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President Uhuru Kenyatta was declaredthe winner of Tuesday’s election, but hisopponent refused to concede. PAGE A5

INTERNATIONAL A4-10

Protests Erupt in Kenya

The 55-word Facebook post hada remarkably short life span, es-pecially for one from Daniel S.Loeb, a charter school proponentand activist investor known forhis acid-penned missives.

Mr. Loeb wrote this week that“hypocrites who pay fealty topowerful union thugs and bossesdo more damage to people of colorthan anyone who has ever donneda hood,” singling out the minorityleader of the State Senate, who isAfrican-American. Mr. Loeb, ahedge fund giant and politicalmegadonor, quickly deleted anddisavowed the incendiary com-ment after it became public, butthe damage was done.

Politicians who have long bene-fited from Mr. Loeb’s generosityscurried for cover and distance.And his enemies pounced.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and hiswife, Chirlane McCray, called onFriday for Mr. Loeb to step downfrom his post as chairman of Suc-cess Academy, a major charterschools network. Democraticgroups in New York and beyond

pushed Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo toreturn the $170,000 he had raisedfrom Mr. Loeb and his wife overthe years, including at a fund-raiser two years ago at Mr. Loeb’sHamptons home.

The day’s events capturedyears of interwoven and lingeringgrievances that have definedDemocratic politics in New York.On one side are left-leaning Dem-ocrats like Mr. de Blasio and theAssembly speaker, Carl M.Heastie, who have traditional tiesto the powerful teachers union. Onthe other are those backed by do-nors who support charter schools,politicians like Mr. Cuomo andSenator Jeffrey D. Klein, theleader of the renegade Independ-ent Democratic Conference.

Mr. Loeb’s comment also di-rectly hit on the long-simmeringracial tensions in Albany, whereMr. Klein’s group has helped blockSenator Andrea Stewart-Cousins,the black lawmaker whom Mr.Loeb attacked in his Facebook

New York Democrats, DividedOn Race, Reignite Schools Feud

By SHANE GOLDMACHER

Continued on Page A17

ARLENE GOTTFRIED

EYE FOR EVERYDAY LIFE With her camera, Ms. Gottfried roamedNew York City to capture striking and often amusing images, in-cluding a woman skipping rope in Brooklyn in 1972. Page D7.

ARLENE GOTTFRIED, 1950-2017

On a flight home to New Yorklast week, the jazz musician JohnPizzarelli received a text messagesaying that Barbara Cook, the 89-year-old star of Broadway andcabaret, was in failing health. Heand his wife, the singer JessicaMolaskey, had met Ms. Cook adecade earlier at Café Carlyle, oneof her musical haunts, and theyhad become close. Would the cou-ple like to come to her bedside andsay their goodbyes?

“The first thing I said was,‘Well, can I bring my guitar?’” Mr.Pizzarelli recalled.

In the days before Ms. Cook’sdeath on Tuesday, friends fromher legendary career delivered afitting farewell: More music.Vanessa Williams and Norm Lew-

is, who starred with Ms. Cook inthe 2010 Broadway revue “Sond-heim on Sondheim,” were amongthose who came by her UpperWest Side apartment and sang toher. Josh Groban, Hugh Jackman,Audra McDonald, Kelli O’Haraand others sent audio and videorecordings full of memories andmelodies.

Ms. Cook was in and out of con-sciousness, able to recognizevoices and respond with a squeezeof the hand.

“So often music can kind of con-nect in ways that just speakingcan’t,” said Mr. Groban, the singerand recent star of Broadway’s“Natasha, Pierre & the Great

As a Cabaret Star Lay Dying,Friends Came to Serenade Her

By SOPAN DEB

Continued on Page A17

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — Presi-dent Trump continued to beat wardrums on Friday against NorthKorea and, unexpectedly, said hewould consider a military optionto deal with an unrelated crisis inVenezuela. But though he de-clared that the armed forces were“locked and loaded,” there wereno indications of imminent actionin either part of the world.

For all the bellicose languageemerging from the president’sgolf club in Bedminster, N.J., theUnited States military was takingno visible steps to prepare for astrike against North Korea or Ven-ezuela. The Pentagon reported nonew ships being sent toward the

Korean Peninsula or forces beingmobilized, nor were there movesto begin evacuating any of thetens of thousands of Americansliving in South Korea.

