March 16, 2023 - PBS NewsHour full episode

With the 2022 election, Democrats in Minnesota took control of both chambers of the state's legislature for the first time in nine years. Gov. Tim Walz joined the state's House and Senate leadership in pushing reforms like voting rights for felons and driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants. The reform latest safeguards the rights of trans people. Gov. Walz joined Geoff Bennett to discuss.

The national nursing shortage dates back decades, but the COVID-19 pandemic pushed it to crisis levels. One study predicts that in the next two years, there will be a shortage of up to 450,000 bedside nurses in the U.S. Stephanie Sy explores how the medical staffing shortage is affecting patients and why nurses are leaving hospitals for other jobs.

Many Americans are watching and waiting to see if Congress will address two major issues facing the country right now, the financial security of banks and immigration at the southern border. Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren has spent a career focused on both. She joined Congressional Correspondent Lisa Desjardins to discuss the issues.

The Chinese parent company of TikTok says the Biden administration is pressuring it to sell to an American firm or face a national ban. Nick Schifrin reports on the national security concerns of the hugely popular video app and Amna Nawaz discusses TikTok's future with Matt Perault of the University of North Carolina's Center on Technology Policy.

The CDC released two reports about mortality rates for mothers and babies in America and they include some stark racial divides. New mothers are dying at higher rates than mothers in any other industrialized nation. And while the overall rate of infants dying is at record lows, the deaths of Black infants spiked during the pandemic. William Brangham explores the trends with two of the researchers.

In our news wrap Thursday, it was another turbulent day in the financial world with news of rescues of troubled banks on both sides of the Atlantic, prosecutors in Virginia charged 10 people in the smothering death of a Black man at a state mental hospital and the Pentagon released video showing a Russian fighter jet intercepting a U.S. surveillance drone over the Black Sea.