U(D547FD)v+&!,!_!$!= Binyamin Appelbaum PAGE 6 SUNDAY REVIEW “Attached,” which was published in 2010, analyzes relationship styles and has people firmly in its grip. PAGE 12 SUNDAY STYLES Dating, by the Book An Atlanta district attorney is moving to call a special grand jury in her crimi- nal investigation of election interfer- ence by the former president. PAGE 14 NATIONAL 13-25 Grand Jury Looms for Trump The boldest experiment in democracy the world has ever seen could use a few new bold ideas. We’ve got some. SPECIAL SECTION Snap Out of It, America! What the film season holds, including Benedict Cumberbatch as a tough-guy rancher and Meryl Streep as president. ARTS & LEISURE Holiday Movies Boston set a goal for a racially diverse construction work force. But its bench- marks have proved difficult to meet. Are unions for the building trades still the main impediment? PAGE 1 SUNDAY BUSINESS Who Gets to Rebuild the U.S.? NFT.NYC, a conference that attracted 5,000 enthusiasts of nonfungible tokens (with a waiting list of 3,000), offered a taste of what a cryptocurrency-filled future might have to offer. PAGE 1 The Metaverse in Manhattan The Indigenous Enterprise troupe cares about tradition, but also embraces the footwork and attitude of hip-hop. PAGE 8 A New Kind of Tribal Dance Prairie View A&M, a historically Black university, is warily buoyant over a donation of $50 million. PAGE 1 A Big Gift Energizes a Campus An artist and an innkeeper have en- listed the help of a burro in an effort to rescue the ancient traditions of Spain’s pilgrimage route, Camino de Santiago, from mass tourism (and selfies). PAGE 4 INTERNATIONAL 4-12 On the Camino, With Donkey Americans are, by many meas- ures, in a better financial position than they have been in many years. They also believe the econ- omy is in terrible shape. This is the great contradiction that underlies President Biden’s poor approval ratings, recent Re- publican victories in state elec- tions and the touch-and-go negoti- ations over the Biden legislative agenda. It presents a fundamental challenge for economic policy, which has succeeded at lifting the wealth, incomes and job prospects of millions of people — but has not made Americans, in their own self-perception, any better off. Workers have seized the upper hand in the labor market, attain- ing the largest raises in decades and quitting their jobs at record rates. The unemployment rate is 4.6 percent and has been falling rapidly. Cumulatively, Americans are sitting on piles of cash; they have $2.3 trillion more in savings in the last 19 months than would have been expected in the prepan- demic path. The median house- hold’s checking account balance was 50 percent higher in July of this year than in 2019, according to the JPMorgan Chase Institute. Yet workers’ assessment of the economy is scathing. In a Gallup poll in October, 68 percent of respondents said they thought economic conditions America’s Economy Is Strong, Even if It Doesn’t Feel That Way By NEIL IRWIN Jobs are available, but infla- tion is making people uneasy. KENDRICK BRINSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page 18 WASHINGTON — Another showdown day over President Bi- den’s ambitious domestic agenda dawned Friday full of optimism, even after the drubbing that Dem- ocrats took in the off-year elec- tions on Tuesday. But by after- noon, lawmakers again seemed stuck when leaders of the Con- gressional Black Caucus entered Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. Seeking to bridge the gap be- tween a resolute clutch of balking Democratic moderates and a much larger group of liberals de- manding that the president’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan only pass concurrently with his $1.85 trillion social welfare and climate change bill, the Black lawmakers proposed a plan that initially seemed far too timid and convo- luted: pass the infrastructure bill immediately, then hold a good- faith procedural vote on the larger bill that would have to suffice be- fore its final vote in mid-Novem- ber. Ms. Pelosi agreed to the deal and then, tellingly, sent the low- key chairwoman of the Black Cau- cus, Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, out to waiting reporters to tell the world. In effect, the speaker had harnessed one fac- tion of her unruly Democrats to win over two others, and she un- derstood that the soft-spoken Afri- can American lawmaker might have had more influence at that point than she did. Nine hours later, at 11:20 p.m., House