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For years, right-wingmedia have embraced aconspiracy theory
abouta Democratic plot to spyon the 2016 Trumpcampaign. But a
JusticeDepartment inquiryturned up no evidence,and the theory is
nowfizzling. PAGE A18
DISTORTIONS
Russia tried cyberattacks against the2018 Olympics in South
Korea and hastargeted the postponed Tokyo Games,U.S. and British
officials said. PAGE B9
SPORTSWEDNESDAY B8-10
The Olympics as a TargetLake Charles, La., slammed by
twohurricanes, wants America to know thatthings are not OK. PAGE
A13
NATIONAL A13-21
Ruined, and Feeling Forgotten
The new iPhone has an improved de-sign, but it’s undermined by
the wire-less industry’s messy rollout of super-speedy 5G networks.
A review. PAGE B1
BUSINESS B1-7
IPhone 12 Is Ultrafast, in Places Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn
and aband of agency scientists have eked outa few victories after
months of yieldingto White House pressure. PAGE A7
TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-7
How the F.D.A. Stood Firm
A racial awakening has unfolded in awhite-dominated brotherhood
known forits veneration of Robert E. Lee. PAGE A21
Fraternal Disorder
Inspired by the Black Lives Mattermovement, a Los Angeles art
dealer isaiming to help people who have been“left out of the
conversation.” PAGE C1
ARTS C1-8
A More Diverse Gallery
Thomas L. Friedman PAGE A22EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23A battle over
the lobster industry in
Nova Scotia pits commercial fishermenagainst Indigenous people.
PAGE A8
INTERNATIONAL A8-12
Claws Out in Canada
WASHINGTON — The strangesound came at night: a crack like
amarble striking the floor of theapartment above them.
Mark Lenzi and his wife hadlightheadedness, sleep issues
andheadaches, and their childrenwere waking up with bloody noses—
symptoms they thought mightbe from the smog in Guangzhou,
China, where Mr. Lenzi workedfor the State Department. But
airpollution could not explain hissudden memory loss,
includingforgetting names of work tools.
What began as strange soundsand symptoms among more thana dozen
American officials andtheir family members in China in2018 has
turned into a diplomaticmystery covering multiple coun-tries and
involving speculationabout secret high-tech weapons
and foreign attacks.One of the biggest questions
centers on whether Trump admin-istration officials believe that
Mr.Lenzi and other diplomats inChina experienced the same mys-
terious affliction as dozens of dip-lomats and spies at the
AmericanEmbassy in Cuba in 2016 and 2017,which came to be known as
Ha-vana Syndrome. American em-ployees in the two countries
re-ported hearing strange sounds,followed by headaches,
dizziness,blurred vision and memory loss.
But the government’s treat-ment of the episodes has been
rad-ically different. The State Depart-
As U.S. Diplomats Fell Sick, Washington Minimized the DangerThis
article is by Ana Swanson,
Edward Wong and Julian E. Barnes. Cases Seem Similar to‘Havana
Syndrome’
Continued on Page A10
TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Pantries like this one at a Manhattan church are bringing hope
to New Yorkers’ kitchens. Page D4.Food for Souls, and Stomachs
MIAMI — Most states have theoccasional problems runningtheir
elections. Not Florida. Flor-ida has debacles.
2018: Three statewide recounts.2016: Russian hacking. 2012:
Vot-ing lines seven hours long. 2006:Malfunctioning electronic
votingmachines. And, of course, thegranddaddy of all election
fiascos:Bush v. Gore in 2000.
More than two decades of scan-dals and blunders have madeFlorida
the nation’s electionspunch line, the state that kept theworld at
the edge of its seat whilevotes for president were
manuallyrecounted. The shadows of Flor-ida elections past seem to
lurk ev-
erywhere.“I feel like I’ve seen this movie
before,” Judge Mark E. Walker ofthe Federal District Court in
Talla-hassee said in a ruling this monthafter the state’s voter
registrationwebsite crashed under the weightof thousands of
last-minute appli-cations.
