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Election 2020

Postal Service tells 46 states that mail-in ballots may not arrive in time to be counted

An election worker with ballots that were mailed in or dropped off at collection boxes earlier this month in Renton, Wash. (AP)
An election worker with ballots that were mailed in or dropped off at collection boxes earlier this month in Renton, Wash. (AP)
The warnings point to a grim possibility: Even if people voting by mail follow all the election rules, the pace of delivery may disqualify their votes.

Discontent with McCarthy rises as GOP considers post-Trump world

A few House Republicans are discussing whether someone should challenge Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), a top Trump ally, for minority leader.

N.J. will send ballots to all active registered voters for November election, governor says

Analysis

Somehow, the president keeps misreading the politics of the pandemic

Americans support stronger efforts to control the outbreak — and see Joe Biden as better able to handle it.
CORONAVIRUS

U.S. will prepare virus strain for potential human challenge trials

Getting ready for human challenge trials — ethically fraught experiments in which people are vaccinated and intentionally exposed to the virus — will take months.

Researchers found a way to clean N95 masks — in a common electric cooker

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that an appliance such as a rice cooker or Instant Pot can thoroughly disinfect an N95 without degrading it.

Nursing homes in the Sun Belt had months to prepare for rising virus cases. They still weren’t ready.

The Northeast this spring provided lessons on preventing nursing home infection, but the South and Southwest have been slow to pick up on them.
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RACE & RECKONING
(The Washington Post)
The Fix
Analysis

Trump, Biden and race: A history

Two men shaped by an earlier era are vying to lead the United States through a time of reckoning.
Election 2020

Trump, Biden tout experience to police chiefs, but president skips some questions

The International Association of Chiefs of Police asked specific questions on reform and funding proposals.
LIVE UPDATES
State police to leave downtown Portland
Video
(John Farrell/The Washington Post)
How coronavirus affects children and what that means for schools
Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s history on race
Play Video 14:47
USPS veteran responds to Trump's attacks on the Post Office
Play Video 3:34
In the Senate, Kamala Harris grilled Trump officials and appointees
Play Video 1:56
How coronavirus affects children and what that means for schools
Play Video 2:11
Opinions
It’s time for Belarus’s dictator to go
Cake, in the manner of the Trump administration’s school reopening guidance
Raise a glass to American craft brewing, and the values it embodies!
A Biden-Harris ticket is Trump’s worst nightmare
Is QAnon the shape of the Republican backlash to come?
Stories You’ll Want to Hear

How the pandemic is straining the unemployment system

What it’s like to be at the mercy of America’s unemployment system, stretched to the brink by the pandemic. And portraits of health-care workers.
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Ex-FBI lawyer to plead guilty of falsifying email in Trump campaign probe

Kevin Clinesmith was accused of doctoring a document to help justify surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser as part of the 2016 investigation of Russian interference in the election.

Top DHS officials aren’t legally eligible for their roles, GAO finds

Homeland Security acting secretary Chad Wolf and his deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, are serving under an "invalid order of succession," the Government Accountability Office found.
The roof and back half of the building is exposed at Camden Amusement in northwest Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Wednesday, following damaging winds Monday. (Liz Martin/The Gazette via AP)
The roof and back half of the building is exposed at Camden Amusement in northwest Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Wednesday, following damaging winds Monday. (Liz Martin/The Gazette via AP)

Cedar Rapids and nearby Iowa communities, still in shambles days after destructive derecho, plead for help

Dispatches from Cedar Rapids reveal a disaster zone, with damage to most homes and businesses, some severe, trees down everywhere, roads blocked and hospitals overrun.
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Critic’s Notebook

Kayleigh McEnany is the camera-perfect embodiment of Trump’s message: Everything is fine

Politics

For Black activists, Harris’s new role brings pride but also compromise

The DNC starts Monday. Here’s what you need to know.

