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      10 Powerful ‘Daily’ Episodes From 2020

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.Protesters marched in New York in June as anger spread across the country.Credit…Demetrius Freeman for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site index10 Powerful ‘Daily’ Episodes From 2020In a year defined by a pandemic, protests and politics, “The Daily” sought out personal stories. Here’s a holiday playlist of the episodes that Michael Barbaro and our team can’t forget.Protesters marched in New York in June as anger spread across the country.Credit…Demetrius Freeman for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyDec. 18, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETListen and subscribe to The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherMichael Barbaro, host of “The Daily.”Credit…The New York TimesIn moments of crisis, the journalistic urge to chronicle and memorialize becomes a kind of civic duty. That’s what 2020 was for “The Daily.” A rolling catastrophe that summoned us — to track down the most memorable characters, the most searing sounds, the most unforgettable scenes.That’s what we tried to do, day after day, for the past 12 months. What follows is a list of what we think are our best shows of the year:The pandemicThe pandemic is a story of unrelenting awfulness: lockdowns, infections and death. But it was also a story of resilience, and, in rare cases, joy. These episodes tell both stories — making them worth revisiting, even months later.Around the world, people spent far more time at home this year than usual. In São Paulo, Brazil, residents gathered at their windows in March to protest the government’s pandemic response.Credit…Victor Moriyama for The New York Times1. Finding the voice that could calm amid crisisGenie Chance and the Great Alaska EarthquakeThis is the story of the biggest earthquake ever recorded in North America — and the voice that held Anchorage together in the aftermath.This was an unusual episode for us. The central event occurred half a century ago. But the parallels between the life-altering catastrophe that befell Anchorage in 1964 and the pandemic felt unmistakable, a connection captured in the opening words of “This is Chance!,” the book by Jon Mooallem that inspired the episode:“There are moments when the world we take for granted instantaneously changes; when reality is abruptly upended and the unimaginable overwhelms real life. We don’t walk around thinking about that instability, but we know it’s always there: at random, and without warning, a kind of terrible magic can switch on and scramble our lives.”Genie Chance’s voice steadied Alaska after an earthquake, and, for a moment, it steadied us too.— Michael Barbaro, host of “The Daily”Learn more about the episode.2. Going to the heart of the crisis in Italy‘It’s Like a War’We spoke to a doctor triaging care at the heart of the coronavirus crisis in Italy. His intimate telling of the crisis in Bergamo is a time capsule for what this year sounded like.I remember exactly when I realized that the coronavirus was about to change all of our lives: The morning of Feb. 27, 2020, when Donald G. McNeil Jr. came on “The Daily” and said that this thing was serious — that it had most likely spread further than we know and that it was something we needed to start preparing for right now.Just a few weeks later, as new travel restrictions and forced business closures began spreading through the United States, and with more and more Americans concerned we might be overreacting, we interviewed a doctor in Italy trying to care for the overwhelming number of coronavirus patients that he was seeing every day. There was no way for me to hear his account and remain confused as to why we all needed to protect the most vulnerable. — Andy Mills, a producerLearn more about the episode.Early in the year, the virus hit Western Europe harder than any other place in the world. In March, a coronavirus patient was examined at his home in Cenate Sotto, Italy.Credit…Fabio Bucciarelli for The New York Times3. Offering a bit of reliefThe Long Distance ChorusHow the elementary school students of Staten Island’s P.S. 22 Chorus are harmonizing from afar.Gregg Breinberg and the chorus of Public School 22 on Staten Island reminded me that we can still find meaningful ways to connect in the midst of Covid. After listening to Mr. Breinberg inspire his students, and lead them through a pandemic, I was left only wishing I had him as my teacher. I still think about this episode from time to time. — Laura Kim, an editorial managerLearn more about the episode.4. Honoring the lives of those we’ve lostOne Hundred Thousand LivesA dictionary collector. A wind chaser. A disco dancer. They are just a few of the more than 100,000 lost to the coronavirus in the U.S.Barbara Krupke won the lottery. Fred Walter Gray enjoyed his bacon and hash browns crispy. Orlando Moncada crawled through a hole in a fence to reach the United States. John Prine chronicled the human condition. Cornelia Ann Hunt left the world with gratitude.“We made this episode after we lost 100,000 people to coronavirus in the United States. In doing so, we broke form, took a chance and made something entirely different than we’ve ever made before. Months later, this audio portrait is still a powerful vigil honoring — and celebrating — these lives.” — Lynsea Garrison, a producerLearn more about the episode.Protests against racial inequityHow do you cover the effects of centuries of systemic racism? By listening closely to those affected by it. This summer, we captured the sounds of the Black Lives Matter movement, unprecedented in scale, by traveling to the protests’ front lines. Then, we spoke with Black police officers and union leaders at the center of the debate over defunding.The killing of George Floyd in May inspired mass demonstrations against police brutality across the country. In Minneapolis, officers confronted protesters on May 31.Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times5. Recording protesters on the front linesWhy They’re Protesting“Hate killed Mr. Floyd,” one protester said. “This kind of conduct has been allowed for far too long against people of color. And enough is enough.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      A Discussion About the Electoral College and Voting Rights

