These D.C. restaurants had tough tables to score. Their takeout shows why.

by a dusting of sunflower seeds; buttermilk green goddess dressing is cool and bright. Diners have the option of three main courses, a roster expected not to change as much as in the Before Times. Each entree casts a little spell on its recipient. Housemade ricotta cavatelli catches walnut pesto in its ridges. Lamb stew is lighter than it sounds, bright with peas and carrots, plus miso-flavored daikon. By cooking the vegetables separately before adding them to the tender spiced lamb, the chef avoids a mush. And how clever to throw in a side of tabbouleh fluffed up with farro. Brined fried chicken tempts you to lick your fingers, but focus instead on dipping a bite into the accompanying miso-honey and following it with a snappy pickle. Key lime pie decorated with raspberry swirls is a fitting finale. Cayenne, clove, black pepper — a little spice cabinet, really — add unexpected fire to the graham crumble crust. Deliveries are handled by Skip the Line, a timesaving service that covers the D.C. metro area and charges customers for their orders based on their distance from the restaurant, starting at $12 within a two-mile radius. Think of it as way to support a good cause — Rooster & Owl — since money that would otherwise go to a big delivery app stays with the restaurant. 2436 14th St. NW. 202-813-3976. roosterowl.com. Open for takeout 5 to 8 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Delivery via Skip the Line. Four-course dinner $45 per person. A lump formed in my throat standing in the alley outside Maydan, where customers are asked to text the restaurant on approach so orders can be brought outside. The weathered blue door is an unintentional tease. Designed to evoke a bazaar and distinguished with a live fire, the dramatic, high-ceilinged main dining room remains out of sight for all but the staff these days. Owner Rose Previte shares my pain. She misses seeing the space full of people, the happy buzz, the chance to welcome visitors. “Instagram posts get me through” the pandemic, she says, referencing online feedback from customers, whose connection “I so, so miss.” Maydan’s newish chef, Marcelle Afram, was only a couple months into the job when the restaurant, an ode to what she calls “Middle Eastern soul food,” ditched plates for plastic containers. “What a way to get to know each other, right?” says Previte, who had


The Health 202: Protecting U.S. nursing homes would have significantly slashed coronavirus deaths

the Centers for Disease Control must now include information on the patient’s race, ethnicity, age and Zip code, HHS announced yesterday. The aim, officials said, is to standardize reporting so it’s easier to track who the virus is targeting and understand its impact on especially vulnerable populations. African Americans have been disproportionally infected and killed by the virus, as we detailed earlier this week, but the data hasn’t always been sufficient to understand the full effects. African Americans account for nearly one-fourth of coronavirus deaths in cases in which race is known, according to the COVID Tracking Project. The ongoing protests over the police killing of George Floyd have resulted in a particular focus on these disparities. CDC Director Robert Redfield apologized yesterday for “inadequate” reporting, as he testified before a House Appropriations subcommittee. “I want to apologize for the inadequacy of our response,” Redfield said. AHH: Some people’s genes may make them more vulnerable to severe cases of covid-19. A new study by European scientists points to genetic variations at two spots in the human genome, including one that determines blood type, linked to an increased risk of respiratory failure in covid-19 patients, the New York Times’s Carl Zimmer reports. “Having Type A blood was linked to a 50 percent increase in the likelihood that a patient would need to get oxygen or to go on a ventilator, according to the new study,” Carl writes. “… Scientists have already determined that factors like age and underlying disease put people at extra risk of developing a severe case of Covid-19. But geneticists are hoping that a DNA test might help identify patients who will need aggressive treatment.” The research was based on blood samples from 1,610 patients who required an oxygen supply or needed to be placed on a ventilator. OOF: Researchers retracted an influential study in a top medical journal, the Lancet, on the dangers of hydroxychloroquine. Three authors of the study that found the antimalarial drug was dangerous for hospitalized covid-19 patients said they could “no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources,” Laurie McGinley reports. “The study, purportedly based on the health records of almost 100,000 patients around the world, found that hospitalized covid-19 patients treated with the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine — a drug repeatedly touted by President Trump — had a sharply higher risk of death and heart problems compared to those who


reports. “Having Type A blood was linked to a 50 percent increase in the likelihood that a patient would need to get oxygen or to go on a ventilator, according to the new study,” Carl writes. “… Scientists have already determined that factors like age and underlying disease put people at extra risk of developing a severe case of Covid-19. But geneticists are hoping that a DNA test might help identify patients who will need aggressive treatment.” The research was based on blood samples from 1,610 patients who required an oxygen supply or needed to be placed on a ventilator. OOF: Researchers retracted an influential study in a top medical journal, the Lancet, on the dangers of hydroxychloroquine. Three authors of the study that found the antimalarial drug was dangerous for hospitalized covid-19 patients said they could “no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources,” Laurie McGinley reports. “The study, purportedly based on the health records of almost 100,000 patients around the world, found that hospitalized covid-19 patients treated with the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine — a drug repeatedly touted by President Trump — had a sharply higher risk of death and heart problems compared to those who did not receive the drug,” she writes. “It also showed the drug didn’t provide a benefit. The study was ‘observational,’ which is less rigorous that a randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial.” Critics raised question soon after the study was published about the data and analysis by Surgisphere and its founder, Sepan Desai. Now with the retraction, there are concerns within the medical and scientific community that “researchers and even prestigious medical journals are lowering their standards in a rush to publish during the pandemic.” Experiments have been abandoned. Clinical trials have been a postponed or suspended. “This singular focus will inevitably delay much-needed advances for other life-threatening ailments, including cancer, stroke and heart disease, experts say,” Laurie writes. “… Now, as medical institutions explore resuming non-coronavirus research, they say it will be hard to make up for lost time. Some researchers have to rebuild their colonies of specially bred animals. Many labs are implementing staggered work shifts to limit the number of employees at any one time.” In short, there could be a long-term slowdown in the development and approval of new therapies. That could have a particularly devastating impact on those with rare diseases and their families. Some say they


Dietitian sees one positive pandemic outcome: A shift in how we think about food

to see so many improvements in my clients’ health due to just one thing: more time in their own kitchen,” says McMahon. Maya Feller, a dietitian in Brooklyn, has seen similar results with her clients. “Since the lockdown, I've seen an increase in self-monitoring and tracking behaviors,” says Feller, who works with people diagnosed with hypertension, type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol. Her patients now have time to monitor blood sugar and blood pressure numbers daily. “We’ve seen those numbers trending down in relation to nutrition and lifestyle modification, such as making time for intentional physical activity,” says Feller. Since covid-19 seems to be more severe in people with chronic health conditions such as type 2 diabetes, it’s a good time for these clients to make positive changes. Feller says clients who usually put in 14-hour workdays are slowing down and prioritizing their health. They report feeling better, and plan to stick with these changes for the long term. Nicole Stefanow, a dietitian in Ramsey, N.J., says the temporary inconvenience of not being able to get everything we need from the grocery store is a good exercise in getting back in touch with our food system. Anecdotally, people have been connecting with farmers, thanking grocery workers and learning more about the food supply chain. Food doesn’t magically appear on grocery store shelves, and the workers involved in the process are finally being recognized for their vital role in our overall wellness. Stefanow says that people in her community are getting fruits, vegetables, milk and eggs from regional farms, which supports local businesses and raises awareness of how food choices affect the environment and our carbon footprint. “If people continue to get produce boxes from local and regional farms, they are less likely to buy produce that needs planes, train and automobiles to get here,” Stefanow says. She also says buying local helps decrease the amount of garbage produced from packaging. “When you go to the store for produce, you are using a plastic produce bag for each item you put in your cart,” says Stefanow. “When you get a produce box, everything comes in one recyclable cardboard box.” It will be interesting to follow up in a year to see how many of these positive changes stick around. I’m hopeful that when people feel the uplifting outcomes of home-cooking, enjoying food and supporting local businesses, these good habits will continue.


One woman wanted to send support to her ‘backyard’ hospital. So her family built a sign.

she was treated for an abscessed tooth. Her oldest son’s first word was “helicopter” after watching so many emergency medevac landings. “It’s always been a part of my life,” she said. The pandemic struck as the aging 385-bed hospital was on its last legs. With a new $500 million teaching hospital scheduled to open next year less than 10 miles down the road in Largo, the Cheverly hospital soon will be phased out. Its final chapter has been a busy one. The county has been particularly hard hit in recent weeks with nearly 16,000 covid-19 cases and more than 550 deaths to date. That’s more cases than any other county in Maryland and more than roughly half the states in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Furnkranz worked with four pieces of plywood, each measuring 4x8 feet. She drew out letters, four feet tall and about three feet wide, and cut out each one. With the help of her 10-year-old son, Dustin, she sanded down the rough edges and painted them all white. On her first visit to Hospital Hill, she noticed a police officer near the abandoned helicopter landing pad. The hill is technically county-owned land and Furnkranz didn’t want to draw any undo attention, so she and her husband delayed their plans by a day. The next morning, they were up at 4:30 a.m. and carried the eight letters to the top of the hill in the dark. Furnkranz knew the area well. Hospital Hill is located on the west side of the hospital’s campus, just off Interstate 295. She grew up dragging her snowboard there in winters, and years later she took her children there to watch area firework displays on Fourth of July. The couple moved fast, and Furnkranz broke a sweat. By the time everything was in place, the sun was starting to rise and the hospital was coming to life. “I liked the idea no one would really see us, and people would just wake up to this sign,” she said. Inside the hospital, Furnkranz’s efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. Ingrid Connerney is the hospital’s chief quality officer, and her office window looks out over Hospital Hill. The workdays have been long these past 2½ months, the stress weighing on patients and hospital staff alike. Connerney says staff regularly pops into her office, eager to get a look at the


Here are 15 of the week’s best photos

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket takes off for the International Space Station; the Pennsylvania primary takes place amid a pandemic and economic downturn; and nationwide protests ignited over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Here’s a look at 15 of the best photos of the week, selected by photo editors at The Washington Post.