The Obamas and the Clintons will speak, along with other party luminaries. But because of health concerns around the coronavirus pandemic, Joe Biden will accept the nomination from his home in Delaware.
  • By Washington Post Staff
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Trump visits younger brother, Robert Trump, who is very ill in hospital

Robert Trump unsuccessfully sought to block publication this summer of niece Mary Trump’s best-selling tell-all book, “Too Much and Never Enough,” about their family.
Volunteer Mike Williams waits for voters at a Baltimore polling station on April 28. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Post)
Volunteer Mike Williams waits for voters at a Baltimore polling station on April 28. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Post)

The pandemic has reshaped Trump’s prospects for reelection

No election in history has played out against the backdrop of a pandemic, a major recession and a racial reckoning. Even more than ever, it is largely about the incumbent.

British vacationers in France told to return home or face 14-day quarantine

The sudden announcement of emergency isolation measures, sparked by a rising number of coronavirus cases in France, took most by surprise.

Pompeo calls it ‘just nuts’ to allow Iran to trade in arms as U.N. vote nears

A photographer captured the moment a couple's wedding photos were interrupted by the massive Beirut port explosion on Aug. 4. The couple was not injured. (Reuters)

Two couples’ wedding photos captured Beirut’s devastation. Both brides wondered if the other survived.

One bride, a doctor, rushed to tend to the wounded in her white wedding dress.

From self-exile, Belarus opposition leader calls for protests to reach ‘every city’

The video from Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who fled to Lithuania, came amid E.U. talks on possible steps against Belarus’s authoritarian ruler, who was recently reelected in a contest widely criticized as rigged.
Three women cross the Rio Grande toward Eagle Pass from Piedras Negras, Mexico in April 2019. (Sergio Flores for The Post)
Three women cross the Rio Grande toward Eagle Pass from Piedras Negras, Mexico in April 2019. (Sergio Flores for The Post)

Trump administration now wants floating wall to seal off waterways along Mexico border

As the United States builds a $15 billion border wall, it is exploring adding a “Buoy Barrier System” to block river and sea crossings.

Lawmakers, State Dept. trade allegations and demands over last year’s emergency arms sales to Saudi Arabia

House Democrats want R. Clarke Cooper, the assistant secretary for political-military affairs, to explain what they say was his “inaccurate” testimony on how the emergency came about.

CDC asks 4 states and a city to draft coronavirus vaccine distribution plans

The discussions with states offer some of the first details of the federal government’s plans at a time when information shared by the administration has been limited and often confusing.

Retail sales inched up in July as Americans loaded up on electronics

Families preparing for a virtual school year powered sales of laptops, webcams, headphones and other electronics by 23 percent.

Google ends direct cooperation with Hong Kong on data requests

The move comes in the wake of Beijing’s imposition of a broad national security law that targets vaguely defined crimes including subversion of state power, collusion with foreign powers, secession and terrorism.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. (Reuters)
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. (Reuters)

Pompeo presses his campaign against Chinese telecom companies during trip to Eastern Europe

During a stop in Slovenia, the secretary of state signed a joint statement with Foreign Minister Anze Logar to “exclude untrusted vendors” from high-speed wireless networks.
(Paige Stampatori for The Washington Post)
(Paige Stampatori for The Washington Post)
Analysis

The NBA’s playoff picture was clear entering the bubble. Now it’s complicated.

LeBron James’s Lakers, Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Bucks and Kawhi Leonard's Clippers entered the NBA bubble as strong favorites, but new vulnerabilities have complicated the championship chase.
Perspective

Can you win a legitimate sports title during a pandemic? We're about to find out.

If we have learned anything about trying to contest sports right now, it’s that if you’re upset about the way things stand at a single point in time, wait a couple of hours, because they’ll change.
Bob Ryland
1920–2020

First Black tennis player to go pro dies at 100

He also coached players including Leslie Allen and Bruce Foxworth, and celebrities such as Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman.
Sam Freeman left his latest appearance this past Wednesday after suffering a mass flexor strain in his left elbow. He's now on the 10-day injured list. (Frank Franklin II/AP)
Sam Freeman left his latest appearance this past Wednesday after suffering a mass flexor strain in his left elbow. He's now on the 10-day injured list. (Frank Franklin II/AP)

Pitcher injuries are piling up, raising a new concern for teams early in MLB’s delayed season

The Nationals are just one team dealing with a rash of injured pitchers this season.

NCAA pulls plug on all Division I fall championships except for top-tier football

The announcement was essentially a formality given the number of conferences that have already postponed fall sports and the board of governors’ requirement that at least 50 percent of schools participate in a season for a championship to be held.

Virginia House Democrats roll out plans for budget, criminal justice overhaul

The General Assembly will return to Richmond on Tuesday just months after newly empowered Democrats pulled off a raft of legislative wins in the regular session.
CORONAVIRUS

Montgomery County pauses testing at county sites pending review of private lab

County officials have decided to close all county-run testing sites over potential issues with testing by Rockville-based AdvaGenix.
Known deaths and cases
The Bullis School occupies a lush 102-acre campus in Potomac, Md. (Bill O'Leary/The Post)
The Bullis School occupies a lush 102-acre campus in Potomac, Md. (Bill O'Leary/The Post)

The head of Potomac’s Bullis School was celebrated. But his exit was messier than it appeared.

Amid by claims of misspending and conflicts of interest, the board of the elite private school voted it had cause to terminate head of school Gerald Boarman, but let him finish his term.

National Zoo announces that female giant panda may be pregnant

D.C. police detain protesters in Adams Morgan area

The group of protesters had been marching for about two hours through Northwest Washington.
Nyja Huston in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. (Washington Post illustration; Activision)
Nyja Huston in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. (Washington Post illustration; Activision)
Perspective

‘Tony Hawk’ warehouse demo delivers a ‘nuclear bomb of nostalgia’ in 2 minutes

Like Mario games, it's an all-time 3D classic.

How cartoonists are drawing Kamala Harris in the wake of her joining the Biden ticket

Inspired Life

A homeless man hadn’t seen his family in 20 years. This couple reunited them.

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From left, Courtney B. Vance as George, Jonathan Majors as Tic and Jurnee Smollett as Leti in “Lovecraft Country.” (Eli Joshua Ade/HBO)
From left, Courtney B. Vance as George, Jonathan Majors as Tic and Jurnee Smollett as Leti in “Lovecraft Country.” (Eli Joshua Ade/HBO)
TV Review

‘Lovecraft Country’ is on the hunt for beasts of bigotry, but its aim isn’t always precise

The HBO horror drama turns classic phantasmagoria into a Jim Crow-era metaphor.
Perspective

The best-kept secret in documentaries? It’s all in the casting.

Book Review

More than a century later, the wonderful work of Andrew Lang holds up remarkably well

The lack of ingredient transparency on bottle labels leaves wines vulnerable to assertions of health claims and marketing of “clean” wines. (Getty Images)
The lack of ingredient transparency on bottle labels leaves wines vulnerable to assertions of health claims and marketing of “clean” wines. (Getty Images)
Perspective

Wine labels can be vague, and drinkers are thirsty for clarity

A lack of ingredient transparency makes wines open to criticism from labels that purport to offer better-for-you wines.
Perspective

It’s hot, we’re stuck and everything is terrible. These cocktails can swizzle your worries away.

5 no-cook salads to keep you and your kitchen cool and happy

(iStock/Washington Post illustration)
(iStock/Washington Post illustration)

Money can buy social distance. But where does that leave budget travelers?

From isolated villas to private jets, the wealthy have found ways to travel during a pandemic. But for backpackers and hostel enthusiasts, it’s not as simple.

How covid-19-related travel restrictions are complicating the once-simple road trip

He set out to show his son the D.C. area’s 68 Civil War forts. Protests made it more than a diversion.

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‘I guess they saw potential’: For 20 years, this program has helped Baltimore youths find center, one breath at a time
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Harris is the pick, but women of color remain underrepresented in government
(Brittany Renee Mayes and Kate Rabinowitz/The Post)Graphic
(Brittany Renee Mayes and Kate Rabinowitz/The Post)
Since 2016, 11 states and D.C. have expanded voting rights for the currently and formerly incarcerated
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(Maria Magdalena Arréllaga for The Post)
These neighbors were hospitalized with coronavirus. Their vastly different journeys show the depths of Brazil’s rich-poor divide.
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