After months of planning and billions in spending, will colleges’ virus prevention efforts get trashed by a few student parties?

University officials planned for months for the resumption of fall classes amid the pandemic, with experts advising them on the rapidly evolving understanding of the novel coronavirus. They spent tens of billions of dollars creating massive testing programs, clearing out dorm space for quarantines, sticking reminder dots six feet apart on sidewalks, overhauling ventilation systems and crafting public health campaigns centered around feisty mask-wearing mascots. But as cases of the coronavirus have popped up on campuses, forcing some schools to empty their dorms or switch to virtual classes, one factor cannot be ignored: Students like to party. And good luck reining that in. College presidents, student leaders and local officials are trying a variety of approaches. Some — like the University of Maryland’s president — are dropping by popular bars near campus to hand out masks to students outside and remind them to stay safe. Others are moving to shut down socializing altogether, or berating fraternities who host parties. Others have gone so far as to kick students out for violating rules. All of this has created new tension over who really is to blame. Some of the penalties and scoldings have infuriated students, who argue that administrators should be held accountable if the virus spreads on a campus that they have chosen to reopen in the middle of a pandemic. “I don’t think they’ve ever truly owned up to the fact that it was a bad idea from the start,” said Zack Jenio, a junior at North Carolina State University, which announced less than two weeks into the semester that it was pivoting to online classes. When West Virginia University temporarily shifted classes online this month, President E. Gordon Gee blamed some students’ “selfish decisions” for a spike in cases. “If the safety protocols had been followed and large gatherings had not been held by students with reckless disregard of their fellow students and community members,” Gee wrote in a recent note to campus, “we may not be in this situation.” This week, WVU announced it would resume some in-person instruction Monday, and praised students who had followed safety guidelines. The school also said about 120 students face coronavirus-related sanctions. Of those, 24 students were suspended and one was expelled and, according to student code, would not receive a refund of tuition and fees. At many schools, the number of coronavirus cases has stayed low thus far even with


Fauci finally loses his patience with Rand Paul

to coronaviruses that are common cold do not cross-react with the covid-19,” Fauci said. As has been the case before — and as Fauci reinforced — Paul’s claims are indeed highly questionable. New York did have a terrible outbreak, but it was also among the earliest, before much of the country embraced the measures Paul questions the necessity of. New York adopted some of the toughest measures, and it now has the third-lowest per-capita case rate among the 50 states. As for whether that is because of herd immunity? Redfield did indeed say at the same hearing that preliminary results of a government study show that “more than 90 percent of the population remains susceptible.” He added that the highest rate of total infection over the course of the outbreak in any state was 24 percent. There are divergent views about just how many infections are needed before herd immunity is achieved, but estimates have generally trended upward, given the coronavirus’s transmissibility, to as much as 65 to 70 percent. Paul suggested that New York might actually be close to that, if you add those who have been infected to those with preexisting immunity through cross-reactivity. Firstly, his math is off; it would actually get you to about the mid-50s. And secondly, studies on cross-reactivity don’t support Paul’s theory. Fauci didn’t cite a specific study, but a study published last week found that “infection with endemic [human coronaviruses] produces little cross-reactivity” to viruses such as the current coronavirus. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University, said it’s far from proven that people, even if they have cross-reactive T cells, will actually benefit from it – much less be immune to the coronavirus. “It’s definitely a huge stretch to say that because 20 percent have been infected and this other percentage of people have these T cells that that much of the population is immune,” Rasmussen said, adding that what Paul said represents “a total misunderstanding of how herd immunity works.” Eric Topol, the director and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, said: “While there are a few reports of cross-reactivity of T cells (common cold coronaviruses and covid-19), there aren’t neutralizing antibodies (the main defense) or any evidence that this cross-reactivity is playing an important protective role and helping us get to a herd immunity of 70 percent or greater of the population protected." This post has been updated.


Trump’s TikTok deal shows how trade with China is woven into the American DNA

more on the business that would grow out of peopling the deserts it traversed, than on the through traffic,” one Union Pacific executive later wrote. (This was partly because the Suez Canal also opened in 1869, creating a faster all-water route for commerce between Asia and Europe.) This apparent failure did little to dent American enthusiasm for Chinese trade. Neither did White Americans’ rising xenophobia toward Chinese immigrants, which culminated in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Just a year later, in 1883, residents of St. Paul, Minn., celebrated the completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad with a parade that stretched for 15 miles. Marchers proudly passed through the Chinese Arch, beneath the words “NPRR, the connecting link between China and St. Paul." Other railroads quickly followed: Great Northern, completed in 1893, named its flagship train “the Oriental Limited,” an American version of Europe’s “Orient Express,” and built two steamships to provide continuing transpacific service from its Seattle wharves. Even Milwaukee Road, the last Transcontinental Railroad completed, in 1909, marketed itself as “the Modern Road to the Ancient East." Trans-Pacific freight still rides these rails, often in shipping containers, the standardized metal boxes that carry most of the world’s commerce. The Port of Los Angeles, for example, is the Western Hemisphere’s busiest container port and China is its most valuable trading partner. In 2019, the Port of L.A. moved $128 billion worth of cargo to or from China, worth more than its trade with the next four countries on the list — combined. Freight trains funnel American products into Los Angeles for export; the same trains fan out across the country distributing containers loaded with Asian imports. The long history of U.S. engagement with China remains etched into the nation’s landscape, in the shape and form of the American railway network. Nineteenth-century Americans seized on the railroad as a new technology to build a more interconnected global economy. Despite the racist and nativist ideas held by many White Americans at the time, they recognized investing in global trade would ultimately bring the United States economic and political power. China has clearly absorbed this lesson: Today, its Belt and Road Initiative funds construction of transportation infrastructure in other countries to benefit its own economy. While an earlier generation of American politicians and entrepreneurs built rails reaching out toward the Pacific Ocean and China beyond, the Trump administration repeatedly tries to build walls.


Which college football conferences are playing and who’s still on the sidelines?

After the 2020 college football season once seemed in jeopardy, all five major conferences will play this fall. The Big Ten and Pac-12 both postponed their season Aug. 11, but both leagues reversed course a month later. The Big Ten will begin playing in late October, while the Pac-12 starts in November. The other five conferences in the top-tier Football Bowl Subdivision will also play this fall. The Mountain West and Mid-American previously announced postponements, but they both reversed those decisions in late September, following the lead of the Big Ten and Pac-12. The novel coronavirus, which has killed at least 202,000 people in the United States, shuttered college sports in March, canceling the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments and abruptly ending many athletes’ careers. Schools and their leagues prepared for a return to competition this fall, and football players arrived on campus in June for voluntary workouts. But as the season approached, and the nation had yet to contain the virus, decision-makers worried about whether they could safely hold a season. The availability of tests and advanced cardiac screening has eased some of those concerns. The ACC and Big 12 have already begun playing, and the SEC will join them in late September. While fan attendance is either limited or not allowed, this fall will somewhat resemble a typical college football season. Here’s what you need to know: As of now, only three of the 130 FBS teams will not play football this fall. The Mid-American Conference was the first FBS conference to postpone the season and the last to reverse that decision. But now all 10 conferences will play with varying start dates. In August, more than 50 teams did not have plans to play this fall, but the Big Ten, Pac-12, Mountain West and Mid-American all reversed their initial decisions to postpone. Old Dominion, a member of Conference USA, announced that it will not play this fall, even though its league is holding the football season as scheduled. Two independents — the University of Connecticut and New Mexico State — decided against playing sports this fall. After all the Power Five conferences adjusted their 2020 schedules, independents scrambled to find opponents. The University of Massachusetts postponed its fall season Aug. 11, but the school reversed the decision after the Big Ten announced plans to return to play. UMass, which does not compete in a college football


China is building vast new detention centers for Muslims in Xinjiang

eat pork and drink alcohol; to renounce their religion and pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party; and to undergo what they have described as systematic brainwashing. Women have been forcibly sterilized and the Uighur birthrate has plummeted. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called China's treatment of Uighur Muslims the "stain of the century," and the administration is reportedly weighing a declaration of China's actions as genocide. Xinjiang authorities did not respond to repeated requests for an interview about the development of the detention system. But Xinjiang government chairman Shohrat Zakir, the top Uighur official in the party structure in the region, has said that the "reeducation camps" were needed to combat violent religious extremism and that the "graduates" now faced brighter futures. In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said this month that suggestions that China was persecuting Uighurs had been "concocted by some anti-China forces" and were "another farce designed to smear and discredit China." The shift is part of a chilling new reality here in Kashgar, the traditional capital of Uighur culture, which has been under strict Communist Party controls for three years coinciding with the reeducation campaign. With the population cowed, authorities recently appear to have let up a bit, secure in their control of Kashgar. The "convenience" police stations that used to monitor movements at every major intersection have gone. Airport-style security checks at markets and in underpasses have largely disappeared, with only metal detectors in use. Around Kashgar, Uighurs were palpably afraid to talk to foreign visitors, waving away reporters before they could ask questions. The Old City, once an atmospheric oasis on the Silk Road, has been turned into a theme park for Han Chinese tourists, complete with light displays featuring Mandarin Chinese characters and kitschy settings that are perfect for selfies. But closer observation reveals that none of the men in this Muslim city have beards and none of the women wear hijab. The men chopping fruit and meat in the bazaar use knives that are chained to their stalls. Many of the historic buildings remain, but an alarming number have padlocked doors and bear signs reading "empty house." There are no working mosques — they have been turned into cafes or museums or closed entirely — and the landmark yellow-tiled Id Kah Mosque stands as a lonely monument to the reeducation campaign. The Post reporter who visited the mosque on