The contrast between theheated words and the lack of ap-parent preparations suggestedthat Mr. Trump may still be count-ing on a resolution to the standoffwith North Korea as it works todevelop a nuclear arsenal capableof reaching the United States. Af-ter escalating his rhetoric against

AS WORLD WAITS,PRESIDENT WARNS FORCES ARE READY

‘LOCKED AND LOADED’

Strain With North Korea and Venezuela, but No Sign of Action

By PETER BAKER

President Trump met with hisnational security team Friday.

AL DRAGO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A9

AUGUSTA, Ga. — “Fire andfury”? Eugene Yu could not havesaid it better himself.

Mr. Yu, 62, who immigratedhere from South Korea, is anAmerican citizen, a United StatesArmy veteran and a staunch sup-porter of President Trump. Likemany conservatives in andaround this midsize Southern city— home to the Masters golf tour-nament and an important Na-tional Security Agency cryptol-ogy center — he was not scared,but rather thrilled this week whenPresident Trump used those exactwords to threaten the North Kore-an government.

That, Mr. Yu said, is the onlykind of language a dictatorshipunderstands.

“All of these North Korean ex-perts in Washington — if they areso expert on the North Korean is-sue, we would have never beendealing with this today,” Mr. Yusaid Thursday from his table at abusy Golden Corral cafeteria. “Weshould have been dealing with this10 years ago. They’re still saying,‘We’ve got to have six-party talks,we’ve got to give this, we’ve got tohave that.’ We’ve had enough.”

Criticism of Mr. Trump’s em-phatic language came this weekfrom foreign leaders, policy ex-perts, some Washington Republi-cans, including Senator John Mc-Cain of Arizona, and others, whocalled it a break with decades ofcarefully measured American di-plomatic language in dealing withthe volatile situation on the Kore-an Peninsula. However, whatmany grass-roots American con-servatives heard was not a brashprovocation, but a brave and un-equivocal calling out of a bully.

That feeling was widespreadamong dozens of Republicans en-countered this week. Many saidthey were pleased that Mr. Trumpwas sticking to the kind of blunt,bracing talk that they heard on thecampaign trail.

Most of them said they did notrelish the idea of any armed con-frontation with North Korea, al-though a few said they felt pro-tected by the vastness of America.

“It doesn’t concern me,” saidZach Lozier, who was tucking intoa barbecue dinner with his familyThursday at the Morgan CountyFair in Brush, Colo. “We live in the

ConservativesRevel in ‘Fury’In Trump’s Talk

Fans See Kept Promisesin Fierce Language

By RICHARD FAUSSET

Continued on Page A10

WASHINGTON — When ca-reer employees of the Envi-ronmental Protection Agency aresummoned to a meeting with theagency’s administrator, ScottPruitt, at agency headquarters,they no longer can count on easyaccess to the floor where his officeis, according to interviews withemployees of the federal agency.

Doors to the floor are now fre-quently locked, and employeeshave to have an escort to gain en-trance.

Some employees say they arealso told to leave behind their cell-phones when they meet with Mr.Pruitt, and are sometimes told notto take notes.

Mr. Pruitt, according to the em-ployees, who requested ano-nymity out of fear of losing theirjobs, often makes importantphone calls from other officesrather than use the phone in his of-fice, and he is accompanied, evenat E.P.A. headquarters, by armedguards, the first head of theagency to ever request round-the-clock security.

A former Oklahoma attorneygeneral who built his career suingthe E.P.A., and whose LinkedInprofile still describes him as “aleading advocate against theEPA’s activist agenda,” Mr. Pruitthas made it clear that he sees hismission to be dismantling theagency’s policies — and even por-tions of the institution itself.

But as he works to roll back reg-ulations, close offices and elimi-nate staff at the agency chargedwith protecting the nation’s envi-ronment and public health, Mr.Pruitt is taking extraordinarymeasures to conceal his actions,according to interviews with morethan 20 current and formeragency employees.

Together with a small group ofpolitical appointees, many withbackgrounds, like his, in Okla-homa politics, and with advice

from industry lobbyists, Mr. Pruitthas taken aim at an agency whosepolicies have been developed andenforced by thousands of theE.P.A.’s career scientists and pol-icy experts, many of whom workin the same building.

