Postal Service Funding Dispute Complicates Impasse Over U.S. Virus Stimulus

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A dispute over Postal Service funding complicates the U.S. stimulus impasse as talks continue.

Top lawmakers remained nowhere close to an agreement on Wednesday for a new economic rescue package amid the recession, and appeared to be growing increasingly pessimistic that they could meet a self-imposed Friday deadline.

A dispute over funding for the United States Postal Service has joined expanded unemployment benefits and aid to state and local governments on the list of issues dividing Democratic leaders and the Trump administration.

“I feel optimistic that there is a light at the end of the tunnel,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said after hosting another round of talks in her Capitol Hill office with Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary; Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff; and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, the minority leader. “But how long that tunnel is remains to be seen,” Ms. Pelosi added.

On the Senate floor, Mr. Schumer called for the Postal Service to fix mail delays that have resulted from cutbacks that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy put in place during the pandemic. Democrats and voting rights groups have charged that the cuts are part of a deliberate effort by President Trump to undermine the service in order to interfere with mail-in voting that will be critical to a safe election in November. Democrats have called for $3.6 billion in the aid package to ensure a secure election, including broader mail balloting, but Republicans are opposing the funds.

Other outstanding disputes include whether to appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars to help states and local governments avoid laying off public workers as tax revenues fall, and whether to reinstate a $600 per week unemployment supplement from the federal government to laid-off workers.

Democrats are pressing to extend the payments, which lapsed last week, through January. Republicans on Tuesday countered with a plan to resume them at $400 per week through Dec. 15, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions who insisted on anonymity to describe them. Democrats declined the offer, they said.

“There are no top-line numbers that have been agreed to,” Mr. Meadows, the White House chief of staff, said after the Capitol Hill meeting, charging that Democrats were unwilling to make significant concessions. “We continue to be trillions of dollars apart in terms of what Democrats and Republicans hopefully will ultimately compromise on.”

“Is Friday a drop-dead date? No,” he added. “But my optimism continues to diminish the closer we get to Friday and certainly falls off the cliff exponentially after Friday.”

Mr. Trump on Wednesday again suggested that he would act on his own to impose a federal eviction moratorium and temporarily suspend payroll tax cuts if an agreement could not be reached. He also reiterated his opposition to a critical Democratic proposal to send more than $900 billion to state and local governments whose budgets have been devastated by the recession.

“We have some states and cities — you know them all — they’ve been very poorly run over the years,” he said. “We’re not going to go along with that.”

More than 53,720 cases and 1,250 deaths were reported on Wednesday in the United States. The U.S. Virgin Islands set a daily case record, and Florida became the second state after California to pass 500,000 confirmed infections.

Education roundup

After parents and teachers opposed a hybrid model, Chicago schools will reopen online only.

Public school students in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest district, will begin the academic year remotely in September, leaving New York City as the only major school system in the country that will try to offer in-person classes when schools start this fall.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago and Janice Jackson, the chief executive of Chicago Public Schools, made the announcement on Wednesday, as the Chicago Teachers Union was in the midst of tentative preparations for a strike over school safety.

“We have to be guided by the science, period,” Ms. Lightfoot said. “When we announced the potential for a hybrid model some weeks ago, we were in a very different place in the arc of the pandemic.” She added, “This was not an easy decision to make.”

Of the nation’s 25 largest school districts, only five now plan to open the school year with any form of in-person learning. Six of the seven largest will be online.

New York City schools, in the nation’s largest district, are scheduled to reopen in about a month, with students having the option of attending in-person classes one to three days a week. But the city is confronting a torrent of logistical issues and political problems that could upend Mayor Bill de Blasio’s efforts to bring students back to classrooms.

In other parts of the country where schools have already opened, they have quickly encountered positive cases, with some having to quarantine students and staff members and even close schools temporarily to contain possible outbreaks. On Tuesday, the second day of its school year, Cherokee County in Georgia closed a second-grade classroom after a student tested positive for the virus.

In other school news:

• Public schools in Arkansas must open for students five days a week when the school year begins on Aug. 24, state officials said on Wednesday. Districts should “allow for flexible schedules and virtual learning options, but must first provide an on-site option where students can access educational resources, school meals and other needed support daily,” the state’s Department of Education said in a statement, adding that some schools could open four days a week pending approval from the board.

