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In the lead up to the next election, documenting the deep political divides in our country and looking for signs of consensus is at the heart of a national PBS reporting project called America at a crossroads.

We're being fed a narrative that everybody hates everybody else.

When we sit down like we are today, we know that's not the case.

What does the series reveal about how Americans think about democracy and what kind of leadership they want in Washington?

We'll ask when iconic PBS journalist Judy Woodruff joins us right now on Alaska Insight.

Good evening.

As the 2024 presidential election gets closer, pressing questions about the nation's political and cultural direction and the deep ideological divide over those decisions mean our nation is not united at a time when global problems require our attention.

Judy Woodruff has devoted five decades to reporting, with more than 20 of those years as host of PBS NewsHour.

And for the past two years, she has talked to Americans across the country to learn about their beliefs and the direction they want for our country.

Judy, it is such an honor and a pleasure to welcome you here tonight.

Thank you so much for being with us.

Thank you.

It is great to be with you, and it's wonderful to be back in Alaska.

This is one of my rare trips to to this amazing state.

And and this one particularly interesting because we're reporting while we're here.

Yes.

Yeah.

And we'll talk about that.

I want to talk about your series first.

Your storied career deserves a lot more discussion than 20 minutes will allow.

So we will focus on America at a crossroads this evening, and hope that you will come back and visit us soon, so that we can spend a longer time talking about these issues and the importance of journalism, your award winning contributions to it, and the future of that work.

Before we show a clip from one of your stories in this series, tell us where this idea came from and what you hoped would come out of it.

Well, as I was thinking, in 2021 and 2022, I knew that I was getting to a point where I was ready to step aside from the anchor desk, but I didn't want to stop reporting.

It's kind of at the heart of what I do.

I've been a reporter, as you said, for over 50 years.

It's what I love.

And I thought about what can I focus on that would be contributing and that would be, would be rewarding in terms of how could I make a contribution?

And I and it hit me almost immediately.

And that is having covered politics for so long, I've never seen America as divided as it is right now.

we have families can barely get together over Thanksgiving dinner.

We have neighbor turning against neighbor building fences.

People unfriending friends on Facebook.

there's something personal.

We've had divisions in the country.

We've certainly seen terrible moments where people didn't agree with each other.

But there's an added personal element to this, and I wanted to try to understand.

And so it's the start of last year.

We set out to, as you say, travel around the country.

We've now been to 20 some states, interviewed ordinary Americans, community leaders and others.

I unders trying to understand different aspects of our division.

Well, let's look at, part of a story that you produced in March related to gun rights, a very fraught topic in America.

Judy talked to Tennessee residents who were both gun enthusiasts and gun control advocates who had come together to try to find a way toward compromise.

They called their group the Tennessee 11.

The attempt at working together was prompted after three nine year old children and three adults were shot and killed at the Covenant School in Nashville.

Nashville A year earlier, it was the deadliest shooting in Tennessee history, and citizens there tried to find consensus to reduce gun violence.

Let's watch.

It.

Tim Carroll is a firearms instructor in rural Harriman, Tennessee, who is passionate about guns and gun rights.

I'm a Second Amendment absolutist.

Having more guns out there is a good thing.

There are some folks in society who cannot protect themselves physically.

The firearm is the only way that that person can protect themselves.

When you think about a gun, what do you think?

I think it's a tool that's misused often and in the wrong hands can cause a lot of damage.

Alyssa Pearman is a high school English teacher in Jackson, Tennessee, who lost two of her students to gun violence.

Less than a year apart.

How are their families doing?

That's like the hardest part.

It just it makes me cry every time.

But yeah, when the casket closed, like, you hear their mom just scream, I can't even imagine.

You might think these two would struggle to see eye to eye about anything to do with guns.

But Tim and Alyssa were part of a so-called citizens Solution session that gathered 11 Tennesseans from all walks of life for a three day conference.

The goal of the session, held in the wake of a 2023 mass shooting at an elementary school, was to develop realistic proposals that could curb gun violence.

If we went to high school together, we'd argue a lot.

It was really refreshing to be able to share my story and for people not to brush it off.

I was a really fortunate to be able to get that sort of perspective from folks like Alyssa, because when I hear gunshots, if somebody is hunting or they're just out here shooting, and when they hear gunshots, it's something bad is happening.

The event was organized by the national, nonpartisan, nonprofit named Starts With Us, which aims to bring people from diverse backgrounds together to find solutions to the country's toughest issues.

We're we're being fed a narrative that everybody hates.

Everybody else.

When we sit down like we are today, we know that's not the case.

