Complete article is at The Morning Dispatch
- Wyoming and Alaska held primary elections on Tuesday. Some highlights:
- Rep. Liz Cheney lost resoundingly to her Trump-backed primary challenger, attorney Harriet Hageman. Winning reelection “would have required that I enable [Donald Trump’s] ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic,” Cheney said in her concession speech. “That was a path I could not and would not take.” After retirements and primaries, just two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021 will be on the ballot in November.
- Chuck Gray—the Trump-backed candidate for secretary of state in Wyoming—beat out Tara Nethercott in the state’s Republican primary after campaigning on Trump’s claims of a stolen 2020 election.
- Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska led Kelly Tshibaka, her Trump-backed primary challenger, by fewer than 300 votes as of 2 a.m. ET, with about 40 percent of the vote yet to be counted. The final result might not be known for a while, but because of Alaska’s unique primary system, both candidates will advance to a ranked-choice general election in November.
- Mary Peltola—a former Democratic state lawmaker—was leading former Republican Gov. Sarah Palin and Republican Nick Begich III in the first round of balloting for Alaska’s special election to serve the final five months of the late Rep. Don Young’s term. The ranked-choice tabulation, however, is not expected to be released until the end of August.
- President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law on Tuesday, enacting the legislation that includes more than $400 billion in healthcare and green energy subsidies, as well as additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service. Democrats claim new corporate taxes and stricter IRS enforcement will generate enough revenue to pay for the bill’s provisions and reduce the deficit, but the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has not yet released an updated estimate following a few last-minute changes to the act.
- A Russian ammunitions depot in Crimea was rocked by explosions on Tuesday, with Ukrainian government officials telling media outlets their forces were behind the sabotage. The attack came days after a similar strike on a Russian airfield in Crimea, and appears to be a part of Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive.
- Axios reported Tuesday that, in an effort to assure lawmakers concerned about influence by the Chinese Communist Party, Oracle has begun vetting TikTok’s algorithms and content moderation models for signs of CCP manipulation. TikTok—which is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance—claimed in June that 100 percent of U.S. user traffic is now being routed through Oracle’s servers, and that it “expect[s] to delete U.S. users’ private data from our own data centers.”
- The Food and Drug Administration issued a rule on Tuesday that will allow adults with mild or moderate hearing loss to buy hearing aids over-the-counter beginning as soon as October. Advocates believe the rule will increase competition, resulting in improved products, lower costs, and increased access to hearing aids.
- The Education Department announced Tuesday it is canceling about $3.9 billion in federal student loan debt for approximately 208,000 borrowers who took out money to attend ITT Technical Institute between 2005 and 2015, when the for-profit technical school was shut down. “For years, ITT's leaders intentionally misled students about the quality of their programs in order to profit off federal student loan programs, with no regard for the hardship this would cause,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said.
- The Justice Department announced Tuesday the FBI arrested former Democratic Rep. TJ Cox in California on Tuesday. The one-term congressman—who represented California’s 21st congressional district from 2019 through 2021—was charged with 15 counts of wire fraud, 11 counts of money laundering, one count of financial institution fraud, and one count of campaign contribution fraud.
