Your Tuesday Evening Briefing

August 25, 2020

Your Tuesday Evening Briefing

By Carole Landry and Hiroko Masuike

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

1. Melania Trump and Mike Pompeo are speaking at the Republican convention tonight, and their appearances will be a sharp break from tradition.

The first lady will speak from the Rose Garden of the White House. Mr. Pompeo will endorse the president from a rooftop in Jerusalem, the first address by a sitting secretary of state at a national party convention in at least 75 years.

Never in recent times has a president used the White House in a nominating convention, nor has a sitting secretary of state participated in such a partisan event. These are examples of how President Trump has blurred the lines between the government and his campaign.

The Times will stream the convention every evening, through Thursday, and our political reporters will provide live analysis from 8:30 p.m. Eastern. Here’s how to watch and where to follow our live updates.

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Kamil Krzaczynski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

2. Jacob Blake, the Black man who was shot by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wis., on Sunday, is paralyzed from a bullet that severed his spinal cord, his family and lawyers said on Tuesday.

Standing in front of a heavily fortified courthouse in Kenosha, where demonstrations and destruction have rocked the city, Mr. Blake’s parents and siblings denounced the police and pleaded for justice. Protests prompted by the shooting have been held across the country, from New York to Seattle.

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It was a “senseless attempted murder,” Mr. Blake’s father, Jacob Blake Sr., above center, said as he wept.

Doral Chenoweth/The Columbus Dispatch, via Associated Press

3. College students who break pandemic rules, beware.

Colleges and universities across the country, facing a rise in coronavirus infections, are increasingly disciplining newly returned students for violating pandemic safety rules.

At Ohio State University, above, 228 students have received interim suspensions for violating rules against large gatherings during the pandemic, the university said.

Officials from Montclair State University in New Jersey warned students: “Please understand, there will be no second chances.” Classes began on Tuesday at Montclair, and 11 students have already been suspended from living in university housing after they gathered without masks or social distancing.

Here are our latest updates and maps of the pandemic.

David J. Phillip/Associated Press

4. Parts of Texas and Louisiana are evacuating before Hurricane Laura arrives.

The storm strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane earlier today as it cut through the Gulf of Mexico on a path toward the coasts of Louisiana and Texas. More than 500,000 people in those states have been told to evacuate. Forecasters predicted that the storm, gathering energy from the Gulf’s warm waters, would become a major Category 3 hurricane late Wednesday. Above, evacuees boarding buses in Galveston, Texas, today.

The region had been on alert for a “one-two punch” of back-to-back hurricanes, but the first system to arrive, Tropical Storm Marco, significantly weakened before making landfall on Monday evening. We have live updates here.

Brian L. Frank for The New York Times

5. Heat, fire and Covid-19 are pummeling farmworkers in California.

Hundreds of thousands of men and women like Briseida Flores, above, are plucking, weeding, and packing produce in the San Joaquin Valley in California as temperatures soar into the triple digits for days at a time and the air turns to a soup of dust and smoke.

One of our climate reporters, Somini Sengupta, and a photojournalist, Brian L. Frank, drove through the valley during a calamitous wave of heat, fire and surging coronavirus infections to see the situation through the eyes of those worst affected: agricultural workers.

There are 625 blazes burning across the state, and they have scorched an area larger than the state of Delaware. Firefighters say they are making progress, but the “megafires” could burn for weeks. Follow our updates here.

Josh Ritchie for The New York Times

6. American Airlines plans to furlough 19,000 employees this fall.

That’s when the restrictions on job cuts that the airlines agreed to in exchange for federal aid will end.

When combined with the thousands of employees who have taken buyout packages or agreed to take long-term leave, the furloughs mean that the airline will have at least 40,000 fewer workers on Oct. 1 than it did before the coronavirus crisis began, a decline of about 30 percent, the airline’s top two executives said in a letter to employees.

The executives called on Congress to extend more support to the aviation industry to protect jobs.

Charlotte Kesl for The New York Times

7. How racism persists in real estate.

Black Americans consistently struggle more than their white counterparts to be approved for home loans, and the specter of redlining — a practice that denied mortgages to people of color in certain neighborhoods — continues to drive down home values in Black neighborhoods.

Even in mixed-race and predominantly white neighborhoods, Black homeowners say their homes are consistently appraised for less than those of their neighbors. In the case of Abena and Alex Horton, of Jacksonville, Fla., above, a second appraisal of their home — done with clues about race, like family photos, removed — came in 40 percent higher than the first one.

Decades of redlining have also created big disparities in the quality of life between neighborhoods. Today, neighborhoods that are poorer and have more residents of color tend to be some of the most sweltering parts of town in the summer, with few trees and an abundance of heat-trapping pavement.

Kin Cheung/Associated Press

8. China targets the internet in Hong Kong.

Beijing’s rule in Hong Kong is increasingly colliding with the financial hub’s rules that protect digital rights.

Under a new security law imposed by Beijing, people are now detained for internet crime, something common on the mainland but new to Hong Kong. The police are targeting the social media accounts of executives, politicians and activists, who are struggling to respond. Major internet companies like Facebook and Twitter have temporarily cut off data sharing with the local police.

“In China this is normal stuff,” said Mark Simon, an executive at Next Digital, which is owned by the media mogul Jimmy Lai, who was arrested this month. “In Hong Kong they’re learning how to operate.”

John P. Dessereau

9. Can love survive this election?

For many couples, fighting about politics has become more common. Since President Trump’s election, a New York City divorce lawyer says he has regularly listened to clients ranting about their partners’ views on initiatives like Black Lives Matter.

On the dating scene, in years past, singles wanted partners that were attractive, intelligent and successful. Now, finding someone politically compatible is nonnegotiable, says the owner of a matchmaking service.

“My motto in the past was, ‘Work together and agree to disagree,’ but it has gotten to the point where people hate the other political side,” she said. “And if they hate them, how could they date them?”

Annie Tritt for The New York Times

10. And finally, be on the lookout for these classic posters.

He calls himself the Ranger of the Lost Art. Doug Leen, a retired dentist who lives on an island in southeast Alaska, has made it his life’s work to track down the original posters created for America’s parks and monuments in the 1930s and ’40s by artists with the Works Progress Administration. Those original designs were almost completely lost to time and neglect.

Of the 14 original prints, there are two Mr. Leen still hasn’t found: posters for Great Smoky Mountain and Wind Cave National Parks. He knows what they look like thanks to the negatives from an archive. He hopes someone might read this article and call him about that Wind Cave poster in their attic.

“What’s driving me in this whole thing is to get all 14 of these back in the public domain,” he said. “These belong to the American people, pure and simple.”

Have a pure and simple evening.

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

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