• Boston Public Schools announced on Wednesday a draft plan for preliminary reopening that would permit schools to choose between remote learning and a blend of in-person and online instruction, meaning neighboring schools could be providing different options to families at the same time this fall. The district, the largest in Massachusetts, serves more than 50,000 students at more than 125 schools.

• For many students in Tennessee, the school year has already begun; some districts there open their doors in early August, sooner than in many other parts of the country. Already, several schools in the state have reported Covid-19 cases on their campuses. Some have enforced temporary closures in response, while others are trying to keep track of the infections through contact tracing and urging staff members and students who may have been exposed to stay home.

• In Maryland, Montgomery County officials have been wrangling with Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, over reopening private schools. Public schools in the county, the state’s most populous, will start the school year learning remotely, and county officials used a directive to make private schools do the same. Mr. Hogan overruled it, arguing that private schools should be free to make their own decisions. But on Wednesday, county officials issued a new order to keep them closed, citing a new authority under state law.

Virginia releases the first U.S. virus-exposure app to employ software from Apple and Google.

Virginia on Wednesday released the first app in the United States that employs new software from Apple and Google to notify users of their possible exposure to the coronavirus.

The announcement of the app, called Covidwise and developed by the Virginia Department of Health, comes two days after Alabama announced a test of a similar one also using the tech companies’ system.

Use is voluntary, but strongly encouraged, Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia said at a news conference. “I hope Virginians across the state will use this,” he said. “This is a way that we can all work together to contain this virus.”

China and other countries have used virus apps to impose new forms of social control. The Apple and Google software, by contrast, offers public health agencies a system with some built-in privacy protections.

Rather than continuously track users’ locations, which can reveal sensitive details about people’s routines, for instance, the Apple-Google software uses Bluetooth signals to detect app users whose smartphones come into proximity with one another. And it logs the contact with rotating ID codes, not personal information like names or phone numbers.

If app users later test positive, they can use the app to notify other users, such as strangers they had sat near to on a train, without sharing that information with government agencies.

Epidemiologists say such apps may be helpful in places with widespread, efficient testing and contact tracing, but they may offer little benefit when people have difficulty getting tested or face long waits for results.

The app can tell only whether two users have come into proximity with one another; it cannot tell whether they were wearing masks or take into account whether they were in a poorly ventilated restaurant or on an outdoor patio. And it cannot detect exposure to people who are not using it.

Even so, health agencies in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Switzerland and other European countries have recently introduced national virus-alert apps based on the Apple-Google software. Google said last week that 20 U.S. states were considering doing the same.

North Korea’s first suspected case has ‘inconclusive’ test results, the W.H.O. says.

Test results for North Korea’s first suspected coronavirus case were “inconclusive,” a World Health Organization official has said, after the case triggered quarantine orders for more than 3,600 people.

North Korea’s state-run news media has said the patient is a man who defected to South Korea three years ago but secretly crossed back to the border city of Kaesong last month. North Korea later declared a “maximum” national emergency and put Kaesong on lockdown.

North Korea, one of the world’s most isolated countries, has repeatedly said that it has no cases of the virus, but outside experts are skeptical. The local news media said last week that the national caseload was still zero, without providing further details on what happened to the man.

Dr. Edwin Salvador, a W.H.O. representative to North Korea, said in a statement on Thursday that the test results for the man remained “inconclusive.” Extensive contact tracing is underway, he added, with 64 of the man’s first contacts and 3,571 secondary ones under quarantine in government facilities for 40 days.

Dr. Salvador said in a separate statement that hundreds of workers at a North Korean seaport and at the border with the Chinese city of Dandong who came into contact with imported goods have also been quarantined.

North Korea’s authoritarian government has adopted drastic measures against the virus, including sealing its borders in January and closing off business with China, which accounts for 90 percent of its external trade.

A coronavirus outbreak could further damage the North’s economy, which is already hobbled by international sanctions, and strain its woefully underequipped public health system. Dr. Salvador said the government had designated 15 laboratories for Covid-19 testing, and that all schools were on an extended summer break.

