Trump saw his convention as a potential success story. Reality intervened.

The announcement by President Trump that he was canceling the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville, Fla., next month was the most vivid evidence to date of how the Covid-19 pandemic and his mixed signals on the virus are upending the 2020 presidential contest.

Until Thursday afternoon, Mr. Trump had been pushing for a crowded, festive convention, complete with a boisterous acceptance speech. He saw it as a celebration of his presidency and an instructive contrast to Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Democratic Party, which have been moving toward a slimmed-down, mostly virtual convention in Milwaukee. It would show the Republican Party as tough in the face of this threat to the national well-being, focused on protecting the economy and returning life to normal — a statement as symbolic as the fight over wearing masks in public.

But at the end of the day, the pullback is not surprising, coming two days after Mr. Trump, in another reversal, endorsed the use of masks. The virus has been exploding across much of the South, and particularly in Florida.

The state has become, arguably, a case study in how not to deal with the virus, and that almost certainly would have been a running story for the thousands of reporters who would have come to Jacksonville to cover the convention. The state’s governor — Ron DeSantis, a Republican and vocal supporter of Mr. Trump — has resisted the kinds of actions, such as requiring masks or instituting stay-at-home-orders, that have been taken by other governors to try to bring the pandemic under control. Mr. DeSantis will head to the White House this afternoon for the signing of an executive order on drug prices before meeting with Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff.

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Life these days is about balancing risk and reward, and that applies to presidents and national political parties as well as ordinary citizens. Republican elected officials, donors and party members were all growing apprehensive about putting themselves at risk; some leading senators had already said they would skip it.

The Democrats had decided the risk of a crowded convention outweighed the benefits that came from packing thousands of people into an arena for four days of attention to a party and its candidate. The upsurge of Covid-19 cases in Tulsa, Okla., after Mr. Trump’s insistence on a large rally there served as a warning call of what could have been a politically damaging aftermath for a convention in Jacksonville.

Trump will sign an executive order aimed at lowering U.S. drug prices.

Mr. Trump on Friday plans to sign an executive order that will target the high price of prescription drugs in the United States, including finalizing a proposal to tie the price that Medicare pays for some drugs to the lower prices that European countries and Canada pay.

The order, which alone cannot change policy, was confirmed by congressional officials and pharmaceutical industry sources. Its signing would revive pledges made as far back as his 2016 campaign to tackle prescription drug costs, even if it means beating back opposition by the pharmaceutical industry and his own political party.

Populist outrage over rising drug prices has been a leading campaign issue for Republicans and Democrats alike, who before the pandemic were inundated with questions about them at town hall meetings. Consumers have been increasingly exposed to rising drug prices as insurers have imposed high deductibles and required people to pay a percentage of a drug’s list price.

But the order comes at a delicate time. Mr. Trump has placed billions of dollars in bets that giant drugmakers like Pfizer, AstraZenaca and Johnson & Johnson will deliver coronavirus treatments and vaccines in time to save his faltering re-election campaign. He needs those companies to produce results, even as he is attacking them on the price of their other products.

The expected centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s executive order, called an “international pricing index,” ties the price that Medicare pays for drugs administered by hospitals or in doctors’ offices to prices negotiated by European governments. Mr. Trump has called for such a system since 2018, railing against drug companies for ripping off Americans.

“Americans pay more so that other countries can pay less,” Mr. Trump said when he first proposed it.

But the proposal has sputtered in the face of resistance from the pharmaceutical industry and Republican lawmakers, and infighting among federal health officials. Conservative critics of the index have viewed it as a form of price fixing.

The order reflects the president’s own frustrations that the United States consistently pays higher prices for drugs than the governments of peer countries. It also comes with irony, just days after the Trump administration signed a $1.95 billion contract with Pfizer as part of the administration’s crash vaccine development program, called “Operation Warp Speed.”

Biden steps up warnings that Trump may try to ‘steal’ the election.

