Steyer Loses $16 Million Bet

$16 million

“Tom Steyer just lost a $16 million bet,” Politico reports. “The Democratic hedge fund billionaire leapt into the presidential campaign late with a clear plan: use his mega-wealth to buy his way into the televised party debates, and then use that platform, and his unelected outsider persona, to challenge the front-runners. Steyer spent millions of dollars on TV ads to boost his poll numbers in early caucus and primary states and on digital ads to meet the donor requirements set by the Democratic National Committee.”

Georgia Voting Anomalies Flaunt Astronomical Odds

1 in 1 million

“To find a clue about what might have gone wrong with Georgia’s election last fall, look no further than voting machine No. 3 at the Winterville Train Depot outside Athens,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports. “On machine No. 3, Republicans won every race. On each of the other six machines in that precinct, Democrats won every race. The odds of an anomaly that large are less than 1 in 1 million.”

Dem September ebate Field Set

10

With two new polls out this morning before the DNC’s qualifying deadline, it appears that next month’s Democratic presidential debate will be limited to just ten candidates: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Julian Castro and Andrew Yang. The debate is scheduled for September 12.

Mattis Finally Speaks

“Unlike in the past, where we were unified and drew in allies, currently our own commons seems to be breaking apart. What concerns me most as a military man is not our external adversaries; it is our internal divisiveness. We are dividing into hostile tribes cheering against each other, fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardizes our future, instead of rediscovering our common ground and finding solutions.”

— Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis speaks out for the first time since resigning his post in a Wall Street Journal essay.

Trump Promises Pardons to Get Wall Built

“President Trump is so eager to complete hundreds of miles of border fence ahead of the 2020 presidential election that he has directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules. … He also has told worried subordinates that he will pardon them of any potential wrongdoing should they have to break laws to get the barriers built quickly.”

Washington Post

Trump Allows Logging in Alaska National Forest

16.7 million acres

“President Trump has instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to exempt Alaska’s 16.7 million-acre Tongass National Forest from logging restrictions imposed nearly 20 years ago,” the Washington Post reports. “The move would affect more than half of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, opening it up to potential logging, energy and mining projects. It would undercut a sweeping Clinton administration policy known as the ‘roadless rule’ that has survived a decades-long legal assault.”