Pelosi called Trump ‘morbidly obese.’ Voters don’t like overweight candidates.

President Trump’s weight put him in the obese category So how do voters see overweight candidates? Some experimental studies find that voters tend to rate obese political candidates more negatively than non-obese candidates, especially if they are women. To investigate voter bias against overweight politicians, we conducted two large nationally representative studies of likely U.S. voters — a survey of more than 6,000 respondents in spring 2020 and a survey experiment with nearly 2,000 respondents in fall 2018. We conducted the two surveys online and both samples mirror the 2016 U.S. electorate demographics. In our 2020 study, we found that almost 45 percent of U.S. voters were less likely to vote for a candidate who is overweight. We noted a number of important subgroup differences. Highly educated voters and high-income voters, for instance, penalized overweight candidates more severely, as did older voters. African Americans, in contrast, were more likely than the norm to support overweight candidates. Relying only on observational survey data, however, may fail to capture voters’ true preferences. Indeed, survey respondents who do not want to look biased may hide their dislike for overweight candidates. Therefore, in another study that we conducted in 2018, we embedded a conjoint experiment, in which we asked respondents to vote for their preferred candidates after we randomly varied several different candidate traits. This approach allowed us to contrast social desirability bias, elicit true voter preferences and quantify the degree of penalty overweight candidates faced. Our results revealed that, compared to average-weight candidates, candidates who were overweight faced an electoral penalty of about nine percentage points. We also investigated the reasons voters dislike overweight candidates. Our 2018 survey found these three factors combined to drive voter bias. Overweight politicians did suffer from plain prejudice — we measured this with a question asking voters about their preferences for neighbors. Voters were significantly less likely to want an overweight candidate as their neighbor compared to an average-weight one. Moreover, voters negatively judged the moral character of overweight politicians, considering them antithetical to social progress. Finally, voters were less likely to support overweight politicians because of electability concerns — they worried about whether overweight candidates could actually win the election. By labeling Trump “morbidly obese,” Pelosi was therefore playing on the stigma surrounding overweight individuals. In annoying the president, Pelosi was embracing a strategy that taps into Americans’ dislike for overweight politicians. Gabriele Magni Andrew Reynolds


What’s it like to go on vacation during a pandemic? I went to a newly reopened resort to find out.

At Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in Pennsylvania, a tall man in a gray suit and a black mask approached my car. He leaned toward my lowered window and asked for my name. Satisfied with my answer, he aimed a raygun-shaped gadget at my forehead, pressed the button and read the digital display. “Ninety-seven degrees,” he told me in a slightly muffled voice. Three degrees higher, and the resort would have turned me away, one of several protections against the coronavirus. But since I was fever-free, the security officer stepped aside, clearing the way to the luxury property and my first getaway since shutdowns began. The pandemic knocked the breath out of the hospitality industry, but hotels across the country are slowly rising to their feet. According to Smith Travel Research, occupancy levels reached 35 percent between May 17 and 23, a notable improvement from early April, when 21 percent of hotel rooms were booked. To reassure guests, properties are implementing health and safety measures that rewrite the textbook on hospitality. “It’s like a hotel opening,” Chris Baran, Nemacolin’s director of sales and marketing, said of resuming operations during the crisis. “We have to forget everything we know and do it this way.” Nemacolin was one of the area’s first luxury properties to welcome back leisure travelers. In early May, the resort opened several dozen rooms at Falling Rock, its Fallingwater-inspired lodging. (The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home is about 10 miles away). It also resumed a bevy of activities, including golf, tennis, fly-fishing, paintball, basketball, safari tours and biking on 2,000 acres of trails. A few days shy of June, the hotel added accommodations at Chateau LaFayette, the opulent spread modeled after the Ritz in Paris, as well as the outdoor pools and Laurel Lane shops. On Friday, when several Pennsylvania counties advanced to the “green phase” of the state’s reopening plan, the resort started accepting appointments at its spa and fitness center. Its on-site restaurants also switched from takeout to sit-down service at reduced capacity, so guests would no longer have to eat pan-seared scallops or a 16-ounce rib eye off disposable plates. The day Washington lifted its stay-at-home order, I was on the road to Pennsylvania. My mission: to see how the new protocols would affect the guest experience and whether they would help or hinder my ability to relax. Ultimately, I wanted to know if Nemacolin could liberate me


Racism is killing black people. It’s sickening them, too.

racism endured by black mothers contributes to the alarmingly high maternal and infant mortality rate. Look no further than Erica Garner, Eric Garner’s daughter, who at the age of 27 went into cardiac arrest following an asthma attack. “I can’t breathe.” The covid-19 pandemic has laid bare many of these inequities for the world to see. We’re now learning that Floyd tested positive for the coronavirus in early April, almost two months before his death. All told, predominantly black counties are seeing three times the rate of infection — and six times the rate of covid-related death — as white counties. Black and brown Americans make up a disproportionate number of essential workers who have stayed on the job through lockdowns, and thus are at higher risk of contracting the disease. And when they do fall ill, they are more likely to receive worse care than white Americans do. That’s true even when controlling for socioeconomic factors such as income and education. And, of course, they are more likely to suffer from the underlying health conditions that can make this coronavirus deadly. We see this in the striking link between long-term air pollution exposure and coronavirus deaths. Black Americans are 75 percent more likely to live near a polluting facility, such as a factory or a refinery. This in part explains why even before this pandemic, black children had a 500 percent higher death rate from asthma than white children. Now, data from our school’s research show that a person who lives for decades in a county with high levels of fine particulate air pollution is 8 percent more likely to die from covid-19 than someone who lives in a place with just one unit less of such pollution. “I can’t breathe.” As James Baldwin wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” It is time to face this immutable fact: Systemic racism has had its knee on the neck of the African American community since America began. And all of us have a responsibility to acknowledge it and address it. We have the tools to identify the many ways that decades of entrenched discrimination are hurting health and cutting lives short to this day. And we cannot let this moment and the growing call for justice fade without making those connections clear — and pressing for meaningful policy change.


Kids could go hungry this summer with school lunch programs in peril

say these are crucial for feeding needy American children as well as to ensure school districts have enough money to operate in the fall. While the Community Eligibility Provision waiver allows a district to feed all comers irrespective of documented need, the National Meal Pattern waiver provides flexibility in what can be given out. Crystal FitzSimons, director of school and out-of-school time programs for Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit organization for eradicating poverty-related hunger and undernutrition, is calling for continuing these programs. “If families are in need, we think they should be able to come to a site and get food.” The meal pattern waiver, she said, allows feeding sites flexibility to offer different food items or combinations than have been delineated by the USDA’s school lunch program. With food supply chains disrupted by the pandemic, she said, it’s essential to allow substitutions. “While we want the meals to be as healthy as possible,” FitzSimons said. “If they are having a hard time getting fresh fruit, say, it’s important that they’re able to waive that.” The USDA said in a statement that it was looking at “all options within our statutory and budget authority to assist program operators with the challenges they are facing during the current health crisis.” Food insecurity doubled overall in the United States in April, tripling among households with children, according to a study by Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research. Another study, the Survey of Mothers with Young Children, said 40.9 percent of mothers with children ages 12 and under reported household food insecurity since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. “There’s been an almost unfathomable increase in food insecurity,” said Lisa Davis, senior vice president of Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign. “It’s going to require a number of policies and programs working hand in glove.” Food banks have been overwhelmed, with lines of cars reaching several miles from feeding sites. April saw the sharpest increase in grocery store prices in nearly 50 years. And now many urban grocery stores are boarding up after days of destruction and looting. Thirty-nine states have been approved to operate an emergency electronic grocery debit card program, called Pandemic-EBT, according to the USDA, covering more than three-quarters of eligible students. But many families have not yet received money from the program. Davis said states don’t have up-to-date rosters of all the children getting free and reduced


Iceland and other destinations are opening to Americans, but should you go?

international visitors. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs says plans are in place to significantly increase testing capacity. Chi says travelers should understand that coronavirus tests are not 100 percent accurate — false-negative results are possible, particularly within the first couple of days after infection — and the type of test given on arrival may differ by country. He notes that antibody tests are less accurate than PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests and may be less useful, because having antibodies doesn’t necessarily exempt a person from future infection. But there is not yet an ideal option. The risk of inaccurate results, Chi says, is one of the reasons Taiwan, another island destination with a low number of coronavirus cases, has not determined when it will reopen to international visitors. “One measure they’re contemplating is a highly sensitive test [to be used] at the airport,” he says. “So far, they haven’t found one.” In countries that seek to restart tourism without requiring a lengthy quarantine, Chi believes the most likely approach for now will be a PCR test upon arrival, quarantine until results are received, and permission to carry on with your travels if the results are negative. In Iceland, a PCR test will be used, and you’re expected to go to your accommodations and follow distancing and hand-washing guidelines until the results are received. If the test comes back positive, you — and anyone you’ve been within six feet of for 15 minutes or more — will be notified and required to self-quarantine. Chi recommends that people with chronic or respiratory conditions postpone travel for now, and he suggests that even those without existing conditions might want to wait a few weeks to see how things play out. “You don’t want to be the guinea pig,” he says. By the second half of August, Chi believes the travel industry will have had time to test and improve coronavirus-related safety measures. If you’re American, you’ll also need to consider that the current State Department Global Level 4 Health Advisory may affect your travel health insurance; check with your carrier to see whether it will cover you during the pandemic. If you are not comfortable traveling yet, Connolly says, Iceland will be waiting to welcome you when you’re ready. “We've got glacier hikes, midnight sun, and whales in the summer and ice caves and Northern Lights in winter. Both are an amazing time.”


