captioning sponsored by wnet >> hill: on this edition for saturday, january 2: record hospitalizations from covid-19 continue into the new year, as vcinations are being administered at slower rates than hoped. >> first! >> hill: a look back at some of the stories we aired in the unprecedented year of 2020. ♪ ♪ and, singer-songwriter rufus wainwright-- unfollowing the next, on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: sue and edgar wachenheim iii. the anderson family fund. the cheryl and philip milstein

family. barbara ho zuckerberg. the leonard and norma klorfine foundation. charles rosenblum. we try to live in the moment, 'to not miss what right in front of us. at mutual of america, we believe taking care of tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial grp, retirement services and investments. >> for 25 years, consumer provide wireless service that helps people communicate and connect. we offer a variety of no-contract plans, and our u.s.-based customer service team can help find one that fits you. to learn more, visit www.consumercellular.tv. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, a private corporation funded bthe american people. and by contributns to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> hill: good evening, and hospitalizations and deaths

from covid-19 contin n to surge, wirly one-quarter of all confirmed cases globally reported right here intehe united s california reported a record 585 deaths in a single day from ane virus yesterday, and my hospitals there are reaching capacity. unvernor gavin newsom annoced yesterday that thegirmy corps of ers will be sent to upgrade outdated oxygen delivery systems at six los angeles area hospitals. nearly 26,000 californians have died from covid-19. vaccinations continue to roll out more slowly thanredicted. nearly 3.5 million people nationwide have been vaccinate in the past three weeks, according to bloomberg's tally of c.d.c. data. that's about 1% of the population. globally, there are now more than 84 million cases of covid-19. ina tested its vaccine delivery system today as it prepares for a nationwide rollout.

yesterday, india-- with the highest number of cases after the u.s.-- approved emergency authorization for its first vaccine developed by astrazeneca and oxford university.ed the uningdom received its first doses of the astrazeneca- oxford vaccine today. the u.k. was the first country to approve that vaccine on wedsday. health officials there are aiming to vaccinate as many as twoillion people per week. in northwest france, where a nationwide curfew is in effect, an underground new year's eve rave drew at least 2,500 people. edlice said that more than 1,200 people were finor gathering illegally. authorities urged all of those who attended to quarantine for seven days. more republican senators, led by texas sator ted cruz, say they will challenge the electoral college certification vote this wednesday. 1n a joint statement toda senators said they will object to the electol college returns unless congress appoints "an

electoral commission, witfull investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct a emergency ten-day audit of the election returns isthe disputed tates." the group cites as precedent an nvestigation of fraud charges in the election of 1876. the statement acknowledges that the certification of president- elect joe biden's win is likely. this challenge is separate from o miouri republican senator josh hawley. with objectionsrom one senator nd one house member, the house and sate will be required to hold debates on the electoral college votes before certification. a federal judge threw out a lawsuit filed by texas congressman louie gohmert and several arizona reblicans that sought to force vice president mike pence to help tip the ection to president trump. the judge, a trump appointee, ruled late yesterday that gohmert and the others lacked standing to sue. the lawsuit was filed ahead of

wednesday's congr sional vote certify president-elect joe biden's victory in the electoral college. vice president peho thehat only constitution requires to preside over e certification, has the authority to decide whether some of ben's electoral votes should be rejected. election law exper have widely rejected gohmert's arguments. president trump and his ales have filed some 50 lawsuits s;hallenging election resu nearly all have been dismissed or dropped. iran announced today that it intends to expand its enrichment of uranium. the he of iranilian nuclear program said the country ncrease production to 20 purity "as soon as possible." the united nations' international atomic energy agency said iran had informed its inspectors of the decisi in a letter received yesterday. iran has reached thileveof enrichment before, but stopped after the country agreed to the

2015 joint comprehensive plan of action kno as the iran nuclear deal. president trump withdrew the u.s. from that agreement in 2018. 20% purity is well below the 90% purity needed for weapons, but it far exceedshe limits by the 2015 deal. the announcement comes one day ofore the first anniversa the assassination of iranian general qassem soleimani, which sihas raised ts between washington and tehran. on hill: for the latest na and international news, visit www.pbs.org/newshour. >> hill: as we wrap the holiday season, we want to bring you more from our team of producers and reporters here at newshour weekend. hari sreenivasan spoke producer laura fong about some en the segments she's working on throughout the year. >> sreenivasan: laura, one of the things that we noticed early into lockdown, was schools shutting down, and graduates--

especially high school graduates-- having to deal with graduating in vid. you did a story on that. >> when everything was shutting down, i-- i immediately thought of students, actually. i did teach for america for two years. and ihought about how are students, especially in that senior year, how are they going to deal with graduation? i found a drive-in in kentucky that was doing it, and they connected me with the local high school. and i got to speak with two seniors and the mom of one of ose seniors. and they were just such a special community that was trying to make this experience as special and as safe as possible. it was the first-of-its-kind for eminence high school's graduating class in eminence, kentucky, less than an hour east of louisville. >> madison heading oor our senior parade! >> in normal times, the students wouldreake a cenial walk through the halls of school called the

