Evening Briefing: Congress closes in on stimulus deal

December 16, 2020

Your Wednesday Evening Briefing

By Remy Tumin and Jeremiah M. Bogert, Jr.

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

1. A stimulus deal with as much as $900 billion in pandemic relief appears near.

The plan congressional leaders are discussing includes another round of direct stimulus payments to Americans and additional unemployment benefits. While the details are not final as of this writing, the package is also expected to provide billions of dollars for vaccine distribution and support for schools and small businesses.

The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, told fellow Republicans that Georgia’s senators were “getting hammered” for Congress’s failure to deliver a bill and that enacting the measure could help them in their closely watched January runoffs.

And there was a new indicator of the economy’s pain: For the first time since spring, U.S. retail sales tumbled in November, an unexpectedly steep decline ahead of holiday shopping.

Continue reading the main story

Audra Melton for The New York Times

2. Two top Republican appointees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention went public on the Trump administration’s manipulation of the agency.

In interviews with The Times, Kyle McGowan, a former chief of staff at the agency, above, and his deputy, Amanda Campbell, detailed what went wrong: a White House fixated on the economic implications of public health. The softening of coronavirus guidance documents. Messaging over science.

Continue reading the main story

At least 201,649 new cases were reported in the U.S. on Tuesday. Nearly 113,000 people are hospitalized. Here’s how the virus is affecting hospital capacity near you.

Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

3. The U.S. has a vaccine, but that doesn’t mean you can let your guard down.

“We should celebrate the fact that the science has come through, but it is not over yet,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert. “We have a ways to go. We have to abide by the public health measures that we talk about all the time.”

That includes wearing your mask, of which more than 100,000 varieties are on the market. A division of the C.D.C. is working with an industry standards group to develop filtration standards, so that masks that actually block infectious particles can be labeled.

We asked Dr. Fauci and other experts when they thought life would start to feel more normal. They tended to agree: It will be a while.

Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency

4. The U.S. has spent tens of billions of dollars on cyber-offensive capabilities. Russian hackers managed to hit multiple government agencies and private companies anyway.

The attack began in the spring and was detected by the private sector only a few weeks ago. It bored into the complex, intertwined U.S. software supply chain, and so was able to reach its targets without triggering alarms from Einstein, a system of government sensors.

The National Security Agency, above, and the Department of Homeland Security, which focused on protecting the 2020 election, were looking elsewhere.

Briefings on the intrusions, including to members of Congress, have not yet outlined what information was stolen. But one thing is clear: It amounts to one of the greatest intelligence failures of modern times and possibly one of the biggest hacks ever.

Cameron Pollack for The New York Times

5. The East Coast is getting hit with its first major winter storm of the season.

The fast-moving storm is expected to stretch nearly 1,000 miles from North Carolina to New England, producing as much as two feet of snow in some areas and bringing freezing rain, strong winds and hazardous travel conditions along the I-95 corridor. We have live updates here.

For the millions of people living in major cities like New York City and Philadelphia, above, it could be one of the biggest snowstorms in years. New York City could get up to a foot of snow, more than the area received all last winter. The city has 330,000 tons of salt and 2,000 snow-removing vehicles standing by.

Pool photo by Olivier Hoslet

6. President Emmanuel Macron was once a darling of liberals and the boy wonder of Western politics.

But now, facing an electorate moving to the right and a likely rematch with the far-right leader Marine Le Pen in France’s 2022 presidential election, Mr. Macron is tacking in their direction.

His embrace of new bills on security and Islamist extremism has alienated supporters and members of his party. Mr. Macron says his policies have been misunderstood.

Separately, Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris was fined nearly $110,000 for … appointing too many women to senior management positions. “Far too feminist,” Ms. Hidalgo said, with more than a hint of sarcasm.

China Global Television Network

7. A Chinese spacecraft brought back the first lunar samples for scientists to study since 1976, ushering in a new era of space competition.

The Chang’e-5 mission touched down in Mongolia, above, with as much as 4.4 pounds of rocks and soil from the moon, gathered from a volcanic plain known as Mons Rümker. The three-week operation, which officials described as flawless, underlined China’s growing prowess and ambition in space.

Today’s competition could be as intense and mercantile as it was four decades ago between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. China is eager to flaunt its technical skills and contribute to the scientific exploration of the solar system. And like the U.S., China has the broader goal of establishing access to a base on the moon, setting up a potential new arena for the two countries to clash.

Bettmann/Getty Images

8. The Negro leagues have often been viewed as the major leagues of their time. Major League Baseball finally made it official.

The league recognized seven Negro leagues that operated between 1920 and 1948 as official major leagues, adding more than 3,400 players to the record books. Our sports reporters are watching to see how the move might change records. Above, the New York Black Yankees in 1942.

We also talked to Naomi Osaka, who used the pandemic pause in tennis to reflect on the world and her place within it. And when the time came to speak, she approached it in her own distinct way, asserting each part of her identity — Japanese, Haitian and raised for a time in the U.S.

Clockwise from bottom left: Rahim Fortune for The New York Times; Troy Conrad; HBO; Chase Hall for The New York Times

9. Who isn’t in need of a good laugh?

The pandemic halted most live performances but comedians adjusted and adapted, turning to Zoom, YouTube, rooftops and parks. Our comedy critic rounded up the best acts of the year, including Eddie Pepitone’s special (on Amazon Prime), Leslie Jones’s complaint about 20-somethings (on Netflix) and Sam Morril’s alfresco special.

But are we ready to find anything about the coronavirus funny? With “Pandemonium,” a half-hour sitcom, the BBC is betting that an audience will find humor in reliving the ordeals of this year.

And “This American Life,” a pioneer of a new kind of audio narrative journalism, turned 25 this year. Listen to some classic episodes of the radio show selected by its founder and host, Ira Glass.

Rittik Deb

10. And finally, catfishing in the cricket world.

Female tree crickets tend to prioritize loudness and size in their male mates — the louder he is, the more likely she’ll be wooed by his serenade, and the larger he is, the more time she will stay locked in a sexual tryst.

So a male cricket with a quieter voice or a tinier body might fashion a mini-megaphone, chomping a hole in a leaf and then pushing his head and forelegs through to amplify his calls. A new study found that it works on the ladies.

As one biologist put it, “There are many ways of being attractive.”

Have a boisterous night.

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

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

What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes.com.

Continue reading the main story