The Untold Story of Breonna Taylor...11 hours ago · icon, her silhouette a symbol of police...
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Jackson Heights, Queens: 180,000 people, 167 languages. PAGE 5 ARTS & LEISURE Walking the American Dream The urban elites in Belarus, above, were apolitical until the pandemic and a blatantly falsified election. PAGE 8 INTERNATIONAL 8-12 The Breaking Point There’s a little bit of summer left, and we’ve got seven ways for you to step up your leisure game on this last unofficial weekend of the season. PAGE 5 AT HOME Mr. Sun, Stay a While Longer In Lafayette, La., frustration and fa- tigue have set in after storms, a pan- demic and a fatal shooting by the police that some residents believe is being overshadowed. PAGE 13 NATIONAL 13-23 ‘We’re Hurting Right Now’ Oscar-nominated filmmakers spent years with the subjects of “Honeyland.” Now, it’s hard to leave. PAGE 12 Movie Drama in the Balkans President Trump, his family and his staunchest supporters dominated screen time at the convention, a graphic analysis shows, with the party estab- lishment much less evident. PAGE 20 The Stars of the G.O.P. Show Moises Velasquez-Manoff PAGE 4 SUNDAY REVIEW Many young people were blindsided by the economic crisis. These financial tips can help them stay afloat. PAGE 4 Life Preserver for Millennials Armed with divinity degrees, spiritual consultants are making space for the soul in the workplace. PAGE 1 SUNDAY BUSINESS Businesses Get Religion U(D547FD)v+@!,!/!$!z Thousands of students return- ing to the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York this month are being asked to wear masks in public, register their health status online each day and electronically log classroom visits for contact tracing if a coronavirus outbreak occurs. But the most novel effort at the school to meas- ure and limit virus spread will re- quire little effort and come quite naturally. Students need only use the bathroom. At more than 15 dormitories and on-campus apartment build- ings, sewage is being tested twice weekly for genetic evidence of vi- rus shed in feces. This provides a kind of early-warning system of an outbreak, limiting the need to test every student for Covid-19. If the disease is found in sewage, in- dividual tests can be administered to identify the source. “It’s noninvasive,” said Enid Cardinal, senior adviser to the president for strategic planning and sustainability at R.I.T. The school is among a half-dozen col- leges in upstate New York adopt- ing similar technology, which was first introduced by Syracuse Uni- versity. At the University of Ari- zona, officials said such tests led to the discovery that several stu- dents in a dorm were infected. “Wastewater,” Ms. Cardinal quipped. “My new favorite topic.” The fall of 2020 will go down as a period of profound experi- mentation at colleges and univer- sities transformed into hothouse laboratories. They are trying out wastewater tests, dozens of health-check apps and versions of homegrown contact technologies that log student movement and exposure risk. And they are ex- perimenting with different testing methods that might yield faster results and be easier to adminis- ter, such as using saliva instead of nasal swabs. Like small island nations with discrete populations, many uni- versities are using methods that cities, states and nations often cannot. The colleges have some authority over relatively captive Colleges, Yearning to Reopen, Become Labs for Covid Safety By MATT RICHTEL U.N.C. Charlotte’s system to sample dorms’ wastewater. PETE KIEHART FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page 5 LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Breonna Taylor had just done four overnight shifts at the hospital where she worked as an emer- gency room technician. To let off some steam, she and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, planned a date night: dinner at a steakhouse, followed by a movie in bed. Usually, they headed to his apartment, where he lived alone and she had left a toothbrush and a flat iron. But that night, they went to the small unit she shared with her younger sister, who was away on a trip. It was dark when the couple pulled into the parking lot, then closed the door to Apart- ment 4 behind them. This was the year of big plans for the 26- year-old: Her home was brimming with the Post-it notes and envelopes on which she wrote her goals. She had just