Mr. Biden is also poised to become the first Democrat in 20 years to carry older adults, the voters who are most at risk with the coronavirus.

But the president is facing an even larger gender gap in the Hispanic community than he is over all: Latinas favor Mr. Biden by 39 points.

Joseph R. Biden Jr. holds a clear advantage over President Trump across four of the most important presidential swing states, a new poll shows, bolstered by the support of voters who did not participate in the 2016 election and who now appear to be turning out in large numbers to cast their ballots, mainly for the Democrat.

His strength is most pronounced in Wisconsin, where he has an outright majority of the vote and leads Mr. Trump by 11 points, 52 percent to 41 percent.

Mr. Biden’s performance across the electoral map appears to put him in a stronger position heading into Election Day than any presidential candidate since at least 2008

Should Mr. Biden’s lead hold in three of the four states tested in the survey, it would almost certainly be enough to win, and if he were to carry Florida, he would most likely need to flip just one more large state that Mr. Trump won in 2016 to clinch the presidency.

In the closing days of the campaign, Mr. Biden has a modest advantage in Florida, where he is ahead of Mr. Trump by three points, 47 percent to 44 percent, a lead that is within the margin of error.

While that advantage has varied over time, and has differed from state to state, he has at no point slipped behind Mr. Trump in any of the swing states that are likeliest to decide the election.

Mr. Trump has continued to hold onto most of the coalition that elected him in the first place, made up chiefly of rural conservatives and white voters who did not attend college.

More broadly, Mr. Trump is facing an avalanche of opposition nationally from women, people of color, voters in the cities and the suburbs, young people, seniors and, notably, new voters. In all four states, voters who did not participate in 2016, but who have already voted this time or plan to do so, said they support Mr. Biden by wide margins.

In Wisconsin, voters who did not cast a ballot in 2016 favor Mr. Biden by 19 points. They have a similarly lopsided preference in Florida, where Mr. Biden leads by 17 points. His advantage with people who did not vote in 2016 is 12 points in Pennsylvania and 7 points in Arizona.

The numbers on new voters represent a setback for the president, whose advisers have long contended he would outperform his polling numbers because of the support he would receive from infrequent or inconsistent voters

oth parties are succeeding in one of their chief goals this year: to motivate large numbers of infrequent voters or nonvoters to come off the sidelines for what supporters of both nominees call the most crucial election of a lifetime.

where more than 10 million people who didn’t vote in 2016 have already cast ballots this year, making up 25 percent of the early vote in those states.

“Nationally, Democrats have a modeled advantage of 14.5 percent with those non-2016 voters,” Mr. Bonier said.

Despite efforts by the president’s campaign and outside groups to expand his support with the voters most likely to back him — white blue-collar workers — polling shows him trailing his 2016 benchmarks

Nationally, the number of early voters this year who are 50 and over and didn’t turn out in 2016, which was 6.4 million as of Thursday, was greater than those under 30, about 4.9 million. All age groups are exhibiting an intense interest in voting

Mr. Trump’s 44,000-vote victory in Pennsylvania four years ago, in which he won by less than one percentage point, hinged on places like Westmoreland County, once a blue-collar Democratic stronghold, which the president carried by 31 points, a wider margin than in any of the state’s other populous counties.

Without the state’s 20 electoral votes, Mr. Trump would have an extremely narrow path to re-election. Mr. Biden has wider options, based on current polling in battleground states.

Trump supporters are expected to dominate in-person voting on Election Day in some battleground states. The current Democratic advantage with non-2016 voters could even out by Election Day.

The problem for Mr. Trump, though, is that he carried the equivalent of the 16th District by twice that much, 20 points, in 2016, according to a New York Times analysis.

Hospitalization data, which the Covid Tracking Project collects at the state level, shows that the number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus reached record highs in almost half of states in recent weeks.

Recent studies have provided some hope that improved treatment has led to a better survival rate among those ill enough to be hospitalized. But experts worry that the 46 percent increase in hospitalizations compared with a month ago could overwhelm hospital capacity — especially in rural areas with limited health resources — and roll back improvements in survival rates.

In the past month, about a third of U.S. counties hit a daily record of more deaths than any other time during the pandemic.

