captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening, i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight, a critical crossroads-- the republican party weighs punishing liz cheney for decrying "the big lie" of a stolen election. then, one on one-- former secretary of defense and c.i.a. director robert gates discusses american foreign policy, the biden administration, and the state of the republican party. and, aid from afar-- many indian doctors living in the u.s. reach out to their homeland to help as the country's coronavirus crisis grows ev more dire. >> you have your day job. you take care of patients he when it's morning in india, it's night here. so you stay up through the night talking to your friends and family trying to help out as

many people as you could there. >> woodruff: all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> at fidelity, changing plans is always part of the plan. >> the kendeda fund. committed to advancing restorative justice and meaningful work through investments in transformative leaders and ideas.

more at kendedafund.org. >> carnegie corporation of new york. supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement, and the advancement of international peace and security. at carnegie.org. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions: and individuals. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: the push to waive

patents on covid-19 vaccines, to make them more available globally, is accelerating after the united states endorsed the idea. french president macron voiced support at a vaccine center today, in a bid to increase production for poorer nations. >> ( translated ): i completely favor this opening up of the intellectual property. the strangle points that complicate access to the vaccines will, at some point, be the price and access to intellectual property. today, it is technological transfer and the capacity to produce. >> woodruff: german chancellor angela merkel spoke out against a patent waiver today. ultimately, the world trade organization, with 164 members, will decide, but opposition from just one could derail the effort. we'll return to this later in the program. in india, the covid emergency is growing ever more desperate. new infections have topped 400,000 for a second time, with nearly 4,000 deaths in 24 hours.

hospitals in new delhi and elsewhere are in crisis, and the government today sharply increased medical oxygen shipments under court order. u.s. secretary of state antony blinken warned today that global vaccinations must move faster. he said in an interview that, "if we don't do more, if the entire world doesn't do more, the world won't be vaccinated until 2024." blinken spoke in ukraine, where he also reassured president volodymyr zelenskyy of u.s. support and said russia's recent massing of troops was reckless. >> we are aware that russia has withdrawn some forces from the border of ukraine, but we also see that significant forces remain there, significant equipment remains there. we are monitoring the situation very, very closely. >> woodruff: blinken also urged ukraine to step up efforts against internal political corruption. a police raid in rio de janeiro,

brazil left 25 people dead today, including one officer. heavily armed suspects leapt from roof to roof to escape the firefight. authorities said the operation targeted a gang of drug traffickers. at least 10 suspects were arrested. back in this country, president biden pitched his infrastructure plan, worth $2.3 trillion, in republican louisiana. he spoke in lake charles, in front of a bridge that he said was 20 years past its intended lifespan. the republican mayor appealed for federal aid. the president also stopped in new orleans. florida is the latest republican-run state to impose new voting rules, including limits on mail-in ballots and drop boxes. governor ron desantis staged a bill-signing today on "fox and friends." he argued the changes will stop fraud, and suggested he would have gone even further.

>> i'm not a fan of drop boxes at all to be honest with you but the legislature wanted to keep them. but they need to be monitored. you can't just leave these boxes out where there is no supervision where there are in all hours of the night. so the drop boxes will be available only when they are monitored and during regular voting hours. >> woodruff: opponents said the measure makes it harder for the elderly and minorities to vote, and they quickly filed suit to block it. a national moratorium on evicting renters during the pandemic will stay in effect for now. a federal judge in washington, d.c. had initially ruled that the centers for disease control had no authority to impose the ban. late wednesday, she put the ruling on hold, to consider the justice department's appeal. new jobless claims have dropped to a pandemic low. they fell by nearly 100,000 last week, to 498,000. the labor department also

reports that productivity rebounded in the first quarter, rising at an annual rate of 5.4%. and, on wall street, banks and tech stocks led a broad rally. the dow jones industrial average gained 318 points to a record close-- 34,548. the nasdaq rose 50 points, the s&p 500 was up 34. still to come on the newshour: the arizona g.o.p. continues an election audit despite zero evidence of fraud. a wide-ranging discussion with former secretary of defense and c.i.a. director robert gates we examine the logistical challenges of sharing vaccines with countries in need. and much more.

