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WASHINGTON — PresidentBiden said Monday that he wouldrenominate Jerome H. Powell, theFederal Reserve chair, to anotherfour-year term, opting for policycontinuity at a moment of rapid in-flation and economic uncertaintyand betting that the Fed will domore to help workers reap thegains of the pandemic recovery.

The much-awaited decision wasa return to tradition in which thecentral bank’s top official is re-appointed regardless of partisanidentity — a norm bucked by for-mer President Donald J. Trump,who appointed Mr. Powell insteadof renominating Janet L. Yellen.

While some progressive Demo-crats criticized Mr. Powell’s re-appointment, the move was pri-marily greeted with bipartisanpraise that suggested an easy

path to confirmation.Mr. Biden also said he planned

to nominate Lael Brainard, a Fedgovernor whom many progres-sive groups had championed to re-place Mr. Powell, to serve as theFed’s vice chair, a move thathelped mollify some criticism onthe left.

The president and his top aidesbelieve that Mr. Powell has donewell in supporting the economythrough the pandemic recessionand a halting recovery, whileamassing credibility by standingup to political pressure from Mr.Trump. But Mr. Biden is also mak-ing a calculated bet that the Fedchair will be more aligned with hisviews on the economy and, in par-ticular, inflation, than he is withRepublicans in the Senate whohave demanded quicker actionfrom the Fed to tamp down risingprices.

“At this moment, of both enor-

PRESIDENT SEEKSTO RETAIN POWELLAS LEADER OF FED

RESISTING A SHAKE-UP

Betting on Continuity toStabilize Economy’s

Halting Recovery

By JEANNA SMIALEKand JIM TANKERSLEY

Jerome H. Powell was firstappointed by President Trump.

NATE PALMER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A16

WAUKESHA, Wis. — He hadbeen arrested time and againsince he was a teenager, accusedof battery and domestic abuse andresisting the police. This month,prosecutors in Milwaukee said, heintentionally ran over a woman heknew with a maroon Ford Escape.

But Darrell E. Brooks, 39, wasquickly freed from jail on bond af-ter prosecutors requested whatthey now say was an inappropri-ately low bail. By Sunday evening,as a Christmas parade was mak-ing its way through downtownWaukesha, Wis., the police werecoming for Mr. Brooks again afterreceiving a report of a domesticdispute involving a knife.

But before Waukesha officersever reached the site of that dis-pute, a maroon Ford Escape top-pled barriers along the paraderoute. The police said that Mr.Brooks was the driver, and that hesped toward the marching bandsand the smiling families and thetroupe of “Dancing Grannies”strolling down Main Street, charg-ing on even as he mowed downchildren and octogenarians. Onepolice officer fired his gun at Mr.Brooks but quickly stopped, ChiefDaniel Thompson said, fearful ofhitting someone in the crowd.

Five adults died in the vehicleattack and at least 48 people, in-cluding children, were injured,some critically. Within minutes,what the mayor described as “aNorman Rockwell type of Christ-mas parade” in suburban Milwau-kee had become a mass casualtyincident, with firefighters whowere watching the parade withtheir families suddenly tendingto the wounded on the street.[Page A10.]

At a hospital not far from the pa-rade route, off-duty doctorsrushed to the emergency room onSunday night. Among the deadwere three members of the Mil-waukee Dancing Grannies, andthe husband of a member of thatgroup.

“That parade became a night-mare,” Mayor Shawn Reilly saidMonday as investigators contin-ued to comb through a downtownthat paradegoers had fled in sucha hurry that they left coolers,strollers and dozens of lawnchairs behind. “Last night, liveswere lost during the middle ofwhat should have been a celebra-tion.”

Chief Thompson, of the Wauke-sha police, said there had been nopursuit by officers before Mr.Brooks steered onto the paraderoute and no indication that the at-tack was motivated by terrorism.While the chief said that Mr.Brooks intentionally struck peo-ple with the vehicle, he was notable to say whether he drovedown the parade route in a rush toescape the earlier confrontationor in a fit of fury.

