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Inside a Fatal Tesla Autopilot Accident: ‘It Happened So Fast’

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George Brian McGee, a finance executive in Florida, was driving home in a Tesla Model S operating on Autopilot, a system that can steer, brake and accelerate a car on its own, when he dropped his phone during a call and bent down to look for it.

Neither he nor Autopilot noticed that the road was ending and the Model S drove past a stop sign and a flashing red light. The car smashed into a parked Chevrolet Tahoe, killing a 22-year-old college student, Naibel Benavides.

One of a growing number of fatal accidents involving Tesla cars operating on Autopilot, Mr. McGee’s case is unusual because he survived and told investigators what had happened: He got distracted and put his trust in a system that did not see and brake for a parked car in front of it. Tesla drivers using Autopilot in other fatal accidents have often been killed, leaving investigators to piece together the details from data stored and videos recorded by the cars.

“I was driving and dropped my phone,” Mr. McGee told an officer who responded to the accident, according to a recording from a police body camera. “I looked down, and I ran the stop sign and hit the guy’s car.”

Distracted driving can be deadly in any car. But safety experts say Autopilot may encourage distraction by lulling people into thinking that their cars are more capable than they are. And the system does not include safeguards to make sure drivers are paying attention to the road and can retake control if something goes wrong.

Mr. McGee, who declined to comment through his lawyer, told investigators that he was on the phone with American Airlines making reservations to fly out for a funeral. He called the airline at 9:05 p.m. on April 25, 2019. The call lasted a little more than five minutes and ended two seconds after his Model S crashed into the Tahoe, according to a Florida Highway Patrol investigation. Florida law makes it illegal to text while driving, but the state does not prohibit drivers from talking on a hand-held cellphone except in school or work zones.

no vehicle on sale today is close to achieving.

Tesla’s critics contend that Autopilot has several weaknesses, including the ability for drivers like Mr. McGee to use it on local roads. With the help of GPS and software, G.M., Ford Motor and other automakers restrict their systems to divided highways where there are no stop signs, traffic lights or pedestrians.

Tesla owners’ manuals warn customers not to use Autopilot on city streets. “Failure to follow these instructions could cause damage, serious injury or death,” the manual for 2019 models says.

a California couple sued Tesla in connection with a 2019 crash that killed their 15-year-old son.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating more than two dozen crashes that occurred when Autopilot was in use. The agency said it was aware of at least 10 deaths in those accidents.

posted videos on YouTube showing that the camera sometimes fails to notice when drivers look away from the road and that it can be fooled if they cover the lens. When the camera notices a Tesla driver looking away from the road, it sounds a warning chime but does not turn Autopilot off.

G.M. and Ford systems use infrared cameras to monitor drivers’ eyes. If drivers look away for more than two or three seconds, warnings remind them to look straight ahead. If drivers fail to comply, the G.M. and Ford systems will shut off and tell drivers to take control of the car.

Ms. Benavides emigrated from Cuba in 2016 and lived with her mother in Miami. She worked at a Walgreens pharmacy and a clothing store while attending community college. An older sister, Neima, 34, who is executor of the estate, said Naibel had been working to improve her English in hopes of getting a college degree.

“She was always laughing and making people laugh,” Neima Benavides said. “Her favorite thing was to go to the beach. She would go almost every day and hang out with friends or just sit by herself and read.”

Neima Benavides said she hoped the lawsuit would prod Tesla into making Autopilot safer. “Maybe something can change so other people don’t have to go through this.”

Ms. Benavides had just started dating Mr. Angulo when they went fishing on Key Largo. That afternoon, she sent her sister a text message indicating she was having a good time. At 9 p.m., Ms. Benavides called her mother from Mr. Angulo’s phone to say she was on the way home. She had lost her phone that day.

On the 911 call, Mr. McGee reported that a man was on the ground, unconscious and bleeding from the mouth. Several times Mr. McGee said, “Oh, my God,” and shouted “Help!” When an emergency operator asked if the man was the only injured person, Mr. McGee replied, “Yes, he’s the only passenger.”

