Sunday, February 28, 2021

Your Weekend Briefing

February 28, 2021

By Carole Landry and Jeremiah M. Bogert, Jr.

Welcome to the Weekend Briefing. We’re covering the third approved vaccine in the U.S., Donald Trump’s return to the spotlight and the Golden Globes.

Sean Mckeag/The Citizens' Voice, via Associated Press

1. A third Covid-19 vaccine has been approved.

The Food and Drug Administration authorized Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine for emergency use on Saturday, making a third vaccine available in the U.S. Above, a drive-through vaccine clinic in Scranton, Pa., on Friday.

It’s the first approved vaccine to require one dose instead of two. Shipments are expected to start within days, on top of the millions of doses being churned out by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

The country’s vaccination numbers have started to increase again after a decline caused by severe weather. But federal health officials warned governors against relaxing pandemic restrictions, saying that the recent drop in cases and deaths could be leveling off.

Roughly one-third of active-duty troops and National Guard members — mostly younger personnel — have declined to take the vaccine, another potential hole in the broad-scale immunity that health experts say is needed for Americans to reclaim their lives.

J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

2. The $1.9 trillion pandemic aid bill passed in the House and must now maneuver through a procedural and political thicket in the Senate.

Every House Republican voted against the measure early Saturday, underscoring the depth of the partisan division it has provoked. The road ahead in the Senate is far bumpier.

Already, President Biden’s effort to include an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 has run aground because of arcane rules that accompany the fast-track process Democrats are using. Above, showing support for a $15 minimum wage in Washington last week.

With unemployment benefits set to begin lapsing on March 14, Democrats have only two weeks to finish the package in the Senate, resend it to the House for final adjustments and deliver it to Mr. Biden’s desk.

Here’s a look at what’s in the stimulus plan. We fact-checked misleading claims about the bill.

Erin Schaff/The New York Times

3. Trump returns to the spotlight.

Most former presidents adopt low profiles after leaving the White House, but Donald Trump is returning to the stage with a prominent appearance at the end of the Conservative Political Action Conference this afternoon.

His advisers have implored him not to revive his false statements about the 2020 election. But CPAC — once a forum for conservative ideas with a strong libertarian strain — has been transformed into Trump-chella. Above, a golden statue of him greets attendees.

For now, Mr. Trump is serious about running for president in 2024, our White House correspondent writes. While some aides expect that he ultimately won’t go through with another bid, his musings could have a chilling effect on his party.

Elizabeth Frantz for The New York Times

4. A second former aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo has accused him of sexual harassment.

The aide, Charlotte Bennett, 25, above, was an executive assistant and health policy adviser in the Cuomo administration until she left in November. She told The Times that the governor had harassed her late last spring, during the height of the state’s fight against the coronavirus.

She said that he had asked her questions about her sex life, whether she was monogamous and if she had ever had sex with older men. Mr. Cuomo said in a statement that he believed he had been acting as a mentor and had “never made advances toward Ms. Bennett.”

Her account follows another detailed accusation published last week.

Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

5. The pandemic economy lifted some, and left others behind.

Robin Arnone and Julie Stark are among the millions of pairs of friends who were on a relatively equal financial footing before last March — and now find themselves on vastly different trajectories.

Ms. Arnone works in home appraising and is doing well in the booming housing market. Ms. Stark, above, a dog walker, has found her services are no longer in demand now that many of her clients are stuck at home.

This contrast is mirrored in the larger economy: Lines at food banks lengthen as new Teslas dot parking lots, and there are waiting lists for Peloton machines so the most fortunate can keep up with their workouts from home.

This newsletter is free, but you can go deeper into the stories we highlight each morning with a subscription to The Times. Please consider becoming a subscriber today.

Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

6. The Golden Globes kick off awards season.

Rather than the usual Beverly Hills gala, the show tonight will be hosted from opposite coasts: Tina Fey live from the Rainbow Room in New York and Amy Poehler from the Beverly Hilton, the awards’ usual West Coast home. Here’s what to watch for.

Our entertainment reporter sees “Nomadland” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” as having the best hopes of winning the best picture award. Here are his other projections.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which puts on the ceremony, is under fire after recent articles exposed a membership that includes no Black voters, which may explain why “Da 5 Bloods” and “One Night in Miami” did not make the best-drama lineup.

Johnathon Kelso for The New York Times

7. These gummies will get you high, and may even be legal.

A once-ignored derivative of hemp called Delta-8-THC has become a hot seller for people looking for a loophole around marijuana laws.

Delta 8 is an only slightly chemically different form of Delta 9, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. But it wasn’t mentioned in the 2018 Farm Bill, an enormous piece of federal legislation that, among many other things, legalized widespread hemp farming and distribution.

