ON USE OF ASSETS FRESH QUESTIONS POMPEO IS ......2020/05/18 · EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23 RIO DE...
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U(D54G1D)y+$!#!#!?!z Jennifer Senior PAGE A23 EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23 RIO DE JANEIRO — Rodrigo dos Santos, 16, was speeding downhill on a motorcycle in Rio de Janeiro, a knapsack packed with marijuana, cocaine and pellets of crack on his back, when two police officers raised their rifles at him. The teenager sped by, his friend sitting behind him, clutching his waist. But within seconds, they toppled over in a barrage of 38 bul- lets fired by the police. Rodrigo died on the way to the hospital, bleeding from a gunshot wound in his arm — and three in his back. The police never claimed he was armed, and one of the offi- cers involved, Sergeant Sergio Britto, was still on duty despite be- ing on trial for murder, accused of shooting another man in the neck at close range. The death of Rodrigo added to a record number of killings by the police in Rio last year — 1,814 — a surge of hundreds in a state with a long history of police brutality and a political leadership that has vowed to “dig graves” to stop crime. Officially, the police in Brazil are allowed to use lethal force only to confront an imminent threat. But an analysis of four dozen police killings in the violent Rio district where Rodrigo was killed shows that officers routinely gun down people without restraint, pro- tected by their bosses and the knowledge that even if they are in- vestigated for illegal killings, it will not keep them from going back out onto the beat. In at least half of the 48 police killings analyzed by The New York Times, the deceased were shot in the back at least once, ac- cording to autopsy reports, imme- diately raising questions about the imminent threat required to justify such killings. In 20 of the cases, the individual ‘Impunity Reigns’: Inside Rio’s Record Year of 1,814 Police Killings By MANUELA ANDREONI and ERNESTO LONDOÑO Children listening to gunshots in the distance in Rio de Janeiro in October. Despite federal rules on using lethal force, police officers in Brazil routinely gun down crime suspects without restraint. DADO GALDIERI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page A16 A late morning drive down Fifth Avenue, starting at the Metropoli- tan Museum of Art, where the lanes are normally choked with inching traffic, now passes by al- most impossibly quickly. Glance down at the speedometer, and you might miss Rockefeller Center. The notorious F.D.R. Drive along the East River, prone to ran- dom standstills throughout its long stretch, like clogs in an old drain, now feels more like a Grand Theft Auto game. New York City’s landmarks — the United Nations, the Brooklyn Bridge, the South Street Seaport and its tall ships — flit past like billboards in the coun- try. The coronavirus has trans- formed the experience of operat- ing a motor vehicle in the city. It has accomplished what years of debates over road improvements and congestion pricing and toll in- creases could not. With no office to go to or friends to visit, and facing stern orders to stay home and stay safe, the vast majority of regular drivers have left their vehicles idle, creating something altogether new: open road, miles and miles of it. It cannot last, of course; nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the West Side Highway. Drivers are already experiencing an increase in traffic from a month ago, with much more to follow as people venture out of quarantine, wary of public transportation. But for now, an emptiness re- mains. No gridlock, no rush hour. Just numbers rolling over on the odometer, the spring afternoon flitting past the window, the smartphone map showing very little yellow or red. The experience of driving those What’s a New York Drive Like? Tour a Ghost Town of 8 Million By MICHAEL WILSON A car can now slice through Times Square without braking. MICHAEL WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page A14 This isn’t the first time Vicki Dobbins’s town has been forced to shelter in place. Last year, the Marathon Petro- leum refinery that looms over her neighborhood near Detroit emit- ted a pungent gas, causing nausea and dizziness among neighbors and prompting health officials to warn people to stay inside. When a stay-at-home advisory returned in March, this time for the coro- navirus, “it was just devastating,” Ms. Dobbins said. Ms. Dobbins, who is 76, later contracted Covid-19, and spent two weeks on oxygen in intensive care. Now she has a question. “Do the polluters in our area make us more susceptible to