WHAT'S BREWING
TRUMP'S FORMER DHS CHIEF OF STAFF CALLS HIS SECURITY POLICIES 'TERRIFYING' Miles Taylor, who was chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security from 2017 to 2019, recounted Trump’s “terrifying” behavior in a video for the group Republican Voters Against Trump and in an op-ed for The Washington Post. “We would go in to try to talk to him about a pressing national security issue ― a cyberattack, terrorism threat,” Taylor said in the video. “He wasn’t interested in those things ... The president wanted to exploit the Department of Homeland Security for his own political purposes.” [HuffPost]
POSTMASTER GENERAL AGREES TO TESTIFY Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has agreed to testify before Congress over changes to the U.S. Postal Service that have caused major postal delays nationwide and that threaten mail-in voting in the upcoming presidential election. DeJoy will testify at the hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Aug. 24. DeJoy, whom Trump appointed in May, is a top Republican donor who has reportedly given more than $2 million to the Trump campaign. This comes as U.S. Postal Service is about to raise rates following weeks of cutbacks and delays. [HuffPost]
AN ELITE CONSULTING FIRM FAILED TO MAKE BLACK LIVES MATTER After four months of working for the small management consulting firm Red Associates in New York City, Funke Sangodeyi felt like something was “off.” Then at a party one night, a senior manager, a white man, approached her. “Oh my God, your skin is so dark,” Sangodeyi recalled him saying. “Does it come in shades darker than yours?” She was shocked. “You don’t say that,” she told him. That was just the start of a disturbing few years for Sangodeyi at Red Associates, a management consulting firm based in Copenhagen and New York City that currently has 51 employees. [HuffPost]
TRUMP FINALIZES ARCTIC REFUGE DRILLING PLAN Trump’s administration finalized a sweeping plan to open Alaska’s fragile Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling ― a move that would forever transform one of America’s last true wild places. The decision sets the stage for future oil and gas leases in the refuge’s 1.5 million-acre coastal plain, most likely before the November election. The refuge, often described as “America’s Serengeti,” covers more than 19 million acres in northeastern Alaska. [HuffPost]
COVID CANCELS UNC CLASSES 1 WEEK IN The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced that the school was moving its undergraduate courses to online only, just a week after the semester began. Over the weekend, the school announced four separate “clusters” of COVID-19 ― defined as five or more cases ― in student housing. As of Monday, the school reported only four spaces remained in the quarantine housing set aside for students who had been exposed to the virus. [HuffPost]
HARRIS MAY PLAY A HUGE ROLE IN FOREIGN POLICY AS VP. SO WHERE DOES SHE STAND? Kamala Harris has very little foreign policy experience at all, but a close examination of Harris’ Senate career and recent presidential run yields some clues. At the least, she appears to be gaining familiarity with the subject and searching for footing, susceptible to pressure from both backers of a muscular traditional American approach and the more dovish progressive wing of her party. The final destination of her evolution matters tremendously, both for the future of a Biden White House but also the party — which Harris could easily be leading herself in four to eight years. [HuffPost] | 
