President Donald Trump: for a Religious Leader to Question a Person's Faith Is Disgraceful

Elaine Welteroth: Hi guys, I'm Elaine Welteroth. I’m the editor-in-chief of “Teen Vogue,” and Channel One News starts right now.

Emily: Thanks to Elaine Welteroth for starting off our show. Coming up, Azia gets a sneak peek into what is going on at “Teen Vogue.” I am Emily Reppert, and first up today, the leader of the free world meets the leader of the Catholic Church.

A face-to-face meeting for President Trump and Pope Francis at the Vatican in Rome — the polite meet-and-greet was a bit different than what we heard on the campaign trail.

President Donald Trump: For a religious leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful.

Emily: When asked about the border wall proposal, Pope Francis said it is not Christian to build walls instead of bridges. Mr. Trump fired back.

Trump: I don't like fighting with the pope, actually. I don't think this is a fight.

Emily: The two leaders have totally different views on many issues. President Trump tried to ban Syrian refugees, while Pope Francis personally took in 12 Muslims who had washed up on Greek shores back to Rome on his papal plane.

After yesterday's closed-door meeting, the pope appeared to give a gentle nudge to change the president's mind on climate change, which President Trump has previously called a hoax. The pope gave him three books, including one he described as focusing on "the care of our common home — the environment," and Trump gave the pope a custom-bound set of the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

President Trump finishes his first international trip on Saturday. Already, he has visited holy Muslim, Jewish and Christian sites.

All right, coming up, one teen fashion magazine is digging deeper these days with its coverage.

Emily: From clothing trends to makeup tips, fashion magazines have you covered when it comes to what is hot and what is not. But one mag is raising the bar when it comes to its content. Azia Celestino sat down with the editor-in-chief of “Teen Vogue” about tackling the tough issues.

Azia: “Teen Vogue,” a magazine known for fashion, beauty, pop culture and — politics?

1 | P a g e Welteroth: "Teen Vogue” was always known as the sort of go-to for every young, stylish girl. And for a long time, that worked for us. But the world has changed so much and so drastically in these last, you know, couple years.

Azia: “Teen Vogue” surprised a lot of other news organizations in the last few months, tackling tough issues like the presidential election and the Dakota Access pipeline protests. We sat down with Editor-in-Chief Elaine Welteroth.

Welteroth: We started covering politics well before, you know, the campaign cycle and the election. It has only underscored how important it is for us to focus on delivering political news and news on social issues that matter to our audience.

Azia: Phillip Picardi is “Teen Vogue's” digital editorial director. He oversaw the publishing of important stories about social justice issues and politics as they were happening.

Phillip Picardi: We were covering themes of sexuality and sexual health, gender identity and expression, Black Lives Matter and police brutality. A lot of media organizations were afraid to potentially rise up in those moments, and we looked at those moments as educational opportunities for our audience to show them how they should be reacting and how we should be representing ourselves in our communities at this point in time.

Azia: Those stories created a new platform for young people that went viral in print and online.

Picardi: From two years ago to now, the site when I first started was at 2 million unique visitors a month, and now we're at twelve and a half million unique visitors a month.

Azia: Visitors that no longer include only teen girls but teen guys, veteran news journalists and even politicians. Now the magazine is using its influence to reach past social media and help educate the next generation of active citizens.

Picardi: How are you not just following what's happening, retweeting, sharing passively — how are you participating actively? We need to make sure that we are creating an audience that is reinforced to be engaged and encouraged to be engaged in the world in which they live.

Azia: This year, “Teen Vogue” began publishing quarterly print issues, recently releasing Volume II: The Music Issue.

2 | P a g e Welteroth: It will blow your mind; it's totally uncensored. And Chance the Rapper talks about growing up with Barack Obama as his mentor. We’re really excited about Solange to write a letter to her teenage self, and Paris Jackson, of course, talks about using her platform for raising awareness on the issues that matter to her.