The daily death toll is lower than it was at its peak, but on average, about 800 people who contracted the coronavirus are dying each day

The recent surge in cases has not yet brought a similar surge in reported deaths, which can lag cases by up to several weeks. But already deaths are increasing in about half of states.

“You don’t grant immunity to individuals unless you are getting something from them — and we wouldn’t be here.”

Six months earlier, Matthew G. Whitaker, the acting attorney general who ran the department from November 2018 until Mr. Barr arrived in February 2019, rejected a request from Mr. Berman for permission to file criminal charges against the bank, two lawyers involved in the investigation said. Mr. Whitaker blocked the move shortly after Mr. Erdogan repeatedly pressed Mr. Trump in a series of conversations in November and December 2018 to resolve the Halkbank matter.

Mr. Erdogan had a big political stake in the outcome, because the case had become a major embarrassment for him in Turkey.

And Mr. Trump’s sympathetic response to Mr. Erdogan was especially jarring because it involved accusations that the bank had undercut Mr. Trump’s policy of economically isolating Iran, a centerpiece of his Middle East plan.

Former White House officials said they came to fear that the president was open to swaying the criminal justice system to advance a transactional and ill-defined agenda of his own.

the administration’s bitterness over Mr. Berman’s unwillingness to go along with Mr. Barr’s proposal would linger, and ultimately contribute to Mr. Berman’s dismissal.

It predated Mr. Trump’s election but came to encompass a broad cast of players, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor; Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser; and Brian D. Ballard, a lobbyist and fund-raiser for the president.

he investigation of Halkbank, Mr. Erdogan claimed, was a “big conspiracy” instigated by his rival Fethullah Gulen, a charismatic Muslim cleric. Mr. Gulen left Turkey in the late 1990s and moved to Pennsylvania, where, in Mr. Erdogan’s telling, he plotted an unsuccessful coup attempt just a month earlier, according to a summary of the conversation provided to The Times by the Biden aide.

“Top leadership in Turkey felt that Trump would be a tough-minded businessman, but a businessman they could work with,” Robert Amsterdam, a lobbyist for Turkey, recalled.

Mr. Erdogan also wanted the Obama administration to remove the judge overseeing Mr. Zarrab’s case in Manhattan, the Biden aide said. And he wanted Mr. Zarrab released and allowed to return to Turkey.

“If the president were to take this into his own hands, what would happen would be he would be impeached for violating the separation of powers,” Mr. Biden said

Mr. Erdogan asked Mr. Biden to remove Preet Bharara, then the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. That office was in the early stages of an investigation into Halkbank and had already indicted a Turkish-Iranian gold trader, Reza Zarrab, for helping to orchestrate the sanctions-evasion scheme.

ust how idiosyncratic became more apparent last October, when Mr. Erdogan sent troops into Syria. Mr. Trump, who had initially given Mr. Erdogan the green light to do so, then faced an intense bipartisan backlash, leading him within days to take a tougher line with Turkey, threatening economic reprisals.

But the investigation by the federal prosecutors in Manhattan ground ahead. By early 2018, it had led to the indictments of nine defendants, including Turkey’s former economy minister and three Halkbank officials, on charges such as bank fraud and money laundering related to the sanctions-evasion scheme.

ut Mr. Mnuchin raised concerns about how large a fine might be imposed on Halkbank. The French banking giant Société Générale agreed that same year to pay U.S. authorities more than $2 billion to resolve charges that it had violated U.S. sanctions against Cuba and bribed officials in Libya, among other accusations

A fine on that scale would threaten the future of Halkbank, lobbyists and lawyers for the bank argued, as did top Turkish officials in conversations with members of the Trump administration

Mr. Erdogan made clear that he was frustrated with the continued pestering by Southern District prosecutors concerning Halkbank, and he wanted Mr. Trump to intervene to help wrap up the investigation, Mr. Bolton said in the interview

Mr. Trump also told Mr. Erdogan that he wanted to replace the prosecutors in Mr. Berman’s office in Manhattan, whom Mr. Trump considered to be holdovers from the Obama era.