Now the state, like the rest ofthe nation, faces perhaps the
mostdaunting test yet: a 2020 electionconducted in the midst of a
pan-demic, amid unsubstantiated
fraud claims spread by the presi-dent and others. Reasonable
pre-dictions suggest that the legalwrangling over the results
couldstretch far beyond election night.
Is Florida ready?Elections officials say yes. With
the problems of years past, theysay, have come lessons that
pre-pared the state to process a crushof mail ballots and juggle
the logis-tics of the coronavirus, such as se-curing drop boxes and
distribut-ing hand sanitizer.
But this is Florida, perhaps thenation’s biggest presidential
bat-tleground and a mirror of Ameri-can polarization, where
winningan election by more than a per-centage point is considered
alandslide. And here, to crib Faulk-
Election Day in Florida: What Could Go Wrong?By PATRICIA
MAZZEI
and FRANCES ROBLESA State Is Hopeful, but
Haunted by Ghostsof Hanging Chads
Election workers in Largo, Fla., opening envelopes for mail-in
ballots. This week, the start of early voting set a Florida
record.EVE EDELHEIT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Continued on Page A16
Joseph R. Biden Jr. holds a nine-point lead over President
Trumpamid widespread public alarmabout the trajectory of the
corona-virus pandemic and demandamong voters for large-scale
gov-ernment action to right the econ-omy, according to a national
poll oflikely voters conducted by TheNew York Times and Siena
Col-lege.
With just two weeks left in thecampaign, Mr. Trump does nothold
an edge on any of the mostpressing issues at stake in theelection,
leaving him with littleroom for a political recovery ab-sent a
calamitous misstep by Mr.Biden, the Democratic nominee,in the
coming days. The presidenthas even lost his longstanding ad-vantage
on economic matters:Voters are now evenly split onwhether they have
more trust inhim or Mr. Biden to manage theeconomy.
On all other subjects tested inthe poll, voters preferred Mr.
Bi-den to Mr. Trump by modest orwide margins. Mr. Biden, the
for-mer vice president, is favoredover Mr. Trump to lead on the
co-ronavirus pandemic by 12 points,and voters trust Mr. Biden
overMr. Trump to choose SupremeCourt justices and to maintain
lawand order by six-point margins.Americans see Mr. Biden as
morecapable of uniting the country bynearly 20 points.
Over all, Mr. Biden is backed by50 percent of likely voters, the
pollshowed, compared with 41 per-cent for Mr. Trump and 3
percentdivided among other candidates.
Most of all, the survey makesclear that crucial
constituenciesare poised to reject Mr. Trump be-
Biden FavoredOn Key Issues,
Poll Indicates
By ALEXANDER BURNSand JONATHAN MARTIN
Continued on Page A17
WASHINGTON — The JusticeDepartment accused Google onTuesday of
illegally protecting itsmonopoly over search and searchadvertising,
the government’smost significant challenge to atech company’s
market power in ageneration and one that could re-shape the way
consumers use theinternet.
In a much-anticipated lawsuit,the agency accused Google
oflocking up deals with giant part-ners like Apple and
throttlingcompetition through exclusivebusiness contracts and
agree-ments.
Google’s deals with Apple, mo-bile carriers and other
handsetmakers to make its search enginethe default option for users
ac-counted for most of its dominantmarket share in search,
theagency said, a figure that it put ataround 80 percent.
“For many years,” the agencysaid in its 57-page
complaint,“Google has used anticompetitivetactics to maintain and
extend itsmonopolies in the markets forgeneral search services,
search
advertising and general searchtext advertising — the
corner-stones of its empire.”
The lawsuit, which may stretchon for years, could set off a
cas-cade of other antitrust lawsuitsfrom state attorneys
general.About four dozen states and juris-dictions, including New
York andTexas, have conducted parallel in-vestigations and some of
them areexpected to bring separate com-plaints against the
company’sgrip on technology for online ad-vertising. Eleven state
attorneysgenerals, all Republicans, signedon to support the federal
lawsuit.
