We Are The Champions

House Passes USPS Bill

The House passed a bill on Saturday that would reverse recent changes to the USPS and give $25B in additional funding ahead of the November election, though the White House has issued a veto threat. Separately, six states and Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit against Postmaster General DeJoy alleging the recent USPS changes (which DeJoy later postponed until after November) were “unlawful” and designed to impede efforts to conduct “free and fair elections.”

More: Also on Saturday, the House unanimously passed a bill to provide emergency funding to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is set to furlough ~⅔ of its employees by the end of the month.

Louisiana Braces For Back-To-Back Storms

Tropical Storm Marco was declared a Category 1 hurricane on Sunday and is expected to make landfall in Louisiana sometime later today. Right behind Marco is Tropical Storm Laura, which forecasters predict will be upgraded to a Category 2 hurricane by the time it makes landfall within the next few days (also in Louisiana). If the two storms develop simultaneously, it will reportedly be the first time on record the Gulf of Mexico has seen two hurricanes at the same time.

More: California’s LNU Lightning Complex grew to become the second-largest wildfire in state history (currently ~341k acres burned) over the weekend, with the SCU Lightning Complex (~340k acres burned) jumping up to third. (Full List)

COVID Roundup: The FDA authorized emergency use of convalescent plasma (taken from recovered COVID patients’ blood) for treatment of certain patients. | The CDC dropped its 14-day quarantine recommendation for travelers returning from overseas or out of state. | Check your state’s ICU capacity.

🔒 Run-On Sentence Incoming… the Golden State Killer was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Friday, while TV star Lori Loughlin and her husband were sentenced to two months and five months in prison, respectively, for their roles in the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal.

‘Tik Tok Toe’ Continues

TikTok confirmed plans to sue the Trump administration later this week over its Aug. 6 executive order prohibiting any U.S. transactions with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance. A separate order released on Aug. 14 gave ByteDance 90 days to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok, with the company reportedly in talks with potential acquirers Microsoft and Oracle.

More: A group of WeChat users (unaffiliated with the company or its owner, Tencent) is similarly suing the Trump administration over its Aug. 6th executive order that also encompasses WeChat.

Step Down 2: The Streets

• American Media (publisher of the National Enquirer) announced CEO David Pecker will step down from his position and into an advisory role as the company enters a merger with Georgia-based Accelerate 360.
• Amazon announced that Jeff Wilke - CEO of the company’s worldwide consumer business & considered a potential successor to Jeff Bezos - will retire early next year.

Palantir Publicizes Performance

On Friday, data analytics startup Palantir privately disclosed a $165M loss in 2019 to potential investors ahead of its IPO planned for as soon as next month. The annual loss reportedly increased to $579M (amid $742M in overall revenue) when costs like sales, marketing, and research were taken into account. The company was valued at ~$20B in a 2015 fundraising round.

Worth Noting: Twitter on Sunday flagged a tweet by President Trump the company said made “misleading health claims that could potentially dissuade people from voting.” View the tweet in question.

🏠 There’s No Place Like Home… according to the National Association of Realtors, existing-home sales jumped 24.7% in July, the largest monthly increase on record.

Mama Bear

Due to her advanced age, giant panda Mei Xiang is not an ideal candidate to give birth. However, since pandas are notoriously bad breeders (and officially “vulnerable” to extinction), the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C., artificially inseminated 22-year-old Mei back in March.

Last Friday, the zoo announced on Twitter that Mei was entering into labor, drawing so many viewers to the livestream that the site crashed. Soon after, Mei became the oldest panda in the U.S. to give birth, successfully delivering a healthy-looking “tiny little pink bald thing” roughly the size of a stick of butter.

Now You’re Talking My Language

When the Pilgrims came to America in 1620, the first indigenous peoples they met were Wampanoags. The collection of tribes lived in Massachusetts and parts of Rhode Island for over 12,000 years. However, by the turn of the twentieth century, the Wampanoag language was not spoken anywhere in the world.

Enter linguist Jessie “Little Doe” Baird, who is single-handedly responsible for reviving the Wampanoag language. Following a vivid dream featuring her Wampanoag ancestors, Jessie embarked on a more-than-decade-long journey (earning a graduate degree from MIT along the way) to reintroduce the language through her nonprofit foundation.

Footprints In The Sand

When the pandemic first began, Greyson Winfield of Conway, SC, was very emotional. The eight-year-old, whose parents have served as role models for acts of service as former firefighters, anguished over how the parents in his community would be able to feed their families and keep their homes if they could not work.

Determined to help the less fortunate, Greyson founded Helping Footprint, an organization through which he collects donations for families struggling to buy groceries or pay their bills. The fourth-grader, who says he wants to be like President John F. Kennedy when he grows up, also mows lawns for local first responders and single mothers.