The Tennessee 11, as they call themselves, shared personal experiences and expertise and ultimately came together last August to draft five proposals that they felt could help address gun violence.

The polling that this group put together found majority support from Tennesseans for the proposals that they developed.

some narrowly, but all more than 50%.

Most were education about gun handling, healing from trauma.

One suggested temporary removal in some cases, and yet the outcome was not at all what the group had hoped for.

Tell us what happened here.

Well, they put together, as you say, five, proposals that they then, turned into, legislation, potential legislative legislation.

And then it was written as legislation.

They could not get, any sort of consensus from the Tennessee legislature, which is majority a conservative majority Republican.

they found that there they didn't even get, an answer to the to the to their suggestion.

They put together a briefing.

They invited members of the state legislature to attend, and only a handful of members of of the state legislature showed up.

The group was very disappointed.

we talked to them about what had happened.

You heard you saw Tim Carroll and another gentleman who is a gun rights enthusiast, and he said he was just deeply disturbed that his own state representative wouldn't even come to the briefing.

And he he said, I ended up chasing him down the hall in the state Capitol to ask him why he wouldn't hear what we've suggested.

And he said he never he never got an answer.

So it's a reminder that, even with efforts like this one and this is happening in a number of states around the country, groups are trying to bring people together across some of these very tough issues.

It's still hard in this politically divided moment.

The people who participated in the Tennessee 11 group seem to really get a lot out of their conversations with each other, and were able to bridge a lot of those divides, but they weren't as successful as you just said, bringing that message back to a wider group.

Why do you think that part was so difficult?

Because we are in such a political, politically divided moment where, and we started this project, in early 2023 talking to researchers, academic researchers, people, the Pew Research Center about what's happened in American, life politically over the last few decades.

Why is it that, you know, we've always had division?

We have Democrats and Republicans going back a long time.

People have had different views.

But there's something personal.

As I mentioned a minute ago, and the researchers told us one woman in particular name is Lilliana mason.

She's with Johns Hopkins University.

She said that what her research and the research of others shows is that today people have taken on their political identity in a way that it supersedes everything else.

You know, we used to get to know each other by where did you grow up?

Tell me about your family.

Where do you like to go on vacation?

What kind of music do you like?

And today it's pretty early on.

What party are you part of?

What do you believe?

And if you're an R or a D and I'm the other, then I may not want to have anything to do with you.

It's taken on, a level of importance in our in the way we interact with each other.

That's just blown away so much of everything else.

And so people are not finding out who the other person is.

We're more likely to just shut someone out.

And meanwhile, the parties themselves have become more powerful in the way they wield.

Excuse me, excuse me.

And the way they wield influence in the way they reward or punish members of the party for working with the other side.

Compromise is a dirty word in so much of American politics.

It didn't always.

It wasn't always that way.

Yeah.

So disheartening.

Have there been, any follow up or new attempts to bring some of these concepts back?

Have you stayed in touch with folks there to find out if they are trying to find a path forward with some of these ideas in Tennessee, or is it just stalled out?

Well, we were just in Tennessee this, spring or the end of winter, beginning of spring in March.

And, so this is relatively recent, what they've been dealing with.

They're pretty discouraged right now.

They're not going to give up.

They're going to continue to work at it.

But we've seen we are just we've just in fact finished filming not a focus on gun so much.

But in the state of North Carolina, there's a county where they've had a lot of issues around rapid growth and what to spend on education and how to how to apportion tax dollars.

And another group has come in there to try to bring people together.

They're finding it equally challenging, even around other, again, around issues of government spending.

Where should we put our tax dollars?

guns is is an issue, in, in this particular county, Alamance County in North Carolina, it sits between Greensboro and the Raleigh Durham, the triangle area.

but we've seen this across the country.

We were in Oregon, not long ago.

looking at the movement to to join Idaho.

Yeah, I'd like to talk about that.

Yes.

Now, folks in the east eastern part of the state feel that Portland and the West doesn't represent them.

So this is a nation wide set of issues that I think, that affect all Americans.

Frankly, one of the statistics, statistics, statistics, excuse me, that followed this story in Tennessee was was so startling to me when I saw it.

It said that although the United States is 4% of the world's population, Americans own 40% of the firearms in the world.

What do you think that statistic says about, any future potential for gun legislation at all?

I think it's very hard.

I had not heard that particular statistic, but I've heard other, sets of numbers and percentages.

we're all reminded that there are many more guns than there are people in the United States.

The gun lobby, the gun rights lobby has become very, very powerful over the last several decades.

they have amassed, enormous influence in Washington.

