Lt. Col. Vindman’s retirement will hurt military effectiveness. This is why.

“in the toilet” after the dismissal of a beloved skipper for apparently political reasons. All of this is problematic because research shows one of the biggest advantages that democracies have during war is the initiative and leadership of its officers. Politicization robs democracies of some of their warfighting advantage. When the military appears to serve the political preferences of a single party, they lose recruits, legitimacy and the popular support necessary to maintain a large force that projects power around the world. When civilian leaders inject partisan politics into military affairs, it undermines the military’s ability to recruit and retain from all cross-sections of society. Military volunteers already come disproportionately from the South and legacy military families, and surveys also show military members more openly identify as (Republican) partisans than they did previously. Such concerns explain the military’s fierce reaction in June when Trump used National Guard forces to dispel peaceful protesters near the White House for a presidential photo op in front of St. John’s Church. Over a dozen retired general officers decried the politicization of the military — including former secretary of defense Jim Mattis. Gen. Milley later apologized for joining the photo op, citing concern about “the role of the military in civil society.” When civilian leaders inject partisan politics into military affairs, civil-military conflict becomes much more likely. Military leaders feel forced to push back against civilian leaders, and can become resentful and distrustful of the president’s orders and intentions. This undermines civilian control and jeopardizes the ability of the president to wage war on behalf of the nation. Even when civilians don’t directly order an action, military leaders make decisions anticipating political needs, a phenomenon that I call “indirect politicization.” This form of politicization is particularly damaging because it compromises the recommendations civilians receive from their military advisers. This significantly reduces civilian leaders’ options as well as military effectiveness, since officers may adjust operations and tactics to conform to domestic politics rather than the rhythm of war. Vindman’s early retirement is yet another signal that civil-military relations in the U.S. are becoming increasingly politicized. While Vindman is only one officer, his departure reflects trends that will have an impact on military recruitment, retention and effectiveness. The TMC newsletter has moved! Sign up here to keep receiving our smart analysis. Carrie A. Lee is an assistant professor at the U.S. Air War College. You can follow


Stanford to discontinue 11 sports programs following 2020-21 academic year

In the weeks after the novel coronavirus pandemic shut down sports in the United States, college athletic departments began preparing for lost revenue. They braced for a drop in donations because of the uncertain economy, the loss of student fees that help subsidize their departments and the harrowing prospect of what the balance sheet might look like if football cannot be played this fall. As athletic directors across the country faced their departments’ unknown futures, they began cutting teams. The stream of lost sports started with wrestling at Old Dominion, and dozens of others followed. The trouble finally reached the Power Five conferences Wednesday when Stanford announced it would discontinue 11 programs following the 2020-21 academic year. The school will cut men’s volleyball, wrestling, field hockey and men’s and women’s fencing, as well as six programs that are not NCAA-sponsored championship sports — lightweight rowing, men’s rowing, co-ed and women’s sailing, squash and synchronized swimming. Stanford has been known for its diverse array of varsity teams and its success in many nonrevenue sports. Stanford has won the Directors’ Cup, given to the best overall athletic department in Division I, for 25 straight years. The discontinued sports have produced 20 national championships and 27 Olympic medals. After next year, 240 athletes will no longer be able to compete for Stanford. The 22 coaches who lead the cut programs will be forced to continue their careers elsewhere. Twenty support staff positions will also be eliminated. “It’s absolutely devastating, honestly, to hear that your storied program, a place that you cherish, is being cut,” former Stanford volleyball player Kawika Shoji, who led the team to a national title in 2010 and won a bronze medal at the 2016 Olympics, said in a phone interview. “Obviously that hurts, but then to think about the current student-athletes and coaching staff and how that affects them as well is something really hard to swallow.” Stanford, which has an endowment valued at about $27 billion, announced its decision in a joint letter from university president Marc Tessier-Lavigne, provost Persis Drell and athletic director Bernard Muir. The school said that before the pandemic, the athletic department was projected to operate at a deficit of at least $12 million during the 2021 fiscal year. In the wake of the coronavirus, the school said the “best-case scenario” was a $25 million deficit. Stanford, the letter said, considered alternatives but found


Man found fatally shot outside laundromat in Northeast Washington

A man was found fatally shot Wednesday night in the parking lot of a laundromat in Northeast Washington, bringing to a dozen the number of people killed in the District since July 1. The shooting occurred shortly before 10 p.m. in the 1700 block of Benning Road NE, along the border of the communities of Carver-Langston and Kingman Park. Police said the victim was found by the side of the Capital Laundrymat. In a report, police said the man might have been shot at 17th Street and Benning Road NE. He died at a hospital. The man was identified by police as 30-year-old Eugene Anthony Hickson, of no fixed address. The area of Carver-Langston has been hit hard by violence this year, and residents have complained to police about drug dealing and shootings. It was not immediately clear whether Wednesday’s shooting is connected to some of those recurring problems. The shooting on Benning Road brings the number of people killed in the District this year to 94, a 19 percent increase over this time in 2019, which ended with a decade high. This month’s deadly tally includes the July 4 killing of 11-year-old Davon McNeal, who was shot at an anti-violence cookout in the Anacostia neighborhood of Southeast Washington.


The Daily 202: Most Americans aren’t buying Trump’s rosy outlook on the coronavirus

hospitals are canceling elective surgeries to free up space for those sick with the virus. Medical staff warn they could become overwhelmed,” Chelsea Janes, Isaac Stanley-Becker, Lenny Bernstein and Joshua Partlow report. “The United States passed the 3 million case mark on Wednesday, and more than 129,000 people have died. Florida is rushing some 100 new health-care workers to Miami-Dade County’s public hospital network to handle the influx of coronavirus cases, including 75 nurses who will be ready to work in intensive care units. … Texas on Wednesday reported 98 deaths from covid-19, a one-day high that surpassed its earlier record reached on Tuesday, when Arizona and Mississippi also reached one-day highs. Arizona and Texas also hit new highs this week in seven-day rolling averages of deaths. … About 45 percent of the Texas Medical Center’s 1,364 intensive care unit beds are now filled with coronavirus patients. … Hospitals are also feeling the strain in Los Angeles County, which is averaging around 2,300 new cases each day.” “Nurses say they are reusing N95 masks for days and even weeks at a time. Doctors say they can’t reopen offices because they lack personal protective equipment. State officials say they have scoured U.S. and international suppliers for PPE and struggle to get orders filled. Experts worry the problem could worsen as coronavirus infections climb, straining medical systems,” William Wan reports. “In interviews, White House officials said concerns over PPE shortages are overblown. They said U.S. manufacturing and stockpiles of protective equipment have improved dramatically and are adequate in most states. … Demand for protective equipment has soared, but unlike in March, when efforts focused on getting PPE for major hospitals … supplies now are desperately needed by primary care offices, nursing homes, prisons and psychiatric and disability facilities.” Tulsa City-County Health Department Director Bruce Dart said the rally “likely contributed” to a dramatic surge in new cases, the AP reports. “Tulsa County reported 261 confirmed new cases on Monday, a one-day record high, and another 206 cases on Tuesday. By comparison, during the week before the June 20 Trump rally, there were 76 cases on Monday and 96 on Tuesday. Although the health department’s policy is to not publicly identify individual settings where people may have contracted the virus, Dart said those large gatherings ‘more than likely’ contributed to the spike.” School officials across the country have concluded they cannot fully reopen


Farm to parking lot to table: The pandemic is inspiring creative efforts to get locally sourced food

go on the site to check out the weekly list of offerings and pay her online, then bring their phones and the lists they write to the pickup. Cherries and strawberries were the most popular at first; now she’s adding more vegetables, like 12 pounds of summer squash for $20. Gregorio is not alone in finding new ways to move food. People have been exploring different ways to get, share and sell food during the pandemic, including bartering, buying grocery staples from restaurants with wholesale contacts, and signing up for community supported agriculture, or CSA, boxes. Giving Fruits customer Allyson Rosen used to buy her produce from the farmers market, tasting samples before purchasing. Now the neuropsychologist picks up fruit from Gregorio every week, and has even connected her with a blackberry seller who was struggling. Most recently, Rosen took home 15 pounds of sweet and delicate Blenheim apricots, selling a third of the haul to a friend. “I’d like to be able to try my fruit before I buy it again, but certainly, now knowing that the farmers are in trouble, I really want to support this,” said Rosen. The pandemic has brought more attention to where food comes from and the role of local providers. Global food supply chains are complicated, and the difficulty involved in rerouting fresh goods when demand dries up in an area has been frustrating for producers and consumers. There have been some success stories, like unused airplane food finding its way to Imperfect Foods, a company that started by selling edible, unattractive produce. But many farms have had to throw out entire crops or thousands of gallons of fresh milk while food banks report more demand than ever. Farms are scrambling to connect directly with customers, after a loss of business from restaurants and with some even being pushed out of farmers markets for social distancing reasons. Dairy farmers are delivering milk to individual doorsteps again. Vegetable growers are distributing produce from homes, and farmers market mainstays are doing preorders. A seafood company is giving discounts to volunteers who handle fish pickups. “We had to figure out how to sell what we had,” said Marsha Habib, owner of Oya Organics, a small organic farm an hour away in Hollister. “Overnight, I had to organize our consumer-supported agriculture program. That’s what people wanted. They didn’t want to go to the store or to the


