Gather round, for Elon Musk has made a new Twitter declaration.
The Tesla CEO informed Twitter followers on Wednesday that he is not joking about using rocket thrusters to get his upcoming Tesla Roadster to fly— or at least hover.
As Musk does, he responded on Twitter to a Tesla fan praising the advancements the car has made over the last six years. The fan (perhaps cheekily) included a gif of a flying DeLorean. Musk quote-retweeted the image, adding “The new Roadster will actually do something like this.”
The Roadster is a new super-fast Tesla that Musk has promised for 2020. Previously, he launched a Roadster into space for SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket launch. And though that vehicle became airborne thanks to a rocket, Musk has since floated the idea that one day, it would use rocket launchers to fly.
SpaceX option package for new Tesla Roadster will include ~10 small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly around car. These rocket engines dramatically improve acceleration, top speed, braking & cornering. Maybe they will even allow a Tesla to fly …
After Musk responded to the fan’s initial tweet, the tech vlogger Marques Brownlee responded to Musk, saying “The thing is I feel like you’re not joking.” And, of course, Musk made it clear — as clear and precise as you can be in 280 characters — that making the Roadster hover was seriously on the road map.
I’m not. Will use SpaceX cold gas thruster system with ultra high pressure air in a composite over-wrapped pressure vessel in place of the 2 rear seats.
Musk believes that the future of transportation is going vertical, as he told press at a Boring Co. event. Most recently, that’s meant building down. Through work with the Boring Co., Musk thinks the solution to traffic is building dozens of high speed tunnels, one on top of the other, underneath cities. He debuted the test track for this system in December to underwhelming results.
But apparently going higher is in the cards, too. Or maybe, this has less to do with killing traffic than it does with outfitting his car with friggin’ rockets.
Democrats want Trump’s nominee for attorney general to assure them he won’t interfere in the special counsel’s investigation.
As the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares for hearings on William Barr’s nomination for attorney general, one person will loom large in the room: special counsel Robert Mueller.
Several Senate Democrats on the committee plan to grill Barr at his confirmation hearing next week on his views on Mueller’s Russia investigation, focusing on a controversial memo Barr wrote last year to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. In that memo, Barr criticized Mueller’s investigation into possible obstruction of justice as “fatally misconceived.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday said Barr should be disqualified from leading the DOJ in part because of the memo.
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“The memorandum is deeply worrisome because in effect he says the president is above the law... that’s incorrect as a matter of law but certainly for an attorney general to have that position is deeply wrong,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who said he’ll ask Barr if he’ll stop political interference into the special counsel’s probe.
He added that Barr should recuse himself from overseeing the investigation if he can’t provide an “ironclad” commitment to protecting Mueller and declines to disavow statements he made in the memo.
Barr’s nomination battle comes at a key moment in Donald Trump’s presidency, with the Justice Department in transition and Mueller’s probe entering its 20th month. The investigation has netted seven guilty pleas as well as secured a conviction of the president’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
Trump has repeatedly blasted the Mueller investigation, deeming it a “witch hunt,” and has taken to Twitter dozens of times to criticize the investigation and the investigators involved in it. A bipartisan group of senators are also reintroducing a bill to protect Mueller, though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said such a bill isn’t needed and has refused to bring it up for a floor vote.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), another Judiciary committee member, also agreed that the Mueller investigation will be front and center and called it “troublesome” that Barr volunteered his opinion on Mueller’s authority. “I’m sure he’ll deny any culpability and assure me that he’s going to be a straight arrow but I come to it with a degree of skepticism,” he said.
Democrats say that the departure of Rosenstein, who is reportedly leaving the Justice Department after a new attorney general is confirmed, also raises the stakes for choosing the next attorney general. While Democrats can’t block Barr’s nomination by themselves, they may succeed in getting him to commit to protecting the Mueller investigation under oath.
“I would have liked [Rosenstein]… to be theattorney general,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) adding that she wants to hear from Barr “that the Attorney General’s office is an independent entity.”
Trump nominated Barr for attorney general in December. If confirmed, he would replace former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who Trump resented after he recused himself from the Russia investigation. Barr also served as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush.
Despite the focus on the Mueller investigation, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee don’t appear to have a completely uniform strategy for how to approach the nomination hearing. When asked about the Democratic strategy, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said he had “no idea” and would focus his attention on meeting with Barr and asking his own questions. Blumenthal seemed to agree.
