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- Census Data Show America’s White Population Shrank for the First Time

- U.S. Troops to Evacuate Personnel From Afghanistan Embassy, Leaving Only Core Staff

- FDA Authorizes Covid-19 Boosters for Certain Immunocompromised

- GameStop’s Power Player: How Outsider Ryan Cohen Wrested Control

- Simply White, Snowfall White, School House White: Proliferation of White Paint Shades Stupefies Renovators

- Disney Posts a Rebound as Tourists Returned to Its Theme Parks

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Census Data Show America’s White Population Shrank for the First Time

Decennial count indicates Latinos, Asians and other racial groups drove all U.S. population growth during past decade

The latest U.S. census, a decennial survey mandated by the Constitution, was delayed more than four months last year by the pandemic. The Las Vegas Strip in April.

Photo: John Locher/Associated Press

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 5:43 pm ET

The first detailed results of the 2020 census show a diversifying nation where the total white population shrank for the first time in its history and where large metropolitan areas, especially in the South and Southwest, saw the strongest growth.

The non-Hispanic white population dropped 2.6% between 2010 and 2020, a decline that puts that group’s share of the total U.S. population below 60%. The number of people who identify as more than one race or ethnicity grew at the fastest rate of any group, partly due to changes that captured more detailed responses.

The nation’s population grew just 7.4% during the decade, the second slowest on record for a decennial census. Only the 1930s—the era of the Great Depression—saw slower growth. Slightly more than half, or 51%, of the total U.S. population growth in the latest period came from increases among Hispanic or Latino residents, the Census Bureau said.

The new data show an overall aging of the nation’s population. Those under age 18 totaled 73.1 million, or 22.1% of the U.S. population in 2020, a 1.4% decrease from 74.2 million in 2010. The decline was partly due to lower fertility rates in recent years, the Census Bureau said.

As many cities and suburbs expanded, the bureau said, the trend toward rural depopulation continued during the decade. More than half of U.S. counties—52%—had smaller populations in 2020 than in 2010.

“Population growth was almost entirely in metropolitan areas,” said Marc Perry, a senior demographer for the Census Bureau.

The cores of metro areas with more than a million people grew 9.1%, while their suburbs grew 10.3%, a Wall Street Journal analysis of the new data shows. Smaller metro areas grew 7.1%. By contrast, small towns and rural areas saw their combined populations drop 0.6%.

Among the 10 largest U.S. cities, Phoenix saw the greatest percentage-point gain in growth during the decade, with its population increasing by 11.2%. The Arizona city replaced Philadelphia as the country’s fifth largest.

New York easily remained the nation’s biggest city with 8.8 million people. It recorded a population gain of 7.7%, a growth rate that among the 10 largest cities was behind only Phoenix, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio.

Los Angeles, the second-biggest city, grew by 2.8% during the decade. Chicago, the third-largest, saw the smallest gain among the 10 biggest cities, growing just 1.9%.

The nation’s fastest-growing metropolitan area was The Villages, a sprawling retirement community in central Florida that saw a 39% population gain during the decade, census officials said. North Dakota’s McKenzie County, which has been part of an oil-and-gas production boom, was the fastest-growing U.S. county during the decade, its population jumping by 131%.

The census data reflect where people lived April 1, 2020, just before the pandemic sent hundreds of thousands to new homes, either temporarily or permanently.

The declining white total reflects decades of falling birthrates, rising death rates and minimal immigration. Non-Hispanic white residents remain the largest racial or ethnic group counted by the government. But as the U.S. diversifies, groupings have become more ambiguous. “White non-Hispanic” is the narrowest “white” definition used under federal standards, which treat a Hispanic ethnicity separately from race. Millions more say that they are white as well as another race or that they are white and Hispanic.

Including people who claimed two or more races in any combination, the multiracial U.S. population was recorded at nine million in 2010 and is now 33.8 million—a 276% increase—the Census Bureau said. It cautioned that changes in how it processed answers were adjusted in 2020 to capture more detail on race and ethnicity, accounting for a share of the increase.

“The non-Hispanic white population has had more deaths than births in the past several years,” said Kenneth Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire. “Thus, at the same time that the minority populations are growing, albeit more slowly, the white population is not growing—and not just from low birthrates but also from growing deaths.”

The census counted 62 million people who claimed Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, up 23% from 2010. They represent 18.7% of the population, up from 16.3% in 2010. Hispanics can be of any race.

The Asian population reached 20 million, up 36% from 2010. It represents 6% of the total U.S. population, up from 4.8% in 2010.

The Black population grew to 41 million, up 6% from 2010. Its share of the nation’s population reached 12.4%, down from 12.6% in 2010.

The census also counted 3.7 million American Indians and Alaska Natives, 27% more than in 2010. They made up 1.1% of the population, up from 0.9%. It counted 690,000 Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, an increase of 28%. They remained about 0.2% of the population.

The nation’s children are even more diverse than the U.S. as a whole. They are now 47% nonwhite, up from 35% in 2010.

Earlier results from the 2020 census—consisting only of population totals for states and the nation—were released in late April. The total U.S. population reached 331 million last year.

Delayed more than four months by the Covid-19 pandemic, the new results detail the racial makeup of every county, city, neighborhood and block in the country. Legislators and commissions will immediately use them to begin redrawing local and federal voting districts in time for next year’s elections.

In addition to intrastate shifts, 13 states are set to gain or lose seats in the House of Representatives next year through the once-a-decade reapportionment required by the Constitution. They’ll also lose or gain votes in the Electoral College beginning in the 2024 presidential election.

Texas will gain two House seats, and five states will gain one each: Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon. Seven states will lose one apiece: California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The new results will become the benchmark for tracking everything from disease and death rates to government-funding formulas and market research. They will also fuel studies on issues ranging from segregation and gentrification to suburban sprawl. More results, including detailed age and racial breakdowns as well as family relationships and homeownership rates, also have been delayed and aren’t yet scheduled for release.

The 2020 census has been dogged by problems and disputes. The Supreme Court in June 2019 blocked the Trump administration from adding a citizenship question. Last year, the pandemic forced the Census Bureau to shut down many operations for weeks.

—Chad Day and Anthony DeBarros contributed to this article.

Write to Paul Overberg at Paul.Overberg@wsj.com and John McCormick at mccormick.john@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Census Shows Diversity Growing In U.S..'

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U.S. Troops to Evacuate Personnel From Afghanistan Embassy, Leaving Only Core Staff

Officials cite the deteriorating security situation as the Taliban seizes more of Afghanistan’s territory

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul; about 5,000 civilians and military personnel are based at the embassy and Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Photo: Reuters

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 8:11 pm ET

WASHINGTON—The U.S. is temporarily deploying thousands of troops to the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan to evacuate personnel from the embassy in Kabul, cutting the size of the diplomatic presence as the Taliban advance toward the Afghan capital, officials said Thursday.

The evacuation will be undertaken by as many as 8,000 fresh troops in the region, who will augment the 1,000 already on the ground in Afghanistan. It comes in response to the rapidly deteriorating security situation, and the recognition that the Taliban’s sweep of a number of provincial capitals is at present irreversible and threatens the seat of the internationally recognized Afghan government.

The decision to reduce the size of the embassy to an essential core and send U.S. troops to the region to do it amounts to a remarkable turnaround for the Biden administration, which has publicly expressed confidence in Afghan security forces even as those forces melted away and the Taliban took over districts and provincial capitals. Only a week ago, the administration anticipated that it would maintain an enduring diplomatic presence to assist the Afghan government to counter the Taliban.

On Thursday, the Taliban conquered western Afghanistan’s main city of Herat and edged close to capturing the southern city of Kandahar, as Afghan police arrested the governor of the strategic Ghazni province for surrendering its capital city to the insurgents earlier in the day.

The accelerating Taliban victories have demoralized Afghan government forces and sown fears in Kabul that it is only a matter of days or weeks before the insurgents mount a large-scale attack on the nation’s capital, home to six million people. The militants have taken over the capitals of at least nine of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces and taken control of more than half of the roughly 400 districts, which are similar to U.S. counties, across the country.

A new U.S. intelligence assessment concludes that Kabul could fall to the Taliban as soon as the next one to three months, according to U.S. officials. That is a stark revision of the classified intelligence assessment in June, which concluded that the government could fall within six months of the departure of American forces, or about March 2022.

State Department spokesman Ned Price on Thursday said that peace talks in Doha, Qatar, among the U.S., the Taliban, Russia, China, and Pakistan had failed to achieve U.S. goals, but he said hopes of a negotiated political solution weren’t dead.

“Diplomacy has not achieved what we want to see achieved,” he said, adding that the fact that talks continued in Doha was a positive sign. “We intend to move forward with that process.”

“Diplomacy has not achieved what we want to see achieved,” State Department spokesman Ned Price, shown in July, said on Thursday.

Photo: Alex Brandon/Associated Press

A U.S. official said embassy operations are likely ultimately to relocate to Hamid Karzai International Airport, a couple miles away from the embassy complex in Kabul, a move that would help facilitate an emergency evacuation.

About 5,000 civilians and military personnel are based at the U.S. Embassy and at the nearby airport. The reductions are expected to include American diplomatic personnel and contractors, some Afghans, and nationals of third countries who provide security and other logistical support to the massive complex.

“We are going to a smaller diplomatic presence, given the security situation,” Mr. Price said.

A Taliban spokesman last month wrote on Twitter that the group wouldn’t touch foreign embassies or diplomatic personnel. But a U.S. official said that could change if the U.S. continues airstrikes on Taliban positions, especially after the Aug. 31 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

“The administration doesn’t want another Benghazi,” the official said, referring to the 2012 attack on a diplomatic compound in Libya that killed four Americans.

A security officer stood guard in Herat on Thursday, the same day the city was seized by Taliban forces in a push in western Afghanistan.

Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The U.S. mission on Thursday advised U.S. nationals to leave the country as soon as possible on commercial flights, offering loans to Americans unable to purchase airline tickets.

More than 3,000 U.S. infantry troops, including one Army and two Marine Corps units, will arrive in Afghanistan beginning this week to carry out the evacuation of diplomatic personnel, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said.

In addition, 1,000 more troops will be deployed to Qatar as a reserve, and a brigade combat team of about 4,000 troops will deploy from Fort Bragg, N.C., to Kuwait as a precaution, Mr. Kirby said. That is all in addition to the roughly 1,000 troops already on the ground that the military had previously said would support the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

Mr. Kirby declined to say how many of the newly deployed troops would remain in Afghanistan following Mr. Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline for the end of the conflict. The U.S. aims to complete the diplomatic withdrawal by Aug. 31, Mr. Kirby said.

Taliban forces overran Ghazni province's capital city Ghazni on Thursday.

Photo: Xinhua/Zuma Press

The U.S. military troops and hardware will also accelerate the evacuation of Afghans who worked alongside U.S. military and diplomatic personnel over the past 20 years.

Mr. Kirby said there was no “one, precipitating event” that prompted the Pentagon and the State Department to act. Top military officials, however, had been urging the State Department to move faster to plan the evacuation.

“We believe this is the right thing to do and this is the right time to do it,” Mr. Kirby said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin informed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani of the diplomatic draw-down Thursday, telling him the U.S. remained “invested in the security and stability of Afghanistan in the face of violence by the Taliban,” Mr. Price said in a statement.

The U.S. had the largest diplomatic presence of at least 12 nations still operating in the capital, and U.S. allies have also begun evacuating staff. European missions are weighing moves to locations where U.S. troops are already based, at the military headquarters or Kabul airport.

The U.K. announced Thursday that it was deploying 600 troops to Afghanistan to assist with an evacuation of British personnel and former Afghan staff. It said it was relocating the embassy to a more secure location. On Monday, India sent a plane to the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif and evacuated its consulate there. More than a dozen nations have contacted the U.S. military for assistance in removing their personnel from Kabul should the security situation dictate it, officials said.

Turkey, which keeps Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport operating to an international standard, has yet to agree on the terms under which it will stay. The Taliban have warned the Turks not to keep troops in the country, complicating negotiations over the airport.

In the weeks immediately following the withdrawal of U.S. and coalition forces, which was largely completed last month, State Department officials had been loath to cut the size of the diplomatic corps in Kabul. Still, charter flights have begun evacuating nonessential personnel.

By this week, the United States Agency for International Development mission, which has had a robust presence in Afghanistan for years, with hundreds of employees, had already dropped to about two dozen non-Afghan employees there, according to officials.

About two weeks ago, the USAID mission director told partners in the country the agency was drawing down to skeleton staff. In total, it expects just 22 expats to remain, including U.S. and third-country nationals. Many U.S. government contractors have also pulled out, concerned about the fate of the civilian airport, further limiting American capacity to continue to deliver aid.

—Vivian Salama contributed to this article.

Write to Gordon Lubold at Gordon.Lubold@wsj.com and Jessica Donati at jessica.donati@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Biden Adds Up to 8,000 Troops To Help Pullout in Afghanistan.'

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FDA Authorizes Covid-19 Boosters for Certain Immunocompromised

Agency expands authorizations for Pfizer and Moderna messenger RNA Covid-19 vaccines

Updated Aug. 13, 2021 12:05 am ET

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized booster shots for certain people with weakened immune systems, likely the launch of broader efforts to better protect against evasive variants like Delta.

The agency on Thursday cleared giving a third dose of a messenger RNA Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. PFE 1.76% and its partner BioNTech SE BNTX 2.00% or from Moderna Inc. MRNA 1.58% to immunocompromised people who had received a solid organ transplant or individuals who have been diagnosed with conditions that are considered to have an equivalent level of immunocompromise.

“After a thorough review of the available data, the FDA determined that this small, vulnerable group may benefit from a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna Vaccines,” Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a statement.

She said other people who are fully vaccinated are adequately protected and don’t need an additional dose at this time. The agency is reviewing whether an additional dose may be needed in the future, she said.

The decision expanding the authorization of the mRNA shots follows evidence that vaccines are less effective at protecting people with weakened immune systems from Covid-19 than the general population.

Immunocompromised people who didn’t have an antibody response after two doses of the mRNA vaccines had responses after a third dose, studies indicated, supporting the decision to recommend a third dose.

Some immunocompromised people, which include transplant recipients and certain cancer patients, have sought to get a third dose on their own.

“This action is about ensuring our most vulnerable, who may need an additional dose to enhance their biological responses to the vaccines, are better protected against Covid-19,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said.

“An additional dose could help increase protection for these individuals, which is especially important as the Delta variant spreads,” she added.

The expanded authorization is expected to be the first step in a broader campaign to get ahead of the evolving coronavirus, which has mutated into more contagious strains.

The virus’s evolution threatens to undermine attempts to move past the pandemic, not long after it appeared that vaccinations held the key to discarding many of the most onerous public-health measures.

Health authorities blame the Delta variant, in particular, for the surging cases across the U.S., especially among people who aren’t vaccinated, which have swamped hospital emergency rooms in areas with low vaccination rates.

The surge has prompted many authorities to revive masking recommendations and some businesses to dial back efforts at returning workers to offices.

Research found an extra dose bolstered the virus-fighting defenses of certain people with weakened immune systems.

Photo: Rogelio V. Solis/Associated Press

Authorized vaccines appear to work well against the new strains that have emerged so far, especially protecting people against severe Covid-19, according to studies.

Yet the shots don’t appear to be quite as effective as they were against the original virus, many studies indicate. Some other, preliminary research suggests that the protection conferred by vaccination wanes over time.

To maintain high levels of protection, some public-health experts and vaccine makers have recommended giving boosters to the general public.

The Biden administration is expected to decide on a broader booster strategy by September.

Other countries, including Israel, have authorized extra doses for those with weakened immune systems. The World Health Organization has asked countries to hold off on giving boosters to help other nations with few doses gain access.

About 2.7% of American adults are immunocompromised, which also includes people who live with HIV or take cancer treatments and other drugs that suppress their immune systems.

Their weakened immune systems make them especially vulnerable to the coronavirus.

Research suggests immunocompromised people are more likely to get severely ill from Covid-19, are more likely to transmit it to household contacts and more likely to have breakthrough infections.

Their weakened immune systems also make the people less responsive to vaccines, which require stimulation of the immune system to provide protection. An extra dose can help mobilize their immune defenses, according to researchers, increasing protection levels.

Pfizer, which developed a Covid-19 vaccine with BioNTech, has said it plans to ask U.S. regulators to authorize booster shots of its two-dose vaccine this month. Moderna has said it plans to do so next month.

Johnson & Johnson is expected to release data about the efficacy of two doses of its single-shot vaccine later this month.

About half of the U.S., or 167.1 million people, are fully vaccinated, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The FDA said the immunocompromised who get an extra vaccine dose should still take precautions to avoid infection, and the agency encouraged close contacts to get vaccinated to further protect the immunocompromised.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been authorized for people 12 years and older, while Moderna’s vaccine is cleared for 18 years and older. Both involve getting two doses, taken several weeks apart.

Write to Felicia Schwartz at felicia.schwartz@wsj.com and Stephanie Armour at stephanie.armour@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'FDA Clears Booster In Limited Cases.'

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GameStop’s Power Player: How Outsider Ryan Cohen Wrested Control

The 36-year-old billionaire pushed out the company’s board and executive team; ‘The most audacious thing I’ve ever seen’

Aug. 12, 2021 10:03 am ET

It took just a few months for a 36-year-old entrepreneur to take over America’s most talked-about company—and make $1 billion for himself in the process.

Ryan Cohen rose to become chairman of GameStop Corp. with the verve of an old-school corporate raider. Wielding little more than a minority stake and a sharp tongue, Mr. Cohen pushed out GameStop’s executive team and installed longtime associates on the company’s board. The tactics made the co-founder of online pet store Chewy Inc. a favorite of the individual investors who sent GameStop’s stock on a roller coaster this year; they call him “Papa Cohen.”

If Mr. Cohen has made winning look easy thus far, it is far from clear what comes next. From his perch as chairman, he has to revamp GameStop’s business, if only to justify the stock’s remarkable run. The stock closed Wednesday around $159 per share, up more than eightfold this year, but far below the high of $483 it touched in January. The company has reported annual losses for three consecutive years.

Save for pledging to increase digital sales, Mr. Cohen is vague on his long-term vision for the company, which mostly sells videogames and related products at its roughly 4,700 stores world-wide. At a June shareholder meeting, he deflected specific questions, saying he was wary of providing hints to competitors.

“We know some people want us to lay out a whole detailed plan,” he said in a live video appearance at the meeting, “but that’s not going to happen.”

Mr. Cohen’s swift accumulation of power at GameStop, orchestrated from his Florida beachfront apartment located halfway across the country from company headquarters, was the result of a series of previously unreported moves, people familiar with the matter said. Fueled in part by his popularity on social media, Mr. Cohen injected himself into company decision making, all but supplanting the CEO. Board members and executives who were deemed too slow to transform the company didn’t last long.

Mr. Cohen’s takeover of GameStop is “the most audacious thing I’ve ever seen,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. “How does a 12% shareholder take control of a company?”

Mr. Cohen and GameStop represent perhaps the highest-profile test of the meme-stock movement. Small-stakes traders congregating on websites such as Reddit and Twitter have invested money and urgency into an unlikely collection of public companies, such as movie-theater chain AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and telecommunications firm Nokia Inc.

The skyrocketing stock prices are already a jackpot for the companies’ executives and investors, including Mr. Cohen. The GameStop chairman’s 12% stake in the company is valued at around $1.4 billion, a more-than billion dollar gain on paper, according to filings. Mr. Cohen sold Chewy in 2017 to a larger competitor in a $3.35 billion deal.

His portion of that windfall helped give him the confidence to face off against GameStop’s board, whose members’ average age was roughly 20 years older. Mr. Cohen, who counts “Dumb and Dumber” among his favorite movies, made little secret of his feelings for the company’s leadership.

“You don’t have to have the highest IQ to run a successful business,” he has often told friends.

GameStop was founded in 1984 in the Dallas suburb of Grapevine under the name Babbage’s before being sold in 1999 and rebranded a year later. The company went public in 2002.

Mr. Cohen, photographed in 2019, cast aside GameStop executives and board as he pressed an overhaul.

Photo: Mark Abramson for the Wall Street Journal

In early 2019, GameStop tried and failed to sell itself after years of stagnant growth and corporate strategy missteps. That spring, it hired a new CEO, George Sherman, a veteran of retailers including Advance Auto Parts. Mr. Sherman was GameStop’s fifth CEO in less than two years. Later in 2019, Mr. Cohen began building his stake.

When the company’s board learned of Mr. Cohen’s stock purchases, the directors offered him a board seat, according to current and former board members. In some ways, he was an unconventional choice, given that he neither worked at a public company nor served on the board of one. His experience in e-commerce from Chewy, however, made him appealing to a retailer attempting to make inroads with gamers who were increasingly downloading games rather than buying hard copies.

Mr. Cohen turned down the entreaty, telling directors that a sole board seat would give him no meaningful influence over decision making.

The pandemic landed hard on GameStop. Though online sales skyrocketed, the chain couldn’t make up for lost revenue from closed stores. Executives had been counting on the release of new machines from Microsoft and Sony Group Corp. to lift sales, but production delays hampered availability.

From the outside, Mr. Cohen stewed. In November, he released a public letter to the board saying it was moving too slowly to adjust to online retail. The letter was particularly critical of the CEO. “Regrettably, Mr. Sherman appears committed to a twentieth-century focus on physical stores and walk-in sales despite the transition to an always-on digital world,” Mr. Cohen wrote.

The board responded by hosting a private call with Mr. Cohen.

The following month, GameStop said it would sell at least $100 million in new stock for a new cash cushion. Mr. Cohen erupted. The topic hadn’t come up on his call with the board, directors said. He worried the plan would damage the company’s standing among investors by reducing the value of existing shares.

In response, Mr. Cohen wrote an email to GameStop’s then-chairwoman, Kathy Vrabeck, warning her that he would go public with his disapproval if the company proceeded with the sale. He urged her to share the email with other directors, people familiar with the matter said. The company shortly after scuttled the planned stock sale, for reasons it didn’t disclose.

“The ill-timed stock offering created a wedge and he used it to his advantage,” a former board member said.

A GameStop retail store in New York.

Photo: John Smith/VIEWpress/Getty Images

Leery of a prolonged fight and open to new ideas to improve the business, the board invited Mr. Cohen and two of his associates to join in January.

Mr. Cohen approached his first board meeting, held over videoconference that same month, as a blitz.

He proposed the formation of a new committee to review GameStop’s strategy for spending and hiring. It would consist of himself, fellow activist investor Kurt Wolf and former Chewy executive Alan Attal. Though some members of the board said they worried about allowing Mr. Cohen so much sway on subjects of day-to-day management, the proposal was approved. Mr. Cohen proceeded to personally recruit new talent, including executives from Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, and Chewy.

Some directors questioned Mr. Cohen’s turnaround chops, as his proposals to reduce store count and invest more in e-commerce were already under way. They also told him that merely shifting focus to online sales didn’t constitute a new strategy. Mr. Cohen countered that the pace of change needed to quicken.

In one instance, Mr. Cohen asked a company executive to sign a deal to lease a new fulfillment center, hoping to speed up delivery times for customers’ online orders, people familiar with the matter said. The executive pushed back, arguing that such a request from a director was unusual and against company policy that called for such contracts to undergo vetting that included multiple executives. The project later moved forward.

Interest in GameStop’s turnaround hit hyperdrive in January, thanks to a populist market uprising led by small traders looking to bolster stocks that Wall Street firms placed heavy bets against. The company’s shares rose or fell by at least $100 for five consecutive days near the end of the month, drawing the attention of lawmakers and regulators. “Ryan personified a hero against the hedge funds,” a former board member said.

GameStop directors were concerned about the sudden rise in valuation. They debated whether to discuss it publicly and whether the stock volatility could lead to shareholder lawsuits, current and former directors said. A government probe of share-trading activity and a congressional hearing about the trading frenzy added further tension. Few directors other than Mr. Cohen were familiar with Reddit, the social network whose users fed the trading fracas, board members said.

Mr. Cohen’s fame among memestock traders, many of whom were also videogame enthusiasts, seemed to grow in tandem with GameStop’s stock. Mentions of him on Reddit and Twitter more than tripled the week of Jan. 24 from the week prior, according to media-intelligence firm Zignal Labs Inc. His sometimes enigmatic tweets, such as one showing a photo of a Sears building being demolished, inspired some of his more than 205,000 followers to hunt for cryptic meanings.

Mr. Cohen’s burgeoning celebrity status, combined with his tendency to dabble in the company’s operations, earned him fans neither in the boardroom nor among GameStop’s executive ranks.

One director, PetSmart Inc. chief executive J.K. Symancyk, on multiple occasions told board members that Chewy under Mr. Cohen was unprofitable and later required a full information-technology overhaul, according to people familiar with the discussions. Several directors interpreted the remarks from Mr. Symancyk, who met Mr. Cohen in the process of joining PetSmart, as criticism. Others viewed the commentaries as matter-of-fact descriptions.

Former GameStop CEO George Sherman resigned in April with more than $224 million in stock.

Photo: Stephanie Klein-Davis/The Roanoke Times/Associated Press

Mr. Cohen agitated for the company to invest more in e-commerce over bricks-and-mortar. Hoping for more sway in GameStop’s spending, he pushed for finance chief Jim Bell, a trusted lieutenant of Mr. Sherman, to be the first senior executive to go, people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Bell left the company in late March. He didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Cohen’s rising influence irked existing leadership. A handful of top executives, including CEO Mr. Sherman, considered stepping down and claiming their contracts had been breached because of the reduction in their duties due to the board member’s involvement in corporate affairs, a person familiar with the matter said. Thanks to the stock rise, several executives were in line to receive multimillion-dollar incentive packages.

Messrs. Cohen and Sherman were cordial but never quite meshed. The new board member was brash and outspoken, while Mr. Sherman, 60, tended to keep to himself, people who know them both said. Though Mr. Sherman worked through most of the pandemic in GameStop’s Texas headquarters, it was Mr. Cohen, on all-hours video calls from his apartment, who called many of the shots, according to board members. New employees frequently sought out Mr. Cohen directly with questions about the business or operations, bypassing the CEO, people familiar said.

Mr. Cohen encouraged Mr. Sherman to step aside, and the CEO agreed in April to step down. His separation agreement called for the accelerated vesting of more than 1.1 million GameStop shares, which were valued at more than $224 million as of June 21, his last official day.

In private conversations, Mr. Cohen expressed shock that even executives with relatively short tenures could leave with lucrative stock awards.

GameStop’s annual shareholder meeting in early June served as both a celebration of the once-ailing company’s remarkable year and as a coronation of Mr. Cohen as its new savior. An estimated 200 shareholders trekked to company headquarters to attend in person, eagerly collecting company-branded swag such as T-shirts, pins and hats.

Shareholders easily approved six board nominees, including Mr. Cohen as chairman. Because of the pandemic, most of the departing directors left their service without ever having met Mr. Cohen in person.

From an undisclosed remote location, Mr. Cohen spoke publicly for the first time since joining the board. “You’ve ushered in a whole new era at GameStop,” he said, a nod to the new interest from individual investors.

His priority for the moment is to head off the threat of losing business to larger online sellers. GameStop is expanding its product selection to include new categories such as chairs for gamers and live-streaming equipment. The strategic board committee, led by Mr. Cohen, is separately building a customer-support team based in Florida, rather than relying on contractors from abroad.

In conversations with directors and executives, Mr. Cohen emphasized improving the experience for GameStop customers, predicting that gamers will support the company if it provides better service, competitive prices and faster shipping.

Farris Husseini, a business-intelligence analyst who owns around $1.5 million of GameStop shares in his personal account, is a true believer in the company’s future. “If you become more customer-centric, you’ll improve loyalty,” said the 32-year-old Mr. Husseini, who once worked at Chewy but didn’t interact with Mr. Cohen. “Sentiment can change overnight.”

Hours after the annual meeting, GameStop announced a new CEO, plucked from Amazon. Another Amazonian joined as finance chief. Through midsummer, GameStop has hired more than 80 new employees with technology experience, while letting go about one dozen existing executives, people familiar with the matter said.

The new team will enjoy a benefit the old one missed out on. Mr. Cohen, cognizant of the elevated share price, blessed a pair of stock offerings, the latest in June, to raise more than $1.6 billion and eliminate the company’s long-term debt.

It was the same move he complained about so vociferously less than one year ago.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Ryan Cohen’s Power Play at GameStop.'

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Simply White, Snowfall White, School House White: Proliferation of White Paint Shades Stupefies Renovators

Or maybe Chantilly Lace or Cotton Balls? Variations keep coming, and the pandemic wave of redecorators is frustrated; ‘life is about to change.’

Aug. 12, 2021 10:00 am ET

When Christopher Lyon walked into his Washington, D.C., home during his last renovation, he saw red.

Or rather, a dozen shades of off-white splashed on the walls in 2-foot squares, a neutral checkerboard that made him dizzy. “It looked like you were in some kind of modern art painting,” recalls Dr. Lyon, a retired educator.

Too many choices

After staring at the samples for weeks, Dr. Lyon gave his husband, Art Coleman, one final week to pick a paint color and get it on the walls. Mr. Coleman, an education policy and legal consultant who quite enjoyed testing different options, acknowledged the experiment had gotten out of hand and complied.

Choosing a shade of white paint from more than a thousand nearly identical hues has long been confounding. As homeowners flocked to hardware stores for renovation projects during the pandemic, sales of paint spiked, along with stress levels.

The process is only getting harder as companies roll out new variations with particular undertones for those looking to achieve a warm, crisp or cool vibe.

Art Coleman, Milandra Edler, Katherine Coleman-Lyon, Ben Coleman-Lyon and Christopher Lyon in 2019. Dr. Lyon had to push Mr. Coleman to make a choice between a dozen shades of off-white paint.

Photo: Lynn Brown

Isabel Ladd, an interior designer in Lexington, Ky., said sometimes a client will call and ask, “Will you come over? I have put 15 swatches of white on my wall,” looking for guidance.

“I’m a maximalist and I know what’s too much,” the designer said. “And that’s too much.”

She tries to provide some perspective—which may have been lost around sample number seven—that the ultimate decision isn’t really that high-stakes. “They’re like, ‘Life is about to change,’ ” she said. Her stock response: “This is paint. This is white paint. This is not cancer.”

Ms. Ladd maintains a spreadsheet listing paint colors from past projects, with notes about undertones and other impressions. From that, she has established four go-to Benjamin Moore shades, depending on if the client wants a creamier color (Lily of the Valley), a blue undertone (Cotton Balls), green hints (French Canvas) or has no idea at all (White Dove).

Benjamin Moore’s Lily of the Valley, Cotton Balls, French Canvas and White Dove.

Part of the problem: Paint companies’ descriptions are akin to wine tasting notes, poetic but not necessarily helpful to buyers.

Farrow & Ball’s Shadow White is “the perfect contrast to the slightly darker Shaded White.” PPG’s Static is “a light, gray, tarnished yellow with a khaki undertone.” The company recommends users “pair it with dusty peaches.”

“Life used to be so much easier when you could say, ‘What color do you want your walls, white or off-white?’ ” said Ghislaine Viñas, a New York-based interior designer. She calls herself a purist, generally pitching her clients on simple Benjamin Moore White, which she said offers a clean, uncomplicated backdrop.

As for cream and beige, Ms. Viñas said, “It’s like seeing a T-shirt with sweaty armpit stains and saying, ‘Isn’t that pretty?’ ”

But then she rented a place with those colors. “These walls brought me so much solace,” she said, joking that the experience undermined her most fundamental design advice.

Benjamin Moore offers a collection of 152 of its “most requested off-white colors,” shades that are “versatile yet complex.” Behr’s website lists 167 white options. PPG, which owns the Glidden line, has 315 at Home Depot.

“To say ‘curated to 152 paints’ is like narrowing down to the grains of sand on a beach,” said Jonathan Levav, a marketing professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business who has studied how the number of choices available can affect consumer decision-making behavior. “It’s somewhere between ridiculous and pointless.”

Dr. Levav, whose research shows people who need to make a series of decisions can get worn down by the process and start acting irrationally, avoided such stress during his recent renovation. His decorator narrowed the field to a manageable three or four choices.

Farrow & Ball makes about 30 neutral colors, like whites and grays. “It’s very, very carefully curated, carefully edited, to what we feel is needed in the market at the moment,” said Joa Studholme, the company’s color curator.

She recently introduced School House White, a shade initially concocted for her own home in Somerset, England. She describes it as “plain, but not bland.”

Ms. Studholme said the mania for white and other neutral-toned walls picked up in the 1990s, though off-white preferences have shifted recently toward beige from gray. “We’re all craving softer colors, colors that will just give us a hug” nowadays, she said.

Benjamin Moore’s popular Chantilly Lace is intended to evoke “images of pure silk, soft linen and simpler times.” The same brand’s Simply White is “fresh as the first snowfall.” That’s not to be confused with Snowfall White, which is “as crisp and clean as winter’s first snow.” The company also sells Snow White, and more than a half-dozen others with winter and frost in the names.

Curt Zeller gave up trying to keep track of which white he used on the trim in his Pittsburgh home, where he has lived for about 15 years. Now, he buys Behr Premium Plus white base paint—the base other tints are mixed into.

“No Snowdrift or Morning Mist or Granny’s Hair or whatever of the 10,000 whites there are,” said Mr. Zeller, who works in information technology.

Aafrine and Usman Ahmed moved into a new house in Birmingham, England, four months ago. They still haven’t decided on what white to use.

“There’s grays and there’s browns and there’s whites, and your whites have to go with your grays and your browns,” Ms. Ahmed said. “I just don’t want to walk into the house on a gray day and think I picked the wrong white.”

Ms. Ahmed said she feels paralyzed by the decision, and so wants her husband to weigh in.

Dr. Ahmed, an orthopedic surgeon, is stumped, admitting he can’t tell the difference between a few of the shades currently being tested on bathroom walls. On two occasions, he has asked other husbands in a paint shop to weigh in and validate his impression that certain colors are actually identical.

Ms. Ahmed recently asked for his take on two colors, he said: “I put my thoughtful face on and I’m like, ‘That one.’ And she tells me it’s the wrong answer.”

The two have been married for 12 years and laugh about the absurdity of their indecision. Ms. Ahmed joked online that two colors were “as different as day and seconds later that day.”

Write to Melissa Korn at melissa.korn@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Cotton Balls, Snowfall or Static? Decision Seems Make-or-Break.'

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Disney Posts a Rebound as Tourists Returned to Its Theme Parks

Executives note uncertainty ahead with Covid-19 Delta variant; company continued to add streaming subscribers to Disney+ and Hulu

Mickey and Minnie showing up for the premiere of ‘Jungle Cruise’ last month.

Photo: mario anzuoni/Reuters

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 6:56 pm ET

Walt Disney Co. DIS 3.09% ’s parks saw a strong rebound in visitors as people left their pandemic cocoon, but the company acknowledged uncertainty ahead because of the coronavirus Delta variant.

“We did not anticipate—nor did I think anybody—the resurgence of Covid with the Delta variant that would have such a significant impact on the marketplace,” Chief Executive Bob Chapek said on the quarterly call with analysts.

The company posted fiscal third-quarter sales of $17 billion, up 45% from the year-ago quarter, when the pandemic locked down much of the world, but results were still below the $20.2 billion in the 2019 third quarter. Analysts polled by FactSet expected sales of $16.76 billion.

Overall, Disney beat analysts’ estimates for its fiscal third quarter and recorded $918 million in profit, or 50 cents a share, for the three-month period ended July 3, compared with a year-ago loss of $4.72 billion, or $2.61 a share. Adjusted earnings were 80 cents a share. Disney’s stock price climbed in after-hours trading to over $188 a share, up around 5% its close of $179.29 a share before the results were released.

Tourists returning to theme parks bolstered Disney’s balance sheet, as key resorts stayed open throughout the quarter. Executives said they see the momentum continuing. “We see strong demand for our parks,” said Mr. Chapek.

The company’s theme parks and consumer products division posted its first profitable quarter in more than a year. Revenue at the division—which includes its storied Walt Disney World and Disneyland resorts—increased 300% from the year-ago period, and it swung to a profit of $356 million for the quarter.

Shanghai Disneyland on May 3, as China’s five-day Labor Day holiday brought out crowds.

Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg News

Disney executives said its parks have more reservations for the future than there was attendance in the third quarter. They didn’t discuss vaccinations or new restrictions due to the Delta variant. Last month, Disney reinstated an indoor mask mandate at its theme parks in the U.S. regardless of vaccination status.

Disney’s results come as the broader travel and tourism industry is seeing a rise in cancellations and a slowdown in bookings as Covid-19 cases rise with the spread of the Delta variant. In its earnings report Thursday, Airbnb Inc. said the variant was affecting overall travel behavior.

Mr. Chapek reiterated that the direct-to-consumer streaming strategy is the company’s top priority and noted that moviegoers remained reluctant to go to theaters even as cinemas reopened.

Disney+ subscriber numbers beat estimates, reaching 116 million, up from 103.6 million in the second quarter, but its Hulu services had even higher growth rates. Total Hulu subscriptions rose 21% from a year ago, to 42.8 million. Hulu’s paid service generates more than three times the average monthly revenue per subscriber when compared to Disney+, the company said in its report.

Mr. Chapek also underscored that Disney will be flexible and strategic about using a combination of exclusive theatrical releases, direct-to-streaming releases or a hybrid of the two for its upcoming movies. He said decisions would be made on a film-by-film basis.

While the company has recently employed a hybrid release strategy for big-budget films like “Black Widow” and “Jungle Cruise”—with movies making their debuts both online and in theaters—Mr. Chapek said the company would stick to its plan to release upcoming movies exclusively in theaters. First “Free Guy,” starring Ryan Reynolds premieres this weekend in theaters, followed by Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” out Sept. 3.

Mr. Chapek cited terms for both productions, which prohibit the company from releasing the two movies simultaneously on Disney+ and in theaters. But he added that giving “Shang-Chi” an exclusive run in theaters of 45 days should provide interesting data as the company evaluates the optimal distribution strategy with future movie releases amid its prioritization of streaming.

Disney’s distribution of movies on its streaming service has provided a new avenue for generating revenue. The company said revenue generated by offering “Cruella” on Disney+ for an additional $30 buoyed the streaming division’s results.

The company employed a similar strategy with the much-anticipated summer release of “Black Widow,” which collected more than $60 million in fees when it simultaneously premiered in theaters and on Disney+.

But, “Black Widow” star Scarlett Johansson dropped a bombshell on the entertainment industry when she sued Disney for breach of contract, saying the simultaneous release on Disney+ and in theaters deprived her of tens of millions of dollars. Disney has said the lawsuit has no merit. The dispute has highlighted debate in Hollywood about how stars should be compensated in the streaming age.

Mr. Chapek said both he and his predecessor, the historically talent-friendly Executive Chairman Robert Iger, made the decision to release high-profile movies on Disney+ and in theaters. Mr. Chapek also sounded confident that the company hadn’t alienated Hollywood’s creative community but also that additional conflicts will be avoidable.

“Since Covid has begun, we’ve entered into hundreds of talent arrangements,” he said. “And by and large they’ve gone very, very smoothly. So we expect that would be the case going forward.”

—Kimberly Chin contributed to this article.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Disney Rebounds, Sees More Virus Risk.'

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U.S. NEWS

- U.S. Jobless Claims Fell Last Week

- Former Media Executive Agrees to Plead Guilty in Varsity Blues College Admissions Scandal

- Home Prices Jumped Across the U.S. in Second Quarter

- Migrant Border Arrests in July Surge to Highest Level in 21 Years

- At Schools Where Native American Children Died, New Hope for Answers

- Census Data Show Sunbelt House Districts Saw Biggest Population Gains

- Millennials’ High-Earning Years Are Here, but It Doesn’t Feel That Way

- VA Health System Won’t Cover Biogen’s Alzheimer’s Drug

- Kathy Hochul Says She Will Run For New York Governor in 2022

- More School Districts in Texas Sue Governor Over Mask-Mandate Ban

- Supreme Court Lifts Part of New York’s Eviction Moratorium

- CDC Director Says She’s Struggling to Communicate With Americans About Covid-19 Amid Politics, Mistrust

- Supreme Court Rejects Request to Block Indiana University’s Vaccine Mandate for Students

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U.S. Jobless Claims Fell Last Week

New claims fell to 375,000, a sign of labor market momentum despite Delta variant uncertainty

A Starbucks in Los Angeles is one of the many U.S. businesses hiring workers, as employers added almost a million jobs last month on a seasonally adjusted basis.

Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 9:44 am ET

New applications for jobless benefits declined for the third straight week, showing the labor market continues to heal despite worries about the Delta variant.

First-time applications for benefits, a proxy for layoffs, fell to a seasonally adjusted 375,000 in the week ended Aug. 7, from a revised 387,000 in the prior week, the Labor Department said Thursday. In recent weeks, jobless claims have been hovering just above the lowest level touched since the pandemic took hold in the U.S. in March 2020.

The four-week moving average, which smooths often volatile data, edged up to 396,250 last week. That is well below the roughly 6 million new claims filed in late March and early April 2020, but above the about 220,000 applications filed weekly in the months before the pandemic.

The recent claims data matches with other indicators showing momentum in the labor market and broader economy is continuing despite signs that the recent rise in coronavirus infections is starting to crimp some business activity.

The variant “certainly is a risk and it could dampen things a little bit,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief U.S. financial economist at Oxford Economics. “But our baseline view is that with each successive wave, the labor market and the economy has reacted less and less.”

Thursday’s report showed the number of continuing claims, a proxy for the total number of people receiving benefits through state programs, fell to 2.9 million, the lowest since the middle of March 2020, at the start of the pandemic.

Employers added a seasonally adjusted 943,000 jobs in July, the largest increase in almost a year, according to a separate Labor Department report released last week. And job openings rose to 10.1 million in June, the highest level since records began in 2000, according to the department. That is more than the 9.5 million people who were unemployed that month.

“The data suggest the labor market recovery has picked up momentum going into summer and we think that momentum will continue into the fall,” Ms. Bostjancic said.

The latest wave of infections, unlike previous ones, comes as about 71% of U.S. adults have had at least one vaccine dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That should soften its impact, she said.

Earlier surges in Covid-19 cases, last summer and again in the winter, didn’t result in a prolonged stretch of job loss. Payroll employment fell in December 2020 but bounced back the following month. Employers have added 4.3 million jobs this year, through July.

So far, state and local governments have resisted imposing new shutdowns of business activity. Instead, places such as Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., have imposed indoor mask mandates, and New York has said it would require people to prove they have at least one vaccine dose before allowing them to eat indoors at restaurants.

Still, the rise in cases appears to have cooled some of the enthusiasm for going out to eat. Restaurant reservations tracked by OpenTable, which had exceeded pre-pandemic levels in late June, were down 8% in the past week from where they were the same week in 2019.

Spending on air travel also fell in late July, according to data from Earnest Research, which tracks trends in credit- and debit-card purchases. Southwest Airlines Co. said Wednesday it has seen a slowdown in bookings and rise in trip cancellations this month and expects that to drag down third-quarter operating revenue.

If consumers decide to pull back on spending, it could weigh on the economy, said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “Consumers are concerned and they have already turned cautious,” he said.

Recent jobless claims data could also reflect policy changes. About half of states have acted to end federal pandemic programs that added $300 a week to unemployment benefits, allowed workers to receive payments for more than six months and allowed the self-employed, and others not typically eligible, to tap benefits.

The number of benefit payments made through all programs, including pandemic programs established in March 2020, fell by about 900,000 to 12.1 million the week ended July 24, the Labor Department said. Enrollment in pandemic-specific programs fell, but that was partially offset by increased enrollment in a separate program that offers extended benefits in states with high unemployment.

Detailed program data isn’t seasonally adjusted and is reported on a two-week delay.

The total level is less than half as many jobless payments as made a year earlier, but well above the about 2 million payments made weekly in early 2020, before the pandemic took hold.

Write to David Harrison at david.harrison@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Unemployment Claims Edge Lower Again.'

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Former Media Executive Agrees to Plead Guilty in Varsity Blues College Admissions Scandal

Prosecutors accused Elisabeth Kimmel of paying corrupt college counselor $525,000 to get her children into Georgetown and USC

Elisabeth Kimmel arrived at federal court in Boston in March 2019.

Photo: Scott Eisen/Bloomberg News

Aug. 12, 2021 2:14 pm ET

BOSTON— Elisabeth Kimmel, a former media executive from La Jolla, Calif., has agreed to plead guilty for her role in a nationwide college-admissions scandal, heading off a trial that was scheduled to begin next month.

Ms. Kimmel, 57 years old, allegedly paid more than a half-million dollars to a corrupt college counselor to slot a daughter into Georgetown University and a son into the University of Southern California as athletes, even though they weren’t competitive players. She agreed Thursday to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, according to a plea agreement filed in Boston federal court.

Under her plea arrangement, Ms. Kimmel and prosecutors agreed to a sentence of six weeks in prison and two years of supervised release, the first of which would be under house arrest. She also would be required to pay a $250,000 fine and perform 500 hours of community service, according to the plea deal. The judge in the case isn’t required to accept the agreed-upon sentence.

Ms. Kimmel is set to be the 45th defendant to plead guilty in the sprawling investigation known as Operation Varsity Blues. Fifty-seven people have been charged since the case came to light in March 2019 and several are slated to go to trial this fall.

Her attorney, Eoin P. Beirne, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

According to prosecutors, Ms. Kimmel paid $275,000 to get her daughter into Georgetown as a tennis player.

Former Georgetown tennis coach Gordon Ernst is discussing a plea deal with the government, his attorney said in a hearing earlier this week. Prosecutors said Mr. Ernst netted more than $2.7 million from Newport Beach, Calif., college counselor William “Rick” Singer between 2012 and 2018 to designate the children of well-heeled clients as athletic recruits, regardless of tennis ability.

Ms. Kimmel also agreed to pay $250,000 to secure a spot for her son at the University of Southern California as a pole vaulter. The fraudulent athletic profile submitted as part of his recruiting package included a photo of a Texas athlete midvault.

The plea hearing is scheduled to take place Monday.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Mother To Plead Guilty Over Admissions.'

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Home Prices Jumped Across the U.S. in Second Quarter

National Association of Realtors numbers show supply of existing homes for sale can’t keep up with demand

Nationwide, the median single-family existing-home sales price rose 22.9% in the second quarter to $357,900, a record in data going back to 1968, the National Association of Realtors said.

Photo: bing guan/Reuters

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 3:04 pm ET

Home prices surged in almost every corner of the U.S. in the second quarter as robust demand continued to overwhelm the supply of homes for sale.

While the homebuying frenzy has shown signs of a slowdown in recent months, home-price growth has yet to cool.

The median sales price for single-family existing homes was higher in the second quarter compared with a year ago for 182 of the 183 metro areas tracked by the National Association of Realtors, the association said Thursday. In 94% of those metro areas, median prices rose by more than 10% from a year earlier.

Nationwide, the median single-family existing-home sales price rose 22.9% in the second quarter to $357,900 from a year ago, a record in data going back to 1968, NAR said.

Home prices have climbed in the past year as low interest rates and increased remote work spurred new homebuying demand. At the same time, the inventory of homes on the market has dropped as potential sellers canceled or delayed their plans to move. The homes that do hit the market sell quickly, often after a bidding war.

But in the past few months, high prices have attracted more sellers to the market and pushed some buyers to the sidelines. Active listings in the four weeks ended Aug. 1 were up 13% from their recent low in the four weeks ended in March, according to real-estate brokerage Redfin Corp.

“The housing market looks to move from ‘superhot’ to ‘warm,’ with markedly slower price gains,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “Housing affordability for first-time buyers is weakening.”

Many of the metro areas that posted the strongest price increases in the second quarter were in the South and West, though the biggest gainer was Pittsfield, Mass., with a 46.5% median-price increase from a year earlier. Following Pittsfield was the Austin, Texas, metro area, up 45.1%, and Naples, Fla., up 41.9%.

The only metro area to post a decline in the second quarter from a year earlier was Springfield, Ill., where median prices fell 6.9%, NAR said.

Fast-rising home prices are forcing some buyers out of the market and frustrating many more. About 28% of consumers surveyed by Fannie Mae in July said it was a good time to buy a home, a record low in data going back to mid-2010.

Prices are rising so rapidly they are outweighing the benefit of low borrowing rates. In the second quarter, the typical monthly mortgage payment for a single-family home rose to $1,215, from $1,019 a year earlier, NAR said, even as mortgage rates declined.

An increase in luxury home sales has helped push up median home prices in many markets. In Greenwich, Conn., buyers who expect to continue working from home full-time or part-time are looking for bigger houses with more office space, said Mark Pruner of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties. Greenwich is part of the Bridgeport, Conn., metro area, where prices rose 37.1% in the second quarter from a year earlier, according to NAR.

“Much of the rise in sales we’re seeing this year are at the higher price levels, and they’re also not using a mortgage,” Mr. Pruner said. “Mostly where we’re seeing the big jump up is the cash buyers.”

Many economists expect home-price growth to moderate by the end of the year. While the Covid-19 pandemic prompted many people to relocate and work remotely, that trend is likely to slow as companies call workers back to their offices, said Matthew Pointon, senior property economist at Capital Economics.

Write to Nicole Friedman at nicole.friedman@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Housing Prices Up Across The U.S..'

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Migrant Border Arrests in July Surge to Highest Level in 21 Years

Nearly 200,000 people were arrested as tens of thousands of families and unaccompanied minors crossed the border

Migrants from Central America being detained by Border Patrol agents after crossing into the U.S. from Mexico, in Sunland Park, New Mexico, in July.

Photo: jose luis gonzalez/Reuters

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 4:56 pm ET

The Border Patrol made about 200,000 arrests at the southern border in July, marking the busiest month at the border in 21 years and a 12% increase over the previous month, according to new figures released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Thursday.

The number marks a departure from seasonal trends that would typically see fewer migrants attempting the dangerous journey at the peak of the summer heat.

Nearly 19,000 unaccompanied children crossed the border in July—almost equal to the record set this March. And 76,000 parents and children crossed the border together as families, the second-highest total ever and a significant jump from June.

The CBP data only includes the number of arrests and doesn’t account for people who made it across the border without being apprehended—typically single adults in search of work who don’t intend to ask for asylum.

The past six months mark the longest period in recent history that monthly crossings have remained near or above 100,000, an unrelenting pace that has placed a heavy strain on the immigration system and posed one of the largest political challenges for the Biden administration so far.

Raul Ortiz, the deputy chief of the Border Patrol, said Covid-19 case levels in Central American countries are prompting some families to sent their children north.

Photo: Verónica G. Cárdenas/Bloomberg News

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called July’s numbers “unprecedented” during a press conference in Texas on Thursday. He said the administration’s plan to address the rise includes addressing the root causes of migration, creating legal pathways for migrants to enter the U.S., improving security and processing at the border and taking actions against smugglers.

“We have a plan. We are executing our plan, and that takes time,” Mr. Mayorkas said.

Of the people apprehended, 47% were immediately sent back to Mexico under the health-emergency policy known as Title 42, though just 13% of migrants traveling as families were turned back.

The high volume of illegal border crossings is a result of several factors, including the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic felt across Latin America, pent-up demand after years of restrictive Trump administration policies and a perception that President Biden would be more welcoming to those looking to migrate. More recently, CBP officials have warned in internal meetings that the improving economy in the U.S. and rising vaccination rates will continue to attract more attempted illegal entries so long as there continue to be unfilled jobs in the U.S.

“One of the things we have seen in some of our intelligence and information is that because the Covid situation hasn’t improved in some of the Central American countries, you’re starting to see families make the conscious decision to send their children north,” said Raul Ortiz, the deputy chief of the Border Patrol who is set to take over the agency’s top job, in an interview Wednesday.

Some shelters, including the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas, have been getting full.

Photo: Verónica G. Cárdenas/Bloomberg News

The number has also been driven up by an unusually high level of migrants crossing the border multiple times to attempt to evade capture; many of these migrants are adult men from Mexico in search of work. Officials have said that Title 42, which allows agents to rapidly return most migrants to Mexico without allowing them to seek asylum, has inadvertently driven up crossings because migrants don’t face consequences for illegal entry under the policy.

Mr. Mayorkas said 27% of migrants crossing the border in July had made at least one attempt in the previous year, and border officials have said some migrants are trying to enter as many as six or seven times in a row.

The challenge for the Biden administration is that, unlike his predecessors who saw large waves of either single adults from Mexico or families and children seeking asylum from Central America, his administration is seeing large numbers of both populations—in the middle of a pandemic.

So many families have been arriving each day that Border Patrol agents sometimes release them with instructions to check in at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, rather than letting them go with a specific court date. The government also cooperates with border cities and local nonprofits to test migrants for Covid-19 and quarantine them if necessary. But amid the uptick, some shelters, including the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas, have been getting full.

The city of McAllen, running out of hotel rooms to quarantine migrants who had tested positive for Covid-19, this week began sheltering about 1,000 Covid-positive migrants under an air-conditioned tent in a park along the border.

In response, the Department of Homeland Security has stepped up its enforcement tactics, agency officials said. Immigration agents have begun flying migrants being expelled under Title 42 into southern Mexico rather than immediately turning them around at the border, a tactic to discourage repeat crossings. Other migrants subject to Title 42 have been flown to different parts of the border—such as from the Rio Grande Valley to El Paso—and sent back to Mexican cities willing to accept them.

Since Mexico won’t accept most families back under Title 42, DHS has also begun using a fast-track deportation process known as expedited removal to fly some families back to Central America without an immigration hearing.

Asked if those flights complied with U.S. asylum laws, Mr. Mayorkas said Thursday: “It is in the lawful exercise of that public-health authority that we are executing those expulsion flights in the service of the public health, not only of the American public, but of the migrants themselves.”

Immigration authorities said they believe that if they begin to deter migrant families from coming to the border that could slow the number of unaccompanied children as well—since those children most often make the journey north with adult relatives, family friends or other adults traveling with their children who have hired the same smuggler.

Write to Michelle Hackman at michelle.hackman+1@wsj.com and Tarini Parti at Tarini.Parti@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Migrant Border Arrests Surged in July.'

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At Schools Where Native American Children Died, New Hope for Answers

Researchers studying fate of young people forcibly taken from homes want help from an Interior Department review following the discovery of mass graves in Canada

Aug. 11, 2021 7:00 am ET

For years, alumni from the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma have been searching for information about the students who died at their old boarding school, one of hundreds once set up by the U.S. government to assimilate young Native Americans.

Sifting through archived records, the volunteer group has compiled 67 names, but with little funding for more research, they have no way of knowing how many of the children are buried in Chilocco’s cemetery, which bears only a single marked grave.

Theirs is one of numerous efforts by tribal historians and researchers over the past several years to uncover evidence of Native Americans who died at the boarding schools. Until now, these grass roots investigations have been stymied by limited resources and logistical hurdles.

Now, those leading the projects are hoping a new federal investigation can shed light on a mystery that has haunted Indian Country for generations. In June, Interior Department Secretary Deb Haaland launched a review of Native American boarding schools, hoping to figure out how many students died at the institutions—whether from disease, accidents or mistreatment—and where they are buried. The move was spurred by the recent discovery of mass graves of indigenous children at boarding schools in Canada.

“The government abandoned this sacred site when they closed Chilocco in 1980,” said Jim Baker, the alumni group’s president. If the Interior Department provides resources, he added, “then we can do a comprehensive ground-penetrating radar survey.”

Jim Baker, head of the Chilocco National Alumni Association, at the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School cemetery on Sunday

More than 100,000 Native Americans attended at least 367 boarding schools, mostly starting in the late 19th century, according to scholars and the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, which has advocated for the federal government to probe the schools’ legacy. Students, sometimes forcibly removed from their homes, were typically barred from speaking their languages and practicing traditions.

Thousands of young people might have died, with accidents and disease among the most common causes, said Preston McBride, a Dartmouth College historian. Parents were sometimes not informed of their children’s deaths. There were also reports of emotional, physical and sexual abuse.

The schools often focused on trades or farming. Many children were used as forced labor and suffered trauma from their time at the institutions, according to the coalition, historians and accounts from those who attended them. Some more recent graduates said their experience wasn’t as negative and helped set them on successful career paths. Most of the schools were shut down by the 1970s.

Ms. Haaland, the first Native American U.S. cabinet secretary, called for the probe to “shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past, no matter how hard it will be.”

A spokesman said the Interior Department was compiling decades’ worth of records and would start working with tribes this fall. The department hasn’t yet said which schools it will focus on, but a report on its findings is due in April.

“We need to have a full accounting, because this history for the most part has been suppressed,” said Shannon Martin, who recently helped assemble a team of researchers for the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan.

Since 2011, Ms. Martin’s team has documented 229 students who died at the Mt. Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School. Only five deaths were reported in official records of the school, which operated until 1934, she said.

Mt. Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School, photographed in the early 1900s.

Photo: Library of Congress

Ms. Martin said she wants the Interior Department to help tribal historians locate student records, which can involve extensive research at multiple archive facilities around the country.

Some tribal historic preservation officers researching other schools hope to obtain ground-penetrating radar equipment to search for unmarked graves.

Marsha Small, a doctoral student at Montana State University, has already used radar to find what she believes are the remains of 210 students at the Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Ore.

Ms. Small now hopes the government will help her find the names of those who died at Chemawa, currently operated by the Bureau of Indian Education.

Marsha Small with a ground-penetrating radar machine in 2019 at the Chemawa Indian School in Oregon, where she has found what she believes are the remains of 210 students.

Photo: Jarrod Burks/Ohio Valley Archaeology

“For those of us who have been working on this for years, there’s finally hope that we can start connecting these children with their families,” she said.

Earlier this summer, the remains of one Alaskan Aleut girl and nine children from the Rosebud Sioux reservation were disinterred by the U.S. Army from graves at the long-closed Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, and returned to their tribal lands in Alaska and South Dakota. The children were buried in the school cemetery for more than 100 years, according to the Army, which owns the grounds and began its work there before Ms. Haaland’s announcement.

At the Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, administrator Maka Black Elk hopes to hire a team to dig through records for students, currently archived at Marquette University.

Tim Giago attended the Catholic Church-affiliated school, then called Holy Rosary Mission, from the age of 5 until he ran away as an 11th-grader in 1951. The longtime Native American journalist recounted being assigned one day by the principal to dig a grave in a nearby cemetery for a teenage classmate he was told had died of an ear infection. Mr. Giago said his shovel struck what appeared to be the skull of a tiny child who had been buried there, too.

“We went and reported it to the principal, and that was the last we heard about it,” said Mr. Giago.

Christian denominations, usually the Roman Catholic Church, operated nearly half of the schools where Native children were sent, according to the national boarding school healing group.

A spokesperson for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops the group was deeply saddened by the reports of mass graves discovered at several church-run residential schools in Canada. The group said it was looking for ways to assist the Interior Department’s probe.

Mr. Baker and his wife, Charmain, at the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School cemetery.

Write to Dan Frosch at dan.frosch@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Answers Sought on Deaths at Boarding Schools.'

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Census Data Show Sunbelt House Districts Saw Biggest Population Gains

Congressional seats that grew most—many just outside big cities in South and West—will need to be redrawn substantially as redistricting begins

Pedestrians strolled in March in Austin, a city in the fast-growing state of Texas that saw its population jump 16% between 2010 and last year.

Photo: Tamir Kalifa/Getty Images

Aug. 12, 2021 8:07 pm ET

Twenty-three congressional districts mostly concentrated in the suburbs and exurbs of Sunbelt cities grew by more than 20% since 2010, leaving other parts of their states far behind, new census figures show.

That uneven growth across the country, laid out in the 2020 census figures released Thursday, highlights the areas where boundaries are likely to change the most in redistricting this fall. Districts in the outlying areas of Houston, Austin, Dallas, Orlando, Las Vegas and Atlanta will have to be redrawn to shed population. Other districts in the same states as those high-growth areas, however, will have to expand to rebalance the proportional representation of the U.S. House.

The new census counts also reveal how America’s slower growth led to fewer population surges in congressional districts compared with the previous decade. Between 2000 and 2010, 67 districts gained more than a fifth of their populations, and a handful saw 50% growth.

The exurbs of Las Vegas are among the areas where House districts will need to be redrawn to shed population to maintain proportional representation.

Photo: John Locher/Associated Press

Democrats currently have a slim majority in the House and Republicans, who control the redistricting process in more states, are favored to gain at least a handful of seats by redrawing lines to their advantage. Texas will gain two House seats—and Electoral College votes in 2024—and five states will gain one each: Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon. Seven states will lose one apiece: California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Most of the districts that gained greater than a fifth of their populations over the decade were in suburban and exurban areas, some of which started the decade reliably conservative but have tilted toward Democrats in recent years. For example, Georgia’s hotly contested Seventh district, which Democrats flipped in 2020, grew 24% over the decade, driven by an increase in Hispanic, Asian and Black populations. In contrast, the district’s white population decreased about 5% since 2010.

Between 2010 and 2020, the places that grew tend to be concentrated in suburban and urban areas where economic opportunity has drawn younger, more diverse workforces, while rural populations have slowed or even declined.

In fact, all 23 congressional districts that grew by more than 20% over the decade saw increases in diversity, the census counts show. In all 23 districts, the population growth rates for Hispanic and Asian residents also outpaced the rate for white residents, the data show.

Mark Lopez, director of race and ethnicity research at the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, said nonwhite populations drove the country’s growth overall, but he noted that there are indications that growth is slowing. He cited a drop in the fertility rate among people who identify as Hispanic or Latino.

“I think that we’re seeing the echo of the 1990s and 2000s population-growth booms for Hispanics and Asians. But we’re probably going to start to see a slowdown of those numbers at some point, and that is probably 10 years out, maybe 15, unless something big changes,” he said.

The fastest-growing U.S. metro area during the last decade was The Villages, a sprawling retirement community in central Florida that saw a 39% population gain.

Photo: Eve Edelheit for The Wall Street Journal

That slower growth compared with previous decades could constrain map-drawing in many states that have rules about starting with existing lines or respecting certain boundaries such as county lines, said Doug Spencer, an associate professor of law at the University of Colorado who studies redistricting.

In those states, “the lack of growth is really going to limit what they’re going to be able to do, because they’re not going to be able to move those lines very far before they start to get population inequality between the old and the new districts,” Mr. Spencer said.

Congressional district populations will return to near parity within each state during the once-a-decade reapportionment required by the Constitution that will begin this fall. While districts’ true sizes will vary by state, the Census Bureau has said each member of Congress will represent an average of 761,169 people.

How those congressional district lines are drawn, whether by state legislatures or commissions, will be the subject of debate with lawmakers in several key states already planning for court battles after the maps are completed.

Steven Romalewski, the director of mapping at the graduate center of the City University of New York who coordinates the Redistricting & You mapping project, said the population and demographic changes give some indication of where lines will have to change. But he said that many other factors would determine what district boundaries finally look like.

“The moment you change any district, it changes everything around it,” he said. He said Texas could see districts with more substantial changes, both because of population growth and because the state will gain two House seats.

Four districts in Florida, where people gathered outdoors in Miami last March, grew by more than 20% since 2010.

Photo: marco bello/Reuters

Nowhere is more emblematic of the population and demographic changes over the decade than Texas. The state overall grew by about 16%, from roughly 25 million residents to more than 29 million in 2020.

Nine of Texas’ current 36 districts grew by more than 20% since 2010—the most of any state. Florida had four districts among that group, and North Carolina had two. Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia each saw one district grow by more than 20%.

On the other end of the spectrum, 61 districts saw population declines. The biggest rate of decline was in Mississippi’s Second district, which lost about 9% of its population over the decade.

—Anthony DeBarros contributed to this article.

Write to Chad Day at Chad.Day@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Sunbelt Congressional Districts Change Most.'

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Millennials’ High-Earning Years Are Here, but It Doesn’t Feel That Way

High debt-to-income ratios and delayed life events press on budgets of older millennials

Aug. 12, 2021 8:00 am ET

The oldest millennials are approaching a new money milestone: their high-earning years.

After two recessions and a world-changing pandemic, the arrival of the high-earning years for millennials born in the 1980s are around the corner. Yet data suggest this phase of life might not provide the financial security other generations found at the same age.

With a higher debt-to-income ratio and other financial obligations already pressing on their budgets, some millennials entering their high-earning years have delayed homeownership and family formation, said Lowell R. Ricketts, a data scientist for the Institute for Economic Equity at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

“In perspective, you can kind of understand how the millennial generation is a microcosm of the K-shaped recovery that we’re seeing and also just the divergence in wealth overall,” Mr. Ricketts said. “I think you have to factor in the labor market changes over time as well, but there’s a kind of more of a sense of insecurity, even though you might be now earning a high salary or wage, that might not be guaranteed tomorrow.”

Workers hit their peak median weekly earnings between the ages of 35 and 54, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. After that period, individual earnings typically decrease or plateau, but workers experience the greatest gain in earnings when they jump from the 25-to-34 to the 35-to-44 age bracket.

In 1986, workers’ median weekly earnings jumped nearly 16% when they moved into that age bracket from their 20s and early 30s, according to BLS data. In 2005, as the oldest members of Gen X crossed the same age threshold, workers’ median weekly earnings increased by 20%. In 2020, workers saw a 22% increase in income when transitioning from the 25-to-34 age bracket to 35 to 44, which means older millennials entering this age range this year are on track to notch similar increases in income.

Those high-earning years coincide with the time when many adults take on new financial responsibilities such as a mortgage or child care or elder-care costs. While every generation complains about higher costs nibbling their earnings, millennials may feel particularly squeezed as they juggle a high debt-to-income ratio and try to catch up on delayed life events, according to data.

As of 2020, the median age of a first-time home buyer was 33 years old, up from 30 years old a decade ago, according to the National Association of Realtors. Americans are also waiting longer to become parents: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the mean age of mothers at first birth was 27 in 2019, a record high.

Older millennials in their high-earning years are also still working to recover lost ground from previous bouts of unemployment or underemployment caused by the 2008 financial crisis, according to a 2020 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“You carry that with you for a long time, maybe your whole career,” said William Gale, one of the authors of the study and a senior fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution.

The study—which examined household wealth across generations using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, a survey conducted every three years by the Federal Reserve—found that the 2007-09 recession significantly reduced wealth for all age groups, and younger cohorts in particular. In 2016, millennial households held around 12% less wealth than did households headed by a person of the same age in 1989.

In 2019, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found older millennials’ debt-to-income ratios to be 23% higher than expected, based on previous generations at similar ages.

The overall real average wage of 2018 had the same purchasing power as it did 40 years ago, Drew DeSilver, a senior writer at Pew Research Center, wrote in an article. That means despite the strong gains in earnings and a growing post-pandemic labor market, many millennial households may not see more flexibility in their budgets, according to Mr. DeSilver.

“The extra money I make every year just gets funneled into something new, in the necessary things in our life,” said Andrea Pica, a 39-year-old working in pharmaceutical operations living in Neptune City, N.J. “Daycare is like a mortgage payment,” she added.

Ms. Pica began making more money in her mid-30s and recently crossed a personal income goal. She said the extra money she already made didn’t dramatically change her lifestyle. A large chunk of it instead went to pay for care for her first child, then her second.

Ms. Pica, 39, said she’s unsure how other people her age will handle rising housing and living costs.

Photo: Bryan Anselm for The Wall Street Journal

According to the federal Consumer Price Index, the cost of child care and nursery school has risen at roughly twice the pace of inflation since 2000.

To some extent, financial stress might be a millennial generational trait. In a recent 2021 Deloitte poll of nearly 15,000 millennials and more than 8,200 members of Generation Z on the topics related to the pandemic and economy, 41% of millennials reported they feel stressed all or most of the time, and two-thirds of that group agreed their personal finance situations contribute to that worry.

Tim Eng, a 35-year-old product manager based in Colchester, Conn. said he, along with most of his friends and neighbors, has also reached personal salary goals, but those higher levels of pay also come with a cost: longer hours and more stress.

“You’re not going to make more income without drastically uprooting your life,” he said. “It’s about making the most of what they have.”

He said the pandemic has refocused his goals for this high-earning period. Now, Mr. Eng said he is aiming to save more money with the goal of one day retiring early or reducing his working hours so he can spend more time with his family.

‘The extra money I make every year just gets funneled into something new, in the necessary things in our life,’ Ms. Pica said.

Ms. Pica said she’s unsure how other people her age will handle rising housing and living costs.

“You just kind of have to figure it out, and I think sometimes that could even be an added level of stress, especially for those that are not high-income earners yet,” she said.

With plenty of job openings and baby boomers retiring, career advancement should help millennials with earnings. In the third quarter of 2020, about 28.6 million boomers reported they were out of the workforce because of retirement, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of monthly labor force data.

Yet labor-force participation for workers over 60 has increased, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Boomers’ decisions to work longer could stall some career advancement for Gen X and millennial workers, said Mr. Ricketts of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

“Gen X can’t move up to senior positions currently held by boomers, and then millennials can’t move up to their positions,” he said. “The broad numbers point to a challenge in that narrative that ‘baby boomers are done and setting sail on their boats to go fishing.’ This is really a story of folks still working.”

Write to Julia Carpenter at Julia.Carpenter@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Older Millennials Are Earning More, but Finding Less Security.'

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VA Health System Won’t Cover Biogen’s Alzheimer’s Drug

Agency cites Aduhelm’s risk of serious side effects and a lack of evidence that it improves cognitive function

Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm was approved by the Food and Drug Administration this summer.

Photo: david a white/biogen/EPA/Shutterstock

Aug. 12, 2021 5:29 pm ET

The Department of Veterans Affairs won’t cover Biogen Inc.’s BIIB -0.11% new Alzheimer’s drug, the latest rebuke of the controversial treatment since it was approved earlier this summer.

The VA decided not add the drug, called Aduhelm, to its formulary list of available medicines because of the drug’s risk of causing serious side effects and a lack of evidence that it improves cognitive function, an agency spokeswoman said.

The VA provides medical benefits to more than nine million veterans, and is the largest integrated healthcare system in the U.S. The agency is known for being a shrewd customer of prescription drugs, using its large purchasing power to haggle steep discounts from manufacturers. By law, the VA has greater leeway than other government health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid to deny coverage of medicines it deems to be of poor value.

Last month, a research paper by a group of VA doctors and scientists identified more than 150,000 veteran beneficiaries diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and estimated that the drug could cost the VA more than $4 billion annually, plus additional spending on associated care such as screening tests and imaging scans. The paper hasn’t yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The VA’s rejection comes as Biogen seeks to persuade health insurers to cover the medicine and push back against critics who have cast doubt over its effectiveness and value.

For the average patient, Aduhelm costs about $56,000 annually, according to Biogen, which could add up to billions of dollars in new taxpayer spending on Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly that is expected to pay for the majority of Aduhelm prescriptions.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is conducting a nine-month review of whether to cover the drug for Medicare patients and under what circumstances. Meanwhile, a few hospitals have said that they won’t administer the drug to their patients, citing concerns over the drug’s effectiveness and the Food and Drug Administration’s process for approving it.

On Thursday, the VA posted on its website a document detailing its review of Aduhelm and its decision. The document provides guidance to doctors not to offer the drug to VA patients, but allows for doctors to seek exceptions for certain patients.

“Any requests must meet prescribing guidance and will be adjudicated on a case-by-case basis,” the spokeswoman said.

A Biogen spokeswoman said the VA’s no-coverage policy isn’t absolute and includes a pathway for veterans to access the drug. “Biogen remains committed to ensuring veterans have access to the latest therapies for Alzheimer’s and we will continue to engage closely with the VA as they evaluate potential updates to their guidance,” she said.

Biogen’s drug, co-developed with Eisai Co. Ltd., has been mired in controversy since being approved by the FDA in June, the first new treatment for the memory-robbing disease in nearly two decades. The FDA cleared the treatment despite what it said were lingering uncertainties about its effectiveness and the unanimous objections of an outside panel of expert advisers, three of whom later resigned in protest of the approval.

Ultimately, the FDA said approval was justified based on the reasonable likelihood that the drug’s proven ability to remove a protein called amyloid from the brain will slow the mental deterioration caused by a disease with virtually no other treatment options.

The approval was criticized by some doctors and scientists, who said that further clinical studies were needed to prove the drug would benefit patients and thus justify its hefty cost and potential for serious side effects including brain bleeding.

Biogen has said it stands by its clinical data used to support FDA approval in people with early Alzheimer’s symptoms. The company has said that it expects sales of the drug to build gradually because of logistical hurdles in getting patients treated, but that Aduhelm should eventually reach billions of dollars in annual sales.

Disagreements over the drug’s approval and concerns about its financial impact on the healthcare system have led health insurers to take a cautious approach to deciding whether to cover the drug. Most eligible patients are covered by Medicare, according to Biogen.

Write to Joseph Walker at joseph.walker@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'VA System Declines to Cover Alzheimer’s Drug.'

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Kathy Hochul Says She Will Run For New York Governor in 2022

Andrew Cuomo successor also says she will consider mask mandates in New York schools to combat Covid-19

New York Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul said her priority as governor is getting students back to school.

Photo: Hans Pennink/Associated Press

Aug. 12, 2021 8:35 am ET

New York Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul said she would run for governor in the state’s 2022 race, making her the first Democrat to announce her plans for the office since Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation.

Ms. Hochul will succeed Mr. Cuomo as governor in 12 days, after he said earlier this week that he was stepping down following a state attorney general report that found he had violated state and federal sexual-harassment laws. Mr. Cuomo has called the report’s findings false.

Ms. Hochul said Thursday that as she finishes out the last 15 months of Mr. Cuomo’s term as governor, New Yorkers will see she is the most prepared candidate in the 2022 race.

“I am confident they will see that I fight like hell every single day,” she said in an interview with NBC’s “Today.”

Ms. Hochul also said her priority as governor is getting students back to school and that she would consider a mask mandate.

“I believe that there will end up being mask mandates,” she said, adding that she viewed it as the best option to create a safe environment for people to return to classrooms.

Positive Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations in New York continue to rise as the Delta variant spreads, particularly through unvaccinated populations, Mr. Cuomo said Wednesday.

“As our numbers tick upward, it is more important now than ever that New Yorkers who are unvaccinated get their shot,” he said.

Several Republican candidates have already announced their plans to run in New York’s 2022 gubernatorial race.

State Attorney General Letitia James, who oversaw an investigation into sexual-harassment allegations against Mr. Cuomo, has been considered a possible Democratic candidate but hasn’t said whether she will run. Ms. James’ report found he inappropriately touched or made inappropriate comments to 11 women, including current and former aides. Mr. Cuomo has denied he ever touched anyone inappropriately and has apologized if his comments were misinterpreted.

Despite working for Mr. Cuomo for six years, Ms. Hochul said that she spent little time in Albany under his administration and had not witnessed the culture of bullying or intimidation that was cited in Ms. James’ report.

“It was sickening to me to see this surface,” she said, calling it an insular situation that went on in Mr. Cuomo’s office. She refused to weigh in on whether the state legislature should continue with the impeachment proceeding.

Write to Deanna Paul at deanna.paul@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Hochul Says She Will Make Bid For Governor of New York in ’22.'

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More School Districts in Texas Sue Governor Over Mask-Mandate Ban

The federal government recommends their universal use but most states have left policy creation to local school boards

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has said that ‘the path forward relies on personal responsibility—not government mandates.’

Photo: Jabin Botsford/Press Pool

Aug. 12, 2021 5:57 pm ET

AUSTIN, Texas—More school districts in Texas are pushing back against an executive order banning mask mandates, joining districts in other states filing lawsuits over the issue.

With most public schools in the country set to begin classes in coming weeks, city and county officials are wrestling with decisions about whether to require masks as the highly-contagious Delta variant causes a surge in Covid-19 cases. The federal government recommends their universal use, but most states have left policy creation to local school boards.

Several states have banned mask requirements. In some of them, local officials are filing lawsuits against state governments for the authority to make those decisions for local schools.

A group of six districts, most of them in the Rio Grande Valley, filed suit Thursday against Gov. Greg Abbott, arguing that he doesn’t have the authority to stop them from requiring masks on their campuses. Kevin O’Hanlon, the attorney representing the group, said schools typically have authority to operate and issue regulations over their own facilities. The districts believe a lack of masks will harm in-person teaching and continuity, as rising infections cause absences and interruptions.

“It seems to me [that the governor] is trying to use a disaster declaration to prohibit anybody from responding to the disaster…which is odd,” Mr. O’Hanlon said.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Abbott, a Republican, said dozens of previous challenges to his executive orders have been upheld in the end. On Wednesday, the governor and Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a state petition to the Fifth Court of Appeals requesting the court overturn a temporary restraining order against the governor’s order that had been granted in Dallas.

“The path forward relies on personal responsibility—not government mandates,” Mr. Abbott said in a statement. “The state of Texas will continue to vigorously fight the temporary restraining order to protect the rights and freedoms of all Texans.”

The suit filed Thursday, the first in the state filed by districts themselves, follows legal challenges to Mr. Abbott’s orders lodged by some of the state’s largest cities.

City and county leaders in San Antonio and Dallas have won temporary restraining orders blocking the enforcement of Mr. Abbott’s executive order. County health officials in both regions immediately followed the orders with directives requiring masks to be worn indoors at area public schools. Some school districts, including in Austin and Dallas, had announced mask requirements in defiance of Mr. Abbott’s order before the lawsuits.

Melissa Griffith, the mother of two elementary school-aged daughters in Richardson Independent School District, north of Dallas, joined the Dallas lawsuit because her youngest daughter, a 7-year-old incoming first-grader, is physically disabled and medically vulnerable, she said. The students who would be harmed most by catching Covid-19 are also the students who rely the most on services provided by in-person schooling, Ms. Griffith said.

“It’s not an equal value of education,” she said of virtual learning, which was suggested to her as an option. “When we’re talking about asking children to go through that, versus the alternative to put a mask on for the day, we don’t feel that it’s a lot to ask.”

Harris County, the nation’s third largest county, which includes Houston, sued Mr. Abbott and Mr. Paxton on Thursday, arguing the county has the authority to set health policies such as mask mandates. The Houston school district was set to consider a mask order later in the day, upon a recommendation from the superintendent.

Tuesday was the first of school at Baldwin Park Elementary School in Orange County, Fla., a school district that is enacting a mask requirement.

Photo: Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/Zuma Press

In Arkansas, several school districts announced they would require masks, after a judge last week temporarily blocked enforcement of the state ban on such mandates. The state legislature met in a special session to consider altering their ban, at the urging of Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, but ultimately didn’t advance bills that would have allowed school districts to set their own rules.

Districts in other states that have banned mask requirements have also pushed back. In Arizona, the Phoenix Union High School district and other school districts have required masks despite a state law against such rules. A group of Republican lawmakers on Wednesday called for the state to withhold funds from districts that require masks.

In Florida, school districts in Broward, Orange and Miami-Dade counties are enacting mask requirements in opposition to an executive order prohibiting them. A spokeswoman for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday said the state could withhold the salaries of superintendents and school board members who intentionally defy the order.

Write to Elizabeth Findell at Elizabeth.Findell@wsj.com and Ben Chapman at Ben.Chapman@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Texas Districts Sue Governor.'

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Supreme Court Lifts Part of New York’s Eviction Moratorium

High court, over liberal dissent, says some state protections deprived landlords of due process

People gathered on Wednesday in New York City to protest evictions.

Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Aug. 12, 2021 9:35 pm ET

WASHINGTON—A divided Supreme Court on Thursday lifted part of New York’s eviction moratorium, saying the state had gone too far in protecting tenants at the expense of landlords.

The high court, in an unsigned written order, blocked a state measure that made it easy for tenants to invoke eviction protections by self-certifying that they were facing financial hardships during the Covid-19 pandemic. Landlords generally couldn’t challenge such certifications.

Before the justices’ intervention, the measure was to expire at the end of August.

The Supreme Court’s order said the New York approach, by denying landlords a hearing to contest the certifications, “violates the Court’s longstanding teaching that ordinarily no man can be a judge in his own case consistent with the Due Process Clause” of the Constitution.

The court said its order did nothing to disturb other New York provisions that allow tenants to invoke eviction protections in court proceedings, so long as they can demonstrate pandemic-related hardships.

The Supreme Court’s action came in response to an emergency appeal by a group of landlords that included small property owners.

“New York’s continuing moratorium violated owners’ constitutional rights and left small landlords struggling to survive, with no opportunity even to be heard in court,” Randy Mastro, a lawyer for the challengers, said after the high court order.

In response, New York argued that the full protections were needed for a temporary pause on eviction proceedings while the state was distributing federally approved rental assistance funds.

The state attorney general’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The court’s three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Stephen Breyer writing that the landlords hadn’t met the high bar for immediate court intervention.

