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Donté Stallworth PAGE A23

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23

AMR ALFIKY/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Sunbathing in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. The heat around the nation put a strain on pandemic guidance for being outdoors.Splendor in the Grass

About four months after 1.1 mil-lion New York City children wereforced into online learning, MayorBill de Blasio announced onWednesday that public schoolswould still not fully reopen in Sep-tember, saying that classroom at-tendance would instead be limitedto only one to three days a week inan effort to continue to curb thecoronavirus outbreak.

The mayor’s release of his planfor the system, by far the nation’slargest, capped weeks of intensedebate among elected officials,educators and public health ex-perts over how to bring childrenback safely to 1,800 public schools.

The decision to opt for only apartial reopening, which is mostlikely the only way to accommo-date students in school buildingswhile maintaining social distanc-ing, may hinder hundreds of thou-sands of parents from returning totheir pre-pandemic work lives,undermining the recovery of thesputtering local economy.

Still, the staggered schedules inNew York City schools for Sep-tember reflect a growing trendamong school systems, universi-ties and colleges around the coun-try, which are all trying to findways of balancing the urgent needto bring students back to class-rooms and campuses while alsoreducing density to prevent thespread of the virus.

“Everyone is looking to the pub-lic school system to indicate thebigger direction of New York City,”Mr. de Blasio said Wednesday.

Under the mayor’s plan, therewill probably be no more than adozen people in a classroom at atime, including teachers andaides, a stark change from typicalclass size in New York Cityschools, which can hover around30 children.

Educators widely consider on-line learning to be a poor substi-tute for the classroom, especiallyfor younger children and thosewith special needs.

The shift has also created enor-mous challenges for parents whohave had to struggle with helpingtheir children learn even as theyhave had to maintain their jobsfrom home or, if an essentialworker, scramble for child care.

Still, like New York City’s, manyschool districts around the coun-try are planning on not reopeningfully, and instead will use a mix ofin-person and remote learning in-

New York CitySet to StaggerClasses in Fall

By ELIZA SHAPIRO

Continued on Page A8

ISTANBUL — Since it was builtin the sixth century, changinghands from empire to empire, Ha-gia Sophia has been a Byzantinecathedral, a mosque under the Ot-tomans and finally a museum,making it one of the world’s mostpotent symbols of Christian-Mus-lim rivalry and of Turkey’s morerecent devotion to secularism.

Now President Recep TayyipErdogan is making moves to de-

clare it a working mosque oncemore, fulfilling a dream for him-self, his supporters and conserva-tive Muslims far beyond Turkey’sshores — but threatening to set offan international furor.

The very idea of changing themonument’s status has escalated

tensions with Turkey’s longtimerival, Greece; upset Christiansaround the world; and set off achorus of dismay from politicaland religious leaders as diverse asSecretary of State Mike Pompeoand Patriarch Kirill of the RussianOrthodox Church.

Mr. Erdogan’s opponents say hehas raised the issue of restoringHagia Sophia as a mosque everytime he has faced a political crisis,using it to stir supporters in hisnationalist and conservative reli-

Museum or Mosque? A Furor Erupts in IstanbulBy CARLOTTA GALL

Hagia Sophia is the most frequented tourist site in Turkey, with 3.7 million visitors last year.OZAN KOSE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Turkish Leader’s Idea for Hagia Sophia

Continued on Page A11

SAN FRANCISCO — Auditorshandpicked by Facebook to exam-ine its policies said that the com-pany had not done enough to pro-tect people on the platform fromdiscriminatory posts and ads andthat its decisions to leave up Presi-dent Trump’s inflammatory postswere “significant setbacks for civ-il rights.”

The 89-page audit put Facebookin an awkward position as thepresidential campaign heats up.The report gave fuel to the compa-ny’s detractors, who said the sitehad allowed hate speech and mis-information to flourish. The auditalso placed the social network inthe spotlight for an issue it hadworked hard to avoid since the2016 election: That it may onceagain be negatively influencingAmerican voters.

Now Facebook has to decidewhether its approach to hatefulspeech and noxious content —which was to leave it alone in thename of free expression — re-mains tenable. And that decisionputs pressure on Mark Zucker-berg, Facebook’s chief executive,who has repeatedly said that hiscompany was not an arbiter oftruth and that it would not policepoliticians’ posts.

