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According to the World Health Organization, “lead affects children’s brain development resulting in reduced intelligence quotient (IQ), behavioral changes such as shortening of attention span and increased antisocial behavior, and reduced educational attainment. Lead exposure also causes anemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immunotoxicity and toxicity to the reproductive organs. The neurological and behavioral effects of lead are believed to be irreversible.”

The Hurley Medical Center, in Flint, released a study in September that confirmed what many Flint parents had feared for over a year: The proportion of infants and children with above-average levels of lead in their blood has nearly doubled since the city switched from the Detroit water system to using the Flint River as its water source, in 2014.

The crisis reached a nadir Monday night, when Flint Mayor Karen Weaver declared a state of emergency. “The City of Flint has experienced a Manmade disaster,” Weaver said in a declaratory statement. 1 of 11 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × fa fa

The mayor — elected after her predecessor, Dayne Walling, experienced fallout from his administration’s handling of the water problems — said in the statement that she was seeking support from the federal government to deal with the “irreversible” effects of lead exposure on the city’s children. Weaver thinks that these health consequences will lead to a greater need for special education and mental health services, as well as developments in the juvenile justice system.

To those living in Flint, the announcement may feel as if it has been a long time coming. Almost immediately after the city started drawing from the Flint River in April 2014, residents began complaining about the water, which they said was cloudy in appearance and emitted a foul odor.

Since then, complications from the water coming from the Flint River have only piled up. Although city and state officials initially denied that the water was unsafe, the state issued a notice informing Flint residents that their water contained unlawful levels of trihalomethanes, a chlorine byproduct linked to cancer and other diseases.

Protesters marched to City Hall in the fierce Michigan cold, calling for officials to reconnect Flint’s water to the Detroit system. The use of the Flint River was supposed to be temporary, set to end in 2016 after a pipeline to Lake Huron’s Karegnondi Water Authority is finished.

Through continued demonstrations by Flint residents and mounting scientific evidence of the water’s toxins, city and state officials offered various solutions — from asking residents to boil their water to providing them with water filters — in an attempt to work around the need to reconnect to the Detroit system.

That call was finally made by Snyder (R) on Oct. 8. He announced that he had a plan for coming up with the $12 million to switch Flint back to the Detroit system. On Oct. 16, water started flowing again from Detroit to Flint.

The Fast Start plan will require extensive coordination between city, state and federal officials,  Weaver said. She was joined Tuesday by retired National Guard Brig. Gen. Michael McDaniel, who said he thinks the project can be done within a year by 32 crews.

McDaniel — who is assisting in coordinating activities between the city, the Lansing Board of Water and Light, state and federal agencies, and other stakeholders -- said the project could begin within the next month. But McDaniel reiterated the plan is still in its early phases and much of it is based on "assumptions."

The preliminary project scope developed by the BWL shows that up to 15,000 lead pipes could be removed in one year "under optimal conditions," Weaver said.McDaniel noted that while it took the BWL 10 years to remove 13,500 pipes, he thinks they can move quicker in Flint because they've perfected the process. McDaniel and Weaver said Flint crews would also be involved in the project.

The project would be done in two phases, with the first targeting high-risk households of children under the age of 6, children with elevated blood-lead levels, pregnant women, senior citizens, residential day care facilities, people with compromised immune systems and households where water tests indicate high levels of lead at the tap.

The project will not immediately address schools, businesses and other locations in Flint, according to a document released by the city detailing the plan. The city said most large facilities are served by "high-capacity cast iron water services," and not the typical lines found in residential water services.

the document states. "For institutional entities like schools and businesses, bottled water can continue to provide for their short-term needs."

Phase two of the program would ramp up to a "full-scale operation" that would bring in 32 crews and a "robust administration and logistics support team to meet the one-year goal," Weaver said.

McDaniel said the costs in the projected $55-million effort could fluctuate because of  the architecture and condition of the water distribution system. The estimated cost per line is $3,670, according to a city document. Of the $55 million, about $1.5 million will go toward administration and logistics, according to the city, which said personnel costs are estimated at $900,000 and operations costs are projected to be $600,000. According to the city, the bulk of the cost — $36 million — will go toward the labor and about $9.7 million will go toward the materials.

According to the city, the Fast Start program will remove and replace the lines at no cost to the homeowner. However, homeowners will be required to sign an agreement that authorizes Flint to remove and replace the portions of the lines on their private property and allow access to the meter inside the home.Lead lines will be replaced with new copper lines and a water filter will be installed at the kitchen tap for three months as a precaution, city officials said.