The state legislature doesn’t have unlimited discretion in responding to the Covid-19 crisis, Justice Breyer said, “but in this case I would not second-guess politically accountable officials’ determination of how best to guard and protect the people of New York.”

The Supreme Court’s order comes ahead of a looming legal fight over a new federal eviction moratorium the Biden administration imposed in August that largely revived protections that expired in July.

The high court declined to lift the previous moratorium early, but signaled any new federal ban on evictions may not pass legal muster unless authorized by Congress, which it hasn’t done.

Property managers and realtors are asking a Washington judge to block the new federal measure, and a ruling is expected soon.

Write to Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'High Court Lifts Part of New York Eviction Freeze.'

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CDC Director Says She’s Struggling to Communicate With Americans About Covid-19 Amid Politics, Mistrust

‘My job is to put my head down, ignore the criticism and do the right thing for the public,’ Rochelle Walensky said in an interview

Aug. 12, 2021 9:00 am ET

Rochelle Walensky said the patients she treated as a physician generally trusted that she was working in their best interests. As director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Walensky said she has learned the same isn’t always true of many people in the U.S.

“My job is to put my head down, ignore the criticism and do the right thing for the public and to do the right thing for health,” Dr. Walensky said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “And so that’s what I did.”

When Dr. Walensky assumed her post in January, she vowed to restore trust in an agency where some officials said they felt undermined and sidelined by the Trump administration during the first year of the pandemic. She has become a fixture at White House briefings on Covid-19, and President Biden has said her agency is in charge of key public-health recommendations.

Dr. Walensky, in her first government post, has repeatedly been the target of public criticism as her agency has taken a central role in the federal response to the pandemic. The CDC’s shifting guidance on masks and schools has confused some public officials, and many Americans, and often put Dr. Walensky on the defensive. At times, some public-health experts say, she hasn’t sufficiently accounted for the way people think and behave. Some of the experts say she has failed to draw a clear connection for the public between policy and the data guiding the CDC’s decisions.

“Their communication has to be much better,” said Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at the Scripps Research Institute. “Just tell it like it is. They haven’t done that.”

Passengers walk through the Union Square subway station in New York City in early August. Mayor Bill de Blasio has said he strongly recommends that even those who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 wear masks indoors.

Photo: Allison Hess/Bloomberg News

Some Biden administration officials said they were frustrated at the way the agency communicated some of the guidance changes. The people said the White House was caught off guard by the CDC’s pronouncement in May that fully vaccinated people could stop wearing masks in most settings, and was expecting the July reversal of that recommendation to apply to fewer people and circumstances. Although the administration backed the changes, White House officials had little time to prepare for how to explain them to the public.

Some West Wing aides said they anticipated a political fallout from the CDC’s decision last month to advise vaccinated people to again wear masks indoors in public places where the virus was spreading rapidly. Mr. Biden had set a goal that July 4 would mark a moment when Americans would be on a path toward normalcy.

After Dr. Walensky said the changed mask guidelines were informed by a July outbreak on Cape Cod, where dozens of vaccinated people became infected with the Delta variant, some public-health experts said using instances of infection among inoculated people to address the threat to the unvaccinated risked undermining trust in vaccines.

Dr. Walensky defended the CDC’s messaging. She said it has been hard to distill complex science in the midst of a pandemic in which public-health measures including masking have been politicized. She said that some of her statements have been misinterpreted, and that the CDC has changed guidance to reflect evolving data.

“I am really struggling with how to communicate to people who are worried about politics, and I just want them to continue to be at their family’s dinner table,” Dr. Walensky said.

Some Republican officials have defied the CDC’s latest recommendations and questioned the science behind them. Officials in Arizona, Arkansas and Oklahoma are among those who have barred schools from requiring that students or teachers wear masks or be vaccinated, steps the CDC has recommended.

“Did you not get the CDC’s memo?” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican critic of the CDC, asked a mostly maskless crowd at a conservative conference in Salt Lake City in July, days after the revised guidance was released. “I didn’t see any of you guys complying.”

When the CDC eased masking guidelines for vaccinated people in May, nearly half of Americans had received at least a first vaccine dose and Covid-19 cases were declining. While Delta was fueling infection surges in countries including India, the variant was responsible for fewer than 1% of new infections in the U.S. at the time, Dr. Walensky said.

“There was an enormous pressure for vaccinated people to be able to do things that they wanted to get back to doing,” she said.

The change prompted many local officials and businesses to drop mask mandates altogether, relying on unvaccinated people to decide to protect themselves with masks. Dr. Walensky said that in the absence of a vaccine-passport system, which the Biden administration had ruled out, there was no better way to allow inoculated people to resume more public activities.

A healthcare worker administers a Covid-19 swab test at a site in Miami. There has been a surge of coronavirus cases in Florida in the midst of political clashes over mask mandates and vaccine requirements.

Photo: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg News

“I couldn’t actually see a pathway that didn’t lead to an honor system,” she said. “It was never a permission, although it was interpreted that way, for unmasking cities, unmasking jurisdictions.”

The White House has stood by Dr. Walensky and the CDC. Anthony Fauci, Mr. Biden’s chief medical adviser, said he recommended Dr. Walensky to lead the CDC due in part to her expertise in infectious diseases.

“Yes, she does not have a lot of, or any, experience in the federal government, but I felt that she’d be a quick study and a quick learner,” Dr. Fauci said. “It’s a very, very difficult role that she’s in…where you have changing science, changing information.”

Andy Slavitt, who worked with Dr. Walensky while serving as Mr. Biden’s senior Covid-19 adviser until June, said it was a difficult adjustment for her to suddenly be in the limelight. He described Dr. Walensky as someone with “a real backbone” who knows she will ultimately bear the burden of major decisions, but was also effective at speaking with people on a more personal level.

“She went from someone who was not a household name to someone where people hang on her every word,” Mr. Slavitt said. “If cases are going down, people will think she’s brilliant. And when cases are going up, people will blame her.”

Dr. Rochelle Walensky

Photo: Tony Luong for The Wall Street Journal

Before joining the CDC, Dr. Walensky, 52 years old, was a researcher known for her analyses of the benefits of early treatment and generic-based drug regimens for HIV patients. She was chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, which put her on the front lines of the first waves of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Stephen Calderwood, a physician at Mass General who held the chief of infectious diseases role before Dr. Walensky took over in 2017, said she was a strong communicator who maintained morale through the toughest months of the pandemic. He and other former colleagues said she cared deeply about her peers, remembering birthdays and leaving handwritten notes of encouragement for healthcare workers shellshocked from treating Covid-19 patients.

“She can really bring together people who are of disparate opinions,” Dr. Calderwood said.

As director of the CDC, Dr. Walensky said she is still trying to figure out what messaging will prompt people to make the best decisions for their health, and to get vaccinated against Covid-19.

She said the American public can still come together to determine the future course of the pandemic, but noted that kind of coordination isn’t a given.

“It’s not yet clear to me that we are going to unify together to claim that control,” Dr. Walensky said.

Write to Sarah Toy at sarah.toy@wsj.com and Sabrina Siddiqui at Sabrina.Siddiqui@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'CDC Chief Struggles To Boost Public Trust.'

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Supreme Court Rejects Request to Block Indiana University’s Vaccine Mandate for Students

Justice Amy Coney Barrett rejects emergency request in first anti-mandate college case to reach the court

Justice Barrett denied the request without comment—and without referring the matter to the full high court for consideration.

Photo: Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

Aug. 12, 2021 7:10 pm ET

WASHINGTON—Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett on Thursday rejected an emergency request by a group of Indiana University students who were seeking to block the school from enforcing a Covid-19 vaccine requirement for the coming semester.

The school is requiring students to be vaccinated unless they are exempt for religious or medical reasons, and in those circumstances, individuals must wear masks and be tested for the virus regularly.

The emergency appeal marked the first time a Covid-19 vaccine mandate reached the Supreme Court.

Lower courts declined to block the policy, saying the students were unlikely to prevail on claims that the mandate violated the Constitution.

The students filed an emergency request for an injunction last week with Justice Barrett, who oversees such fast-track petitions from Indiana. On Thursday, she denied the request without comment—and without referring the matter to the full high court for consideration.

Justice Barrett also didn’t require the university to respond to the request, suggesting she didn’t believe the matter to be a close call.

The students argued they had a constitutionally protected right to “bodily integrity” that was violated by the mandate. But lower courts emphasized that the Indiana policy included exemptions and said the school had wide latitude in the name of public health.

“A university will have trouble operating when each student fears that everyone else may be spreading disease,” Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote in a ruling earlier this month for the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “Few people want to return to remote education—and we do not think that the Constitution forces the distance-learning approach on a university that believes vaccination (or masks and frequent testing of the unvaccinated) will make in-person operations safe enough.”

The court among other things cited a 1905 Supreme Court ruling that upheld a measure mandating smallpox vaccinations.

As the Delta variant of Covid-19 has led to a spike in cases, more employers and schools have begun to impose vaccine requirements, moves endorsed by the Biden administration.

Write to Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Barrett Denies Students’ Bid to Block Shot Mandate.'

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WORLD NEWS

- Covid-19 Vaccine Scammers Target Authorities in Dozens of Countries Including Italy and Colombia

- Israel, Widely Vaccinated, Suffers Another Covid-19 Surge

- Head of WHO Team Investigating Origins of Covid-19 Calls For Closer Look at China Lab

- New Zealand to Pursue Zero-Covid-19 Policy Indefinitely

- Afghan Taliban Seize Herat, Move Into Kandahar After Taking Ghazni

- Afghans Tell of Executions, Forced ‘Marriages’ in Taliban-Held Areas

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Covid-19 Vaccine Scammers Target Authorities in Dozens of Countries Including Italy and Colombia

Criminal groups and individuals have proposed contracts for millions of dollars to officials; vaccine makers say they don’t use intermediaries and will sell only directly to governments

Investigators at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security compared real and fake Pfizer websites earlier this year as they looked into Covid-19 vaccine fraud.

Photo: Gabriella Demczuk for The Wall Street Journal

Aug. 12, 2021 5:30 am ET

Criminal organizations and individuals claiming access to Covid-19 vaccines have contacted authorities in dozens of countries hoping they will sign illegitimate contracts for millions of dollars, according to documents and people familiar with the attempts.

Countries whose national, regional or tribal governments were approached include the Netherlands, Latvia, France, Israel, the Czech Republic, Austria, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Canada and Spain, according to the people familiar with the matter.

Some of the governments were offered either vaccines from Pfizer Inc. PFE 1.60% and partner BioNTech BNTX 2.00% SE, Johnson & Johnson JNJ 0.33% as well as AstraZeneca AZN 1.32% PLC, according to the people and copies of illegitimate contracts and letters of intent reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Some negotiated detailed contracts, before calling off the talks and realizing the offers were scams, the people said.

France doesn’t negotiate directly with distributors of vaccines but gets them through the European Commission, a spokeswoman for French President Emmanuel Macron said. Brazil didn’t end up buying vaccines that were offered by third-party brokers, President Jair Bolsonaro’s office said, although it confirmed there were talks. Latvia’s vaccines are purchased within the contracts signed by the European Commission and vaccine manufacturers, said a country representative.

Offers from people and companies to Austrian public agencies or the chancellery that appeared to be serious turned out to be dubious and were referred to authorities, an Austrian government spokesman said. Colombia received proposals from vendors who later dropped them after being pressed by the government to prove they were working with drugmakers, according to Germán Escobar, chief of staff for the Health Ministry. He said the country ultimately negotiated contracts directly with manufacturers. Meanwhile, Argentina only signed contracts directly with vaccine makers, a government spokesman said.

Investigators at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have identified between 50 and 75 scammers, businesses and brokers looking for prospective governments willing to buy, the people said.

It couldn’t be determined if any offers have been successful, and the activity is believed to be happening in developing nations where Covid-19 vaccine supply remains limited, according to the people. Some countries have completed investigations, although others continue, according to Pfizer and government officials familiar with the investigations.

Many governments are desperate for vaccines because of limited supply. International law-enforcement officials and a security expert said they are concerned that limited vaccine supply in some countries could prompt government officials to unwittingly sign bogus contracts.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, through Homeland Security Investigations’ National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, and its partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, has more than a dozen investigations into vaccine contract-related crimes and is investigating vaccine-contract fraud in the U.S. and overseas, a spokeswoman said.

Lining up for Covid-19 shots last month in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state. Brazil says it didn’t end up buying vaccines offered by third-party brokers.

Photo: Maria Magdalena Arrellaga/Bloomberg News

Interpol, the international police organization, is planning to issue an alert in the coming days to governments warning them about potential scams, in hopes of soliciting information to aid ongoing investigations, a spokeswoman said.

Vaccine makers said they still only sell their vaccines directly to governments, so there are no intermediaries public officials should be working through. European Union member governments and regional or local authorities cannot purchase vaccines directly from any supplier.

Pfizer, which developed a vaccine with BioNTech, is aware of 86 fraudulent offers to governments in 45 countries involving the shot, said Lev Kubiak, head of Pfizer’s security. The company shares information on fraud it gleans with law enforcement and governments, as well as rival vaccine makers, he said.

“We’re worried that eventually, at one point or another, some government may become fooled,” he said. “Some of those countries that are most desperate are at greatest risk.”

A Johnson & Johnson spokesman referred to an April statement on its website that says it is aware of fraudulent campaigns that offer its vaccine for sale, and said no private companies are authorized to sell or distribute the shot on behalf of the drugmaker.

An AstraZeneca spokeswoman said that there is no private-sector supply, sale or distribution of the company’s vaccine and that if someone offers private vaccines, they are likely counterfeit, so should be refused and reported to local health authorities.

After Covid-19 vaccine distribution began, groups and individuals fraudulently claiming to possess or have access to shots started reaching out to government officials with bogus offers of doses, the people familiar with the efforts said.

Boxes containing Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses in Spain earlier this year.

Photo: Jon Nazca/Reuters

In late April, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation sent an advisory to healthcare providers and companies warning them of attempts by criminal organizations posing as legitimate vaccine makers and third-party intermediaries offering the shots. The advisory said these criminals claimed they procure millions of doses and asked for half the purchase to be paid upfront through wire transfers to overseas bank accounts.

Israeli police investigated several cases that the country’s Ministry of Health was involved in, said Ronny Berkovitz, director, division of enforcement and inspection, at Israel’s Ministry of Health. He declined to elaborate.

In the Netherlands, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport confirmed it received fraudulent offers but didn’t accept them, and has completed contracts through the European Commission, a government spokesman said. One offer came by mail on Feb. 21, offering five million vials of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the spokesman said.

Canada’s national police issued a bulletin in February warning that officials at different levels of government across the country had received unsolicited offers of Covid-19 vaccines for sale. Police said the emailed offers could be attempted frauds, offers to sell stolen vaccine doses or attempts to test or breach security.

The Canadian government’s indigenous-services department said it received a request in February from a small community called the James Smith Cree Nation, located in the prairie province of Saskatchewan, about purchasing AstraZeneca vaccines through a source outside the federal government. A spokeswoman for the department said officials followed up with vaccine manufacturers, “who confirmed that these offers are not legitimate.” The department contacted police given concern about the legitimacy of the offers, the spokeswoman said.

Wally Burns, chief of the James Smith Cree Nation, couldn’t be reached for comment. Chief Burns told the Saskatoon StarPhoenix newspaper in March that he believed the offer was legitimate and that it could help people in Canada.

The Canadian indigenous-services department issued an information sheet earlier this year that said it was aware of unsolicited offers to sell about 300 million doses of AstraZeneca and other Covid-19 vaccines to indigenous communities, municipal and provincial governments and federal government departments.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police declined to comment on whether it was investigating fraudulent vaccine offers.

Seniors waited last winter for doses in Padova, Italy. Prosecutors across the country have opened probes after regional authorities reported receiving offers to sell them vaccines.

Photo: Roberto Silvino/NurPhoto/Zuma Press

In Italy, regional governments carried out vaccination campaigns. In February, authorities of the northern region of Emilia-Romagna said they received a number of offers from individuals and companies saying they could import millions of AstraZeneca shots. In the same month, the northeastern Veneto region, where Venice is located, said it received offers for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, including one for 15 million doses and another for 12 million doses.

Across Italy, many prosecutors opened investigations after regional authorities disclosed that they had received the offers, said a person familiar with the Italian investigations. A few of the probes are continuing, while some were folded, the person said.

Several letters of intent sent to government agencies in Argentina, Austria and elsewhere and viewed by the Journal show that offers have ranged from one million doses to at least 20 million doses. They provide step-by-step instructions on how countries should put funds in escrow accounts and say they would be able to verify authenticity directly with vaccine manufacturers.

According to a letter reviewed by the Journal and sent to an unidentified government agency in March, the agency was offered 20 million Pfizer-BioNTech doses for $751 million, with the letter outlining the steps to the apparent purchaser and mentioning a phone call with the letter’s recipient. “We are all aware of the failure of the direct route to the manufacturers via central governments for immediate procurement,” the letter stated.

Covid-19 vaccine fraud schemes have become more sophisticated compared with earlier in the pandemic, when it was easier to identify mistakes in illegitimate contracts, said Mr. Kubiak of Pfizer.

Scammers are now using company executives’ names on phony contracts and, in some cases, saying they are working with legitimate companies in logistics and the import-export businesses, Mr. Kubiak said.

He said legitimate companies have approached Pfizer asking to help with a country’s supposed vaccine deal only to be told by the drugmaker about fraudulent offers. He also said Pfizer learned of a phony offer only after hearing from a country’s embassy that had been contacted by that country’s health ministry, which he declined to name.

—James Marson contributed to this article.

Write to Jared S. Hopkins at jared.hopkins@wsj.com, Kim Mackrael at kim.mackrael@wsj.com and Giovanni Legorano at giovanni.legorano@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Vaccine Sales Scams Proliferate Globally.'

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Israel, Widely Vaccinated, Suffers Another Covid-19 Surge

Country delivers more booster shots, restores mask and quarantine mandates as Delta variant drives up hospitalizations

Israel is offering booster shots to fully vaccinated people over 60, and is considering giving access to over-50s.

Photo: Gideon Markowicz/Jini/Zuma Press

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 2:01 pm ET

TEL AVIV—After becoming one of the first countries to open up thanks to a widespread Covid-19 vaccination campaign, Israel is again on guard, this time against the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus.

Mask mandates are back, including requirements to mask up for large outdoor gatherings. Many venues require people to show proof of vaccination, a negative Covid-19 test or proof of recovery from the virus. People returning from most countries have to quarantine for at least a week, even if they are fully vaccinated. Over-60s are being offered a third, booster shot of Pfizer Inc.’s vaccine, and the government is planning to offer it to younger recipients with the hopes it can suppress the rise of cases of severe illness.

Health officials are warning that Israel could face a fourth lockdown during the Jewish holiday season in September if the country doesn’t deliver more booster shots and improve on its wider vaccination rate; 60% of the total population are fully vaccinated, making up around 80% of adults.

A little over a month ago, day-to-day life in Israel was quickly getting back to normal. People were dining indoors or attending concerts without needing the so-called green pass, a digital certificate stored on phones to show the holder is fully vaccinated. But the more contagious Delta variant is forcing a change in tack, in a test case for what could happen elsewhere, including countries with high vaccination rates.

“That window when we weren’t concerned about things was so brief,” said Rena Magun, 61 years old, who co-runs a tourism and Jewish events-planning business with her husband in Jerusalem.

Ms. Magun said when she sent an invite to her friends for a meal last week she was careful to emphasize it would take place outside on the porch.

Her business has been badly damaged as families hoping to celebrate bar or bat mitzvahs with their children in Israel have been forced to reschedule the trips up to four times already since March 2020.

“It’s absolutely devastating,” Ms. Magun said.

She said she had decided to get the third Pfizer shot once she was sure it was safe. “I’m gonna get that booster so I can go back to feeling like Superman,” she recalled telling herself.

Other countries with similarly high vaccination rates, notably the U.K., have seen a wave of Delta infections, but hospital admissions have remained low and are falling, according to official data through early August.

Israeli health experts are watching closely for indications that Israel will follow the U.K.’s trajectory. If not, it could be a worrying sign for other countries.

There has been a jump in Israel in cases of severe illness caused by the virus since the start of August, doubling to 400 in a population of 9 million, with 240 of those patients already having been vaccinated. Patients over 50 years old account for 90% of the severe cases, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Tuesday.

“I ask every Israeli citizen over 50 to be very careful in the coming weeks,” he said.

Though the number of severe cases remains low, the rate of growth has raised concerns. Hospitals are preparing for an influx of patients similar to the early days of the pandemic, with a seven-day average of nearly 4,000 new coronavirus cases now being recorded daily.

To head off the outbreak and prevent larger numbers of vaccinated Israelis falling ill, Israel last month became one of the first countries to begin offering a third Pfizer dose to people 60 years old and over—without any clinical evidence that it would be effective. The decision came after preliminary data made available to medical experts advising Israel’s government showed that protection against severe illness for vaccinated people in the age group had dropped to 81% from 97% in mid-April.

Israeli experts said it wasn’t yet clear whether the apparent drop in protection was due to the Delta variant, waning immunity or a combination of the two.

The prime minister, Mr. Bennett, told health authorities Thursday to begin planning to provide boosters to people under 60 years of age. “Our goal has been, and remains, fighting the Delta strain without destructive harm to the economy, to the extent possible. In order to meet this task, the vaccination effort is the supreme tool,” he said.

Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz and medical experts advising the Israeli government said they hoped Israel would soon have its own evidence regarding the efficacy of the booster shot, possibly this week.

If the booster shot succeeds in lowering cases of severe illness, it would “give us a powerful tool against the pandemic,” Mr. Horowitz said. “This is why we decided to go ahead, even before [U.S.] FDA approval” of booster shots, he added.

People waited to receive Covid-19 vaccine boosters in Tel Aviv earlier this month.

Photo: Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg News

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration expects to have a strategy on Covid-19 vaccine boosters by early September that would lay out when and which vaccinated individuals should get the follow-up shots. The governments of France and Germany have said boosters would soon be available.

The booster rollouts come as the World Health Organization is pushing for a moratorium on such shots until at least the end of September, citing an urgent need to address a shortfall in vaccine supplies to poor countries.

Israeli authorities say more than 600,000 Israelis ages 60 and above, well over a third of the age group, have received a Pfizer booster since its use was approved. To be eligible, five months must have passed since the recipient got a second shot.

The government, meanwhile, is considering tightening measures to contain the spread of the virus.

Israeli police can now be seen patrolling streets and malls and showing up at weddings and other events to ensure people are wearing masks and that they have been fully vaccinated. Those bucking health regulations face large fines.

The return of quarantine for incoming travelers is another example of the more cautious approach.

For Yael Wood, 30, the inclusion of the U.S. on a list of countries from which new arrivals must quarantine beginning Aug. 11 was the final blow to the summer wedding she had fought hard to save. She postponed it after her close family members were unable to come from the U.S.

“I’m really disappointed in the system,” she said. “There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. That’s the feeling.”

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Israel Buckles Down As Virus Roars Back.'

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Head of WHO Team Investigating Origins of Covid-19 Calls For Closer Look at China Lab

Peter Ben Embarek says investigators should seek more information about Wuhan CDC

Peter Ben Embarek, the leader of a World Health Organization team that traveled to China to investigate Covid-19, spoke at a news conference in February at the end of the trip.

Photo: Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

Aug. 12, 2021 6:33 pm ET

The Danish head of a World Health Organization-led team that traveled to China earlier this year to probe the origins of Covid-19 called for closer scrutiny of a laboratory near the site of the first known cluster of cases at a market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

In comments broadcast by Denmark’s state-owned TV 2 and confirmed to The Wall Street Journal, Peter Ben Embarek, a food-safety specialist, said investigators should seek more information about the lab, a research facility run by the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Ben Embarek’s remarks mark the biggest departure by a member of the WHO’s team from their view, expressed at a news conference in February, that a laboratory incident was too unlikely to merit further studies.

“It’s interesting that the lab relocated on the 2nd of December 2019: That’s the period where it all started,” Dr. Ben Embarek said in the TV interview. “We know that when you move a lab, it disturbs everything…That entire procedure is always a disruptive element in the daily work routine of a lab.”

The Wuhan CDC couldn’t be immediately reached for comment. In February, lab workers told the WHO-led team that there were no incidents or mishaps that could have unleashed a virus.

“The Wuhan CDC lab which moved on 2nd December 2019 reported no disruptions or incidents caused by the move,” the WHO’s joint report said. “They also reported no storage nor laboratory activities on CoVs [coronaviruses] or other bat viruses preceding the outbreak.”

The debate over whether the coronavirus pandemic could have begun with a laboratory mishap has pitted the U.S. against China, and caused deep ruptures between virologists who reach difference conclusions on how likely the idea seems.

The convoy carrying the World Health Organization team tasked with investigating the origins of Covid-19 arrived at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention in February.

Photo: thomas peter/Reuters

Chinese authorities, who say the virus couldn’t have come from a local lab, have suggested the pandemic could have started outside its borders.

The WHO team sent to study evidence on where the coronavirus came from was sharply constrained during its four-week trip—with two of those weeks spent in quarantine—and was mostly limited to listening through presentations from Chinese scientists and government officials who declined to provide raw data behind their conclusions.

China says it cooperated fully with the probe, and has encouraged the WHO to study whether the virus first began spreading elsewhere.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has called for further scrutiny of labs in Wuhan, and has offered to send experts as part of a second phase of studies. But diplomatic negotiations to conduct that work have stalled in recent weeks in the face of objections by Beijing.

“Searching for the origins of any novel pathogen is a difficult process, which is based on science, and takes collaboration, dedication and time,” the WHO said in a statement. “In order to address the ‘lab hypothesis,’ it is important to have access to all data and consider scientific best practice.”

The Biden administration has ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct a 90-day review of the available evidence. That review is set to wrap up at the end of this month. U.S. officials have warned that it is unlikely to reach a firm determination of whether the virus began with a lab accident, or in nature.

In his televised remarks, Dr. Ben Embarek focused on the Wuhan CDC lab.

The lab is classified BSL-2, a safety level at which air ventilation controls aren’t particularly strict, as they are in more secure labs. At that level, lab workers are usually dealing with pathogens that either cause mild disease in humans or which don’t typically spread through small particles that linger in the air. Researchers at that level don’t necessarily wear masks.

The Wuhan CDC lab tested all of its staff for Covid-19 antibodies, it told the WHO in February. All staff tested negative, except one who tested positive, it said. That person was infected “due to family cluster transmission,” the WHO-led team’s report’s annex says.

There is no mention of whether the tests were carried out early enough to detect antibodies, which can fade over time, and no blood samples were preserved.

But Dr. Ben Embarek is the first to so explicitly question the team’s conclusion, published in a joint report with Chinese counterparts, that a lab accident was an “extremely unlikely” hypothesis.

That wording was only reached after a 48 hour period of intense negotiations with Chinese counterparts said Dr. Ben Embarek, who said he would have preferred to designate an accident inside a lab as merely “unlikely.”

Beyond that, he said he considered it a stronger possibility that a lab worker interacting with bats in nature could have been the pandemic’s patient zero.

“An employee who was infected in the field while collecting samples falls under one of the likely hypotheses,” he said. “That is where the virus jumps directly from a bat to a human. In this case, it would be a lab employee instead of a random villager or another person or some other person who is regularly in contact with bats.”

He said he was intrigued by the fact that the lab relocated just as the pandemic was beginning, and said he only learned about the move after it came up in conversation with Chinese researchers.

The lab hadn’t published any work with bats since 2013, he said.

“That doesn’t mean they haven’t worked with bats since,” he said, in the interview, which he said was conducted around April but held while TV2 awaited clarity on whether future studies will be conducted. “As far as we understand, they work mostly with parasites, not as much with viruses, so they have worked on parasites from bats.”

“It’s also possible that someone is trying to hide something,” he added. “Who knows?”

Write to Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com, Jeremy Page at jeremy.page@wsj.com and Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Scrutiny Sought for Wuhan Lab.'

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New Zealand to Pursue Zero-Covid-19 Policy Indefinitely

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government might ease entry for fully vaccinated travelers in early 2022 if conditions warrant

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Thursday that New Zealand might always need some protection at its borders to keep coronavirus cases at bay.

Photo: Nick Perry/Associated Press

Aug. 12, 2021 12:21 pm ET

New Zealand said it won’t loosen its stringent border-control and quarantine procedures until next year as it doubles down on its zero-Covid-19 approach to the pandemic, with plans to consider for entry only vaccinated travelers from low-risk countries starting in early 2022.

The Pacific nation of some 4.9 million people has been closed to virtually all travelers since March 2020. That approach has been credited for keeping its Covid-19 infection rate among the lowest in the world, with 26 reported deaths since the pandemic began.

Laying out the reopening strategy, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern warned that New Zealand might always need some protection at its borders, comparing the pandemic to the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S.

“Just like after 9/11, the border will never be the same after Covid,” Ms. Ardern said. “Things can change, but that doesn’t mean we can’t adapt to them in a way that eventually feels normal again.”

New Zealand’s policy of eliminating rather than slowing the spread of the virus has included lockdowns and rapid contact-tracing in addition to strict border-control measures. Officials haven’t recorded any Covid-19 cases passed on in the community for 165 days.

With vaccinations now accelerating after a slow start—all New Zealanders over age 16 will be able to book a vaccine beginning Sept. 1—the government is adjusting its stance to prepare for a gradual reopening.

People were vaccinated for Covid-19 earlier this month in Auckland; about a third of New Zealanders have received the inoculation.

Photo: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images

Starting in October, fully vaccinated New Zealanders will be able to travel overseas for business purposes and self-isolate at home upon returning, instead of submitting to two weeks in government-designated isolation centers. Fully vaccinated foreign travelers arriving from low-risk nations could be allowed into the country without quarantining starting in the first quarter next year if authorities deem that a safe step.

“If we give up our elimination approach too soon, there is no going back and we could see significant breakouts here like some countries overseas are experiencing who have opened up early in their vaccination rollout,” Ms. Ardern said.

Her government has faced growing pressure to ease border controls from businesses facing a labor shortage that is threatening to fuel inflation. New Zealand’s economy largely depends on overseas workers, particularly in agriculture and services, while the health sector relies heavily on internationally qualified nurses.

Inflation reached 3.3% in the second quarter, the highest in a decade, surpassing central bank forecasts and stirring speculation that it could soon tighten monetary policy to prevent the economy from overheating.

Health experts, however, have warned that the highly contagious Delta variant could spread quickly in New Zealand given the domestic population’s low level of natural immunity. Just over a third of New Zealanders have received a vaccine dose, with a fifth having had two shots.

Write to James Hookway at james.hookway@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'New Zealand Keeps Its Strict Controls.'

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Afghan Taliban Seize Herat, Move Into Kandahar After Taking Ghazni

Police detain governor of Ghazni province for surrendering its capital to the insurgents

Afghans fleeing fighting outside Kabul gathered at a makeshift camp in a park in the capital on Thursday.

Photo: Victor J. Blue for The Wall Street Journal

Aug. 12, 2021 1:33 pm ET

KABUL—The Taliban conquered western Afghanistan’s main city of Herat on Thursday and edged close to capturing the southern city of Kandahar, as Afghan police arrested the governor of the strategic Ghazni province for surrendering its capital city to the insurgents earlier in the day.

The accelerating Taliban victories have demoralized Afghan government forces and sown fears in Kabul that it is only a matter of days before the insurgents mount a large-scale attack on the nation’s capital, home to six million people.

Street-to-street fighting in Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city, reached key government buildings Thursday, according to witnesses. A security official in Kabul said it was possible the city would fall to the Taliban by the morning. South of Herat, the insurgents overran the Shindand air base, one of the biggest in the country, according to officials and videos on social media.

“Unfortunately, the Taliban managed to get into [Herat] city with the help of their infiltrators,” said Abdul Razaq Ahmadi, an aide to Ismail Khan, a warlord who tried to organize a defense of Herat. “The police headquarters has been captured by the Taliban as all police forces left it before the arrival of the Taliban militants.”

By nightfall, other residents said, the insurgents took control of the rest of the city.

Thursday morning’s Taliban capture of Ghazni, which lies along the Kabul-Kandahar highway and serves as a gateway between the capital and insurgent strongholds in the south, significantly increased the threat to the Afghan capital.

An employee of the governor’s office in Ghazni said that Gov. Daud Laghmani simply handed over his office to a senior Taliban commander. “He gave a flower to the Taliban commander and congratulated him,” he said.

Pro-Taliban social-media feeds showed a video of Mr. Laghmani and a convoy of his SUVs being escorted out of the city by Taliban fighters and sent to the border of nearby Wardak province on the highway to Kabul. The Afghan Ministry of Interior said that Mr. Laghmani was arrested upon arriving in Wardak’s capital, along with his chief of staff and other provincial officials. “The governor made a deal with the Taliban. He basically gave the city to them,” said a senior police official.

Mr. Laghmani couldn’t be reached for comment.

Tens of thousands of people from provinces overtaken by Taliban forces have moved into the Afghan capital, some into camps like this one.

Photo: Victor J. Blue for The Wall Street Journal

The Taliban’s advances have cast a pall over Kabul, where many residents expressed surprise and shock at the speed of the Afghan government forces’ collapse while the U.S. still maintains some troops in the country and conducts airstrikes.

In recent days, tens of thousands of people from conquered provinces flooded the capital, bringing with them tales of Taliban atrocities. The passport office was mobbed by hundreds of Afghans who tried to apply for documents that would allow them to leave. Some ATMs ran out of cash. Most embassies stopped issuing visas as they readied evacuation plans.

“The mood has changed,” said Abdullah Dost, who owns a mobile-phone shop in central Kabul. “People are afraid that the Taliban will destroy the city.”

In Kabul’s neon-lit Shahr-e-Naw neighborhood, where the main park was filled with recently arrived displaced people, car washer Habibullah Nabizada was fatalistic as he pondered the city’s fate. “I am sad about the Taliban coming here and closing girls’ schools, but we are helpless,” he said. “What can we do? They will take over Kabul sooner or later.”

People lined up at an ATM in Kabul on Thursday.

Photo: Victor J. Blue for The Wall Street Journal

Masih Esmati, a 24-year-old cook frying chapli kebabs, said he was angry with Americans for abandoning Afghanistan, and, like many Kabulis, feared the Taliban takeover. “Yet,” he added, “at the end of the day, this is our country, and we are the ones who have to defend it.”

Outside the Herat restaurant nearby, the favorite hangout of al Qaeda jihadists when Kabul was under Taliban rule in the 1990s, Nadim Qaderi, a recent recruit to the Afghan army, his head clean-shaven, dismissed fears of the city’s collapse.

“We will fight hard and we will defend Kabul. The Taliban won’t manage to come here,” he said.

Zalmay Nazari, a German-trained police trooper who escaped to Kabul this week from Kunduz, the northeastern city captured by the Taliban, burst out laughing. “That’s what we were saying too in Kunduz—we will never give up, we will never surrender, the Taliban will never take the city, and then they did,” he said, stirring his mango lassi. “The same thing will happen here.”

A makeshift camp for displaced Afghans in Kabul was crowded with vehicles on Thursday.

Photo: Victor J. Blue for The Wall Street Journal

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com and Alan Cullison at alan.cullison@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Insurgents’ Advance Speeds Ahead.'

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Afghans Tell of Executions, Forced ‘Marriages’ in Taliban-Held Areas

In public statements, the Islamist militant group has pledged it wouldn’t seek vengeance against government officials and troops

Aug. 12, 2021 11:07 am ET

KABUL—Taliban leaders have publicly pledged to be magnanimous in victory, assuring government officials, troops and the people of Afghanistan that they have nothing to fear as ever larger swaths of the country fall under their control.

But Afghans pouring into Kabul and those still in Taliban-held areas say they have witnessed unprovoked attacks on civilians and executions of captured soldiers. In addition, they say, Taliban commanders have demanded that communities turn over unmarried women to become “wives” for their fighters—a form of sexual violence, human-rights groups say.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said Thursday that it had received reports of the Taliban executing members of the Afghan military who had surrendered. “Deeply disturbing & could constitute war crimes,” the embassy said on Twitter.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, denied the group had killed any prisoners, saying that would violate its principles. He also said allegations that the Taliban was forcing women into marriage were false, and that such actions would be contrary to the rules of Islam and violate cultural tradition.

Afghans arrived in Kabul on Thursday after fleeing fighting in the north of the country.

On Wednesday, Mawlawi Abdul Qadir, a senior Taliban religious official, said in a speech in the newly captured capital of Badakhshan province that government soldiers who surrender and “confess their crimes” would be able “to live like a Muslim under the flag of the Islamic Emirate.”

The deal reached last year by the Trump administration and the Taliban, under which the U.S. agreed to withdraw its forces, didn’t spell out any human-rights standards for the Taliban to follow. The group, however, promised to seek a peaceful settlement and a negotiated cease-fire with the Afghan government.

Some of those fleeing the violence as more provincial capitals fall have ended up in Kabul. One badly injured woman named Wazir Nazari, a member of Afghanistan’s Shiite Hazara minority, lay motionless on her side on a thin mattress on the roof of a house in the western part of the capital.

Her father, Abdul Rezaq Rezaie, said she had been shot in the head in early July by Taliban fighters going door-to-door in their village in the Malistan district of Ghazni province in central Afghanistan. Villagers said it was unclear what they were after.

Malistan is almost entirely populated by Hazaras, whose Shiite Islam is viewed with disdain by the strictly Sunni Taliban. In the 1990s, the Hazaras offered stiff resistance to Taliban efforts to take over the country and subsequently faced persistent persecution at Taliban hands.

The fighters shot Wazir’s sister-in-law in the stomach and she collapsed to the floor mortally wounded. As Wazir, who is in her 40s, bent to help her, she was shot in the face, Mr. Rezaie said. He said a bullet entered her right temple and exited from her left eye.

Wazir Nazari, a member of Afghanistan’s Shiite Hazara minority, was shot in the face by Taliban assailants, her father said.

Abdul Rezaq Rezaie, right, sits with his daughter Wazir, center, and his wife Hamida, left, on a rooftop in Kabul.

The family took Wazir by taxi on a 10-hour journey over unpaved roads to a hospital in a neighboring district that was still in government hands. Eleven days later, a military helicopter carried her to Kabul. Mr. Rezaie said she has suffered serious brain damage, can no longer see and is barely able to move.

“It would have been better for her if they had killed my daughter than leave her in this state,” Mr. Rezaie said.

Later that week, when the Taliban reached the neighboring village of Paai Julga, community leaders, including the principal of a girls high school there, Baba Ali Rahmani, went to see the local Taliban commander, known as Mawlawi Mosafir.

The commander assured them that the Taliban had no issue with the Shiite village and that residents could continue with their usual way of life, said Mr. Rahmani’s son, Sharif.

Days later, government forces attempted a counterattack in the district and the Taliban turned violent against Hazara civilians, Sharif Rahmani said. His father ventured outside the house and was killed. Neighbors said he had been shot by Taliban fighters on a motorcycle, Mr. Rahmani said.

Mr. Rahmani said he didn’t know why his father, who was hit three times in the torso and once in the neck, was singled out.

Sharif Rahmani, whose father was killed in an attack by Taliban fighters, he said.

Mr. Rahmani, 26, has since fled to Kabul with his two adult sisters, and is staying with relatives. Left behind in the village are his mother and three younger siblings, still children. “My mother said she has nothing left to lose, so she stayed,” he said.

An estimated 2,200 mostly Hazara families from Malistan have escaped to the relative safety of Kabul since the Taliban conquest, said Khaliqdaad Fitrat, a community leader in the district.

Mr. Fitrat said he fled as a Taliban search party approached. They opened fire as he ran, he said.

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission says at least 27 civilians have been killed in Malistan since the Taliban takeover, with 10 others injured.

Mr. Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said that in Malistan, no civilians were harmed after the takeover.

After a pitched battle between government forces and Taliban fighters in the southwestern province of Nimroz, people there said, the Taliban executed a dozen captured soldiers. One of the prisoners had his eyes gouged out and another had his ears cut off, according to local residents who later retrieved the bodies for burial.

Pictures purporting to show the soldiers’ dead bodies were shared by local Taliban fighters on messaging apps.

Mr. Mujahid denied the group had executed captured soldiers in Nimroz.

A man mounts a flag in a mosque in a predominantly Hazara part of Kabul.

Vendors sell Shiite decorations and accessories at roadside stalls in Kabul.

