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CONTENT © 2020

The Washington Post / Year 143, No. 241

A voice for women

Julie Donaldson

wants to fix

Washington

football SPORTS

Next Lost Cause?

The election could

be another chance

to immortalize

defeat OUTLOOK

Coming home

NASA and SpaceX

prepare for a

splashdown return

to Earth NATION, A

$ 317

ABCDE

Prices may vary in areas outside metropolitan Washington. SU V1 V2 V3 V

Humid, partly sunny 94/74 • Tomorrow: Showers, storms 85/71 C12 Democracy Dies in Darkness SUNDAY, AUGUST 2 , 2020. $3.

7

BY JOEL ACHENBACH,

RACHEL WEINER

AND CHELSEA JANES

The coronavirus is spreading at

dangerous levels across much of

the United States, and public

health experts are demanding a

dramatic reset in the national re-

sponse, one that recognizes that

the crisis is intensifying and that

current piecemeal strategies

aren’t working.

This is a new phase of the pan-

demic, one no longer built around

local or regional clusters and hot

spots. It comes at an unnerving

moment in which the economy

suffered its worst collapse since

the Great Depression, schools are

rapidly canceling plans for in-per-

son instruction and Congress has

failed to pass a new emergency

relief package. President Trump

continues to promote fringe sci-

ence, the daily death toll keeps

climbing and the human cost of

the virus in America has just

passed 150,000 lives.

“Unlike many countries in the

world, the United States is not

currently on course to get control

of this epidemic. It’s time to reset,”

declared a report released last

week by Johns Hopkins Univer-

SEE VIRUS ON A

Experts

push for

new tack

on virus

OMINOUS TRENDS

SEEN ACROSS U.S.

Study: Coordination is

needed to control spread

Pandemic’s toll: Weight falls

increasingly on Hispanics. A

BY DAVID J. LYNCH

Less than a year after becoming CEO of

Flex Ltd., Revathi Advaithi faced one of

the most serious threats in the company’s

half-century history.

The novel coronavirus pandemic had

shut down the world’s manufacturing

center in China, disrupting supply chains

and underscoring the dangers of a global-

ized economy. Faraway factories, once

celebrated for delivering lower costs, now

seemed a fatal vulnerability.

For Flex, a Singapore-based manufac-

turer with 100 facilities in 30 countries,

the consequences were particularly

acute. Some of its 21 factories in China,

where the coronavirus outbreak was pre-

venting millions of workers from reach-

ing their jobs, would stay closed for

weeks.

Business

unusual

How a little-known

manufacturing company

navigated the uncertainty

of the pandemic — while

pointing the way to a less

China-centric future

CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Javier Ramirez, director of supply chain solutions at Flex, adjusts the screens in Pulse Center at the company’s office in

Milpitas, Calif. Pulse, a data analytics tool introduced in 2015, helps the Singapore-based Flex monitor its operations.

ELECTION 2020

BY TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA,

JOSH DAWSEY

AND ANNIE LINSKEY

Signs that President Trump’s
reelection bid is in crisis grew
steadily this past week, one of the
most tumultuous moments of a
presidency increasingly operat-
ing with an air of desperation as it
tries to avoid political disaster in
November.
Campaign officials pulled tele-
vision ads off the air amid a
late-stage review of strategy and
messaging. At the same time,
Trump publicly mused about de-
laying the November election, air-
ing widely debunked allegations
about fraud.
And as the campaign aims to
mount a more aggressive defense
of Trump’s handling of the coro-
navirus pandemic, the president
has reverted to touting unproven
miracle cures, attacking public
health officials and undercutting
his own government’s push to
encourage good health practices.
Trump briefly lamented his
predicament during a taxpayer-
funded event Friday in Florida
that doubled as a political rally
and a showcase of poor public
health practices.
“We had an easy campaign, and
then we got hit by the China
virus,” Trump said as uniformed
sheriff’s deputies stood behind
him and a crowd of dozens of
supporters huddled before him.
SEE TRUMP ON A