Friendship Heights, once known as a hub for high-end shopping, is struggling as the pandemic accelerates an exodus of retailers

take years to recover and revitalize the area after this most recent wave of departures. Others say the exits present an opportunity for the area to reinvent itself. “The pandemic may at least provide the impetus for some change,” said Jonathan Bender, who represents the area as a member of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission. “Hopefully the owners of these places will be thinking about more radical change.” When Mazza Gallerie opened in 1977, developers predicted the enclosed 60-store shopping mall would become the center of a new downtown in Northwest Washington. It would be the District’s version of Fifth Avenue or Rodeo Drive. Neiman Marcus was one of the first stores to open at the four-story mall, bringing a certain cachet to the capital region. It also was a fierce competitor to Lord & Taylor, which had already built a loyal clientele down the block since opening in 1959. Mazza’s marble structure was built atop Metro’s Red Line. The delayed construction of the subway station in the late 1970s caused massive traffic snarls and, some said, contributed to setbacks for the new shopping mall. A year after opening, Mazza Gallerie was unable to fill spaces, and merchants complained that sales in the center were disappointing. The long-troubled 294,000-square-foot retail center was sold in 1997 and again in 2004 and 2017. It was sold this August in a foreclosure auction for $38 million — less than half of what it was purchased for three years earlier. The Metro station’s opening in 1984, along with the shopping district’s proximity to the region’s highways — roughly four miles from the Capital Beltway — did help attract retailers to the area in the decades that followed. In 2005, the Collection at Chevy Chase, on the Maryland side in Montgomery County, opened with a tenant lineup that included Dior, Gucci and Louis Vuitton. Discount retailers on the D.C. side of the border added bargain hunters to the mix of shoppers. Jeffrey Slavin, mayor of the nearby town of Somerset in Montgomery County, said residents lament the lack of such services as a 24-hour pharmacy, a convenience store and a hardware store. Although retailers have come and gone over the years, Slavin said, the area feels a lot more deserted these days. “It’s a complete disaster,” Slavin said. “This is one of the most sought-after neighborhoods in the United States. The demographics are amazing. It’s very


You can’t get the flu from a flu shot. Here’s why.

body is working hard to fight the flu. This is particularly dangerous in older adults, young children, and those whose immune systems aren’t working well, such as those receiving chemotherapy or transplant recipients. Historically, The cornerstone of flu prevention is vaccination. The CDC recommends that everyone 6 months of age and older who does not have contraindications to the vaccine, receive the flu shot. And just as the polio vaccine won’t give a child polio, the flu vaccine will not cause the flu. That’s because the flu vaccine is made with inactive strains of the flu virus, which are not capable of causing the flu. That said, some people may feel sick after they receive the flu shot, which can lead to thinking they got sick from the shot. But feeling under the weather after a flu shot is actually a positive. It can be a sign that your body’s immune response is working. What happens is this: When you receive the flu shot, your body recognizes the inactive flu virus as a foreign invader. This is not dangerous; it causes your immune system to develop antibodies to attack the flu virus when exposed in the future. This natural immune response may cause some people to develop a low-grade fever, headache or overall muscle aches. These side effects can be mistaken for the flu but are likely the body’s normal response to vaccination. And the good news is these natural symptoms are short-term side effects compared to the flu, which can last much longer and is more severe. It is estimated that less than 2 percent of people who get a flu shot will develop a fever. Also, people often confuse being sick with a bad cold or stomach flu with having influenza. Influenza symptoms can include a fever, chills, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body aches, fatigue and headaches. Cold symptoms can be similar to the flu but are typically milder. The stomach flu, or gastroenteritis, can be caused by several different bacteria or viruses. Symptoms of gastroenteritis involve nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Some people do get the flu after they have received a flu shot, but that is not from the shot. It can happen for a couple of reasons. First, they could have been exposed to the flu before they had the shot. It can take up to two weeks after receiving the flu shot to


Skywatch: What’s happening in the heavens in October

October’s nights thrive as a cosmic carnival featuring a bright Mars and Venus, the chummy duo Jupiter and Saturn, meteors made from Halley’s comet and a blue moon grand finale. As the carnival opens, Mars seems a red candied apple in our evening heavens. Easily find Earth’s bright neighboring planet Oct. 1, rising over the eastern horizon about 7:30 p.m. It’s guarded by the full harvest moon a bit to the right. The portly moon brushes up against the Red Planet Oct. 2, and the moon next meets Mars on Oct. 29. The ruddy Red Planet, in the constellation Pisces, begins the month at -2.5 magnitude (very bright) and grows slightly brighter to -2.6 magnitude at mid-month. Mars dims slightly to about -2.5 at month’s end, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. Mars reaches its closest approach to Earth on Oct. 6, when it will be 38.6 million miles away. It will not get this close again until 2035, according to NASA. On Oct. 13, Mars and the sun — from Earth’s perspective — are opposite each other. Thus, Mars reaches opposition. Jupiter and Saturn play the dynamic duo — the two large gaseous planets are destined to be sky-gazing treasures for the rest of the year. Find them now after dusk, relatively high above the horizon in the southern sky. But which planet is which? Easy: Jupiter is the brighter object at -2.3 magnitude (bright), and Saturn is the much dimmer 0.5 magnitude. Both loiter close to the teapot-shaped constellation Sagittarius, but bright Jupiter is closest to the teapot’s handle. As autumn progresses, Jupiter and Saturn will inch closer to each other in the night heavens until Dec. 21, the winter solstice, when they will be 0.1 degree apart. It will be their closest conjunction since 1623, according to the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Early-morning dog walkers may appreciate Venus as another luminous spot in the carnival. Look to the east before sunrise Oct. 1 to see the effervescent Venus slightly above the bright star Regulus at the front of the constellation Leo, the Lion. A few mornings later, you might notice that Venus will be slightly below Regulus. Venus is easily seen at a bright -4.1 magnitude, according to the observatory. Ever the social butterfly, the waning crescent moon visits Venus on Oct. 13, and the barely visible moon appears to pass bright Venus on Oct. 14.


More women gain ground in ultramarathons, other long-distance races

35 percent of races between the marathon and up to 50 miles. That percentage drops to 25 percent and below at about the 100k and longer mark. “This is one of the confounding factors when figuring out why females excel at longer distances,” Tiller says. “It’s likely that the type of females who choose these events are super tough and quick to begin with, so it’s self selecting and maybe not a fair comparison of males and females” since so many more men of mixed abilities are competing in these races. Paul Ronto, one of the researchers on the ultra-events analysis, says he agrees. Ronto says his study looked at averages, which doesn’t equate to the best women being better than best men. “On average, the fields are about 20 percent female and 80 percent male,” he says. “The women who toe the line are better prepped and professional athletes, where some of the men in the field are less competitive and more experiential in their approach.” Beat Knechtle, a professor of general medicine at the University of Zurich, in Switzerland, has conducted several studies to try to discern whether the female winners in these recent long races are outliers or indicators of a growing trend. “You need to include all women and men in an analysis to make a conclusion about gender differences,” he says. “Looking only at winners or top athletes can lead to a selection bias.” His 2015 study looked at the performance differences between men and women in 50-mile to 3,100-mile ultramarathons. His sampling of 128,000 finishers (101,000-plus men and 26,000-plus women) concluded that overall, men were still faster than women by 17 to 20 percent for all those distances. Still, he says, “women can close the gap to men with increasing age and depending on the race distance,” although more studies are needed to show that. “There are fundamental physiological differences [with men] that will always put women at a disadvantage,” Hunter says in an email. “On average, males have larger hearts, more muscle mass, less essential fat to carry and greater concentrations of hemoglobin (oxygen carrying capacity by the blood). All these factors will provide a performance advantage of close to 10 percent-12 percent. “For these reasons, [even if many women can outperform many males], the best male theoretically should be able to outperform the best female and that is what is typically seen


How the pandemic has affected abortion rules around the world

case argued that classifying abortion as a crime “violates the fundamental rights of women and health personnel.” The pandemic provided an opening, Coral said. “Precisely because we are living this pandemic and the pandemic is exacerbating access to essential health services, we need to ensure access now,” she said. Before the pandemic, women in England, Wales and Scotland could visit a clinic for a consultation and for medically induced abortions, there or at home. Under emergency legislation in late March, in force for the next two years, the same service can now be provided entirely online. No ultrasound is needed in most cases, and pills are sent to homes. “Great Britain completely transformed its service,” said Abigail Aiken, an associate professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin who has studied demand for self-managed abortions in the United States and Europe during the pandemic. “The outcomes of these abortions tend to be very good, in terms of, yes, they work and, yes, they are safe.” Aiken’s research analyzed demand for Women on Web’s services in eight European countries: Five countries saw significant increases, while England was the only country where requests decreased. She attributed this to women having their needs met through the formal health-care network. “If the outcomes of these abortions are just as good as the medical model we had before, why not make this the status quo?” she said. In Northern Ireland, the coronavirus was a “quirk in the system” that served as the final push for implementing services, said Dawn Purvis of Alliance for Choice, an abortion advocacy group there. Last year, the British Parliament ruled that Northern Ireland’s highly restrictive abortion laws contravened Britain’s human rights obligations. By March 31, it said, Northern Ireland’s devolved government had to make abortion services available. Before that, those seeking one were forced to travel to elsewhere in the United Kingdom. The rollout was rocky. Abortion remains contentious in Northern Ireland, and the conservative Democratic Unionist Party strongly opposes the procedure. Activists accused the health minister of stalling implementation, leading to a brief period when women had to travel by ferry to England for abortions after airlines cut services. By mid-April, medical professionals offered abortions as required. Still, Purvis said she worries about “the most vulnerable women” — like those who are poor, migrants or caught in abusive relationships. “The coronavirus restrictions have enabled some, but


Panda cub more than a month old, seems healthy, zoo said.

