Your Friday Evening Briefing

March 27, 2020

Your Friday Evening Briefing

By Remy Tumin and Marcus Payadue

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

Erin Schaff/The New York Times

1. President Trump signed the largest economic stimulus package in modern American history. The $2 trillion measure in response to the coronavirus pandemic includes:

Direct payments of $1,200 to millions of Americans earning up to $75,000 a year.
An additional 13 weeks and a four-month enhancement of jobless benefits, including for freelancers and gig workers.
$377 billion in federally guaranteed loans to small businesses and a $500 billion government lending program for distressed companies.
$100 billion to hospitals on the front lines of the pandemic.

Our personal finance reporters answered common questions about what’s in the plan.

Don’t need that $1,2000 stimulus check? Here are places to donate it.

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Mark Abramson for The New York Times

2. Nearly 200 U.S. cities reported a dire need for face masks, ventilators and other emergency equipment vital to fighting the virus.

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A survey by the United States Conference of Mayors found serious shortages that underscored the “scope and severity” of the crisis. In total, the group calculated that cities need 28.5 million face masks, 24.4 million other items of personal protection equipment, 7.9 million test kits and 139,000 ventilators. Above, workers outside of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Lower Manhattan.

President Trump officially invoked the Defense Production Act to compel General Motors to fulfill contracts for ventilators as the country battles the spread of the coronavirus.

The president had previously played down states’ needs for more ventilators, and G.M. had already committed to producing the equipment. Here’s the latest.

The Times has been tracking all known coronavirus cases in the U.S. Today, we are releasing that data to help in the fight against the outbreak.

Fabio Bucciarelli for The New York Times

3. No region has been hit harder by the coronavirus than Bergamo, Italy.

Once quiet and wealthy, Bergamo is now a place where Red Cross workers, above, go door to door to carry away the afflicted, and coffins are so numerous the army has been called to take them. Officially, over 1,300 people have died there, but the actual toll may be four times higher.

Our correspondent Jason Horowitz and the photographer Fabio Bucciarelli have been reporting on the tragedy unfolding there. This photo essay is a look at the devastating human toll.

Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

4. Environmental rollbacks have become a centerpiece of the Trump administration. That effort is finding opposition from within.

Federal scientists and lawyers, told to undo regulations that they have worked on for decades, have quietly embedded data into technical documents that environmental lawyers are now using to challenge the rollbacks.

Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a sweeping relaxation of environmental rules in response to the coronavirus pandemic. If you are breathing polluted air, you may be at greater risk of catching the coronavirus and of having a severe infection. Here are some tips on improving indoor air quality.

Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

5. The Pentagon is planning for an escalation of American combat in Iraq, according to several U.S. officials. Above, American military vehicles at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq in January.

Military commanders were issued a directive last week to prepare a campaign to destroy an Iranian-backed militia group that has threated more attacks against American troops.

That order was met with a blunt response by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Robert White, who warned that such a campaign could be bloody, counterproductive and risk war with Iran.

Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

6. The American response to the pandemic is laying bare class divides that are often camouflaged.

Access to health care, child care, education, living space, even internet bandwidth can mean starkly different outcomes in coping with disruptions to school and work routines. The result is a rapidly developing caste system.

In New York, thousands of students living in shelters, like Allia Phillips, above, or doubled up in overcrowded apartments have not received web-enabled devices for online learning. And an older generation that grew up in an analog era is facing its own digital divide.

Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

7. “We’re bombarded with gloom and doom every minute on the TV, but this is my piece of paradise.”

One upside for people who are isolated at home by the coronavirus: more time to walk pets. The downside: Professional dog walkers like Juliya and Masha Puckhoff, above, are struggling.

If you’re worried that your dogs — like doorknobs — may be touched by people who are infected, you can bathe them with soap after the walk, a dog-cognition researcher writes in Opinion. But quarantine, she says, is actually giving dogs something they’ve deserved all along: more of our companionship.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed in bleak times, but here are some moments of kindness and perseverance amid the crisis.

Hokyoung Kim

8. In this moment of solitude, consider letting a book be your passport.

The writer Jordan Kisner recommends eight books that might take you somewhere, including “A Manual for Cleaning Women” for a touch of the American West, “Justine” for a trip to Egypt, and “The Phantom Tollbooth” for a whimsical journey to the Kingdom of Wisdom.

For other entertainment ideas:

Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn are reunited on “Making the Cut” on Amazon, the latest iteration of the “Project Runway” playbook. Can they make it work? Here’s our TV critic’s take.
Short attention span? All of these films are under 90 minutes. And here’s a primer on getting into Westerns.
And from their living rooms to yours, Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham are back with a new season of “Still Processing.” Listen here.

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

9. This is the story of a die-hard Brooklyn Dodgers fan’s quixotic attempt to rebuild the borough’s cathedral of baseball.

Rod Kennedy Jr. makes his living by manufacturing tiny tin replicas of ballparks. But Mr. Kennedy eventually enlarged his ambitions by pursuing his dream of rebuilding Ebbets Field.

The vision for a new ballpark, originally demolished in 1960, never came to fruition. But the journey, which begins in a municipal subbasement in Brooklyn where Mr. Kennedy found the stadium’s blueprints, is a great slice of baseball history.

Ronan Donovan/National Geographic

10. And finally, one of the world’s greatest wildlife experiments.

Twenty-five years ago this month, 14 wolves from Canada were released into Yellowstone National Park to see what would happen. Wolves had been erased from the park and the rest of the Northern Rockies in a sustained elimination campaign in the early 20th century.

Today, the daily lives of 10 wolf packs are on full display, offering a scientific and tourist bonanza.

“It’s a huge National Park Service success story,” said Douglas W. Smith, the biologist who oversaw the return of the wolves. “It’s carrying out our most fundamental goal: restoring and preserving nature. Without wolves it’s not restored, nor is it nature.”

Have a restorative weekend.

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