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CONTENT © 2020The Washington Post / Year 143, No. 213

Under pressure As a name change looms, Snyder sits atop a fragile structure SPORTS

Virtual divorce What happens when the pandemic delays a planned split OUTLOOK

The Magazine is on hiatus and will return next week

$120

ABCDEPrices may vary in areas outside metropolitan Washington. SU V1 V2 V3 V4

Democracy Dies in Darkness sunday, july 5, 2020 . $3.50Partly sunny 92/76 • Tomorrow: Mostly sunny 93/75 C14

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Photos by Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post

‘The cursed platoon’Their leader was convicted of war crimes and pardoned by

the president, and now he is hailed as a hero in conservative media. Yet the crimes still haunt his troops. Special Section

BY STEVE THOMPSON

Someone — let’s call her Person A — catches the coronavirus. It’s a Monday. She goes about life, un-aware her body is incubating a killer. By perhaps Thursday, she’s contagious. Only that weekend does she come down with a fever and get tested.

What happens next is critical. Public health workers have a small window of time to track down everyone Person A had close contact with over the past few days. Because by the coming Monday or Tuesday, some of those people — though they don’t yet have symptoms — could also be spreading the virus.

Welcome to the sprint known as contact tracing, the process of reaching potentially exposed peo-ple as fast as possible and per-suading them to quarantine.

The race is key to controlling the pandemic ahead of a vaccine, experts say. But most places across the United States aren’t making public how fast or well

see Tracing on A24

In contact tracing race, few states reveal speed

BY CLEVE R. WOOTSON JR.

THE VILLAGES, Fla. — Sharon Sandler was already irritated as she walked toward the growing line of golf carts preparing to parade around one of her retire-ment community’s town squares for President Trump’s birthday.

Sandler, who is in her 60s, had spent the early afternoon of June 14 at an anti-racism vigil that sought to honor the memory

of people killed by police, but whoever controlled the Villages’ sound system wouldn’t lower the volume, she said, so a solemn moment was pierced with a hy-drant of Fox News.

Within minutes, Sandler’s si-lent protest devolved into a pro-fanity-laced screaming match, with Sandler at the center. The confrontation would later draw international outrage when Trump, last Sunday morning,

shared a video showing one of his supporters at the parade pumping his fist and screaming, “White power!”

The tweet was deleted hours later, and the White House said Trump had not heard what the man had said. But to Sandler, who settled here a decade ago, the episode showed what Trump’s presidency has done to political discourse in a commu-

see The Villages on A9

Tensions flare in ‘America’s friendliest’ senior village

dard-bearer but as leader of a modern grievance movement an-imated by civic strife and marked by calls for “white power,” the phrase chanted by one of his supporters in a video the presi-dent shared last weekend on Twitter. He later deleted the video but did not disavow its message.

Trump put his strategy to re-suscitate his troubled reelection campaign by galvanizing white supporters on display Friday night under the chiseled granite gaze of four past presidents me-

see Trump on A7

this summer as the president has reacted to the national reckoning over systemic discrimination by seeking to weaponize the anger and resentment of some white Americans for his own political gain.

Trump has left little doubt through his utterances the past few weeks that he sees himself not only as the Republican stan-

BY ROBERT COSTAAND PHILIP RUCKER

President Trump’s unyielding push to preserve Confederate symbols and the legacy of white domination, crystallized by his harsh denunciation of the racial justice movement Friday night at Mount Rushmore, has unnerved Republicans who have long en-abled him but now fear losing power and forever associating their party with his racial animus.

Although amplifying racism and stoking culture wars have been mainstays of Trump’s public identity for decades, they have been particularly pronounced

Trump’s racial animus rattles GOPRepublicans worry

recent statements could endanger party’s future

BY DEREK HAWKINSAND MARISA IATI

The seven-day average of nov-el coronavirus cases set a record for the 26th straight day in the United States on Saturday, as top health officials warned that the holiday weekend might hasten the spread.

Several states experienced re-cord numbers of confirmed in-fections and hospitalizations. Florida logged another daily high number of new cases. Hos-pitalizations in Arizona set a record. And intensive care unit capacity at the world’s largest medical center, in Houston, was exceeded at one point.

President Trump said Satur-day that his administration had “made a lot of progress” on controlling the coronavirus pan-demic, even as the seven-day average of cases in the United States set a record for the 26th straight day.

Trump asserted in his speech at the White House while cele-brating Independence Day that the country had “put out the flame” of the virus. He added that progress was being made on development of a vaccine, which experts say is unlikely to be widely available until late this year or into the start of 2021 at the earliest.

see Virus on A22

Viruscasestake noholidayseven-DAY AVERAGEAGAIN SETS RECORD

Hospitals continue to struggle to meet need

More than two centuries after the Declaration of Independence was signed, Americans converged on the Mall on Saturday for the Fourth of July during a season of protests over racial injustice, bringing with them clashing notions of what freedom means.

“Freedom looks like being able to take a run in a neighborhood without being shot down,” said Shyrah Perkins, 28, of Baltimore, referring to the death of Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot while jogging. “But that’s not America. America is about stealing; it’s about taking opportunities from people. It’s about taking freedom away.”

The holiday has lost its lofty mean-

ing, said Perkins, who is African Amer-ican; Juneteenth would be her new freedom day. “July Fourth now is just a day that people like to celebrate with their family, have a fun party.”

Bill Seibert, who had roared to the Capitol grounds from Easton, Pa., as part of a biker contingent of support-ers of President Trump, might as well have been standing in a different country.

“When I hear about racism, I don’t see Fourth on A16

This article is by Emily Davies, Fredrick Kunkle, Justin Jouvenal, Marissa J. Lang and Sydney Trent

Americans converging in D.C. question freedom’s meaning

­Depression-level unemployment and pervasive sadness, polling and interviews across the country reveal an enduring — even renewed — reservoir of optimism, a sense that despite the coronavirus and perhaps as a result of protests in big cities and small towns alike, the United States can still right itself.

Months of quarantine and the continuing anxiety of life under the threat of an uncontained virus has shrunk social circles, leaving many people lonely or bored. In Clear Lake, Iowa, where there would normally be a parade, a carnival and a grand

see America on A14

BY MARC FISHER

As statues tumble and a frighten-ing virus spreads through the land, far fewer splashes of color burst onto the night skies across America on the Fourth of July. Instead of parades and picnics, the nation’s 244th birth-day was a muted celebration by people who are frustrated and strained, yet intriguingly, persistent-ly hopeful about the future.

A triple whammy of deadly dis-ease, wholesale economic paralysis and a searing reckoning with racial inequality largely canceled the na-tion’s birthday bash. But despite

The nation on its birthday: Ailing and divided, but hopeful

Virus vaccine: Brazil is hosting a major trial, with more planned. A22

Hair and there: Salons in England reopen to eager clients. A23

Shots at shots: Germany’s anti-vaccine movement grows. A18

National Garden: New monument heroes criticized by historians. A4

Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post

The Fourth of July in Washington was capped, as usual, with the drama of fireworks and flyovers. However, the crowds that typically flow into the District on Independence Day to line the streets for a parade or to get a prime spot on the Mall to see the fireworks were markedly thinner this year.