WHAT'S BREWING
HURRICANE ISAIAS BARRELS TOWARDS BAHAMAS, FLORIDA Officials across the Caribbean and the southern U.S. have urged citizens to brace for Hurricane Isaias after the storm gained strength and barreled over Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. The National Hurricane Center said early Friday that Isaias had strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane, with sustained winds of about 80 mph. The Bahamian government issued a hurricane warning for large swaths of the country, and Hubert Minnis, the country’s prime minister, urged citizens to “prepare for the worst.” This comes as a Florida newspaper pleads with Gov. Ron De Santis to step up the fight against COVID-19: "We're dying out here." [HuffPost]
BIDEN MAKES THE SIMPLEST ANTI-TRUMP PROMISE EVER Over the past few weeks, Joe Biden has released details of his plans for the country should he defeat Trump in November. But one simple promise is drawing plenty of praise. Hours after Trump set off a fury with a tweet suggesting the November election be delayed, Biden took to social media with his own vow: You won't have to worry about my tweets when I'm president. Meanwhile, Trump's reelection campaign appears to be centered around pretending there's no pandemic. [HuffPost]
TRUMP'S SUDDEN PHOTO OP JUST HAPPENED TO BE DURING OBAMA'S EULOGY Trump's public schedule was clear through mid-afternoon Thursday — right up until Obama was about to take the dais at John Lewis’ funeral 600 miles to the southwest — when suddenly, reporters and cameras were called into the Oval Office. As Obama remembered the Georgia civil rights great, Trump -- a reality TV master of counterprogramming -- spoke to the family of murder victim Vanessa Guillen. [HuffPost]
UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS ARE TYING REPUBLICANS IN KNOTS More than 25 million laid-off workers received their final $600 weekly supplemental payments from the federal government last weekend and Senate Republicans are in disarray over whether to replace the benefits or just drop them. [HuffPost]
U.S. ALLOWS MICHAEL COHEN TO PUBLISH UNFLATTERING BOOK ABOUT TRUMP Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer, will be allowed to publish a book critical of the president before the Nov. 3 election while completing his criminal sentence at home. The agreement between Cohen’s lawyers and federal prosecutors also frees Cohen to engage with news organizations and use social media, as he serves the remainder of his three-year term for campaign finance violations and other crimes in home confinement. [HuffPost]
RECKONING WITH THE FEMINIST, EUGENICIST FOUNDER OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD Margaret Sanger was a walking contradiction. The founder of the birth control movement spent her life arguing that women’s liberation was predicated on their ability to control their own reproduction. “No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother,” she wrote in 1919. At the same time, she bought into the ideology of eugenics — the belief that genetics could improve through selective breeding — and supported sterilization of those who were deemed unfit to reproduce. [HuffPost] | 
