VOL. CLXX.... No. 58,849 © 2020 The New York Times Company SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2020
U(DF463D)X+&!$!.!?!z
On Friday, President
Trump tweeted a sa-
tirical article about
Twitter shutting down
to shield Joe Biden. It
isn’t clear if Mr. Trump
knew it was a joke.
How the article’s right-
wing source capitalizes
on confusion. PAGE A
DISTORTIONS
Post offices are few and the mail is slow
on the Navajo Nation in Arizona. That
may be pivotal for the election.PAGE ANATIONAL A14-23, 28Slog for Ballots on Reservation
THIS WEEKENDThe drugmaker said it wouldn’t seek
vaccine approval before mid-November,
after regularly bolstering President
Trump’s Election Day promise. PAGE ATRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-Pfizer Extends Vaccine Timing
Whether to pay for expanded testing to
screen people without virus symptoms
is complicating stimulus talks. PAGE AStimulus Talks Sticking Point
The days of the central government in
Beijing exercising its will behind the
scenes in Hong Kong are over. PAGE AINTERNATIONAL A8-Communist Party in the Open
Roger Cohen PAGE A
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-Tapping on his cellphone with a
sense of purpose, Kevin Mathew-
son, a former wedding photogra-
pher and onetime city alderman in
Kenosha, Wis., did not slow down
to fix his typos as he dashed off an
online appeal to his neighbors. It
was time, he wrote on Facebook in
late August, to “take up arms to
defend out City tonight from the
evil thugs.”
One day earlier, hundreds of
residents had poured onto the
streets of Kenosha to protest the
police shooting of 29-year-old Ja-
cob Blake. Disturbed by the sight
of buildings in flames when he
drove downtown, Mr. Mathewson
decided it was time for people to
arm themselves to protect their
houses and businesses.
To his surprise, some 4,000 peo-
ple responded on Facebook.
Within minutes, the KenoshaGuard had sprung to life.
His call to arms — along with
similar calls from others inside
and outside the state — propelled
civilians bearing military-style ri-
fles onto the streets, where latethat night a gunman scuffling with
protesters shot three of them, two
fatally. The Kenosha Guard then
evaporated just as quickly as it
arose.
Long a divisive figure in Ke-
nosha, Mr. Mathewson, 36, who
sprinkles his sentences with
“Jeez!” and describes himself as
“chunky,” does not fit the typical
profile of a rifle-toting watchdog,
although he said he supportedWhen a Vigilante’s Call to Action Is Only a Facebook Post Away
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Heating Up Right-WingFears in Kenosha
Continued on Page AMARIA MAGDALENA ARRELLAGA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESFires worsened by climate change have destroyed a chunk of Brazil’s Pantanal wetland. Page A10.From Wetland to Inferno
GREAT FALLS, Mont. — For
months, the jail in central Mon-
tana’s Cascade County was free of
the coronavirus, which seemed as
distant a threat as it did in much of
the nation’s rural Mountain West.
Then a few people who had the
virus were arrested. By the time
Paul Krogue, the jail’s medical di-
rector, realized there was a prob-
lem, nearly 50 inmates were in-
fected in the jail, where some had
been sleeping on mats on an over-
crowded floor. After several
weeks, Mr. Krogue got a call that
infections were spreading to a
side of the jail that had been virus-
free.
He hung up the phone and put
his head in his hands.
“I just kind of lost it, like, ‘My
God, I don’t know how much long-
er I can do this,’ ” Mr. Krogue, a
nurse practitioner, recalled. “I
was just scared that I’m not going
to be able to see it through, that
I’m going to get sick — you just
feel so exhausted and it’s just a
lot.”
The Mountain West, which for
months avoided the worst of the
pandemic, has rapidly devolved
into one of the most alarming hot
spots in a country that recorded
its eight millionth confirmed case
on Thursday, a day when more
than 65,000 cases were an-
nounced nationwide, the most in a
single day since July.In Rural West,
Jails Are Hubs
For Infections
This article is by Lucy Tompkins,
Maura Turcotteand Libby Seline.Continued on Page APresident Trump painted a rosy
picture of his financial condition
during a televised town hall on
Thursday night, calling his hun-
dreds of millions of dollars in debt
coming due “a peanut” and saying
he had borrowed it as a favor to
lenders eager to take advantage of
his financial strength.