“I have my questions and my strategy for asking those questions. I don’t think there’s a Democratic strategy,” he said.
Senate Republicans are bracing for Barr’s hearing to become confrontational, particularly given the contentious nature of the committee’s high-profile hearing of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has no doubt that Democrats will try to block Barr’s confirmation in no small part because Democratic senators with 2020 aspirations may use the hearing to stand out.
“Senate Democrats especially on the Judiciary Committee have demonstrated that they will treat almost anything like a political circus, and you’ve got right now it seems like half of the Judiciary Committee on the Democratic side running for president so I fully expect more ‘Spartacus’ moments in the next two years,” said Cruz, referencing Sen. Cory Booker’s performance during theKavanaugh hearings.
Despite potential Democratic attacks, Senate Republicans don’t appear concerned about Barr’s memo to Rosenstein and remain confident that he will be confirmed, particularly given that they expanded their majority during the midterm election. Only 50 votes are needed to confirm a nominee and so Republicans don’t need any Democratic votes.
Barr met Wednesday with Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and former Committee Chair Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Graham said that during their meeting, Barr reassured him of his respect for Mueller.
“He said ‘I’ve known Bob Mueller for decades,’ their wives are like best friends,” Graham said, adding that Barr believes Mueller is “professional, will be fair to the president, fair to the country and...is going to make sure that Bob Mueller can finish his job.”
Graham also expressed support for bringing up the Mueller protection bill in his committee if the probe is still going on next month.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who is also on the Judiciary Committee, doesn’t see Barr’s memo to Rosenstein on the Mueller investigation as disqualifying and noted in an interview that Barr wrote the memo as a private citizen.
Not all Republicans are on board yet with Barr’s nomination. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) reiterated his concern Wednesday with Barr’s view of civil liberties. “I believe there are some statements of his saying the Patriot Act didn’t go far enough and should have gone farther,” Paul said.
This post is part of ourHigh-tech High series, which explores weed innovations, and our cultural relationship with cannabis, as legalization in several U.S. states, Canada, and Uruguay moves the market further out of the shadows.
It’s not easy being green — especially at CES, the world’s largest consumer electronics convention. Marijuana tech companies are grumbling about how difficult it is to participate in CES 2019 because organizers will not allow them to exhibit.
“We’re not allowed on the showroom floor, and it’s apparently because [organizers] say they haven’t created a category for cannabis vaporizers yet,” says Jeff Brown, vice president of public policy and communications at PAX Labs, an electronic vaporizer company.
“Apparently they’re not comfortable with cannabis. It’s odd and mildly frustrating,” he adds. “Nevada is a medical and recreational [consumption] legal state, and there’s certainly no shortage of alcohol being served at CES. There are concessions everywhere. To draw the line at a technology company demoing cannabis is odd and frustrating.”
“Apparently they’re not comfortable with cannabis. It’s odd and mildly frustrating.”
For a company like PAX Labs, the consequence of not being able to participate in a convention like CES can be devastating. The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the trade organization that hosts CES, estimates 180,000 people will attend the conference this year with more than 4,500 exhibiting companies and more than 6,500 media workers.
For a startup like Pax Labs, the type of exposure and backroom deals that can be made at a conference like CES can catapult a company from tiny startup to full-fledged industry leader.
Mashable spoke to the CTA about its decision to prohibit marijuana technology companies from exhibiting at the conference. In an emailed statement, the CTA said, “There are no cannabis or e-cigarette products on the exhibit floor at CES, as the show does not have a category pertaining to that market. As the industry and regulations evolve, we continue to assess all categories.”
Of course, not everyone is happy with the association’s logic. “It feels counterintuitive for a platform centered around innovation and progression to have such a conservative viewpoint on something that millions of people use and find significant benefit from,” says founder of portable vaporizer company Puffco, Roger Volodarsky.
Other marijuana tech company executives agree. “We think the biggest challenge facing the cannabis industry right now is that millions of people are trying cannabis for the first time, and millions of people are coming back after a long hiatus, and they don’t know what to expect,” says Brown. “Technology can help solve that problem, but CES won’t let us do that.”
