Usher Announces 2021 Las Vegas Residency, and All We Can Say Is 'Yeah!'

Usher once sang “if you want it, scream ‘yeah’”—and it looks like fans of his live shows are going to be screaming “yeah!” next year.

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All the Key Ingredients to Stop Wasting Food and Cook Properly for One

Cooking your own meals is a bonafide way to save money and eat better. Especially now, with a lot of people still quarantined, cooking is a good distraction from everything while also making something essential to your well-being. But, it seems like every recipe is portioned for an entire family. I’m one of those…

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Kanye spends nearly $6M on presidential campaign

Rapper Kanye West is pouring in millions of his own money and hiring prominent political operatives to fuel his independent presidential bid, according to his first financial filing with the Federal Election Commission.

West’s campaign is almost entirely self-funded. The rapper reported loaning his campaign nearly $6.8 million and receiving just over $11,000 in outside contributions. He reported spending $5.9 million and has over $1.2 million in outstanding debt owed to consultants.

The majority of the campaign’s expenses have been to get on ballots in states across the country. His campaign reported paying $4.4 million for various ballot access-related expenses. He’s currently on the ballot in a handful of states, and has litigation pending in others.

Much of his expenses are going to a handful of firms. He reported paying nearly $1.3 million to Atlas Strategy Group — the firm of Gregg Keller, a prominent Republican operative who has helmed major conservative groups and worked on campaigns for Republicans like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and former President George W. Bush.

He also reported paying just under $1.5 million to Fortified Consulting, a Tempe, Ariz.-based firm with little public presence, and $2.7 million to the Long Island-based Millennial Strategies, a firm that lists Democrats as clients, including Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign; Jumaane Williams, the current New York City public advocate; and Suraj Patel, a congressional candidate who unsuccessfully challenged Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) in a primary earlier this year.

Fortified Consulting shares a mailing address with the Arizona branch of Lincoln Strategy Group, which had done work for President Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016, along with a slew of other Republicans. A representative for Lincoln Consulting did not immediately respond to a request for comment from POLITICO.

West paid $25,000 to John Boyd, whom New York magazine described as a “spiritual adviser” to West, and $25,000 to Isaac Ford, whom the Tennessean reported helped get West on the ballot in that state. Ford's father and brother — Harold Ford Sr. and Harold Ford Jr., respectively — were Democratic members of Congress from Tennessee.

West’s campaign also reported paying $444,000 to Millennial Strategies for polling, an exorbitantly high amount for a fledgling campaign. He also spent $95,000 on travel to a charter jet company.

He has shelled out over $400,000 in legal fees to various firms, as he sues in multiple states to get on the ballot. Most recently, West is asking the Arizona state Supreme Court to reverse a ruling that is keeping him off the ballot in the battleground state.

The report covered spending and fundraising from July 15-Aug. 30. West will not be required to file another report until Oct. 20, just two weeks before Election Day.

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Judge strikes down DeVos plan to boost pandemic relief for private schools

A federal judge on Friday ruled that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ effort to boost the amount of emergency pandemic relief that flows to private school students is illegal and struck down the policy.

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled that DeVos ran afoul of the CARES Act when she required public schools to send a greater share of pandemic assistance to private school students than is typically required under federal law.

The judge sided with the NAACP, which had brought the legal challenge against DeVos’ policy, criticizing it as a ploy to divert emergency aid away from needy public schools toward more affluent private-school students.

Several other judges had already preliminarily blocked DeVos’ rule in certain states, but Judge Friedrich’s ruling — which is final — goes further in striking down the entire rule as illegal. The ruling will apply nationwide.

Fredrich ruled that DeVos lacked the authority to add her own conditions on the $13 billion that Congress set aside for K-12 schools in the CARES Act.

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Trump contradicts health officials, says 'probably' a Covid-19 vaccine in October

President Donald Trump again suggested that a coronavirus vaccine would “probably” be available in October, contradicting assessments this week by top health officials who have said it would be very unlikely.

Trump said in a press briefing Friday that there would be a vaccine “before the end of the year and maybe even before Nov. 1. I think we can probably have it sometime in October.”

The president's remarks came a day after the head of the government's vaccine accelerator, Moncef Slaoui, said that the government was "very unlikely" to greenlight a vaccine by early November, because data from late-stage clinical trials of leading vaccine candidates would not be ready by then.

"There is a very, very low chance that the trials that are running as we speak could read before the end of October,” said Slaoui, who heads the government's Operation Warp Speed, told NPR. “I think it's extremely unlikely but not impossible, and therefore it's the right thing to do to be prepared in case."

He is not alone in urging caution. While three vaccine developers have entered the final stages of trials, phase III, the studies take months and enroll tens of thousands of people.

The federal government's top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, also cautioned this week that result could take longer.

“If you look at the projection of the enrollment and the kinds of things you'll need to get a decision about whether the vaccine is safe and effective, most of us project that that's going to be by November and December, by the end of this year,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said on CNN. “It is conceivable that you could have it by October, though I don't think that that's likely.”

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told reporters this week that the company will know if its coronavirus vaccine works by the end of October. But it is unclear whether the Food and Drug Administration, the agency responsible for reviewing vaccines, would issue an emergency use authorization or approve the shot based on that data.

Trump had previously suggested that a vaccine could be ready before the election, and last month accused government scientists of trying to delay progress until after Nov. 3.

Meanwhile public confidence in coronavirus vaccines has slipped, with just 14 percent of voters be more likely to take a vaccine recommended by Trump, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.

But both Slaoui and FDA's top vaccine official Peter Marks have said they would quit their jobs if a shot was rubber stamped without enough data. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn has also denied politics would play any role in their decisions.

The FDA has scheduled a public meeting for its vaccine advisory committee, a panel out outside experts, to discuss coronavirus vaccines on Oct. 22.

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