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Mr. Trump’s indication that he will not sign the legislation without changes, including more than tripling the size of the direct payments to individuals, from $600 to $2,000, could further delay both the distribution of any payments and the amount of time it takes for jobless workers to begin seeing their payments again. (The legislation, if signed, does ensure workers will receive back payments for the time missed.)

The House is set to convene on Thursday, Christmas Eve, in a so-called pro forma session, typically a brief meeting that requires one lawmaker be present and lasts for just a few minutes. In that session, House Democrats plan to bring up a stand-alone bill that would provide for $2,000 direct payments for American families.

“We need to send a clean bill with just $2,000 survival checks and a separate spending/covid relief bill,” Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota and a frequent target of Mr. Trump’s ire, wrote Tuesday evening on Twitter, adding, “since Trump wants to sign a bill with survival checks, let’s send one to his desk right away.”

All legislation dies with a Congress, so without Mr. Trump’s signature in the next 10 days, the behemoth legislation would have to be reintroduced and voted on a second time, further delaying funding of the government and providing relief to struggling Americans and businesses.

Trump is “delivering a sort of mixed message,” said Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta. “Because if you look at the rally he held down at Valdosta, the first time he came down, he spent more time airing his own grievances over the presidential election and claiming that he was cheated out of victory than he really did supporting Loeffler or Purdue. He endorsed them, but he didn’t seem to be as concerned about those races as he was about trying to re-litigate the presidential race.”

Republicans believe that many of their supporters are waiting until Jan. 5 to vote in person. Across the country in November, Republicans saw big in-person voting turnout wipe away Democratic leads in states like Florida and Texas. Republicans could also be particularly keen to cast their ballots in person this time, considering the widespread fears of voter fraud that Mr. Trump has instilled in his base since his loss.

comes

out of Pelosi's House, it’ll come to the Senate and we’ll kill it dead,” he said, as the crowd roared with approval.

The day had started as one of triumph for Mr. Biden and his party, with Democrats coming off elections the day before that sealed control of the Senate by picking up two seats in Georgia and Congress scheduled to clear away the last formal Republican objections to his victory by certifying the Electoral College outcome.

Filling out his cabinet, Mr. Biden chose Judge Merrick B. Garland, whose Supreme Court nomination Republicans blocked in 2016, to be attorney general, placing the task of repairing a beleaguered Justice Department in the hands of a centrist judge.

The assault on the Capitol by pro-Trump demonstrators devolved into a physical confrontation that halted the process of certifying the Electoral College outcome

It’s not protest. It’s insurrection.

Other interest groups quickly seized on the Georgia results to ratchet up the pressure on Mr. Biden to make good on his campaign promises.

“The work of the moment and the work of the next four years must be the restoration of democracy, of decency, honor, respect, the rule of law,” he said, adding later: “We must step up

Mr. Biden’s advisers are deep into the process of developing policy proposals to deliver to Congress in the coming weeks, starting with another stimulus package

Shortly after, Mr. Trump posted on Twitter a one-minute video in which he empathized with the rioters because “we had an election that was stolen from us,” but then urged them to “go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order.”

The Democratic victories in Georgia put Mr. Biden’s party in control at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and reduced the risk of total partisan gridlock in Congress, at least for two years.

“With Schumer in control of the calendar, he’s got the opportunity to do some really substantial things.”

The Biden team is also drafting proposals to implement the president-elect’s “Build Back Better” campaign agenda, including new government spending on clean energy, infrastructure, health care and education, financed by tax increases on the rich and corporations.

Mr. Biden’s allies in the Senate expressed optimism that, armed with committee chairmanships and control of the legislative calendar, they could advance the president-elect’s policy goals.

“We need to fix a lot of the damage Trump’s done, and then there’s pent-up demand for a whole lot of things — what do we do about climate and about racial inequality, about wealth inequality, about structural racism,” said Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who is set to be the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee.

Mr. Biden has also proposed the most ambitious climate agenda of any president in history, including $2 trillion in spending on green initiatives. A majority in the Senate gives Mr. Biden options to make some of that happen.

But Mr. Biden’s agenda will be constrained by the Democrats’ narrow advantages in the House and in the Senate, where moderate Democrats such as Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona will wield vast power over which plans can pass.

Before the outbreak of violence on Capitol Hill, Mr. Biden signaled on Wednesday morning that despite the shift of Senate control to Democrats, he would still attempt to build legislative coalitions with Republicans on his top priorities

A high-profile business lobbying group that has long supported many Republicans, the National Association of Manufacturers, denounced Mr. Trump on Wednesday for inciting the violence and suggested it was time for his administration to invoke a constitutional provision to remove him

But his initial impulse to jettison politics altogether soon gave way to the gravitational pull of the game: In a conversation a few weeks later, he had changed his mind. He was starting Nucleus.

The story of how Mr. Parscale came to work for Mr. Trump is serendipity, plus a little of Mr. Parscale’s opportunistic savvy. He was already a successful marketing executive, well known in the business circles of San Antonio, when about ten years ago one of his clients was on a flight next to someone who was about to take a job working for the Trump family. The client jotted contact info on an airplane napkin, and soon Mr. Parscale was looped in to bid on some digital work for the family. He cut his rate to make sure he would get the job.

“Americana worked,” he said. “Just Americana. ‘Bring back that America pride’ worked. Pictures of a space shuttle. Half my ads just look like a Fourth of July party with a Vietnam vet. I wasn’t some mad genius.”

He saw himself as a campaign manager but also something more: a partner to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, who was overseeing the campaign from the White House, and he enjoyed the limelight enough that he would take the stage at Trump rallies and throw red MAGA caps into the crowd.