So entrepreneurs began extracting and packaging it, and, as one Austin-based entrepreneur said, the number of customers “coming into Delta 8 is staggering.”

Leigh Wells

8. The Times Book Review is 125 years old — a moment for celebration, but also introspection.

Parul Sehgal, a critic and former editor at the Book Review, looked back at its legacy. Her brief, you might say, was to review the Book Review. She found much to admire, like the reviews of John Leonard, an early and forceful champion of writers like Toni Morrison, John Edgar Wideman and Grace Paley.

She also saw misjudgments, to be sure — masterpieces misunderstood in their time. But what about the reviews themselves?

In years past, books by nonwhite writers, women and especially L.G.B.T.Q. writers, she found, were referred to, not as written or crafted, but as expelled, excreted, almost involuntarily. And reviewers might impute cultural importance to the work of Black writers, but rarely aesthetic significance.

Of her own favorite critics, Parul writes, their “credentials were nerve, wariness and style.”

Laura Moss for The New York Times

9. Some homeowners are taking D.I.Y. to a new level.

As the pandemic ignites a wave of home renovations, some craftier homeowners are channeling their artistic energy into reimagining their décor.

There’s no time like the present to turn the basement into a home theater with a full concession stand, or to build an ice-skating rink in the front yard.

“I had a lot of energy that I needed to put into something,” said Jen Rondeau, who turned the gray basement laundry room in her home into a psychedelic disco lounge, above.

If you’re hunting for a new home, however, you may already have discovered that the inventory of homes for sale nationwide is startlingly low.

Joy Jones

10. And finally, quarantines, freebies and puppies.

The Weekender has 11 stories our editors chose for you: Read about travel quarantines, above, the free stuff tossed out in New York City streets, pandemic pets in need of training, and more.

This week’s playlist features tracks from Post Malone, Pop Smoke, Jade Bird, Adrian Younge and others. And here’s a glance at the latest small-screen recommendations for the weekend, along with 12 new books we recommend.

Have you been keeping up with the headlines? Test your knowledge with our news quiz. And here’s the front page of our Sunday paper, the Sunday Review from Opinion and our crossword puzzles.

March is almost here. Hope this week brings a spring in your step.

Your Weekend Briefing is published Sundays at 6:30 a.m. Eastern.

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Friday, February 26, 2021

The Morning: Virus mobilization

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February 26, 2021

By David Leonhardt

Good morning. Corporate America says it will play a bigger role in fighting Covid.

President Biden speaking about the 50 million Covid-19 vaccines administered in the U.S.Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

What wartime mobilization really means

President Biden has compared the fight against Covid-19 to wartime mobilization. And successful wartime mobilization in the United States has always involved much more than the government. The best example is World War II, when private companies like Ford and General Motors quickly overhauled their operations to contribute to the war effort.

In the fight against Covid, however, the private sector — with the big exception of pharmaceutical companies — has done relatively little so far. It has not made a major push to persuade Americans to remain socially distant, wear masks or get vaccinated as soon as possible.

Later this morning, Biden administration officials and business leaders will announce a plan to change that, White House officials told me. The plan includes some of the country’s largest corporate lobbying groups — like the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers and groups representing Asian, Black and Latino executives — as well as some big-name companies.

Ford and The Gap will donate more than 100 million masks for free distribution. Pro sports leagues will help set aside more than 100 stadiums and arenas to become mass vaccination sites. Uber, PayPal and Walgreens will provide free rides for people to get to vaccination sites. Best Buy, Dollar General and Target will give their workers paid time off to get a shot. And the White House will urge many more companies to do likewise.

Many of the steps are fairly straightforward, even obvious. That they have not happened already is a reflection of the Trump administration’s disorganized Covid response. Trump officials oversaw a highly successful program to develop vaccines, but otherwise often failed to take basic measures that other countries did take.

“We’ve been overwhelmed with outreach from companies saying, ‘We want to help, we want to help, we want to help,’” Andy Slavitt, a White House pandemic adviser, told me yesterday. “What a missed opportunity the first year of this virus was.”

Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles is one of the largest vaccination sites in the country.Mario Tama/Getty Images

A potential turning point — good or bad

The new push comes at an important moment in the pandemic. The country has a chance to crush the virus in the coming weeks, through a combination of vaccination, mask wearing and social distancing. Yet the spread of contagious new variants means that virus cases could surge instead, causing tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

In a worrisome sign, the number of new cases has stopped falling over the past week, in the U.S. and worldwide. We are now looking at the possibility of a fourth wave, as my colleague Apoorva Mandavilli explains in a new overview of the pandemic.

Private companies can play a big role in avoiding that new wave for two main reasons.

