Your Thursday Evening Briefing

September 3, 2020

Your Thursday Evening Briefing

By Remy Tumin and Marcus Payadue

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York Times

1. Joe Biden visited Kenosha, Wis., and drew a sharp contrast with President Trump.

Sending a distinctly different message, Mr. Biden aligned himself strongly with protesters of racial injustice and with Black voters pained by the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

“Hate only hides,” Mr. Biden said, as he described the ways that, in his view, Mr. Trump has emboldened bigots. He asserted that the country had reached an “inflection point.”

Mr. Biden attended a community meeting at Grace Lutheran Church, above, met with Mr. Blake’s family and spoke by phone with Mr. Blake. Mr. Trump traveled to Kenosha two days earlier to focus attention to violence and disorder and did not meet with the Blake relatives.

Despite the president’s effort to reframe the election around law and order, polls show that he hasn’t reshaped it to his advantage.

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Erin Scott/Reuters

2. Facebook will bar new political ads the week before Election Day, which is among planned changes to limit misinformation and prevent interference from President Trump and other politicians.

The social network said it would also strengthen measures against posts that try to dissuade people from voting. Postelection, it said it would quash any candidates’ attempts at claiming false victories by redirecting users to accurate information on the results. But Facebook’s moves may already be too little and too late, critics said. Above, Facebook’s chief executive testified before Congress in October.

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For decades, Mr. Trump has sown distrust in almost everything he touches, our White House correspondents write, with a goal to undermine the opposition and leave people uncertain about what to believe.

3. The S&P 500 had its worst day since June, ending the day down by 3.5 percent as high-tech stocks plunged. The Dow fell more than 800 points.

The tumble shattered the market’s steady appearance. Stocks were dragged down by a sharp sell-off among the handful of giant technology companies that have powered a monthslong rally in the markets, including Apple, Amazon and Microsoft. The Nasdaq composite was down by nearly 5 percent.

New state unemployment claims remained high in the latest weekly tally. The government reported that 833,000 workers filed new jobless claims. Most analysts expect that the monthly jobs report, scheduled for release on Friday, will show a dip in August from double-digit unemployment rates.

Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

4. The Justice Department plans to file an antitrust suit soon against Google after Attorney General William Barr overruled lawyers’ request for more time.

Charges could land in the coming weeks. Justice Department officials told lawyers involved in the inquiry into Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube and one of the world’s wealthiest companies, to wrap up their work by the end of September.

With most of the 40-odd lawyers on the case opposing the timeline, some said they wouldn’t sign the complaint and several left the case. Some lawyers in the department worry a rushed job may weaken their case and ultimately strengthen Google’s hand, according to interviews with 15 lawyers who worked on the case or were briefed on the department’s strategy.

Rochester Police Department, via Associated Press

5. Seven police officers in Rochester, N.Y., were suspended over the death of a Black man who suffocated after he was detained in March.

The suspensions came a day after his family released disturbing footage that shows officers taking Daniel Prude, 41, into custody, putting a hood over his head and then pressing his face into the pavement for two minutes. He had been experiencing mental health problems before the incident, according to police reports.

Mr. Prude’s death attracted widespread attention on Wednesday when his family held a news conference to highlight the video taken from the police officers’ body cameras.

The New York State attorney general, Letitia James, and the Rochester police chief said they were investigating the death.

Brenda Ann Kenneally for The New York Times

6. Food insecurity casts a constant shadow over the U.S., and the pandemic has made it worse. We sent a photographer out to capture what America looks like at hunger’s edge.

Beginning in May, Brenda Ann Kenneally set out across the country to photograph the routines of Americans who struggle to feed their families, piecing together various forms of food assistance and ingenuity to get by.

Ms. Kenneally found lines at food banks that stretched to hundreds of cars; food-insecure families who have been helping one another out despite their own hardships; and those who were facing hunger for the first time because of the pandemic.

“What’s happening with children right now is unprecedented in modern times,” one expert said.

Associated Press

7. The greatest Met of all.

Tom Seaver, who died on Monday at age 75 from complications of Lewy body dementia and Covid-19, was remembered as a masterly pitcher who defined the Mets for a generation and belongs in the pantheon of the game’s giants, our baseball columnist writes.

“Pitching is not a job for the physically timid or the mentally lazy,” Seaver, pictured in 1968, wrote in his manual, “The Art of Pitching” — on the very first page.

In other news from the sports world, the Brooklyn Nets made the surprising move to hire Steve Nash as their next head coach, despite the Hall of Fame point guard’s lack of experience. Nash’s relationship with Kevin Durant is said to be a key factor.

Disney Enterprises, Inc.

8. Mulan has always been the most adaptable of heroines. The new Disney+ action film, premiering Sept. 4, weaves together many versions.

The Chinese-American actress Yifei Liu stars in a tale that blends stunning battle sequences with a story that keeps to the gender-bending subtexts. It nods to various older iterations of the story of the female warrior, most notably the “Ballad of Mulan,” the poem from the fifth or sixth century that started it all.

Our film critic says the new film, directed by Niki Caro, “is pretty much what happens when a legend meets Disney’s global bottom-line.” Here’s his review.

Myo Min Win/WCS Myanmar

9. This rare turtle really does have a reason to smile.

The Burmese roofed turtle — a giant Asian river turtle whose bug-eyed face is naturally set in a goofy grin — was for 20 years presumed extinct. But after rediscovering a handful of surviving animals, nearly 1,000 have been bred in captivity and some have been released back into Myanmar’s wilds.

And many species have developed elaborate startle displays that they use to defend against predators (the dead leaf praying mantis puts its arms behind its head in a pose reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”). A new study shows the element of surprise may be essential to survival.

Lincoln City Council

10. And finally, is it still a chicken wing if it’s boneless?

Ander Christensen, 27, raised this question during his local City Council meeting in Lincoln, Neb., and made a proposal: “That we as a city remove the name boneless wings from our menus and from our hearts.”

Many wing lovers, including Mr. Christensen, a chemical engineer, sneer at the boneless variety, which is usually made by deep-frying slices of chicken breast. “Boneless chicken wings are just chicken tenders, which are already boneless. I don’t go to order boneless tacos. I don’t go and order boneless club sandwiches,” he said, proposing the city rename the dish.

The speech was a joke, but the grievance was so petty that it almost could not help but find an audience of hundreds of thousands of people who have watched it on video in the days since.

Have an authentic night.

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

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