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCalifornia TodayA Discussion About the Electoral College and Voting RightsThursday: Assemblywoman Shirley Weber says, “I continue to be amazed at being able to participate in the process at this level.” Also: A pandemic update.Shawn Hubler and Dec. 17, 2020, 8:56 a.m. ETAssemblywoman Shirley Weber, the head of California’s Legislative Black Caucus. Credit…Rich Pedroncelli/Associated PressGood morning.This week, the Electoral College voted, officially making Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Kamala Harris the next president and vice president of the United States.If you were watching the news, you might have caught California’s electors bursting into applause in the green-carpeted Assembly as they cast the 55 votes that put the Biden-Harris ticket over the 270-vote threshold. Or you may have noticed the legislator dressed in red who was heading the proceedings.That was Shirley Weber, a retired San Diego State University professor who is now a Democratic assemblywoman and the head of California’s Legislative Black Caucus.Shawn Hubler caught up with her on Tuesday and asked her about the experience. Her answer, lightly edited here, was a surprise:It’s not every day that the Electoral College gets gavel-to-gavel TV coverage. Watching you after the events of the past year, just as a Californian, I wondered what must be going through your mind.It was an amazing experience. I’ve been on the Electoral College once before, and it doesn’t seem like a lot. But once you’re in that room, you realize what we were doing. And how important it was. I continue to be amazed at being able to participate in the process at this level.I come from a father and grandfather who were sharecroppers in Arkansas, and my father never got a chance to vote until he was in his mid to late 30s because he lived in Arkansas. And my grandfather never got to vote at all because he died before the Voting Rights Act of 1965.Wow. I had no idea. So the back story for you was much deeper than just California and its role in the Trump resistance.My dad could barely read. He was never allowed to go to school very much in Arkansas, because they were sharecroppers and he was a male, so he had to work.Well, they were trying to cheat him out of his years of labor, and one day he fought back. And they were going to make an example of him — it was known in the community they were going to kill him. My mother’s mother had come to California years before, so he came here, fleeing for his life.My God.They had put him in the back of a wagon, in the middle of the night like in a movie, and took him to Texarkana and he got on the train and came to my mother’s mother in California.When the men came to our house that night, my dad was gone. We remained in Arkansas for three months, until my dad earned enough money to bring his wife and six children by train to California. Later two more were born in California.Where in Arkansas was this?We lived in Hope, Ark. Bill Clinton’s grandfather lived right down the road from my grandparents. They all knew his grandfather and knew him.And your family settled in Los Angeles then?Yes. We lived in the projects. Eventually my father on a fluke was able to buy a house at 45th and Broadway. His company had changed owners and when they changed the retirement system, they had to pay what was in it to the employees, so he got $2,000 and put it down on a house.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Your Thursday Briefing

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyYour Thursday BriefingCronyism and waste in Britain’s pandemic spending.Dec. 17, 2020Updated 1:08 a.m. ET(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.)Good morning.We’re covering a new analysis of Britain’s slipshod pandemic spending, a move to the right for Emmanuel Macron and an upside to the climate crisis for Russia.[embedded content]Medical staff wearing personal protective equipment, or P.P.E., at a hospital in Cambridge, England, in May. Officials shelled out billions in contracts for Covid-19 tests, vaccines and P.P.E.Credit…Pool photo by Neil HallCronyism and waste in Britain’s pandemic spendingAs Britain scrambled for protective gear and other equipment, select companies — many of which had close connections to the governing Conservative Party or no previous experience — reaped billions, according to a New York Times analysis of more than 2,500 contracts.In some cases, more qualified companies lost out to those with better political connections, which were granted access to a secretive V.I.P. lane that made them about 10 times more likely to be approved for a contract.Conclusions: While there is no evidence of illegal conduct, there is ample evidence of cronyism, waste and poor due diligence, with officials ignoring or missing red flags, including histories of fraud, human rights abuses, tax evasion and other serious controversies.Christmas restrictions: Prime Minister Boris Johnson has stuck by a pledge to lift limits on gatherings from Dec. 23 to 27 despite growing calls to abandon the plan as coronavirus cases surge.Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.In other developments:The U.S. is negotiating a deal with Pfizer to produce tens of millions of additional doses of its coronavirus vaccine. Vaccinations began in the U.S. on Monday.The number of severe Covid-19 cases in the Gaza Strip sharply increased, raising concerns that hospitals could soon be overwhelmed.In the first week of Britain’s vaccination program, more than 137,000 people have received shots.An international team of 10 scientists working with the World Health Organization will travel next year to China to investigate the origins of the coronavirus.President Emmanuel Macron of France has moved to the right, alienating some former supporters and current members of his own party.Credit…Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMacron’s pre-election slide to the rightWith an eye on France’s next presidential election in 2022, President Emmanuel Macron has tacked to the right, alienating former liberal supporters and current members of his own party.After recent terrorist attacks, Mr. Macron pushed forward bills on security and Islamist extremism that raised alarms among some French, the United Nations and human rights groups, but won favor among right-leaning voters. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally, is expected to be his main challenger.Analysis: Despite his center-left origins, Mr. Macron has always been known as a shape-shifter. His slide to the right is regarded by some as a clean break from the first three years of his presidency.Related: A French court found 14 people guilty of aiding the 2015 attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo, supplying the attackers with cash, weapons and vehicles.Gender equality: The mayor of Paris was fined nearly $110,000 for hiring too many women, under a 2012 law intended to address gender imbalance at senior levels of the country’s Civil Service.A landmark ruling on air pollutionA 9-year-old girl who died of an asthma attack in 2013 became the first person in Britain to officially have air pollution listed as a cause of death, after she was exposed to levels of nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter beyond World Health Organization guidelines.The death of the girl, Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who was Black, shed a harsh light on how pollution disproportionately affects minorities and deprived families in Britain.Legal experts said it could open a new door to lawsuits by pollution victims or their families. The girl lived near a major road in southeast London. Her mother said that if she had been told air pollution was contributing to her daughter’s ill health, she would have moved.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Biden’s Inaugural Will Be Mostly Virtual, but Money From Donors Will Be Real

