AFTER A 52-48 VOTE TO SUPREME COURT BARRETT SWORN IN

VOL. CLXX . . . . No. 58,859

? 2020 The New York Times Company

NEW YORK, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2020

Late Edition

Today, mostly cloudy, humid in the morning, high 58. Tonight, remaining cloudy, low 49. Tomorrow, clouds and periodic sunshine, high 58. Weather map appears on Page B12.

$3.00

Cuts Hit Bone

As Pandemic

Saps Colleges

Even Tenured Positions

Are Not Off Limits

By SHAWN HUBLER

Ohio Wesleyan University is eliminating 18 majors. The University of Florida's trustees this month took the first steps toward letting the school furlough faculty members. The University of California, Berkeley, has paused admissions to its Ph.D. programs in anthropology, sociology and art history.

As it resurges across the country, the coronavirus is forcing universities large and small to make deep and possibly lasting cuts to close widening budget shortfalls. By one estimate, the pandemic has cost colleges at least $120 billion, with even Harvard University, despite its $41.9 billion endowment, reporting a $10 million deficit that has prompted belt tightening.

Though many colleges imposed stopgap measures such as hiring freezes and early retirements to save money in the spring, the persistence of the economic downturn is taking a devastating financial toll, pushing many to lay off or furlough employees, delay graduate admissions and even cut or consolidate core programs like liberal arts departments.

The University of South Florida announced this month that its college of education would become a graduate school only, phasing out undergraduate education degrees to help close a $6.8 million budget gap. In Ohio, the University of Akron, citing the coronavirus, successfully invoked a clause in its collective-bargaining agreement in September to supersede tenure rules and lay off 97 unionized faculty members.

"We haven't seen a budget crisis like this in a generation," said Robert Kelchen, a Seton Hall Uni-

Continued on Page A10

DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Amy Coney Barrett became the 115th Supreme Court justice in an unusual ceremony late Monday.

BARRETT SWORN IN TO SUPREME COURT AFTER A 52-48 VOTE

A Scalia Prot?g?e Tilts a Bench Remade by Trump Further to the Right

By NICHOLAS FANDOS

WASHINGTON -- Judge Amy Day. They warned of a disastrous

Coney Barrett, a conservative ap- precedent that would draw retali-

peals court judge and prot?g?e of former Justice Antonin Scalia, was confirmed on Monday to the Supreme Court, capping a lightning-fast Senate approval that handed President Trump a victory ahead of the election and promised to tip the court to the right for years to come.

Inside a Capitol mostly emptied by the resurgent coronavirus pandemic and an election eight days away, Republicans overcame unanimous Democratic opposition to make Judge Barrett the 115th justice of the Supreme Court and the fifth woman. The vote was 52 to 48, with all but one Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, who is battling for re-election, supporting her.

It was the first time in 151 years that a justice was confirmed without a single vote from the minority party, a sign of how bitter Washington's war over judicial nominations has become.

The vote concluded a brazen drive by Republicans to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just six weeks before the election. They shredded their own past pronouncements and bypassed rules in the process, even as they stared down the potential loss of the White House and the Senate.

Democrats insisted Republicans should have waited for voters to have their say on Election

ation should they win power, and in a last-ditch act of protest, they unsuccessfully tried to force the Senate to adjourn before the confirmation vote.

Republicans said it was their right as the majority party and exulted in their win. In replacing Justice Ginsburg, a liberal icon, the court is gaining a conservative who could sway cases in every area of American life, including abortion rights, gay rights, business regulation and the environment.

"The reason this outcome came about is because we had a series of successful elections," said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, who was the architect of the strategy. "What this administration and this Republican Senate has done is exercise the power that was given to us by the American people in a manner that is entirely within the rules of the Senate and the Constitution of the United States."

The new justice's impact could be felt right away. There are major election disputes awaiting immediate action by the Supreme Court from the battleground states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Both concern the date by which absentee ballots may be accepted.

Soon after, Justice Barrett will confront a docket studded with

Continued on Page A23

D?J? VU The swearing-in ceremony for Justice Amy Coney Barrett mimicked a superspreader event, but with more masks. PAGE A23

New York City

Falling Behind

In Its Recovery

By PATRICK McGEEHAN

New York, whose diversified economy had fueled unparalleled job growth in recent years, is now facing a bigger challenge in recovering from the pandemic than almost any other major city in the country. More than one million residents are out of work, and the unemployment rate is nearly double the national average.

The city had tried to insulate itself from major downturns by shifting from tying its fortunes to the rise and fall of Wall Street. A thriving tech sector, a booming real estate industry and waves of international tourists had helped Broadway, hotels and restaurants prosper.

But now, as the virus surges again in the region, tourists are still staying away and any hope that workers would refill the city's office towers and support its businesses before the end of the year is fading. As a result, New York's recovery is very likely to be slow and protracted, economists said.

"This is an event that struck right at the heart of New York's comparative advantages," said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Analytics, a Wall Street research firm. "Being globally oriented, being stacked up in skyscrapers and packed together in stadiums: The very thing that made New York New York was undermined by the pandemic, was upended by it."

Mr. Zandi said he expected that it would take New York about two years longer than the rest of the

Continued on Page A8

Trump, Bolsonaro and a Virus-Ravaged Region

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and JOS? MAR?A LE?N CABRERA

The coronavirus was gathering lethal speed when President Trump met his Brazilian counterpart, Jair Bolsonaro, on March 7 for dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Bolsonaro had canceled trips that week to Italy, Poland and Hungary, and Brazil's health minister had urged him to stay away from Florida, too.

