As President Trump continued to try to sow doubts about the election with his latest assault on mail-in balloting, the postmaster general announced on Tuesday that he would suspend cost-cutting initiatives at the Postal Service until after November.
The announcement by the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, came amid growing pressure from lawmakers, state attorneys general and civil rights groups, who have warned that the changes being made could disenfranchise Americans casting ballots by mail to avoid long lines during the pandemic. And it came as several states moved forward Tuesday with plans to sue the Trump administration over the election-year changes at the Postal Service.
“There are some longstanding operational initiatives — efforts that predate my arrival at the Postal Service — that have been raised as areas of concern as the nation prepares to hold an election in the midst of a devastating pandemic,” Mr. DeJoy said in a statement.
“To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded.”
Mr. DeJoy vowed that retail hours at the post office would not change, that no mail processing facilities would be closed and that overtime would continue to be approved.
His announcement came as the attorney general of Washington State, Bob Ferguson, said he would lead a coalition of states filing a lawsuit in federal court charging that the changes could undermine the general election in November. Other states, including California, Pennsylvania, and New York, also said that they planned to file or join lawsuits.
“For partisan gain, President Trump is attempting to destroy a critical institution that is essential for millions of Americans,” Mr. Ferguson said in a statement. “We rely on the Postal Service for our Social Security benefits, prescriptions — and exercising our right to vote.”
In remarks from the White House that offered little substance or detail, Mr. Trump floated the idea that the November election might need to be redone should Americans rely on a system that would let everyone vote by mail.
The president does not have the authority to reschedule a federal election. The date is set by federal law, and changing it would require legislation passed by Congress.
Referring to universal mail-in voting, which will be available to 44 million voters in nine states and Washington, D.C. come November, he said, “Universal is going to be a disaster, the likes of which our country has never seen. It will end up being a rigged election or they will never come out with an outcome. They’ll have to do it again, and nobody wants that, and I don’t want that.”
But numerous studies have shown that voting fraud is exceedingly rare. A panel that Mr. Trump established to investigate election corruption was disbanded after it found no real evidence of fraud.
In a sign of the severity of the backlash to changes at the Postal Service, Speaker Nancy Pelosi had summoned lawmakers back from summer recess to vote on legislation put forth by House Democrats that would revoke policy changes until Jan. 1, 2021, or the end of the pandemic, as well as include $25 billion in funding for the beleaguered agency.
Mr. DeJoy is still expected to face tough questioning about the changes at two congressional hearings in the coming days, including a virtual Senate hearing on Friday and a House oversight committee hearing on Monday.
Democrats on Tuesday night will seek to straddle themes of national security, American unity and generational change, with an array of speakers from the Democratic Party’s past — like Bill Clinton and John F. Kerry — and a few who appear to represent its future, like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Much as they did on Monday night, Democrats are set to cast the 2020 election as an existential test for the country, with an important early speech coming from Sally Q. Yates, the former acting attorney general who was fired by President Trump for refusing to enforce a travel ban on predominantly Muslim countries.
The central events of the evening figure to be closing remarks by Jill Biden, the former second lady and Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s wife, who occupies the same slot in the program that Michelle Obama took on the convention’s first night, and a virtual roll call vote of delegates from all the American states and territories that will culminate in Mr. Biden’s formal designation as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.
In a typical convention, the roll call vote is often one of the most entertaining parts of the week, featuring colorful speeches often brimming with parochial pride in each state’s delegation. This one promises to be a distinctive and perhaps more sober take on that tradition, with a combination of prearranged testimonials about Mr. Biden, descriptions of his campaign promises and personal accounts of adversity in the coronavirus pandemic and other crises of the Trump administration.
Tuesday’s events will again run from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time. Tracee Ellis Ross, the Emmy-nominated actress, will be the M.C. There are several ways to watch:
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The Times will stream the full convention every day, accompanied by chat-based live analysis from our reporters and real-time highlights from the speeches. Download our iOS or Android app and turn on notifications to be alerted when our live analysis starts.
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The official livestream will be here. It will also be available on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Twitch.
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ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News will air the convention from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. each night. C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC and PBS will cover the full two hours each night.
Here’s more information on how to stream the convention on various platforms.
