"Just after 8 p.m. on Monday, at the end of a thirty-one-hour session of the Senate, Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who was presiding, peered from the podium and asked if any senators still needed to vote. Hearing that none did, he said, 'The ayes are fifty-two. The nays are forty-eight. The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court is confirmed!' He said it as if he were announcing the winner on a game show, and the Republican senators in the room reacted accordingly, standing and cheering. Barrett wasn't so much the victor as the prize—their prize." A ceremony followed and with that, Justice Amy Coney Barrett Was Sworn In Under Darkness at the White House.

+ The confirmation process was fast and unprecedented, and so too will be the pace at which Barrett will hear some of the most pressing cases in America. 4 upcoming Supreme Court cases will reveal who Amy Coney Barrett really is.

+ There's one potential case that Trump is eying closely. Slate: "Put simply, Barrett's first actions on the court could hand Donald Trump an unearned second term, and dramatically curtail states' ability to protect the right to vote." The president was already helped by yesterday's SCOTUS decision that prevented a plan to allow mail in ballots, postmarked by election day, to be counted for up to six days afterwards. Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued that "States want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election. And those States also want to be able to definitively announce the results of the election on election night, or as soon as possible thereafter." Of course, that chaos and those suspicions are all coming from the president and his right wing echo chamber. Around the time the Court rendered its decision, in a tweet Twitter labeled misleading, Trump argued: "Big problems and discrepancies with Mail In Ballots all over the USA. Must have final total on November 3rd."

+ So let's review the president's strategy as he heads into an election where the polls are decidedly against him. Step one: Without any evidence, attack voting by mail nonstop for months. Step two: Slow down the postal service in key swing states, an effort that was stifled, but not stopped ("Parts of the presidential battleground states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio fell short of delivery goals by wide margins.") Step 3: Push through a Barrett confirmation, further packing the Court with judges who will limit time for counting all ballots. Step 4: Regardless of the state of vote counting, declare victory on November 3. Step 5: Start legal fight to support that claim of victory. Step 6: Take that legal fight all the way to the Supreme Court you just packed.

"I'm not saying politicians are breaking any laws; I'm saying there just aren't many laws designed to protect our data from politicians. As an institution, Congress has shown little interest in regulating the digital tools its members use to get into office." Geoff Fowler in WaPo: How politicians target you: 3,000 data points on every voter, including your phone number. (The one thing these groups don't know about me is data point 3,001 ... I hate getting texts.)

"When it comes to gun ownership there's something uniquely American that cuts across party affiliation and social boundaries — leaving liberals and conservatives jostling for ammunition because they want to brace for whatever comes next." NYT: A Divided Nation Agrees on One Thing: Many People Want a Gun. Have a great election season everyone!

"Every time the president ramps up this violent rhetoric, every time he fires up Twitter to launch another broadside against me, my family and I see a surge of vicious attacks sent our way. This is no coincidence, and the president knows it. He is sowing division and putting leaders, especially women leaders, at risk. And all because he thinks it will help his reelection." Gretchen Whitmer in The Atlantic: The Plot to Kidnap Me. At Trump's rallies, mentions of Whitmer draw chants of "Lock Her Up." Combine that kind of malfeasance with the firepower described above, and we could be heading towards a November to remember.

"Manufacturers of a wide range of products have made it increasingly difficult over the years to repair things, for instance by limiting availability of parts or by putting prohibitions on who gets to tinker with them. It affects not only game consoles or farm equipment, but cellphones, military gear, refrigerators, automobiles and even hospital ventilators." Now, there's a bipartisan push to make it easier for you to fix the stuff you own. NYT: The ‘Right to Repair' Movement Gains Ground. (As a Jewish male, I've always been less concerned with the right to repair and more concerned with the ability to repair.)

"One of the world's leading Covid-19 experimental vaccines produces an immune response in older adults as well as the young, its developers say, raising hopes of protection for those most vulnerable." Oxford Covid vaccine works in all ages, trials suggest.

+ Good. And please hurry. WaPo: Hospitals in nearly every region report a flood of covid-19 patients.

"On Jodel — pronounced 'Yodel' — the reaction from VMI students was filled with exactly the kind of bigotry that prompted Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) and other state officials to order an independent investigation of VMI's culture last week. On Monday, the school's superintendent, retired Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III, resigned, saying he'd been told by the governor's chief of staff that Northam and other state legislators had 'lost confidence in my leadership' and wanted him out." WaPo: VMI cadets attack Black students, women on anonymous chat app as furor over racism grows. 2020, the year America's scabs were ripped off. (Now, the internet has even ruined yodeling.)

"The theory among people I've spoken with in Silicon Valley is that tech workers trapped in their houses will start to develop new, better technologies to facilitate the process. Google Maps and Gmail, for example, were built as side projects at Google because the engineers saw a need for these tools. Now that tech employees are working remotely, they are finding new problems in the work-from-home lifestyle and creating new solutions to allow them to be more productive. Which means that these products could eventually make their way into our hands, and could justify us never going back to the office. In which case, the diaspora that has taken place from cities like San Francisco and New York to Los Angeles, Austin, and Miami will only continue." Nick Bilton in Vanity Fair: Tech Workers Are Never Going Back to the Office: The Pandemic Housing-Market Explosion Could Upend Silicon Valley as We Know It. (I must be an outlier. The minute I can go back to my office, I will, and I may never come back home...)

"Saudi Arabia is a hyperbolic example, because its budget is bigger, monarchy more absolute, internal politics more extreme, and reputation more notorious than most other nation-states. But in recent years, travel influencers, Instagrammers, YouTubers, and bloggers have chased clout in a number of countries with notably severe authoritarian regimes and egregious human rights records, including Syria, North Korea, Iran, Myanmar, and China." Travel influencers, meet authoritarian regimes. (Or meet some self respect maybe...)

"Mr. Sadvakassov, the deputy chairman of the tourism board, hadn't seen the movie before its premiere, but he said he wasn't concerned, either. 'In Covid times, when tourism spending is on hold, it was good to see the country mentioned in the media,' he said. 'Not in the nicest way, but it's good to be out there. We would love to work with Cohen, or maybe even have him film here.'" Joel Stein in the NYT with an amazing turnaround story. Kazakhstan, Reversing Itself, Embraces ‘Borat' as Very Nice. (Eventually, Rudy will come around too.)