Mr. Biden, who for months has argued that President Trump may seek to interfere in the presidential election results, issued one of his sharpest warnings yet this week.

“This president is going to try to indirectly steal the election by arguing that mail-in ballots don’t work,” the presumptive Democratic nominee said at a fund-raiser Thursday night, according to a pool report. “‘They’re not real,’” he said Mr. Trump would argue. “‘They’re not fair.’”

The remark capped an extraordinary week in which both presidential candidates sought to lay down markers on critical questions around election legitimacy, taking two sharply divergent approaches.

Mr. Biden and his campaign issued stark warnings about foreign interference in the election and lambasted Mr. Trump’s approach to foreign meddling.

“He knew full well of Russian involvement in the election in ’16,” he said at another fund-raiser. “He’s done nothing. He sought help.”

Representatives for the Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Mr. Trump, for his part, repeatedly decried voting by mail — a view that stands in contrast to many Republicans who embrace the practice — and he refused to commit to accepting the election results during an interview Sunday with Fox News’s Chris Wallace, an approach that may be aimed at sowing doubts about the outcome of the election should he lose.

Taken together, the statements reflect a dark phase of the presidential campaign in which there is no shared agreement on even the most fundamental tenets of American democracy.

Suppose Biden wins big in November. What would the effects be?

Recent national polls show that Mr. Biden’s commanding lead has eroded longstanding demographic divisions that have favored Republicans, Nate Cohn writes for The Upshot.

This development has endangered the G.O.P.’s hold on states where Democrats usually have little chance to prevail in federal elections, even Republican strongholds like Kansas or Alaska.

Remarkably, Mr. Trump’s lead among white voters has all but vanished. On average, he holds just a three-point lead among white voters, 48 percent to 45 percent, across an average of high-quality telephone surveys since June 1. His lead among white voters has steadily diminished since April.

Over the last two decades, Republican strength among white voters has given the party structural advantages in the House, the Senate and the Electoral College. A competitive race among white voters would deprive Republicans of those advantages, threatening carefully devised gerrymanders in House races and raising the specter of previously unimagined losses in the Senate.

Mr. Trump still has plenty of time to close the gap with Mr. Biden. But with Mr. Biden’s lead enduring well into a second month amid a worsening coronavirus pandemic, it’s worth considering the potential consequences of a decisive Biden victory.

To illustrate, we took the results of the 2016 election by demographic group and calculated what would happen if those groups backed Mr. Trump at the levels shown in recent polls. Mr. Biden would fight to within single digits in traditional red states like Alaska, Utah, South Carolina, Indiana, Montana, Missouri and Kansas. And notably, he would win by nine to 10 points in the three Northern battleground states that decided the last election: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The N.R.A., making its first advertising buy of the election, focuses on four key battleground states.

The National Rifle Association has made its first advertising buy of the 2020 election, spending more than $3.5 million across four states for the final two weeks of August, according to Advertising Analytics, an ad tracking firm.

The group is focusing on Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina, with the biggest reservations in Pennsylvania at $1.4 million.

Though it has been quiet on the airwaves this election, the National Rifle Association was one of the staunchest backers of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. As the two super PACs supporting Mr. Trump spent less than $25 million each in the election, the N.R.A. spent more than $30 million backing the president.

The N.R.A.’s wading into election spending also comes as the group has struggled financially and has had layoffs and furloughs this year.

And as the N.R.A. has struggled, gun control groups have surged. The 2018 midterms marked the first time they outspent the N.R.A.

The trend could continue in 2020. Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control group backed by Michael R. Bloomberg, has pledged to spend at least $60 million in the 2020 election. On Thursday, it announced a $15 million digital advertising effort, targeting both vulnerable Republican senators and state legislatures, as well as ads that will support Mr. Biden.

The National Rifle Association declined to comment on its advertising buy.

In Washington, at least, Senate Republicans have started distancing themselves from Trump.

