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Many farms in the Midwest have begunserving pizza, socially distanced, onsummer nights. Above, a pie at LunaValley Farm in Decorah, Iowa. PAGE D1

FOOD D1-8

Pepperoni Amid the CornstalksWith fewer people and more protocols,the country’s largest museum is readyto welcome back visitors. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-6

Met Ready to Shine AgainSome in Wisconsin were stunned asbuildings went up in flames after JacobBlake, a Black man, was shot. PAGE A23

NATIONAL A23-25

Anguish Over Police Shooting

Britons have stormed restaurants, pubsand cafes to take advantage of a stimu-lus program in which the governmentpicks up half the check. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-6

Rush to Grab a Table in BritainThe C.D.C. quietly modified guidelineson testing, but some experts called themove “potentially dangerous.” PAGE A4

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-7

No Symptoms, No Need to Test

HBO’s “I May Destroy You” promptedsome cathartic moments for the re-viewer Salamishah Tillet. PAGE C1

A Path Back From Assault

The U.S. is taking aim at a small Germanport city to try to halt a nearly completeRussian gas pipeline. PAGE A8

INTERNATIONAL A8-12

Targeting Ally With Sanctions

Gail Sheehy, 83, plumbed the characterof newsmakers for insights. PAGE B11

OBITUARIES B10-11

Writer Who Explored Lives

Black former players said doctors usedtwo scales — one for Black athletes, onefor white — to determine eligibility inthe concussion settlement. PAGE B7

SPORTSWEDNESDAY B7-9

N.F.L. Faces Bias Claims

Thomas L. Friedman PAGE A26

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27

In March and April, as ambu-lances raced through neighbor-hoods and refrigerated trucks sathumming behind hospitals over-whelmed by the pandemic’s dead,summer seemed a distant fantasy.Then it arrived as promised: thecity unveiled in a series of phasesthat brought its streets back tosomething closer to life.

The coronavirus infectionsdropped, the curve flattened, din-ner and drinks were served be-neath the stars and friends reunit-ed in parks and on beaches as ifhome from a war.

But throughout the city, be-tween the elbow bumps andhappy hours, lurked a deep and in-tense anxiety over what might lieahead, as summer gives way toautumn and a new rash of fright-ening unknowns.

September, always both an end-ing and a beginning, seems thisyear almost impossibly fraught,its usual rhythms — back toschool, back to work — upended.

In interviews, New Yorkers,even as they leaned into summeractivities and visited parks andcafes, shared a common forebod-

ing that looked beyond the virusitself. Schools, the economy,crime, food, shelter, travel and ac-cess to family, planning a vacation— nothing feels like a given inthese waning days of August.

“I don’t think it’s going to getbetter,” said Angel Vasquez, 39, adata processor, visiting Bush Ter-minal Piers Park in Brooklyn withhis three young daughters. “Ithink it’s going to get worse.”

On most days, New York’s rateof infection hovers below 1 percentof the roughly 25,000 tests per-formed each day in the city. Simi-larly, the number of positive tests

Summer Glimpses of Post-Pandemic Life Turn to Fears About FallBy MICHAEL WILSON

The Brooklyn Bridge at sunset. New Yorkers got back outside during summer as infections fell.SEPTEMBER DAWN BOTTOMS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A6

To get onto his Facebook ac-count, the police used TonyChung’s body.

When officers swarmed him ata Hong Kong shopping mall lastmonth, they pulled him into astairwell and pinned his head infront of his phone — an attempt totrigger the facial recognition sys-tem. Later, at his home, officersforced his finger onto a separatephone. Then they demanded pass-words.

“They said, ‘Do you know withthe national security law, we haveall the rights to unlock yourphones and get your pass-words?’” Mr. Chung recalled.

Emboldened by that new law,Hong Kong security forces areturning to harsher tactics as theyclose a digital dragnet on activists,pro-democracy politicians andmedia leaders. Their approaches— which in the past month haveincluded installing a camera out-side the home of a prominent poli-tician and breaking into the Face-book account of another — bear

marked similarities to those longused by the fearsome domestic se-curity forces in mainland China.

Not accustomed to such pres-sures, Hong Kong lawmakers andactivists, and the American com-panies that own the most popularinternet services there, havestruggled to respond. Pro-democ-racy politicians have issued in-structions to supporters on how tosecure digital devices. Many haveflocked to encrypted chat appslike Signal and changed theirnames on social media.