Traveling with kids during the pandemic

As they watched the coronavirus pandemic sweep the globe, Chelsea Jackson and her family postponed their planned move for as long as they could. But finally in June, she, her husband and their two kids boarded flights from the Marshall Islands to their new home in Seattle. As some states and countries ease their coronavirus restrictions, parents have cautiously begun booking trips — to move to a new home, to visit family, even to take a much-needed vacation. But traveling with kids, especially on planes and through airports, was stressful and germy even before the pandemic hit. How can you do it safely now? “If you have to travel cross-country or internationally, I wouldn’t do that for fun,” said Yvonne Maldonado, a senior associate dean for pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine and chair of the committee on infectious diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics. “There’s so much uncertainty about who you’re going to be around and how close you’re going to be to the next person and how well the airlines are cleaning their planes,” she said. Traveling by car is a safer alternative to flying, she said — especially if family members are at high risk for the coronavirus. However, flights might be unavoidable for some families. In that case, many of the same precautions we’ve taken in the past few months still apply: stay home if you’re sick, wear a mask, try to keep a distance from others and keep your hands as clean as possible. If possible, Maldonado said, get tested before and after the trip. It’s also important to consider whether you are coming from or traveling to a coronavirus hotspot. Families could bring the virus to a previously unaffected community, or they could bring it back home to vulnerable family members. Travelers should also check to see if masks are required at their destination and plan accordingly. Coming from the Marshall Islands, where there have been no recorded cases, the Jacksons were concerned about adjusting to life within a pandemic. These changes started as soon as they boarded their first flight. “We definitely changed our routine a lot,” Jackson said. Their 8-year-old and 18-month-old daughters had traveled before, but this was different. No more trips up and down the aisles, no more snacks from flight attendants and definitely no more meeting the pilots in the cockpit. “We stayed in our seats.


Australia suspends Hong Kong extradition treaty, invites migrants from city

a violation of the agreement under which the city was handed over. Beijing had promised to safeguard the financial center's political freedoms and a high degree of autonomy until 2047. The security law sharply curtails political freedoms and applies globally, which legal experts have said could expose a citizen of any jurisdiction with an extradition treaty with Hong Kong to prosecution in China if the person promotes causes such as Hong Kong independence or publicly criticizes the ruling Communist Party. Mainland Chinese security agencies also opened a new office in a bustling Hong Kong commercial district on Wednesday to carry out their new duties under the law. That has raised the risk of Hong Kongers and foreigners alike running afoul of Chinese law enforcement. In its updated travel advisory Thursday, the Australian government told its citizens they "could be deported or face possible transfer to mainland China for prosecution under mainland law." The Beijing government, for its part, has warned that it will wield the law to extinguish Hong Kong's protest movement, which Beijing says is fanned by Western nonprofit groups and media outlets. Those Western organizations "should be frightened" upon the inauguration of the new national security office in Hong Kong staffed by mainland officials, according to a headline in the state-run Global Times this week. Already, there are signs that many Hong Kongers are planning to leave the city rather than live under Beijing's authoritarianism. Under Morrison's measures, Australia will extend temporary visas for Hong Kongers in the country and offer similar measures for future applicants, allowing them to stay for an additional five years and start out on a path to permanent residency. Notably, he offered incentives to businesses in Hong Kong to relocate to Australia, saying the country would welcome talented and entrepreneurial people who could generate jobs. Australia's actions followed Britain's move to provide residency and a path to citizenship for almost 3 million Hong Kongers born before the city's 1997 handover to China who are eligible for a special passport. Canada last week also suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong after China introduced the security law. Canada has accused China of arbitrarily detaining two of its citizens in retaliation for Canada's seizing Meng Wanzhou, a senior executive of the Chinese tech company Huawei, during a layover in Vancouver at the behest of the United States, which is seeking her extradition on fraud charges.


From cow to customer, a $20 cheeseburger’s tumultuous journey during a pandemic

longer his cattle kept growing past their “due date,” the more they cost to feed. The fatter they got, the less valuable their meat became. Tiffany’s wife tried to gently point out to him just how stressed he was. By the last week of April, the beef-packing industry reached a once unthinkable low: 318,000 steers and heifers slaughtered, down 42 percent from the year before. But the steer from Tiffany Cattle Co. had already left the ranch. He was sent up a ramp, onto a truck and 220 miles west to Dodge City, a Kansas town of 27,000 with two major meatpacking plants: Cargill and National Beef, the slaughterhouse where the steer met his end. He arrived at a plant that had been transformed with steel partitions installed between work stations, temperature checks at the door, scattered break times and paid leave for sick employees. But in a town where a largely Hispanic population lives in close quarters at home and labors in close quarters at work, the virus’s spread was relentless. The Dodge City plant had one of the state’s largest outbreaks, with 550 cases by June, according to National Beef. By the time the steer began making its way through what employees call the “kill floor,” Marisela Garman, 45, had already gotten sick. She’d been taking the coronavirus seriously since the moment she heard about it. Before immigrating to the United States in 2018, she was a nurse at a hospital near Guadalajara, Mexico. Back then, she was rushing to leave her husband after years of psychological abuse. Only when she and her son arrived in Kansas and moved into her aunt’s trailer did she realize that her nursing license was useless in the state. She started working as a babysitter and pet sitter, then she found out how much it would cost her to hire a divorce lawyer. National Beef paid nearly $16 an hour. She worked on the kill floor, then moved to fabrication, where she learned about meat hooks and grinders and packaging, and how to stand almost shoulder to shoulder with her co-workers and move her hands as fast as the conveyor belt demanded. Her fingers always hurt, but on a Tuesday in April, she knew something was wrong when it was her head that started to ache. National Beef sent Garman home for two weeks, with pay, as soon as she tested positive.


As it moves aggressively to restore confidence, Boeing flies into an uncertain future

onboard ran into trouble as soon as it reached orbit. A software problem reminiscent of the issues with the 737 Max made the spacecraft think it was at a different point in the mission. As engineers moved to fix that problem, they uncovered another that could have caused the service module to collide with the crew module when they separated in flight. They were able to quickly send up a software fix to that problem so that the two modules separated cleanly. The problems prevented the spacecraft from docking with the International Space Station, and Boeing had to bring the spacecraft home after just two days. Since then, NASA and Boeing launched an investigation, and Boeing said it has better integrated its hardware and software teams, and has taken a hard look at its culture and processes. It’s also reviewed all 1 million lines of code in the spacecraft “resulting in increased robustness of flight software,” the company said in a statement to The Post. It said it is “making excellent progress in readying two Starliner spacecraft” — one that would repeat the test flight without astronauts onboard expected later this year, and then one with a crew of three, which could come sometime next year. The stakes for both those launches could not be higher. “They need to nail them and prove they can stick to the schedule,” Canaccord’s Herbert said. “They need to get their mojo back in space. From a public relations perspective and in the eye of the customer, they’ve lost a significant amount of credibility.” Nearly a decade after winning the Air Force contract to build a fleet of KC-46 Pegasus aerial refueling tankers, Boeing’s assembly lines outside of Seattle have been busy. The company has delivered 34 of the planes so far. But the military has said it won’t be able to use them for most missions until at least 2023 because of persistent technical flaws. The plane’s boom, the long tube through which fuel is transferred, isn’t flexible enough to safely link up with smaller jets. And the Defense Department’s testing office has determined that the complicated camera system that guides the boom into place isn’t accurate enough. The Air Force also has repeatedly found trash, wrenches and other debris scattered inside newly delivered jets. While Boeing works on fixing the problems, the Air Force has been forced to rely on an aging


Climate news quiz: Electric rickshaws and vampire energy

All right: Time to see if you’ve been paying attention to The Washington Post’s climate-related coverage. If you have, this quiz should be an easy A. Answer: B. Answer: C. Answer: D. Answer: D. Answer: C. Answer: B. Answer: C Answer: D. Answer: A Answer: D. 0 to 3 questions correct Climate novice: You’ve still got a lot to learn about climate change. But that’s okay: We’ve got you covered. Got a question? Ask us here. 4 to 7 questions correct Climate curious: Hey, not bad! You know a thing or two about climate change. But there’s still more to learn, and we’ve got you covered. Got a question? Ask us here. 8 to 10 questions correct Climate expert: Well done! You’re super climate-literate. You probably already know that one of the most important things you as an individual can do to combat climate change is to spread the word. Go ahead: Brag a little, share this quiz with your friends, and find out who knows the most about climate change.


Those we have lost to the coronavirus in Virginia, Maryland and D.C.