Mr. Brooks was expected to ap-pear in court on Tuesday after-noon after police referred fivecounts of first-degree intentionalhomicide to prosecutors. It wasnot clear whether he had a lawyer.

Suspect Faced Many Charges Before Parade

Vehicle Attack Leaves5 Dead in Wisconsin

This article is by Mitch Smith,Dan Simmons, Glenn Thrush andSerge F. Kovaleski.

Main Street in Waukesha, Wis., on Monday, the day after a driver toppled barriers and plowed into a crowd at a Christmas parade.MARY MATHIS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES


BRUSSELS — Austria wentinto a major lockdown on Mondayto try to break the strong fourthwave of Covid spreading acrossEurope, while the German healthminister, Jens Spahn, warned thatby the end of this winter “justabout everyone in Germany willprobably be either vaccinated, re-covered or dead.”

“Immunity will be reached,” Mr.

Spahn said at a Berlin news con-ference. “The question is whetherit’s via vaccination or infection,and we explicitly recommend thepath via vaccination.”

European governments are

toughening their measuresagainst Covid in the face of soar-ing infection rates — more thantwo million new cases each week,the most since the pandemic be-gan — and popular resistance,with violent protests over theweekend in numerous countries.

Tens of thousands of people pro-tested official crackdowns andvaccine requirements in Austria,the Netherlands, Belgium, Den-

Anger Fills Europe’s Streets as Lockdowns SpreadBy STEVEN ERLANGER Protesters Turn Violent

as Fourth Wave Hits


Widespread flight cancella-tions. Excruciating waits forcustomer service. Unruly pas-sengers.

And that was all before the holi-day travel season.

Even in normal times, the daysaround Thanksgiving are a deli-cate period for the airlines. Butthis week is the industry’s biggest

test since the pandemic began, asmillions more Americans — em-boldened by vaccinations and re-luctant to spend another holidayalone — are expected to take tothe skies than during last year’s

holidays.A lot is riding on the carriers’

ability to pull it off smoothly.“For many people, this will be

the first time they’ve gotten to-gether with family, maybe in ayear, year and a half, maybe long-er, so it’s very significant,” saidKathleen Bangs, a former com-mercial pilot who is a spokeswom-an for FlightAware, an aviationdata provider. “If it goes poorly,

One Big Holiday. 20 Million Airline Passengers.By SYDNEY EMBERand NIRAJ CHOKSHI

Industry Faces BiggestTest of Pandemic

Travelers at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Two million in the U.S. flew on Saturday alone.DESEAN McCLINTON-HOLLAND FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES


MOSCOW — In the days afterthe collapse of the Soviet Union,the upheaval and uncertainty thatgripped Russia were accompa-nied by a liberating climate ofopenness, in which free expres-sion, historical examination andpolitical dissent could flourish.

But in the two decades sinceVladimir V. Putin took power, thegovernment has steadily rolledback those rights. Mr. Putin hastamed the oligarch class, muffledthe media, jailed religious groupsand dissidents and suppressed po-litical opposition.

Now Mr. Putin has set his sightson rewriting the memory of one ofthe most painful times in Russia’sturbulent history: the era of thegulag, when millions of Russians

toiled and died, mostly in the firsthalf of the 20th century. Russianprosecutors are moving to liqui-date the archive and human rightscenter of Memorial International,the country’s most prominent hu-man rights organization, which isdedicated to the remembrance ofthose who were persecuted by theSoviet Union’s often-brutal re-gime.

Activists and dissidents con-sider the threat to Memorial a wa-tershed moment for independentthinkers in Russia — a sobering

example of the government’s de-termination to silence its criticsand sanitize the narrative sur-rounding the Soviet Union, whichMr. Putin views as a heady era ofRussian influence and power.

Mr. Putin is obsessed with“making Russia great again,” saidAleksandr Baunov, editor in chiefof the Carnegie Moscow Center’swebsite. “Putin’s Russia builds it-self on the denial” of the 1990s,with its reforms, self-criticism andsocial and economic upheaval, Mr.Baunov said, because to him itrepresents the time in recent his-tory when Russia was its weakest.