2 National Guardsmen injured in lightning strike; protesters marched on despite storms

Protests are underway in Washington on Thursday for the seventh consecutive day. Here are some significant developments: • Thunderstorms hit Washington Thursday evening, sending many protesters looking for shelter. But as the night wore on, other demonstrators were undeterred and began marching from Lafayette Square to the Lincoln Memorial. Late Thursday, two National Guardsmen were taken to a hospital after a lightning strike near Lafayette. • The American Civil Liberties Union and Black Lives Matter filed a lawsuit accusing President Trump and his administration of authorizing an “unprovoked and frankly criminal attack” on demonstrators to enable a photo op of the president holding a Bible in front of the St. John’s Episcopal Church. • Overall, the day’s protests have been peaceful, and the mood festive, around parts of downtown Washington. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) lifted the curfew after a sixth night of demonstrations ended with zero arrests and no police injuries or damage to police property. • While eulogizing George Floyd on Thursday, the Rev. Al Sharpton announced plans for an Aug. 28 demonstration in the nation’s capital on the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington.


The black-white economic divide is as wide as it was in 1968

be surprising, then, that most black (and Hispanic) workers report that they have lost income since the crisis began. A special survey by the U.S. Census in late April and early May revealed how stark the situation is for African Americans. More than 1 in 5 black families now report they often or sometimes do not have enough food — more than three times the rate for white families. Black families are also almost four times as likely as whites to report they missed a mortgage payment during the crisis — numbers that do not bode well for the already low black homeownership rate. With far less savings or wealth to draw on, blacks were especially vulnerable to the downturn. That does not even begin to address the higher hospitalization and death rates African Americans face from the novel coronavirus itself. “This idea that we’re all in this together is sort of a false statement to make," said Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy. “Black workers are the least likely to be able to work from home.” By many measures, black Americans have lost ground financially since the Great Recession. They regained jobs, incomes and homes much more slowly than whites. While many Americans welcomed the news that middle-class income hit an all-time high in 2018, that was not true for black Americans. They are still earning less than they did in 2000, according to inflation-adjusted figures from the Census Bureau. Other racial groups — whites, Hispanics and Asians — have all surpassed their prior peak, but the median black income remains more than $2,000 below where it was in 2000. As their incomes did not rebound as quickly, many black Americans were not able to rebuild their savings before the global pandemic hit. Depleted cash reserves put black Americans in an astonishingly precarious position heading into the crisis. They did not have the cash on hand to pay for basic needs, including health care. “The black population was penniless to deal with this health crisis,” said Hamilton. “The little wealth black people had is typically tied up in their home." On average, black households had $8,762 in cash or equivalent liquid assets compared with $49,529 for white households, according to government data analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute. Black households with a high school degree or less had, on average,


‘Protecting property’ is an abstraction to the growing share of Americans who own nothing

which have cost more than 40 million Americans their jobs. A positive net worth means safety and security. It means you can grow your wealth by investing or starting a business. It means you can make a down payment on large purchases such as homes. It means you have assets to pass on to your children when you die. It means that if you fall on hard times, you have financial reserves to draw on. Families with zero net worth have none of those things. And families with negative net worth have to worry about paying down debts before they can even think about building a nest egg. If financial hardship strikes, they may be in serious trouble. It’s worth noting that many families with zero or negative net worth do have financial assets of some sort — savings or 401(k) retirement accounts or perhaps a house on which they have a mortgage. These assets could be liquidated, with varying degrees of difficulty, in the event of a job loss or an unexpected financial burden. But doing so would put them even more in the hole, taking value from the positive side of their ledgers and adding it to their debts. The 21 percent figure cited above is just a national average. Among key protest demographics, the share is much higher. Among black families, for instance, the share with zero or negative net worth is 37 percent, according to Wolff’s calculations. In 2011, the Pew Research Center reported that a similar share of households headed by someone younger than 35 fell into this category. It’s difficult to make an appeal to the sanctity of property ownership when you’re addressing people who don’t own any property to speak of. For many younger Americans, especially nonwhite ones, the traditional American Dream of homeownership and building a nest egg to pass on to your heirs seems increasingly out of reach. Perhaps most worrying in the Survey of Consumer Finances data is that the percentage of Americans who own nothing is increasing. Couple that trend with the explosion of wealth-hoarding at the top of society and you arrive at a very concerning picture of a society increasingly divided between haves and have-nots. Asking the people at the bottom of such a hierarchy to respect the property rights of the those at the top is only likely to become more difficult if these trends continue.


Humvees, helicopters and the National Guard: D.C. officials push back on show of federal force on city streets

command center at the FBI’s Washington Field Office every two hours,” the official said. Another Justice official credited the federal force with tamping down the unrest. “What would be the alternative, letting people burn down the city?” the official asked. The dynamic in the city follows Trump’s urge to local leaders that they “dominate” unruly demonstrations. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff appeared outside the White House in combat fatigues. And Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper referred to American cities as a “battle space.” The president has floated the idea of a federal takeover of D.C. police and threatened to send active-duty military into the District. For now, the Justice Department says the National Guard is supporting civilian authority and is not making arrests. But District leaders say the show of force still runs counter to the norms of civilian policing. The forceful removal of demonstrators at Lafayette Square has been roundly denounced and described as “shameful” by the mayor. An Army helicopter from the D.C. National Guard buzzed low over a city street, using its downward draft from the rotors to scatter demonstrators, a tactic used in wartime maneuvers. And Park Police officers were captured on video using a shield to shove Australian journalists and were removed from protest duties after that government called for an investigation. D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said he wasn’t given a heads-up when the U.S. Secret Service, Park Police and National Guard forcefully cleared the park, nor was he part of the decision by federal authorities to close part of 16th Street and H and I streets NW, to expand the perimeter around the president’s home. “D.C. residents need access to D.C. streets,” Bowser said. By Thursday, the police chief said the administration had successfully pushed back and the federal line retreated to Lafayette Square. D.C. police, perhaps more than those in any other city, have close working relationships with a multitude of federal law enforcement agencies that crisscross the city every day — from the U.S. Capitol Police to the Secret Service. They coordinate on major security events, such as presidential inaugurations and planned mass gatherings, and on smaller crimes. Bowser said those ties remain strong. But she singled out the extra federal forces being deployed, saying, “I can’t say more about other agencies, about who is directing them.” Bowser did ask for the D.C. National Guard, which in the


‘People are looking at me’: For many who lost jobs in the coronavirus epidemic, hunger comes with shame

an entirely new experience for Garcia, Bednarek and many others who have lost their jobs in the economic collapse triggered by the coronavirus pandemic. Thirty percent of American households where people have lost income because of the virus have missed meals or relied on food handouts in recent weeks, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. Many people who are new to worrying about getting food had low incomes at the start. Approximately a quarter of people making less than $40,000 year said the virus has pushed them to skip meals or seek free food, the poll found. But the surprise to many food bank managers — and to their new clients — is the number of people one step up the income ladder, in the $40,000 to $90,000 range, who are short on food. About 12 percent of Americans in that income bracket said they have missed or cut the size of meals in recent weeks. “We have a group of people who are suddenly struggling to get food,” Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber said. “They’re people who are really unused to asking for help, people who thought they had a pretty good handle on life.” The new face of food insecurity is evident throughout a country where tens of millions have lost work. Queues outside food pantries have stretched for blocks in Los Angeles, New York and Pittsburgh. Thirty-six percent of Americans said in an Axios/Ipsos poll in mid-May that their access to food and household needs has diminished in recent weeks. In Washington, D.C., at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart, congregants transformed the Catholic church in the city’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood into a food distribution center, where gloved and masked volunteers prepare hundreds of baskets of beans, oil, rice and carrots. In St. Louis, public libraries have turned nine branches into drive-through food pickups. In Santa Fe, the number of people receiving meals from Kitchen Angels, the nonprofit that is helping Garcia and Bednarek, has shot up by 27 percent in the past six weeks, said Jeanette Iskat, the agency’s client services manager. There has been so much demand — the mayor says Santa Fe is handing out almost twice as many pounds of food as it did a year ago — that the Food Depot food bank had to create a drive-through distribution center in the parking lot of a shuttered mall. The idea that