Los Angeles may cut off electricity to homes that host large parties.

Eric M. Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, said on Wednesday that the city could cut off power to homes or business that host large gatherings in defiance of public health guidelines.

Large gatherings in private homes are banned under Los Angeles County’s public health orders because of the pandemic, but there have been a number of reports of parties in recent weeks. One party that drew a large group to a mansion on Mulholland Drive on Monday night devolved into chaos and gunfire after midnight, leaving five people wounded, one of whom later died, the authorities said.

“These large parties are unsafe and can cost Angelenos their lives,” Mr. Garcetti said at a news conference on Wednesday. “That is why, tonight, I am authorizing the city to shut off Los Angeles Department of Water and Power service in the egregious cases in which houses, businesses and other venues are hosting unpermitted large gatherings.”

He said that beginning on Friday night, “if the L.A.P.D. responds and verifies that a large gathering is occurring at a property, and we see these properties reoffending time and time again, they will provide notice and initiate the process to request that D.W.P. shut off service within the next 48 hours.”

He added that this would not apply to small home gatherings, though he urged residents to avoid those, too.

“Some research has shown that 10 percent of people cause 80 percent of the spread,” Mr. Garcetti said. “These super-spreader events and super-spreader people have a disproportionate impact on the lives that we are losing, and we cannot let that happen like we saw on Mullholland Drive on Monday night.”

A surge in coronavirus cases since mid-June in California has prompted officials to reconsider their moves to loosen some restrictions. California surpassed New York last month as the state with the highest number of coronavirus cases.

global roundup

Welcome back to Germany. Now take your free virus test.

As Europe reopens, cases have begun ticking up nearly everywhere, in varying degrees, leaving countries in a constant, seesaw battle to tamp down outbreaks before they undo months of hard-won progress made during costly lockdowns this spring.

Germany is no exception. This week, it recorded 879 new coronavirus infections in one day, part of a rising trend that has begun to worry officials as people return from trips abroad during the summer vacation season.

To address that concern, Germany this week began requiring virus testing for all travelers who enter the country from coronavirus “hot spots,” again making it a leader in using testing as a firewall against the spread of the virus. It has set up free testing sites at airports and border crossings. Results come back in a day or two.

Germany has made testing a primary tool in its battle against the virus since the start of the pandemic, and its capacity to make testing accessible and efficient has distinguished it among industrialized nations.

In other world news:

• The central Japanese prefecture of Aichi declared a state of emergency on Thursday, after a rise in infections since mid-July. The order, which will last until Aug. 24, coincides with the Obon festival, in which people across Japan typically travel to see their families and honor the spirits of their ancestors.

• The economy of the Philippines contracted by 16.5 percent in the second quarter, its slowest quarterly growth rate since 1981, officials said on Thursday. The drop was “a bit steeper than most projections,” said Astro del Castillo, a financial analyst. The Southeast Asian country, whose capital returned to lockdown this week, has more than 115,000 cases.

• The number of virus deaths around the world passed 700,000 on Wednesday, according to a New York Times database. The virus has sickened more than 18.5 million people. Almost twice as many countries have reported a significant rise in new cases over the past two weeks as have reported significant declines, according to the database.

• About one-third of Afghanistan’s population, or roughly 10 million people, have probably been infected by the virus and recovered, the health ministry said on Wednesday, based on a household survey that deployed rapid tests for antibodies. Kabul, the capital, with more than five million people, has been hit worst, with about 53 percent of its residents infected.

Kenya’s unusual approach to the school problem: Cancel the year and start over.

For Kenyan students, 2020 is turning out to be the year that disappeared.

Education officials announced in July that they were canceling the academic year and making students repeat it. They are not expected to begin classes again until January, the usual start of Kenya’s school year.

Experts believe Kenya is the only nation to have gone so far as to declare the entire school year a washout.

“It’s a sad and great loss,” said Esther Adhiambo, 18, who had expected to finish high school and enroll in university this year. “This pandemic has destroyed everything.”

The decision to scrap the academic year, taken after a monthslong debate, was made not just to protect teachers and students from the coronavirus, but also to address glaring issues of inequality that arose when school was suspended in March, said George Magoha, the education secretary. After schools closed, some students had the technology to access remote learning, but others didn’t.

