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    A Long, Lonesome Look at America

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    Twilight falls over a county road in Crook, Colorado.Flags billow along an empty sidewalk in Martin, Tennessee.In Detroit, Oregon, the wreckage from a wildfire sits beneath burned-out hills.These photographs were taken on a 10,000-mile road trip across the United States.They reflect our country’s beauty, loss, confusion, hope, division, grace and grandeur.They’re scenes of an America cloaked in solitude — and of a country on edge.Supported byContinue reading the main storyThe World Through a LensA Long, Lonesome Look at AmericaJan. 11, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETI was only a few days into a meandering trip across America, and already I was easing into something of a nighttime routine. Earlier in the day I’d pinpointed a promising campsite in Ozark National Forest. Now, I found myself ascending an isolated forestry road to get to it, my tires crackling over its rough, potholed surface.When I could no longer hear the road noise from the scenic highway that carried me into the mountains, I found a small clearing in the woods, shimmied my car into a level position and climbed into the back. Gathering my camping stove, I stepped outside into a light rainfall and, under a tall canopy of trees, lit the burner.All night I’d been enveloped in a thick foggy haze: not much to see, wipers running full tilt. I hadn’t interacted with anyone in days, and now even the landscape was hidden from view. But the rain seemed to be letting up — enough in this small glade, at least, for me to heat a pot of water for a solitary cup of tea. In the morning, I thought, if things cleared, there’d even be hope of seeing the surrounding mountains in their autumnal glory.Lichens on the rock reflect the turning of the leaves at Sam’s Throne, in Ozark National Forest.So it went, it seems, with much of 2020: our lives — and our country — enveloped in a haze of uncertainty, without our knowing whether the next day would bring a modicum of relief or a deepening of our solitude.Cattle in a field near Encino, N.M.Flocks of geese head west over Nebraska.In October I set off on a trip to witness and document this singular moment in American history — to look quietly and intently at our country, to parse its scenery.A polka-dotted awning on a vacant street in Glenwood, Ark.A boarded-up building in Carter, Wyo.The Rio Grande near Taos, N.M.To limit interaction and prevent exposure, I outfitted my car as a makeshift camper van, removing the rear seats and installing a sleeping (and living and working) platform in their place.After stocking up on food and water, I headed southwest from my hometown, Hudson, Ohio, largely avoiding highways and preferring instead to pass more slowly through less populated areas. Most nights I spent at remote, unimproved campsites — away from any developed campgrounds — in our sprawling network of national forests.The fringes of Kootenai National Forest, in northwest Montana.A barn near Libby, Mont.On many of my previous trips across the country, my spirits have been buoyed by the fleeting social interactions that occur sporadically throughout the day — at diners, motels, knickknack shops, campgrounds.Traveling in isolation, though, was a categorically different experience.Even in the casual places where travelers still gathered — gas stations, coffee shops, rest areas — there were generally no offhand conversations, no sharing of experiences, no sense of spontaneous connection. Strangers transacted and, still strangers, went their separate ways.A service station in Dale, Ore.Without the promise of social interaction, the landscape itself — both natural and built — became my focus.Often it felt like a companion. Often it felt like a manuscript, open to interpretation.Early morning light illuminates the Guadalupe Mountains, east of El Paso.A pair of deer in McKittrick Canyon.Wintry colors in Prineville, Ore.Reviewing the photographs from my trip, I found that my eyes were drawn to projections of my own isolation: lone structures, unpeopled scenes, solitary sets of tire tracks.The Fox Community Church in Grant County, Ore.A Forest Service road near Sisters, Ore.A vacant strip mall in northwest Tennessee.Looking outward, I saw within.An aptly named business in Ronan, Mont.Silhouettes against the night sky in Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, in central Idaho.What also struck me were the scars. In town after town I saw sidewalks emptied, shops struggling, restaurants barely clinging to life.It all added up to the same bleak assessment: The pandemic has acted like an accelerant, hastening trends toward online commerce that threaten the future of brick-and-mortar stores and streetside businesses — the economic and communal mainstays of small towns throughout America.A café in Ojo Caliente, N.M.A service station in Vaughn, N.M.The economic fallout wasn’t the only visible trauma. In Colorado, Oregon and California, the widespread effects of the worst fire season on record were ubiquitous.Heading west from Fort Collins, Colo., along State Highway 14, I watched as crews scrambled to battle the Cameron Peak fire, the largest in Colorado history. The devastation along Highway 22 in Oregon was astonishing.Handmade