White House Dossier's

Donald J. Trump    $22.5    
Tim Scott    21.1    
Joseph R. Biden Jr.    20.1    
Ron DeSantis    12.2    
Vivek Ramaswamy    9.0    
Source: Federal Election Commission. New York Times

Full Replay: Tucker Carlson Grills 2024 Candidates At First GOP Presidential Forum In Iowa . . . Tucker Carlson moderated a series of conversations with most of the major non-Trump GOP presidential candidates Friday in Des Moines at this event hosted by the Family Leader and The Blaze. The candidates attending included Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. Senator Tim Scott, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson. Carlson spent about half an hour with each candidate. TuckerCarlson.com

Dems tout war chest, fret over third parties . . . The Hill put Biden at the top of its list of fundraising winners as the Federal Election Commission reported donations at the close of the year’s second quarter. Together with the Democratic National Committee, the Biden campaign and joint fundraising committees reported on Friday raising $72 million, an impressive total considering that many Democratic voters say they’re lukewarm about the 80-year-old’s bid for a second term, according to polls. The Hill

Top Biden Immigration Official Called To ‘Abolish’ ICE, End Detention Of Illegal Immigrants . . . A top Biden administration U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) official previously advocated to “abolish” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and worked with an anti-ICE group. Avideh Moussavian began her tenure at USCIS in March 2022 and was later appointed to serve as the agency’s chief of the Office of Policy and Strategy in March 2023. Before her work for the Biden administration, Moussavian tweeted in 2018 the hashtag “abolishICE,” accusing the agency of “misleading the public and making our workplaces less safe.” She has also advocated to “defund” ICE and CBP, according to a 2019 tweet. Daily Caller

Video | Biden bites petrified Finnish baby

A group of GOP centrists threatens hardline tactics on tax bill . . . A group of House Republican centrists is taking a page from their hardliner colleagues, demanding critical changes to their party’s signature tax plan — and threatening to hold the bill up until they get it. A small band of Republicans from New York, New Jersey and California is effectively blocking the House GOP’s tax plan from reaching the floor anytime soon as they seek relief for taxpayers back home who’ve been hit with heftier bills due to a Trump-era tax law that limited a key deduction. Politico

As Russia intercepts another US drone over Syria, official warns ‘triumvirate’ with Iran to force US out . . . Alongside yet another intercept of a US drone flight today, the Russian military also conducted a reconnaissance mission over the American garrison at al-Tanf in Syria, moves that a senior defense official said represent a “triumvirate” between the Russian, Syrian and Iranian governments to push the US military out of Syria. Breaking Defense

Typo leaks millions of US military emails to Mali web operator . . .  Millions of US military emails have been misdirected to Mali through a “typo leak” that has exposed highly sensitive information, including diplomatic documents, tax returns, passwords and the travel details of top officers. Despite repeated warnings over a decade, a steady flow of email traffic continues to the .ML domain, the country identifier for Mali, as a result of people mistyping .MIL, the suffix to all US military email addresses. The problem was first identified almost a decade ago by Johannes Zuurbier, a Dutch internet entrepreneur who has a contract to manage Mali’s country domain. Financial Times

SERE School: The Infamous Course That Teaches US Troops to Survive ‘With Honor’ . . . The origins of SERE school trace back to World War II, when MI9, a super-secret intelligence department of Britain’s War Office, helped POWs escape from Nazi camps. After the Americans joined the war in 1941, MI9 shared its escape and evasion methods with the US Army Air Forces, which used them as the blueprint for survival training programs, which would gradually form at various military garrisons around the country. Initially, the program was primarily focused on teaching troops how to make it back to friendly lines in the event they ever found themselves stranded in enemy territory. It wasn’t until the Korean War that the Department of Defense realized that the training lacked one crucial component: preparing service members to resist their captors. Between 1950 and 1953, more than 7,000 Americans were taken prisoners of war on the Korean Peninsula. More than 2,700 of them — nearly 40% of the total number captured — never made it out of the camps alive. Many of those who survived captivity did so despite having been subjected to torture and starvation. Perhaps some survived because they ultimately complied with their captors and participated in North Korean propaganda. Coffee or Die

Ukraine’s NATO Push Hit a Bump. Joining the EU Will Also Be Tough . . . Ukraine’s bid for quick NATO membership faced a setback last week. Its path to membership of the European Union looks equally bumpy, despite encouragement from Brussels.

