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WASHINGTON — The Senateon Friday voted overwhelminglyto override President Trump’sveto of the annual military policybill as most Republicans joinedDemocrats to rebuke Mr. Trumpin the final days of his presidency.
The 81-to-13 vote was the firsttime lawmakers have overriddenone of Mr. Trump’s vetoes. It re-flected the sweeping popularity ofa measure that authorized a payraise for the nation’s military.
The margin surpassed the two-thirds majority needed to force en-actment of the bill over Mr.Trump’s objections, and only sev-en Republicans voted to sustainthe veto. The House passed thelegislation on Monday in a simi-larly lopsided 322-to-87 vote thatalso mustered the two-thirds ma-jority required.
The vote ended a devastatinglegislative week for Mr. Trump, ef-fectively denying him two of thelast demands of his presidency.Senate Republican leaders onWednesday had declared thatthere was “no realistic path” for avote on increasing stimuluschecks to $2,000 from the current$600, a measure Mr. Trump hadpressed lawmakers to take up.
Republicans have also dividedover supporting the president’sdetermination to make one lastand futile attempt to overturn the
2020 election results in Congressnext week.
Senator James M. Inhofe, Re-publican of Oklahoma and thechairman of the Armed ServicesCommittee, typically a strong allyof the president, took to the Senatefloor on Friday to encourage hiscolleagues to override Mr.Trump’s veto, calling the passageof the bill “the most significantvote lawmakers take.”
“This year especially so, in lightof all of the disruptions and prob-lems that we’ve had,” Mr. Inhofesaid.
The main disruption Mr. Inhofewas referring to was the presi-dent. Making good on a months-long series of threats, the presi-dent vetoed the bipartisan legisla-tion last week, citing a shifting listof reasons, including his objectionto a provision directing the mili-tary to strip the names of Confed-erate leaders from bases. He alsodemanded that the bill include therepeal of what is known as Section230, a legal shield for social mediacompanies that he has tangledwith. Republicans and Democrats
IN BLOW TO TRUMP,SENATE OVERRIDESDEFENSE BILL VETO
A First as His Presidency Nears an End— Only 7 Republicans Vote No
By CATIE EDMONDSON
Continued on Page A19
CHICAGO — One Fridayevening, Sandra McGowan-Watts, a 46-year-old doctor fromsuburban Chicago, opened herlaptop, stifled her nerves and toldstrangers on a Zoom call what hadhappened to her husband, Steven.
“He died by himself,” said Dr.McGowan-Watts, who joined thecall after an invitation on a Face-
book support group for widowedBlack women. “Not being able tosee him, being able to touch him,all of those things. The grief iskind of complicated.”
The women listening under-stood instantly. They were all wid-ows of Covid-19.
For nearly two hours that sum-mer night, their stories tumbledout, tales of sickness and death,single parenting and unwantedsolitude, harrowing phone calls
and truncated goodbyes.More than 340,000 people have
died of the coronavirus in theUnited States. Men have died ofthe disease in larger numbersthan women, a gender disparity
that some researchers have sug-gested could be partly attributedto men’s generally poorer health.That has left untold thousands ofspouses suddenly widowed by thevirus.
Women have witnessed thepandemic from a miserably closeangle. They have been left behindwith family responsibilities, finan-cial burdens, worries about their
Sudden Sisterhood of Covid Widows, United in Unthinkable LossBy JULIE BOSMAN Support Groups Swell
With the Bereaved
Continued on Page A5
Joseph R. Biden Jr. won most urban Latino, Asian and immigrant neighborhoods, but with farsmaller margins than Hillary Clinton had in 2016. Where voters drifted the most. Pages A11-14.
Red Shifts in Blue Strongholds
When New York State lawmak-ers approved emergency legisla-tion this week to ban evictions forat least two months, they wereseeking to prevent hundreds ofthousands of people from beingforced from their homes duringthe winter, with the pandemic stillraging. But they also feared some-thing more perilous: a broad rip-ping at the fabric of society.