Mr. Rosenstein was convinced that the evidence was compelling, perhaps even more so than in other sanctions-evasion cases in which the United States had charged banks, lawyers familiar with the investigation said. The memo from the prosecutors also noted that the actions Halkbank was accused of taking were helping to support Iran’s economy, which was antithetical to Mr. Trump’s foreign policy goal of tightening economic pressure on the country.

Mr. Rosenstein urged Mr. Berman to come to Washington to present the Southern District’s argument to Mr. Whitaker. The goal was not to file charges immediately against the bank. Instead, the plan was to give the Southern District more leverage to squeeze Halkbank to accept a deferred prosecution agreement that included an admission of wrongdoing.

Discussions between Halkbank and the Southern District continued, according to lawyers involved in the case. But the bank maintained its refusal to admit to wrongdoing and insisted on a deal that would end investigations and drop existing charges.

At times, the prosecutors were left with the impression that bank officials felt they had all the leverage because of the relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdogan.

The suggestion that the Justice Department would offer Turkish officials protection from criminal charges, even without their agreement to assist in the investigation, was unacceptable and unethical, Mr. Berman argued, according to lawyers close to the investigation.

Mr. Barr sought to persuade Mr. Berman that the so-called global settlement would enforce U.S. sanctions law and avert a rift with an ally in a volatile part of the world.

“That is the biggest prize that Erdogan could ever receive,” Mr. Erdemir said. “Erdogan was not trying to save the bank. He was trying to save his ministers and save himself.”

The National Security Council asked the Education Department about a network of charter schools, partly funded with federal money, that were said to be linked to Mr. Gulen, the Erdogan rival who was living in Pennsylvania. The agency was then asked if the money could be blocked, one official involved in the conversations said. But Education Department officials resisted, saying they did not have the legal authority to stop the funding.

On Oct. 15, the Justice Department gave the prosecutors in Manhattan approval to file charges against Halkbank, a direct slap at Mr. Erdogan.The prosecutors rushed to present evidence before a grand jury and secured a six-count indictment that same day charging Halkbank with money laundering, bank fraud and conspiracy to violate the Iran sanctions. So far, no additional individuals have been charged.

Earlier the same day, Mr. Trump ridiculed the notion that the virus was spreading rapidly again, falsely telling a crowd in Lansing, Mich., that the reported “spike in cases” was merely a reflection of increased testing

His determination to brush aside the ongoing crisis as a campaign issue has become the defining choice of his bid for a second term and the core of his message throughout the campaign’s endgame.

a Marquette University Law School poll published Wednesday showed that 58 percent of voters there disapproved of the president’s handling of the pandemic. Mr. Biden was leading Mr. Trump in the crucial state by five percentage points.

The country has reported more than 8.8 million cases of the coronavirus, including a 39 percent increase in new cases over the last 14 days.

More than 227,000 Americans have perished from the disease.

Last week, she was dismayed to see that Mr. Trump was holding a rally in her area, because it had the potential to help spread the disease

There is considerable evidence it is not working. The stock market, long the focal point of Mr. Trump’s cheerleading efforts, plunged by more than 900 points on Wednesday, suffering its worst drop in months as investors grappled with the mounting disruptions wrought by the pandemic. Polling and interviews with voters show that most are not inclined to trust Mr. Trump’s sunny forecast.

A national poll published recently by The Times found that nearly two in five voters agreed with Mr. Trump that the worst of the crisis was over

In the same Times survey, most voters said that the worst of the pandemic was still ahead, including half of independent voters and a fifth of Republicans. By a 12-point margin, voters said they preferred Mr. Biden to lead the response to the pandemic rather than Mr. Trump. And 59 percent of voters said they favored a national mask mandate, including majorities of Democratic and independent voters, and three in 10 Republicans.

Mr. Biden, 77, has kept a strictly limited campaign schedule, holding no large rallies and traveling far less frequently than a typical presidential nominee.

“Yes, we’re getting more cases identified, but the cases are actually going up,” Admiral Giroir said, urging Americans to wear masks and avoid clustering indoors

“not going to control the pandemic” — a remark Mr. Biden brandished as confirmation that Mr. Trump was capitulating.