But while the goal was to level the playing field, researchers say it might just widen already-existing gaps. Once schools reopen, the two sets of students will not be on the same level or able to compete equally in national exams, education experts said.

The decision affects more than 90,000 schools and over 18 million students in pre-primary through high school, including 150,000 more in refugee camps, according to the education ministry. Universities and colleges are also closed for physical classes until January, but can continue holding virtual instruction and graduations.

Myanmar jails a Canadian pastor for attending a large gathering.

A pastor from Canada, who contracted the virus in Myanmar after preaching that Christians were immune to it, was sentenced to three months in prison on Thursday for violating the country’s strict rule against large gatherings.

The Myanmar-born preacher, David Lah, was found guilty of attending a 27-day Christian gathering in Yangon, the country’s largest city, that began in March and is blamed for spreading the virus to at least 72 people.

At the time, the government had prohibited gatherings of five or more people in an effort to contain the virus. The limit on gatherings was raised last week to 15.

The spring gathering, where Mr. Lah was a featured speaker, is Myanmar’s biggest known coronavirus cluster so far. Mr. Lah was diagnosed with Covid-19 days after it ended.

In one of his sermons at the gathering, he claimed that the coronavirus had leaked from a “nuclear biological weapon” but that those who believed in God would be spared.

“For anyone who hears the word of God,” he said, “that disease will never come and infect you.”

One of Myanmar’s two vice presidents, U Henry Van Thio, was tested for the disease after meeting separately with Mr. Lah, the authorities said. His test result was negative.

Mr. Lah, who has been imprisoned since May 20 awaiting trial, will be released in two weeks. U Wai Tun, who organized the event and played drums there, was also convicted and sentenced to three months.

Christians, who make up 6 percent of Myanmar’s population, are the largest religious minority in the predominantly Buddhist nation.

As of Thursday, Myanmar had reported 357 coronavirus cases and 6 deaths. Its testing rate — 2,219 per million people — is among the lowest in the world.

Health experts ask the F.D.A. to make vaccine deliberations public.

A letter signed by nearly 400 health experts on Wednesday night urged the Food and Drug Administration to conduct full safety and efficacy reviews of potential coronavirus vaccines before making the products widely available to the public.

The group called on Dr. Stephen Hahn, the F.D.A. commissioner, to be forthcoming about the agency’s deliberations over whether to approve any new vaccine, in order to gain the public’s trust.

“We must be able to explain to the public what we know and what we don’t know about these vaccines,” noted the letter, which was organized by the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest. “For that to happen, we must be able to witness a transparent and rigorous F.D.A. approval process that is devoid of political considerations.”

More than 30 experimental coronavirus vaccines are in clinical trials, with several companies racing to have the first product in the United States ready by the end of the year. The federal government has promised more than $9 billion to companies for these efforts to date. But many people are highly skeptical of these new vaccines, and might refuse to get them.

In an effort to reassure the public, Dr. Hahn said recently that he would seek the advice of the F.D.A.’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, although he has not said when the group would meet or which vaccine candidates it would consider.

The F.D.A. declined to comment on the letter Wednesday evening.

N.Y.C. will set up checkpoints to inform travelers about state quarantine rules.

New York City will set up checkpoints at major bridge and tunnel crossings to inform those entering the city about a state requirement that travelers from dozens of other states quarantine for 14 days upon arrival, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Wednesday.

The announcement conjured images of police officers stopping cars and detaining people from out of state. The reality may be a lot less stark — and a lot more confusing.

The authorities will not be stopping every car. They will probably not be at every crossing on any given day. The Police Department will not even be involved. The checkpoints, run by the city’s Sheriff’s Office, will focus on informing travelers about the rules.

The state’s restrictions have been in place since late June, and have applied to travelers entering New York by road or rail, but the enforcement efforts have so far focused mostly on airports. As cases surged across the country, however, officials have grown worried about the prospect of another widespread outbreak in New York.

As of Tuesday, travelers from 34 states and Puerto Rico, where virus cases have risen, are subject to the quarantine. And as of this week, a fifth of all new cases in the city were coming from out-of-state travelers, said Ted Long, the executive director of the city’s contact tracing program.