>> woodruff: now to a leadership shake-up in the g.o.p. and a critical moment for republicans. internal divides over last year's election and the future of the party have again come to a head, as house republicans seem to be moving to replace their number three leader. lisa desjardins has our report. >> desjardins: a party leader, but for how long? house republicans seem to have had enough of their conference chair-- wyoming congresswoman liz cheney, and within days are expected to oust her from g.o.p. leadership. it's a stunning turn of events in just three months... >> the number one thing that happened in this conference was unity. >> desjardins: ...when republican leader kevin mccarthy and cheney together resoundly defeated another attempt to remove her. >> we're not going to be in a situation where people can pick off any member of leadership. >> desjardins: in a secret ball, two thds of republicans supported her over inner-party critics like florida

representative matt gaetz, who flew to cheney's home district to campaign against her. >> you can send liz cheney home. >> desjardins: a staunch conservative and daughter of republican vice president dick cheney, the congresswoman was seen as a rising star on the right when she won the leadership position back in 2018. >> we will take a backseat to no one. >> desjardins: but that all changed after january 6. cheney was one of 10 house republicans who joined democrats in impeaching former president donald trump for his role in the insurrection. defending her vote, she released a blistering statement that president trump “lit the flame of [the] attack.” >> the extent to which following january 6, i don't believe that he should be playing a role in the future of the party or the country. >> desjardins: but president trump has kept a commanding role in the party and continued to blast falsehoods about november, this week declaring it “the fraudulent presidential election of 2020,” trying to redefine things the results as "the big lie."

on twitter, cheney fired back that, “anyone who claims [the election was stolen] is spreading the big lie, and poisoning our democratic system.” now, fellow republicans say she's gone too far. >> i have heard from members concerned about her ability to carry out the job as conference chair. >> desjardins: mccarthy is openly asking whether cheney can communicate the party's message. and in a comment made before the interview and leaked to axios, mccarthy indicated his personal patience has run out. >> i think she's got real problems. i've had it, i've lost confidence. well someone just has to bring a motion but i assume that will probably take place. >> desjardins: cheney has defenders-- on twitter, republican congressman adam kinziger said she is being removed “for telling you the truth.” and the "wall street journal" editorial board wrote “purging liz cheney for honesty would diminish the party.” >> get rid of them all. >> desjardins: but none of that outweighs the party's current standard bearer, who just yesterday called cheney a“ warmongering fool” with “no

business in republican party leadership.” in the "washington post," cheney blasted back, writing, "this is a turning point for the party-- that it needs to stand for“ conservative principles” and steer away from “the dangerous trump cult of personality.” >> elise stefanik. >> desjardins: but mister trump moved on, endorsing an ally from the past, whose name he tried to say at a 2020 rally, new york representative elise stefanik. with cheney on the outs, she's the favorite to become as the sole woman in house g.o.p. leadership. >> woodruff: and lisa joins me now. so, lisa, tell us the latest. what is expected right now with regard to a formal vote on cheney? >> desjardins: it does seem all signs for a vote that may be impossible, next wednesday, to remove cheney from her

leadership to remove cheney post, some signs of that today-- elise stefanik is calling around, sometimes calling multiple times, to members. i talked to members like kevin brady of texas, well respected who said he supported cheney last time on that vote. now he's undecided. so, another member who supported cheney last time told me they believe that two-thirds of the people who voted with cheney just three months ago are now going to vote against her. >> woodruff: so, lisa, what has changed since then? as you pointed out, that vote took place just a few months ago. what are republicans telling you has changed? >> desjardins: i think consider house republicans in two groups in terms of what's happening with liz cheney. the first group is republicans who did vote for cheney last time, but generally support president trump. what i heard from this group, talking to many of them over the past few days, is that the last time they voted, marjorie taylor green was also a factor. remember, at that time, house republicans were choosing not to punish her for her statements that were seen as inflammatory.

these republicans tell me now that at the time, they didn't feel that they could let green off the hook but yet punish cheney. so in a way, they see that vote as connected to both sides of the party as it comes to trump. they say nowwith cheney makes these statements on her own with green sort of out of the picture, that cheney has just gone too far and is kind of provoking too much when it comes to president trump. so that's the one group. the other group that's interesting that i spoke with are republicans who say they actually agree with cheney. they think everything she's saying about president trump is correct. note, they're not saying in public. but they tell me the problem they have is they think her words are empowering president trump, that she is actually activating his base and making them consider and talk more about the election as fraudulent in a way they believe is unhelpful. they think she is just picking a battle that is actually harming things. and this group, when you think about it, judy, you have a situation for cheney if she has lost those who support president

trump and also has a problem with those who want to move past president trump, she's lost nearly all of the house republicans. >> woodruff: it does sound like it. lisa, just stepping back in terms of the politics more broadly, what's the thinking about political ramifications from this? >> desjardins: well, there are some for cheney herself. she will have to defend her seat or decide if she's going to defend her seat. she also has to decide if she will stick forth and keep up for this leadership election next week. some would like her to resign. there's no indication she's going to. in fact, i spoke to a source familiar with cheney's thinking, and she said that she doesn't want this post if it requires that she has to lie in order to keep it. but it does sound like she's willing to not resign. she's going to make republicans vote on this. the other ramification, judy, democrats tell me they are hopeful that perhaps this will help them next year by make the republican party look more extreme, ousting someone, even a conservative like liz cheney. what do republicans say?

