JOHN YANG: Good evening.

I'm John Yang.

Judy Woodruff is away.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: the North Korea threat.

After the North's most powerful nuclear test yet, the United States and the world struggles with how to deal with Kim Jong-un.

Also ahead: as the damage from Harvey becomes more evident and with cleanup efforts in the early stages, a look at how those still stuck in shelters are coping.

Then, it's Politics Monday.

As Congress returns, we discuss President Trump's reported decision to end DACA and Congress' first step to fund rebuilding after Harvey.

Plus, in remembrance.

We look back at American poet John Ashbery, his influential work and what made the prolific writer unique.

JOHN ASHBERY, Poet: Poetry comes to me out of thin air or out of my unconscious mind.

It's sort of the way dreams come to us.

JOHN YANG: All that and more on tonight's "PBS NewsHour."

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: North Korea has again seized the world's attention with a new nuclear blast.

The weekend test may move Pyongyang a quantum leap forward in its bid to become a nuclear power, capable of threatening the U.S. mainland.

That, in turn, has set off a new diplomatic flurry.

Special correspondent Nick Schifrin reports.

NIKKI HALEY, U.S.

Ambassador to the United Nations: Enough is enough.

NICK SCHIFRIN: For the second time in a week, the Security Council today held an emergency session on North Korea.

And U.S.

Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had slapped the international community in the face.

NIKKI HALEY: His abusive use of missiles and his nuclear threats show that he is begging for war.

War is never something the United States wants.

We don't want it now.

But our country's patience is not unlimited.

NICK SCHIFRIN: And for the second time in a week, South Korea today practiced an attack on North Korea.

The South Korean military fired missiles it said could target North Korea's nuclear test sites.

Today, President Trump agreed to help South Korea increase the size of those missiles, sell South Korea more weapons, and South Korea said the U.S. would soon deploy a carrier strike group and long-range bombers.

Those military moves provide the U.S. with options that Secretary of Defense James Mattis mentioned yesterday.

JAMES MATTIS, U.S. Secretary of Defense: Any threat to the United States or its territories, including Guam, or our allies will be met with a massive military response.

We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea.

But, as I said, we have many options to do so.

NICK SCHIFRIN: But Chinese Ambassador to the U.N. Liu Jieyi said today pressure won't produce peace.

LIU JIEYI, Chinese Ambassador to the United Nations (through translator): The parties concerned must strengthen their sense of urgency, make joint efforts together to ease the situation, and restart the dialogue and talks and prevent further deterioration.

NICK SCHIFRIN: In the last few years, North Korea's missile and nuclear programs have slowly evolved.

But this weekend's test is more than just another step.

JAMES ACTON, Associate, Nuclear Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment For International Peace: I think this is a definitely significant leap in technology.

A thermonuclear weapon is not just an evolutionary change.

NICK SCHIFRIN: James Acton is a physicist and co-director of Carnegie's Nuclear Policy Program.

He says there's no verification yet of North Korea's claim it exploded a hydrogen, or thermonuclear, bomb, but it seems that way.

JAMES ACTON: It was a very large explosion, about 100 kilotons.

That is certainly consistent with a hydrogen bomb.

The day before the test, they released photos of Kim Jong-un standing next to a device that looked like a thermonuclear weapon.

And we also know that they have been trying to develop the materials they would need to build a thermonuclear weapon.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Here's the difference.

An atomic bomb splits a uranium or plutonium atom.

That's fission.

That split creates more splits, and a chain reaction that creates a nuclear blast.

That's the starting point for a thermonuclear bomb.

The fission explosions create enough energy for hydrogen atoms to fuse together.

That's fusion, and it makes a much more powerful bomb.

JAMES ACTON: A thermonuclear weapon can produce yields that are 10, 100, even 1,000 times bigger than a simple atomic weapon.

NICK SCHIFRIN: This was the size of the impact of the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

And this is the size of the impact from this weekend's North Korean bomb.

JAMES ACTON: The Hiroshima test leveled the center of a city.

It killed around about a couple of hundred thousand people.

This bomb is five times bigger.

That kind of gives you some sense of the enormous explosive scale of the weapon that was detonated.

NICK SCHIFRIN: It's not clear if North Korea can miniaturize that kind of bomb, so it can be delivered by a ballistic missile.

But James Acton says it's only a matter of time.

JAMES ACTON: If this wasn't a miniaturized thermonuclear weapon, unfortunately, I have little doubt that North Korea will be able to miniaturize it, will able to do so in fairly short order, and then stick it on the nose cone of a ballistic missile.

NICK SCHIFRIN: A U.S. intelligence official told me today that it's too early to know exactly the bomb that North Korea detonated, but -- quote -- "We're highly confident that this was a test of an advanced nuclear device, and what we have seen so far is not inconsistent with North Korea's claims."

So, for more on all this, we get two views.

Bob Gallucci had an extensive career in nuclear arms control, including as the chief U.S. negotiator with North Korea during the Clinton administration.

He is a professor at Georgetown University and chair of the U.S. Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

And Balbina Hwang served in the State Department during the George W. Bush administration.

She is now a visiting professor at Georgetown University.

And welcome to you both.

Thank you very much.

Bob, I will turn to you first.

Are we at a point where we only have two options, either going to war or somehow accepting what seems to be an inevitable march toward a North Korea with the ability to put a thermonuclear weapon on an ICBM?

ROBERT GALLUCCI, Georgetown University: No, we don't have only two options.

There is, I think, still a possibility.