The EU last summer granted Ukraine official candidate status, opening the way for eventual membership of the bloc, one of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s biggest goals for his country. Many EU officials and leaders describe the prospect of Ukraine joining the bloc as a necessity, vital to anchoring Kyiv in Western institutions, whatever its future relationship with NATO.

Yet EU accession remains years away, at best. Wall Street Journal

Ukraine attacked Crimean Bridge, official says . . . Ukraine’s military and security services were responsible for the attack on a key bridge that connects the Crimean peninsula to the Russian region of Krasnodar, a Ukrainian official said Monday. Ukraine used sea surface drones to attack the bridge — an important supply artery for Russia’s war in Ukraine — the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of military operations. Washington Post

Moscow halts grain deal after bridge to Crimea struck . . .  Russia halted participation on Monday in the year-old U.N.-brokered deal which lets Ukraine export grain through the Black Sea, just hours after a blast knocked out Russia's bridge to Crimea in what Moscow called a strike by Ukrainian sea drones.

Russia said two civilians were killed and their daughter wounded in what Moscow cast as a terrorist attack on the road bridge, a major artery for Russian troops fighting in Ukraine. Reuters

Israel and Arab neighbors gather to build trade deal framework . . . Amid efforts to broker new agreements between Israel and the Arab world, negotiators met this week to develop a roadmap for a broad future trade deal. The Atlantic Council and the Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation’s joint N-7 Initiative hosted a conference in Bahrain, following a similar gathering in the United Arab Emirates earlier this year, aimed at promoting cooperation between Israel and the Arab world in order to look at the possibility of a multilateral regional free-trade agreement. Fox News

Israel’s Netanyahu discharged from hospital . . . Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was discharged on Sunday after an overnight hospital stay for check-ups and monitoring following a dizzy spell. Netanyahu, 73, was rushed to Sheba Medical Center on Saturday after feeling mild dizziness. His office said he had left the hospital around midday after stating earlier that his test results were normal and that he was feeling “very good.”. Politico

Money

Europeans Are Becoming Poorer . . . Europeans are facing a new economic reality, one they haven’t experienced in decades. They are becoming poorer. Life on a continent long envied by outsiders for its art de vivre is rapidly losing its shine as Europeans see their purchasing power melt away. The French are eating less foie gras and drinking less red wine. Spaniards are stinting on olive oil. Finns are being urged to use saunas on windy days when energy is less expensive. Across Germany, meat and milk consumption has fallen to the lowest level in three decades and the once-booming market for organic food has tanked. Italy’s economic development minister, Adolfo Urso, convened a crisis meeting in May over prices for pasta, the country’s favorite staple, after they jumped by more than double the national inflation rate. With consumption spending in free fall, Europe tipped into recession at the start of the year, reinforcing a sense of relative economic, political and military decline that kicked in at the start of the century.  Wall Street Journal

Republicans Issue Ominous Warning to Ukraine . . . Republican voters attending the Turning Point Action conference in Florida on Sunday have sent an ominous message about U.S. support for Ukraine. A straw poll's results were announced by Charlie Kirk, president of Turning Point USA, who said that 95.8 percent of conference attendees were opposed to U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine. Newsweek

China’s Economy Barely Grows as Recovery Fades . . . China’s economy barely grew in the second quarter from the first quarter and youth unemployment hit a record high in June, providing evidence of a fading recovery that risks leaving the global economy underpowered this year as recession stalks the U.S. and Europe. The sluggish pace of growth in 2023 is piling pressure on Beijing to reignite an expansion that is in danger of fizzling out as consumers refrain from spending and exports slump. A drawn-out real estate crunch and shaky local-government finances are compounding the gloom. China’s economy grew just 0.8% in the second quarter compared with the first three months of the year, and more than a fifth of Chinese aged 16 to 24 are out of work. Wall Street Journal