i talked to a republican senator and republican house members, they don't buy that. they think the election say long way away, and they think something like this is inside washington. >> woodruff: and just quickly, lisa, do we know yet whether this vote will be a secret ballot, as the other one was? >> desjardins: we expect it to be secret ballot. i would be surprised if it is anything else. >> woodruff:s can day with else. else. >> woodruff: lisa desjardins with more excellent reporting. thank you, lisa. >> woodruff: though the 2020 presidential election is six months behind us, a review of nearly 2.1 million ballots in arizona's largest county is currently underway. stephanie sy explores the growing controversy and what it means for our democracy. >> sy: thanks, judy. we explore the questions and concerns around the maricopa

county review, ordered by the state's republican-led senate, with tammy patrick of the non partisan democracy fund. she previously served as a maricopa county election official for more than a decade. thank you so much for joining us. i want to remind people donald trump did beat him in november. many republicans have been calling that outcome into question, really since election day. is that the basis of this recount? >> i believe that it is the basis of the recount. and it's an unfounded basis because arizona already audited their ballots, and they've already done hand counting and made sure, in fact, it was the correct outcome. it's been standard process and procedures in arizona for more than a decade. >> sy: so this is really a process that was because the republican-led senate in arizona decided they wanted to do this. but is it an unprecedented review? and is it legal? >> we have never seen anything

like this in our country before. and i reached out to individuals that deal with democracy issues and elections globally, and they've never seen it. so if it truly is unprecedented-- and we've use that word a lot in the last 15 months-- not only is it the case the senate has stepped forward earlier this year and asked for a forensic audit to be done of maricopa county voting equipment-- which was done and found no issues. they found no fraud. they found no problems. then the senate went to court and asked to obtain the actual ballots that were voted in maricopa county. that is something that is outside of any statute in the entire country as to how this should play out, what rules and regulations and guidelines need to be followed. and so we truly are in unchartered waters. >> sy: and we learned that the justice department, an official there has sent a letter to the arizona senate republicans, concerned that there may be

violations of federal law here. but in any case,hey were able to obtain millions of arizonaan ballots, maricopa county, the largest county, most populous in arizona. they also turned over voting machines. they then turned those ballots and machines over to a private contractor, cyber ninjas. what do we know about cyberninninjas and what they're doing with the ballots and equipment? >> i have been working in this space for 20 years now and i was not familiar with cyber ninjas, nor was anyone i was associated with or know. there were a lot of questions to ask. we started asking those questions weeks ago and it took a court order to obtain some of the procedures and policies being done right now down at the veterans coliseum. this is really important for people to understand that under normal circumstances, everything that happens to your ballot is publicly available as far as what the rules and guidelines are. the laws are laid out. the procedures manual in arizona

lays out how are audits to be conducted, how are votes to be counted. but this is something outside of that. so we obtained the procedures, and there were a lot of things included in there that raised many questions for election experts. and, also, it was very questionable about what was omitted or what was excluded in those documents. so there are a lot of unanswered questions here. and, unfortunately, those conducting this review have in fact called for the courts to maintain a secrecy around the materials and their processes. they've put parameters around who can observe that are extra legal and extraordinary in the election space. normally, we want individuals to observe and be able to be the eyes and the ears of the voting public in the room to be able to ensure that there's integrity to the process. >> sy: well, tammy, what is the potential damage to election integrity here?

are other states looking at arizona to follow its playbook here? >> we've seen in the last couple of days issues percolating around the country with grass-roots organizations now calling into question the outcome and the legitimacy of the elections in their own state. whether it was individuals in new hampshire or california or elsewhere, where they're now saying they, too, want a forensic audit, like maricopa county. and it's critical to understand this is not about individuals and election officials wanting to not be transparent about our elections. that's the core of of a healthy democracy. it's about having the election certified and validated and then moving on and moving forward and not continuing to relitigate and rehash, literally, the elections. the other challenge here is that the public has not been told the truth. they've not been told the truth that last year was the most-secure, most-observed, most-transparent, most-audited