Dogged by the global reach ofthe law, even people from HongKong living far away from the cityworry. One Facebook discussiongroup of Hong Kongers living inAustralia closed off public accessafter a user claimed to have re-ported discussions to the HongKong authorities for potentiallyviolating the law.

Major internet companies likeFacebook and Twitter have tem-porarily cut off data sharing with

As China Sets a Digital Dragnet,Hong Kong Dodges and Weaves

By PAUL MOZUR

Continued on Page A10

STOCKTON, Calif — Work be-gan in the dark. At 4 a.m., BriseidaFlores could make out a fire burn-ing in the distance. Floodlights il-luminated the fields. And shoul-der to shoulder with dozens of oth-ers, Ms. Flores pushed into therows of corn. Swiftly, theyplucked. One after the other. Firstunder the lights, then by the firstrays of daylight.

By 10:30 a.m., it was unbear-ably hot. Hundreds of wildfireswere burning to the north, and somuch smoke was settling into theSan Joaquin Valley that the localair pollution agency issued ahealth alert. Ms. Flores, 19, whohad joined her mother in the fieldsafter her father lost his job in theearly days of the coronavirus pan-demic, found it hard to breathe inbetween the tightly planted rows.Her jeans were soaked withsweat.

“It felt like a hundred degrees inthere,” Ms. Flores said. “We saidwe don’t want to go in anymore.”

She went home, exhausted, andslept for an hour.

All this to harvest dried, ocher-colored ears of corn meant to dec-orate the autumn table.

Like the gossamer layer of ashand dust that is settling on thetrees in Central California, climatechange is adding on to the hazardsalready faced by some of the coun-try’s poorest, most neglected la-borers. So far this year, more than7,000 fires have scorched 1.4 mil-lion acres, and there is no reprievein sight, officials warned.

Summer days are hotter thanthey were a century ago in the al-ready scorching San Joaquin Val-ley; the nights, when the bodywould normally cool down, arewarming faster. Heat waves aremore frequent. And across thestate, fires have burned over amillion acres in less than twoweeks. One recent scientific paperconcluded that climate changehad doubled the frequency of ex-treme fire weather days since the1980s.

In the valley is where the smokegets stuck when the wind blows itin from the north and south.

Still, hundreds of thousands ofmen and women like Ms. Florescontinue to pluck, weed, and packproduce for the nation here, astemperatures soar into the tripledigits for days at a time and the airturns to a soup of dust and smoke,stirred with pollution from truck

Battling HeatAnd the VirusAt the Harvest

Brutal Summer WorkGrows Even Harder

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

Continued on Page A24

Vice President Mike Pence, thehead of the federal coronavirustask force, delivered a clear mes-sage to governors about reopen-ing schools. Help us help you, Mr.Pence told the state executivesduring a virtual meeting in earlyJuly, stressing that the adminis-tration wanted to see childrenback in the classroom.

“You all build your plan, we’llwork with you,” Mr. Pence said,according to a recording of thesession. He added, “We’re here tohelp.”

The next day, Mr. Pence’s bossissued a different message tostates. On July 8, PresidentTrump accused Democrats of try-ing to obstruct the reopening ofschools for political reasons andthreatened retribution: “May cutoff funding if not open!” hetweeted.

If Mr. Pence felt embarrassed orundermined by the president’soutburst, he did not show it. In-deed, when he held another callwith governors a week later, Mr.Pence made no mention of thepresident’s ultimatum, instead re-iterating his own more diplomatic

plea that states make every effortto reopen their education sys-tems.

“Our bottom line is: We’re withyou,” Mr. Pence said on July 13.

Over the past four years, thatstark contrast in approach — andthe ultimate, unquestioned su-premacy of Mr. Trump — has de-fined the political partnership be-tween the president and his run-ning mate. Since Mr. Trumpplucked Mr. Pence from the gover-norship of Indiana to serve as so-cially conservative ballast on athrice-married real estate mogul’sticket, Mr. Pence has grown accus-tomed to performing such acro-batics, maneuvering around or di-aling back in private what Mr.Trump bellows in public.

The cumulative effect of Mr.Pence’s conduct is to createaround him a kind of artificial bub-ble of relative normalcy, in whichthe vice president avoids Mr.Trump’s most explosive and divi-sive behavior mostly by pretend-ing it does not exist.

Mr. Pence never expressesovert disagreement with Mr.