asthma, bron- chitis, heart failure, cancers?” she asked. “Is the virus just going to be one of the ones added to that list?” Nationwide, low-income com- munities of color like hers, River Rouge, Mich., are exposed to sig- nificantly higher levels of pollu- tion, studies have found, and also see higher levels of lung disease and other ailments. Now, scien- tists are racing to understand if long-term exposure to air pollu- tion plays a role in the coronavirus crisis, particularly since minor- ities are disproportionately dying. The science is preliminary — the virus, being so new, remains poorly understood — though re- searchers are finding reason to look closely. People with two con- ditions tied to air pollution, inflam- matory lung disease and coronary heart disease, face a higher risk for severe Covid-19, preliminary research has shown. Last month, work by Harvard specialists found that coronavirus patients in areas with historically heavy air Virus Is Yet Another Deadly Risk In Shadows of U.S. Smokestacks By HIROKO TABUCHI An incident at the Marathon Petroleum plant in River Rouge, Mich., last year released a pungent gas and spurred a stay-at-home order. EMILY ROSE BENNETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page A8 When a sprinkling of a reddish rash appeared on Jack McMor- row’s hands in mid-April, his fa- ther figured the 14-year-old was overusing hand sanitizer — not a bad thing during a global pan- demic. When Jack’s parents noticed that his eyes looked glossy, they attributed it to late nights of video games and TV. When he developed a stomach- ache and didn’t want dinner, “they thought it was because I ate too many cookies or whatever,” said Jack, a ninth grader in Woodside, Queens, who loves Marvel Comics and has ambitions to teach him- self “Stairway to Heaven” on the guitar. But over the next 10 days, Jack felt increasingly unwell. His par- ents consulted his pediatricians in video appointments and took him to a weekend urgent care clinic. Then, one morning, he awoke un- able to move. He had a tennis-ball-size lymph node, raging fever, racing heart- beat and dangerously low blood pressure. Pain deluged his body in “a throbbing, stinging rush,” he said. “You could feel it going through your veins and it was almost like someone injected you with straight-up fire,” he said. Jack, who was previously healthy, was hospitalized with heart failure that day, in a stark example of the newly discovered severe inflammatory syndrome linked to the coronavirus that has already been identified in about 200 children in the United States and Europe and killed several. The condition, which the Cen- ters for Disease Control and Pre- vention are calling Multisystem ‘Straight-Up Fire’ in His Veins: Teen Battles Covid Syndrome By PAM BELLUCK Continued on Page A11 WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo swatted away questions about his use of govern- ment resources again and again last year. In January, news reports cited unnamed diplomats complaining about his wife, Susan, traveling with him across the Middle East during a partial government shut- down. In the summer, members of Congress began examining a whistle-blower complaint accus- ing Mr. Pompeo of asking diplo- matic security agents to run er- rands like picking up restaurant takeout meals and retrieving the family dog from a groomer. And in October, a Democratic senator called for a special coun- sel to investigate his use of State Department aircraft and funds for frequent visits to Kansas, where he was reported to be considering a Senate run. In each case, Mr. Pompeo or other department officials denied wrongdoing, and the secretary moved on unscathed. But his record is now coming under fresh scrutiny after President Trump told Congress on Friday night that he was firing the State Depart- ment inspector general — at Mr. Pompeo’s private urging, a White House official said. The inspector general, Steve A. Linick, who leads hundreds of em- ployees in investigating fraud and waste at the State Department, had begun an inquiry into Mr. Pompeo’s possible misuse of a po- litical appointee to perform per- sonal tasks for him and his wife, according to Democratic aides. That included walking the dog, picking up dry-cleaning and mak- ing restaurant reservations, one said — an echo of the whistle- blower complaint from last year. The details of Mr. Linick’s inves- tigation are not clear, and it may be unrelated to the previous alle- gations. But Democrats and other POMPEO IS FACING FRESH QUESTIONS ON USE OF ASSETS FIRING RAISES RED FLAG Democrats See a Pattern of Abuse by a Shrewd Trump Loyalist By EDWARD WONG Continued on Page A20 More than 36 million Ameri- cans are suddenly