While friends advised Mr. Parscale to make a clean break from the campaign, he chose instead to accept a smaller role. For the Republican National Convention, Mr. Parscale was in charge of video supplements to the program. Working mostly from his Florida home, he became frustrated.

There are no obvious financial bubbles, and given the stock market expansion, consumers and investors appear confident about the long run.

The scope of tax losses could mean layoffs of teachers, firefighters and police across much of the nation.

The next round of Covid relief must accomplish two things. First, it must extend the supplemental pandemic unemployment insurance that has sustained more than 10 million families since March.

Failure to replace state and local government tax losses will have damaging effects, deepening the downturn and potentially adding years to a full recovery.

In fact, since January, approximately 1 million local government employees have already lost their jobs. But it also means significant reductions in public services next year.

Many investments could also reduce costs for local governments with more energy efficient buildings and lower transportation costs.

The House passed a version of pandemic relief with a $2.2 trillion estimated cost in the spring.

While GOP resistance to this size of relief has been characterized as a bailout to poorly run states, that rhetoric is simply wrong.

the economic distress facing states is caused by the fallout of Covid, not fiscal mismanagement.

But we face the pandemic with the government we have, not the government we wished we had. So, a new relief bill should provide a good working example of compromise for the next administration

Most large American cities face significant congestion problems, and few roads have the necessary technology to accommodate smart vehicles.

The Biden infrastructure plan calls for $2 trillion of spending. This is more than earlier transit plans, but not out of range of all federal infrastructure spending over a typical five to seven year spending plan.

Still, the short-term economic damage from the pandemic will likely persist for several more years. And the long-term damage, particularly to children and young adults, may last for decades. Because of this, Covid-19 relief should be the first economic policy priority of the Biden administration.

We still have rapidly rising health care spending, a counterproductive trade war that weakened US manufacturing and comprehensive immigration reform to contend with. We need longer term paths to constructive compromise.

Over the past few decades, the United States has moved away from federalism, where state and local government take a more active role in determining their own best course of action on many of our most divisive issues. This weakens our ability to craft compromises.

President-elect Biden faces an historically weakened economy and strengthening pandemic. He also steps into office in an age of deep political distrust. As he fights the economic fallout of Covid, he has a rare chance to resurrect the mechanisms of compromise that have served the United States well for 244 years.

Research shows that health facilities with unions have better patient outcomes and are more likely to have inspections that can find and correct workplace hazards. One study found New York nursing homes with unionized workers had lower COVID-19 mortality rates, as well as better access to PPE and stronger infection control measures, than nonunion facilities.

Recognizing that, some workers — like the nurses at Mission Hospital — are forming new unions or thinking about organizing for the first time. Others, who already belong to a union, are taking more active leadership roles, voting to strike, launching public information campaigns and filing lawsuits against employers.

Labor experts say it's too soon to know if the outrage over working conditions will translate into an increase in union membership, but early indications suggest a small uptick. Of the approximately 1,500 petitions for union representation posted on the National Labor Relations Board website in 2020, 16% appear related to the health care field, up from 14% the previous year.

Stephanie Felix-Sowy said her team is fielding dozens of calls a month from nonunion workers interested in joining. Not only are nurses and respiratory therapists reaching out, but dietary workers and cleaning staff are as well, including several from rural parts of the state where union representation has traditionally been low.

many hospitals across the country have said worker safety is already their top priority, and unions are taking advantage of a difficult situation to divide staff and management, rather than working together.

The nurses at Mission Hospital say administrators have minimized and disregarded their concerns, often leaving them out of important planning and decision-making in the hospital's COVID-19 response.

Early in the pandemic, staffers struggled to find masks and other protective equipment,

The hospital discouraged them from wearing masks one day and required masks 10 days later. The staff wasn't consistently tested for COVID-19 and often not even notified when exposed to COVID-positive patients.

the concerns persisted for months. And some nurses said the situation fueled doubts about whether hospital executives were prioritizing staff and patients, or the bottom line.

Although the nurses didn't vote to unionize until September, Waters said, they began acting collectively from the early days of the pandemic. They drafted a petition and sent a letter to administrators together. When the hospital agreed to provide advanced training on how to use PPE to protect against COVID transmission, it was a small but significant victory

Even as union membership in most industries has declined in recent years, health workers unions have remained relatively stable:

But with another surge of COVID cases approaching, the nurses decided not to wait any longer to take action

Republican groups have invested millions in this cycle to win back seats they lost in 2018, forcing Democrats to spend significantly to defend these first-term lawmakers.

Democrats took back many GOP-held suburban seats in the 2018 midterm election and are hoping to clean up the rest on Tuesday night.

In Arkansas, GOP Rep. French Hill is facing a tougher-than-expected race against state Sen. Joyce Elliott in a district that Mr. Trump won by 11 points in 2016.

There are 94 GOP women running in the general election, a record for the party, breaking its previous high mark of 53 GOP women who made it through the primary elections in 2018

Democrats have almost universally focused their messaging on health care and addressing the coronavirus pandemic, while Republicans have attacked Democrats for being socialists or espousing liberal ideas from the party’s far-left flank, such as defunding the police. The message that is most successful could help frame postelection priorities.

Democrats, meanwhile, have focused on Republicans’ efforts to undermine the Affordable Care Act, arguing they could jeopardize protections for people with pre-existing conditions. Democrats are running ads focusing on this popular part of the ACA in districts such as GOP Rep. Chip Roy’s Texas district, where he is being challenged by former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis.

voters may hold him and his administration accountable for brushing aside scientific experts and failing to effectively mobilize the government to minimize natural disasters that have claimed lives, damaged property and threatened economic prosperity.

