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McALLEN, Texas — The frontdoor of the Hidalgo County Re-publican Party’s office is coveredwith photographs of high-profilepoliticians in the party: Gov. GregAbbott, Senator John Cornyn andformer President Donald J.Trump. Nearly all of them arewhite men.

Step inside, and you’ll see a bul-

letin board with pictures of localRepublican leaders: AdriennePena-Garza, Hilda Garza DeS-hazo, Mayra Flores. Nearly all ofthem are Hispanic women.

Hispanic Republicans, espe-

cially women, have become some-thing of political rock stars inSouth Texas after voters in the RioGrande Valley shocked leaders inboth parties in November byswinging sharply toward theG.O.P. Here in McAllen, one of theregion’s largest cities, Mr. Trumpreceived nearly double the num-ber of votes he did four years earli-er; in the Rio Grande Valley over

Hispanic Women Give G.O.P. Life in South TexasBy JENNIFER MEDINA Seeking Further Gains

Against Democrats

Continued on Page A17

A big shift toward working fromhome is endangering hundreds oflocally owned Manhattan store-fronts that have been hanging on,waiting for life to return to the des-olate streets of Midtown and theFinancial District.

The fate of these stores, and byextension the country’s two larg-

est business hubs, will hinge inlarge part on how long landlordswill keep offering the rent breaksthat have kept many retailersafloat. Landlords themselves areunder growing financial pressure

as office vacancies soar and com-muters and visitors stay away.

At risk is Manhattan’s uniqueretail culture — the jewelers, bar-ber shops, event spaces and bars— that has long brought vibrancyand familiarity to the street-levelcanyons of its skyscraper-filled of-fice districts.

“Right now, we’re suffering,”said Gili Vaturi, who operates To-

New York Retailers Fret as Offices Stay EmptyBy PETER EAVIS

and MATTHEW HAAGRemote Work Leaves

Vital Culture at Risk

Continued on Page A16

Early in the pandemic, whenvaccines for the coronavirus werestill just a glimmer on the horizon,the term “herd immunity” came tosignify the endgame: the pointwhen enough Americans wouldbe protected from the virus so wecould be rid of the pathogen andreclaim our lives.

Now, more than half of adults inthe United States have been in-oculated with at least one dose of avaccine. But daily vaccinationrates are slipping, and there iswidespread consensus among sci-entists and public health expertsthat the herd immunity thresholdis not attainable — at least not inthe foreseeable future, and per-haps not ever.

Instead, they are coming to theconclusion that rather than mak-ing a long-promised exit, the viruswill most likely become a manage-able threat that will continue tocirculate in the United States foryears to come, still causing hospi-talizations and deaths but in muchsmaller numbers.

How much smaller is uncertainand depends in part on how muchof the nation, and the world, be-comes vaccinated and how the co-ronavirus evolves. It is alreadyclear, however, that the virus ischanging too quickly, new vari-ants are spreading too easily andvaccination is proceeding tooslowly for herd immunity to bewithin reach anytime soon.

Continued immunizations, es-pecially for people at highest riskbecause of age, exposure or healthstatus, will be crucial to limitingthe severity of outbreaks, if nottheir frequency, experts believe.

“The virus is unlikely to goaway,” said Rustom Antia, an evo-lutionary biologist at Emory Uni-versity in Atlanta. “But we want todo all we can to check that it’slikely to become a mild infection.”

The shift in outlook presents anew challenge for public healthauthorities. The drive for herd im-munity — by the summer, someexperts once thought possible —captured the imagination of largesegments of the public. To say thegoal will not be attained adds an-other “why bother” to the list ofreasons that vaccine skeptics useto avoid being inoculated.

Yet vaccinations remain the keyto transforming the virus into acontrollable threat, experts said.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Bidenadministration’s top adviser onCovid-19, acknowledged the shiftin experts’ thinking.

“People were getting confusedand thinking you’re never going toget the infections down until youreach this mystical level of herdimmunity, whatever that numberis,” he said.

