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the window is a description, not a tactic: Shifting it doesn’t mean proposing extreme ideas to make somewhat less extreme ideas seem reasonable.

“It just explains how ideas come in and out of fashion, the same way that gravity explains why something falls to the earth,”

Joseph P. Overton introduced the concept in the 1990s as an executive at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy,

“We have come a very, very long way in the American people now demanding legislation and concepts that just a few years ago were thought to be very radical,” Mr. Sanders said in a recent interview.

That the Overton window is shifting doesn’t necessarily mean policies like Medicare for all will be enacted, and it doesn’t say anything about whether they are good or bad. But it does say something meaningful about the political climate.

Part of the story is polarization: Democrats moving left and Republicans right, to an extent “that we haven’t seen previously in a modern political period,”

As support for more ambitious policies has increased among Democrats, there has also been “a wave of young party leaders who are less encumbered by a long voting history tying them to more moderate and less progressive policy stances,” Dr. Atkinson said. “And they’re being supported by a base that is ready to hear these messages.”

think tank, contended that pushing for extreme positions is more effective at changing public opinion. However, there are multiple approaches to shifting the status quo. For example, similar to the foot-in-the-door technique used in sales, one could advocate for small but gradually larger shifts to a policy.

My guess is that GND activists are right (politically) about the Overton Window stuff — wanting big, bold sweeping initiatives instead of incrementalism. But that they’re wrong (politically) about the strategy of lumping environmental policy along with a grab bag of other left-ish policy positions, instead of being more targeted.

But I have no idea. It’s just my priors, and they’re fairly weak priors.

I actually think one of the better arguments for swinging for the fences in terms of the GND is that because the Senate is so resistant to change, you need some kind of paradigm shift

A paradigm shift where even action that seems incremental is actually quite bold, just because the goalposts have shifted so much.

natesilver: I think the shift would just be a generational one. There’s a *lot* of evidence that people under about age 40 are willing to consider left-wing worldviews that a previous generation might have considered too radical.People under age 40 have also lived with two really unpopular Republican presidents, Bush and Trump (along with one semi-popular Democratic one). So I think there’s a decent chance that policy in the U.S. shifts significantly to the left as those young people grow older and gain influence and power.

natesilver: I’m not on the fence so much as I just have no f’ing clue. I guess the heuristic is “what we tried before didn’t work, so let’s try something new”, which I suppose on some level I agree with

Like, maybe the GND isn’t any more likely to succeed than incrementalism, but when it *does* succeed, there’s a much bigger payoff.

natesilver: That even goes a little bit to whether you think climate change is a linear or nonlinear problem. If you think we’re all fucked unless there’s a massive paradigm shift, then you take whatever chance of a paradigm shift you can get, even if you also risk a backlash. If you think climate change harms are more adaptable and/or uncertain and/or solvable by technology and/or with international agreement, maybe you want a more incremental approach.

The GND shouldn’t be taken as a stand-in for the overall debate about incrementalism vs. the big swing. You could very easily think that an incremental approach works for health care but is a disaster for the environment, for instance.

that was before House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy declined to punish the execrable Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, other than a statement condemning her views. The QAnon follower's embrace of baseless conspiracy theories, along with violent, racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic statements are repulsive not just to many Americans, but to decent people around the world.

McCarthy presided over a meeting weighing the fate of Greene and of Rep. Liz Cheney, who committed the grave sin of condemning former President Donald Trump for inciting a mob to attack the Capitol in an assault on American democracy so stunning that even McCarthy briefly found his spine and criticized Trump.

Cheney survived a vote to remove her from leadership by a vote of 145- 61. And Greene, after apologizing to her colleagues in the closed-door party meeting Wednesday night, was not penalized, but met with a standing ovation.

Greene offered what largely amounted to a non-apology, expressing regret for some of her past comments. Hours later, in a dramatic Congressional session, 219 House Democrats, along with 11 Republicans, did what McCarthy should have and stripped Greene of her committee assignments.

