has its costs

1
U(D547FD)v+[!%!_!$!# ANNIVERSARY ISSUE Years after being cleared of a heinous crime and leaving an Italian prison, Amanda Knox is intent on telling her story, on her terms. PAGE 10 SUNDAY STYLES Unwanted Fame Follows Her The arrest of a small religious group’s leader in Siberia shows that repression reaches even far-flung areas. PAGE 10 INTERNATIONAL 4-12 Long Arm of Russian Law Young lawyers are finding that being in the office makes a big difference in the race to get ahead at work. PAGE 1 SUNDAY BUSINESS Showing Up Matters Over four days in Montana, members of the Blackfeet Nation honored Chief Earl Old Person, who had led the tribe for over 60 years before he died. PAGE 13 NATIONAL 13-28 Farewell to the Chief Thousands of Afghans who were in India when the country collapsed are now desperate to return. PAGE 4 The Difficulty of Going Home Grace Congregational Church wants to redevelop its building. A new historic district stands in its way. PAGE 1 A Dilemma in Harlem Byron Lewis founded an ad agency to speak to Black audiences and set the template for a media empire. PAGE 1 METROPOLITAN He Saw the Overlooked The children’s publisher Scholastic had been a family empire until an executive, Iole Lucchese, was given control. PAGE 1 Surprise Ending Maureen Dowd PAGE 7 SUNDAY REVIEW Col. Wang Yaping is a pilot in the People’s Liberation Army’s Air Force. She is a space veteran, now making her second trip into orbit. She is set in the coming weeks to be the first Chinese woman to walk in space as China’s space sta- tion glides around Earth at 17,100 miles per hour. And yet, as she began a six- month mission last week at the core of China’s ambitious space program, official and news media attention fixated as much on the comparative physiology of men and women, menstruation cycles and the 5-year-old daughter she has left behind as they did on her accomplishments. (No one asked about the children of her two male colleagues.) Shortly before the launch, Pang Zhihao, an official with the China National Space Administration, let it be known that a cargo cap- sule had supplied the orbiting space station with sanitary nap- kins and cosmetics. “Female astronauts may be in better condition after putting on makeup,” he said in remarks shown on CCTV, the state televi- sion network. At 41, Colonel Wang is a model of gender equality in a country where Mao Zedong famously said She’s a Pioneer In Space. China Sent Cosmetics. By STEVEN LEE MYERS Continued on Page 12 WASHINGTON — Two months after the evacuation of 80,000 Af- ghans fleeing the Taliban take- over, most have cleared subse- quent vetting for admission into the United States. Some initially raised possible security issues — like evacuees who shared a name with terrorism suspects — but were absolved on closer scrutiny. But several dozen have been red-flagged, despite having helped the United States during its 20-year war in Afghanistan, be- cause screenings uncovered ap- parent records of violent crime or links to Islamist militants that fol- low-up evaluations have not cleared, officials said. The deroga- tory information has raised the question of what to do with them, leaving them in limbo. The military transferred most of the still-flagged evacuees — some with relatives — to Camp Bondsteel, a NATO base in Koso- vo, which agreed to let Afghans be housed there for up to a year if they stayed on the base. They are designated as requiring further investigation, and no final deci- sion has been about whether they will receive permission to enter the United States, officials said. But in an acknowledgment that many are likely to be barred from Vetting Flagged Dozens Fleeing Rule of Taliban By CHARLIE SAVAGE Continued on Page 8 Sixteen months before last November’s presidential election, a researcher at Facebook de- scribed an alarming development. She was getting content about the conspiracy theory QAnon within a week of opening an experimental account, she wrote in an internal report. On Nov. 5, two days after the election, another Facebook em- ployee posted a message alerting colleagues that comments with “combustible election misinfor- mation” were visible below many posts. Four days after that, a company data scientist wrote in a note to his co-workers that 10 percent of all U.S. views of political material — a startlingly high figure — were of posts that alleged the vote was fraudulent. In each case, Facebook’s em- ployees sounded an alarm about misinformation and inflamma- tory content on the platform and urged action — but the company failed or struggled to address the issues. The internal dispatches were among a set of Facebook documents obtained by The New York Times that give new insight into what happened inside the so- cial network before and after the November election, when the company was caught flat-footed as users weaponized its platform to spread lies about the vote. Facebook has publicly blamed the proliferation of election false- hoods on former President Don- ald J. Trump and other social plat- forms. In mid-January, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief oper- ating officer, said the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was “largely organized on platforms that don’t have our abilities to stop hate.” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief ex- ecutive, told lawmakers in March that the company “did our part to secure the integrity of our elec- tion.” But the company documents show the degree to which Face- book knew of extremist move- ments and groups on its site that were trying to polarize American Misinformation Tripped Alarms Inside Facebook By RYAN MAC and SHEERA FRENKEL Continued on Page 20 “Hamilton” has restaged “What’d I Miss?,” the second act opener that introduces Thomas Jefferson, so that the dancer play- ing Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman who bore him multiple children, can pointedly turn her back on him. In “The Lion King,” a pair of longstanding references to the shamanic Rafiki as a monkey — taxonomically correct, since the character is a mandrill — have been excised because of potential racial overtones, given that the role is played by a Black woman. “The Book of Mormon,” a musi- cal comedy from the creators of “South Park” that gleefully teeters between outrageous and offensive, has gone even further. The show, about two wide-eyed white missionaries trying to save souls in a Ugandan village con- tending with AIDS and a warlord, faced calls from Black members of its own cast to take a fresh look, and wound up making a series of alterations that elevate the main Black female character and clar- ify the satire. Broadway is back. But as shows resume performance after the long pandemic shutdown, some of the biggest plays and musicals are Racism Protests Change the Script on Broadway By MICHAEL PAULSON “The Book of Mormon” was revised after Black actors, including Kim Exum, expressed concerns. SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page 24 WASHINGTON — Joe Biden’s pitch during the 2020 campaign to unseat President Donald J. Trump was simple: Trade in a stubborn, immovable leader for one with a proven record of taking half a loaf when a full one is out of reach. That approach appears to have brought Mr. Biden to the preci- pice of victory on a $2 trillion deal that could begin to define his legacy as a successful Oval Office legislative architect, one who is reshaping government spending and doing so by the narrowest of margins in a coun- try with deep partisan and ideo- logical chasms. But the bill is certain to be far smaller than what he originally proposed, and far less ambitious than he and many of his allies had hoped. It won’t make him the one who finally secured free community college for everyone. Seniors won’t get free dental, hearing and vision coverage from Medicare. And there won’t be a new system of penalties for the worst polluters. “Look — hey, look, it’s all about compromise,” Mr. Biden said at a CNN town hall meeting on Thursday, shrugging off the doubters as he sought to close the deal with lawmakers and the public. But accepting less and calling it a win has its limits — and consequences. By spending the last several months pushing for an even larger and more ambitious agenda, knowing that he would most likely have to pare it back, Mr. Biden has let down some supporters who believed he Biden Finds Even Victory Has Its Costs The Consequences of Political Compromise NEWS ANALYSIS By MICHAEL D. SHEAR Continued on Page 16 Eric Adams could not resist the story. In a 2019 commencement ad- dress, Mr. Adams complained that a neighbor’s dog kept befouling his yard — no matter how polite he was to the owner, no matter his standing as Brooklyn’s borough president. Then a pastor gave him an idea. Mr. Adams slipped on a hoodie and Timberland boots, rang the neighbor’s doorbell and reintroduced himself a little less politely, he said. After that, the dog stayed away. “Let people know you are not the one to mess with,” he advised the predominantly Black graduat- ing class at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. He closed with a pre- diction for those who said he would never be mayor: “I’m going to put my hoodie on, and I’m going to make it happen.” That electoral prophecy might well hold up. The story does not. It was the pastor, Robert Water- man, who actually had the neigh- bor with the dog and the con- frontation at the door, both men said in interviews. Mr. Adams just liked how it sounded. “It was a great story I heard,” he told The New York Times recently. “I heard him preach, and I told him, ‘I’m going to tell that story.’” With Mr. Adams, 61, now poised to become New York City’s next mayor, the episode at once reflects his political superpower and greatest potential vulnerability: a comfort with public shape-shift- ing that would make him the big- gest City Hall wild card in dec- ades. He propagates and discards narratives about himself, rarely sweating the details. His highest principle can ap- pear to be the perpetuation of the Eric Adams story, one that he hopes will deliver him from a streetwise childhood in Brooklyn and Queens to the seat of power in Lower Manhattan. He speaks with almost spiritual zeal about his personal evolution — he is a meditating, globe-trotting, vegan Who Is Eric Adams? No One Knows, but He’s Probably a Winner. This article is by Matt Flegen- heimer, Michael Rothfeld and Jef- fery C. Mays. A Political Wild Card Who Says ‘I Am You’ Eric Adams at an event in Midtown on Thursday. The former police officer has run a disciplined campaign and is on the cusp of becoming New York’s next mayor. ANDREW SENG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page 22 UNPOPULARITY Behind President Biden’s low approval ratings is a pessimistic electorate. PAGE 16 Vanessa Bryant was questioned in her lawsuit over images of remains from the crash that killed Kobe Bryant and their daughter Gianna. PAGE 35 SPORTS 32-35 Recalling a Day of Loss Late Edition VOL. CLXXI . . . No. 59,221 © 2021 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2021 Today, some sunshine, then increas- ing clouds, seasonably cool, high 60. Tonight, intervals of rain, low 56. To- morrow, milder, showers later, high 66. Weather map is on Page 26. $6.00