But Mr. Bolsonaro insisted, eager to burnish his image as the "Trump of the Tropics." His grinning aides posed at the president's resort in green "Make Brazil Great Again" hats. Mr. Trump declared he was "not concerned at

How Defenses Eroded

in Latin America

all" before walking Mr. Bolsonaro around the club shaking hands.

Twenty-two people in Mr. Bolsonaro's delegation tested positive for the virus after returning to Brazil, yet he was not alarmed. Mr. Trump had shared a cure, Mr. Bolsonaro told advisers: a box of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, the unproven treatment that Mr. Trump was then promoting as a remedy for Covid-19.

"He said the trip was wonderful,

that they had a great time, that life was normal at Mar-a-Lago, everything was cured, and that hydroxychloroquine was the medicine that was supposed to be used," recalled the health minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, who was fired by Mr. Bolsonaro the next month for opposing reliance on the drug.

"From that time on, it was very hard to get him to take the science seriously."

The Mar-a-Lago dinner, which would become infamous for spreading infection, cemented a partnership between Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolsonaro rooted in a shared disregard for the virus.

Continued on Page A6

DANIEL BEREHULAK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Dr. Galo Mart?nez recalled crowds "crying out for help" as the virus spread in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

They Passed Up

Voting in 2016,

And Will Again

By SABRINA TAVERNISE and ROBERT GEBELOFF

EAST STROUDSBURG, Pa. -- Like nearly half of all the eligible voters in her county in 2016, Keyana Fedrick did not vote.

Four years later, politics has permeated her corner of northeastern Pennsylvania. Someone sawed a hole in a large Trump sign near one of her jobs. The election office in her county is so overwhelmed with demand that it took over the coroner's office next door. Her parents, both Democrats born in the 1950s, keep telling her she should vote for Joseph R. Biden Jr. Anything is better than President Trump, they say.

But Ms. Fedrick, who works two jobs, at a hotel and at a department store, does not trust either of the two main political parties, because nothing in her 31 years of life has led her to believe that she could. She says they abandon voters like "a bad mom or dad who promises to come and see you, and I'm sitting outside with my bags packed and they never show up."

That is why Ms. Fedrick does not regret her decision in 2016 to skip the voting booth. In fact, she plans to repeat it this year -- something that she and a friend have started to hide from people they know.

"We said we're just going to lie, like, `Oh yeah, I voted,' " she said. "I don't feel like getting crucified for what I think."

As the presidential campaign reaches its final week, early-vot-

Continued on Page A15

In Senate Runs,

Black Hopefuls

Delve Into Race

By JONATHAN MARTIN and ALEXANDER BURNS

HORN LAKE, Miss. -- Mike Espy and Jaime Harrison, two of the five Black Senate candidates in the South this year, may belong to different political generations, but they both came up in a Democratic Party where African-American politicians didn't talk directly about race in campaigns against white opponents.

But there was Mr. Harrison this month, speaking before more than 250 cars at a drive-in rally in South Carolina's Lowcountry, explicitly urging a mix of white and Black supporters to right the wrongs of the state's past.

"The very first state to secede from the union," Mr. Harrison said to a cacophony of blaring horns, is about to make history "because we will be the very first state in this great country of ours that has two African-American senators serving at the very same time -- and you will make that happen."

A day later, speaking to an equally diverse audience in northern Mississippi, Mr. Espy called his Republican opponent, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, "an anachronism."

"She is someone who believes in going back to the old days," he said, lashing his Republican rival for hailing the Civil War-era South and refusing to take a stand in the debate over Mississippi's state flag, which until this summer included the Confederate battle emblem. "We need a Mississippi that's more inclusive, that's more

Continued on Page A20

DISTORTIONS

Twitter has become an up-to-the-minute source for news and current events, but also a ground zero for the spread of viral, potentially harmful false information. As the election approaches, Twitter is "prebunking."

PAGE A15

BUSINESS B1-7

Trump's Factory Promises

The president's manufacturing renaissance push has not always brought the pledged jobs or investments. PAGE B1

Renewable Energy Slows

Developers have struggled to finish projects as the pandemic disrupts construction and supply chains. PAGE B1

NATIONAL A14-24

A Font of Misinformation

A recent campaign rally by President

Trump in Wisconsin was typical: In 90

minutes, he made 131 false or inaccu-

rate statements.

PAGE A22

Unexpected Lunar Water

NASA discovers that astronauts may not need to delve into dangerous polar craters on the moon to find it. PAGE A24

SPORTSTUESDAY B8-10, 12

Rugby's `Cement Ceiling'

The sport's world governing body recently barred transgender women from global women's competitions. PAGE B10

SCIENCE TIMES D1-8

Rehab With Incentives

An approach called contingency management rewards drug users with cash and prizes for staying clean. PAGE D1

Saving Endangered Lemurs

Climate change is shifting habitats and requiring conservation scientists to think outside park boundaries. PAGE D1

ARTS C1-8

A Crisis Point for Museums?

New York galleries are at 25 percent capacity in the pandemic, and leaders worry it will persist far into 2021. PAGE C1

Behind (and Beyond) the Music

Netflix's "Song Exploder" explores the making of hits by R.E.M., Alicia Keys, Lin-Manuel Miranda and more. PAGE C1

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27

John F. Kerry

PAGE A27

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