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WASHINGTON — WhenDi’Zhon Chase’s teacher told herthat she might be able to enroll in aHarvard University class, she wasskeptical — and not just becausethe Ivy League school was morethan 2,000 miles from her home-town, Gallup, N.M.

“Harvard isn’t part of the con-versation — you don’t even hear

that word in Gallup,” Ms. Chasesaid. “It isn’t something thatadults expect out of us. I don’tthink it’s because they don’t be-lieve in us; it’s just so much isstacked against us.”

But in fall 2019, Ms. Chasejoined a small group of studentsacross the country in an experi-ment that sought to redefine whatis possible for students who shareher underprivileged background.

Through an initiative started by aNew York-based nonprofit, theNational Education Equity Lab,hundreds of students are virtuallyrattling the gates of some of the

nation’s most elite colleges by ex-celling in their credit-bearingcourses before they leave highschool.

The Equity Lab enrolled morethan 300 11th and 12th gradersfrom high-poverty high schools in11 cities across the country in aHarvard course, “Poetry in Amer-ica: The City From Whitman toHip-Hop,” taught by a renowned

By ERICA L. GREEN Focusing on Students inthe Poorest Schools

Continued on Page A19

A Program Inspires Ivy League Dreams in Disadvantaged Teens

DALLAS — Power began toflicker back on across much ofTexas on Thursday, but millionsacross the state confronted an-other dire crisis: a shortage ofdrinkable water as pipes cracked,wells froze and water treatmentplants were knocked offline.

The problems were especiallyacute at hospitals. One, in Austin,was forced to move some of itsmost critically ill patients to an-other building when its faucetsran nearly dry. Another in Hous-ton had to haul in water on trucksto flush toilets.

But for many of the state’s resi-dents stuck at home, the emer-gency meant boiling the tap waterthat trickled through theirfaucets, scouring stores for bot-tled water or boiling icicles anddirty snow on their stoves.

For others, it meant no water atall. Denise Gonzalez, 40, hadjoined a crowd at a makeshift re-lief center in a working-class cor-ner of West Dallas on Thursdaywhere volunteers handed out foodfrom the luggage compartment ofa charter bus.

Back at her apartment, shesaid, the lights were finally backon. But her pipes were frozensolid. She could not bathe, showeror use the toilet. She said she hadbeen calling plumbers all day, butone of the few who answered toldher it would be $3,000 to come out

to assess the damage.“If I had $3,000,” Ms. Gonzalez

said, “I wouldn’t be getting foodfrom people on the bus.”

Major disruptions to the Texaspower grid left more than four mil-lion households without powerthis week, but by Thursdayevening, only about 347,000lacked electricity. Much of thestatewide concern had turned towater woes.

More than 800 public water sys-tems serving 162 of the state’s 254counties had been disrupted as ofThursday, affecting 13.1 millionpeople, according to a spokes-woman for the Texas Commissionon Environmental Quality.

In Harris County, which in-cludes Houston, the nation’sfourth-largest city, more than onemillion people have been affectedby local water systems that haveeither issued notices to boil waterso it is safe to drink or that cannotdeliver water at all, said BrianMurray, a spokesman for thecounty emergency managementagency.

Residents in the Texas capital,Austin, were also told to boil waterbecause of a power failure at thecity’s largest water-treatment fa-cility. The director of Austin Wa-ter, Greg Meszaros, said thatplummeting temperatures causedwater mains to break and pipes toburst, spurring an increase in wa-ter usage and allowing water to

Texans Facing New Crisis:Too Little Drinkable Water

Power Flickers Back, but Frozen Pipes Breakand Treatment Plants Are Crippled

This article is by Jack Healy, Rich-ard Fausset and James Dobbins.

A family in San Antonio burning furniture to stay warm. More than four million Texans lost power when the state’s grid collapsed.TAMIR KALIFA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A14

Like millions of his constituentsacross Texas, Senator Ted Cruzhad a frigid home without elec-tricity this week amid the state’spower crisis. But unlike most, Mr.Cruz got out, fleeing Houston andhopping a Wednesday afternoonflight to Cancún with his family fora respite at a luxury resort.