By now, they seem to have a system at the National Zoo for learning what’s up with their newborn giant panda cub. On Friday, its mother stepped away from the den, and keepers again went into action. In the brief minutes before protective parent Mei Xiang returned, keepers got a read on the cub’s length, girth and weight. Born a little more than a month ago, it seems to be growing as healthy newborns do. Mature pandas have a plumpness about them, and based on Friday’s report, it appeared that the cub possessed an increasingly rotund shape. Measuring about 12.5 inches around, the cub has a circumference that nearly matches its 13.9 inches length (two-inch tail included). Since the last weigh-in Sept. 19, it has gained about 50 percent in bulk, increasing from two pounds to three pounds. The cub was born Aug. 21 in what keepers described as a kind of miracle given its mother’s age. Its gender remains unknown. But an answer may come soon, the zoo said. In a previous exam, a cheek was swabbed, and the DNA obtained is being studied. A nonspecialist can only speculate on whether what goes on when the mother panda wanders off ultimately becomes part of the cub’s subconscious memory. But a lot does occur. On Sept. 19, the zoo said veterinarians ran a battery of tests. They listened to its heart and lungs, palpated its stomach, tested its suckle reflex and moved its limbs to assess the development of its bones and muscles. It also seems unclear whether Mei Xiang knows what is happening in her brief absences or how happy she would be if she knew. During the Sept. 19 exam, the zoo said, the cub gave a particularly loud squeal. It caught Mom’s attention. She headed back to the den, and, according to the zoo staff, they ended the exam and replaced the cub.


U.S. restricts tech exports to China’s biggest semiconductor manufacturer in escalation of trade tensions

The Trump administration has issued new restrictions on U.S. technology exports to China’s biggest semiconductor manufacturer, warning that the exports could benefit the Chinese military. The Commerce Department on Friday notified U.S. companies that they will now need a license to export certain technology to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., or SMIC, according to a copy of the agency’s letter reviewed by The Washington Post. The letter said the licensing regime will be in place “pending the U.S. government’s review of SMIC and its subsidiaries.” The Pentagon earlier this month said the Trump administration was considering adding SMIC to the Entity List, a trade blacklist that would block U.S. technology sales unless companies receive a license. The Commerce Department “has determined that exports to SMIC or its subsidiaries, including those listed above, may pose an unacceptable risk of diversion to a military end use in the People’s Republic of China pending the U.S. government’s review of SMIC and its subsidiaries,” said the letter, which was reported earlier by the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. SMIC and other chip manufacturers depend on U.S. software and chip-making machinery to produce semiconductors. The Commerce Department declined to comment on the letter but said it is “constantly monitoring and assessing any potential threats to U.S. national security and foreign policy interests” and “will take appropriate action as warranted.” Zoe Zheng, a spokeswoman for SMIC, said the company has “no relationship with the Chinese military and does not manufacture for any military end-users or end-uses.” A report last month by SOS International, a defense contractor in Reston, Va., said that SMIC has a variety of ties to China’s defense sector, including an ongoing relationship with CETC, a state-owned developer of military electronics. SMIC has helped CETC test new manufacturing technologies and has used CETC technologies in its own manufacturing, according to the report. SOS also said Chinese military researchers have disclosed in research papers using SMIC technology to manufacture chips. Restricting U.S. tech exports has become a favorite Trump administration tool to counter China’s rise as a technology and military power and to punish Chinese entities for alleged human rights abuses. The Entity List, overseen by the Commerce Department, now includes more than 300 Chinese companies. The Trump administration has previously used it against Chinese telecom company Huawei, firms engaged in alleged human rights violations in China’s Xinjiang region and most recently against Chinese


After weeks of chaos, a slow return to in-person classes and wide-scale testing bring some stability to D.C.-area universities

and reported 212 positives, President Darryll J. Pines told state lawmakers Sept. 16. The success of testing encouraged Pines to resume face-to-face instruction Sept. 14. “It’s good because you have in-person contact with people,” Alexa Polinsky, a U-Md. freshman from Scarsdale, N.Y., said after Sherburne’s public speaking class. “But you have to be cautious.” Buckets of cleaning wipes sit outside classrooms for students to disinfect their seats before and after class. In Sherburne’s classroom, every fourth seat was open for a student. The rest were blocked with yellow tape. “I feel they’re very compliant,” Sherburne said. She prefers teaching in person because there’s value in interpersonal connections. “I’ve been pleased with their willingness to follow the rules.” But reopening campus hasn’t come without challenges. More than 200 U-Md. students were told not to attend face-to-face classes, report to in-person jobs or visit their friends after 23 students in their residence hall contracted the coronavirus. Thirty-five student-athletes tested positive for the virus earlier this month as the athletics department announced the resumption of Big Ten football. The virus continues to spread on the campus. More than 6,500 tests administered between Sept. 20 and Sept. 26 produced 73 positive results, according to the most recent data available. An additional 87 students and employees who were tested off campus reported contracting the virus during the same week. More than 60 percent of quarantine housing is in use, and the university is preparing three additional empty dorms to house sick students in case more beds are needed. “Obviously, you know, we don’t want anybody to get the virus, but that’s impossible,” Pines told members of the U-Md. student government at a virtual meeting on Wednesday. “But our numbers are fairly low when you compare us to any university of our size, public, in the Big Ten [Conference].” The climbing caseloads have raised fears among essential workers on campus, including housekeepers, facilities staff and bus drivers. Their union has clamored for more protective equipment and mandatory testing. Members recently protested on campus and called on administrators to negotiate new safety standards. Crystal Foy, a 29-year-old housekeeper, said she worries daily about contracting the virus while cleaning surfaces in two academic buildings. On Thursday, the union distributed 3,000 KN-95 masks to workers “due to the administration’s continued failure to protect staff working on campus,” leaders said. At Catholic University, the sole university in the District with


Hurricanes near U.S. coast forecast to worsen and multiply due to global warming

it strengthened and caused disastrous flooding in several southern states. “Frontal origins of tropical cyclones are not that unusual, but four times so far this season is unusually often,” Ryan Truchelut, chief meteorologist at WeatherTiger, a private weather forecasting service, wrote in an email, referring to storms with nontropical origins. “The culprit is much warmer than average waters in the western Atlantic, coupled with generally lower than average wind shear in the same area driven by the tilt into La Niña” (a periodic weather system that creates favorable conditions for hurricanes).” The warming water Truchelut refers to is largely a result of climate change, the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that has heated the oceans 0.41 degrees Celsius during the last 50 years. Warm water is the main fuel for tropical storms and hurricanes. While it’s impossible to predict future trends from a single hurricane season, scientists can take historical and other data and run models to get a glimpse of what the future may bring. That’s what Kerry Emanuel, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, did in a new peer-reviewed study in the American Meteorological Society’s “Journal of Climate.” The study found that the probability has increased for future storm generation off the North American coast. Emanuel, a leading authority on hurricanes, has been modeling climate change’s impact on tropical cyclones for three decades. In the study, Emanuel used nine climate models from the latest generation of a global modeling project called CMIP6, coordinated by the World Climate Research Program. In a process called “downscaling,” he tightened the spatial resolution of hurricanes by embedding a specialized model used to forecast them. When he ran the resulting program, it showed how hurricane characteristics evolved as carbon was added to the atmosphere at the rate of 1 percent annually. The results “show an increase in both the frequency and severity of tropical cyclones, robust across the models downscaled, in response to increasing greenhouse gases,” the study says, noting a particularly strong increase off the coast of North America. Although the majority of storms in the study did not make landfall, those that did were exceptionally powerful and potentially destructive. The storms in the study also showed an increased potential to stall over a specific area, a scenario that can lead to flooding rains and destructive winds, which occurred with hurricanes Harvey in 2017, Florence in 2018,


Trump’s refusal to commit to relinquishing power is chilling

Regarding the Sept. 24 news article “Trump will not commit to peaceful transition”: Perhaps it is a sign of these times. A president of the United States says he may not respect the outcome of the election and cannot guarantee a peaceful transfer of power, and his statement does not even make the front page of The Post. “Get rid of the ballots, and you’ll have a very — we’ll have a very peaceful, there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation,” our president said on Wednesday. At a time when we are watching Republicans in the Senate flex their raw political muscle because they are technically within the legal bounds of the Constitution, if not morally so, who can doubt that this president isn’t feverishly considering ways to suppress and contest the vote, and ultimately stay in power through any thin legal means? This is chilling. Now is the time for The Post and media outlets of all stripes to give this front-page attention, day after day, until influential Republicans take this seriously. Now is the time for people of good character who support the president to let him know there is a line we cannot cross in this democracy, and the public will not tolerate him crossing it. Steve Raabe Asked by a reporter This statement should shock any patriotic American, whether Democrat, Republican or independent, who treasures our nation’s democratic ideals and our system of selecting our leaders — even with its imperfections. All of us, no matter what our political persuasion, must repudiate this threat to nullify the coming election. But especially, members of the president’s own party who love their country must stand up and speak out. Now, before the election, Republican leaders must make it clear they will uphold our electoral process and reject any attempt by the president to subvert it. Paul Fleisher Read more letters to the editor.