Who’s speaking tonight:
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Jill Biden, Mr. Biden’s wife and the former second lady
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Former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter, the former first lady
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Former President Bill Clinton
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John Kerry, the former secretary of state and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee
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Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York
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Senator Chuck Schumer of New York
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Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general
The first night of the Democratic National Convention was, to put it mildly, weird. How else can we describe one of the biggest events in American politics turned into a glorified Zoom meeting?
But surreal as it was, the virtual convention included several powerful moments — some reminiscent of normal times, and others reflective of the tremendous abnormality of these times.
Michelle Obama said President Trump was “clearly in over his head.”
Casting aside her reluctance to engage in political combat, Michelle Obama delivered an impassioned keynote address to cap off the first night of the Democratic convention and offered a withering assessment of President Trump, accusing him of creating “chaos,” sowing “division” and governing “with a total and utter lack of empathy.”
“He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head,” she said. “He cannot meet this moment.”
Bernie Sanders gave Biden a full-throated endorsement.
Despite his disagreements with Mr. Biden on policy, Senator Bernie Sanders gave a forceful endorsement of his former rival.
Mr. Biden is much more moderate than the progressive wing of the party would like, Mr. Sanders acknowledged, but “if Donald Trump is re-elected, all the progress we have made will be in jeopardy,” he said. “This election is about preserving our democracy.”
George Floyd’s family led a moment of silence.
The family of George Floyd, whose killing by the Minneapolis police set off a national uprising over systemic racism, prefaced a moment of silence for Black people killed by the police by listing the names of just a few of the victims.
“George should be alive today,” Mr. Floyd’s brother Philonise Floyd said. “Breonna Taylor should be alive today. Ahmaud Arbery should be alive today. Eric Garner should be alive today. Stephon Clark, Atatiana Jefferson, Sandra Bland — they should all be alive today.”
Times commenters were watching the first virtual convention too:
I cried. Without the crowd it was better. it felt personal. Without cameras panning around a cavernous stadium, no din drowning out carefully chosen words. People connected with us, instead of standing at the podium delivering a speech. We got to sit a foot away from Michelle Obama, talking to us like she was in the room. God I miss her. Trump is all about the crowd, he needs the adulation validation. Tonight felt intimate, in keeping with the times.
— Judy O’Rourke, San Diego
Hundreds of commenters have shared their thoughts about the first night of the D.N.C. Join in the conversation here.
WASHINGTON — President Trump was traveling to the border city of Yuma, Ariz., this afternoon to highlight his efforts to drastically limit immigration and to attack Joseph R. Biden Jr. on the second day of the Democratic convention.
Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign said the event was intended to focus on Mr. Biden’s “failures on immigration and border security.”
That message is already at the center of Mr. Trump’s criticisms of Mr. Biden and Senator Kamala Harris of California, his running mate.
On Monday, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that Mr. Biden supports allowing anyone to enter the United States, telling supporters in Mankato, Minn., that Mr. Biden had “pledged to allow virtually unlimited immigration during a global pandemic spreading the virus, overwhelming our health care system and displacing millions of American job seekers.”
Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant message helped him win in 2016 and has remained at the core of his presidency. He has blocked asylum seekers and refugees, tried to end a program protecting young immigrants and cut back on opportunities for foreigners to work and study in the U.S.
While courts have blocked some of his most extreme efforts, the president and his top aides have succeeded in changing many regulations and policies.
Ahead of Mr. Trump’s speech in Yuma, a coalition of more than 100 pro-immigration organizations planned to release on Tuesday an “action plan” of recommendations on how a Biden presidency could roll back Mr. Trump’s policies and improve the nation’s system of immigration.
The report, obtained by The Times, lists 10 broad action items, including decriminalizing immigration, protecting immigrant children and families, phasing out immigration jails and restoring the “right to seek and receive protection from persecution” at the border.
“We need a vision,” said Tyler Moran, the executive director of the Immigration Hub and one of the effort’s leaders. “It really is a road map that we think a new administration can take.”
The report’s more specific recommendations include a moratorium on deportations pending a comprehensive review of immigration enforcement; reinstatement and expansion of the DACA program for young immigrants; the repeal of “Muslim, African, refugee and other travel bans”; a White House “Office of New Americans”; and the suspension of criminal prosecutions for migration-related offenses.
On the way to Arizona, the president is scheduled to make a brief stop in Iowa to hear from emergency officials about damage from last week’s derecho wind storm.