“Many in the civil rights com-munity have become disheart-

Facebook Lets Hate Flourish,

Report FindsBy MIKE ISAAC

Continued on Page A15

WASHINGTON — PresidentTrump pressured the govern-ment’s top public health expertson Wednesday to water down rec-ommendations for how the na-tion’s schools could reopen safelythis fall and threatened to cut fed-eral funding for districts that de-fied his demand to resume classesin person.

Once again rejecting the adviceof the specialists who work forhim, Mr. Trump dismissed theCenters for Disease Control andPrevention’s “very tough & ex-pensive guidelines,” which he saidasked schools “to do very imprac-tical things.” Within hours, theWhite House announced that theagency would issue new recom-mendations in the days to come.

The president’s criticisms, in abarrage of Twitter threats, in-flamed a difficult debate that haschallenged educators and parentsacross the country as they seekways to safely resume teachingAmerican children by September.Even as the coronavirus is spread-ing faster than ever in the UnitedStates, Mr. Trump expressed noconcern about the health implica-tions of reopening in person andno support for compromise plansthat many districts are consider-ing.

His all-or-nothing stance left

him at odds with the nation’s twolargest school districts. Mayor Billde Blasio of New York City an-nounced shortly after Mr. Trump’stweets that schools would not fullyreopen in September, with stu-dents attending classes in persononly one to three days a week toaccommodate social distancing.The chief public health officer inLos Angeles County told school of-ficials on Tuesday to be preparedto continue learning entirely fromhome given the surge of infectionsin California.

But Mr. Trump’s attack on theC.D.C. underscored his growingimpatience with public health ex-perts he considers obstacles to hisambitions of reopening the coun-try after months of lockdown. Ashe significantly trails Joseph R.Biden Jr., the presumptive Demo-cratic presidential nominee, in

Trump Threatens Cuts if Schools Don’t ReopenThis article is by Peter Baker, Eri-

ca L. Green and Noah Weiland.

Continued on Page A9

Pressures Top HealthOfficials to Weaken

Safety Guidelines

WASHINGTON — The Su-preme Court on Wednesday up-held a Trump administration reg-ulation that lets employers withreligious or moral objections limitwomen’s access to birth controlcoverage under the AffordableCare Act and could result in asmany as 126,000 women losingcontraceptive coverage from theiremployers.

The 7-to-2 decision was the lat-est turn in seven years of fierce lit-igation over the “contraceptionmandate,” a signature initiative ofthe Obama administration that re-quired most employers to providecost-free coverage for contracep-tion and that the Trump adminis-tration has sought to limit.

In a second major decision onreligious rights on Wednesday,the court ruled by another 7-to-2vote that employment discrimina-tion laws did not apply to teachersin religious schools. Last week, bya 5-to-4 vote, it said state pro-grams that provide scholarshipsto students in private schools maynot exclude religious schools.

The three decisions were part ofa broad examination of the rela-tionship between church and stateover the 15-year tenure of ChiefJustice John G. Roberts Jr. inwhich the court’s conservativemajority has almost always sidedwith religious groups.

Many religious groups praisedthe contraception decision. “Thegovernment has no business forc-ing pro-life and religious organiza-tions to provide drugs and devicesthat can destroy life,” JohnBursch, a lawyer with AllianceDefending Freedom, said in astatement.

Organizations seeking to pro-tect access to birth control andabortion denounced the ruling asan assault on women that, asNARAL Pro-Choice America saidon Twitter, “gave the Trump ad-ministration a green light to at-

tack our birth control coverage.”The clash between contracep-

tive coverage and claims of con-science is a key battleground inthe culture wars, and the SupremeCourt’s decision is likely to mobi-lize voters on both sides of the di-vide.

For opponents of the regulation,the decision to uphold it was espe-cially disappointing because twomembers of the court’s liberalwing, Justices Elena Kagan andStephen G. Breyer, voted with themajority.

Both justices had been in dis-sent in 2014, when the court ruledin a 5-to-4 decision that requiringfamily-owned corporations to pro-vide contraceptive coverage vio-lated a federal law protecting reli-gious freedom.

