Your Tuesday Evening Briefing

September 22, 2020

Your Tuesday Evening Briefing

By Remy Tumin and Karen Cetinkaya

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

1. Today is the first day of fall, and with it comes the third season of Covid-19 — and a staggering death toll.

Coronavirus deaths in the U.S. surpassed 200,000, more than any other country in the world. President Trump estimated back in May that 100,000 would die over the course of the pandemic. Above, flags planted in front of the Washington Monument to honor the 200,000 dead.

Now, as the number of new cases climbs in the U.S. and parts of Europe, infectious disease specialists are scrambling to determine how the pandemic could evolve in the months ahead.

The nation’s caseload is growing especially in states in the middle of the country like Wisconsin, Montana and North Dakota. The arrival of flu season and the prospect of cooler fall air — likely to send many people indoors — have added to fears about what the coming months may bring.

Thousands of cases have already been linked to schools this season. But a lack of reporting of data means that there is no national tally of cases in schools. Here’s what we know about the virus’s prevalence in America’s classrooms.

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Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

2. A vote on a new Supreme Court justice looks all but certain after Senator Mitt Romney said he supported moving forward to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat.

Mr. Romney echoed Republican leaders who have said that historical precedent supported filling the seat in an election year when the presidency and Senate were controlled by the same party. Democrats, powerless to prevent the vote, lashed out at Republicans for going along with President Trump’s wishes.

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Should Mr. Trump’s nominee be approved, it will almost certainly shift the court to the right for generations. One of the biggest questions pending before the court: the fate of the Affordable Care Act. Here’s what would happen if the Supreme Court struck down the decade-old health law.

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

3. Facebook has taken down fake pages created in China that were aimed at influencing the November election.

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It’s the first public disclosure of Chinese efforts to meddle in the election, though relatively minor and not directly attributed to the government in Beijing. Facebook identified a range of fake accounts pushing information both for and against President Trump and Joe Biden, and focused on “driving division,” said the head of security at Facebook.

Some in China believe Mr. Biden, if elected, might do damage to China’s ambitions, taking a harder line on human rights and rallying allies to stand up to Beijing.

And the C.I.A. reasserted that President Vladimir Putin of Russia is most likely continuing to approve and direct interference operations aimed at raising Mr. Trump’s re-election chances.

Logan Cyrus/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

4. A Republican vote-by-mail campaign in swing states may be undercut by President Trump’s rhetoric about election fraud.

Republicans lag far behind Democrats in requesting mail ballots in North Carolina and elsewhere, experts said. “If Trump loses this election it could very well be because he attacked vote by mail,” one longtime Republican operative said.

More than 61.4 million absentee ballots have already been requested or sent to voters in 28 states and the District of Columbia for the general election. See how your state compares with others.

Eskinder Debebe/United Nations, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

5. The U.S.-China feud took center stage at the U.N. General Assembly.

President Trump, in a prerecorded address, blamed China for the coronavirus pandemic and demanded that the U.N. hold the country accountable. President Xi Jinping of China framed the virus as everyone’s challenge and described his country’s response as responsible.

Mr. Xi also pledged that his country, the world’s top producer of greenhouse gases, would adopt much stronger climate targets and achieve what he called “carbon neutrality before 2060.” If realized, the pledges would be crucial in the global fight against climate change.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

6. The Labor Department proposed a rule that would designate gig workers as contractors rather than employees.

The move is the Trump administration’s most ambitious step yet toward blessing the business practices of companies like Uber and Lyft. Companies that rely on contractors don’t have to pay minimum wage, overtime, a share of Social Security taxes and unemployment insurance or provide workers’ compensation.

The proposal is a so-called interpretive rule, not a regulation that has the force of law, but it could have significant influence were it to be finalized. Above, ride-share drivers protested in New York City last year.

Noah Berger/Associated Press

7. Decades of climate disasters are now inevitable. The Times spoke to two dozen experts who said decisions made now would spell the difference between a difficult future and something far worse.

“It’s as if we’ve been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for decades” and the world is now feeling the effects, said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University. But, she said, “we’re not dead yet.”

Managing climate change, experts said, will require rethinking virtually every aspect of daily life, including home construction and power grids — and a large shift in politics in a country that has largely ignored climate change.

Tyler Schiffman

8. Coming soon: creatures of the deep.

Public aquariums around the world are spending millions of dollars to put animals normally found in the deepest, darkest parts of the world’s oceans on display. Leading the effort is California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium, which plans to create the world’s first large-scale exhibition of deep-sea life.

Researchers recently discovered that many deep-sea species can survive at sea level if slowly acclimated. To keep deep-sea animals healthy, the aquarium developed a seawater system using filtration technology first developed by the pharmaceutical industry.

Armando Franca/Associated Press

9. Back in February, Maya Gabeira found herself in the perfect position at the Nazaré Tow Surfing Challenge in Portugal when a big set of waves rolled in. Big turned out to be an understatement.

This month, a team of private wave engineers and scientists determined that the wave the Brazilian surfer rode that day was 73.5 feet, smashing her own previous record by more than five feet. It wasn’t just the biggest wave ever ridden by a woman. It was also the biggest wave surfed by anyone during the 2019-20 winter season.

Back on terra firma, our Sports desk looked at two standouts of the basketball playoffs: Crystal Dangerfield, a guard on the Minnesota Lynx and the team’s top scorer, and Nikola Jokic, the Denver Nuggets center who passes as if he were playing water polo (that’s a good thing).

@gr8kakes

10. And finally, pandemic baking just got weirder.

While you were perfecting your sourdough bread, artists were creating confections at home, not out of practicality, but for art’s sake. The kooky, edible cakes made from scratch often include a hodgepodge of botanical ingredients or whatever is in the fridge.

Many of us have been cooking and baking away our pandemic anxieties with the help of Melissa Clark, whose From the Pantry series offered versatile ideas for meals that were satisfying to eat and calming to prepare. Now that we’ve adapted to this new normal — and figured out what to do with all those beans — we’re retiring the series. Here are Melissa’s favorite pantry recipes that she developed over the last six months.

Hope you find some joy in the kitchen tonight.

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

Want to catch up on past briefings? You can browse them here.

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