Families becoming homelessafter being evicted, overwhelm-ing shelters. Children haphaz-ardly transferring schools andfalling far behind. Lines at foodpantries growing. People endingup in overcrowded housing, in-creasing their chances of develop-ing chronic disease. During theoutbreak, evictions have been as-sociated with the spread ofCovid-19.
And so the threat of eviction andsubsequent hardships loomsacross the region. A school aide inBrooklyn who spent months in ahomeless shelter is worried thatshe will lose her apartment andhave to return to a shelter far fromthe doctors who treat her son’sheart condition.
A 65-year-old immigrant inEast Harlem lost his wife to Covidand faces eviction after using hisrent money to send her body backto Senegal. Since losing his jobstocking groceries, he has boughtfood with his unemploymentbenefits.
North of New York City, an un-employed freight dispatchermoved into a mobile-home park,hopeful that her son would get agood education there. But now sheis facing eviction, and she worries
Evictions BanMay Just Delay
Broader Crisis
By DANA RUBINSTEINand JAZMINE HUGHES
After losing his job, Diba Gaye, 65, whose wife died of Covid in April, is at risk of being evicted from his apartment in East Harlem.STEPHEN SPERANZA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Continued on Page A15
The biographical video fromSenator David Perdue’s first cam-paign, in 2014, celebrated a narra-tive arc that many fellow Geor-gians either related to or have as-pired to: the story of a humble boyfrom rural America whose hardwork catapulted him into a globalbusiness career, navigating freemarkets and faraway lands, all thewhile gathering stores of wisdomand wealth.
The embrace of global com-
merce has been a hallmark ofmodern Georgia, showcased inthe 1996 Atlanta Olympics, dis-sected by the novelist Tom Wolfeand promoted by, among others,Mr. Perdue’s Nafta-loving cousin,Sonny Perdue, governor from2003 to 2011. Three years later, inhis maiden run for office, David
Perdue would boast of his interna-tional experience as a consultantand chief executive while speak-ing to a gathering of Republicansin Bibb County, close to his middleGeorgia hometown.
“There’s only one candidate inthis race that’s ever lived outsidethe United States,” Mr. Perduesaid. “How can you bring value toa debate about the economy un-less you have any understandingabout the free-enterprise systemand what it takes to compete in theglobal economy?”
Now, facing one of a pair of Jan.5 runoff elections in Georgia that
Born-Again Populist Who Sent Jobs OverseasThis article is by Stephanie Saul,
Richard Fausset and MichaelLaForgia.
Perdue’s Turnabout asHe Faces Voters in a
Senate Runoff
Continued on Page A16
WASHINGTON — The Penta-gon has abruptly sent the aircraftcarrier Nimitz home from theMiddle East and Africa over theobjections of top military advis-ers, marking a reversal of aweekslong muscle-flexing strat-egy aimed at deterring Iran fromattacking American troops anddiplomats in the Persian Gulf.
Officials said on Friday that theacting defense secretary, Christo-pher C. Miller, had ordered the re-deployment of the ship in part as a“de-escalatory” signal to Tehranto avoid stumbling into a crisis inPresident Trump’s waning days inoffice. American intelligence re-ports indicate that Iran and itsproxies may be preparing a strikeas early as this weekend toavenge the death of Maj. Gen.Qassim Suleimani, the command-er of Iran’s elite Quds Force of theIslamic Revolutionary GuardsCorps.
Senior Pentagon officials saidthat Mr. Miller assessed that dis-patching the Nimitz now, beforethe first anniversary this Sundayof General Suleimani’s death in anAmerican drone strike in Iraq,could remove what Iranian hard-liners see as a provocation thatjustifies their threats againstAmerican military targets. Someanalysts said the return of theNimitz to its home port of Bremer-ton, Wash., was a welcome reduc-tion in tensions between the twocountries.