election in u.s. history with the most number of voters. that is the truth. it had integrity, and we should have confidence in it. but instead, they've been fed miss and disinformation that's been spread on social media, in chat rooms, to call into question existing laws, spurring legislators to take these types of activities, like we're seeing in arizona with this review, and other legislators to introduce legislation to change the options that voters have in their states. and this is happening all across the country, hundreds of bills being introduced to change the options that the voters have in those states. unfortunately, there's only one or two very good, positive stories to tell, like in kentucky, where they had bipartisan bills to codify some of the changes they made last year to give voters new options. but more often than not, it's being used to restrict what voters can do in order to make

their voices be heard. and i hope voters are paying attention. all across the country, remember this moment. remember what your legislators are doing whennure personally go and try and vote by mail or try and vote early in person and find out that the rules have changed. >> sy: the latest rules to change, of course, in florida, with governor ron desantis there, signing what voting rights advocates say is a restrictive voting law. tammy patrick with the democracy fund, thank you so much. >> thank you. >> woodruff: it's been over 100 days since president biden was sworn in. in addition to combating the pandemic, the president has sought to rebuild relations with allies in asia and europe, and

punish russia for election interference and cyber- espionage. the administration has also decided to withdraw troops from afghanistan, and attempts to root out extremism in the military. how is the president doing dealing with these national security issues? we turn to former defense secretary, and former c.i.a. director, robert gates. he's served in both republican and democratic administrations. and he's the author of "exercise of power: american failures, successes, and a new path forward in the post-cold war world." robert gates, it's very good to see you again. thank you so much for talking with us. and i want to start with a story in the news today, and that is what is going on inside the republican party with the efforts by house republicans to punish congresswoman liz cheney. you served four republican presidents. what is your thinking about this? >> well, i think the republican presidents that i served would be hard pressed to recognize the

republican party of today. it is-- it is very different, that's for sure. >> woodruff: and so, are you, in essence, saying they're making a mistake by pushing her out? >> well i'm not going-- i've never done domestic politics, and i'm not going to start now. i will say this: i have not met liz cheney, but i, obviously, know her father very well. i have, based on everything i've read, i have a lot of respect for her integrity and for her patriotism. so i guess you would-- you would have to say i'm an admirer of hers. but beyond that, you know, this is-- this is internal republican party politics. >> woodruff: let me ask you now about the reason we invited you originally to be on the show and that's foreign policy, defense policy. you wrote-- you famously wrote

in another book in 2014, so you know the quote i'm about to use, and it was about joe biden. you said, "i think he's been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." that was in 2014. how do you think he is doing in these early weeks and months of his administration? >> i think he's doing really well. i think there's a lot of continuity on several of the really big problems, on china, on russia, north korea. i think there's a lot of continuity with the previous administration, in fact, and i think that the tough line that he has taken has been the appropriate one. on north korea, they've basically said they're going to try and thread the needle between the strategic patience of president obama and the

maximum pressure of president trump. i think, as i write in the book, we've tried-- we've been down this road before under four presidents, and it hasn't yielded much progress. but there's a lot of continuity there. i think the only area that concerns me is the effort to renew the nuclear agreement with iran. i think, first of all, the agreement is half over in terms of its duration. it was supposed to be for 10 years or so. and i was heartened initially by the administration's references to strengthening and lengthening that agreement. i think our objective ought to be for iran never to have a nuclear weapon north just time limited. and i think we also need better monitoring or verification of their adherence to the agreement. and, finally, i think we need to do something about their ballistic missile capability. so just picking up the old agreement whe we left off, i think is probably insufficient.

but in the otr areas of-- important areas of foreign policy, i think-- i think that they're on a good path. >> woodruff: you mentioned iran. let me ask you about afghanistan. it's certainly been a controversial decision, president biden saying he wants all u.s. troops out of there by september 11 this year. one of the arguments he's making, bob gates, is that the threat has now moved to different parts of the word, scpeakd isis. he's saying they're in places like yemen and syria, on the african continent. was this the right decision? >> well, it's a very tough decision, and-- and i think i probably would have... recommended, as secretary austin and the joint chiefs did, keeping a small u.s. force there. but the reality that i think the president was facing is that even with our forces there, every day, the taliban is taking

over more and more of the cotryside and making greater and greater progress against the government of afghanistan. so even if we kept troops there, that's no assurance that the current trend wouldn't-- wouldn't continue. you know, i think of all the possible endings in afghanistan at this point, the least likely is a happy ending. i would say that the one thing that's important, and critically important, is that we continue our economic and military assistance to the government of afghanistan, even after our troops are gone. you know, the government the soviets installed in kabul survived for three years after the soviets pulled all their troops out in 1988. and because of the flow of economic and military assistance. and office only when the soviet