A senior Afghan government official in Kabul, who corroborated the local residents’ accounts, said that the images from the execution had spread fear among troops ahead of the fall of Nimroz’s provincial capital, Zaranj, last week.

Shaharzad Akbar, head of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said mounting evidence was emerging of the execution of captured soldiers around the country. She said civilians, especially those who work for the government, were also being targeted.

“There is absolute disregard for international humanitarian law,” Ms. Akbar said. “My biggest fear is that this will become a pattern that will keep repeating itself.”

In Spin Boldak, a town on Afghanistan’s southern border with Pakistan, the Taliban executed 44 people after taking over in mid-July, according to an investigation by Human Rights Watch.

Those killed were supporters of a family that controlled the border crossing and ran a pro-government militia, the rights group said. Videos shared by pro-Taliban accounts on social media showed a fighter with a machine gun shooting bound prisoners by the side of a road.

Afghans fleeing fighting in the north of the country gathered at a makeshift camp in Kabul on Thursday.

In many newly conquered areas, the Taliban have imposed harsh restrictions on the movement of women, not allowing them to leave the house without male relatives and mandating that they wear the all-enveloping burqa, according to local residents reached by phone.

A man who fled Badakhshan province, in the northeast, said the Taliban had told his village that women weren’t to leave home without male chaperones. Men were ordered to go to the mosque for prayers five times a day. Families with more than one man were required to provide one to fight with the militants, he said.

The United Nations warned this week that it was receiving deeply disturbing reports of human-rights abuses in Afghanistan.

“Hampering a woman’s ability to leave home without a male escort also inevitably leads to a cascade of other violations of the woman,” said Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

After the insurgents in late June took the Rustaq district of the northern province of Takhar, a senior local Taliban figure addressed residents in the mosque during Friday prayers. All girls over the age of 15 and widows younger than 40 should be married to the insurgent fighters, he told the congregation, according to a local man who was present.

The man was later summoned and ordered to hand over his 15-year-old daughter. He said in a telephone interview that he fled the area and was trying to make his way to Kabul from the province, whose capital fell to the Taliban on Sunday.

Experts said the openly declared demand for women for their fighters showed the Taliban had grown even more extreme than they were when their regime was in power the 1990s. The practice shows the influence of Islamic State, which enforced sexual slavery on women on a massive scale in Syria and Iraq.

Write to Saeed Shah at saeed.shah@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Afghans Tell of Killings, Forced ‘Marriage’ by Taliban.'

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LIFE & ARTS

- ‘Respect’ Review: The Real Aretha Franklin Is Hard to Beat

- ‘The Tempest’ Review: Curtain Calls

- ‘Sparkling: The Story of Champagne’ Review: More Dry Than Not

- Who’s Winning the Dodgers-Padres Battle In the NL West? The Giants

- The World of Olympic Water Sports Still Looks Very White. There’s a Push to Change That.

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‘Respect’ Review: The Real Aretha Franklin Is Hard to Beat

Jennifer Hudson leads the star-studded cast in this new biopic about the Queen of Soul

Aug. 12, 2021 5:06 pm ET

The good news about the Aretha Franklin biopic “Respect” is that its star, Jennifer Hudson —whose voice is usually the musical version of the U.S. Women’s Gymnastics Team (spinning, bouncing, straining, vaulting)—reins it in as the Queen of Soul while still giving a great singer her due. Sometimes, Ms. Hudson delivers what are near-verbatim performances of Franklin’s bigger hits, which not only shows enormous respect but, in Ms. Hudson’s case, enormous restraint.

Musically, the movie is solid: The scenes with the Muscle Shoals studio musicians with whom Aretha creates her first real hit—after the ego-driven misguidance of her preacher father, C.L. ( Forest Whitaker ), and her first husband, Ted ( Marlon Wayans ), and the well-intentioned efforts by Columbia Records’ John Hammond ( Tate Donovan ) to market her as a jazz singer—are a magical portrayal of artistic creation and collaboration. The performances, whether they’re in church or at Madison Square Garden, are bliss. But the movie’s still a mess.

The rap on old Hollywood biographies was that the films disregarded fact for crowd-pleasing fiction. Cole Porter was not Cary Grant (per “Night and Day”); the portrayal of Billie Holiday’s life in “Lady Sings the Blues” was a “fraud,” as one critic put it, despite the performance by Diana Ross. But the intent was always to make an entertaining movie, realities be damned. The impulse behind “Respect” is to create something epic, a memorial to its subject, and the upshot is a movie not only rigid with cliché but bloated beyond reason. Ms. Hudson doesn’t sing the title song (recorded by Franklin in 1967) until about an hour and a half into the 145-minute film, which ends in 1972. And yet “Respect” still massages the facts, or simply leaves its audience bewildered about them.

Skye Dakota Turner and Audra McDonald

Photo: Quantrell D. Colbert/MGM

If the producers wanted a definitive “Respect” they might have looked elsewhere than Liesl Tommy, a stage and TV director (“The Walking Dead”) making her big-screen debut, or screenwriter Tracey Scott Wilson (who collaborated on the “story” with Callie Khouri of “Thelma & Louise”). Together, they shoehorn the Franklin bio into a number of standard-issue formats—the coming of age of a great artist; her rise and fall and rise; her self-affirmation and liberation. It’s like a sports movie with soul music. Also, children are popping up everywhere with no explanation and time is beyond elastic. (Franklin had her first child at age 12, something that is addressed obliquely, albeit uncomfortably.) Concision and compression are to be expected. Confusion is not.

“Respect” opens in 1952 Detroit, where C.L. has become a prominent church leader, civil-rights activist and prodigious drinker; Mr. Whitaker is seldom without a glass of whiskey in his hand, in case you miss the point. He rouses young Aretha ( Skye Dakota Turner ) to sing for the guests at his close-to-raucous Saturday-night parties. (How is she asleep? Practice, one assumes.) The knowing viewer will recognize the guests— Sam Cooke, Art Tatum playing piano (badly, which is a sacrilege) and Dinah Washington ( Mary J. Blige ). The knowing viewer will also recognize the cleverness of it all.

Henry Riggs, Jennifer Hudson, Hailey Kilgore, Saycon Sengbloh, Alec Barnes, John Giorgio, Marc Maron and Joe Knezevich

Photo: Quantrell D. Colbert/MGM

Washington, who died in 1963, will later turn over a table at New York’s Village Vanguard because Aretha dares to sing one of her songs, which seems wildly off, not just dramatically but chronologically. So does Ms. Hudson’s playing a 16- or 17-year-old Aretha in 1959 Birmingham, Ala., where she and C.L. have joined with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ( Gilbert Glenn Brown, who does a first-rate vocal impersonation). Aretha wants to march. MLK is less than enthusiastic, but probably because he’d rather deal with Bull Connor than Aretha’s over-protective, tyrannical father.

Tyrannical men, first C.L. and then Ted, who hate each other, are Aretha’s chief problem, as she navigates stardom, alienates her sisters Erma and Carolyn (Saycon Sengbloh, Hailey Kilgore ), jumps producers—from the famed Hammond to the famed Jerry Wexler (a terrific Marc Maron )—and confronts problems with alcohol that come close to derailing her career. Well, not really, but this kind of movie needs that kind of crisis.

Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin and Marc Maron as Jerry Wexler

Photo: Quantrell D. Colbert/MGM

The advantage to Ms. Hudson is twofold: She’s probably the only actress-vocalist alive who could convincingly play Aretha Franklin the singer, and Aretha Franklin the woman had such a limited public personality that there’s very little that the actress has to impersonate. Ms. Hudson gives us a sympathetic and sympathetically flawed heroine of a story that leaves us in January 1972 at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, with the Rev. James Cleveland (Tituss Burgess) and the Southern California Community Choir backing her up. (The album “Amazing Grace” would become her bestseller; the film version wouldn’t be released until 2018.) It’s a finale of biblical proportions, a triumph of Aretha’s voice and her musical instincts, a performance that might just save souls. Whether it can save the movie is another story.

—Mr. Anderson is a Journal TV critic. Joe Morgenstern is on vacation

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'The Real Aretha Is Hard to Beat.'

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‘The Tempest’ Review: Curtain Calls

The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival bids farewell to its current campus with a superb production of the play thought to be one of Shakespeare’s last

Aug. 12, 2021 5:02 pm ET

A scene from ‘The Tempest’ at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival

Photo: T Charles Erickson

Garrison, N.Y.

None of Shakespeare’s plays is better suited to outdoor staging than “The Tempest,” whose setting is an enchanted island, and it is hard to imagine a better place to see it than under the tent of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, pitched on a wooded bluff overlooking the Hudson River. There being few finer summer theater companies in America, I expected much of Ryan Quinn’s new production, and I got all I hoped for: This was a “Tempest” that gave pleasure of every conceivable kind, one in which Shakespeare’s tale of forgiveness and redemption is retold in such a way as to give like delight to those who know the play well and those who are seeing it for the first time.

It’s widely thought by contemporary scholars that “The Tempest” was one of Shakespeare’s last plays. If so, it is fitting that he should have used the occasion to tell the story of Prospero ( Howard W. Overshown ), an Italian duke whose throne was stolen from him by his faithless brother and who was set adrift with Miranda ( Kayla Coleman ), his young daughter, finding his way to a deserted island where he occupied himself by learning the occult arts of sorcery and scheming for his ultimate revenge—a longing that he sets aside at evening’s end when his now-aged soul is redeemed by love.

Mr. Quinn’s “Tempest” is characteristic of the HVSF’s now-familiar “house style.” Utterly straightforward, with no obscuring high directorial concept superimposed on Shakespeare’s text, it is played out on a plain dirt stage floor devoid of sets and, for the most part, props, with pop-style dancing (skillfully choreographed by Susannah Millonzi ) used to set the scene. The magical powers of the furious Prospero are brilliantly suggested by the sound design of Charles Coes and Nathan Roberts and the lighting of Lucrecia Briceno. All else is left to the actors, the text, and the viewer’s imagination.

Howard Overshown as Prospero

Photo: T Charles Erickson

No less typical of Hudson Valley is an emphasis on comedy, one that is populist in the best sense of the word, with Ralph Adriel Johnson making an uproarious impression as Trinculo, the hard-drinking jester who introduces Caliban ( Jason O’Connell ), Prospero’s servant-slave, to the risky joys of liquor. Mr. O’Connell, a stand-up comedian who got his start playing Shakespearean clowns at Hudson Valley and has since matured into a classical actor of high distinction, puts a subtle spin on the part: His Caliban is a tragic monster, one whose plight is neither horrifying nor ludicrous but heartbreaking. As Miranda and Ariel, Prospero’s spirit-servant, Ms. Coleman and Britney Simpson are fresh and charming.

While Mr. Overshown is admirably forthright, I prefer an older Prospero, one of sufficient age to make plausible his climactic decision to renounce sorcery, forgive his enemies and retire to the place of his birth, “where / Every third thought shall be my grave.” I also missed the poetry in the great speech—for me, Shakespeare’s greatest—in which he declares that humankind is “such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.” Alvin Epstein, the best Prospero I’ve seen on stage, played the role in Boston at the age of 82, and he filled that speech with a darkly elegiac, immensely wise note that Mr. Overshown will surely live to strike someday.

Jason O'Connell as Caliban

Photo: T Charles Erickson

This is, incidentally, the last season that Hudson Valley will perform on the lawn of the Boscobel Restoration, which has been its home for 34 years. In 2022 it will move its tent to a new, permanent headquarters in Philipstown, continuing to perform outdoors each summer. I have no doubt that the new site will be well suited to its purpose, but I can’t deny that I’ll regret no longer seeing plays on the handsome lawn to which I have traveled nearly every summer since 2005. “The spectacle of the water below and the mountains beyond remains irresistibly seductive,” I wrote on that never-to-be-forgotten first occasion. I shall miss it.

—Mr. Teachout, the Journal’s drama critic, is the author of “Satchmo at the Waldorf.” Write to him at tteachout@wsj.com.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as '‘The Tempest’: Curtain Calls.'

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‘Sparkling: The Story of Champagne’ Review: More Dry Than Not

A documentary all about bubbly features interviews with experts and spokespeople from major Champagne houses, with an emphasis on winemaking minutiae

Aug. 12, 2021 5:03 pm ET

Peter the Great took four bottles to bed with him each night. Alexander II was so paranoid that the company Roederer had to create its transparent bottle, so the czar could check for impurities (or poison). It was the Widow Clicquot (of Veuve Clicquot) who discovered how to get sediment out of the wine. And while the Benedictine monk Dom Pérignon has always been credited with creating the first batch, it was sturdy English bottling that made the whole enterprise possible.

Such are some of the tales told in “Sparkling: The Story of Champagne,” and you wish there were a good deal more of them—about Napoleon, for instance: He was such a fan that his army was followed by another—an army of wine merchants, who wound up introducing the drink to Russia. Waterloo might have been bad for Napoleon, we are advised, “but it was very good for Champagne.”

Directed by first-timer Frank Mannion and featuring heirs, vintners and spokespeople for all the major Champagne houses, “Sparkling” will likely be an oenophile’s delight—it’s a bacchanalian romp through winemaking minutiae that are beyond the grasp or attention span of the everyday drinker or, certainly, the casual movie viewer. It’s quite upfront about the marketing of individual brands, though, and some of that is fascinatingly frank: how celebrities become identified with different labels ( Marilyn Monroe is still associated with Piper-Heidsieck); how Bollinger has been featured in 15 James Bond movies; and how Taittinger sponsors the BAFTA awards. Winston Churchill was a Pol Roger man. Jay-Z presumably drinks Armand de Brignac (because he owns half the company). Champagne’s movie debut, according to "Sparkling,” was in “Sons of the Desert” with Laurel & Hardy trying to open a bottle of Piper-Heidsieck.

Bruno Paillard tasting Windsor Great Park sparkling wine in

Photo: Gravitas Ventures

Too many of the interviews, however, feel like there’s a publicist hovering just outside the frame, and some of the interviewees are publicists. Everyone wants to promote his or her label over the others. At a certain point, the movie becomes about promoting one country over another: With the French climate growing too warm for proper grape production, the south of England is attracting more and more winemakers to its chalky soil, and the debate rages in “Sparkling” about the quality of English champagne—which can’t rightfully be called Champagne because it’s not from the Champagne region—and how it compares to its French antecedent. The French winemakers sniff. The English cheer. The film eventually falls off the track, perhaps a bit tipsy.

—Mr. Anderson is a Journal TV critic. Joe Morgenstern is on vacation.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as '‘Sparkling’: More Dry Than Not.'

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Who’s Winning the Dodgers-Padres Battle In the NL West? The Giants

San Francisco has unexpectedly emerged with the best record in baseball, disrupting the expected season-long showdown between Los Angeles and San Diego

Aug. 12, 2021 8:00 am ET

Brandon Crawford has won two World Series during his career, so he has a good idea of what an elite roster looks like. Even he admits that he wasn’t immediately convinced that the 2021 San Francisco Giants qualified.

“I’d be lying if I said going into spring training that I thought we would have the best record in baseball,” said Crawford, the Giants’ longtime shortstop.

But with nearly three-quarters of the season complete, that’s where the Giants stand, a stunning showing that has completely upended the sport’s competitive landscape. In a division that was advertised as a summer-long brawl between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres, the Giants have unexpectedly crashed the party, setting up a ferocious sprint to the finish.

The race only intensified at last month’s trade deadline when the two main competitors both landed heavyweight blows: The Dodgers acquired three-time Cy Young winner Max Scherzer and star shortstop Trea Turner; the Giants countered by bringing in former MVP Kris Bryant.

It has resulted in the Giants, Dodgers and Padres having three of the best four records in the National League. With MLB returning to its traditional playoff structure this autumn, the stakes are high. The winner will advance immediately to the best-of-five division series. The two losers will be forced into the do-or-die wild card showdown, meaning one of these three powerhouses’ postseason will last only one game.

“We had a competitive team, I think I knew that,” Crawford said. “But I wasn’t sure how we would stack up against the Dodgers and Padres. So far, we’ve done a pretty good job.”

Mike Yastrzemski is congratulated by Giants manager Gabe Kapler.

Photo: Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

To general manager Scott Harris, the Giants planted the seeds of success last year. After starting 8-16 in the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign, they went 21-15 the rest of the way. Their strong finish left Harris feeling like the Giants “had a solid base to build from.”

Nonetheless, it’s not hard to see why the Giants were largely ignored heading into 2021. They haven’t had a .500 record since 2016 and made no splashy moves in the winter that would suggest significant improvement. They have the oldest lineup in the major leagues, and their best player, 34-year-old catcher Buster Posey, opted out of last year over Covid-19 concerns. Their No. 1 starter, Kevin Gausman, came into the year with a lifetime ERA of 4.26.

In other words, there were few obvious signs that the Giants were in store for a massive turnaround, even though Harris said, “We had plans to be good this year.”

Meanwhile, the defending-champion Dodgers and the upstart Padres dominated the offseason, commanding headlines with a series of major additions designed to stave off the other. They were widely seen as not just the two best teams in the NL West, but perhaps in all of baseball, destined to battle for supremacy all the way through October. The Giants were viewed as still being a year or two away from contention.

From their Bay Area home a few hundred miles up the California coast, the Giants watched as the Dodgers and Padres jockeyed for position. It was as if they didn’t exist at all.

“To be honest, it was kind of annoying—you’re just constantly hearing about those guys,” Gausman said. “Everybody was picking us to finish last or second to last in the division. So it’s been nice to shut some of those people up.”

How the Giants have done it is not immediately obvious. They don’t have a trio of pitching aces, like the Dodgers’ Scherzer, Walker Buehler and Clayton Kershaw. They don’t have a lineup filled with big-name sluggers, like Fernando Tatís Jr. and Manny Machado on the Padres. And yet they lead the National League in home runs, rank third in ERA and have the second-best overall run differential only behind the Dodgers, indicating their success thus far isn’t a fluke.

Offensively, the Giants have received a bunch of throwback performances from veterans. Posey is having arguably his best season since he won the MVP in 2012. Crawford, whose job was in jeopardy after he hit .228 in 2019, is having his best offensive season. Darin Ruf, who spent 2017 through 2019 playing in South Korea, has turned into a force at age 35, posting an OPS of around .950.

“I’ve learned not to rule out any level of performance with that caliber of player,” Harris said.

The pitching has been equally impressive. By throwing his split-fingered fastball more than he ever did earlier in his career, Gausman has transformed into a Cy Young candidate with a 2.29 ERA. Anthony DeSclafani, who came to San Francisco as a free agent in December, is throwing his fastball less frequently in favor of his slider and changeup and has a 3.28 ERA.

“It doesn’t always take the big-name people for a team to be successful,” said Bryant, the former Chicago Cubs slugger. “That’s why this team has been so successful—there are a lot of guys stepping up.”

The rise of the Giants has elevated the NL West into baseball’s most exciting division, and the fight for first place is likely to last for the entire regular season. The Padres’ hopes likely fall on the shoulder of Tatís—literally. A MVP favorite for much of the season, Tatís has been on the injured list all month with a shoulder injury. He is expected to return as soon as this weekend, potentially as an outfielder instead of a shortstop to protect his shoulder.

As for the Dodgers, they’ve been the best team in baseball for years, having won eight straight division crowns and a championship last season. They again lead the NL in runs and ERA and have now added Scherzer and Turner to an already-loaded roster.

Bryant gives the Giants a star of their own, somebody that president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said “fits the ethos of our roster really well.” He also brings additional postseason experience to San Francisco, having won in the World Series with the Cubs in 2016.

Kevin Gausman has transformed into a Cy Young candidate this season.

Photo: Norm Hall/Getty Images

Then again, playoff experience is one thing the Giants certainly don’t lack. Posey was their catcher for their championship runs in 2010, 2012 and 2014. He, Crawford and first baseman Brandon Belt were all together for the final two. They are all still with the Giants all these years later, a shockingly long time for three players to stay together on one team in this era of baseball.

They didn’t know if they’d ever have another opportunity to play deep into October. These Giants have given them that chance.

“It doesn’t happen often where three guys have been together for 10-plus years and especially having won multiple championships together,” Crawford said. “I’ve started to realize more how special it is.”

Write to Jared Diamond at jared.diamond@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'MLB’s Best Is a Giant Surprise.'

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The World of Olympic Water Sports Still Looks Very White. There’s a Push to Change That.

Water sports were among the organizations who looked at their record on racial diversity—and promised to do better

Aug. 12, 2021 10:00 am ET

Like many children raised in sweltering South Florida, Ashleigh Johnson learned to swim out of necessity because her family had a pool in their backyard. She picked up water polo by chance: she and her four siblings had boundless energy and the local recreational pool happened to offer youth lessons.

More than 20 years later, Johnson anchored the U.S. women’s water polo team in Tokyo to its third consecutive gold medal. She is known for her “brick wall” goalkeeping, but also for being one of the few Black athletes competing for the U.S. in the overwhelming white world of Olympic water sports.

“I never really envisioned myself as an Olympian or playing for the national team because I never saw anyone who looked like me out there,” she said. “If people would stop telling [Black] people that they don’t swim, then it wouldn’t become part of their story.”

When water sports roll into the spotlight every four years around the Olympic Games, it’s striking how few Black athletes are competing at the highest level, including for the U.S. Officials at national governing bodies for water sports—swimming, diving, water polo and artistic swimming—acknowledge the obvious: their sports are perceived as very white, with few Hispanic, Asian-American and Pacific Islander swimmers and even fewer Blacks.

After years of exploring community outreach efforts, those organizations in 2020 moved to create formal structures that would help them diversity amid the national reckoning over race in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd.

Swimmer Cullen Jones, a silver medalist in the 50-meter freestyle in London and first Black swimmer to hold a world record, said he suggested that USA Swimming hold a racially focused roundtable last year, after he says he was briefly stopped by police while walking his dog in Charlotte, N.C.

Cullen Jones is working to make swimming more diverse.

Photo: Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press

After the incident, he called both fellow Olympian Lia Neal, who is also Black, and USA Swimming Chief Executive Officer Tim Hinchey. Jones assembled a panel of the most high-profile Black swimmers—three-time gold medalist Simone Manuel and NCAA All Americans Natalie Hinds, Shaine Casas and Reece Whitley—to draft a diversity plan for USA Swimming.

The group called itself “Team Black” and agreed one of the most obvious jumping off points was representation.

“Seeing other people that look like yourself, at the age group level at the club swim level, when you are 5 [years old] and learn to swim that’s hugely important,” said Jones. “We want to show that 5-year-old, 6-year-old, 7-year-old, how they can get to where we are.”

Some of the early proposals have also been very basic. USA Diving said it wants to eventually add divers of color to the catalog of photos it maintains that depict how hundreds of dives are carried out; it currently has no specific plans for that, however.

Artistic swimming has moved more quickly, including Black swimmers more prominently in its social media accounts and advertising.

“We took a really long hard look at ourselves and said, ‘We need to change this look,’ ” said Ashley Johnson, USA Artistic Swimming’s vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion, a position established last summer.

“I want to be able to see and know that my child would be accepted into the organization.” She added: “You want to be and see where there are others that look like you… you don’t want to be in an organization where you are the only one.”

There’s also the problem of equipment, which tends not to cater to Black athletes in aquatics. These Olympics got off to a controversial start, for example, when FINA banned swimmers from competing at international competitions in the “Soul Cap,” an extra large silicone swim cap designed to accommodate voluminous hairstyles.

Manuel, the first Black woman to win an individual gold medal in swimming, does not train or race in the Soul Cap, but still took issue with the message the ban sent.

“It’s unfortunate the situation that was made by FINA,” she said after winning a silver medal in the women’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay in Tokyo. “It doesn’t do the best for inclusivity in the sport.”

In artistic swimming workshops, athletes have pointed out repeatedly: if they’re wearing swimsuits, they want to have mesh to match their skin tone. They want to talk to Speedo about why there are peach-colored nose clips, and nothing that seems to correspond to darker skin.

Speedo did not respond to a request for comment.

Something almost every aquatic federation has done to confront its race problem involves forming charitable partnerships to strengthen learn-to-swim programs in underserved communities. Task forces are also common, some of them involving prominent athletes of color. But everything points to a long road ahead.

Simone Manuel won a silver medal in the women’s 4×100 meter freestyle relay in Tokyo.

Photo: Tom Pennington/Getty Images

Brenda Villa, a four-time Olympian in water polo and co-chair of USA Water Polo’s Racial Equity and Reform Taskforce, said that she was somewhat optimistic as she saw some more kids come into the sport who didn’t have any history with it, “breaking the mold where you join because your family played.”

Villa said she attributed the water polo boost in part to families trying to find new pipelines to top colleges and college athletic scholarships beyond soccer, volleyball and basketball—and also to a slight increase in representation at the highest level of the sport going back to 2008.

“I am sure we will get another upswing from the Tokyo Games as well,” she said, noting the coverage of players such as Ashleigh Johnson, the only American-born member not from California.

“If I can be a mirror for another part of the U.S. to look to and see themselves in, especially in our sport, it’s special,” said Johnson.

Write to Laine Higgins at laine.higgins@wsj.com and Louise Radnofsky at louise.radnofsky@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Olympic Water Sports Remain Behind in Push to Improve Diversity.'

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OPINION

- Schumer and His Shadow

- Social Media’s Threat to Religious Freedom

- Covid and a Tale of Two Summer Festivals

- ‘A Brief History of Motion’ Review: Rolling Forward

- The Danger of Shrinking American Naval Power

- You’re Already Paying for That $4.5 Trillion

- Will Biden Bring an End to Reagan’s Era of Prosperity?

- Notable & Quotable: Donald Kagan

- Bring on the Covid Vaccine Boosters

- Dumbing Oregon Down

- The Debacle in Afghanistan

- Break Out of the Student Loan Forbearance Mindset

- Tenants Take Advantage of the CDC’s Eviction Ban

- Dogs Deserve Better Treatment

- Teachers Weren’t Paid Like Essential Workers This Year

- The Climate-Change Cop-Out Is a Politician’s Best Friend

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Schumer and His Shadow

Why is he so afraid of AOC? Ask the ghosts of Joe Crowley and Eliot Engel.

Aug. 12, 2021 6:26 pm ET

“Me and my shadow / . . . Not a soul can bust this team in two / We stick together like glue.”

If Sinatra reveled in his shadow, Chuck Schumer lives in semicomical fear of his. It’s hard to know who runs the Senate these days—the majority leader, or his harrier from the Bronx, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Mr. Schumer released the Senate to recess this week, having accomplished the AOC and Bernie Sanders plan for the most audacious expansion of government in U.S. history: a $3.5 trillion budget outline that proposes to create new permanent entitlements, lay the foundation of the Green New Deal, take the first steps toward Medicare for All, and soak the rich and the middle class with a new tax regime. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has hailed it as “absolutely a progressive victory.”

What AOC wants, Mr. Schumer delivers. A few days earlier, the majority leader had joined Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley (an original member of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s “Squad”) to complain that President Biden’s new order to “pause” student loan payments didn’t “go far enough.” AOC has been pushing for outright debt cancellation, and Mr. Schumer is now so all in that he wears a face mask emblazoned “#CancelStudentDebt.”

Or witness Chuck last week jogging across the Capitol to congratulate Missouri Rep. Cori Bush, another Squad member, for her sit-in that pressured the administration to extend its illegal eviction moratorium. “You did this!” Mr. Schumer roared, hugging Ms. Bush and AOC for the cameras. “You guys are fabulous!”

What Mr. Schumer meant to say was: “You guys are terrifying!” The 70-year-old New Yorker has had a lock on his Senate seat since 1998. But these days he’s suffering the ghosts of Joe Crowley and Eliot Engel. Those powerful, longtime (and old, white and male) representatives were both defeated in primary upsets—the former in 2018 by AOC, the latter in 2020 by progressive Jamaal Bowman.

The Ocasio-Cortez team within months of AOC’s taking office hinted she was hungry for more. Progressives have since become more brazen with the threat to run against Mr. Schumer in the 2022 primary. Her decision “is dependent on what Schumer does,” Waleed Shahid, communications director for Justice Democrats (which recruited AOC for her House run) told Politico in February. Adopt the AOC agenda, or prepare for retirement.

Mr. Schumer made his choice, and there’s not an issue on which he’s willing to let AOC get to his left. He’s proposed to kill the filibuster and pushed a federal takeover of elections. AOC wants the Green New Deal; Chuck does too. AOC wants to decriminalize marijuana; Chuck does too. At least Sinatra’s shadow took him to jazz clubs. Mr. Schumer’s signed him up for paid family and medical leave, free community college and subsidized child care.

The AOC threat has produced one of the more rapid and disturbing political transformations in Washington. While always a liberal, Mr. Schumer’s career was defined by New York pragmatism. A self described “angry centrist,” he could as easily be found in a Wall Street boardroom as at a labor rally. His primary interest was his state’s industry and residents, making him a modulating voice against higher taxes or excessive regulation of banks, hedge funds or private equity. Bidding to succeed Harry Reid as Democratic leader, he even sought to define himself by working with Republicans—most notably as part of the bipartisan immigration Gang of Eight. Before he became minority leader in 2016, New York’s Daily News wrote that he was “expected to use peacemaking style to unite Congress.”

Donald Trump’s election and the ascendancy of the Democratic left changed the calculation. Progressives are Mr. Schumer’s true problem. In the not-so-long-ago days of raw New York political power, a Senate leader would have simply ordered state political bosses to gerrymander AOC out of political existence. To do so today would be to earn animated progressive wrath and guarantee a primary challenge.

Mr. Schumer’s other, obvious option is to show some backbone and lead in a way that doesn’t harm the country or his party’s political prospects. Polls show only about 15% of Americans self-identify as progressive, and most voters reject the progressive agenda, from the Green New Deal to open borders. Even the Democratic primary electorate chose the “moderate” Joe Biden over Mr. Sanders. The AOC agenda could make Mr. Schumer minority leader again.

Mr. Schumer seems happy to take that risk if its spares him losing his job altogether in a primary fight. The Democratic establishment, including the White House, is running scared of the progressive bogeyman. And Ms. Ocasio-Cortez isn’t about to give up her leverage. Asked this week if she’d decided on a primary challenge, AOC was noncommittal. “Senator Schumer and I have been working very closely on a lot of legislation and that, to me, is important,” she said, grinning. “And so, we shall see.”

Write to kim@wsj.com.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition.

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Social Media’s Threat to Religious Freedom

A theologian’s talk on the Christian view of sex was deemed a ‘content violation.’

Aug. 12, 2021 6:29 pm ET

Presbyterian minister Carl Trueman.

Photo: Grove City College

Carl Trueman is a distinguished scholar, bestselling author and ordained Presbyterian minister. On Aug. 7 he gave a series of talks to the Sacramento Gospel Conference, live-streamed on the YouTube channel of Immanuel Baptist Church. Twice during the event, the live broadcast was booted off the air. Viewers were informed that the first interruption was due to a copyright violation, possibly the result of Christian music that the conference organizers played during a break. But in the second, more mysterious instance, Mr. Trueman’s presentation went dark because of a “content violation.”

Was this an intervention by a human being or an algorithm on automatic pilot? Neither Mr. Trueman nor Immanuel Baptist has been told. Equally unclear is the specific nature of the alleged content violation. Nothing in Mr. Trueman’s talks encouraged hatred, vulgarity or violence. On the contrary, he offered a thoughtful analysis of American cultural attitudes toward sex through the lens of classic Christian thought, citing sources from Freud to the philosophers Rousseau and Charles Taylor.

Mr. Trueman is understandably worried that religious speech is being censored online. So are many other religious believers. And for good reason: We sense that the First Amendment guarantee of religious liberty is being dismantled, and with it the profound contributions that religion makes to American unity and self-government.

Today’s sexual politics function as a new kind of fundamentalism, one that presents a deep problem to a diverse and democratic society. Instead of encouraging the dialogue of democratic process, the fundamentalists seek to impose their own rigid certitude unilaterally. On matters ranging from foster care and education to gender ideology and the family, this new fundamentalism is displacing the moral convictions that once grounded U.S. culture. The result isn’t a more compassionate and liberal society; it’s a more punitive one.

Social media enables the new fundamentalism, enforced by the mysterious rules of Big Tech’s quasimonopoly. On public sidewalks, the First Amendment still theoretically protects free speech. In the new public square of the internet, power displaces liberty and conscience.

In the past, religious-liberty issues could be resolved, or at least fruitfully argued, by appeals to the Founding. The Founders’ moral vision was shaped by a mix of biblical faith and Enlightenment thought: reason and faith working together. This vision was once widely shared but lately has less force. And here’s why: The language of “rights” and social justice that marks so much of today’s social unrest may sound familiar—and much of it is a response to real injustice—but some of the key ideas that govern our current culture wars are found nowhere in the Constitution, or, for that matter, in reality. We can locate them instead in the work of thinkers like Herbert Marcuse and his 1965 essay “Repressive Tolerance.”

As the cultural turmoil of the 1960s began to unfold, Marcuse wrote that “what is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today” is actually “serving the cause of oppression.” Thus, a “liberating tolerance” might require “new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices which . . . serve to enclose the mind within the established universe of discourse and behavior.” In other words, intolerance in the service of a new and allegedly “liberating tolerance” is not only acceptable, but praiseworthy. Killing freedom in the name of freedom is the Orwellian proposition at work.

This is why religious liberty should be important to everyone. It checks government’s tendency to overreach, and it helps form citizens in the virtues necessary for democracy to work. There is a reason the Pledge of Allegiance places our national loyalty “under God.” Without that protection, the ambitions of power tend to corrupt conscience and deform human rights.

As writers, we speak from two different branches of the Christian tradition. Yet as Christians we share an obligation to hear those who suffer, to work for justice and speak the truth with love. St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans reminds us to respect and obey civil authority, and to be leaven for goodness and beauty in the world. Here in the “new Rome,” the task remains the same.

The American experiment was founded on, and has always thrived on, the freedom of religious believers to speak, teach, preach, practice, serve and work in peace—not only in private, but in the public square—for the truth about God and humanity that ennobles their lives and all lives.

The more we diminish that freedom, the more crippled we become as a people. The more we feed it, the deeper and more robust the roots of our nation and its freedoms grow. Those are the two paths before us. Here’s the good news: We get to choose.

Archbishop Cordileone leads the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco. Mr. Daly is president of Focus on the Family.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition.

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Covid and a Tale of Two Summer Festivals

In Wisconsin, burgers are back. Butterflies will have to wait.

Aug. 12, 2021 6:31 pm ET

The 200-pound hamburger is poised to make its triumphant return in Seymour, Wis., this weekend. Twenty miles south, in Appleton, the community’s annual summer release of butterflies has been postponed until next year.

In those two towns, both part of eastern Wisconsin’s Outagamie County, you can find, in miniature, the quandary being faced by townships and villages across the country. In a nation that has for a year and a half been rocked by Covid, people of goodwill are struggling to do the right thing for their citizens as the warm season of beloved summer festivals rolls on.

Wisconsinites at the 17th Annual Burger Fest eat under the gaze of the statue of Hamburger Charlie in Seymour, Aug. 6, 2005.

Photo: B. A. Rupert/GREEN BAY PRESS-GAZETTE via ASSOCIATED PRESS

In some cities there’s a yearly corn festival; others honor blueberries or peaches or cherries. All the gatherings are intensely local, with one goal: to bring the people of the towns together, shoulder to shoulder.

Last year many festivals went away, and with them the chance to celebrate the concept of community. But Seymour’s chief historian, Bill Collar, told me the decision has been made: This weekend the 200-pound burger will again be grilled and split into 800 quarter-pounders for festival-goers.

Seymour prides itself on being the town where the hamburger was invented. Several other places make the same claim, but allow me, as someone who has spent time in Seymour, to advise you: Don’t argue with the townspeople about it. The story is that a 15-year-old boy named Charlie Nagreen —in an ox-driven wagon, no less—made his way to the Outagamie County Fair during the summer of 1885. He hoped to earn some money by selling hot meatballs. But fairgoers resisted, because the meat was so messy in their palms. Thus, legend has it, Charlie got the idea to flatten the meatballs and put them between pieces of bread, and the hamburger sandwich was born.

Hamburger Charlie, as Nagreen came to be known, returned to Seymour every summer until his death in 1951. There is a 16-foot-high statue of him downtown, and each year the hamburger festival honors him with that 200-pound communal burger. (One year, just to see if they could do it, the people of Seymour built a gigantic grill and cooked a burger that they swear weighed four tons.)

In this second Covid summer, they’re going to cross their fingers and gather. Meanwhile, down County Highway C in Appleton, the organizers of the annual Fox Cities Butterfly Festival have come to a different determination. With the continuing Covid uncertainty, the community will wait until next summer before inviting residents to come together for food, games, music and the ritual release of hundreds of butterflies into the Wisconsin sky. “It was a decision not made lightly,” said Sarah Wylie, festival co-chair. “But by the deadline, we just weren’t confident, with all the unanswered health questions, how wise it was to ask parents and children to congregate in tight spaces.”

Town by town, across the U.S., people are trying their level best, with little reliable official guidance, to do the proper thing. Bless them all. The summers in a person’s life are precious and finite; savor the burgers that are present this weekend, and think a good thought for the butterflies that aren’t.

Mr. Greene’s books include the novel "All Summer Long.”

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition.

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‘A Brief History of Motion’ Review: Rolling Forward

Wheeled vehicles profoundly changed cities—their economies, their design, their hygiene. Innovations in transport continue to do so today.

An early electric vehicle.

Photo: Corbis via Getty Images

Aug. 12, 2021 6:25 pm ET

Tom Standage, the deputy editor of the Economist and one of our best writers of nonfiction, has cultivated a special niche: exploring the history of technology with an eye on both the past and the future. When he finds the right subject—such as the roots and repercussions of digital communication in his 2013 book “Writing on the Wall”—his work is both thought-provoking and scintillating. “A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next” isn’t quite in the class of its predecessor, but like all of Mr. Standage’s books, it is rewarding: the product of deep research, great intelligence and burnished prose. Moreover, he always comes up with offbeat and intriguing facts that I, for one, never knew.

Being conscientious to a fault, he starts his story with the advent of the wheel. It was developed around 3500 B.C., probably in Eastern Europe. Five thousand years after it was perfected there remained regions—Africa and the Middle East, to name two—where it was eschewed for various reasons; nevertheless, wheels changed the world. Chariots appeared near the Black Sea around 2000 B.C., eventually becoming “a transformational technology on the battlefield,” courtesy of the Hittites.

The chariot’s progeny became weapons in the battle for social importance. In 16th-century Europe, “coaches rapidly became status symbols and ‘coaching’ (driving for pleasure in a coach) emerged as . . . a means of showing off, among people wealthy enough to own one or more coaches.” Mr. Standage explores the tortuous symbiosis between wheeled transport and cities, which began in Europe in the 17th century. Urban alterations implemented in that era benefited coaches and their wealthy owners. “Streets were widened and straightened to ease the passage of coaches,” Mr. Standage writes, “and new cities were laid out with broad straight avenues.” Another innovation was the creation of parks, where the rich could preen and flaunt their “fancy vehicles.” Hired vehicles for paying passengers—the horse-drawn omnibus, for instance—first appeared, in France and elsewhere, only around 1820. The arrival of railroads, soon after, hastened the possibilities of mobility for everyone, not just the elites.

Wheeled vehicles profoundly changed cities, sometimes in manifestly ghastly ways: Horse-drawn conveyances engendered a serious problem, their ubiquity turning cities into huge outdoor latrines. To the rescue (so it seemed) came the automobile, whose discharges were believed to be much preferable to those of horses. Alas, little did the early car enthusiasts know.

At the outset, the auto wasn’t destined to be gas-powered. In 1897 electric cars outsold gasoline- and steam-powered cars. But these models used batteries that needed frequent, lengthy charges. (Electric-car batteries are an issue even now: Mr. Standage offers a lucid assessment of the lithium-ion battery, considered by many of today’s experts to be the probable salvation of the electric vehicle.) In the pivotal rivalry between electric batteries and the internal-combustion engine (pioneered in Belgium in the 1850s and later refined in Germany), the latter won out.

The crux of “A Brief History of Motion” is the saga of the automobile. The author makes his book a vehicle packed tightly with information about the car’s impact on history and society. One example: Hitler (who couldn’t himself drive) “was an outspoken advocate of mass car ownership. . . . It was carmaking, not rearmament, that powered Germany’s recovery from the Depression.” Mr. Standage also dives deeply into the so-called oil crisis of 1973, implemented by the Middle Eastern nations of OPEC. Their embargo on oil to the United States (retribution for supporting Israel) punished America via its cherished cars and induced panicky gas rationing, high prices and long lines at the pump.