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesElectoral College ResultsBiden’s CabinetInaugural DonationsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBiden’s Inaugural Will Be Mostly Virtual, but Money From Donors Will Be RealThe president-elect’s allies have begun an ambitious fund-raising campaign for the celebration of his swearing-in. Big donors will get “virtual signed photos” — and a chance to generate good will.President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s inauguration will be mostly virtual, with in-person events scaled back because of the coronavirus pandemic.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesKenneth P. Vogel and Dec. 16, 2020WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s allies have begun an ambitious campaign to raise millions of dollars from corporations and individuals by offering special “V.I.P. participation” in reimagined inaugural festivities that will be largely virtual because of the coronavirus pandemic.Far fewer tickets than normal are being distributed for people to attend the actual swearing-in ceremony outside the Capitol on Jan. 20, which is organized and funded by the government.To create an air of celebration, Mr. Biden’s inaugural committee said it was raising private funds to pay for virtual events that will echo the Democratic convention this year, which featured a 50-state roll call from spots around the nation. There are also plans for a “virtual concert” with major performers whose names have not yet been released — and possibly for an in-person event later in the year.The contrast between the constraints of putting on inaugural festivities in the midst of a public health crisis and fund-raising as usual underscores how donations to an inaugural are not just about getting good seats for the swearing-in or tickets to the glitziest black-tie balls. They are also a way for corporations and well-heeled individuals to curry favor with a new administration, a reality that prompted liberal groups on Wednesday to ask Mr. Biden’s inaugural committee to forgo corporate donations.President Trump’s inauguration nearly four years ago took the practice to a new level. It became an access-peddling bazaar of sorts, and aspects of its record fund-raising and spending emerged as the subjects of investigations.Mr. Biden’s inaugural committee is promising corporations that give up to $1 million and individuals who contribute $500,000 — the largest amounts the committee said it would accept — some form of “V.I.P. participation” in the virtual concert.This special access is among the perks detailed on a one-page sponsorship menu from the committee that circulated among donors on Wednesday. Perks include “event sponsorship opportunities,” as well as access to virtual briefings with leaders of the inaugural committee and campaign, and invitations to virtual events with Mr. Biden and Jill Biden, the future first lady, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff.Top donors will also get a fitting memento for the coronavirus era — “virtual signed photos” with the president-elect and the first lady, as well as Ms. Harris and her husband, replacing the traditional in-person rope-line photo opportunities for which donors usually pay handsomely at fund-raisers and other political events.Incoming presidents have long raised private funds to organize and pay for inaugural festivities beyond the swearing-in ceremony, which is hosted by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies and funded with taxpayer money.Top donors typically get intimate in-person access at parties and dinners to celebrate with members of an incoming president’s campaign and administration.Among the corporate giants who have indicated they are ready to donate despite the lack of in-person events is Boeing, the aerospace manufacturer and military contractor. The company is contributing $1 million to Mr. Biden’s inauguration, an amount it said is consistent with its past contributions to inaugural committees. Representatives from Bank of America and Ford Motor Company also said their companies intended to donate.“We have supported inauguration events over many administrations on a nonpartisan basis because we view it as part of our civic commitment for an important national event,” Bill Halldin, a spokesman for Bank of America, said in a statement. “The private sector has traditionally done so and we expect to provide support for ceremonies in January as appropriate, given the health crisis and other factors that may impact it.”A number of corporations that have been major donors to past presidential inaugurations — like Coca-Cola, Google and United Parcel Service — said this week that they still had not decided how much, or whether, to donate, though Google noted it had provided “online security protections for free” to the inaugural committee.“As you know this is a very different year and as such we have not yet made a decision,” Ann Moore, a spokeswoman for Coca-Cola, said in a statement.A spokeswoman for the investment bank JPMorgan Chase, which has donated to past inaugurations, said that instead of giving to Mr. Biden’s committee, it would be donating to food banks in Washington and the hometowns of Mr. Biden (Wilmington, Del.) and Ms. Harris (Oakland, Calif.) “to help those impacted by the pandemic.”The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 17, 2020, 10:00 a.m. ETHere’s a look at the economy Biden will inherit next month.Dominion demands that Sidney Powell retract ‘baseless and false allegations’ about voting machines.Pence will be vaccinated publicly on Friday, the White House says.An inauguration spokesman would not say how much had already been raised, or what the fund-raising goal was.Funds raised for inaugurations cannot be transferred to federal campaigns or party committees. Past inaugural committees have donated unspent funds to charities including those engaged in disaster relief, as well as groups involved in decorating and maintaining the White House and the vice president’s residence.The effort by Mr. Biden’s inaugural committee to raise funds from corporate donors prompted puzzlement and objections from liberal activists, who have expressed concern about what they see as the Biden team’s coziness with corporate interests.A coalition of about 50 liberal groups released a letter to the inaugural committee on Wednesday urging it to forgo donations from corporations to prevent them “from wielding undue influence,” and questioning the need for such donations, given the likelihood that Mr. Biden’s inauguration would cost less than previous inaugurations.“The drive to raise so much money without a clear use for it is perplexing, and the appearance of doing so is disconcerting,” said the letter, which was organized by Demand Progress, a group that has also urged Mr. Biden not to hire corporate executives and consultants or lobbyists.Federal law does not require the disclosure of donations to inaugural committees until 90 days after the event, and limited disclosures about expenditures are not required until months after that. But the Biden inaugural committee said it intends to disclose the names of at least its larger donors before Jan. 20.There are no legal limits on the sizes of donations that inaugural committees can accept, and there are few restrictions on who can give.Mr. Biden’s inaugural committee announced last month that it would voluntarily forgo donations from fossil fuel companies, registered lobbyists and foreign agents, in addition to limiting corporate donations to $1 million and individual donations to $500,000.Those restrictions are less stringent than the ones adopted by former President Barack Obama for his 2009 inauguration. His inaugural committee refused corporate donations and said it limited individual donations to $50,000, though he loosened the rules for his second inauguration in 2013.While Mr. Trump’s team said it would not accept contributions from lobbyists for his 2017 inauguration, its fund-raising was otherwise mostly unrestricted, resulting in a record $107 million haul.The Biden team has so far released few specifics regarding plans for the inauguration, other than a statement on Tuesday urging people not to travel to Washington to attend the event given the pandemic and noting that the “ceremony’s footprint will be extremely limited.”In an expression of just how unusual the event will be, the Biden inaugural committee named Dr. David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, as an adviser to help with decisions on what kinds of events it can hold.