Flint's drinking water became contaminated with lead in April 2014 after the city, while under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager, switched its source to the Flint River as a temporary cost-cutting move and the state Department of Environmental Quality failed to require the addition of needed corrosion-control chemicals. As a result, corrosive water caused lead to leach from pipes, joints and fixtures, causing many citizens to receive water with unsafe lead levels. The state has told residents not to drink the water without filtering and says it is treating all Flint children as having been exposed to unsafe levels of lead

The FBI is now investigating the contamination of Flint’s drinking water amid a growing public outcry. U.S. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Harrison Township, proposed an emergency $1-billion grant to be authorized through the Environmental Protection Agency, and two Democratic U.S. senators and U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township, proposed up to $400 million in dollar-for-dollar matching funds from the state to do much the same thing.

The U.S. Attorney's Office announced Jan. 5 that it was assisting the EPA in the investigation

Several lawsuits have been filed in connection with the crisis.

When asked at the news conference whether she thinks Snyder will support the plan, Weaver said the city can no longer afford to wait."We’re putting forward our plan and we cannot wait for that," Weaver said. "We don’t trust that and we deserve new pipes. That’s the only way this community is going to be confident and people will stay here and people will come. I cannot imagine that he would not support this plan. If he doesn’t, shame on him."

“There are no excuses. The governor long ago knew about the lead in Flint’s water. He did nothing. As a result, hundreds of children were poisoned. Thousands may have been exposed to potential brain damage from lead.

Sanders' main rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, has also called for an explanation of what Snyder's administration knew and said that the situation was "unconscionable."

The former Secretary of State has also called on Michigan to pay for water purchases from Detroit for Flint residents until their water is safe again.

"The best thing for the people of Flint is that every effort is focused on solving this emergency, getting the aid needed to help the residents, and ensuring that clean drinkable water is restored to the city," he said in a statement.

Stabenow and Peters say federal funding is needed to replace aging pipes in Flint and other parts of the infrastructure to ensure public safety and restore confidence in the water system in the Michigan city.

It would authorize the federal Drinking Water State Revolving Fund to make up to $100 million in grants between now and October 2017 "to any state that receives an emergency declaration ... to a public health threat from lead or other contaminants in a public drinking water system."

The bill also authorizes $50 million for public health — though that funding is not specific to Flint — including $17.5 million to monitor the health effects of lead contamination in municipal water, along with allowing Michigan to use other funding to repay earlier federal loans taken out by Flint for work on its water system.

While Lee said, however, that Gov. Rick Snyder hadn’t asked Congress to authorize emergency funds, that misses some of the nuances of the situation in Flint, where a lack of corrosion-control treatment when the city switched to the Flint River in April 2014 allowed lead to leach from aging water pipes.

Snyder initially requested that President Barack Obama declare a major disaster in Flint and provide more than $700 million for infrastructure repairs to pipes and the water system. But Obama turned down that request because federal law only allows for such declarations in the cases of natural disasters, fires or explosions.

“What is happening to the people of Flint, Michigan is a man-made disaster,” Lee said. “Congress has special mechanisms for emergency spending when it is needed. But to date Michigan’s governor has not asked us for any, nor have Michigan’s senators proposed any. Contrary to media reports, there is no federal ‘aid package’ for Flint even being considered.”

"one of the largest criminal investigations currently underway in the world."

"Like any other case, we charge cases that we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt," Worthy said. "We do not charge cases that we cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt, so we are confident in all charges that we have meted out today."

Like Snyder, former Flint Public Works director Howard Croft pleaded not guilty Thursday to two counts of willful neglect of duty. The charges against Snyder and Croft -- which first came to light in court documents Wednesday -- are misdemeanors, punishable with up to one year in prison or a fine of up to $1,000, according to the state's penal code.

Among the others who face charges is Nicholas Lyon, the former director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, who faces nine counts of involuntary manslaughter -- each a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison -- and one count of willful neglect of duty.

Eden Wells, the state's former chief medical executive, faces nine counts of involuntary manslaughter, one count of willful neglect of duty and two counts of misconduct in office, each punishable by up to 5 years in prison.

Corrosive pipes leaked lead into the homes of Flint residents for more than a year despite complaints by residents for dirty-looking and smelly water.

Clinton said she would commit to do so and “go further.” She would clear lead from soil and paint through out the country.

Many Flint residents are Black, and they have long memories of racist treatment by doctors who dismissed or neglected their medical needs.

Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, chief medical executive of the state Department of Health and Human Services, said the state's plan to vaccinate 70 percent of residents as quickly as possible includes efforts to enlist people like block club captains, fraternity and sorority presidents and religious leaders to promote the vaccine — an effort Khaldun said is especially important in the Black community, where what she called "vaccine hesitancy" is high.

"When you tell us that the water is safe but it really wasn't, that relationship between leadership and the community is still damaged," said Todd Womack, the pastor of community connections at Central Church of the Nazarene in Flint. "That just layers the historical trauma that has presented itself in our community."

"In this country, we know that African Americans have always been targeted as test dummies," he said, referring to unethical medical experiments including the infamous Tuskegee study, which left hundreds of Black men with untreated syphilis for decades.

"There is still systemic racism that exists. There is still, quite frankly, sometimes explicit bias that exists in the health care system, and so I think we need to name it and not shame these groups of people where they may have some hesitancy."

The process of spreading the information is just beginning, but it's going to need to come from more than one place, said Debra Furr-Holden, an epidemiologist who has been leading community discussions about the virus as director of the Flint Center for Health Equity Solutions

But at the same time, "relationships are built on trust, and trust takes time," she said. "They developed a vaccine at warp speed, and they're trying to skip a bunch of processes in the trust and relationship-building process."

"You don't allow your pulpit to become a platform," he said, adding that he understands "what you are risking when you open these platforms to a community that's already been taken advantage of, misused, abused."

"There's a reason, a quite valid reason, for there to be concerns about how the health care system in general, and often health care systems and the government together, have treated the African American community historically in the United States,"

"There was this push for everybody to use the water from the city," both during the crisis and after the city switched to a cleaner water source and started distributing filters and replacing corroded pipes, Womack said.

JJ Milliken, another Swanson supporter, said via Twitter: "#WalkWithUs is how we change a system that murdered #GeorgeFloyd. It requires mindfulness of our actions and beliefs. Chris Swanson exemplifies the deputies and officers I know and respect. Community-first mentality and lead by example. This is a mindful action. This is change."

CNN is attempting to reach the Genesee County Sheriff's office for comment.

Textiles feature almost as early as Pottery. Weights designed for spinning are common in neolithic sites, and fragments of fine woven cloth survive in graves at Catal Huyuk from as early as 5800 BC.

The other method, going back to at least 5800 BC, uses the thread in a rectangular criss-cross pattern to produce flat cloth. The vertical threads are stretched taut to form a grille; the horizontal threads are then interwoven between them. This is the process for all textiles of cotton, linen, silk or wool. It also produces tapestry

By 4000 BC deep shafts are cut into the hillside at Rudna Glava, in the Balkans, to excavate copper ore. This robbing of the earth's treasures is carried out with due solemnity.

The harnessing of draught animals is a major technological advance in agriculture as well as transport. The first to be harnessed is the ox, conveniently provided by nature with a fleshy hump above the shoulders

The first ploughs consist of a sharp point of timber, sometimes hardened in a flame or tipped with flint, projecting downwards at the end of a long handle.

The wheel is often quoted as the single most important advance in early technology. It is sometimes said to have evolved from the potter's wheel. Both are first known at approximately the same period, around 3000 BC. But they share no geographical origin and it is intrinsically unlikely that either form would suggest the other. Each is a natural solution to a very different problem.

Mr. Trump was holding rallies in five states on Sunday after spending a full day in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

Mr. Biden has also faulted Mr. Trump for endangering his own supporters.“I’m being responsible and I’m not becoming a great spreader of Covid,” Mr. Biden said last week, making explicit the distinction that he has been trying to draw for months. Mr. Trump, he said, is “putting thousands of people at risk.”

“A great red wave is forming,” Mr. Trump said on Saturday in Newtown, Pa. “As sure as we’re here together, that wave is forming. And they see it, they see it on all sides, and there’s not a thing they can do about it.”

But Mr. Trump is less enthusiastic when the input comes from smaller crowds. On Saturday morning, as he spoke to only about 300 people at his first Pennsylvania rally of the day, Mr. Trump was lethargic and subdued, as if he were privately thinking to himself: Yawn.

Mr. Trump bragged about attracting bigger crowds than Mr. Biden and former President Barack Obama, who campaigned together on Saturday. “I hate to say it, Obama doesn’t draw any better,” he said. “They went as a twosome and they had less people.”

“It’s a great way to show the enthusiasm and get the feeling of a campaign while being Covid safe,” said Jenn Ridder, the national states director for the Biden campaign. “People love them. They love the honking and the noise. I think people want to feel part of something, and especially in Covid.”

