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Robert S. Trump, the president’s young-er brother, was a loyal spokesman forthe family who shunned the spotlight.He was 71. PAGE 23

OBITUARIES 22-24

‘The Quietest of Trumps’As hurricane season enters its busiestphase, there’s a lot you can do now tostock up and get ready. PAGE 3

AT HOME

Prepare to Hunker DownPlentiful salmon used to be one of thefew perks for residents of the country’sFar East. Then the fish vanished, andmany blamed President Putin. PAGE 8

INTERNATIONAL 8-11

Dry Runs in Russian Rivers

A bastion of improv is addressing theproblem for at least the fifth time. PAGE 6

ARTS & LEISURE

Second City and RacismWhen estranged parents flee with chil-dren, a shadowy industry steps in. PAGE 1

SUNDAY BUSINESS

Corporate KidnappingsPresident Aleksandr G. Lukashenko ofBelarus, who often plays Moscow offagainst the West, is in crisis. PAGE 9

Appealing to Putin for Help

Devastating windstorms just beforeharvest were the last thing reelingfarmers needed. PAGE 13

NATIONAL 13-20

Wind Flattens Hopes in Iowa

U(D547FD)v+%!%!_!?!"

One hundred years ago, millions ofAmerican women cast their first ballots.

SPECIAL SECTION

Suffragists and Democracy

In the N.B.A.’s first play-in game, theTrail Blazers secured the final playoffspot by defeating the Grizzlies. PAGE 27

SPORTS 25-27

Making History in the Bubble

A.O. Scott on the meticulously observedfiction of Edward P. Jones. PAGE 1

BOOK REVIEW

‘The Americans’The harsh reality of social media influ-encers with Hollywood dreams. PAGE 1

SUNDAY STYLES

L.A. Story

The pseudonymous Italian author isreleasing “The Lying Life of Adults” onSept. 1, and the Magazine has an excerpt.

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A New Ferrante Novel

For months, public health ex-perts and federal officials havesaid that significantly expandingthe number of coronavirus testsadministered in the United Statesis essential to reining in the pan-demic. By some estimates, sev-eral million people might need tobe tested each day, includingmany people who don’t feel sick.

But the country remains farshort of that benchmark and, forthe first time, the number ofknown tests conducted each dayhas fallen.

Reported daily tests trendeddownward for much of the last twoweeks, essentially stalling the na-tion’s testing response. Some733,000 people have been testedeach day this month on average,down from nearly 750,000 in July,according to the COVID TrackingProject. The seven-day test aver-age dropped to 709,000 on Mon-day, the lowest in nearly a month,before ticking upward again atweek’s end.

The troubling trend comes aftermonths of steady increases intesting, and may in part reflectthat fewer people are seeking outtests as known cases have leveledoff at more than 50,000 per day, af-ter surging even higher this sum-mer. But the plateau in testingmay also reflect people’s frustra-tion at the prospect of long linesand delays in getting results — aswell as another fundamentalproblem: The nation has yet tobuild a robust system to test vastportions of the population, not justthose seeking tests.

Six months into the pandemic,testing remains a major obstacle

RATE OF TESTINGSHOWS FIRST DIPSINCE ILLNESS HIT

U.S. ‘NOT DOING ENOUGH’

Lacking a Robust Systemto Extend Screening

Beyond Demand

This article is by Sarah Mervosh,Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs andSheryl Gay Stolberg.

Figures show that tests de-clined in 20 states last week.

CHRISTOPHER SMITH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page 6

JERUSALEM — Prime Min-ister Benjamin Netanyahu buoy-antly approached the micro-phone, beaming at his diplomaticcoup.

“I told you,” he told Israelis in atriumphant news conference onThursday night.

Indeed he had.At least since 2009, Mr. Netan-

yahu had been insisting, againstconventional wisdom, that Israelcould build full diplomatic andtrade relationships with Arabcountries in the Middle East with-out settling the Palestinian con-flict first.

At every opportunity, he badg-ered the Persian Gulf monarchs tobring their not-so-secret coopera-tion with Israel into the open.

Again and again, they de-murred. Settle the conflict withthe Palestinians, they said, thenwe’ll talk.

That was the answer so manytimes from so many Arab coun-tries for so long that Mr. Netanya-hu’s persistence seemed discon-nected and quixotic.