Live television viewership of Monday’s opening night of the Democratic National Convention fell by roughly 25 percent from 2016, according to Nielsen, with MSNBC emerging as the clear winner among the major networks.
About 18.7 million people watched traditional TV coverage of the convention from 10 p.m. to 11:15 p.m., the portion featuring speeches by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and the former first lady Michelle Obama. Four years ago, about 26 million people tuned in for the Democrats’ first night in Philadelphia.
The Nielsen figures do not include online and streaming viewers, a rapidly growing chunk of the American mass media audience. But there are few reliable ways to measure streaming views, and TV remains a key vehicle for politicians to reach a wide swath of voters, especially older ones.
A virtual event that bore little resemblance to pomp-filled conventions in large arenas in the past, the Democrats’ event featured the actress Eva Longoria as M.C. and included a range of live and prerecorded video segments.
MSNBC, whose prime-time is popular with liberals, attracted the biggest audience of any network with 5.1 million viewers, up from its usual 10 p.m. average. Fox News, which usually dominates cable ratings, dipped to 2.1 million, a drop from the 3.4 million who usually tune in at 10 p.m. for Laura Ingraham’s conservative commentary.
The Big Three broadcast networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — lost about 42 percent of their live audience from 2016. CNN’s overall audience dropped from 2016, but it was Monday’s best performer among viewers 25 to 54, the most important demographic in the TV news industry.
The TV Watch
Modern political conventions, deprived of the who-will-win-the-nomination drama of earlier smoke-filled eras, have always been television events. But the Democratic National Convention that began to unfold Monday night proved to be a very different kind of show, The Times’s chief television critic, James Poniewozik, noted. He wrote:
On cable news, there were no pundit panels jawboning all day on location. There was no location, really — most of the convention took place in a Milwaukee of the mind. (Sadly, without virtual fried cheese curds.) There were no floor interviews with delegates for also-ran candidates. No placards. No funny hats. And above all, no cheering, hooting crowds.
Instead, the teleconvention kept a few standards (like the Bruce Springsteen-soundtracked montage) and borrowed from a grab bag of other TV formats, from talk show to cable news to reality-TV reunion special. And it was all hosted for the night by the actress Eva Longoria from the floor of a cable-news-like studio, a kind of ersatz DNCNN. “We had hoped to gather in one place,” she said early on.
The very reason they couldn’t was linked to a key political theme of the night: the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Trump administration’s handling of it. This meant that, more than usual, the medium was the message.
The program’s very existence was a kind of political argument: If this doesn’t look normal, it’s because none of this is normal right now. President Trump, the presentation said visually, had broken normality; the Democrats, with an assortment of appeals both to Republicans and to their own party’s left, promised to restore it.
Some viewers on social media said the show looked like a telethon, and it often did, from the stories of hardship to the heart-tugging sea-to-shining-sea musical numbers. (These included Leon Bridges on a rooftop and Maggie Rogers on a Maine shore.)
But why do you hold a telethon? For disasters and diseases. For emergencies.
A report released Tuesday by a Republican-controlled Senate panel that spent three years investigating Russia’s 2016 election interference laid out an extensive web of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Russian government officials and other Russians, including some with ties to the country’s intelligence services.
The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, totaling nearly 1,000 pages, provided a bipartisan Senate imprimatur for an extraordinary set of facts: The Russian government undertook an extensive campaign to try to sabotage the 2016 American election to help Mr. Trump become president, and some members of Mr. Trump’s circle of advisers were open to the help from an American adversary.
The report drew to a close one of the highest-profile congressional inquiries in recent memory, one that the president and his allies have long tried to discredit as part of a “witch hunt” designed to undermine the legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s stunning election nearly four years ago.
Like the investigation led by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who released his findings in April 2019, the Senate report did not conclude that the Trump campaign engaged in a coordinated conspiracy with the Russian government — a fact that Republicans seized on to argue that there was “no collusion.”
But the report showed extensive evidence of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and people tied to the Kremlin — including a longstanding associate of the onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, whom the report identifies as a “Russian intelligence officer.”
The Senate report said that the unusual nature of the Trump campaign — staffed by Mr. Trump’s longtime associates, friends and other businessmen with no government experience — “presented attractive targets for foreign influence, creating notable counterintelligence vulnerabilities.”