I think Secretary Mattis said there is always the possibility that negotiations might succeed.

We might be able to roll back, even eliminate the North Korean threat.

It is possible that we will decide, the United States will decide to live with this, to live with deterrence, as we have with the Soviet Union, then Russia and China.

But at this point, there is an awful lot of language being used about how we are not going to tolerate this and not going to put up with it.

If one wishes to do something about the capability, certainly there is a military option, and the secretary's spoken to that, but there's also a possibility of negotiations.

NICK SCHIFRIN: And, Balbina, do you think that, that there is the possibility of negotiations?

There have been negotiations in the past, and we're at a point where North Korea seems to have at least a very large bomb, if not a thermonuclear weapon.

BALBINA HWANG, Senior Policy Analyst, Heritage Foundation: Well, I don't think it's necessarily mutually exclusive, either one or the other.

I think it all depends on what we want to achieve with negotiations.

And, frankly speaker, while we work on whether negotiations might work or not, to establish our goals, are we trying to completely eliminate all of North Korea's nuclear weapon programs and future ambitions?

That's a different story than trying to contain or slow town or even freeze or dismantle its existing programs.

NICK SCHIFRIN: I will just pose, ask another question, a follow-up, though.

The U.S. has talked about denuclearizing -- denuclearizing the peninsula for a long time, and that just doesn't seem like it's going to happen, though, right?

BALBINA HWANG: Well, it's certainly very difficult to, because, how do you negotiate with a party that, first of all, has refused to negotiate, because it won't put the nuclear weapons on the table?

And, secondly, that seems to be the die-hard ambition of this regime.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Bob, can you negotiate with a regime that has a die-hard ambition?

ROBERT GALLUCCI: I recollect doing so a long time in another universe around 1994.

We concluded a deal with North Korea that ended what we knew of as their nuclear weapons program.

It was based on plutonium as the fissile material to drive that weapons program.

And the facilities that would produce the plutonium and separate it were shut down, closed down for eight years while the deal was in place.

And that was their nuclear weapons program.

Now, they, from our perspective at least, cheated on that deal by having secret arrangements with the Pakistanis to bring them another technology for another type of material.

But I would submit to you at this point that the negotiation produced an outcome in which North Korea was without nuclear weapons, when they could have been with nuclear weapons.

And the estimate from the intelligence community of the early '90s was the North could enter the 21st century with roughly 100 nuclear weapons if that deal hadn't been concluded.

OK, it ultimately fell apart.

Agreed.

The question is now, can you have another deal?

Can you have a deal that sticks?

Can we get the transparency we need?

I actually may disagree with my colleague a bit here about whether it is possible to get a deal that denuclearizes the peninsula.

I don't think you can get it in one step.

I think you would have a freeze, you would have a cap.

But I think if we don't have as a declared objective to have a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, then we really undercut the status of our ally South Korea.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Well -- OK, sorry.

Balbina, you go.

BALBINA HWANG: Well, I completely agree with that.

And I do think that we should never take off denuclearization as the goal.

We should remember that it's actually the two Koreas in 1991 that signed an agreement that said that they both wanted to denuclearize.

So, that principle was in place and that was actually the basis of both what you worked on and then also the six-party talks.

NICK SCHIFRIN: But, Bob, very quickly, how can you negotiate today with that same notion of what you brought back in the '90s, when North Korea has seemingly a thermonuclear weapon?

ROBERT GALLUCCI: This is not beyond the minds of men and women to figure out.

If the North will come to the table, if the United States will come to the table without preconditions and begin a discussion, then there are ways to dismantle, take apart nuclear weapons programs.

We did that in the case of Iraq some time ago.

We had an inspection system and we took apart a pretty sophisticated nuclear weapons program.

We certainly can do it in the case of North Korea, if the North Koreans are persuaded that they can achieve their security objectives, achieve their security objectives without nuclear weapons.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Very quickly, I want to ask a question to Balbina about alliances.

I want to read a tweet from President Trump.

He uses the word appeasement.

He wrote: "South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work.

They only understand one thing."

Sorry about that.

We put the wrong tweet up there.

"They only understand one thing."

Is he alienating U.S. allies, Balbina?

BALBINA HWANG: Well, what is really fascinating is that there's nothing that focuses the minds of allies more than when threats seem to become imminent.

So, it's very interesting to watch what South Korea is doing and what President Moon is doing.

He's defying expectations, actually.

I'm rather surprised by how he's reacting to all of this.

And, in fact, President Moon is showing that he really wants to strengthen the alliance.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Bob, quickly, is President Trump alienating a U.S. ally?

ROBERT GALLUCCI: It's hard to put clearly the amount of destructive impact, character that the president has accomplished with just the simple characterization of negotiations as appeasement.

He should want to preserve that option.

His secretary of defense wants to preserve that option.

It may not work.

That may not be the solution to this problem, but we don't want to dismiss it, and we don't want to politicize it with a word like appeasement.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Bob Gallucci, Ballina -- sorry - - Balbina Hwang, thank you very much.

BALBINA HWANG: Thank you.

NICK SCHIFRIN: John.

JOHN YANG: Thanks, Nick.

In the day's other news: Texas officials have raised the death toll from Hurricane Harvey to 60, as the recovery moves slowly forward, even as parts of Houston remain underwater.

Torrents gushed from a swollen reservoir in a controlled release that forced 4,700 more homes to be evacuated.

The top elected official in Harris County, which includes Houston, said the hard work is just beginning.