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Page 1: Has Its Costs

C M Y K Nxxx,2021-10-24,A,001,Bs-4C,E2

U(D547FD)v+[!%!_!$!#

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

Years after being cleared of a heinouscrime and leaving an Italian prison,Amanda Knox is intent on telling herstory, on her terms. PAGE 10

SUNDAY STYLES

Unwanted Fame Follows HerThe arrest of a small religious group’sleader in Siberia shows that repressionreaches even far-flung areas. PAGE 10

INTERNATIONAL 4-12

Long Arm of Russian LawYoung lawyers are finding that being inthe office makes a big difference in therace to get ahead at work. PAGE 1

SUNDAY BUSINESS

Showing Up Matters

Over four days in Montana, members ofthe Blackfeet Nation honored Chief EarlOld Person, who had led the tribe forover 60 years before he died. PAGE 13

NATIONAL 13-28

Farewell to the Chief

Thousands of Afghans who were inIndia when the country collapsed arenow desperate to return. PAGE 4

The Difficulty of Going HomeGrace Congregational Church wants toredevelop its building. A new historicdistrict stands in its way. PAGE 1

A Dilemma in Harlem

Byron Lewis founded an ad agency tospeak to Black audiences and set thetemplate for a media empire. PAGE 1

METROPOLITAN

He Saw the Overlooked

The children’s publisher Scholastic hadbeen a family empire until an executive,Iole Lucchese, was given control. PAGE 1

Surprise Ending

Maureen Dowd PAGE 7

SUNDAY REVIEW

Col. Wang Yaping is a pilot in thePeople’s Liberation Army’s AirForce. She is a space veteran, nowmaking her second trip into orbit.She is set in the coming weeks tobe the first Chinese woman towalk in space as China’s space sta-tion glides around Earth at 17,100miles per hour.

And yet, as she began a six-month mission last week at thecore of China’s ambitious spaceprogram, official and news mediaattention fixated as much on thecomparative physiology of menand women, menstruation cyclesand the 5-year-old daughter shehas left behind as they did on heraccomplishments. (No one askedabout the children of her two malecolleagues.)

Shortly before the launch, PangZhihao, an official with the ChinaNational Space Administration,let it be known that a cargo cap-sule had supplied the orbitingspace station with sanitary nap-kins and cosmetics.

“Female astronauts may be inbetter condition after putting onmakeup,” he said in remarksshown on CCTV, the state televi-sion network.