Photos of Mr. Cruz and his wife,Heidi, boarding the flight rico-cheted quickly across social me-dia and left both his political alliesand rivals aghast at a tropical tripas a disaster unfolded at home.The blowback only intensified af-ter Mr. Cruz, a Republican, re-leased a statement saying he hadflown to Mexico “to be a good dad”and accompany his daughters andtheir friends; he noted he was fly-ing back Thursday afternoon,though he did not disclose howlong he had originally intended tostay.

Text messages sent from Ms.Cruz to friends and Houstonneighbors on Wednesday re-vealed a hastily planned trip.Their house was “FREEZING,” as

Ms. Cruz put it — and she pro-posed a getaway until Sunday. Ms.Cruz invited others to join them atthe Ritz-Carlton in Cancún, wherethey had stayed “many times,”noting the room price this week($309 per night) and its good se-curity. The text messages wereprovided to The New York Timesand confirmed by a second personon the thread, who declined to beidentified because of the privatenature of the texts.

For more than 12 hours after the

Bolting to Cancún, Cruz FindsMore Heat Than He ExpectedBy SHANE GOLDMACHER

and NICHOLAS FANDOS

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas at aMexico airport on Thursday.

REUTERS

Continued on Page A16

Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland,” starringFrances McDormand, above, is a pa-tient, compassionate film about itiner-ant lives, A.O. Scott writes. PAGE C1

WEEKEND ARTS C1-14

The Unsettled AmericansAfter ousting Serena Williams, NaomiOsaka, above, will play Jennifer Bradyfor the Australian Open title. PAGE B9

SPORTSFRIDAY B7-9

A New-Generation ShowdownOn La Gomera, in the Canary Islands,schoolchildren learn a language ofmedieval shepherds: whistling. PAGE A8

INTERNATIONAL A8-11

An Island’s Ageless Echoes

The federal government has not de-ployed a policy of directly providingjobs to people since the Great Depres-sion. Various politicians and economistsare now willing to consider it. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-6

Employment, Guaranteed?After warnings of draconian actions,officials in New York announced thatthey would not have to slash bus orsubway service through 2022. PAGE A7

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-7

Cuts to Public Transit Averted

Lawmakers at a congressional hearingkept coming back to the chief of thestock-trading app with pointed ques-tions and a key argument: “Somethingvery wrong happened here.” PAGE B1

Robinhood Cast as the Villain

David Brooks PAGE A20

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A20-21

Democrats detailed a sweeping plan tofix an immigration system they saidTrump policies had broken. PAGE A18

NATIONAL A12-19, 22

Outlining a Path to Citizenship

With the naming of a woman to run theTokyo organizing committee, some alsosee a cultural shift in Japan. PAGE B8

New Boss for Tokyo GamesEuropeans welcome President Biden’svow to restore the trans-Atlantic alli-ance, but they want more say. PAGE A10

More Dialogue, Less DiktatNative Americans are hoping for help inaddressing problems with poverty,health care and other issues. PAGE A17

Pushing Biden on His Pledge

RICHMOND, Va. — When tinyglass vials of coronavirus vaccinebegan rolling off production lineslate last year, federal health offi-cials set aside a big stash for nurs-ing homes being ravaged by thevirus. Health providers aroundthe country figured as well that itwas prudent to squirrel away vialsto ensure that everyone who got afirst dose of vaccine got a secondone.

Two months later, it is clear bothstrategies went overboard.

Millions of doses wound up

trapped in logistical limbo, eitherset aside for nursing homes thatdid not need them or stockpiledwhile Americans clamored in vainfor their first doses. Now a na-tional effort is underway to prythose doses loose — and, withluck, give a significant boost to thenational vaccination ramp-up.

In New York, Gov. Andrew M.Cuomo has pushed the Biden ad-ministration to allow him to clawback 100,000 excess doses thatwere allocated to the federal pro-gram for long-term-care facilities.In Michigan, Dr. Joneigh S. Khal-dun, the chief medical executive,is raiding nursing home doses that

Short of Doses, States Lay ClaimTo Stockpiles of Unused Vaccine

This article is by Sharon LaFra-niere, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and AbbyGoodnough.