An unusually astute futurist, Mr. Standage offers observations about where we are now and where we might be heading that should be taken seriously. His argument that “the smartphone, rather than any particular means of transport, is the true heir of the car” sounds like hyperbole but becomes convincing as he elaborates: smartphones give “users the freedom to socialize, shop and explore—and not just in the virtual realm.”

Mr. Standage calls his vision of the future of travel (and hence of cities, suburbia, climate change and more) the “internet of motion.” It integrates electric cars, self-driving electric cars (if they can ever be made truly safe), bicycles, ride-hailing services, aerial taxis, and the rights of pedestrians. The author is not peremptory about his speculations. As he says, summing up the “lessons” contained in his book: “Expect the unexpected.”

It is rare that I encounter a nonfiction author whose prose is so elegant that it is worth reading for itself. Mr. Standage is a writer of this class, even if “A Brief History of Motion” isn’t top-grade Standage. When he treats topics like digital communication and robotics, as he did in “Writing on the Wall,” “The Victorian Internet” and “The Turk,” his ideas are so cutting-edge that they trigger an intoxicating frisson in his readers. But motor-vehicle travails of one kind or another probably bedevil most Americans, and readers of this newspaper are well aware of the fitful emergence of the electric car on the highway. Therefore, this book’s topics and themes might seem to many readers somewhat—pardon the pun—pedestrian.

Here’s hoping that Mr. Standage will decide one day to tackle artificial intelligence, an innovation perhaps even more remarkable than the wheel.

Mr. Schneider reviews books for newspapers and magazines.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Rolling Forward.'

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The Danger of Shrinking American Naval Power

China may invade Taiwan within six years, admirals warn. Is the U.S. ready?

Aug. 12, 2021 1:24 pm ET

Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS John Finn transits the Taiwan Strait, March 10.

Photo: us navy/Reuters

The Chinese military will likely attack Taiwan within six years, Adm. Phil Davidson, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told Congress in March, just before retiring from the Navy. More generally, he said, Beijing’s long-term objective—supplanting the U.S. and remaking the global order to benefit the Chinese Communist Party—will feature confrontation.

Adm. Davidson’s assessment is the clearest articulation of contemporary strategic realities by a major government or military official in the past decade. China is showing its ambitions, increasing its assertiveness in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and ratcheting up military pressure against Taiwan. The Chinese strategic tradition prizes both patience and decisive action when the balance of forces appears favorable.

The implication of Adm. Davidson’s assessment—and a similar one offered this spring by his successor, Adm. John Aquilino —is that any major reduction in U.S. combat strength, particularly naval power, will tempt the Chinese Communist Party to strike.

This assessment should inform the Navy’s recently announced “divest to invest” plan. The Navy will “divest” from older, larger platforms such as the Ticonderoga-class cruiser and reduce its large surface combatant force, including Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, by around one-third.

In turn, the Navy will “invest” in smaller, more numerous platforms, specifically a new Constellation-class frigate and a variety of unmanned surface combatants and undersea vehicles. The Navy will also speed up production of its Virginia-class submarines, the most modern in the fleet, and develop a yet-to-be-defined new submarine class. The Navy hopes “divest to invest” will make the fleet more distributed, more survivable and more lethal.

A more modern fleet is central to any U.S. deterrence or war-fighting strategy. But the “divest to invest” strategy is dangerous, for at least three reasons.

First, there is no guarantee that the Navy will reap any of the savings it expects. Washington’s budget battles will intensify in the coming five years, after trillions in emergency Covid spending. A Navy that voluntarily cuts its outlays will be at the mercy of partisan politics.

The Air Force and Army will be competing for dollars to fund their own efforts. The Navy has failed to produce a 30-year shipbuilding plan that justifies any strategy. Ever since the Trump administration identified great-power competition, particularly with China, as its primary focus, the Army has sought to justify its role in a Pacific conflict. The air and land branches will siphon off these dollars if they make a better case than the sea service does.

Second, it is unclear whether the defense industrial base can execute the “investment” portion of the Navy’s plan quickly enough to avoid a major drop in fleet numbers. The Navy plans to shrink its large surface combatants to about 60 ships from 90, retiring cruisers and likely cutting back on building destroyers.

Meanwhile, the Navy says it will build 15 Constellation-class frigates by 2026 and support them with unmanned ships and perhaps a modified littoral combat ship, which is designed to operate in shallow waters in support of sea control operations. These would be deployed close to the First Island Chain, within the range of China’s arsenal of land-, air- and sea-based missiles intended to deny U.S. forces access to the region.

The shipbuilder Fincantieri Marinette Marine won the contracts for the first three Constellation-class frigates. Fincantieri built littoral combat ships at a pace of about one a year—and that ship was half the size of the new frigate. Even if Austal USA, another shipbuilder, receives frigate contracts, and both builders keep up the pace, the Navy would receive only eight to 10 frigates by 2026, not 15.

The picture is no better on unmanned vehicles. The Navy last year received funding for only two of 10 planned large unmanned surface vehicles, the first in the fleet. The Navy’s unmanned aerial refueling tanker, the MQ-25, has been in the works for years but is still awaiting its maiden deployment in the fall. There’s no reason to think other unmanned vehicles will reach the fleet more quickly.

In other words, the Navy is on track to divest by 2024 to 2026—but the investments may not arrive until one to five years later. The U.S. could be very vulnerable in this gap. Will the People’s Liberation Army sit by watching American military modernization before it acts?

The Navy should instead maintain its surface fleet, extending the life of the cruisers and integrating more-advanced, longer-range systems into its missile-launch cells. The Navy can also build—or buy from allies—many small, highly lethal combatants and unmanned platforms. This will require a 30% annual bump to the Navy’s shipbuilding budget every year for the foreseeable future. That may sound expensive, but an additional $6 to $8 billion next year is a fraction of the overall Pentagon budget and a rounding error in President Biden’s infrastructure package.

Maintaining the fleet at its current size of about 300 ships throughout the 2020s will allow the defense industrial base to catch up to the demands of great power competition. Accelerating submarine construction—building three Virginia-class attack subs a year—must also be a priority. Surface ships, whether large or small, manned or unmanned, will be far more vulnerable to Chinese military capabilities than undersea forces.

America’s most senior naval officers have warned of a Chinese attack against Taiwan in the near future. “Divest to invest” is an invitation to attack.

Mr. Cropsey is director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for American Seapower. He served as a naval officer and was a deputy undersecretary of the Navy in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition.

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You’re Already Paying for That $4.5 Trillion

Taxes haven’t gone up yet, but inflation and lost productivity amount to financial repression.

Aug. 12, 2021 1:22 pm ET

The U.S. Capitol at dawn after a ‘vote-a-rama,’ an overnight session of the Senate to pass a series of amendments in Washington, Aug. 11.

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

It’s a $4.5 trillion week in Washington. Between the infrastructure and reconciliation bills in various stages of debate, it’s worth discussing in some depth how all this will be paid for. Government spending is conventionally understood as a matter of increased taxation and debt, a framing that has the virtue of being true. But that conversation is incomplete without also exploring the concept of financial repression—which ultimately underlies both the taxes and debt.

When the term was coined in the 1970s (by Stanford economists Ronald MacKinnon and Edward Shaw ) it referred primarily to the dysfunctions of the banking systems in spendthrift developing countries. Governments would suppress interest rates on domestic savings to below the rate of inflation to reduce rates on lending. The point was to service government borrowing and subsidize credit to politically favored industries. In the process, they’d create a substantial wealth transfer from private creditors to debtors, leaving creditors with less purchasing power in the future while easing the real burden of debt repayment over time.

In emerging markets, this downward pressure on the interest rate paid on savings often still is accomplished via state ownership or effective public control of the banks. State domination of the financial system also facilitates the allocation of capital on the most favorable terms to politically connected borrowers. Developed economies have deployed this gimmick too. Regulation of the rates banks paid on savings was an important, and not the only, bit of financial repression perpetrated against Americans by the federal government in the lead-up to and aftermath of World War II.

That was a simpler era, and the understanding and practice of financial repression has grown more sophisticated alongside the evolution of the global economy and financial system. Banks in many countries remain important vectors for stealing from savers, but no longer are they the only accomplices (witting and willing or otherwise).

Financial repression nowadays consists of several overlapping phenomena beyond the classic suppression of bank interest rates. A nonexhaustive list: more-intrusive management of assets and credit allocation in the banking system via reserve requirements, capital regulations and the like; a blurring of the line between fiscal and monetary policy such that monetary authorities subsidize the fiscal authority’s borrowing while the fiscal authority creates new credit subsidies for other parties; and any press release from Sen. Elizabeth Warren demanding a new regulation on this sort of lending or that sort of borrowing.

We’ve had all of these tricks and more (including various European versions of Ms. Warren) robbing savers across developed economies since the 2008 financial panic, and even more since the pandemic started last year. You’ve got your historically low interest rates from the Federal Reserve and other central banks. You’ve got your capital-adequacy ratios and reserve requirements that press-gang banks into accumulating the government-issued debt conveniently classified as “safe” under the rules, and that soon will privilege “green” assets, too.

You’ve got your effective Fed backstop on municipal bonds and all the new Congress-created lending programs, many of them environment-related, that inevitably litter any Washington spending plan these days. You’ve got Ms. Warren demanding the ouster of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, who still allegedly believes in some vague role for markets in credit allocation, in favor of Lael Brainard, who is said to favor a heavier regulatory hand.

A gaze through the lens of financial repression offers a new view of how dangerous Washington’s spending boondoggles are.

Because the debt must be repaid, a deficit borrows from future productivity to fund current spending—but this isn’t paid back only in future tax payments. Unfettered government spending also forces voters to pay via inflation and low returns on savings in the here and now.

More deeply, a discussion of financial repression prompts a reflection on productivity. The redirection of savers’ resources to politically favored “borrowers” (either directly via loan guarantees or more often indirectly via the disbursement of government grants raised via deficit financing) creates inefficiency and waste. If those loans were economically sensible—justified by a reasonable guess about the productivity the investment would create—the subsidy wouldn’t be necessary. Financial repression happens in the first place because the project the politician wants to spend money on is a productivity clunker, at the cost of fruitful investment in innovations that would permanently increase living standards.

It’s in this way, via rampant misallocation of capital and the attendant distortions of saving and investment, that Washington’s current spending binge won’t only borrow from the future. It will create a materially worse future, for which we all will pay one way and another.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition.

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Will Biden Bring an End to Reagan’s Era of Prosperity?

Forty years after the 1981 tax cuts, America needs to relearn the lessons of the supply-side revolution.

Aug. 12, 2021 6:32 pm ET

President Reagan signs tax and budget cuts outside his ranch in the Santa Ynez Mountains, Calif., Aug. 13, 1981.

Photo: Dirck Halstead/Getty Images

Friday marks the 40th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s first tax cuts—arguably the most consequential and controversial economic policy paradigm shift of the past half-century. The Reagan supply-side revolution went global. An analysis by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that the unweighted average top marginal income-tax rate among developed countries fell by a third, from 65% to 43%, after 25 years. Nearly every nation, from China to Costa Rica, imposes lower tax rates today than in the 1970s.

Alas, the U.S. needs to relearn the lessons of the Reagan tax cuts. President Biden has proposed a sweeping tax-policy reversal that would raise many tax rates—such as the capital-gains and death-tax rates—to levels even higher than in the Jimmy Carter years.

The U.S. economy was a wreck when Reagan took office, due to the combination of tax rates that rose to as high as 70% on some types of income and an inflation rate that hit 14% in 1980. The “misery index” (inflation plus unemployment) closed in on 22%, as a new gloomy term appeared in the economic lexicon: “stagflation.”

The Keynesian Democrats were out of ideas. The dean of liberal economists, Paul Samuelson, glumly advised that the only way to break the back of inflation was to tolerate another decade of very high unemployment. Reagan dismissed the austerity model and carried the banner of supply-side optimism. Borrowing from the young Rep. Jack Kemp, economists Robert Mundell and Mr. Laffer (one of the authors of this article) and these pages, Reagan persuaded Americans that the remedy to the decadelong malaise was to reduce the drag of regulatory and tax policy to encourage more work and production.

Lower tax rates, Reagan predicted, would reduce unemployment and help stabilize prices. This revolutionary concept wasn’t an easy sell even in the Republican Party. Many Republicans, including Sen. Barry Goldwater, had voted against the tax-rate cuts President John F. Kennedy advanced, and when Reagan proposed the idea, George H.W. Bush ridiculed it as “voodoo economics.” The Republican Senate leader, Howard Baker, called the policy a “riverboat gamble.”

The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 cut rates for every income group by at least a quarter and brought the top tax rate down from as high as 70% to 50%. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 further reduced it to 28%. The bet paid off:

• Take-home pay rose for all income groups in the 1980s, and real median family income rose by nearly $8,000 (in today’s dollars) during the Reagan years. Real median family income climbed from $60,597 in 1981 to $68,299 in 1989, following steep declines during the Carter presidency. Tens of millions of Americans moved up the income scale in the 1980s; 86% of households in the poorest income quintile in 1980 had moved to a higher quintile by 1990.

• The 30-year mortgage-interest rate fell substantially—from more than 18% in 1981 to below 10% at the end of Reagan’s presidency. Inflation fell from nearly 14% in 1980 to less than 4% by the late 1980s. The misery index fell in half.

• Gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 7.3% from 1981-89. As the late Robert Bartley, editor of these pages, put it in his 1992 book, “The Seven Fat Years,” that was the equivalent of “growing a new California.”

• From 1980 to 1990 tax revenues almost doubled in nominal terms even though most rates fell by more than half. The share of taxes paid by the richest 1% rose from 19% to 26% under Reagan and has subsequently grown to 40%.

• Reagan’s policies ushered in an unprecedented era of wealth creation. The Dow Jones Industrial Average before the Reagan tax cuts was at roughly 1000. Forty years later, it stands at 35000. The Federal Reserve Board calculates that the wealth of households in the U.S. has risen by nearly $100 trillion in real terms from 1980 to 2020.

The only complaint from liberal Democrats that carried much weight during the prosperity of the Regan era was that his policies allowed the debt to rise substantially. The national debt was 38% of GDP in 1983, but wealth was rising quickly. Compare this with Mr. Biden’s call for a deficit in the middle of an economic recovery that would raise the debt-to-GDP ratio well beyond 130%, three times what it was in Reagan’s worst year.

One of the most impressive repercussions of the Reagan tax cuts has been their staying power. While federal income-tax rates have meandered between 30% and 40% since Reagan left office, that’s a far cry from the 50 years before he took office, when the top tax rate never dropped below 63%. No serious politician considered raising rates back to their historic highs.

Until now. Mr. Biden wants to erase 40 years of progress and return to “That ’70s Show,” with runaway welfare spending and soak-the-rich economic policies. If Reagan were alive, we think we know what he’d say: “Well, there they go again.”

Mr. Laffer is chairman of Laffer Associates. Mr. Moore is a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity and an economist with FreedomWorks. Mr. Laffer was a member of Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board and Mr. Moore served in the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition.

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Notable & Quotable: Donald Kagan

‘Universities, he proposed, are failing students and hurting American democracy.’

Aug. 12, 2021 6:30 pm ET

Historian Donald Kagan.

Photo: Yale/Michael Marsland

From the Journal’s April 27, 2013, Weekend Interview with historian Donald Kagan, who died Aug. 6 at 89:

For his “farewell lecture” here at Yale . . . the 80-year-old scholar . . . uncorked a biting critique of American higher education.

Universities, he proposed, are failing students and hurting American democracy. . . . He counseled schools to adopt “a common core of studies” in the history, literature and philosophy “of our culture.” . . .

This might once have been called incitement. In 1990, as dean of Yale College, Mr. Kagan argued for the centrality of the study of Western civilization in an “infamous” (his phrase) address to incoming freshmen. A storm followed. He was called a racist—or as the campus daily more politely editorialized, a peddler of “European cultural arrogance.”

Not so now. . . . The PC wars of the 1990s feel dated. Maybe, as one undergrad told me after the lecture, “the pendulum has started to swing back” toward traditional values. . . .

Mr. Kagan offers another explanation. “You can’t have a fight,” he says one recent day at his office, “because you don’t have two sides. The other side won.”

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Notable & Quotable: Kagan.'

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Bring on the Covid Vaccine Boosters

The mask wars are a political distraction. More shots are needed.

Aug. 12, 2021 6:44 pm ET

A nurse prepares vaccine doses at a Covid-19 vaccination clinic in Paramount, Calif., Aug. 4.

Photo: etienne laurent/Shutterstock

Most of the media and political class are absorbed by the mask debate, but the Food and Drug Administration is keeping the focus where it should be: vaccines. On Thursday the agency was close to approving Covid-19 booster shots for immuno-compromised patients, and more people will need them soon.

Vulnerable patients, such as those with cancer or who have received organ transplants, produce a weaker response to Covid vaccines. A recent study found that immuno-compromised patients who received an mRNA vaccine are only 59% protected against hospitalization. Studies have found that a third shot can substantially increase antibodies.

Neutralizing antibodies are the immune system’s front-line defense. Vaccines also elicit a B- and T-cell response that can help fight infections, but these immune cells can take longer to kick in for older people as well as when people get rundown. As antibodies naturally wear off over time from vaccination, people will become more likely to get sick with Covid.

A study from Israel found that fully vaccinated health-care workers with lower antibody levels were more likely to get Covid. Most such breakthrough infections were mild but 19% had persistent symptoms after six weeks. A recent United Kingdom study estimated that vaccines were only 59% effective against symptomatic illness during late June and early July.

A new Mayo Clinic study found that Moderna’s vaccine was 76% protective against infection and Pfizer’s 42% in July, versus the 94% to 95% against symptomatic illness in their clinical trials. While both remained 75% to 80% protective against hospitalizations, that still means some who get infected could become seriously ill. The vaccine makers have said they believe people will soon need boosters to juice their antibodies.

Vaccine makers are working on booster shots to determine a formula that will confer the broadest and most robust immune response—again showing how private industry is leading the way. The FDA says it hopes to outline a strategy for administering booster shots for broader use next month. Great. The Biden Administration should let anyone who wants a booster get one.

While vaccines will likely remain highly protective against severe illness, no one wants to get symptoms resembling a bad flu as some breakthrough cases have experienced. Covid is never going away, and the best way to manage the virus is vaccinations. That has become even more clear as hospitalizations in parts of the U.S. return to levels at last summer’s peak.

The media are hammering Florida and Texas Governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott for their recent Covid surges and because the White House is using both Republicans as convenient political foils. Both states are experiencing bad hospital surges, which Mr. Abbott implicitly acknowledged by asking hospitals to suspend elective surgeries and requesting out-of-state health workers to help.

Florida’s hospitalizations have exceeded its peak last summer by some 50%, and the Biden Administration has sent it 200 ventilators. But Texas and Florida are hardly alone. The virus has been rampaging through communities across the South that have lower vaccination rates and more underlying health conditions. Delta variant infections are spreading across the country, so expect more hospitalizations in the Northeast and Midwest too.

The political media fight over masks is mostly a phony war. The evidence is that N-95 medical-grade masks can help reduce transmission at the margin, though the costs of masking young children seem higher than the benefits. In any case the Delta variant is still going to spread. The Administration should be working with Messrs. Abbott and DeSantis to increase vaccination rates rather than bicker over mask mandates. The two governors should let private companies impose mask and vaccine mandates if they want, and picking fights with localities over masks seems pointless.

The governors and Mr. Biden are both playing to their political bases, but politicizing the virus isn’t helping the American people. Vaccines are the only way through the pandemic.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition.

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Dumbing Oregon Down

The soft bigotry of low progressive expectations for minority students.

Aug. 12, 2021 6:42 pm ET

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown visits Sitton Elementary School in Portland, Ore., March 5, 2020.

Photo: Eder Campuzano/Associated Press

Why didn’t we think of that? Politicians and school officials in Oregon are embarrassed that too many minority children fail tests designed to confirm they’ve mastered the “essential skills” that high school is meant to teach. So in the name of racial equity, they’ve now done the progressive thing. Instead of lifting graduation rates by boosting student performance, they’re eliminating the proficiency requirement.

Gov. Kate Brown signed the bill on July 14, but the Oregonian reports her office never issued a press release and the bill was not entered into the legislative database until two weeks later—a “departure from the normal practice” of entering bills the same day they are signed.

The Secretary of the Senate blamed the delay on a staffer experiencing medical issues. But it’s hardly surprising that Gov. Brown and the Democratic Legislature would not wish to draw attention to this attempt to dumb the state down.

The new law extends until 2024 a temporary suspension of the state requirements that kids demonstrate proficiency in reading, writing, and math to graduate from high school. Previously, in addition to demonstrating proficiency via Oregon’s Assessments of Knowledge and Skills test, students had the option of taking other standardized tests or submitting a work project to teachers. The new legislation gives the state’s Department of Education until 2022 to write new standards.

The purpose of public education is to provide students with the skills they need to succeed in the world. It is a terrible disservice to issue a diploma that fools them into believing they’ve mastered basic skills they haven’t. It is particularly cruel for the minority students who will pay the highest price when the real world confirms that their high schools have defrauded them of a real education.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition.

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The Debacle in Afghanistan

Biden and Trump share responsibility for the looming defeat.

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 7:55 pm ET

Taliban militants patrol after taking control of the Governor's house and Ghazni city, in Afghanistan, Aug. 12.

Photo: nawid tanha/Shutterstock

Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates famously wrote that President Biden has been on the wrong side of every major foreign-policy issue in his long career. The world is getting another example as Mr. Biden’s hell-bent, ill-planned withdrawal from Afghanistan is turning into a strategic defeat and moral debacle.

The Taliban march to Kabul continues with the fall of more provincial capitals each day. The last count was 12 capitals, including Ghazni City on the road between the major cities of Kandahar and Kabul. Reinforcing Afghan forces defending Kandahar will become harder if the road is blocked.

The Afghan government is trying to mount a counterattack, and President Ashraf Ghani has sacked another army chief. But the Taliban now controls at least eight entire provinces, according to the Long War Journal, and its reach includes areas in the north that the Taliban didn’t control when it ruled the country before 9/11. The city of Herat also fell Thursday, and Kandahar could be next.

Many Afghan troops are fighting bravely, but they lack the air support that has been their main military advantage. Mr. Biden blundered in withdrawing all U.S. air power from the country, including private contractors who assist the Afghan air force in maintaining helicopters and planes. The contractors are now literally having to assist via Zoom calls, while the U.S. military flies too few sorties from the Persian Gulf region to slow the Taliban.

The White House has failed to understand what’s happening, with leaks saying the Administration is surprised by the Taliban assault. Surprised? The military warned Mr. Biden and so did U.S. intelligence. The Taliban began this offensive on May 1, two weeks after Mr. Biden announced his withdrawal, aiming for the symbolic date of Sept. 11.

The Pentagon said Thursday it is sending 3,000 troops back into the country to protect the withdrawal of U.S. Embassy personnel, as well as the evacuation of Afghan translators who assisted the U.S. This is necessary but one more sign that the White House had no plan for helping our Afghan allies.

The White House dispatched diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad to warn the jihadists not to take the country by force. Mr. Khalilzad struck the “peace” deal during the Trump Administration that the Taliban failed to honor. The U.S. is also pleading with China and Russia to intercede with the Taliban.

Someone also dispatched White House press secretary Jen Psaki to the briefing room to say that “if the Taliban claim to want international legitimacy, these actions are not going to get them the legitimacy they seek. . . . They could choose to devote the same energy to the peace process as they are to their military campaign. We strongly urge them to do so.” Strongly urging should do the trick.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump issued a statement absolving himself of all responsibility, though he cut the bad deal with the Taliban and set the 2021 withdrawal date. “I personally had discussions with top Taliban leaders whereby they understood what they are doing now would not have been acceptable,” Mr. Trump said. “It would have been a much different and much more successful withdrawal, and the Taliban understood that better than anyone.”

That’s not what Mr. Trump said in the spring when he praised the withdrawal and claimed credit. Both men were so determined to get political credit for bringing the troops home that they failed to face the consequences. The military offered a way to keep a minimal force in the country, providing air and other support to Afghan troops. Mr. Biden refused that advice and bet on retreat.

Many Americans may not care now what happens in Afghanistan. But as in Vietnam, the abandonment of our allies will have significant costs. When the world’s rogues sense that a superpower lacks the will to support its friends, they soon look for other ways to take advantage.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition.

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Break Out of the Student Loan Forbearance Mindset

Politicians promote poor decision-making and offer handouts as remedies.

Aug. 12, 2021 2:22 pm ET

Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Regarding “Student Loan Forbearance—Forever?” (Review & Outlook, Aug. 9): The push to forgive student-loan debt promotes the wrong ideals. My sister and I were fortunate to obtain four-year degrees and graduate without student-loan debt. We could do so because it was our father’s goal to fund our educations.

My dad was a steelworker. He worked hard to achieve his goal, and sacrificed along the way. He raised his hand to work overtime every chance he got. He purchased run-down homes, repaired them himself and rented to those in need. We did not live in a fancy home, nor did he wear nice clothes. We were one of the last families I knew to get a VCR. One of my fondest childhood memories is attending the local auto auction where my dad bought cars.

It’s unfortunate that politicians today fail to promote the stories of people like my dad—stories of goals, sacrifice and achievement. Instead, they promote poor decision-making and offer handouts as remedies. When I am called “privileged” today, I nod and agree. I’m privileged to have my dad and the ideals he espoused.

Archie Johnson

Amherst, Ohio

Your editorial states that “nearly 90% of the 43 million student borrowers as of March 2021 . . . weren’t making payments.” Student loans, unlike mortgage loans, lack real-estate collateral and frequently lack credible work experience for loan repayment. Hence, sound underwriting related to the student’s ability to repay is of the utmost importance, and it rests largely on the student’s forecast earnings.

Sadly, far too many students graduate with unmarketable degrees and then must amortize huge indebtedness with jobs that require only a high-school diploma. It may be preferable for the federal government to neither make nor guarantee loans, and leave that role to commercial banks—with a partial guarantee and financial liability for loan nonpayment provided by colleges who admit the students.

Em. Prof. James H. Boykin

Virginia Commonwealth University

Richmond, Va.

All references to the “cancellation” or “forbearance” of student loans are inaccurate. No debts will be cancelled or forgiven. They will be transferred to the taxpayers, many of whom have either paid for their own education or never had the opportunity to go to college.

David Goodwin

Simi Valley, Calif.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Break Out of the Loan-Forbearance Mindset.'

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Tenants Take Advantage of the CDC’s Eviction Ban

In New York, the extension is a moot point.

Aug. 12, 2021 2:21 pm ET

Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Regarding “Brett Kavanaugh’s Eviction Lesson” (Review & Outlook, Aug. 5): I rent individual apartments of 400 to 500 square feet, mainly to singles, and I have lost thousands of dollars to the eviction moratorium. The younger renters take advantage; the older renters not so much.

Instead of inviting Congress to extend the moratorium, Justice Kavanaugh should have underlined how valuable contract law and personal property rights are to clawing one’s way into the American dream. Stop the enabling. They aren’t entitled.

Wayne Mayo

Scappoose, Ore.

“The Eviction Ban Has to End Sometime” (Review & Outlook, Aug. 4), but progressive politicians are happy to let rental-property owners take another hit from the extension of the CDC eviction ban. As it applies to the slowly-turning-around rental market in New York, the extension is a moot point.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, eviction proceedings were glacial at best and unwinnable even in the strongest cases. New York City housing court is backed up and cases are not being added to the courts’ calendars. Small owner-manager companies, such as my family’s, are dismayed at the renewal of the eviction ban, but we threw up our hands in surrender long ago.

Nadine Shatzkes

Great Neck, N.Y.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Tenants Take Advantage of the Eviction Ban.'

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Dogs Deserve Better Treatment

Pet ownership isn’t for everyone.

Aug. 12, 2021 2:21 pm ET

A woman takes her dog for a walk in Stuttgart, Germany, May 3.

Photo: Bernd Weissbrod/Zuma Press

Pet ownership comes with responsibility (“I’m Disciplining My Dog, Not Torturing Her” by Mark Naida, op-ed, Aug. 3). Training a dog, like raising a child, requires commitment. This is not for everyone—and apparently not for Mr. Naida. With a good trainer, a dog can be trained and housebroken in a timely manner. The habit of “pulling on the leash” usually can be cured in a day or two in a humane manner that does not involve the infliction of pain. If a human is unwilling to invest the time and money into working with and training a dog, then perhaps pet ownership is not for that human.

Johnny Lieberman

President, Colorado Canine Advocates

Colorado Springs, Colo.

Mr. Naida needn’t apologize, feel embarrassed or blame his impatience for choosing to discipline his dog. By properly training his dog, he is doing her a favor. We have a standard poodle, our third dog trained with clarity, consistency, love and discipline, and he is the star of the neighborhood: affectionate, gentle, and curious. Most important, he is happy. He runs freely without a leash and endlessly explores the outdoors. He is also alive, which is not the case for so many other dogs we know whose owners did not train them and ultimately, tragically, put them to sleep for ingrained habits like stealing food, biting children, incessant barking, running away or destroying property.

Rochelle and Steven Katz

Evanston, Ill.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'You Should Do Your Dog a Favor—but How?.'

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Teachers Weren’t Paid Like Essential Workers This Year

Instead of a raise for showing flexibility during an unprecedented and difficult year, we lost pay.

Aug. 12, 2021 2:19 pm ET

Yellow school buses sit vacant in a parking lot in New York, Sept. 4, 2020.

Photo: Ron Adar/Zuma Press

My school district currently has 200 unfilled special-education positions and is lacking more than 200 bus drivers. I am awaiting the day when the market will pay educators as essential workers, since we all saw last year that the economy shuts down without them. I suggest wage experimentation in the school district will work to recruit and retain educators just as it worked to find and keep machine operators in Cleveland (“The Wage Wager,” Exchange, Aug. 7).

When asked to return pre-vaccination, teachers weren’t offered time-and-a-half as other essential workers were. Instead of a pay raise for flexibility during an unprecedented and difficult year, we lost pay.

Some departing teachers say respect and realistic expectations would keep them in the classroom, but my hunch is that if teachers had enough pay to cover child-care expenses, and if retirees were paid more as bus drivers than as cashiers, they would do what they enjoy—making a difference in children’s lives and supporting the community. I believe it’s worth the experiment. Otherwise, who will teach your children?

Shannon Evans

Herndon, Va.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition.

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The Climate-Change Cop-Out Is a Politician’s Best Friend

Global warming means it’s never your fault.

Aug. 12, 2021 2:20 pm ET

A stack of coal at a wholesale market in Mumbai, Aug. 9.

Photo: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg News

Like Bjorn Lomborg, I believe “Climate Change Doesn’t Cause All Disasters” (op-ed, Aug. 6). It is a factor in many, but not the only factor. So why do local politicians seemingly always respond to disasters by emphasizing the role of climate change and promise to “do more” to cut emissions? Greenhouse emissions are a global problem, and local efforts will be swamped by China’s and India’s coal usage. Plus, any potential good from lowering emissions is decades away.

But that’s the point: Climate change means it wasn’t their fault, and the effects of their green efforts will be immeasurable. It’s a cop-out. Sure, we should all do what we can to cut emissions, but we should also hold politicians responsible for mitigation efforts (practical zoning laws, sustainable forest and wetlands management, prediction and warning systems, etc.) that are under local control, are affordable and have measurable near-term effects.

George B. Hept

The Villages, Fla.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Climate-Change Cop-Out Is A Politician’s Best Friend.'

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BUSINESS & FINANCE

- Airbnb Revenue Nearly Quadrupled in Second Quarter

- Boeing’s Starliner Launch Could Face Delay of Several Months

- Tether Sheds Light, but Not Enough, on Its $63 Billion Reserves

- Global ETF Assets Hit $9 Trillion

- Reddit Valuation Soars to $10 Billion in New Funding Round

- High-Speed Trading Firm Jump to Execute Retail Investors’ Stock Trades

- BlackRock, Other Investors Target Climate Issues, Covid-19 Response and Board Seats in Shareholder Votes

- Revival of Ford Bronco SUV Hits Production Snag

- Coffee Jolt Gets Pricier as Costs of Beans, Labor, Transport Rise

- Adidas Agrees to Sell Reebok to Authentic Brands

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Airbnb Revenue Nearly Quadrupled in Second Quarter

Home-sharing giant cautions about fall travel even as it projects record revenue for the third quarter

An Airbnb vacation rental in Tennessee. The company’s revenue for the three months ended June climbed to $1.3 billion.

Photo: Mike Belleme for The Wall Street Journal

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 6:26 pm ET

Airbnb Inc.’s second-quarter revenue nearly quadrupled, rebounding from the lows of the pandemic and exceeding pre-pandemic levels, as domestic travel lifted the home-sharing company’s fortunes.

The company is projecting record revenue for the current quarter that ends in September despite the impact of the new Covid-19 Delta variant on bookings and cancellations. The June-September quarter is typically the most lucrative for Airbnb because of seasonal factors like summer vacations. Its previous revenue record was $1.65 billion in that quarter in 2019. Analysts were projecting third-quarter revenue of $1.96 billion before the company’s latest guidance.

Airbnb cautioned, however, that it didn’t know whether people would be as willing to travel in the fall as the summer. “Vaccination progress, containment of new variants, and travel restrictions outside the U.S. will all continue to be key factors,” in determining growth for the rest of the year, the company said Thursday. Its shares fell almost 5% in after-hours trading.

Revenue for the three months ended June climbed to $1.3 billion compared with $335 million in the same period last year, when world-wide Covid-19 lockdowns decimated Airbnb’s business. That beat the average estimate of analysts polled by FactSet and came in 10% higher than the same quarter in 2019, before the pandemic.

Airbnb’s net loss narrowed to $68 million in the second quarter, compared with a loss of $576 million in the year-earlier period. Analysts had expected a loss of $254 million.

The pandemic reshaped Airbnb’s business. Local travel became its stronghold, and people started using the platform for longer stays. Many large employers have said they will allow their employees to live more nomadic lives even after things return to normal, and Airbnb has positioned its business to capitalize on the trend.

“We haven’t just been sitting passively around waiting for travel to return,” Chief Executive Brian Chesky told analysts Thursday, adding that the company had designed a host of new features and products to benefit from changing travel habits.

Mr. Chesky redesigned the company’s website and app last summer to show prospective travelers nearby getaways, while hotel chains with a footprint in big cities suffered. At the same time, he cut a quarter of staff, paused noncore operations and slashed the company’s hefty marketing budget to keep expenses down.

Airbnb second-quarter sales and marketing expenses rose 76% from the same period a year ago, when the company slashed its marketing budget as part of a wide-ranging overhaul. The company previously said it would invest in marketing in the first half of this year, anticipating a recovery.

Earlier this year, Airbnb launched a flexible search feature that helps curate stays for travelers who aren’t sure where they want to go, or when. That feature lets Airbnb steer prospective travelers to locations where it has supply, something hotel operators can’t necessarily match.

The company said last week that it had seen more than 500 million such searches. The most-booked stays from those searches were treehouses, beachfront properties and houseboats, according to Airbnb.

Airbnb is jostling for new hosts, alongside Expedia Group Inc.’s Vrbo, to meet soaring demand for local stays.

Airbnb said in May it had eased the sign-up process for new hosts, reducing the number of steps required to 10 from dozens. It is also offering referral payments to hosts who can get others to list on Airbnb. Mr. Chesky said the company ended the second quarter with the highest number of active listings on its platform.

Airbnb hasn’t posted an annual profit since its founding in 2008. But it has been profitable on an adjusted basis before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization in several quarters, including the latest June quarter. Companies often point to this metric to signal a path to future profits. These adjustments entail stripping out expenses such as asset write-downs that executives and many investors consider to be outside a company’s fundamental operations.

Airbnb posted adjusted earnings before those items of $217 million in the second quarter. That compared with a loss of $397 million by that measure in the year-earlier period.

The company is projecting its highest adjusted profit before those items in the third quarter, alongside record revenue.

Airbnb’s growth in recent years—and newfound success with local travel—has drawn sharp opposition from many corners. While some U.S. cities have eased restrictions on short-term rentals, others are moving to tighten them. Homeowners from Arizona to Florida and Massachusetts are among those lobbying for it, raising objections to living near short-term rentals because of noise, crime and falling property values.

Write to Preetika Rana at preetika.rana@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Revenue Quadruples at Airbnb.'

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Boeing’s Starliner Launch Could Face Delay of Several Months

Aerospace company likely will need to remove space capsule for repairs to problematic valves

A rocket with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft onboard in Cape Canaveral, Fla., earlier this month.

Photo: aubrey gemignani/NASA/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 9:33 pm ET

Boeing Co. BA -0.51% ’s Starliner space capsule launch could be delayed several months as the company will likely need to remove it from atop a rocket for repairs, people familiar with the matter said.

Such a delay would be a setback for Boeing’s space program. The company has spent years developing the Starliner and was supposed to launch it late last month to dock with the International Space Station, without crew on board—after a failed attempt a year and a half ago. Ultimately, the capsule is supposed to ferry astronauts to the space station.

Boeing engineers have been working to repair a problem with some of the valves in a propulsion system on the Starliner that was discovered earlier this month while the vehicle sat on a launchpad. The company first said it was investigating the valve issues last week, and on Monday disclosed that 13 valves had failed to open as expected during preflight checks.

Nine of the valves are now functioning and Boeing engineers are working to address the other four, the company said Thursday.

“Over the past couple of days, our team has taken the necessary time to safely access and test the affected valves,” said John Vollmer, a Boeing executive overseeing the Starliner.

The company also said it would work with NASA and United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between it and Lockheed Martin Corp. that provides the rocket to take the Starliner to space, to determine a date for another launch “when the spacecraft is ready.”

Boeing and NASA on Monday said they hadn’t given up on potentially launching the Starliner in August. NASA said then the earliest possible date for another attempt would be in the middle of this month.

Other missions are also planned for the space station, complicating when the Starliner may try to reach the facility without crew members again. NASA has said a Dragon spacecraft carrying cargo from Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the formal name of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, would launch for the station later this month.

The agency also plans to launch a ship to study asteroids no earlier than mid-October from the location at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, where engineers are currently working on the Starliner. NASA has said previously any date for another Starliner launch would protect the asteroid mission.

On Friday, officials from NASA and Boeing are scheduled to discuss the Starliner at a press event. The space agency said Thursday it was discussing the mission status with Boeing.

As teams continued to work on the valve problem, separating the Starliner from the rocket appeared increasingly necessary, according to people familiar with the matter.

Ahead of the Starliner do-over, NASA and Boeing officials in July said they had subjected the spacecraft to rigorous, increased testing to ensure a successful test.

In December 2019, a Boeing software error prevented the Starliner from getting into the correct orbit and it never docked with the space station. Another potentially catastrophic error was fixed during the mission to prevent damaging the spacecraft’s protective heat shield.

The 2019 botched space mission came as Boeing was struggling with the fallout of two fatal crashes of its 737 MAX passenger aircraft. Company executives have since sought to revamp how the company handles engineering, safety and quality issues.

NASA has said it wants to have two U.S.-based companies available to transport astronauts to and from the space station. Right now, the agency has one confirmed provider, SpaceX, in place for those flights. Its second option is to contract for seats on Russian rockets.

Write to Andrew Tangel at Andrew.Tangel@wsj.com and Micah Maidenberg at micah.maidenberg@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Boeing Starliner Delayed Further.'

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Tether Sheds Light, but Not Enough, on Its $63 Billion Reserves

The stablecoin has secured itself a critical place in the crypto ecosystem, but its holdings fall short compared with those of prime money-market funds

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 3:45 pm ET

One of the things most cryptocurrency enthusiasts really don’t want is more exposure to the U.S. government. It turns out—via the biggest so-called stablecoin, tether—that is exactly what they got. Holdings of Treasury bills backing tether surged, according to the first accountant-verified breakdown of its issuer’s $63 billion of assets.

Tether is designed to trade one-for-one with the dollar and has become immensely popular as a way for traders quickly to shift money between crypto exchanges or park cash without going through the hassle of transferring it to a bank account.