“We are asking Americans to participate in inaugural events from home to protect themselves, their families, friends and communities,” Dr. Kessler said in a statement.In a typical inauguration year, a congressional committee that organizes the swearing-in ceremony typically distributes 200,000 tickets to lawmakers for seats on the platform, risers and seating close to the West Front of the Capitol, which are then distributed to constituents and friends who want to attend.But this year, the committee announced it would give just two tickets to the outdoor festivities to each of the 535 members of Congress, for them and a guest to attend.Beyond this event, it is largely up to the Biden inauguration committee, where officials have said in recent days they are still working to “reimagine” and “reinvent” the inauguration.There will still be some kind of an inauguration parade, but it will be considerably pared down and will most likely feature video or live shots of groups performing from spots across the country.The inaugural committee this week disclosed that it had retained Ricky Kirshner, a New York-based entertainment industry television and events producer. His past experience includes the Super Bowl halftime show this year that featured Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, as well as past Tony Awards and Kennedy Center Honors events, and the largely virtual 2020 Democratic National Convention, among many other events.Major donors will also get “V.I.P. tickets” to some kind of future event to celebrate the start of the new administration in person, according to the one-page menu of donor perks.But given the continued uncertainty associated with the pandemic, that event is listed as “date to be determined.”Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Like a Hand Grasping’: Trump Appointees Describe the Crushing of the C.D.C.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Like a Hand Grasping’: Trump Appointees Describe the Crushing of the C.D.C.Kyle McGowan, a former chief of staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and his deputy, Amanda Campbell, go public on the Trump administration’s manipulation of the agency.“Every time that the science clashed with the messaging, messaging won,” said Kyle McGowan, a former chief of staff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Credit…Audra Melton for The New York TimesDec. 16, 2020Updated 9:36 a.m. ETATLANTA — Kyle McGowan, a former chief of staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and his deputy, Amanda Campbell, were installed in 2018 as two of the youngest political appointees in the history of the world’s premier public health agency, young Republicans returning to their native Georgia to dream jobs.But what they witnessed during the coronavirus pandemic this year in the C.D.C.’s leadership suite on the 12-floor headquarters here shook them: Washington’s dismissal of science, the White House’s slow suffocation of the agency’s voice, the meddling in its messages and the siphoning of its budget.In a series of interviews, the pair has decided to go public with their disillusionment: what went wrong, and what they believe needs to be done as the agency girds for what could be a yearslong project of rebuilding its credibility externally while easing ill feelings and self-doubt internally.“Everyone wants to describe the day that the light switch flipped and the C.D.C. was sidelined. It didn’t happen that way,” Mr. McGowan said. “It was more of like a hand grasping something, and it slowly closes, closes, closes, closes until you realize that, middle of the summer, it has a complete grasp on everything at the C.D.C.”Last week, the editor in chief of the C.D.C.’s flagship weekly disease outbreak reports — once considered untouchable — told House Democrats investigating political interference in the agency’s work that she was ordered to destroy an email showing Trump appointees attempting to meddle with their publication.The same day, the outlines of the C.D.C.’s future took more shape when President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced a slate of health nominees, including Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, as the agency’s new director, a move generally greeted with enthusiasm by public health experts.“We are ready to combat this virus with science and facts,” she wrote on Twitter.Mr. McGowan and Ms. Campbell — who joined the C.D.C. in their early 30s, then left together in August — said that mantra was what was most needed after a brutal year that left the agency’s authority crippled.In November, Mr. McGowan held conversations with Biden transition officials reviewing the agency’s response to the pandemic, where he said he was candid about its failures. Among the initiatives he encouraged the new administration to plan for: reviving regular — if not daily — news briefings featuring the agency’s scientists.Mr. McGowan and Ms. Campbell, both 34, say they tried to protect their colleagues against political meddling from the White House and Department of Health and Human Services. But an agency created to protect the nation against a public health catastrophe like the coronavirus was largely stifled by the Trump administration.The White House insisted on reviewing — and often softening — the C.D.C.’s closely guarded coronavirus guidance documents, the most prominent public expression of its latest research and scientific consensus on the spread of the virus. The documents were vetted not only by the White House’s coronavirus task force but by what felt to the agency’s employees like an endless loop of political appointees across Washington.Mr. McGowan recalled a White House fixated on the economic implications of public health. He and Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the C.D.C. director, negotiated with Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, over social distancing guidelines for restaurants, as Mr. Vought argued that specific spacing recommendations would be too onerous for businesses to enforce.