Marijuana isn’t exactly a hidden phenomenon in Las Vegas, either. Attendees at CES regularly get whiffs of marijuana outside of the larger hotels on the Las Vegas Strip. The Nevada Department of Taxation estimates more than $340 million in recreational marijuana sales occurred from July 2017 to April 2018. Estimates from Cowen investment bank suggest the legal weed industry could generate $75 billion in the U.S. by 2030.
But for now, marijuana companies are being forced to exhibit off-site at CES, against the will of the organizers. “This movement has too much momentum to be stopped now,” says Volodarsky. “CES has the opportunity to lead the stage for innovation in our field. Not doing so just gives the opportunity to someone else to capitalize on all the interest in the cannabis space.”
And for savvy attendees, there are plenty of marijuana companies demonstrating tech products during CES — albeit outside of the convention center at unofficial events. Maybe next year they won’t be forced to puff in the shadows.
A new study from Princeton and New York University delves into how much people share fake news online, and who’s doing the sharing. It largely confirms what some previous studies have indicated, and what you might have already suspected: the people who share the most fake news are your grandparents.
More specifically, the largest determinant to sharing a fake news article was being over the age of 65 — regardless of political orientation.
“No other demographic characteristic seems to have a consistent effect on sharing fake news, making our age finding that much more notable,” the study reads.
For the overall set, the other determinant outside of age was being a conservative Trump supporter. But this finding was not as significant as age group.
Researchers surveyed a representative sample of 3,500 US adults, then matched those respondents with their Facebook profiles. From there, they determined whether they had shared a fake news article, from a list compiled by a BuzzFeed reporter.
The findings were more optimistic than one might assume. In fact, the study is called “Less than you think: Prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on Facebook.” Ninety percent of people who shared links did not share a single fake news article.
“Sharing of stories from fake news domains is a much rarer event than sharing links overall,” the study reads.
Its findings back up an initial report from one of the same researchers, Andrew Guess of Princeton University. That January 2018 study of 2,525 Americans also found that people over 60 were the most likely age group to share fake news, as well as people who leaned conservative.
Of course, the study was only able to look at what people shared on their Facebook pages. That means we don’t know how much or who shared fake news in Facebook Messenger, let alone in other apps where people are increasingly getting news, such as WhatsApp.
But with Facebook’s status as the political locus for the spread of misinformation online, this study may temper some of the blame. That, or a small amount of people sharing a small amount of articles, is much more powerful than it appears.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Kuzma discussed how he thinks Lakers head coach Luke Walton can create a five-man lineup similar to what the Golden State Warriors use when they go small with their best players, per the Los Angeles Times‘ Tania Ganguli:
“I think our smallball unit can be really good. I think we can have a death lineup whether that’s [Rajon] Rondo and Lonzo [Ball] on the floor at the same time and me and [Brandon Ingram] and [Le]Bron [James] or substituting guys. I think as we get better defensively and get more continuity, that small ball lineup is going to be huge for us, especially in the playoffs, when everybody’s going to be going small.”
This article will be updated to provide more information on this story as it becomes available.
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Vice President Mike Pence made a rare trip to the House GOP conference meeting, where he and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen spent more than an hour speaking to members about specifics of the wall. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images
House Republicans have united against a Democratic strategy to try to end the shutdown.
An 11th hour campaign by the White House and House GOP leaders to stem Republican defections on Democratic funding bills is working.
The House GOP caucus is presenting a largely united front against Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s funding strategy this week after several days of fierce lobbying by the Trump administration, according to multiple lawmakers and aides.
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Just eight Republican lawmakers voted for the first funding bill on Wednesday evening — a remarkable shift from days earlier, when top GOP leaders feared they could lose more than two dozen Republican votes and undermine President Donald Trump’s campaign for border wall money.
Nineteen days into a shutdown, the vast majority of House Republicans voted against reopening the IRS and other key portions of the federal government. A similarly limited number of defections is expected for the other three spending bills up for a vote this week.
Just two Republicans — Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) — abandoned the GOP’s stance Wednesday after voting against previous Democratic funding bills. The other GOP supporters were Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Will Hurd (R-Texas), John Katko (R-N.Y.), Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who backed a Democratic bill last week to reopen the government.
One member, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) decided to oppose the funding bill after voting with Democrats last week.
White House officials, as well as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, had launched a full-court press this week to counter Pelosi’s attempts to pick off rank-and-file Republican support for her bills to reopen the government.