’You’re basically right next to the nuclear reactor.’

what they’re going through. I try to think about something positive — a positive expectation. Mostly they’re unconscious on the vent, but each day for an hour or two they get what we call a sedation holiday, which means we bring down their medications so we can check on their baseline level of consciousness and see how they’re doing on their own. In other words, for a little while, they might wake up. They can’t talk with the tube in, but I have seen a few patients before write messages on a piece of paper. “Vent?” Or: “Surgery?” Or: “How much longer?” Usually, before this, patients would be on a vent for three to five days. Now we’re seeing 14 to 21. Most of these people have acute respiratory distress syndrome. There’s inflammation, scar tissue, and fluid building up in the lungs, so oxygen can’t diffuse easily. No matter how much oxygen you give them, it can’t get through. It’s never enough. Organs are very sensitive to low oxygen. First comes kidney failure, then liver failure, and then brain tissue becomes compromised. Immune systems stop working. There’s a look most people get, called mottling, where the skin turns red and patchy when you only have a few hours left. We have a few at that point. Some have been converted to “do not resuscitate.” In between intubations, I’ll sit in my call room and watch the monitors. I can see all of the patients’ vitals and check on how they’re doing. We’ve had some successes. A younger patient came off the vent earlier this week and just got sent home. The staff at this hospital is amazing. Even so, it usually goes the other way. I’m looking at the monitor right now, and there’s one patient who isn’t going to make it through the night. Three others are tipping toward the edge. It’s a powerless feeling, watching someone die. The oxygen level drops, the heart rate drops, the blood pressure drops. These patients are dying on the ventilator, and sometimes when they take away the body, the tube is still in the airway. eli.saslow@washpost.com Read more from Voices from the Pandemic More Coronavirus coverage Coronavirus Newsletter: Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked in the newsletter are free to access. How to help: Your community FAQ: What you need to know about coronavirus


The Technology 202: Trump administration dealt temporary legal blow with TikTok ruling

last November after regulators found thousands of instances where drivers posed as Uber drivers to pick up customers, Alistair MacDonald at The Wall Street Journal reports. The company won an appeal allowing it to continue to operate, but now the court says it's fit to operate under an 18-month-license. The court found Uber still breached local regulations, but reduced the occurrence of breaches and hadn't hid them from regulators. "This decision is a recognition of Uber’s commitment to safety,” the company said. London is one of Uber's biggest markets, but it's faced resistance from local regulators who have refused to give the company a permanent license. The new rule will require U.S. companies to get a license before exporting anything to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., China’s largest maker of computer chips, The move comes after the Commerce Department determined technology exports to SMIC could end up being used by the Chinese military. The push against SMIC also comes as the White House tries to maintain the United States' position as a world leader in chipmaking, an industry the Chinese government is heavily investing in. Most major chip makers use some U.S. technology. The White House has taken similar steps against Chinese telecom giant Huawei, which it has said could help Beijing spy on users of its hardware. Huawei denies the charges. The restrictions will apply to all Google advertising platforms including YouTube and could last a week or more, Google told Brian Fung at CNN. The restriction shows how tech companies are tightening their policies in advance of what could be a long and messy road to a final election result. Google's ban will cover state, local and federal races and apply to all advertisers, not just political groups and candidates. “Given the likelihood of delayed election results this year, when polls close on November 3, we will pause ads referencing the 2020 election, the candidates, or its outcome,” Google spokeswoman Charlotte Smith said in a statement. “This is a temporary measure, and we'll notify advertisers when this policy is lifted.” The announcement follows Facebook's pledge last week to block advertisements declaring a winner of the election before results are officially declared. Facebook will also limit any new political ads the week of the election. How Work Became an Inescapable Hellhole (Wired) Inside eBay’s Cockroach Cult: The Ghastly Story of a Stalking Scandal (The New York Times) Someone hire her:


Coronavirus cases are likely to rebound in the Washington region, officials and experts say

Coronavirus cases dropped to their lowest level since mid-July in the greater Washington region last week, but keep your mask on. Infections will probably rebound this fall and winter, and could force authorities to reverse course and tighten restrictions on public activities, officials and health experts said. Six months after the virus erupted in our area, its persistence has frustrated early hopes that shutdowns and other measures would have mostly contained it by now. The region has fared better than much of the country in battling the disease. But it has failed to drive down infections as much as the Northeast and many foreign countries. “The reality is it’s going to get worse,” said Boris Lushniak, dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Health and an acting U.S. surgeon general during the Obama administration. “The real question is how bad is it going to get.” Fairfax County Health Director Gloria Addo-Ayensu said: “Pandemics can take a long time. Typically some pandemics that we know about have taken 18 months, and sometimes more. We still have a lot of days ahead of us.” Cases are expected to rise partly because colder weather means people will spend more time indoors, where the virus spreads more easily. Upticks are already occurring in some states and Europe. “Covid fatigue,” or public weariness with following health guidelines, also is a factor. Local health departments have increased their capacity to conduct coronavirus tests and carry out contact tracing, two critical tools in fighting the pandemic. But the benefit is limited if people don’t get tested, resist cooperating with contact tracers or engage in risky behavior. “We consistently are seeing large family gatherings, large social gatherings, and different activities like that being associated with cases that have tested positive,” Montgomery Health Officer Travis A. Gayles said. “We are trying to retool our messaging . . . to remind people why it’s important to adhere to the rules.” Gayles is concerned by a drop since late July and August in the number of Maryland residents getting tested for the novel coronavirus. “Testing is down, in spite of there being capacity to support those coming in,” Gayles said. The D.C. area is having a mixed experience with contact tracing. That’s the process in which people who test positive are asked to isolate for 10 days and identify others with whom they have come in close contact. The


Wealth gaps between Black and White families persisted even at the height of the economic expansion

emergency, compared to just $14,400 for the typical Black family and $14,900 for the typical Hispanic family. “These gaps in emergency savings are particularly relevant in light of the covid-19 pandemic and associated job losses. Because the 2019 [Survey of Consumer Finances] data were collected just before the onset of the pandemic, these gaps in savings suggest large disparities in families’ ability to weather the pandemic,” according to a Federal Reserve staff research note attached to the survey. At the same time, families near the bottom of the income and wealth spectra saw substantial gains in their median and mean net worth between 2016 and 2019. As the unemployment rate ticked down to 3.5 percent by the end of 2019, the benefits of a tight labor market were finally reaching communities still climbing back from the Great Recession. (The last time the Fed conducted this extensive survey was 2016.) The current recession has put sharp focus on how the Fed can narrow persistent racial and economic gaps and rebuild an economy that doesn’t leave marginalized communities behind. But it’s unclear how exactly the Fed can use its broad-based tools — be it setting interest rates or hitting an inflation target — to mitigate the country’s racial inequality. Low interest rates, for example, can reduce unemployment and often boost the stock market and asset prices. But those benefits can disproportionately accrue to White Americans who are more likely to hold investments. Last year, about 53 percent of families owned stocks, a slight uptick from 2016, the survey showed. But only about 31 percent of families in the bottom half of the income distribution held stocks last year. For comparison, about 70 percent of families in the upper-middle-income group held stock, and more than 90 percent of families in the top decile held stock. White families are also almost three times as likely as Black families, and more than four times as likely as Hispanic families, to have received an inheritance, strengthening the transfer of wealth from generation to generation. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell and his colleagues often note that job losses since February have disproportionately affected low-income workers, women and workers of color, many of whom work in service-sector jobs that have been slow to return in the middle of the public health crisis. And even as the recovery moves at a quicker pace than some expected, economic gaps


The Cybersecurity 202: Here are five big things election experts are really worried about

it for propaganda and to steal U.S. user data. ByteDance is trying to sell parts of TikTok to a U.S. company. But it's ByteDance insists it will retain majority ownership of the company and its algorithm, but Trump has said he won't approve any deal with ByteDance involved. The legal battle has ratcheted up tensions between the United States and Beijing. The Justice Department, in a filing Friday, accused ByteDance chief executiveZhang Yiming of affirming the company is China is reportedly moving forward with its own list of U.S. technologies to be banned and has floated Apple and Google for potential inclusion in retaliation for the TikTok ban. The latest move would require U.S. companies to get a license before exporting anything to China’s largest maker of computer chips, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., The move comes after the Commerce Department determined technology exports to SMIC could end up being used by the Chinese military.SMIC disputed that, saying the company has “no relationship with the Chinese military and does not manufacture for any military end-users or end-uses." The White House has taken similar steps against Chinese telecom giant Huawei, which it has said could help Beijing spy on users of its hardware. Huawei denies the charges. The push against SMIC also comes as the White House tries to maintain the United States' position as a world leader in chipmaking, an industry the Chinese government is heavily investing in. Most major chip makers use some U.S. technology. But the Kremlin statement, released Friday, made no mention of Russia's long string of cyberattacks against the United States and other nations including Ukraine, The suggestion for a reset comes as Russia faces intense scrutiny over its It seems highly unlikely the White House would sign on to such a deal. “It is hard to take such statements seriously when Russia, China, Iran and others have sought to undermine our election process,’’ John Ullyot, spokesman for the National Security Council, told The Times. “It’s disconcerting to see the president and his chief of staff cast doubt on the integrity of our democracy,” the Obama administration's homeland security secretary said on CBS's “Face the Nation.” There’s also tension within the Trump administration. Earlier in the same program, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows slammed FBI Director More election news: Short of Money to Run Elections, Local Authorities Turn to Private Funds (The New York Times)


Older voters could carry Biden to victory — and it’s not all about covid-19

York Times last month. New York magazine’s Eric Levitz, too, recently suggested that elderly voters have surely noticed that Trump dismisses deaths of older people when he describes the effects of covid-19. (“It affects elderly people,” Trump noted at a rally in Dayton, Ohio, and said young people had little to worry about. “Elderly people with heart problems and other problems.”) “Maybe older Trump-to-Biden supporters are looking for a president who will tell them that their lives have no value and that the Dow’s performance must take precedence over protecting nonentities like themselves from a fatal disease,” Levitz wrote. “But it seems like a risky bet.” Biden’s advantage among seniors, however, predates the pandemic by many months. While Trump’s management of the crisis may have cost him some support, it’s not sufficient to explain the ground he has lost since 2016 among seniors. Data from the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape project, a weekly online survey that I help to manage, shows that Biden has led Trump among registered seniors since last summer: Long before the words “novel coronavirus” entered the public consciousness, Biden had a lead of about five points within this cohort. On this score, the conventional wisdom appears to be wrong. To be fair to those promoting the covid-19 narrative, that pre-pandemic five-point lead is smaller than the lead Biden holds in Nationscape data today. At present, he leads among seniors by about nine points. (That’s higher, incidentally, than Democrats’ lead among older voters generally: Nationally, Democrats running for the House currently lead by four points among registered seniors, up from a two-point lead in late February.) It’s certainly plausible that Trump’s handling of covid-19 has widened Biden’s advantage, although so much else has happened over this period — including an economic recession caused by the lockdowns and one of the broadest protest movements in American history — that isolating causal effects is difficult. But what explains the trend that predates covid-19, which differs from patterns in recent presidential elections? Is it possible that seniors are simply anti-Trump — and ready for a change, whomever the opposing candidate might be? That doesn’t appear to be the case. Within Nationscape, we also consistently ask respondents how they would vote in a hypothetical race in which Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the runner-up in the primaries, was the Democratic nominee. In contrast with Biden’s nine-point lead with seniors, Sanders is


The pandemic proves we all should know ‘psychological first aid.’ Here are the basics.

health. The prevalence of symptoms of an anxiety disorder was three times as high and symptoms of depression were four times as high in June 2020 than in the second quarter of 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The pandemic’s psychological ripple effects are different from, say, those of natural disasters, which last merely hours or days. “The pandemic is like the never-ending story,” says Everly. “What makes this more psychologically toxic is that we keep receiving new impacts” as resurgences and new outbreaks occur, and more collateral damage to life and work, as we knew them, becomes apparent. Meanwhile, on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis we’re subjected to bad news from multiple directions — not just about the pandemic, the economy and racial issues, but about political scandals, civic tensions, fires, floods, conspiracy theories and more — without the in-person support of friends, extended family and colleagues because of the pandemic. “The world seems more uncertain than ever — uncertainty is a powerful toxin,” Everly says. Fortunately, you can dial down your stress reactivity and come to your own emotional rescue — or that of others — with PFA-based strategies. There are many different models of PFA. The World Health Organization’s approach recommends developing skills that help people feel safe, connected to others, calm and hopeful; feel that they have access to social, physical and emotional support; and feel they are able to help themselves, as individuals and communities. Here’s how to put the actual components of PFA into practice for yourself and those you care about: Address basic bodily needs. As far as your own needs, make a conscious effort to consume nutritious foods, stay hydrated, get enough sleep, do some form of physical activity every day, and avoid using substances such as alcohol or cigarettes to cope, advises Kaushal Shah, a psychiatric researcher at Griffin Memorial Hospital in Norman, Okla., who has done research on PFA. Besides being important for your overall health, these healthy lifestyle practices are a vital part of PFA. “Finding a baseline routine that works for you and maintaining it helps align the body’s equilibrium with your psychological equilibrium,” Shah explains. Avoid further harm. In addition, try to protect yourself from information overload. New research, involving 6,514 adults in the United States, found that people who have higher daily hours of covid-19-related media exposure and exposure to conflicting covid-19


CDC asks 4 states and a city to draft coronavirus vaccine distribution plans

January. In the planning discussions, one of the hottest topics involves freezers. At least one vaccine candidate is expected to require storage at very cold temperatures, about minus-70 degrees Celsius. A top CDC official told state immunization officials Wednesday that states probably won’t be expected to buy special freezers. But if a vaccine is approved by the Food and Drug Administration that requires such cold storage, states should prepare sites for mass vaccination clinics because doctors’ offices aren’t likely to store and administer those shots. It’s possible that the government would sign contracts with other commercial entities to handle the refrigerated storage, the official said. On Friday, the Defense and Health and Human Services departments announced that McKesson Corp. will be a central distributor of covid-19 vaccines and related supplies. The CDC is executing an existing contract option of $178 million with McKesson to support vaccine distribution, an HHS statement said. McKesson also distributed the H1N1 vaccine during the H1N1 pandemic in 2009-2010. McKesson will work under CDC’s guidance to ship covid-19 vaccines to sites where shots will be administered, the statement said. Although President Trump has said repeatedly the military will deliver vaccines, the Defense Department “is not actually going to be distributing or delivering the vaccines itself,” Paul Mango, deputy chief of staff for policy at HHS, told reporters at a briefing Thursday. The Defense Department will handle logistics of manufacturing, including acquisition of raw material, establishing factories and training workers. “With few exceptions, our commercial distribution partners will be responsible for handling all the vaccines,” Mango said in an email Thursday. In some cases, the commercial distributors may provide vaccine to private organizations, such as mobile vaccination units that go to nursing homes, he said. In the months ahead, state and federal officials will need to figure out how to transport and store vaccine, how to identify priority groups who will receive the first doses and how to keep track of individuals who may need to have a second dose, if necessary. North Dakota officials said they have been working for weeks on a plan. In addition to a strategy for vaccinating the general population, they are working with CDC on ways to reach American Indian populations, according to a statement from Molly Howell, North Dakota’s immunization program manager. Native Americans and other communities of color have been disproportionately affected by covid-19, with higher rates of hospitalization


The Health 202: The Trump administration is urging schools to reopen with help from rapid coronavirus tests

a sticking point, as the White House has largely opposed more funding for states and cities. CNN’s Brian Stelter “Well yeah, I’m concerned that sometimes things are said that are really taken either out of context or actually incorrect,” Fauci said. Fauci also told Stelter that most of the coronavirus task force was working together well but that there was an outlier. He appeared to be speaking about Atlas, who has made controversial statements about protecting America through herd immunity and who has questioned the value of mask mandates. The comments come after NBC News reported that Redfield, the CDC director, was overheard on a phone call on a commercial airline saying that “everything he says is false” in reference to Atlas. Atlas told NBC News that all of his communications have been based on “data and science.” That’s as many as people as live in San Jose, Calif.; Volgograd, Russia; or Qom, Iran, The Post reports. The United States has recorded more than 204,000 deaths from the virus and at least 7 million cases. CNN's Jake Tapper: India is on track, however, to overtake the United States, even as doctors in the country report shortages in supplies of oxygen to treat patients. Europe has also seen a surge in cases over the past month. World Health Organization Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan told reporters on Sunday that The WHO has taken steps to ensure vaccines are distributed equally through an initiative known as Covax, which counts the participation of 150 countries with the notable exceptions of China and the United States. The international health organization hopes to have 2 billion doses by the end of 2021. “The number of homicides in 27 cities across the United States was 53 percent higher this summer than in the pre-pandemic summer of 2019, according to an updated analysis by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan research group,” the New York Times reports. The FBI on Monday released statistics showing a 15 percent increase in homicides between 2019 and preliminary data from 2020, constituting “the largest single-year increase on record,” the Times writes. Some crime experts point to pandemic-related mental health and economic stressors, as well as the fact the pandemic makes it harder to implement proven community-based strategies for interrupting cycles of violence. There's also been a decline in the relationship between police and the public in the wake of the killing


Maryland — the state and the university — need to do better on covid-19

I made the difficult decision to stay home this semester because I did not trust that the situation on the University of Maryland’s College Park campus would be under control. The stories I hear from friends living on or near campus confirmed my instincts. Particularly off-campus, there seems to be little to no enforcement of the university’s covid-19 guidelines and many students make reckless decisions that endanger not only other students but also staff, faculty and residents of Prince George’s County. I recognize that I am still one of those privileged enough to have been minimally impacted by the virus. It is heartbreaking and frustrating that while 200,000 Americans — among them nearly 4,000 Marylanders — have died of covid-19, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) calls for restaurants to resume indoor dining at 75 percent capacity [“D.C. adds criteria for Phase 3 of reopenings,” Metro, Sept. 22]. Another matter of concern is that the university still does not require testing at frequent intervals. When we know this virus spreads easily when the infectious are either asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic, how can these policies ever be considered reasonable? As a Maryland resident, I am calling for Mr. Hogan to temporarily re-close nonessential businesses. To do any less is careless and exceedingly risky. As a student at U-Md., I am calling for the administration to mandate frequent testing for those living on or near campus. By implementing sound, science-driven policies, both the university and the state can gradually return to some sense of normalcy and, most importantly, save lives. Colleen Berk Read more letters to the editor.