signs along State Highway 14 in northern Colorado.A scorched tree trunk in Willamette National Forest.The charred remains of a home in Detroit, Ore.Our country’s political divisions were also omnipresent — in the form of yard signs, flags, billboards.In some places, the public posturing read like communal declarations. More than at other points in recent memory, businesses (as opposed solely to individuals or residences) seemed to trumpet their political affiliations.A politicized marquee on a theater on North Main Street in Springhill, La.A billboard in Carlsbad, N.M.A sign outside a farm in Bossier Parish, La.A roadside stand offering political merchandise in Medina, Tenn.There was, of course, an endless array of beauty. Gazing at the sandstone arches in eastern Utah, standing silently over the pristine waters of the McDonald Creek in northern Montana, looking out at a herd of bison in Southern Colorado, I saw the sublimity and the precariousness of our natural treasures reflected in their own forms.The Corona Arch, near Moab, Utah.McDonald Creek in Glacier National Park.A bison at the Medano-Zapata Ranch, on the eastern edge of Colorado’s San Luis Valley. In the 19th century, American bison were hunted nearly to extinction; fewer than a thousand remained from an estimated population of 30 to 60 million.If much of the American landscape can be read, then much is also continuously rewritten — particularly in our forests, grasslands and wildlife refuges, the arenas for our never-ending attempts to strike a balance between conservation and extraction, between profit and preservation.A U.S. Forest Service sign in Ouachita National Forest.A nearby logging operation.In many ways the trip felt like an extended ode to such places — our national forests in particular.Twelve days and some 4,500 miles in, I woke before dawn in the southern stretches of Bitterroot National Forest, near the border between Idaho and Montana. Temperatures outside had fallen into the low 20s; cocooned in my car, I hadn’t noticed. But, cracking the door open, I felt a rush of cold air.I peered out into the darkness.Clear skies above Bitterroot National Forest.Startled by the cold and beckoned by the Montanan scenery, I opted for an early start, descending the mountains north toward Missoula. I fell into an early-morning trance — until, 20 minutes later, I saw a fellow traveler who’d pulled his car to the side of the road and exited it. He was staring into the distance.I turned to my left, in the direction of his gaze, and saw Trapper Peak, purple and majestic, dressed in unspeakable beauty. Somehow, inexplicably, I hadn’t noticed its grandeur.I pressed the brakes and slowed to a stop some 100 feet away. I, too, exited my car and stood alongside the road.Together in solitude, we took in the scene.Pastel skies at sunrise over Trapper Peak, in the Bitterroot Mountains.Stephen Hiltner is an editor on The New York Times’s Travel desk, where he edits the weekly World Through a Lens column. You can follow his work on Instagram and Twitter.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Use It or Lose It: Tenant Aid Effort Nears a Federal Cutoff

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyUse It or Lose It: Tenant Aid Effort Nears a Federal CutoffEmergency pandemic funding to help renters must be distributed by Dec. 30. But getting the money to those who need it is no small task.Gregory Heller of the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation is scrambling to get emergency aid into tenants’ hands before a federal deadline.Credit…Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesDec. 15, 2020Updated 7:15 p.m. ETFor several months, Gregory Heller, an official with a Philadelphia nonprofit group, has grappled with an unusual problem. He had $60 million in rental aid to help low-income tenants weather the pandemic — and a whole lot of trouble spending it.Designing questionnaires, verifying bank statements, processing stacks of paperwork: There is a wide administrative gap between the goal of getting money to renters who need it and the reality of cutting a check to their landlord. People like Mr. Heller are trying to bridge it.He is among hundreds of public servants and nonprofit employees nationwide who are scrambling to unload hundreds of millions in federal aid for tenants before a Dec. 30 deadline. They don’t have enough money to address a growing rental housing crisis yet are struggling to pay out what they have — an undertaking that has become even more urgent as other federal emergency programs, including unemployment benefits and an eviction moratorium, are also about to expire.Working from a home office in front of a laptop whose spreadsheets represent roofs over families’ heads, Mr. Heller, senior vice president for community investment at the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation, is so engulfed in his efforts that he now supplements the work of his support staff by taking calls from tenants and landlords on his cellphone. That way he can pitch in on answering questions and review applications on the fly, part of a rush to stave off a wave of evictions, one tenant at a time.