unemployed. Congress has allocated $2.2 tril- lion in aid, with more likely to be on the way as a fight looms over government debt. Millions more people are losing their health in- surance and struggling to take care of their children and aging relatives. And nearly 90,000 are dead in a continuing public health catastrophe. This was not the scenario Jo- seph R. Biden Jr. anticipated con- fronting when he competed for the Democratic nomination on a con- ventional left-of-center platform. Now, with Mr. Biden leading Pres- ident Trump in the polls, the for- mer vice president and other Democratic leaders are racing to assemble a new governing agenda that meets the extraordi- nary times — and they agree it must be far bolder than anything the party establishment has em- braced before. So far, neither Mr. Biden nor Mr. Trump has defined in itemized terms what an agenda for the first 100 days of a new presidency in the coronavirus era might look like. But on the Democratic side, far more than within the Republi- can Party, there is an increasingly clear sense of the nature and scale of the goals a new administration would pursue. Mr. Biden’s campaign has been rapidly expanding its policy-draft- ing apparatus, with the former vice president promising on Mon- day to detail plans for “the right kind of economic recovery” within weeks. He has already effectively shed his primary-season theme of restoring political normalcy to the country, replacing it with prom- ises of sweeping economic change. On Wednesday, Mr. Biden sig- naled anew that he was willing to reopen his policy platform, an- nouncing six policy task forces — covering issues including health care, climate and immigration, as well as the economy — that com- bine his core supporters with left- wing allies of Senator Bernie Sanders, his vanquished primary opponent. The formation of those commit- Biden Pursues Ideas to Match Scale of Crisis Left Senses an Opening for a Bolder Agenda By ALEXANDER BURNS Continued on Page A19 Soccer returned to Germany in empty stadiums. Fans warmed to the subdued scene, Rory Smith writes. PAGE D1 The New Game Day Cabin fever drew carloads of people to a drive-in theater well stocked with hand sanitizer in Warwick, N.Y. PAGE C1 Pandemic-Approved Viewing Ron Yu, a master racket technician, tells how being off the road has made him appreciate the sport anew. PAGE D2 SPORTSMONDAY D1-6 No Tennis, but Still Love The Guggenheim’s “Countryside” show was shut down, but its tomato crop is still feeding New Yorkers. PAGE C1 ARTS C1-7 An Essential Gardener Gravediggers are overwhelmed in one Nigerian city, where inaction led to an unchecked outbreak. Across Africa, other hot spots are emerging. PAGE A6 TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-14 Virus Takes Hold in Africa U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Serv- ices asks Congress for aid as a plunge in petitions hurts its revenue. PAGE A10 No Visas, No Money The coronavirus has paralyzed Cirque du Soleil, forcing it to close shows and grounding its artists. PAGE A15 INTERNATIONAL A15-17 Will the Show Go On? For decades, Justice Clarence Thomas’s legal thinking was considered too ex- treme even for the court’s conserva- tives. That’s no longer true. PAGE A18 NATIONAL A18-21 A Legal Icon for the Trump Era The journalist Ronan Farrow has landed big stories, some stronger than others, Ben Smith writes. PAGE B1 BUSINESS B1-8 Revisiting Farrow’s Exposés The comedic actor Fred Willard ap- peared in more than 700 films and TV episodes. He was 86. PAGE D7 OBITUARIES D7-8 Made Us Laugh for 50 Years After her reign as Miss America, Phyl- lis George joined the all-male cast of “The NFL Today.” She was 70. PAGE D8 Sportscaster and Role Model The cable network has laid off top exec- utives while looking to make shows that are cheaper to produce. PAGE B1 Overhaul at Comedy Central Late Edition VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,697 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, MONDAY, MAY 18, 2020 Today, periodic clouds and sunshine, high 67. Tonight, plenty of clouds, breezy, low 53. Tomorrow, mostly cloudy, breezy, cooler, high 60. Weather map appears on Page A24. $3.00
Transcript of ON USE OF ASSETS FRESH QUESTIONS POMPEO IS ......2020/05/18 · EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23 RIO DE...
C M Y K Nxxx,2020-05-18,A,001,Bs-4C,E2
U(D54G1D)y+$!#!#!?!z
Jennifer Senior PAGE A23
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23
RIO DE JANEIRO — Rodrigodos Santos, 16, was speedingdownhill on a motorcycle in Rio deJaneiro, a knapsack packed withmarijuana, cocaine and pellets ofcrack on his back, when two policeofficers raised their rifles at him.