But its peg to the dollar is dependent on the value and availability of its investments, and here the new disclosure brings both good and bad news. The good news is that with more detailed disclosure and the stamp of approval from an accountant, it is less likely that Tether, the company that issues the coin, and linked crypto brokerage Bitfinex are repeating the illegal practices that led to an $18.5 million settlement with the New York Attorney General earlier this year.

The bad news is that the disclosure is still far less than is provided by regulated money-market funds. The accountant’s assurance is limited to one day, and it is based in the Cayman Islands—albeit part of Moore Global, a second-tier international firm. And the portfolio still includes plenty of assets that would be hard to sell to support the value of the coin in an emergency.

Tether has secured itself a critical place in the crypto ecosystem, with three times as much trading between bitcoin and tether as between bitcoin and dollars. Tether is bigger than the next two largest stablecoins put together. Yet doubt has swirled around its legitimacy after revelations of banking troubles and misuse of its assets, culminating in the New York legal action which led to it being banned from operating in the state and agreeing to publish information about its holdings.

Regulators and central banks are now worrying that stablecoins are getting so big they could pose a threat to financial stability if forced to dump assets in a hurry.

The pressure has prompted a flurry of disclosures by stablecoins after years of refusing to provide details of assets. Tether’s detailed breakdown shows it bought more than $14 billion of T-bills during April, May and June. U.S. government paper is now almost a quarter of the investments backing the currency, although it also cut its cash by about $2.5 billion. T-bills would be useful if tether hit problems: They would be easy to sell either to finance refunds if the cryptocurrency suffered a run of withdrawals, or to provide cash to shore up the price by buying tethers in the market if they fell to a discount to the dollar.

More troubling, Tether holds $2 billion in “other investments” including other cryptocurrencies, with no indication of how easy they would be to sell. It also has $2.5 billion in secured loans, which are often impossible to sell before maturity.

A Tether spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Almost half the assets are in commercial paper, a form of short-term loan used by banks and large companies. The bulk of that is rated investment grade. But its holdings have an average rating of A-2, lower than the norm for a prime money-market fund. They have an average maturity of 150 days, much longer than is usual among such funds.

Few major banks, the biggest commercial-paper issuers, are rated as low as A-2, but the rating does include American Express, while Detroit-based Ally Financial is A-3, according to rating agency S&P Global.

Tether’s assets are riskier than those of its smaller rivals, Circle and Paxos, which issue USDC, BUSD and PAX. Paxos says it holds almost all its money in cash or equivalent, with 4% in T-bills, about as secure a portfolio as is possible. Circle is riskier, with 61% in cash and equivalent, but its commercial paper holdings are all at least A-1 rated, and it holds no secured loans, cryptocurrencies or the “other” of tether.

The flip side of taking more risk in the portfolio is that tether should be making a fatter return. I estimate its commercial paper holdings alone should bring in an annual income of around $90 million, based on the rating and maturity. The less liquid holdings, assuming they earn more to reflect the higher risk, ought to push up income to at least $200 million a year, and potentially far more. All of that income goes to the company, not to holders of tether.

Circle, which is in the process of listing via a SPAC, expects to make $40 million of income this year from the roughly $28 billion of assets currently backing its USDC coin, plus further growth.

The danger of taking more risk is that a sudden fall in the markets Tether invests in could wipe out the slim cushion of 0.25% of extra assets Tether holds above its liabilities. If that happened, its assets would be worth less than $1 per tether, which could destroy confidence and prompt a rush to withdraw, as happened to money-market funds that “broke the buck” during the 2008 financial crisis.

So far, tether has proved invulnerable to panic, and its rapid growth continued after the New York penalties. The coin had only a brief, though severe, drop even amid the broad market chaos of March 2020.

There are also obstacles to a run on the fund. Redeeming tethers for dollars requires a minimum transaction of $100,000. Even if there was a run, tether’s terms allow it to suspend any account holder for no reason and to repay with its assets, instead of in dollars.

Customers wouldn’t be happy with such moves, but tether has come through many problems that ought to have destroyed faith in it already.

The latest disclosure is an improvement, and hopefully Tether will eventually provide full details and the audit it has long said it is working toward. The problem is that Tether is trusted more than it should be, and while I can’t predict what will shake that trust, that makes it inherently fragile.

Write to James Mackintosh at james.mackintosh@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Tether Sheds Not Enough Light.'

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Global ETF Assets Hit $9 Trillion

Net flows so far this year have nearly eclipsed the $736.5 billion investors had moved into ETFs globally in all of 2020

Vanguard Group’s ETFs pulled in nearly $224 billion through the first seven months of this year.

Photo: Ryan Collerd for The Wall Street Journal

Aug. 12, 2021 7:59 am ET

Investors poured $705 billion into exchange-traded funds through the first seven months of the year, pushing 2021’s world-wide tally to a record $9.1 trillion, according to data from Morningstar Inc.

Net flows so far this year have nearly eclipsed the $736.5 billion investors had moved into ETFs globally in all of 2020. Most of the cash has gone into cheap, index-tracking funds, with large-cap and short-term bond ETFs, as well as products offering inflation protection, attracting significant investor interest, according to the data.

U.S. ETFs accounted for a record $519 billion of the total, sending assets in U.S. funds to about $6.6 trillion. ETFs now hold more money than index-tracking mutual funds, which had about $8.8 trillion in assets as of June, though mutual funds overall still command more money, with about $40.7 trillion in assets.

ETFs are baskets of securities that are as easy to trade as a stock. They lack the investment minimums found in many mutual funds, are generally more tax efficient and carry lower fees. The success of ETFs was far from guaranteed after the first one launched in 1993. But enthusiasm for low-cost investments has led to an explosion in ETF assets over the past 10 years.

“ETFs are probably the greatest success story in financial services over the last two decades,” said Anaelle Ubaldino, head of ETF research and investment advisory at data firm TrackInsight, which also tracked ETFs crossing the $9 trillion mark last month.

Vanguard Group has been the biggest draw this year, with its ETFs pulling in nearly $224 billion through the first seven months of 2021. That is 45% more than all the money attracted so far in 2021 by BlackRock, BLK -0.21% the world’s No. 1 ETF manager by assets.

Two broad, inexpensive stock-market funds run by Vanguard garnered the most interest from investors. Vanguard’s 500 Index Fund and Total Stock Market Index Fund pulled in $32.3 billion and $23.4 billion so far this year. Of the top 10 funds by inflows in 2021, Vanguard managed six, while BlackRock’s iShares ETF unit oversaw the other four.

Since asset managers got regulatory approval in 2019 to run stock-picking ETFs that also shield their daily holdings, Fidelity Investments, T. Rowe Price Group Inc., Putnam Investments and others have launched actively managed funds. These are similar to some of their mutual-fund strategies, yet more accessible and usually cheaper for individual investors. Others such as Guinness Atkinson Funds and Dimensional Fund Advisors have opted to convert some mutual funds into ETFs.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has launched some actively managed ETFs, including its Equity Premium Income fund last year, which has pulled in $2.4 billion from investors so far in 2021. The banking giant said Wednesday that it plans to convert four active mutual funds managing some $10 billion in assets into ETFs in 2022 pending approval from their boards.

Active ETFs still represent a small but growing segment of the overall ETF market. Nonindexed ETFs, including those that actively pick stocks, carried $358 billion in assets as of July, about 4% of the overall ETF market, according to Morningstar’s data. That was up from $193 billion a year ago.

ETFs come with some risks, however. Narrow, thematic funds can concentrate billions of dollars in assets in a small roster of companies, making them potentially susceptible to a liquidity crunch in volatile markets, some analysts say. ETFs that track indexes, meanwhile, have the potential to fall out of step with benchmarks, which is known as tracking error.

With stocks hitting records, some expect more growth ahead. In the U.S. alone, Matt Bartolini, head of SPDR Americas Research at State Street Global Advisors, predicts inflows for all of 2021 could reach nearly $800 billion—more than what has flowed into U.S. mutual funds in the past nine years combined.

“With such dazzling flow totals in a short period of time, it begs the question of how high flows could get in 2021,” said Mr. Bartolini. “Particularly if ETFs can make it into the four commas club.”

Write to Michael Wursthorn at Michael.Wursthorn@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'ETF Assets Swell to $9 Trillion.'

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Reddit Valuation Soars to $10 Billion in New Funding Round

Social-media company says it expects to secure additional financial commitments from new and existing investors

Reddit has been in the spotlight for its WallStreetBets forum.

Photo: dado ruvic/Reuters

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 12:05 pm ET

Six months after closing a funding round that doubled its valuation, Reddit Inc. is locking in a roughly 50% increase, driven by money managers hunting for investments and its role in the Wall Street trading frenzy.

Reddit on Thursday said it has raised $410 million from Fidelity Investments Inc. at a valuation of about $10 billion. The company said it expects to secure additional financial commitments from new and existing investors to bring the total raised to as much as $700 million. In February, the company said it had raised about $500 million in late-stage funding at a $6.5 billion valuation.

Bumper financing rounds with big leaps in valuation are becoming almost routine for many startups as big money-management firms and others are pouring massive amounts of funding into Silicon Valley, hunting for healthy returns at a time of low interest rates. Fanatics Inc., the sports retailer, recently announced it had tripled its valuation in a year to $18 billion. Clubhouse, the startup audio-chat social network, secured a $1 billion valuation earlier this year. It quadrupled that figure within about three months, according to people familiar with the matter.

Reddit Chief Executive Steve Huffman said the company opted to raise additional money prompted by Fidelity, a longtime investor in the social-media site that is leading the latest funding round. Reddit, he said, also is looking to further capitalize on the popularity it gained when the WallStreetBets forum put the company in the spotlight as individual investors rallied around buying certain stocks such as GameStop Corp. The episode brought in millions of new users, Mr. Huffman said, as well as new advertisers, the source of the bulk of the company’s revenue.

Reddit, in the most recent quarter, had $100 million in advertising revenue for the first time, almost triple the prior-year figure, though it remains unprofitable. And the ad sales figure still means it is a relatively minor player in a business of giants. Facebook Inc. generated $28.6 billion in ad sales in the most recent quarter, and Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., made more than $50 billion from ads in the same period.

Mr. Huffman said Reddit plans to use the additional investments to underpin the expansion into new markets, and product improvements, such as enhanced video capabilities and making the website run faster. Reddit users can already share videos on the site, but the company wants to bolster that feature that companies such as short-video app TikTok have demonstrated has wide consumer appeal. At the end of last year, Reddit bought video-sharing app Dubsmash for an undisclosed sum to expand its presence in user-created video.

San Francisco-based Reddit also continues to add staff, Mr. Huffman said, after more than doubling its head count over the past 18 months.

The company’s recent success raising capital isn’t putting Reddit off its plans to eventually go public, Mr. Huffman said. “Though it is fashionable for companies to stay private longer, that is not our goal,” he said. “To go out successfully, there’s a lot of work between here and there and a lot of things we need to do.”

Write to Meghan Bobrowsky at meghan.bobrowsky@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Funding Raises Reddit’s Valuation.'

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High-Speed Trading Firm Jump to Execute Retail Investors’ Stock Trades

Plan for retail wholesaler business comes as meme-stock frenzy fuels surge in trading by individual investors

Chicago-based Jump Trading is a big player in global markets, despite its penchant for secrecy.

Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News

Aug. 12, 2021 5:30 am ET

Jump Trading Group, one of the world’s largest high-frequency trading firms, will launch a unit that executes stock orders for individual investors, a business that has grown more lucrative for electronic traders as meme-stock mania has fueled a surge in U.S. retail volumes.

Executives at Jump told The Wall Street Journal that the firm is setting up a so-called retail wholesaler business. Wholesalers fill buy and sell orders for the customers of online brokerages such as Robinhood Markets Inc. HOOD 1.98% and TD Ameritrade.

Chicago-based Jump is a big player in global markets, despite its low profile and penchant for secrecy. The firm is active on futures, options and stock exchanges around the world and is a major trader of Treasurys and cryptocurrencies. It employs more than 900 people and has offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Wholesalers generally make money by collecting a small spread between the buying and selling price of stocks, often just a fraction of a penny per share. Most are units of firms such as Citadel Securities or Virtu Financial Inc. VIRT -0.47% that trade millions of shares each day.

Jump declined to provide the timing of the launch, saying it was still seeking regulatory approvals needed to operate the business. The firm decided several years ago to start a wholesaler, well before the recent trading frenzies in stocks such as GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., the executives said.

In a potential challenge to Jump’s plans, the meme-stock phenomenon has prompted Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission to scrutinize the handling of retail investors’ stock trades. The SEC is reviewing the role of wholesalers as well as payment for order flow—a controversial practice in which wholesalers pay brokers for the right to trade against their customers’ orders.

Critics say such payments pose a conflict of interest for brokers by encouraging them to maximize their own revenue rather than look after their customers’ best interests. Some critics, including SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, have also voiced concern that wholesaling harms the quality of the U.S. stock market by diverting volumes from public exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange to less transparent private venues.

Many brokers and traders say the system works well for small investors, citing data that shows retail investors get better prices from wholesalers than they could at exchanges. Payment for order flow also allows brokerages like Robinhood to offer zero-commission trades.

Jump’s move doesn’t mean it necessarily likes the market’s current structure, the executives said. Still, the firm felt it needed to enter the wholesaler business to deepen its presence in the more than 40% of U.S. equities trading volume that takes place off-exchange, said Tonya Adduci, head of global business development at Jump.

“ ‘Jump has obviously been a pretty quiet company in the past.’ ”

— David Olsen, the firm’s president and chief investment officer

“The utopian market structure for U.S. equities would be a completely lit and transparent market,” she said. “Absent that, we’re forced to find ways to participate in the markets as they exist today. That means we need to have a footprint in the wholesale market-making business.”

There is no guarantee Jump will succeed. The wholesaler business is dominated by Citadel Securities and Virtu, which together handle more than 70% of individual investors’ stock orders, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data. Traders say profit margins in the business are thin, favoring the players with the biggest scale. Some firms that tried to launch wholesalers in recent years have failed to gain traction or exited the business.

Earlier this summer, Jump hired wholesaler veteran George Sohos to help run the new initiative. Mr. Sohos was a longtime executive at KCG Holdings, which was acquired by Virtu in 2017. More recently he worked at Citigroup Inc.

Jump already executes crypto trades for Robinhood customers, a partnership that gives Jump a foothold in the online-brokerage world. During the first quarter of this year, 11% of Robinhood’s transaction revenue came from Tai Mo Shan Ltd., a Jump affiliate, Robinhood disclosed ahead of its initial public offering in July. That means Jump paid Robinhood about $46 million during the quarter for handling customers’ trades in bitcoin and other digital currencies.

Jump was founded in 1999 by two former Chicago Mercantile Exchange floor traders. It was among the first firms to build cross-country microwave networks to zip market data between exchanges at close to light speed, and it is often at the forefront of other technology aimed at shaving fractions of a second off the time it takes to execute trades. Still, Jump executives say the firm isn’t all about speed.

“Our ability to make money is based on our research and quantitative horsepower and data science, not our speed,” said David Olsen, Jump’s president and chief investment officer.

Privately owned Jump doesn’t release its financials and has historically kept out of the public eye. Even after the 2014 publication of Michael Lewis’s book “Flash Boys” provoked furious criticism of high-frequency trading, prompting some HFT firms to speak out, Jump avoided publicity. The firm’s website features little more than a list of job openings and some legal disclosures.

Still, Jump has grown somewhat more open to public engagement. Some partners in Jump’s venture-capital arm have even begun publishing blog posts and recording podcasts. The firm may open up further as it enters businesses such as retail wholesaling, Mr. Olsen suggested.

“Jump has obviously been a pretty quiet company in the past,” he said. “As markets evolve and we evolve, we are being a little bit more public.”

Write to Alexander Osipovich at alexander.osipovich@dowjones.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'High-Speed Trader to Handle Individuals’ Orders.'

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BlackRock, Other Investors Target Climate Issues, Covid-19 Response and Board Seats in Shareholder Votes

Strength of index-tracking funds sets the stage for future showdowns over issues from director seats to climate-change disclosure

BlackRock funds withheld support from 10% of board directors on company shareholder ballots in the recent proxy season.

Photo: Amir Hamja for The Wall Street Journal

Aug. 12, 2021 7:00 am ET

BlackRock Inc. BLK -0.21% and other heavyweight investors were more willing to flex their muscles against companies in the past year, setting the stage for future showdowns over issues from board seats to climate-change disclosure.

BlackRock funds withheld support from 10% of board directors on company shareholder ballots, or more than 6,500 director election proposals, in the year ended in June.

That is up from 8.5% in the prior year. In addition, the world’s largest asset manager increased support for shareholder-led proposals. It backed 64% of environmental proposals, up from 11% during the prior year.

BlackRock cast key votes alongside other big investors in signature shareholder battles that forced companies to make changes.

Earlier this year, BlackRock, Vanguard Group and California pensions joined others in backing dissident directors at one of America’s most-prominent companies, Exxon Mobil Corp. It was the culmination of yearslong frustration over the oil major’s handling of shareholder feedback.

“There have been subtle but significant shifts at the largest institutions to be more assertive,” said Rich Fields, who heads Russell Reynolds Associates’ board-effectiveness practice. “The implication is there’s going to be more of this.”

Investors have flooded into index-tracking funds in the past decade in hopes of getting broader access to the market at a lower cost. One unintended consequence of the index funds’ rise has been the huge voting power these firms have accumulated as they have added assets. Funds of BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street Global Advisors collectively held nearly 20% of the S&P 500 at the end of March, according to FactSet. They are among the largest shareholders of many companies.

How they wield this power for their millions of investors—or refrain from doing so—has far-reaching effects across corporations.

Fund managers’ willingness to exert power in more-visible ways emboldened other investors to take on companies too. This year was particularly noteworthy as the Covid-19 pandemic revealed flaws in how companies navigated economic upheaval, supply-chain challenges and restive workforces. More boards failed to secure strong approval ratings.

Worker safety at Tyson Foods plants during the Covid-19 pandemic has drawn the attention of major investment funds.

Photo: Michael Conroy/Associated Press

Across Russell 3000 companies, 6% of proposals involving company-supported board candidates fell short of 80% shareholder support, according to Insightia data for the year ended June. That is the highest level of companies failing to draw this key level of support in at least four years, and up from 4.3% in 2018.

Casting “no” votes or withholding support from directors are the most direct ways to express dissent. Directors who don’t win a majority vote typically must leave. Those with less than 80% of votes are vulnerable.

“It’s a red flag for companies—and it’s shark bait for activist investors,” said Andrew Freedman, co-chair of the shareholder-activism group at the law firm Olshan Frome Wolosky LLP.

As index firms are involved in new activist battles, they face competing pressures. Activist investors, special-interest groups and politicians have pushed these funds to do more on a host of social issues, from climate change to gender rights. They are targets of public pressure campaigns and lobbying by environmentalist and progressive groups.

Some politicians have accused index firms of overreach. Two Republican senators expressed concern that BlackRock and State Street were emphasizing their chief executive officers’ “personal policy views over retirees’ financial security” when making shareholder voting decisions for the nation’s biggest 401(k)-type plan.

The fund managers have said they vote solely to fulfill responsibilities to investors.

Index funds can’t sell companies at random and avoid interfering in corporations’ daily business. They say that private discussions are the main way to convey expectations to companies they are invested in for the long haul and that they only cast votes to maximize shareholder value.

In the case of BlackRock, the rise in votes against directors reflected stricter expectations on board independence in Asia; concerns about pay packages in a pandemic year; and what it perceived as insufficient action around climate issues.

The team driving votes at BlackRock supported 35% of shareholder-led proposals in 2021 proxy year, up from 17% during the period a year earlier. This capped Sandy Boss’s first full year leading interactions with companies on behalf of the firm. BlackRock’s new head of investment stewardship has made it clear that backing shareholder proposals are no longer a tool of last resort.

Blue-chip investors’ embrace of shareholder proposals validates what started out as a fringe movement driven by retirees, nuns and environmentalists. Today more proposals directly address what investors consider material financial risks. Vanguard, the world’s second-largest money manager, tweaked voting guidelines and articulated that its funds would be likely to support proposals for disclosure on workforce diversity and how U.S. companies deal with climate risks.

Vanguard votes helped lead to a shake-up at Toshiba that included the ouster of its chairman.

Photo: Toru Hanai/Reuters

Vanguard explicitly warned that its funds could vote against directors who weren’t demonstrating enough changes needed for board diversity or attention to environmental and social risks. In 2020, Vanguard named John Galloway, who worked for the Obama administration, to head investor stewardship. Vanguard’s votes for all of the 2021 proxy period will be disclosed later in the year.

After Tyson Foods Inc. plants were hit by Covid-19 infections, BlackRock and Vanguard backed a proposal that called on the meat supplier to assess human rights and worker safety. While the proposal didn’t pass, it demonstrated that big investors are paying attention to the issue.

A Tyson spokesman said the company is committed to dialogue with investors and gives priority to workforce safety. It recently ordered all U.S. employees to get Covid-19 vaccinations.

In other key votes, Vanguard votes helped oust the board chairman and bring about a broader shake-up at Toshiba Corp. , the Japanese conglomerate plagued by accounting scandals. BlackRock voted to keep the board chairman for stability, voting against other directors it considered more responsible for missteps.

The art of splitting the vote is keeping bankers and advisers busy. After years of being dismissed as board lackeys, those hired to help companies survive shareholder vote season are gaining clout and seeing bonuses multiply from having the attention of CEOs.

Meanwhile, votes by the biggest managers continue to bring attention to their growing power.

BlackRock’s voting record for this year reflects new policies, but executives at the firm don’t expect its funds’ votes against companies to rise as sharply in coming years.

The firm is evaluating new ways to give more of its large investors voting power, people familiar with the matter said. Although different BlackRock funds’ voting decisions can diverge from the BlackRock stewardship team, that doesn’t happen often.

Vanguard handed off some of its voting power in 2019, so outside managers running the firm’s active stock funds vote separately from funds it manages on its own.

Write to Dawn Lim at dawn.lim@wsj.com and Justin Baer at justin.baer@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Power of Index-Fund Giants Sets Stage for More Showdowns.'

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Revival of Ford Bronco SUV Hits Production Snag

The auto maker said some customer deliveries will be delayed because roof appearance is flawed

The Bronco is part of Ford’s lineup for the first time since the mid-1990s.

Photo: Carlos Osorio/Associated Press

Updated Aug. 13, 2021 10:15 am ET

Ford Motor Co. F -0.79% said it would halt delivery of some new Bronco sport-utility vehicles because of a production problem, a high-profile setback as the auto maker tries to address nagging quality issues.

Ford said Thursday that it will replace the roofs on some of the SUVs it has produced so far because of a problem that affects appearance, though not functionality. The fixes will cause a delay for customers who had ordered Broncos, which went on sale in June, a spokesman said.

Ford said the molded, hardtop roofs made by German supplier Webasto Group for some Broncos didn’t meet Ford’s standards.

Webasto said in a statement that the company’s goal is to ensure its products always meet customers’ expectations. “The imperfections are microscopic, do not affect the functionality of the roof and are exposed in heavy rain and humidity. We found it and have now put in corrective steps,” Webasto said.

Ford also makes a soft-top version of the Bronco that it will continue to ship to customers, the spokesman said.

The return of the Bronco SUV to Ford’s lineup for the first time since the mid-1990s is among the most significant vehicle debuts for the company in many years. The problem comes as Ford Chief Executive Jim Farley has made it a priority to fix costly quality issues, such as safety recalls, warranty expenses and shaky rollouts of new models.

Ford began taking reservations for the Bronco in the summer of 2020, after years of buzz among enthusiasts about the prospect of the SUV’s return to the market.

The revival of the well-known nameplate—aimed at taking on the Jeep Wrangler, a popular off-roader—has already encountered several delays. In December, Ford said the Bronco’s debut would be delayed by several months because of pandemic-related supply problems, with sales starting in the summer. The company this spring began telling customers of delays related to the optional hardtop roof, offering to allow them to switch to the soft-top model.

Buyers who already have received a Bronco with the problematic roof will be able to have it replaced at a dealership at no charge, the company said. Vehicles that have been built but have yet to be shipped are being held near the Detroit-area factory where they are assembled.

Problems with the 2019 rollout of a redesigned Ford Explorer hurt the company’s financial results that year. Since then executives have said they intensified their focus on quality to avoid costly defects and warranty repairs.

“We haven’t fixed the issues that have held us back in our automotive business. They include warranty costs, which remain unacceptably high,” Mr. Farley told analysts last fall, after assuming the CEO job.

Write to Mike Colias at Mike.Colias@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Ford’s Bronco Return Hits Snag.'

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Coffee Jolt Gets Pricier as Costs of Beans, Labor, Transport Rise

Cafes and retailers lift prices, while others try to hold the line; ’Consumers will be looking for more affordable options’

Retail brands including Folgers are raising prices or plan to do so soon.

Photo: Richard B. Levine/Zuma Press

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 1:58 pm ET

Many coffee drinkers can expect to pay more for their cup of joe at supermarkets and cafe registers, as producers grapple with higher coffee bean prices, constrained supplies and other costs.

Retail brands like Folgers, as well as independent coffee chains, are raising prices or plan to soon, executives said. Starbucks Corp. and Nestlé SA NSRGY 1.28% have said they could increase prices, while other coffee sellers try to hold prices steady, aiming to capture more business.

Coffee roasters and cafe operators are responding to poor harvests in major coffee-growing regions and logistics snarls that executives said have constrained bean supplies, delayed shipments and boosted costs. Companies are also raising wages to recruit and retain workers.

The supply chain issues are likely to worsen as a cold snap in Brazil, the world’s biggest coffee producer, is expected to reduce next year’s crop. The price of coffee futures traded on Intercontinental Exchange Inc. markets this year has averaged about $1.43 per pound, the highest it has been since 2014, according to Macrotrends LLC.

FairWave Holdings LLC, a Kansas City company that operates 20 cafes and sells packaged coffee, has raised menu prices and slowed hiring in response to escalating costs, executives said.

“In my 35-plus years of experience, this is one of the most rapidly rising cost environments that I’ve seen,” Dan Trott, the company’s chief executive said.

A worker dries coffee beans in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, where cold weather is hurting crop yield.

Photo: Igor Do Vale/Zuma Press

Nestlé, which produces Nescafé instant coffee as well as Starbucks-branded packaged coffee, said that while it has hedged coffee costs, it may raise prices as supply-chain costs are set to have a bigger impact in the second half of the year. NuZee Inc., a specialty coffee company that focuses on co-packing single-serve coffee, said it has enough coffee to last until the next quarter, but expects to pay higher prices once that inventory runs out

J.M. Smucker Co. , which owns Folgers and produces Dunkin’ ground coffee, said it is trying to trim costs in its supply chain and has raised prices too. “We are seeing inflationary costs impacting the entire fiscal year,” said Tucker Marshall, the company’s chief financial officer, on a June conference call.

In addition to coffee, Americans are paying more for many things—including hotel stays, other groceries and gasoline—as the economy rebounds from Covid-19’s impact over the past year. Companies are facing higher costs for labor, commodities and shipping, and they are passing them on to consumers in many cases. Consumer prices rose 5.4% in July from a year earlier, the same pace as in June, the highest 12-month rate since 2008, the Labor Department reported Wednesday.

Coffee shops face escalating prices for beans, labor and other expenses.

Photo: Emilie Richardson/Bloomberg News

Supermarket sales of coffee have stayed high even as consumers go out more. Retail sales of coffee jumped from roughly $10 billion in 2019 to around $11 billion in 2020, according to market research firm IRI, and totaled almost $11 billion for the 52-week period ended July 11, the firm estimated. After major coffee chains’ sales dropped to about $30 billion in 2020 from around $34 billion in 2019, sales this year are on pace to approach 2019 levels, according to data from food-service consulting firm Technomic Inc.

Some coffee companies hope to take advantage of inflation to attract new customers. David Kovalevski, chief executive of instant coffee company Waka Coffee, said the coffee beans he buys from India and Colombia have gone up in price. Waka is trying to purchase coffee and other raw materials in bulk to negotiate lower prices and minimize freight costs, Mr. Kovalevski said.

Despite inflationary pressures, Waka hasn’t increased prices. Instead, Mr. Kovalevski said he hopes to lower prices and offer a cheaper alternative to other companies’ brews. “Consumers will be looking for more affordable options,” he said.

Defensive strategies have helped insulate some major buyers from rising coffee costs. Executives of Starbucks said last month that the company has more than one year’s worth of coffee on hand, with favorable prices locked in. JDE Peet’s NV, an Amsterdam-based coffee supplier, has hedged its own supplies this year, CEO Fabien Simon said last week.

Starbucks executives said the Seattle-based chain plans to promote premium beverages such as cold coffee to help compensate, and could lift prices in some areas, as the company faces higher labor and supply costs.

In Flushing, Mich., coffee shop chain Coffee Beanery has shielded itself from rising coffee prices by purchasing its supplies in advance, said Laurie Shaw, the company’s chief operating officer. But rising shipping and labor costs led the company to increase prices by an average of around 7%. As coffee costs have risen further, the company is considering another 10% increase, Ms. Shaw said.

Coffee companies say customers have been understanding of price increases because they are seeing higher costs everywhere.

Lisa Bee, chief executive of cafe chain Sweetwaters Coffee & Tea, said that because buying a cup of coffee tends to be a minor expense, her customers haven’t minded the price hike. Sweetwaters sells specialty coffee and recently increased its prices by around 5% to 10%.

“Even if there is a 10%, 15%, even 20% increase, you’re not talking about a lot,” she said.

Corrections & Amplifications

NuZee Inc., a coffee co-packer, doesn’t work with Caribou Coffee. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that NuZee works with Caribou, and a photo caption incorrectly said that Caribou faced higher coffee prices once NuZee’s coffee inventory ran out. (Corrected on August 12, 2021)

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Coffee Jolt Gets Pricier as Costs Increase.'

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Adidas Agrees to Sell Reebok to Authentic Brands

The value of the deal with the brand-management company is put at roughly $2.5 billion

Adidas has been trying to re-energize the U.S. fitness brand, which it acquired in 2006.

Photo: christof stache/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 12:50 pm ET

Adidas AG ADDYY 1.62% said it has agreed to sell Reebok to Authentic Brands Group for up to about $2.5 billion, roughly 15 years after acquiring the U.S. fitness brand and trying to revamp it.

The German sporting-goods company managed to improve the Reebok business, but its sales lagged behind those of Adidas itself and dragged down the group’s profits.

Adidas, which in December 2020 said it was exploring a Reebok sale, acquired the brand in 2006 for roughly 3 billion euros as part of a bid to expand in the U.S. The company put the value of the deal with Authentic Brands at as high as €2.1 billion.

Over the past few years, brand-management company Authentic Brands has made a name for itself by picking up downtrodden retail brands including JCPenney and Forever 21.

Adidas on Thursday said the majority of the transaction will be paid in cash at the deal’s closing, with the remainder made up of deferred and contingent fees. The company said it plans to share much of the cash proceeds with shareholders after the deal is expected to close in next year’s first quarter.

Authentic Brands will keep Reebok’s bricks-and-mortar presence, said Jamie Salter, the company’s founder and chief executive.

Authentic Brands has scooped up retail brands before and during the pandemic, and is now one of the bigger operators of physical stores at a time when more shopping is shifting online. The company last month said it plans to sell shares to the public.

Adidas in March laid out its strategy to increase profitability and gain market share by 2025. The company said it would focus on strengthening the Adidas brand while it worked on shedding Reebok.

The sale doesn’t affect Adidas’s existing guidance for the full year, it said. Adidas earlier this month said it sees sales growing by up to 20% for the full year, while at the same time it continues to absorb the effects of Covid-19-related lockdowns and supply-chain challenges.

—Joshua Kirby contributed to this article.

Write to Dave Sebastian at dave.sebastian@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition.

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Alibaba Sets Anti-Sexual Harassment Measures After Employee Allegations

The company will set up a prevention committee with five female executives after an employee accused her supervisor of assaulting her

Alibaba says it has set up an emergency hotline for employees to combat sexual harassment.

Photo: Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/Zuma Press

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 11:24 pm ET

TAIPEI— Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. BABA -1.29% has announced new policies to combat sexual harassment, a response to sexual-assault allegations by a female employee that rocked the company and caused widespread public backlash in the past few days.

The steps released by China’s biggest e-commerce company Thursday include establishing a dedicated committee for sexual-harassment prevention, comprising five female senior executives, setting up another team responsible for investigating complaints, and improving its policies on dealing with sexual harassment and inappropriate workplace behavior. They were the result of internal review, discussions and employee feedback, the company said in a memo to employees, which it later released to the public.

The measures come after the woman’s accusations that her supervisor forced her to drink alcohol and sexually assaulted her, as well as her claims that other managers at the company mishandled her complaints.

On Saturday, an Alibaba employee who didn’t disclose her name shared an 11-page account on the company’s internal discussion board accusing her supervisor of sexual assault. In her recounting, which later went viral on Chinese social media, she said the manager, Wang Chengwen, brought her to a client dinner and forced her to drink heavily. She said she was then kissed and groped against her will by both a male client and Mr. Wang.

Mr. Wang couldn’t be reached for comment. The client couldn’t be reached for comment, though to local media he denied sexually harassing the woman at Alibaba and said there was “normal drinking” so “of course there was hugging.” His employer said he had been fired. The victim couldn't be reached for comment. While she didn’t disclose her name in her allegations, Alibaba employees would be able to identify her through her original post.

Her allegations struck a chord with both Alibaba employees and the broader Chinese public, many of whom decried the ingrained cultural practice of parading women at business meetings and pressuring them to get drunk. More than 6,000 Alibaba employees joined an open letter to management asking leadership to set up a team dedicated to handling sexual-assault cases and a hotline to report such issues.

On Monday, Alibaba Chief Executive Daniel Zhang said Mr. Wang had been fired, and two other managers overseeing the accuser’s business group had resigned. In a memo to employees, Mr. Zhang said the inaction by management was indicative of systemic cultural issues at the company and that he would work to change those issues. He also criticized the forced-drinking culture and said employees should feel emboldened to reject such demands.

Mr. Zhang said Mr. Wang had violated company policy and admitted to “overly intimate acts” with the accuser while she was inebriated. He added that whether Mr. Wang committed rape or indecency would be determined by the police in Jinan, the eastern Chinese city where the incident was reported. The Jinan police have said the situation is under investigation and they would update the public with the results.

Thursday’s notice said the internal investigation was nearing conclusion and the company would share its findings as soon as possible.

The committee for workplace environment will be chaired by Alibaba Deputy Chief People Officer Jane Jiang, and include Chief Financial Officer Maggie Wu, Chief People Officer Judy Tong, General Counsel Sara Yu and Chief Risk Officer Jessie Zheng. The committee will report directly to the company’s board of directors, the announcement said.

The company has also set up an email for reporting cases and an emergency hotline for preventing sexual harassment. A specialist will follow up on complaints and ensure that no actions are taken against victims, the notice said.

The company said it would implement anti-sexual harassment and self-defense training, and work on codes of conduct and guidelines within the company for appropriate workplace behavior. Another dedicated team will work to get rid of inappropriate behaviors such as forced drinking and tasteless comments, the company said.

Write to Stephanie Yang at stephanie.yang@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

The committee for workplace environment will include Alibaba Chief Risk Officer Jessie Zheng. An earlier version of this article misspelled her last name as Zhang.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Alibaba Unveils New Policies After Alleged Sexual Assault.'

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Frackers, Shippers Eye Natural-Gas Leaks as Climate Change Concerns Mount

Cheniere Energy, EQT among those dispatching drones, planes and specialized cameras to collect data amid international pressure from buyers

Aug. 12, 2021 5:30 am ET

WASHINGTON COUNTY, Pa.—Drones darted in patterns above natural-gas wells in the hills of southwest Pennsylvania, as workers atop water tanks pointed specialized cameras, and a helicopter outfitted with a laser-light detection system swooped in low. All searched for an invisible enemy: methane.

The American gas industry faces growing pressure from investors and customers to prove that its fuel has a lower-carbon provenance to sell it around the world. That has led the top U.S. gas producer, EQT Corp. EQT -1.07% , and the top exporter, Cheniere Energy Inc., to team up and track the emissions from wells that feed major shipping terminals.

The companies are trying to collect reliable data on releases of methane—a potent greenhouse gas increasingly attracting scrutiny for its contributions to climate change—and demonstrate they can reduce these emissions over time.

“What we’re trying to really do is build the trust up to the end user that our measurements are correct,” said David Khani, EQT’s chief financial officer. “Let’s put our money where our mouth is.”

Natural gas has boomed world-wide over the past few decades as countries moved to supplant dirtier fossil fuels such as coal and oil. It has long been touted as a bridge to a lower-carbon future. But while gas burns cleaner than coal, gas operations leak methane, which has a more potent effect on atmospheric warming than carbon dioxide, though it makes up a smaller percentage of total greenhouse gas emissions.

EQT’s fracking site in Mannington, W.Va., is powered by a turbine rather than conventional diesel engines, which are more typical.

The control room at EQT’s field office in Canonsburg, Pa. Oil-and-gas companies use setups like this to remotely monitor—and even run—some operations.

Investors, policy makers and buyers of liquefied natural gas, known as LNG, are rethinking the fuel’s role in their energy mix because of concerns about methane emissions, which were highlighted this week as a significant contributor to climate change by a scientific panel working under the auspices of the United Nations.

Those concerns, pronounced in Europe and increasingly in Asia, are a problem for LNG shippers, as some of their customers signal plans to ease gas consumption over time. In a policy draft last month, Japanese regulators said the country would have LNG make up 20% of its projected power generation by 2030, down from a prior target of 27%. The European Union has been weighing how to pressure LNG shippers to cut emissions. It could, for example, include LNG among the imports subject to a recently proposed carbon border tax.

Nearly every industry now faces some pressure to reduce its carbon footprint, as investors focus more on ESG—or environmental, social and governance—issues and push companies for trustworthy emissions data. But the pressure has become particularly acute for oil-and-gas companies, whose main products contribute directly to climate change.

Producing, transporting and ultimately burning one metric ton of LNG releases the greenhouse gas equivalent of about 3.4 metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to a U.K. government estimate, about a quarter of which are emitted before the fuel reaches a power plant.

Though the world is now devouring natural gas as economies emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, shale executives said keeping U.S. supplies competitive longer-term will require companies to corral leaks from wells, processing facilities, pipelines and the export plants before tankers carry it around the world. The tricky part, they said, is proving to skeptics they are actually doing so.

Justin Vecchio uses a hand-held optical gas imaging camera to monitor methane emissions at the Captain USA site.

Cheniere, the largest U.S. LNG exporter, this summer began leading a joint effort with EQT, the largest gas producer, and four other domestic producers including Pioneer Natural Resources Co. , to figure out the most effective way to monitor and quantify methane emissions.

Over six months, the companies and researchers plan to test drones, specialized cameras that can see methane gas, and other technologies across about 100 wells in the Marcellus Shale in the northeast U.S., the Haynesville Shale of East Texas and Louisiana, and the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico.

The goal is to collect methane emissions data and see how it stacks up against current estimates from U.S. environmental regulators, which critics consider overly conservative as their underlying data isn’t based on continuous measurements. The companies will then decide which technology is the most effective when deployed on a larger scale for continuous monitoring of methane leaks, and which ways to best cut emissions.

EQT has said it would spend $20 million over the next few years to replace leaky pneumatic devices, which help move fluids from wells to production facilities and water tanks, with electric-drive valves, executives said. They expect that will cut about 80% of the company’s methane emissions. The company also began exclusively using electric-powered hydraulic fracturing equipment last year.

EQT supervisor Nick Nolder inspects equipment at the Captain USA site.

EQT and Cheniere employees gather at the Captain USA site. The companies are working together to track well emissions.

Cheniere delivered what it called its first carbon-neutral cargo to Royal Dutch Shell PLC in Europe in April, by purchasing carbon offsets from Shell. It also plans to provide customers next year with data on emissions tied to each shipment it sends from its two Gulf Coast export facilities. That data, contained in Cheniere’s so-called cargo emissions tags, will be based on its analysis of emissions from its supply chain.

The LNG shipper expects its analysis will show a range of emissions from gas producers, pipelines and exporters, but that emissions from the gas it gathers will be comparatively low, said Anatol Feygin, Cheniere’s chief commercial officer.

Mr. Feygin said the U.S. gas industry hasn’t “done a good job of getting the transparent, auditable information” it needs to back up its claim that it has been curbing emissions, and that collecting that data will be critical for the industry’s social license to operate going forward. Cheniere hasn’t yet announced any partnerships with pipeline companies that transport gas, another area where it said its efforts will need more work.