“That’s why we stopped usingherd immunity in the classicsense,” he added. “I’m saying:Forget that for a second. You vac-cinate enough people, the infec-

‘HERD IMMUNITY’ DIMS WITH PACE OF VACCINATIONS

VARIANTS ACCELERATING

But Added InoculationsWill Diminish Future

Threat of Virus

By APOORVA MANDAVILLI

Continued on Page A8

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. —Ma’Khia Bryant had been deadonly a few hours when the authori-ties in Columbus, Ohio, releasedbody camera footage from the po-lice officer who had shot and killedher.

Andrew Brown Jr. was killed bysheriff’s deputies in ElizabethCity, N.C., nearly two weeks ago,and it could be many more weeks— or even months — before videoof his death is publicly shown.

As body-worn cameras have be-come more commonplace, andpublic pressure on officials to takepolice accountability more seri-ously has mounted, so too havedemands to quickly release thefootage of violent or fatal encoun-ters between law enforcement of-ficers and citizens. A video canmean the difference betweendrawing attention or dying in ob-scurity.

But it is not always that easy.While more police chiefs and may-ors have recently made ad hoc de-cisions to quickly release videos ofhigh-profile episodes, activistsand lawmakers in some states arepushing for faster public access.That has made the question of tim-ing an important and unsettlednew frontier of policymaking asthe use of body cameras amonglaw enforcement in the UnitedStates becomes the rule ratherthan the exception.

As of 2018, at least 23 states andthe District of Columbia hadpassed laws related to the publicdisclosure of body-worn camerafootage, according to the National

Conference of State Legislatures,and many states are consideringmeasures this year. Few statesconsider body-worn camerafootage exempt from publicrecords requests, although moststates have passed various ex-emptions associated with the dis-closure — from who is allowed toview the video to the time frame inwhich it must be released.

In Ohio, body-worn camerafootage is generally subject topublic disclosure, and any author-ity figure can choose to release itat any time. In North Carolina, acourt order is required, even if theperson requesting the footage isthe head of a law enforcementagency.

By first requiring a judge’s ap-proval to release body camerafootage through blanketed, state-

Clamor GrowsTo Get FootageOff Body Cams

Uneven Access AcrossU.S. Vexes the Public

By RICHARD FAUSSET and GIULIA McDONNELL NIETO DEL RIO

Protesters demanding thevideo of the killing of AndrewBrown Jr. in North Carolina.

AMR ALFIKY/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A20

Perhaps the most striking dif-ference between the middle classof 50 years ago and the middleclass today is a loss of confidence— the confidence that you weredoing better than your parentsand that your children would dobetter than you.

President Biden’s multitrillion-dollar suite of economic proposalsis aiming to both reinforce and re-build an American middle classthat feels it has been standing onshifting ground. And it comes withan explicit message that the pri-vate sector alone cannot deliveron that dream and that the gov-ernment has a central part to play.

“When you look at periods ofshared growth,” said Brian Deese,director of Mr. Biden’s NationalEconomic Council, “what you seeis that public investment hasplayed an absolutely critical role,not to the exclusion of private in-vestment and innovation, but inlaying the foundation.”

If the Biden administration getsits way, the reconstructed middleclass would be built on a sturdierand much broader plank of gov-ernment support rather than thevagaries of the market.

Some proposals are meant tosupport parents who work: fed-eral paid family and medicalleave, more affordable child care,free prekindergarten classes. Oth-ers would use public investmentto create jobs, in areas like cleanenergy, transportation and high-speed broadband. And a higherminimum wage would aim to buoythose in low-paid work, while freecommunity college would im-prove skills.

That presidents pitch theiragendas to the middle class is notsurprising given that nearly nine

Spending PlanAims to Bolster

Middle Class

By PATRICIA COHEN

Continued on Page A20

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — Ifthere was one moment thatsummed up the current state ofthe Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,Firearms and Explosives, it waswhen the floor at the agency’sgun-tracing center caved in a cou-ple of years ago under the weightof paper.