ED EMMETT, Harris County Emergency Operations Official: Storm's been dealt with, but if two weeks from now, people still have debris, and they don't have a sense that it's going to be picked up, if they don't have a sense that they're going to have housing, if they don't have sense that all levels of government are working together to bring them relief, then all these warm fuzzy feelings we have today are going to be gone.

JOHN YANG: Elsewhere, officials lifted an evacuation order around a wrecked chemical plant outside Houston.

And leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives set a vote for Wednesday on a disaster aid bill totaling $7.9 billion.

Meanwhile, Irma grew, Hurricane Irma drew into a dangerous Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 130 miles an hour and still growing.

Satellite images today showed the storm's advance.

The governors of Florida and Puerto Rico declared emergencies.

The storm is expected to close to the Leeward Islands tomorrow night, before moving toward Puerto Rico and possibly South Florida by the weekend.

Rain and cooler temperatures are helping firefighters in Los Angeles battle the largest blaze in city history.

The fire has been burning since Friday and has swept through nearly 6,000 acres.

But L.A.'s fire chief says damage to homes has been minimal.

RALPH TERRAZAS, Los Angeles Fire Chief: Our people are tired.

I talked to them at length yesterday and last night.

They had a good rest period, a large percentage of them, last night, and that's a good sign.

As long as the weather continues to cooperate, I'm very confident and convinced we will be fine.

JOHN YANG: To the north, crews are struggling with fires and high heat.

At Yosemite National Park today, high winds pushed a fire into a grove of giant sequoia trees that are 2,700 years old.

Officials aren't sure of the extent of the damage.

Lawmakers and activists are bracing for President Trump to stop shielding 800,000 young immigrants from deportation.

The Obama era effort covers people who were brought into the United States illegally as children.

It's widely reported Mr. Trump will announce tomorrow that he's ending the program in six months.

That's to give Congress time to address the issue.

We will have more later in our Politics Monday segment.

The violence against the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar drew growing condemnation across the Muslim world today.

In Russian, Chechnya, tens of thousands of protesters rallied in the capital of Grozny.

They demanded an end to the violence.

In Jakarta, Indonesia, hundreds of Muslim women protested in front of Myanmar's embassy.

The Indonesian president urged Myanmar's leader to act.

JOKO WIDODO, Indonesian President (through translator): We deplore the violence that occurred in Myanmar.

Real action is needed, not just statements and condemnations.

The government of Indonesia is committed to continuing to help address the humanitarian crisis, in cooperation with civil society in Indonesia and the international community.

JOHN YANG: Almost 90,000 Rohingya have crossed into Bangladesh in just 10 days, fleeing a military crackdown.

The government of the largely Buddhist nation says Rohingya insurgents provoked the trouble.

And the electoral commission in Kenya has set October 17 to rerun the presidential election.

President Uhuru Kenyatta was declared the winner over opposition leader Raila Odinga in the August 8 vote.

Last week, the country's Supreme Court nullified the results, citing irregularities.

Still to come on the "NewsHour": we head to Houston, where the massive cleanup continues in the wake of Hurricane Harvey; our Politics Monday team digs into President Trump's apparent plans for so-called dreamers; and much more.

At the height of Harvey's fury in Houston, thousands of people sought refuge in the city's Convention Center.

While the numbers have gone down, for those who are still there, the sense of desperation is still high.

Special correspondent Marcia Biggs has our report.

MARCIA BIGGS: Its been one of the symbols of the Hurricane Harvey disaster, and the George R. Brown Convention Center is still bustling today.

At its highest point since Harvey made landfall 10 days ago, the center was catering to 10,000 people.

Today, only around 1,400 remain as full residents.

But those who remain are seemingly some of the most vulnerable.

®MDNMCHERYL CONLEY, Hurricane Victim: I don't have no and no family.

I mean, if I do, they are just as flooded as well as I am.

MARCIA BIGGS: Cheryl Conley has been here since last Tuesday.

She has congestive heart failure and epilepsy and hasn't been able to reach her landlord, even though she has heard that her apartment is flooded and mold-infested.

How desperate are you to get out of here?

CHERYL CONLEY: On a scale from one to a million, a million.

I'm trying to see why FEMA keeps my status pending, pending, pending, when I have a letter right here from the doctor saying that I'm critical care.

I have congestive heart failure and seizures.

And nobody is doing nothing about it.

MARCIA BIGGS: For now, she says she has nowhere to go.

People like Cheryl are turning to the legion of lawyers set up in the lobby.

Rita Lucido is a private lawyer and activist coordinating the effort.

She says the biggest issues today surround filing for benefits and knowing about renter's rights.

RITA LUCIDO, Attorney: Talk to your landlord about getting your belongings out, if anything's left.

Ask them if it's safe to go in.

And you can negotiate with your landlord to transfer your security deposit to another apartment.

Those are the kind of really very practical legal answers for folks who are in a precarious situation.

MARCIA BIGGS: But renter's rights are way beyond the problems some here are facing.

Donna Morrissey is the Red Cross spokesperson.

DONNA MORRISSEY, American Red Cross: We have a wide array of people with special needs.

We have people who are in wheelchairs, people with very serious medical conditions, people who are homeless.

The point to remember is that there are a lot of significant problems that any city has prior to the storm making landfall, and they are going to be here after the storm clears and we're trying to help rebuild.

MARCIA BIGGS: Cheynna Galvan, homeless for two years, had been living under a bridge.