The teenager sped by, his friendsitting behind him, clutching hiswaist. But within seconds, theytoppled over in a barrage of 38 bul-lets fired by the police.
Rodrigo died on the way to thehospital, bleeding from a gunshotwound in his arm — and three inhis back. The police never claimedhe was armed, and one of the offi-cers involved, Sergeant SergioBritto, was still on duty despite be-ing on trial for murder, accused ofshooting another man in the neckat close range.
The death of Rodrigo added to arecord number of killings by thepolice in Rio last year — 1,814 — asurge of hundreds in a state with along history of police brutality anda political leadership that hasvowed to “dig graves” to stopcrime.
Officially, the police in Brazil areallowed to use lethal force only toconfront an imminent threat. Butan analysis of four dozen policekillings in the violent Rio district
where Rodrigo was killed showsthat officers routinely gun downpeople without restraint, pro-tected by their bosses and theknowledge that even if they are in-vestigated for illegal killings, it
will not keep them from goingback out onto the beat.
In at least half of the 48 policekillings analyzed by The NewYork Times, the deceased wereshot in the back at least once, ac-
cording to autopsy reports, imme-diately raising questions aboutthe imminent threat required tojustify such killings.
In 20 of the cases, the individual
‘Impunity Reigns’: Inside Rio’s Record Year of 1,814 Police KillingsBy MANUELA ANDREONIand ERNESTO LONDOÑO
Children listening to gunshots in the distance in Rio de Janeiro in October. Despite federal rules onusing lethal force, police officers in Brazil routinely gun down crime suspects without restraint.
DADO GALDIERI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Continued on Page A16
A late morning drive down FifthAvenue, starting at the Metropoli-tan Museum of Art, where thelanes are normally choked withinching traffic, now passes by al-most impossibly quickly. Glancedown at the speedometer, and youmight miss Rockefeller Center.
The notorious F.D.R. Drivealong the East River, prone to ran-dom standstills throughout itslong stretch, like clogs in an olddrain, now feels more like a GrandTheft Auto game. New York City’slandmarks — the United Nations,the Brooklyn Bridge, the SouthStreet Seaport and its tall ships —flit past like billboards in the coun-try.
The coronavirus has trans-formed the experience of operat-ing a motor vehicle in the city. Ithas accomplished what years ofdebates over road improvementsand congestion pricing and toll in-creases could not.
With no office to go to or friendsto visit, and facing stern orders tostay home and stay safe, the vastmajority of regular drivers haveleft their vehicles idle, creatingsomething altogether new: openroad, miles and miles of it.
It cannot last, of course; natureabhors a vacuum, and so does theWest Side Highway. Drivers arealready experiencing an increasein traffic from a month ago, withmuch more to follow as peopleventure out of quarantine, wary ofpublic transportation.
But for now, an emptiness re-mains. No gridlock, no rush hour.Just numbers rolling over on theodometer, the spring afternoonflitting past the window, thesmartphone map showing verylittle yellow or red.
The experience of driving those
What’s a New York Drive Like?Tour a Ghost Town of 8 Million
By MICHAEL WILSON
A car can now slice throughTimes Square without braking.
MICHAEL WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Continued on Page A14
This isn’t the first time VickiDobbins’s town has been forced toshelter in place.
Last year, the Marathon Petro-leum refinery that looms over herneighborhood near Detroit emit-ted a pungent gas, causing nauseaand dizziness among neighborsand prompting health officials towarn people to stay inside. Whena stay-at-home advisory returnedin March, this time for the coro-navirus, “it was just devastating,”Ms. Dobbins said.
Ms. Dobbins, who is 76, latercontracted Covid-19, and spenttwo weeks on oxygen in intensivecare. Now she has a question. “Dothe polluters in our area make usmore susceptible to asthma, bron-chitis, heart failure, cancers?” sheasked. “Is the virus just going tobe one of the ones added to thatlist?”