‘Good Soldier’ Pence Walks LineBetween Loyalty and His Future

By ALEXANDER BURNS and MAGGIE HABERMAN

Continued on Page A18

DiAnna Schenkel is a law schoolgraduate who once ran on theDemocratic ticket for her citycouncil. She voted twice forBarack Obama. A 59-year-old sub-urbanite in North Carolina, sheworries about her Black son-in-law being racially profiled by thepolice, pulled over and beaten orworse.

The portrait of a Biden voter?No, Ms. Schenkel, who is white,

is a confirmed supporter of Don-ald J. Trump. She voted for him en-thusiastically four years ago afterbecoming disillusioned with theObama presidency, and plans tovote for his re-election. At thesame time, she is wary of express-ing her politics openly becauseshe believes that stereotypes ofwhat she calls “Trumpers” likeherself, as portrayed on social me-dia and in conversations, aresmug and spiteful.

“There’s so many people throw-ing down really inflammatorywords: Racist. Xenophobic,” shesaid of the way people regardTrump supporters. “And these in-flammatory words carry emo-tions. It just pivots people to

where they’re not going to eventolerate someone for supportingthat person. You’re automaticallyput on trial and you have to testifywhy you believe what you be-lieve.”

As Mr. Trump takes centerstage at the Republican NationalConvention this week, he main-tains a core of rock-solid support-ers like Ms. Schenkel who believehe is fighting in America’s best in-terests and has achieved many ofhis goals — which are their goalstoo. He has aggressively cultivat-ed these voters over the last fewmonths with scathing criticism ofvandalism that has occasionallyarisen from mostly peaceful pro-tests calling for racial justice, andby boasting that, pre-coronavirus,he had built an economy second tonone.

For Democrats and many inde-pendents, Mr. Trump has shat-tered the norms of presidential be-havior with racist tweets and divi-sive policies; his use of federalagencies to advance his personalinterests; and, perhaps most im-portant, his detachment from

Trump’s Goals Are Their Goals,And the Tweets Are Irrelevant

By TRIP GABRIEL

Continued on Page A20

American Airlines said it would shed upto 19,000 workers if the industry did notreceive government aid. PAGE A25

Airline Warns of Job Cuts

President Trump made a bid tosand down his divisive politicalimage by appropriating the re-sources of his office and the pow-ers of the presidency at the Re-publican convention on Tuesday,breaching the traditional bound-aries between campaigning andgoverning in an effort to broadenhis appeal beyond his conserva-tive base.

In an abrupt swerve from thedire tone of the convention’s firstnight, Mr. Trump staged a grab-bag of gauzy events and personaltestimonials aimed in particularat women and minority voters. Invideos recorded at the WhiteHouse, Mr. Trump pardoned a Ne-vada man convicted of bank rob-bery and swore in five new Ameri-can citizens, all of them people ofcolor, in a miniature naturaliza-tion ceremony.

Where the convention on Mon-day emphasized predictions of so-cial and economic desolation un-der a government led by Demo-crats, the speakers on Tuesday —including three from Mr. Trump’simmediate family — hailed thepresident as a friend to womenand a champion of criminal justicereform. There was no effort to rec-oncile the dissonance between thetwo nights’ programs, particu-larly the shift from Monday’s rhet-oric about a looming “vengefulmob” of dangerous criminals intoTuesday’s tributes to the power ofpersonal redemption.

It was not clear whether thisnew appeal would change theminds of women, minorities andothers who formed negative opin-ions of Mr. Trump over the last fiveyears, amid the allegations of sex-ual assault against him, the ap-peals to racial bigotry and hard-line policies like a border crack-down that separated migrant fam-ilies.

The coronavirus pandemic waslargely confined to parentheticalcomments within the speeches,and, not wanting to remind view-ers of the virus, nobody who ap-peared during the course of theevening wore a mask. MelaniaTrump, the first lady, addressed it

TRUMP TAKES AIMAT MIDDLE, USING

TOOLS OF OFFICE

BID TO BROADEN APPEAL

G.O.P. Points Message atBoth Women andMinority Voters

By ALEXANDER BURNSand JONATHAN MARTIN

Continued on Page A16

VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,797 + © 2020 The New York Times Company WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2020

PETE MAROVICH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION

PETE MAROVICH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Clockwise from top left, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke from Jerusalem; Melania Trump thanked frontline workers; EricTrump said a vote for his father “is a vote for the American spirit”; Tiffany Trump talked of “a fight for freedom versus oppression.”

DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Sunny. Record-challenging heat.Thunderstorms far north. Highs inupper 80s to 90s. Mostly clear skiestonight. Very hot again for most to-morrow. Weather map, Page B12.

National Edition