"senior walk," but, this year, they adapted it for social distancing and called it the "senior parade." the students were so hble. they knew that they wereissing out oneir senior trip, which they've been looking forward to for years. but ths ey knew that this what they need to do, and they adapted, and everyone in the whole community showed up for them. >> sreenivasan: one of the stories you and i did when we weew all filming together in york was about the gig economy and about how it's affecting drivers, whether the lyft drivers or taxi drivers. and there was a big kind of election-focused story in california, prop 22. what was it about? what happened? >> prop 22 is a ballot measure that app companies like uber, lyft, doordash got on the november ballot. more than $181 million towards the "yes on prop 22" campaign, making it the most expensive bitallot tive in california history. they wanted to overturn a law

that the state legislature passed saying that their drivers needed to be classified as employees, giving them this-- you know, the protections and benefits of employees. it di% d get the vote. as a result of this law passing, they are going to be making sure that all their drivers have 120% of the minimum wage, which you tiuld hope they would be g anyways, but there are cases where these drivers were not gt.etting tha it could happen in other states if uber and lyft lobby other states to pass a laeithat allows r workerthere to also be considered independent contractors with these added benefits, because there are lawsuits pending in other states regarding the classification of whether or not these workers are employees. >> sreenivasan: one of the farthest afield that we have ever gone on newshour weekend was a story that you and mori rothman shot out in the rose atoll, a tiny speck of a piece of land way out in the pacific.

you stopped at american samoa on the way, did some stories there. d american samoa is a place that has, what, no or almost no coronavirus cases? what happens when the government decides to absolutely shut down a border, which you can do a lot easier when you're an island? >> there's a lot of islands that have taken the stance of being extremely strict about closing its borders, and that's because of the limited medical resources that they ha. the consequence of this is, they have estimated 562 residents who are stranded here in the u.s. >> what time are you going to come back home? when are you going to come back home >>ti aina is stranded in honolulu, hawaii, 2,600 miles away from his home, his wife danielle and their six kids. there is a provisional date set for the first flight, but at this point the res who i've spoken to, they don't know if they're going to be oifthat flight ot's going to be delayed. >> sreenivasan: now, a lot of our viewe don't know that ou're one of the producers who are there every saturday and

sunday dealing th the breaking ews, usually kind of the lead story or the top story that we're dealing with. this has been a pretty outrageously phenomenal nine months to be in the news thsiness. ere's been so much information there. are there days that stick out to you? >> the first one i could think of was when john lewis passed. wehe were on-- on-callthat happened, and he had, you know, such an impact on so many lives. shout out to sally garner, our news editor. she-- she wrote the obit, and i pulled all thessets and cut it together, and we-- we made it work. we are constantly just tryg to keep on top of all the news conferences, especlly in those early months where there was, like, back-to-back conferences from the white house: >> adding to the confusion, the idpresident e would not be wearing a mask. >> i don't think i'm going to be doing it. >>rn frogos: >> can we handle that number of cases at the high point of the cu>>rve? it was-- it was a lot. i'll-- i'll be honest, it was--it was a blur. >> fedel government's top infectious disease expert, dr. anthony fauci, warned today that the coming surge of cases

coronavirus pandemic could cause more than 100,000 >> i did look back on some of our new summaries from those early days, and it is startling to think about hh of those predictions came true, if not more true. some of the predictions of how many people were going to pass, i mean, it seemed unbelievable at the time. >> hill: that was producer laura fong. we continue the conversation with newshour wroeekendcer zachary green, who has a round-up of some of hntis segfrom last year. >> sreenivasan: zach, we did a lot of stories about race and equity this year. one of them was you diving ba into a debate from 55 years ago. tell us about it. >> well, this was a debatthat took place in 1965 between william f. buckley, the founder of the "national review," and james baldwin, the author and dssayist and playwright civil rights activist, among many other things. or not the american dream comesr atthe expense of black people

in amica. and this was a debate that i was kind of slightly obsessed withr e better part of seven years, i'd say. book about it.ublished a his name is nicholas bucola. he's a professor of political science. the book is called "the fire is upon us." >> it just seemed to me just suca amatic moment and ch an important one. so, these two movements that did so mtoucefine 20th century political history, to have these two finigures clawas just - just irresistible. >> what was really utscinating at was just seeing the way that the same issues that se urround race that weeing play out now were the same issues playing out 55 years ago. and when you tch that debate, ou can see that even though times have changed, policies know, we approach race and equity in this country hasn't really changed that much in 55 years. >> sreenivasan: you also took a trip back to your hometown tac see how the lives matter movement was doing there.