Nationwide, low-income com-
munities of color like hers, RiverRouge, Mich., are exposed to sig-nificantly higher levels of pollu-tion, studies have found, and alsosee higher levels of lung diseaseand other ailments. Now, scien-tists are racing to understand iflong-term exposure to air pollu-tion plays a role in the coronaviruscrisis, particularly since minor-ities are disproportionately dying.
The science is preliminary —the virus, being so new, remainspoorly understood — though re-searchers are finding reason tolook closely. People with two con-ditions tied to air pollution, inflam-matory lung disease and coronaryheart disease, face a higher riskfor severe Covid-19, preliminaryresearch has shown. Last month,work by Harvard specialistsfound that coronavirus patients inareas with historically heavy air
Virus Is Yet Another Deadly RiskIn Shadows of U.S. Smokestacks
By HIROKO TABUCHI
An incident at the Marathon Petroleum plant in River Rouge, Mich., last year released a pungent gas and spurred a stay-at-home order.EMILY ROSE BENNETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Continued on Page A8
When a sprinkling of a reddishrash appeared on Jack McMor-row’s hands in mid-April, his fa-ther figured the 14-year-old wasoverusing hand sanitizer — not abad thing during a global pan-demic.
When Jack’s parents noticedthat his eyes looked glossy, theyattributed it to late nights of videogames and TV.
When he developed a stomach-ache and didn’t want dinner, “theythought it was because I ate toomany cookies or whatever,” saidJack, a ninth grader in Woodside,Queens, who loves Marvel Comicsand has ambitions to teach him-self “Stairway to Heaven” on theguitar.
But over the next 10 days, Jackfelt increasingly unwell. His par-ents consulted his pediatricians invideo appointments and took himto a weekend urgent care clinic.
Then, one morning, he awoke un-able to move.
He had a tennis-ball-size lymphnode, raging fever, racing heart-beat and dangerously low bloodpressure. Pain deluged his body in“a throbbing, stinging rush,” hesaid.
“You could feel it going throughyour veins and it was almost likesomeone injected you withstraight-up fire,” he said.
Jack, who was previouslyhealthy, was hospitalized withheart failure that day, in a starkexample of the newly discoveredsevere inflammatory syndromelinked to the coronavirus that hasalready been identified in about200 children in the United Statesand Europe and killed several.
The condition, which the Cen-ters for Disease Control and Pre-vention are calling Multisystem
‘Straight-Up Fire’ in His Veins:Teen Battles Covid Syndrome
By PAM BELLUCK
Continued on Page A11
WASHINGTON — Secretary ofState Mike Pompeo swatted awayquestions about his use of govern-ment resources again and againlast year.
In January, news reports citedunnamed diplomats complainingabout his wife, Susan, travelingwith him across the Middle Eastduring a partial government shut-down.
In the summer, members ofCongress began examining awhistle-blower complaint accus-ing Mr. Pompeo of asking diplo-matic security agents to run er-rands like picking up restauranttakeout meals and retrieving thefamily dog from a groomer.
And in October, a Democraticsenator called for a special coun-sel to investigate his use of StateDepartment aircraft and funds forfrequent visits to Kansas, wherehe was reported to be consideringa Senate run.
In each case, Mr. Pompeo orother department officials deniedwrongdoing, and the secretarymoved on unscathed. But hisrecord is now coming under freshscrutiny after President Trumptold Congress on Friday night thathe was firing the State Depart-ment inspector general — at Mr.Pompeo’s private urging, a WhiteHouse official said.
The inspector general, Steve A.Linick, who leads hundreds of em-ployees in investigating fraud andwaste at the State Department,had begun an inquiry into Mr.Pompeo’s possible misuse of a po-litical appointee to perform per-sonal tasks for him and his wife,according to Democratic aides.That included walking the dog,picking up dry-cleaning and mak-ing restaurant reservations, onesaid — an echo of the whistle-blower complaint from last year.
The details of Mr. Linick’s inves-tigation are not clear, and it maybe unrelated to the previous alle-gations. But Democrats and other
POMPEO IS FACINGFRESH QUESTIONS ON USE OF ASSETS
FIRING RAISES RED FLAG
Democrats See a Patternof Abuse by a Shrewd
Trump Loyalist
By EDWARD WONG
Continued on Page A20
More than 36 million Ameri-cans are suddenly unemployed.Congress has allocated $2.2 tril-lion in aid, with more likely to beon the way as a fight looms overgovernment debt. Millions morepeople are losing their health in-surance and struggling to takecare of their children and agingrelatives. And nearly 90,000 aredead in a continuing public healthcatastrophe.