“Talk to a firefighter if you think that climate change isn’t real,” Mayor Eric M. Garcetti of Los Angeles, a supporter of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent, said

“As an historic figure, he is one of the most culpable men in America contributing to the suffering and death that is now occurring through climate-related tragedy,” Jerry Brown, the former California governor

The president’s record is also more consequential, experts say, because the amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere has now passed the point at which scientists say it would be possible to avert many of the worst effects of global warming — even if tough emissions policies are later enacted.

“In both cases, there is no plan to deal with crisis,” he added.

the president has used his time in the nation’s highest office to aggressively promote the burning of fossil fuels, chiefly by rolling back or weakening every major federal policy intended to combat dangerous emissions. At the same time, Mr. Trump and his senior environmental officials have regularly mocked, denied or minimized the established science of human-caused climate change.

At the event in front of supporters in Jupiter, Fla., Mr. Trump declared himself “a great environmentalist.”

The report is clear about the causes — burning fossil fuels — and the effects: It found that the increased drought, flooding, storms and worsening wildfires caused by the warming planet could shrink the American economy by up to 10 percent by the end of the century.

he said of global warming, “I don’t know that it’s man-made,” and suggested that even as the planet warmed, “it will change back again” — an idea scientists have long debunked.

And Mr. Trump’s first appointee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, declared early in his tenure that carbon dioxide was not a primary contributor to global warming, a statement starkly at odds with the scientific consensus.

He said Mr. Trump had put in place “common sense policies that have kept our air, water and environment clean.”

Taken together, those rules represented the country’s first significant step toward reducing greenhouse gases, while putting the world’s largest economy at the forefront of the global effort to fight climate change.Now they are in shambles.

If Mr. Biden is elected, he has vowed to rejoin the Paris agreement and reinstate those rules, while pushing to enact even stronger policies, spending up to $2 trillion to promote the development of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.

That followed decisions by judges that have thrown the future of the Dakota Access Pipeline into doubt, struck down the relaxation of protections for migratory birds and vacated the rollback of an Obama-era rule to reduce waste from natural gas flaring on federal lands.

According to a database kept by New York University’s nonpartisan Institute for Policy Integrity, the Environmental Protection Agency has won only nine out of 47 cases in court under Mr. Trump, while the Interior Department has won four of 22.

“There is a sense that the administration has been in a hurry and has been sloppy,” said Jonathan H. Adler, a conservative legal expert and professor of environmental law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

biggest rollbacks of clean water rules, curbs to greenhouse gas emissions in automobiles and power plants, and environmental reviews of infrastructure projects.

a number of courts ruled that agencies acted illegally by providing little or no justification when they rewrote, weakened or repealed regulation.

It is not only a sin to kill a mockingbird, it is also a crime. That has been the letter of the law for the past century.

rejected the E.P.A.’s 2019 approval of an air pollution rule for Pennsylvania that would have allowed coal-fired power plants in that state to exceed pollution limits.

17 states to block the Trump administration’s revisions to a rule that significantly narrows the definition of which bodies of water are federally regulated

“The current record shows that D.O.J. and E.P.A. are making a solid defense of the Trump administration priorities.”

ignoring facts about climate change.

“The Trump administration, along with allies like me, wins on big-picture issues at the highest levels,” Mr. Morrisey said.

“The Trump administration is impatient,” he said. “The Trump administration is sloppy. The Trump administration doesn’t like to do its homework.”

“The administration is so reluctant to mention climate change that they get in trouble for not even mentioning it,” Mr. Gerrard said.

“A lot of these rollbacks are going to have very shallow roots, and perhaps no roots as all,” said David Hayes, executive director of the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center.

“If there’s a Democratic president, roll up your sleeves and wait for Texas to file lawsuits against President Biden,” he said.

Color me alarmist, but that sounds like an invitation to do more than just watch. Trump put an exclamation point on it by exhorting those supporters to vote twice, once by mail and once in person, which is of course blatantly against the law.

On Wednesday Trump was asked if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power in the event that he lost to Joe Biden. Shockingly but then not really, he wouldn’t. He prattled anew about mail-in ballots and voter fraud and, perhaps alluding to all of the election-related lawsuits that his minions have filed, said: “There won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”

“sheriffs” and “law enforcement” who would monitor the polls on his behalf. At a rally in North Carolina, he told supporters: “Be poll watchers when you go there. Watch all the thieving and stealing and robbing they do.”

“I have never in my adult life seen such a deep shudder and sense of dread pass through the American political class.”

And the day after Ginsburg died, I felt a shudder just as deep.

This was an omen — and a harrowing one at that.

“I have never in my adult life seen such a deep shudder and sense of dread pass through the American political class.”

Is a fair fight still imaginable in America? Do rules and standards of decency still apply? For a metastasizing segment of the population, no.

Right on cue, we commenced a fight over Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat that could become a protracted death match, with Mitch McConnell’s haste and unabashed hypocrisy

On Wednesday Trump was asked if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power in the event that he lost to Joe Biden. Shockingly but then not really, he wouldn’t

“There won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”

We’re in terrible danger. Make no mistake.

Trump, who rode those trends to power, is now turbocharging them to drive America into the ground.

The week since Ginsburg’s death has been the proof of that. Many of us dared to dream that a small but crucial clutch of Republican senators, putting patriotism above party,

Hah. Only two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, broke with McConnell, and in Collins’s case, there were re-election considerations and hedged wording. All the others fell into line.

Most politicians — and maybe most Americans — now look across the political divide and see a band of crooks who will pick your pocket if you’re meek and dumb enough not to pick theirs first.

