The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had been in poor health, was not a shock. But the impact of a spare seat on the US supreme court just weeks before election day has caused an electric shock to the American body politic.
Bader Ginsburg’s death leaves a huge hole in US progressive politics and it’s one that Donald Trump and Senate leader Mitch McConnell are hoping to quickly plug with a conservative justice. For Democrats, already engaged in the fight of their lives trying to win back the Senate and the White House, it’s another huge battle in a draining four years. And one they’re likely to lose, even if they win back the Senate in November’s elections. With Republicans – including possible dissenters such as Mitt Romney – mainly falling in line behind McConnell already, will there be anyway to prevent a supreme court that is conservative for generations?
In Britain, increasingly gloomy predictions from government scientists and health officials have led to new restrictions in an effort to curb Covid. Our Westminster team reports on how a rapidly rising number of cases has led the government to raise Britain’s alert level and tighten controls.
What lessons can the UK and other countries learn from the likes of Sweden, with its unique light-touch coronavirus rules, and others such as China and New Zealand that have managed to minimise the impact of a second wave? Jon Henley and Emma-Graham Harrison report.
In other countries, the second wave is still the first wave. Our team of Latin America reporters explain how a rush to a kind of “normality” in countries as badly impacted as Brazil could lead to further disaster. Then, our health editor, Sarah Boseley, explains what the last six months of covering the search for a Covid-19 vaccine have been like – and why she’s cautiously optimistic about the impact a vaccine could have.
Elsewhere in the edition: Steve Rose looks at new Chinese blockbuster The Eight Hundred and how the Chinese state is increasingly involving itself in its burgeoning movie business; Andrew Anthony looks what the increasingly permanent-seeming change to home-working has done to us and Sally Williams tells the extraordinary story of Helios flight 522, which crashed into a mountain in 2005. Was one switch left in the wrong position really to blame?
In culture, Yomi Adegoke meets Issa Rae, creator and star of HBO’s Insecure and games editor Keza MacDonald celebrates 35 years of Nintendo’s superstar plumber, Super Mario.
