White House Dossier's

A Qatari plane took off from Tehran carrying the five with two of their relatives, shortly after the U.S. and Iran received confirmation that the funds had been transferred to accounts in Doha, a source briefed on the matter told Reuters

Trump moves to put the nail in DeSantis’ campaign coffin . . . Donald Trump’s campaign believes Ron DeSantis is flatlining. Now, they want to bury him. The former president and his team are beefing up their efforts in Iowa, hoping to deliver the type of knock-out punch that would effectively end the Florida governor’s bid and send a message to the other campaigns to get out of the way. Politico

Trump builds better machine: Campaign team and administration in waiting primed for Day One . . . Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign is more of a well-oiled machine than his first scattershot bid when he learned on the fly and threw together an operation that ignored the traditional nuts and bolts of running for president. The more professional nature of his campaign’s structure and the legwork his allies are putting in to prepare for a presidential transition is setting the stage for a far less chaotic scene if Mr. Trump seizes the nomination and then returns to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded in 2021 to promote Mr. Trump’s policies, is doing some of the heavy lifting through a transition project launched last year. Doug Hoelscher and Mike Rigas, a couple of Trump administration alumni, are leading the initiative. Washington Times

Trump Drops Massive Hint For Potential VP Selection . . . Former President Donald Trump suggested that he may pick a woman as his vice presidential running mate if he wins the Republican nomination. In an interview with NBC News’ Kristen Welker, Trump suggested that he “liked the concept” of picking a woman as his running mate, according to a report about the interview. Trump is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination with an average of 56.6% support. Daily Caller

Hunter Biden sues IRS, alleges agents tried to 'target' and 'embarrass' him . . . Hunter Biden's attorneys filed a lawsuit against the IRS on Monday, alleging that agents have "targeted and sought to embarrass" the president's son. Biden's Monday morning filing cites two major examples in IRS Agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, two whistleblowers who claimed the IRS mishandled aspects of its investigation into Biden. Biden's lawsuit seeks for the court to declare that the IRS "willfully, knowingly, and/or by gross negligence, unlawfully disclosed Mr. Biden's confidential tax information." Fox News

Open Letter to the DNC . . . By ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.
Dear Chairman Harrison and Members of the DNC,

I know some of you well. A few of you are among my oldest friends. Others of you I have never met. But all of you are my family, as public servants and fellow Americans. Families tell one another the truth, as best we are able with grace and love and, above all, with candor. When we take wrong turns, or fail to live up to our best selves, it is our family's responsibility to hold up a mirror and recall us back to our true purpose and highest self-expression. And so I feel compelled to write to you now, because in my view, limited though it may be, the Democratic Party has gone off track. Substack

Here’s All The Evidence Connecting Joe Biden To Hunter Biden’s Foreign Business Dealings . . .The amount of evidence connecting Joe Biden to Hunter Biden’s business dealings is growing as Congressional investigations continue to reveal new information surrounding Hunter Biden’s engagements. Witness testimony, emails, text messages, flights and additional evidence indicate Joe Biden was knowledgeable about Hunter Biden’s business dealings and communicated with his son’s business associates on numerous occasions. Daily Caller

US aims to make 100k artillery shells monthly by 2025 amid production challenges . . . The U.S. is planning to ramp up production of 155-millimeter artillery shells to 100,000 per month by 2025 in an effort to refill the military’s stockpiles and sustain demand from allies and partners like Ukraine. Fox Business

Clorox’s first-quarter results to see ‘material impact’ from cyberattack . . . Pine-Sol maker Clorox said on Monday its first-quarter results could see a “material impact” from a cybersecurity attack last month that damaged portions of its IT infrastructure and caused widescale disruption to its operations. The household staples maker said on Aug. 14 that unauthorized activity on its computer network forced it to take its systems offline, causing delays in order processing. It could not estimate how long it would take to resume fully normalized operations. CNBC

Why Putin infiltrates spies and disruptors to America and why authorities struggle to catch them . . . By Rebekah Koffler. Last Thursday, speaking at the Spy Museum in Washington DC, FBI Director Christopher Wray complained that Russia continues to infiltrate large number of spies into the United States, despite the FBI’s efforts to kick them out. He warned that the traditional counterintelligence threat from Moscow still looms large," as Russia, under President Vladimir Putin views the U.S. as an adversary, although the Cold War is over. As someone who spent my intelligence career monitoring threats coming from Russia, here’s why espionage remains the principal tool in Putin’s Playbook, targeting America, which presents a major challenge for the feds to disrupt. Fox News

NATO chief warns there will be no quick ending to the war in Ukraine . . . NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has warned that the war in Ukraine could be long, as Kyiv’s counteroffensive against Russia continues to make only marginal gains. Ukraine’s allies have sought to accentuate campaign gains in recent weeks, but it has been underway for months with no major breakthroughs. The fall will bring changing conditions on the ground and the possibility that Russia will once again try to pummel Ukrainian energy infrastructure. CNN

