Your Wednesday Evening Briefing

August 26, 2020

Your Wednesday Evening Briefing

By Carole Landry and Merrill D. Oliver

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

Travis Dove for The New York Times

1. Vice President Mike Pence will be the headliner at the Republican National Convention tonight.

Mr. Pence is expected to give a speech that sells President Trump’s record rather than promote himself — he is not widely seen as an heir apparent.

The outgoing White House adviser Kellyanne Conway will also take the stage. So will Richard Grenell, the openly gay former ambassador to Germany and former acting director of national intelligence, as part of Mr. Trump’s turnabout to reach out to the L.G.B.T.Q. community.

With the convention at the midway point, there has been far less focus than in the Democratic convention on the pandemic, which has upended life across the U.S. and led to more than 178,000 deaths. Masks and social distancing have been mostly absent, in part thanks to the White House’s ability to test freely.

The Times is streaming the convention with our political reporters’ live analysis starting at 8:30 p.m. Eastern. Here’s how to watch and where to follow our live updates.

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Laura Racker

2. Hurricane Laura is hurtling toward Louisiana and Texas.

A Category 4 hurricane with winds of nearly 140 miles per hour, Laura is set to make landfall on Thursday morning, most likely near the Texas-Louisiana border. A storm surge, powerful gusts of wind and heavy rains might arrive sooner.

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“This is a major hurricane,” said Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana, drawing a comparison to the devastating Hurricane Rita in 2005. “It’s going to be a large, powerful storm.”

The worst is bound for a part of his state hit hard by the coronavirus. Shelters are being set up throughout the hurricane zone, but Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas encouraged evacuees to consider booking rooms in hotels and motels instead. Follow our live updates and our tracking map.

Stephen Maturen/Reuters

3. An Illinois teenager has been arrested in connection with a shooting in Kenosha, Wis., that left two people dead and another person wounded.

Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, was charged with first degree intentional homicide in the shooting, which took place during a third chaotic night of demonstrations (watch our video) over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man. Above, armed men outside the Kenosha County Courthouse on Tuesday.

President Trump said on Twitter that he would deploy the National Guard and other law enforcement to quell the unrest.

Mr. Blake was shot seven times. He is conscious in a hospital. Family members and lawyers say that a bullet severed his spinal cord and that he is partially paralyzed.

In Florida, the Milwaukee Bucks declined to come out of the locker room for the start of their N.B.A. playoff game against the Orlando Magic, a move that appeared to be in protest over Mr. Blake’s shooting.

Etienne Laurent/EPA, via Shutterstock

4. Older men are more vulnerable to the coronavirus.

Why? The first study to look at immune response by sex has turned up a clue: Men produce a weaker immune response to the virus than women, the researchers concluded.

Also, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was instructed by Trump administration officials to change its virus testing guidelines to exclude people who do not have symptoms, our reporters learned. Experts have called the revision alarming and dangerous.

In New York City, the coronavirus has retreated, but the rituals of September are disrupted, and a sense of foreboding remains about a possible second wave.

Lena Mucha for The New York Times

5. What Germany is doing right.

Germany, like other countries that have managed the pandemic fairly well, was quick to deploy widespread testing, effective contact tracing and tests with rapid results. The rate of community transmission shrank. Above, a school director with a father and daughter waiting to be tested in Berlin.

As the U.S. heads into the new school year, the lesson is that classrooms can reopen and remain open if leaders build on that kind of foundation.

Germany’s governing coalition has agreed to extend benefits for furloughed workers until the end of 2021 as the country prepares for additional months of economic pain caused by the pandemic. Although the German economy is rebounding, a full recovery is expected to take years.

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A newsletter on how the pandemic is upending education.

Max Whittaker for The New York Times

6. Thousands of California families forced to evacuate by wildfires are now streaming back — and wondering if, between fires and the coronavirus, they will ever get their old lives back.

It is still early in a wildfire season expected to rage through the fall.

The community at Lake Berryessa in Napa County — mostly retirees and young families who commute to landscaping, winery and service jobs in the wealthier areas — has been reduced to a thicket of tangled steel and ash. Above, family members sift through the remains of a grandmother’s home.

“2020 can go to hell,” said a 65-year-old resident whose trailer home burned down and whose 92-year-old father tested positive for the virus. “This has been the worst year of my life.”

Lauren DeCicca for The New York Times

7. The Trump administration has imposed sanctions on 24 Chinese companies that helped Beijing’s military build artificial islands in a disputed part of the South China Sea.

It is the first time that the administration has blacklisted entities in relation to China’s activities in the South China Sea, which stretches south of Hong Kong and borders the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and other countries. Above, a site in Malaysia run by one of the 24 companies.

Also, we went behind the scenes of another situation caused by U.S.-Chinese tensions: TikTok’s talks with Microsoft.

Calla Kessler for The New York Times

8. Moving entire communities as seas rise.

For years, U.S. policymakers stuck to the belief that relocating entire communities from vulnerable areas was simply too extreme. But that is rapidly changing as climate change turbocharges storms and communities begin to accept that rebuilding over and over makes little sense.

The federal government has long paid to buy and demolish flood-damaged homes, but now the buyouts are on a much larger scale. Greater numbers of people, and even whole neighborhoods, are being relocated, sometimes even before a storm or flood strikes.

“That’s family land,” said Joann Bourg of the Louisiana island property she agreed to leave behind. “But I don’t miss all the water. I don’t miss having to evacuate.”

Nicole Rifkin

9. The 19th Amendment became part of the Constitution a century ago today, declaring that the right to vote in the U.S. could not be denied on the basis of sex.

We talked to women ranging in age from 13 to 110 — actors, activists, an athlete and a poet — about what suffrage means to them.

“It’s amazing to me that one of the few things I can point to that women can do on equal footing with men is vote,” wrote Padma Lakshmi, a cookbook author and host and executive producer of “Top Chef” and “Taste the Nation.” “Honestly, I wish we had made much more progress.”

Katherine Tracey/Avant Gardens

10. And finally, the pleasure of low-maintenance plants.

Katherine Tracey, a garden designer in Massachusetts, has amassed more than 400 kinds of succulents. For the non-gardener, that means “any plants whose leaves, stems or roots can hold water for extended periods of time.”

Ms. Tracey, who teaches workshops on creating wreaths and arrangements with the fleshy-leafed plants, says succulents are easy, if you go easy on them.

Don’t torture them with regular potting soil — use cactus or succulent mix instead. And don’t water them as often as other plants or annuals. “Not over-tending them is the secret,” she says.

Have a trouble-free evening.

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

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