C M Y K Nxxx,2021-04-12,A,001,Bs-4C,E1

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It was opening day for Coney Is-land’s famed amusement parks,long shuttered during the pan-demic, and Andrew Yang — the2020 presidential candidate whohas shifted his personality-drivencampaign to the New York Citymayoral race — was in his ele-ment.

“Coney Island is open for busi-ness!” he declared on Friday,pumping his fists as he made hisway down a windswept board-walk. “New York City! Can youfeel it?”

What it felt like was a campaignevent, and Mr. Yang was not theonly mayoral candidate to take ad-vantage. Scott M. Stringer, the citycomptroller, mingled along themidway, playing games with hisfamily; Kathryn Garcia, the for-mer sanitation commissioner,rode bumper cars and visitedsmall businesses.

New York faces immense chal-lenges on the road to recoveryfrom the pandemic. Thousands ofdeaths, economic devastation, ris-ing violent crime and deep racialand socioeconomic inequalitycomplicate the city’s path forwardat every turn, making the upcom-

Race for MayorIs Gearing UpAs City Is, Too

By KATIE GLUECK

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JAMES ESTRIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES; BENJAMIN NORMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES; JOHN MINCHILLO/ASSOCIATED PRESS; GABRIELA BHASKAR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Top contenders in New York City’s mayoral race are, clockwise from top left: Andrew Yang, a 2020 presidential candidate; Scott M.Stringer, the city comptroller; Eric Adams, Brooklyn’s borough president; and Maya D. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Rory Levin, a sixth grader inBloomington, Minn., used to hategoing to school. He has a healthcondition that often makes himfeel apprehensive around otherstudents. Taking special-educa-tion classes did little to ease hisanxiety.

So when his district created astand-alone digital-only program,Bloomington Online School, lastyear for the pandemic, Rory optedto try it. Now the 11-year-old is en-joying school for the first time,said his mother, Lisa Levin. Heloves the live video classes andhas made friends with other on-line students, she said.

In December, Bloomington

Public Schools decided to keeprunning the online school even af-ter the pandemic subsides. Ms.Levin plans to re-enroll Rory forthis fall.

“It is such a good fit for him,”she said. “We’re really hopingthey can continue it for the rest ofhis school career.”

A year after the coronavirus setoff a seismic disruption in public

education, some of the remoteprograms that districts intendedto be temporary are poised to out-last the pandemic. Even as stu-dents flock back to classrooms, asubset of families who have cometo prefer online learning are push-ing to keep it going — and schoolsystems are rushing to accommo-date them.

After Covid, Some Students Will Still Learn Online, by Demand

By NATASHA SINGER

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LAKE MARY, Fla. — Long be-fore the F.B.I. began to scrutinize atax collector in Florida namedJoel Greenberg — and long beforehis trail led them to Representa-tive Matt Gaetz — he amassed anoutlandish record in the mundanelocal public office he had turnedinto a personal fief of power.

Records and interviews de-tailed a litany of accusations: Mr.Greenberg strutted into work witha pistol on his hip in a state thatdoes not allow guns to be openlycarried. He spent hundreds of

thousands of taxpayer dollars tocreate no-show jobs for a relativeand some of his groomsmen. Hetried to talk his way out of a trafficticket, asking a police officer for“professional courtesy.” Heplayed police officer himself,putting a flashing light on his carto pull over a woman and accuseher of speeding. He published ananti-Muslim Facebook post. He

solicited help to hack critics on thecounty commission.

Stalking a rival candidate gothim arrested. Federal agents look-ing into the matter found at leastfive fake IDs in his wallet andbackpack, and kept digging.

Their inquiry culminated in 33federal charges against Mr.Greenberg, 36, including sex traf-ficking of a minor, bribery, fraudand stalking — and led to a mush-rooming political scandal thatburst into national news in recentdays and ensnared Mr. Gaetz, whois a close ally of President DonaldJ. Trump, and other influentialFlorida Republicans, with the in-vestigation continuing.

Behind Gaetz Case, a Problematic Tax CollectorThis article is by Patricia Mazzei,

Michael S. Schmidt and Katie Ben-ner.

