C M Y K Nxxx,2020-05-10,A,001,Bs-4C,E2

The safest way to cast a ballot is by mail.But will it be available to all? PAGE 26

THE MAGAZINE

Can Democracy Survive?In Thailand’s sweltering capital, resi-dents rushed to newly reopenedgroomers. Bangkok Dispatch. PAGE 24

INTERNATIONAL 24-26

A Trim for Fluffy Pups, at Last

Matt Klapper, an aide to Senator CoryBooker of New Jersey by day, has puthis experience as a former ambulancecrew chief to use at night. PAGE 27

NATIONAL 27-32

When Medical Duty CallsWe may not be thrilled with our house-bound conditions, but what better op-portunity for learning a foreign lan-guage? Many first-rate language toolsare free or inexpensive. PAGE 8

AT HOME

Speaking in New Tongues

New works about the ties that bind, tearus apart and bring us back together.

BOOK REVIEW

Family IssuesA Uighur fighting to free her brotherfears Beijing punished him for attend-ing a U.S. leadership program. PAGE 25

Branded ‘an Enemy’ in China

Broadway’s “Mrs. Doubtfire” had threeperformances before the pandemicintervened. The ripple effects. PAGE 4

ARTS & LEISURE

A Musical’s Sudden Stop

A return to competition for BreannaStewart, the 2018 M.V.P., from a tornAchilles’ tendon was stalled. PAGE 38

SPORTS 38-39

W.N.B.A. Comeback on Hold

We gave disposable cameras to sixresidents of Evergreen Gardens, asenior home in La Junta, Colo., to docu-ment their pandemic days. PAGE 1

SUNDAY STYLES

Life in an Assisted Living Home

Tara Isabella Burton PAGE 4

SUNDAY REVIEWU(D547FD)v+=!;!/!$!z

A Times analysis lists nearly 100 rulesthe administration has tried to reverse,often successfully. PAGE 28

Trump’s Rollbacks on Climate

WASHINGTON — As the na-tion confronts unemployment lev-els not seen since the Great De-pression, Congress and the Trumpadministration face a pivotalchoice: Continue spending tril-lions trying to shore up busi-nesses and workers, or bet thatstate reopenings will jump-startthe U.S. economy.

At least 20 million Americansare unemployed and a large shareof the nation’s small businessesare shut and facing possible insol-vency. Policy errors in the comingweeks could turn the 18 milliontemporary layoffs recorded inApril into permanent job lossesthat could plunge the UnitedStates into a deep and protractedrecession unrivaled in recent his-tory.

Yet the federal government islurching away from the strategythat has thus far helped slow thespread of the coronavirus and sus-tain people and companies strug-gling during the self-inflicted eco-nomic shutdown.

Over the past two months, asconsumers and workers retreatedand state officials imposed limitson economic activity, PresidentTrump and bipartisan coalitionsin the House and Senate have ap-proved $3 trillion in federal spend-ing to help companies, workersand the unemployed. The FederalReserve has taken extraordinarysteps to keep the financial systemfunctioning, buying up govern-ment-backed securities and em-barking on plans to purchase cor-porate and municipal debt to keepcredit flowing. Governors haveembraced stay-at-home orders inan effort to slow the virus’s

spread.Economists and policy experts,

including some in the administra-tion, have likened those efforts tobuilding a bridge through the pan-demic recession — one that willcarry as many people and compa-nies to the other side of the crisisas possible.

But as the virus threatens tohaunt the nation and its economylonger than some officials had an-ticipated, Mr. Trump and manyRepublicans in Congress havegrown weary of federal spendingto support workers and busi-nesses and have begun urgingstates to get back to what was con-sidered normal.

Even some allies of the presi-dent, though, acknowledge thatmay be an unrealistic gamble andmore wishful thinking than an ac-tual plan. With confirmed infec-tions and deaths projected to con-tinue rising, and limited capacityto test for the virus, many statesare expected to keep businessesclosed into the summer or longer.And even once things reopen, sim-ply allowing people to walk into abarber shop or a movie theaterdoes not mean they will do so dur-ing a pandemic until a vaccine oreffective treatments are available.

Economists, including liberalsand many conservatives, warnthat prematurely ending efforts toaid businesses and workers with-out enacting a new strategy couldforce the economy into a summerof partial recoveries, rising infec-tion rates and insufficient supportfor struggling businesses andthose out of work.

In that case, the experts warn,

A Bridge of Federal ReliefMay Crumble in Summer

As Losses Mount, Leaders Weigh a Returnvs. Approving More Aid (and Debt)

By JIM TANKERSLEY

Continued on Page 16

The claim was tailor-made forPresident Trump’s most steadfastbackers: Federal guidelines arecoaching doctors to markCovid-19 as the cause of deatheven when it is not, inflating thepandemic’s death toll.

That the claim came from a doc-tor, Scott Jensen, who also hap-pens to be a Republican state sen-ator in Minnesota, made it all themore alluring to the president’s al-lies. Never mind the experts whosaid that, if anything, the deathtoll was being vastly under-counted.

“SHOCKING,” tweeted ChrisBerg, a conservative televisionshow host on KX4, a Fox affiliatein Fargo, N.D., after interviewingDr. Jensen last month. Soon after,

Laura Ingraham, the Fox Newshost, invited Dr. Jensen onto hershow. His assertions were pickedup by Infowars, the conspiracy-oriented website founded by AlexJones. They were shared by fol-lowers of Qanon, who subscribe toa web of vague, baseless theoriesthat a secret cabal in the govern-ment is trying to take down thepresident.

“What is the primary benefit tokeep public in mass-hysteria re:Covid-19? Think voting. Are youawake yet?” a Qanon followerknown as John the White wrote onTwitter, saying the pandemic was

being used to manipulate the elec-torate.

The likes of John the White mayview the world through the mostconspiratorial of lenses, but theyare hardly the only people weigh-ing the political impact of the vi-rus’s death toll. With implicationsfor how quickly businesses andtheir employees return to some-thing like normalcy, the fight toshape the official record is addinga grim new front to the presiden-tial campaign.

Since the outset of the crisis, el-ements of the right have sought tobolster the president’s politicalstanding and justify reopening the

Disputing the Death Toll to Score Political PointsBy MATTHEW ROSENBERG

and JIM RUTENBERGRebuffing the Science

To Bolster Trump

Continued on Page 15

Nearly 190,000 people weretested for the coronavirus in NewYork City over the past two weeks,a record number. The increase intesting, crucial for curbing theoutbreak, came as Mayor Bill deBlasio announced plans to hire asmall army of 1,000 disease detec-tives to track down the contacts ofevery infected New Yorker.

The city is also paying for hotelsto house people who cannot quar-antine in their cramped apart-ments, and it may use the U.S.T.A.Billie Jean King National TennisCenter in Queens for the samepurpose.

From the State Capitol, Gov. An-drew M. Cuomo has established aframework for reopening thestate, based on seven concrete,health-related milestones, and hehas asked Bill Gates, the restaura-teur Danny Meyer, the New YorkKnicks owner James L. Dolan anddozens of other outside advisers

Why Reopening New York City Is Still Far Off

By J. DAVID GOODMANand MICHAEL ROTHFELD

Continued on Page 12

A closed playground on theUpper East Side of Manhattan.

ANDREW SENG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON — There havealways been two sides to MichaelT. Flynn. There was the rebelliousteenager who surfed during hurri-canes and spent a night in a re-formatory. Then there was theadult who buckled down, joinedthe Army and rose to become athree-star general.

Mr. Flynn was a lifelong Demo-crat who served President BarackObama as a top intelligence offi-cer. He also called Mr. Obama a“liar” after being forced out of thejob and reinvented himself as aRepublican foreign policy adviser.

Mr. Flynn criticized retired gen-erals who used their stars “forthemselves, for their businesses.”He appeared to do the same thingas a consultant.

But the two sides of Mr. Flynnwere perhaps never so stark as inthe criminal case against him thatended abruptly on Thursday tothe astonishment of much of offi-cial Washington.

After pleading guilty in 2017 tolying to federal investigatorsabout his contacts with a Russiandiplomat, Mr. Flynn cooperatedwith the special counsel, saying hewas “being a good soldier” andearning prosecutors’ praise. Thenhe recanted his confession and be-gan what some allies saw as areckless gamble to recast himselfas an innocent victim of a justicesystem run amok.

That gamble paid off this weekwhen, in an extraordinary rever-sal, the Justice Department aban-doned his prosecution, saying henever should have been charged.Current and former federal lawenforcement officials expresseddisbelief and dismay, calling themove an unprecedented blow tothe Justice Department’s integri-ty and independence. FormerPresident Barack Obama, in re-marks to former members of hisadministration, said he fearedthat “not just institutional norms,but our basic understanding ofrule of law is at risk.”

Mr. Flynn transformed his caseinto a political cause that res-onated in the conservative echochamber. Led by his lawyer, Sid-ney Powell, and RepresentativeDevin Nunes, Republican of Cali-fornia and a close ally of the presi-dent’s, Mr. Flynn’s backersworked to wipe away the mistrustof some Republicans over his co-operation with law enforcementand turn him into a right-wing

Surprise Ruling:Latest Reversal

In Flynn’s LifeBy SHARON LaFRANIERE

and JULIAN E. BARNES

Continued on Page 31

To hop on the train, any train,earbuds intact, alone in the crowdon the way somewhere else. Towalk out of the Metropolitan Mu-seum of Art, exhausted as if from amarch. The sweet-potato fries anda beer at Tubby Hook Tavern in In-wood; the coffee-cart guy on West40th Street who remembers youtake it black.

Sunday Mass and the bakery af-ter. Seeing old friends in the syna-gogue. Play dates. The High Line.Hugs.

Ask New Yorkers what theymiss most, nearly two months intoisolation. To hear their answers isto witness a perfect version of thecity built from the ground up, aplace refracted through a lens ofloss, where the best parts arehuge and the annoyances becomeall but invisible. The cheap seatsin the outfield, the shouting to beheard at happy hour. Meetingcousins with a soccer ball inBrooklyn Bridge Park. The din ofthe theater as you scan the Play-bill before the lights go down.

“I miss my gym equipment,”said Barbara James of BrooklynHeights.

“The lamb over rice from thefood cart by my office, at Seventhand 49th,” said Chris Meredith ofEast Harlem.

“Just everything,” sighed a po-lice officer sitting behind thewheel of his vehicle in Williams-burg, Brooklyn, last week. “I misseverything.”

In normal times, in Big Apple,city-that-never-sleeps times, peo-ple flew in from all over the worldto see and do the things localscould do on any given Tuesday. Tohave that access cut off for so long,with its return yet unforeseen, is

Deep YearningFor Hometown

Lost to a VirusBy MICHAEL WILSON

Continued on Page 14

ANDREW SENG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art last week. Tourism is one of the factors complicating the return of New York to normalcy.Culture, Waiting to Be Revisited

Richard Penniman, betterknown as Little Richard, whocombined the sacred shouts of theblack church and the profanesounds of the blues to create someof the world’s first and most influ-ential rock ’n’ roll records, died onSaturday morning. He was 87.

His son, Danny Jones Penni-man, said the cause was cancer

but did not say where he died.Little Richard did not invent

rock ’n’ roll. Other musicians hadalready been mining a similarvein by the time he recorded hisfirst hit, “Tutti Frutti” — a raucoussong about sex, its lyrics cleanedup but its meaning hard to miss —in a New Orleans recording studioin September 1955. Chuck Berryand Fats Domino had reached thepop Top 10, Bo Diddley had toppedthe rhythm-and-blues charts, and

Elvis Presley had been makingrecords for a year.

But Little Richard, delvingdeeply into the wellsprings ofgospel music and the blues,pounding the piano furiously andscreaming as if for his very life,raised the energy level severalnotches and created somethingnot quite like any music that hadbeen heard before — somethingnew, thrilling and more than a lit-

An Electrifying Link From R&B to Rock ’n’ RollBy TIM WEINER

Little Richard in 2007. His onstage flamboyance was a touchstone for artists like James Brown.HIROYUKI ITO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

LITTLE RICHARD, 1932-2020

Continued on Page 34

A mysterious illness linked to the coro-navirus has sickened 73 other childrenin New York, the governor said. PAGE 23

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK 4-23

3 Children Die of Syndrome

QUARANTINES Three health czars,including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci,may have been exposed. PAGE 16

Late Edition

VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,689 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, MAY 10, 2020

Today, some sunshine, then increas-ing clouds, breezy, cool, high 62. To-night, mostly cloudy, low 48. Tomor-row, a few showers, breezy, high 60.Weather map appears on Page 30.

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