Her local food pantry shut down during the storm and she came to the Convention Center.

CHEYNNA GALVAN, Hurricane Victim: I was very grateful to have this place to come to.

MARCIA BIGGS: How long will you stay?

CHEYNNA GALVAN: Until I can get out on my feet or until they shut this down.

And then after that, I don't know where I will go.

MARCIA BIGGS: So, in a way, this storm gave you a place to go?

CHEYNNA GALVAN: It did.

It did give me a place to go to.

MARCIA BIGGS: John, as you can see here behind me here, people have been coming and going all day long.

When I asked the Red Cross how long this shelter is going to be open, I was told there is no set date for closure.

JOHN YANG: So, no end in sight, Marcia.

It's now been 10 days since Harvey made landfall.

What sorts of people are there now?

MARCIA BIGGS: It's a real mix of people.

You definitely have those who have gone back to their homes, but they are coming back every day for supplies, for medical help, for legal aid.

But you also have those residents that are still here that haven't been able to go home.

And for them, it's a very bleak picture.

They're homeless.

They have got disabilities.

These are people that have been struggling since way before the storm and these are issues that have just been compounded.

They have been trying to get back on their feet before and they have just been knocked back down.

JOHN YANG: Marcia, the federal officials here in Washington have said that people shouldn't have feared to go to shelters, people who needed food, water, shelters shouldn't have worried about an immigration roundup and they said they'd not be asked their immigration status.

Are people trusting that?

MARCIA BIGGS: There is a lot of fear.

I spoke to one woman today who lives in an apartment complex.

And she was here getting some supplies for people in that building.

She told me that there had been some undocumented workers in her apartment complex that had been evicted because they had been unable to pay their rent.

They hadn't been able to work during the storm.

Of course, they are too afraid to come here for supplies, for shelter and for that necessary legal aid.

This is an issue that is definitely on the minds of the lawyers who are volunteering here.

Of course, they're trying to help those immigrants who still have cases pending.

And, of course, if they don't have a home for their summons to appear in court to plead their case, if they can't receive that summons, then they may be penalized for failure to appear.

JOHN YANG: Marcia Biggs in Houston, thank you very much.

MARCIA BIGGS: Thank you.

JOHN YANG: About 80 miles east of Houston, which is the nation's fourth largest city, Harvey also battered Beaumont, Texas, population of 120,000.

The city is among the hardest-hit in the state.

For the latest on the situation on the ground, I'm joined now by phone by Beaumont Police Chief James Singletary.

Chief, thanks for joining us.

I have got to ask first about the water situation.

Late last week, the water plant shut down because of being swamped by floodwater, and backup pumps went down.

What's the situation now?

JAMES SINGLETARY, Beaumont Police Chief: The water situation now is that we're getting water slowly but surely back to most of our citizens.

It would be a totally different interview to tell you how that happened.

But we had some private industries and working with our water folks and getting it restored.

So that in itself is an amazing story.

But we're slowly but surely getting the water restored.

It's going to be a while before we are going to lift the boil water notice right now.

JOHN YANG: So, people, everyone in the town, in the city still has running water now, is that right?

JAMES SINGLETARY: Not everybody.

But most of them do.

And it is trickling right now in some places.

And some of them are, you know, better than others.

JOHN YANG: What about other conditions, Chief?

Has the water started to recede yet?

JAMES SINGLETARY: Yes, sir.

The water has started to recede.

We have a very big river here next to Beaumont, the Neches River, and it's starting to recede a little bit.

It crested a couple days ago, I think.

So, the water is starting to recede.

There are still about 3,000 homes that we have not been able to get to, to see what their situation is.

We have done a bunch of flyovers with the drones and helicopters, and, gosh, it's just - - it's horrific.

I have lived here my whole life.

I have been a cop for my whole adult life and I have never seen anything like this.

JOHN YANG: Chief, have people been able to get back to their homes?

You say the water is going down.

Have they been able to get back to their homes yet, or is that still a little bit away?

JAMES SINGLETARY: Yes, that still a bit away.

There are still areas that we can't even access.

And it will be a while before some citizens are able to get back to their homes.

And then there's areas north of us and east of us and even south of us that are in pretty bad shape also, but it's going to be a while.

This thing has impacted this us, this area for years to come, I'm afraid, in so many different areas.

JOHN YANG: Chief, I have got to ask you.

You and your force are not only working this disaster.

You are living through it.

I would imagine some of the homes of some of your force have been affected by this.

What's that been like for you, for the men and women of your police department?

JAMES SINGLETARY: Well, that's another horrible thing that's happened to our officers and our city workers.

We have had over 130 of our -- Beaumont's first-responders, the firefighters and police officers and emergency personnel that have been adversely affected or had actually significant damage to their home.

And most of these officers -- and this is what's amazing -- this is why I love these guys -- most of these officers are here working, and they have no idea how bad their homes are destroyed or how badly their homes are damaged.

But they're here working.

And, man, it makes you feel great, if you live here in Beaumont, especially if you're the chief of police.

JOHN YANG: Chief James Singletary of Beaumont, we're glad to hear thing are getting better.

And we appreciate your work, your department's work.

And our thoughts are with you.

JAMES SINGLETARY: You got it.

Thank you very much.

JOHN YANG: Stay with us.

Coming up on the "NewsHour": taking stock of President Trump's promises to help the American worker; and remembering a poet and a musician who left their marks on the arts in very different ways.

But first: Congress returns to work this week facing a growing to-do list.