union collapsed and the aid stopped that the government collapsed. i think there's a lesson in that for us. the only chance that this regime, that this government in kabul has of surviving and of preserving want rights of women and the other areas where there actually has been progress in afghanistan, is for the united states and our allies to continue our economic and military assistance. >> woodruff: i want to-- there's so much to ask you about. i do want to include china. the secretary of state, tony blinken, has been saying, i think several times, the last few days that the united states is not nhis words, trying to check china or hem it in; that, rather, the biden policy is to, in his words, push the chinese to follow the rules-based order. does that sound like the right approach to you? >> it does. and i think secretary blinken has essentially said that the

relationship with china should essentially fall into three baskets, the area where's we can cooperate, the areas where we will compete, and those areas where we will be adversaries. and that sounds about right to me. the question is whether xi jinping and the chinese government and the chinese communist party are willing to consider-- to have that kind of a relationship going forward. and, frankly, i don't think we know the answer to that question yet. >> woodruff: one other thing i want to ask you about, the decision that is going to be made soon inside the pentagon about whether sexual assault claims should be considered outside the chain of command. >> well, i read that the chairman of the joint chiefs has stated recently that he is open to the possibility of changing the way that this is dealt with and taking it out of the chain of command. i think if i were secretary today, i would be very open to

the idea of removing sexua assault-- and i would say only sexual assault-- from the chain of command. we have been-- we have been promising for 10 years, for more than 10 yea to do something about this problem, to prevent it or to dramatically reduce the frequency. and, frankly, it has not led to the kind of progress that we should have had. there are still too many cases of sexual assault. and i think we owe it, in particular to the women in the force, to try some-- if nothing we've tried before has been effective, then we ought to be very open to changing the way that those prosecute-- investigations and prosecutions take place. >> woodruff: former secretary of defense, robert gates, his new book out in paperback "exercise of power: american failures, successes, and a new path forward in the post-cold

war world," thank you very much. >> thank you, judy. >> woodruff: let's return to the pandemic, here and abroad. president biden has given the initial go-ahead for the u.s. to waive patent rights on covid vaccines in an effort to boost production internationally for countries in need. but there are real questions over how effective these moves would be, what else is needed, and when this would translate into more shots in arms. william brangham focuses on that part of the story tonight. >> brangham: judy, the response by some european countries today on this patent question hinted at some of those very complications. the president of the european commission, for example, would not commit a bloc of european countries to waiving these patent protections. but that's not the only concern

here. let's explore this with rachel silverman, she's a policy fellow at the center for global development. rachel silverman, great to have you on the newshour. what was your reaction when the biden administration made this announcement yesterday? >> well, great to be here this evening. so, my reaction is that i'm very encouraged that the biden administration with this move is signaling its willingness and eagerness to take bold action, that it understands the scope of the challenge before us, that it is treating this as the number-one global issue, diplomat issue, security issue that needs to be solved; and is signaling that it's willing to make moves that might upset the apple cart, that break out of old paradigms and that show real ambition. i do think this move itself is probably largely symbolic in this respect. it will be quite a long time before w.t.o. members agree on a patent waiver, if they agree at all. i think probably the prablthal effect of that patent waiver will be fairly marginal.

but i am optimistic that this signals a more proactive role for the biden administration in entering the frey and really solving this problem on behalf of the entire world. >> brangham: so if waiving this intellectual property isn't the most effective route, what would you argue is the most urgent thing we ought to be doing? >> i think we need to be thinking much more ambitiously about the scale of resources we're willing to put into scale up vaccines. i think we're still thinking very small. the u.s.' contribution to covax is $4 billion. that is welcome-- >> brangham: the global vaccine supply. >> yes. exactly. it's not enough to vaccinate the world. and, you know, the united states has produced these vaccines. we are very fortunate that most people in the united states now have the ability to access these vaccines. that's not true in most low- and middle-income countries.

and what couldship a lot more money. there's not enough money in the system to purchase vaccines on behalf of everyone in the world, to provide the commercial certainty to industry that it should be continuing to scale up its production. there needs to be much more money in the system, financing a much more ambitious version of what it will take to vaccinate the world in short order. >> brangham: i mean, supporters of this move argue there has already been a lot of money, including taxpayer money, put into the development of these vaccines, and that we are in a crisis, and these nations need to speed this process. and so this is the obligation of the companies that they need t give these up. >> well, i certainly agree that we are in a crisis and we need to speed this entire process up. there is no time to delay whatsoever. and that's exactly my concern is that what's the most practical way forward? if we look at the trips waiver, i think it will probably go ahead. it will be fine.