At the bridge and tunnel checkpoints, officers will stop a random sampling of vehicles, the city’s sheriff, Joseph Fucito, said. The effort will begin on Wednesday.

Officers will then ask travelers coming from designated states to fill out forms with their personal information and provide them with details about the state’s quarantine rules, officials said.

Laura Feyer, a spokeswoman for Mr. de Blasio, said that the city would most likely not announce where the checkpoints would be so that motorists would not try to route around them.

A Republican congressman who pushed for routine Covid testing on Capitol Hill tests positive.

Representative Rodney Davis of Illinois, the top Republican on the House Administration Committee, tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday, becoming the third member of Congress in one week to be found to have the virus.

Mr. Davis said in a statement from his home in Taylorville that he tested positive after taking a routine temperature check and noticing a higher-than-normal reading. He said that his wife and aides with whom he worked this week had tested negative and added that he would quarantine at home.

“During these challenging times, protecting the public health is my highest priority,” Mr. Davis said. “If you’re out in public, use social distancing, and when you can’t social-distance, please wear a mask.”

Mr. Davis had pressed for routine testing procedures on Capitol Hill, where leaders in the House and the Senate have repeatedly declined to put in place a campuswide testing program for lawmakers and their aides.

The congressman reiterated his concern about a lack of testing in Congress last week after Representative Louie Gohmert, Republican of Texas, was found to have the virus at the White House, sending dozens more aides, reporters and the attorney general scrambling to be tested.

Representative Raúl Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona and the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, interacted with Mr. Gohmert at length during a hearing held by the panel and tested positive shortly after his diagnosis

U.S. ROUNDUP

Major U.S. health insurers are reporting big profits, benefiting from the pandemic.

The leading U.S. health insurers are experiencing an embarrassment of profits.

Some of the largest companies, including Anthem, Humana and UnitedHealth Group, are reporting second-quarter earnings that are double what they were a year ago.

On Wednesday, CVS Health, which owns Aetna, the big insurer, said net income for the second quarter reached $3 billion, about $1 billion more than it reported for the same period of 2019, on revenues of $65 billion. Others had already trumpeted blockbuster results, ensuring that their stocks weather swings in the markets.

Insurance profits are capped under the Affordable Care Act, with the requirement that consumers should benefit from such excesses in the form of rebates. The Health and Human Services Department advised companies to consider speeding up rebates, and on Tuesday, suggested they reduce premiums to help consumers through the economic downturn.

Although many hospitals have been overwhelmed by outbreaks, insurers have shelled out billions of dollars less in medical claims in the last three months as many expensive, elective surgeries have been postponed and people have steered clear of doctors’ offices and emergency rooms out of fear of contracting the virus.

The companies’ staggering pandemic profits put a spotlight on big insurance companies as government officials in many states face huge budget shortfalls. Some states are discussing cutting payments to insurers that offer Medicaid plans to their residents.

“This could tilt the politics against insurers on a whole number of fronts,” said Larry Levitt, the executive vice president for health policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. Others say it could revive support for “Medicare for all,” a proposal to replace the private health care system with a government one guaranteeing coverage for all U.S. residents.

Elsewhere in the U.S.:

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a formal warning on Wednesday about the dangers of drinking hand sanitizer, after four people died and nearly a dozen became ill. The C.D.C. told poison control centers across the nation to be on the lookout for cases of methanol toxicity.

• Facebook took down a video posted by the campaign of Mr. Trump on Wednesday in which he claimed children were immune to the coronavirus, a violation of the social network’s rules against misinformation around the virus. It was the first time Facebook has removed a post by Mr. Trump’s campaign for spreading misinformation about the virus, though the social network has previously taken down other ads and posts by the campaign for violating other policies.

• The leadership of the National Governors Association passed on Wednesday to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, who has frequently sparred with Mr. Trump. Mr. Cuomo, a moderate Democrat, succeeds Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a moderate Republican. Both have been outspoken critics of the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic, and both have called for the federal government to provide much more assistance to the states.

• Democrats are once again dialing back plans for their party convention, announcing on Wednesday that the event will effectively be entirely virtual. On the advice of health officials working for the party, no national Democratic officials — not even former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — will travel to the event from out of state to participate in events. Mr. Biden will accept the party’s presidential nomination from his home state, Delaware.

