Transcript
Page 1: WORST CRISIS SINCE 70 AS CASES BALLOON OF TESTING IN U.S ... · 2 days ago  · TERRIFYING LACK OF TESTING IN U.S. AS CASES BALLOON AREVERSAL OF PROGRESS Lines Go Around Blocks, and

C M Y K Yxxx,2020-07-07,A,001,Bs-4C,E2

U(DF463D)X+?!:!$!?!"

Ennio Morricone composed music forsome 500 movies, beginning with spa-ghetti westerns. He was 91. PAGE B10

Film Score Virtuoso

Charlie Daniels, who played at blazingspeed in his hit song “The Devil WentDown to Georgia,” was 83. PAGE B9

OBITUARIES B9-10

Fiddling Force in CountryNew technologies, like the gene-editingtool Crispr, can work in less than an hour.But tests are months away. PAGE A4

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-10

An Evolution for Testing

Neighbors of a beloved grocer in southLondon rebelled when a new landlordserved eviction papers. PAGE A11

INTERNATIONAL A11-12

Defending a Brixton Favorite

Devastated by the murder of ArmySpecialist Vanessa Guillen, relatives arecalling on the military to revise the wayit handles reports of sexual harassmentand assault. PAGE A13

NATIONAL A13-17

Justice Sought for Slain Soldier

Amy Cooper, who emphasized a Blackman’s race when she said he wasthreatening her after he asked her toleash her dog in Central Park, wasaccused of filing a false report. PAGE A17

Woman Charged Over 911 Call

Paul Krugman PAGE A18

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A18-19

The Trump administration released dataon which businesses received PaycheckProtection Program loans. Amongthem: lobbyists and law firms. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-5

Where Federal Aid Went

Confronted by illnesses that most scien-tists overlook, these families had towork out their own approaches to findtreatments. PAGE D1

SCIENCE TIMES D1-8

4 Families Battle Rare DiseasesRelieved and giddy New Yorkers re-turned to the water this past weekendas the city reopened the beaches forswimming. PAGE A6

The Good Kind of Waves

GIANNI CIPRIANO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Pawnshops, a standby in hard times over the centuries, are booming in the pandemic. Page A10.Italy’s Shadow Safety Net

WASHINGTON — States canrequire members of the ElectoralCollege to cast their votes for thepresidential candidates they hadpledged to support, the SupremeCourt unanimously ruled on Mon-day, curbing the independence ofelectors and limiting one potentialsource of uncertainty in the 2020presidential election.

Thirty-two states and the Dis-trict of Columbia have laws re-quiring electors to vote as theyhad promised, but recent court de-cisions had come to opposite con-clusions about whether electorsmay disregard their pledges.

The Supreme Court resolvedthe dispute on Monday in a pair ofcases concerning electors inWashington State and Colorado,by saying that states are entitledto remove or punish electors whochanged their votes. In stateswithout such penalties, electorsremain free to change their votes.

“The Constitution’s text and thenation’s history both support al-lowing a state to enforce an elec-tor’s pledge to support his party’s

States Can CurbElector Choices,

Justices Affirm

By ADAM LIPTAK

Continued on Page A15

Lines for coronavirus testshave stretched around city blocksand tests ran out altogether in atleast one site on Monday, new evi-dence that the country is stillstruggling to create a sufficienttesting system months into itsbattle with Covid-19.

At a testing site in New Orleans,a line formed at dawn. But city of-ficials ran out of tests five minutesafter the doors opened at 8 a.m.,and many people had to be turnedaway.

In Phoenix, where tempera-tures have topped 100 degrees,residents have waited in cars foras long as eight hours to gettested.

And in San Antonio and otherlarge cities with mountingcaseloads of the virus, officialshave reluctantly announced newlimits to testing: The demand hasgrown too great, they say, so onlypeople showing symptoms maynow be tested — a return to re-strictions that were in place inmany parts of the country duringearlier days of the virus.