Among the new items, Hurricane Harvey relief and immigration.

To talk about this on Politics Monday, we're joined by Stuart Rothenberg, a longtime political analyst who is senior editor of Inside Elections, and Amy Walter, national editor of The Cook Political Report.

Stu, Amy, thanks for coming in on this Labor Day.

The president is reportedly ready to do something on DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

The reports are that he's going to sunset in six months to give Congress time to do something about it.

Stu, let me start with you.

What is at stake in this?

STUART ROTHENBERG, Inside Elections: There's a lot at stake for different people.

At stake for the president and his supporters who want to see action on immigration and undocumented immigrants, for the Republican Party, which could easily be ripped apart by this discussion, and most importantly, John, for the 800,000 undocumented immigrants who think of the United States as their home.

They haven't known any other country, any other home.

The stakes are highest for them.

AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: Yes, I think Stu said it perfectly.

And the real question for Congress is, if there were an easy legislative solution, we would have already been there.

This is something that has been going through Congress both during Democratic and Republican administrations.

The divide in the Republican Party is fierce and it even cost one member of the House leadership his seat.

Eric Cantor of course lost in 2014 after suggesting that maybe Republicans should do more on immigration reform, deal with some of the dreamers and illegal immigration.

So this has the potential where it's politically popular.

You see the polling thing trying that the dreamers are a politically popular group of people, but it's politically fraught at the same time.

The question now in my mind is what happens now that Congress, if this is true that finally their feet are put to the fire, a lot like with the Affordable Care Act, where Republicans had run for years and years and years saying, this is a terrible thing, we need to get rid of it?

Now, once forced to deal with it, it was much more difficult, because parts of the bill were popular.

The same may happen with this DREAM Act, where they have been talking about it for years, we need to do something on illegal immigration, put a hard line down, and yet it's also a pretty popular program.

JOHN YANG: And Congress not being able -- or having trouble with this issue is actually how we got here in the first place, is because Congress couldn't do it, so President Obama did it by executive action.

AMY WALTER: Right.

STUART ROTHENBERG: Right.

JOHN YANG: Stu, it is popular.

The polls show people like this program.

Is this going to be an easy lift or a heavy lift?

(LAUGHTER) STUART ROTHENBERG: Really heavy, John.

You're right.

Public opinion seems to be on one side of this issue, but the president and his core supporters seem to be on a different side of this.

Now, look, the president can always say, I'm not making a decision on the substance here, there are constitutional issues, the executive wouldn't be able to do this.

I'm just kicking this over to Congress to make them make the decision, which is both reasonable and untrue in some respects.

And that's this, that Donald Trump already has a history on immigration and the Arpaio pardon, sanctuary cities, Muslim ban, Charlottesville.

The administration is already seen as not particularly tolerant and open to immigrants and undocumented immigrants.

And so I think for him to say, well, it's a constitutional argument, I don't think that's going to carry the day with many people.

He's going to be responsible for this policy if Congress cannot act.

JOHN YANG: And, Amy, this adds to a list of things that Congress is already facing.

They have now got Harvey relief.

They have got to deal with the first vote scheduled for Wednesday.

They have got to raise the debt ceiling.

They got to -- they'd like to pass a budget.

They have got to pass spending bills certainly by -- to fund the government.

And they have got a tax cut.

AMY WALTER: Right.

So it's the proactive and reactive part.

When -- the last time we talked before they went into recess, we thought that it was going to be really just a couple of those things, debt ceiling and government funding, and then to be proactive, to get a tax cut done.

That was really their top priority.

We can get these other things sort of out of their way.

But then Harvey and immigration on top of it makes the tax reform thing that much more difficult.

When you talk to Republicans, their greatest fear coming into 2018 is that they end 2017 without substantive accomplishments and that they have to go to voters in 2018 with sort of a laundry list of they have passed some bills, but nothing that is particularly substantive, nothing that's really going to energize their base.

So having to deal with a whole bunch of stuff that they hadn't planned on doing on top of stuff that is already fraught, that's going to be a challenge.

The one thing though that Republicans do want to do is look as if they are competent.

Get these little things out of the way that normally trip them up, like the debt ceiling.

And I don't mean little, but the things that they should be able to do easily, so that they can get on to the more substantive stuff.

That was their number one concern.

(CROSSTALK) STUART ROTHENBERG: One thing.

I agree with Amy completely.

I would just add one thing.

One thing that we have learned about this president is to expect the unexpected.

We are talking now as if in the next few months, we know the precise number of issues and what those issues are.

The president has a habit of tweeting, I have noticed.

I don't know if you have noticed that.

He has a habit of tweeting, and creating controversies and issues.

So, on top of all this, on top of funding of the government and the debt ceiling and DACA and tax reform, there may be two or three other things that develop because it hits the president's fancy and creates new problems.

JOHN YANG: Well, and also one of the reactive things is North Korea.

How is that going to -- this is sort of looming over everything.

How is that likely to affect... (CROSSTALK) AMY WALTER: Right.

To Stu's point, the tweet about it is something that the members of Congress are going to have to react to and the issue just in general.

But I do think this gets to the issue really of the president and how people view him temperamentally and whether his temperament can meet the time.

Right?

The concern about North Korea now is we don't really know what's happening.

There is a whole bunch that we learned about this weekend that is very troubling, and whether the president himself, his personality is one that a whole bunch of folks question whether temperamentally he can do well by this issue.

It's so dangerous.

And every tweet carries added significance.

And so I think, as we're watching where the public goes and where Congress goes, it is watching to see, again, if his temperament and his tone fits the time that we're in.

STUART ROTHENBERG: And I think that, because of this, there is not the usual rally-around-the-flag effect that we normally see when there is a foreign policy crisis.

AMY WALTER: Yes.

STUART ROTHENBERG: It's not as if there are a whole bunch of Americans rooting for North Korea.

No, that's not the case.

Americans are still rooting for the president, for Congress, for this country, of course.

But there isn't that natural sense that the president has the temperament, the experience, the competence, the forthrightness that we expect from presidents and that get our loyalty and our allegiance.

And so, the president still needs to earn American voters' trust.

And that's a problem at this point in the presidency.

JOHN YANG: Stu, we have got to leave it there.

Stu Rothenberg, Amy Walter, Politics Monday, thanks for joining us.

AMY WALTER: You're welcome.

STUART ROTHENBERG: Thank you.

JOHN YANG: On this Labor Day, the national holiday that celebrates the contributions of America's working men and women, President Trump said tweeted: "We are building our future with American hands, American labor, American iron, aluminum and steel."

Our William Brangham is talk about how President Trump is doing with his pledge to help workers - - William.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That's right John.

As you well know, the president was elected in no small part because he promise to revitalize jobs in America, especially manufacturing jobs.

So, for a look at how American labor has been doing in the Trump era, I talked earlier today with Steven Greenhouse.

He covered the labor movement for The New York Times for many years, and he's currently writing a book about its past and future.

And I started by asking him how the president, who's a billionaire real estate developer from Manhattan, had struck such a strong chord with so many blue-collar workers in the election.

STEVEN GREENHOUSE, Author: My sense is President Trump was very smart in reading workers' concerns and anxieties.

He saw that a lot of workers, especially blue-collar workers in the Midwest, were very concerned about stagnant wages, jobs lost to trade, closed factories.

And he talked very directly and viscerally to them, saying, I'm going to do something about it.

Hillary is not going to do enough about it.

We're going to bring back the jobs.

We're going to get tough with Mexico and China on trade.

And that really resonated with people.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, let's talk a little bit about his record.

The president has been talking about jobs a lot.

He touts his record.

He talks about the Carrier Corporation example.

He talks about coal plants, renegotiating trade deals.

What has his record been on job creation and helping workers?

STEVEN GREENHOUSE: It's unclear to me that he's done much concretely to bring back jobs, except he's been reducing regulations.

And I think that has encouraged many companies.

We have seen over the past few months an increase in manufacturing jobs.

And economists are wondering, why this big increase?

You know, manufacturing jobs were increasing in Obama's last year.

They continue to increase.

The dollar has dropped a good bit since Donald Trump was elected.

That encourages our exports.

And I do think that Trump has excited a lot of business executives and the so-called animal spirits are flowing.

And they're thinking, let's invest.

And he also has, you know, in some of the regulations he's killed, he eliminated, delayed some regulations that help business, but hurt workers.

He sought to delay and perhaps kill a regulation that would make overtime pay available to an additional four million workers.

He's delayed regulations that would protect workers against very dangerous silica dust and beryllium.

He's helping Wall Street firms by delaying and perhaps canceling an Obama regulation that would require investment advisers, Wall Street advisers, to act in the best interest of workers and retirees when they're handling retirement accounts.

He's canceled an Obama administration regulation that requires federal contractors to disclose when they violate wage laws and race discrimination laws and sex discrimination laws.

So I think business has been very pleased that he's eliminating regulations that might make them feel more ready to invest, but on the other hand, some of these moves have really not helped workers.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: As you mentioned, a lot of employers would point to those regulations and say that those are the very things that hinder their ability to create jobs and to grow the economy and to grow the labor pool.

STEVEN GREENHOUSE: There is truth that regulations often create disincentives to investment, but remembering this -- President Trump ran on the platform of, I'm going to be a big friend of workers, I'm going to help you out.

And in virtually every regulation that he's acted on, he's acted for business and against workers.

And he will say, and American business will say, this is good because it's helping to create jobs.

On the other hand -- and President Trump is boasting that, I have created over a million jobs, more than a million jobs have been created since I came into office.

But President Obama's fans, economists will say, but actually the rate of job growth has been slightly slower under Trump, about 170,000 a month since January, than it was in Obama's last six months.

Now, it's possible with all these regulations removed that job growth will increase in the next six months, a year, but we will see what happens.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: There is a fair amount of polling out there, including a recent poll by Gallup, and indicates that workers, middle-class workers, feel that they are doing better.

They are comfortable about the jobs that are available.

They don't think they are going to be outsourced.

They argue that they are doing better.

Do you think that that optimism is real, and should President Trump get some credit for that?

STEVEN GREENHOUSE: I think President Trump should get some credit.

I think Obama should get some credit.

Remember, we had the worst economic recession since the Great Depression in 2007 until 2009.

And the economy has really improved slowly, unevenly since 2009.

And, you know, the unemployment rate is down to its lowest point in 16 years.

And Donald Trump gets some credit.

Obama gets a lot of credit for that.

And it's understandable that workers are feeling pretty good, because, with unemployment so low, finally, finally they're thinking they have steady jobs.

Wages are finally starting to increase, still way too slowly.

Wages just increased just by one-tenth of 1 percent last month.

They're up 2.5 percent over the year, slightly more than the inflation rate.

And that's good.

But, again, economists are wondering, with the unemployment rate so low, you know, why aren't wages going up more?

When all these employers are saying I'm having a hard time finding people to fill jobs, why aren't they paying more?

Why aren't wages going up more?

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, Steven Greenhouse, chronicler of the labor movement, thank you so much.

STEVEN GREENHOUSE: Nice to be here.

JOHN YANG: Next, we return to the story of the violence in Myanmar against the ethnic minority group known as the Rohingya.

We look at their plight and the challenges they face after they flee to Bangladesh.

As special correspondent Tania Rashid found earlier this year when this story first aired, they are hardly more welcome in their new home.

We should warn you, some viewers may find parts of this story disturbing.

TANIA RASHID: The island is isolated, covered in bushes, and underwater half of the year.

It's called Thenga Chor, and it lies on the coast of Bangladesh.

It's a hard and long day's boat ride from the nearest port.

This rough spot might be the new home for the Rohingya, a group of more than 300,000 people the U.N. calls the most persecuted minority in the world.

But on a camp on the mainland, Hafez, a Rohingya activist, says that is no place they want to go.

HAFEZ, Activist (through translator): If we go to Thenga Chor, we will get sick.

We can die.

We are used to being here, and we feel safe here.

TANIA RASHID: It's only a relative safety.

Close to half-a-million have fled murder and persecution by the army of Myanmar to seek refuge in camps in Southern Bangladesh.

The Muslim Rohingya have lived in mainly Buddhist Myanmar for centuries, but are viewed as illegal ethnic Bangladeshis by the Myanmar government.

The de facto leader of Myanmar, Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has denied a U.N. charge of ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya'.

But in the last eight months, the numbers of Rohingya fleeing for their lives have surged to more than 70,000.

But now their lives are more precarious than ever before.

Monsoon season and a punishing cyclone damaged many Rohingya settlements.

So, the Bangladeshi government plans to resolve the Rohingya's continued displacement by moving 60,000 of the refugees to this remote island.

Aid agencies like the UNHCR and Human Rights Watch have expressed alarm over the planned relocation.

Our journey to the island was difficult.

We began a week before the cyclone.

We traveled first by ferry, then by a private boat, where a local fishermen agreed to take us to the island.

It was a dangerous journey.

Pirates are known to control these seas and take hostages for ransom.

But the island is not easy to access.

The tides are too high on the bigger ship, so we had to get a smaller boat to take us to the island.

We just made it on the island.

We managed to find a muddy bog to land near, and get us across to the island.

The government has already moved forward with the plan of making the island more habitable by planting trees.

But this local official doesn't want the Rohingyas moving into his district.

He thinks it will create more problems for his community.

MINAZUR RAHMAN, Local Official (through translator): In the past, the Rohingya were related to the drug problem.

They are linked to drugs, linked to smuggling.

Most of the people here, their main livelihood is fishing.

The bad character and influence of the Rohingya people will impact the locals here.

TANIA RASHID: But the Bangladeshi government believe the Rohingyas cross the border at will, with the help of smugglers and corrupt border guards.

The government argues the relocation will guarantee their isolation from the rest of the population.

But the island is formed by river sediment, making it unstable, and it could be eroded in five years' time.

Dr. Ainun Nishat is a leading expert on climate change in Bangladesh.

DR. AINUN NISHAT, Climate Change Expert: The main history of the coastal belt of Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to storm surges and cyclonic weather.

Due to impact of climate change, we believe that the frequency of climate change may not be increasing, but intensity of the storm surges are definitely going to increase.

So, they should be accommodated in good concrete structure, where at the time of emergency people should we -- can be moved to a height of 20 feet and above.

TANIA RASHID: Today, about one million Rohingyas live in apartheid-like conditions in internment camps in Rakhine State of Myanmar, separated from the Buddhist majority.

They have no citizenship, and need permission to marry or to travel outside of their own villages.

On October 9 of last year, Rohingya militants killed nine Myanmar police officers.

The Myanmar military then led a wide and brutal counterinsurgency campaign in retaliation, where they killed more than 1,000 Rohingyas, torched homes and mosques.

The Myanmar government calls these accusations exaggerations and denies charges of ethnic cleansing.

Dil Nawaz is one of 70,000 Rohingya's who fled to Bangladesh.

She was gang-raped by soldiers, and witnessed her husband's murder in front of her eyes.

I'm looking at a photo of her husband who was hacked to death about five months ago, and this is a photograph she took shortly after she was murdered.

DIL NAWAZ, Refugee (through translator): They used a machete on my husband in front of me on the road.

I saw it with my own eyes.

They chopped him into pieces in front of me in a rice field.

Then, the army came and took all the women out to the rice fields and took several women.

Five men took turns raping them.

They took people's gold jewelry, rings and earrings.

They killed some children.

Then they burned all the houses down, followed by the mosque.

Then the military went back to a Buddhist area.

This is why we fled to Bangladesh.

TANIA RASHID: Activist Hafez says they have found refuge here.

HAFEZ (through translator): Bangladesh is small, and overpopulated, but they gave us a place to stand.

This is a big thing.

TANIA RASHID: But like many other Rohingya, he wants a sense of permanence.

HAFEZ (through translator): Instead of sending us to Thenga Chor, if the Myanmar government could, we request that they grant us citizenship.

TANIA RASHID: Forty-five-year old Dilbar hopes for a last-ditch political solution.

DILBAR, Refugee (through translator): If the Bangladesh government and the Myanmar government negotiate a deal and send us back, then we will be happy.