“If the situation were reversed, the Dems would be doing the same thing.”

Ugliness begets ugliness until — what? The whole thing collapses of its own ugly weight?

The world’s richest and most powerful country has been brought pitifully and agonizingly low. On Tuesday we passed the mark of 200,000 deaths related to the coronavirus, cementing our status as the global leader, by far, on that front. How’s that for exceptionalism?

What’s the far side of a meltdown? America the puddle? While we await the answer, we get a nasty showdown over that third Trump justice. Trump will nominate someone likely to horrify Democrats and start another culture war: anything to distract voters from his damnable failure to address the pandemic.

University of California-Irvine School of Law, with the headline: “I’ve Never Been More Worried About American Democracy Than I Am Right Now.”

you can be re-elected at the cost that American democracy will be permanently disfigured — and in the future America will be a failed republic — I don’t think either would have taken the deal.

“I don’t think the survival of the republic particularly means anything to Donald Trump.”

“Tribal,” “identity politics,” “fake news” and “hoax” are now mainstays of our vocabulary, indicative of a world where facts and truth are suddenly relative.

“The coronavirus pandemic, a reckless incumbent, a deluge of mail-in ballots, a vandalized Postal Service, a resurgent effort to suppress votes, and a trainload of lawsuits are bearing down on the nation’s creaky electoral machinery,”

But what if there’s bottom but no bounce? I wonder. And shudder.

This country, already uncivil, is on the precipice of being ungovernable, because its institutions are being so profoundly degraded, because its partisanship is so all-consuming, and because Trump, who rode those trends to power, is now turbocharging them to drive America into the ground. The Republican Party won’t apply the brakes.

At some point, someone had to be honorable and say, “Enough.”Hah. Only two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, broke with McConnell, and in Collins’s case, there were re-election considerations and hedged wording. All the others fell into line.

So the lesson for Democrats should be to take all they can when they can? That’s what some prominent Democrats now propose: As soon as their party is in charge, add enough seats to the Supreme Court to give Democrats the greater imprint on it. Make the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico states, so that Democrats have much better odds of controlling the Senate. Do away with the filibuster entirely. That could be just the start of the list

And who the hell are we anymore? The world’s richest and most powerful country has been brought pitifully and agonizingly low. On Tuesday we passed the mark of 200,000 deaths related to the coronavirus, cementing our status as the global leader, by far, on that front. How’s that for exceptionalism?

he might contest the election in a manner that keeps him in power regardless of what Americans really want.

The coronavirus pandemic, a reckless incumbent, a deluge of mail-in ballots, a vandalized Postal Service, a resurgent effort to suppress votes, and a trainload of lawsuits are bearing down on the nation’s creaky electoral machinery,

this election might well degenerate into violence, as Democratic poll watchers clash with Republican poll watchers, and into chaos, as accusations of foul play delay the certification of state vote counts

headline: “I’ve Never Been More Worried About American Democracy Than I Am Right Now.”

“The republic is in greater self-generated danger than at any time since the 1870s,” Richard Primus, a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, told me, saying that Trump values nothing more than his own power and will do anything that he can get away with

“If you had told Barack Obama or George W. Bush that you can be re-elected at the cost that American democracy will be permanently disfigured — and in the future America will be a failed republic — I don’t think either would have taken the deal.” But Trump? “I don’t think the survival of the republic particularly means anything to Donald Trump.

What gave Primus that idea? Was it when federal officers used tear gas on protesters to clear a path for a presidential photo op? Was it when Trump floated the idea of postponing the election, just one of his many efforts to undermine Americans’ confidence in their own system of government?

Or was it when he had his name lit up in fireworks above the White House as the climax of his party’s convention? Was it on Monday, when his attorney general, Bill Barr, threatened to withhold federal funds from cities that the president considers “anarchist”? That gem fit snugly with Trump’s talk of blue America as a blight on red America, his claim that the pandemic would be peachy if he could just lop off that rotten fruit.

The deadly confrontations recently in Kenosha, Wis., and Portland, Ore., following months of mass protests against racial injustice, speak to how profoundly estranged from their government a significant percentage of Americans feel.

Litigation to determine the next president winds up with the Supreme Court, where three Trump-appointed justices are part of a majority decision in his favor. It’s possible.

Rush Limbaugh — you know, the statesman whom Trump honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom earlier this year — has urged McConnell not even to bother with a confirmation hearing for the nominee in the Judiciary Committee and to go straight to a floor vote. Due diligence and vetting are so 2018

You know who has most noticeably and commendably tried to turn down the temperature? Biden. That’s of course its own political calculation, but it’s consistent with his comportment during his entire presidential campaign, one that has steered clear of extremism, exalted comity and recognized that a country can’t wash itself clean with more muck.

He’s our best bid for salvation, which goes something like this: An indisputable majority of Americans recognize our peril and give him a margin of victory large enough that Trump’s challenge of it is too ludicrous for even many of his Republican enablers to justify. Biden takes office, correctly understanding that his mandate isn’t to punish Republicans. It’s to give America its dignity back.

Maybe we need to hit rock bottom before we bounce back up.But what if there’s bottom but no bounce? I wonder. And shudder.

“I have never in my adult life seen such a deep shudder and sense of dread pass through the American political class.”

The administration has also canceled bidding rounds for clean-energy projects in solar and wind power, while boosting natural-gas pipelines and refineries, which experts say will complicate Mexico’s goals under the Paris Climate Accords

“It’s become clear that this guy does not care about the environment at all,” said Gustavo Alanis-Ortega, director of the Mexican Center for Environmental Rights, or Cemda, a prominent nonprofit. Adrián Fernández Bremauntz, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Mexico Climate Initiative, said he feels “totally betrayed.”