“It’s terrifying, and clearly anevidence of a failure of the sys-tem,” said Dr. Morgan Katz, aninfectious-disease expert at JohnsHopkins Hospital.

In the early months of the na-tion’s outbreak, testing posed asignificant problem, as suppliesfell far short and officials raced tounderstand how to best handle thevirus. Since then, the UnitedStates has vastly ramped up itstesting capability, conductingnearly 15 million tests in June,about three times as many as ithad in April. But in recent weeks,as cases have surged in manystates, the demand for testing hassoared, surpassing capacity andcreating a new testing crisis.

In many cities, officials said acombination of factors was nowfueling the problem: a shortage ofcertain supplies, backlogs at lab-

‘TERRIFYING’ LACKOF TESTING IN U.S. AS CASES BALLOON

A REVERSAL OF PROGRESS

Lines Go Around Blocks,and Total Infections

Near 3 Million

By SARAH MERVOSHand MANNY FERNANDEZ

Continued on Page A8

A coronavirus assessment center last week in Nashville. Some sites ran out of tests on Monday.BRETT CARLSEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

MIAMI — Miami’s flashy night-clubs closed in March, but the par-ties have raged on in the water-front manse tucked in the lush res-idential neighborhood of BelleMeade Island. Revelers arrive insports cars and ride-shares sev-eral nights a week, say neighborswho have spied professionalbouncers at the door and boughtearplugs to try to sleep throughthe thumping dance beats.

They are the sort of parties —drawing throngs of masklessstrangers to rave until sunrise —that local health officials say have

been a notable contributing factorto the soaring number of coro-navirus cases in Florida, one ofthe most troubling infection spotsin the country.

Just how many parties havebeen linked to Covid-19 is unclearbecause Florida does not makepublic information about con-firmed disease clusters. On Belle

Meade Island, neighbors fear thatthe large numbers of people goingin and out of the house parties areprecisely what public health offi-cials have warned them about.

“We have hundreds of peoplecoming onto this island,” said JeriKlemme-Zaiac, a nurse practi-tioner who has lived in the neigh-borhood for 25 years. “This is howthis is spreading: People have noregard for anyone else.”

The city of Miami and the Mi-ami-Dade Police Department shutdown a party at the house just be-fore midnight on Wednesday, aspokesman for the department

Virus Finds a Feast at House Parties in FloridaBy PATRICIA MAZZEI Its Spread Overwhelms

the Efforts to TraceRevelers’ Contacts

Continued on Page A9

President Trump mounted anexplicit defense of the Confeder-ate flag on Monday, suggestingthat NASCAR had made a mistakein banning it from its auto racingevents, while falsely accusing atop Black driver, Darrell WallaceJr., of perpetrating a hoax involv-ing a noose found in his garage.

The remarks are part of a pat-tern. Almost every day in the lasttwo weeks, Mr. Trump has soughtto stoke white fear and resent-ment, portraying himself as a pro-tector of an old order that pollsshow much of America believesperpetuates entrenched racismand wants to move beyond.

Two weeks ago, the presidentretweeted a video of a supportershouting “white power” at a re-tirement community filled witholder people whom he wants towin over. Last week, he wrote thathe was reviewing a fair housingregulation that is aimed at elimi-nating racial housing disparitiesin the suburbs, but that he saidwould have a “devastating im-pact” on those communities — aplay to white suburbanites whosevotes would be crucial to his re-election.

On Monday, he also tweeted his

displeasure with sports teamsthat are reviewing the appropri-ateness of nicknames that are of-fensive to Native Americans,seeking to curry favor with Amer-icans who believe political cor-rectness has gone too far. He hasinvoked fear of crime with tweetsabout sanctuary cities and crimerates in New York and Chicago,and has spoken of preserving “ourheritage,” picking up the languageof those who want to honor theConfederacy.

For many Republicans who arewatching the president’s impacton Senate races with alarm, his fo-cus on racial and cultural flashpoints — and not on the surge ofthe coronavirus in many states —is distressing.