“I get calls all day, every day,” he said. “I’ve basically joined the help desk.”Philadelphia is a case study in the simple-but-not-easy task of helping tenants with the rent. Social programs are often a partnership in which cities provide funding and lay out rules but delegate the execution to quasi-governmental nonprofit organizations like Mr. Heller’s. Like most places, Philadelphia isn’t close to satisfying the need for help. But through rounds of rejiggering and three phases of funding — each with its own maze of rules and requirements — Mr. Heller’s group built a team to distribute aid, whittled down the processes that delayed it and ultimately concluded that the best way to help was the most straightforward: Give the money directly to renters.“There’s a societal belief that poor people can’t spend money the right way, and I think it’s important to start questioning that assumption,” Mr. Heller said.Almost from the moment the pandemic spread across the United States, advocacy groups have warned that the economic fallout could cause mass displacement of low-income tenants. In response, more than 400 state and local governments have used money from the federal CARES Act to set up funds to cover at least $4.3 billion in rental assistance — money that has helped tenants pay their bills and landlords stay current on their mortgages, according to a database set up by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a policy group.But now many jurisdictions are reporting trouble spending it, and with barely two weeks left in the year, they are on pace to have more than $300 million left over, according to the coalition’s database. In a pattern that predated the pandemic, the programs have been complicated by bureaucratic hurdles, competing budget demands and a reluctance among landlords to take part.There was shifting federal guidance on how CARES Act money could be spent. States passed legislation that piled local rules on top of the federal rules. Each layer was ostensibly created to improve programs — preventing fraud, making sure the money went to the neediest tenants — but added numerous hurdles for both tenants and landlords, and in the end cost time.“In trying to build bulletproof programs, you build programs that take a long time to get off the ground or simply don’t work because they are too clunky,” said Brad Gair, a principal with Witt O’Brien’s, an emergency-management consulting firm that has helped about a dozen state and local governments create rental funds.Hoping to distribute the remaining aid before it is forfeited, many states and cities are simplifying applications and moving money from nonprofits that can’t process the aid fast enough to those that can. Others are redirecting the funds to different purposes, lest they go unspent.Philadelphia is a case study in the simple-but-not-easy task of helping tenants with the rent. Like most places, it isn’t close to satisfying the need.Credit…Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesNone of this is for lack of demand. In interviews, more than a dozen officials of nonprofit groups and housing administrators reported a deluge of applications, while reports show tenants are piling up credit card bills, back rent and loans. Moody’s Analytics estimates that by the end of the year some 11 million lower-income renters will be about $70 billion in arrears.Tenant advocates, landlord organizations and local-government associations have called on Congress to extend the Dec. 30 deadline. “The idea of reverting that money back to the Treasury just as the eviction moratoriums expire and renters are on the brink is absurd and cruel,” said Diane Yentel, chief executive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.Like most U.S. cities, Philadelphia had a housing problem long before the pandemic. Rents are lower than in markets like New York and San Francisco, but the burden on tenants is still high. In 2018, about a third of the city’s tenants spent at least half of their pretax income on rent, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.Despite this, federal aid for housing has been declining for decades, part of a continued disinvestment in the social safety net. The line for the federal Section 8 program, which gives vouchers to low-income renters, is more than a decade long in Philadelphia. At the same time, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant Program is giving the city less than half of the funding that it received in 1995, adjusted for inflation.Looking to expand aid, Mayor Jim Kenney announced in early March that the city would budget $50 million for a five-year program to assist low-income households. It would also run an experiment, giving one group of households rental vouchers while another group of families got unrestricted cash assistance.The coronavirus ended that by blowing a hole in the city’s budget. But the CARES Act added some $60 million in new funds, some through the state and some in direct federal support to cities. The catch was that it had to be spent quickly. And that’s where Mr. Heller’s group came in.Mr. Heller, 39, has spent his career in the nonprofit world and has been a consultant on neighborhood development projects in two dozen cities. In 2016, he was appointed to run the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, a role he still holds, and last year he joined the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation.Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 15, 2020, 4:17 p.m. ETEuropean Central Bank will lift ban on bank dividends, a sign of cautious optimism.Top congressional leaders met to discuss a stimulus deal and a year-end spending bill before the deadline on Friday.European truck makers say they will phase out fossil fuel vehicles by 2040.Money can come in an instant, but running new programs involves a bunch of mundane but important tasks. Mr. Heller’s organization could not take applications or distribute aid until it had built new information technology infrastructure, with a web portal for claims and 18 full-time employees to review applications and field calls.The first phase was rolled out on May 12 and covered up to $2,500 in rent over three months. Within four days the city had 13,000 applicants. About a third were approved, consuming $10 million of the eventual $60 million.At the same time, Pennsylvania used CARES Act money to start a separate rental-aid program. This was confusing to landlords and tenants, because while that money was also distributed through nonprofits like Mr. Heller’s, it had different criteria from Philadelphia’s program. The major distinction was that the state program would cover no more than $750 in rent, and to receive it property owners had to agree to forgive the balance, and to waive late fees and back rent. This caused a number of landlords — especially in Philadelphia, where the median rent is $1,600 — to balk. And without landlords’ consent, tenants couldn’t get the aid.Victor Pinckney, a landlord and former president of HAPCO, a city landlords’ group, said the reason was simple: He and others didn’t want to take less than the market rent, or give up the right to collect back payments. “It was a no-brainer,” he said.The result was that tenants like Christy Lee Nicholas, who spent two days filling out the questionnaire and assembling pay stubs and bank statements, didn’t even have their applications looked at because the city couldn’t process them without landlord forms.Ms. Nicholas, 42, made about $1,400 a month from a part-time teaching job but was laid off during the pandemic. She recently applied to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps, and pays $1,100 a month in rent. She is one month behind on rent and applied for the city’s program, but her landlord didn’t send in his own forms.Linda Harkins applied to the city’s rental assistance program, but was denied because her landlord did not send in a form.Credit…Hannah Yoon for The New York Times“I got an email that said, ‘Sorry, but unfortunately participation requires your landlord,’” she said.This problem went far beyond Philadelphia. Vincent Reina, an urban planning professor at the University of Pennsylvania, recently found that in some cities as many as half of tenants could not get landlords to cooperate with rental assistance programs. The reasons included not wanting to deal with bureaucracy and an unwillingness to comply with terms like waiving back rent or losing the right to evict tenants collecting aid.“We’ve consistently created programs where owners have ultimate veto power over whether a tenant can access the housing assistance that they’ve applied for and need,” Mr. Reina said.To coax more landlords into the program, Philadelphia used its own CARES Act money to augment state rental funds, allowing it to cover up to $1,500 a month in rent. That took care of an additional $30 million, but even with a higher rent cap, 37 percent of landlords still refused to take part.With the end of the year approaching, the city gave Mr. Heller’s organization $20 million for a third program for tenants. This time, instead of having separate applications from landlords and tenants, the organizers asked people who weren’t able to get aid from the first two rounds to reapply — for a cash payment.“We don’t want to penalize them just because their landlord won’t play ball,” Mr. Heller said.One of them was Linda Harkins. Ms. Harkins is a 67-year-old retiree who makes about $1,200 a month from a pension and Social Security, and until recently supplemented it with about $600 a month from a part-time job with the Census Bureau. When her position was cut, Ms. Harkins applied to the city’s rental assistance program.Her application, like Ms. Nicholas’s, was denied because her landlord did not send in a form. Last month, she applied for the new direct-aid program. Ms. Harkins is hoping the check will arrive by Christmas, or at least the first of the month.With the new cash program, Mr. Heller said he was confident that all $60 million would be spent by year’s end. But the need for help will continue.“We now have a whole program set up to funnel millions of dollars to tenants and landlords,” he said. “This issue predates the pandemic and it’s going to continue after. The question is whether we’re going to continue to fund it, or not.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    States Try to Rescue Small Businesses as U.S. Aid Is Snarled

