Go for the gold: Your Weekend Briefing

October 25, 2020

By Remy Tumin and Judith Levitt

Welcome to the Weekend Briefing. We’re covering the homestretch of the presidential campaign, a troubling coronavirus surge and a prehistoric discovery.

Desiree Rios for The New York Times

1. With nine days to go, one of the most severe surges of the coronavirus to date is shadowing the remaining days of the campaign.

President Trump and Joe Biden presented sharply divergent cases for how they would handle the crisis still ravaging the country: Mr. Trump sought to minimize it, while Mr. Biden said there was “going to be a dark winter ahead unless we change our ways.”

Behind in the polls, Mr. Trump is seeking to recapture the last-minute energy that lifted him to a surprise win four years ago. Both candidates are making stops in some of the country’s top battlegrounds this weekend.

Hundreds of thousands of voters are expected to cast their ballots, and long lines formed during the first weekend of early in-person voting in Florida, New York, above, Wisconsin and other states. Mr. Trump was among the early voters in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Saturday.

If you’re voting in person, here’s how to do it safely. Have questions about how to vote? Our politics team has you covered.

Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

2. More than 85,000 new coronavirus cases were reported across the U.S. on Friday, breaking the single-day record set on July 16 by about 10,000 cases. Above, a memorial for coronavirus victims in Washington, D.C.

The harrowing surge is raging across the American heartland, most acutely in the Midwest and the Mountain West. As of Friday, 15 states have added more cases in the past week than in any other seven-day stretch of the pandemic. Hospitalizations are also on the rise.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, suggested the country consider putting in effect a first-ever national mandate requiring masks to help control the outbreak.

And at the White House, members of Vice President Mike Pence’s inner circle, including his chief of staff, tested positive for the virus, people briefed on the matter said.

Europe is also bracing for a dark winter as the pandemic has entered a dangerous phase across the continent. Several countries shattered daily infection records and uncertainty is mounting about how Europe will battle its worst outbreak to date.

Mark Makela for The New York Times

3. President Trump’s economic legacy won’t be about the numbers, but in how much he has shifted the conversation around the economy. Above, a farm in Lititz, Pa.

The president has changed the way both parties talk about trade, immigration and deficits — and despite dismal economic news, many voters still praise him for it. Mr. Trump gets his highest approval ratings on the economy, pointing to the resilience of his reputation as a savvy businessman and hard-nosed negotiator.

Americans have endured economic crises before but none quite like this one. The Times teamed up with local news organizations across the country earlier in the year to document the lives of a dozen Americans who found themselves out of work.

In our latest examination of Mr. Trump’s taxes, we looked at his claims about his charitable giving history, which show that most of it came from land deals that offset his income.

Samuel Corum for The New York Times

4. The Senate is on a path to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Monday. But not without more debate.

Democrats are using the final days of the debate to stoke outrage among voters about the rush to confirm her, and turning to parliamentary tactics on the Senate floor. If confirmed, her nomination will deliver Republicans a coveted 6-to-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, in a turnabout, said she would vote to confirm Judge Barrett.

In other news out of Washington, we took a closer look at the Justice Department’s landmark antitrust lawsuit against Google and the impact on its relationship with Apple. The complaint targets a secretive partnership that is worth billions of dollars to both companies.

Continue reading the main story

Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

5. Hundreds of people stranded by President Trump’s asylum limits are languishing in squalid conditions in a tent camp on the border.

Members of this displaced community requested refuge in the U.S. but were sent back into Mexico and told to wait. Many have been living in fraying tents for more than a year, surrounded by rotten debris, human waste and uneaten food swarming with flies. It is one of several refugee camps that have sprung up on the doorstep of the U.S. for the first time in the country’s history.

When the issue of immigration came up at the final presidential debate last week, Mr. Trump was correct in saying that the Obama administration expanded the number of border facilities with chain-linked enclosures. But separating children from parents was a policy all Mr. Trump’s own.

The Times can help you navigate the election — to separate fact from fiction, make sense of the polls and be sure your ballot counts. To support our efforts, please consider subscribing today.

A 2017 photo shoot showing several Black models wearing head scarves.Patrick Demarchelier

6. Vogue’s September issue celebrated Black culture. But some employees say Anna Wintour, the editor, fostered a workplace that sidelined women of color.

The magazine — and by default Ms. Wintour — has defined fashion for generations of women, setting a standard that has favored white, Eurocentric notions of beauty.

Black journalists who have worked with Ms. Wintour told the Times that they had not gotten over their experiences at a magazine whose workplace mirrored its exclusive pages. Some said they felt so out of place that they created white alter egos — several used the term “doppelgänger” — just to get through the workday. A 2017 photo shoot showed several Black models wearing head scarves, above.

Ms. Wintour said in a statement that while she had made mistakes along the way, she was “committed to doing the work.”

Mario Tama/Getty Images

7. Against all odds, professional sports came back in 2020. Now comes the hard part: They have to do it again.

Aggressive coronavirus testing made the restart of professional sports possible, but the financial pain of empty arenas lingers and plans for next year are up in the air. Resorting to bubblelike zones seems unrealistic for an entire season.

The N.B.A. season ended on Oct. 11, just weeks before the next one would normally start; league officials have yet to say when play will begin again. Baseball, now in the midst of the World Series, set April 1 as opening day, with a very large asterisk.

The Tampa Bay Rays stunned the Dodgers and tied the World Series after Los Angeles made two mistakes on a wild final play.

Reynolds et al., Quaternary Science Reviews 2020

8. Even during the Pleistocene era, it seems, human toddlers wanted to be picked up and carried at the most inopportune times.

Scientists recently studied an exceptional set of human and animal footprints dating back several thousand years in the White Sands National Park in New Mexico. Most of the human footprints were made by a young adult, the team determined. But about every 100 yards or so, a few much smaller human prints suddenly appear.

On their journey, a mammoth and a giant ground sloth crossed their path. Studying the footprints highlights how ancient sets of fossilized footprints can reveal more than even fossilized bones.

Ryan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

9. New twists on some classics.

Toddies and mulled wine have a long history, with mulled wine dating to Roman antiquity and the toddy to the mid-18th century. Both have stuck through to modern times, though they deserve some revamping, Rebekah Peppler writes. The drinks’ adaptable base formulas allow for experimentation.

Toddies, normally whiskey-based, are great for showcasing aged spirits like bourbon, rum, scotch, Cognac and port; swap out water for tea for an added layer of complexity. Mulled wine, another traditionally warming beverage, can also benefit from a contemporary overhaul: Consider serving it cold.

George Steinmetz

10. And finally, dig in to a great Sunday read.

The jazz musician Keith Jarrett confronts a future without the piano. How to fix cattle’s climate change problem. And how to get your friends to stop treating you like a therapist. All these and more await you in The Weekender.

For more suggestions, our editors picked these 11 new books, looked at the latest must-see TV, and weighed in on new music from Ariana Grande, among others.

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 peaceful week.

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

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