This week, the government said that it is beginning work on the Maya Train without having published an environmental impact report, as required by law.

To date, Russian hackers have only been arrested while traveling abroad. In 2016, a Russian cybercriminal was arrested while vacationing in Prague on charges he hacked LinkedIn, the social network, and other American companies.

The vast majority of ransomware outfits are based in Russia, where authorities have protected hackers from extradition.

According to Emsisoft, nearly 10 percent of ransomware victims now see their data leaked online, a jarring development for hospitals, who are legally responsible for protecting medical data.

And in 2014, American Secret Service agents coordinated with authorities in the Maldives to extradite a Russian cybercriminal to Guam. The hacker was later found guilty on 38 counts of hacking U.S. retailers and sentenced to 27 years in prison. Russian officials called the extradition a “kidnapping.”

In Oregon, with a confirmed death toll of 10 along with 22 others missing

At his subsequent briefing, however, Gov. Gavin Newsom and his top environmental adviser pushed the president to acknowledge the role of climate change. Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, made a point of doing so exceedingly politely, reaffirming his working relationship with the president, thanking him for federal help and agreeing that forest management needed to be improved.

“Something’s happening to the plumbing of the world, and we come from a perspective, humbly, where we submit the science is in and observed evidence is self-evident that climate change is real, and that is exacerbating this.”

Mr. Biden, on the other hand, has proposed spending $2 trillion over four years to escalate the use of clean energy and ultimately phase out the burning of oil, gas and coal. He has pledged to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations, build 1.5 million new energy-efficient homes and eliminate carbon pollution from the power sector by 2035.

Mr. Trump rejected the premise. “It’ll start getting cooler,” he insisted. “You just watch.”

“Well, I don’t think science knows, actually,” Mr. Trump retorted, maintaining a tense grin.

Some environmental specialists said that Mr. Trump had a point about forest management but that it should not be an excuse to deny climate science and refuse to take action.

Experts say climate change, the management of public lands and decisions over where to site housing all contribute to wildfires. Mr. Trump has exclusively blamed poor forest management and last year issued an executive order directing agencies to cut down more trees, arguing that expanding timber harvesting would reduce forest fires.

Not far away, one of the biggest fires, now largely contained, recently burned more than 363,000 acres.

former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called President Trump a “climate arsonist” while the president said that “I don’t think science knows” what is actually happening.

the Democratic presidential nominee sought to paint a second Trump term as a danger to the nation’s suburbs, flipping an attack on him by the president.

Mr. Newsom noted that only 3 percent of land in California is under state control while 57 percent is federal forest land, meaning under the president’s management as governed by federal law.

“And so I think there’s an area of at least commonality on vegetation, forest management. But please respect — and I know you do — the difference of opinion out here as it relates to this fundamental issue on the issue of climate change.”

That's far more than can be accommodated initially.

When you add all the priority groups together, they account for half of all U.S. adults

Priority groups include "those who have the highest risk of exposure, those who are at risk for severe morbidity and mortality ... [and also] the workforce that's needed for us to maintain our both health and economic status,"

But even within this seemingly clear category, there are questions about who a front-line health worker is. The definition extends beyond doctors and nurses to encompass hospital staff who care for and clean up after COVID-19 patients, nursing home workers and possibly pharmacy staff and emergency medical responders, according to preliminary guidelines from the CDC. Morticians and funeral home workers may also qualify, according to a draft report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, because they handle COVID-19 victims' bodies.

The general consensus among bioethicists is that the first doses should go to front-line health workers. "Obviously they are being placed at high risk of infection, because they're taking care of people who are infected and infectious

"Health care worker vaccination sounds simple, but if we don't have enough doses, we still have to be really judicious in how we're implementing," Lee said. If everyone who might qualify as a health worker exceeds the initial supply, state and local authorities might have to ration distribution further — for instance, restricting the vaccine to parts of a state that are being hit the hardest.

So who should get it next?

A lot of the decisions will depend on the characteristics of the vaccine itself.

Factors still unknown include who a vaccine is most effective for, who can reasonably access the vaccine and whether people will line up in droves to get it.

suggests that a vaccine could be available to all Americans within 12 to 18 months of its approval

Several organizations have produced reports on prioritizing vaccine distribution, but it's the CDC and its advisory committee that have the greatest influence over how a vaccine is used and distributed in the U.S. by health departments, hospitals and doctors' offices. When ACIP does vote, the committee's advice will provide critical information that state and local health agencies will use to figure out whom to give the first vaccines to and how to reach them.

the 10 countries with the highest deaths per capita were all in Latin America or the Caribbean.

deep-seated skepticism among people like Mr. Arriaga — the workers who feed Mexico City and much of the nation — turned to shock, and eventually to resignation, as their neighbors, friends and loved ones died and their neighborhood became ground zero for the outbreak.

Officials had posted signs warning of Covid-19 and urging workers to report illnesses. In the beginning, most ignored them.“I think they made it up, to raise prices on the poor,” Mr. Arriaga said of the virus in March

A new reality set in for many: A prolonged economic shutdown was clearly impossible. People could wear masks, and distance as much as possible, but almost no one could afford to stay home. They had to keep working.

For the vast majority of people, risking illness or death has simply become the price of survival.

Mr. Arriaga’s own attempts to stay away from the market lasted only a month before he blew through his life savings and trudged back to work in fear.“I’ve got nothing left,” he said on a recent weekend, bracing himself for another long night in the market. “It’s either go out there and face the virus, or sit here and starve.”

