Vox Sentences: Keeping up with the Kavanaugh hearings

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Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings are off to the races; Brazil’s National Museum burns.

A chaotic first day for Kavanaugh’s confirmation

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

• The first day of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh has come to an end. The chaotic start was certainly a foreshadowing of what will unfold in the coming days. [CBS]
• Within minutes, the hearing was in disarray. Democratic senators called on Republican committee chair Chuck Grassley to adjourn and give the committee members time to review a newly released 42,000 documents, while almost two dozen protesters, who were quickly escorted from the room, shouted “vote no” in the background. [Vox / Emily Stewart]
• The Democrats on the committee, as a whole, focused on how Republicans have forgone precedent and changed up rules on confirming a SCOTUS nominee. They feel that not releasing every document related to Judge Kavanaugh’s career is an injustice to governmental process and the American people. [Vox / Tara Golshan]
• Republicans, meanwhile, feel that Kavanaugh is “unquestionably qualified” and feel bad that he has to “go through some of this nonsense.” [CNN / Brian Ries and Veronica Rocha]
• Other drama has also transpired during breaks in the hearing. Fred Guttenberg (father of 14-year-old Jamie, who was slain in the Parkland shooting), was seemingly snubbed by Kavanaugh when he introduced himself — though it’s unclear what truly went down. [Vox / Jane Coaston]
• Kavanaugh, for his part, promised to be a “a neutral and impartial arbiter” who will focus on the law during his opening remarks. [Washington Post / Seung Min Kim, Ann E. Marimow, and John Wagner]
• The rest of the hearing, which resumes Wednesday morning, will likely focus on abortion rights, gun control, and executive privilege, while Democrats and Republicans fight to push their contrasting narratives of the nominee. [NYT / Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Adam Liptak, and Charlie Savage]

A fire devastates one of the biggest museums in Latin America

• A devastating fire destroyed Brazil’s National Museum, considered “one of Latin America’s most important museums,” and almost all of the 20 million historical artifacts inside on Sunday night. It’s unclear what started the fire. [TIME / Laignee Barron]
• The museum, which resided in Rio de Janeiro’s Saint Christopher Palace, displayed relics from ancient eras, including a variety of dinosaur skeletons, mummies, meteorites, and the oldest human remains ever found in the Americas. [AP]
• The world also lost entire records of Earth’s oldest indigenous languages that are no longer spoken. [Business Insider / Peter Kotecki]
• A historian said the “incalculable” loss is akin to “a lobotomy of the Brazilian memory.” [The Guardian / Dom Phillips]
• In the wake of the fire, many have taken to the streets to protest the government’s possible indirect ignition through spending cuts and inattention to the museum’s maintenance and infrastructure. Police have tried to control the crowds through violent means. [CNN / Joshua Berlinger, Flora Charner, and Phil Gast]

Miscellaneous

• Amazon is officially worth over $1,000,000,000. It is only the second publicly traded company to pass that trillion-dollar mark. [USA Today / Adam Shell]
• The FBI may have found Dorothy’s missing ruby-red slippers. The famous Wizard of Oz shoes were stolen from a museum display 13 years ago. [BBC]
• Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was officially uninvited from headlining the New Yorker’s 19th annual festival on Monday. The magazine received an insurmountable backlash on social media, and from employees and guest speakers (some of whom dropped out of the festival after learning that Bannon would be speaking), before making the decision to cut him from the bill. [Business Insider / Alex Lockie]
• Calling all ABBA stans: Group member Björn Ulvaeus is collaborating with London’s O2 arena to recreate an elaborate “Mamma Mia! The Party” Mediterranean dining experience. Niko’s Tavern will open in spring 2019. [Billboard / Marina Pedrosa]

Verbatim

“A strategy, in politics, can be confused with a policy or a vision, but they’re not quite the same thing. Policies address the ‘what’; they’re prescriptions for the way things might operate in an ideal world. Strategy is about the ‘how.’ How do you move toward a desired end, despite limited means?” [Beverly Gage on the past and present history of strategy across the world and in the White House / New York Times]

Watch this: Pro wrestling is an art form

The best part of pro wrestling isn’t the wrestling. [YouTube / Mac Schneider and Dean Peterson]

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