They give money to so many, candidates for office, Republicans and Democrats, and they've managed to keep that majority.

And they they've come up with a strategy.

And this is shorthand where they basically oppose almost any changes in, around gun control or efforts to, to limit access to guns.

They, they describe it as an effort to take away your rights, your Second Amendment rights or even to do away with the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which, of course, is the right to bear arms.

and they've made it a, sort of a global argument that affects, no matter what, the other side or the gun, the folks who are worried about too many guns try to do.

It's painted by the gun rights movement, most of it as an attempt to take away your guns.

And that is not the intent.

I mean, for example, Tim Carroll, whom you saw, he's very much a gun enthusiast.

He teaches people how to shoot guns safely, how to use them, how to store them, how to shoot.

but he's in favor of common sense.

Just for example, the one piece of, the one recommendation in those suggestions that this group had put forward, that was the most controversial was to say if if someone could possibly pose a risk if they had a gun, we should take away have to have the ability to take away their gun.

Even that could not, could not, could not pass.

There were some other educational proposals they made that that might have gotten somewhere, but they felt it was important to include that one.

But it didn't move.

It was never going to see the light of day.

Well, the one gun enthusiast in the story said it's a Second Amendment right.

Why compromise?

And so he was not interested in any kind of any kind of compromise.

The gentleman, the gentleman who represents the Tennessee Gun Owners Association said, first of all, he cited a Supreme Court ruling and other laws and said, anything like this is is just unacceptable.

You mentioned the story in, Oregon, the political divide that has resulted in efforts by some counties in on the eastern side to try this.

They would like to secede from Oregon and join Idaho.

Tell us what you heard from residents there about why they think such a big change is needed.

Well, this does go back a few years, so we're not the first people to report on it.

But the fact is, it's still alive and they're still trying to get the state legislature to take it up, in Oregon.

And by the way, it would require the approval of the state legislature in Oregon, which seems very unlikely right now.

That's a democratically controlled state legislature.

It would require the approval of Idaho.

And I don't know what Idaho legislators think about it.

And it would approve.

It would require the approval of the United States Congress.

So it's far away from happening.

Having said that, the Greater Idaho movement is alive and well.

it is it's basically the the counties that are east, of of the, the mountain range that runs right next to Portland and, the cities on the on the west coast of Oregon.

We talked to a rancher who's lived his entire life in Oregon, and he said he said, I just don't feel the state capitol cares about us.

I don't feel Portland represents us.

It's a city that has lots of problems around, local government, he said around, and he cited drugs.

As you probably remember, the state of Oregon voted to legalize, drugs a few years ago.

They've now repeal that.

They've gone back on it.

But he he said, we just we're just not nobody pays attention to us.

And we have different values in our we are we have different ideas about the environment and we talked to the gentleman who who is the spokesman for the Greater Idaho movement.

He lives in eastern Oregon.

And he said, again, he said, our values are different.

We want to be part of a state government that share that, that thinks like we do.

And when I said, do you think it's a good idea, though, to to, for America to divide up into red areas and blue areas, is that good for our democracy?

And interestingly, he said, yes.

He said, we shouldn't be forced to be part of a state government, part forced to compromise with a state or another entity that doesn't share our values.

So it's a very different attitude, I thought, than than what so many Americans we've spoken with believe.

But it's very it's on their part.

they're definitely serious about this.

They're pushing ahead.

Yeah.

it's interesting to think about how someone perceives the United in the United States with that mindset.

And I know that the folks on the Portland side are have a different attitude about this idea.

You talk to folks, business owners and things.

What do they have to say?

Well, we talked to a gentleman who runs a coffee shop.

He's known informally as the mayor of Portland because he's downtown and he's gotten to know so much of, the, the, the people who live and work in that area.

We talked with a woman who works in social services.

We talked to the gentleman who runs the Oregon Historical Society, and they all said, you know, we we in the, in the western part of the state want to represent the entire state.

We haven't they acknowledge they haven't always listened to people in the East, the agricultural interests, the ranching interests, some of the environmental interests, in the and you can imagine they have different ideas about natural resources and what to promote and what to limit.

but and I thought I was struck by the fact that they admitted they weren't always attentive to the needs of folks in the East, but they very much said they oppose the idea of splitting up the state.

I mean, it would mean two thirds or more of the land mass of Oregon joining Idaho.

It would become, I think, the third or fourth fourth biggest state in the country.

If this happened.

But the odds of it happening, I think are pretty small.

Yeah.

One of your stories looked at how marriage demographics are changing from a time when there were unions that brought together Republicans and Democrats through marriage.

considering some past marriages.

