Good morning! This year month almost got even crazier yesterday when a social media hoax spread claiming President Jimmy Carter had died. Thankfully, Carter’s alive and, well, 99 years old.

This is a great time to re-up the bizarre pic of the Bidens visiting the Carters a few years back and somehow making them look like hobbits.

2024

🥥 The great unburdening has begun

Well, that was fast. Joe Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday. He deleted his campaign social media pages on Monday. And Kamala Harris had the Democratic nomination sewn up by Tuesday.

• Every potential rival endorsed her campaign and Democratic congressional leadership joined them.

• Moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) threatened a challenge but flinched and didn’t run. He also noted that he would not serve as Harris’s VP if asked. On a related note, Ryan Gosling has taken himself out of the running to be the next pope.

• A majority of delegates to the Democratic National Convention (DNC) have also come out in support. They’ll officially nominate her either at the DNC or, if a party rules proposal passes today, virtually next week.

Harris visited the staff at campaign HQ in Wilmington, DE. That was Biden’s political home base and will remain the location of Harris’s inherited campaign operation.

• Biden called into that meeting, making his first semi-public appearance in almost a week. He’ll speak to the nation from the Oval Office tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern.

She made her campaign debut at a rally in Milwaukee in front of thousands of fans yesterday. She compared this campaign to her time as a prosecutor, saying she’s got plenty of experience taking on “predators,” “fraudsters,” and “cheaters.”

• She got some good polling news, too. A Reuters survey has her narrowly leading Trump 44% to 42%. Though most polls have her trailing.

• The Trump campaign, for its part, has reportedly been preparing to run against Harris since May.

Harris HQ on Instagram and X has taken some inspo from Charli XCX and gone brat. The good folks at CNN had some trouble figuring that one out.

• On the music front, Harris sewed up the BeyHive vote when Beyoncé gave her permission to use the song “Freedom” throughout the campaign.

Vetting the veeps: The campaign infrastructure is ready to go. But Team Harris will have to vet potential VP choices ASAP. The law firm of ex-Obama Attorney General Eric Holder is taking the lead there.

• Her list of potential running mates includes Gov. Andy Beshear (KY), Sec. Pete Buttigieg, Gov. Roy Cooper (NC), Sen. Mark Kelly (AZ), Gov. Gavin Newsom (CA), Gov. JB Pritzker (IL), Gov. Wes Moore (MD), Gov. Josh Shapiro (PA), and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (MI).

• Who has and has not been sent vetting paperwork is up for debate. But anyone in contention will have every piece of their life uncomfortably torn apart in search of possible dirt.

While the long list of possibilities includes nine names, the three current favorites are Cooper, Kelly, and Shapiro.

• PS: Mark Kelly is a former astronaut with a twin brother, Scott, who’s also a former astronaut.

Future: Election day is in just 104 days. And early voting begins in some states as soon as September 20th. Expect the campaign to kick into high gear in the coming weeks.

GOVERNMENT

🏛️ Cheatle brings unity to Washington

Bet she wishes she'd quit on Monday instead. Now-former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle got canned resigned yesterday after accidentally bringing some bipartisan unity to the House during her testimony on Monday.

Democrats and Republicans blasted her into another dimension for the Secret Service's near-fatal mistakes in the agency's worst failure since 1981 (when Reagan was shot).

• AOC (D-NY) asked her why the security perimeter at an outdoor rally was shorter than the range of the most popular rifle in America.

• Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) asked her why she gave better answers to ABC News than to Congress.

• Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) asked if she knew what the Secret Service director in 1981 did after the Reagan shooting. She said he stayed on the job. He, in fact, resigned.

• Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) tossed her a softball and gave her a chance to blame it on the prevalence of AR-15s. Her weapons-grade non-answer led him to call for her resignation immediately.

After she quit, Oversight Committee (they held the hearing) Chair Rep. James Comer (R-KY) low-key celebrated in a statement reaffirming the Secret Service's "no-fail mission."

The Department of Homeland Security is conducting an "independent review" of its own failures here. It will be led by a bipartisan panel of former federal security officials.

House leadership announced its own bipartisan investigation comprised of six Democrats and seven Republicans (owing to Republican control of the House).

• Congress will vote on the creation of this task force tonight. That vote is expected to easily pass since this plan was co-created by the House's Democratic and Republican leaders.

• The group will have subpoena authority to drag people in to testify and will, ideally, recommend specific changes to prevent this from happening again.

And here’s a quick intro to some other news:

• 👩‍⚖️ A federal judge in Philly rejected an attempt to block the recent Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ban on noncompete clauses. The rule kicks in in September but is likely to face further legal challenges.

