Students: We are the seventh-grade class from Brandywine Middle School, and Channel One News starts right now!
Tom: That is a lot of students. Thanks to Brandywine Middle School in Niles, Michigan, for kicking us off. Okay, now President Trump is moving fast to make good on his campaign promises, so today we are breaking down exactly what is going on. First up, the president says he will get started on his most famous pledge: to build a wall along the U.S.–Mexico border.
President Donald Trump: We will build a great, great wall.
Tom: The idea of a border wall isn’t new. It actually came up and was authorized back in 2006, but Congress never funded it. But yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order to start building the wall.
Trump: The secretary of homeland security, working with myself and my staff, will begin immediate construction of a border wall.
Tom: He insisted Mexico will pay for the wall eventually, but so far, Mexico says, “No, we are not!”
Another campaign promise: to tighten up immigration. Today, the president plans to sign another executive order restricting immigration from countries where terrorism is a problem, like Syria and Iraq.
Trump: I call it extreme vetting. Right? Extreme vetting!
Tom: And he wants undocumented immigrants already in America to be forced to leave.
Now, President Trump's view on climate science is very different from President Obama's, so expect a new course of policies. And for now, the president has told several environmental agencies to keep quiet.
Trump: I am to a large extent an environmentalist. I believe in it. But it's out of control.
Tom: The White House sent a memo to the Environmental Protection Agency this week ordering it not to talk to the media until the Trump administration gives "further direction" — including no social media, no blog posts and a careful screening of incoming media requests.
Yesterday, the Badlands National Park tweeted about climate change in defiance of the White House, but then the posts were quickly deleted. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cancelled a conference exploring the effects of climate change on public health.
Some groups are worried that the Trump administration will limit access to information as it rolls back and gets rid of environmental protections. Here at President Trump's alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, environmental professors and students are racing to back up information available from government websites to public servers.
The president's nominee to run the EPA, Scott Pruitt, disagreed with Trump in his hearings.
Senator Ed Markey: Do you agree that global warming is a hoax?
Scott Pruitt: I do not, Senator.
Tom: But he has supported the debate about what is the cause of global warming and if humans are to blame.
Rachel Cleetus is with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Rachel Cleetus: This is the sort of climate denial that says, “Yes, it's real, but we don't know what's causing it.” And basically, it's yet another way to kick the can down the road and not take any action.
Tom: Cleetus says, with data showing 2016 as the hottest year on record and sea levels rising at alarming rates that could trigger massive flooding by the end of the century, rolling back regulations on energy production could create huge problems.
Cleetus: This is a false choice. We don't have to choose between a safe climate and economic growth; we can have both.
Tom: And as executive orders are getting signed away, Wall Street is loving it. The Dow Jones yesterday closed at a record 20,000 for the first time — a good sign for the economy. Analysts say they think Trump will deliver on his promises, including rebuilding roads, bridges and airports.
All right, after the break, one smart teen develops one smart gun.
Tom: It is time to get your geek on. Gun violence in the U.S. is a huge problem. And I don’t know if you knew this, Demetrius, but gun-related deaths arenow outpacing traffic-related deaths in almost half of the states in the country. Can you believe that?
Demetrius: It is a sad statistic, Tom. But one college freshman has an answer to an age-old question: How do we make guns safer? Take a look.
When Kai Kloepfer points his .40-caliber handgun, it fires like any other weapon. But if somebody else were to try and use it — you get nothing. An innovation that could revolutionize gun safety: the first firearm with the same built-in security as many smartphones. If the gun is picked up by an authorized user, this sensor recognizes the fingerprint and…
Kai Kloepfer: It'll fire. I think this could be huge. I think it could really be the future of firearms.
Demetrius: He is the founder of Biofire, a startup still headquartered in his parent's house in Boulder, Colorado. Now a freshman at MIT, Kai started working on his gun as part of a science project when he was 15 years old.
Kloepfer: There'd be days where I'd sit down, and I'd look up 14 hours later. I hadn't moved from the spot; I hadn’t thought about anything else.
Demetrius: He realized he couldn't stop mass shootings, but he thought he could still save lives. After all, in one year alone, nearly 600 people died in firearm accidents. There were thousands more suicides, many committed with guns that did not belong to the victim.
Kloepfer: It's not as simple of a process as you might imagine. It's not really something anybody has ever done before.