In Wisconsin, where new cases have skyrocketed by 46 percent in the last two weeks, Mike Mitchell, a retail manager who backs Mr. Trump, blamed out-of-town visitors for the uptick in his area

I may not agree with the way he tweets and everything else, but he’s turned this country around, and he’ll do it again,” said Mr. D’Amato, 71, who wore a mask to vote near downtown Fort Myers last week.

they have also urged the president not to interrupt Mr. Biden repeatedly

The president has signaled he intends to focus on Mr. Biden’s son Hunter and his business dealings, after an unsubstantiated New York Post report on that subject

. But some advisers fear he will not be able to control himself and will attack the younger Mr. Biden in a way that engenders sympathy for the Biden family, a dynamic that unfolded in the first debate when Mr. Trump mocked Hunter Biden’s history of battling drug addiction.

“The president, in order to have a successful debate, has to go on offense without being offensive,”

Mr. Biden, for his part, is working to protect his advantage by relying on arguments that have defined his pitch for months: that he is the candidate best equipped to lead the nation out of the pandemic and its attendant economic fallout, and that he can restore stability and a measure of civility to the office after Mr. Trump’s turbulent tenure.

In particular, allies expect that he will face questioning on expanding the Supreme Court, a matter he has repeatedly dodged, though he has said that he will clarify his position before Election Day

Last week, Trump advisers tried gently suggesting, as they prepared him for his NBC town hall event with Savannah Guthrie, that he needed to be more controlled and less caustic than in the first debate. Aides claim he has processed that information, though he was combative and refused to disavow a conspiracy theory movement during the first part of that appearance, too.

Mr. O’Donnell, the Republican strategist, suggested that Mr. Trump’s frequent interruptions in the previous debate prevented viewers from absorbing some of Mr. Biden’s shakier responses

The president’s advisers have also gone over with him his third debate against Hillary Clinton in 2016, which they believe was his best of the three he had in that campaign, in part because he was relatively articulate while being specific in discussing policies, despite the moment when Mrs. Clinton called him a “puppet” of Russia and his response was: “No puppet, no puppet. You’re the puppet.”

“He does need to communicate to swing voters that the real stakes in this election are not the past, not even the present, but they are the future, of rebuilding the economy.”

Mr. Biden’s advisers see the race as a referendum on Mr. Trump’s leadership during the pandemic, and they view the debate as another chance to highlight differences with the president as coronavirus cases rise across the country

Mr. Biden is expected to highlight his own plans around health care and reviving the economy in a week when Mr. Trump has sharply criticized Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert. The former vice president’s team has also signaled that it will cast personal attacks as an attempted diversion from the most urgent issues facing the nation. And some close to the Biden campaign have pointed to polls that showed a backlash to Mr. Trump’s first debate performance and his sharp personal attacks.

A number of Biden allies said in interviews that there was nothing wrong with a flash of righteous anger. But they said that the wisest course was to dismiss any personal attacks by pivoting back to voters’ more tangible concerns, something Mr. Biden tried to do in the first debate by noting that many Americans have family members who struggle with addiction.

Senator Kamala Harris, suggested on Wednesday that it was unlikely he would turn to attacks on Mr. Trump’s children

North Carolina has long been crucial to both parties’ hopes of winning a Senate majority

Last month 46 percent of likely voters polled in North Carolina had a favorable view of Mr. Cunningham, compared to 29 percent who saw him unfavorably. Now 40 percent of likely voters have a favorable view and 41 percent see him unfavorably.

In 2016, Mr. Trump carried North Carolina by 3.7 percentage points over Hillary Clinton

Mr. Biden’s standing in North Carolina is consistent with the leads he has built in other battleground states. The former vice president has significant advantages among women and suburbanites, and is far more trusted to deal with the public health crisis caused by the coronavirus.

Mr. Biden had a 10-point advantage among likely voters in Nevada, and a seven-point lead in Ohio.

But the polling shows that Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Tillis and Mr. Trump all suffer from a broad lack of trust, which hampers both their political standing and their ability to launch attacks against their opponents.

41 percent of voters surveyed said they did and 52 percent said they did not. Even nine percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters in the state said they did not trust his administration to state true facts about his health.

He also promised that vaccines were "coming momentarily", although the US Centers for Disease Control has said no vaccine is expected to be widely available before the middle of next year.

