June 3, 2020 - PBS NewsHour full episode

Columbia, South Carolina’s capital, is among the many U.S. cities seeing protests and curfews over the past week. Mayor Stephen Benjamin is the city’s first African American mayor, and he joins Judy Woodruff to discuss how he sees “collective pain” emerging during this tumultuous period, what his constituents are asking for and his fears about controlling the spread of COVID-19 amid protests.

In our news wrap Wednesday, COVID-19 cases continue to climb across the U.S., with deaths exceeding 107,000. The state of Florida confirmed 1,300 new infections, one of its largest single-day surges, but attributed the rise to increased testing. Also, former FBI Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein defended appointing Robert Mueller to lead an investigation into Russian election interference.

Widespread protests over George Floyd’s death and the treatment of black Americans by police more broadly have dominated the U.S. in recent days. For analysis of the issues at the heart of the unrest, Amna Nawaz talks to Art Acevedo, Houston’s chief of police, Tracey Meares, professor and founder of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School and Samuel Sinyangwe of the group Campaign Zero.

Structural racism is now sharing the American cultural spotlight with COVID-19. While solutions to racial disparities in police treatment, health care and education will likely require policy changes, some experts say decisions at the family and individual levels matter just as much. Special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault talks to Margaret Hagerman of Mississippi State University.

Elections were held in several states on Tuesday, even as the pandemic and major protests consumed the country. In Ferguson, Missouri, where protests first erupted in 2014 after the shooting death of Michael Brown by a white police officer, an African American woman was elected as the city’s next mayor. For more results and analysis, Judy Woodruff talks to Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report.