“It is not the C.D.C.’s role to determine the economic viability of a guidance document,” Mr. McGowan said.They compromised anyway, recommending social distancing without a reference to the typical six-foot measurement.One of Ms. Campbell’s responsibilities was helping secure approval for the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, a widely followed and otherwise apolitical guide on infectious disease renowned in the medical community. Over the summer, political appointees at the health department repeatedly asked C.D.C. officials to revise, delay and even scuttle drafts they thought could be viewed, by implication, as criticism of President Trump.“It wasn’t until something was in the M.M.W.R. that was in contradiction to what message the White House and H.H.S. were trying to put forward that they became scrutinized,” Ms. Campbell said.Dr. Tom Frieden, the C.D.C. director under President Barack Obama, said it was typical and “legitimate” to have interagency process for review.“What’s not legitimate is to overrule science,” he said.Often, Mr. McGowan and Ms. Campbell mediated between Dr. Redfield and agency scientists when the White House’s requests and dictates would arrive: edits from Mr. Vought and Kellyanne Conway, the former White House adviser, on choirs and communion in faith communities, or suggestions from Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and aide, on schools.“Every time that the science clashed with the messaging, messaging won,” Mr. McGowan said.Episodes of meddling sometimes turned absurd, they said. In the spring, the C.D.C. published an app that allowed Americans to screen themselves for symptoms of Covid-19. But the Trump administration decided to develop a similar tool with Apple. White House officials then demanded that the C.D.C. wipe its app off its website, Mr. McGowan said.Ms. Campbell said that at the pandemic’s outset, she was confident the agency had the best scientists in the world at its disposal, “just like we had in the past.”“What was so different, though, was the political involvement, not only from H.H.S. but then the White House, ultimately, that in so many ways hampered what our scientists were able to do,” she said.Top C.D.C. officials devised workarounds. Instead of posting new guidance for schools and election officials in the spring, they published “updates” to previous guidance that skipped formal review from Washington. That prompted officials in Washington to insist on reviewing updates.Brian Morgenstern, a White House spokesman, said that “all proposed guidelines and regulations with potentially sweeping effects on our economy, society and constitutional freedoms receive appropriate consultation from all stakeholders, including task force doctors, other experts and administration leaders.”A C.D.C. spokesman declined to comment.Mr. McGowan and Ms. Campbell both attended the University of Georgia and saw their C.D.C. positions as homecomings. Mr. McGowan said the two institutions he revered most during his Georgia childhood were the C.D.C. and Coca-Cola.He arrived with a résumé that made the agency’s senior ranks suspicious, he said. Like Ms. Campbell, he worked for former Representative Tom Price, first in his House office, then when he was health secretary under Mr. Trump. When he arrived at the C.D.C., Mr. McGowan told his new colleagues that he was there not to spy on or undermine them, but to support them.Mr. McGowan and Ms. Campbell, who have since opened a health policy consulting firm, said they saw themselves as keepers of the agency’s senior scientists, whose morale had been sapped. Dr. Redfield, whose leadership has been criticized roundly by public health experts and privately by his own scientists, was rarely in Atlanta, consumed by Washington responsibilities.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      From Voter Fraud to Vaccine Lies: Misinformation Peddlers Shift Gears

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFrom Voter Fraud to Vaccine Lies: Misinformation Peddlers Shift GearsElection-related falsehoods have subsided, but misleading claims about the coronavirus vaccines are surging — often spread by the same people.Sidney Powell, who was a member of President Trump’s legal team, on Capitol Hill last month. She has started posting inaccurate claims about the coronavirus vaccines online.Credit…Jonathan Ernst/ReutersDavey Alba and Dec. 16, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETSidney Powell, a lawyer who was part of President Trump’s legal team, spread a conspiracy theory last month about election fraud. For days, she claimed that she would “release the Kraken” by showing voluminous evidence that Mr. Trump had won the election by a landslide.But after her assertions were widely derided and failed to gain legal traction, Ms. Powell started talking about a new topic. On Dec. 4, she posted a link on Twitter with misinformation that said that the population would be split into the vaccinated and the unvaccinated and that “big government” could surveil those who were unvaccinated.“NO WAY #America,” Ms. Powell wrote in the tweet, which collected 22,600 shares and 51,000 likes. “This is more authoritarian communist control imported straight from #China.” She then tagged Mr. Trump and the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn — both of whom she had represented — and other prominent right-wing figures to highlight the post.Ms. Powell’s changing tune was part of a broader shift in online misinformation. As Mr. Trump’s challenges to the election’s results have been knocked down and the Electoral College has affirmed President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s win, voter fraud misinformation has subsided. Instead, peddlers of online falsehoods are ramping up lies about the Covid-19 vaccines, which were administered to Americans for the first time this week.Apart from Ms. Powell, others who have spread political misinformation such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia, as well as far-right websites like ZeroHedge, have begun pushing false vaccine narratives, researchers said. Their efforts have been amplified by a robust network of anti-vaccination activists like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on platforms including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.Among their misleading notions is the idea that the vaccines are delivered with a microchip or bar code to keep track of people, as well as a lie that the vaccines will hurt everyone’s health (the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna have been proved to be more than 94 percent effective in trials, with minimal side effects). Falsehoods about Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist who supports vaccines, have also increased, with rumors that he is responsible for the coronavirus and that he stands to profit from a vaccine, according to data from media insights company Zignal Labs.The shift shows how political misinformation purveyors are hopping from topic to topic to maintain attention and influence, said Melissa Ryan, chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation.It is “an easy pivot,” she said. “Disinformation about vaccines and the pandemic have long been staples of the pro-Trump disinformation playbook.”The change has been particularly evident over the last six weeks. Election misinformation peaked on Nov. 4 at 375,000 mentions across cable television, social media, print and online news outlets, according to an analysis by Zignal. By Dec. 3, that had fallen to 60,000 mentions. But coronavirus misinformation steadily increased over that period, rising to 46,100 mentions on Dec. 3, from 17,900 mentions on Nov. 8.NewsGuard, a start-up that fights false stories, said that of the 145 websites in its Election Misinformation Tracking Center, a database of sites that publish false election information, 60 percent of them have also published misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic. That includes right-wing outlets such as Breitbart, Newsmax and One America News Network, which distributed inaccurate articles about the election and are now also running misleading articles about the vaccines.John Gregory, the deputy health editor for NewsGuard, said the shift was not to be taken lightly because false information about vaccines leads to real-world harm. In Britain in the early 2000s, he said, a baseless link between the measles vaccine and autism spooked people into not taking that vaccine. That led to deaths and serious permanent injuries, he said.