The Daily

Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s plan for winning the presidential election relies on putting together African-American voters of all ages, including younger Black people who are less enthusiastic about him, and white moderates who find President Trump unacceptable. At last week’s Republican National Convention, the Trump campaign appeared to be sowing discord within that coalition...

This episode contains strong language. As a police officer in his hometown of Flint, Mich., Scott Watson has worked to become a pillar of the community, believing his identity has placed him in a unique position to do his job. He has given out his cellphone number, driven students to prom and provided food and money to those who were hungry. After watching the video of the killing of George Floyd, his identity as a Black police officer became a source of self-consciousness instead of pride...

Many American states use the labor of inmates to help fight its fires, but none so more than California. Using incarcerated firefighters saves the state’s taxpayers an estimated $100 million a year. The women that choose to enter the firefighting camps are afforded better pay, by prison standards, and an improved quality of time served...

For much of his life, Donald Trump Jr. has been disregarded by his father. He played only a bit part in the 2016 campaign and when the team departed for Washington, he was left to oversee a largely unimportant part of the Trump Organization. But after The New York Times revealed that he had played an integral role in organizing the Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and Russians promising information on Hillary Clinton, the younger Mr...

This episode contains strong language. The shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black father from Kenosha, Wis., by a white police officer has reverberated through the city, fueling protests and unrest. There have been marches and demonstrations, as well as instances of destruction: businesses and property set alight, fireworks launched at the police. On Tuesday night, a group of armed men, who claimed to be there to protect the community, arrived. Three protesters were shot, two of whom died...

At the 1968 Republican National Convention, Richard Nixon made an appeal to voters in the suburbs concerned about racial unrest across the United States after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. They helped deliver him the presidency that year, cementing suburbanites’ role as an integral voting bloc. The 2020 election is also taking place against a backdrop of mass protests and unrest over racial justice...

In the U.S., emergency-use authorization has been granted for convalescent plasma, the efficacy of which is yet to be robustly tested. For some, this echoes the situation with hydroxychloroquine and the government’s subsequent U-turn on its rollout. Meanwhile, America’s infection rate appears to be flattening out — but at tens of thousands of cases per day. This stands in stark contrast to China, where daily cases are under 40...

Gun violence is on the rise in New York City. By the end of July, there had been more shootings in 2020 than in all of 2019. Shootings have risen in other metropolises, too, including Atlanta, Chicago, Denver and Houston. Several theories have been advanced about why. Experts on crime say the coronavirus outbreak has deepened the endemic problems that often underlie gun violence, including poverty, unemployment, housing instability and hunger...

Much of the fashion industry has buckled under the weight of the coronavirus — it appears to have sped up the inevitable. This story was written by Irina Aleksander and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

When the coronavirus hit the United States, the N.B.A. was faced with a unique challenge. It seemed impossible to impose social distancing in basketball, an indoor sport with players almost constantly jostling one another for more than two hours. However, there was a big financial incentive to keep games going: ending the 2019 season early would have cost the league an estimated $1 billion in television revenue...