U(DF463D)X+%!\!,!?!" LAKE CHARLES, La. — Soon after Hurricane Laura slammed into the Louisiana coast in the dark of night, a city of oil refineries and casinos some 30 miles inland awakened to scenes of unfolding chaos: A 22-story contemporary office tower in Lake Charles with windows stripped and smashed. A casino boat, wedged under the bridge over the Calcasieu River. Plumes of dark gray smoke from a chemical fire staining the blue of a post-storm sky. Wind gusts, measured at up to 132 miles per hour at the local air- port, sheared the top of a sky bridge, tossed an R.V. on its side and downed power lines and trees. It even toppled a soaring monument to Confederate sol- diers that the Calcasieu Parish Po- lice Jury had declined to take down this month despite calls to do so from Black Lives Matter ac- tivists. John O’Donnell, 33, a leader- ship consultant who had fled Lake Charles earlier in the week with a bottle of bourbon and a cowboy hat in his passenger seat, was back in town on Thursday morn- ing surveying the large hole in the roof of his home and taking stock of his downtown block, a mess of After Storm, Shattered Towers and Vagrant Boats This article is by Rick Rojas, Manny Fernandez and Richard Fausset. Search-and-rescue helicopters flew low Thursday over Holly Beach, La., a small coastal community. MATTHEW BUSCH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Hurricane Laura Strews Ruin in Louisiana as It Heads Inland Continued on Page A22 LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — George Hill is hardly the biggest star in professional basketball. But he was the one who took the lead when a handful of players on the Milwaukee Bucks began talk- ing about the police shooting of Ja- cob Blake a few days earlier in Wisconsin. The players, led by Mr. Hill, im- plored their teammates not to play in their playoff game on Wednesday, believing they had a responsibility to make a state- ment about how the police treat Black people. What they envisioned — a one game, on-the-fly protest — in- stead inspired one of the broadest political statements across sports leagues that the United States had ever seen: walkouts involving hundreds of athletes in profes- sional men’s and women’s basket- ball, baseball and soccer, as well as one of the world’s biggest stars in tennis. LeBron James, basketball’s most famous athlete, said on Twit- ter that change “happens with ac- tion and needs to happen NOW!” President Trump, who had previ- ously attacked the league and had publicly sparred with Mr. James, who plays for the Los Angeles Lakers, said people were “a little tired of the N.B.A.” By Thursday afternoon, the N.B.A. players had pledged to re- turn to play, according to three With Walkouts, N.B.A. Players Jolt Pro Sports This article is by Marc Stein, Sopan Deb and Alan Blinder. Continued on Page A20 He signed up to be a cadet in a program for teenagers who aspire to be police officers. He filled his Facebook page with support for Blue Lives Matter. He sat upfront at a rally for President Trump in January, and posted images of it on TikTok. And he chose to mark his 16th birthday by raising funds for a support group for the police called Humanizing the Badge. Now, at age 17, Kyle H. Ritten- house is charged with homicide in a shooting that took place as coun- terprotesters sparred with dem- onstrators in Kenosha, Wis. He was there on Tuesday night as demonstrators filled the streets to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white po- lice officer. Mr. Rittenhouse, who is white, was carrying a military- style rifle and a medical kit, and stood amid a group of armed men who declared that they were pro- tecting the area from fires and looting in protests that had turned destructive on earlier nights. “People are getting injured and our job is to protect this business,” Mr. Rittenhouse said early that evening in an interview with The Daily Caller, an online news and opinion site. He had come to Kenosha from his home in Antioch, Ill., 30 min- utes away. “Part of my job also is to protect people,” he said. “If someone is hurt, I’m running into harm’s way. That’s why I have my rifle; I’ve got to protect myself ob- viously. But I also have my med kit.” Teen Suspect In Two Killings Lionized Police By NEIL MacFARQUHAR Continued on Page A19 Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, announced a major shift in how the central bank guides the economy, signal- ing it will make job growth pre- eminent and