bought a new car. Next on the list: buying her own home. And trying to have a baby with Mr. Walker. They had already chosen a name. She fell asleep next to him just after mid- night on March 13, the movie still playing. “The last thing she said was, ‘Turn off the TV,’” he said in an interview. From the parking lot, undercover offi- cers surveilling Ms. Taylor’s apartment be- fore a drug raid saw only the blue glow of the television. When they punched in the door with a battering ram, Mr. Walker, fearing an in- truder, reached for his gun and let off one shot, wounding an officer. He and another officer returned fire, while a third began blindly shooting through Ms. Taylor’s win- dow and patio door. Bullets ripped through nearly every room in her apartment, then into two adjoining ones. They sliced through a soap dish, a chair and a table and shattered a sliding-glass door. Ms. Taylor, struck five times, bled out on the floor. Breonna Taylor has since become an icon, her silhouette a symbol of police vio- lence and racial injustice. Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris spoke her name during their speeches at the Democratic conven- tion. Oprah Winfrey ceded the cover of her magazine for the first time to feature the young Black woman, and paid for bill- boards with her image across Louisville. A tribute to Breonna Taylor in Washington Square Park in Manhattan in June during a march against racism and police brutality. TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES The Untold Story of Breonna Taylor Her Life Was Changing. Then the Police Came to Her Door. By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI Continued on Page 16 WASHINGTON — Marilyn Cortez, a retired cafeteria worker in Houston with no health insur- ance, spent much of July in the hospital with Covid-19. When she finally returned home, she re- ceived a $36,000 bill that com- pounded the stress of her illness. Then someone from the hospi- tal, Houston Methodist, called and told her not to worry — President Trump had paid it. But then another bill arrived, for twice as much. Ms. Cortez’s care is supposed to be covered under a program Mr. Trump announced this spring as the coronavirus pandemic was taking hold — a time when mil- lions of people were losing their health insurance and the adminis- tration was doubling down on try- ing to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, the law that had ex- panded coverage to more than 20 million people. “This should alleviate any con- cern uninsured Americans may have about seeking the coro- navirus treatment,” Mr. Trump said in April about the program, which is supposed to cover testing and treatment for uninsured peo- ple with Covid-19, using money from the federal coronavirus relief package passed by Congress. The program has drawn little attention since, but a review by The New York Times of payments made through it, as well as inter- views with hospital executives, patients and health policy re- searchers who have examined the payments, suggests the quickly concocted plan has not lived up to its promise. It has caused confu- sion at participating hospitals, which in some cases have mistak- enly billed patients like Ms. Cortez who should be covered by it. Few FOR UNINSURED, RELIEF PROGRAM IS FALLING SHORT COVID-19 BILLS PILING UP Murky Rules, Backlogs and Mistakes Add to Patients’ Anxiety By ABBY GOODNOUGH Continued on Page 6 The Republican convention last week marked an extraordinary ef- fort to recast President Trump’s image on issues of race and gen- der, with the party stretching to find African-Americans who would testify that Mr. Trump is not racist, and lining up women to de- scribe him as sensitive and empa- thetic — qualities he rarely dis- plays in public. This vouching for Mr. Trump, as he was nominated for a second term, was without precedent. Never before has a convention by either major party felt compelled to call such a diverse array of speakers to defend the character of a sitting president. And it was done with a crucial political goal in mind: making a di- visive leader appear more palat- able to white moderate voters, who have turned against the Trump-led G.O.P. in recent elec- tions, while also trying to peel away some nonwhite voters from Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democrat- ic nominee. Some polls indicate that Mr. Trump has made slight gains among minority voters over the past three