Why you should never carry these things in your wallet . . . If you've ever lost your wallet, you know the disruption and inconvenience that it causes. However, you may not even realize how dangerous losing your wallet can be when it comes to protecting your personal privacy. There could be major consequences way worse than having to call and cancel a credit card, so be sure you take any of the following items out of your wallet today. Take these 10 items out of your wallet. Fox Business

Culture

Planned Torah, Bible-burning event in Sweden spurs outrage from Israeli officials: 'shameful decision' . . . srael came out swinging at Swedish officials on Friday following the decision by Stockholm police to allow the Bible and Torah to be burned during a protest scheduled for this weekend outside the Israeli Embassy.

Jerusalem called on the Swedish government to stop the protests, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "The sacred books of all religions must be respected." "I strongly condemn the decision of the authorities in Sweden to allow the burning of a Bible book in front of the Israeli embassy in the country," he said in a tweet. "The State of Israel takes very seriously this shameful decision that damages the Holy of Holies of the Jewish people." Fox News

Onetime guest on Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘pedophile island’ donates nearly $700K to Biden campaign fund . . . A joint fundraising committee raising dollars for President Biden’s re-election effort received a large donation from a tech billionaire revealed to have once traveled to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman dumped $699,600 into the Biden Victory Fund war chest, a joint fundraising committee authorized by the Biden campaign, in April, federal election records show. The donation came one week before The Wall Street Journal reported Hoffman had visited the late serial sexual predator’s US Virgin Islands compound in 2014. NY Post

Latest Deregulation Bill Risks Gifting China Our Meat Production . . . Confronting China and protecting American industries from China’s globalist ambitions involved opposing legislation that strengthens China’s grip on our economic interests. This is why I’m raising a red flag on the risks associated with the so-called Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act, H.R. 4417/S. 2019, led by Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS). Due to the opposition they’ve already faced since its introduction, they must know their proposal is grotesquely offensive to American farmers, states’ rights advocates, and experts on the China threat. In short, EATS would ban states from setting agricultural procurement policies that support their farmers and communities and clean the slate of existing state laws, enabling foreign companies to more rapidly acquire American agriculture assets. Daily Caller

Russian scientists warn of powerful solar flare activity on Monday . . . Powerful solar flare activity is forecast for Monday which may interfere with short-wave communications, Russian scientists said after three flares were observed on the sun on Sunday. The Fedorov Institute of Applied Geophysics in Moscow said class X flares were possible, including proton flares, and short-wave radio conditions were expected to deteriorate. X-class flares are the largest explosions in the solar systems and can create long-lasting radiation storms. Proton flares are a storm of solar energetic particles, composed chiefly of proton. Reuters

Why some bosses hate remote work and what can be done about common gripes . . . A study released this month by Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research found 40% of U.S. employees now work from home at least one day a week – a five-fold increase from 2019 to 2023. The popularity of remote work has caused companies to cut back on office space leases to the point that it is posing a significant threat to commercial real estate. Remote work is now a significant factor in attracting top talent for positions that can be carried out from home, and in a tight labor market, many companies have been forced to embrace it to remain competitive – but that doesn't mean they like it. Fox Business

Fare-dodging snake found riding D.C. commuter train . . . The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority said a train was taken out of service when a snake was spotted on board.

At least one passenger captured photos when the snake was spotted on the floor of the Blue Line Train at Reagan National Airport. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority spokesperson Sherri Ly confirmed the incident. She said officials do not know how the slithering strap-hanger got onto the train.

"It did not have a farecard and clearly slipped onto the train without tapping in," Ly told WDVM-TV.

Ly said the train was removed from service and parked in the WMATA yard overnight with its doors open. She said animal control officers searched the railcar the next day and confirmed the snake had left on its own. WMATA reported some delays as a result of the train being taken out of service. UPI