First, the companies have enormous resources at their disposal — buildings, technology and people for vaccination sites; money to spend on public-service messages; and more. A case study: Honeywell worked with local officials in North Carolina to deliver more than 1,500 vaccine shots per hour on two recent weekends.

Second, companies can sometimes break through partisan barriers that politicians cannot. Many Americans who won’t listen to Biden’s advice about mask wearing — or vaccine effectiveness — may listen to a colleague’s or boss’s advice. They may be willing to participate in a shared effort to protect their co-workers and community. Slavitt, the White House adviser, said he was hopeful that employers could make a particular difference in states that have not enacted mask mandates.

The message, he added, should be: “Wear a mask. Avoid crowds. And get vaccinated when it’s your turn.”

During our conversation, I asked Slavitt whether companies could not only influence people’s attitudes but also make a real difference in the speed at which Americans are vaccinated. The country has averaged about 1.5 million shots per day over the past week. My reporting suggests that the right goal is at least three million daily shots by April.

Slavitt didn’t sign on to that goal — “I don’t think we have a perfect answer to that question,” he said — but he didn’t reject it either. He noted that the peak number of flu vaccine shots in a normal year is around three million per day.

He also pointed out that Biden yesterday predicted that any adult who wanted a Covid vaccine would be able to get a shot within 60 to 90 days. That timetable suggests a pace of close to three million shots by early spring. And it will probably take private-sector efforts, like Honeywell’s, to make it happen.

Wartime metaphors are often overused. But in the case of Covid, it feels appropriate: People’s lives are at stake.

THE LATEST NEWS

POLITICS

The Senate parliamentarian ruled that Democrats could not increase the federal minimum wage using the budget reconciliation process, potentially killing the measure from Biden’s pandemic relief plan.
Biden ordered an airstrike in Syria, bombing a cluster of buildings that the Pentagon said belonged to Iran-backed militias responsible for a recent attack on American troops and contractors.
The House passed the Equality Act, which would extend civil rights protections to sexual orientation and gender identity. The bill is unlikely to pass the Senate.
Mitch McConnell said he would “absolutely” support Donald Trump if Trump becomes the party’s 2024 nominee, after calling him responsible for the Capitol riot.

ARTS AND IDEAS

Ricky Gervais rolled out the red carpet at the Golden Globes last year.Christopher Polk/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty Images

The Golden Globes’ scandals and influence

The Golden Globes — which will air on Sunday — are the third most-watched awards show, after the Academy Awards and the Grammys. The publicity of a Globe nomination or win often boosts the careers of less established creators and helps secure financing for future projects.

But the Globes are also known for making baffling choices, like nominating the horror film “Get Out” for best comedy or musical in 2018.

The nonprofit group that runs the awards — the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — has only 87 members, compared with more than 9,000 Academy Awards voters. Many of the 87 (none of whom are Black) write for obscure publications. As Cara Buckley and Matt Stevens write in The Times, the voters are “widely viewed as colorful, generally harmless, perhaps venal and not necessarily journalistically productive.”

The association has endured various scandals over the decades, often regarding its ethics. Celebrities and studios regularly court its members with lavish gifts. In 2019, more than 30 association members flew to France to see the set of the series “Emily in Paris,” and Paramount Network treated them to stays at a five-star hotel, The Los Angeles Times reported. The show, which critics panned, received two Golden Globe nominations this year.

By contrast, “I May Destroy You,” a critically acclaimed series starring Michaela Coel, received no nominations. A writer on “Emily in Paris” even wrote an op-ed saying her excitement was “tempered by my rage over Coel’s snub.”

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

WHAT TO COOK

Sarah Anne Ward for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Paola Andrea.

Make pork chops smothered in a lemon-caper sauce.

WHAT TO WATCH

“WandaVision” reinvents the well-trodden superhero premise by placing its comic-book characters into classic sitcom settings.

COATS FOR DAVOS

A coat that starts at $1,000 has become a favorite of financiers and movie stars.

LATE NIGHT

The hosts talked about Trump’s taxes. (Manhattan’s district attorney received Trump’s tax returns this week.)

TAKE THE NEWS QUIZ

Which famous electronic music duo broke up this week? Take this week’s News Quiz, and compete with other Times readers.

NOW TIME TO PLAY

The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was glamour. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Glowing coal (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you Monday. — David

P.S. While working at Newsday and The New York Times, Jack Schwartz was “a masterly editor, learned and literary, with a twinkling sense of humor,” one former colleague recalled. Schwartz died of Covid complications at 82.

You can see today’s print front page here.

There’s no new episode of “The Daily” today. Instead, here’s the first episode of “Odessa,” a new Times podcast, about what happened when one Texas high school reopened during the pandemic.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.