In fact, the loans, and the un-
usual requirement he had to ac-
cept to receive them, illustrate the
financial challenges he faces and
the longstanding reluctance of
banks to deal with him.
Mr. Trump had to personally
guarantee $421 million in debt, a
rare step that lenders only require
of businesses that may not be able
to repay. The commitment puts
his assets on the line and could
place his lenders, should he be re-
elected, in the position of deciding
whether to foreclose on a sitting
president.
The personal guarantee also
speaks to why, despite Mr.
Trump’s assertion that banks are
eager to lend him money, nearly
all the money he borrowed in the
last decade came from only two in-
stitutions.
“When a bank asks for a person-
al guarantee, it is because the
bank isn’t satisfied with the cred-
itworthiness of the borrower,” said
Richard Scott Carnell, who served
as assistant secretary for finan-Trump Shrugs
Over His Debts,
But Test Awaits
By RUSS BUETTNER
and SUSANNE CRAIGContinued on Page AWASHINGTON — Facing the
prospect that President Trump
could lose his re-election bid, his
cabinet is scrambling to enact reg-
ulatory changes affecting millions
of Americans in a blitz so rushed it
may leave some changes vulnera-
ble to court challenges.
The effort is evident in a broad
range of federal agencies and en-
compasses proposals like easing
limits on how many hours some
truckers can spend behind the
wheel, giving the government
more freedom to collect biometric
data and setting federal standards
for when workers can be classified
as independent contractors rather
than employees.
In the bid to lock in new rules
before Jan. 20, Mr. Trump’s team
is limiting or sidestepping re-
quirements for public comment
on some of the changes and swat-
ting aside critics who say the ad-
ministration has failed to carry
out sufficiently rigorous analysis.
Some cases, like a new rule to
allow railroads to move highly
flammable liquefied natural gas
on freight trains, have led to warn-
ings of public safety threats.
Every administration pushes to
complete as much of its agenda as
possible when a president’s term
is coming to an end, seeking not
just to secure its own legacy but
also to tie the hands of any succes-
sor who tries to undo its work.
But as Mr. Trump completes
four years marked by an exten-
sive deregulatory push, the ad-
ministration’s accelerated effort
to put a further stamp on federal
rules is drawing questions even
from some former top officials
who served under Republican
presidents.
“Two main hallmarks of a good
regulation is sound analysis to
support the alternatives chosen
and extensive public comment toget broader opinion,” said Susan
E. Dudley, who served as the top
White House regulatory official
during the George W. Bush admin-
istration. “It is a concern if you are
bypassing both of those.”
Administration officials said
they were simply completing
work on issues they have targeted
since Mr. Trump took office in 2017
promising to curtail the reach of
federal regulation.
“President Trump has worked
quickly from the beginning of his
term to grow the economy by re-
moving the mountain of Obama-
Biden job-killing regulations,”
Russell Vought, the director of the
White House Office of Manage-
ment and Budget, which oversees
regulatory policy, said in a state-
ment.
If Democrats take control of
Congress, they will have thepower to reconsider some of these
last-minute regulations, through a
law last used at the start of Mr.
Trump’s tenure by Republicans to
repeal certain rules enacted at the
end of the Obama administration.
But the Trump administration
is also working to fill key vacan-White House Unleashes
Blitz of Policy Changes
As Election Day Nears
Cutting Corners on Getting Public Input
for Regulations Affecting Millions
By ERIC LIPTONTruckers’ hours are one issue.GEORGE ETHEREDGE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESADAM DEAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESThe Thai police wielded stinging liquid and an obscure rule shielding the queen to go after antigovernment demonstrators. Page A13.
Shields, Water Cannons and an Arcane Law
WESTERVILLE, Ohio — Kate
Rabinovitch doesn’t call herself an
activist.