By embracing Greene, Republicans are moving the Overton window, the range of views that are considered politically acceptable. Unfortunately, that has an impact on the entire country, however much the Democrats try to correct for the moral failings of Republicans.

After the closed-door meeting on Wednesday, McCarthy justified his inaction on Greene by saying, "This Republican Party's a very big tent, everyone's invited in."

But the tent is becoming increasingly comfortable for racists, anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists and reality deniers.

It's the party of the twice impeached Trump, a man who Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham described in 2015 as "a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot," who "doesn't represent my party."

Graham, as we know, did a 180 on Trump. He, too, found integrity too politically risky, and debased himself by embracing Trump.

It was the tolerance of Trump's rhetoric -- which was previously considered beyond the pale -- that paved the road to Greene's election and the attack on the Capitol last month.

Just two years ago, Republicans stripped Rep. Steve King from all committee assignments. King, who had made countless racist statements, had asked in an interview with the New York Times, "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization -- how did that language become offensive."

"That is not the party of Lincoln," he declared, "and it's definitely not American."

The party has changed.

Like many elected Republicans, Greene rejected the incontrovertible fact that President Joe Biden won the election. But she goes much further. She repeatedly showed support on social media for assassinating prominent Democrats, shared an image of herself holding a gun alongside other congresswomen with a caption that mentioned going "on the offense against these socialists" and claimed the 2018 California wildfires were deliberately set by a Jewish financier using a space laser.

When Greene was still a candidate running for Congress, the Republican Party initially distanced itself from her.

Rep. Steve Scalise, the House Republicans' number two, went even further, calling her statements "disgusting," and added they "don't reflect the values of equality and decency that make our country great."

But then Trump threw his arms around his fervent admirer, calling her "a real WINNER," and a "future Republican star."

On Wednesday, McCarthy defended Greene and said, "I think it would be helpful if you could hear exactly what she told all of us -- denouncing Q-on, I don't know if I say it right," McCarthy disingenuously claimed, "I don't even know what it is.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, of all people, seems to be an outlier among Republican leadership in condemning Greene. "Loony lies and conspiracy theories are a cancer for the Republican Party and our country. Somebody who's suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.'s airplane is not living in reality."

The GOP welcomed into the fold an extremist, during a time when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered an urgent examination of extremism in US military ranks; during a time when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says the threat of domestic terrorism is "persistent."

The new domestic terrorist threat comes from the extremist fringes that espouse the same ideas that McCarthy seemed to welcome into the GOP's "very big tent."

Extremists and their supporters are winning battles in the Republican civil war, and the entire country is paying a price.

At the other extreme sit conservatives like my Atlantic colleague David Frum, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced and International Studies Professor Eliot Cohen, and New York Times columnist David Brooks, who warned against Trump during the campaign, and believe he is now vindicating their fears.

For them, conservatism is about prudence, inherited wisdom, and a government that first does no harm; they see none of those virtues in Trump. They see themselves as the inheritors of a rich conservative intellectual tradition; Trump’s ignorance embarrasses them.

they believe America should stand for ideals that transcend race, religion and geography; they fear white Christian identity politics in their bones

In between are the conservatives who will tip the balance. Unlike Breitbart and company, they generally opposed Trump during the campaign. Unlike Brooks and company, they serve a conservative audience that now overwhelmingly backs him.

they work for conservative publications and networks. Their business model is opposing the left. And that means opposing the people who oppose Trump."

National Review is the most illustrative. During the campaign, it called Trump “a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself.”

Step number one: Accuse Trump’s opponents of hyperbole.

But now Trump is a Republican president, popular with most conservatives, and under liberal attack. So National Review has developed a technique that could be called anti-anti-Trump. It goes like this.

Step number two: Briefly acknowledge Trump’s flaws while insisting they’re being massively exaggerated.

The problem with these formulations should be clear. Some liberal criticism of Trump may indeed be melodramatic. But liberals don’t wield much power in Washington right now. Conservatives do. The key question facing National Review, therefore, is not whether Trump’s actions are as bad as the most extreme lefties say they are. The key question is whether Trump’s actions warrant conservative opposition.