years. A shift of even a sliver of voters toward him — or a strategy that dampens minority turnout by demonizing Mr. Biden and presenting Mr. Trump as ac- ceptable — could make a differ- ence in critical states like North Carolina and Arizona. “Many on the other side love to incite division by claiming that President Trump is a racist,” Ben Carson, the housing secretary and the only African-American in the cabinet, said at the convention on Thursday night, shortly before Mr. Trump delivered his accept- ance speech. “They could not be more wrong.” Herschel Walker, a former foot- ball star and longtime friend of the president’s, said he was offended that anyone might hold that nega- tive view of Mr. Trump. “I take it as a personal insult that people Party Stretched To Link Trump With Diversity Intense Drive to Recast Image at Convention By ADAM NAGOURNEY and SYDNEY EMBER Continued on Page 19 Over three days in late July, a three-bedroom house in East Or- ange, N.J., was listed for sale for $285,000, had 97 showings, re- ceived 24 offers and went under contract for 21 percent over that price. On Long Island, six people made offers on a $499,000 house in Valley Stream without seeing it in person after it was shown on a Facebook Live video. In the Hud- son Valley, a nearly three-acre property with a pool listed for $985,000 received four all-cash bids within a day of having 14 showings. Since the pandemic began, the suburbs around New York City, from New Jersey to Westchester County to Connecticut to Long Is- land, have been experiencing enormous demand for homes of all prices, a surge that is unlike any in recent memory, according to officials, real estate agents and residents. In July, there was a 44 percent increase in home sales for the sub- urban counties surrounding the city when compared with the pre- vious year, according to Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers & Consultants. The increase was 112 percent in Westchester, just north of New York City, and 73 percent in By MATTHEW HAAG Continued on Page 15 Fleeing the City Creates Frenzy In the Suburbs The young Black activists who chan- neled a nation’s outcry into a movement. THE MAGAZINE Galvanized by George Floyd The problem with dignity is that there’s not much an actor can do with it. Not when he’s playing Jackie Robinson or Thurgood Marshall, not when you’re the leader of a made-up African kingdom, like Wakanda. For a performer, dignity can seem like an anchor or a void. What can he show us of a baseball legend or a titan of jurisprudence that they hadn’t previously revealed? In playing dignity, Chadwick Boseman, who died Friday, at just 43, of colon cancer, often seemed tasked to perform its burden. But there was always more to him in these parts than heft. He pumped in plenty of its opposite: lightness. In “Marshall,” instead of bearing down on the man’s owlish bril- liance, Boseman turned the con- cept of what’s actionable into physical action. He was light, quick, smooth, chic. He sprinkled the truth with herbs and spices. Amazingly, between his work as Robinson and Marshall, Boseman also played the great American superstar James Brown in “Get On Up.” Had any actor spent more time in such enormous shoes in so brief a span? (The Jackie Rob- inson film, “42,” came out in 2013; “Marshall” was four years later.) No one in the movies comes to Infusing Lightness Into the Dignity of Kings The actor, 43, dazzled audiences as the star of “42,” “Get On Up” and the groundbreaking film “Black Panther.” Obituary, Page 24. MAGDALENA WOSINSKA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES WESLEY MORRIS AN APPRAISAL CHADWICK BOSEMAN, 1976-2020 Continued on Page 25 The Milwaukee Bucks returned to the basketball court, and won, days after starting the league’s social justice movement by refusing to play. PAGE 27 SPORTS 27-29 The N.B.A. Picks Up The movie star and self-described “drama nerd person” was meant to host the MTV Video Music Awards. PAGE 1 SUNDAY STYLES Keke Palmer’s Brazen Aplomb Late Edition VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,801 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, AUGUST 30, 2020 Today, partly sunny, seasonable, less humid, high 78. Tonight, partly cloudy, a bit cool, low 62. Tomorrow, mostly sunny, lower humidity, high 77. Weather map is on Page 23. $6.00
Transcript of The Untold Story of Breonna Taylor...11 hours ago · icon, her silhouette a symbol of police...
