March 18, 2021 - PBS NewsHour full episode

After this week's shootings in Atlanta, we explore the congressional response to rising violence against Asian Americans with Democratic Rep. Judy Chu of California. Chu is the chair of the congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and testified on the “crisis point that cannot be ignored” at a Capitol Hill hearing Thursday.

As the nation deals with the aftermath of this week's shootings in Atlanta that killed eight, including six Asian American women, a troubling new report from the Anti-Defamation League shows white supremacist propaganda, including racist, anti-semitic and anti-LGBTQ material, nearly doubled in 2020. Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the organization joins Amna Nawaz to discuss.

In our news wrap Thursday, the U.S. will send a combined 4 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine to Mexico and Canada, the European Union’s drug regulatory agency said the vaccine does not pose a significant threat of blood clots, the fight over wearing face masks sparked fireworks at a U.S. Senate hearing, and powerful storms rolled across more of the deep South.

The number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. have reduced substantially since the height of the last wave, but with states reopening widely those numbers are spiking again. New data shows the development of several hotspots, with new cases up in 15 states over the past week. Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University, joins William Brangham to discuss the rise.

Today in Moscow, the U.S. and half a dozen other countries are holding a summit on the best way to end the war in Afghanistan, launched by the U.S. nearly 20 years ago. President Joe Biden recently said it would be "tough" to pull American troops out of the nation by May as planned by the Trump administration. How does that affect the prospects of peace in the country? Nick Schifrin explores.

Filmed before the Georgia shootings, writer Te-Ping Chen shares with us her "Humble Opinion" that people with ethnic names must embrace them instead of shying away. Chen, who says she was given a "boy's name" at birth, looks back on how it crafted her life. It's a reflection on heritage and how, in the melting pot of America, a name can become a concrete link to family traditions.

Nearly eight weeks have passed since President Joe Biden lifted one of the Trump administration's most controversial policies — the "Muslim ban." Still, some critics believe that Biden has not moved quickly enough to reverse all of his predecessors' policies as families continue to be separated at the border and are blocked from entering the U.S. Special correspondent James Fox has the story.

This week marked the 52nd straight week of high unemployment claims, with numbers rising as more than a million people filed for state and emergency federal unemployment benefits across the country. One state, Rhode Island, is working to reverse that trend by matching several thousand job-seeking residents with potential employers. Paul Solman has the story for our series, "Work Shift."