The appeal of the all-American hamburger knows no boundaries

is a man shaped by several cultures: Born in Addis Ababa, he spent his formative years in Minneapolis before relocating to France for formal culinary training and to start working at Michelin-starred restaurants, including the legendary La Maison Troisgros in Roanne, whose patriarch, Pierre Troisgros, recently died at age 92. Taddesse, in other words, is no stranger to the hamburger. The double decker on his menu — a two-fisted, arm-drip burger with twin patties and a “special sauce” — is Taddesse’s attempt to build his own Big Mac, “to capture that flavor that kind of struck me as a young kid,” says the chef, who earned his own Michelin star at Caviar Russe in New York. I’d suggest grabbing extra napkins for this immersion in joy and sloppiness. But my favorite burger at Mélange goes by the name of the Classic. It’s something of an homage to Taddesse’s professional journey. It starts with a patty formed from three cuts of dry-aged beef: brisket, short rib and shank (though he sometimes substitutes chuck for shank), all from Roseda Farm in Maryland. The key, Taddesse says, is that he doesn’t rely on brisket fat, which renders out too quickly. He prefers fat from the short rib, which Taddesse says has more flavor and melts nice and slow, making for a smashburger that doesn’t shrink like a T-shirt in the wash. Two of the toppings are ideas borrowed from places where Taddesse previously cooked. His brown butter aioli is a modification of a binder/filling he learned to make during an internship at a hotel restaurant in Cannes: an emulsification of brown butter, soft-poached eggs and a little water. Taddesse’s version combines Duke’s mayonnaise and brown butter. The chef’s pickled red onions are a trick that he nicked from the Adour, the Alain Ducasse restaurant inside the St. Regis in New York, where the kitchen used to pickle pearl onions for a lamb dish. The rest of the Classic relies on standard burger toppings — iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, American cheese — although the result is anything but standard. The dry-aged beef concentrates the flavors without tipping over into blue-cheese territory, while the toppings and bun provide all these delightful contrasts: sweet and acidic, soft and crusty, warm and cool. It reminds you how good a burger can be. The pandemic and the birth of his daughter rearranged Robert Aikens’ priorities. Earlier this year, the


Disney lays off 28,000 as coronavirus slams its theme-park business

Disney announced Tuesday that it would lay off 28,000 people across its theme-park division in the United States, demonstrating the devastating toll covid-19 has taken on its core business. About two-thirds of those losing their jobs are part-time employees, the company said. “As heartbreaking as it is to take this action, this is the only feasible option we have in light of the prolonged impact of COVID-19 on our business, including limited capacity due to physical distancing requirements and the continued uncertainty regarding the duration of the pandemic,” Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney’s theme park unit, said in a letter to employees. The company did not reveal what percentage of its workforce that entailed, but it’s believed the U.S. theme parks employ about 200,000 people, which would make the layoffs a workforce reduction of 14 percent. Disney parks in California remain closed while Florida parks, which reopened in July, have been underperforming. The company had furloughed 100,000 employees worldwide at the height of the lockdowns in the spring. Many were brought back when Walt Disney World reopened this summer. Theme parks have taken the brunt of the toll as the virus has limited or scuttled public gatherings. In the most recent April-June quarter, Disney’s theme-park division reported less than a billion dollars in revenue, after taking in nearly $7 billion in the same period in 2019. The division posted a loss of $2 billion over the period. Business has not significantly picked up since. On an earnings call in August, Bob Chapek, the Disney chief executive who previously ran the theme-park division, acknowledged that its Walt Disney World locations in Central Florida have not seen the traffic executives had hoped for when they reopened in July. The parks, he said, had undergone a “higher-than-expected level of cancellations." In response the company cut back the parks’ hours. Walt Disney World in particular relies on travel from other states. Airlines are preparing to cut 35,000 jobs this week as people ground their travel plans. The layoffs came as the company prepared to end its fiscal 2020 on Wednesday; the timing, some Wall Street analyst believe, is not coincidental as Disney seeks to shore up its expenses heading into a new period. In a statement Tuesday, the company partly pointed the finger at California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who has kept bans on large public gatherings in place in his state. The situation,


Our food shopping habits have human and environmental costs. ‘The Secret Life of Groceries’ adds them up.

The modern American supermarket is a marvel. Species from every season and every part of the globe lie in perfectly aligned stacks, cold and fresh. The middle aisles overflow with foods that remain edible for years and are engineered to give maximum immediate pleasure. Supermarkets are a Willy Wonka factory where gloss, abundance and free samples convince us to ignore whatever problems such an opulent feast creates. In “The Secret Life of Groceries,” Benjamin Lorr peers at the dark underbelly of this industry, one that depends on inexhaustible supply. Readers might be primed to hear it: The pandemic has pulled back the curtain on the inflexibility and vulnerability of our food supply chain. Empty shelves, exhausted workers and food rotting in fields while people go hungry are front-page news. Grocery delivery services raise ethical questions about what it means to pay people to take on our risk while also encouraging consumers to buy only what they’ve bought before, as algorithms direct us back to our panic-purchase Oreos instead of broccoli. “The Secret Life of Groceries” is part investigative journalism, part history and part philosophical meditation on how humans transfer meaning to their food choices. “The entire Michael Pollan ethos is, after all, a way of making food a bridge to the past when the world was simple and purer,” Lorr writes. Food is “the perfect stage to resolve all our tensions around consumption.” Lorr explores how the food we buy (never mind whether we actually eat it) is a proxy for our values. And as those values turn into personal choices — as well-meaning as they might be — we are complicit in the cruelties of the broader food system. Lorr rides along with a truck driver who laments that she has no home other than her truck (where she lives with her two dogs), driving ceaselessly back and forth to bring food from distributors to grocery stores for $17,000 per year. He visits the Thai shrimp industry’s victims of human enslavement and witnesses the devastating environmental effects of the country’s seafood farms. You won’t soon forget Lorr’s description of the smell he endured while cleaning the fish display cases when he was an employee at Whole Foods, a job he took to research the book. These stories are pieces of the “dark miracle of the American supermarket” Lorr refers to in the book’s subtitle. Many shoppers want to create


As repression mounts, China under Xi Jinping feels increasingly like North Korea

there is no real judicial process and no recourse for them. But China, like North Korea, is increasingly taking foreign hostages and using journalists as pawns in its political and diplomatic disputes with the United States and its allies. The extent of this trend hit home this month when I was planning a farewell in Beijing. Scrolling through my contacts list on the WeChat messaging app, I realized how many of them had been expelled — like my colleague Gerry Shih and many other American reporters. (The United States has forced dozens of Chinese journalists to leave in retribution.) I felt a pang of sadness when I got to the "M" section. Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, both of whom I know through my work, have been held by China for more than 650 days, retribution for Canada's arrest of a Huawei executive. That's longer than North Korea held Otto Warmbier, the American college student. More recently, it has emerged that Cheng Lei, an Australian journalist who worked for the Chinese state broadcaster's English channel, disseminating China's version of events to the world, was detained last month. She is the single mother of two young children. As if there was any doubt over what Beijing, locked in a diplomatic clash with Australia, was up to, I woke up to news scarcely a week later that two Australian journalists had made a dramatic exit from China after being summoned for interrogation by state security officials, threatened with exit bans and potential detention. It's clear that China now thinks the cost of having foreign correspondents — people who do pesky reporting on human rights abuses — outweighs the benefit of having people to write about what a great destination China is for investment. So I left China this month with a heavy heart. I had already decided to pursue a new opportunity at home in New Zealand before the latest incidents with the Australian journalists. I don't see the situation getting freer or easier for the Chinese people any time soon, nor for the foreign journalists who try to show their audiences back home what it's like to be on the ground in China, for better or for worse. Before I left, an old acquaintance told me about a joke going around China these days: "We used to think North Korea was our past — now we realize it's our future."