But the format allows for something that has been missing when Mr. Biden gives speeches during the pandemic in front of small groups of reporters: audible feedback from the crowd, even if it is different from the applause at Mr. Trump’s rallies.

“It kind of personifies this campaign,” Mr. Gilchrist added. “Joe Biden is a person who values human connection.”

“The horns can be really cool as far as call and response,” said Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II of Michigan, who spoke at the rallies in Flint and Detroit. “You have people kind of sitting on top of their cars, or hanging out the window.”

While President Trump still thrills to the roar of a crowd, even during a pandemic, Joe Biden has found a new way to get audience feedback: through honking horns at his drive-in rallies.

Both men put those competing identities on display as they dashed across battleground states over the weekend.

Mr. Trump enters his rallies to pounding music and crowds roaring their approval — with few people wearing masks — as he throws Make America Great Again hats into the stands like T-shirts at a basketball game.

On Sunday, Mr. Trump also had rallies scheduled in Dubuque, Iowa; Hickory, N.C.; Rome, Ga.; and Opa-locka, Fla. — the last one at 11 p.m.

t the event in Flint, Mr. Obama mocked his successor for his “obsession” with crowd size, asking: “Did no one come to his birthday party when he was a kid? Was he traumatized?”

For attendees, it is a new experience, and they have different approaches to taking in the proceedings. Some people stay inside their cars, allowing easy access to honking. Others stand near their cars, a position that allows for sign hoisting or flag waving.

But the system works. In the dorms, classrooms, summer internships and early jobs they learn how to behave the way successful people do in the highly educated hubs. There’s no economic reason to return home, and maybe it’s not even socially possible anymore.

The highly educated cluster around a few small nodes. Decade after decade, smart and educated people flock away from Merced, Calif., Yuma, Ariz., Flint, Mich., and Vineland, N.J. In those places, less than 15 percent of the residents have college degrees. They flock to Washington, Boston, San Jose, Raleigh-Durham and San Francisco. In those places, nearly 50 percent of the residents have college degrees.

the magnet places have positive ecologies that multiply innovation, creativity and wealth. The abandoned places have negative ecologies and fall further behind.

This sorting is self-reinforcing, and it seems to grow more unforgiving every year.

half of the jobs in university political science programs went to graduates of the top 11 schools. That is to say, if you have a Ph.D. from Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and so on, your odds of getting a job are very good. If you earned your degree from one of the other 100 degree-granting universities, your odds are not.

The first problem with the effort is that it’s like shooting a water gun into a waterfall

The second problem is the focus on income redistribution

The final problem is that, in an effort to reduce the economic concentration of power, the administration is concentrating political power in Washington

the liberal agenda is not very good at addressing the inequality problem it seeks to solve. The meritocracy is overwhelming the liberal project.

She did not elaborate or speak directly about the details of her husband's acknowledged infidelity, but the context was clear.

noted that the prodigal son parable “is also about Our Father in heaven who is always ready to take us back …who gave His only begotten son for us. So practicing the discipline of gratitude is one of the ways we understand more what is expected of us.”

Clinton visited three black churches Sunday, before a debate in Flint, Mich., that will highlight a poisoned-water crisis in the majority-black city.

Nearly 60 percent of Republicans between the ages of 23 and 38 say that climate change is having an effect on the United States, and 36 percent believe humans are the cause.

That’s about double the numbers of Republicans over age 52.

voters under the age of 53 cast 62.5 million votes in the 2018 midterm elections. Those 53 and older, by contrast, were responsible for 60.1 million votes.

“Americans believe climate change is real, and that number goes up every single month,”

voters under the age of 30 found that 73 percent of respondents disapproved of Mr. Trump’s approach to climate change

Half the respondents identified as Republican or independent.

“There’s a lot of people out there who would probably vote Republican if they knew there was a conservative agenda on climate change,” Mr. Backer said. Instead, he said, “They’re going to go to the Democratic Party, because that’s the only party that’s talking about the environment.”

The full effect quite likely will not be felt until after the 2020 election cycle. President Trump’s campaign appears to have identified a strategy for winning re-election that relies on polarizing the electorate on issues like race, immigration and, it seems, climate change

“You can be skeptical of climate change all you want, but young people aren’t, and there’s no way conservatives are going to win elections if we don’t deal with climate change,” said Benjamin Backer, 21, the coalition’s founder and president

a Republican polling firm, Public Opinion Strategies. Speaking of younger Republicans, the firm concluded that “climate change is their most important issue” and called the numbers “concerning” for the party’s future.