• 🎥 The Illinois State Police released body cam footage of the fatal shooting of Sonya Massey. Prosecutors have filed murder charges against a deputy but he claims Massey attacked him with boiling water.

• 🏛️ A recent Supreme Court decision is forcing Congress to write more regulations in-house instead of passing the buck to federal agencies. Now the congresscritters have to figure out how. One idea? Dramatically expand the number of congressional staffers.

POLITICS

🔴 Donald Trump joined pro golfer Bryson DeChambeau for an episode of DeChambeau’s YouTube show “Break 50.” The two played a round of golf as a fundraiser for the Wounded Warrior Project. Since it looks like the writers this season decided against going forward with the Trump/Biden golf episode, this’ll have to do.

• Trump said yesterday that candidates "have an obligation to debate," so he’d be willing to take on Harris at least twice. But it won't be the Biden-Trump affair ABC had set for September 10 — Trump wants a different network.

🔴 JD Vance’s jump from the Senate to the national stage has him firmly planted on the struggle bus. At a campaign rally in his Ohio hometown, Vance made a weird remark about Diet Mountain Dew, fake laughed, and broke the awkward silence with a classic “I love you guys.”

• Democrats are hitting Vance for his comments in a now-resurfaced 2021 video. In the clip, Vance slams Democrats as “a bunch of childless cat ladies” with no stake in America’s future.

🔵 Sen. Bob “Gold Bar” Menendez (D-NJ), recently convicted of acting as a foreign agent, submitted a letter of resignation to Gov. Phil Murphy (and CC'd Kamala Harris in the VP’s capacity as president of the Senate). His resignation is effective August 20, which just so happens to be the Senate's payday. Between his conviction last week and his coming resignation, ole Bobby will rake in $16,639 of his annual $174,000 salary.

🔴 Nikki Haley, Trump's vanquished rival who's since endorsed him, sent a cease-and-desist notice to "Haley Voters for Harris." Her lawyers are demanding the Democratic group stop using "Ambassador Haley's name... without her permission."

TRIVIA

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney ran for president in 2012 and got steamrolled by the Obama Machine™. In the meantime, most people learned his full, goofy name: Willard Mitt Romney. Not everyone, however, got the memo. Some people were convinced that “Mitt” was short for… “Mittens.” According to a 2012 poll from “60 Minutes,” what percentage of real-life Americans thought Mitt Romney’s real name was “Mittens”?

Hint: Thankfully, we’re in the single digits here.

WORLD

🇪🇹 Ethiopia: Heavy rain caused two huge landslides in the capital of Addis Ababa this week. The death toll is up to 229 and counting, many of whom got stuck after attempting to rescue others. Ethiopia's rainy season runs through mid-September.

🇮🇱 Israel: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address a joint (aka both houses) session of Congress this afternoon. Plenty of Democrats say they'll boycott the event. The bold ones like Sen. Bernie Sanders are pretty open about this. The lame ones, like Sen. Tim Kaine, claim to have scheduling conflicts.

🇹🇼 Taiwan: Sirens blared, roads emptied, and people took cover yesterday in Taipei. Taiwan (aka The Republic of China) was conducting emergency drills for a long-feared invasion by China (aka The People's Republic of China), which views Taiwan as an unruly separatist region.

BRIEFS

• Tesla CEO Elon Musk set a 2026 date for sales of Optimus, its upcoming humanoid robot that’s already working at a Tesla facility

• The Department of Transportation is investigating Delta for canceling two years of flights in five days after the Crowdstrike crash

• A massive study on Universal Basic Income (UBI) from OpenAI founder Sam Altman found people loved getting an extra $1,000 per month

• After dropping its new Llama 3.1 AI, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the service would remain free and open-source

• Teachers at a Pennsylvania middle school are being tormented by fake TikTok accounts insinuating they're sex addicts and pedophiles

• The FTC is pushing back against companies offering different in-app prices and deals to different customers

QUOTE

SNACKS

🦈 Cocaine sharks: A new “Sharknado” / “Wolf of Wall Street” crossover just dropped. A study of Brazilian sharpnose sharks found cocaine in the animals’ systems.

🎵 Eminen > Taylor: Slim Shady’s newest album debuted and knocked “Tortured Poets” out of the top spot after a twelve-week reign. And Tay was just two weeks away from tying Stevie Wonder’s all-time record of 14 consecutive weeks at the top.

💥 Yellowstone: Tourists got a free show yesterday when the Black Diamond Pool erupted, blowing up a boardwalk and sending black water and rocks soaring.

ANSWER

A 2012 poll from “60 Minutes” and “Vanity Fair” found that a cool two percent of people thought Romney’s real name was Mittens. Or maybe that’s just the number of people who try to give the funniest answer they can think of to pollsters.