“It’s going to take a very long time to migrate the entire supply chain,” Mr. Feygin said, describing the ultimate goal as “high-quality, real-time information.”

Write to Collin Eaton at collin.eaton@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Natural-Gas Firms Target Emissions.'

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DoorDash Revenue Rises 83% as Consumers Stick to Food Delivery

Company sees expanded offerings and delivery partnerships spurring growth amid uncertainty from Delta variant

DoorDash has increased its share of the U.S. food-delivery market during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Photo: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 6:52 pm ET

DoorDash Inc.’s DASH -1.17% second-quarter revenue almost doubled, showing food delivery’s resilience even as restaurants reopened across the U.S. and people began moving around again.

Revenue in the three months ended June 30 was $1.24 billion, up 83% from the year-earlier quarter when nationwide shutdowns because of Covid-19 propelled blistering growth. That came in slightly higher than the $1.10 billion average estimate of analysts polled by FactSet.

The pandemic served as an unexpected boon for DoorDash. The company commanded more than half of the U.S. food-delivery market at the end of April, up from just over one-third in late 2019, according to market-research firm Edison Trends.

The health crisis made consumers more accustomed to the ease of convenience at the touch of a button. DoorDash expanded into delivering everything from toothpaste to toilet paper and Tylenol during the pandemic. It also expanded its logistics partnerships, delivering orders placed directly on the websites of retailers like Walmart Inc. WMT 0.46% and Macy’s Inc.

Continued demand for food delivery, combined with DoorDash’s business partnerships and its expansion into new verticals like grocery and convenience items, led the company to raise its full-year outlook on the value of orders placed on its platform. DoorDash said it expects order value this year to be in a range of $39 billion to $40.5 billion, up from the $35 billion to $38 billion range it forecast just three months ago.

“ ‘You’re seeing continued stickiness in terms of consumer behavior.’ ”

— DoorDash finance chief Prabir Adarkar

A looming question for DoorDash and its competitors is just how much will change as the country reopens. The new Covid-19 Delta variant could boost the company’s near-term fortunes if it discourages people from going out again; but executives say that it doesn’t mean that the company will continue to grow at 2020’s breakneck pace.

“You had this hockey stick-like growth in 2020,” Chief Financial Officer Prabir Adarkar said in an interview. Mr. Adarkar said he expects DoorDash will grow this year, though the pace of growth won’t be as dramatic. DoorDash’s shares fell nearly 5% in after-hours trading.

“What’s encouraging is that you’re seeing continued stickiness in terms of consumer behavior. New habits and behaviors have formed,” Mr. Adarkar said.

He added that DoorDash will focus on investing in growth over near-term profits so it can capitalize on this shift. The company expanded to Japan over the quarter.

One reason that DoorDash can invest in growth is because the company has been profitable on an adjusted basis before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization for more than a year, including the latest quarter. Companies often point to this metric to signal a path to future profits. These adjustments entail stripping out expenses such as asset write-downs that executives and many investors consider to be outside a company’s fundamental operations.

Uber Technologies Inc., UBER 0.09% whose Eats division competes directly with DoorDash, expects to post its first profit on this basis by the end of this year, for example.

DoorDash posted an adjusted Ebitda profit of $113 million, compared with $79 million in the same period a year ago. That beat analysts’ average forecast.

But its net loss was saddled by a $138 million stock-based compensation charge, tied to employees liquidating their shares after the company went public in December. DoorDash posted a $102 million loss for the second quarter compared with a rare $23 million profit in the same period a year ago, when employees couldn’t exercise their stock options.

DoorDash hasn’t posted an annual profit since its inception eight years ago, but it is the only major food-delivery platform to turn a quarterly profit during the pandemic.

Executives at DoorDash and Uber Eats have spent the past year testing what they hope will be the secret sauce to long-term growth and profits. They are trying to raise customers’ average order size by expanding into more lucrative offerings like groceries and alcohol; bundling nonperishable goods with food to drive down delivery costs; and using technology to reduce errors by restaurants and drivers, translating into fewer refunds.

DoorDash is also growing its logistics business, which entails delivering orders that are placed on other retailers’ websites. DoorDash now provides delivery services for Walmart, Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. and Petco Health and Wellness Co., among others.

These orders are more profitable than the restaurant orders DoorDash receives on its app because it doesn’t spend money on marketing to drive those orders, nor does it need to refund consumers when someone goes wrong. Clients like Walmart bring big business, meaning drivers typically carry more than one order at the same time, lowering DoorDash’s delivery cost.

Mr. Adarkar said the company added a record number of first-time drivers to its platform in the second quarter. DoorDash isn’t facing a shortage of drivers, unlike Uber and Lyft Inc. But it was forced to boost its advertising spending because the ride-share companies have driven up prices for driver ads amid the shortage, the company said. DoorDash’s increased ad spending, combined with its focus on consumer growth, meant sales and marketing costs more than doubled to $427 million in the second quarter compared with the same period a year earlier.

There are other challenges as DoorDash navigates a post-pandemic world. Many U.S. cities temporarily capped the commissions DoorDash and others could charge restaurants during the pandemic, and some are considering making those caps permanent. DoorDash said Thursday that these caps translated to $26 million in lost revenue. Last month, DoorDash and rival Grubhub Inc. sued San Francisco over its decision to make its cap permanent.

DoorDash has made some concessions in an attempt to appease restaurants. Earlier this year, the company said it would allow restaurants to choose from three commission rates, offering varying degrees of marketing and product support based on the selection.

Write to Preetika Rana at preetika.rana@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'DoorDash Revenue Climbs 83%.'

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Facebook’s Takeover of Giphy Raises Competition Concerns, U.K. Says

Regulator says the social-media giant could be required to sell the animated-GIF provider

Facebook last year bought Giphy, which allows users to search for, create and share animated GIFs.

Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire/Getty Images

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 7:59 am ET

U.K. antitrust officials said they could call on Facebook Inc. FB 0.53% to unwind its acquisition of Giphy, a provider of popular animated images, after provisionally finding that the deal would harm competition between social-media platforms and in the display advertising market.

Facebook bought Giphy last year, saying it planned to integrate its offering into Instagram and other apps. Giphy allows users to search for, create and share animated images known as GIFs, which stands for graphics interchange format.

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority began probing the deal in June 2020 and launched an initial investigation in January. On Thursday it said it would now seek responses from interested parties to its provisional findings and issue a final report on Oct. 6. The CMA added that if its competition concerns are ultimately confirmed, it could require Facebook to sell off Giphy in its entirety.

Facebook said it disagreed with the CMA’s preliminary findings and that it would work with the regulator to “address the misconception that the deal harms competition.”

The CMA said that millions of daily posts on social media include GIFs and that any reduction in choice or quality of images could affect how people use the sites, and whether they might switch to another platform.

As most of Facebook’s major competitors, including Twitter Inc., TikTok and Snapchat use Giphy GIFs, those platforms could be hurt if the social-media giant decided to deny its peers access to the images, or change usage terms such as requiring more user data, the CMA said.

Google’s Tenor GIF platform is the only other large provider of GIFs, the CMA said, adding that other competition authorities were also investigating the deal.

The regulator also noted that before Giphy was acquired by Facebook, its own paid advertising business in the U.S. had the potential to compete with Facebook’s advertising services, and had been considering expanding to other countries including the U.K. As such, the deal had removed a potential challenger in display advertising markets, the CMA said.

In July 2020, the CMA found that Facebook controlled more than 50% of the U.K.’s £5.5 billion, equivalent to $7.63 billion, display advertising market.

The investigation into Facebook’s acquisition of Giphy comes as the CMA looks to assert itself as a new force following the U.K.’s departure from the European Union, launching a flurry of new cases against big tech companies.

—Sabela Ojea contributed to this article.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Facebook’s Giphy Deal Has U.K. Concerned.'

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Goldman Sachs, Other Financial Firms Back Program to Diversify Wall Street

Bloomberg, Centerbridge also part of multimillion-dollar CUNY initiative targeting training, internships and hiring

The CUNY Futures in Finance program will launch this fall at City College, as well as Brooklyn College and Lehman College, and aims to expand over time.

Photo: John Penney/iStock

Aug. 12, 2021 6:30 am ET

Bloomberg LP, Centerbridge Partners LP and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS -1.09% are funding a new program to train, mentor and hire students for careers in the financial sector in a push to bring more women and minorities to the industry.

The initiative, a partnership between the firms and the City University of New York, is launching this fall at CUNY’s Brooklyn College, City College and Lehman College and aims to expand to additional schools over time. The funding will provide internship opportunities, career-development staff and help with postcollege hiring. The program’s backers say they hope it will help New York’s economic recovery from the pandemic.

Women and minorities have yet to ascend to the top ranks at financial firms in notable numbers, and attention increasingly has turned to hiring practices following racial justice protests last summer. CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez said the initiative, which has been in the works for about two years, will help boost students’ social mobility since more than half of CUNY students’ parents didn’t graduate from college. Many rely on CUNY for career help.

“ The demand from employers in our industry is insatiable for talent that is smart, diverse, hardworking. ”

— Centerbridge Managing Principal Jeff Aronson

The firms plan to invest millions of dollars over three years in the program, CUNY Futures in Finance, people familiar with the matter said.

The financial-services sector accounts for 336,400 jobs, or 9% of private-sector jobs in New York City as of June 2021, according to city government data.

The initiative plans to serve more than 4,500 students a year within three years, with at least 25% participating in internships. It aims to have 40% of participating graduating seniors land full-time jobs in the financial-services sector after the first three years. The program will be overseen by CUNY’s University Dean of Industry and Talent Partnerships Lauren Andersen, who started in July.

Jeff Aronson, managing principal and co-founder of investment firm Centerbridge, who conceived of the program, said the initiative is aimed at exposing students to the range of financial services jobs such as investing, accounting, business operations, compliance and human resources.

Mr. Aronson has been working with Goldman Sachs President and Chief Operating Officer John Waldron, and Michael Bloomberg, former New York City mayor and co-founder of his eponymous financial-data and media company.

“The demand from employers in our industry is insatiable for talent that is smart, diverse, hardworking,” Mr. Aronson said. “By the way, that talent is in our own backyard.”

CUNY has 500,000 students across New York City’s five boroughs. It was hit hard during the pandemic when some city and state funding was initially frozen, leading the school system to reallocate its budget and put projects on hold, said Mr. Rodríguez.

CUNY’s data show that students who participate in paid internships get jobs faster and receive higher first-time salaries. Consulting firm Bain & Co. has been working pro bono with CUNY to analyze its career services work and found it needed to improve its connections to potential employers.

Bloomberg, Centerbridge and Goldman Sachs have each separately been working with CUNY on individual internship and hiring programs.

“We believe that the investments we make in our own backyard are critical to the city’s future success,” Goldman’s Mr. Waldron said.

Write to Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Wall Street Firms Back Diversity Plan.'

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Summit Partners Targets $7 Billion for Latest Growth Strategy

The new investment pool would be 43% larger than its $4.9 billion predecessor, which closed in 2019

Peter Chung, pictured here in 2017, is chief executive of Summit Partners.

Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg News

Aug. 12, 2021 3:22 pm ET

Summit Partners has hit the fundraising circuit with its 11th flagship growth strategy barely a year after it collected more than $2.2 billion across vehicles focused on European growth equity investments and venture capital deals.

The veteran growth-equity investor is targeting around $7 billion for its Summit Partners Growth Equity XI strategy, which is focused on backing North American companies, according to people familiar with the fundraising. The target was confirmed in a public pension document seen by WSJ Pro Private Equity.

If the firm reaches its fundraising goal, the new pool would be roughly 43% larger than its predecessor, which wrapped up with $4.9 billion in March 2019, including a $400 million commitment from the firm. The firm so far hasn’t indicated that an upper limit has been set for the new growth investment vehicle, one of the people said.

Last year, Summit completed raising its Summit Partners Europe Growth Equity Fund III with €1.1 billion, equivalent to about $1.29 billion, and its Summit Partners Venture Capital Fund V, with $1 billion.

Investor appetite for growth-equity funds remains high. As of Tuesday, 182 growth equity-focused funds had closed globally so far this year, amassing some $72.2 billion of capital, according to data provider Preqin Ltd. In all of last year, 262 growth-focused funds closed world-wide, collecting some $74.1 billion, the Preqin data show.

Growth deal making is also off to a strong start, Preqin said. As of Tuesday, 534 such deals had closed world-wide, with a total value of about $18.4 billion, compared with 654 transactions totaling $36.4 billion in all of last year, the data show.

Founded in 1984 and based in Boston, Summit was among the earliest private-equity firms to focus on growth investing. This strategy generally includes making non-control investments in fast-growing businesses.

Summit’s U.S. focused funds invest in sectors that include technology, healthcare and life sciences. The firm also backs businesses involving consumer products and services, financial and business services, energy, education and industrial technology, according to its website.

The firm generally commits $75 million to $300 million of equity per growth investment, according to a regulatory filing in March.

Over the years, the firm has added three new strategies, including European growth investments, private credit and public equities, often with a growth and sustainability focus, according to its website.

In the first half of this year, Summit invested $1.7 billion in 32 companies and its portfolio companies completed more than 50 acquisitions, according to a midyear update published by the firm. Summit also reported 11 strategic sales and public offerings, according to the report.

Recently slated exits include an agreement to sell early childhood education company Teaching Strategies LLC to KKR & Co. and a deal to sell cybersecurity company RiskIQ Inc. to Microsoft Corp.

In June, the firm led a $70 million investment in education software maker Smartest Edu Inc., which operates as Formative in Santa Monica, Calif. In May, Summit participated in a $320 million investment in marketing automation company Klaviyo Inc., which the firm initially backed in 2019.

The Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System committed $150 million to Summit’s latest growth fund, according to the pension system document. The system also invested $150 million in Summit’s previous flagship growth strategy, joining other public pensions such as the Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana, the Minnesota State Board of Investment and the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pensions, according to WSJ Pro Private Equity data.

The predecessor growth pool produced a roughly 49.9% internal rate of return, according to documents from the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which committed $300 million to the vehicle. The Pennsylvania pension system saw a net IRR of 39% from the strategy, the document shows.

As of Dec. 31, Summit Partners managed about $25.56 billion in client assets, according to a March regulatory filing.

Write to Preeti Singh at preeti.singh@wsj.com and Laura Cooper at laura.cooper@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Summit Partners Plans New Growth.'

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Wan Long, CEO of World’s Largest Pork Producer, Steps Down

Former head of WH Group will remain chairman and an executive director

Wan Long, shown in 2017, has been in the meat-processing industry since the 1960s.

Photo: bobby yip/Reuters

Aug. 12, 2021 8:16 am ET

The billionaire boss of WH Group Ltd. 288 3.30% , the Chinese pork producer that bought Virginia-based Smithfield Foods back in 2013, on Thursday relinquished the top job at the company.

Wan Long, a veteran with more than 50 years’ experience in the meat-processing industry, resigned as the group’s chief executive and will remain its chairman and an executive director. He owns more than a fifth of WH’s shares, according to its most recent annual report.

The 81-year-old had been CEO since October 2013, and the company said his stepping down would help it comply with the Hong Kong stock exchange’s corporate governance code, which says that the roles of chairman and chief executive should be separate and not performed by the same individual.

WH Group named Guo Lijun, who had been its chief financial officer, as its new chief executive.

“This team adjustment is normal. There will be new developments in all areas of our work after this,” Mr. Wan said during an earnings call on Thursday.

The world’s largest pork company reported a 6.8% increase in revenue for the six months ended June 30 to $13.3 billion, and a small drop in profit to $539 million. It said hog prices declined in China as the country’s pork supply recovered from the effects of African swine fever.

Mr. Wan’s resignation comes about two months after his son, Wan Hongjian, was removed from his roles as executive director, deputy chairman and vice president of WH Group. In June, the company said the younger Mr. Wan was “unable to fulfill his duties of skill, care and diligence as a Director due to his recent misconduct of aggressive behaviors against the Company’s properties.”

The younger Mr. Wan, who is in his early 50s, recently said in an interview with Chinese media outlet Yicai Global that he had quarreled with his father after they disagreed over a managerial choice. In another interview with a newspaper owned by Beijing city’s Chinese Communist Party, he recounted how he punched a door and banged his head against a glass cabinet when he was asked to leave his father’s office.

A WH Group spokesperson said the company had no further comments regarding the issue, beyond what it earlier disclosed.

The elder Mr. Wan was the architect of the Chinese conglomerate’s $4.7 billion acquisition of Smithfield Foods, one of the biggest-ever purchases of an American company by Chinese buyers. At the time of the deal, WH was known as Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd., and the acquisition made it the world’s largest pork producer.

The former CEO started off in the industry in the 1960s, working at a state-owned abattoir in his hometown of Luohe, a city in China’s central Henan province. He later became the general manager of the factory, which launched the Shuanghui brand in 1989 and eventually became China’s largest meat processor.

After renaming itself as WH Group, the company listed in Hong Kong in 2014, and introduced the Smithfield brand to the China market the following year. It owns numerous meat brands including Nathan’s Famous hot dogs and Farmland packaged meats.

In June this year, WH Group said it would buy back up to $1.9 billion worth of its shares, which have underperformed the market over the past year.

Smithfield Foods in July named a new CEO, Shane Smith, following the resignation of its previous top executive, Dennis Organ. The company said Mr. Organ stepped down for personal reasons.

Write to Chong Koh Ping at chong.kohping@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'WH Group Leader Gives Up CEO Role.'

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Dow, S&P 500 Climb to Records After Economic Data

Nasdaq rises but stays below record as investors digest earnings from Disney, others

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 5:09 pm ET

U.S. stocks rose Thursday ahead of a series of earnings reports later in the day and after fresh labor-market data provided insight on the pace of the recovery.

The S&P 500 gained 13.13 points, or 0.3%, to 4460.83, its 47th record high of the year. The Nasdaq Composite edged up 51.13 points, or 0.35%, to close at 14816.26, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 14.88 points, or less than 0.1%, to 35499.85 to a record close.

A clutch of companies were scheduled to report earnings Thursday after the markets closed including Airbnb, DoorDash and Walt Disney.

Recently, a robust earnings season and signs of an improving economy have driven both the Dow and the S&P 500 to record highs. Still, surging cases related to the Delta variant of the coronavirus have raised concerns about the recovery.

“Earnings have been nothing short of spectacular,” said Jeff Schulze, investment strategist at ClearBridge Investments. “It’s everything you want to see as an investor. In my opinion, it’s one of the reasons why you haven’t seen a larger selloff at this point in the cycle, which is normally what you see.”

Among individual movers, South Korean e-commerce company Coupang dropped nearly $3.07, or 8.3%, to $34.13 after posting quarterly results that included a nearly $300 million hit from a fire at a fulfillment center. The slide took shares of the SoftBank Group-backed company below their March initial-public-offering price.

Vaccine makers rose as the Food and Drug Administration was close to approving Covid-19 booster shots. Moderna climbed $6.09, or 1.6%, to $391.42, BioNTech added $14.83, or 4.1%, to $374.02 and Novavax rose $12.94, or 5.5%, to $247.24.

In addition, software company Palantir recently jumped more than $2.54, or 11%, to $24.89 after reporting earnings that beat analysts’ estimates.

On the economic front, jobless claims came in at 375,000 last week, a slight decline from the previous week and in line with analysts’ expectations. The U.S. producer-price index jumped 6.2% in July, more than economists had forecast.

Investors look toward the consumer-sentiment data released Friday morning for more insight into how consumers feel about the economy.

“Right now investors are looking to hang their hats on every piece of data that comes out, but a lot of it has been conflicting,” said Greg Bassuk, chief executive officer at AXS Investments. “Any real big surprises up and down we think could give a better indication of the consistency and direction that the economy is moving.”

Investors are keeping an eye on the bipartisan infrastructure package for more details on job creation, investments in renewable energy and overall impact on the economy. While confident that the infrastructure package will pass, some investors doubt that the package will be implemented in its current form.

“For us, it’s definitely more than just the passage of a single piece of legislation and much more about the impact and what it will spark on the economy, which we think will bode very well moving toward the end of this year,” Mr. Bassuk said.

Melissa Brown, managing director of applied research at Qontigo, said it is important to note that market rally during low trading volumes of the summer months can be hard to maintain come fall when volumes increase.

“I’m skeptical about whether that is a sustainable rally; it’s not quite as certain when stocks are going up on low trading volumes,” Ms. Brown said.

Concerns about inflation are also receding after a Wednesday data release on consumer prices for July showed a decline on a monthly basis, dropping to 0.5% last month from 0.9% in June.

“We still think inflation is transitory,” said Andrew Little, an analyst at Global X, a thematic ETF provider. “There are indications of a longer-term move into very slowly, naturally raising interest rates, but at this point, we still think it is somewhat of a pretty dovish attitude.”

In bond markets, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note ticked up to 1.366%, the highest in nearly a month, from 1.339% on Wednesday.

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, lost 13 cents a barrel, or 0.18%, to $71.31, snapping a two-day winning streak.

Traders worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

Photo: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg News

Overseas, the pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 edged up 0.52 point, or 0.11%, to 474.84, extending gains after hitting records for eight consecutive trading sessions.

Write to Anna Hirtenstein at anna.hirtenstein@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Stocks Rise Ahead of Earnings.'

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Delta Variant Dents Oil Demand Recovery While OPEC Expects More Supply

Rising OPEC+ supply and new Covid-19 restrictions ease global supply crunch fears, the IEA says

The world’s thirst for oil is still expected to return to pre-pandemic highs in the second half of next year, the IEA said.

Photo: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg News

Updated Aug. 12, 2021 3:01 pm ET

The economic impact of the Covid-19 Delta variant and rebounding output mean that expectations of global oil demand outstripping supply are fading, the IEA and OPEC said Thursday.

In its closely watched monthly market report, the International Energy Agency said that the worsening of the pandemic, as well as revisions to historical data, mean its global oil demand outlook has been “appreciably downgraded,” with some of this year’s forecast recovery shifted to 2022.

Investors have become concerned about falling commodities demand in China, where Beijing authorities last week canceled all large-scale exhibitions and events for the remainder of August. That, and other measures aimed at slowing the spread of the Delta variant, has in recent days spooked traders who were already worried about the fragile nature of China’s economic recovery.

The IEA cut its 2021 global oil demand growth forecast by 100,000 barrels a day, while upgrading its 2022 forecast by 200,000 barrels a day. Both the IEA and OPEC expect the world’s thirst for oil to return to pre-pandemic highs in the second half of next year.

The Paris-based IEA said the timing of the variant’s spread has coincided with planned supply increases from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies “stamping out lingering suggestions of a near-term supply crunch or supercycle.”

OPEC, in its own report, significantly upgraded supply-growth estimates for its non-cartel counterparts for both 2021 and 2022. The Vienna-based cartel raised its 2022 supply-growth forecast by 840,000 barrels a day to 2.9 million barrels a day.

While OPEC expects Russia to increase its production by a million barrels a day next year, it said “the U.S., with year-on-year growth of 0.8 million barrels a day, together with Brazil, Norway, Canada and Guyana, will be the other key drivers.”

Oil prices suffered a blow Wednesday, after the White House urged OPEC to boost oil production, saying planned increases are insufficient to fuel the post-pandemic economic recovery. The remarks came as the U.S. tries to tamp down rising consumer prices, particularly that of gasoline.

Crude prices edged lower Thursday, with Brent crude oil—the global benchmark—falling 0.2% to $71.31 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. gauge, dropping 0.2% to $69.09 a barrel. U.S. crude is down 6.6% this month, with the price rally seen in much of 2021 foundering, largely due to worries about the Delta variant.

Despite remarks Wednesday from National Security adviser Jake Sullivan suggesting OPEC+ should pump more oil, global demand may not keep up with the supply already expected next year if OPEC and its allies continue plans to unwind production cuts, the IEA said.

Analysts have reacted to the White House’s remarks on OPEC production with skepticism and suggest it is unlikely the cartel will accelerate the pace at which it will relax production cuts.

“There will be quite a lot of reluctance from the Saudis and the broader group to increase output further, particularly given continued uncertainty over the spread of the Delta variant,” said Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy at Dutch bank ING.

It may have only been weeks since traders and analysts were discussing the prospect of $100-a-barrel Brent crude in 2022, “but the scale could tilt back to surplus in 2022 if OPEC+ continues to undo its cuts and producers not taking part in the deal ramp up in response to higher prices,” the IEA said in its report.

While the IEA trimmed its 2021 output growth estimates for producing nations outside of the OPEC+ bloc, it raised its supply increase forecasts for next year by 100,000 barrels a day to 1.7 million barrels a day, with the U.S. accounting for 60% of that growth.

Even so, the global oil market may be “slightly short of supply” in this year’s final quarter, said the IEA, unless ongoing talks between Iran and Western nations succeed in reviving a deal that limits Tehran’s nuclear capabilities in return for lifting debilitating sanctions on the country’s oil sector, among others.

With the recent inauguration of new Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, all branches of power in Iran are under the control of hard-liners for the first time in several years. The status of nuclear talks and the White House’s comments on OPEC this week can be seen in that context, analysts said.

The remarks may be “an indication that a U.S.-Iran nuclear deal is less likely, and that Iranian production will not return to the market any time soon,” said Helge Andre Martinsen, senior oil market analyst at DNB Markets.

Write to David Hodari at David.Hodari@dowjones.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Delta Variant Dents Oil Demand Recovery.'

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Advance Auto Parts Can Keep the Good Times Rolling

America’s aging car fleet will keep cash registers ringing at this retailer

In its first quarter, Advance Auto Parts saw same-store sales jump 24.7% compared with a year earlier.

Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News

Aug. 12, 2021 6:30 am ET

This column is part of the Heard on the Street Stock Picking Contest. You’re invited to play along with us here.

Even the most cursory reader of news has seen the headlines by now: Used cars are expensive, and weather across the U.S. has been extreme. While that sounds like trouble to most people, it is music to the ears of car-parts retailer Advance Auto Parts. AAP -0.62%

Investors have been slower to take notice, though. Advance Auto Parts shares are up 32% since the beginning of 2020 but have lagged behind a basket of retailers by 30 percentage points. Meanwhile, a basket of used- and new-car sellers’ stocks has done far better over the same period, even after excluding high-growth e-commerce names such as Carvana.

Test your investing savvy against our Heard on the Street writers to predict the best-performing stock for the rest of 2021.

The blockbuster profits seen in the used-car selling business will wind down when the chip shortage eases. The effects on the car parts and repairs business, however, could prove lasting. The average age of cars and light trucks on U.S. roads is a record 12.1 years according to IHS Markit. In particular, there has been healthy growth in cars aged 4-to-11 years, which is deemed a sweet spot as they are often past their warranty and can be serviced by independent garages—an important customer cohort for Advance Auto Parts.

The scarcity of new vehicles and higher used-car prices should prompt more car owners to continue repairing their existing vehicles for some time, especially with the absence of another round of stimulus checks. Sure, those prices may be coming off their highs—Manheim data shows wholesale used-vehicle prices declined slightly in July compared with June. But they remain 24% more expensive than a year earlier so a return to normal pricing could take time. Auto makers have said the chip shortage could weigh on production well into the second half of this year.

Meanwhile, this year’s hotter-than-average summer should also help drive up parts demand, just as the harsh winter did earlier this year. And vehicle miles traveled are still recovering, creating more wear and tear.

Skeptics might fear that sales are already near their peak. In its first quarter ended April 24, Advance Auto Parts saw same-store sales jump 24.7% compared with a year earlier. Compared with peers, though, Advance Auto Parts appears to have a longer growth runway.

For one, its business leans more heavily on car-repair professionals, who account for roughly 60% of sales. That was a drag last year as pandemic-wary consumers opted for do-it-yourself repairs or put off the work. Demand among professionals is just starting to catch up.

Additionally, car parts didn’t exactly fly off the shelf last year in the Northeast—the company’s largest market—because the region’s mobility was heavily affected by the pandemic. That market is staging a healthy recovery in auto parts demand, and a return to severe restrictions seems less likely in the highly vaccinated region.

There is also more room to run valuation-wise. Advance Auto Parts’ shares fetch 1.31 times enterprise value to forward-12-month revenue, while peers AutoZone AZO -0.51% and O’Reilly Automotive ORLY -0.04% fetch 2.9 times and 3.6 times, respectively, according to FactSet.

The company has lagged behind in recent years because its management, which took the reins after activist investor Starboard Value bought a stake in 2015, didn’t deliver on the targets that some analysts think were unrealistic to begin with.

Scot Ciccarelli, analyst at RBC Capital Markets, notes in a report that the management inherited a “very complex business that needed a ton of work.”

Most of the heavy lifting is now behind Advance Auto Parts. In the past few years, the company has overhauled its organizational culture, found efficiencies among its four different store banners and invested wisely in technology, according to Mr. Ciccarelli’s report.

After years of declining or slowly improving operating margins, the company seems to be turning around. Its full-year margins for 2020 were 7.9%, almost a full percentage point higher than the prior year. Analysts polled by FactSet now deem the company’s 10.5% to 12.5% operating margin goal for 2023 realistic.

It is time for investors to peek under the hood.

Write to Jinjoo Lee at jinjoo.lee@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Advance Auto Parts Has an Open Road.'

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Europe’s Electrification Stalwarts Go Digital

The companies that built last century’s power grid are preparing for a more high-tech build out in the next wave

Schneider Electric is among the companies focusing on using digital technologies to make buildings, industrial production and local power systems smarter and more efficient.

Photo: jeff pachoud/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Aug. 12, 2021 5:44 am ET

Siemens, SIEGY -0.67% ABB ABB 0.51% and Schneider Electric SU 1.04% were at the heart of electrifying society last century. In the new age of electrification, they have a different focus: digital technology.

With roots stretching back to the 19th century, the trio helped build Europe’s electricity infrastructure, from power plants through to plug sockets. Like General Electric in the U.S., Siemens even made machines that plugged into the wall. However, all three European companies have turned away from high-voltage transmission projects as another electrification wave promises to decarbonize the economy.

Instead, the trio are focusing on the long-mooted industrial internet-of-things: using digital technologies to make buildings, industrial production and local power systems smarter and more efficient. They have “a clear strategy of walking away from project businesses and focusing on product businesses,” says Guillermo Peigneux Lojo, an analyst at UBS. The latter, which include digitization, software and services, tend to come with higher growth and profitability.

All three companies increased their revenue and profit outlooks on reporting quarterly results in recent weeks. Supply chains were stretched as demand recovered and customers built up stock, but they were able to increase prices, improving profits despite higher costs for raw materials, components and transport. Their digitization businesses were generally their most profitable, generating margins of between 17% and 21% in earnings before interest, taxes and amortization.

Test your investing savvy against our Heard on the Street writers to predict the best-performing stock for the rest of 2021.

Siemens has for years been slimming down to focus on digital technology. It sold assets and spun off businesses such as medical equipment maker Heathineers and power producer Siemens Energy, though it retains stakes in both. Siemens’ railway-focused mobility business was once another spinout candidate, but those plans have been shelved for now. Its enduring business units are digital industries, which focus on factory automation, smart infrastructure for buildings and a financing group.

ABB is midway through its own strategic reset. It sold its power-grids business to Hitachi and has more to sell, but is already shopping for bite-sized companies that deepen its offering in its chosen areas of focus: electrification, process automation, robotics and motors. Paris-listed rival Schneider Electric seems to be furthest ahead in the transition to a digital technology company. It is looking for bolt-on acquisitions but has finished its structural work to create two divisions: energy management and industrial automation.

The moves have rewarded investors. Over the past two years shareholder returns from all three stocks have significantly exceeded those from the Stoxx Europe 600 benchmark. Schneider Electric trades at a slightly higher valuation than ABB and Siemens, likely reflecting its strategic head start. By contrast, GE’s returns have been much lower than its benchmark’s over the same period. It still has restructuring work to do.

The sector could be entering something of a sweet spot. The pandemic accelerated existing trends toward digitization, sustainability and electrification; now Europe’s Green Deal and the American Jobs Plan and U.S. infrastructure plans could give them a further boost. While it is still unclear exactly where the funding will go, the stimulus plans and private-public collaboration will help growth in industries like renewables, energy efficiency and building automation, says Mr. Peigneux Lojo.

Trends to decarbonize, electrify and create an industrial internet-of-things have been discussed for years, with mixed results. Fortunately for Schneider Electric, ABB and Siemens, their moment may finally have come.

Write to Rochelle Toplensky at rochelle.toplensky@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Electric Stalwarts Go Digital.'

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Regal Cinemas’ Owner Can’t Count on AMC’s Meme Crowd

London-listed movie-theater chain Cineworld is considering a U.S. listing to fix its debt-heavy capital structure

Regal Cinemas’ owner, Cineworld, is considering tapping the New York stock market.

Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Aug. 12, 2021 10:05 am ET

Hollywood directors can’t intentionally make cult movies, and companies can’t set out to create meme stocks. But there’s no harm in trying.

The owner of Regal Cinemas, the second-largest U.S. chain of movie theaters after AMC, said Thursday it was considering tapping the New York stock market. Cineworld, whose shares are currently traded in London, could shift or split its own listing, or it could hold an initial public offering for part of Regal, which accounted for 72% of its first-half revenues. Its shares rose about 6%.

The company has had a turbulent pandemic. Its cash flows collapsed amid widespread closures and the deferment of big movie releases. Audiences have been slow to come back: In July it sold just 45% of the tickets it did in July 2019. Its recovery hinges on the fourth quarter, when the latest installments of the James Bond, Top Gun and Matrix franchises, among other big movies, are due for release.

Given the huge debt load it shouldered to acquire Regal in 2018, Cineworld faces persistent questions about its financial viability. As of June 30, its borrowings net of cash totaled $4.6 billion excluding lease liabilities and $8.4 billion including them. The company has a market value equivalent to just $1.25 billion. At some point, the company will need to fix this lopsided capital structure by raising more equity.

Hence the U.S. listing idea, which chief executive and anchor shareholder Mooky Greidinger says is the result of a “very preliminary discussion with advisers about capital structure.” Cineworld’s decision to announce the possibility hints that it may not have found much appetite in London and wants to wave a flag across the Atlantic, where it makes most of its money and comparable stocks are sometimes better valued.

An unacknowledged presence in the background is meme-stock phenomenon AMC. Cineworld’s peer has soared to an outlandish valuation thanks to a loyal following on Reddit, allowing it to raise cash to secure its own financial position. AMC’s ability to drink from this new and price-insensitive well of capital could in time become a problem for Cineworld, if it pays for the refurbishment of rival cinemas, for example. Mr. Greidinger says he hasn’t yet seen “any material change in the nature of our competition.”

Of course, Cineworld can’t bank on a valuation comparable with AMC, given the randomness of the stocks that go viral on social media. It isn’t even clear it would get a better valuation than in London: Cinemark, a third U.S.-listed movie-theater company, trades at a discount to Cineworld in terms of enterprise value to sales, according to FactSet.

Still, Cineworld has little to lose in testing the extent of American optimism toward the post-Covid movie theater business. It needs help from somewhere.

Write to Stephen Wilmot at stephen.wilmot@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Regal Cinemas’ Owner Can’t Count on Memes.'

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Evergrande’s Enormous Bill Finally Comes Due

China’s most indebted property company is selling off strategic assets, but that probably isn’t enough to save it

Evergrande had around $104 billion of interest-bearing debt as of March, but that isn’t even its most urgent problem.

Photo: bobby yip/Reuters

Aug. 12, 2021 5:48 am ET

The troubles of China’s most indebted property developer are still far from over.

Shares of China Evergrande rose 11% this week due to a company announcement that it is in talks to sell part of its stake in listed subsidiaries including its electric-vehicle unit and its property-management arm. But the company’s financial situation remains dire. Evergrande’s stock has lost almost 80% since July last year. Its bonds are trading at distressed levels: Some of them are worth less than half of their par values.

Evergrande’s stakes in the two listed companies are valued around $16 billion, which could help relieve some immediate liquidity pressure. In particular, the property-management company, which is profitable with a stable business, could be appealing to other developers. Its unprofitable EV unit, which is carrying heavy debt and has yet to sell a single car, could be harder to unload. The value of Evergrande’s 65% stake in its EV unit is around $10 billion, a drop of more than 80% since February. Evergrande has already raised around $400 million this month by selling an 11% stake in its internet unit to investors including Tencent.

Still, the company needs to sell even more assets to plug its financial hole. Evergrande had around $104 billion of interest-bearing debt as of March, but that isn’t even the most urgent problem. It doesn’t have any bonds due until March next year. The bigger worry comes from its unpaid suppliers and contractors—many have sued to get their money back and some have managed to get some of Evergrande’s assets frozen.

For example, Shenzhen-listed Leo Group said last week that it is suing Evergrande for $55 million including unpaid advertising fees and commercial acceptance bills that are overdue or nearly due. Construction-material company Lets Holdings said it would stop accepting commercial acceptance bills from Evergrande. The company already owns around $5 million of such bills.

Such small amounts add up: Evergrande had nearly $100 billion of trade payables as of December. Lawsuits and asset freezes could lead to a downward spiral as other suppliers and contractors pile on—relatively small debts from Evergrande’s perspective could be existential issues for its suppliers. Evergrande’s big creditors may be more motivated to negotiate a solution, but it is harder to coordinate with so many smaller businesses.

Evergrande managed to lower borrowings last year partly by increasing its payables, but it will be impossible to pull this off now. More cautious suppliers also mean Evergrande may find it harder to complete existing projects. Other developers may be interested in buying some of Evergrande’s projects, but Beijing’s clampdown on leverage in the sector, which triggered the current crisis, may also limit their ability to do so.

The government is unlikely to let all this unfold into a disorderly scramble, especially when it involves many small businesses and buyers of Evergrande’s presold apartments. But it is also unlikely to let credit keep flowing into Evergrande to continue its debt-fueled growth. The developer will need to keep selling assets and accept being cut down to size. Evergrande’s shareholders, in particular, may not come out unscathed.

Evergrande’s ballooning debt has driven its growth for years. Now the bill is finally due.

Write to Jacky Wong at jacky.wong@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

Evergrande sold an 11% stake in its internet unit to investors. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said it had sold a 7% stake. (Corrected on Aug. 13)

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition.

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MANSION

- Door County Lives Up to Its Nickname as the Midwest’s Cape Cod

- An English Manor With a Noble Past Needed a Royal Renovation. ‘It Was Basically Falling Down.’

- Verandas Bring Things Outside, but Not Too Much

- Want to Lower Your Homeowners Insurance Premium? There Are Discounts for the Taking

- John McLaughlin Struggled on Violin, but When He First Played Guitar? ‘Skyrockets Went Off’

- For $2 Million, a Chance to Spend Eternity Next to Marilyn Monroe and Hugh Hefner

- New York Townhouse Designed by St. Patrick’s Cathedral Architect Asks $28 Million

- Ex-WeWork CEO Adam Neumann Sells New York Townhouse for $13.65 Million

- In Celebrity-Filled Calabasas, a Huge Spec Home Sells for a Record $30 Million

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Door County Lives Up to Its Nickname as the Midwest’s Cape Cod

Second-home buyers from as far away as Texas and California are transforming the peninsula on Wisconsin’s Green Bay into a high-end, year-round destination

Aug. 12, 2021 1:00 pm ET

Dallas venture capitalist Ed Mello has fond memories of idyllic summers spent on Cape Cod in his native Massachusetts and more recent memories of oppressive summers at home in North Texas. In the midst of last summer’s lockdowns, Mr. Mello, 63, and his wife, Nancy Mello, a 61-year-old financial adviser, began longing for a northern getaway.

They found what they were looking for on a bluff above the Lake Michigan inlet of Green Bay, on Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula. Known as Door County, the narrow peninsula, dotted with forests and farmland, has sandy beaches, hilly terrain and four distinct seasons. Locals looking for a shorthand explanation to explain its appeal to outsiders call it the Cape Cod of the Midwest.

“That moniker fits,” says Mr. Mello. In June 2020, the Mellos made a $1.5 million offer on a fully furnished, 4,000-square-foot, three-bedroom home built in 2005. They closed in July and went on to enjoy the rest of their Wisconsin summer, viewing Green Bay sunsets from nearly every room while listening to wind blow through the birch trees on their 1.1-acre lot.

Mr. Mello says the new vacation home is used year round, especially as an escape from sizzling summers.