At 41, Colonel Wang is a modelof gender equality in a countrywhere Mao Zedong famously said

She’s a PioneerIn Space. ChinaSent Cosmetics.

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

Continued on Page 12

WASHINGTON — Two monthsafter the evacuation of 80,000 Af-ghans fleeing the Taliban take-over, most have cleared subse-quent vetting for admission intothe United States. Some initiallyraised possible security issues —like evacuees who shared a namewith terrorism suspects — butwere absolved on closer scrutiny.

But several dozen have beenred-flagged, despite havinghelped the United States duringits 20-year war in Afghanistan, be-cause screenings uncovered ap-parent records of violent crime orlinks to Islamist militants that fol-low-up evaluations have notcleared, officials said. The deroga-tory information has raised thequestion of what to do with them,leaving them in limbo.

The military transferred mostof the still-flagged evacuees —some with relatives — to CampBondsteel, a NATO base in Koso-vo, which agreed to let Afghans behoused there for up to a year ifthey stayed on the base. They aredesignated as requiring furtherinvestigation, and no final deci-sion has been about whether theywill receive permission to enterthe United States, officials said.

But in an acknowledgment thatmany are likely to be barred from

Vetting Flagged Dozens FleeingRule of Taliban

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

Continued on Page 8

Sixteen months before lastNovember’s presidential election,a researcher at Facebook de-scribed an alarming development.She was getting content about theconspiracy theory QAnon within aweek of opening an experimentalaccount, she wrote in an internalreport.

On Nov. 5, two days after theelection, another Facebook em-ployee posted a message alertingcolleagues that comments with“combustible election misinfor-mation” were visible below manyposts.

Four days after that, a companydata scientist wrote in a note to hisco-workers that 10 percent of allU.S. views of political material — astartlingly high figure — were ofposts that alleged the vote wasfraudulent.

In each case, Facebook’s em-ployees sounded an alarm aboutmisinformation and inflamma-tory content on the platform andurged action — but the companyfailed or struggled to address theissues. The internal dispatcheswere among a set of Facebookdocuments obtained by The NewYork Times that give new insightinto what happened inside the so-cial network before and after theNovember election, when thecompany was caught flat-footedas users weaponized its platformto spread lies about the vote.

Facebook has publicly blamedthe proliferation of election false-hoods on former President Don-ald J. Trump and other social plat-forms. In mid-January, SherylSandberg, Facebook’s chief oper-ating officer, said the Jan. 6 riot atthe Capitol was “largely organizedon platforms that don’t have ourabilities to stop hate.” MarkZuckerberg, Facebook’s chief ex-ecutive, told lawmakers in Marchthat the company “did our part tosecure the integrity of our elec-tion.”

But the company documentsshow the degree to which Face-book knew of extremist move-ments and groups on its site thatwere trying to polarize American

MisinformationTripped AlarmsInside Facebook

By RYAN MACand SHEERA FRENKEL

Continued on Page 20

“Hamilton” has restaged“What’d I Miss?,” the second actopener that introduces ThomasJefferson, so that the dancer play-ing Sally Hemings, the enslavedwoman who bore him multiplechildren, can pointedly turn herback on him.

In “The Lion King,” a pair oflongstanding references to the

shamanic Rafiki as a monkey —taxonomically correct, since thecharacter is a mandrill — havebeen excised because of potentialracial overtones, given that therole is played by a Black woman.

“The Book of Mormon,” a musi-cal comedy from the creators of“South Park” that gleefullyteeters between outrageous andoffensive, has gone even further.The show, about two wide-eyedwhite missionaries trying to save

souls in a Ugandan village con-tending with AIDS and a warlord,faced calls from Black members ofits own cast to take a fresh look,and wound up making a series ofalterations that elevate the mainBlack female character and clar-ify the satire.

Broadway is back. But as showsresume performance after thelong pandemic shutdown, some ofthe biggest plays and musicals are

Racism Protests Change the Script on BroadwayBy MICHAEL PAULSON

“The Book of Mormon” was revised after Black actors, including Kim Exum, expressed concerns.SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page 24

WASHINGTON — Joe Biden’spitch during the 2020 campaignto unseat President Donald J.Trump was simple: Trade in astubborn, immovable leader forone with a proven record oftaking half a loaf when a full oneis out of reach.