why? >> mm-hmm. yeah, i grew up in western massachusetts, in berkshire county. it is a beautiful place to grow up. it's very rural. it's exactly what you think of when you think of quintessential new england. one thing that happened this year that really caught my attention was that my home town of great barrington, massachusetts, wch is a town of, like, a few thousand people, had a very well attended black lives matter demonstration of about a ousand people. you know, that's a huge chunk of ne population to come outd protest in favor of black lives matter. but it also f made me think, what does that mean in the context of everything else that goes on there? because berkshire county is a very white place, but there has always been a black population ng there. i really wanted to reexamine what it was like for other people who didn't look like me growing up where i grew up. >> there's a lot of handed-down generational racism or bigotry that, like, sort of is, like, the underpinning of the berkshires. strangely enough, like, one

of the kids i used to have a huge problemith growing up, one of the kids my daughter had a problem with i came to find t is the son of this dud st one is born intrinsically ra you can tell exactly what is going on with parents by how their children act. >> sreenivasan: one of the other things that, well, you and i did this year was a product called "briefly," whichas a way to try to make sense of those interminably long news briefings about the coronavirus that weren't brief. >> basically, you know, we were sitting, watching these briefings, watching our colleagues report on them and-- hd just kind of feeling a little aghast these things were playing out. you know, the president has a lot of power, and the bully pulpit is maybe the most powerful tool that he has. and the messaging thate were getting was, you know-- you know, was confusing and maybe at worst disingenuous.

we just felt like we had a role to play here, to actually watch through these briefings and see what was said in them that could actually be of use to the icam people. we kind of subjected ourselves to these hour-plus-long briefings and then tried to condense them into a watchable format of, like, you know, five minutes i think was the shortest one, 15 minutes on the long end, to just say, you know, "here's awhat we watche here's what we think you really need to know." >> sreenivasan: we watched so other people wouldn' to. >> that's right. we learned how to say "hydroxychloroquine." >dsreenivasan: and we lear to say it well. >> very well! >> sreenivasan: and repeatedly. zach green, thanks for all your stories. happy holidays. >> you, too, hari. thanks. coming up this month.wards are those, of course, are the record try's highest honors for wide variety of musical styles, plus other audio achievements. but there's no category for

music and dialogue onnline audio services, which bringus to cia recent release by mu rufus wainwright, who has found a unique way to tell the story-- life. least a story-- of his newshour weekend special correspondent tom casciato has more. >> ♪ sometimes i feel like my brain turns to leaves... ♪ >> reporter: rufus wainwright's most recent album is called "unfollow the rules..." >> ♪ unfollow the rules... >> reporter:..and he's always ready to do just that. listen to him disrupt this fluid melo wh a single note. ( discordant piano note ) >> et♪ ses i feel... >> reporter: this is the artist, after all, o earned his first grammy nomination 12 years ago recreating a famed 1961 performance judy garland. >> ♪ we're going to be going to t promised land. ♪ we're heading across the >> reporter: now, he's

unfollowed the rules again with a unique audio autobiography called "road trip elegies." >> ♪ there's no business like show business, like no business i know... ♪ >> reporter: it combinrf mance with conversations held on an almost 400-mile car trip from his hometown of montreal all the way to neyork city, conversations with his therapist. >> i just had this vision all of a sudden of creating, like, a kind oonf podcast-type situa but involving both my therapy ♪ ...smile when they all know... ♪ >> reporter: and, of course, it beingra t, there's a lot about his parents. rufusle's mother, kate mcgarr was an accomplished performer who joined her sister anna to become one of canada's great singer-songwriter duos. >> ♪ some say a art is just like a wheel ♪ when you bend ityo can't mend it. ♪ wainwright iii, is another noted

sing-songwriter, known to sing a song or two about fathers and sons. >> ♪ when i was yr age, i thout i hated my dad ♪ and that the feeling was a mutual one that we had ♪ we fought each other day and night... ♪ er>> both my parentsvery successful in their field, and o was made awathat and-- and really participated in that from a very yanoung age. i-- i always have embraced this family tradition. >> ♪ that pass examination di so well for me that ♪ now i am the rulers f the queen'vy. ♪ >> ♪ that pass examination did so well for me that... ♪ >> reporter: have you always embraced it?th becausere was a point in the story where you say that your aunt anna... >> yes. >> reporter: ...tells you that-- almost that you have to embrace >> yes, yes. well, yes, i-- i've always embraced it, i think probably 90%. ( chuckls ) my mother sadly passed away about ten years ago.er and, iestingly enough-- and this, this connects to therapy-- is that it was, onceied, i actually realized that there

were moments that i was quite angry for having been pushed into this profession. >> reporter: it was through his mother kate's and his mutual love of opera, rufus says, that they always connected. with his father, it was broadway shows. >> wh wen about six or seven, i saw "annie" on broadway, and i was utterly transfixed! and i immediately told my mother that i wanted to be annie. and my m, who didn't miss a beat, atimmey told me that in fact there were certain productions in nether regions of canada where they do "annie" with all boys. and she said, "if... when one these auditions come up, you know, she'll-- we'll go and we'll-- u know, yeah, you could play annie." none of that existed. ( laughter ) that was completely false. >> reporter: all these years about your mother?t tell you