One of the most memorable speakers of the first night of the Democratic National Convention was a woman whom many voters had never heard of: Kristin Urquiza, whose father, a supporter of President Trump’s, died of the coronavirus in Phoenix in June, not long after Arizona lifted many of its stay-at-home restrictions.
“My dad was a healthy 65-year-old,” she said during the convention. “His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump — and for that he paid with his life.”
In May, Ms. Urquiza, 39, graduated with a master’s degree in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley, and had planned to continue her work with international environmental policy. But the death of her father, Mark Anthony Urquiza, has prompted her to turn her focus on the impact of the pandemic in the United States.
Already, her words are being featured in two political advertisements targeting voters in several swing states. The New York Times spoke with her about her family’s politics and what she planned to do in the weeks leading up to the presidential election.
The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
You spoke about your father’s vote for Mr. Trump — how much did the two of you discuss politics?
He was a Republican for most of his life. I just learned recently that when my parents got married, my mom was a registered Republican and he was a Democrat, but he said, “Well, I’ll be a Republican so we don’t cancel each other out.” I think my dad over time became very loyal to the party. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Trump. He liked that he was a businessman. He thought that he would bring a fresh perspective to his position.
When he was in this hospital, we ended up talking about politics. I asked him, “What do you think now?” He told me that he felt sideswiped and betrayed by what was happening. I didn’t have the heart to dig in further, but there was a part of me that wanted to. I didn’t want him to feel like he was doing something wrong. My dad was following what he was told by people who are supposed to be leaders.
How did you make the decision to turn grief into advocacy?
I saw people in the neighborhood I grew up in waiting in line for hours for [Covid] tests in 107-degree heat — predominantly immigrants, predominantly Latinx. If I didn’t speak out, I didn’t know who would.
Governor [Doug] Ducey was lock step with Trump on reopening quickly — that caused a spike across the country. I was not comfortable to have him with blood on his hands without being open about that.
So by leaning into the advocacy, I couldn’t save my dad’s life, but I could potentially have that sort of higher purpose.
Ady Barkan, the progressive activist who became a champion for single-payer health care after receiving a diagnosis of the neurodegenerative disease A.L.S., is speaking tonight at the Democratic National Convention.
In an email conversation this week, Mr. Barkan discussed the prospects for single-payer health care in a moderate Democratic administration and his group Be A Hero’s push to flip the Senate. The exchange has been edited and condensed.
NYT: What will be your message to the Democratic Party, particularly as it relates to health care?
Barkan: I support Medicare for All and Joe Biden obviously doesn’t. Many Democratic voters agree with me, as evidenced by the overwhelming support in the exit polls during the primaries. And the pandemic and depression have proven how dangerous it is to tie insurance to employment. But we obviously have work to do to convince Democratic leadership to shift perspective on this.
NYT: Do you worry that the party will embrace you but reject the policies you advocate for?
Barkan: I definitely don’t want to be co-opted! I see my role, and the role of the progressive movement, as trying to get more and better Democrats elected, then pushing hard to get them to promote justice and equity.
I hope we can leverage our power in the House to pass strong legislation pressure the Senate to act, including by getting rid of the filibuster, and put transformative bills on President Biden’s desk.
NYT: Some progressives worry that the energy and money that has fueled some progressive victories in the last four years will dry up if President Trump is defeated. Do you?
Barkan: That is a critical concern. But I am hopeful that the progressive movement is much more powerful and sophisticated than we were when Obama took office. We saw that without movement energy then, not nearly enough was accomplished. Climate change, immigration reform, workers rights, gun control, even a public option health insurance — none of this happened, because of the filibuster and because the progressive movement didn’t pressure Obama to act quickly.
I don’t think we will make the same mistake. The movement for Black lives, for example, understands that it is Democratic mayors and city councils that are funding and protecting the police state. Everyone understands that President Biden will need to be pushed to be the transformative president America needs.
Mario Cuomo shot to Democratic Party stardom with a rousing depiction of a tale of two cities in 1984. Ann Richards brought down the house in 1988 by declaring of George H.W. Bush: “Poor George, he can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.” Barack Obama launched himself toward the White House in 2004 with his stirring account of “the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.”
But as the virtual Democratic National Convention begins its second evening on Tuesday, there will not be — for the first time in memory — a single keynote speaker handed the opportunity to capture the imagination of delegates and viewers at home.