but it will take quite a bit of time to negotiate. there are still complicated issues around technology transfer, giving companies in low- and middle-income companies the recipes, the proprietary knowledge, the cell lines needed to do this. that will not come automatically, even with a waiver. but what we can do in the short and medium term is to put more money into the system to pull through more manufacturing capacity, to create the incentives that say build it, and we will pay for it, and we will vaccinate the world. i think it's a mistake to put this onus of all of this on the pharmaceutical companies. yes, they received taxpayer money. yes, taxpayers and the public, we need these vaccines. we need them to be equitably shared, and we have stake in doing so. but they are companies. they are private companies. we are the global community. we are the united states government. and we need to take the leadership role in making this happen, not just expecting

pharma to do it on our behalf without our intervention. >> brangham: i want to ask you about another argument the industry makes, which is if they go about developing these vaccines and then we swoop in and break their intellectual property thirk patents for those vaccines that this sets a terrible precedent going forward. do you share that concern? >> i think it's somewhat overstated. but the reason i think it's overstated is because, again, i think the effect of this patent waiver will be quite marginal. that said, the part i do agree with them on is that we definitely do want to send a signal to the market that you will be rewarded if you solve the most important issues facing humanity. what we don't want is a situation where all of the private pharmaceutical companies decide, "you know what, it's not worth our while to tackle the big problems. we'd rather find the next botox, work on cosmetic treatments or things we can sell to rich

people for a lot of money and they'll never bother us about giving it free to poor people." that is not an optimal solution. we have malaria, we have t.b., we have h.i.v.-- there's no vaccine. there's treatment but no vaccine. we do pharma focused on solving the world's most important problems. i think the effect of the waiver will be fairly marginal in this respect. but i would like it see a focus on incentives to produce what matters, that you will be rewarded with if you do, and not penalized because what you produced is so important. but that doesn't mean hording the supply. that doesn't mean it's okay to not vaccinate the entire world. it's not. and we can do both at once. >> brangham: all right, rachel silverman, at the centre for global development. thank you for being here. >> thank you.

>> woodruff: the covid crisis in india continues to devastate that country. the past 24 hours brought more daily records there-- 400,000- plus new cases and nearly 4,000 deaths. all of that a likely undercount, and comes amid a severe shortage of vaccinations. the 4.2 million members of the indian diaspora here in the u.s. are stricken with panic, pain and grief. many are volunteering to help. special correspondent fred de sam lazaro reports on the efforts of indian american doctors. it's part of fred's series agents for change. >> reporter: the funeral pyres in makeshift crematoria now go 24-7, the final stop in a health care system that has crashed- unable to provide the most basic care that could have prevented most of these covid deaths: hospital beds, equipment and

most critically, oxygen. one irony in this tragedy is that this country is a major producer and exporter of technical and medical experts, especially to the u.s. about 80,000 doctors of indian origin practice in the united states today, found everywhere from the mayo clinic to the farthest reaches of rural america. the vast majority of them graduated medical school in india before immigrating to the u.s., so their ties to their homeland are recent, and they run deep. >> hi ms. goel, this is dr. rohatgi. how are you doing? >> i'm fine, dr. rohatgi. >> reporter: when she's not at work at stanford medical center hospital in california, dr. nidhi rohatgi is regularly dispensing care to family and friends 13 time zones away in india. >> he should try to get up and walk a little bit, and also make sure that his breathing is ok when he's walking. it's been quite overwhelming i

think, you have your day job. you take care of patients here and when it's morning in india, it's night here. so you stay up through the night talking to your friends and family trying to help out as many people as you could there. >> reporter: she's hardly alone... >> this is my twitter feed. i decided to open up my direct messages, and now it's maybe 15 to 20 a day. >> reporter: ...so busy has this telemedicine routine become, dr priya sampathkumar has taken a leave of absence from her job as an infectious disease physician at the mayo clinic. these are random strangers from twitter? >> random strangers from twitter, i'm saying, okay, adjust the oxygen, turn the camera on, so i can see the concentrator. let me let me help you. this is what i'm doing. is she getting prone? is she lying on her stomach? >> she's been asked to, but i think she's assisted by a nurse to do it. >> that's fine.

she just needs to do it. >> reporter: getting advice in delhi on this call was diksha bajaj, caring for an elderly aunt. >> i found it extremely, extremely useful. it was becoming extremely difficult to get through to a doctor. we weren't getting any clarity on how much it improved. and if we were on the right track. the do's and don'ts for the patient. >> reporter: but that assistance often extends beyond medical advice. >> we called our friend and asked him to send the oxygen cylinder. did he? >> reporter: dr. sampathkumar used connections to locate an oxygen cylinder for this couple she met on twitter. they live in the u.s. and are trying to keep his covid positive mother, who lives india's capital, delhi, alive. >> right now, there's no hospital in these hotspots that is not completely overwhelmed. >> reporter: i paid a visit to the young couple, who are both doctors. they asked to remain anonymous, fearful of repercussions for family back home.