Now, Mexico has the fourth-highest death toll in the world, with more than 70,000 lives officially lost to the virus. Experts say the real number may be tens of thousands more than that.

Tomas BravoMexico City8h agoGreat article. Even living in the same city there are different realities playing out, and this gives a good insight into the stories of some of the worst struck by the pandemic. Some local media have talked of these issues, but there is an ongoing effort from the government to deny these allegations. It is nice to see a story told from the perspective of individuals through which the bigger issues that have paved the way for this crisis are highlighted

(b) we see no arguments about mask wearing in CDMX stores/areas, and witnessed concerns about customers shooting up USA grocery stories if masks are enforced,

gtodonGuanajuato, Mexico3h ago@Ignacio Colin Perhaps in your neighborhood of sprawling Mexico City, the "community is strong and doing its part." Where I live, in Guanajuato, about half the people on the streets, and even in the stores, decline to wear masks, and half of those who do wear masks don't wear them properly; they appear to think they're chin-guards. The same is true in nearby León, a much larger city. In the state of Guanajuato, only San Miguel de Allende, with its large foreign population, takes Covid seriously.

BVINew York7h agoPowerful article with powerful images. I felt close to the shopkeepers and their families. The intimacy of these stories and revealing personal impact in such detail, without judgment, makes the story so much more human. "At every level, there is simply less." A sadly perfect summation of this pandemic's impact.

IvanMemphis, TN9h agoTwo failures seem to be conspiring to make this a catastrophe. First the governments failure to institute simple low cost and effective measures to reduce the spreed - like mandatory and enforced masks in crowded public areas. Second the failure of the public to take it serious and follow common sense guidance - because of paranoia about the motives of experts and government. I guess they are not that different from the US, except they have less resources to counter the predictable outcomes of these failures.

gnacio ColinMexico City8h agoOnce again, we are portrayed as a country that diminishes the virus’ impact and downplays it. It’s a great read but tbh most of the responsibility lays on the President, who has been adamant about employing techniques that do not combat the virus. Nonetheless, Mexico City’s government led by a PhD, Claudia Sheinbaum has done a great job and has countered the President in many ways regarding the management. We have a dormant President who chooses to look elsewhere instead of looking for solutions (he’s done the same with medication purchases, education, ecology, human rights commissions, to say the least). The Mexican community is strong and is doing its part on mitigating this national (and global) tragedy.

D. HendersonMexico City4h ago@Jorge Romero and @ E. Voigt, you have points and they are well taken. I live in CMDX and work in rural MX. In July, we made a "necessary" risky cross-country drive to see Ohio family b/c we suspect that such is impossible until a vaccine in spring 2021 or later. We used masks, face shields, alcohol solutions when at two hotels & gas stations. Some anectodal sharing

Like many people in Iztapalapa, they felt a sense of shame associated with the virus.“There’s a stigma,” said Mr. Dominguez, the organizer. “No one wants to admit they had it.”

ExPatMXAjijic, Jalisco Mexico7h ago@observer " We shouldn't be reporting on these "poor countries" as if we are so far removed on our American pedestal any longer." Thank you. Mexico is a magnificent country and the people remind me of how Americans treated each other with kindness and friendliness when I was young. They make eye contact on the streets, wish you a good day, you'll see teenage boys taking young siblings places with care and loving. There are some places in the US that this happens but a lot more places that it doesn't. Is the government corrupt? Certainly. But they are open about it while the US government is equally corrupt but hides it behind religion or other convenient excuses. We have been adopted" into a few Mexican families and attend birthdays, wedding, and fiestas. This article made me want to cry. The poor in Mexico are struggling to survive just as the poor in the US are similarly struggling. This article put faces on the essential workers who are risking their lives to feed their families (and the rest of the country) which I think is needed so the rest of us who are lucky can identify with what this disease is doing to people.

(c) CDMX is MASSIVE, centro de abastos is massive, hard to relay really its size and diversity and intensity. It IS "formally" and "informally" opening up again for many of the reasons explained in this article; it "feels" like a deal is being made with the COVID-19 devil (only time and the virus will dictate outcomes).

ONE. Thank you NYT for this article and to the commentators for their sharing. Good. TWO. When comparing citizen behavior in CDMX streets to what we saw in TX, TN, AR, KY, OH we note (a) NOW 95-100% of people in CDMX streets, metro, tianguis (markets) use masks, compared with 40-50% (or less depending on USA area),

PaulRio de Janeiro10h agoI cannot speak for Mexico, but I can speak for Brazil, where many cities have seen their numbers plummet, sometimes by over 90%. This is the case in Rio where much has been open for weeks, months in the case of malls and many other public places, without dire consequences.

At this very moment I personally know more people sick in Europe than I do here in Rio or even in Brazil. This is not to minimize the impact that Covid had on Latin America, on Brazil and on Rio. The opposite in fact: it is close to undeniable that some measure of herd immunity was attained in many of the hardest hit places, including New York City, northern Italy and several Brazilian cities.

d) urban CDMX life is different than rural MX life (and other MX cities) always and now; yet, there is a general lack of trust across the board about info and institutions, so much so that we know the death rate IS not accurate, many die in their homes rather than go to hospitals). Survive is what we all must do.

The recovery of places like Manaus, Recife, Rio, São Paulo and other Brazilian cities has been woefully underreported by the New York Times and others. It is too bad because an analysis of the data and of the facts on the ground could yield valuable insight for other countries and cities, especially in poor or emerging countries.

misinformation was as rampant as the virus itself.Ms. Aquino’s cellphone brimmed with clips sent via WhatsApp. Some claimed that the virus was a Chinese conspiracy, others that bleach was a cure. Even President Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered his own theories, contending that a clean conscience helped prevent infection.

