C M Y K Yxxx,2020-09-13,A,001,Bs-4C,E1

VOL. CLXIX . . . . No. 58,815 © 2020 The New York Times Company SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2020

The presidential candidates are turningcollege football into an election issue.Team leaders aren’t thrilled, but they’renot surprised, either. PAGE 28

SPORTS 28-31

Grass, Cleats and Soapboxes

With 51 days until the election, voters inswing states explain how they see therace and what issues drive it. PAGE 21

Battleground DispatchesYouTube and other platforms giveNorth Korea a way to push an upbeatmessage: We’re just like you. PAGE 8

A Propaganda Makeover

U(DF47D3)W+@!/!_!$!"

Margaret Atwood, Héctor Tobar, Thom-as Mallon and Brenda Wineapple onolder political novels that have a lot tosay about the world today. PAGE 1

BOOK REVIEW

What Was True Then ...

Michael Sokolove PAGE 4

SUNDAY REVIEW

President Aleksandr G. Lukashenkoand his opponents both say they’ll win,but it isn’t clear how either can. PAGE 9

INTERNATIONAL 8-12

Stalemate in Belarus

President Trump’s weekslongbarrage against Joseph R. BidenJr. has failed to erase the Demo-crat’s lead across a set of keyswing states, including the crucialbattleground of Wisconsin, whereMr. Trump’s law-and-order mes-sage has rallied support on theright but has not swayed the ma-jority of voters who dislike him,according to a poll conducted byThe New York Times and SienaCollege.

Mr. Biden, the former vice pres-ident, leads Mr. Trump by five per-centage points in Wisconsin andby a wider, nine-point margin inneighboring Minnesota, a Demo-cratic-leaning state that Mr.Trump has been seeking to flipwith his vehement denunciationsof rioting and crime.

The president has improved hispolitical standing in Wisconsin inparticular with an insistent ap-peal to Republican-leaning whitevoters alarmed by local unrest.But in both Midwestern states,along with the less-populous bat-tlegrounds of Nevada and NewHampshire, Mr. Trump has notmanaged to overcome his funda-mental political vulnerabilities —above all, his deep unpopularitywith women and the widespreadview among voters that he hasmismanaged the coronaviruspandemic.

Overtaking Mr. Biden in someof those four states could be a sig-nificant boost to Mr. Trump’s re-election chances. He narrowlywon Wisconsin in 2016 and barelylost the other three to Hillary Clin-ton.

While Mr. Trump has steadiedhis candidacy since his politicalnadir early in the summer, theTimes poll suggests that, less thantwo months before Election Day,he has yet to achieve the kind ofmajor political breakthrough heneeds.

Voters in Wisconsin and Minne-sota are split on the question ofwhich candidate they trust moreto handle the subject of law and or-

TRUMP BLITZ FAILSTO GIVE HIM EDGEIN CRUCIAL STATES

NEW POLL FAVORS BIDEN

Law-and-Order MessageNarrows Democrat’sLead in Wisconsin

By ALEXANDER BURNSand JONATHAN MARTIN

Biden Stays Ahead

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Based on a New York Times/Siena College poll of likely voters from Sept. 8 to Sept. 11.

Minn.(n=814)

+2 Clinton +9 Biden50-41

Nev.(n=462)

+2 Clinton +4 Biden46-42

N.H.(n=445)

<1 Clinton +3 Biden45-42

Wis.(n=760)

<1 Trump +5 Biden48-43

Four statescombined(n=2,481)

<1 Clinton +6 Biden48-42

Joe Biden is leading among likely voters in four swing states, including one Donald Trump narrowly won in 2016.

NYT/SIENA,SEPT. 2020

2016RESULT

Continued on Page 23

SAN FRANCISCO — They livedmore than 500 miles from eachother — one in the wooded foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada, north-east of California’s capital, Sacra-mento, the other in a thicklyforested canyon east of Oregon’scapital, Salem.