This was not the scenario Jo-seph R. Biden Jr. anticipated con-fronting when he competed for theDemocratic nomination on a con-ventional left-of-center platform.Now, with Mr. Biden leading Pres-ident Trump in the polls, the for-mer vice president and otherDemocratic leaders are racing toassemble a new governingagenda that meets the extraordi-nary times — and they agree itmust be far bolder than anythingthe party establishment has em-braced before.
So far, neither Mr. Biden nor Mr.Trump has defined in itemizedterms what an agenda for the first100 days of a new presidency inthe coronavirus era might looklike. But on the Democratic side,far more than within the Republi-can Party, there is an increasinglyclear sense of the nature and scaleof the goals a new administrationwould pursue.
Mr. Biden’s campaign has beenrapidly expanding its policy-draft-ing apparatus, with the formervice president promising on Mon-day to detail plans for “the rightkind of economic recovery” withinweeks. He has already effectivelyshed his primary-season theme ofrestoring political normalcy to thecountry, replacing it with prom-ises of sweeping economicchange.
On Wednesday, Mr. Biden sig-naled anew that he was willing toreopen his policy platform, an-nouncing six policy task forces —covering issues including healthcare, climate and immigration, aswell as the economy — that com-bine his core supporters with left-wing allies of Senator BernieSanders, his vanquished primaryopponent.
The formation of those commit-
Biden PursuesIdeas to Match
Scale of Crisis
Left Senses an Openingfor a Bolder Agenda
By ALEXANDER BURNS
Continued on Page A19
Soccer returned to Germany in emptystadiums. Fans warmed to the subduedscene, Rory Smith writes. PAGE D1
The New Game DayCabin fever drew carloads of people to adrive-in theater well stocked with handsanitizer in Warwick, N.Y. PAGE C1
Pandemic-Approved Viewing
Ron Yu, a master racket technician,tells how being off the road has madehim appreciate the sport anew. PAGE D2
SPORTSMONDAY D1-6
No Tennis, but Still LoveThe Guggenheim’s “Countryside” showwas shut down, but its tomato crop isstill feeding New Yorkers. PAGE C1
ARTS C1-7
An Essential GardenerGravediggers are overwhelmed in oneNigerian city, where inaction led to anunchecked outbreak. Across Africa,other hot spots are emerging. PAGE A6
TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-14
Virus Takes Hold in Africa
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Serv-ices asks Congress for aid as a plungein petitions hurts its revenue. PAGE A10
No Visas, No Money
The coronavirus has paralyzed Cirquedu Soleil, forcing it to close shows andgrounding its artists. PAGE A15
INTERNATIONAL A15-17
Will the Show Go On?
For decades, Justice Clarence Thomas’slegal thinking was considered too ex-treme even for the court’s conserva-tives. That’s no longer true. PAGE A18
NATIONAL A18-21
A Legal Icon for the Trump Era
The journalist Ronan Farrow haslanded big stories, some stronger thanothers, Ben Smith writes. PAGE B1
BUSINESS B1-8
Revisiting Farrow’s Exposés
The comedic actor Fred Willard ap-peared in more than 700 films and TVepisodes. He was 86. PAGE D7
OBITUARIES D7-8
Made Us Laugh for 50 Years
After her reign as Miss America, Phyl-lis George joined the all-male cast of“The NFL Today.” She was 70. PAGE D8
Sportscaster and Role Model
The cable network has laid off top exec-utives while looking to make shows thatare cheaper to produce. PAGE B1
Overhaul at Comedy Central
Late Edition
VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,697 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, MONDAY, MAY 18, 2020
Today, periodic clouds and sunshine,high 67. Tonight, plenty of clouds,breezy, low 53. Tomorrow, mostlycloudy, breezy, cooler, high 60.Weather map appears on Page A24.
$3.00