As Senate Republicans’ grip on their majority teeters while the president’s political standing plummets, their fate could well be determined by their ability to produce a sweeping pandemic recovery package before the election.

But their frantic attempts to do so have so far produced little more than deep division in their ranks and with Mr. Trump — not the place they wanted to be 100 days out from a decisive race.

Their uncertain fortunes appear to have stiffened Republicans’ resolve to do something they rarely try: distance themselves, however gingerly, from Mr. Trump. They have jettisoned the president’s call for a payroll tax cut, drawing a resentful response from him on Twitter.

They rejected the administration’s plan to omit money for coronavirus testing — an effort many senior Republicans see as crucial to reopening the country and stabilizing the economy — and to defund schools that fail to resume in-person classes in the fall.

Republicans said they were nearing agreement on a $1 trillion package that would be introduced on Monday, but the tortured process that they went through to get there has weakened their negotiating hand relative to Democrats, who are pressing for a $3 trillion plan. And it has dramatized the growing divergence between their interests and Mr. Trump’s instincts.

Even as they privately haggled over the aid bill on Thursday, Republicans publicly defied Mr. Trump on another matter, voting for the annual military policy bill that he has threatened to veto over its requirement that the Pentagon rename bases named for Confederate figures. Many Republicans believed his stance was out of step with public opinion amid a nationwide conversation about racism in the United States.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez leads Democratic women in denouncing sexism in Washington.

Ever since Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came to Congress as the youngest woman elected to the House, she has upended traditions, harnessing the power of social media and challenging leaders, including Mr. Trump, who are many decades her senior.

On Thursday, she took to the House floor to read into the Congressional Record a sexist vulgarity that Representative Ted Yoho, a Florida Republican, had used to refer to her.

“In front of reporters, Representative Yoho called me, and I quote: ‘A fucking bitch,’” she said. “These are the words Representative Yoho levied against a congresswoman.”

Then Ms. Ocasio-Cortez invited a group of Democratic women in the House to come forward to express solidarity with her. One by one, they shared their own stories of harassment and mistreatment by men, including in Congress. More even than the profanity uttered on the House floor, where language is carefully regulated, what unfolded over the next hour was a remarkable moment of cultural upheaval on Capitol Hill.

“It happens every day in this country,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “It happened here on the steps of our nation’s Capitol.” And then, in an unmistakable shot at Mr. Trump, she added, “It happens when individuals who hold the highest office in this land admit to hurting women and using this language against all of us.”

John Lewis will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda, one of the highest American honors.

Congressional leaders announced Thursday that Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia and a civil rights icon, would lie in state next week in the Capitol Rotunda, one of the highest American honors, before a viewing for the public to be held outside.

With the Capitol closed to the public because of the pandemic, Mr. Lewis will spend only a few hours lying in state under the Capitol dome after an invitation-only ceremony on Monday afternoon, according to plans released by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader.

Afterward, his coffin will be moved outside to the top of the Capitol steps, and members of the public will be able to line up — with masks required and social distancing enforced — to view it from the plaza below on Monday evening and all day Tuesday, the leaders said in a joint statement.

Mr. Lewis, a 17-term congressman from Georgia and the senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus, died last week after battling pancreatic cancer. He was known as the “conscience of the Congress” for his moral authority acquired through years of protest for racial equality — including when he was brutally beaten during voting rights demonstrations in Selma, Ala., in 1965 and across the Jim Crow South.

Last year, Representative Elijah E. Cummings became the first Black lawmaker to lie in state in the Capitol. It is an honor that has been afforded to more than 40 individuals, most recently including Mr. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, President George H.W. Bush and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.

A Nashville surgeon running for Senate gets a boost from Ted Cruz at a rally, but a mask mandate is not followed.

He’s a doctor who is holding public campaign rallies, eschewing masks, and running as a pro-Trump candidate, but without the president’s endorsement.

