Stranger Than Fiction

You can support the newsletter that you’re reading right now using PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, or purchase a subscription on Substack.Don’t forget to join us in the Stranger Slack for access to source documents and a running feed of news throughout the day. (this link was broken for awhile and has now been fixed)TOP NEWS

• GOP Senators Target Supreme Court Confirmation by Election Day “More Republicans are pushing to get a successor to Ruth Bader Ginsburg confirmed by the November elections, a speedy time frame that could add a new justice to the court in time to consider a major health-care case.”

• With U.S. Covid-19 Deaths Mounting, Vaccine Regulators Face Politics “As the U.S. passed 200,000 deaths from Covid-19, regulators have grappled with politics as they work to determine how to approve and distribute a vaccine.”

• Johnson & Johnson Begins Final-Stage Testing of Covid-19 Vaccine “The company said Wednesday it started a 60,000-person clinical trial of its single-dose Covid-19 vaccine on three continents, becoming the fourth experimental Covid-19 shot to enter final-stage testing in the U.S.”

• House passes bipartisan spending bill to avert government shutdown “The 359-57 vote sends the legislation to the Senate, which could take it up later this week. The deal was negotiated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a chaotic series of events.”

• Louisville Police Brace for Decision in Breonna Taylor Shooting Case “Louisville police restricted access to the city’s downtown ahead of an expected decision by the Kentucky attorney general on whether to bring charges against police officers involved in Breonna Taylor’s killing.”

• Republican probe fails to support accusations against Joe Biden in Ukraine “The find­ings, out­lined in an 87-page re­port, don’t sup­port a cen­tral ac­cu­sa­tion Pres­i­dent Trump and other Re­pub­li­cans have made about De­mo­c­ra­tic presidential can­di­date Joe Biden’s du­ties in Ukraine”

WHAT I’M READING + WATCHING + LISTENING TO

• 🎧 LISTEN: Exxon's Stunning DeclineSeven years ago, Exxon was the biggest company in the U.S. Since then, it's lost about 60% of its value. WSJ's Christopher Matthews tells the story of its rapid fall.

• Experts and medical groups increasingly say a temperature check isn’t a good gauge of Covid-19 as many infected children and adults don’t get fevers.

• The Pentagon is fast-tracking a study of ways to detect barely noticeable effects on asymptomatic Covid-19 patients

THE COMMENT

“Eighteen-year terms for justices would help lower the stakes in the necessary way and give us that reset, as my colleague Charles Lane wrote. Federal legislation could, of course, accomplish this, as was recently proposed in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences commission report that I helped chair, but there is no hope of that at this moment in time. In the near term, it’s up to the justices. We need the eight who remain to take it upon themselves to lower the stakes of any given Supreme Court appointment. If they could voluntarily establish a term-limits regime for themselves, presidents would no longer have the chance to shape the judiciary for a lifetime over the course of an eight-year administration. Every president would have the chance to appoint two justices in each term. This would meaningfully ratchet down the intensity of our politics and give the judiciary a fighting chance of making its way back above the fray.” - Danielle Allen

THE STRANGEST

• Chuck E. Cheese asking to spend $2 million to destroy 7 billion prize tickets

THE AV ROOM