In turmoil,

president’s

team tries

to pivot

Trump’s public outbursts

undercut aides’ efforts

to adjust his platform

BY BRADY DENNIS

AND DINO GRANDONI

During a recent virtual fund-
raiser focused on climate action,
former vice president Joe Biden
made a direct appeal to voters
young enough to be his grandchil-
dren.
“ I want young climate activists,
young people everywhere, to
know: I see you. I hear you. I
understand the urgency, and to-
gether we can get this done,” said
the 77-year-old Democrat, who
days earlier had announced a
$2 trillion plan to combat climate
change and environmental racism
— the most ambitious blueprint
released by a major party nominee
for president.
The moment marked a shift
months in the making.
Biden had rolled out a proposal
during the primaries — a $1.7 tril-
lion plan that aimed to make the
nation carbon neutral by 2050 —
that did not impress many young
activists who view climate change
as an existential crisis.
The youth-led Sunrise Move-
SEE BIDEN ON A

The voices

that pulled

Biden left

on climate

Campaign spent months

listening to activists,

union officials, ex-rivals

BY KYLE SWENSON

He had five days to move out

of the house in Brightwood

Park, and now Daniel Vought

stood looking at the plastic

crates stacked in the living

room holding his things. T-

shirts. Power cords. Pokémon

cards and stuffed animals. His

beloved guitar — a Gibson Ex-

plorer electric — still hung on

the wall. He figured it would be

safer staying behind.

A new housemate was com-

ing, one who could actually pay

$800 a month for the room

Vought, 30, had lived in rent-

free since the coronavirus pan-

demic shut down the George-

town bar where he worked.

For four months, his unem-

ployment benefits application

had been snared in red tape at

the D.C. Department of Employ-

ment Services, a black hole of

unanswered emails, phone

holds and automated voice

messages offering delays in-

stead of answers.

Hundreds, if not thousands,

of people in the nation’s capital

have been sucked down the

same confusing abyss. Through

July 29, the employment office

SEE BENEFITS ON A

Out of money, out of options

In D.C., a broken unemployment system upends people’s lives

MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST

Thomas Kennerly, 48, checks his phone next to his granddaughter Kaiylan, 4, while visiting his

mother’s house in Oxon Hill, Md. Unable to find work, he has s pent months on a relative’s sofa.

There is no P ost Magazine this week. I ts crossword is in Arts & Style.

Worse, snags in the company’s opera-

tions threatened to interrupt the produc-

tion of consumer and industrial goods for

its customers, household names such as

Apple, Ford and Johnson & Johnson.

As the pandemic re-

shaped global demand,

some Flex factories

were suddenly produc-

ing too many parts,

while others were not

producing at all. The

crisis peaked on Feb.

22, when Advaithi

learned her factories

faced shortages of

8,000 individual items — roughly five

times what Flex dealt with on a typical day.

If the shortfalls of electronic compo-

nents such as memory chips, connectors

SEE GLOBAL ON A

Revathi

Advaithi

AS TOLD TO ELI SASLOW

This is my choice, but I’m start-

ing to wish that it wasn’t. I don’t

feel qualified. I’ve been a superin-

tendent for 20 years, so I guess I

should be used to making deci-

sions, but I keep getting lost in my

head. I’ll be in my office looking at

a blank com-

puter screen,

and then all of

the sudden I re-

alize a whole

hour’s gone by. I’m worried. I’m

worried about everything. Each

possibility I come up with is a bad

one.

T he governor has told us we

have to open our schools to stu-

dents on August 17th, or else we

miss out on five percent of our

funding. I run a high-needs dis-

trict in middle-of-nowhere Ari-

zona. We’re 90 percent Hispanic

and more than 90 percent free-

and-reduced lunch. These kids

need every dollar we can get. But

covid is spreading all over this

area and hitting my staff, and now

it feels like there’s a gun to my

head. I already lost one teacher to

this virus. Do I risk opening back

up even if it’s going to cost us

more lives? Or do we run school

remotely and end up depriving

these kids?

This is your classic one-horse

town. Picture John Wayne riding

through cactuses and all that. I’m

superintendent, high school prin-

cipal and sometimes the basket-

ball referee during recess. This is

a skeleton staff, and we pay an

average salary of about 40,000 a

year. I’ve got nothing to cut. We’re

buying new programs for virtual

learning and trying to get

hotspots and iPads for all our

kids. Five percent of our budget is

hundreds of thousands of dollars.

SEE VOICES ON A

VOICES FROM THE PANDEMIC

‘I’m sorry, but it’s a fantasy’

Jeff Gregorich, superintendent, on trying

t o reopen his schools safely

CAITLIN O’HARA FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Jeff Gregorich heads the

Hayden Winkelman Unified

School District in Arizona and

is also a school principal.

An oral history

of covid-19 and

those affected.