Mr. Angulo was airlifted to a hospital. He later told investigators that he had no recollection of the accident or why they had stopped at the intersection.

An emergency medical technician spotted a woman’s sandal under the Tahoe and called on others to start searching the area for another victim. “Please tell me no,” Mr. McGee can be heard saying in the police video. “Please tell me no.”

Ms. Benavides’s body was found about 25 yards away.

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One Year Later

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Shortly after 8 p.m. on May 25, 2020, Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer, placed his knee on George Floyd’s neck and kept it there for more than nine minutes. None of the three other officers standing near Chauvin intervened. Soon, Floyd was dead.

Initially, the police gave a misleading account of Floyd’s death, and the case might have received relatively little attention but for the video that Darnella Frazier, a 17-year-old, took with her phone. That video led to international outrage and, by some measures, the largest protest marches in U.S. history.

Today, one year after Floyd’s murder, we are going to look at the impact of the movement that his death inspired in four different areas.

30 states and dozens of large cities have created new rules limiting police tactics. Two common changes: banning neck restraints, like the kind Chauvin used; and requiring police officers to intervene when a fellow officer uses extreme force.

pledged to hire more diverse workforces.

wrote. “So companies and institutions stopped whining about supposedly bad pipelines and started looking beyond them.”

It’s still unclear how much has changed and how much of the corporate response was public relations.

Initially, public sympathy for the Black Lives Matter movement soared. But as with most high-profile political subjects in the 21st-century U.S., opinion soon polarized along partisan lines.

Today, Republican voters are less sympathetic to Black Lives Matter than they were a year ago, the political scientists Jennifer Chudy and Hakeem Jefferson have shown. Support among Democrats remains higher than it was before Floyd’s death but is lower than immediately afterward.

There are a few broad areas of agreement. Most Americans say they have a high degree of trust in law enforcement — even more than did last June, FiveThirtyEight’s Alex Samuels notes. Most also disagree with calls to “defund” or abolish police departments. Yet most back changes to policing, such as banning chokeholds.

It’s clear that violent crime has risen over the past year. It’s not fully clear why.

Many liberals argue that the increase has little to do with the protest movement’s call for less aggressive policing. The best evidence on this side of the debate is that violent crime was already rising — including in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia — before the protests. This pattern suggests that other factors, like the pandemic and a surge of gun purchases, have played important roles.

Many conservatives believe that the crime spike is connected to the criticism of the police, and they point to different evidence. First, the crime increase accelerated last summer, after the protests began — and other high-income countries have not experienced similar increases. Second, this acceleration fits into a larger historical pattern: Crime also rose in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., after 2015 protests about police violence there, as Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist and crime scholar, notes.

Sharkey has told us. But that doesn’t mean that the pre-protest status quo was the right approach, he emphasizes. Brute-force policing “can reduce violence,” he said, in a Q. and A. with The Atlantic. “But it comes with these costs that don’t in the long run create safe, strong, or stable communities.”

Some reform advocates worry that rising crime will rebuild support for harsh police tactics and prison sentences. “Fear makes people revert to old ways of doing things,” Lopez said.

How can police officers both prevent crime and behave less violently, so that they kill fewer Americans while doing their jobs?

Some experts say that officers should focus on hot spots where most crimes occur. Others suggest training officers to de-escalate situations more often. Still others recommend taking away some responsibilities from the police — like traffic stops and mental-health interventions — to reduce the opportunities for violence.

So far, the changes do not seem to have affected the number of police killings. Through last weekend, police officers continued to kill about three Americans per day on average, virtually the same as before Floyd’s murder.

Related:

125th anniversary, The Times Book Review is highlighting some noteworthy first mentions of famous writers. You can find the full list here. Some of our favorites:

F. Scott Fitzgerald: In 1916, Princeton admitted only men, and they would often play women’s roles in campus plays. The Times featured a photo of Fitzgerald in character, calling him “the most beautiful showgirl.”

in an article about a “Greek Games” competition among students at Barnard: “A messenger, Joan Roth, rushed in to say that Persephone still lived and a rejoicing group danced in. Eight tumblers did tricks before the crowd to distract the still disconsolate Demeter.” Highsmith was among the student acrobats.