“I’ve heard government is paying people to claim their loved ones died from Covid,” Ms. Aquino whispered. “I have two friends who were offered money.”At best, the rumors sowed confusion and doubt. At worst, they were a death sentence.

A dull acceptance of the new reality filled Iztapalapa: Coronavirus is a necessary risk, and the reward for taking it is merely survival.

Thank you for this story about our new home country. We live far from Mexico City in the state of Jalisco where the governor and local officials took the virus seriously. So far their efforts have been rewarded with per capita numbers of cases around 20 per 100,000, some of the consistently best results anywhere in the world.

I was born and raised in Mexico and all my family is still there. Back in March I received video in which a central de abastos worker mocks the pandemic and people who are quarantining calling them lazy, and those wearing masks, gullible. The video to me helped illustrate the hard truth that México, like the USA, has parallel narratives. There are those who believe the science and consume fact-checked news, like my relatives. And there are also many who believe conspiracy theories or folk remedies, including misinformation on YouTube. I believe the official tally of the sick and dead is much lower than the real numbers. This disease is exposing the fragility of Mexico’s institutions, much like it has American ones.

As a full-time resident of Mexico I can attest that most Mexicans either have had a family member ill from Covid and/or have lost a family member to Covid. It has attacked not only low income but also middle and upper classes. It is rampant here but unfortunately the wealthy have better access to adequate health care. Most Mexicans I know are very vigilant about mask wearing; unfortunately the American tourists who come to holiday here are not vigilant and are reluctant to wear masks.

ilToronto

Rachael EiermannLos Cabos, Mexico

Brad BurnsMexico

In that election, awful as the choices were, it was necessary to support Edwards. Bumper stickers read “Vote For The Crook: It’s Important.”

Reed used this example to show why voting for Clinton was so necessary in a race against Donald Trump, regardless of Clinton’s long record of terrible policies. “Vote for the lying neoliberal warmonger,” Reed said. “It’s important.”

He, and many other famous leftists like Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, and Cornel West, are saying the same thing this time around. “An anti-fascist vote for Biden is in no way an affirmation of Neoliberal politics,” West commented.

Some people on the left find this argument very difficult to stomach, though. In a recent conversation on the Bad Faith podcast, Briahna Joy Gray and Virgil Texas debated Chomsky about his stance.

In response to the “vote Biden to stop Trump” argument, they and others ask questions like the following:  But if we are willing to vote for the Democrat no matter how awful they are, what incentive will the Democratic party have to ever get better? How are we ever going to get better candidates if we don’t have some standards? Is there really no one we wouldn’t support, if they were the “lesser evil”?

Isn’t supporting “the lesser of two evils” still supporting evil? Why should I help someone get into office who has shown no willingness to support my policies, who feels entitled to my vote, who is not going to do anything to woo me?

It’s also a mistake to think that the decision about whether or not to vote for Democrats in a general election can operate as an effective form of political pressure on Democrats. The mainstream Democratic Party does not see losing elections as a sign that it needs to do more to excite its left flank. John Kerry did not look at the 2000 election and think “My God, I need to work hard to appeal to Nader voters.”

The answers to these questions are: (1) maybe, but it doesn’t matter in the situation we’re currently in (2) yes (3) no, because if he declines to stop being corrupt, you’re still going to have to give him your vote, because the alternative is putting a Klansman in office, and “do unlikely thing X or I will help white supremacists win, or at least not work to stop them” is an insane threat to make.

The easy way to avoid being troubled by having to vote for people you loathe is to give less importance to the act of voting itself. Don’t treat voting as an expression of your deepest and truest values

Don’t let the decision about who to vote for be an agonizing moral question. Just look at the question of which outcome out of the ones available would be marginally more favorable, and vote to bring about that outcome

if faced with two bad candidates, forget for the moment about the virtues of the candidates themselves and look only at the consequences for the issues you care about.

Voting can have immensely important consequences—the narrow 2000 election put a warmongering lunatic in power and resulted in a colossal amount of unnecessary human suffering.

The mainstream (I would call it “propagandistic”) view of political participation is that you participate in politics through voting. But instead, we’re better off thinking of voting as a harm-reduction chore we have to do every few years.

(Reed compares it to cleaning the toilet—not pleasant but if you don’t hold your nose and get on with it the long-term consequences will be unbearable.) Most of our political energy should be focused elsewhere. 

Reed used an illuminating comparison to explain why it was so important in 2016 to vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. In the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial primary, the Republican candidate was former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke. The Democratic candidate was the infamously corrupt Edwin Edwards, who would ultimately end his career in prison on charges of racketeering, extortion, money laundering, mail fraud, and wire fraud. It’s hard to imagine anyone you could possibly trust less in public office than Edwin Edwards… except David Duke.

Noam Chomsky’s view of electoral politics is, I believe, a sensible one. In fact, it’s not his; as he says, it’s the “traditional left view,” just one that we’ve lost clarity on

the general election vote itself is not how we effectively exercise pressure, in part because it would be unconscionable to actually go through with anything that made Donald Trump’s win more probable. The threat not to vote for Biden is either an empty one (a bluff) or an indefensible one (because it’s threatening to set the world on fire).

The conversation between Chomsky, Gray, and Texas frustrated everyone involved, as these conversations often do. Essentially, for most of the hour, Gray and Texas asked variations of the same question, and Chomsky offered variations of the same answer. They appeared to think he was ignoring the question and he appeared to think they were ignoring the answer.

