Go for the gold: Your Weekend Briefing

September 13, 2020

By Remy Tumin and Judith Levitt

Welcome to the Weekend Briefing. We’re covering the historic wildfires in the West, a new Times/Siena poll and Disney’s political stumble.

Tyee Burwell/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

1. Dozens of people remain missing in the Oregon wildfires. One official spoke of the horrifying possibility of a “mass fatality incident.”

West Coast blazes have scorched a combined area approaching the size of New Jersey, killing at least 20 people and sending blankets of choking smoke far from the fires. Above, the Holiday Farm fire near McKenzie Bridge, Ore., this week.

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, and about 500,000 more could be ordered to flee. Many are looking to changing weather for hope. President Trump will visit California on Monday, the White House said. We’re tracking the fires’ spread and resulting air quality.

The assaults from a wildfire season of historic proportions are complicated by the coronavirus pandemic and misinformation.

2. President Trump has attacked Joe Biden for weeks over law and order. But a Times/Siena College poll shows he still trails Mr. Biden in four swing states.

They are Wisconsin, where Mr. Trump’s denunciations of rioting and crime have rallied support on the right but failed to sway voters who dislike him; Minnesota, a Democratic-leaning state that Mr. Trump hopes to flip; Nevada; and New Hampshire.

Every week through Election Day, The Times will bring you dispatches from the swing states to help explain how voters see the race and what issues are driving it.

We also took a closer look at how Senator Kamala Harris’s parents shaped the Democratic vice-presidential candidate. They grew up under British colonial rule on different sides of the planet, but each was drawn to Berkeley, Calif., where they met and rewrote their life plans.

Lindsey Wasson/Reuters

3. The Times reconstructed the White House’s push for a plasma therapy, and found a pattern that helps explain the intensifying concern that President Trump could demand pre-Election Day approval of a vaccine.

For instance, in August, President Trump called the director of the National Institutes of Health, demanding fast action to approve expanded use of convalescent plasma to treat the coronavirus. Even though it didn’t come, Mr. Trump announced the expansion of the treatment anyway, with the F.D.A.’s approval, on the eve of the Republican National Convention.

Tensions over the White House’s urgency to show progress against the pandemic, which has killed more than 193,500 people in the U.S., are also playing out at the Department of Health and Human Services, where political appointees have repeatedly meddled in weekly outbreak reports prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

4. China is harnessing the power of its authoritarian system to bring nearly 200 million students back into classrooms, like one in Wuhan, above.

The Communist Party has rolled out sanitation and distancing procedures with an all-out approach that brooks no dissent, one that would be nearly impossible almost anywhere else. Local officials and party cadres inspect classrooms; apps monitor students and staff members. Some colleges forbid students to leave campus.

President Xi Jinping boasted last week that the country’s return to business and school “fully demonstrated the clear superiority of Communist Party leadership and our socialist system.”

In the U.S., where the seven-day average of daily cases is over 35,500, college campuses are the new coronavirus hot spots, now accounting for more than 88,000 infections since the pandemic began. We’re tracking college case counts here.

Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

5. The White House announcement on Friday that Bahrain would normalize relations with Israel may pave the way for more such moves.

Sudan and Oman may follow suit, according to some analysts, but the real test will be whether Saudi Arabia does so. Israel and Arab leaders in the Persian Gulf have quietly cultivated ties for years, united by antipathy toward Iran.

With the November election nearing and U.S. efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord foiled, Israel’s détentes with both Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, along with the start of peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government, have helped spotlight President Trump’s sudden turn toward ending, rather than starting, conflicts.

Jasin Boland/Walt Disney Studios

6. Disney wanted to make a splash in China with “Mulan.” Instead, it stumbled.

The $200 million live-action spectacle, five years in the making, arrived on Disney+ to strong reviews. Critics lauded its ravishing scenery and thrilling battle sequences. But when the credits rolled, social media users noticed the filmmakers thanked government entities in Xinjiang, the region in China where Uighur Muslims have been detained in mass internment camps.

The filming location, used for roughly one minute of background footage, created the exact kind of controversy Disney had hoped to avoid — a rare blunder by a company that’s one of the world’s savviest on China.

Separately, “Nomadland,” starring Frances McDormand, won the top award at the Venice Film Festival, the first international film festival held since the pandemic began.

Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York Times

7. On Aug. 5, 1944, nearly a thousand Jewish refugees from Europe arrived in upstate New York at the invitation of President Roosevelt. It was supposed to be the first of many relief camps. It turned out to be the only one.

This is the overlooked saga of one of the more complex refugee experiences in American history. At the time, the country was embroiled in familiar debates over immigration, complicated by the spread of misinformation. We spoke to some of the former refugees, and to residents of Oswego who remember the camp.

“All we saw was a barbed-wire fence and American soldiers,” said Ben Alalouf, who arrived at the converted military base as a four-year-old. “Everyone thought it was a concentration camp.”

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

8. It’s been a very full week in sports.

Naomi Osaka defeated Victoria Azarenka in three sets to win the U.S. Open, her third Grand Slam singles victory. Dominic Thiem plays Alexander Zverev in the men’s singles final today at 4 p.m. Eastern.

In basketball, the Lakers defeated the Rockets to move on to the Western Conference finals, where they’ll play either the Nuggets or the Clippers. The Heat and the Celtics begin the Eastern Conference finals on Tuesday.

And it’s opening weekend for the N.F.L. Tom Brady (in a new uniform) squares off against Drew Brees, and Lamar Jackson goes up against the Browns, the last team to beat him in the regular season. Here’s a look at Sunday’s best games.

Phylicia J. L. Munn for The New York Times

9. Tan France has a lot to teach us about dressing.

The style guru on Netflix’s “Queer Eye,” which follows a group of experts as they help “heroes” with simple life tips and home improvements, has spun his fame into ample opportunity: a memoir, a competition show, a comedic web series and now a MasterClass where you, too, can learn everything you ever wanted to know about capsule wardrobes.

According to him, it’s not about the money. “I took this job because I had an agenda,” he said. “I needed people to see my people — Muslims, gays, Pakistanis, immigrants — as real people, not just characters on a TV show.

Susan Wright for The New York Times

10. And finally, a dessert menu of great stories.

Ice skaters trade the rink for New York City pavement. London’s bridges really are falling down. Tilda Swinton talks about her new “ultimate lockdown film.” We have all that and more in our Best Weekend Reads.

Our editors also recommend these 9 new books, a range of the latest small-screen offerings, and these new pop songs, including Bruce Springsteen’s fresh track with the E Street Band.

Have you been keeping up with the headlines? Test your knowledge with our news quiz. And here’s the front page of our Sunday paper, the Sunday Review from Opinion and our crossword puzzles.

Have an entertaining week.

Your Weekend Briefing is published Sundays at 6 a.m. Eastern.

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