“I didn’t know I was this sick,” she said. Read more about Chianti Jackson Harpool Irwin Schorr, retired IBM employee and bibliophile, always thought there was something more to learn. Two weeks before he died of covid-19, Schorr signed up for remote saxophone lessons from an unemployed musician in Baltimore. Read more about Irwin Schorr Bishop James N. Flowers Jr. founded a house of worship in a vacant auto garage in 1982 and in 38 years built it into a handsome brick church with about 200 congregants in Seat Pleasant, Md. “My dad was just a special, humble, fair, caring man of God,” said his daughter, Linda Flowers. He was the lead singer of a band on the rise on the D.C. club circuit during the 1950s and 1960s. Read more about James Flowers Annis Creese was in her final year of teaching Spanish at Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, Md. Nearly everyone who crossed paths with her could feel her warmth, which she projected so strongly some of the children she taught called her “Mom.” Creese left behind two grown children and the hundreds of students who passed through her classroom at the Prince George’s County school over her 25 years there. Read more about Annis Creese Peter Bainum’s writings weren’t the sort you’d come across in your neighborhood bookstore. One of his volumes, for instance, is titled, “Orbital Mechanics and Formation Flying: A Digital Control Perspective.” But in the field of aerospace engineering, the former Howard University professor was “a star,” his son said. Read more about Peter Bainum Horace Saunders was the mayor of every room he walked into — a gregarious chap for whom all life was a performance — while Violet, in her quiet, gracious style, “kept him in his place, kept him grounded,” their granddaughter recalled. If he was holding forth and got carried away, Vi, pleasantly exasperated, might roll her eyes. They died five days apart after catching the virus in Pleasant View Nursing Home, in Mount Airy, Md. Read more about Violet and Horace Saunders Samuel Kramer was a founding member of Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac and spent decades in government service. He worked at the Bureau of the Budget, which eventually became the Office of Management and Budget, and at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, from which he retired as deputy director in 1997. He died in the


Republican governors who opposed mask mandates start to soften

not to,” Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said. “The goal was not to be political; the goal was to protect Savannahians.” The coastal city is dealing with a surging caseload of coronavirus infections and had an influx of summer tourists from neighboring Florida and South Carolina during the Fourth of July holiday. “We were on a dangerous trajectory,” Johnson said. “We had more cases from May to June than we had had at any other time of the virus combined. With a very busy holiday season and wonderful weather, this was a recipe for disaster for us if we did not take some kind of proactive action.” Columbia, S.C., Mayor Steve Benjamin (D) likewise wondered whether state leaders would challenge his decision to mandate masks last month. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) has repeatedly argued that mask mandates are unenforceable and possibly unconstitutional. When Benjamin got a call from the state attorney general a day after announcing the order, he asked, half-jokingly, “Are you suing me?” Benjamin was told not to worry — the mask mandate was fine. Columbia’s June 23 order came just after Greenville, S.C., imposed a requirement to wear masks inside grocery stores and pharmacies. “The governor was already advocating for masks, and we did give him heads-up and he had absolutely nothing but encouragement — at least, nothing negative,” Mayor Knox White (R) said. White said he heard from residents afraid to go into grocery stores and noticed social distancing began to lapse. “The voluntary effort that was so well-received at the beginning was beginning to falter,” the mayor said. “We needed not just to adopt a new requirement but also to grab people’s attention again.” In mid-June, as cases and hospitalizations rose precipitously, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) let local governments require masks, as they had been requesting for several weeks. Mayors across the state quickly imposed the requirement. “I would support a statewide mask program. I believe that it would save lives,” Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego (D) said. But, she said, “there’s a political aspect now.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) halted local mask orders in April, only to mandate them for most of the state last week. “He was concerned about mandating masking because of the claims of some of his constituency that there was some kind of liberty issue at stake,” Austin Mayor Steve Adler (D) said. “I never understood that argument,


CDC: Covid-19 death toll is twice as high among people of color under age 65 as for white Americans

while for Hispanics it was 71, and for all nonwhite, non-Hispanic people it was 72. Researchers found that the virus exacted a vastly steeper toll on people of color who were younger than 65. About 35 percent of Hispanic people who died of covid-19 were under 65, and about 29.5 percent of nonwhite, non-Hispanics who died were under 65. By comparison, 13.2 percent of deaths among white people were in those younger than 65. The percentage of deaths among Hispanic and nonwhite people exceeded their representation in the U.S. population. That suggests rates of coronavirus transmission are higher among younger members of those groups than among their white counterparts and may reflect their greater presence in front-line jobs that don’t allow them to work from home. It could also suggest they are more likely to live in crowded or multigenerational homes where it is difficult to maintain social distancing. Authorities on health disparities say racial differences arise from social and structural inequities that leave some racial and ethnic groups around the world acutely vulnerable to the most devastating effects of the coronavirus. Those differences have helped fuel protests for racial justice that have swept the nation. Among those older than 65 who died of covid-19, nearly 41 percent were white and non-Hispanic, 21 percent were Hispanic and 32 percent were nonwhite and non-Hispanic. The CDC report found that diabetes was common among those younger than 65 who died. Nearly half of the deaths in people under 65 were in people with diabetes. Overall, 35 percent of patients under age 65 hospitalized with covid-19 had diabetes. The CDC recently broadened its warning about the groups at risk of developing severe complications from covid-19. Officials said even younger people who are obese or have other health conditions, such as diabetes, can become severely ill if they contract the virus. A CDC study last month found that people with underlying medical conditions such as heart disease and diabetes were hospitalized six times as often as otherwise healthy individuals infected with the coronavirus during the first four months of the pandemic and they died 12 times as often. In the report released Friday, nearly 1 in 12 deaths in people under 65 took place at home or in an emergency department, suggesting they may not have had access to health care, may have delayed seeking care or may have been delayed in getting diagnosed.


Transcript: The Path Forward: Strategic Preparedness

and a service provider as well. MS. SELLERS: So, what is the process through which these improvements or these relationships with the government happen? Legislative? Who are the other stakeholders? How does this work? MS. HUMPTON: Well, we've been talking to legislators, for sure. We've been talking to key stakeholders at the Department of Defense. Obviously, we believe that the Department of Homeland Security has a critical role to play. What we're envisioning is the idea of establishing this strategic digital twin reserve, asking manufacturers to actually build out digital twins of their products, digital twins of the production process that's used to product their products, and have those on hand so that in case of need, we could draw on those as a nation, activate those manufacturers and bring their capabilities to the market. MS. SELLERS: So, you're seeing a lesson in our pandemic response that's truly related to long-term strategic planning. MS. HUMPTON: It is, indeed. I mean, it takes--it certainly takes long-term planning in order to envision what are those critical items we'll need. But remember. The real key concern here is that we can't possibly stockpile everything they need. There is no business case for that, and I don't know that there is enough taxpayer dollars to build warehouses full of things that we may eventually use. Heaven's sake, those things could go out of use over a period of time. They could be obsolete. So, what this would enable us to do is to maintain the flexibility we need to then ramp up for scale when needed. MS. SELLERS: So, I've been reading a little about these digital twins. Give me an example, as well, of how they could work in a private company, what twinning could do to avoid, for example, logjams in a production cycle. MS. HUMPTON: Yeah. Digital twins have been used over many years by some really diverse applications. Many people remember the Mars Rover, Curiosity. Of course, it would be impossible for NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab to recreate the conditions of Mars. So, what they did was created a digital twin of the Rover itself and a digital twin of the environment in which it would be used. And simulating, for instance, the landing of Curiosity, thousands of times, they found the optimal parameters to ensure a safe landing on the planet. That same technology can be used


it for a long time. Climate change, another looming crisis. How can these tools you're talking about help us prepare? We're already engaged, of course, in changes in our weather systems. But how can these changes you're talking about help us prepare to tackle that sort of looming crisis. And I know Siemens itself has had some sort of--has had a controversial role in, or has been criticized for some of its engagement with coal plants. But talk generally about that. MS. HUMPTON: Yeah. Siemens has had a long engagement in the energy sector, literally for decades. And what you'll find is that in large-scale power generation, assets that get built truly perform for decades. And so, yeah, Siemens has been involved in fossil power, and is now increasingly involved in the transition to renewable forms of energy, and maybe even more importantly, what I'm talking about here, the digital twin, the digital controls that make it possible for us to blend forms of power generation on our grids. A great example is the work done by our team in the U.S. with Blue Lake Rancheria. They are tribal lands in Northern California where the local community said that they would like to have more control over their own power generation and their connections to the grid. Working together with PG&E we have actually put in a microgrid, an islanded electrical grid, and placed the controls in the hands of the community so they could have their own, on-site renewable power generation, and then connect to the grid when needed. What that gave them the capability to do then was last year, during the wildfires, they were able to island themselves, and they actually became a power hub while the rest of the grid had to be brought down in rolling blackouts. Now this year, as COVID hit, the controllers that are part of this microgrid solution were so sophisticated that they detected the drop in usage and were able to make the necessary adjustments so that it did no damage to the existing power generation capability. So these controls play a vital part, as communities, as nations around the world really execute on their energy transition, and at Siemens, under the new Siemens Energy company, we've brought together all of the assets in power generation, transmission and distribution, all of those are available to help game-changers work their way


Transcript: Leadership During Crisis: Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego

a mom who just brought home a baby from the hospital, a newborn, and she was feeling some respiratory symptoms, but she didn't want to leave her newborn baby unless she knew she really had the virus. She was just struggling to get the right information to make a heartbreaking decision. MR. CAPEHART: So, let's talk more about the pandemic in Arizona. It seems as though Arizona has lost control of its response or control of the pandemic. On Tuesday, Arizona hit a record with 117 deaths from COVID-19--a new single-day high for the state. Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, is recording as many as 2,000 new cases per day, which eclipses even New York City on its worst day. You were just talking a moment ago about spikes in cases after the 4th of July. What is driving that? Is it people not social distancing? Is it reopening too early? What is it? MAYOR GALLEGO: Arizona was one of the last states to go to a stay-at-home order and one of the first to emerge. When we--when the governor decided to lift the stay-at-home order, we saw a lot of uses that the Centers for Disease Control didn't recommend in the early phases of reopening. So, CDC does not recommend crowded night clubs until the final phase of reopening, but we had them right away in Phoenix. We had night clubs that were handing out free champagne to celebrate. Public health officials tell me that night clubs are one of the most dangerous environment. People are very unlikely to be wearing a mask while they're drinking. There's also loud music, and so people might be raising their voices and you might have increased droplet spread because of that. We've had many younger Arizonans who've been featured on the news talking about how it just felt like a celebration and a party and it didn't feel like they needed to be careful. We've had now the majority of our new cases come from younger Arizonans. I think there was a message we defeated COVID and you could go back to life as normal. Which I understand. It is--it is not fun to be at stay at home. I'm a mother of a 3-year-old, and this morning we were having a debate about how hangers are not toys, and we've been painting rocks. I mean, you know, it's a struggle for