The accident was not entirelyaccidental.

The gun lobby, led by the Na-tional Rifle Association, has foryears systematically blockedplans to modernize the agency’spaper-based weapons-tracingsystem with a searchable data-

base. As a result, records of gunsales going back decades arestored in boxes stacked sevenhigh, waiting to be processed,against every wall.

“We had a lady pushing a cart,and the floor just gave way,” re-called Tyson J. Arnold, who runsthe tracing center, tapping thenew, steel-braced deck with hisshoe.

Now the long-suffering A.T.F.

(somehow the “explosives” nevermade it into the abbreviation) is atthe center of President Biden’splans to push back at what he hascalled “the international embar-rassment” of gun violence inAmerica.

As he laid out his expansive vi-sion for the nation on Wednesdaynight, Mr. Biden once again calledon Congress to expand back-ground checks and ban assaultweapons. But given the abidingpower of the gun lobby, his imme-diate hopes lie in a more limitedlist of executive actions that willultimately rely on the effective-ness of the A.T.F., the federalagency tasked with enforcing thecountry’s gun laws and executive

How the Firearms Lobby Hamstrings the A.T.F.This article is by Glenn Thrush,

Danny Hakim and Mike McIntire.

Edward Stely at an A.T.F. site in West Virginia. The gun lobby has blocked the creation of a tracing system with a searchable database.ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Biden Effort to CombatGun Violence Relies

on Ailing Agency

Continued on Page A18

REBECCA CONWAY/GETTY IMAGES

Receiving oxygen at a makeshift clinic in India’s Uttar Pradesh state. With the health care system atits breaking point, online grass-roots networks are racing to get aid to people who need it. Page A9.

Filling Gaps in a Desperate India

It’s a complex manufacturing and test-ing process that takes 60 days andresults in millions of doses. PAGE A6

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-10

How Pfizer’s Vaccine Is MadeProtests by Manchester United sup-porters caused a soccer game againstLiverpool to be postponed. PAGE D3

SPORTSMONDAY D1-6

Storming an Empty StadiumA PBS Kids show about a mohawk-sporting donkey, above with PurplePanda, was inspired by a character in“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” PAGE C1

ARTS C1-6

Another Good Neighbor

Turmoil in Slovakia is an example ofhow Russia’s vaccine diplomacy canturn out for a recipient country. PAGE A4

Political Effects of Sputnik VThe Ivy League decided against springsports, so players at Brown headedsouth for top-flight training. PAGE D1

A Baseball Gap Year

Accused of espionage, a dual Cuban andU.S. citizen who married a Cuban diplo-mat is serving a 13-year sentence. Hermother is seeking her release. PAGE A12

INTERNATIONAL A12-14

Love Story Leads to Cuban JailInvestors, reflecting a customary ap-proach, seem to care more about eco-nomic data and corporate profits thanwhat President Biden might do oncapital gains. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-5

Shrugging at Tax Increase Talk

Ezra Klein PAGE A22

OPINION A22-23

A SpaceX rocket with a crew of fourmade the first nighttime splashdownwith astronauts since 1968. PAGE A21

NATIONAL A15-21

Wet Finish for NASA Mission In making the deal with the privateequity firm Apollo, Verizon is acknowl-edging that it was behind on digital ads.Instead, it will concentrate on building a5G network. PAGE B1

Verizon Nears Yahoo-AOL Sale

The woman who said the mayoral can-didate Scott Stringer sexually assaultedher denied working for a rival. PAGE A16

Pushing Back in New York City

Late Edition

VOL. CLXX . . . . No. 59,047 © 2021 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, MONDAY, MAY 3, 2021

Today, mainly cloudy, mild, after-noon showers, high 71. Tonight,cloudy, showers, low 60. Tomorrow,very warm, partly cloudy, high 82.Weather map appears on Page D8.

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