February 18, 2021 - PBS NewsHour full episode

South Carolina is the latest state to place tough new restrictions on abortions. It is part of a renewed focus on abortion access with a new conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Gavin Jackson, a public affairs reporter for South Carolina ETV, and Mary Ziegler, a Florida State University law professor, join John Yang to discuss.

The storms that have descended on much of the country, and their after-effects, have hit vulnerable groups the hardest, especially communities of color. Dr. Robert Bullard, a professor at Texas Southern University who focuses on wealth and racial disparities related to the environment, joins Stephanie Sy from Sugar Land, Texas to discuss.

In our news wrap Thursday, Democrats formally introduced President Biden’s immigration bill offering an eight-year path to citizenship for 11 million people, protests continue across Myanmar against military coup, thousands of farmers in India staged sit-ins at railroad police stations, and the Labor Department reported new claims for unemployment benefits shot back over 860,000 last week.

The pandemic's toll was highlighted in stark terms again Thursday as the expected life spans fell in the U.S. by a year on average in the first half of 2020. It is the largest drop since World War II, and gaps along racial lines are profound. Dr. Reed Tuckson, Washington, D.C.'s former public health commissioner and a leader in the Black coalition against Covid-19, joins Judy Woodruff to discuss.

South Africa is battling to contain a mutant strain of COVID-19 that has now been found in more than 30 other countries, including in the U.S., which has prompted a raft of travel bans on South Africa. But across Africa itself, borders remain very much open on a continent that has little hope of getting enough vaccines for years to come. Special correspondent Chris Ocamringa reports.

The U.S. is back on the Red Planet after a nearly 300-million-mile journey. NASA celebrated late Thursday afternoon when it landed its latest rover on Mars. The rover is designed to explore new areas of the planet and look for clues for past life there. Miles O'Brien joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the mission.