The Health 202: Why determining the coronavirus death rate is so tricky

pregnant women, and noted there are no proven interventions for pregnant women. He suggested it should raise awareness about transmission. Lenny adds: “Fenizia said the results suggest it may be important as the pandemic continues to monitor pregnant mothers and newborns for signs of inflammation, especially in light of the discovery of an alarming inflammatory syndrome linked to covid-19 that has affected hundreds of children in the United States.” So write Joel Achenbach, Laura Meckler and Chelsea Janes, in this interview with top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci. “It’s not going to be easy because we’ve never done it before,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told our colleagues. “This is uncharted waters — always remembering the primary issue is the safety and welfare of the children as well as the teachers who are going to be interacting with the children.” “The reopening of schools is likely to be halting and improvisational. It could be marked by setbacks,” our colleagues write. “There is no proven strategy for the remobilization of 56.6 million K-12 students amid a pandemic like this one.” People under age 25 account for fewer than 200 covid-19 deaths. As we noted earlier, only a few dozen kids under age 15 have died from it. But it’s unclear to what extent kids can still transmit it to each other and to vulnerable adults — such as their teachers or family members. “Scientific research on children and covid-19 has not been nearly as extensive as research on older people, because there haven’t been nearly as many sick children to study, and children are rarely tested as part of disease surveillance programs,” Joel, Laura and Chelsea write. “Much of the scientific understanding of how the coronavirus affects children is provisional. A study by researchers in the United Kingdom published last month found that children are only about half as likely as adults to become infected with the virus. Another study , from the University of California at Berkeley, did not see any significant effect on the community spread of coronavirus from the closing of schools in March.” “As the White House, the nation’s pediatricians and many worn-down, economically strapped parents push for school doors to swing open this fall, local education officials say they are being crushed by the costs of getting students and teachers back in classrooms safely,” the New York Times’s Dana Goldstein


The data on covid-19’s racial and ethnic gap tells a painfully familiar story

BLACK AND Latino Americans are disproportionately contracting and dying from the novel coronavirus, according to a report from the New York Times. This updated picture of the virus’s disparate impacts is yet another morbid illustration of the sometimes deadly effects of the racial discrimination that is the focus of an ongoing wave of national protests. The report is based on new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which, though incomplete, shows alarming disparities: Black and Latino people were three times as likely to be infected as white people, and almost twice as likely to die from the virus. These painful disparities are echoed throughout the rest of a growing list of pandemic inequities. Shouldering a disproportionate burden of the economic crisis, black and Latino Americans are overrepresented among the newly unemployed. Amid a ballooning hunger crisis, almost 4 in 10 black and Hispanic households with children are struggling to put food on the table, compared with 2 in 10 white families with children. As eviction moratoriums expire around the country, experts warn that black and Hispanic renters are likely to be hit hardest. These simultaneous blows are poised to exacerbate already staggering socioeconomic gaps between white Americans and racial and ethnic minorities. These gaps, in turn, are part of what is fueling the differences in infection and fatality rates. Black, Latino and Native Americans suffer from higher rates of certain comorbidities, the preexisting health conditions that make covid-19 more deadly. Americans also continue to rely on front-line workers who are disproportionately black and brown, who are generally poorly paid and often lack sufficient personal protective equipment. In some cases, the numbers are particularly horrifying: A CDC study on outbreaks in meat and poultry processing facilities reported 87 percent of cases occurring among racial and ethnic minorities when race and ethnicity were reported. The racialized burdens of the coronavirus should be understood in the context of the broader, urgent mandate to reexamine the social contract for Americans of color. In the near term, though, more and better data is needed. Racial and ethnic data is still missing in far too many cases — more than half of the cases in the CDC’s recent data lacked this information. Sometimes, data-gathering practices obscure important realities. Native Americans are also contracting and dying from the virus at alarming rates, but in many states they are labeled “other,” making those cases more


U.K. lifts travel restrictions for dozens of countries, but U.S. arrivals still require 14-day self isolation

The British government rolled back pandemic travel restrictions Friday on arrivals from 75 countries and British overseas territories — but visitors from the United States will still be asked to self-quarantine for 14 days. Under the new policy, first formulated last month, travelers entering Britain from dozens of countries, including former novel coronavirus hot spots, will no longer face a requirement to self-isolate. The lightened rules free up residents of Britain to travel to the countries in question, as they will not face a requirement to isolate upon return. Italy and Spain, once the epicenters of the pandemic in Europe, along with countries such as Japan and South Korea that pushed back their outbreaks early, are on the green list. But not all parts of the United Kingdom have adopted the exact same rules: Scotland will still require arrivals from Spain to self-quarantine for 14 days, while England, Wales and Northern Ireland will not. Restrictions on travelers from the United States remain in place. U.S. visitors will still be required to undertake mandatory self-isolation or risk a $1,245 fine, as will those from other destinations where the virus is surging, including Brazil and Russia, and from China, the initial epicenter. The rollback comes as Britain slowly reopens after months of lockdown. Pubs across the country opened July 4, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson is pushing for most students to return to the classroom in the fall. Some countries have been more cautious about lifting entry restrictions. In New Zealand, which declared itself virus-free in early June, nearly 30,000 people have successfully completed isolation periods since borders were closed in March. But after just three weeks with no new cases, the New Zealand government faced blowback last month when two travelers who flew from Britain to New Zealand by way of Australia were allowed to leave their mandatory isolation early to visit a dying relative and subsequently tested positive for the virus. Australia on Friday slashed in half the number of citizens abroad allowed to return each week, over similar concerns. In Britain, the eased restrictions have met an enthusiastic reception among people hoping to travel outside the country. A number of people told the BBC they had begun planning trips. Eoin Burgin, a 21-year-old student at Edinburgh University, said he was “very excited” to reunite in Switzerland with his girlfriend, who he has not seen for five months. A number


Trump and López Obrador perform a shape-shifting act at the White House

Carlos Loret de Mola A. is a Mexican journalist and a contributing columnist for Post Opinión. We might be used to politicians trying to shift their positions depending on what’s convenient. But on Wednesday the presidents of the United States and Mexico took the posturing to a new level: At the White House, Donald Trump appeared as a pro-immigrant friend of the Latino community, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador as a market-friendly ally of the United States. The shape-shifting act was a duet, and they really worked together. But first some context. Trump’s poll numbers are weak in some key states, including a traditionally red state with a growing percentage of Hispanic voters like Texas. Among Mexican voters, López Obrador is still quite popular, but he is trying to turn the page on a disastrous response to the novel coronavirus. In remarks at the White House that will certainly haunt him for many years, López Obrador thanked Trump for being “increasingly respectful with our Mexican paisanos.” He described the man who has said Mexican migrants are rapists and criminals as “understanding" and “respectful” and thanked him for his “kindness.” The Trump campaign wasted no time: A video highlighting the compliments was quickly circulated by surrogates on Twitter (just as Joe Biden posted that Trump has “spread racism against our Latino community ever since” he launched his 2016 run). Trump needs every vote he can get — even getting a small slice of Mexican American voters will be a victory. Shamelessly, the Mexican president decided to help him, in times when the Latino population in the United States is suffering greatly, getting infected with the coronavirus at alarmingly disparate rates. A visit and performance at the White House will not change the reality for Mexico’s president, either. López Obrador is failing to contain the economic impact of the pandemic. He is one of the icons of leftist populism in Latin America but has inexplicably decided not to deploy an aggressive plan of direct financial assistance for families and businesses. Instead of offering his own fiscal stimulus, López Obrador is betting that he can ride the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and U.S. recovery programs and buy some Trump-time (that is, make it through the presidential campaign without being the incumbent’s piñata, as in 2016). But López Obrador’s biggest problem is that he generates very little trust. Just a few days before the


Big Ten moves all fall sports, including football, to conference-only schedules

Ten opponents will have to adjust their schedules or play fewer games than anticipated. Many smaller programs rely on matchups with Power Five schools for the payout they receive for playing. A shortened schedule also would impact Big Ten schools’ ability to become bowl eligible by winning six games, unless rules are adjusted. The Big Ten’s decision was first reported by The Athletic before the conference announced its plan later Thursday afternoon. ESPN reported that the Big Ten’s league-only schedules will be front-loaded with division games. Some Big Ten programs were scheduled to face fellow Power Five schools during their nonconference slates. Among the matchups that will be lost are Ohio State at Oregon, Michigan at Washington, Notre Dame vs. Wisconsin (at Lambeau Field) and Penn State at Virginia Tech. Maryland was scheduled to play Towson, Northern Illinois and West Virginia the first three weekends of the season. With coronavirus cases continuing to rise around the United States, the fate of the college football season remains uncertain, even though the financial stakes of not holding the season are massive for Power Five schools. Typically, at those programs, the revenue generated by football offsets a significant portion of the entire athletic department’s expenses. College athletic facilities across the country closed in mid-March when the coronavirus upended everyday life in the United States. Most programs could not hold or even begin spring football practices. Across all sports, athletes could not work out on campus until the NCAA lifted the suspension of team activities beginning June 1. In the following weeks, many football players returned to campus for voluntary workouts. Since then, with most athletic departments testing their players for the coronavirus, multiple schools have had outbreaks within their programs and have had to suspend workouts. Ohio State and North Carolina both announced Wednesday they paused football workouts because of positive tests. The Big Ten also announced Thursday that summer athletic activities will continue to be voluntary for all sports. Athletes who choose not to participate in their sport because of concerns about the coronavirus will have their scholarships honored by their schools. Read more: Unable to afford coronavirus testing, some colleges are canceling football season As coronavirus cases rise, governors warn the college football season could be in danger Senators press NCAA for coronavirus rules, criticize schools’ liability waivers Coaches inspire and instruct on the field. Can they help in a pandemic?


