed these sculptures and humanize them by having them breathe and sort of shy away from you.

JEFFREY BROWN: Not only that, you can jump in and take a seat.

And so we did.

Because sitting is the idea here, right?

MISHA KAHN: Yes.

Well, I think... JEFFREY BROWN: I mean experiencing it.

MISHA KAHN: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: You wanted to know if this would be perceived as a place to sit?

MISHA KAHN: Yes.

And then, like, if you sort of think of it as a chair, then what else is going on?

And so it sort of pulls you into a different area.

It activates your brain in a slightly different way.

JEFFREY BROWN: And that is what Dan Krawczyk brought to the exhibition.

Krawczyk is a brain researcher and deputy director of the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas, Dallas.

DAN KRAWCZYK, University of Texas, Dallas: We're essentially seeing how active the brain is.

It's a heat map of areas that are particularly active for some kind of process.

JEFFREY BROWN: In 2018, before the artists got to work, curator Sarah Schleuning brought them together with scientists and medical researchers who study brain function, autism and dementia and much more.

Dan Krawczyk was one of them.

DANIEL KRAWCZYK: I was excited by the possibility, because we don't often have these opportunities to have a science-meets-art kind of conversation.

And I have long thought that especially visual arts has a very clear link within the brain.

And when you're a neuroscientist, you tend to always think, how does the brain become active in different ways?

JEFFREY BROWN: The artists then did their thing.

The design team of brothers Steven and William Ladd created this room from hundreds of rolled-up, colorful scrolls of all sizes, each made and initialed by a resident of Dallas or Atlanta.

The room entices the visitor to touch and feel or sit and meditate.

Neuroscientist Krawczyk was able to explain to the artists how their work alters perceptions.

DANIEL KRAWCZYK: I think that the major message I tried to inform them about is how dynamic the brain is, that we don't just perceive.

We're constantly perceiving with a goal to act.

And the brain is constantly cycling between perceiving and then acting.

And so I thought there was a lot of exciting synergy with the way the brain really works, because we always want to take the next action.

JEFFREY BROWN: Why would this kind of art be more accessible to someone who we would call disabled, in terms of what's going on in the brain?

DANIEL KRAWCZYK: It's changing the inputs pretty dramatically, right?

And that's going to change the brain state quite dramatically.

So the range of options -- if you're more of a touch-based, exploratory person, you're likely to get something very different out of these exhibits.

JEFFREY BROWN: And that, of course, is the point of this exhibition, which even includes a so-called de-escalation room, where visitors can relax, with a weighted blanket, after all the sensory stimulation.

Curator Sarah Schleuning hopes the exhibition can be part of a new model for museums.

SARAH SCHLEUNING: When we can offer experiences and opportunities that may change the way that they see and perceive what art is, what a great thing to be, to not be locked in a box.

It's OK to be different in the space, and you can still be surrounded and engaged in the experience.

JEFFREY BROWN: The exhibition Speechless: Different By Design was a collaboration with the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and travels there next.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Jeffrey Brown at the Dallas Museum of Art.

JUDY WOODRUFF: On the "NewsHour" online right now, 12 tapestries designed by Renaissance master Raphael have all returned to the Sistine Chapel for the first time in nearly five centuries.

Take a closer look on our Web site, PBS.org/NewsHour.

Later tonight on most PBS stations, "Frontline" examines the ascent of the world's richest man, Jeff Bezos, who is leading Amazon's delivery of endless products, entertainment services, and technology innovations to customers with just a simple swipe, but at what price?

"Frontline"'s "The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos" -- tonight at 9:00/8:00 Central.

And that's the "NewsHour" for tonight.

On Wednesday, from Las Vegas, a preview of the next Democratic presidential debate.

I'm Judy Woodruff.

Join again here tomorrow evening.

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