When he sealed a deal to nor-malize relations with the UnitedArab Emirates this week, it wasnot because he had suddenly be-come more persuasive. What hadchanged, analysts and formeraides to Mr. Netanyahu said, wasthe dynamics of the region and theworld.

The Arab Spring uprisings hadshown Gulf monarchs that popu-lar anger over repression and cor-ruption were bigger threats totheir rule than any blowback overtheir failure to maintain solidaritywith the Palestinians.

Other events changed their se-curity calculus. Washington stoodby as a staunch ally, PresidentHosni Mubarak of Egypt, wasousted in a popular uprising, andfailed to respond militarily whenSyria gassed its own people andIran was blamed for an attack onSaudi oil facilities.

It became increasingly clear tothe Gulf states that the Westernallies they had relied on for dec-ades to come to their rescue mightnot be there in a pinch.

Finally, as Iranian-sponsoredproxy forces grew more powerfulacross the region — in Lebanon,Syria, Iraq and Yemen — the Gulfstates increasingly saw Iran astheir greatest threat. And the 2015Iran nuclear deal persuaded themthat Washington was not commit-ted to destroying Iran’s nuclear

New RealitiesIn Mideast Pull2 Rivals Closer

How the U.A.E. Founda Firm Ally in Israel

By DAVID M. HALBFINGERand RONEN BERGMAN

Continued on Page 11

After Southern California’ssoaring coronavirus caseloadforced Chapman University thismonth to abruptly abandon plansto reopen its campus and shift toan autumn of all-remote instruc-tion, the school promised that stu-dents would still get a “robustChapman experience.”

“What about a robust refund?”retorted Christopher Moore, aspring graduate, on Facebook.

A parent chimed in. “We arepaying a lot of money for tuition,and our students are not gettingwhat we paid for,” wrote ShannonCarducci, whose youngest child,Ally, is a sophomore at Chapman,in Orange County, where the costof attendance averages $65,000 ayear. Back when they believedAlly would be attending classes inperson, her parents leased her a$1,200-a-month apartment. Now,Ms. Carducci said, she plans to askfor a tuition discount.

A rebellion against the high costof a bachelor’s degree, alreadybrewing around the nation beforethe coronavirus, has gatheredfresh momentum as campuseshave strained to operate in thepandemic. Incensed at payingface-to-face prices for educationthat is increasingly online, stu-dents and their parents are de-manding tuition rebates, in-creased financial aid, reduced feesand leaves of absence to compen-sate for what they feel will be a di-minished college experience.

At Rutgers University, morethan 30,000 people have signed apetition calling for an eliminationof fees and a 20 percent tuition cut.More than 40,000 have signed aplea for the University of NorthCarolina system to refund hous-ing charges to students in theevent of another campus shut-down. The California State Uni-

With Campus Life Diminished,Why Pay for ‘Glorified Skype’?

By SHAWN HUBLER

Continued on Page 5

Aahtrell Johnson rememberedthe police car rolling up, just be-fore he was about to take his shotat the basket under the pine trees.It was 2016, and his neighbor hadcalled 911, complaining that hewas getting loud in the street. Awhite officer named Bobby Whitehad been sent to respond.

As Mr. White, a Florida nativewith a trimmed goatee, ap-proached Mr. Johnson, who isBlack, the officer could see the 17-year-old was only playing basket-ball with his friend. Rather than is-sue a ticket, Mr. Johnson recalled,the officer asked if he could jointhe game. He shot some hoopswith the teenagers, and otherscame out of their homes.

No one noticed that Mr. White’sdashboard camera was runningthe whole time.

The video — posted online bythe Police Department afterwardand watched by millions of view-ers — was a moment of hope in anage where recordings of policebrutality were the ones going vi-ral. Mr. White became a celebrityin Gainesville, Fla., and was nick-named “Basketball Cop.” Sportsstars came to play pickup gameswith the Gainesville teens. Mr.White founded a nonprofit to easerelations between the police andBlack youths and was invited onNBC’s “Nightly News” and ESPNto promote it.

“He didn’t look at us like wewere criminals,” Mr. Johnson, now22, said.

But Chanae Jackson, a real es-tate agent who was born inGainesville, had a different under-standing of policing in the city. Herson had a troubling encounterwith law enforcement in 2018, andshe became a vocal critic of the de-partment. This May, someonesent her another video of Mr.White: A cellphone recording ofhim slamming a Black teenagerinto the hood of his patrol car.