WNBA considering a 22-game schedule at a central site, starting in July

The WNBA proposed starting its delayed regular season in a single Florida location, similar to the plan the NBA unveiled Thursday, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions. The league postponed the start of training camps and the regular season because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The WNBA plan calls for a 22-game season to be held at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the proposal remains unofficial. The WNBA declined to comment through a spokesperson, and Women’s National Basketball Players Association Executive Director Terri Jackson did not immediately respond to a request to comment. The proposal, first reported by ESPN, includes a start date of July 24 with the playoffs in October. A shortened training camp probably would take place in early July. The league’s original schedule allowed room for some accommodation because it had included a break from late July to early August to allow players to participate in the Tokyo Olympics, which have since been postponed until 2021 because of the pandemic. The regular season had been scheduled to open May 15 and include 36 games per team. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has said games probably will be played without fans, at least initially. The IMG facilities include four basketball courts and a Performance & Sports Science Center. The NBA plans a bubblelike environment at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney World, and contact with those outside that environment would be limited. The WNBA probably would take similar measures for safety precautions at its site about 100 miles away. The league would have decisions to make on essential and nonessential personnel, how to test initially and consistently and what family and/or friends would be allowed on site. It also will need a plan if a player, coach or member of a staff tests positive after the season begins. “ More WNBA: Mystics waive both of their 2020 draft picks before WNBA’s roster deadline NFL draft the first live sports ‘in what feels like forever’? The WNBA has a beef with that. Sabrina Ionescu, Oregon’s star guard, goes No. 1 in WNBA draft to the Liberty


89 former Defense officials: The military must never be used to violate constitutional rights

armed forces. We are alarmed at how the president is betraying this oath by threatening to order members of the U.S. military to violate the rights of their fellow Americans. President Trump has given governors a stark choice: either end the protests that continue to demand equal justice under our laws, or expect that he will send active-duty military units into their states. While the Insurrection Act gives the president the legal authority to do so, this authority has been invoked only in the most extreme conditions when state or local authorities were overwhelmed and were unable to safeguard the rule of law. Historically, as Secretary Esper has pointed out, it has rightly been seen as a tool of last resort. Beyond being unnecessary, using our military to quell protests across the country would also be unwise. This is not the mission our armed forces signed up for: They signed up to fight our nation’s enemies and to secure — not infringe upon — the rights and freedoms of their fellow Americans. In addition, putting our servicemen and women in the middle of politically charged domestic unrest risks undermining the apolitical nature of the military that is so essential to our democracy. It also risks diminishing Americans’ trust in our military — and thus America’s security — for years to come. As defense leaders who share a deep commitment to the Constitution, to freedom and justice for all Americans, and to the extraordinary men and women who volunteer to serve and protect our nation, we call on the president to immediately end his plans to send active-duty military personnel into cities as agents of law enforcement, or to employ them or any another military or police forces in ways that undermine the constitutional rights of Americans. The members of our military are always ready to serve in our nation’s defense. But they must never be used to violate the rights of those they are sworn to protect. Leon E. Panetta Chuck Hagel Ashton B. Carter William S. Cohen Sasha Baker Donna Barbisch Jeremy Bash Jeffrey P. Bialos Susanna V. Blume Ian Brzezinski Gabe Camarillo Kurt M. Campbell Michael Carpenter Rebecca Bill Chavez Derek Chollet Dan Christman James Clapper Eliot A. Cohen Erin Conaton John Conger Peter S. Cooke Richard Danzig Janine Davidson Robert L. Deitz Abraham M. Denmark Michael B. Donley John W. Douglass Raymond F. DuBois Eric Edelman Eric


After week of protest, Saturday expected to bring largest crowds yet to Washington

in the city to date,” he said. “And we anticipate that the protesters will continue to be as peaceful as they have been over the past couple of days.” In response to large crowds, Metro announced Friday that it will reopen the first and last rail cars on trains starting Saturday to boost capacity for rail riders. The transit agency had kept the end cars closed on eight-car trains as a way to protect train operators from interacting with passengers during the coronavirus pandemic. Though operators work in enclosed compartments, the added buffer was a safeguard the transit union representing most of Metro’s workers had sought. Opening the first and last cars is one of the few options Metro has to increase capacity, and officials said the move will be indefinite, not just for Saturday. Though D.C. police and the National Park Service are preparing for tens of thousands of demonstrators, no one can say exactly how many to expect. Typical mechanisms used to gauge crowd size have been suspended or scaled back because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Park Service has stopped issuing protest permits. Agencies that might typically discuss plans with community organizers have halted in-person meetings. Many administrative officials are working from home. On Friday, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) renamed a street in front of the White House “Black Lives Matter Plaza” and had the phrase “Black lives matter” painted in giant yellow letters along 16th Street NW near the White House. The move, an escalation in Bowser’s feud with President Trump over control of D.C. streets, was meant to be a stark reminder to the president and legions of federal forces and military personnel called to the District amid the protests that the city’s allegiance is to “peaceful demonstrators,” said John Falcicchio, the mayor’s chief of staff. Some D.C. residents and activists criticized the move as merely performative and demanded that the mayor follow up with substantive changes to the D.C. police department. On Saturday, protesters planned to target city officials and buildings alongside those of the federal government with demonstrations in front of the U.S. Senate office buildings, the D.C. government’s Wilson Building, at Judiciary Square and Freedom Plaza, and the White House. Officials said they expect demonstrations to be fluid and roaming, with groups breaking off to join other demonstrations as the day progresses and marches taking protesters through the city. On


Trump approves plan to withdraw one-third of U.S. troops from Germany

President Trump has signed off on a plan to permanently withdraw up to one-third of about 34,500 U.S. troops currently based in Germany, bringing the total down to no more than 25,000, according to U.S. officials. Implementation of the plan is being turned over to the Defense Department, a senior administration official said. Defense officials said they had no immediate comment on the subject and referred questions to the White House National Security Council, which did not respond to queries. Trump pledged during his last presidential campaign to end U.S. involvement in what he has called America’s “forever wars,” primarily in the Middle East and Afghanistan. He has repeatedly threatened to end or reduce the peacetime defensive deployments of troops in Asia and Europe, charging that those countries were not paying enough for what he has described as U.S. protection. Until now, however, he has made only small reductions — along with a number of increases — in U.S. forces deployed in war zones, while threats to scale back the tens of thousands of U.S. forces in countries such as South Korea, Japan and Germany have not been acted upon. The reduction plan, pushed by U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, has been closely held within the White House. Grenell has also served for the past several months as acting director of national intelligence, following Trump’s firing of his predecessor, acting director Joseph Maguire, over concerns about Maguire’s staff’s loyalty. Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Tex.) was confirmed for the post last month. Attempts to reach Grenell were not successful. As of late Friday, Germany had not been officially informed of the withdrawal order, which the Wall Street Journal, which first reported it Friday, said had been formally signed by Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien after the president approved it. It was unclear whether members of Congress had been told of the withdrawal. But as word of the plan became public, Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called Trump’s order “petty and preposterous.” “It’s another favor to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and another leadership failure by this Administration that further strains relations with our allies,” Reed said in a statement issued by his office on Friday. A spokesperson for Armed Services Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) did not respond to a request for comment. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.) said in


Amid reopenings and street protests, coronavirus transmission remains high in much of the U.S.

demonstrators should still follow “public health best practices” such as social distancing and wearing masks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a statement saying it was “monitoring closely” the demonstrations. “Protests and large gatherings make it difficult to maintain our recommended social distancing guidelines and may put others at risk,” the CDC said. “It is too early to know what, if any, effect these events will have on the federal COVID-19 response. Every local situation is different.” The coronavirus map is, indeed, complicated at this point — as complicated as the virus itself, which can lead to the potentially lethal disease covid-19 or leave an infected person with no symptoms at all. The early epicenter, New York City, has made huge strides in driving down caseloads and death rates, and hospitals are no longer overwhelmed. But a briefing document prepared by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and distributed Thursday to senior federal officials captured the scale of the challenges remaining. FEMA tracks how many days in a row a state records a decline in new daily coronavirus cases. Thirteen states — Arizona, California, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin — had not shown a sustained daily decrease as of Tuesday, according to the document, a copy of which was obtained by The Post. A separate Post analysis of county-level data reveals the patchwork nature of the epidemic, with some communities showing dramatic spikes — a tripling or more of cases within the last two weeks — even as surrounding areas remain stable. These localized outbreaks have often been in counties that contain meat processing plants, prisons or assisted-living facilities. New data shows that almost a third of the deaths nationally have been in nursing homes. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) announced this week that the number of patients on ventilators in Mississippi hospitals hit a new high last weekend, and he warned that “the threat of covid-19 is as great as ever, if not greater.” Florida on Thursday reported its highest number of new daily cases — 1,419 — since the state began providing such statistics in March, according to the Miami Herald. More than half the state’s cases so far have been in the South Florida counties of Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe and Palm Beach. “I still think we have a lot of cases to come,” said Julie Swann, a former


heat and humidity. A new report published in the journal Science says weather isn’t as important as susceptibility: Most people have yet to be exposed to this virus and have no immunity. “Lack of population immunity is the much more fundamental driver than climate,” said the study’s lead author, epidemiologist Rachel Baker of the Princeton Environmental Institute. California is dealing with a massive outbreak in Imperial County on its southeastern border with Mexico. Last week, more than 60 patients were sent to neighboring Riverside County to alleviate the surge on local hospitals. The county, with a population of about 181,000, had 2,540 active cases as of Thursday evening. Yuma County, Ariz., which borders California and Mexico, is also seeing hospitalization spikes, according to Cara M. Christ, the state’s health director. Christ and Gov. Doug Ducey (R) told reporters much of the state’s rising caseload can be traced to increased testing. But state data also shows an uptick in hospitalizations and positive test rates, suggesting testing is not entirely responsible for increased case numbers. “The virus is widespread,” Ducey said. “This virus is not going away.” The virus spread easily until mid-March, when the first shutdown orders and the widespread adoption of social distancing began to flatten the epidemiological curve. Data compiled by The Post shows at least 107,000 deaths from the coronavirus as of Friday. The CDC projected Thursday that by June 27, 118,000 to 143,000 people in the United States will have died of covid-19. The worst weeks for coronavirus deaths were in early April. As the daily death toll has dropped, so have precautions by many Americans. In many places, people are not routinely wearing facial coverings. Many different agencies and research groups are tracking the virus, and their reports generally echo one another even though they slice the data in distinct formats. None of the data clearly signals a summer resurgence of the virus at the national scale, at least in terms of cumulative statistics. The heterogenous nature of the epidemic in the United States reveals itself in South Carolina. Charleston has not been hard-hit, according to Christine M. Carr, a professor of emergency medicine and public health sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina. But the state’s daily reports show that the area known as Pee Dee, in the northeast corner of the state, and communities along the heavily traveled I-95 corridor have been slammed.