C M Y K Nxxx,2020-08-30,A,001,Bs-4C,E2
Jackson Heights, Queens: 180,000people, 167 languages. PAGE 5
ARTS & LEISURE
Walking the American Dream
The urban elites in Belarus, above,were apolitical until the pandemic and ablatantly falsified election. PAGE 8
INTERNATIONAL 8-12
The Breaking Point
There’s a little bit of summer left, andwe’ve got seven ways for you to step upyour leisure game on this last unofficialweekend of the season. PAGE 5
AT HOME
Mr. Sun, Stay a While LongerIn Lafayette, La., frustration and fa-tigue have set in after storms, a pan-demic and a fatal shooting by the policethat some residents believe is beingovershadowed. PAGE 13
NATIONAL 13-23
‘We’re Hurting Right Now’
Oscar-nominated filmmakers spentyears with the subjects of “Honeyland.”Now, it’s hard to leave. PAGE 12
Movie Drama in the Balkans
President Trump, his family and hisstaunchest supporters dominatedscreen time at the convention, a graphicanalysis shows, with the party estab-lishment much less evident. PAGE 20
The Stars of the G.O.P. Show
Moises Velasquez-Manoff PAGE 4
SUNDAY REVIEW
Many young people were blindsided bythe economic crisis. These financial tipscan help them stay afloat. PAGE 4
Life Preserver for Millennials
Armed with divinity degrees, spiritualconsultants are making space for thesoul in the workplace. PAGE 1
SUNDAY BUSINESS
Businesses Get Religion
U(D547FD)v+@!,!/!$!z
Thousands of students return-ing to the Rochester Institute ofTechnology in New York thismonth are being asked to wearmasks in public, register theirhealth status online each day andelectronically log classroom visitsfor contact tracing if a coronavirusoutbreak occurs. But the mostnovel effort at the school to meas-ure and limit virus spread will re-quire little effort and come quitenaturally.
Students need only use thebathroom.
At more than 15 dormitoriesand on-campus apartment build-ings, sewage is being tested twiceweekly for genetic evidence of vi-rus shed in feces. This provides akind of early-warning system ofan outbreak, limiting the need totest every student for Covid-19. Ifthe disease is found in sewage, in-dividual tests can be administeredto identify the source.
“It’s noninvasive,” said EnidCardinal, senior adviser to thepresident for strategic planningand sustainability at R.I.T. Theschool is among a half-dozen col-leges in upstate New York adopt-ing similar technology, which wasfirst introduced by Syracuse Uni-versity. At the University of Ari-zona, officials said such tests ledto the discovery that several stu-dents in a dorm were infected.
“Wastewater,” Ms. Cardinal
quipped. “My new favorite topic.”The fall of 2020 will go down as a
period of profound experi-mentation at colleges and univer-sities transformed into hothouselaboratories. They are trying outwastewater tests, dozens ofhealth-check apps and versions ofhomegrown contact technologiesthat log student movement andexposure risk. And they are ex-perimenting with different testingmethods that might yield fasterresults and be easier to adminis-ter, such as using saliva instead ofnasal swabs.
Like small island nations withdiscrete populations, many uni-versities are using methods thatcities, states and nations oftencannot. The colleges have someauthority over relatively captive
Colleges, Yearning to Reopen, Become Labs for Covid Safety
By MATT RICHTEL
U.N.C. Charlotte’s system tosample dorms’ wastewater.
PETE KIEHART FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Continued on Page 5
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Breonna Taylorhad just done four overnight shifts at thehospital where she worked as an emer-gency room technician. To let off somesteam, she and her boyfriend, KennethWalker, planned a date night: dinner at asteakhouse, followed by a movie in bed.
Usually, they headed to his apartment,where he lived alone and she had left atoothbrush and a flat iron. But that night,they went to the small unit she shared withher younger sister, who was away on a trip.It was dark when the couple pulled into theparking lot, then closed the door to Apart-ment 4 behind them.
This was the year of big plans for the 26-year-old: Her home was brimming with
the Post-it notes and envelopes on whichshe wrote her goals. She had just bought anew car. Next on the list: buying her ownhome. And trying to have a baby with Mr.Walker. They had already chosen a name.
She fell asleep next to him just after mid-night on March 13, the movie still playing.“The last thing she said was, ‘Turn off theTV,’” he said in an interview.