• On Wednesday, Republican planners released a list of safety measures intended to prevent the spread of the virus at their national convention. They include a mandatory mask requirement, daily temperature checks, “robust” training of delegates, social distancing and a requirement that anyone planning to attend events in the North Carolina part of the event test negative in advance.

• Florida on Wednesday topped more than 500,000 known virus cases, joining California in being the only states to surpass the grim milestone. The two states are among the hardest hit areas that have seen spikes in new cases this summer. Combined, California’s and Florida’s total case count represents nearly a quarter of the total cases in the United States.

• Arizona was leading the country in cases just a few weeks ago, and reeling from a surge in deaths after Gov. Doug Ducey quickly reopened the state in late spring. But the state is now showing encouraging signs of curbing the growth of outbreaks, after Governor Ducey, a Republican, reversed some of his policies. “There’s a real path forward and a common-sense approach,” Mr. Ducey said during a meeting at the White House with Mr. Trump and Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, both of whom praised the governor.

• In New Jersey, the health commissioner said Wednesday that a 7-month-old baby died and subsequently tested positive for the virus, though it was unclear what the primary cause of death was. The governor also said full reports overnight from hospitals affected by power outages related to the storm had been delayed on the number of virus patients hospitalized and lab-confirmed virus deaths.

• The U.S. federal government has committed just over $1 billion to Johnson & Johnson for up to 100 million doses of its experimental coronavirus vaccine, the company announced Wednesday.

• The Ensign Group Inc., a national nursing-home chain, has returned $109 million in federal coronavirus relief funds that it never sought and wasn’t using as Congress intended, following a congressional inquiry. Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, announced the return of the funds on Wednesday, urging all health care providers to use federal funding for “lawful purposes” or “return the funds immediately.”

The biggest cities in the Netherlands require masks, but only in some places.

Face masks became mandatory in some places in Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands on Wednesday for everyone over the age of 13.

There is no national mask mandate outside of public transit in the Netherlands, but last week local governments were given the power to issue mask orders. The mayors of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, the two largest cities in the country, both with rising case numbers, took action.

In Rotterdam, masks will be required in designated busy areas in the city’s center, including indoor shopping malls and street markets. In Amsterdam, the masks will have to be worn in designated locations, including in two markets and the Red Light district.

The Albert Cuyp Market, one of Amsterdam’s most famous street markets and a popular tourist attraction, is one of those places. On the day before the rule was set to take effect, small groups of people strolled the largely empty street.

“We don’t like it,” said Anuscka de Graaf, who has sold cheese on the market for 10 years. Face masks aren’t really necessary on the open-air market, she said, and they would probably hurt business.

Others, though, saw the benefits of the masks.

“We will wear face masks, we should,” said Mohammad al-Zobai, 30, who works for a stand that serves coffee and sandwiches. “It’s good for us,” he said. “I’m with the government on this.”

He said that the face masks would make him feel safer. “I saw the numbers,” he said. “People should be worried.”

Masks are not mandatory in museums, gyms, or hospitality establishments, like hotels or cafes.

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Reporting was contributed by Fahim Abed, Reed Abelson, Alan Blinder, Julie Bosman, Luke Broadwater, Emily Cochrane, Lindsey Cook, Nick Corasaniti, Melissa Eddy, Catie Edmondson, Reid J. Epstein, Nicholas Fandos, Manny Fernandez, Jacey Fortin, Hailey Fuchs, Katie Glueck, Michael Gold, Jason Gutierrez, Virginia Hughes, Sheila Kaplan, Juliana Kim, Abdi Latif Dahir, Lisa Lerer, Dan Levin, Mujib Mashal, Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, Sarah Mervosh, Raphael Minder, Claire Moses, Richard C. Paddock, Tara Parker-Pope, Amy Qin, Saw Nang, Simon Romero, Eliza Shapiro, Michael D. Shear, Natasha Singer, Kaly Soto, Eileen Sullivan, Katie Thomas, Glenn Thrush, Kenneth P. Vogel, Mary Williams Walsh, Noah Weiland, Will Wright, Billy Witz and Elaine Yu.