The coronavirus is reshaping an old hierarchy: Who can travel where

said Blewer, the company’s public relations director. Henley & Partners saw a 42 percent increase in clients seeking a new passport from the end of 2019 to the first quarter of 2020, according to Blewer. The coronavirus, he said, was a probable motivator. Blewer declined to list the countries in which his clients are hoping to take up residence, but described some general trends: An Australian passport has become increasingly appealing to clients in South Africa and Asia, while Cyprus and Malta are of growing interest for people seeking quick access to Europe and Switzerland, in part for access to high-quality medical care. Henley & Partners have created a passport index, which ranks passports by the freedom of movement they impart. Coronavirus may have changed the system for now, but it has not rewritten the ranking, which the company updates based on “peacetime” conditions, said Blewer. Putting passport privileges aside, many countries since March have imposed bans on all but essential travel or imposed mandatory quarantines on travelers. The United States continues to bar entry to non-U.S. citizens or residents who have recently been in China, Iran, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the European Schengen zone and Brazil. European Union member states have shut their borders. But as countries reopen their economies, financial and social pressure is growing for borders to reopen too. In countries that have largely brought their outbreak under control, travel corridors, or bubbles, could be a viable option. The idea is to forge travel agreements among groups of countries to keep the virus out and prevent it from circulating from hard-hit to relatively unscathed regions. Australia and New Zealand, both of which have contained their outbreaks, are considering a travel corridor. Japan, South Korea and Singapore may team up in another, said Guevara Manzo. Countries in Europe are eager to open tourism to Greece, with its relatively low infection risk. Eastern Europeans, long viewed as sources of cheap migrant labor in Western Europe, are now prime tourists to attract thanks to their countries’ low rates of infection. Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are joining forces for a Baltic travel bubble. “We are seeing these bubbles growing as we speak,” said Guevara Manzo. Reopening has not always gone smoothly. The United Kingdom’s initial announcement of a mandatory 14-day quarantine for travelers led to confusion about who was exempted and why. In mid-May, Spain said it would impose a quarantine


Mohamed Soltan, U.S. citizen held as political prisoner, files torture lawsuit against Egypt’s ex-prime minister

trips,” at least until the law’s 10-year statute of limitations expires. Vladeck referred to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom the CIA concluded ordered the assassination of Washington Post contributing columnist and Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Khashoggi’s death sparked a global outcry but incurred limited legal consequences for senior leaders of the oil-rich kingdom. “We send a message to the torturers and human rights abusers of Egypt’s corrupt and brutal regime that they cannot commit crimes against humanity and then seek safe haven in the United States and walk the streets of America’s cities with impunity,” said Soltan attorney Lewis, of Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss. Lewis added that the IMF’s employment of “a torturer and human rights abuser” of thousands of free speech advocates is “a stain on the organization.” The IMF declined to comment. The fund’s 24-member executive board meets several times weekly to oversee daily operations and while compensated, directors are chosen by member states. Beblawi has been a director since 2014, and his latest two-year term is set to lapse in October, although it could be extended. Soltan asserts in his lawsuit that Beblawi authorized the Egyptian cabinet and the then-interior minister to violently disperse the protests. Beblawi later confirmed to Egyptian media that “close to 1,000” deaths resulted, adding, “We expected much more,” the lawsuit says. Soltan was interrogated by Egypt’s chief of state security prosecutions and singled out for helping foreign media “embarrass Egypt before the world,” for his U.S. citizenship and his father’s status, the suit states. “They knew who he was,” Lewis said. Soltan was convicted in a mass trial and sentenced to life in prison after being charged with broadcasting “false news,” spreading “terror,” damaging the state’s prestige and disturbing national and public security. Soltan is recently married and lives near three of his four siblings. He said he continues to get “calls in the middle in the night” about friends or an uncle arrested; his father punished; and prisoners in cases he is working on — including one who he said recently died of medical neglect. He also still bears burn marks on his neck, bullet scars, and limited strength and motion in his left arm. But worse, he said, is a “perpetual trauma” that includes nightmares of the inmate guards put in his cell to die beside him, the screams of


‘Tell me what to do! Please!’: Even experts struggle with coronavirus unknowns

Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia psychology professor who has devoted his career to making scientific data more reliable and trustworthy, is frustrated. Like everyone else, he’s trying to understand the pandemic, particularly in his own community of Charlottesville, and in California, where he has family. So he wonders: Where is the virus spreading? Where is it suppressed? Where are people social distancing as they should, and where are they not? Where will he and his family be safe? In this pandemic, we’re swimming in statistics, trends, models, projections, infection rates, death tolls. Nosek has professional expertise in interpreting data, but even he is struggling to make sense of the numbers. “What’s crazy is, we’re three months in, and we’re still not able to calibrate our risk management. It’s a mess,” said Nosek, who runs the Center for Open Science, which advocates for transparency in research, in May. “Tell me what to do! Please!” Scientists are still trying to understand the virus they call SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease covid-19. Basic questions are not fully answered: How deadly is this virus? How contagious? Are there different strains with different clinical outcomes? Why does SARS-CoV-2 create a devastating disease in some people while leaving others without symptoms or even knowledge that they were infected? With stay-at-home orders expiring and businesses reopening, all the scientific data is being scrutinized anew. But the numbers are often ambiguous, with large margins of error. And because this is still an early phase of the pandemic, scientific findings have to be couched in tentative, provisional, sometimes squishy language that is festooned with caveats and admitted limitations. The experts shy away from predictions and instead offer “scenarios.” For example, last month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a document titled COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios that offered guidance to public health officials. The document gave a wide range of numerical estimates for the contagiousness and lethality of covid-19. The guidance was presented with a cautionary preamble: “Information about [covid-19’s] biological and epidemiological characteristics remain limited, and uncertainty remains around nearly all parameter values.” The CDC added that the numbers presented are “not” — the word is boldfaced for emphasis — “predictions of the expected effects of COVID-19.” With the science fuzzy, people are forced to do their own calculations and estimates, and figure out what’s safe and what isn’t. They have to decide whether to go


about statistical averages as they do about their personal risk level. Even the low estimates must be viewed in the context of a population that, at the start of this year, was completely susceptible to this highly contagious virus. Fatality rates fluctuate over time and from place to place, and depend on many variables, including demographics and access to health care. But if the CDC’s “best estimate” is correct and remains constant, and half the people in the United States become infected during the next two years without the introduction of a proven drug treatment or vaccine, that would result in about 426,000 deaths. The lethality of the virus has been hard to estimate because of the lack of testing and the paucity of solid data on how many people have been infected. That data is now coming in, however, including a report by researchers at the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles County health department, published in JAMA, that described a survey of Los Angeles County residents who were tested for antibodies to the virus. The authors estimated that about 4 percent of the population had been infected as of April 10 and 11. Although the report did not offer an infection fatality rate, lead author Neeraj Sood, a professor of health policy at USC, said it would probably be 0.13 percent for people outside nursing homes and 0.26 percent — identical to the CDC best estimate — when people in nursing homes were included. No one in the survey lives in a nursing home. All of the volunteers tested were “community-dwelling individuals,” he said. “Depending on how you make the assumptions, you can get different answers for the infection fatality rate,” he said. The published report, in keeping with scientific norms, acknowledges that it “has limitations” and states them: “Selection bias is likely. The estimated prevalence may be biased due to nonresponse or that symptomatic persons may have been more likely to participate. Prevalence estimates could change with new information on the accuracy of test kits used. Also, the study was limited to 1 county.” The pandemic has cast a bright light on epidemiology and the computer models that played a key role in spurring the massive shutdowns in March. Some critics of the models have called them flawed and incorrect. A favorite target of right-wing news sites has been an Imperial College model that in