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesBritain’s Vaccine RolloutVaccine TrackerFAQ: Vaccines and MoreAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyStates Try to Rescue Small Businesses as U.S. Aid Is SnarledState governments are offering loans, grants and tax rebates, but budget constraints limit their impact.Kirk Meurer’s business installing office furniture in the Cleveland area dried up practically overnight when the pandemic began.Credit…Da’Shaunae Marisa for The New York TimesDec. 10, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETWith the economic recovery faltering and federal aid stalled in Washington, state governments are stepping in to try to help small businesses survive the pandemic winter.The Colorado legislature held a special session last week to pass an economic aid package. Ohio is offering a new round of grants to restaurants, bars and other businesses affected by the pandemic. And in California, a new fund will use state money to backstop what could ultimately be hundreds of millions of dollars in private loans. Other states, led by both Republicans and Democrats, have announced or are considering similar measures.But there is a limit to what states can do. The pandemic has ravaged budgets, driving up costs and eroding tax revenues. And unlike the federal government, most states cannot run budget deficits.“We have done what we can do to pump money into small businesses so that people can continue to work,” said Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican. “From the jobs point of view and the economy point of view and the workers’ point of view and small businesses, we’ve got to get that help from the federal government. That’s the only place we can get it.”After months of false starts and on-again-off-again negotiations, there are signs of progress in Washington. Top Democrats last week embraced a $908 billion plan proposed by a bipartisan group of moderate senators. That plan would include nearly $300 billion in aid for small businesses, as well as smaller sums for unemployed workers, state and local governments and other groups. On Tuesday, the White House proposed its own $916 billion plan, which would include more than $400 billion for small businesses.But Democrats and Republicans still disagree on important issues, including aid for state and local governments and liability protection for businesses. Even if the two sides do reach a deal, it could be weeks before money starts flowing.Many small businesses say they can’t wait that long. A survey from the National Federation of Independent Business on Tuesday showed optimism falling and uncertainty rising as the nationwide surge in coronavirus cases leads governments to reimpose restrictions and consumers to pare their spending. Separate data from the Census Bureau shows an increasing share of small businesses cutting jobs, and other surveys have shown large numbers of businesses in danger of failing.If that happens, it could be a disaster for both state economies and state budgets. Local businesses are major sources of tax revenue — both directly and through their employees — and major drivers of economic activity. If they fail in large numbers, it will slow the economic recovery once the pandemic is over.“It becomes almost a death spiral if you can’t keep these businesses running,” said Tim Goodrich, executive director of state government relations for the National Federation of Independent Business.Kirk Meurer was on track to have one of his best years ever in his business installing office furniture in the Cleveland area. But when companies began sending their workers home last spring, his business dried up practically overnight.“Even though we didn’t have to shut down like the restaurants and bars and the travel industries, it didn’t matter,” he said. “The business wasn’t there.”After some delays, Mr. Meurer got money through the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which he thought would be enough to sustain him until business rebounded. But as the pandemic dragged on and offices pushed back their reopening dates to the summer, then to the fall, then into next year, it became clear the company would need more help to survive.“It’s amazing how fast you can burn through money when you’ve got nothing coming in and all the overhead to maintain,” Mr. Meurer said.In recent weeks, his company, Modular Systems Technicians, received a $10,000 grant from a new state fund to help small businesses. He also got money under a program that refunded $8 billion from the state workers’ compensation fund.“It helped,” Mr. Meurer he said. “It’s not nearly enough, but they did what they could.”The money for the Ohio grant program, and from some other recent state aid efforts, actually came from the federal government. As part of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act last spring, Congress created a $150 billion fund that states could tap in responding to the virus. They were given wide latitude in using the money — as long as they did so before the end of the year.As the pandemic has flared anew, however, it has become clear that the economic crisis will last well into next year, by which point the federal money will be gone and state budgets will be unable to pick up the slack. So states are racing to use what’s left of the CARES Act money to shore up their economies and build a buffer for the winter.