In this way, National Review minimizes Trump’s misdeeds without appearing to defend them.

Among National Review’s favorite phrases these days is “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” It refers to Democrats who describe Trump as mentally unstable, a pathological liar or a would-be dictator

But National Review once described Trump in those terms itself. A year ago, in its issue entitled, “Against Trump,” the magazine called him a “huckster” whose populism contained “strong-man overtones.”

Its contributors declared him a “charlatan,” a “con man,” someone exhibiting “emotional immaturity bordering on personality disorder” and an “American Mussolini.”

Where exactly does National Review see the evidence of emotional, intellectual and moral growth?

It’s not deranged to worry that Trump may undermine liberal democracy. It’s deranged to think that leftist hyperbole constitutes the greater threat. Unfortunately, that form of Trump Derangement Syndrome is alive and well at National Review.

It is inconvenient for National Review that the individual in government who now most threatens the principles it holds dear is not a liberal, but a president that most conservatives support. But evading that reality doesn’t make it any less true.

No matter how fierce play may look on the playground or in the social scrimmage of the school day, the more grueling competition is the one your child faces each day to measure up in her peer group. At around age eight, children start to compare themselves to each other in more competitive ways.

media and much of life online introduce an adult context for a child’s self-assessment. The behaviors they see there that set the bar for cool, cute, bold, and daring come from the wrong age and life stage. The mix suddenly includes adolescents and adults, media coverage of fame-addled celebrities and jaded politicians, teen magazines, and Victoria’s Secret at the mall and in the mail.

As the inner critic grows, parents become indispensable as the voice of the inner ally, the voice that helps balance a child’

innermost sense of himself

Day by day, kids need time to process their experiences intellectually and emotionally, to integrate new information with their existing body of knowledge and experience. They need time to consolidate it all so that it has meaning and relevance for them. Ideally, they do that with their parents and in the context of family and community.

Kids don’t get home from school anymore; they bring school—and an even larger online community—home with them.

t in the ways that matter most, speed derails the natural pace of development. Pressure to grow up faster or exposing children to content or influences beyond their developmental ken does not make them smarter or savvier sooner. Instead, it fast-forwards them past critical steps in the developmental process.

Developmentally, this is the time children need parents and teachers to help them learn to tame impulsivity—learning to wait their turn, not cut in line, not call out in a class discussion—and for developing the capacity to feel happy and alone, connected to oneself and empathetic toward others.

Some things in life you just have to do in order to learn, and do a lot of to grow adept at it. Like learning to ride a bike, developing these inner qualities of character and contemplation calls for real-life practice. In the absence of that immersion-style learning, time on screens can undermine a child’s development of these important social skills and the capacity to feel empathy

With nature pressing for human interaction and a child’s world of possibility expanding in the new school environment, to trade it all for screen time is a terrible waste of a child’s early school years.

Emotional and social development, like cognitive development, can benefit from “judicious use” of tech

“But if it is used in a nonjudicious fashion, it will shape the brain in what I think will actually be a negative way,”

“the problem is that judicious thinking is among the frontal-lobe skills that are still developing way past the teenage years. In the meantime, the pull of technology is capturing kids at an ever earlier age, when they are not generally able to step back and decide what’s appropriate or necessary, or how much is too much.”

in school, they take their cues from the crowd-sourced conversations they hear among friends and on social media. For girls, even seven-year-olds on the school playground, sexy is the new cute. Thin is still in, but for ever younger girls. In a study of the effects of media images on gender perceptions, one study reported that by age three, children view fatness negatively, and free online computer games for girls trend toward fashion, beauty, and dress-up games, reinforcing messages that your body is your most important asset.

prior to Britney Spears, most girls had ten years of running around, riding their bikes, and experiencing their bodies as a source of energy, movement, confidence, and skills. That was before children’s fashions included thong panties for kindergarten girls, stylish bras for girls not much older, lipstick or lip gloss as a top accessory for nearly half of six-to nine-year- old girls, and “Future Pimp” T-shirts for schoolboys.

Boys, too, are under pressure. They must measure up to the super-masculine ideal of the day, portrayed and defined by more graphic, sadistic, and sexual violence than the superheroes of yesterday. Homophobia and the slurs used to express it remain a common part of boy culture, but now at an earlier age, as does a derogatory view of all things female and an increasingly sexualized attitude toward girls.

Children do best when they are free and flexible to try on and cross over the gender codes—girls who skateboard and play ice hockey, boys who draw or dance, boys and girls who enjoy each other without “dating” overtones.

TV viewing helped white boys feel better about themselves, and left white girls, black girls, and black boys feeling worse. White boys saw male media comparisons as having it good: “positions of power, prestigious jobs, high education, glamorous houses, a beautiful wife” all easily attained, as if prepackaged. Girls and women saw female media comparisons in more simplistic and limited roles, “focused on the success they have because of how they look, not what they do, what they think or how they got there.” Black boys also saw their media comparisons in the negative, limited roles of “criminals, hoodlums and buffoons, with no other future options.”

there is “a clear link between media violence exposure and aggression” as well as to other damaging consequences including eating disorders, poor body image, and unhealthy practices in an effort to achieve idealized appearances. “Failure to live up to the specific media stereotypes for one’s sex is a blow to a person’s sense of social desirability,”

They approached several bus drivers on break, showing them a picture of a subject from the original experiment and asking the driver if that rider would be allowed to stay on. In that survey, 86 percent of drivers said they’d let a black passenger stay onboard—a rate far higher than what happened out on the streets. Perhaps drivers know that they shouldn’t discriminate, but only act on that knowledge when they think their actions are being recorded

If that comparison sounds overwrought, consider the words of Denny Gioia, a management professor at Penn State who, in the early 1970s, was the coordinator of product recalls at Ford. At the time, the Ford Pinto was showing a tendency to explode when hit from behind, incinerating passengers. Twice, Gioia and his team elected not to recall the car—a fact that, when revealed to his M.B.A. students, goes off like a bomb. “Before I went to Ford I would have argued strongly that Ford had an ethical obligation to recall,” he wrote in the Journal of Business Ethics some 17 years after he’d left the company. “I now argue and teach that Ford had an ethical obligation to recall. But, while I was there, I perceived no strong obligation to recall and I remember no strong ethical overtones to the case whatsoever.”

Executives are bombarded with information. To ease the cognitive load, they rely on a set of unwritten scripts imported from the organization around them. You could even define corporate culture as a collection of scripts.

back to Volkswagen. You cannot unconsciously install a “defeat device” into hundreds of thousands of cars. You need to be sneaky, and thus deliberate.

The most troubling thing, says Vaughan, is the way scripts “expand like an elastic waistband” to accommodate more and more divergence.

Embarrassed and unable to overturn the script they themselves had built in the preceding years, Morton-Thiokol’s brass buckled. The “no launch” recommendation was reversed to “launch.”

“It’s like losing your virginity,” a NASA teleconference participant later told Vaughan. “Once you’ve done it, you can’t go back.” If you try, you face a credibility spiral: Were you lying then or are you lying now?

Scripts are undoubtedly efficient. Managers don’t have to muddle through each new problem afresh, Gioia wrote, because “the mode of handling such problems has already been worked out in advance.” But therein lies the danger. Scripts can be flawed, and grow more so over time, yet they discourage active analysis

the final decision to deceive was, on an individual level, rational—the logical end to a long sequence.

This sequence of events fits a pattern that appears and reappears in corporate-misconduct cases, beginning with the fantastic commitments made from on high.

All of which placed personnel in a position of extreme strain.

We know what strain does to people. Even without it, they tend to underestimate the probability of future bad events. Put them under emotional stress, some research suggests, and this tendency gets amplified. People will favor decisions that preempt short-term social discomfort even at the cost of heightened long-term risk. Faced with the immediate certainty of a boss’s wrath or the distant possibility of blowback from a faceless agency, many will focus mostly on the former.

What James Burke, Johnson & Johnson’s CEO, did was anticipate the possible results of these pressures, well before they built up. He shared Henry James’s “imagination of disaster.” And it’s why he introduced, if you will, a set of counterscripts. It was a conscious effort to tinker with the unconscious criteria by which decisions at his company were made. The result was an incremental descent into integrity, a slide toward soundness, and the normalization of referencing “Our Credo” in situations that might otherwise have seemed devoid of ethical content.

This reaction isn’t excusable. But it is predictable.

What we know of Ferdinand Piëch, Volkswagen’s chairman before the scandal, is that he was no James Burke. At a 2008 corruption trial that sent one VW executive to jail, Piëch referred to alleged widespread use of VW funds on prostitutes as mere “irregularities,” and chided a lawyer for mispronouncing Lamborghini. (“Those who can’t afford one should say it properly” were his precise words.) This was around the time the emissions cheating began.

“Culture starts at the top,” a businessman recently said in an interview with the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. “But it doesn’t start at the top with pretty statements. Employees will see through empty rhetoric and will emulate the nature of top-management decision making … A robust ‘code of conduct’ can be emasculated by one action of the CEO or CFO.”

“Why is there no socialism in the United States?”

Non-Marxists took up the inquiry after World War II. With a Labor government nationalizing railways and steelworks in Britain—Germany shattered by Nazism—and communism holding Russia, China, and half of Europe in its grip, the United States stood out as a lonely beacon of liberalism. Again America seemed a special case that needed explaining. This time the explanations came from fellow-liberals who admired the American exception, which is how the phrase acquired its secondary and more positive meaning.

“American exceptionalism" began its career, however, not as a boast, but as a question.

Even pre-Trump, it was hard to argue that the United States was a consistently more liberal society than Germany or Britain

Free speech is more protected in the United States than other places. In some ways, no: The right to vote is better protected almost everywhere else in the democratic world than in the United States.

But most of the compliments Americans paid themselves half a century ago ring hollow in the 21st century.

Marco Rubio delivered the keynote address at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. He told his own inspiring personal story and credited it to the unique opportunities of the United States. "The result is an America where—which is the only place in the world where it doesn't matter who your parents were or where you came from. You can be anything you are willing to work hard to be. The result is the only economy in the world where poor people with a better idea and a strong work ethic can compete and succeed against rich people in the marketplace and competition.” None of that is true, and in important ways it is the opposite of the truth.

Who your parents were and where you came from matters probably more in the United States than in most other advanced economies, at least if statistics on upward mobility are to be believed.

It is more violent than other comparable societies, both one-on-one and in the gun massacres to which the country has become so habituated

It has worse health outcomes than comparably wealthy countries, and some of them most important of them are deteriorating further even as they improve almost everywhere else.

America’s average levels of academic achievement lag those of other advanced countries.

Fewer Americans vote—and in no other democracy does organized money count for so much in political life.

“Why was the United States vulnerable to such a person when other democracies have done so much better?” Part of the answer is a technical one: The Electoral College, designed to protect the country from demagogues, instead elected one.

How did Trump even get so far that the Electoral College entered into the matter one way or another?

If, as I believe, Donald Trump arose because of the disregard of the American political and economic elite for the troubles of so many of their fellow-citizens, it has to be asked again: How could the leaders of a democratic country imagine they could get away with such disregard?

The insurrection left several people dead and hundreds of people have been charged in connection to the events of Jan. 6.

"We’ve moved from just plain old fringe, extremist rants to fringe extremist and racist rants," Pocan said.

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Johnson also has pushed the conspiracy theory that outside provocateurs were part of the riots, a claim Trump backers have often made.

Britain has long resisted the idea of requiring people to carry identity documents, and for some in the country, this issue carries authoritarian overtones.