“There’s a feeling of paranoia inthe agency — employees feel likethere’s been a hostile takeoverand the guy in charge is treatingthem like enemies,” said Christo-pher Sellers, an expert in envi-ronmental history at Stony BrookUniversity, who this spring con-ducted an interview survey withabout 40 E.P.A. employees.

Such tensions are not unusualin federal agencies when an elec-tion leads to a change in the partyin control of the White House. But

Staff Tells of Rampant Secrecy at Pruitt’s E.P.A.By CORAL DAVENPORT

and ERIC LIPTON

Continued on Page A13

Mission to Weaken an Agency Once Known

for Transparency

TOM BRENNER/THE NEW YORK TIMES

President Trump’s office was under construction on Friday, part of the roughly two-week, $3.4 million renovation of the West Wing.Reshaping the Oval Office

SHANGHAI — Facebook andmany of its apps have beenblocked in China for years. Tochange that, Mark Zuckerberghas made a big point of meetingwith Chinese politicians, readingstodgy Communist Party propa-ganda, studying Mandarin and —perhaps more daunting — speak-ing it in public.

Now the social network is try-ing a different way into China: byauthorizing the release of a newapp there that does not carry theFacebook name.

Facebook approved the May de-but of a photo-sharing app, calledColorful Balloons, in China, ac-cording to a person with knowl-edge of the company’s plans, whodeclined to be named because theinformation is politically sensi-tive. The app, which has not previ-ously been reported, shares thelook, function and feel of Face-book’s Moments app. It was re-leased through a separate localcompany and without any hintthat the social network is affiliatedwith it.

The stealthy and anonymousrelease of an app by a major for-eign technology company inChina is unprecedented. It showsthe desperation — and frustration

Facebook UsesA Stealth AppTo Enter China

By PAUL MOZUR

Continued on Page A7

Google encourages employees to speakup in internal forums, but the recentcontroversy over a memo on diversityhighlights the practice’s perils. PAGE B1

A Test for Openness at Google

As sales continued to fall, Wall Street’spatience wore thin. J. C. Penney sharesdropped 16 percent, hitting their lowestprice in a decade. PAGE B3

Flailing Retailers Roil Investors

The interior secretary is reviewing 27national monuments to see if they werecreated through overreach. PAGE A15

NATIONAL A11-15

Monuments Up for Review

A protest by white nationalists againstthe removal of a statue of Robert E. Leehas Charlottesville, Va., on edge for aweekend of potential violence. PAGE A12

Bracing for Another Rally

New York’s subway system is old anddirty. Shanghai’s is new and clean. Buttrips on it may take longer. PAGE A16

NEW YORK A16-17, 20

China Model: New York Transit

Allbirds, a start-up that makes sneaker-like shoes out of wool and castor beanoil, has created the latest footwearcraze in Silicon Valley. PAGE B1

BUSINESS DAY B1-6

Trendy Among Techies

The N.F.L., levying a six-game penalty,said Ezekiel Elliott’s behavior reflected“a lack of respect for women.” PAGE D1

SPORTSSATURDAY D1-6

Cowboys’ Elliott Is Suspended

Tom Brokaw PAGE A19

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A18-19

Five directors of horror films share theobjects that inspired terror in theirchildhoods. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-6

What Makes You Tremble?

“Mayhem,” a memoir of a family’saddiction, raises questions of catharsisversus privacy in recovery. PAGE C1

A Tragedy and a Feud

A hard-right group’s ship hired to dis-rupt migrant rescues stalled, but re-fused a migrant aid boat’s help. PAGE A4

Migrant Foes Founder at SeaA group including the ex-Yankee DerekJeter is said to have agreed to buy theteam for nearly $1.2 billion. PAGE D2

Jeter Group in Marlins Deal

VENEZUELA BRISTLES Aides saidPresident Trump refused to take aphone call from a concernedVenezuelan president. PAGE A8

Late Edition

VOL. CLXVI . . . No. 57,687 © 2017 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 12, 2017

Today, mostly cloudy, a few showersand thunderstorms, high 78. To-night, mostly cloudy, low 68. Tomor-row, sunshine and clouds, high 82.Weather map appears on Page D8.

$2.50