The question that is on the ballot on November third,” as Chomsky said, is the reelection of Donald Trump. It is a simple up or down: do we want Trump to remain or do we want to get rid of him? If we do not vote for Biden, we are increasing Trump’s chances of winning. Saying that we will “withhold our vote” if Biden does not become more progressive, Chomsky says, amounts to saying “if you don’t put Medicare For All on your platform, I’m going to vote for Trump… If I don’t get what I want, I’m going to help the worst possible candidate into office—I think that’s crazy.” 

In fact, because Trump’s reelection would mean “total cataclysm” for the climate, “all these other issues don’t arise” unless we defeat him. Chomsky emphasizes preventing the most catastrophic consequences of climate change as the central issue, and says that the difference between Trump and Biden on climate—one denies it outright and wants to destroy all progress made so far in slowing emissions, the other has an inadequate climate plan that aims for net-zero emissions by 2050—is significant enough to make electing Biden extremely important.

This does not mean voting for Biden is a vote to solve the climate crisis; it means without Biden in office, there is no chance of solving the crisis.

TEXAS: If these capitalist institutions result in recurring ecological crisis, and existential ones, as they do, then isn’t the real fight against those institutions instead of a reform that maybe gets us over the hump in 30 years

CHOMSKY: Think for a second. Think about time scales. We have maybe a decade or two to deal with the environmental crisis. Is there the remotest chance that within a decade or two we’ll overthrow capitalism? It’s not even a dream, okay? So the point that you’re raising is basically irrelevant. Of course let’s work to try to overthrow capitalism. It’s not going to happen *snaps fingers* like that. There’s a lot of work involved. Meanwhile we have an imminent question: are we going to preserve the possibility for organized human society to survive?

The important point here is that the question is not whether we attack capitalist institutions “instead of” reforms. The reforms are necessary in the short term; you fight like hell to force the ruling elite to stop destroying the earth as best you can even as you pursue larger long-term structural goals.

Gray and Texas note to Chomsky that for people who are struggling in their daily lives, climate may seem a somewhat abstract issue, and it may be hard to motivate them to get to the polls when the issue is something so detached from their daily reality. Chomsky replied that “as an activist, it is your job to make them care.”

Some have pointed out a tension in Chomsky’s position: on the one hand, he consistently describes voting as a relatively trivial act that we should not think too much about or spend much time on. On the other hand, he says the stakes of elections are incredibly high and that the future of “organized human life” and the fate of one’s grandchildren could depend on the outcome of the 2020 election.

There’s no explicit contradiction between those two positions: voting can be extremely consequential, and it can be necessary to do it, but it can still be done (relatively) briefly and without much agonizing and deliberation.

However, if the presidential election is so consequential, can we be justified in spending only the time on it that it takes to vote? Surely if we believe Trump imperils the future of Earth, we should not just be voting for Biden, but be phone-banking and knocking doors for him. Well, I actually think it might well be true that we should be doing that, reluctant as I am to admit it.

I actually asked Chomsky about this, and he said that he does believe it’s important to persuade as many people as possible, which is why at the age of 91 he is spending his time and energy trying to convince people to “vote against Trump” instead of sitting by a pool and hanging out with his grandkids

one thing is evident: if we want to look toward electoral strategies for change, it had better be mass-based oppositional models like the Bernie campaign, not third-party protest candidacies or the threat of nonvoting

The question of how to win power does not have easy answers. What to do from now until November 3rd is, however, easy; what to do afterwards is much, much more complicated no matter who wins. But political activism is not an untested endeavor. We can study how social movements set goals and win them.

it overemphasizes the role of “deciding who to vote for in the general election” as a tool of politics. One way to get better Democrats in general elections is to run better candidates and win primaries. Another would be to build an actually powerful left with the ability to coordinate mass direct action and shape the political landscape

People mistakenly assume that by saying “vote against Trump,” Chomsky is putting too much stock in the power of voting and is insufficiently cynical about the Democratic Party. In fact, it’s completely the opposite: he puts very little stock in voting and is perhaps even more cynical about the Democrats than his critics, which is why he doesn’t think it’s surprising or interesting that Biden is offering the left almost nothing and the party is treating voters with contempt.

We must reimagine the landscapes we share with Mexico. The border should not be a line that divides cultures and fragments their desert environment. It is a juncture where two nations connect, where history is shared, where cultures are alive and where a common future must unfold.

With a sweeping set of executive orders in his initial days in office, Mr. Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement among nations to fight climate change, canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and issued a moratorium on drilling for fossil fuels on federal land, among other things.

“Our infrastructure cannot handle extreme weather events, which these fossil fuels are ironically causing.”

Social media posts mocked renewable energy as “unreliables.”

“Building resilient and sustainable infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather and a changing climate will play an integral role in creating millions of good paying, union jobs, creating a clean energy economy, and meeting the president’s goal of reaching a net zero emissions future by 2050,” said Vedant Patel, a White House assistant press secretary.

The bulk of the power loss in Texas came from natural gas suppliers, according to regulators, as pipelines froze, making it difficult for plants to get the fuel they needed. Production from coal and nuclear plants dropped as well. A similar phenomenon played out in Kansas and other states.

Ms. Boebert mentioned a photo shared repeatedly this week on social media of wind turbines she said were in Texas and apparently being de-iced by helicopter with a substance derived from fossil fuels.

In Kansas, one of few states that rely heavily on wind power, the blades on some turbines froze, too. However, just like in Texas, the bigger problem was that the state’s frigid temperatures stopped delivery of natural gas to fossil-fuel-burning power plants.

"The events of January 6 were stark reminders that institutional biases, priorities and actions taken out of sync with actionable data resulted in poor decisions," he said. "If we do not learn from these mistakes, the campus will continue to remain vulnerable to unknown and unexpected threats."