“I think they’re terrified,” said Joseph Parilla, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who has studied state responses to the pandemic. “If they’re paying attention, they should be.”Eden Stein isn’t sure how much longer her San Francisco gallery and boutique can continue.Credit…Christie Hemm Klok for The New York TimesGov. Jared Polis of Colorado, a Democrat, recalled the legislature for a special session late last month to pass several relief measures, including a $57 million grant program for small businesses. In an interview, he cited Colorado’s slow recovery from the last recession a decade ago, when the failure to contain the foreclosure crisis left lasting scars on the state’s economy. Without further assistance — including federal aid — he fears a wave of business failures that would set off an equally damaging chain reaction, he said.“If we don’t help them get through this, will it ever come back?” Mr. Polis asked. “Sure, but it means years of boarded-up stores and restaurants on Main Streets across America if Democrats and Republicans can’t come together now to act.”Some states are trying creative ways to stretch resources. California last month established a “rebuilding fund,” which will use a comparatively small amount of public money to provide loan guarantees to encourage for-profit and nonprofit lenders to make low-interest loans to small businesses.The California program is aimed at the smallest businesses — most with fewer than 10 employees — and those in low-income and minority neighborhoods. Many were left out of the federal aid programs like the Paycheck Protection Program, which primarily helped somewhat larger employers.“P.P.P. never really served these kinds of businesses very well,” said Laura D. Tyson, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who helped design California’s program. “More and more of them are boarding up and closing down, and it’s a real hit to the community, a real hit to the quality of life in these communities.”Ms. Tyson said the loans should help businesses make investments to adapt to life during the pandemic — like investing in online ordering technology or outdoor dining — or to position themselves for the post-pandemic world. But the state can’t afford to cover day-to-day expenses the way the federal government did in the spring.Secession Art & Design, a gallery and boutique in San Francisco, has survived the first nine months of the pandemic through a combination of loans, donations from customers and an aggressive shift in strategy toward online sales, which had been only a small part of the business.But Eden Stein, who owns the 13-year-old business, said she wasn’t sure how long that could continue. California is reimposing restrictions on retail businesses, which could hurt sales during what she calls a make-or-break holiday season. Her lease is up in the spring, and she hasn’t decided whether to renew it.Ms. Stein is thinking of applying for a rebuilding loan from the state but is nervous about taking on more debt. She is applying for a grant under a separate state program, but that won’t be enough to sustain the business. She doesn’t know what the local economy will look like after the pandemic, she said, but it is essential for small businesses to have enough confidence to renew leases and plan for the long term.“I’m not concerned about how hard I can work, how I can connect with my customers or my community,” Ms. Stein said. “I am concerned that I will eventually run out of money.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    A $900 Billion Plan Would Help the Economy, but Not Fix It

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesC.D.C. Shortens Quarantine PeriodsVaccine TrackerFAQAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storynews analysisA $900 Billion Plan Would Help the Economy, but Not Fix ItWhile a compromise package gaining steam in Congress would provide urgent help to the economy, some people and businesses would be left out in the cold.The framework of a $908 billion stimulus plan includes several types of assistance that economists have been calling on Congress to approve for months.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesBy More

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    In Blue States and Red, Pandemic Upends Public Services and Jobs

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesC.D.C. Shortens Quarantine PeriodsVaccine TrackerFAQAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn Blue States and Red, Pandemic Upends Public Services and JobsAs a standoff over federal aid persists, state and local governments are making deep budget cuts. “Everything’s going to slow down,” one official said.Republican-led states that largely depend on energy-related taxes, like Wyoming, have been walloped by the sharp decline in oil prices.Credit…Stephen Speranza for The New York TimesBy More

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    Biden and His Economic Team Urge Quick Action on Stimulus as Risks Mount

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesFormal Transition BeginsBiden’s CabinetSecretary of StateElection ResultsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBiden and His Economic Team Urge Quick Action on Stimulus as Risks MountThe president-elect introduced key nominees in Delaware, while lawmakers exchanged new proposals with prospects for a deal still dim.President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. acknowledged that any stimulus agreement would necessarily fall far short of the trillions of dollars that Democratic leaders have insisted on for months.Credit…Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesBy More