Your Friday Evening Briefing

July 17, 2020

Your Friday Evening Briefing

By Remy Tumin and Marcus Payadue

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian, via Associated Press

1. Federal officers have flooded the streets of Portland, seizing and detaining protesters in what Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon has called “a blatant abuse of power.”

Dressed in camouflage and tactical gear with no markings or identification, officers have patrolled the streets in unmarked vans and unleashed tear gas. Federal officers also shot one protester in the head with an apparent impact munition, leaving the man with severe head injuries.

President Trump said last week that he sent Homeland Security personnel to Portland because “the locals couldn’t handle it.” The acting Homeland Security secretary, Chad Wolf, arrived in the city on Thursday, calling the people who initially gathered to protest George Floyd’s death a “violent mob” of anarchists emboldened by a lack of local enforcement.

Separately, the Pentagon in effect banned the Confederate flag from military sites without mentioning the word “Confederate,” in a carefully written memo that officials hoped would avoid igniting another defense of the flag from Mr. Trump.

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The New York Times

2. The U.S. continues to break its daily infection records — more than 75,000 were tallied on Thursday and hospitalization and deaths rates are on the rise. But Americans still can’t stop fighting about masks.

While some politicians who have previously opposed mask requirements are beginning to change their tune — the governors of Alabama, Arkansas, Texas and Colorado have all recently issued statewide mask mandates — there is still resistance from those who see mask mandates as an attack on personal liberty.

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So where are masks worn most in the U.S.? Our map shows their use is affected by local and social patterns, as well as by infection levels.

Richard Vogel/Associated Press

3. New rules announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom of California would require many districts to teach remotely when school starts next month and require most of its more than six million students to wear masks when they do attend.

The California framework would require public and private schools in counties where the spread of the virus is particularly severe to remain shuttered until those areas meet certain public health thresholds.

For schools that are allowed to reopen, the guidelines recommend that school staff members be regularly tested for the coronavirus, something teachers across the country have been pushing for. Separately, Chicago announced tentative plans for some in-person classes, with a final plan due in August.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

4. The U.S. economy appears likely to remain in a sort of limbo, neither fully open nor fully shut, for months or even years.

But economists and other experts say there are steps that government, at all levels, can take to mitigate the economic damage: prioritize public health; extend unemployment benefits; spend what it takes to reopen schools safely; keep businesses alive; and convince lawmakers to provide some certainty amid the chaos. Above, protesters in Miami Springs, Fla., this week.

On Friday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called on Congress to pass additional legislation by the end of the month. The request comes as millions of Americans are about to see their expanded unemployment benefits expire.

Lucas Jackson/Reuters

5. In a show of progressive power, Jamaal Bowman scored a stunning victory over Representative Eliot Engel, a 32-year incumbent, in a New York Democratic primary.

Mr. Bowman, a middle school principal from Yonkers with a fiery anti-establishment message, defeated Mr. Engel, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, after a tally of absentee ballots that took several weeks. Many other races have yet to be called because of a lag in absentee ballot counting.

New projections by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report show 20 congressional races moving in favor of Democrats, citing polling showing President Trump dragging down Republicans in races across the country.

Separately, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg announced that her cancer had returned, but said she was “fully able” to continue her job on the Supreme Court.

Joseph Rushmore for The New York Times

6. Nearly a century after the Tulsa Race Massacre, the search for burial sites has finally begun.

Estimates of the death toll, one of the deadliest race massacres in U.S. history, range from 36 to 300, with long-told stories of mass graves passed down through generations of families.

Many Americans had never heard of the massacre before President Trump’s campaign rally in Oklahoma in June. But in Tulsa, the 99-year-old wounds are still fresh. How the community heals itself may depend on what it finds.

We’re also remembering the life of C.T. Vivian, a field general for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a champion of nonviolence. He died at the age of 95.

Marcus Yam/The New York Times

7. Brian Eisch was a single father of two boys when he deployed to Afghanistan a decade ago. Our reporters chronicled their lives for the past 10 years.

The costs of war are often tallied in troops lost or wounded, but there are other consequences that are harder to measure. We watched as his two sons, Isaac and Joey, pictured together in 2010, grew up in the shadow of their dad’s military service and how Brian’s sacrifice shaped them.

“When we began, we didn’t know how much joy and tragedy we would witness,” Catrin Einhorn and Lesley Davis write. The family’s story is captured in a documentary, “Father Soldier Son,” now streaming on Netflix. For print subscribers, look out for a special section in your paper this weekend.

Kathy Willens/Associated Press

8. Baseball players know they shouldn’t spit. But old habits die hard.

High fives, fist bumps and hugs are also to be avoided, according to the M.L.B.’s protocols for returning to play during the coronavirus pandemic. The Yankees, like the other 29 teams who have gotten back to work this month, are trying to adjust to the new normal.

“I’m trying to hold back, get used to that and make that second nature, but I’ve been spitting a lot when pitching for a long time,” Adam Ottavino said. “It’s kind of a nervous tic.”

Our basketball reporter is in quarantine waiting to get inside the N.B.A. bubble at Disney World. In the meantime, Matisse Thybulle, a rookie guard for the Philadelphia 76ers, is using his camera skills to give basketball fans a glimpse inside.

Don Hitchcock/donsmaps.com

9. The call of nature was heard by a group of humans over 14,000 years ago near a stone fire pit in the cool, dry depths of a cavern in the Pacific Northwest.

The Paisley Caves in Oregon aren’t just America’s oldest-known outhouse, a new study finds, but the droppings preserved in its arid caves are among the oldest known evidence of human presence in North America. Above, scientists dig for preserved dung called coprolites in 2011.

The findings could help settle an argument about when people first arrived in the Americas, as well as crucial clues to what they ate and how they lived.

Pool photo by Chris Jackson

10. And finally, introducing Sir Tom Moore.

You may know him as Captain Tom, the 100-year-old World War II veteran who raised $40 million for Britain’s National Health Service by walking 100 laps during lockdown. In less than six weeks, Mr. Moore was propelled into a rare superstardom and became an all-around national hero.

Queen Elizabeth II honored those achievements by conferring knighthood upon Mr. Moore at Windsor Castle on Friday. She tapped him on both shoulders with a sword that belonged to her father, George VI, in her first public appearance since March.

Have a stoic weekend.

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

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