“If the Nimitz is departing, thatcould be because the Pentagon be-lieves that the threat could sub-side somewhat,” said Michael P.Mulroy, the Pentagon’s former topMiddle East policy official.
But critics said the mixed mes-saging was another example ofthe inexperience and confusingdecision-making at the Pentagonsince Mr. Trump fired Defense
U.S. Backs OffNaval Strategy
Aimed at IranBy ERIC SCHMITT
Continued on Page A7
Battered by a wave of coronavi-rus infections and deaths, localjails and state prison systemsaround the United States have re-sorted to a drastic strategy tokeep the virus at bay: Shuttingdown completely and transferringtheir inmates elsewhere.
From California to Missouri toPennsylvania, state and local offi-cials say that so many guardshave fallen ill with the virus andare unable to work that abruptlyclosing some correctional facili-ties is the only way to maintaincommunity security and prisonersafety.
Experts say the fallout is easyto predict: The jails and prisonsthat stay open will probably be-come even more crowded, unsani-tary and disease-ridden, and thetransfers are likely to help the vi-rus proliferate both inside andoutside the walls.
“Movement of people is danger-ous,” said Lauren Brinkley-Rubin-stein, a professor at the Universityof North Carolina School of Medi-cine, who has been tracking co-ronavirus cases in correctionalsettings. “We’ve got really goodexamples of overcrowding equalsmore infection and greater risk ofoutbreak. We’ve got lots of evi-dence that even transferring peo-ple from one facility to the next isvery dangerous.”
There have been more than480,000 confirmed coronavirus in-fections and at least 2,100 deathsamong inmates and guards inprisons, jails and detention cen-ters across the nation, accordingto a New York Times database.
Among those grim statistics arethe nearly 100,000 correctional of-ficers who have tested positiveand 170 who have died.
Early in the pandemic, some
States ClosingPrisons as VirusSickens Guards
This article is by Brendon Derr,Rebecca Griesbach and Danya Is-sawi.
Continued on Page A5
Returning Gizmo to the WestchesterCounty estate he escaped took drones,wanted posters and a lasso. PAGE A15
NATIONAL A10-20
A Llama on the LamEgyptians are rediscovering the riverthat has shaped and nourished thecountry throughout its history. PAGE A9
INTERNATIONAL A6-9
Rowing Along the Nile
THIS WEEKEND
Israel has distributed the first of twovaccine doses to more than 10 percentof its population, bolstering the primeminister’s battered image. PAGE A4
TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-5
World’s Vaccination Leader
In the season starting this month, theCanadian teams will all be in one divi-sion, as they were from 1926 to 1938,and as during World War II, a globalproblem will affect roster size. PAGE B10
N.H.L. Adjusts to Pandemic
For the publisher of The 830 Times inDel Rio, Texas, keeping his paper afloatmight be the biggest news. PAGE A10
Oasis in a News DesertThe island’s quarantine tactics againstthe virus have worked, but some ask howmuch longer their luck can last. PAGE A6
Taiwan Keeps Its Guard Up
Timothy Egan PAGE A22
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23
Led by its Big 3 on offense — DeVontaSmith, Mac Jones and Najee Harris —the Crimson Tide scored touchdowns onits first three drives to sweep pastNotre Dame. PAGE B8
SPORTSSATURDAY B8-10
Alabama Reaches Title Game
G.E.’s giant turbine, which can light upa small town, is stoking a renewable-energy arms race. PAGE B1
BUSINESS B1-7
The War of Winds
In a wretched year, increased savingsamong white-collar workers liftednearly all financial assets. PAGE B5
Why Markets Thrived in 2020
DISMISSAL A federal judge said asuit aimed at rejecting the elector-al votes lacked standing. PAGE A20
Late Edition
VOL. CLXX . . . No. 58,926 © 2021 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 2021
Today, morning rain, turning partlysunny, windy, high 53. Tonight,partly cloudy, less wind, low 35. To-morrow, times of rain showers, cold-er, high 40. Weather map, Page A18.
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