From the parking lot, undercover offi-cers surveilling Ms. Taylor’s apartment be-fore a drug raid saw only the blue glow ofthe television.
When they punched in the door with abattering ram, Mr. Walker, fearing an in-truder, reached for his gun and let off oneshot, wounding an officer. He and anotherofficer returned fire, while a third began
blindly shooting through Ms. Taylor’s win-dow and patio door. Bullets ripped throughnearly every room in her apartment, theninto two adjoining ones. They slicedthrough a soap dish, a chair and a table andshattered a sliding-glass door.
Ms. Taylor, struck five times, bled out onthe floor.
Breonna Taylor has since become anicon, her silhouette a symbol of police vio-lence and racial injustice. Michelle Obamaand Kamala Harris spoke her name duringtheir speeches at the Democratic conven-tion. Oprah Winfrey ceded the cover of hermagazine for the first time to feature theyoung Black woman, and paid for bill-boards with her image across Louisville.
A tribute to Breonna Taylor in Washington Square Park in Manhattan in June during a march against racism and police brutality.TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Untold Story of Breonna TaylorHer Life Was Changing. Then the Police Came to Her Door.
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Continued on Page 16
WASHINGTON — MarilynCortez, a retired cafeteria workerin Houston with no health insur-ance, spent much of July in thehospital with Covid-19. When shefinally returned home, she re-ceived a $36,000 bill that com-pounded the stress of her illness.
Then someone from the hospi-tal, Houston Methodist, called andtold her not to worry — PresidentTrump had paid it.
But then another bill arrived,for twice as much.
Ms. Cortez’s care is supposed tobe covered under a program Mr.Trump announced this spring asthe coronavirus pandemic wastaking hold — a time when mil-lions of people were losing theirhealth insurance and the adminis-tration was doubling down on try-ing to dismantle the AffordableCare Act, the law that had ex-panded coverage to more than 20million people.
“This should alleviate any con-cern uninsured Americans mayhave about seeking the coro-navirus treatment,” Mr. Trumpsaid in April about the program,which is supposed to cover testingand treatment for uninsured peo-ple with Covid-19, using moneyfrom the federal coronavirus reliefpackage passed by Congress.
The program has drawn littleattention since, but a review byThe New York Times of paymentsmade through it, as well as inter-views with hospital executives,patients and health policy re-searchers who have examined thepayments, suggests the quicklyconcocted plan has not lived up toits promise. It has caused confu-sion at participating hospitals,which in some cases have mistak-enly billed patients like Ms. Cortezwho should be covered by it. Few
FOR UNINSURED,RELIEF PROGRAMIS FALLING SHORT
COVID-19 BILLS PILING UP
Murky Rules, Backlogsand Mistakes Add to
Patients’ Anxiety
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Continued on Page 6
The Republican convention lastweek marked an extraordinary ef-fort to recast President Trump’simage on issues of race and gen-der, with the party stretching tofind African-Americans whowould testify that Mr. Trump is notracist, and lining up women to de-scribe him as sensitive and empa-thetic — qualities he rarely dis-plays in public.
This vouching for Mr. Trump, ashe was nominated for a secondterm, was without precedent.Never before has a convention byeither major party felt compelledto call such a diverse array ofspeakers to defend the characterof a sitting president.
And it was done with a crucialpolitical goal in mind: making a di-visive leader appear more palat-able to white moderate voters,who have turned against theTrump-led G.O.P. in recent elec-tions, while also trying to peelaway some nonwhite voters fromJoseph R. Biden Jr., the Democrat-ic nominee.
Some polls indicate that Mr.Trump has made slight gainsamong minority voters over thepast three years. A shift of even asliver of voters toward him — or astrategy that dampens minorityturnout by demonizing Mr. Bidenand presenting Mr. Trump as ac-ceptable — could make a differ-ence in critical states like NorthCarolina and Arizona.