A few weeks ago, the 29-year-
old real estate agent wrote per-
sonalized messages to voters in
her home state of Ohio on behalf of
Joseph R. Biden Jr. She texts with
undecided friends during the de-
bates, arguing for the Democratic
nominee. And she is helping to or-
ganize voter drives in her subur-
ban Cleveland neighborhood.
But a political activist? No way.
“It’s just not something that I
ever would have described myself
as, if you talked to me a year ago,”
said Ms. Rabinovitch. “I’m just a
mom with the feels, like hardfeels.”
Four years ago, Ms. Rabi-
novitch agonized over which can-
didate to support. In the final min-
utes of voting, she walked into the
booth still uncertain. She left hav-
ing cast her ballot for Donald J.
Trump.
“I thought, ‘Oh, what’s the
worst that could happen?’ ” she
recalled recently. “I do feel guilty.”
For much of the country, polar-
ized views about the presidentand his chaotic upending of Amer-
ican politics haven’t budged since
2016, when he squeezed out a nar-
row Electoral College victory
while losing the popular vote. Yet,
there is a demographic group that
has changed its mind: white wom-
en in the suburbs.
In 2016, the suburbs powered
Mr. Trump’s victory, with exit
polls showing that he won those
areas by four points. Now, polling
in swing states shows the presi-
dent losing those voters by his-
toric margins, fueled by a record-
breaking gender gap. Mr. Biden
leads by 23 points among subur-
ban women in battleground
states, according to recent polling
by The New York Times and SienaIn the Suburbs, Women Turn Away From Trump
By LISA LERER The Past Four Years
Have Soured Voters
He Needs to Keep
Continued on Page A19 Continued on Page AMEXICO CITY — American
law enforcement agents were lis-
tening in as Mexican cartel mem-
bers chattered on a wiretap, talk-
ing about a powerful, shadowy fig-
ure known as El Padrino, or The
Godfather.
Agents had been closing in on
him for months, suspecting that
this central figure in the drug
trade was a high-ranking official
in the Mexican military.
All of a sudden, one of the peo-
ple under surveillance told his fel-
low cartel members that El Pa-
drino happened to be on television
at that very moment. The agents
quickly checked to see who it was
— and found it was the Mexican
secretary of defense, Gen. Sal-
vador Cienfuegos, according to
four American officials involved
in the investigation.
In that moment, the authorities
say, they finally confirmed that
the mystery patron of one of the
nation’s most violent drug cartels
was actually the leader in charge
of waging Mexico’s war against
organized crime.
It was a stunning display of how
deep the tendrils of organized
crime run in Mexico, and on
Thursday night General Cienfue-
gos was taken into custody by the
American authorities at the Los
Angeles airport while traveling
with his family.
Even for Mexico, a country of-
ten inured to the unrelenting vio-
lence and corruption that have
gripped it for years, the arrest was
nothing less than extraordinary,
piercing the veil of invincibility
that the nation’s armed forces
have long enjoyed.
General Cienfuegos, Mexico’s
Mexico Shaken
By Drug Arrest
Of Top General
By AZAM AHMED
and ALAN FEUERContinued on Page ATwitter’s decision to stop blocking a
dubious New York Post article about
Hunter Biden underscores how rapidly
social media giants are shifting their
positions ahead of the election. PAGE BBUSINESS B1-Social Media Policy Reversals
The government spent $6.55 trillion in
fiscal 2020, while tax receipts and other
revenue was $3.42 trillion. Pandemic
relief fueled the surge. Total debt held by
the public topped $21 trillion. PAGE BDeficit at Record $3.1 Trillion
The Supreme Court will hear challenges
to a Trump plan to exclude the undocu-
mented in reapportionment. PAGE AImmigrants and the Census
Printed in Chicago $3.
Strong wind. Showers to the north.
Partly sunny south. Highs in 50s to
60s. Windy tonight. Showers,
mainly north and west. Lows in 30s
to 40s. Weather map, Page A28.National Edition