Former Florida OfficialSeemed to Hold Law

in Little Regard

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French curators had worked fora decade to prepare a major exhi-bition marking the 500th anniver-sary of the death of Leonardo daVinci. When it opened, though, themost talked-about painting theyhad planned to show — “SalvatorMundi,” the most expensive workever sold at auction — was no-where to be seen.

Plucked from shabby obscurityat a New Orleans estate sale, thepainting had been sold in 2017 as arediscovered “lost” Leonardo andfetched more than $450 millionfrom an anonymous bidder whokept it hidden from view. Thechance to see it at the Louvre mu-

seum’s anniversary show twoyears later had created a sensa-tion in the international art world,and its absence whipped up astorm of new questions.

Had the Louvre concluded thatthe painting was not actually thework of Leonardo, as a vocalhandful of scholars had insisted?Had the buyer — reported to beSaudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mo-hammed bin Salman, though hehad never acknowledged it — de-clined to include it in the show forfear of public scrutiny? The tanta-lizing notion that the brash Saudiprince might have gambled a for-

Clash of Wills Kept a LeonardoFrom Being Seen at the Louvre

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and ELAINE SCIOLINO

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DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Hideki Matsuyama of Japan became the first Asian-born player to win the Masters. Page D1.A Blast of History at Augusta

After a bloody election, the governmentof Yoweri Museveni appears intent onbreaking the opposition’s back. PAGE A9

INTERNATIONAL A6-10

Torture Campaign in Uganda“Concrete Cowboy” is set amid the sta-bles of Philadelphia’s Fletcher Street, a hub for Black equestrians. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-6

Riding Horses on a City StreetTaiwan is going to great lengths to keepwater flowing to its all-important semi-conductor industry, including shuttingoff irrigation to rice growers. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-7

Tech vs. Farmers in a Drought

Local officials across the country arestepping back from elected office. Manyoffer the same explanation: Covidfatigue has sapped them of their reser-voirs of energy. PAGE A11

NATIONAL A11-15

Mayors Head for the ExitSome have regrets over unfinishedbusiness. For others, the end of anunhappy and complicated relationshipjust comes as a relief. An essay. PAGE A4

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-5

Grieving the Estranged

Farhad Manjoo PAGE A19

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A18-19Men’s sheds became a model for aiding“old boys.” Now, women are startingtheir own. Australia Dispatch. PAGE A6

Welcome to the Women’s ShedPivoting in months off an importantevent, the Speed Museum offers a newmodel. Critic’s Notebook. PAGE C1

An Art Show for Breonna

Wayne LaPierre has led the NationalRifle Association for 30 years, but hisimplacable image looked threadbareduring a round of testimony in bank-ruptcy court in Dallas. PAGE A15

An N.R.A. Chief in DisarrayPublic health experts say the vaccine’sbenefits far outweigh the risk of a clot-ting disorder for most people. PAGE A5

Rare Reaction to AstraZeneca

Holding the Games in a pandemic isn’tthe only dire issue for the Olympic move-ment, Kurt Streeter writes. PAGE D2

SPORTSMONDAY D1-6

Carrying a Torch for Change

WASHINGTON — Members ofCongress have begun a frenzy oflobbying to ensure that their petprojects and policy priorities areincluded in President Biden’s $2trillion infrastructure and jobsplan, eager to shape what could beone of the most substantial publicworks investments in a genera-tion.

Officials across the country aredusting off lists of constructionprojects and social programs,hoping to secure their piece of aplan aimed at addressing what theadministration estimates is atleast $1 trillion worth of back-logged infrastructure improve-ments, as well as economic and ra-cial inequities that have existedfor decades.

Senior lawmakers have startedcollecting lists of requests fromtheir colleagues for what shouldbe included in the bill, while topWhite House officials are fieldinga torrent of calls from rank-and-file lawmakers, all of whom havetheir own ideas.

“My phone is blowing up,” PeteButtigieg, the transportation sec-retary, said in an interview.Nearly every lawmaker “canpoint to a road or a bridge or anairport” in his or her district thatis in dire need of repair.

“There’s a ton of interest fromCongress,” he said.