Trump’s debts and foreign deals pose security risks, former intelligence officials say

of his companies, seeming contempt for the tax code, discrepancies in his valuations of assets, and potentially illegal practice of paying consulting fees to family members. “All of that goes to how trustworthy a person is to hold highly classified, sensitive material,” Pfeiffer said. The tax records provide a new lens through which to view Trump’s behavior toward foreign autocrats. Trump’s aversion to challenging Russian President Vladimir Putin has been particularly baffling to national security officials. Trump has dismissed evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election, downplayed reports that Russia paid bounties to forces in Afghanistan targeting U.S. soldiers, and this month refused to even address questions about the poisoning of a Russian political activist. Beyond his pursuit of a Trump Tower in the Russian capital, the tax files show that Trump made at least $2.3 million from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Trump has praised Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte for doing an “unbelievable job” in a crackdown on drugs that has killed thousands and been condemned by the State Department. Tax files show that Trump has made millions after licensing his name to a Manila tower 10 years ago. More recently, Trump boasted to journalist Bob Woodward that he “saved” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from severe repercussions from the United States after the CIA concluded that the Saudi royal was complicit in the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Ethics experts and congressional Democrats have repeatedly raised concerns that Trump is using the office to enrich himself, refusing to recuse himself from the family business even as foreign dignitaries and lobbyists flock to his hotels and other properties. Lobbyists funded by Saudi Arabia paid for an estimated 500 nights at Trump’s Washington hotel in 2016 within a month of his election, The Post reported in 2018. Then-Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak patronized the Trump hotel in D.C. in 2017. Officials said that the power of the presidency makes it difficult for U.S. intelligence or national security officials to take any steps to respond to the revelations about Trump and take any steps to minimize risks to security. “My guess is there may be less detail provided about sources and methods” to Trump than to previous presidents, Pfeiffer said. “But presidents, by our norms and the fact that they have been elected, have access to classified information. You can’t take it to zero.”


Arthur Ashkin, Nobel-winning physicist who trapped molecules with light, dies at 98

Arthur Ashkin, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who harnessed the power of light to levitate particles and take hold of living cells, developing “optical tweezers” that emerged as a powerful new tool to probe molecular processes and human diseases, died Sept. 21 at his home in Rumson, N.J. He was 98. His son Michael Ashkin, an artist, confirmed the death but did not know the cause. Dr. Ashkin became the oldest Nobel laureate in history when he earned the physics prize in 2018, at age 96, for inventing optical tweezers more than three decades earlier. He had long ago “given up worrying” about prizes, he said, and saw his record broken just one year later, when John B. Goodenough won the chemistry Nobel at age 97. A longtime researcher at what is now Nokia Bell Labs in New Jersey, Dr. Ashkin was fascinated by an often-overlooked aspect of light, which exerts a relatively weak force known as radiation pressure. After the laser was invented in 1960, he believed that he might be able to use the device to push a microscopic ball with nothing but a tightly focused beam of light. To his delight, forces in the laser actually pushed the ball into the center of the beam and held it there, trapping it in place. His breakthrough, reported in a 1970 paper that was published despite initial skepticism from Bell Labs, marked the first step toward the creation of optical tweezers. The instrument uses “laser beam fingers,” as the Nobel Prize committee put it, to grab atoms, viruses, bacteria and other living cells, and has been credited with paving the way for advances including the development of a malaria blood test and cholesterol-lowering drugs. “Optical tweezers were not an invention, they were a surprise,” Dr. Ashkin’s former colleague David G. Grier, a physicist at New York University, told the New York Times in 2018. “That was a new thought for science, that light can pull. It is revolutionary.” Dr. Ashkin showed that a vertical laser beam could be used to levitate microscopic particles, and partnered with colleagues such as Steven Chu, a future Energy Department secretary and Stanford professor, to demonstrate that atoms could be slowed to a crawl and contained in a field of laser light, which Dr. Ashkin had suggested in his 1970 paper. “To do real physics you have to push to the extreme,” he told the


“Kingdom of Silence”: A Conversation with Director Rick Rowley and Executive Producer Lawrence Wright

Oct. 2 marks the two-year anniversary of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s death at the hands of Saudi operatives. The assassination sparked global outrage in 2018 and a follow up United Nations investigation, which found “sufficient” and “credible” evidence linking Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the murder. “Kingdom of Silence” is a Showtime documentary directed by Emmy-award winner Rick Rowley and executive produced by Alex Gibney, in collaboration with Lawrence Wright, examining the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia as a backdrop to the murder of Khashoggi. Join Washington Post Live on Tuesday, Sept. 29 at 3:00 p.m. ET for a conversation about the documentary with Rick Rowley and Lawrence Wright, hosted by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius.


Documentary probes the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and our complicated relationship with Saudi Arabia

Rating: (3 stars) The shocking subject of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s grisly fate — his 2018 murder and dismemberment at the hands of thugs apparently directed by Saudi Arabian authorities, perhaps as highly placed as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — opens and closes the disturbing documentary “Kingdom of Silence.” There is a suggestion that Khashoggi may have been killed because he had been approached by investigators looking for information about connections between the Saudi government and 9/11. Khashoggi himself was once a close admirer of Osama bin Laden, in his youth, before bin Laden established al-Qaeda. But the reasons behind the death of Khashoggi, who was a Washington Post contributing columnist and critic of the Saudi government, are not the film’s sole subject. Rather, Khashoggi’s assassination is used to bookend a deeper examination of the history of Saudi Arabia’s complex relationship with the United States, which the film posits began with Chevron’s entry into the country to drill, after the discovery of oil there in 1938. From that point, filmmaker Rick Rowley lays out the chronology carefully — if not always in tidy chapters, considering its many twists and turns. During the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan, for instance, the United States and the Saudis together backed the Afghan mujahideen rebels, and all seemed cozy. But then 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 turned out to be Saudi. And bin Laden — a supplier of arms and funds to the mujahideen, like us — was identified as being behind that attack. Things got messy. Throughout this shifting narrative, Khashoggi’s place in the story is also evolving, from an insider with close connections to the Saudi royal family to something of a dissident who often sharply disagreed with its rulers, despite always identifying as a patriot. He was living in what he called self-exile in suburban Washington at the time of his death. “Kingdom of Silence” — the title refers to the insularity and secrecy of rule by the Saudi royal family — is most alarming in its implications about the United States, however, and not the Saudis. The clear message is that we, as a country, have prioritized our strategic and financial relationship with an authoritarian regime “one step below a theocracy,” as one interview subject puts it, over all else, including grotesque human rights violations. That’s made explicit by President Trump: When asked by a reporter why he


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Coronavirus cases hit multiweek lows in D.C. region, but experts fear cold weather could reverse trend

The number of new coronavirus infections this week has fallen to levels last seen in mid-July across the Washington region, although leaders and health officials worry that the return of colder weather could reverse the trend. The rolling seven-day average of new cases in D.C., Maryland and Virginia dropped to 1,293, down from recent peaks above 2,000 about two months ago. All three jurisdictions have recorded multiweek lows in new reported cases in recent days. But health experts cautioned that there’s no guarantee the numbers will continue to fall, as chillier October weather begins to usher outdoor activities indoors. Taison Bell, an assistant professor of medicine specializing in infectious diseases and critical care at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, said the greater Washington region is “in a bit of a steady state” in its number of reported coronavirus cases. The region’s caseload had held steady for several weeks before starting to tick downward about 10 days ago. He also cautioned that the arrival of cooler weather could increase the spread of the virus as people increasingly decide to congregate indoors. Neil J. Sehgal, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, urged residents to consider the pandemic as they make plans for the holidays. They should remember that this is “not the normal holiday season,” he said. Sehgal said progress in some jurisdictions while battling the virus has started to slow, singling out Prince George’s County, where outbreaks have been reported at the University of Maryland in College Park. He said other college towns in the region, including Virginia’s Blacksburg and Charlottesville, also have seen caseloads rise as students go back to school. “We haven’t controlled transmissions,” Sehgal said. “We’re still riding our first wave of the outbreak. We saw a summer dip, but we never stamped it out. There are still chains of transmission in the community.” Short of a vaccine, Sehgal said, recent days are probably “as safe as it’s going to be” in terms of a lowered number of cases in the Washington region, also noting the likelihood of increased spread as the weather turns colder. Still, D.C., Maryland and Virginia have made progress in battling the virus in recent days. The seven-day rolling average of new cases in Washington’s Northern Virginia suburbs stood at 190 on Wednesday, with the region this week notching its lowest average


Man fatally shot in Columbia Heights, D.C. police say

A man was fatally shot early Wednesday one block from the Metro station in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Northwest Washington, according to D.C. police. The shooting occurred shortly before 1:15 a.m. in the 3100 block of Hiatt Place NW, between 14th and 16th streets. Police said the man was shot in the head and was pronounced dead at the scene. No arrests have been made. The victim was identified as John Marvin Pollard, 33. Police said in a statement that he had lived in Northwest Washington. A police report also lists an address for him in Hyattsville in Prince George’s County. There have been 145 homicides in the District this year, up 13 percent compared with the same period last year.