That approach appears to havebrought Mr. Biden to the preci-pice of victory on a $2 trilliondeal that could begin to definehis legacy as a successful OvalOffice legislative architect, onewho is reshaping governmentspending and doing so by thenarrowest of margins in a coun-try with deep partisan and ideo-logical chasms.

But the bill is certain to be farsmaller than what he originallyproposed, and far less ambitiousthan he and many of his allieshad hoped. It won’t make him theone who finally secured freecommunity college for everyone.Seniors won’t get free dental,hearing and vision coveragefrom Medicare. And there won’tbe a new system of penalties forthe worst polluters.

“Look — hey, look, it’s all aboutcompromise,” Mr. Biden said at aCNN town hall meeting onThursday, shrugging off thedoubters as he sought to closethe deal with lawmakers and thepublic.

But accepting less and callingit a win has its limits — andconsequences.

By spending the last severalmonths pushing for an evenlarger and more ambitiousagenda, knowing that he wouldmost likely have to pare it back,Mr. Biden has let down somesupporters who believed he

Biden FindsEven VictoryHas Its CostsThe Consequences ofPolitical Compromise

NEWS ANALYSIS

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Continued on Page 16

Eric Adams could not resist thestory.

In a 2019 commencement ad-dress, Mr. Adams complained thata neighbor’s dog kept befoulinghis yard — no matter how polite hewas to the owner, no matter hisstanding as Brooklyn’s boroughpresident. Then a pastor gave himan idea. Mr. Adams slipped on ahoodie and Timberland boots,rang the neighbor’s doorbell andreintroduced himself a little less

politely, he said. After that, the dogstayed away.

“Let people know you are notthe one to mess with,” he advisedthe predominantly Black graduat-ing class at Medgar Evers Collegein Brooklyn. He closed with a pre-diction for those who said hewould never be mayor: “I’m goingto put my hoodie on, and I’m goingto make it happen.”

That electoral prophecy mightwell hold up. The story does not.

It was the pastor, Robert Water-man, who actually had the neigh-bor with the dog and the con-frontation at the door, both men

said in interviews. Mr. Adams justliked how it sounded. “It was agreat story I heard,” he told TheNew York Times recently. “I heardhim preach, and I told him, ‘I’mgoing to tell that story.’”

With Mr. Adams, 61, now poisedto become New York City’s nextmayor, the episode at once reflectshis political superpower andgreatest potential vulnerability: a

comfort with public shape-shift-ing that would make him the big-gest City Hall wild card in dec-ades. He propagates and discardsnarratives about himself, rarelysweating the details.

His highest principle can ap-pear to be the perpetuation of theEric Adams story, one that hehopes will deliver him from astreetwise childhood in Brooklynand Queens to the seat of power inLower Manhattan. He speakswith almost spiritual zeal abouthis personal evolution — he is ameditating, globe-trotting, vegan

Who Is Eric Adams? No One Knows, but He’s Probably a Winner.This article is by Matt Flegen-

heimer, Michael Rothfeld and Jef-fery C. Mays.

A Political Wild CardWho Says ‘I Am You’

Eric Adams at an event in Midtown on Thursday. The former police officer has run a disciplined campaign and is on the cusp of becoming New York’s next mayor.ANDREW SENG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page 22

UNPOPULARITY Behind PresidentBiden’s low approval ratings is apessimistic electorate. PAGE 16

Vanessa Bryant was questioned in herlawsuit over images of remains fromthe crash that killed Kobe Bryant andtheir daughter Gianna. PAGE 35

SPORTS 32-35

Recalling a Day of Loss

Late Edition

VOL. CLXXI . . . No. 59,221 © 2021 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2021

Today, some sunshine, then increas-ing clouds, seasonably cool, high 60.Tonight, intervals of rain, low 56. To-morrow, milder, showers later, high66. Weather map is on Page 26.

$6.00