will not raise interest rates to guard against coming in- flation just because the unemploy- ment rate is low. In emphasizing the importance of a strong labor market and say- ing the Fed will tolerate slightly faster price gains, Mr. Powell and his colleagues laid the ground- work for years of low interest rates. That could translate into long periods of cheap mortgages and business loans that foster strong demand and a solid job market. The changes, which Mr. Powell detailed at the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole policy sym- posium, follows a year-and-a-half long review of the central bank’s monetary policy strategy. In con- junction with his remarks, the Fed released an outline of its long-run policy plan. “Our revised statement empha- sizes that maximum employment is a broad-based and inclusive goal,” Mr. Powell said in the re- marks. “This change reflects our appreciation for the benefits of a strong labor market, particularly for many in low- and moderate-in- come communities.” Market reaction to Mr. Powell’s announcement was mixed. In- vestors had already penciled in years of rock-bottom interest Fed Chair Paves Way for a Period Of Lower Rates By JEANNA SMIALEK Continued on Page A21 ances, a person of empathy and good character. Ben Carson, the lone Black member of Mr. Trump’s cabinet, argued that people who call the president a racist “could not be more wrong.” It was not only on matters of character that voters were asked to trust the assertions of Mr. Trump’s family members and po- litical allies over their own percep- tions of reality. On no subject was that dynamic more dominant than the coronavirus pandemic: With only a few exceptions, nearly ev- ery speaker who mentioned the virus sidestepped the scale of its devastation and what is likely to be a slow and painful recovery. Several speakers, including Vice President Mike Pence, hailed Mr. Trump as a Churchillian leader in the most trying of times. It was an attempt — not through the deft deployment of facts but through sheer force of assertion — to persuade the majority of voters who believe Mr. Trump misman- aged the coronavirus crisis that, in fact, the opposite is true. The very staging of the conven- tion on Thursday appeared de- signed to send a signal that the vi- rus was a thing of the past, even as the U.S. death toll neared 180,000. President Trump accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for a second term on Thursday, joining a general-election contest against Joseph R. Biden Jr. that he and his party cast this week as a crusade against left-wing ideol- ogy and violent social disorder, fought against the backdrop of a virus that Republicans largely de- scribed as a temporary handicap on the economy. In the run-up to Mr. Trump’s cli- mactic speech, his party delivered a drumbeat of attacks on Mr. Bi- den, the Democratic nominee, and his party, accusing them of sym- pathizing with violent rioters rather than police officers, and of harboring designs for a drastic re- structuring of the American eco- nomic system along socialist lines. Republicans drew a harsh caricature of Mr. Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris of California, who are both center-left lawmakers with politi- cally conventional positions on criminal justice. Mr. Trump, by contrast, was placed in the role of a defender of traditional American values and an unbending ally of the police. “Your vote will decide whether we protect law abiding Ameri- cans, or whether we give free rein to violent anarchists, agitators, and criminals who threaten our citizens,’’ Mr. Trump said, stand- ing on a stage on the South Lawn of the White House. “And this elec- tion will decide whether we will defend the American Way of Life, or whether we allow a radical movement to completely disman- tle and destroy it. That won’t hap- pen.’’ Much of the night was given over to unusually explicit rebut- tals to Mr. Trump’s vulnerabili- ties: Seldom if ever has a political party spent so much time during a convention insisting in explicit terms that its nominee was not a racist or a sexist, and that he was, perhaps despite public appear- ACCEPTING BID, TRUMP PAINTS BIDEN AS UNSAFE Falsely Warning of Support for ‘Anarchists’ as He Shows His Grip on the G.O.P. By ALEXANDER BURNS and MAGGIE HABERMAN Preparing the South Lawn for the president’s address. ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page A12 WASHINGTON — For a man on the edge of history, President Trump sounded calm and relaxed. If he believes that he is on the verge of losing, he betrayed no sign of it. Instead, he trotted out one of his favorite polls, boasted about his popularity with Republi- can voters and talked about his convention’s television ratings. His presidency, he declared in an interview this week, has produced “an incredible result.” The stock markets are “pretty amazing,” the Republican Na- tional Convention has been “very successful,” and he has “done a very good job” of handling the co- ronavirus pandemic even though more than 180,000 Americans are dead. At the same time, he said, he has endured “terrible things” by his “maniac” opponents. After nearly four years in office, Mr. Trump heads into the fall cam- paign with a striking blend of braggadocio and grievance, a man of extremes who claims one moment to have accomplished more than virtually any other president even as he complains moments later that he has also suffered more than any of them. He inhabits a world of his own making, sometimes untethered from the reality recognized by others. He has imposed his will on Washington and the world like no one else. While previous presidents evolved in office as they learned the mechanisms of power and ad- justed their goals by the time they claimed renomination, Mr. Trump remains the same polarizing, dominating force of nature who got up four years ago and asserted that “I alone can fix it.” He has not tempered with age nor bent to convention nor been chastened by impeachment. He says he still considers himself “an outsider” even while occupying the highest office in the land. In the course of a 40-minute telephone call on Wednesday, Mr. Trump struggled to describe how he has changed. “I think I’ve just become more guarded than I was four years ago,” he offered, a curi- ous notion for the least-guarded man to sit in the Oval Office in a lifetime. “I think I really am a little bit more circumspect.” By that he seemed to mean that President Is Unchastened by Time in Office, Even Impeachment By PETER BAKER President Trump, in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention Thursday, again cast himself as a law-and-order candidate. ANNA MONEYMAKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page A11 He Boasts of Exploits and Complains of Perceived Slights Héctor Zamora’s “Lattice Detour” at the Met is a monument to openness over enclosure. It’s also fraught with political meaning, Holland Cotter says. PAGE C14 WEEKEND ARTS C1-14 A Wall on the Roof Flash floods carved out new streets and erased homes in Charikar, above, an Afghan city of 200,000. PAGE A8 INTERNATIONAL A7-9 ‘I Lost Everyone’ Unmowed lawns, unemptied garbage bins and littered playgrounds clutter New York City’s green spaces. PAGE A6 TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-6 Budget Cuts Take Toll on Parks Investigators suspect arson for a July blaze that rendered the warship Bon- homme Richard inoperative. PAGE A21 NATIONAL A18-23 Navy Quizzes Sailor Over Fire The tournament, which is set to begin Monday, may be lacking some star power amid the pandemic, but plenty of intriguing story lines remain. PAGE B14 SPORTSFRIDAY B10-15 U.S. Open Draw Is Set Bill Arnett traveled the South to find brilliant works by self-taught African- American artists who often used scav- enged materials. He was 81. PAGE A24 OBITUARIES A24-25 Collector of Black Art A sharp drop in the value of the lira is imperiling the economy and testing businesses and residents while they are coping with the pandemic. PAGE B1 BUSINESS B1-7 Turkey’s New Currency Crisis Anti-authoritarian unrest in perhaps his closest neighbor poses a dilemma for the Russian president. PAGE A7 Putin Warns Belarus Protesters The retail giant is joining with Micro- soft, against Oracle, in a bid to buy the Chinese-owned video app. PAGE B1 Walmart Joins TikTok Talks With the White House blocking the way to network news, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci speaks wherever he can. PAGE A5 Dr. Fauci’s Media Odyssey David Brooks PAGE A26 EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27 VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,799 © 2020 The New York Times Company FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 2020 Printed in Chicago $3.00 Mostly cloudy north. Clouds and sunshine south. Record-challenging heat. Heavy thunderstorms, poten- tially severe north. Highs in upper 80s to 90s. Weather map, Page B16. National Edition