“This is part of the same selfish,divide-and-conquer strategy thathelped the president get elected in2016,” said Carlos Curbelo, a for-mer Republican congressmanfrom Florida who has been criticalof Mr. Trump. “Of course that

Trump Adds to an Old Playbook As He Stokes White Resentment

By MAGGIE HABERMAN

Continued on Page A15

Railing at NASCAR andSports Teams’ Moves

New York City, hit hard by thecoronavirus pandemic, is mired inthe worst economic calamitysince the financial crisis of the1970s, when it nearly went bank-rupt.

The city is staggering towardreopening with some workersback at their desks or behind cashregisters, and on Monday it begana new phase, allowing personal-care services like nail salons andsome outdoor recreation to re-sume. Even so, the city’s unem-ployment rate is hovering near 20percent, a figure not seen sincethe Great Depression.

What was intended as a “pause”has dragged on so long that formany workers, furloughs areturning into permanent job losses.The sudden shutdown of the citynearly four months ago threwnearly a million residents out ofwork and threatened the survivalof many of their employers.

The layoffs continued in June assome employers gave up hope of aquick recovery or ran out of thefederal aid they were using tomaintain their payrolls.

Kelvin L. Rolling, 48, wasamong those affected. A taxi dis-patcher at Kennedy InternationalAirport for the last five years, Mr.Rolling said he thought he was oneof the lucky ones who would hold

CALAMITY LOOMSIN NEW YORK CITY

OVER JOB LOSSES

WORST CRISIS SINCE ’70S

Acceleration of EconomicWorries as Furloughs

Turn Permanent

By PATRICK McGEEHAN

A deli in East Harlem is one ofcountless closed businesses.

SEPTEMBER DAWN BOTTOMS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A9

Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to re-open New York’s public schools inSeptember, but students will al-most certainly not return to class-rooms five days a week, and theywill probably have staggeredschedules to fulfill social-distanc-ing requirements.

That could mean that the city’s1.1 million students physically at-tend school a few times a week, orone week out of every two or eventhree, and continue their classesonline the rest of the time. Mathand English classes could be heldin cafeterias or gyms, where thereis room to spread out. Studentsmay be asked to keep their dis-tance from one another in once-boisterous hallways and school-yards.

Mr. de Blasio is expected to an-nounce more details in the comingdays, as anxiety among parentsgrows and his administration con-fronts an array of challenges onthe path to reopening the largestschool district in the UnitedStates.

Senior aides to the mayor arestruggling to map out options, buttensions have already risen withunions that represent thousandsof teachers and principals. Theunions have made clear they areworried about whether there willbe enough personal protectivegear, school nurses and testing ca-pacity to reopen safely, and unionleaders have not hesitated to criti-cize the mayor for not releasingmore specifics yet.

Details about the plans for theschools emerged from interviewswith government officials andschool administrators who spokeon the condition of anonymity be-cause the plans are not final.

The scope of the final proposalis essential to the city’s come-back: The local economy cannotrecover fully until working par-ents can send their children toschool.

New York City’s system, with1,800 schools, stands apart fromother districts for its size, but dis-tricts and colleges across theUnited States are grappling withmany of the same questions aboutsafely reopening. Students in Se-attle, the first U.S. city to be hit

De Blasio PlotsLimited Return

To Classrooms

Balancing Safety WithEducational Needs

By ELIZA SHAPIRO

Continued on Page A7

An alumnus has filed a suit to save afresco at the University of Kentuckythat depicts enslaved people. PAGE C1

Lawsuit Over Kentucky Mural

The actor Paapa Essiedu discusses whythe HBO show “I May Destroy You”needs room to breathe. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-6

Hard to Watch? Yes, He Knows

VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,747 © 2020 The New York Times Company TUESDAY, JULY 7, 2020 Printed in Chicago $3.00

Partly sunny, hot and humid. Show-ers or thunderstorms during the af-ternoon. High temperatures will bein the low 90s. Warm and muggy to-night. Weather map is on Page A20.

National Edition

Top Related