“Many on the other side love toincite division by claiming thatPresident Trump is a racist,” BenCarson, the housing secretary andthe only African-American in thecabinet, said at the convention onThursday night, shortly beforeMr. Trump delivered his accept-ance speech. “They could not bemore wrong.”
Herschel Walker, a former foot-ball star and longtime friend of thepresident’s, said he was offendedthat anyone might hold that nega-tive view of Mr. Trump. “I take itas a personal insult that people
Party StretchedTo Link TrumpWith Diversity
Intense Drive to RecastImage at Convention
By ADAM NAGOURNEYand SYDNEY EMBER
Continued on Page 19
Over three days in late July, athree-bedroom house in East Or-ange, N.J., was listed for sale for$285,000, had 97 showings, re-ceived 24 offers and went undercontract for 21 percent over thatprice.
On Long Island, six peoplemade offers on a $499,000 housein Valley Stream without seeing itin person after it was shown on aFacebook Live video. In the Hud-son Valley, a nearly three-acreproperty with a pool listed for$985,000 received four all-cashbids within a day of having 14showings.
Since the pandemic began, thesuburbs around New York City,from New Jersey to WestchesterCounty to Connecticut to Long Is-land, have been experiencingenormous demand for homes ofall prices, a surge that is unlikeany in recent memory, accordingto officials, real estate agents andresidents.
In July, there was a 44 percentincrease in home sales for the sub-urban counties surrounding thecity when compared with the pre-vious year, according to MillerSamuel Real Estate Appraisers &Consultants. The increase was 112percent in Westchester, just northof New York City, and 73 percent in
By MATTHEW HAAG
Continued on Page 15
Fleeing the CityCreates Frenzy
In the Suburbs
The young Black activists who chan-neled a nation’s outcry into a movement.
THE MAGAZINE
Galvanized by George Floyd
The problem with dignity is thatthere’s not much an actor can dowith it. Not when he’s playingJackie Robinson or ThurgoodMarshall, not when you’re the
leader of a made-upAfrican kingdom,like Wakanda.
For a performer,dignity can seemlike an anchor or avoid. What can he
show us of a baseball legend or atitan of jurisprudence that theyhadn’t previously revealed?
In playing dignity, ChadwickBoseman, who died Friday, at just43, of colon cancer, often seemedtasked to perform its burden. Butthere was always more to him inthese parts than heft. He pumpedin plenty of its opposite: lightness.In “Marshall,” instead of bearingdown on the man’s owlish bril-liance, Boseman turned the con-cept of what’s actionable intophysical action. He was light,quick, smooth, chic. He sprinkledthe truth with herbs and spices.
Amazingly, between his work asRobinson and Marshall, Bosemanalso played the great Americansuperstar James Brown in “GetOn Up.” Had any actor spent moretime in such enormous shoes in sobrief a span? (The Jackie Rob-inson film, “42,” came out in 2013;“Marshall” was four years later.)No one in the movies comes to
Infusing Lightness Into the Dignity of Kings
The actor, 43, dazzled audiences as the star of “42,” “Get On Up”and the groundbreaking film “Black Panther.” Obituary, Page 24.
MAGDALENA WOSINSKA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
WESLEYMORRIS
ANAPPRAISAL
CHADWICK BOSEMAN, 1976-2020
Continued on Page 25
The Milwaukee Bucks returned to thebasketball court, and won, days afterstarting the league’s social justicemovement by refusing to play. PAGE 27
SPORTS 27-29
The N.B.A. Picks Up
The movie star and self-described“drama nerd person” was meant to hostthe MTV Video Music Awards. PAGE 1
SUNDAY STYLES
Keke Palmer’s Brazen Aplomb
Late Edition
VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,801 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, AUGUST 30, 2020
Today, partly sunny, seasonable,less humid, high 78. Tonight, partlycloudy, a bit cool, low 62. Tomorrow,mostly sunny, lower humidity, high77. Weather map is on Page 23.
$6.00