On Wednesday, in a concurringopinion written by Justice Kagan,they said that the Affordable CareAct itself authorized regulators tocreate exemptions for employerswith religious objections, notingthat the Obama administrationhad adopted one limited to housesof worship. Whether the Trumpadministration had provided ade-quate justifications for its muchbroader exemption, Justice Ka-gan wrote, was a question for an-other day.

“Even in an area of broad statu-tory authority — maybe espe-

COURT, 7-2, ALLOWSRELIGIOUS OPT-OUT ON BIRTH CONTROL

126,000 May Lose Coverage as VictoriesPile Up for Faith-Based Employers

By ADAM LIPTAK

Continued on Page A17

DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Justices Elena Kagan andStephen G. Breyer voted withthe court’s conservative wing.

Durek Verrett, above, purports to be asixth-generation shaman, is a friend ofGwyneth Paltrow and wants to bringhealing to the masses. PAGE D1

THURSDAY STYLES D1-6

The Shaman of NowWyatt Cenac, above, took on policereform on “Problem Areas,” but theHBO series didn’t gain traction. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-8

Ahead of the Curve, in 2019Barbara Murray, a Florida nurse. Fivemonths into the pandemic, the U.S. stillhasn’t solved the problem. PAGE A7

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-9

Protective Gear in Short Supply

Ennio Morricone, who died on Monday,was one of the world’s great composers,the musician John Zorn writes. PAGE C1

More Than a Film Composer

The country has halted imports ofsecondhand clothes, limiting fashionoptions but opening doors for its owndesigners and manufacturers. PAGE A10

INTERNATIONAL A10-13

Current Trend: Made in Kenya

Such projects are facing legal hurdles,shifting economics and rising demandsto fight climate change. PAGE A15

NATIONAL A14-21, 24

The End of New Pipelines?

United Airlines warned workers that upto 36,000 of them could lose their jobsbecause demand for travel is weak andfalling again as infections rise. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-7

Furloughs Loom for Airline

George Floyd’s dying momentshave played on an endless loop,horrifying the world and prompt-ing a spasm of street protests, butnewly released evidence revealsan even more desperate scenethan previously known in the mo-ments before an officer pressedhis knee into Mr. Floyd’s neck.

Mr. Floyd uttered “I can’tbreathe” not a handful of times, asprevious videotapes showed, butmore than 20 times in all. He criedout not just for his dead motherbut for his children too. Before hisfinal breaths, Mr. Floyd gasped:“They’ll kill me. They’ll kill me.”

As Mr. Floyd shouted for his life,an officer yelled back at him to“stop talking, stop yelling, it takesa heck of a lot of oxygen to talk.”

The chilling transcripts of Min-neapolis police body camerafootage, made public on Wednes-day, were filed in state court aspart of an effort by one of the offi-cers on the scene, Thomas Lane,37, to have charges that he aidedand abetted Mr. Floyd’s murderthrown out by a judge.

Mr. Floyd, 46, died after anotherofficer, Derek Chauvin, 44,pressed his knee down onto Mr.Floyd’s neck for more than eightminutes until he was no longermoving.

Mr. Chauvin, who was on the

‘They’ll Kill Me,’Floyd Pleaded,Records RevealBy RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

and KIM BARKER

Continued on Page A18

The Ivy League is putting all sports onhold until at least January, becomingthe first Division I conference to sus-pend football for the fall. PAGE B8

SPORTSTHURSDAY B8-12

The Ivies Put Sports on Pause

The White House had told the Pentagonthe president did not want Lt. Col. Alex-ander S. Vindman promoted. PAGE A16

Impeachment Witness to RetireSunday services, church meetings andyouth camps have been linked to hun-dreds of cases nationally. PAGE A6

Churches Become Hot Spots

Late Edition

VOL. CLXIX . . . . No. 58,749 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, THURSDAY, JULY 9, 2020

Today, mostly sunny, hot, humid,high 90. Tonight, cloudy, showerslate, low 74. Tomorrow, mostlycloudy, showers, breezy, humid, high82. Weather map is on Page A24.

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