It is a message almost messianic in its undertones - one that the rest of his party is amplifying. The president has suffered and overcome, and will lead the nation to a promised land beyond the virus.

He could experience a relapse or long-term medical difficulties. Americans who have lost loved ones to the disease may find his words and actions ill-considered or offensive.

But he said the medical team agreed the president's status and progress "support his safe return home, where he'll be surrounded by world-class medical care 24/7".

Dr Conley refused to answer questions about when Mr Trump last received a negative test or to go into the specifics of his treatment. He would not offer details regarding the president's scans to check for pneumonia, citing patient protection laws.

Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany became the latest high-profile figure close to the president to confirm a positive test earlier on Monday.

First Lady Melania Trump, senior aides and three Republican senators have also tested positive.

At least 12 people close to Mr Trump have now tested positive, as have several junior staff members.

"This is not a matter of politics," Biden told a small audience outside a union hall. "It's a bracing reminder to all of us that we have to take this virus seriously; it's not going away automatically. We have to do our part to be responsible."

His campaign says it will disclose the result of every coronavirus test Biden takes

Mr. Trump appeared to pick a doctor who would maintain the narrative of his health status

“Presidents make these decision based on politics over medicine,” said Matthew Algeo, the author of “The President Is a Sick Man” and other books about the presidency. “And there is an inherent conflict between politics and medicine.”

“It was an election season for F.D.R., too, when his health worsened so dramatically. Perhaps Trump, like F.D.R., is also in denial about the seriousness of his illness.

“behaved irresponsibly and with willful ignorance about the gravity of the pandemic, a true public health crisis, and his insistence on leaving the hospital today only underscores his juvenile, self-interested behavior.”

So Mr. Trump’s doctor appears to have chosen another route, obfuscating details with vague timelines and imprecise language.

The net result of Mr. Trump’s hospitalization has been widespread confusion among those who may have been exposed by the president and others around him who have tested positive for the virus, and a general sense that his care is being coordinated less by medical professionals than the West Wing.

Mr. Trump’s insistence on trying to resume normal activities when he has a highly contagious and notably volatile illness

“But if there is a suspicion that a patient will knowingly and purposefully endanger others, there would need to be a discussion had about keeping that patient in the hospital against his will.”

the president did not mention the hardship the virus had caused to others or that anyone had suffered greatly from it. Nor did he mention the White House staff members who had fallen sick.

Doctors allowed him to leave for the White House, while acknowledging he hadn’t yet reached the critical seven- to 10-day window that doctors watch for with the coronavirus to see whether patients take a turn for the worse.

Mr. Trump did little to adhere to the narrative aides were hoping would emerge, one that would benefit him politically.

“There’s a high-risk strategy here and I hope that the president doesn’t rush back into the campaign mode — which he wants to do before he gets well — until they tell him he’s no longer a danger to everybody else,” said Ed Rollins, an adviser to a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump.

“It appears the campaign hasn’t discussed their concept with their candidate,” said Brendan Buck, a former adviser to the former House speaker Paul D. Ryan. “You would hope someone who has been in serious health crisis would have a bit of an awakening, find a little religion on this, but he seems incapable of doing that.”

“After being released from the hospital, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson showed in personal terms how the virus impacted him — thanking those who helped him get back on his feet, committing to tackling the virus and balancing the challenges facing his country,”

it would not be clear until Oct. 12 whether Mr. Trump is over the hump of his virus.

Advisers continue to hold out the belief that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Trump’s challenger, could stumble, or that unforeseen events could intervene in the race.

Campaign officials said the expectation was still to resume presidential rallies before November, contending that Mr. Trump’s only real exposure to people at those events was on the plane, and the entourage traveling with him would be smaller because so many of his own aides are out sick as well.

“With four weeks remaining and nearly four million Americans already casting their votes, it’s awfully late to change perceptions about President Trump or his performance,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist.

In 2008, rumors again circulated online that a candidate was being fed answers during a debate. Ann Althouse, a law professor and conservative blogger, wrote that close-up TV stills showed that Barack Obama “was wearing an earpiece” during a debate with John McCain.

2000, when Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio host, accused then-candidate Al Gore of getting answers fed to him through an earpiece during a “Meet the Press” appearance.