Coronavirus-shaped cakes and cupcakes are popping up in fine-dining restaurants, bakeries and home kitchens around the world

This week, a sweet dish offered by the Michelin-starred Chicago restaurant Alinea stirred a bitter controversy. Some on social media were outraged by an image of a canape, apparently fashioned out of custard, Szechuan peppercorns and freeze-dried raspberries, made to look like a blown-up image of the novel coronavirus, according to local news outlet Block Club Chicago. The reviews, based on an image originally posted by a patron who thanked the restaurant, were mostly damning: “unbelievably disrespectful,” one critic wrote. Alinea Group co-owner Nick Kokonas went on the defensive about the dish, which was served at a rooftop pop-up the restaurant is running during the pandemic. “Art is meant to provoke discomfort, conversation, and awareness,” he responded on Instagram. “Everyone on here saying we are oblivious need to think just a single level upwards.” But confections in the shape of the deadly virus aren’t new, and they aren’t just the high-concept creations of high-end kitchens. Novelty cake and cupcake makers all over the world — from local bakeries to creative home crafters — for months have been sculpting buttercream and fondant and candies and food coloring into approximations of the microscopic germ that has commanded the planet’s attention. In dozens of images posted all over Pinterest and Instagram, many appear to be based on a widely shared illustration offered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Tufts of red icing, shards of rock candy, or stubs of Twizzlers might form the spikes emanating from a blue-tinged sphere, which the CDC notes “impart the look of a corona surrounding the virion.” Other baked goods seem modeled on various Internet images of the virus, some portrayed in vivid green or bright blue; others take liberty, shading their versions in softer pastels. Many cartoonishly anthropomorphize the virus, giving them googly eyes and emoji-like faces. Those virus-creatures might sport graduation caps; many wear masks. They are often accompanied by sugar-rendered iconography of the Covid Age: rolls of toilet paper, bars of soap, the comforting visage of top infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci. The combination might seem jarring: cakes and cupcakes are for celebrations, after all, of birthdays and anniversaries and graduations. Meanwhile, the coronavirus is the ultimate unwelcome party guest, a deadly force that has upended lives, costing millions of jobs and more than half a million deaths worldwide. But Erica Elia, the owner of Classy Girl Cupcakes in Milwaukee, says the cakes


Comet Neowise is gracing the night sky and is visible with the naked eye

of ionized gas, while the other was dusty in nature. The dust tail is brighter. A bit to the right, you’ll see Venus — just about as bright as it can get — hovering brighter than any other star or planet in the sky. You’ll see a similar lineup through at least early next week. A stunning view of Neowise was even captured onboard the International Space Station: Peter Forister, a meteorologist and masters student studying geography at Virginia Tech, ventured into rural Virginia early Thursday morning in hopes of glimpsing Neowise. He was not disappointed. “I planned out my trip with star-tracking software and Google Maps to find wide open views to the northeast,” wrote Forister in a Twitter direct message. “I got to my spot at 4:30 a.m., and after about 60 seconds of my eyes adjusting to the dark skies, I spotted the comet just above the low fog bank.” He noted that, while the comet “wasn’t super bright,” it was easily visible with about the same luminance as a bright star — “with a long orange tail.” “It’s an absolutely beautiful sight!” wrote Forister, who says it’s a first of its kind in his 15-plus years of stargazing. “I’ve seen other small comets before, tiny dots in the sky with a faint green haze around them, but this event blows them out of the water.” Next week will also afford evening views of Neowise, too. That’s great news if you’re not an early riser. Beginning Monday, look to the west-northwest after sunset, and you’ll probably be able to spot it. Time is of the essence, though. Neowise is running away from the sun and could soon begin slowly fading into oblivion. There’s an outside chance solar heating could cause the comet to markedly brighten, but astronomers say we shouldn’t bet on it. Considering its unpredictable nature, seizing the opportunity to view it soon rather than later may be better. The comet was named after the NASA satellite that discovered it, the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. The comet will make its closest pass near Earth on July 22, but no need to fret; it will still be 64 million miles distant. The comet’s infrared signature was enough for NASA scientists to estimate it at about three miles in width. They believe the comet is composed of materials as old as the solar system. More photos


Local Digest: Man found fatally shot outside laudromat in Northeast Washington

THE DISTRICT A man was found fatally shot Wednesday night in the parking lot of a laundromat in Northeast Washington, bringing to a dozen the number of people killed in the District since July 1. The shooting occurred shortly before 10 p.m. in the 1700 block of Benning Road NE, along the border between the communities of Carver-Langston and Kingman Park. Police said the victim was found by the side of the Capital Laundrymat. In a report, police said the man might have been shot at 17th Street and Benning Road NE. He died at a hospital. The man was identified by police as Eugene Anthony Hickson, 30, of no fixed address. The area of Carver-Langston has been hit hard by violence this year, and residents have complained to police about drug dealing and shootings. It was not clear whether Wednesday’s shooting is connected to some of those recurring problems. — Peter Hermann VIRGINIA Two armed men forced their way into a Seven Corners home, abducted an occupant and made the person withdraw money from a nearby bank, Fairfax County police said Thursday. The brazen home invasion robbery occurred about 11 a.m. on June 29 in the 6000 block of Kelsey Court, police said. The incident began when the men gained entry to the home of an elderly woman. One of the men remained with a person at the home while brandishing a firearm, while the other man took a second person to a bank to withdraw money, police said. The occupants were not hurt in the incident. Police said they have not received any other reports of similar incidents in the county. — Justin Jouvenal A 92-year-old man has died after a crash earlier this week in Arlington, police said. The incident happened about 9 p.m. Tuesday near the Washington and Old Dominion Trail in the 4800 block of Eighth Street South, according to Arlington police. An initial investigation found that the driver, identified as Bolivar Cobos of Arlington, lost control of his vehicle and hit a parked vehicle. He then kept driving before his vehicle flipped over onto the trail, police said. He was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries and later died, authorities said. The crash remains under investigation. — Dana Hedgpeth MARYLAND Thieves are using trucks as battering rams to steal automated teller machines from inside local businesses, Baltimore police said. The thieves sometimes use


With coronavirus science still iffy, U.S. schools hope to reopen for 56.6 million K-12 students

In just a matter of weeks, tens of millions of children will start a new school year, and what that will look like has become the nation’s thorniest political and epidemiological issue. School officials have to figure out how to resume schooling while limiting the risks to children, their teachers, school staffers and their communities. This pivotal moment in the coronavirus pandemic comes as scientists are still trying to understand precisely how the virus affects children and how children affect the spread of the virus. This dicey decision point has generated tension between President Trump and his own public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with Trump saying the CDC is “asking schools to do very impractical things” to allow classes to resume. The reopening of schools is likely to be halting and improvisational. It could be marked by setbacks. There is no proven strategy for the remobilization of 56.6 million K-12 students amid a pandemic like this one. “It’s not going to be easy because we’ve never done it before,” Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Thursday in an interview with The Washington Post. “This is uncharted waters — always remembering the primary issue is the safety and welfare of the children as well as the teachers who are going to be interacting with the children.” Children are clearly at low risk of serious illness from covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Research suggests they’re also less likely to get infected to begin with. But it’s unclear to what extent they can still transmit it to each other and to vulnerable adults — such as their teachers or family members. Much of the scientific understanding of how the coronavirus affects children is provisional. A study by researchers in the United Kingdom published last month found that children are only about half as likely as adults to become infected with the virus. Another study, from the University of California at Berkeley, did not see any significant effect on the community spread of coronavirus from the closing of schools in March. But scientific research on children and covid-19 has not been nearly as extensive as research on older people, because there haven’t been nearly as many sick children to study, and children are rarely tested as part of disease surveillance programs. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House


MLB flew Dominican players to the U.S. for restart but didn’t test them for coronavirus first

class airfare” to Washington. The memo indicated that once Dominican players and staffers landed in Miami, the Nationals would cover the cost for them to fly from South Florida. The charter and first-class accommodations were arranged to limit exposure to the public. In their memo, part of which was also obtained by The Post, the Nationals used capital letters to emphasize another safety measure: “ALL PLAYERS SHOULD TRAVEL WITH FACE MASK COVERINGS.” The situation was then further complicated by recent hitches in the testing model. A handful of teams around the sport, including the Nationals, had to shift plans because of a lag in test results during the first week of workouts. On Monday, the Nationals shut down their facility because they had yet to receive results from Friday’s coronavirus tests. MLB later released a statement citing “unforeseen difficulties” during Fourth of July weekend and has since discussed adding a second laboratory to help process a high volume of test samples, according to people with knowledge of that effort. “One of the principle [sic] reasons for using the Utah laboratory is to not divert testing resources away from the health care system,” MLB said in its statement. “In the Dominican Republic, Covid-19 testing is not as widely available as in the U.S., requires a doctor’s order, who may only prescribe the test to individuals who are symptomatic or have been in close contact with persons who have been diagnosed with the disease, and takes longer to report the results than in the U.S.” As of Monday, when three teams had to cancel workouts, there were players waiting for results from Thursday’s intake testing. That included some Nationals who flew on the charter flights from the Dominican Republic. They were told to keep isolating over the weekend after players from the flight tested positive. Then they were kept from the team facility while they wondered about their own health. For the Nationals players who did not test positive during intake screening, follow-up results were negative. They still aren’t allowed to train. “These guys are really frustrated by the whole thing,” said one person close to a few Nationals who took the charter flight and are isolating. “And it also shows how risky the travel is all around. There’s so much you can’t control.” Dave Sheinin contributed to this report, which has been updated to remove references to a player whose travel