Democrats, with help from a few Republicans, sent to Mr. Bi- den the largest public works bill since President Dwight D. Eisen- hower created the Interstate Sys- tem. They also took a major step toward approving a stalled sweep- ing social safety net measure, pro- HOW BILL TO FIX INFRASTRUCTURE SURVIVED BRAWL PRESIDENT HAILS A WIN Black Caucus Opens Path for Factions to Agree on $1 Trillion Plan By JONATHAN WEISMAN and CARL HULSE Continued on Page 19 HOT SPRINGS, Va. — The in- creasingly liberal politics of Vir- ginia had been a sore spot for resi- dents of this conservative town of 499 people nestled in the Alleghe- ny Mountains. But this past week, as Republicans stormed to marquee victories powered in part by turnout in rural areas like Bath County, local voters cheered. “We got our Virginia back,” said Elaine Neff, a 61-year-old resi- dent. “And we haven’t had a win in a long time.” Ms. Neff said she cried from a mix of happiness and relief after the election. She does not want to take the coronavirus vaccine and believes Glenn Youngkin, the win- ning Republican candidate for governor, will relax state man- dates. Outside a nearby grocery store, Charles Hamilton taunted the Democrats. “We’re a county of old country folk who want to do what they want,” said Mr. Hamilton, 74. “They found out the hard way.” In the jigsaw puzzle that is elec- toral politics, Democrats have of- ten focused their energy on swingy suburbs and voter-rich cities, content to mostly ignore many white, rural communities that lean conservative. The belief was, in part, that the party had al- ready bottomed out there, espe- cially during the Trump era, when Republicans had run up the num- bers of white voters in rural areas to dizzying new heights. Virginia, however, is proof: It can get worse. In 2008, there were only four small Virginia counties where Re- publicans won 70 percent or more of the vote in that year’s presiden- tial race. Nowhere was the party above 75 percent. This year, Mr. Youngkin was above 70 percent in 45 counties — and he surpassed 80 percent in 15 of them. “Look at some of those rural counties in Virginia as a wake-up call,” said Steve Bullock, the Dem- ocratic former governor of Mon- tana who made a long-shot 2020 presidential run, partly on a mes- sage that his party needed to com- pete in more conservative parts of the country. “Folks don’t feel like we’re offering them anything, or hearing or listening to them.” Mr. Youngkin not only won less populated areas by record mar- gins — he was outpacing former In Rural Areas, Prospects Sink For Democrats Bottom May Be ‘Zero’ Among White Voters By ASTEAD W. HERNDON and SHANE GOLDMACHER Continued on Page 25 RINCÓN, P.R. — The turtle, pre- sumably, had no way of knowing it would become a symbol of protest this summer when it got stuck for hours in a construction site on a beach in western Puerto Rico, un- able to return to the sea. But the endangered hawksbill had wandered onto the site of a swimming pool being built so close to the ocean’s edge that a swimmer could practically step from the pool into the waves. A photo of the struggling turtle, its front flippers digging out of the sand, spoke emphatically for Puerto Ricans alarmed at what is happening to their beloved coast. Erosion and overdevelopment threaten Puerto Rico’s beautiful beaches. On an island that has struggled with bankruptcy, crum- bling infrastructure and the emi- gration of a substantial part of its population, the pristine sand and abundant wildlife that have made Puerto Rico’s beaches famous around the world are both a point of pride and an important tourism draw. Concerns over their future are decades old but have been exacer- bated in recent years by climate change, hurricanes and a frenzy of building and rebuilding that is re- shaping the island’s oceanfront. Gone, many Puerto Ricans fear, will be the last modest family homes and uncrowded stretches of habitat for hawksbill and leatherbacks. In their stead: lux- Can a Lone Turtle Save Puerto Rico’s Beaches? By PATRICIA MAZZEI Continued on Page 14 JOHNNY MILANO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Two reporters take a spin on the sprawling, new 750-mile Empire State Trail. Metropolitan, Page 1. Crossing New York on Two Wheels PHENIX CITY, Ala. — On a Sunday in May 2017, a patrol car sat outside the city’s oldest public housing project, waiting for anyone acting suspiciously. The two police officers heard Cedric Mifflin before they saw him, blasting music from a silver Mer- cury