Four years later, during the 2004 presidential debates, rumors circulated among left-wing bloggers that George W. Bush was getting help from a surreptitiously placed earpiece.

In 2016, the rumor appeared again, this time attached to Hillary Clinton, who was accused by right-wing websites of wearing a secret earpiece. (One such story, which appeared on the conspiracy theory website Infowars, was shared by Donald Trump Jr. and other pro-Trump influencers.)

Foreign politicians, including Emmanuel Macron of France, have also been baselessly accused of wearing earpieces during debates.

But the idea of a hidden helper giving one side an unfair debate advantage has proved seductive to campaign operatives trying to explain away a lopsided debate, or sow doubts about cheating on the other side.

While plenty of Supreme Court nominees have been confirmed in presidential elections years, none has ever been approved so close to the election itself.

The last time any seriously contested selection for the court was rushed through so quickly at any point in the election cycle, counting from the date of the original nomination, was in 1949

Democratic donors chipped in $160 million online through ActBlue, the leading site for processing digital donations, in the first three days after Justice Ginsburg’s death.

on the day the nation passed the grim milestone of 200,000 killed by the virus

“A couple of days ago, the biggest issue in this election was Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic. Now it’s a battle over the Supreme Court.”

“This is going to be a late deliverable, which combined with a Covid vaccine will be substantive issues for late deciders,” he said

In fact, the Constitution permits changing the number of seats on the court just as it permits the president and the Senate to confirm a nominee at any point in the election cycle, but neither has been the norm in modern times.

Anti-abortion voters have long been a bedrock of the Republican coalition and often more devoted to casting ballots on that issue than their counterparts. But polls show the broader electorate supports retaining Roe v. Wade, and Democrats hope that if the ruling appears to be threatened it will activate voters who support abortion rights.

While the White House would never say so publicly, by pushing to confirm a choice before voters render their judgment on him, Mr. Trump is effectively conceding that he could lose and therefore it would be better to fill the seat immediately.

Some Republican strategists said it would make more sense to proceed with hearings while holding back on a final vote until after the election to let conservative voters know what is at stake and give them a reward, in effect, for turning out.

Since July, the campaigns have been spending more on Florida’s airwaves than anywhere else in the country.

Michael R. Bloomberg has pledged to spend $100 million

Florida television screens are increasingly the primary method, along with digital advertising

the campaign has more than two dozen unique on-air advertisements in different markets around the state over the past week.

He spent about $600,000 on one ad over the past week

The Biden campaign is also clearly concerned about maintaining its lead over Mr. Trump among Latino voters

directly rebut attacks by Mr. Trump — evidence of a concern about the effectiveness of the president’s accusations — and even embrace some of Mr. Biden’s more progressive policies

two key groups in the state: seniors and Latino voters

Trump campaign falsely portrays Mr. Biden as a candidate who wants to cut Social Security

he ad also demonizes undocumented immigrants, claiming without evidence that a President Biden would take away Social Security from American citizens and give it to undocumented immigrants

But it hasn’t necessarily damaged his support among Latino voters in Florida

Voting begins in Florida with the distribution of absentee ballots on Sept. 24.

he challenged the established science of climate change, declaring, “It will start getting cooler.” He added: “Just watch. I don’t think science knows, actually.

whose 40-month prison sentence for lying to Congress was commuted by the president in July,

“there are hit squads being trained all over this country” to mount armed opposition to a second term for Mr. Trump. “You understand that they’re going to have to kill me, and unfortunately, I think that’s where this is going,”

stating that the president had personally put him in charge of a $250 million public service advertising campaign intended to help the United States return to normal.

Department officials have complained that congressional Democrats are obstructing the effort.

ritics say Dr. Redfield has left the Atlanta-based agency open to so much political interference that career scientists are the verge of resigning.

who was heavily involved in the effort to reshape the C.D.C.’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports.

Mr. Caputo was a minor figure in that inquiry, but he was of interest partly because he had once lived in Russia, had worked for Russian politicians and was contacted in 2016 by a Russian who claimed to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Caputo worked on Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign

He claimed baselessly that the killing of a Trump supporter in Portland, Ore., in August by an avowed supporter of the left-wing collective was merely a practice run for more violence.