The future of travel, according to Travel Channel host Kellee Edwards

with the world around us that we have built, and it’s making us look closer at that. And so there’s been a lot of shifts, you know, between our selves and amongst each other in a way had this pandemic not happened at this time, this shift wouldn’t have been there. We are hypersensitive and hyper-aware to everything around us right now, and the world is becoming a better place for it. Do you have any expectations or any hope for when travel might return to any kind of normalcy? Or what it might look like, like what might be changed significantly, when Americans can start going to other parts of the world again? I will echo the sentiment that it will never be the same. We are going forward with the new normal as in the way travel changed after 9/11. The concern that I have is that because people haven’t been able to travel  — or there’s people who had never traveled before who are now more interested in travel because of the cabin fever  — that when everyone is traveling again there will be overtourism in places. The person who’s looking to truly get an experience and a taste of a place will now have to compete with so many other tourists for that picture in front of the Eiffel Tower, for that meal at a restaurant that was recommended on a food television program or in a travel magazine. And so I’m looking forward to travel coming back, but I’m hoping that it’ll be through a lens that people are more appreciative of what the world as a whole has to offer, and not consume it in a selfish way that is more detrimental than helpful. I read that you like to travel solo or that you do travel solo a lot, and that seems like a way to connect with new people. But I wonder if you’ve been thinking about traveling solo in a post-pandemic world I think what it’s going to make me do more than ever is to respect cultures and people and their personal space. I think the best thing about travel is the connection with other people, but this is a time where I’m going to have to be diligent in reading the tone and the energy of the place that I’m in. For those who are comfortable with


A photographer in Mexico uses an imperfect camera to document an uncertain time

carried on despite the current limitations helped me work within my own limitations, knowing that I had only one switch to adjust the light on cloudy days and a rudimentary focus system. When I rode around the city on my motorcycle in April, I saw that the virus had already spread far beyond the hospitals — it had entered people’s consciousness. I photographed a man selling pipe-cleaner spiders for kids, for a few pesos each, and an altar to Santa Muerte, the folk saint who personifies death, in a bridal gown and a face mask. The other images, the more classic ones — the crematoriums, the public cemetery, the nurses’ protests — came later, once I had time to consider our collective state of mind. Few things about Mexico’s coronavirus outbreak were clear from the beginning, and few are now. As new cases fall in other parts of the country, infections in Mexico City and its surroundings reached what was supposed to be their peak — and hovered there for days. The country started to reopen hesitantly at the beginning of the month. I saw a young couple hold one another in a newly reopened park, more intimately, it seemed, than I’ve ever seen anyone do before. Although the future is still uncertain, we desperately felt the need to go outside and to be closer to each other. Finding a different way to document this period — with the toy camera, its images marked by light that sneaks in through its seams or is distorted by its plastic lens — has at least given me a way of looking beyond the pandemic. It has not alleviated the overwhelming sense of consequence, but seeing each image emerge from the chemicals hidden in my laundry room during this time of quarantine helps me think about what we’ve lived through. Now, we are waiting for whatever may come. In Sight is The Washington Post’s photography blog for visual narrative. This platform showcases compelling and diverse imagery from staff members and freelance photographers, news agencies and archives. If you are interested in submitting a story to In Sight, please complete this form. More on In Sight: ‘My dad died alone and afraid from something that, by all rights, shouldn’t have killed him’ Intensely personal images show how a Bangladeshi family copes during the covid-19 pandemic ‘Fear, uncertainty and distance’: Life in Shanghai under covid-19


Known coronavirus deaths and cases in D.C., Maryland and Virginia

The coronavirus pandemic has transformed life in the District, Maryland and Virginia, with camps, schools and many businesses closed or restricted, and people asked to wear masks around others and stay home whenever possible. What started as a trickle of cases in early March has ballooned to thousands of confirmed infections and deaths. As the region slowly reopens, communities are bracing for a new surge of infections. Experts think the number of people who have contracted the coronavirus outpaces those who have tested positive, because testing is still limited and it can take up to two weeks for people to become symptomatic. Public health officials say the number of cases will continue to rise as testing expands. Throughout the pandemic, Maryland has reported the most deaths and cases of the three jurisdictions. When adjusted for population, however, more people per 100,000 residents in the District are getting infected or dying from covid-19, the disease the virus causes. After sharp declines in case numbers in early June, the number of known cases in all three jurisdictions has mostly plateaued. But July brought a slight uptick, especially in Virginia. Leaders in Virginia, Maryland and the District have all pointed to daily numbers of coronavirus-related hospitalizations and intensive care unit patients as crucial measures in determining whether the spread of the virus is slowing. In all three jurisdictions, those measures have generally been trending downward, reaching historic lows in late June and early July. Additional design and development by Joe Fox and Leslie Shapiro. Dana Hedgpeth, Rachel Chason, Erin Cox, Antonio Olivo, Jenna Portnoy, Patricia Sullivan, Laura Vozzella, Ovetta Wiggins, Perry Stein and Hannah Natanson also contributed to this report. Mapping the spread: Who we’ve lost: What you need to know: Have you tested positive for the coronavirus? Share your experience with The Post. Sign up for daily news delivered to your inbox: Morning (8 a.m.) | Afternoon (4 p.m.)


Mapping the worldwide spread of the coronavirus

In the months since an outbreak of the novel coronavirus first surfaced in China late last year, millions of people have been infected, with cases reported in almost every country in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people are confirmed to have died of covid-19, the disease the virus causes, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. In many places, testing remains limited, and the true case and death counts are probably far higher than the confirmed tally. “It took more than two months for the first 100,000 cases to be reported,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, secretary-general of the World Health Organization, said in June. “For the past two weeks, more than 100,000 new cases have been reported almost every single day.” Many countries turned to drastic containment measures to try to curb the spread of the virus. While some countries saw success in flattening the curve, or in the case of New Zealand, driving confirmed infections down to zero for a time, others faced rising case numbers as global hot spots shifted. The Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus was first reported last year, and parts of Europe once overwhelmed by the virus have largely begun to reopen and report far fewer cases and deaths. In the United States, where testing efforts faltered early in the outbreak, cases and deaths are slowing in some states but rising in others. The total number of U.S. reported cases remains by far the highest in the world. Brazil, where cases surged as government leaders disagreed over the severity of the crisis and resisted lockdown measures, now ranks second for the largest number of cases and deaths. Russia, which ranks third for the highest number of confirmed cases, is also struggling to contain a massive outbreak although its official death toll remains far lower than those of other hot spots. In May, the World Health Organization declared South America the new epicenter of the global pandemic. In the early months of the outbreak, China reported more cases than any other country. Its tally of new infections peaked in mid-February and approached zero by mid-March, although questions surround the accuracy of its data. As the disease waned in China, it began to surge in Italy and Spain. By May, more than 150,000 people had died throughout Europe. This month, a cluster of cases in Beijing linked to a large market has raised alarm


After ICE cracks down on online learners, international students scramble for backup plans

Alexander Auster came to the United States for college because here, unlike in his native Germany, he could study and swim, with hopes of someday competing in the Olympics. His Olympics dream fizzled. But after undergraduate success at George Washington University, he stayed for law school and planned to start his legal career here, too. Then, this week, he saw the news: International students would not be allowed to stay in the country if they were only taking online classes, the government said, despite the coronavirus pandemic forcing many colleges to stop teaching in person. In an instant, Auster said, he was uncertain about not just fall but his home, his education, his career. “Everything I planned for the future is up in the air,” he said. On Monday, the federal Student and Exchange Visitor Program announced that students enrolled in fully online programs would have to leave the country or transfer to a program that includes in-person classes to maintain legal status. It’s not an entirely new rule. The government typically does require international students to take most classes in person. But it had offered more flexibility when the pandemic shuttered colleges in March. The new guidance, which has not been published, blindsided university officials, who expected immigration authorities to grant the same flexibility they had given in the spring, especially as coronavirus cases spike. Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northeastern University are suing the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, seeking to block the rule. California is suing, too. International students, meanwhile, are doing what immigrants often do while waiting for the courts to untangle an attempt by the Trump administration to send them home and send a message: They’re worrying, and they’re scrambling for backup plans. Studying abroad on a visa always brings some restrictions and complications. But an unexpected change just weeks before classes start had international students worrying about leases, travel, academics, expenses and jobs — all things already made precarious by the pandemic. A biochemistry student from Ireland, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared retaliation, had been checking ICE’s website every day in June, hoping to see the pandemic rules extended. She found ICE’s decision on the website before her school, the State University of New York, was even notified. Her adviser told her to find any in-person course the school was offering


Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel blazes a bloody trail in rise to power