Instead of designating a star for the party’s future, the Democrats have assembled a mash-up of 17 of the “next generation of party leaders” to speak via video montage Tuesday night. The party released a video teaser on Tuesday afternoon.
The list of speakers includes Stacey Abrams of Georgia, who considered a 2020 presidential run herself after falling short in a bid to win her state’s governorship in 2018; three members of Congress; eight state legislators; two mayors; the president of the Navajo Nation; and Florida’s agriculture commissioner — the only Democrat elected to statewide office in the critical battleground state.
The Democrats’ biggest donors are used to being feted at the party’s national convention, breezing through a maze of tiered luxury suites and V.I.P. rooms with free-flowing appetizers, access and booze. This year, though, even those who have given $500,000 and up are stuck watching the same virtual event from home as the rest of us.
So ahead of the week’s virtual gathering, the party and the Biden campaign mailed along a care package to tide over any forlorn financiers: notebooks embossed with the number 46 (as in the potential for Joseph R. Biden Jr. to be the 46th president), hats, buttons, posters, a bag of “Cup of Joe” coffee (a moderate, friendly medium roast) and a bottle of confetti to be deployed whenever the mood strikes.
Like nearly everything else in American life, the already cloistered world of political fund-raising has been upended by the coronavirus pandemic, as campaigns and contributors alike figure out how to raise tens of millions of dollars without so much as a photo line (Zoom screenshots are a poor substitute).
The lack of a convention is especially a blow to the political arms of House and Senate Democrats, along with the Democratic Governors Association, which lay out their plans to woo donors months in advance. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is still offering up to $35,500 packages to donors to attend three briefings with various senators and Senate candidates.
Still, it’s not the same as the serendipity of being there.
“There is nothing like the excitement of being in the convention hall and the daily nonstop of events, meetings and ad hoc hotel lobby meetups,” said Michael Kempner, a Democratic fund-raiser who has previously raised money for both Mr. Biden and Senator Kamala Harris of California, the Democratic nominee for vice president. “I am surprised how much I already miss it.”
This year’s election could eventually determine whether Roe v. Wade is overturned by the Supreme Court or codified by Congress.
Normally, stakes that high would make abortion a primary focus of the campaign. But normally, the country would not be experiencing a pandemic, a recession and a civil rights movement all at once.
On Night 1 of the Democratic National Convention, the sum total of the attention abortion received was the second it took Kamala Harris to say “reproductive justice” in a video montage.
Anti-abortion groups hope to keep Americans voting Republican despite anger at leaders’ handling of the coronavirus, race and the economy. Abortion rights groups say the issues are all linked. Both sides are clamoring simply to be heard.
There is no playbook for this: If you are an activist whose life’s work hinges on the attention and decisions of an overwhelmed electorate, what do you do?
WILMINGTON, Del. — Jill Biden, the former second lady of the United States who taught English at a community college throughout her time in the administration, is headed back to the classroom to give her convention speech on Tuesday.
Dr. Biden is expected to speak live from Brandywine High School in Wilmington, a spokesman said. She taught English at the school in the early 1990s and will be speaking from Room 232, her former classroom, Dr. Biden said on Twitter.
Dr. Biden was once a reluctant political spouse, but this campaign season she emerged as one of her husband’s most prolific and powerful surrogates, maintaining public campaign schedules at a pace that sometimes surpassed Mr. Biden’s during the in-person days on the trail early this year, and serving as a critical adviser on the most significant matters of the campaign.
The Trump campaign has started using an advertising firm linked to MyPillow, a company whose chief executive is a donor to and ally of the president, to buy some of its television airtime.
The firm, LifeBrands, bought broadcast airtime for the Trump campaign in Florida and in North Carolina this week, during the Democratic National Convention, according to officials at Medium Buying, a Republican ad-buying firm.
A Trump campaign spokesman declined to comment, and it was unclear how LifeBrands came to be working for the campaign.
But the chief executive of MyPillow, Mike Lindell, is an ally and donor who has repeatedly popped up during the Trump administration. Most recently, Mr. Lindell met with the president at the White House in July and evangelized about oleandrin, an unproven treatment, as a therapeutic for the coronavirus.
Mr. Lindell’s boosterism for the drug — and Mr. Trump’s hope for a quick cure for the coronavirus — has alarmed some White House officials.
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