Mr. Johnson acknowledged the sensitivities and pointed out that the certification plan would not be rolled out for a few months. The government plans to test the program in pilot locations, from a comedy club and nightclub in Liverpool to the FA Cup soccer final at Wembley Stadium.

Britain plans to classify countries according to a traffic light system, with visitors from green countries not required to isolate themselves, visitors from amber countries required to isolate at home for several days, and those from red countries required to continue quarantining in hotels.

With more than 31 million people having gotten at least one vaccine “jab,” and the country still largely in lockdown, Britain has dramatically driven down its new cases, hospital admissions and deaths from the virus.

The administration is currently investigating 232 pending violations, Ms. Read, the spokeswoman, said

The University of Alabama and the University of Georgia have continued to hold in-person classes despite more than a thousand positive cases of coronavirus at each school.

asking them to sign a pledge that they would not gather in groups larger than 10

Students at other colleges have flooded social media with photos of outdoor gatherings and of their crowded classrooms and dining halls, expressing outrage at their administrations.

described the feeling of walking into a crowded music lecture as “apocalyptic.”

Last week the Republican National Committee launched a digital advertising campaign, raising questions about whether the university is keeping documents under seal related to the Reade allegation. One of the ads alleges: “University of Delaware is complicit in sexual assault cover-up.”

Biden’s defenders argue he is merely following precedent: past senators who ran for president have not been required to disclose all their papers. But Fitton contended: “It’s not that they’re being required; the question is whether the records are available under law. If he had them at his house, maybe there’s an argument, but they’re not at his house. They’re at a university and subject to Foia [Freedom of Information Act].”

“curating the collection”, a process likely to continue well into 2021, and the papers will not be released until two years after Biden retires from public life.

Furthermore, critics on the progressive wing of the Democratic party would be eager to scrutinize Biden’s links to the financial services industry, a big player in Delaware. Conservatives might hunt for documents linking Biden’s son, Hunter, to overseas business interests. In a replay of the 2016 campaign, when he encouraged Russia to hack Clinton’s emails, Donald Trump may welcome a chance to make mischief by demanding “transparency”.

There are practical objections, Sabato added, but Republicans will seek to turn those to their advantage. “First of all, you couldn’t publish it all or even open it all. He had an incredibly long career, a 50-year political career, and there are some personal items in there as well, from what I understand. How could you even manage to make it available to researchers, much less the general public, just a few months ahead of an election? It’s not going to happen.

“His papers from the Senate were at the University of Tennessee and his opponents kept quacking about the fact that we had locked them up, literally, because we didn’t want to go through every morning having some 12-year-old take five words out of a 300-word essay and have to defend it all day.

“So we just said to hell with you, if that’s what the fight is going to be about, then the fight will be about not getting access to the papers as opposed to what’s in the papers. And it’s a little hard to make the case that Biden won’t give up the papers at the University of Delaware while Trump has been in federal court for 27 years to protect his financial records.”

“Thank God for the deep state,” John McLaughlin, a former deputy and acting director of the C.I.A.

Anthony Fauci is the steely superhero of my deep state, and he’s flanked and fortified by all the government health officials who also pushed back against the quackery of Scott Atlas, the Trump-flattering pandemic adviser who resigned on Monday.

Most jurisdictions are not planning to post uniformed police at polling stations, because tradition and local laws keep officers at a distance to avoid an impression of voter intimidation.

Given this year's tensions, and the fact that the police themselves are a major issue in the election, the question of their presence at polling places has become a partisan flashpoint in some places.

Democrats in Miami complained about a uniformed police officer wearing a Trump face mask at an early-voting location, and he faces potential discipline by his department.

New Jersey is considering last-minute legislation to restrict the presence of officers at polling places, a debate that quickly acquired partisan overtones. A similar dispute broke out in North Carolina, where the Board of Elections issued a memo reminding uniformed police officers to stay away from polling places, and state Republicans objected.