After the killing of GeorgeFloyd, Ms. Jackson decided shewould release the video.

And with just a click on Face-book, she set off an uproar thatstripped away not only Mr.White’s image as the face of whatgood neighborhood policingshould be but also the assumption

Video ShattersPublic’s Image

Of Hoops CopBy NICHOLAS CASEY

Continued on Page 14

When Kamala Harris’s motherleft India for California in 1958, thepercentage of Americans whowere immigrants was at its lowestpoint in over a century.

That was about to change.Her arrival at Berkeley as a

young graduate student — andthat of another student, an immi-grant from Jamaica whom shewould marry — was the beginningof a historic wave of immigrationfrom outside Europe that wouldtransform the United States inways its leaders never imagined.Now, the American-born childrenof these immigrants — people likeMs. Harris — are the face of thiscountry’s demographic future.

Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s choice ofMs. Harris as his running matehas been celebrated as a mile-stone because she is the firstBlack woman and the first of Indi-an descent in American history tobe on a major party’s presidentialticket. But her selection also high-lights a remarkable shift in thiscountry: the rise of a new wave ofchildren of immigrants, or second-generation Americans, as a grow-ing political and cultural force, dif-ferent from any that has come be-fore.

The last major influx of immi-grants, in the late 19th and early20th centuries, came primarilyfrom Eastern and Southern Eu-rope. This time the surge comesfrom around the world, from India

and Jamaica to China and Mexicoand beyond.

In California, the state whereMs. Harris grew up and which shenow represents in the Senate,about half of all children comefrom immigrant homes. Nation-wide, for the first time in this coun-try’s history, whites make up less

than half of the population underthe age of 16, the Brookings Insti-tution has found; the trend is driv-en by larger numbers of Asians,Hispanics and people who aremultiracial.

Today, more than a quarter ofAmerican adults are immigrants

Child of Immigrants and Face of a New AmericaBy SABRINA TAVERNISE

Kamala Harris, left, with her family in 1970. Nationwide, whitepeople make up less than half of the population under age 16.

KAMALA HARRIS CAMPAIGN, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Continued on Page 18

DARBY, Pa. — Each day, whenNick Casselli, the president of aPhiladelphia postal workers un-ion, sits down at his desk on MainStreet in this historic town wheretrolley cars still run and the postoffice is a source of civic pride, hisphone is full of alarmed messagesabout increasing delays in maildelivery.

Mr. Casselli and his 1,600 mem-bers have been in a state of highalert since Louis DeJoy, a Republi-can megadonor and an ally ofPresident Trump’s, took over aspostmaster general in May. Over-time was eliminated, promptingbackups. Seven mail-sorting ma-

chines were removed from anearby processing center in WestPhiladelphia, causing further de-lays. Now, post offices are beingtold to open later and close duringlunch.

“I have some customers bang-ing on my people’s doors: ‘Openup!’” Mr. Casselli said. “I’ve neverseen that in my whole 35-yearpostal career.”

Similar accounts of slowdownsand curtailed service are emerg-ing across the country as Mr. De-Joy pushes cost-cutting measuresthat he says are intended to over-

haul an agency suffering billion-dollar losses. But as Mr. Trumprails almost daily against the serv-ice and delays clog the mail, vot-ers and postal workers warn a cri-sis is building that could disen-franchise record numbers ofAmericans who will be castingballots by mail in November be-cause of the coronavirus out-break.

For the most part, experts andemployees say, the Postal Serviceis still capable of operating as usu-al. Yet the agency has warnedstates that it may not be able tomeet their deadlines for deliver-ing last-minute ballots. And thisweek, Mr. Trump said he opposednew postal funding because of hisopposition to mail-in voting,

Growing Crisis in Postal Service Alarms VotersThis article is by Luke Broadwa-

ter, Jack Healy, Michael D. Shearand Hailey Fuchs.

The postal carrier Henrietta Dixon in Philadelphia. Mounting delays affect not only ballots but also medicines and other deliveries.MATT ROURKE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Ballot Volume Dwarfedby Christmas Mail

Continued on Page 16

Late Edition

VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,787 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, AUGUST 16, 2020

Today, mostly cloudy, cooler, show-ers in areas, high 73. Tonight, mostlycloudy, low 65. Tomorrow, showersor thunderstorms, some sunshine,high 79. Weather map, Page 21.

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