Ralph Ellison: In 1950, two years before the publication of “Invisible Man,” Ellison reviewed a novel called “Stranger and Alone,” by J. Saunders Redding. Ellison wrote that Saunders “presents many aspects of Southern Negro middle-class life for the first time in fiction.”

John Updike: An acclaimed short-story writer who had yet to publish a novel, Updike appeared in an advice article in 1958, encouraging parents to teach their children complex words. “A long correct word is exciting for a child,” he said. “Makes them laugh; my daughter never says ‘rhinoceros’ without laughing.” — Sanam Yar, a Morning writer

play online.

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Comedian Silverman (five letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. The first “Star Wars” movie premiered 44 years ago today. Vincent Canby’s Times review called it “the most elaborate, most expensive, most beautiful movie serial ever made.”

You can see today’s print front page here.

“The Daily” is about a student free speech case. On “Sway,” Eliot Higgins discusses Bellingcat’s journalism.

Lalena Fisher, Claire Moses, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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The Week in Business: Crypto’s Crashes

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Good morning and happy Sunday. Here’s what you need to know in business and tech news for the week ahead. — Charlotte Cowles

had a rough week. Digital currencies saw several ugly crashes, with Bitcoin ending Friday nearly 30 percent below its price a week before. The plunge followed an announcement from China that effectively banned its financial institutions from providing services related to cryptocurrency transactions. (Elon Musk’s sudden about-face on Bitcoin probably didn’t help, either.) The volatility shook some investors’ confidence in crypto, which has ridden a seemingly unstoppable wave of popularity — and gained traction with mainstream investors — over the past year.

Texas, Oklahoma and Indiana joined more than a dozen other states that are ending federal pandemic unemployment benefits early, citing the need to incentivize people to get back to work. The decision will get rid of the $300-a-week supplement that unemployment recipients have been getting since March and were scheduled to receive through September. It will also end all benefits for freelancers, part-timers and those who have been out of work for more than six months. Some lawmakers believe that cutting off benefits will encourage more people to apply for jobs, but that’s not always the case — a persistent lack of child care has also prevented many parents from returning to work.

can cause premature death, according to a new study by the World Health Organization. Long hours — also known as overwork — are on the rise and are associated with an estimated 35 percent higher risk of stroke and 17 percent higher risk of heart disease compared with working 35 to 40 hours per week, researchers said.

give the Internal Revenue Service more money to chase down wealthy individuals and companies who cheat on their taxes. As part of the same effort to close tax loopholes, the U.S. Treasury Department is trying to convince other countries to back a 15 percent global minimum tax rate on big companies. The policy is meant to deter corporations from sheltering their operations in tax havens such as Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands. But a number of governments have been hesitant to sign on for fear that they’ll scare off businesses.

Congress wants to bolster the United States’ ability to compete with China and is willing to throw money at the problem. The senate is working on a bill that would invest $120 billion in the nation’s development of cutting-edge technology and manufacturing. Known as the Endless Frontier Act, the legislation would fund new research on a scale that its proponents say has not been seen since the Cold War. In related news, the European Union blocked an investment deal with China on Thursday, citing concerns with the country’s abysmal human rights record.

Executives from the largest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, will testify before lawmakers this week about their actions (or lack thereof) to help struggling Americans and small businesses during the pandemic. Democrats on the Senate Banking and House Financial Services committees organized the hearings to scrutinize the banks’ role in lending money to alleviate the financial pressures of the past 15 months. The testimony could affect how lawmakers seek to regulate Wall Street in the coming years.

soared 30 percent in its initial public offering on Wednesday. Amazon indefinitely extended its ban on police usage of its facial recognition software, which has faced ethical criticism. And New York City lifted nearly all of its pandemic restrictions, allowing businesses to welcome customers back at full capacity.

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A 1960 Corvette That Vanished for 40 Years After Le Mans Is Auctioned Off

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The strange, serendipitous, 60-year saga of a historically significant but long-missing 1960 Chevrolet Corvette finally reached a measure of closure on Saturday with its sale for a somewhat disappointing $685,000 “hammer price” at a court-ordered auction in Amelia Island, Fla. A sales commission of about 10 percent made the final “drive-off” price $785,500.