“Misinformation creates fear and uncertainty around the vaccine and can reduce the number of people willing to take it,” said Carl Bergstrom, a University of Washington evolutionary biologist who has been tracking the pandemic.Dr. Shira Doron, an epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, said the consequences of people not taking the Covid-19 vaccines because of misinformation would be catastrophic. The vaccines are “the key piece to ending the pandemic,” she said. “We are not getting there any other way.”Ms. Powell did not respond to a request for comment.To deal with vaccine misinformation, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media sites have expanded their policies to fact-check and demote such posts. Facebook and YouTube said they would remove false claims about the vaccines, while Twitter said it pointed people to credible public health sources.Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 16, 2020, 9:57 a.m. ETThe latest: Domino’s will pay its hourly workers a bonus.LVMH takes a stake in WhistlePig, an American rye whiskey brand.U.S. retail sales decline more than expected in November.The flow of vaccine falsehoods began rising in recent weeks as it became clear that the coronavirus vaccines would soon be approved and available. Misinformation spreaders glommed onto interviews by health experts and began twisting them.On Dec. 3, for example, Dr. Kelly Moore, the associate director for immunization education at the nonprofit Immunization Action Coalition, said in an interview with CNN that when people receive the vaccine, “everyone will be issued a written card” that would “tell them what vaccine they had and when their next dose is due.”Dr. Moore was referring to a standard appointment reminder card that could also be used as a backup vaccine record. But skeptics quickly started saying online that the card was evidence that the U.S. government intended to surveil the population and limit the activities of people who were unvaccinated.That unfounded idea was further fueled by people like Ms. Powell and her Dec. 4 tweet. Her post pushed the narrative to 47,025 misinformation mentions that week, according to Zignal, making it the No. 1 vaccine misinformation story at the time.To give more credence to the idea, Ms. Powell also appended a link to an article from ZeroHedge, which claimed that immunity cards would “enable CDC to track Covid-19 vaxx status in database.” On Facebook, that article was liked and commented on 24,600 times, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned social media analytics tool. It also reached up to one million people.ZeroHedge did not respond to a request for comment.In an interview, Dr. Moore said she could not believe how her words had been distorted to seem as if she was supporting surveillance and restrictions on unvaccinated members of the public. “In fact, I was simply describing an ordinary appointment reminder card,” she said. “This is an old-school practice that goes on around the world.”Angela Stanton-King, a Republican candidate for Congress in Georgia, in Atlanta last month.Credit…Megan Varner/Getty ImagesOther supporters of Mr. Trump who said the election had been stolen from him also began posting vaccine falsehoods. One was Angela Stanton-King, a former Republican candidate for Congress from Georgia and a former reality TV star. On Dec. 5, she tweeted that her father would be forced to take the coronavirus vaccine, even though in reality the government has not made it mandatory.“My 78 yr old father tested positive for COVID before Thanksgiving he was told to go home and quarantine with no prescribed medication,” Ms. Stanton-King wrote in her tweet, which was liked and shared 13,200 times. “He had zero symptoms and is perfectly fine. Help me understand why we need a mandatory vaccine for a virus that heals itself…”Ms. Stanton-King declined to comment.Anti-vaccination activists have also jumped in. When two people in Britain had an adverse reaction to Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine this month, Mr. Kennedy, a son of former Senator Robert F. Kennedy who campaigns against vaccines as chairman of the anti-vaccination group Children’s Health Defense, pushed the unproven notion on Facebook that ingredients in the vaccine led to the reactions. He stripped out context that such reactions are usually very rare and it is not yet known whether the vaccines caused them.His Facebook post was shared 556 times and reached nearly a million people, according to CrowdTangle data. In an email, Mr. Kennedy said the Food and Drug Administration should “require pre-screening” of vaccine recipients and “monitor allergic and autoimmune reactions,” without acknowledging that regulators have already said they would do so.Ms. Ryan, the disinformation researcher, said that as long as there were loopholes for misinformation to stay up on social media platforms, purveyors would continue pushing falsehoods about the news topic of the day. It could be QAnon today, the election tomorrow, Covid-19 vaccines after that, she said.“They need to stay relevant,” she said. “Without Trump, they’re going to need new hobbies.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Your Wednesday Briefing

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyYour Wednesday BriefingPoorer nations struggle to access a coronavirus vaccine.Dec. 15, 2020, 10:06 p.m. ETGood morning.We’re covering the gulf between wealthy and poorer nations for access to a coronavirus vaccine, new laws against civil liberties in Hungary and Brazil’s chaotic vaccine plan.