Demetrius: Kai's weapon doesn't only lock like a smartphone, it charges like one.
Kloepfer: It's about as simple as it gets.
Demetrius: And the invention has won him some deep-pocketed allies.
Ron Conway: Kai is the Mark Zuckerberg of guns.
Demetrius: Ron Conway was an early investor in Google and Facebook, and now he is putting his money behind Kai's smart gun.
Conway: What Kai has done is used all of the latest technology available to us to innovate a truly authenticated gun. You couldn't do this five years ago.
Demetrius: But a push for similar guns misfired memorably in the late 1990s. A Colt prototype failed in a major demonstration, and Smith & Wesson dropped its smart gun program after resulting boycotts nearly bankrupted the company.
Stephen Sanetti is president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the main trade group for companies that make and sell guns. He expressed concern about the reliability of any firearm that depends on battery power.
Stephen Sanetti: The firearm has to work, and a firearm is not the same as a cellphone. The consequences of a cellphone not working are inconvenience. The consequences of a firearm not working could be someone's life.
Kloepfer: It's relatively reliable. I know, like, when I'm using it, when I'm testing it, it functions almost every single time. Uh-oh.
Demetrius: But not every time. In this test his modified Glock .22 failed.
Man: It’s red.
Range monitor: That's hot. That'll shoot.
Kloepfer: You shorted it.
Demetrius: Still, he thinks an ultrafast and reliable final weapon isn't far off.
Kloepfer: I'm now to the point where I'm able to, you know, start raising money, building a team, sort of really transitioning this to a real company — a real startup — instead of just, you know, a kid in his garage working on a science project.
Demetrius: Now, the gun lobby says people wouldn't buy a smart gun. But a poll taken last year in the “American Journal of Public Health” says a majority of Americans would at least consider it.
Tom: Thanks, Demetrius. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.
Okay, after the break, we take you inside one classroom where bouncing around is not only allowed, but actually required.
Tom: Okay, so I want you guys to think about this. How long do you sit in the same spot in class? Is it minutes? Hours? Maybe even days?
Arielle: Okay, Tom. You are getting a little bit too carried away, but it is true, when you have to sit in a desk all day long, it can be kind of hard to concentrate. But one school is switching it up. Check it out.
Okay, so when I say the word "classroom," you picture something like this, right? Or maybe this, with the desks all lined up in neat little rows. Well, that old classroom style takes a backseat to this.
This class decided to change it up, taking part in what is called flexible seating. The students can choose to sit on exercise balls, a stability disc, high up in regular chairs or low to the ground — wherever they want, really. And the teacher, Mr. Haviland, moves the students constantly.
Craig Haviland: Group A, these two right here or the floor. Hannah, I'll grab you a stylus so you can get going there.
Arielle: He says that movement empowers free thinking.
Haviland: Giving them that choice and allowing them to pick where they sit allows them to take a little more ownership in the classroom. And when kids take ownership of it, they’ll — most times, they'll give you more of an effort.
Arielle: Principal Bill MacDonald agrees.
Bill MacDonald: You look at a traditional classroom, and it — you know, the — you picture the rows facing the front of the room and the teacher up front teaching, but a lot of research now says that that's actually not the best way to engage kids, especially this generation of kids.
Arielle: For a generation constantly on the go, some say encouraging movement makes sense.
Haviland: It allows them to focus, especially some of these kids who really — they need to move around. Whether it's standing, whether it’s on a yoga ball or stability disc, it allows them to really get out some of that energy without being disruptive to the rest of the class.
Arielle: This new classroom set-up also motivates students to take control, like actually teaching in small groups or on a mobile whiteboard. They come up with answers together, kind of like what adults need to do in a workplace office-style environment.
Haviland: Collaborate, communicate, be creative and critically think. So this kind of set-up allows students to work together, to talk together, to share information.
Arielle: Moving students toward a more empowering future.
So what do you guys think? Should students be allowed to choose where they sit in class? Vote and leave your comments on ChannelOne.com.
Tom: Yeah, we are definitely interested to see what you guys have to say about that one. I don’t know about you, Arielle — I totally could have used that when I was in school.
Arielle: Oh no, definitely, me too. Me too.
Tom: All right, that is it for us today. We will see you tomorrow.
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