presidential daily brief

The tables have turned. Now America’s largest city is no longer the world’s worst COVID-19 hot spot. New York-area governors say they’ll impose two-week quarantines on visitors from states with major outbreaks. Having dropped from 10,000 daily cases to a few hundred, governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut want to prevent the contagion’s revival by targeting eight states, including hard-hit Arizona, Florida and Texas, for travel restrictions. Fortunately, deaths in those states aren’t surging with new cases, but experts say it’s likely they will in coming weeks.

OZY’s Butterfly Effect argues: Listen to pandemic fighters.

It’s not just a moment, it’s a movement. Progressive Black middle-school principal Jamaal Bowman has apparently defeated three-decade Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel in their New York primary. Bowman, who was backed by left-wing firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, now looks as though he’ll be following her to Congress. Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, won her own race handily — and she and Bowman could lead a burgeoning coalition of far-left youthful politicos. Engel’s defeat will mean his role as head of the Foreign Affairs Committee is up for grabs, which could set up a scramble for dominance among longtime Democratic House leaders.

At a Wednesday press conference, Tucson, Arizona, Chief Chris Magnus offered his resignation as he revealed disturbing body camera footage of the death of a 27-year-old Latino man in police custody. The move comes more than two months after Carlos Ingram-Lopez died while being arrested as officers held him handcuffed and face down for 12 minutes. Ingram-Lopez was clearly distressed and repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe before he went into cardiac arrest. Mayor Regina Romero, who said she was “deeply troubled and outraged,” has not yet accepted Magnus’ resignation. The three officers involved all quit last week.

Immunity isn’t certain. That also goes for equity markets that have seemed content that the pandemic’s first wave was receding. Yesterday, with news of climbing infections and backtracking on reopening plans in some U.S. states, Wall Street swooned. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones indexes dropped 2.6 percent and 2.7 percent respectively, followed by Asian markets declining today while European markets rose in early trading. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund said it expects a worldwide recession to take $12 trillion out of the global economy.

A U.S. prosecutor told a House committee Wednesday that the Department of Justice pressured him to be lenient toward President Donald Trump’s longtime associate Roger Stone. Russians began voting today on constitutional reforms that could prolong President Vladimir Putin’s leadership. And Jessi Combs has been declared the new women’s land speed record-holder, after evaluation of her 522.78 mph Oregon drive that killed her in August.

Coronavirus update: Systems that circulate cool air in meat processing plants may be a factor in outbreaks that have plagued such facilities around the world, a German public health authority warns.

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In another symptom of health care providers’ struggle to combat the pandemic, “demand is currently outstripping supply” of oxygen concentrators, World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom said Wednesday. Just as hospitals around the world have struggled with respirator shortages, now there’s not enough oxygen concentrators to support COVID-19 patients’ struggling lungs. The WHO plans to send 14,000 devices to 120 countries in the coming weeks and will spend $100 million obtaining 170,000 more. But that won’t be soon enough for many, as confirmed cases approach 10 million, of whom 480,000 have died.

Check out all OZY’s coronavirus coverage here.

Saniniu Laizer won’t be needing that pickaxe anymore. The subsistence miner is now a billionaire — in local shillings — after the Tanzanian government handed him a check equaling $3.35 million. It’s payment for the two largest known chunks of tanzanite, mined only in a small part of the country’s north. The gemstones Laizer uncovered weigh 21.4 and 11.2 pounds, beating the previous record of 7.4 pounds. Payment for the forearm-sized gemstones should come in handy. He could, for instance, now set up a fund for some of his 30 children.

Read this OZY profile of a self-made mineral magnate.

Hard times militate for soft power. The fossil fuel-enriched United Arab Emirates is finding the pandemic an opportune moment in history to buy its way out of Saudi Arabia’s massive shadow, OZY reports. From Bangladesh to Colombia, the Emirati government is dispensing medical supplies and other aid where COVID-19’s ravages and its economic interests converge. Even advanced economies like the U.S., Italy and Switzerland are among the 38 nations receiving Emirati help. While the UAE’s aim of becoming a “soft power superpower” may be more than it can afford, it certainly won’t hurt at future negotiating tables.

Ad people hawking Geico homeowners’ insurance discovered that it’s one thing to mention a pillow fort and quite another to name it “Fort Pillow.” A historian who heard the ad on the radio was horrified that, as America grapples with racial injustice, the spot conjured up the Tennessee site where 300 surrendering Black Union soldiers were massacred in 1864 by troops led by seminal KKK organizer Nathan Bedford Forrest. Geico hasn’t commented, but the ad disappeared from the company’s website, and its writer, professing ignorance of the reference, said the ad is now off the air.

Check out all OZY’s race coverage here.

She died as she lived: pushing boundaries. Veteran Paralympian Angela Madsen, 60, wanted to be the first paraplegic, openly gay and oldest woman to row herself across the Pacific. But word emerged yesterday that she had died after trying to fix an anchor on her vessel, RowofLife, nearly halfway from Los Angeles to Hawaii. Her wife, Debra, became concerned when Madsen stopped communicating Saturday, and by Monday, a Coast Guard plane spotted her lifeless body in the water. Those mourning her passing were at least comforted, as Debra posted, that “Angela was living her dream.”