If this doesn't happen, then please bomb us.

We came here, left our homes, rice.

We came here to save our lives.

If we have no peace, then it's better to die.

Our children died there.

We sacrificed everything and came here for peace.

If you take us to the island, it will be like killing us, slaughtering us.

We are like Anthony Scaramucci.

We are nothing.

It won't take much to kill us.

Just bomb us.

Nobody will make a case against you, because we have no ground under our feet.

TANIA RASHID: Their hope, to find that safe ground one day.

But, for now, they remain in limbo, not of this land and not pushed from it.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Tania Rashid on Thenga Chor Island, Bangladesh.

JOHN YANG: Finally tonight, we take some time to remember a great writer and a noted musician.

First, John Ashbery, considered one of the country's most important and influential poets.

He died yesterday in Hudson, New York.

He won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, among many other accolades.

Jeffrey Brown profiled him back in 2007.

Here's an excerpt.

JEFFREY BROWN: For much of his life, John Ashbery has been a walker in the city.

JOHN ASHBERY, Poet: I used to have a little recording device I took around with me, so I could record those and other things that occurred to me while I was walking.

JEFFREY BROWN: The words, phrases and sounds he collected often ended up in his poetry, a body of work that has led him to be considered one of the nation's most important writers of the last half-century.

Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927.

As a young man, he and friends like Frank O'Hara and Kenneth Koch formed what came to be called the New York School of Poetry.

His first book of poems, "Some Trees," was published in 1956.

In 1975, "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" cemented his reputation and earned Ashbery a triple crown, the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and the National Book Critics' Circle Award.

Now, at age 80, he's just garnered a rather different and unusual honor, being named as MTV's first poet laureate.

In all, he's published more than 30 volumes of poetry, criticism and essays, including, in recent months, a new book of verse, "A Worldly Country," and a collection of selected later poems called "Notes from the Air," which includes the poem "This Room."

JOHN ASHBERY: "The room I entered was a dream of this room.

Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.

The oval portrait of a dog was me at an early age.

Something shimmers.

Something is hushed up.

We had macaroni for lunch every day, except Sunday, when a small quail was induced to be served to us.

Why do I tell you these things?

You are not even here.. JEFFREY BROWN: I talked with John Ashbery recently at his New York apartment.

"Notes From the Air," now, is that a good description of where words or phrases come from, from the air, in a sense?

JOHN ASHBERY: Yes, I would say that it is.

Poetry comes to me out of thin air or out of my unconscious mind.

It's sort of the way dreams come to us and the way that we get knowledge from them, through television, old movies, which I watch a lot of.

Lines of dialogue suddenly seem to be part of a poem there.

JEFFREY BROWN: Those "Notes From the Air" that he turns into poems -- yes, he still drafts his poetry on an old typewriter -- have earned him a reputation for being hard to read.

An Ashbery poem often has no clear narrative and a bewildering, if humorous, wordplay.

"We'll party when the millennium gets closer," he writes in the poem "Tuesday Evening."

"Meanwhile, I wanted to mention your feet."

Is it sort of a conversation with yourself going on?

JOHN ASHBERY: Yes.

Very often, not with -- maybe not me with myself, but of two personalities in my head who are arguing and sort of ignoring me at the same time.

JEFFREY BROWN: They're arguing and ignoring you?

JOHN ASHBERY: I sometimes feel that that's what happens.

JEFFREY BROWN: So you have this reputation for being difficult.

Does that bother you?

JOHN ASHBERY: Well, it kind of does, because I think that it precedes my poetry and may discourage people from picking it up and, "Oh, he's so difficult.

I would have to read a book about him before I could appreciate anything that he wrote."

JEFFREY BROWN: Does a poem have to be understood in the way we normally think of understanding language?

JOHN ASHBERY: Well, I never quite understood about understanding.

My ideas for poetry, in fact, tend to come more from music than they do from poetry or literature.

JEFFREY BROWN: What do you mean by that?

JOHN ASHBERY: One listens to a piece of great music, say, and feels deeply moved by it, and wants to put this feeling into words, but it can't be put into words.

That's what -- the music has already supplied the meaning, and words will just be superfluous after that.

But it's that kind of verbal meaning that can't be verbalized that I try to get at in poetry.

JOHN YANG: John Ashbery was 90 years old.

There was another loss in the world of arts and letters.

Steely Dan co-founder and guitarist Walter Becker also died yesterday.

He was instrumental in producing the funky melodies and enigmatic lyrics that captivated an avid following for the band.

Becker and Donald Fagen, a friend from Bard College, founded Steely Dan in 1971.

The band's first album produced a unique sound in rock with memorable hits such as "Do It Again" and "Reelin' in the Years."

Becker's bass and guitar licks would become a signature of the band's jazz-infused sound.

Famously introspective, Becker rarely sought the spotlight.

Steely Dan only toured for two years after their 1927 debut, choosing to focus on producing records.

The band stopped recording in 1981, returning in 1993.

In a statement, Fagen called Becker "smart as a whip, hysterically funny and cynical about human nature, including his own."

Steely Dan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001.

Here's Becker and Fagen performing one of their hits, "Peg," on a 2000 broadcast on PBS.

(MUSIC) JOHN YANG: Walter Becker was 67 years old.

And that's the "NewsHour" for tonight.

Thanks for spending part of your Labor Day with us.

I'm John Yang.

Join us online and again here again tomorrow evening, when Judy will be back.

For all of us at the "PBS NewsHour," thanks.

See you soon.