[embedded content] Pillay Jagambrun, a Care home worker, received the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at Croydon University Hospital in south London last week.Credit…Pool photo by Dan CharityRich countries are first in line for new virus vaccinesThe world’s wealthiest countries have laid claim to more than half of the doses of coronavirus vaccines coming on the market through 2021, as many poorer nations struggle to secure enough. If all those doses are fulfilled, the E.U. could inoculate its residents twice, Britain and the United States four times over and Canada six times over, according to our data analysis.In the developing world, some countries may be able to vaccinate, at most, 20 percent of their populations in 2021, with some reaching immunity as late as 2024.In many cases, the U.S. made its financial support for the vaccine’s development conditional on getting priority access. The country is heading toward authorizing another vaccine this week, from Moderna.By the numbers: Britain has claimed 357 million doses in total, with options to buy 152 million more, while the European Union has secured 1.3 billion, with as many as 660 million doses more if it chooses.Credit…The New York TimesHere are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.In other developments:A second wave has brought a new surge in infections to Sweden, leaving Stockholm’s emergency services overrun and forcing the authorities to recalibrate their approach.Russia has released additional results from a clinical trial of its leading coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V, showing an efficacy rate of 91.4 percent. AstraZeneca opened talks this month about combining efforts.President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa announced new restrictions as the country entered a second coronavirus wave, with infections expected to rise over the festive season.The European Medicines Agency said in a statement that it would move forward a meeting to decide whether to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to Dec. 21 from Dec. 29.The new amendment would also effectively bar gay couples from adopting children in Hungary by defining a family as including a man as the father and a woman as the mother.Credit…Attila Kisbenedek/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNew laws in Hungary further erode civil libertiesThe Hungarian Parliament on Tuesday passed sweeping measures that curtailed the rights of gay citizens, relaxed oversight of the spending of public funds and made it more difficult for opposition parties to challenge Prime Minister Viktor Orban in future elections.The government justified its actions in a written explanation by saying that the Constitution “is a living framework which expresses the will of the nation, the manner in which we want to live.” Increasingly, “the will of the nation” is becoming indistinguishable from Mr. Orban’s own.Analysis: The new laws are cause for “grave concern,” said Agnes Kovacs, a legal expert. Over more than a decade in power, Mr. Orban has torn at the fabric of democratic institutions in pursuit of what he calls an “illiberal” state.Details: The legislation includes a constitutional amendment that would effectively bar gay couples from adopting children in Hungary by defining a family as including a man as the father and a woman as the mother. The amendment could also make it harder for single parents to adopt.Kenyan soldiers at their base in Tabda, inside Somalia, near the border with Kenya. As part of the African Union peacekeeping forces in Somalia, Kenya has more than 3,600 troops stationed in the country.Credit…Ben Curtis/Associated PressSomalia cuts diplomatic ties with KenyaSomalia severed diplomatic ties with Kenya on Tuesday, accusing the neighboring East African nation of meddling in its internal political affairs. The move came weeks before a crucial general election.“The federal government of Somalia reached this decision as an answer to the political violations and the Kenyan government’s continuous blatant interference recently in our country’s sovereignty,” said Osman Dubbe, the minister of information.Context: The move injects an additional note of instability into an already shaky region, after the U.S. announced plans to withdraw troops from Somalia — which some fear will motivate the Shabab militant group to escalate its offensive across Somalia and the Horn of Africa.If you have 5 minutes, this is worth itBrazil’s chaotic vaccine planCredit…Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesWith its top-notch immunization program and strong pharmaceutical industry, Brazil should be well-placed to curtail infections domestically. But political infighting, haphazard planning and a rising anti-vaccine movement have left the nation without a clear vaccination plan, our reporters found. Above, a vaccine trial in São Paulo this month.Brazilians now have no sense of when a vaccine will come. The coronavirus has brought the public health system to its knees and has crushed the economy. “They’re playing with lives,” one epidemiologist said. “It’s borderline criminal.”Here’s what else is happeningBig Tech: In a bid for tougher oversight of the technology industry, the authorities in the European Union and Britain introduced regulations to pressure the world’s biggest tech companies to take down harmful content and open themselves up to more competition.Uighurs: Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court will not investigate allegations that China committed genocide and crimes against humanity over the mass detention of ethnic Uighurs in the Xinjiang region, saying China is not a party to the court.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Did the Resistance Defeat Donald Trump?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyDid the Resistance Defeat Donald Trump?Some reasons to doubt a theory that’s shared by liberals and Trump supporters alike.Opinion ColumnistDec. 15, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETMedia members watching Joe Biden onscreen and the White House in front of them in November. Credit…Oliver Contreras for The New York TimesTwo of the most intense factions in our politics, the anti-Trump Resistance with its claim to be standing against fascism and the conservatives trying to delegitimize Joe Biden’s victory with claims of widespread voter fraud, agree on almost nothing, but they do agree on one point: The Trump administration was successfully undermined — the Trump agenda thwarted and Donald Trump himself defeated — by liberal institutions that refused to normalize him, maintained a persistent alarm about his presidency and took every opportunity to obstruct, investigate, protest and impeach.The liberals urging constant vigilance and outrage against Trump’s challenge to the 2020 outcome are trying to see this project of resistance through to its Biden-inauguration end. Meanwhile, the Trumpian side is trying to imitate it, since lurking below the right’s fantasy politics is a more cynical assumption that it’s a great idea, a highly effective political counterpunch, for Republicans to act like Biden is an anti-president, a Great Pretender — because that’s what liberals did to Trump and it obviously worked.I think both of these groups are mostly wrong — that what defeated Trump was Trump himself, that the “fascism” discourse around his presidency was often a distraction, and that the most successful strategies pursued by the Democrats were strategies of normalcy rather than alarm. But now that the Electoral College has voted and a Biden presidency seems essentially assured, let’s consider the best arguments for how and why the Resistance undid Trump.From the Resisters themselves, those arguments accuse anyone who was skeptical of their alarmism of ignoring the importance of passion, organization and mobilization in American politics. To eye-roll at the would-be defenders of liberalism and democracy, Laura K. Field of the Niskanen Center asserted just before the election, is to engage in an “implicit denial of the work that has gone into attempting to defeat