MEXICO CITY — Before they allegedly tried to assassinate this city's police chief, the foot soldiers of Mexico's most powerful drug cartel already had left a bloody wake across the country. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel has killed judges, congressmen, dozens of police officers and thousands of civilians. Its fighters once shot down a military helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade. The cartel controls the movement of more than a third of all drugs consumed in the United States, U.S. officials say, and has expanded into Europe and Asia. And yet until last month, many here saw the rise of the cartel as an internal matter for the parties in an interminable drug war. Then the group sent three dozen men armed with military-grade weapons into one of the country’s most exclusive neighborhoods, authorities say, to kill the capital’s top security official. Omar García Harfuch was shot three times in the June 26 attack but survived. Three people were killed. Since then, several Mexican officials, including the governor of the western state of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro Ramírez, and the head of the country’s human rights commission, Rosario Piedra Ibarra, have said that they received death threats from the cartel. For now, at least, it appears that Mexico has arrived at a moment of reckoning, as the country’s elite look more closely at the new, more brazenly violent face of the country’s criminal underworld. “We are seeing the threat to institutions, a reality already visible in some states and now reflected in Mexico City,” Alfaro told reporters. Unlike the drug cartels of Pablo Escobar’s Colombia, Mexican drug trafficking organizations have rarely targeted top officials, in part to avoid a clash with the state and in part because they have found bribery a more useful tool than assassination. Though local politicians have been frequent targets, state governors and federal officials have not. That made the assassination attempt against García Harfuch and news of threats against prominent officials particularly startling. Two weeks before García Harfuch was targeted in an attack on his convoy, gunmen killed a well-known federal judge, Uriel Villegas Ortiz, and his wife, Verónica Barajas, in the state of Colima. Villegas Ortiz had become famous in presiding over the case that enabled the extradition to the United States of Rubén Oseguera, known as El Menchito, a son of the head of the Jalisco cartel. Last year was the deadliest in Mexico’s recent


‘Are you ready to go back?’ After covid-19, a poultry worker fears a return to work.

education efforts that are intended to help keep our employees, and the broader communities in which we operate, safe from COVID-19.” For the worker, the hulking factory had long been the center of his life. He’d met his wife in Georgetown, working overtime so he could buy a small house, where their three kids grew up with braces and American accents. But in almost 30 years, his wage had barely kept up with inflation. And so, when Perdue asked him to return as he was lying in the hospital hooked up to an oxygen machine, the poultry plant worker began wondering if he should go back. He arrived home after a week in the hospital to find that Perdue had stopped paying him, he said, even as the company kept calling him to come back. (Perdue says it follows CDC guidelines on employees returning to work and pays sick workers “through the duration of their recovery.”) As he recovered, he began to hear about co-workers who’d gotten sick after him. One of them was Aaron Sanchez Huerta. The Mexican electrician had also been at the plant for years, and the two men had often spent their breaks chatting in the cafeteria. When rumors swirled that Sanchez had died of the disease, his friend didn’t know if he should believe them. So on the day of his doctor’s appointment, he stopped by Sanchez’s house on a narrow lane called Strawberry Alley. He knocked, but no one answered. As he was about to leave, a woman in a ponytail and pajamas with the word “LOVE” on them emerged from a back door. “Is Aaron in?” he asked in Spanish. “He’s not here,” answered Reyna Bahena. “Do you know him?” “He’s a friend of mine,” he said. “We work together in Perdue.” “You work in Perdue?” The Central American nodded. “My husband died,” she said softly. For years, the gentle man with the bushy mustache had promised to move back to Mexico with Bahena as soon as he retired from Perdue. Instead, she got a job there, too, working during the day on the chicken lines that he repaired by night. At first, the only sign of the pandemic was the announcement that Perdue would pay an extra dollar per hour, which elicited shouts of “Bravo!” from the workers on Bahena’s shift. Soon, however, Sanchez came down with what he initially dismissed as


No masks, no coughs: Robots can be just what the doctor ordered in time of social distancing

need to move,” Fukabori said. “This is really important, because we forget the freedom of this mobility. You can just walk around, and people will talk to you about really, really natural things. That creates human trust. That isn’t as easy in WebEx or Zoom, where if you don’t know each other it’s really hard to keep talking.” Work is underway on prototypes that allow users to control a remote robot through virtual reality headsets and gloves that allow the wearer to pick up, hold, touch and feel an object with a distant robotic hand, with potential uses ranging from space exploration to disaster relief or caring for the elderly. But Fukabori said the cheaper, lightweight avatars offer more immediate and affordable uses. What sets this project apart from existing avatar robots, the company says, is the ability for users to access the robots easily from a laptop, by renting them out rather than having to buy them. Avatarin hopes to install the avatars in more hospitals and in eldercare centers, shops, museums, zoos and aquariums. The company also aims to have 1,000 in place for next year’s Tokyo Olympics. In Tokyo, robotics lab ZMP has been developing three small bots to help compensate for Japan’s shrinking labor force, employing the same technology as self-driving cars. A delivery robot aims to transport goods ordered online from local warehouses to customers’ doors; a patrol robot, with six cameras, does the job of a security guard; a self-driving wheelchair can be programed to take users to specific destinations. The wheelchair is already available and approved for use on Tokyo streets. The others still await official permission to venture out alone in public. Now, the patrol robot has been adapted so it can also disinfect surfaces as it patrols, and is attracting interest from Tokyo’s Metro stations as well as other businesses. In May, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe noted surging demand for unmanned deliveries and pledged to carry out tests to see if delivery robots were safe to use on roads and sidewalks by the end of the year. Even the self-driving wheelchair can come into its own amid a coronavirus-filled world, the company said, potentially helping elderly people move around more independently without a helper who might be a vector for the virus. “Before corona, most customers wanted to reduce workers,” said ZMP’s chief executive, Hisashi Taniguchi. “But after corona, our


How America’s hottest city will survive climate change

program sets the standard for responding to bad weather. Mayor Kate Gallego (D), who holds an environmental science degree, wants Phoenix to be a model for the nation. Heat is inevitable in the desert, Gallego said. But dangerous heat — “that’s not something we have to accept passively.” “We understand that necessity breeds invention,” said Gallego, who was elected in 2018. “And we hope … that we will produce the innovations that make it possible for people to adapt.” Islands of heat Phoenix’s fight against heat is a war with many fronts, said David Hondula, a sustainability scientist at Arizona State University and a leading researcher studying the intersection of heat and health. One is high up in the atmosphere, where accumulating greenhouse gases from human activities are causing global average temperatures to steadily rise. The average annual temperature in Maricopa County is 3.4 degrees higher than it was in 1895, according to a Washington Post analysis of records going back more than 100 years. That translates into summers that are hotter, longer and drier. Drastically reducing heat-trapping emissions on a planet-wide scale is essential to averting catastrophic heat waves and other dangers from global warming, scientists say. But there are also changes that can be made much closer to home, Hondula said. Phoenix’s rapid development in recent decades has made it a victim of what researchers call the “heat island effect.” All the trademarks of the urban environment — towering glass buildings, bustling industry, vast expanses of concrete and asphalt — absorb and amplify the heat of the sun. “We talk about climate … as something mysterious and ambiguous that comes from the sky. But it is also something we are driving with the way we are paving our streets,” Hondula said. “Urbanization is a critical part of the story.” Natural environments, he explained, are incredibly effective at getting rid of heat. That’s because of the way trees and other vegetation release water into the surrounding air, a process called evapotranspiration. Turning water from a liquid to a gas uses heat energy, and it can result in air temperatures in a healthy tree grove being 10 degrees lower than in open terrain. Even scrubby desert plants are capable of cooling their environments, especially at night. In paving over the desert, Phoenix’s developers not only lost this cooling capacity but they made the problem worse. Tall buildings create canyons in


Latinos hit hard by coronavirus, but Chicago suggests it’s even worse than it looks

patients actually self- identify. The count is further muddled because 37 percent of Hispanics self-reported identification with at least one other racial or ethnic group. Researchers concluded that there are important inaccuracies and there needs to be better processes to document race ethnicity in electronic health records. Public health experts Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.), a physician, knows first hand the health-care challenges facing Latinos during this pandemic. “First of all, Latinos are more likely to be employed in essential jobs. Meaning that they do not have the luxury of working from home,” he says. “They have to go out into the workforce. Second of all, these are precisely the workers that needed protections in the workplace even before covid-19. Farmworkers for example have one of the highest injury rates, one of the highest hazard rates in any profession and they are not protected.” As a result, the number of Latinos with covid-19 is staggering. In Iowa, Latinos account for 24 percent of coronavirus cases although they are only 6 percent of the population. Latinos in Washington state make up 13 percent of the population but 44 percent of cases. In Florida, they are just over a quarter of the population but account for 2 of 5 virus cases where ethnicity is known. In Chicago, the inability to get an accurate count of how many Latinos have the coronavirus has real resource implications as local and state health officials respond to the pandemic. Although the state and city are flattening the curve, the number of Latino deaths in Chicago has surpassed the death toll of other groups but the resources to address these high levels of infection are still lacking. Today, Rico and Latino leaders in Chicago are leading an effort to get a state executive order to correctly identify Latino racial categorization in state agencies. Inaccurate data in a pandemic can lead to missing vulnerabilities and predispositions to diabetes and heart disease, which are destructive when combined with covid-19. “At the end of the day, local governments are not able to make the necessary resource allocations for combating this virus if they do not know who or how many people are actually sick in a given area,” Rico said. “This should be simple, give people the option to self-select Latino on these forms. We get enough othering in real life, let’s make it simple to include us in these counts.”