Continued on Page A5

WASHINGTON — The UnitedStates took a major step on Thurs-day toward restoring the Iran nu-clear deal that the Trump admin-istration abandoned, offering tojoin European nations in whatwould be the first substantial di-plomacy with Tehran in more thanfour years, Biden administrationofficials said.

In a series of moves intended tomake good on one of President Bi-den’s most significant campaignpromises, the administration alsobacked away from a Trump ad-ministration effort to restoreUnited Nations sanctions on Iran.That effort had divided Washing-ton from its European allies.

And at the same time, Secretaryof State Antony J. Blinken told Eu-ropean foreign ministers in a callon Thursday morning that theUnited States would join them inseeking to restore the 2015 nucle-ar accord with Iran, which he said“was a key achievement of multi-lateral diplomacy.”

Hours later, Enrique Mora, theEuropean Union’s deputy secre-tary general for political affairs,appealed to the original signers ofthe nuclear deal — Britain,France, Germany, Russia andChina — to salvage it at “a criticalmoment.”

“Intense talks with all partici-pants and the US,” Mr. Mora saidon Twitter. “I am ready to invitethem to an informal meeting todiscuss the way forward.”

While it was unclear whetherthe Iranians would agree to joindiscussions, three people familiar

U.S. Is MovingTo Renew DealWith Iranians

This article is by Lara Jakes, Mi-chael Crowley and David E. Sanger.

Continued on Page A9

NASA safely landed a new ro-botic rover on Mars on Thursday,beginning its most ambitious ef-fort in decades to directly studywhether there was ever life on thenow barren red planet.

While the agency has com-pleted other missions to Mars, the$2.7 billion robotic explorer,named Perseverance, carries sci-entific tools that will bring ad-vanced capabilities to the searchfor life beyond Earth. The rover,about the size of a car, can use itssophisticated cameras, lasers thatcan analyze the chemical makeupof Martian rocks and ground-pen-etrating radar to identify thechemical signatures of fossilizedmicrobial life that may havethrived on Mars when it was aplanet full of flowing water.

“Now the fun really starts,” LoriGlaze, director of NASA’s plan-

etary science division, said duringa news conference after the land-ing.

NASA’s earlier missionsshowed that in the distant pastsome places were warm, wet andhabitable. Now it is time to learnwhether there were ever any mi-croscopic inhabitants there.

“It‘s an enormous undertakingthat’s in front of us, and it hasenormous scientific potential toreally be transformative.” Ken-neth Williford, a deputy projectscientist on the mission said dur-ing a news conference on Wednes-day. “The question is, ‘Was Marsever a living planet?’”

Mars has been the focus of moreand more interest from explorerson Earth. The United Arab Emir-ates and China both began orbit-ing the planet last month, joiningan armada of European andAmerican spacecraft alreadystudying it from space.

The rover will set in motion aNASA plan that is to be carried outover the next decade, and it couldbring samples from Mars back toEarth, where scientists will haveeven more capabilities to findsomething signaling that ourplanet is not the only place wherelife has ever been found.

The mission will also try tomake a small experimental heli-copter, Ingenuity, take flight in thethin Martian atmosphere — some-thing never accomplished before.Successful tests of thisMarscopter could point the waytoward new methods for search-ing the surface of Mars and other

‘Touchdown’ as NASA’s Rover Arrives on MarsBy KENNETH CHANG On a Mission to Send

Rocks Home in aSearch for Life

Mission control erupted in cheers on Thursday as NASA’s $2.7 billion Perseverance craft landed.BILL INGALLS/NASA, VIA REUTERS

Continued on Page A16

FATEFUL MOVE An Americancouple’s decision to relocate toIran has brought misery. PAGE A9

Late Edition

VOL. CLXX . . . . No. 58,974 © 2021 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021

Today, cloudy, periodic snow, sleet,high 34. Tonight, flurries, partialclearing later, low 26. Tomorrow,clouds and sunshine, windy, high 36.Weather map appears on Page A22.

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