Democrat and political analyst James Carville been married for close to 30 years, to Mary Matalin and a Republican strategist and former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, married to George Conway for two decades.

Divorce now.

But, the story pointed out that this was much more common and a political modifier in the past, but no longer.

What did you find, about Partizans who are looking for life partners?

Well, one thing we found is that, yes, it's happened in the past.

It hasn't been the norm.

They the research we looked into has shown that people tend to marry folks who share their political views.

or they may be married to someone who's an independent who doesn't feel strongly about one party or another, that the marriages across party lines have always been, I think, I think the number was something like 6 or 7% of all marriages today.

That is down to 2 or 3%, that in the last few years, there are fewer and fewer marriages of people who are with, with, with who are strong believers in as a Republican, married to, a strong believer, as a Democrat.

But we flew to Colorado, and, and interviewed a couple who've been married.

They've actually newlyweds.

They've only been married about ten years.

But he is a is a Trump supporter.

She's a very liberal Democrat.

She runs a labor union.

they're public employees union, in Colorado.

And they talked about how they just talk it out that they said we they said, yes, we have fiercely different views, but we like to to verbalize it.

And they didn't say they like to fight, but they said they often have arguments.

And they said, we don't like to go to sleep at night.

You know, having argued, we try to make up, but it's a it was a pretty lively household.

They had a teenage daughter.

This is interesting.

Who was telling us that, in that because we, we were interested in how young people are approaching dating, you know, as you know, while young people use dating apps to meet other young people and she was telling us that today on on the dating apps, you can tell almost immediately and you want to know immediately whether someone you are looking for agrees with you.

Politically.

This was not always the case.

And she said some, some of these, dating apps will just basically say swipe right or swipe left, depending on where, where you are on like, but but it's a reminder that this divided moment that we're in has seeped down to the younger generation as well.

Absolutely.

You're in Alaska now.

We're so happy to have you here to research election issues.

Do you plan to report on the states ranked choice voting, or are you looking at the upcoming U.S House race this fall?

We came here specifically to look at Alaska's open primary, what you started in 2022.

And of course, that came along with ranked choice voting and with some changes in in campaign fundraising.

the reason is that Alaska is one of the few states that's implemented significant reform in your primary.

And why do we want to look at it?

Because what you've done in Alaska is seen by political scientists as one of the ways we can make our political system more conducive to finding the middle.

Everybody now agrees across the spectrum that the system we have with closed primaries, with primaries that cater just to Republicans or just to Democrats, has driven it certainly driven candidates farther to the left and the right, because to win on the left or win on the right, you the candidates often have to make arguments that are farther to the edges, and that's driven our politics.

You look at Washington right now, look at Congress.

It is a far more divided place than it was.

You don't see it.

Nearly as many members of Congress, Senate or House in the middle.

You used to be you had some Democrats who were more conservative than the most liberal Republicans, and vice versa.

Some Republicans who were more liberal than the most conservative.

That is not the case now.

I mean, everybody is moving there.

You have a few in the middle, but mainly we're and that's because of our primary system.

And so what Alaska has done in with this, reform that you enacted a few years ago, and then you implement it in the 2022 race, and it got a lot of attention because you ended up electing a conservative Republican governor.

You elected.

I would think it's fair to say a a moderate Republican U.S. senator reelected Lisa murkowski.

And then you ended up electing a Democratic House member, which had not happened.

Congressmember, in what, 40 some years?

And Mary Peltola, right now, there is a serious effort to repeal your, new open primary system with ranked choice voting, and we'll see what happens.

But we're talking to people across the we interviewed, state Senator Kathy Geisel, in Juneau this week.

We're going to be talking to others this week.

Wouldn't be talking to Congresswoman Peltola, and others about how this is working.

But we think it's a fascinating experiment in trying to take our political system and move it to a more moderate place, and we'll see whether that lasts or not.

Well, Judy, thank you so much.

As time has flown by, we want you to come back so we can spend more time and delve into more of your incredible career and the importance of independent reporting that shines light on the most urgent and important political, social and cultural issues of the day.

Thank you so much.

I'd love to do that.

Thank you.

It has been a thrill and an honor to host Judy Woodruff this evening to hear more about her reporting series called America at a crossroads that examines the political divides in our nation.

Visit the Alaska Insight page on Alaska public.org.

Judy's PBS reporting is an excellent reminder of the power and light that journalism brings to democracy.

That's it for this edition of Alaska Insight.

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Thanks for joining us this evening.

I'm Lori Townsend.

Good night.