Tensions rise in U.S. Olympic community amid protests and punishments

doing better. Hopefully they succeed in that. I think the conversations that are now happening, the listening, is at least a first step.” Berry has said the protest cost her sponsorship money and endangered her quest for the Tokyo Olympics, which were postponed to 2021 because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. She said this week that she was contacted by Max Siegel, chief executive at USA Track & Field, to facilitate a meeting. On Thursday, the USOPC organized a conference call for all of its track and field athletes in which Hirshland took part. While race equality and police brutality have sparked dialogue across the country, Berry and Imboden have been a focal point for many in the Olympic world. Sprinter Noah Lyles, the reigning 200-meter world champion and one of the sport’s biggest rising stars, admired Imboden and Berry taking their stances, knowing how much they had to lose in sponsorship support and risk in public perception. “Seeing them do that, that already puts them on a very high level for me,” Lyles said in a phone interview Friday. “And it also shows really how much these organizations are really trying to support us. I guess some people could look at them and say: ‘Oh, they’re on suspensions. That’s nice of them to do.’ In our eyes, it’s like, no, they basically told them: ‘You’re kind of on house arrest. Don’t do anything, or we’re going to really mess you up next time.’ ” Lyles participated in Thursday’s conference call for track and field athletes. He sensed frustration from his peers during the lengthy session. “The strongest point that was made in there was us pleading that we hear the IOC, USATF and all these big companies, even sponsors, saying, ‘We support you,’ ” Lyles said. “Which you do. But we’re not seeing any action taken on to that. If you support us, we need to see how much you support us. There are people who are going to be putting up a fist or kneeling, and we need to know, are you going to be putting them on probation? Or are you going to be saying, ‘They did this for the right reason; we don’t need to be punishing them anymore’? ” Rule 50 and the punishment haven’t stopped Berry from speaking her mind. She continues training for Tokyo and has followed the headlines and developments closely the


Noah Lyles runs for his country, and he wants to help make it better

” Sponsorship money drives Lyles’s income, and he senses some want athletes to “maybe tone it down” on social issues. As a black athlete reliant on corporate America, he feels the pull of an unfair choice. “By [protesting at the Olympics], I might be taking away that next generation’s security,” Lyles said of his family. “Instead of fighting financial needs, I will now have to fight [for] civil rights.” Lyles has an affinity for fast cars. When he turned pro out of high school and signed with Adidas, he bought a BMW. His mother, Keisha Caine Bishop, went home and cried. Lyles understands why now, even if he has not personally experienced harassment from police. “It doesn’t mean I don’t have fear that I will,” Lyles said. “I would put it like this: Knowing that you have a good car that is looked at in a high light and knowing you’re a black man means that you will be more on guard over how you present yourself. When I drive my car, I definitely follow every rule because I don’t want to be pulled over. That’s just an excuse for them to do whatever they want to me. ... All they see is the color of my skin, and they equate with me having this car, and their first jump would probably be I’m selling drugs. Being a black man that’s in a good, stable position in life, you have to know who your enemies will be. It’s not the people on the track.” Living with those thoughts is unfamiliar, if not unfathomable, for many Americans. Lyles must endure them and then compete for his country. He still loves it enough to want to make it better. “I don’t think you feel conflict until you see the other side,” he said. “When you’re at a world championships or you rep the U.S. in another country and you’re actually being praised over what you do, when they’re like, ‘You’re such a great athlete.’ Then when you come home and you’re completely treated the opposite way, then that’s when you have an issue. That’s when it’s like, ‘Okay, now I feel in my position I need to do something.’ ” More on the Olympics: How U.S. Olympians are training at home With Olympics postponed, Katie Ledecky focuses on educating herself — and others When sports will return: Breaking down every league’s plan


In crisis, Amtrak is focused on testing and training for new trains to debut in 2021

Manufacturing and testing of Amtrak’s new high-speed Acela trains, expected to debut next year in the Northeast, is on track despite interruptions to production and training during the coronavirus pandemic, officials said. Testing of the first two Avelia Liberty high-speed train sets from French manufacturer Alstom, is underway in the Northeast Corridor and at a federal facility in Pueblo, Colo., and Amtrak said railroad crews have started training on the new technology in anticipation of a launch next spring. The Acela prototype arrived at the Colorado Federal Railroad Administration site for nine months of testing in February. Officials said it recently exceeded performance expectations, traveling at 165 mph, above the 160 mph limit the trains would be allowed to travel once in service between Washington and Boston. The current Acela trains travel up to 150 mph. “We are laser-focused on delivering this new fleet of trains,” said Caroline N. Decker, Amtrak’s vice president for the Northeast Corridor. “Looking at where we are in terms of the production, we have a high degree of confidence that a 2021 launch is very doable, and certainly we’re eager to introduce the new fleet to the Northeast Corridor as soon as possible.” The $2.5 billion project, which also includes major infrastructure improvements to accommodate the new trains, is moving forward at a time when Amtrak is preparing to reduce staff by up to 20 percent and is requesting nearly $1.5 billion more in federal aid to keep afloat amid the unprecedented financial hardship from the pandemic. The health crisis that shut down much of the country in March devastated the passenger railroad’s ridership and revenue. The investment in the Acela was originally aimed to grow one of Amtrak’s strongest lines. Post-pandemic, the investment offers hope for the future as the company tries to recoup from massive losses suffered when ridership plummeted with the health crisis. Railroad officials say they are determined to keep the project on track, saying it could stimulate economic recovery. The contract for the 28 trains was awarded in 2016 and supports about 1,300 jobs across the country, officials said, including 400 at Alstom’s facilities in areas of support such as train control, rail signaling, engineering and maintenance. The new trains will replace the existing fleet of 20 sets starting next year. “It’s a silver lining at a time of a lot of dark clouds,” Decker said. “We’re very mindful that


As coronavirus deaths in Brazil surge, Bolsonaro limits the release of data

Bolsonaro has taken control of the country’s federal response to the pandemic. He fired former health secretary Luiz Henrique Mandetta after they publicly clashed over the need to maintain social distancing and temporarily close nonessential businesses. He pushed out Mandetta’s replacement, Nelson Teich, after Teich resisted his pressure to advocate the use of the anti-malarial drug chloroquine in coronavirus cases, despite potentially fatal side effects. Bolsonaro has tapped a military official with no medical training as the interim health minister. Brazil has long struggled to maintain accurate coronavirus data. Until now, however, the concern was that it was underestimating the severity of the crisis — not the other way around. Unable to buy or produce enough tests, Brazil was at one time testing 32 times fewer people than the United States and 12 times fewer than Iran — but still posting one of the world’s largest outbreaks. The scant testing has led researchers to estimate that Brazil’s outbreak is anywhere between five and 15 times worse than the official register. The disagreement over the data fits into a broader pattern for Bolsonaro. The right-wing populist, a fierce advocate for commercial development in the Amazon rainforest, claimed last year that government deforestation monitors “sometimes lie” and that their data is “exaggerated.” He then fired the country’s top deforestation watchdog. When the number of forest fires in the Amazon started to sharply rise — a phenomenon linked to deforestation — he claimed without evidence that the fires had been lit by nongovernmental organizations linked to U.S. actor Leonardo DiCaprio to make Bolsonaro look bad. Scientists say they fear the Bolsonaro administration is moving to hide more data he doesn’t like, politicizing what should be an objective tally, with human lives in the balance. “In any country, if you do a recount, you will find an increase in the number of deaths,” said Mauro Sanchez, an adjunct professor of public health at the University of Brasília. “But if they do a recount and come up with a smaller number of deaths than what they are reporting now, we will have to take this number with a grain of salt. … Where is this going?” Domingos Alves, a data scientist at the University of São Paulo, said the country is increasingly resembling North Korea. “It is a government that, for ideological reasons, is isolating itself from the world and withholding information like North Korea.”


Desperate Middle Eastern women resort to selling their gold as pandemic grinds on

had also seen a spike in sales by desperate families who had lost work during the coronavirus lockdown. “They are selling the gold they have. Not lots of quantities, but small stuff like rings and earrings, stuff that gets them around $300 so they can at least provide food,” he said. The gold, he added, “is mostly from their weddings, which is supposed to be for women in their hard times.” Abu Salah, 51, a laborer who lost his work this spring, visited Kadhim’s store after finally asking his wife’s permission to sell her jewelry. “Since we were young, we learned that the wife’s gold is hers only, and the man cannot do anything with it,” he said. The gold had been his wedding gift to his wife 30 years ago. “I feel like less of a man for doing this. The man should be able to support his family, always, without touching his wife’s gold,” Abu Salah said. “I am ashamed of doing this. But now I have no other options.” Syrians have also been selling off their gold, said Ghassan Jazmati, head of the craft association for goldsmithery and jewelry-making in Damascus, in an interview with Syria’s al-Thawra newspaper. He added that this trend reflects how badly Syrians need cash for basic needs, such as food and medicine, amid an economic crisis in that country that has as much to do with nine years of war as the pandemic. Unlike in neighboring countries, most of those sales have been over social media. In April, as Syrians posted online photos of jewelry for sale at cut-rate prices, gold merchants feared that the market would collapse and lobbied the government to reopen stores that had been closed to fight the epidemic. It is not just women who have long turned to gold as a traditional way to safeguard their wealth and save for emergencies. In many Middle Eastern countries, banks are often seen as untrustworthy or unreliable — recent banking crises in the region have reinforced those fears — and the kind of retirement savings programs available in the West are relatively rare. But around the Middle East, coronavirus outbreaks have disrupted traditional gold markets. Dubai’s gold souk, home to nearly 400 retailers, shut down in March to curb the spread of the disease and, even after reopening in late April, remained mostly empty of purchasers. In Egypt, gold production


