“The issues that are facing this country are generational,” said Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at University of Florida. He said the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, coupled with the heightened political engagement since Mr. Trump’s election, had produced a highly energized electorate.

“We wish we could care about other things in our lives, but right now, politics matter so much, and people are engaged,” he said.Of course, non-battleground states, or states without a competitive statewide race, are unlikely to generate such intense voter interest, and early turnout can sometimes lag for reasons ranging from different start dates to disruptions from a hurricane.

But amid the swelling turnout is growing concern over the yawning gap between absentee ballots that have been requested and those that have been returned. With just days to go, 36 million ballots that were requested have either not been returned or have been rejected. Many of those ballots could still be in the mail or in processing or might have been sent to people who now plan to vote in person.

Any problems with the early vote are also likely to affect Democrats more than Republicans. In almost every state, Democrats have requested absentee ballots at a higher rate than Republicans. In Pennsylvania, nearly two million registered Democrats requested absentee ballots, compared with fewer than 790,000 Republicans. And while 70 percent of those Democratic voters have returned their ballots, roughly 590,000 ballots sent to registered Democratic voters have not yet been returned, along with 360,000 ballots sent to registered Republicans.

Voters in Pennsylvania, one of the most important battleground states, have been increasingly unnerved by the flurry of litigation regarding the deadline for when ballots can be accepted. The Supreme Court left open a possibility of a future ruling on ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive late, and the secretary of state told all county election officials to segregate those ballots.

Worries about the U.S. Postal Service have added to the anxiety. The agency said in a filing that staffing issues resulting from the pandemic were causing problems in some facilities, including some in central Pennsylvania. Only 78 percent of employees are available, according to the filing.

The body cam footage showed Officer Luckey attempting to pull Mr. Wright from the car as Ms. Potter drew a weapon and aimed it at Mr. Wright. She shouted, “I’ll Tase you!” and then “Taser! Taser! Taser!” before firing a bullet into Mr. Wright’s chest.

After Ms. Potter fired the gun, the video shows, she cursed and said, “I just shot him.” Officer Luckey and a sergeant who had arrived at the scene appeared stunned. After the shot was fired, Mr. Wright’s car moved down the street, coming to a stop when it struck another car.

In the criminal complaint filed against Ms. Potter, a special agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension described additional body camera footage that has not been released publicly. The agent, Charles Phill, wrote that Ms. Potter, moments after the shooting, had used an expletive, lamenting that she had “grabbed the wrong gun” and, a minute later, had said, “I’m going to go to prison.”

Mr. Wright was pronounced dead at the scene at 2:18 p.m., 16 minutes after he was shot.

What are the charges and possible sentences?

Prosecutors in the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office have filed two felony charges against Ms. Potter: first-degree manslaughter and second-degree manslaughter.

To convict Ms. Potter of first-degree manslaughter, jurors would need to find that Ms. Potter had caused Mr. Wright’s death while recklessly handling her gun with “such force and violence” that it was “reasonably foreseeable” that someone would be killed or suffer great bodily harm.

To convict her of the lesser charge of second-degree manslaughter, jurors would need to find that Ms. Potter had caused Mr. Wright’s death through negligence, had created “an unreasonable risk” and had consciously taken the chance of killing someone or inflicting great bodily harm.

“Human actions threaten more species with global extinction now than ever before,” the report concludes, estimating that “around 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken.”

Unless nations step up their efforts to protect what natural habitats are left, they could witness the disappearance of 40 percent of amphibian species, one-third of marine mammals and one-third of reef-forming corals. More than 500,000 land species, the report said, do not have enough natural habitat left to ensure their long-term survival.

Over the past 50 years, global biodiversity loss has primarily been driven by activities like the clearing of forests for farmland, the expansion of roads and cities, logging, hunting, overfishing, water pollution and the transport of invasive species around the globe.

In Indonesia, the replacement of rain forest with palm oil plantations has ravaged the habitat of critically endangered orangutans and Sumatran tigers. In Mozambique, ivory poachers helped kill off nearly 7,000 elephants between 2009 and 2011 alone. In Argentina and Chile, the introduction of the North American beaver in the 1940s has devastated native trees (though it has also helped other species thrive, including the Magellanic woodpecker).

All told, three-quarters of the world’s land area has been significantly altered by people, the report found, and 85 percent of the world’s wetlands have vanished since the 18th century.

And with humans continuing to burn fossil fuels for energy, global warming is expected to compound the damage. Roughly 5 percent of species worldwide are threatened with climate-related extinction if global average temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the report concluded. (The world has already warmed 1 degree.)

“If climate change were the only problem we were facing, a lot of species could probably move and adapt,” Richard Pearson, an ecologist at the University College of London, said. “But when populations are already small and losing genetic diversity, when natural landscapes are already fragmented, when plants and animals can’t move to find newly suitable habitats, then we have a real threat on our hands.”