The Daily 202: Debate showcased Trump’s failure to caricature Biden as captive to ‘radical left’

unofficial Election Day deadline, floundering in the wake of the medical leave of its architect, Michael Caputo, and running up against increasing resistance among career staff. … The video firm recommended by HHS to execute the campaign has struggled to meet deadlines, retain staff and even find the contact information of celebrities to participate in the videos … That firm, DD&T, is led by a filmmaker who had no prior experience making U.S. public health campaigns and is also the business partner of Caputo." “Covid-19 cases surged nationally among 18- to 22-year-olds between Aug. 2 and Sept. 5, according to a report released by the CDC, which urged young adults as well as colleges and universities to take precautions to prevent the spread of the virus,” Susan Svrluga reports. “Weekly cases among the age group jumped 55 percent across the country during that time and made up a bigger share of overall cases, according to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The agency said the increase in cases couldn’t fully be explained by ramped-up testing as colleges reopened for the fall.” “When covid-19 came for Dudu Mesquita, who prepares menus for restaurants all over Brazil, it took away his sense of taste and smell. Five weeks later, they still weren’t back completely, and his doctors couldn’t say if they ever would be. He wondered what that might mean for him. For what is a chef who cannot taste?” Terrence McCoy and Heloísa Traiano report. Mesquita is "one more person in this disease-racked country reckoning with how the coronavirus has altered their life. The virus has exacted a devastating toll on Brazil, infecting more than 4.7 million people — more than 1 in 50. The vast majority have survived. But many are not the same. … Gabriela Montenegro, 33, who’d belted out church hymns every Sunday, now can’t sing … Roberto Godoy, a 42-year-old triathlete, doesn’t know when he’ll compete again … But the sudden loss of taste and smell, the most distinct sign of a coronavirus infection, has proved particularly disorienting — and enduring. Studies haven’t determined how long it might last, but agree it could be a long time.” Some memorable reactions to the debate: Stephen Colbert said the debate was so messy that it made him look forward to the vice-presidential version next week: Trevor Noah said the debate didn’t need a moderator but a UFC referee:


These pandemic upgrades and downgrades might surprise you

In some ways, travel has improved as a result of covid-19. But in other ways, it hasn’t. Either way, the travel industry’s pandemic upgrades and downgrades might surprise you when you travel this fall. Theme parks, car rental companies and hotels have improved their products during the travel slowdown: Lines are shorter, handoffs are contact-free, and facilities have been upgraded. At the same time, airlines have quietly made changes no one wanted. For example, Disney’s Florida theme parks adopted a new park pass system that allows guests to make advance reservations for their preferred park. The changes, implemented to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, will also ensure that Disney World won’t get as crowded as it used to. You don’t have to be a theme park insider to appreciate the irony of paying thousands of dollars to stand in hour-long lines in 90-degree heat. But that’s in the past. “It will help Disney keep park capacity at more manageable levels and spread demand around the four Disney World parks,” says Jonathan de Araujo, owner of the Vacationeer Travel Agency, which specializes in Disney World vacations. “Theoretically, this should improve guest experience and reduce lines.” Car rental companies such as Avis and Budget have overhauled the car rental process during the pandemic, making it a more touchless, DIY experience. They also signed a deal with Lysol, which will offer guidance on cleaning protocols. The companies now allow customers to check in online. Just flash your license and credit card at the counter and receive a key to your car. If you use the Avis mobile app and belong to its frequent renter program, you can also select the model car you want and receive a QR code. Show the agent your code, and you get a key. Many hotels and resorts, faced with a hiatus, put it to good use. When the Sirenian Bay Resort & Villas in Belize reopens this fall, it will have 12 new bungalows, a new wine room for tastings and private dinners, and an expanded restaurant. It will also be putting the finishing touches on a new conference facility and fitness center. The resort’s owner, Brian Montgomery, says surviving meant investing. He and his staff went to great lengths to make the renovations and additions, including taking pay cuts and reducing travel by employees. “We locked down the resort property and allowed no outside


Remdesivir may not cure coronavirus, but it’s on track to make billions for Gilead

But the price tag for a course of treatment triggered outrage among congressional and state government critics who cited a study that said the company could break even by charging less than $1 per vial. Gilead disputed the study and pushed back on criticism of its price. “It is inaccurate to suggest that developing and manufacturing a complicated investigational drug like Veklury, for which we have invested significant resources over the last 10 years, relies on raw materials sourced from around the world, involves multiple chemical reactions and requires sterile manufacturing facilities, is 93 cents,” said the company spokesman, Ridley. Gilead invented the molecule that would become remdesivir during a search for treatments for hepatitis C a decade ago. In 2013, the company included it in a library of 1,000 molecules it provided to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, which were searching for antivirals to target infectious diseases. The government scientists discovered in laboratory tests that remdesivir was effective against Ebola virus, but it did not work well in a clinical trial in Africa. Its potential against coronaviruses including Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) remained strong. When the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak began this year, NIH quickly fielded a placebo-controlled clinical trial. Once early results arrived in late April, Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, declared the drug a “modest” weapon against the disease but said it would be the standard of care. Citing the taxpayer investment in the drug, a bipartisan group of 11 state treasurers said in a Sept. 16 letter to O’Day that Gilead’s price “suggest an opportunistic attempt to remarket an old drug at prices that are disconnected from economic reality.” Attorneys general from 34 states and territories urged the Department of Health and Human Services in August to exercise “march-in” rights and license the drug to a different manufacturer because of supply shortages and a price that would “impede access to treatment in the U.S. and further strain state budgets.” Gilead initially donated about 120,000 treatment courses for the United States through June. Then it signed an agreement with the Department of Health and Human services to sell another 500,000 treatment courses through the end of September, the pact that is about to expire. The company has said in all it aims


Climate news quiz: biodegradable fashion and cooling off without A/C

All right: Time to see if you’ve been paying attention to The Washington Post coverage of the people, organizations and governments trying to mitigate climate change, found on our Climate Solutions page. If you have, this quiz should be an easy A. Answer: C Answer: C. Answer: A Answer: C. Answer: D. Answer: C. Answer: A Answer: B. Answer: A Answer: B. 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.


Parent company of Olive Garden violates the Civil Rights Act with its tipping policies, activists say

restaurants. He said, across all company brands, tipped workers earn more than $20 per hour on average, and have very low turnover rates. “Fifty percent better than the industry average,” Jeffers said. More than half of the company’s managers come from the hourly ranks, he added, and 52 percent of those promoted from hourly positions are women and 32 percent are people of color. Not all workers are as content as Darden’s statistics would indicate based on interviews with hundreds of company workers who have sought emergency relief from One Fair Wage during the pandemic, Jayaraman said. In fact, two servers who work for the Capital Grille chain also filed EEOC complaints on Tuesday. Pamela M. Araiza, a Latinx server who works in Washington, D.C., and Jean-Louis Jeffrey, a Black server who works in New York, both charged they were routinely assigned sections and guests known for not tipping well. They also alleged harassment from management. “I was also consistently assigned to sections of the restaurant known to generate less in tips, which management referred to as ‘Section 8’ or ‘my low-income world,’ ” Araiza noted in her statement to the EEOC. Jeffers said the server claims are also baseless. He noted that servers at the Capital Grille earn an average of $41.42 per hour, including tips. The EEOC will have to investigate the complaints. If the agency finds they have merit, it will issue One Fair Wage and the servers a “right to sue” letter, which would allow them to take their cases to state or federal court. But Jayaraman hopes it doesn’t have to go that route. Her group has already organized worker strikes at Darden restaurants in several cities, including New York, Washington and Chicago. She hopes Darden will eliminate the sub-minimum wage on its own, just as the company started covering sick leave for hourly workers during the pandemic, after apparently resisting previous calls to provide paid leave for sick employees. “We have a direct, very recent precedent of them moving on something they said they would never move on,” Jayaraman said. “We hope they take this moment to do the same thing on race.” Read more on Voraciously Wildfires claim a Michelin-three-star restaurant and multiple wineries in Napa Valley Diners angry about masks and other coronavirus rules prompt training for restaurant workers In the quest for a pandemic coping mechanism, I’ve become a cookie monster


D.C.’s Metro will take the needs of all of its riders into account

The Sept. 25 Metro article “Metro is questioned on budget’s hit on poor” created for some readers the misimpression that Metro’s Board of Directors will not have a full assessment of which customers may be impacted by rail- and bus-service changes that are necessary to address a $212 million shortfall due to the pandemic. Despite the waiver from the Federal Transit Administration exempting transit agencies from performing a Title VI equity analysis for temporary service changes in response to the coronavirus public health emergency, Metro is conducting customary public outreach efforts that we can do safely, and replacing in-person public hearings with a virtual public hearing to facilitate community input. Staff is conducting an equity analysis of the impacts of the proposed service changes — using the same criteria under Title VI used before the coronavirus public health emergency — and will present a report to the board in October. The board’s vote on the midyear budget changes, targeted for mid-November, will be informed by the results of the Compact public hearing and an equity analysis. Before making any decisions, the board will understand the impacts on our customers, including our minority and low-income customers. All board members are deeply concerned about the impact of service cuts on the riding public — especially those making essential trips, as well as our essential workers operating trains and buses during this public health crisis. That is why we, with transit agencies across the country, continue to seek additional emergency funding from Congress and the White House that is critical to help us bridge our budget gap in this extraordinary time. Paul Smedberg The writer chairs the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Board of Directors. Read more letters to the editor.