Supreme Court Hold On Mueller Secrets | Apple-Google Covid Trackers | Corporate Debt Junkies

Plus: Kendall Jenner Settles Fyre Festival Instagram Post Lawsuit

Know Now

• Supreme Court Grants Trump Request, Blocks Congress From Mueller Materials

• Record-Breaking 100,000 Global New Covid-19 Cases In One Day

• At Least 54,000 U.S. Deaths Could Have Been Avoided If Lockdown Came Two Weeks Earlier

• Cyclone Amphan Slams Into India And Bangladesh As Millions Attempt To Escape

• Donald Trump’s Campaign Raised $16.9 Million In April

Top Take-Aways

All 50 U.S. states have now partially reopened after weeks of strict restrictions on businesses and keeping people at home. Vast variations remain for how states are choosing to open up—and why they might reclose.

Apple and Google just released software that will allow public health agencies around the world to build their own apps to track who may have been exposed to Covid-19 using Bluetooth signals, with Alabama, North Dakota and South Carolina the first U.S. states to sign on.

Bernie Sanders’ campaign is requiring its convention delegates to sign a social media agreement that includes barring delegates from making negative statements about other candidates, campaigns and supporters, as well as journalists and media outlets.

Victoria’s Secret is closing 250 U.S. and Canadian stores as sales plummet due to the coronavirus. Even before the pandemic, the retailer was facing challenges, its core image called into question as brands that prioritize size inclusivity became more popular. 

MasterClass just raised $100 million to produce more celebrity edutainment with courses by Serena Williams and Natalie Portman. “It’s Hollywood meets Harvard,” says one investor.

Kendall Jenner has settled a Fyre Festival Instagram post lawsuit for $90,000. Jenner was allegedly paid $250,000 to promote the festival in a single, now-deleted Instagram post, along with an additional $25,000 a few days after the post went live.

Today's Must-Read

According to an exclusive Forbes investigation, businesses in the S&P 500 Index nearly tripled their net debt over the past decade, adding some $2.5 trillion in leverage to their balance sheets. The analysis shows that for every dollar of revenue growth over the past decade, the companies added almost a dollar of debt.

But as the coronavirus pandemic cripples commerce worldwide, American corporations face a grim reality: Revenues have evaporated, but their crushing debt isn’t going anywhere.

“Before Covid-19 ground the U.S. economy to a standstill, we were at work studying an alarming trend across Corporate America,” notes editors Antoine Gara and Nathan Vardi. “The 10-year expansion that ended with covid had yielded a giant corporate debt binge reaching into the trillions of dollars.” The epicenter was many of America's largest and most iconic companies, from Boeing, to McDonald's, General Motors and AT&T.

It's one of the reasons the Federal Reserve and Treasury have aimed $750 billion of relief at corporate debt markets, including speculative areas like companies that have recently been downgraded to junk, says Gara. “The Fed's unprecedented actions have helped unlock the bond market, which shattered records for new debt deals in March and April, in deals that kept many companies afloat.”

The only problem? So far, the cure to the debt addiction is just more debt. Read our full investigation here.

Across Forbes

Forbes Advisor: How much of your nest egg can you spend each year without running out of money in retirement? The answer is a simple formula that starts at 4%.