Manny Sethi, the conservative Nashville trauma surgeon vying in a crowded G.O.P. primary to replace the retiring Senator Lamar Alexander, got a boost Friday when Senator Ted Cruz arrived in Tennessee to join campaign rallies in several cities for him.

Mr. Cruz appeared at a campaign rally Friday morning in Jonesborough wearing a mask upon arrival, according to a video posted on Facebook by the local TV station WJHL, but Mr. Sethi’s face was fully exposed as he shook hands with those in attendance, many of whom were flouting a local Washington County mandate requiring masks in public.

A day earlier, Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths had reached new highs in Tennessee, where citizens were generally noncompliant with admonitions by health officials to wear face coverings, according to an analysis by The New York Times.

Running as a conservative who will roll back Obamacare, Mr. Sethi also has the endorsement of Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.

In an era of self-funded candidates, Mr. Sethi, the son of physicians who immigrated to the United States from India, has joined those relying partly on a personal fortune, loaning his campaign $1.9 million.

But he’s just one of the candidates in the Tennessee Senate race who have tapped millions from their own accounts.

The biggest spender, the businessman and former ambassador to Japan Bill Hagerty, who is endorsed by Trump, took out a $2.5 million bank loan to help promote his campaign.

And yet another doctor, the Memphis radiologist George Flinn, also dug into his own piggy bank. Mr. Flinn is running as an un-Trump candidate, pledging to challenge the president when he makes bad decisions.

In all, 12 Republicans, five Democrats and nine independents are running for the Senate seat, with primary voting Aug. 6.

A Texas House runoff between two Republicans remains too close to call.

The vote counting in a Republican House runoff election has been dragging on for more than a week in Texas’ 23rd Congressional District, a sprawling expanse of farm and ranchland stretching from San Antonio to El Paso.

The Trump-backed candidate, Tony Gonzales, remains just a few votes ahead of Raul Reyes in a race that was too close to call on election night, July 14, when Mr. Gonzales led by just seven votes.

As absentee and overseas ballots trickled in across the 29-county district, Mr. Gonzales, a Navy veteran, appeared to pull ahead to lead by 25 votes early this week. Then Mr. Reyes picked up a few votes on Thursday.

“We’re either ahead 22 or 9,” Matt Mackowiak, a campaign spokesman for Mr. Gonzales, said Thursday night. “There’s a discrepancy in Hudspeth and they went home,” he added, referring to tiny Hudspeth County, population 4,866.

Mr. Reyes, an Air Force lieutenant colonel, had been the underdog, but his campaign got a boost in the form of an endorsement from Mr. Cruz, whose emergence in the race turned it into a proxy battle, of sorts, between him and the president.

Mr. Reyes has hinted that he wants a recount.

But Republicans are worried that could potentially further divide their party in the swing district, jeopardizing a House seat they had hoped to retain after the retirement of Representative Will Hurd.

As the Republicans battle over every vote, a well-funded Democratic nominee, Gina Ortiz Jones, a former Air Force intelligence officer, has emerged as a strong general election opponent in the predominantly Mexican-American district, where she almost defeated Mr. Hurd in 2018.

The New York Legislature may become one of the nation’s most liberal after primary upsets.

A slew of progressive challengers upset entrenched incumbents in the New York Legislature in the recent Democratic primary, cementing their movement’s influence in Albany and making it likely that the state government will become one of the most liberal in the nation.

The results, held up for weeks because of delays caused by the coronavirus outbreak, set up potential clashes between an emboldened Legislature eager to push the priorities of the left and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a moderate Democrat who generally favors a get-it-done philosophy.

The most resonant symbol of the new wave was its defeat of Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol of Brooklyn, a Democratic stalwart and chair of the powerful codes committee, who had served 24 terms after first being elected in 1972. Emily Gallagher, 36, a community activist in Greenpoint, won her primary, and Mr. Lentol, 77, conceded this week.