Josiah Williams, 16.Wyatt Tofte, 13.They were young lives cut

short, victims of the great westernwildfires of 2020.

The arrival of fire season in theAmerican West always bringsfear of fatalities, especially amongthe elderly and infirm, unable toescape the flames.

But the deaths of Josiah andWyatt, two athletic teenagers,speaks to the speed and the feroc-ity of the fires that this year haveburned a record number of acres,4 million in California and Oregoncombined.

With thick smoke blanketinglarge parts of Washington, Oregonand California and tens of thou-sands of people evacuated, thefires have been the worst in dec-ades, exacerbated by climatechange. By Saturday, fires in Cali-fornia had burned 26 times moreterritory than at the same timelast year.

Across the West this weekend,law enforcement authorities werescouring incinerated communi-ties for missing persons. An emer-gency management official in Or-egon said Friday that the statewas bracing for a “mass fatalityincident.”

At least 17 people have died inthe fires, with dozens more miss-ing and peak fire season only be-ginning in many parts of the West.

Among those who have diedwas a 1-year-old boy, Uriel, killedwhen his parents became trappedby fire while visiting their prop-erty in Okanogan, Wash. Theywere rescued by the side of a riverwith serious burns after attempt-ing to escape with the baby in a

Western TownsRiven by GriefOf Fire Deaths

By THOMAS FULLER and GIULIA McDONNELL NIETO DEL RIO

A search team hunted for a missing resident on Friday in Ashland, Ore. At least 17 people have died in the fires, with peak season only beginning in many places.DAVID RYDER/GETTY IMAGES

Continued on Page 16

WASHINGTON — It was thethird week of August, the Republi-can National Convention wasdays away, and President Trumpwas impatient.

White House officials were anx-ious to showcase a step forward inthe battle against the coronavi-rus: an expansion of the use of

blood plasma from recovered pa-tients to treat new ones. Fornearly two weeks, however, theNational Institutes of Health hadheld up emergency authorizationfor the treatment, citing lingeringconcerns over its effectiveness.

So on Wednesday, Aug. 19, Mr.Trump called Dr. Francis S.Collins, the director of the N.I.H.,with a blunt message.

“Get it done by Friday,” he de-manded.

It wasn’t done by Friday, and onSunday, regulators at the Foodand Drug Administration still hadnot finished a last-minute data re-view intended to ease N.I.H.doubts.

But on Sunday night, the eve of

the convention, the president an-nounced, with the F.D.A.’s approv-al, that plasma therapy would beavailable for wider use, and he de-clared that it could reduce deathsby 35 percent, vastly overstatingwhat the data had shown aboutthe benefits.

Mr. Trump’s call to Dr. Collinswas a flash point in a pressurecampaign by the White House tobend the nation’s public health

For Regulators, the Rock Is the Pandemic, the Hard Place Is TrumpThis article is by Sharon LaFra-

niere, Noah Weiland and Michael D.Shear.

Pressure on Agencies toAnnounce Progress

Continued on Page 6

With conditions decaying inNew York City neighborhoods andbusiness districts, a powerful cor-porate executive traveled to Gra-cie Mansion in July to meet withMayor Bill de Blasio. He briefedthe mayor on a plan — preparedby 14 consulting firms — for howCity Hall could work with busi-ness leaders to overcome the pan-demic downturn.

Mr. de Blasio appeared support-ive. The executive, Steven R.Swartz, head of the Hearst mediaconglomerate, left feeling hopeful,as he later told others from thePartnership for New York City, atop business group.

But weeks then went by, and thecorporate leaders began feelingthat Mr. de Blasio was ignoringtheir concerns.

On Thursday, they struck backin the form of an open letter thatpublicly upbraided the mayor forneglecting “public safety, cleanli-ness and other quality-of-life is-

Tensions FlareWith de BlasioOver Recovery

This article is by J. David Good-man, Emma G. Fitzsimmons andJeffery C. Mays.