Attorney General William P.Barr had spoken publicly aboutthe
investigation for months. Heurged the agency to file a case bythe
end of September, promptingresistance from some of its law-yers who
wanted more time andcomplained of political motiva-tions.
Google called the suit “deeplyflawed.” But the agency’s
actionsignaled a new era for the technol-ogy sector. It reflects
pent-up andbipartisan frustration toward ahandful of companies —
Google,Amazon, Apple and Facebook in
U.S. FIGHTS GOOGLEIN ANTITRUST SUITTHAT MAY JOLT WEB
Biggest Test for Tech Power Since 1990s Could Change Consumer
Habits
This article is by Cecilia Kang, Da-vid McCabe and Daisuke
Wakaba-yashi.
Continued on Page A14
President Trump and his allieshave tried to paint the
Democraticnominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., assoft on China, in part by
pointingto his son’s business dealingsthere.
Senate Republicans produced areport asserting, among
otherthings, that Mr. Biden’s son Hunt-er “opened a bank account”
with aChinese businessman, part ofwhat it said were his
numerousconnections to “foreign nationalsand foreign governments
acrossthe globe.”
But Mr. Trump’s own businesshistory is filled with overseas
fi-nancial deals, and some have in-volved the Chinese state. He
spenta decade unsuccessfully pursuingprojects in China, operating
an of-fice there during his first run forpresident and forging a
partner-ship with a major government-controlled company.
And it turns out that China isone of only three foreign nations—
the others are Britain and Ire-land — where Mr. Trump main-tains a
bank account, according toan analysis of the president’s
taxrecords, which were obtained byThe New York Times. The
foreignaccounts do not show up on Mr.Trump’s public financial
disclo-sures, where he must list personalassets, because they are
held un-der corporate names. The identi-ties of the financial
institutionsare not clear.
The Chinese account is con-trolled by Trump InternationalHotels
Management L.L.C., whichthe tax records show paid $188,561in taxes
in China while pursuing li-censing deals there from 2013
to2015.
The tax records do not includedetails on how much money mayhave
passed through the overseasaccounts, though the InternalRevenue
Service does require fil-
Trump’s TaxesShow Own PastCourting ChinaThis article is by Mike
McIntire,
Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig.
Continued on Page A14
UBIQUITOUS Google used to be just for Googling. Now, the brand
domi-nates a great many aspects of our lives, both online and off.
PAGE B1
WASHINGTON — SenatorMitch McConnell, the majorityleader,
privately told Republicansenators on Tuesday that he hadwarned the
White House not tostrike a pre-election deal withSpeaker Nancy
Pelosi on a newround of stimulus, moving to headoff an agreement
that PresidentTrump has demanded but most inhis party oppose.
Mr. McConnell’s remarks, con-firmed by four Republicans
famil-iar with them, threw cold water onMr. Trump’s increasingly
urgentpush to enact a new round of pan-demic aid before Election
Day.They came just as Ms. Pelosi of-fered an upbeat assessment of
hernegotiations with StevenMnuchin, the Treasury secretary,telling
Democrats that their latestconversation had yielded “com-mon ground
as we move closer toan agreement.”
The cost of their emerging com-promise on a new round of aid
tohard-pressed Americans andbusinesses has steadily climbedtoward
$2 trillion, inching closerto Ms. Pelosi’s demands even as itfar
exceeds what most Senate Re-publicans have said they can ac-
McConnell ActsTo Shelve ReliefTill the Election
By EMILY COCHRANEand NICHOLAS FANDOS
Senator Mitch McConnell op-poses a push to pass an aid bill.
ANNA MONEYMAKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Continued on Page A6
The United States is on pace to recordthe most new daily cases
of the entirepandemic in the coming days. PAGE A4
Third Surge Takes Hold
Late Edition
VOL. CLXX . . . . No. 58,853 © 2020 The New York Times Company
NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2020
Today, fog and mist, clouds and peri-odic sunshine, high 71.
Tonight,mostly cloudy, mild, low 62. Tomor-row, partly sunny, warm,
high 74.Weather map appears on Page A20.
$3.00