Grand Marquis. Then they tried to pull him over: He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Mr. Mifflin, a 27-year-old Black man, kept driving. What happened next is disputed, but how it ended is certain. Officer Michael Seavers leapt out of the patrol car, drew his gun and fired 16 times at the moving car. He thought Mr. Mifflin intended to run him over, he said later. “I had never felt the fear that I had at that moment,” Officer Seavers, who is white, told investigators in a statement. He said he thought of what a vehicle can do “to a hu- man body and how I would die if I didn’t re- act.” The officer’s defense of killing Mr. Mifflin, who wielded neither a gun nor a knife, is one repeated over and over across the country: The vehicle was a weapon. In a New York Times investigation of car stops that left more than 400 similarly unarmed people dead over the last five years, those words were routinely used to explain why police officers had fired at drivers. When asked in a deposition whether a man he had fatally shot in 2017 had used a weapon, an officer in Forest Park, Ill., an- swered, “Other than a moving vehicle, no.” Minutes after sheriff’s deputies near San Leandro, Calif., killed a shoplifting suspect and injured a passenger in an S.U.V. in early 2019, an officer asked what weapons they had been armed with. “A vehicle,” one depu- ty replied. And a lawyer for a sheriff’s deputy who shot a driver in Wichita, Kan., in late 2019 said the motorist had used “a 4,500-pound vehicle as a weapon.” In about 250 of the 400 seemingly avoid- able deaths, The Times found that police of- ficers had fired into vehicles that they later claimed posed such a threat. Relative to the population, Black motorists were overrep- resented among those killed. Like Mr. Mifflin, the other drivers had been pursued for nonviolent offenses, many of them minor. A seatbelt ticket in Phenix City that would have cost $41. A cracked tail- A Times investigation found that some officers had put themselves in danger when they shot. Others appeared to face no peril. KENNY HOLSTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES When Police Call a Car a Weapon A Common Defense in Fatal Shootings, but Officers Often Aren’t at Risk This article is by Kim Barker, Steve Eder, David D. Kirkpatrick and Arya Sundaram. Continued on Page 22 CLIMATE STRIDES The bill in- cludes $47 billion to prepare for the effects of warming. PAGE 19 STATES’ TO-DO LISTS Fix risky bridges and update aging water systems and airports. PAGE 13 HOUSTON — Panic and then desperation spread through the crowd of 50,000 mostly young peo- ple just as the popular hometown rapper they had come to see, Trav- is Scott, took the stage Friday night. It came like a wave, an un- stoppable movement of bodies that could not be held back. Some collapsed. Others fought for air. Concertgoers lifted up the unconscious bodies of friends and strangers and surfed them over the top of the crowd, hoping to send them to safety. Others shouted out for help with CPR and pleaded for the concert to stop. It kept going. In the end, eight people died, ranging in age from 14 to 27, ac- cording to city officials. Hundreds more were treated for injuries at a field hospital at the concert venue, the NRG Park in Houston, or at lo- cal hospitals. Among those treated at a hospital was a 10- year-old child. By Saturday, officials in Hous- ton were at a loss to explain how the concert, part of the two-day Astroworld music festival orga- nized by Live Nation and Mr. Scott, had transformed in an in- stant from a celebration to a strug- gle for life. So too were those who had been at the outdoor concert, who described a thrust of the crowd that would not let up as Mr. Scott took the stage around 9 p.m. Texas Concert Ends in Chaos And 8 Deaths By J. DAVID GOODMAN and MARIA JIMENEZ MOYA Continued on Page 20 There’s a stark gender and age differ- ence at the Glasgow summit. Young women are taking the lead on protests and the two sides have different views on what “urgent” action means. PAGE 12 Generations Clash on Climate A federal appeals panel has blocked for now the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for large businesses. PAGE 24 Vaccine Mandate Put on Hold Late Edition VOL. CLXXI . . . No. 59,235 © 2021 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2021 Today, mostly sunny skies, chilly, high 55. Tonight, clear to partly cloudy skies, low 42. Tomorrow, mostly sunny skies, windy, high 60. Weather map appears on Page 24. $6.00