May 5, 2021 - PBS NewsHour full episode

Brazil formalized a criminal investigation last week into President Jair Bolsonaro’s response to the pandemic. It could lead to his impeachment. The country just passed 400,000 total fatalities so far, with no significant slowdown in sight. With support from the Sloan Foundation, special correspondent Simon Ostrovsky and producer Charles Lyons bring us the first of two reports.

In the past few weeks, a new and large form of COVID-19 relief has opened in the U.S., with the federal government offering to pay for all or most of every funeral of those lost to the disease. Lisa Desjardins reports on the unprecedented scale of help, how the rollout has fared so far, and the questions it raises about the cost of grief in America.

In our news wrap Wednesday, Republican leaders stepped up calls to oust Rep. Liz Cheney as the third highest ranking Republican in the House after she backed President Trump's second impeachment. A federal judge in Washington threw out a national moratorium on evicting renters during the pandemic. Police in San Francisco arrested a suspect in the latest of a series of attacks on Asian Americans.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi joins Judy Woodruff to discuss President Biden's ambitious plans for American infrastructure and families, the price tag associated with them, the fate of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in the Senate, and the investigation into, and fallout from, the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

President Biden announced that the U.S. will support waiving patent rights for the COVID vaccines — a major move that follows a call domestically, and internationally, for America to provide much quicker and greater assistance to the rest of the world. William Brangham looks at the potential impact of this decision and the reaction to it with Madhavi Sunder of the Georgetown University Law Center.

A new book argues the 1970's was a moment when TV, movies, and music all shifted into a new gear, changing the cultural landscape in ways that continue to today. Jeffrey Brown has a conversation with author Ron Brownstein about his book "Rock Me on the Water: 1974-The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics." This segment is part of our arts and culture series, CANVAS.