Eliminating Memorial, Mr.Baunov said, would help Mr. Putinsuppress a forensic examinationof one of Russia’s most shamefulperiods, even as descendants of

Putin Tries to Erase History of Gulag AtrocitiesBy VALERIE HOPKINS Russian Rights Group

Is in Cross HairsOver Its Work


An eight-month investigationby the New York State Assemblyfound “overwhelming evidence”that former Gov. Andrew M.Cuomo engaged in sexual har-assment while in office, corrobo-rating a damning investigation bythe state attorney general that Mr.Cuomo has repeatedly tried to dis-credit.

The investigation also foundthat Mr. Cuomo abused his powerto help produce what would be-come a $5.1 million pandemicmemoir, providing new detailsabout just how much of the gover-nor’s staff was used to help himwrite, publish and promote hisbook.

The Assembly inquiry wasmeant to create a road map for po-tential impeachment proceedingsagainst Mr. Cuomo, a three-termgovernor whose unrelenting styleof leadership engendered varyingamounts of fear, respect and ani-mus. But that prospect was ren-dered moot after he resigned indisgrace in August, a week afterthe release of the attorney gener-al’s report, which concluded thathe had sexually harassed 11 wom-en.

After Mr. Cuomo stepped down,Carl E. Heastie, the Assemblyspeaker and a longtime ally of theformer governor’s, moved to sus-pend the Assembly investigation,contending that lawmakerslacked the constitutional author-ity to impeach an official no longerin office.

But Mr. Heastie reversedcourse after facing an immediatebipartisan backlash from lawmak-ers who argued that the Assemblyshould, at minimum, finish the

Assembly AddsTo the FindingsAgainst Cuomo

By GRACE ASHFORDand LUIS FERRÉ-SADURNÍ


VICE CHAIR Lael Brainard, alongtime Washington insider,is tapped as the No. 2. PAGE B1

The installation of a sculpture by FrankStella, above, serves as a homecomingfor the 85-year-old artist. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-6

A Return to Ground ZeroSocial media has worsened a migrantcrisis in Belarus, helping smugglersprofit off the desperate. PAGE A6

INTERNATIONAL A4-8

Fake News Targets Migrants

The discovery of an ancient tusk sug-gests the ocean floor could be coveredin paleontological treasures. PAGE D1

SCIENCE TIMES D1-8

Deep ResearchResearchers at a Seattle A.I. lab saythey have built a system that makesethical judgments. But decisions are asknotty as they are for humans. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-5

Can Machines Learn Morality?

Paul Krugman PAGE A19

OPINION A18-19

A revolution in research and treatmentis finding new ways to help those suf-fering from chronic pain. PAGE D4

Healing a World of Hurt

The director Paul Thomas Andersontells why he returned to his home turffor his film “Licorice Pizza.” PAGE C1

Back in the ValleyThe tennis star Peng Shuai was unableto break through China’s resistance tosexual assault allegations. PAGE A4

‘Golden Flower’ Goes SilentBeyond Alex Rodriguez and David Ortizare other compelling first-time candi-dates, our columnist writes. PAGE B6

SPORTS B6-10

Up for the Hall of Fame

Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the blood-testing start-up Theranos, redirectedblame at her fraud trial. PAGE B1

Holmes Takes the Stand

Prosecutors raised the question of raceas a motive as closing arguments weremade in the trial of three men accusedof murdering Ahmaud Arbery. PAGE A12

NATIONAL A9-17

Closing Pitches in Arbery Case

The Justice Department will pay out$130 million over the F.B.I.’s failure toinvestigate fully two tips before a 2018school massacre in Florida. PAGE A16

Money for Parkland Victims

The Trump allies Roger J. Stone Jr. andAlex Jones were among five peoplesummoned on Monday by the Housepanel investigating the riot. PAGE A11

More Jan. 6 Subpoenas

Late Edition

VOL. CLXXI . . . . No. 59,251 © 2021 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2021

Today, partly sunny, blustery, cold,high 42. Tonight, mostly clear, windslowly diminishing, low 32. Tomor-row, sunshine, chilly, a light breeze,high 44. Weather map, Page B10.

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