December 4, 2020 - PBS NewsHour full episode

As another week of this devastating pandemic comes to an end, NewsHour is taking a moment to honor some of those we've lost to COVID-19.

Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including the Biden team’s transition to the White House and the impact of Trump’s election fraud claims.

The first doses of the long-awaited COVID-19 vaccine are on their way to the United Kingdom, the earliest western country to grant emergency authorization. The vaccine is manufactured by the U.S pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, but most of the 1.3 billion shots Pfizer hopes to deliver in 2021 will be produced in the tiny factory town of Puurs, Belgium. Special correspondent Lucy Hough reports.

Women in the U.S. are more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than anywhere else in the developed world, according to the Commonwealth Fund. Native American women face some of the highest rates of death, and in Arizona, those disparities are even more profound. From the Cronkite School of Journalism, Jennifer Alvarez reports on an effort to fight maternal mortality among Native Americans.

While House Democrats lost races in some Republican-leaning districts, one Republican was ousted by a challenger from his own party on the right. Lisa Desjardin spoke with Rep. Denver Riggleman, a first-term Virginia Republican, about why he lost the race.

In our news wrap Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have agreed that a bipartisan relief bill worth $900 billion is a starting point, the House of Representatives voted to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level, widespread flooding in Indonesia kills at least five people, and an Alabama man turns 104 after surviving COVID-19.

The Biden White House transition continues though the president-elect is already facing what may be his greatest challenges, as the pandemic fills hospitals and jars the economy again. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign continues to lose its legal challenges in moving to dispute the election result. Judy Woodruff has the story.

The latest jobs report released by the Department of Labor Friday estimates the economy has not yet replaced about 10 millions jobs lost last spring, with many Americans now close to losing their unemployment benefits. Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project and a former chief economist for the Congressional Budget Office, joins Amna Nawaz to discuss the country's economic outlook.