Trump.” If his authoritarianism has fizzled out in fantasy and hopeless lawsuits, it still could have been much, much worse if people hadn’t felt a world-historical incentive to resist — an effort that merits “gratitude and respect, not dismissive call-outs and belittling tweets.”Rather than emphasizing mobilization, meanwhile, the Trumpist version of Field’s argument emphasizes elite power — the way that the media and the judiciary and the bureaucracy joined with congressional Democrats in denying Trump any of the normal space of action that his predecessors enjoyed. This newspaper’s famous Op-Ed by “Anonymous” (later revealed to be Miles Taylor, the homeland security secretary’s chief of staff) claiming to represent the Resistance inside the Trump White House offers a condensed symbol of what these Trump supporters have in mind — a kind of inside-outside game of obstruction, with media entities and government officials cooperating to keep the agenda that Trump actually campaigned on from taking shape.To these arguments I would offer a concession and a rejoinder.The concession first: There’s no question that the anti-authoritarian, America-imperiled narrative of the last four years had some benefits for Trump’s opponents. It helped pressure the disparate factions of the American elite, from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, to close ranks against the president. It created an ideological home and a compelling self-understanding for anti-Trump Republicans. It contributed to the mobilization of suburban and minority voters in crucial states like Georgia and to the general sense of purpose that a successful political movement needs. And in its inside-game form, elite resistance definitely obstructed at least some of Trump’s expressed desires, from Gary Cohn and John Bolton maneuvering deceptively on NAFTA or NATO to the generals who repeatedly slow-walked orders to withdraw forces from the Middle East or Afghanistan.My rejoinder, though, is that it’s not clear whether the Resistance mentality was more effective than more politically normal modes of fighting Trump, and whether the inside-the-system obstruction of the president actually derailed a real agenda rather than just adding extra layers of chaos to a presidency that never had a vision or a plan.On the first point, one might observe that the Trump-era controversies most dominated by Resistance theatrics were conflicts that the Resistance didn’t win — the long Russiagate investigation and imbroglio, the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation battle, the impeachment fight.At the same time, Trump’s actual defeats were the work of very conventional political campaigning: a midterm campaign in which the Democrats organized around health care and other kitchen-table issues and a presidential election in which they nominated their most moderate candidate and ran on normalcy and decency, casting Trump as a terrible person and a bad president but not a Mussolini in the making.Then, too, the gains from the Resistance mentality came with a political price. The anti-Trump closing-of-ranks within elite institutions helped shore up the president’s populist bona fides, his claim to represent outsiders and non-elites, even when his actual policies favored insiders and the rich. The tendency to see an authoritarian depredation behind every policy move, however banal, weakened the credibility of the media, especially putatively neutral outlets like CNN. The pitch of anti-Trumpism bound once-dubious Republicans to his cause, almost matching the mobilization on the Democratic side.And the liberal belief that Trump was obviously, self-evidently a white supremacist and semi-fascist left liberalism somewhat blindsided by the voters who disagreed: not just the white shy-Trumpers of the suburbs but also the Trump-voting Latinos and African-Americans who helped keep the 2020 race competitive, denying Biden his blowout and the Resistance the full repudiation of Trumpism that it sought.On the right, meanwhile, the Trumpist conceit that the Mueller investigation or MSNBC hysteria were the main forces preventing a more successful Trump agenda gives that opposition way too much credit — and Trump himself way too little blame. It was not the Resistance but his own indifference that induced Trump to outsource policymaking to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell during the two years when his party actually controlled the government. It was not the Mueller investigation but the attempted Obamacare repeal and a not-very-populist tax plan that drove his polling numbers to their notable lows.When Kayleigh McEnany complained recently that her boss “was never given an orderly transition of power,” she had a point — but the major source of disorder was not Crossfire Hurricane or the Steele dossier but just the Trump team’s own incompetence, notably Jared Kushner’s decision to ditch Chris Christie’s transition plan without having a replacement.The Resistance may have induced Democrats to take a lot of party-line votes against the president, but if Trump actually pursued his promised infrastructure bill he would have found Democratic takers. In areas where he had competent people working for him (judicial nominations, above all), the political and media opposition was impotent to stop him. Impeachment was just a segue into his presidency’s peak, a triumphant State of the Union address just before the coronavirus came calling. Even late in 2020, Nancy Pelosi was willing to make a deal with him on a big new round of coronavirus relief, which might have helped save his re-election bid — yet Trump preferred instead to go down tweeting.So treating Biden the way Trump was treated, opposing him as Trump was opposed, is only a devastating strategy if you assume that Biden and his White House will miss as many opportunities and perform as many face-plants as Trump’s administration did.And that’s without even getting into the fact that the Republican campaign to delegitimize Biden can’t really emulate the Resistance, since the whole point of the anti-Trump effort was to mobilize a political and cultural establishment from which the populist right is notably excluded. At most a refusal to recognize Biden’s legitimacy could keep congressional Republicans voting in lock step against whatever the new president supports. But most would vote in lock step anyway, and the Republican senators most likely to break ranks, a Mitt Romney or a Susan Collins, are the least likely to be swayed by appeals to Biden’s supposed illegitimacy.Which means the attempt to build a right-wing Resistance narrative should probably be understood less as an effort to actually impede Biden’s administration and much more as a project to maintain Donald Trump’s position as his party’s leader, a president in exile — because, after all under its theory, he never really lost.If the idea of Trump 2024 appeals to you, as it currently does to many Republicans, then this kind of Resistancing may sound like a good way to keep anybody else from claiming any kind of real position in the party. But the primary claim being made for it — that it will obstruct and defeat Biden the way Resistance liberals took down Trump — is a twofold error: They didn’t, and it won’t.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More