The auctioneers, RM Sotheby’s, had a pre-auction estimate of $900,000 to $1.3 million for the no-reserve sale. The identity of the winning bidder, as is customary, was not officially announced.

Corvette racing aficionados hold this car in special regard since it had vanished for nearly 40 years after its star-crossed debut at the 1960 24 Hours of Le Mans race. It has been the subject of seemingly endless legal twists and turns, and acrimonious confrontations, since its chance rediscovery in 2011.

This car was one of three identical blue-on-white Corvettes — numbered 1, 2 and 3 — which made up the “Briggs Cunningham team” of 1960 coupes sent with clandestine Chevrolet factory support to contest the French endurance classic. Although this particular car, the No. 1, and a team car crashed and burned in the race while running up front, the remaining contestant soldiered on to win its class — a milestone in Corvette racing annals.

Chevrolet couldn’t make much hay out of its accomplishment because the effort had been set up by rogue employees, in defiance of a corporate ban on racing. So after the race, the cars were quietly sold off to private parties. It took until the 1990s for sleuths to figure out the cars’ secret Vehicle Identification Numbers. Two were then easy to find, were restored to their former glory, and ended up with a Corvette enthusiast, Lance Miller, of Carlisle, Pa. Mr. Miller arranged for a lavish, nostalgic return to Le Mans for a 50th anniversary Lap of Honor in 2010 for the extant two cars and one of the original winning drivers, John Fitch, then 92.

The third Corvette, as it turned out, had been bought by a South Florida amateur sports car racer, who inexplicably commissioned a crude reshaping of the Corvette’s fiberglass body into something resembling a 1950-ish Zagato Gran Turismo. A 1970s-era V8, believed to be from a Pontiac, was also installed. It then found its way to a Tampa-area drag racer who painted it purple.

But Mr. Miller and his restoration expert, Kevin Mackay, of Valley Stream, N.Y., thought they had made the discovery of a lifetime when they responded to a newspaper ad for a “Zagato-bodied Pontiac prototype” that turned out to have the VIN of the missing Corvette. They eagerly bought the misshapen monstrosity on a bill of sale from the purported owner.

On the eve of its much-ballyhooed public unveiling in Carlisle they were interrupted by the police, armed with a Florida title and a stolen-vehicle report. A retired police officer, who was the son of the now-deceased drag racer, claimed it had been purloined from his father’s yard many years earlier.

A complicated legal battle ensued. Mr. Miller wanted out of the controversy and sold his interest to Mr. Mackay, who vowed to fight to the end.

Along the way, the drag racer’s son, an Indiana car dealer, a self-described Florida “treasure hunter” and others all asserted an interest in the car. At least three of them subsequently experienced financial difficulties that also brought their creditors into the picture. And it all culminated with a frustrated judge ordering the sale of the car, with proceeds to be divided among the claimants, and a clear title to be issued to the winning bidder.

Mr. Mackay, who retained rights to a 30 percent share of the proceeds, declared it the “end of a long road” for the Corvette’s identity crisis. He predicted the car would eventually be restored and take its rightful place in history with its two other pristine teammates.

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Once Tech’s Favorite Economist, Now a Thorn in Its Side

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Paul Romer was once Silicon Valley’s favorite economist. The theory that helped him win a Nobel prize — that ideas are the turbocharged fuel of the modern economy — resonated deeply in the global capital of wealth-generating ideas. In the 1990s, Wired magazine called him “an economist for the technological age.” The Wall Street Journal said the tech industry treated him “like a rock star.”

Not anymore.

Today, Mr. Romer, 65, remains a believer in science and technology as engines of progress. But he has also become a fierce critic of the tech industry’s largest companies, saying that they stifle the flow of new ideas. He has championed new state taxes on the digital ads sold by companies like Facebook and Google, an idea that Maryland adopted this year.

And he is hard on economists, including himself, for long supplying the intellectual cover for hands-off policies and court rulings that have led to what he calls the “collapse of competition” in tech and other industries.