The primary wins have the newcomers and their legislative allies dreaming of passing bills on issues like criminal justice reform, affordable housing and tax increases on the very wealthy, as well as pressing for greater power in the annual and all-important budget negotiations, which are usually dominated by Mr. Cuomo.

Many will find common ground with a younger and more diverse crop of legislators elected in 2018, when Democrats picked up eight seats in the State Senate to capture the majority.

The influence of those progressive lawmakers was first made clear in measures including changes to the criminal justice and campaign finance systems; new gun control laws; new rights for voters, immigrants and victims of violence; and bans on plastic bags, toxic toys and offshore drilling.

Zohran Mamdani, a 29-year-old housing counselor and democratic socialist who defeated Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas of Queens, said in an interview that there was no question that the primary results would “change the nature of the Assembly.”

“How much?” he asked. “That is what we’re going to show in the next year.”

Presidents often talk up their credentials — but usually not their score on a dementia test.

Presidents and those who would be president often boast of their qualifications — their education, their experience, their achievements. And then there is Mr. Trump, who is boasting about his dementia test.

Rather than dispensing with speculation over whether he may have lost a step, Mr. Trump drew new ridicule this week when he declared it nothing short of “amazing” that he did so well on a test that, among other things, required him to identify an elephant.

To demonstrate just how hard he said the test really was, he went on television to recite, over and over, the words that he had been asked to remember in the right order: “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”

Cable television played the president’s performance on a virtual loop on Thursday, and those five words trended online. A group of anti-Trump Republicans instantly produced an online ad mocking the president. T-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies and other clothing with “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.” emblazoned on them were quickly offered for sale. They have in effect become the haiku of the 2020 campaign.

The reaction was not quite what the president was seeking. In repeatedly bringing up his cognitive test in recent weeks, he has been trying to bolster his strategy of questioning the mental acuity of Mr. Biden, whom he has portrayed as a doddering old man.

But in doing so, the president who has called himself a “very stable genius” reinforced concerns about his own capacity, leaving voters who are already confronting the oldest matchup of presidential candidates in American history to decide which septuagenarian is still with it — Mr. Trump at 74 or Mr. Biden at 77.

Trump wants schools to reopen. But Americans are worried, polls show.

Mr. Trump retreated on the coronavirus this week, saying things would “probably, unfortunately, get worse,” and calling mask-wearing a “patriotic” act.

But he remains dug in on one issue, despite broad public opposition: The timely reopening of schools.

On Thursday evening, Mr. Trump argued that schools ought to be able to “reopen safely,” even as he abandoned the Republican Party’s convention plans.

“We cannot indefinitely stop 50 million American children from going to school, harming their mental, physical and emotional development,” he said. “Reopening our schools is also critical to ensuring that parents can go to work and provide for their families.”

But polls show that Americans — parents in particular — remain gravely worried about sending students back to school.

An Associated Press/NORC poll this week found that most Americans said they were very or extremely concerned that reopening K-12 schools for in-person instruction would contribute to spreading the virus. Altogether, 80 percent of respondents said they were at least somewhat concerned, including more than three in five Republicans.

And by a two-to-one margin, Americans said in a Quinnipiac University poll released last week that they thought it would not be safe to send children back to elementary school in the fall. By roughly the same spread, they said they disliked how Mr. Trump was dealing with the reopening of schools.

Americans “want their kids back in school, but not right now,” said Ed Goeas, a veteran Republican pollster. “I think safety is taking priority over education.”

“It shows you how nervous Americans are about coronavirus,” he added. “Because let’s face it, virtual learning couldn’t be worse — yet large numbers of parents say, ‘We’re not putting our kids back in school.’”

Reporting was contributed by Peter Baker, Luke Broadwater, Nate Cohn, Nick Corasaniti, Catie Edmondson, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Katie Glueck, Carl Hulse, Margot Sanger-Katz Jesse McKinley, Adam Nagourney, Giovanni Russonello, Stephanie Saul, and Noah Weiland.