Azia: The expansion in coverage has many describing “Teen Vogue” as “woke,” but the title is way more than just a catchy slang word.

Welteroth: There's this quote that a friend of mine, DeRay Mckesson, who is one of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement, shared with me: “People aren't born woke. It's up to us to create moments of awakening.” For me that captures it. That is our mission at “Teen Vogue.”

Azia: A movement that is turning up the volume to wake up the world to the power of young people. Azia Celestino, Channel One News.

Emily: Very cool story. Thanks, Azia.

All right, coming up, what is black and white and rapidly declining due to climate change? We will tell you when we get back.

Emily: This week, President Trump unveiled his budget for 2018, and there are plenty of cuts to go around. The proposed budget would cut over $2 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency and chop 15 climate-related programs, which leaves many scientists wondering about the future of funding their research. But Demetrius Pipkin has some new ways money might pour into saving the climate.

Demetrius: Emily, we often hear about how tourism can harm the environment with its increased pollution and possible natural habitat loss. But in this case, ecotourism — or environmentally friendly travel — might just save scientific research into climate change.

The U.S.–Antarctic research base at Palmer Station shares this rocky shoreline with some unique neighbors. The Adelie species of penguin has nested nearby in the tens of thousands. They are the penguins that were the inspiration for the movie “Happy Feet,” though they are apparently not so happy anymore. Researchers say their numbers are dwindling.

Man: We’re counting the penguins every year. These local islands where we've been censusing for — it’s 43 years now — have declined by about 85 percent. The numbers on this island at their peak were almost 9,000, and this year, it was about 1,200.

3 | P a g e Demetrius: At first it was thought that, as the weather warmed here, the penguins might have moved further south, looking for the sea ice that they need to hunt from. But they hadn't.

Man: We do work other places down the peninsula, looking for them. Correct, not finding them.

Demetrius: And it is not just the sea ice that is retreating. There is a spectacular glacier next to the base that gets less spectacular every year. And as the climate changes here in Antarctica, so does the ecosystem, from the penguins all the way up the food chain.

John Durban: One of the reasons we study top predators is to understand the health of the ecosystem that supports them.

Demetrius: Using modern gear, a camera mounted on a drone, this small pod of killer whales is getting a health checkup. The results are troubling: a whale that has lost all of the fat along her body, a dying whale. And their best guess why? Well, the pack ice around which they normally hunt is not as abundant as it used to be; neither are the seals they hunt for.

Durban: There's a problem with their food supply.

Demetrius: But more research is needed to understand what is happening in the remote Antarctic region, but its location makes getting the latest technology down there more difficult, making the research more expensive.

Woman: It costs hundreds of thousand dollars if you were going to charter a research vessel.

Demetrius: And under the new administration, what little funding they did have could soon be in jeopardy.

Man: Well, we've already gotten indications from our federal funding agencies, particularly the National Science Foundation, that we should anticipate budget cuts.

Demetrius: So now scientists are getting creative. Tourists, like Lori Fey from Austin, who is up for just about anything, say they are willing to pay a premium to get up close and personal with one of nature’s most serene and beautiful landscapes.

Lori Fey: I really think it's a shame that the science is in the crosshairs of politics because it doesn't take much to understand that we are having a detrimental effect, collectively, on the world.

4 | P a g e Demetrius: And without the tourist excursions, these researchers would have never been able to come down to Antarctica.

Woman: It's a wonderful relationship that we have.

Demetrius: The tourists are effectively funding the science. They come for the experience but leave with much more than memories. They leave with knowledge — knowledge of a dying ecosystem, but thanks to their tourism dollars, they are giving researchers a chance to save it before it is too late.

Demetrius Pipkin, Channel One News.

Emily: And if you can't make it to Antarctica to see the penguins, no worries. We have got a list of fun facts on penguins up on ChannelOne.com.

All right, that is it for us today. We will see you guys right back here tomorrow.

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