>> well, my mom was was-- was really put all of ergy- and into-- into training her children, both my sister and i, my sister martha, training to be on the stage. i mean-- andhe wasn't-- and -- i don't mean that she was a stage mother because that's very different. it wasn't about, li, pushing us. like, she didn't want us to do commercials. she didn't want to put us in-- on tv or anything. but she wanted us to really know music intimately and really be mastersf our craft. so, i'm now going to do a song fro"annie." ( laughter ) ♪ ♪ maybe far away... >> reporter: rufus' relationship with his mother was complicated. as "road trip elegies" tells it, kate was less than enthusiastic upon learning of her son's sexual identity. one day, my mom discovered

some dirty magazines under my bed. classic story. and i-- i got home, and she was insitting in the lroom. she had a scotch in one hand and a cigarette in the other. and i sat down, and all she said to me was, "rus, don't tell me so.thing i don't want to he it was not an ideal situation with both mparents, actually. but, i mean, i spent more-- most time with mmother. she wasn't a religious person, necessarily, but she had, you know, been brought up by nuns and stuff, so i think that kind of happened. also, i-- i came out very young. i was only 13 when i-- when i started really know what was going on. and that was a very scary time, you know, with aids. and so, i think she was-- there was a lot of fear there. yeah, yeah. she wasn't-- she wasn't great about that. but-- but we-- we came to terms eventually. >> reporter: some 24 years later, it would be no coincidence, he says, that he would write his fit opera

about a diva losing her voice riasghis mother was losing her life to cancer. an avid cross-country skier, kate mcgarrigle drew the image that would mark the front of her gravestone. >> i did a drawing for her that wason, like, a-- a banjhe ocean. and then, these are some of her lyrics: "let the sun set on the ocean, i will watcit from the shore. let the sun rise over the redwoods, i'll rise wh it till i ise no more." and that's from acaong she wrote led "mendocino." and so, i put my little illustration on the back. ♪ i bid farewell to the state of old new york... ♪ >> reporter: there's much more to "road trip elegies," more music... >> ♪ ...in the sta of new... >> reporter: ...plus tales of boarding school, his complex relationship with his father,

support he received from songwriting master leonard cohen, even a therapeutic breathrough of sorts involving his paternal grandmother, whom he credits as his greatest supporter when he was young. >> ♪ ...in new york state. >> reporter: and while they mayi nove out awards for projects as hard to categorize as "road tr egies," they do for albums like "unfollow the rules." >> yes, yes. d i will say my recent grammy- nominated album, "follow the rules." ( laughs ) >> reporter: the record is up for a 2021 grammy award for b traditional pop album. one of its rivals? renee zellweger doing the songs from her biopic of judy garland. you're up against a judy garland album, renee zellwegger's album. >> i know, i know, i know. eporter: and you invented doing judy garland while not... >> and actually, my-- my judy record was nominated for the very same category many years ago. and, you know, look, i adore-- i-- i'm quite good friends with renee, and i thought her job on vithe was fantastic, you

know, but we'll keep it there because if she-- well, i-- may the-- whoever wins is great. may the best judy win. ( chuckles ) >> hill: that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. for the late news updates, visit www.pbs.org/newshour. thanks for watching. stay healthy, and have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >>ma pbs newshour weekend i possible by: sue and edgar wachenheim iii. the anderson family fund. bernard and denise schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. barbara hope zuckerberg. the leonard and norma klorfine foundation.

charles rosenblum. we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's right in front of us. at mutual of america, we believe taking care of tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and investments. additional support has been provided by: consumer cellular. and by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, a private co oamerican people. the and by contributions to your fpbs statio viewers like you. thank you. you're watching pbs.

robert: craft and art are core to the democracy that we have here in the united states. s rebecca: tthsonian institution is the largestex museum compl in the world,la and it's a p where people come to learn about what it means to be an american. joanne: i think that as a nation, we're still grappling with the legacy of race that startedhe withnslavement of black people in this country. this museum is one of the places where we withnslavement of help people grapple with that. teri: we chose 21 women to help us understand what this exhibit was gonna be about. native women are quite used to doing this, working together in ourommunities. this is how we've survived. monica: to be able to have veterans in the height of their craftsmanship come into the library of congrs to tell their acory is democracy in tion.