Continued on Page 6

LOS ANGELES — Executivesat Walt Disney Studios were cele-brating. “Mulan,” a $200 millionlive-action spectacle five years inthe making, had arrived on Dis-ney’s streaming service to strongreviews, with critics lauding itsravishing scenery and thrillingbattle sequences.

The abundant controversiesthat had dogged “Mulan” over itsgestation — false rumors that Dis-ney was casting a white lead ac-tress, calls for a boycott after itsstar expressed support for theHong Kong police — had largelydissipated by Sept. 4, when thefilm arrived online. Successlooked likely around the world, in-cluding the crucial market ofChina, where “Mulan” is set andwhere Disney hoped its release intheaters on Friday would advancethe company’s hold on Chineseimaginations and wallets.

“In many ways, the movie is alove letter to China,” Niki Caro, thefilm’s director, had told the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

Then the credits rolled.Almost as soon as the film ar-

rived on Disney+, social media us-ers noticed that, nine minutes intothe film’s 10-minute end credits,the “Mulan” filmmakers hadthanked eight government enti-ties in Xinjiang, the region inChina where Uighur Muslimshave been detained in mass in-ternment camps.

Activists rushed out a new#BoycottMulan campaign, andDisney found itself the latest ex-ample of a global company stum-bling as the United States and

How 1 MinuteOf ‘Mulan’ PutDisney in Bind

By BROOKS BARNESand AMY QIN

At an off-campus space at theUniversity of California at Berke-ley in the fall of 1962, a tall, thin Ja-maican Ph.D. student addressed asmall crowd, drawing parallels be-tween his native country and theUnited States.

He told the group, a roomful of

Black students, that he had grownup observing British colonialpower in Jamaica, the way a smallnumber of whites had cultivated a“native Black elite” in order tomask extreme social inequality.

At 24, Donald J. Harris was al-ready professorial, as reserved asthe Anglican acolyte he had oncebeen. But his ideas were edgy. One

member of the audience foundthem so compelling that she cameup to him after the speech and in-troduced herself.

She was a tiny Indian scientistwearing a sari and sandals — theonly other foreign student to showup for a talk on race in America.She was, he recalled, “a standoutin appearance relative to every-

body else in the group of both menand women.”

Shyamala Gopalan had beenborn the same year as Mr. Harris,in another British colony on theother side of the planet. But herview of the colonial system wasmore sheltered, the view of a sen-ior civil servant’s daughter, she

For Harris’s Parents, a Bond in America Shaped by ’60s ActivismBy ELLEN BARRY

Continued on Page 18

CHANG W. LEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES

With no spectators to cheer, boo or woo, the U.S. Open lackedenergy, until a semifinal match brought the joy back. Page 30.

Spirit in the Empty Stands

NEW MENACE Climate change hasdried out a part of Oregon that’susually too wet to burn. PAGE 14

GRIM WARNING Experts say theU.S. isn’t moving fast enough tochange fire-risk policies. PAGE 13

Continued on Page 12

SPECIAL SECTION

The proto-influencer says that afternearly two decades of playing a charac-ter, she’s ready to be herself. PAGE 1

SUNDAY STYLES

Who Is Paris Hilton, Really?

The Kardashians’ reality show shapednot only TV, but celebrity, beauty andentrepreneurship. PAGE 1

Unlikely Agents of Change

Worldwide, the population facing life-threatening levels of food insecurity isexpected to double, to more than aquarter of a billion people. PAGE 1

SUNDAY BUSINESS

In Covid’s Wake, Hunger

In a secret recording, oil executivescontradicted public claims that methaneemissions were under control. PAGE 14

NATIONAL 13-25

Clashing Messages on Climate

Printed in Chicago $6.00

Cloudy early. Turning mostly sunnyby the afternoon. Highs in the lowerto middle 70s. Mainly clear and sea-sonably cool tonight. Lows in the50s. Weather map is on Page 22.

National Edition