“Economists taught, ‘It’s the market. There’s nothing we can do,’” Mr. Romer said. “That’s really just so wrong.”

free-market theory. Monopoly or oligopoly seems to be the order of the day.

The relentless rise of the digital giants, they say, requires new thinking and new rules. Some were members of the tech-friendly Obama administration. In congressional testimony and research reports, they are contributing ideas and credibility to policymakers who want to rein in the big tech companies.

Their policy recommendations vary. They include stronger enforcement, giving people more control over their data and new legislation. Many economists support the bill introduced this year by Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, that would tighten curbs on mergers. The bill would effectively “overrule a number of faulty, pro-defendant Supreme Court cases,” Carl Shapiro, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration, wrote in a recent presentation to the American Bar Association.

Some economists, notably Jason Furman, a Harvard professor, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration and adviser to the British government on digital markets, recommend a new regulatory authority to enforce a code of conduct on big tech companies that would include fair access to their platforms for rivals, open technical standards and data mobility.

his Nobel lecture in 2018 prompted him to think about the “progress gap” in America. Progress, he explained, is not just a matter of economic growth, but should also be seen in measures of individual and social well-being.

Mr. Romer pushed the idea that new cities of the developing world should be a blend of government design for basics like roads and sanitation, and mostly let markets take care of the rest. During a short stint as chief economist of the World Bank, he had hoped to persuade the bank to back a new city, without success.

In the big-tech debate, Mr. Romer notes the influence of progressives like Lina Khan, an antitrust scholar at Columbia Law School and a Democratic nominee to the Federal Trade Commission, who see market power itself as a danger and look at its impact on workers, suppliers and communities.

That social welfare perspective is a wider lens that appeals to Mr. Romer and others.

“I’m totally on board with Paul on this,” said Rebecca Henderson, an economist and professor at the Harvard Business School. “We have a much broader problem than one that falls within the confines of current antitrust law.”

Mr. Romer’s specific contribution is a proposal for a progressive tax on digital ads that would apply mainly to the largest internet companies supported by advertising. Its premise is that social networks like Facebook and Google’s YouTube rely on keeping people on their sites as long as possible by targeting them with attention-grabbing ads and content — a business model that inherently amplifies disinformation, hate speech and polarizing political messages.

So that digital ad revenue, Mr. Romer insists, is fair game for taxation. He would like to see the tax nudge the companies away from targeted ads toward a subscription model. But at the least, he said, it would give governments needed tax revenue.

In February, Maryland became the first state to pass legislation that embodies Mr. Romer’s digital ad tax concept. Other states including Connecticut and Indiana are considering similar proposals. Industry groups have filed a court challenge to the Maryland law asserting it is an illegal overreach by the state.

Mr. Romer says the tax is an economic tool with a political goal.

“I really do think the much bigger issue we’re facing is the preservation of democracy,” he said. “This goes way beyond efficiency.”

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Texas, Indiana and Oklahoma join states cutting off pandemic unemployment benefits.

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Texas, Indiana and Oklahoma this week joined the growing number of states that are withdrawing from federal pandemic-related unemployment benefits.

Supported by Republican governors and lawmakers as well as national and state chambers of commerce, the decision will eliminate the temporary $300-a-week supplement that unemployment recipients have been getting and will end benefits for freelancers, part-timers and those who have been unemployed for more than six months.

In Wisconsin, where the governor is a Democrat, Republicans in the Assembly and Senate have introduced legislation to end participation.

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming also plan to end federal unemployment benefits, beginning in June or early July.

Gov. Greg Abbott said in a news release. “According to the Texas Workforce Commission, the number of job openings in Texas is almost identical to the number of Texans who are receiving unemployment benefits.”

The moves will affect more than 3.4 million people in the 21 states, according to a calculation by Oxford Economics, a forecasting and analysis firm. Of those workers, 2.5 million currently on unemployment would lose benefits altogether, it said.

Although business owners and managers have complained that unemployment benefits are discouraging people from answering help-wanted ads, the evidence is mixed. Vaccination rates are picking up but less than half of adults are fully vaccinated. In surveys, people have cited continuing fear of infection. A lack of child care has also prevented many parents from returning to work full time.