Kim Jong Un's sister is 'the most dangerous woman in the world,' expert says: Here's why . . . A North Korea expert discussed with Fox News Digital why Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, is "the most dangerous woman in the world" after surprise appearance in Russia last week. "Kim Yo Jong today is indeed the most dangerous woman in the world in all of Korean history, perhaps world history," said Sung-Yoon Lee, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. "Although she is relatively young – she turns 36 at the end of September – she is a woman who brings, of course, a softer image to the brutish, chauvinistic, male-dominated facade of her nation," he said.  Lee is the author of "The Sister," which tracks Yo Jong’s rise to power as "de-facto deputy" to the hermit kingdom’s supreme leader. Fox News

Money

A UAW Strike Made in Washington . . . This strike is made in Washington because of the Biden Administration’s policy mandating a rapid transition to electric vehicles. The UAW knows that EVs require fewer workers to make and will jeopardize union jobs making gas-powered cars. But the companies already lose money on EVs and worry about making too many concessions to the UAW that will cause them to lose even more as they are forced to build more EVs.

It’s hard to overstate the costs of this coerced EV transition. The Biden Administration, with California as its co-enforcer, is mandating that EVs make up an increasing share of auto-maker sales—two-thirds by 2032. California and other progressive states plan to ban all new gas-powered cars by 2035. Wall Street Journal

Billions of dollars in western profits trapped in Russia . . . Western companies that have continued to operate in Russia since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine have generated billions of dollars in profits, but the Kremlin has blocked them from accessing the cash in an effort to turn the screw on “unfriendly” nations. Groups from such countries accounted for $18bn of the $20bn in Russian profits that overseas companies reported for 2022 alone, according to figures compiled by the Kyiv School of Economics, and $199bn of their $217bn in Russian gross revenue. Financial Times

There Is Evidence for an Impeachment Inquiry . . .  Much of the press reports that Republicans have “no evidence” to justify investigating the President. It’s true there’s no proof so far that the President cashed checks from foreign sources. But there’s plenty of evidence that son Hunter and others in the Biden family received millions of dollars from foreign partners who believed they were buying influence with his father. The House has good reason to follow these leads about a President who is asking to remain in office for another four years. Wall Street Journal

Culture

Radical Left currents run deep here at home . . . Christopher F. Rufo recently published a bestseller on the impact of predominantly foreign leftist ideas on American politics and culture. Herbert Marcuse, “whose Marxist- and Freudian-inspired critical social theories had an astonishing lasting impact on the American left.” Among the notorious activities of this German refugee scholar, who came to the U.S. in the thirties, was training Angela Davis, the black radical Marxist, and this relationship (as we are not told) came during the twilight of Marcuse’s career, at the University of California at San Diego. During the violent upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s,”Davis's complicity in the attempted escape of murder suspects in a courtroom drama in Marin County, California, which resulted in four deaths, was somehow related to Marcuse’s teachings.

The American conservative establishment has focused excessively on foreign contaminants while denying the extraordinary receptiveness of American political culture to the poisonous fumes of foreign ideologies, particularly the radical revolutionary doctrines of Marcuse. American Mind

Is That a Spy in Your Car? . . . You know what the Chinese government does really well? Spy. The latest threat—a technology, soon to be ubiquitous, called LIDAR, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging. It's a system of complex sensors that can, for instance, serve as the “eyes” for a self-driving vehicle. Indeed, even cars that are only semiautonomous have a LIDAR system to guide them. It’s also a mapping technology, an aid to the growing number of “smart cities,” a tool for robotics, farming, meteorology, you name it.  As recently as 2018, most LIDAR systems sold in the U.S. were made by American companies. Today? The leading manufacturer is a company called Hesai. And though it has a Silicon Valley office, it is not a Silicon Valley company. It is a Chinese company that is now listed on the U.S. stock exchange. Free Press

Married mothers are happiest group in America . . . Married people with children are among the happiest group in America, according to new data in the General Social Survey. Both men and women are significantly happier being married, the study found, which increases when they have children. Washington Examiner

Paper checks are dead. Cash is dying. Who still uses them? . . . In a few years, comically oversized foam-board novelty checks will be the last remaining evidence of a 20th-century icon, as the paper check goes the way of the landline phone and the floppy disk. Even the most dubious cliché of the past century — the promise that the check’s in the mail — has fallen from common usage. So where — if anywhere — are paper checks making their last stand?  How many Americans still use paper checks? Who are they and where do they live? What are the trend lines? Washington Post

My Mom-in-law still uses them!

Wine flows through streets of Portuguese village after accident at distillery . . . Two tanks owned by the Levira Distillery spilled about 2.2 million litres of wine, enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Sky News