"We want to respect the concern [about voter intimidation]," Newton says. But he says because voters have other ways to cast ballots, "it's not a valid issue, that someone has to face down a uniformed law enforcement officer to vote in North Carolina."

One unresolved question in Michigan is whether private citizens will be allowed to carry firearms openly around polling places. The state's open carry law is generally quite permissive, but Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson issued a directive saying visible guns would not be allowed at the polls or other election-related offices this year. But police chiefs have cast doubt on whether they have the legal grounds to enforce such an order, and it's also attracted a lawsuit.

Away from the polls, police departments are planning to have more officers on hand on Election Day, especially in cities that saw unrest over the summer.

Chicago endured extensive looting and property damage over the summer, something police superintendent David Brown believes was coordinated by what he calls "agitators" embedded in legitimate protests.

"From those lessons learned over the summer, we are planning for that to be a feature of peaceful protests," on Election Day, Brown said at a press conference last week.

National Guard soldiers around the nation will take part in security operations for the election — but only for cybersecurity, assisting state officials by trying to prevent foreign governments and others from interfering with the vote. The National Guard, like the active military, does not want to get involved in physical security at the polls, leaving that up to poll workers and if need be local police.

Military officials tell NPR they want to maintain their apolitical stance, and not get involved in partisan politics, saying uniformed soldiers at the polls would lead to charges the military favors one candidate over another.

Military officials don't anticipate any particular problems of violence at the polls themselves, but they do say that with the bitter campaign, street protests and the rise of armed groups, violence could occur after the election, regardless of who wins.

If violence erupts and local police are unable to handle it, a governor could activate Guard units

Governors are in charge of their state Guard forces, but a president can "federalize" the Guard and take control from a governor. That has happened in rare occasions in the 1950s and '60s during school integration.

And a president can invoke the Insurrection Act and send in active troops. That, too, is rare. In 1992, California Gov. Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush to send in active troops to deal with protests after the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper in June publicly opposed using the Insurrection Act, saying Guard troops would make more sense since they come from the local communities they would protect. That angered the president, who sources say threatened to fire Esper but was talked out of such a move so close to the election.

President Trump has added to the election tensions by suggesting on numerous occasions that he might not accept the results of the vote, unless it is "fair." And that has led to speculation the president might try to hold onto power, and the military might be called on to remove him. Such talk is strongly dismissed by the nation's top military officer, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Yiwu’s 500 doses were consumed within hours. Other cities are limiting doses or asking people to show proof that they are traveling. The overwhelming demand has inspired a cottage industry of scalpers — called “yellow cows” in China, the people who usually score the newest iPhones or hot railway tickets — charging as much as $1,500 for an appointment.

respondents from China gave the highest proportion of positive responses when asked if they would take a “proven, safe and effective vaccine.”

“We risk losing confidence in people if indeed adverse effects occur,” said Kristine Macartney, director of the National Center for Immunization Research and Surveillance in Sydney, Australia.

Once Phase 3 trials are complete, the companies would submit results to the regulators of the countries that they want to sell their vaccines in. The authorities would review and assess them for approval.

Those users could be taking big risks. People who have taken ineffective vaccines might believe they are safe and engage in risky behavior. They can be barred from taking another, better vaccine because they have already been injected. In a few cases in the past, unproven vaccines have caused health risks.

“In China, there’s this trend of ‘everyone is getting it, so I want it, too,’”

China’s drive has taken nationalistic overtones, with many celebrating the fact that the country has candidates in late-stage trials.

“under special circumstances,” the two doses could be delivered at the same time, on each arm, according to the Guangming Daily newspaper. The two shots are supposed to be administered days apart to generate a stronger immunity response, said Clarence Tam, an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore’s Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health who researches vaccines.

“There has been no adverse reaction after the vaccination, indicating that the safety of the vaccine developed by China is beyond doubt,” Ms. Zhang said.

“European governments do not take Covid as seriously as our Chinese government.”

“Some people have been especially grateful to me for helping them,” Mr. Li said, though he fretted that he could be doing something illegal.