Arizona, Montana and Oklahoma are offering newly hired workers an incentive bonus.

Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut, a Democrat, said this week that his state would offer $1,000 bonuses to 10,000 workers who have experienced long-term unemployment and obtain new jobs. His state is not dropping the federal benefits.

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Many States with Bad Recent Outbreaks Show Cases and Hospitalization Drops

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Many of the states that have suffered the worst recent coronavirus outbreaks have seen notable declines both in new cases and in hospitalizations over the last two weeks, according to a New York Times database.

For example, in Michigan, which has had one of the country’s steepest drops, the average number of daily cases sank 45 percent and hospitalizations tumbled 32 percent over that time period, as of Tuesday.

The average number of new cases is also down 30 percent in Minnesota, 38 percent in Pennsylvania and 33 percent in Florida in the past two weeks. In the same three states, hospitalizations are down 20 percent, 27 percent and 11 percent.

The progress for states like Michigan, which recently began to recover from one of its worst stretches in the pandemic, could indicate that vaccinations are beginning to rein in the virus in the United States. Hospitalization data can often lag behind case numbers for a number of reasons.

lower vaccination rates but did not see the same recent spike in case numbers as its northern neighbor.

“I don’t see us having a national surge. We’re not going to be like India. I do think the vaccine levels have surely helped us tremendously in taking that off the table,” Dr. Osterholm said. “But I do think at the state level, where we have substantial populations that need to be vaccinated, we could still see substantial activity.”

the pace of U.S. vaccinations had declined. Nearly all states now have a glut of vaccine doses that could be quickly redirected to adolescents once the Pfizer-BionTech vaccine has been authorized for 12- to 15-year-olds.

President Biden is pursuing a strategy focused on local outreach and expanded accessibility to the vaccine to help reach his goal of at least partly vaccinating 70 percent of Americans by Independence Day.

“If it’s available, if it’s nearby, if it’s convenient, people are getting vaccinated,” Mr. Biden said at the White House on Wednesday, highlighting initiatives like walk-up availability and free Uber and Lyft rides to vaccination sites.

Making it easier to get vaccinated could appeal to the roughly 30 million Americans who say they would get the shot, but have not yet done so for myriad reasons. Local officials and private businesses are also offering a wide range of different incentives, like free subway rides, beer, baseball tickets and cash payouts, to convince more reluctant Americans to get vaccinated.

The changes in the trajectory of the virus in the United States comes as other regions of the world, especially India and Southeast Asia, are getting hit hard. A number of variants are also spreading around the world, and scientists told a U.S. congressional panel on Wednesday that variants will pose a continuing threat to the nation.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the W.H.O., said on Monday that the world was seeing a plateau in known cases, “but it is an unacceptably high plateau with more than 5.4 million cases and almost 90,000 deaths last week.”

He continued, “Any decline is welcome but we have been here before, over the past year many countries have experienced a declining trend in cases and deaths, have relaxed public health and social measures too quickly, and individuals have let down their guard only for those hard-won gains to be lost.”

Bryan Pietsch contributed reporting.

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Biden Aides Quietly Say His Tax Increases Would Help Charities

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WASHINGTON — President Biden’s plan to raise taxes on high earners and the wealthy is likely to entice more rich Americans to give property or other assets to charity before they die in order to avoid large tax bills, a top administration official told nonprofit leaders last week in a private conference call.

On the call, a deputy director of Mr. Biden’s National Economic Council, David Kamin, was asked how the president’s tax plans would affect charitable giving — in particular, his proposals to change the tax treatment of the capital gains income that high earners receive from selling assets that have gained value, like businesses or stocks.

The plan “actually increases the incentive to give to charity,” Mr. Kamin told the group. “And it basically says if you want to not pay tax on the gain, the way you need to do that is to give the property to charity.”

Mr. Kamin further explained the administration’s rationale, saying “at that point it’s obviously with a charitable organization.”

published an online guide to Mr. Biden’s tax plans for its donors in November, noting that donating stocks and other assets that have gained value “to a public charity — like Duke — can have two powerful tax benefits.” The president’s proposed increase in the capital gains rate for high earners, it wrote, “would mean that significantly more tax could be avoided through a charitable gift, greatly incentivizing gifts of these appreciated investments.”

