U(D54G1D)y+\!?!%!$!" Tamales, along with the cultures and microeconomies that they sustain, are essential to the city, even during a pandemic. PAGE D1 FOOD D1-8 A Delicious Dish in Los Angeles Trying to rescue the small apes in Thai- land has proved to be tricky, and some critics say it’s misguided. PAGE A14 INTERNATIONAL A8-14 Gibbons Await a New Home Devices to measure oxygen levels in the blood give misleading readings of Black patients, a study showed. PAGE A4 TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-7 Pulse Oximeter Errors The N.F.L. team everybody outside New England loves to hate collapsed in two ways, Mike Tanier writes: gradual- ly, and then suddenly. PAGE B8 SPORTSWEDNESDAY B8-10 The End of the Patriot Way Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, will serve out the two years left in Kamala Harris’s Senate term. PAGE A17 California’s New Senator-to-Be Aid allotted to public schools by Con- gress isn’t enough to cover a looming financial crisis, districts say. PAGE A6 ‘Wall of Need’ for Schools Mindful of animation’s history of racist imagery, the studio aimed to make the jazz pianist at the center of the film as specific as possible. PAGE C1 ARTS C1-8 How Pixar Pictured Its ‘Soul’ Cathy Park Hong PAGE A23 EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23 MAURICIO LIMA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES An intensive care unit in Paris this month. As Europe struggles to control the pandemic, medical workers feel the strain. Page A11. For Hospitals, It’s Wave After Wave LONDON — As nation after na- tion rushed this week to close their borders with Britain, the moves brought back memories of the way the world reacted after the coronavirus first emerged broadly in the spring. Most of those initial travel prohibitions came too late, put in place after the virus had already seeded itself in communities far and wide. This time, with countries trying to stop the spread of a new, possi- bly more contagious coronavirus variant identified by Britain, it may also be too late. It is not known how widely the variant is already circulating, experts say, and the bans threaten to cause more economic and emotional hardship as the toll wrought by the virus continues to grow. “It is idiotic” was the blunt as- sessment of Dr. Peter Kremsner, the director of Tübingen Univer- sity Hospital in Germany. “If this mutant was only on the island, only then does it make sense to close the borders to England, Scotland and Wales. But if it has spread, then we have to combat the new mutant everywhere.” He noted that the scientific un- derstanding of the mutation was limited, and its dangers unclear, and described as naïve the notion that the variant was not already spreading widely outside Britain. Also, Britain has some of the most sophisticated genomic sur- veillance efforts in the world, which allowed scientists there to discover the variant when it might have gone unnoticed elsewhere, experts said. Dr. Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization’s regional di- rector for Europe, said that mem- ber states would try to come up with a coherent approach to any threat posed by the variant. At the The Mutant Virus Is Loose. Travel Bans Won’t Stop Its Spread. By MARC SANTORA BORDER DEAL France and Britain agreed to let freight proceed. Here, a tarmac in England. Page A5. WILLIAM EDWARDS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES Continued on Page A5 It took Portland, Ore., almost $1 million in legal fees, efforts by two mayors and a police chief, and years of battle with the police un- ion to defend the firing of Officer Ron Frashour — only to have to bring him back. Today, the veteran white officer, who shot an un- armed Black man in the back a decade ago, is still on the force. Sam Adams, the former mayor of Portland, said the frustrated disciplinary effort showed “how little control we had” over the po- lice. “This was as bad a part of government as I’d ever seen. The government gets to kill someone and get away with it.” After the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis offi- cers in May spurred huge protests and calls for a nationwide reset on law enforcement, police depart- ments are facing new state laws, ballot proposals and procedures to rein in abusive officers. Port- land and other cities have hired new chiefs and are strengthening civilian oversight. Some munici- pal leaders have responded faster than ever to high-profile allega- tions of misconduct: Since May, nearly 40 officers have been fired for use of force or racist behavior. But any significant changes are likely to require dismantling deeply ingrained systems that shield officers from scrutiny, make it difficult to remove them and portend roadblocks for re- form efforts, according to an ex- amination by The New York Times. For this article, reporters reviewed hundreds of arbitration decisions, court cases and police contracts stretching back dec- ades, and interviewed more than 150 former chiefs and officers, law enforcement experts and civilian oversight board members. While the Black Lives Matter protests this year have aimed to address police violence against people of color, another wave of protests a half-century ago was exploited to gain the protections that now often allow officers ac- cused of excessive force to avoid discipline. That effort took off in Detroit, partly as a backlash to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, when police officers around the country — who at times acted as The Way Cities Lost Oversight Of Their Police Unions Leverage Fears to Ease Punishment This article is by Kim Barker, Mi- chael H. Keller and Steve Eder. Continued on Page A18 A budget crisis forced the country’s Parliament to dissolve, bringing the fourth election in two years. PAGE A9 Israeli Government Collapses The Justice Department says the re- tailer fed the crisis by letting its pharma- cies fill dubious prescriptions. PAGE B6 BUSINESS B1-7 Walmart Faces Opioid Lawsuit Young and eager, Harry Rosado never had trouble finding a job. Fresh out of high school, he was hired as a sales associate in Mid- town Manhattan at Journeys and then at Zumiez, two fashion stores popular with young shoppers. He moved on to Uncle Jack’s Meat House in Queens, where he earned up to $300 a week as a bus- boy. Then Mr. Rosado, 23, was laid off in March when the steakhouse shut down because of the pan- demic. He was called back after the steakhouse reopened, but business was slow. In August, he was out of work again. New York City has been hit harder by the economic crisis set off by the pandemic than most other major American cities. But no age group has had it worse than young workers. By September, 19 percent of adults under 25 in the city had lost jobs compared with 14 percent of all workers, said James Parrott, di- rector of economic and