“I completely agree that we’re offending the climate,” Mr. Bagley said. “But the solutions that are being introduced to fix it are going to drive us back into the Dark Ages.”

a video of 11 Trump voters around a hotel conference table in Florida discussing climate change. Government can’t be trusted to solve climate change, the focus group agreed. But like Mr. Bagley, they also all agreed that climate change is real.

“Republican orthodoxy is changing,” Mr. Flint said. “You’re safe saying you acknowledge climate change.”

“It’s a matter of honesty,” he said. “Voters believe it is happening, at the very least, they want their politicians to acknowledge reality.”

Scott Jennings, a Republican consultant and a former campaign adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said 2020 candidates in different states would take various approaches to climate change

“Someday Republicans are going to have to come up with some proposals that are responsive to these issues and, frankly, be more reasonable and more thoughtful.”

Kelly’s first full segment found the host interviewing the cast of Will & Grace—a show that has remained relevant and beloved in large part because of, yes, its politics.

all of it building up to the final segment, the one Kelly had been teasing most excitedly throughout the hour: a serious-toned, news-magazine-style profile of Sister Donna Liette. The 77-year-old woman, Kelly said, lowering her voice dramatically, “faced with violence tearing apart her Chicago neighborhood … decided to do something about it.”

Chicago, and particularly the crime rates of that city, have been a particular touchpoint for the Trump presidency. “If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible ‘carnage’ going on,” he tweeted in January, “... I will send in the Feds!”

Which is to say that Kelly’s choice of interview subject—the “nun taking back her streets”—was deeply political. It celebrated the work of a single white woman, working to “take back her streets” (her streets). It whiffed of “the girl was no saint, either” and “he just is white.”

Kelly’s interview with Liette began like this:

“How many murders do you hear about a week?” she asked.“Probably five or six or seven a week, at least,” Liette replied.“It’s like living in a war zone,” Kelly said. It was not a question.

At her worst, though, Kelly has engaged in a particularly insidious brand of political argument: the kind that refuses to admit itself as politics at all. The kind sees things from a narrow perspective, but claims to be omnivisual. The kind that lobs grenades into the culture war and then innocently throws up its empty hands. The kind that says, before it talks of Joe Biden and Donald Trump and taking back her streets, “I am kind of done with politics for now.”

they were clearly affluent, but they also came from diverse backgrounds. They had been on exotic vacations and had volunteered for the needy. They were truly interesting people.

So I didn’t understand why so many of them were enrolled in the optional SAT prep section of our summer program. Why would such impressive high achievers spend their summer nights storming through a massive SAT book? Many of them already took weekend SAT prep courses back home.

the kids at Exeter saw summer academic programs as normal and enjoyable. I was happy to be around so many fellow nerds. Still, they approached studying for the SAT with a near-professional intensity that was alien to me.

I realized that they didn’t just want to score exceptionally well on the SAT. They were gunning for a score on the Preliminary SAT exams that would put them in the top percentile of students in the United States and make them National Merit Scholars in the fall.

The majority of low- and middle-income 11th graders I know in Michigan didn’t even sit for the preliminary exams. Most took the SAT cold. Few were privy to the upper-middle-class secret I discovered that summer: To get into elite colleges, one must train for standardized tests with the intensity of an athlete.

My newfound friends worked extremely hard, but they also seemed to have access to a formula for success that had been kept from the rest of us.

I had opted out of Exeter’s SAT prep. So the following fall, when I posted a so-so SAT score, I went into Super-ZIP-kid mode.I couldn’t afford a $3,000 40-hour prep course or tutor. But I could take out test prep books at the public library. There were very few checkout stamps on the book jackets, so I kept renewing them. I also took a $99 online program I heard about on NPR and Khan Academy’s free SAT section. On Saturdays, I commuted an hour each way to Ann Arbor for a free test-prep program at the University of Michigan.

My post-prep score saw a solid pop, and that awarded me access to tens of thousands in automatic merit awards to local colleges. I was encouraged to throw my hat in the ring at some more selective universities.

This past month, I watched many of these friends dazzle their social media followers with acceptance letters from Northwestern, Harvard, Williams and Duke, as well as six-figure Presidential Scholarships to various public universities.

“I left the EPA because of the proposals to roll back legislation that will have direct impacts on local communities,” he said. “Ten months in, they have yet to move forward any action to help communities be healthier. People in Puerto Rico are drinking toxic water. Unfortunately, so far, I’ve been proved right in my decision to leave. I wanted them to prove me wrong.”

