Your Monday Evening Briefing

August 3, 2020

Your Monday Evening Briefing

By Victoria Shannon and Hiroko Masuike

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

1. The next stimulus package? The parties remain far apart.

As Democratic leaders huddled with top administration advisers in search of a compromise economic recovery package, President Trump derided their efforts and said he might use an executive order to ban evictions, which the Republican aid proposal did not include.

The president has been notably absent from the negotiations, even after the expiration last week of enhanced jobless benefits for tens of millions of Americans. Above, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, left, and the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, on Capitol Hill today.

Mr. Trump accused Democrats of being single-mindedly focused on getting “bailout money” for states they control and unconcerned with extending unemployment benefits.

The issue of schools reopening is on equally rocky ground. Some schools in Indiana, Mississippi and Georgia that had opened for in-person classes are quarantining staff members and students, and even closing temporarily as new coronavirus cases are found.

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Meghan Dhaliwal for The New York Times

2. Until this year, tuberculosis, H.I.V. and malaria were on the run.

Now, as the coronavirus pandemic consumes global health resources, they are making a comeback.

Lockdowns have raised barriers to patients who must travel to obtain diagnoses or drugs. Fear of the coronavirus and closed clinics have kept away many patients. And restrictions on air and sea travel have severely limited delivery of medications to the hardest-hit regions. Above, Dr. Giorgio Franyuti, who usually works on combating tuberculosis, treating a coronavirus patient at a hospital in Mexico City.

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“Covid-19 risks derailing all our efforts and taking us back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Dr. Pedro Alonso, the director of the World Health Organization’s global malaria program.

September Dawn Bottoms/The New York Times

3. The mysteries of medical bills in a pandemic.

When Debbie Krebs got her hospital bill, her coronavirus test was missing. Without the test, Ms. Krebs, above, owed $1,980; with it, her insurer would have to cover the cost of the visit.

Across the country, Americans like Ms. Krebs are receiving surprise bills for care connected with the virus. Tests for the virus can cost between $199 and $6,408 at the same location. Services that patients expect to be covered by insurance often aren’t.

The Times wants to know how patients are managing their medical bills in the midst of a pandemic. Send us your medical bills. We’ll use them to investigate hospital and doctor billing practices.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

4. New York prosecutors are investigating President Trump and his company for bank and insurance fraud, a new court filing suggests.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office argued to the federal court that Mr. Trump’s accountants should have to comply with its subpoena seeking eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns.

The prosecutors did not directly identify the focus of the inquiry, but cited “undisputed” news reports last year that the president may have illegally inflated his net worth and the value of his properties to lenders and insurers.

The president’s legal team has asked a judge to declare the subpoena invalid. The clash comes less than a month after the Supreme Court, in a major ruling on the limits of presidential power, cleared the way for prosecutors to seek Mr. Trump’s financial records.

Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

5. Not your father’s Microsoft.

A purchase of TikTok — whose video-clip app has become wildly popular among young smartphone users — could give Microsoft, known for databases and operating systems, control of one of the largest and most influential social networks in the country.

President Trump gave the go-ahead today for Microsoft to hold negotiations on a potential blockbuster deal to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations. Last week, Mr. Trump threatened to ban the app because of its Chinese ownership, which he has called a possible threat to national security. Above, Microsoft C.E.O. Satya Nadella.

More than 800 million people regularly use TikTok, with some 100 million in the U.S.

Alyssa Pointer/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

6. Former President Barack Obama issued his first slate of 2020 endorsements.

He backed 118 candidates in 17 states — many in key battlegrounds for control of Capitol Hill — including Democrats running for the Senate against Republican incumbents in Colorado, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina.

And President Trump’s campaign announced a return to TV advertising in four states — North Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Arizona — after retreating last week to reassess strategy.

On Tuesday, primaries are on in several states, including Michigan, where the incumbent Rashida Tlaib faces Brenda Jones in the Democratic race for the 13th Congressional District, and Kansas, where some Republicans fear Kris Kobach, a Trump supporter, could win the G.O.P. Senate nomination but lose in November.

Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

7. Lord & Taylor and Men’s Wearhouse filed for bankruptcy protection.

The retailers join Neiman Marcus, J. Crew, J.C. Penney and Brooks Brothers as victims of the pandemic economy.

The Lord & Taylor chain, which traces its roots to 1826, had been floundering for years. Le Tote, a San Francisco tech start-up, last year bought the chain and envisioned reviving it.

Tailored Brands, which through its ownership of Men’s Wearhouse and Jos. A. Bank once dominated the market for men’s suits, saw demand plummet as the pandemic kept office workers at home.

Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

8. Isaias is forecast to strengthen into a hurricane again and make landfall in the Carolinas by midnight.

The tropical storm was about 60 miles south of Charleston, S.C., with sustained winds of 70 miles an hour, at 5 p.m. Eastern, and was expected to drive inland over North Carolina, which has declared a state of emergency. Flash floods, storm surges and even tornadoes are possible, the National Hurricane Center said. We have updates here.

Tropical storm warnings and watches are active all the way to Maine. Heavy rainfall in northeastern New Jersey, New York City and the lower Hudson Valley was expected to begin late tonight, building into heavier downpours by Tuesday. Above, workers setting up plastic flood barriers and sandbags in Lower Manhattan today.

Isaias, which is pronounced ees-ah-EE-ahs, is the ninth storm to be named in an already busy hurricane season.

Shawshots/Alamy

9. Masks: a symbol of government overreach, inspiring protests, petitions and barefaced gatherings.

No, that isn’t about today. That same resistance described defiance in the face of the 1918 influenza pandemic, as well.

San Francisco was the first U.S. city to mandate masks; the penalty was $5 to $10, or 10 days’ imprisonment. On Nov. 9 alone, 1,000 people were arrested. Above, rail commuters in California in 1918.

Still, while there were scuffles and arrests, one epidemic historian said, the protesters were “the exception rather than the rule.”

Charles Auringer

10. And finally, that other rock ’n’ roll magazine.

A new documentary traces the rise and fall of Creem, the irreverent publication founded in Detroit in 1969. Alice Cooper describes it today as “somewhere between a teen magazine and Mad magazine and a hard rock magazine.” Above, the staff in 1969.

Creem claims to have invented — and it certainly promoted — the terms “punk rock” and “heavy metal,” and called itself “America’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll Magazine,” despite the dominance of Rolling Stone magazine. It folded in 1989.

Have an electrifying evening.

Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern.

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