fiscal pol- icy at the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School. Young adults have been espe- cially vulnerable because they were overrepresented in the serv- ice industries that have been deci- mated by social distancing re- strictions. While workers under 25 made up just 10 percent of the city’s total work force of 4.8 million before the pandemic, they held 15 percent of the jobs in the hardest-hit service industries, including restaurants, retail stores, and arts, entertain- ment and recreation businesses, Mr. Parrott said. The consequences of losing a job for workers just starting out can reverberate for years, leading to lower wages, fewer job prospects and financial hardship and instability, especially for those already burdened with col- lege or credit card debt, according They’re Under 25 and Jobless, And Their Prospects Are Bleak By WINNIE HU In New York, Younger Workers Are Hit the Hardest by Layoffs Continued on Page A6 In an audacious pre-Christmas round of pardons, President Trump granted clemency on Tues- day to two people who pleaded guilty in the special counsel’s Rus- sia inquiry, four Blackwater guards convicted in connection with the killing of Iraqi civilians and three corrupt former Republi- can members of Congress. It was a remarkable assertion of pardon power by a president who continues to dispute his loss in the election and might well be fol- lowed by other pardons in the weeks before he leaves office on Jan. 20. Mr. Trump nullified more of the legal consequences of an investi- gation into his 2016 campaign that he long labeled a hoax. He granted clemency to contractors whose actions in Iraq set off an interna- tional uproar and helped turn pub- lic opinion further against the war there. And he pardoned three members of his party who had be- come high-profile examples of public corruption. The 15 pardons and five com- mutations were made public by the White House in a statement on Tuesday night. They appeared in many cases to have bypassed the traditional Justice Department review process — more than half of the cases did not meet the de- partment’s standards for consid- eration — and reflected Mr. Trump’s long-held grudges about the Russia investigation, his in- stinct to side with members of the military accused of wrongdoing and his willingness to reward po- litical allies. Hundreds if not thousands of clemency seekers have been look- ing for avenues of influence to Mr. Trump as he weighs pardons be- fore leaving office. The statement highlighted a number of promi- nent Republicans and Trump al- lies who had weighed in on behalf of those granted clemency. Among them were Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and lobbyist who helped defend TRUMP PARDONS 2 MORE FIGURES IN RUSSIA INQUIRY MAKING AUDACIOUS MOVE Clemency for Blackwater Guards and G.O.P. Ex-Congressmen By MAGGIE HABERMAN and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT Continued on Page A21 The Trump administration and Pfizer are close to a deal under which the pharmaceutical com- pany would bolster supply of its coronavirus vaccine for the United States by at least tens of millions of doses next year in ex- change for a government direc- tive giving it better access to man- ufacturing supplies, people famil- iar with the discussions said. An agreement, which could be announced as early as Wednes- day, would help the United States at least partly offset a looming vaccine shortage that could leave as many as 110 million adult Americans uncovered in the first half of 2021. So far, only two pharmaceutical companies — Pfizer and Moderna — have won federal authorization for emergency distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, and most of what they are capable of pro- ducing for the next six months has already been allocated through contracts with the United States and other governments. In the negotiations, the govern- ment is asking for 100 million ad- ditional doses from Pfizer from April through June. The company has signaled that it should be able to produce at least 70 million, and perhaps more, if it can get more access to supplies and raw ma- terials. To help Pfizer, the deal calls for the government to invoke the De- fense Production Act to give the company better access to roughly nine specialized products it needs to make the vaccine. One person familiar with the list said it includ- ed lipids, the oily molecules in which the genetic material that is used in both the Moderna and Pfi- zer vaccines is encased. Pfizer first started asking for U.S. and Pfizer Nearing Deal To Expand Supply of Vaccine By SHARON LaFRANIERE and KATIE THOMAS Millions of Extra Doses in Return for Access to Raw Materials Continued on Page A6 Late Edition VOL. CLXX .... No. 58,916 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2020 The president-elect accused President Trump of an “irrational downplaying” of an immense cyberattack on the federal government this year. PAGE A21 NATIONAL A15-21, 24 Biden Jabs at Trump Over Hack WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday evening threatened to derail months of bi- partisan work in Congress to de- liver $900 billion in coronavirus relief to a country battered by the pandemic, demanding checks to Americans that are more than three times larger than those in the bill, which he called a “dis- grace.” The president, who has been preoccupied with the baseless claim that the election was stolen from him, seized on congressional leaders’ decision to pass the relief bill by combining it with a broader spending plan to fund govern- ment operations and the military. That spending plan includes rou- tine provisions like foreign aid and support for Washington institu- tions like the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Smithsonian. But Mr. Trump portrayed such spending items as “wasteful and unnecessary” additions to the co- ronavirus legislation. “It’s called the Covid relief bill, but it has almost nothing to do with Covid,” Mr. Trump said in a video posted online. “Congress found plenty of money for foreign countries, lobbyists and special interests while sending the bare minimum to the American peo- ple.” “I am asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ri- diculously low $600 to $2,000,” he added. Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Cali- fornia, who had been pressing for similarly sized checks, welcomed Breaking Silence on Covid Relief, President Calls Bill a ‘Disgrace’ By LUKE BROADWATER and ALAN RAPPEPORT Lawmakers and Aides Undercut in Push for Bigger Checks Continued on Page A7 FINE PRINT The spending bill includes a lot — good, bad and just plain strange. PAGE A7 Today, mostly sunny, less wind, high 42. Tonight, partly cloudy, low 39. To- morrow, mostly cloudy, increasingly windy, afternoon showers, high 57. Weather map appears on Page A24. $3.00