Patrick M. Rooney, an economist who is the executive associate dean for academic programs at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, said Mr. Biden’s increases could also create a psychological incentive of sorts for people who were under pressure to pass assets on to their heirs, but instead want to donate them.

“It kind of gives you an out with the kids and the grandkids,” he said. “‘I’m not going to give it to you, because so much will be taken out in taxes — and you can help me decide who to give it to.’”

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Biden and the Vaccination Slowdown

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The F.D.A.’s decision to end the pause on Friday suggests it ultimately agreed that the benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risks. Just as the Biden administration deserves credit for much of the overall success of the vaccination program, it also bears some responsibility for the slowdown.

But the Johnson & Johnson pause is not the only factor. Vaccine hesitancy also plays a role.

A poll last month by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 20 percent of U.S. adults said that either they would not get vaccinated or would do so only if required. Another 17 percent said they wanted to wait until the vaccine had been available longer and they could see how it affected others. Put those two groups together, and you can see that the country is starting to run low on unvaccinated adults who are eager to get a shot.

In Mercer County, Ohio, on the border with Indiana, people used to show up at the end of the day to claim any leftover shots. Recently, though, Mercer has had to throw out some doses, Jason Menchhofer, the county health administrator, told The Times.

When I spoke with Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, about the vaccine slowdown, he emphasized the role of hesitancy. “We’ve got people who are less eager,” Klain said. “We know we have to make the shot more convenient, particularly for younger people.”

To do so, the administration is increasing the number of pharmacies that can give the shot, to about 40,000, and will soon start urging them and other vaccine clinics to move to a no-appointment system; people will simply show up and get a shot, as they already can in New York City. The White House also wants employers to offer shots at work and colleges to offer shots to students. The reintroduction of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is also likely to help.

“As people see the benefits to being vaccinated, I think we’ll continue to see progress,” Klain said.

That seems correct. The number of Americans hesitant to get a shot has declined substantially since December, Kaiser’s polls show. And the vaccines continue to work phenomenally well. Fully vaccinated people rarely get Covid and almost never get a serious version of it. In Britain and Israel, Covid deaths have fallen more than 97 percent in the last three months.

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Charles Strum, Versatile Editor for The Times, Dies at 73

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“He loved writing but grew to love editing and supporting reporters,” Ms. Strum said by phone. “He was at a place with many giant egos, and he didn’t have one.”

Mr. Strum collaborated with five Times reporters on the book “Outrage: The Story Behind the Tawana Brawley Hoax” (1990), about the 1987 case in which a Black teenager claimed to have been kidnapped, gang-raped and further defiled by white racists. Mr. Strum acted as the internal editor for the book, which was reported by Robert D. McFadden, Ralph Blumenthal, E.R. Shipp, M.A. Farber and Craig Wolff and written by Mr. McFadden.

After his stint as New Jersey bureau chief, Mr. Strum continued to write for The Times occasionally, often flashing his characteristic wit. One article, in 2000, was about taking a French immersion class.

“Mercifully, this was not like high school, where teenagers wince from embarrassment,” he wrote. “I felt no trace of the angst of my sophomore year, when my teacher — a humorless woman who looked like Howdy Doody with a gray wig and spoke French with an Indiana twang — aimed her intolerance up and down the rows like a machine-gunner.”

In addition to his wife, who is known as Becky, he is survived by their daughter, Kate Strum, and their son, Alec, as well as twin daughters, Sara and Mary Lee Kenney, from a relationship with Nancy Kenney.

After retiring from The Times in 2014, Mr. Strum worked for three years as an editor at The Marshall Project, the nonprofit journalism site that covers criminal justice.

“Some editors edited stories; Chuck edited writers,” said Bill Keller, the former executive editor of The Times who was The Marshall Project’s founding editor in chief. “He made them better. At the start, being a start-up, we had some writers who had more promise than practice. Chuck didn’t just fix their stories, he helped them grow.”

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