the government has cracked down on messages deemed negative-- even things like a plea online for oxygen-- ostensibly to prevent panic. >> i think theshould realize that this is just, you know, people just acting out of desperation to really get whatever they can for their loved ones. >> reporter: and with both equipment and skills in short supply, they've had to train non-medical family members to provide care. >> so i was like, you know, just to use a glove to tie a tourniquet, your left hand to stabilize it right hand rotate and pull it back, so that, these were the steps and he did all of it. >> reporter: and the vast indian medical and tech diaspora are trying to coordinate a ramp up in assistance, with fundraising, sending equipment and this website by the main indian american doctors group. it has a list of available volunteer providers, time slots for virtual appointments, even language options. >> amid a vast rumor mill and medical misinformation, some are

doing the rounds in india's media. >> so, u.s.a. first wave, second wave, no difference. >> reporter: dr. sampathkumar has been on tv in her native tamil language, spoken extensively in the south. >> i just have these pangs about being here and not being in india. but right now in for the first time, i'm actually glad that i'm here. because i can do so much more from here than there. if i were in india, yes, i could take care of a few patients, and definitely make a difference. but i can't impact policy. i can't impact care of large numbers of patients as an individual physician. >> reporter: how are you feeling, right about now? >> i guess when i left india, i never thought this is something that could happen. and this is what i might be leaving behind. so yeah, a question best not

asked, just keep going, just keep doing. >> reporter: and while there are strong ties to india, stanford emergency medicine professor s. v. mahadevan says the sheer scale here is driving the response. >> obviously, the emotional and family ties are there with india, but it wouldn't matter, really. we're also thinking about who's going to be next and how we can take the lessons that we learn now and apply them to the next country that suffers this humanitarian crisis. >> reporter: and with the danger of new, deadlier mutations of this coronavirus, he says, that could by any country, including the u.s. >> we can never be complacent, you know, even though we're doing really well now, in terms of the number of people vaccinated and the trends of covid positive patients are trending down. until the world is vaccinated, this problem is going to stay with us in some form or other. and though it may not be in our backyard now, it has the potential to return to our backyard in the future unless we vaccinate the rest of the world. >> reporter: that's not likely

any time soon. in just india, about two percent of its 1.3 billion people have been fully vaccinated. for the pbs newshour, i'm fred de sam lazaro. >> woodruff: fred's reporting is a partnership with the under- told stories project at the university of st. thomas in minnesota. >> woodruff: thanks to the u.s.' domestic vaccine campaign, cases here continue to drop. but this success prompts further reflection on why more than 500,000 americans died and why our initial response failed to contain the virus more effectively. a new book tells the story of a few people who tried to steer the country on a different path. william brangham is back, for the latest in our newshour bookshelf.

>> brangham: that's right, there were a handful of researchers, scientists and public health officials who seemed to have an early, prescient understanding of how bad this pandemic would hit the united states and what we could do to avert it. michael lewis's new book, "the premonition," tells the story of this unusual group and how they tried their very best to get those in positions of power to listen and to respond. michael lewis, great to have you back on the newshour. as i mentioned, this book focuses on this small, unusual, secretive group in some ways, who, as your title suggests, were able to see what seemingly many in the government were not able to see. tell us a little bit who were these people and what is it that they were seeing? >> at the center of it is a local public health officer named charity dean, and it's the ignored characters of this pandemic because they're the ones who have been fighting disease on the ground forever.

and she had seen firsthand that we were ill equipped. in particular, the c.d.c. was ill equipped to actually engage when there when the shooting started. and another one of the other characters, carter mescher, actually is one of the authors of the u.s. pandemic plan that was written during the bush administration and in the course of his work, developed a kind of prernatural ability to track pandemic disease, to anticipate it. and both of these characters, by the late january, middle of january, knew what we were dealing with. they knew the severity and they knew the transmissibility and they knew what was coming. and they had some trouble getting people to listen to listen to it. >> brangham: there are all of these remarkable scenes in the book where these people, through these different back channels trying to convince members of the c.d.c. or h.h.s. or the or the white house covid task force to act. what is your sense? what is their sense of why that message didn't get through? >> or for that matter, the state