The Mellos are part of a new wave of buyers who are helping to transform Door County from a rustic outpost catering to primary homeowners from Wisconsin and Illinois into an upmarket, second-home destination with a national profile.

Kevin Nordahl, a Door County native, has seen the change firsthand. His agency, True North Real Estate, is in Fish Creek, a bay-side village in the heart of the county’s 15-mile gold coast, which stretches from Egg Harbor in the center of the peninsula to Sister Bay a short drive from the tip. He says his clientele has expanded from the Milwaukee-Chicago corridor to include buyers from Colorado, Minneapolis, St. Louis and as far away as California.

The peninsula’s luxury listings, he says, are on three tiers.

“The gold standard,” he says, are shoreline homes on the bay side, especially on Cottage Row Road, a waterfront street near Fish Creek. Next come what he calls bluff homes, like the Mellos’ property. Those are set back from the shore but still have views of the bay. The third tier are the multiacre inland properties that have “an estate feel.”

On the Lake

The Mello home faces Lake Michigan

The rear of the Mello house faces a calm stretch of Lake Michigan..

Sara Stathas for The Wall Street Journal

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The rear of the Mello house faces a calm stretch of Lake Michigan..

Sara Stathas for The Wall Street Journal

Illustration: JASON LEE

Luxury sales in Door County have increased dramatically, says Diane Taillon, owner of Arbor Crowne Properties, located in Ephraim, just south of Sister Bay. In 2015, there were six Door County home sales above $1 million; in 2019, that number rose to 10, which then doubled to 21 in 2020.

Ms. Taillon is currently listing the area’s most expensive property: an eight-bedroom, 6,800-square-foot, bay-front home, listed for $8.3 million.

The home, a 2010 radical refurbishment of an early-20th-century farmhouse, comes with a rare boathouse. It is no longer possible to get permission to build new boathouses, says Ms. Taillon, and she estimates the amenity can add as much as $800,000 to a property.

The seller, John White, and his wife, Antoinette Chouteau White, divide their time between Lake Forest, Ill., Sanibel Island, Fla., and Door County. They like to spend their Christmases in Wisconsin, and use the boathouse roof as a spot for a waterfront Christmas tree.

Mr. White, 82, is the founder and CEO of Kinter, an Illinois company that makes retail-display hardware. His wife, 66, is a retired surgical nurse who now works with her husband. The pair, both widowed, married in 2016.

Mr. White and his first wife turned the site’s previous house, a 4,000-square-foot, four bedroom, into a 6,800-square-foot, eight-bedroom, with 6½ baths, underfloor heating and a new kitchen that has Miele and Sub-Zero appliances.

They also added a 145-foot pier. In 2007, Mr. White paid $5 million for the original home and a second waterfront lot, later adding two more lots at a cost of $250,000. He then spent about $3 million on the gut renovation and landscaping.

Teardowns aren’t uncommon in Door County, and buyers often want to grandfather in features no longer allowed. By renovating rather than restarting, Mr. White says, he was able to keep their indoor fireplace and a lower, less intrusive set of railings on their front porch.

The Whites have 11 children between them, with 35 grandchildren. “And the second great-grandchild has just arrived,” says Mr. White. They are building a new home in Florida and plan to get a smaller Door County property.

The Mellos like to drive up from Texas for the summer, and the Whites, who belong to a jet-sharing service, take a 20-minute flight from northern Illinois to Door County’s airport in Sturgeon Bay, the peninsula’s main hub.

Tom Dier, of southern Door County’s Forestville Builders, specializes in new luxury builds and renovations with custom millwork. He says the new wave of upscale buyers is bringing along new tastes in finishes.

“Oak is in decline,” he says, with clients opting for more expensive, more atmospheric cherry and hickory.

Real-estate agent Kevin Nordahl says that buyers have helped to all but remove Door County’s traditional housing stock: the so-called three-season summer cottage that lacked insulation and often used only a fireplace for heat.

“A lot of those cottages were on the water and now they have been replaced by mansions,” he says.

Around Door Peninsula

A look at the Wisconsin enclave

Door County fish boils, using locally caught Lake Michigan whitefish, are a tourist attraction. The White Gull Inn in Fish Creek is a traditional one.

Sara Stathas for The Wall Street Journal

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Door County fish boils, using locally caught Lake Michigan whitefish, are a tourist attraction. The White Gull Inn in Fish Creek is a traditional one.

Sara Stathas for The Wall Street Journal

Another local builder, Tom Birmingham of Great Northern Construction, at 70 is old enough to remember building cottages as recently as the 1980s that typically had Formica countertops and vinyl bathroom floors. Mr. Birmingham, who did the Whites’ renovation and additions, says those cottages could be built for less than $50 a square foot. He is now building new homes for $1,000 a square foot.

In the heyday of the no-frills cottage, Door County’s season lasted from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

Homeowners on the bay side have views of the sunset.

Photo: Sara Stathas for The Wall Street Journal

Now, high-end restaurants such as Wickman House, near the peninsula’s outer tip, stays open from April to February. Mike Holmes, Wickman House’s owner, says second-home and full-time residents rather than short-term tourists make up the majority of his clientele.

Wickman House relies on the peninsula’s microclimate with its markedly slower growing season. “We get summer vegetables in August and September,” he says.

As real-estate prices rise, luxury-minded buyers are starting to look farther afield. While the bay side still has most of the high-end listings, million-dollar homes are popping up on the lakeside, where front-line homeowners get dramatic sunrises and stay-at-home evenings instead of the bay side’s signature sunsets and thriving nightlife.

Mr. Nordahl says he broaches the prospect of a lakeside home by asking new clients, “Are you a coffee person or a cocktail person?”

In central Door County on Glidden Drive, the lakeside’s premier residential street, a three-bedroom, 3,700-square-foot home, with a half-acre lakefront lot, is listed for $1.275 million. Back on the bay side, a 1,500-square-foot home on a 1.4-acre Sister Bay waterfront lot has an asking price of $1.697 million.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Wisconsin’s Great Escape.'

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An English Manor With a Noble Past Needed a Royal Renovation. ‘It Was Basically Falling Down.’

Sally and David Matton bought the historic Everleigh Manor in Wiltshire for about half its asking price and embarked on a nine-year, $3.32 million restoration project

Aug. 11, 2021 3:15 pm ET

From its beginnings as a country retreat for Tudor-era power players, the long saga of Everleigh Manor had been one of gradual decline in the face of war, fire and neglect.

When Sally and David Matton first saw the house 22 years ago, it was in a pitiful state: its roof leaked, it was riddled with mildew, and many of its fine features had been stripped out. The couple bought the property for less than half its list price, but then had to spend almost a decade (and well over $3 million) putting things right.

The manor, in the county of Wiltshire, around 80 miles west of London, stands in an area that was once open forest owned by the British royal family and used for sporting pursuits like hunting and falconry, according to “A History of the County of Wiltshire.”

In 1999, Mr. and Mrs. Matton were living in a village around 20 miles away in a four-bedroom converted pub. Mr. Matton, now 58, sold the telecommunications company he had founded and the couple had the funds to buy their dream home, a country house with no immediate neighbors and a very specific aesthetic style.

“I like my houses like kids draw them,” said Mr. Matton. “With a door in the middle and four windows—symmetrical.” When the 20,495-square-foot Everleigh Manor came up for sale it ticked all his boxes. It was listed with a guide price of $3.46 million but Mr. and Mrs. Matton secured it with a lowball offer of $1.52 million.

This wasn’t quite the bargain it appeared to be, however. “It was derelict,” said Mrs. Matton, 56. “The roof leaked, there was mold all over the walls, and wet rot and dry rot everywhere. The brickwork was crumbling, parts of the ceilings had fallen in. It was basically falling down.”

Mr. Matton, however, was sanguine about the scale of the task ahead. “In my mind it was quite simple,” he said. “It is just a house, a big house, but still just a house.”

David and Sally Matton spent almost a decade renovating Everleigh Manor.

Photo: Vanessa Berberian for The Wall Street Journal

It is a house, however, with a long and fascinating history. According to “A History of the County of Wiltshire,” the land on which it sits was granted in 1547 to Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and brother of Jane Seymour, third wife of King Henry VIII. She had died in childbirth 10 years earlier. The Duke had just become one of the most powerful men in the country, ruling as Lord Protector of England because his nephew, Edward VI, was only 9 years old when he was crowned king.

A subsequent owner was Sir Ralph Sadler, who began his career as secretary and trusted aide of Thomas Cromwell, the right-hand man to King Henry VIII and hero of Hilary Mantel’s trilogy of novels. Sir Ralph, who survived Cromwell’s downfall and went on to serve Queen Elizabeth I, is thought to have built the first house at Everleigh, which stood until around 1770. Little is known about this early version of the house because it was rebuilt by Sir John Astley, a landowner and Conservative politician, who bought the estate in 1736. The Astley family owned the house for almost 150 years until 1881 when it burned almost to the ground. The house was rebuilt the following year. A fireplace from that reconstruction still stands in its entrance hall commemorating the date.

After the Astleys sold in the early 20th century, the manor was converted into a nursing home. Then, like many large British country houses, it was requisitioned by the British government during World War II and used as a hospital for injured American soldiers. After the war, it became an Army research laboratory, and after that, a home for people with psychiatric disorders.

A relic of the manor’s days under military ownership was a small concrete shack on the grounds that had been used as a cricket pavilion. Mr. and Mrs. Matton converted it into a one-bedroom cottage, which they lived in during the manor’s restoration.

During that restoration, they replaced the roof, gutted the interior, and removed a section from the center of the house to create an atrium running through its core, they said. This meant sacrificing square footage but rewarded them with a magnificent triple-height entrance hall, its walls painted a warm yellow, and lighted by a new skylight in the roof.

Original features including the timber central staircase, cornicing, and fireplaces were renovated but its original windows were beyond repair. For safety reasons during its use as a psychiatric facility, the previous owner had replaced the glass with acrylic windows.

Beyond the dramatic entrance hall is a kitchen and breakfast room, a formal dining room painted deep red with large french doors leading out onto a terrace, a wood-paneled office, home movie theater, and living room. On the second floor, there are four bedroom suites, while the top floor has a self-contained one-bedroom apartment, three more bedrooms, and a games room.

The renovated timber staircase.

Photo: Vanessa Berberian for The Wall Street Journal

At each side of the manor are two wings. One was originally an orangery, an ornamental greenhouse. This space is now devoted to leisure, with a hot tub, sauna, steam room and gym. Mrs. Matton has converted the other wing into a boutique bed-and-breakfast hotel, which she runs.

It took the couple until 2008, nine years in all, to complete the house. This was partly because they moved to the Cayman Islands for five years in 2003 for tax reasons and had no incentive to hurry. In 2008, they came back and moved into Everleigh Manor with their two children, Jacob, now 19, and Eliza, now 16. The restoration cost $3.32 million, said Mr. Matton.

For so large a property, its running costs are surprisingly modest, said Mr. Matton. Its heating is provided by a biomass boiler and, unusually for British homes of this era, renovation included adding extra insulation and double-glazed windows. The couple estimate that the cost for operation and everyday maintenance is around $48,400 a year.

The orangery wing at Everleigh Manor houses a hot tub, sauna, steam room and gym.

Photo: Vanessa Berberian for The Wall Street Journal

Staffing costs are also minimal. Mrs. Matton’s mother and her partner live in the cottage on the grounds and take care of the backyard, and they have a cleaner one day a week.

With Jacob and Eliza almost grown, Mr. and Mrs. Matton bought a house in Palm Harbor, Fla. They plan to spend winters there and buy a new, more modest home on the south coast of England. Everleigh Manor is listed with The Country House Department for $9.258 million.

“We always knew that we should not stay here forever just because of the size of it,” said Mrs. Matton. “We don’t want to rattle around in it just for the sake of it.”

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'A Big Fixer-Upper With Royal Roots.'

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Verandas Bring Things Outside, but Not Too Much

These roofed porches were originally built to help keep homeowners cool. Now they’re just nice to sit on

Aug. 12, 2021 11:00 am ET

Any time you have a transitional space between the yard and the house it’s a great thing, said Todd Pritchett of Pritchett + Dixon, a residential architecture firm in Atlanta. In this case, the transitional space he’s referring to is a veranda.

A veranda is a roofed porch, usually flat or low-pitched, that runs alongside a house on the ground level. Unlike other porches that are usually more square and designed for conversation, verandas are frequently long and thin and designed so that the seating faces out and looks over nature, said Mr. Pritchett.

Before the advent of air conditioning, people in warm climates positioned houses to maximize the effect of the prevailing wind, said Michael Burch, a Los Angeles-based architect. Verandas allowed them to take full advantage of those cooling breezes.

In the Victorian era, verandas allowed people to be outdoors without actually being outside. This remains part of their charm today.

“In simplest terms, a veranda is a covered porch that connects a garden with a house,” said architect Craig Dixon. “But in emotional terms, which is really what good architecture is about, it’s more of a romantic idea.”

Today, homeowners no longer rely on verandas to keep them cool. The architectural feature is now most notable as a design element that connects the indoors to the outdoors.

“We always try to expand the house out into a space like that with folding-door systems so you blur the line of what is inside and what is outside,” said Mr. Pritchett.

Four Homes For Sale With Verandas

Photo: Bailey Chastang

Fairhope, Ala. // $7.45 million

The wraparound veranda of this approximately 7,906-square-foot house offers views of Mobile Bay. The main house has six bedrooms, five bathrooms, and two half-bathrooms and the interior of the home has heart pine floors, crown molding and operational shutters.

Photo: Bailey Chastang

There’s a garage apartment with a kitchenette and full bathroom as well as a guest house with two bedrooms, one bathroom, a living area, a fireplace and screened-in porch. The house is available fully furnished with antiques and reproductions and also includes a 19-foot Sea Hunt Bay Cruiser. This property is listed by Roberts Brothers.

Photo: David LaLush/Richardson Properties

Paso Robles, Calif. // $3.595 million

This 3,467-square-foot house has a wraparound veranda that is approximately 2,300 square feet as well as four bedrooms and three bathrooms. Features in the home include repurposed hardwood flooring in the living areas, 10-foot ceilings, and a wine room with walnut cabinetry that can hold 2,500 wine bottles and an adjacent study with built-in shelving.

Photo: David LaLush/Richardson Properties

The kitchen has birch cabinetry, countertops of walnut, marble, and granite, a Sub-Zero refrigerator and a Viking range and hood. This listing also includes Canterbury Tails Dog Resort which has eight pet suites and has been in business for 10 years. This property is listed by Richardson Properties.

Photo: Sotheby's International Realty

Montauk, N.Y. // $11.95 million

One of the “Seven Sisters” of Montauk, this house was designed by Stanford White and has a veranda offering views of the Atlantic Ocean. The house, built in 1880, sits on 2.3 acres and has four bedrooms, three bathrooms, two half-bathrooms and is 3,800 square feet.

Photo: Sotheby's International Realty

The interior of the cottage was renovated by a historian and included restoration of the original millwork, windows and floors. The house also has a sunken living room, six fireplaces, a library and a second-level balcony. There is approval for a Gunite pool. The property is listed by Sotheby’s International Realty.

Photo: Tyler Fraser

Bluff City, Tenn. // $1.475 million

The Cole-McClellan house and cottage sits on five acres and is 4,090 square feet. There are five bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms. Originally built in 1785, the current home was finished in hand-fired red brick in the early 1800s.

Photo: Tyler Fraser

Today, it has a wraparound veranda and Doric columns as well as a primary bedroom on the ground floor, wood-burning fireplace, sunroom, original windows and a kitchen with modern features. This property is listed by A Team Real Estate Professionals.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Just the Place to Sit Awhile.'

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Want to Lower Your Homeowners Insurance Premium? There Are Discounts for the Taking

Luxury homes tend to be more expensive to insure—but there are ways to save

Illustration: Pete Ryan

Aug. 11, 2021 11:30 am ET

As the cost of homeowners insurance continues to rise across the country, particularly in catastrophe-prone areas such as the West Coast and Florida, many luxury-home owners are seeking ways to reduce their premiums. Although the cost of coverage varies widely based on many factors, such as the size of a house, its age and location, there are discounts and credits available that can reduce premiums by up to thousands of dollars a year.

According to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry trade group, the average premium for a homeowners policy rose 3.1% in 2018, the latest year for which statistics are available, to $1,249. But owners of luxury homes pay much more. “High-end homes are more expensive to repair or replace than a standard home,” said Loretta Worters, an Institute vice president. “The home is usually far larger and may have special decorative moldings, luxury kitchens with imported Italian marble countertops, gold fixtures, murals, all more costly to replace.”

One of the easiest ways to reduce your homeowners insurance premium is to bundle policies by insuring your home, car or boat with the same company. Lydia Leeds, an executive producer in Manhattan who owns a vacation home on over 3 acres in northwest Connecticut, pays $2,358 to Travelers to insure the property, valued at nearly $1.5 million, but she’s saving 12% on her premium by insuring her home and automobile with the same company. Ms. Leeds also gets a 10% credit for having a central-station alarm system and a 2% credit for installing a water sensor that detects leaks. Her discounts total $1,600.

Discounts are also available for bundling other types of policies. Chubb, for example, offers up to 7.5% off, in most states, for bundling home and valuables coverage for jewelry, fine art, wine or other collectibles, according to Fran O’Brien, division president of Chubb North America Personal Risk Services.

Updating your home not only increases its value but can also entitle you to a premium discount. By replacing the roof or windows, or updating the electrical system, you reduce the risk of loss to an insurance company, and that translates into a lower premium.

The same goes for adding hurricane shutters, straps to secure the roof or a whole-house generator in a storm-prone area. A wind-mitigation inspection can document improvements that would make a home sturdier in a storm.

Other discounts are available as well. This is when a good insurance agent can be invaluable, since they know the intricacies of insurance. Travelers, for example, offers a green-home discount of 5% if a policyholder’s home is LEED-certified. Homeowners with no claims for a period of years may also be entitled to a “claims-free” discount. Discounts for living close to a fire station or hydrant may also be available. Remember that not all discounts are available from all insurance companies.

One other way to reduce your homeowners insurance premium is to increase your deductible. For a typical $5 million home, increasing one’s home-insurance deductible from $10,000 to $50,000 reduces the overall premium by 24% a year, on average, said Andrew Hurst, research and data analyst for ValuePenguin, a personal-finance website owned by LendingTree.

Tips for Reducing Your Insurance Premium

If you’re in the market for homeowners insurance, here are a few things to keep in mind:

Don’t forget to protect your valuables. A standard homeowners policy may not adequately protect your jewelry, art or wine collection. According to Loretta Worters of the Insurance Information Institute, a standard policy may provide coverage for up to $2,500 on jewelry, whereas a policy geared toward high-net-worth homeowners may include blanket coverage up to $150,000 or more, with limits of $10,000 per item. For expensive watches or other valuable pieces, endorsements can be added to the policy for additional coverage.

Consult your insurance agent before you move. Luxury homes are often in areas with low crime rates, but they may face other risks, such as hurricanes, floods or earthquakes. If you’re considering multiple locations for your move, an insurance agent can provide guidance on relative rates in each place. The age of a home also affects the insurance rate. Even if you’re buying new construction, call your agent early in the process. It is easier during construction to install wiring for central burglar and fire alarms, as well as sprinklers and water shut-off valves, all of which would qualify you for a discount.

Compare companies and policies. It might seem obvious, but a recent survey conducted in March 2021 by ValuePenguin, the personal-finance website, found that 26% of Americans have never compared multiple insurance quotes. That could be costing them money, as 80% of those making more than $100,000 a year who shopped around saved money by doing so, according to ValuePenguin.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Get Your Discounts Here.'

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John McLaughlin Struggled on Violin, but When He First Played Guitar? ‘Skyrockets Went Off’

The Grammy-winning musician on reuniting with his father, why it was hard making friends as a kid and becoming obsessed with his brother’s guitar

Aug. 10, 2021 12:00 pm ET

John McLaughlin, 79, is a Grammy-winning guitarist and composer who in the 1970s pioneered jazz-rock fusion with his Mahavishnu Orchestra. His new album is “Liberation Time” (Abstract Logix). He spoke with Marc Myers.

My dad wasn’t a kind or gentle man. As a result, my mother left him when I was 7. She took three of her five kids to live at her mother’s house in northern England. The other two were already at university.

Growing up, I didn’t have a relationship with my father, John. I didn’t care for him. The early years after my parents’ separation were hard on my mom and on us.

When my parents were still together, they first lived south of London. To escape German bombing during the Blitz, they moved north to Kirk Sandall, a hamlet of 150 people 20 minutes northeast of Doncaster. There, we lived in a row house and depended on food coupons for milk and butter. There were a couple of chickens out back for eggs and a vegetable garden. My father worked as a mechanic at a local factory.

After my parents split, we moved to her mother’s house. The village was a little bigger—all of 300 people. Space was tight, and Grandma was a bit of a tyrant. Before long, we left and found a flat in Whitley Bay near the North Sea.

John McLaughlin, left, playing with a band that included his sister, Ann McLaughlin, in Northumberland, U.K., around 1957.

Photo: John McLaughlin (Family Photo)

My mother, Mary, was a big influence on me. She was an amateur violinist who had played in orchestras, and she encouraged me to play and listen to music. She started me on the violin, but I couldn’t get a good sound on the instrument. So at age 8, I started taking piano lessons.

Mom worked as a couturier, making dresses on her sewing machine. She also cleaned people’s houses. We kept moving in the area, so school was never permanent. I could never keep a friend.

Eventually, we settled in the region, 20 minutes from the coast. I soon became attached to the sea, in all seasons. I loved when the water was rough.

My brother, Robert, who was 10 years older, had a guitar. In 1951, when the blues and folk boom hit colleges, Rob was at Cambridge. He tried to play and sing, but he didn’t have a voice.

After six months, he became bored and gave the guitar to David, my second-oldest brother. When I was 11, David gave me the guitar and showed me how to form a D chord. When I hit the strings, skyrockets went off. I took the guitar to bed each night.

John McLaughlin at his home.

Photo: Ina Behrend

Whenever my brothers came home, they brought me albums by blues musicians. The music, with its liberty, sensuality and rhythm, was singing to me. My older brothers encouraged me all the way.

At 16, I left home to play professionally and became a studio shark in London. But after 18 months, I’d had it. I left for Antwerp, Belgium, and got a gig with a band playing free jazz. I also started to play with some really good British musicians.

That’s when I made a decision to change my life. In the summer of ’68, I jammed with drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Dave Holland in London. Jack taped the session. Back in New York, he played it for drummer Tony Williams, who needed a guitarist for his group, Lifetime. He called me.

The night I arrived in New York City, I went to see Tony, who was playing with Miles Davis at Club Baron in Harlem. When Miles came in and passed me, he whispered my name, “Johnnn.” How did he know my name? I was thrilled.

The next day, he invited me to record on his album “In a Silent Way.” Miles called me regularly.

Today, my wife, Ina, and I live in an apartment in Monaco. We’ve lived here 30 years and love it. The climate is ideal and I’m well located to play concerts all over the world.

When I was 35 and living in New York, I had a dream about my father. So I flew to the U.K., took a train up north and knocked on his door. He was astonished to see me. We went to a local pub but avoided talking about the past.

A few months after I left, he had a heart attack and was gone. I felt sorry for him. Without my dad I wouldn’t be here. At least I had closure, and for that I thank my lucky stars.

Miles Davis in 1960.

Photo: Ullstein Bild/Getty Images

John’s Solo

Inspiration for “Liberation Time”? I was so frustrated about the tour cancellations and lockdown last year. The music came in a rush, except my two solo piano pieces.

Lessons? At 14, I went to a guy, but by the time I finished playing him blues songs he wanted to hear, we were out of time.

First Miles Davis track heard? “Blues for Pablo” on “Miles Ahead: Miles Davis +19” (1957)

Dad familiar with your music? Somewhat. He said he’d bought two of my Mahavishnu albums but was shocked by the music.

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'He Fell in Love With a Guitar and Pioneered Fusion.'

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For $2 Million, a Chance to Spend Eternity Next to Marilyn Monroe and Hugh Hefner

At Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles, an unused burial crypt is being shopped by the family of the late Broadway composer Jerry Herman

Aug. 12, 2021 9:00 am ET

This is real estate to die for.

A burial crypt adjacent to the remains of Hugh Hefner and Marilyn Monroe is asking $2 million.

Located at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles—where celebrities including Natalie Wood and Truman Capote are also buried—the granite crypt was purchased in the 1990s by theatrical composer and lyricist Jerry Herman. But when Mr. Herman died in 2019, he was buried in New Jersey instead, said his goddaughter, Jane Dorian. The family now wants to sell the unused crypt, said Ms. Dorian, who said she is handling the sale on behalf of the family. They will consider bids starting at $2 million.

Celebrities including Natalie Wood and Truman Capote are buried at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

Photo: Jennelle Fong for The Wall Street Journal

“There’s Marilyn Monroe, Hugh Hefner, then Jerry’s,” Ms. Dorian said. “He’s next to the two sexiest people that were ever alive.”

The composer of scores for the Broadway musicals “Hello, Dolly!,” “Mame,” and “La Cage aux Folles,” her godfather “was pretty sexy, too,” she said. Mr. Herman was “tickled” by the concept of being entombed near Ms. Monroe, whose crypt in the Corridor of Memories complex is covered in lipstick kisses from fans. The space Mr. Herman purchased is two crypts down from Ms. Monroe’s. She was interred there in the 1960s. Between them is Mr. Hefner, who died in 2017.

Mr. Herman “was very concerned about real estate,” said Ms. Dorian, who works as a real-estate agent at Compass in L.A. “He wanted to make sure his final resting place was up to his standard.” She said Mr. Herman bought and sold about 50 homes in his lifetime, and his influence was one of the reasons she went into real estate.

Mr. Herman purchased the crypt in 1997 for $75,000, Ms. Dorian said. He had been prompted to get his affairs in order after testing positive for HIV. At the time his life was based in Los Angeles, so being buried there made sense.

With the advent of protease inhibitors, however, Mr. Herman’s health improved and he ultimately died of natural causes at the age of 88. He moved to Miami, and eventually changed his mind about the Westwood crypt, she said. The Tony-winning composer was “torn,” Ms. Dorian said, but decided to be buried with his mother in New Jersey, in a spot overlooking the lights of Broadway.

A similar crypt at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village purchased directly from the cemetery would cost roughly $180,000, Ms. Dorian said, and she expects Mr. Herman’s unused crypt to sell for far more than that due to the celebrity factor.

“It goes back to the adage: location, location, location,” she said.

She noted that in 2009, a family received a bid of more than $4.6 million for the crypt above Ms. Monroe’s in an eBay auction. The deal fell through, however, and the crypt was never sold.

The starting price for a single mausoleum crypt at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village is $47,000.

Photo: Jennelle Fong for The Wall Street Journal

Nationwide, the average price of a single cemetery plot is roughly $3,500, said Los Angeles cemetery broker Baron Chu of Plot Brokers. Just as in real estate, cemetery prices are higher in large coastal cities, he said. The starting price for a single mausoleum crypt at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village is $47,000, the cemetery said, while burial spaces start at $198,000.

But the family’s hopes of fetching millions for Mr. Herman’s crypt may die an untimely death. Like used cars, burial plots sold on the resale market tend to be discounted from cemetery sticker prices, Mr. Chu said. And while family plots with room for multiple people can sometimes fetch millions of dollars, he said he’s never seen a single crypt sell for more than “a couple hundred thousand.”

Plus, Mr. Chu said, when it comes to choosing a final resting place, most people put little stock in proximity to celebrities, instead choosing to be buried near family members. For one thing, there is no shortage of celebrities in California graveyards, said Mr. Chu. He said he is currently selling a crypt next to Michael Jackson’s at Forest Lawn—Glendale for $80,000, a discount from its original price several years ago.

Others balk at spending millions on a burial site rather than leaving that money to their loved ones. “You can do so much more with that money,” said Mr. Chu. “You’re literally being buried with it.”

It is possible, but unlikely, that a mega-fan would pay millions for a crypt next to Ms. Monroe and Mr. Hefner, he said.

“I’m sure there’s somebody out there that would pay whatever they’re asking,” he said, “but the odds of it happening are very slim.”

Write to Candace Taylor at Candace.Taylor@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Your Forever Home, Literally.'

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New York Townhouse Designed by St. Patrick’s Cathedral Architect Asks $28 Million

Built in 1856, the James Renwick Jr.-designed home in Greenwich Village was restored to its original glory by the sellers

Aug. 10, 2021 2:10 pm ET

A Greenwich Village townhouse designed by James Renwick Jr., the architect of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, is coming on the market for $28 million.

Built in 1856, the roughly 9,000-square-foot Anglo-Italianate house has six stories, 13½-foot ceilings, original fireplace mantels and a rooftop terrace, according to marketing materials. There are six wood-burning fireplaces, seven bedrooms, a chef’s kitchen and two kitchenettes.

A Grand Townhouse in Greenwich Village

On West 10th Street, the extensively renovated home was designed by James Renwick Jr., the architect of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

A Greenwich Village house designed by James Renwick Jr. is asking $28 million.

Eytan Stern Weber

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A Greenwich Village house designed by James Renwick Jr. is asking $28 million.

Eytan Stern Weber

The sellers are Jay Newman, a former senior portfolio manager at Elliott Management, and his wife Elissa Kramer, a retired radiologist. Mr. Newman bought the townhouse in 1999 for $3 million, according to public records.

The couple spent two years extensively renovating the home after a prior owner subdivided the property into six floor-through apartments. “We set about restoring everything to pretty much what it would have looked like in the 1850s,” said Mr. Newman. In addition to relining the fireplaces, they repaired ceiling medallions and crown moldings and had mahogany doors and windows constructed that resemble the original design.

James Renwick Jr. designed a string of houses on West 10th Street that have iron balconies on the second floor.

Photo: Rich Caplan

Mr. Newman said they also repaired the home’s crumbling facade, with brownstone in front and brick in back. “This was the worst-looking house on the block when we bought it,” he said, estimating they spent “multiples” of the purchase price on the two-year renovation. “It was extensive and it was expensive,” he added.

In addition to the restoration work, Mr. Newman said they added an elevator, modern mechanicals, a backyard garden and rooftop garden, which has decorative plantings, climbing hydrangea and an herb garden. On the home’s second floor, they hid a wet bar behind paneled doors. “It’s kind of a jewel,” Mr. Newman said.

Mr. Renwick, one of America’s most celebrated architects, was born in 1818 in New York, according to a biography from the Smithsonian Institution. He had no formal training as an architect but rose to prominence in the 1840s when he won a competition to design Grace Church in New York. In addition to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, he designed the original City College building in New York and the Smithsonian’s main building in Washington, D.C., known as the Castle. He died in 1895.

In Greenwich Village, Mr. Renwick designed a string of houses on West 10th Street that have iron balconies on the second floor, Mr. Newman said.

Mr. Newman’s house is around 22 feet wide and 67 feet deep, said Nicole Palermo of Serhant, who is co-listing the property with Ryan Serhant.

Mr. Newman said he and his wife bought the home when their children were younger. Both were previously married and had two children each. “It’s the first place we ever lived together,” he said. In April, they bought a house in Vero Beach, Fla., that has space for the children and grandchildren to visit. The low-tax environment is a bonus, he said.

Write to E.B. Solomont at EB.Solomont@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'Home in NYC With a Pedigree.'

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Ex-WeWork CEO Adam Neumann Sells New York Townhouse for $13.65 Million

The co-working company co-founder bought the Greenwich Village property with his wife for $10.5 million in 2013

Aug. 11, 2021 5:15 pm ET

The Greenwich Village townhouse of WeWork co-founder and former Chief Executive Adam Neumann has sold for $13.65 million, according to property records.

Built in 1847, the Greek Revival-style house is nearly 23 feet wide and has wood-burning fireplaces and a backyard garden, according to marketing materials prepared before Mr. Neumann purchased the home.

Danny Davis of the Corcoran Group represented the seller. He declined to comment.

Adam Neumann purchased the property with his wife in 2013.

Photo: Brett Beyer/VHT

The couple paid $10.5 million for the Greenwich Village townhouse.

Photo: Brett Beyer/VHT

Adam Neumann

Photo: Getty Images

Mr. Neumann and his wife, Rebekah Paltrow Neumann, bought the home for $10.5 million in 2013, records show. In 2014, the Neumanns commenced a multimillion-dollar renovation, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Between 2013 and 2018, as WeWork’s valuation soared, the Neumanns amassed other pricey properties including condos in New York City, a farm in Westchester, a home in the Hamptons and an estate in California.

In 2019, WeWork pulled an initial public offering after investors questioned the startup’s valuation and raised questions about its loose corporate governance. Mr. Neumann was ousted as CEO.

In 2014, the Neumanns began a multimillion-dollar renovation.

Photo: Brett Beyer/VHT

In May, securities filings show WeWork gave Mr. Neumann a stock award worth roughly $245 million. The award was part of a renegotiation of his 2019 exit package meant to end a dispute between the former chief executive and SoftBank, which invested billions of dollars into WeWork.

A month later, Mr. Neumann struck a deal to buy adjacent properties at Miami Beach’s Bal Harbour Yacht Club marina for $44 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Mr. Neumann didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Write to E.B. Solomont at EB.Solomont@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'WeWork’s Neumann Sells.'

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In Celebrity-Filled Calabasas, a Huge Spec Home Sells for a Record $30 Million

The sale is the most expensive to date in the San Fernando Valley

Updated Aug. 10, 2021 8:02 pm ET

A massive spec house in Calabasas has sold for $30 million, according to the local multiple listing service. The deal sets a sales record in the celebrity-filled Southern California city, local real-estate agents said.

The sale is the most expensive to date in the San Fernando Valley, the people said. Previously, a house in Hidden Hills, another city in the Valley, sold for $22.2 million in 2019, according to public records.

A Massive Modern Spec Home in San Fernando Valley

In Calabasas, Calif., this home is roughly 22,000 square feet and mixes wood with neutral surfaces.

A spec house in Calabasas, Calif., sold for a record $30 million.

Douglas Friedman

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A spec house in Calabasas, Calif., sold for a record $30 million.

Douglas Friedman

Kim Kardashian purchased a Hidden Hills mansion for $19.75 million in 2014, according to records. Khloe Kardashian sold her Calabasas home for $15 million last year, according to records.

The most recent sale was a roughly 22,000-square-foot house built by developer Michael Palumbo, according to the listing. It has eight bedrooms, a guesthouse and a poolside casita.

It went on the market in October asking $37.999 million, according to Zillow. The price was later dropped to $34 million.

Tomer Fridman of the Fridman Group at Compass and Branden and Rayni Williams of Beverly Hills Estates had the listing.

Write to E.B. Solomont at EB.Solomont@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

Branden Williams is an agent at Beverly Hills Estates. An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled his first name. (Corrected on August 10.)

Appeared in the August 13, 2021, print edition as 'California Spec House Sets a Record.'

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Table of Contents

The Wall Street Journal [Fri, 13 Aug 2021]

FRONT PAGE

Census Data Show America’s White Population Shrank for the First Time

U.S. Troops to Evacuate Personnel From Afghanistan Embassy, Leaving Only Core Staff

FDA Authorizes Covid-19 Boosters for Certain Immunocompromised

GameStop’s Power Player: How Outsider Ryan Cohen Wrested Control

Simply White, Snowfall White, School House White: Proliferation of White Paint Shades Stupefies Renovators

Disney Posts a Rebound as Tourists Returned to Its Theme Parks

U.S. NEWS

U.S. Jobless Claims Fell Last Week

Former Media Executive Agrees to Plead Guilty in Varsity Blues College Admissions Scandal

Home Prices Jumped Across the U.S. in Second Quarter

Migrant Border Arrests in July Surge to Highest Level in 21 Years

At Schools Where Native American Children Died, New Hope for Answers

Census Data Show Sunbelt House Districts Saw Biggest Population Gains

Millennials’ High-Earning Years Are Here, but It Doesn’t Feel That Way

VA Health System Won’t Cover Biogen’s Alzheimer’s Drug

Kathy Hochul Says She Will Run For New York Governor in 2022

More School Districts in Texas Sue Governor Over Mask-Mandate Ban

Supreme Court Lifts Part of New York’s Eviction Moratorium

CDC Director Says She’s Struggling to Communicate With Americans About Covid-19 Amid Politics, Mistrust

Supreme Court Rejects Request to Block Indiana University’s Vaccine Mandate for Students

WORLD NEWS

Covid-19 Vaccine Scammers Target Authorities in Dozens of Countries Including Italy and Colombia

Israel, Widely Vaccinated, Suffers Another Covid-19 Surge

Head of WHO Team Investigating Origins of Covid-19 Calls For Closer Look at China Lab

New Zealand to Pursue Zero-Covid-19 Policy Indefinitely

Afghan Taliban Seize Herat, Move Into Kandahar After Taking Ghazni

Afghans Tell of Executions, Forced ‘Marriages’ in Taliban-Held Areas

LIFE & ARTS

‘Respect’ Review: The Real Aretha Franklin Is Hard to Beat

‘The Tempest’ Review: Curtain Calls

‘Sparkling: The Story of Champagne’ Review: More Dry Than Not

Who’s Winning the Dodgers-Padres Battle In the NL West? The Giants

The World of Olympic Water Sports Still Looks Very White. There’s a Push to Change That.

OPINION

Schumer and His Shadow

Social Media’s Threat to Religious Freedom

Covid and a Tale of Two Summer Festivals

‘A Brief History of Motion’ Review: Rolling Forward

The Danger of Shrinking American Naval Power

You’re Already Paying for That $4.5 Trillion

Will Biden Bring an End to Reagan’s Era of Prosperity?

Notable & Quotable: Donald Kagan

Bring on the Covid Vaccine Boosters

Dumbing Oregon Down

The Debacle in Afghanistan

Break Out of the Student Loan Forbearance Mindset

Tenants Take Advantage of the CDC’s Eviction Ban

Dogs Deserve Better Treatment

Teachers Weren’t Paid Like Essential Workers This Year

The Climate-Change Cop-Out Is a Politician’s Best Friend

BUSINESS & FINANCE

Airbnb Revenue Nearly Quadrupled in Second Quarter

Boeing’s Starliner Launch Could Face Delay of Several Months

Tether Sheds Light, but Not Enough, on Its $63 Billion Reserves

Global ETF Assets Hit $9 Trillion

Reddit Valuation Soars to $10 Billion in New Funding Round

High-Speed Trading Firm Jump to Execute Retail Investors’ Stock Trades

BlackRock, Other Investors Target Climate Issues, Covid-19 Response and Board Seats in Shareholder Votes

Revival of Ford Bronco SUV Hits Production Snag

Coffee Jolt Gets Pricier as Costs of Beans, Labor, Transport Rise

Adidas Agrees to Sell Reebok to Authentic Brands

Alibaba Sets Anti-Sexual Harassment Measures After Employee Allegations

Frackers, Shippers Eye Natural-Gas Leaks as Climate Change Concerns Mount

DoorDash Revenue Rises 83% as Consumers Stick to Food Delivery

Facebook’s Takeover of Giphy Raises Competition Concerns, U.K. Says

Goldman Sachs, Other Financial Firms Back Program to Diversify Wall Street

Summit Partners Targets $7 Billion for Latest Growth Strategy

Wan Long, CEO of World’s Largest Pork Producer, Steps Down

Dow, S&P 500 Climb to Records After Economic Data

Delta Variant Dents Oil Demand Recovery While OPEC Expects More Supply

Advance Auto Parts Can Keep the Good Times Rolling

Europe’s Electrification Stalwarts Go Digital

Regal Cinemas’ Owner Can’t Count on AMC’s Meme Crowd

Evergrande’s Enormous Bill Finally Comes Due

MANSION

Door County Lives Up to Its Nickname as the Midwest’s Cape Cod

An English Manor With a Noble Past Needed a Royal Renovation. ‘It Was Basically Falling Down.’

Verandas Bring Things Outside, but Not Too Much

Want to Lower Your Homeowners Insurance Premium? There Are Discounts for the Taking

John McLaughlin Struggled on Violin, but When He First Played Guitar? ‘Skyrockets Went Off’

For $2 Million, a Chance to Spend Eternity Next to Marilyn Monroe and Hugh Hefner

New York Townhouse Designed by St. Patrick’s Cathedral Architect Asks $28 Million

Ex-WeWork CEO Adam Neumann Sells New York Townhouse for $13.65 Million

In Celebrity-Filled Calabasas, a Huge Spec Home Sells for a Record $30 Million