The Trump administration has targeted dozens of regulations it says have stymied economic growth. It has moved to axe an Obama-era plan to reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants, delayed new standards to cut toxic fumes from vehicles and dropped a proposed ban on a pesticide linked to developmental delays in children.

But Ali said there was little evidence the agency is focused on vulnerable communities, claiming it is a “particular slap in the face” that the EPA wants to cut funding for anti-lead programs given that the largely black city of Flint, Michigan, continues to suffer from lead-tainted water, three years after the scandal was exposed.

“I became an environmentalist, I have to be candid with you, not because of the effects of global warming some time in the future,” said Booker, a former mayor of Newark, New Jersey, at a time when the city was experiencing its own problems with lead contamination of drinking water. “I became an environmentalist because I saw horrific examples of environmental injustice and how it was hurting my community in every single way.”

One in three Latinos live in areas that violate federal standards for ozone, a pollutant that causes smog and is linked to an array of health problems. The thousands of abandoned mines that dot the western US have left a legacy of soil and water contamination that blights native American tribes, such as the Navajo nation.

Nearly seven in 10 African Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant, compared with 56% of whites. Once the coal is burned, its ash, which can damage the nervous system and cause cancers if ingested or inhaled, is dumped in about 1,400 sites around the US – 70% of which are situated in low-income communities.

“Ultimately, masculinity still matters, we’ve learned. It’s how candidates still try to prove they are the best candidate,” said Ms. Cooper. “And so, even in 2020, Democrats decided the safest bet to beat a white man in his 70s is another white man in his 70s.”

He has said he believes men who change diapers are “acting like the wife.” “Macho Man” is the song that plays at his rallies, even after the Village People objected. “He seeks to distinguish himself as the manliest — and thus, in his mind, the most-qualified — person to be president,” said Kelly Dittmar, a scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

On the other end of the spectrum, or perhaps somewhere in the middle, is Mr. Biden, a “Dad-like” figure, as the philosopher Kate Manne put it, who has vowed to be America’s protector through a dark period, with some combination of strength, empathy and compassion.

“He’s offering a more paternalistic type of masculinity, in that you can be a strong leader, but still be compassionate and empathetic,” said Marianne Cooper, a sociologist at Stanford University who studies gender and work.

On the one extreme is President Trump, who leaves little subtlety in his approach: Bragging about his sexual prowess, along with the size of his nuclear button, proclaiming “domination” over coronavirus and mocking his opponent for the size of his mask (“the biggest mask I’ve ever seen”), as if mask-wearing is somehow weak.

From Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan and right on through Mr. Trump, largely white, Christian, heterosexual presidential candidates have “performed” manhood in all sorts of ways: Donning hard hats and posing inside military tanks; battling over who would be the better guy to have a beer with; and implying their opponents were soft, weak, or “sleepy.”

“Michael Dukakis had a 17-point lead over Bush in the summer of 1988,” said Mr. Katz, whose book on presidential masculinity has been adapted into a documentary called “The Man Card.” “So what did they do? They relentlessly attacked his manhood. They suggested he was a failed protector, that he was ‘soft,’ that he wasn’t a ‘real man.’”

“I think the performance of masculinity means a lot,” he noted, “because it has the potential to eclipse all else.”

Girls receive a message that they “become” women — typically through a biological event like menstruation — while men are told throughout their lives to “be” men or to “man up,” as if masculinity is something that can be easily lost.“You don’t really say ‘be a woman’ the way you say ‘be a man’ or ‘man up,’” she said.Image

“Trump is the personification of this masculinity contest culture,” Ms. Cooper said. “It’s bad for organizations, it’s terrible for a country.”

Maybe women were always the intended audience for the contests. Whether that’s true, they seem to be ready to render a clear judgment. Mr. Biden is leading among women by as much as 20 points.

The true number of infections is likely higher because many people haven’t been tested, and studies suggest people can be infected and not feel sick

Texas’ seven-day rolling average of the positivity rate has risen over the last two weeks from 7.12% to 10.72%. Nationwide, the positivity rate was 6.6%.

Texas health officials have reported more than 18,000 deaths so far from COVID-19.

Last Thursday, El Paso County officials ordered a two-week shutdown of nonessential activities after the area’s medical resources were overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases.

El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego says they’re struggling to find space for the increasing number of people dying and are setting up a fourth mobile morgue unit at the medical examiner’s office.