of california that, you know, charity is working for? it is forbidden from using the word pandemic in january or february. and i think there's a couple of things going on. one is that it's the nature of the threat that it is. it's an invisible threat. and until it's you actually you actually kind of see it sickening people around you. you don't believe it. you know, it's a kind of theoretical thing. and the problem is, as they all point out, with this particular threat, you have to be almost clairvoyant because by the time you see the illness, you're way behind the disease. the other part of it is, i think just generally that just the tools are government tools that we have to manage existential risks have been allowed to corrode that. we that we we've become kind of complacent and that so that when you have a sense that your tools might not work, maybe you're a little slower to use them. >> brangham: the c.d.c. in particular comes under a good deal of criticism in this book. what is your sense? what is the main assessment of

how the c.d.c. stumbled in this pandemic? >> you know, it's not my criticism. you just follow these characters in the story. when there's a risk of being wrong, the c.d.c. stands back, doesn't engage in the battle, and the problem is it is a battle and the decisions that get made in the course of disease are ones that happen under conditions of uncertainty, if they're going to be effective. and the institution has been politicized, it's kind of a little to the point where charity dean, when she's in santa barbara county, local health official, bans them from her investigations, is it slows her down. i think the bigger message is how we manage ourselves that that we have allow that institution to drift over the course of a couple of generations from a really well run, proud institution filled with public servants and run by public servants to one that that's managed at the top by political appointees who are there for short periods of time and who are on a very short

leash from the political process, and the way we punish people for being wrong, even if the process that got them to the decision is right, has led us to to a situation where the servant, the people at the top are terrified of being wrong. >> brangham: the characters in your book clearly do believe that if some of their warnings and their actions had been heeded, that this pandemic would have looked very different for the united states. i wonder, though, do you think that american society, writ large, would have accepted some of their recommendations? because some of them are fairly extreme and severe? do you think they could have implemented what they wanted to do, if they'd been given the power to do so? >> so this is a great question. and the question is, is the society willing to be led and unified? because that's what would have been required and it's hard to know, right? my feeling is that it was, yes, possible. and the reason i think it was possible is after if it would have been led properly, it would have only taken six weeks or so

before the country saw, oh, my god, we dodged that bullet. now, even if that's not true, even if even if for strange, bizarre cultural reasons, we were incapable of containing the virus, if we just mitigated it better, if we just if we just been as good as the average g7 country, there'd be 200,000 americans alive today that are not. so that that's the sin. it's sort of like, all right, maybe it wasn't possible to do what australia did and really stamp it out and control it. maybe that's not possible for us, but it was possible to do a lot better and we did not do it. we did. we didn't do ourselves proud here. and you really should be a gut check moment for the cultu. >> brangham: do you think, when this is all said and done, that we will heed some of the lessons of the missteps that we made, or do you think that we'll be so eager to put this behind us that we'll put those lessons behind us, too? >> i think the trauma that the society has suffered, is enough that people will have had enough. i'm very hopeful.

i think that we're sort of like a really talented team that has had a really crappy season. and the question is like why? it isn't the talent of the players. we have the capacity. if we didn't have the capacity, i'd say hmm, maybe we're in trouble the next time. but i do think that, like, no one wants to relive this, and certainly no one wants to relive this, maybe worse. you replay this with it, killing children or being more lethal. nobody wants that. and so i think that it will be messy because we're a polarized country and people want to like a losing team. people want to point fingers rather than fix the problem. but i think at bottom, america doesn't want to lose. you know, i think at bottom, we want to win, and i think we'll just figure we're going to figure out a way to do it. >> brangham: all right, the book is called “the premonition: a pandemic story.” michael lewis, always great to see you. thank you very much. >> thanks for having me. >> woodruff: this kind of journalism matters so much. thank you, michael lewis, and thank you, william.

and a sad update to tuesday's report by jane ferguson, from yemen. many of you wrote us, and jane, about how to help young murad, who'd had intestinal surgery, and whose father couldn't afford to pay for his care. we regret to report that murad died yesterday morning. he was 13 years old. and you can watch all of jane's remarkable reporting in yemen on our website, pbs.org/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. join us online and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you, please stay safe, and we'll see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> architect. bee-keeper. mentor. a raymond james financial advisor tailors advice to help you live your life. life, well-planned.

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. hello, everyone. welcome to "amanpour & co." here's what's coming up. >> we've aeady committed to work to send 60 million doses of astrazeneca vaccines to other countries. starting this month into june. >> prbl promises to send vaccines with the developing world. as coronavirus surges in india, is it too little too late? i ask south africa's foreign minister. and donald trump's facebook ban continues for now. top tech journalist kara swisher on the ramifications of today's decision. then -- >> when john and i first started all of this, the republican party was really truly a wonderful place to be.