Britain’s new toughness on human rights abusers is a welcome change

47 individuals who will face travel restrictions and asset freezes, including 25 Russians involved with the death of Sergei Magnitsky in a Russian prison and 20 Saudis involved in the assassination of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, among others. Mr. Raab said, “If you are a kleptocrat or an organized criminal, you will not be able to launder your blood money in this country.” The U.S. law is named after Magnitsky, a 37-year-old tax law expert who died ill and brutalized in a Moscow prison on Nov. 16, 2009. Magnitsky had exposed Russian officials who fraudulently obtained a $230 million tax refund from their government. The law intends to hold accountable people complicit in human rights abuses who, in the past, have often frolicked unimpeded in open societies. Britain passed the law two years ago but has now begun imposing sanctions, made possible by its exit from the European Union in January. Two of the Crown dependencies, Jersey and Guernsey — as well as the Cayman Islands, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom — have followed suit, potentially closing off important destinations for dirty cash. There are now seven countries with Magnitsky laws: the United States, Canada, Britain, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Kosovo. The European Union has agreed in principle, and Australia is moving toward it. Britain’s determination to play a more aggressive role is to be welcomed. The latest sanctions included one of President Vladimir Putin’s security officials, Alexander Bastrykin, head of the federal Investigative Committee, who is also under U.S. sanction. Do these sanctions bite? Seems like it: Soon after the British announcement, the Kremlin threatened to reciprocate. More attention must focus on China, which is carrying out the cultural and demographic genocide of the Muslim Uighur people in Xinjiang province, the suppression of democracy in Hong Kong and systematic repression in Tibet. For the most part, sanctions have been aimed at people who execute atrocities, but what about the political leaders and overlords who enable them, such as Xinjiang party boss Chen Quanguo? The United States last week imposed sanctions and visa restrictions on Mr. Chen and other Xinjiang officials, and Britain should follow suit. So far, a certain diplomatic caution and realpolitik has spared the likes of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or Hong Kong’s executive, Carrie Lam, from direct personal sanction. But are they any less responsible than the hatchet men they supervise?


When staying safe meant staying in: Memories of sheltering in place before covid-19

stop the spread of the coronavirus in Italy are entirely distinct from his wartime experiences, he said. “It’s different because I trust here,” he said. The Italian government “will not leave you without food.” The situation in Syria “was out of my control,” he said. “But now I can control more. You have many ways to spend your time. Not just a fear of death.” That said, ways of thinking he learned in Syria apply in Italy. “No problem will last forever. Even if it takes a long time, there will be a solution,” he said. “Keep patience.” During the coronavirus outbreak, Mariam Barghouti found solace in the recipes of her childhood in the early 2000s, during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation. The spinach pies her mother would bake in bulk to freeze for leaner times. The soups she would cook up in hopes of bolstering immunity. The way everything in the kitchen had multiple uses. “You have to stay happy, you have to stay happy,” Barghouti remembers her mother repeating as she stuffed her and her siblings with food or sent them running around the house for exercise. Barghouti is a writer in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, where the semiautonomous Palestinian government has banned movement between cities and issued a curfew to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Travel to Israel is forbidden. It feels eerily familiar, yet distinct, she said. “The initial reaction for the pandemic was: Oh, here we go again; we have to find new, creative ways to cope.” During the intifada, the Israeli military imposed curfews, and people lived in fear of violence in the streets. “Under military curfew, you kind of wanted to do the impossible, to go see people,” she said. “And now you want to do the exact opposite.” Barghouti said her basic approach to riding out the pandemic is based on what she learned as a child. “Find innovative ways of celebrating and grieving and being angry,” she said. Birthdays must still be celebrated. “We continued giving attention to other aspects of our lives instead of just focusing on the disaster in front of us.” Enrique Roldan is waiting out the pandemic in Riverside, Calif. But sometimes in his mind he’s a teenager back in El Salvador in the mid-1970s, hiding under his bed to escape recruitment by both government and guerrilla forces. It’s the


Disappearances in Mexico rose during López Obrador’s first year, now top 73,000

massive scale.” “It is important to recognize the López Obrador administration’s commitment to establish an open and transparent database of these disappearances,” he said. “I wish they would show the same commitment to identifying those responsible for these crimes and bringing them to justice.” Only a tiny fraction of disappearances have resulted in criminal convictions, a reflection of the weakness of Mexico’s justice system. Authorities are still trying to solve the country’s most notorious case of disappearances. Forty-three students from the southern town of Ayotzinapa went missing in September 2014 after they were detained by police. The initial investigation by Mexican authorities was widely condemned. International legal experts and U.N. officials alleged that the investigators tortured suspects to compel them to say that a local drug gang had slain the students and burned their bodies while ignoring evidence that federal security forces might have been involved. López Obrador’s administration has reopened the investigation. Authorities last week announced the identification of a second set of remains from the missing students. Despite the increased government attention, 2019 was the second-worst year on record for disappearances: 7,350 people went missing and didn’t return. That was second only to 2017, when 7,910 people went missing. Although last year’s number could reflect more complete reporting of the crimes, it was also undoubtedly linked to persistently high levels of violence around the country. Homicides hit a record in 2019, at 35,588. Officials said they were encouraged to see a drop in the first six months of 2020 to 2,394 disappearances. They said they did not know why the decline happened. But it appeared to begin when Mexico locked down during the coronavirus pandemic. There has been little if any decline in homicides, despite the quarantine. The new total of missing people includes cases dating back to Mexico’s “dirty war” against leftists in the 1970s and some disappearances that are undated. The figure is still believed to be an undercount; some families remain too frightened to report disappearances. The updated figure includes 324 U.S. citizens who vanished in Mexico and weren’t found. That appeared to be by far the highest number issued by authorities in recent years. The database does not provide public access to the identities of the missing. There have been numerous cases over the years of Americans who traveled to see relatives in Mexico and vanished, in many cases apparently due to foul play.


How chef Daniela Moreira would spend a perfect day in D.C.

stop by, say hi to everybody and grab some coffee. It’s regular drip coffee. We named it just coffee because it’s a simple coffee. We don’t like the idea of having all this coffee that tastes like something else. What happened to just coffee? So we have just coffee. We’re going to get Frankie out for a walk in Rock Creek Park, then we drop Frankie at his grandparents’ house. We’re going to get some lunch, and there’s a Jamaican spot called Sweet Sosumba a block from Call Your Mother. We’re going to get some vegan chickpea patties, rice and beans, cabbage slaw, and they make unbelievable smoothies. I would get the avocado banana smoothie. Next we’ll go for a bike ride. Usually we do a loop where we go all the way to Georgetown, then go through Bethesda and then come back through D.C. If I follow Andrew’s pace, it’s about an hour and half, but I’m dying at the end. On my dream day it’ll be two hours. I just love D.C. so much and like going on that trail. You’re pretty much in the park the whole time, it seems that you’re not in the city, it’s like you’re somewhere else. All the seasons it’s beautiful, even in the winter. After the bike ride, we’d stop by Vace on Connecticut Avenue and get a slice of pizza, just the simple cheese pizza. That’s my No. 1 pizza place. It’s a different style of pizza, compared to Timber. I love the cheese that Vace uses, and the fact that they put the cheese first and the sauce on top, because you get the flavor of the sauce first. And I like that it is super, super crispy. You get that when you’re baking it for way longer than wood fire. I love Timber, too, of course, but it’s like two different things. Vace is like the pizza that you have for breakfast. After that I’m going to be pretty tired so we’ll go to Georgetown to South Block and I’ll get a smoothie bowl, the PBJ Bowl. It’s so good. If you cross the street, there’s the entrance to a little park and there’s these chairs where you can sit by the canal, so I’ll sit there and eat my smoothie bowl. Before going out to dinner, we’ll go take Frankie for a run. On Porter Street, there’s


Coin supply low as Maryland businesses reopen

said it planned to continue to review and potentially revise limits. It has encouraged banks “to order only the coin they need to meet near-term customer demand.” Trade groups representing industries that rely on cash transactions are urging the Fed, U.S. Mint and Treasury Department to push to return the supply chain to normal as quickly as possible. Business advocates said the rationing plan came as a shock. They fear the system for distributing coins is at the breaking point. “There are millions of Americans who are underbanked that pay in cash/coins,” said Melissa Murdock, a spokeswoman for the Retail Industry Leaders Association. “It’s simply not an option for retailers to go cashless.” In a letter to Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the retail group and others said that their industries process large volumes of consumer transactions every day and that “many of those transactions are paid in cash. A critical, but largely unseen, part of these businesses’ operations, then, is obtaining sufficient amounts of coins to be able to handle cash transactions and provide customers with change.” Besides the retail leaders association, also signing on to the June 23 letter were the Food Marketing Institute, National Association of Convenience Stores, National Automatic Merchandising Association, National Grocers Association and Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America. “Some of our member businesses are being told that they cannot get coins from their banks at all,” the letter says. “This threatens the functioning of our member businesses and, by extension, the needs of their customers.” Once the economy opens more broadly and normal coin circulation patterns resume, inventory levels should return to normal, Fed officials said. “What we’re seeing now is demand has started to come back,” McKone said. “Different states have opened up, and people are back out in the economy.” Businesses “have customers coming out and buying things they hadn’t previously, so the demand is starting to increase, but the supply hasn’t caught up yet,” he said. The banker remains hopeful that the shortage will be short-lived. Howard Bank is working to identify those customers who are most dependent on coins to run their businesses, such as retailers, laundromats and convenience stores, and assess their needs. “We want to make sure customers are comfortable,” he said, “so that while there is a shortage, it’s not something that’s going to become an issue.” — Baltimore Sun