‘We don’t get justice’: When a black girl’s death from covid-19 feels like a collision of two crises

all of whom work jobs that force them to be out in the community, potentially exposed to the pathogen. Dyson’s grandfather is a truck driver, their neighbor works for Burger King, an uncle for the electric company, and so on. The shops nearby and other neighbors’ homes were also probably full of people who are essential workers. Jerome Patterson, who called Dyson a “hype cousin” as a sign of his adoration, said she rarely ventured out and took stay-at-home orders seriously. Instead, she passed the time making TikTok videos with her little sisters and posting on Instagram to her friends. Patterson, 15, the same age as Dyson but in ninth grade while she was in 10th, said the two of them had been sitting around listening to music when suddenly her stomach began to hurt her. “One minute was fine, and then she was not,” he said. “I’ve been sad and angry and really very scared.” Things got so bad that on May 11 — after several days of fever and severe stomach pains that left her unable to eat — her mother rushed her to the nearest hospital. Over the next few days, Dyson’s condition deteriorated further, and she began to experience the telltale symptoms of a rare and mysterious pediatric syndrome related to covid-19 that has killed several children in New York state and other parts of the world. It has been described as similar but distinct from Kawasaki disease, a condition whose cause is unknown but usually affects children under the age of 5. Some doctors have described the condition as the pediatric equivalent of the “cytokine storm” occurring in some adults with severe illness. Health commissioners in New York and New Jersey released data this week that showed black or Hispanic children have been disproportionately affected by the pediatric syndrome — representing roughly two-thirds of all cases. Similar findings have been reported in Europe. In Paris, doctors at one hospital wrote in the medical journal BMJ that 12 of 21 children seen there were of African or Caribbean heritage. In another outbreak in the southeastern United Kingdom, six of eight cases were children of color. “These clinical findings should prompt high vigilance among primary care and emergency doctors … in countries with a high proportion of children of African ancestry and high levels of community transmission,” the French researchers wrote. Like others with the condition, Dyson


it did,” said Manuel Henderson, 61, Dyson’s grandfather. “I think it’s because they put her on the ventilator that did it.” The reflections underscore an eroding public trust in the medical establishment — trust that some relatives, friends and neighbors said was already fragile because of months of flip-flops and conflicts about the virus between President Trump and state health officials, as well as a history of mistreatment. Ahing Castro, 39, a home improvement contractor who lives in the housing complex, said he has not been surprised that so many black Americans are dying from covid-19. He said this was happening for the same reason he felt underperforming schools festered in black neighborhoods and large numbers of liquor stores got licenses to open up. “It’s how it’s set up,” he said. “It’s another way to keep us down.” He described how he was recently working on renovating a home and police saw him through the window and immediately assumed he had broken in. Even when he showed them he had the key and his tools, he said, they detained him until they could reach the owner. Looking back, some family members say, it may have been almost inevitable that Dyson was exposed, given the community in which she lived. Everyone seemed to know someone who had been infected or died. But family members also said there has not been enough testing, and many neighbors do not have cars. “We need to know who has it so we can protect ourselves better,” said Dyson’s aunt Rhonda, 42. She asked that her last name be withheld because she works for the government. “We are out here scared, and we don’t know what to do.” Suncercy Smith, a 33-year-old single mother and family friend who is a cashier working during the pandemic, said she is angry at the government for not doing more to protect black communities when it should have been clear they would be affected so severely. “They knew,” Smith said. “They should have been prepared. It’s not right." Read more: Covid-19 is ravaging black communities. A Milwaukee neighborhood is figuring out how to fight back. ‘It’s a blue-soaked anger’: Amid protests, African Americans feel a private grief Children with perplexing syndrome linked to covid-19 may be experiencing deadly ‘cytokine storm’ The girl who died twice: Juliet Daly was a healthy 12-year-old in Covington, La., until the coronavirus infected her heart


CDC wants states to count ‘probable’ coronavirus cases and deaths, but most aren’t doing it

are not included in the public death count or reported to the CDC. “We suspect that we are actually more likely to be undercounting deaths than overcounting them,” Katie Hutchinson, the health department’s health statistics manager, said during a recent briefing. CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said that the agency is working with health departments to improve the flow of data. “In pandemic circumstances, such as with covid-19, collecting complete information on each case is challenging,” Nordlund said. “The current case and deaths counts reported to CDC are likely an undercount.” During the H1N1 flu pandemic, states initially counted probable and confirmed cases individually. But about three months into the outbreak, the CDC said those individual counts represented “only a fraction of the true burden” of the disease. The agency stopped collecting individual case reports and instead began publishing estimates based on hospitalizations, symptoms and other data. The CDC is planning to come up with similar estimates for the coronavirus but has no immediate plans to stop counting individual cases. “CDC is actively working on a model to address and assess the true burden of covid-19 in the U.S.,” Nordlund said. For government officials assessing how quickly to reopen the economy and individuals deciding what risks to take, their daily judgment calls are based, in part, on the case and death counts publicized on television and computer screens. That has propelled the pandemic counts into the contentious political arena, where some allies of President Trump and conservative voices on social media have claimed that the covid-19 death toll is inflated. The debate over whether counts of probables are crucial or misleading extends beyond the nation’s capital. In Illinois, two Republican lawmakers and three businesses have sued the Democratic governor over coronavirus disaster orders. A spokeswoman for the health department, Melaney Arnold, said the state is not divulging probable deaths on its website “because there is concern from the public that the number of deaths is being inflated. . . . We need the public to have confidence in the data and therefore are reporting only those deaths that are laboratory confirmed.” The state website lists about 5,700 deaths as of June 5, excluding the approximately 185 probable deaths tracked internally as of that day and reported to the CDC. But a resident looking at a state chart and then turning to the CDC might not find the same numbers. The newly


Commissioner Kristina Box said at an April 20 news conference. “Rather, we are capturing the deaths that have occurred really since this pandemic began.” Box suggested other states would do the same: “Indiana — like every other state — will include these deaths in our reporting in order to better capture the toll that covid-19 has truly taken.” One week earlier, Michigan officials had said they intended to begin disclosing probable cases and deaths. When the state finally began doing that on June 5, more than 5,000 cases and 200 deaths were added to coronavirus totals. California’s state health department is reviewing the process to track probable deaths and “working to provide as much data as possible about COVID 19 while ensuring that the data are valid and useful for understanding the pandemic,” according to a May 20 email to The Post. Hilda Solis, a supervisor in Los Angeles County who represents a heavily Hispanic and impoverished district, said she was surprised that the state is not following national recommendations on counting coronavirus deaths. She has called for more post-mortem testing by the medical examiner. “A lot of people are dying at home. Poor people are dying at home. Homeless people are dying,” said Solis, a former U.S. labor secretary under President Barack Obama. “I do believe covid-19 is being underreported and that we need to take more responsibility.” The scale of undercounting that results from reporting only confirmed cases became clear when New York City on April 14 added more than 3,700 probable deaths to its numbers, sending the city’s tally over 10,000. The city that sits at the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States still is not counting probable cases, however. New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat praised for his command of daily news briefings during the pandemic, has indicated skepticism about recording probable cases. “Probable is different than confirmed,” he said at a news conference in late May. “Probable is ‘probable, but I have to check, I don’t know, I have to do further testing.’ We’ve had many cases that were probable coronavirus and turned out not to be coronavirus and that’s why they call them probable.” Covid-19 websites for New York and New Jersey include probable deaths at nursing homes, but those numbers are not included in the states’ overall death totals. A spokesperson for North Carolina’s health department said the state


The Finance 202: The surprisingly strong May jobs report clouds prospects for more pandemic economic relief

valued at $140 billion, is the U.K.’s biggest drugmaker by market capitalization and has developed treatments for conditions from cancer to cardiovascular disease. Gilead, worth $96 billion at Friday’s close, is the creator of a drug that’s received U.S. approval for use with coronavirus patients. Gilead is not currently interested in selling to or merging with another big pharmaceutical company, preferring instead to focus its deal strategy on partnerships and smaller acquisitions …” Futures point to gains at the open Fed eyes yield caps “Fed officials aren’t prepared to announce any decision on so-called yield caps when their two-day policy meeting concludes Wednesday. With rates near zero and unlikely to go lower, two other policy questions must get resolved first: how to manage their pace of bond purchases and how to communicate their long-run intentions, using so-called forward guidance.” U.S. shale industry is producing again Independent economists says Beijing's jobless claims after the pandemic are too rosy: “Millions of laborers who lost their jobs weren’t counted in China’s headline unemployment rate because of quirks in the way the data are gathered — and many still haven’t returned to work. Others found new jobs but had to accept pay cuts or fewer hours. Independent economists in China and Hong Kong estimate as many as 80 million people were out of work during the worst of China’s lockdowns earlier this year. That is far more than the roughly 26 million captured by the government’s unemployment survey of people in cities in March, when China’s economy was still reeling from the virus.” But the country's trade surplus is surging to a record: “Exports decreased 3.3 percent in dollar terms from a year earlier, beating economists’ estimates, while imports plunged 16.7 percent. That resulted in a trade surplus of $62.93 billion. The record surplus comes as the price of commodities China buys such as crude oil, natural gas and soy beans declined. Exports, meantime, have come off their lows, helped in part by sales of masks and other medical supplies as countries around the world battle to stem the spread of the coronavirus.” The company is coming off a historic launch with NASA: “The Falcon 9 rocket that launched the astronauts is the mainstay of SpaceX’s business, with 85 missions over the past decade. But Starship represents the company’s aim to make obsolete even the cost-saving advances of its Falcon 9 fleet.” Today: Tuesday:


Thinking about a remote-work trip? Consider these tips first.

or table (bonus points for a workspace near a window for natural light), and reliable Internet so you can connect to your regular Zoom meetings. It may seem like a no-brainer, but ask these questions of your host. As cathartic as it sounds to get up and leave your home immediately, you’ll be better off making appropriate arrangements before you go. Depending on how long you’ll be gone, you may want to stop your mail or arrange for someone to water your plants. And do not forget to take out the trash before your trip; I am warning you. For safety purposes, Belles, who plans to spend a month working remotely in Colorado with her family this summer, puts her home lights on an automated dimmer during nighttime hours so its less obvious the family is away. Travis Levius, a freelance travel writer and editor, recommends considering which subscriptions you won’t be using while you’re traveling, like Netflix or meal kits, and pausing them to save money. “Suspend those services so you won’t have to pay hundreds of dollars for no reason if you’re not using the service abroad,” he said. “This helps a lot financially.” Because we’re in a pandemic, research the place you’re visiting ahead of time to know what restrictions are in place. “Is there a quarantine based on where you’re coming from and where you’re going?” Belles said. “It’s really important right now to find out what is open in that area, because everything changes state by state.“ Even though places are slowly reopening, health experts are warning of a second wave of novel coronavirus infections, which could result in new restrictions. If you are thinking about going abroad, remember that the State Department still has a Level 4 travel advisory in place, which advises U.S. citizens to not travel internationally. But if you still plan to go, check local government sites to understand what precautions you need to take when you arrive, like quarantining — that is if the city is even open to U.S. visitors again. The same can be true for domestic trips, such as Hawaii, which requires visitors to quarantine for 14 days. For those new to long-term travel, packing for a trip can feel stressful. How do you fit enough things into a suitcase for a month away from home? “It’s key to pack light, I like to be as flexible


Lessons from Peru in the U.S.-China aviation standoff

The June 4 news article “Administration to ban flights by Chinese airlines” reported on deteriorating bilateral aviation relations with China. (The proposed ban has since been softened.) We had a similar problem when I was the economic counselor at our embassy in Peru in the early 1980s. At that point, the venerable U.S. airline Braniff International had gone bankrupt, and the right to serve that route passed to Eastern Air Lines. Peru, for its own reasons, contested the succession, but we figured it would be sorted out. At the same time, our old Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) was slated for bureaucratic “death” under a then-sexy “sunset” law. CAB was determined to be tough in its waning days, and we had a hard time reconciling our two countries’ positions. No solution satisfied our friends at CAB. We at the State Department never fully knew what CAB intended to do, and it was hard to move the board to engage on the matter. Similar bilateral threats to cut off service, as in the China case, were made, only hardening both side’s positions. No deal proved workable. We sadly watched as the other side cut off our carrier’s access, and CAB responded: Presto! No direct U.S.-Peru air service. And it stayed that way for more than a year. A “minor” issue troubled our efforts to smooth relations with a friendly country. As for China, I doubt there’s much to be learned from this “ancient history,” except the usual “tail wagging the dog” regrets. M. Gordon Jones Read more letters to the editor.


Maryland state parks see surge in visitors as gyms and most recreational facilities remain closed

Mike Stirratt had planned to celebrate his 50th birthday last month in Santa Fe, N.M., on a getaway trip with his husband, David Johnson, and their 6-year-old son, Prescott. But as the coronavirus pandemic upended normal daily life, those plans were no longer feasible. Instead, the D.C. resident, donning a plastic birthday crown, took his family on their first visit to Patapsco Valley State Park near Baltimore. He enjoyed Cascade Falls, the Swinging Bridge in the Avalon area and skipping rocks in the Patapsco River with his son. “It felt like coming out here on this gorgeous day helped to make it very special,” Stirratt said. “We thought maybe there’d be less people because it’s a Tuesday afternoon,” Johnson said. “Seems like a lot of other people had the same idea.” Maryland state parks saw a sharp increase in visitors in March and April compared with the same period last year, amid orders from public officials that closed businesses and required residents to stay in their homes except for essential travel, to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. Even as Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) replaced the state’s stay-at-home order with a “Safer at Home” advisory and cleared the way for localities to begin some reopening, outdoor exercise has been among the few recreational activities available to residents, with gyms and rec centers remaining closed. For many, hiking and biking at Patapsco Valley State Park has been a respite — despite the closed restrooms and bathhouses, the park’s prohibition on grilling and certain restrictions on camping. “We have nothing to do. We don’t know when we’re going back to work,” said Sandra Whitt, walking on a trail with her daughter, Kelly Newsome. Whitt, a bartender, and Newsome, a dental assistant, have both lost their jobs in the pandemic. At Patapsco Valley State Park, regular users have noticed the increase in visitors. On a recent Tuesday afternoon, a line of cars stretched past the Avalon entrance in Halethorpe, slowly filing into the park. Laurel resident Japheth Bruce spent four days a week fishing at Patapsco before the pandemic. “We have to just deal with the crowd now,” Bruce said. “You’re used to having nature to yourself, basically, as selfish as it sounds.” In March, the 53 parks managed by the state Department of Natural Resources recorded 258,576 visits, compared with 64,101 visits in March 2019 and 46,153 in March 2018,


For many low-income Americans, Oct. 15 is the last chance to sign up for a stimulus payment for this year

may be on the way. If you aren’t a federal beneficiary and you don’t normally file a federal return because you earned $12,200 or less as an individual or under $24,400 as a married couple, the IRS doesn’t know you qualify for the stimulus payment. So you have to use the non-filers tool. “Anyone who registers by October 15 will receive their payment by the end of the year,” the IRS said. Because the IRS isn’t processing paper returns now due to the coronavirus and stay-at-home orders, people have to register on the online tool. This could be a problem, of course, for many low-income individuals, as well as the homeless, who may not have Internet access. Places where they might go to use a computer, such as public libraries or nonprofit communication organizations, may still be closed. The non-filers tool will also allow people to provide banking information for direct deposit information, which is quicker than having to wait for a mailed check. This also presents an issue: Millions of low-income individuals don’t have bank accounts. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has been making a push to reach the “unbanked” to make it easier for them to receive stimulus payments. In 2017, about 8.4 million U.S. households, made up of 14.1 million adults, were unbanked, meaning no one in the household had a checking or savings account, according to the most recent findings from the FDIC. The nonprofit Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund has a “Bank On” initiative to help underserved communities find affordable banking and credit union accounts. The IRS says it will team up with community groups that serve homeless individuals, underserved communities, and limited English households to get the word out about stimulus payments. The agency has created an online page with materials groups can download or post on social media. One caution: Do not use the non-filer tool if you have filed or intend to file a 2019 federal return. You can still get your stimulus payment by filing a return. The IRS is processing stimulus payments based on recently filed electronic returns. The economic impact payment is an advance credit for 2020. Under the Cares Act, payments must be made by Dec. 31. If people don’t receive a payment by the end of the year, they still have an opportunity to get the stimulus funds. However, to get the money they have to


Shuttered zoos are hemorrhaging money, and they want federal help for endangered species work

Three months after stranding on a Delaware beach, a gray seal dubbed Pippi Longstocking is recovering at the National Aquarium in Baltimore and will soon be released to the wild. She may be the facility’s last such patient for the foreseeable future. The aquarium has lost more than $8 million and furloughed one-third of its staff since closing in March because of the coronavirus pandemic. Although its 20,000 animals — including 13 endangered sea turtles convalescing in a new rehabilitation center — are still being cared for, the institution’s rescues of stranded seals and other federally protected marine mammals can’t happen now. The National Aquarium is one of more than 200 major U.S. zoos and aquariums that — like most attractions that rely on ticket sales — have suffered huge losses amid shutdowns to combat the spread of the coronavirus. But these zoos say they have been hit harder than many other shuttered institutions because their occupants — more than a million animals nationwide, some owned by the U.S. government — still need food, water, heating, cooling and veterinary care. Helping wild animals such as Pippi is important to the aquarium, said president and CEO John Racanelli, but it takes “existential” resources that are vanishing. “Many of our peers are in tougher shape,” Racanelli said. “But all of us are confronting the fact that if we’re not operating, we’re dying.” Many zoos have laid off or furloughed most staff members except those who care for animals, but they are hemorrhaging money even as some partially reopen, according to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which represents 229 facilities in North America. Their future tenuous, some of their first cuts are likely to be to wildlife conservation programs, some of which buttress federal efforts to rebuild endangered species populations, said Dan Ashe, the association’s president. “The bottom line is that it’s been financially devastating for our members,” Ashe said. Most zoos, he said, have three to six months of financial reserves, and the federal paycheck protection funds received by about 70 percent are running out. “The casualty, I’m almost certain, will be the ability to support conservation work. Because that’s fueled by gate revenue,” he said. Critics Breeding of endangered species is on hold at many zoos. The Endangered Wolf Center, near St. Louis, in May flew nine critically endangered Mexican wolf pups to Arizona, where they were placed with wild