On Monday, Mr. Biden is set tomeet at the White House with agroup of Republicans and Demo-crats to discuss the plan, part of apush to forge a bipartisan compro-mise that may ultimately prove fu-tile given G.O.P. resistance to thescope of the package. The five cab-inet officials tapped to navigatethe infrastructure packagethrough Congress, including Mr.Buttigieg, are continuing to dis-cuss the plan with both Republi-cans and Democrats.

“The door is open,” SpeakerNancy Pelosi of California said onSunday on CBS’s “Face the Na-tion.” “Our hand is extended. Let’sfind out where we can find ourcommon ground. We always havea responsibility to strive for bi-partisanship.”

The process is crucial to Mr. Bi-den’s strategy for maneuveringthe far-reaching plan through aCongress where his party has mi-nuscule majorities, at a time whenthe space for a bipartisan compro-mise is narrow and even Demo-crats differ on how to structureand pay for such a huge package.Mr. Buttigieg said Sunday on FoxNews that Mr. Biden wanted tosee “major progress in Congress”by Memorial Day, and lawmakersare eager to weigh in.

Representative Mikie Sherrill,

Frenzied PushTo Put ProjectsIn Building Bill

Congress Weighs Ideasfor Infrastructure

This article is by Emily Cochrane,Pranshu Verma and Luke Broadwa-ter.

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A power failure that appearedto have been caused by a deliber-ately planned explosion struckIran’s Natanz uranium enrich-ment site on Sunday, in what Ira-nian officials called an act of sabo-tage that they suggested had beencarried out by Israel.

The blackout injected new un-certainty into diplomatic effortsthat began last week to salvagethe 2015 nuclear deal repudiatedby the Trump administration.

Iran did not say precisely whathad caused the blackout at theheavily fortified site, which hasbeen a target of previous sabo-tage, and Israel publicly declinedto confirm or deny any responsi-bility. But American and Israeli in-telligence officials said there hadbeen an Israeli role.

Two intelligence officialsbriefed on the damage said it hadbeen caused by a large explosionthat completely destroyed the in-dependent — and heavily pro-tected — internal power systemthat supplies the undergroundcentrifuges that enrich uranium.

The officials, who spoke on thecondition of anonymity to de-scribe a classified Israeli opera-tion, said that the explosion haddealt a severe blow to Iran’s abil-ity to enrich uranium and that itcould take at least nine months torestore Natanz’s production.

If so, Iran’s leverage in newtalks sought by the Biden admin-istration to restore the nuclearagreement could be significantlycompromised. Iran has said it willtake increasingly strong actionsprohibited under the agreementuntil the sanctions imposed byPresident Donald J. Trump havebeen rescinded.

It was not immediately clearhow much advance word — if any— the Biden administration re-ceived about the Natanz opera-tion, which happened on the samemorning that the American de-fense secretary, Lloyd J. AustinIII, was visiting Israel. But Israeliofficials have made no secret oftheir unhappiness over Mr. Bi-den’s desire to revive the nuclearagreement that his predecessorrenounced in 2018.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head ofIran’s Atomic Energy Organiza-tion, described the blackout as anact of “nuclear terrorism” andsaid the international communitymust confront the threat.

“The action this morningagainst the Natanz enrichmentsite shows the defeat of those whooppose our country’s nuclear andpolitical development and the sig-nificant gains of our nuclear in-dustry,” Mr. Salehi said, accordingto the Iranian news media. “Theincident shows the failure of thosewho oppose Iran negotiating forsanctions relief.”

Israel, which considers Iran adire adversary, has sabotagedIran’s nuclear work before, withtactics ranging from cyberattacks

EXPLOSION ROCKSNUCLEAR CENTER, INFURIATING IRAN

SABOTAGE IS SUSPECTED

Attack May Hurt Effortsto Reboot 2015 Deal

With the U.S.

This article is by Ronen Bergman,Rick Gladstone and Farnaz Fassihi.

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Late Edition

VOL. CLXX . . . . No. 59,026 © 2021 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, MONDAY, APRIL 12, 2021

Today, mostly cloudy, rain, cooler,high 52. Tonight, overcast, strayshowers, low 45. Tomorrow, cloudsbreaking for some sunshine, milder,high 61. Weather map is on Page B8.

$3.00