On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence made a rare trip to the House GOP conference meeting, where he and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen spent more than an hour speaking to members about specifics of the wall. The lengthy briefing included a Q&A session, and members emerged with packets of border security statistics.
McCarthy called another closed-door GOP conference meeting on Wednesday — less than 24 hours after Trump’s televised national address — where border security also dominated the discussion.
GOP lawmakers had been feeling the heat this week as the consequences of the partial government shutdown appeared to grow harsher. Tax refunds were at risk, as well as funding for food stamps programs.
But the Office of Management and Budget took major steps early this week to mitigate some of those effects. Budget officials declared Monday that the Internal Revenue Service would still be able to process tax refunds. On Tuesday, the administration announced that it had found a way to fund nutrition assistance for struggling families.
Those tactics — as well as sharper attacks against Democrats on border security — appears to have won over at least some GOP skeptics.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who previously voted with Democrats to reopen parts of the government, will vote against the bills this week. Smith told POLITICO Wednesday he planned to vote against the funding bills, after rereading parts of the Secure Fence Act — a decade-old bill that became the chief GOP talking point on Capitol Hill.
Another Republican, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), had been “leaning yes” on the funding bills, but said he changed his mind after Democrats decided not to put forward the bipartisan, bicameral versions of those funding bills. Instead, the House will vote only on the Senate’s version of those bills.
“These are just the Senate priorities that really screw the Republicans in the House,” Simpson said of the four spending bills on the House floor this week.
“I think if people thought this bill could reopen the government, it would be a different animal,” added Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), another GOP appropriator who plans to vote against the funding bills this week.
Ages ago, in a galaxy some 300 million light years away, an unwitting star veered fatally close to a powerful black hole. After shredding the star apart, the black hole ejected pulses of energy into the cosmos.
Astronomers received this ancient signal, made of x-rays, in 2014.
Now, a team of astrophysicists used these x-rays to reveal insights about this enigmatic black hole, specifically, how rapidly it’s spinning. They published the study Wednesday in the journal Science.
“You’re getting information from right next to the black hole,” Dheeraj Pasham, an astrophysicist at MIT and the study’s lead author, said in an interview. “You’re getting information from the strongest gravity that can exist.”
An artist’s impression showing hot gas orbiting in a disk around a rapidly-spinning black hole.
Image: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss
The black hole in question is thought to be super massive — about 1 million times the mass of the sun. Accordingly, it has an immensely powerful gravitation pull. So when an unassuming star traversed near this black hole, it began to rip the star apart. This dramatic moment is called a tidal disruption event, or flare.
“It’s just gravity — but gravity in an extreme situation,” Chris Fryer, an astrophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who had no involvement in the study, said in an interview.
These tidal disruption flares are critical to understanding the nature, and spin, of black holes that are actively consuming stars.
As the black hole strips away the star, this volatile matter heats up to 1 million degrees Celsius as it gets pulled into a disk around the black hole, explained Pasham. This “star soup” then emits energy, in the form of x-rays, into space. In the case of this black hole, scientists found that a strong x-ray signal was emitted every 131 seconds over at least 450 days.
Critically, the hot disk is suspected to orbit just outside of the black hole’s event horizon — which is the point of no return. Not even light can escape.
“The key is figuring out how close the material can get to the black hole,” said Pasham.
In other words, armed with evidence about how and where this disk of hot star matter was moving, combined with a good idea of the black hole’s mass, Pasham said his team “teased out” the black hole’s spin. It spins at about half the speed of light. Researchers have calculated black holes’ speeds before, and they can spin faster than this one, but this one’s speed is nothing to sneeze at.
“It’s just a really rapidly spinning black hole,” said Fryer.
An artist’s conception of swirling matter around a black hole.
Image: nasa
This method of studying black holes — by observing the dramatic shredding of stars — gives scientists improved insight into massive black holes that are actively ripping apart massive stars and creating disks of star matter. This is rare. Only about 5 percent of black holes are actively doing this.
“It’s basically having access to this pool of supermassive black holes that have not been studied before,” Pasham said.
Pasham plans to look for, and hopefully spot, more of these dramatic events in the cosmos. The aim is to continue unravelling the nature of black holes — which are still largely enigmatic and relatively new to science.
“A little over 20 years ago we were not certain we could prove black holes existed,” said Fryer. “Now, there is no one doubting it.”
“In a twist that would disappoint Mr. Glass more than anything in the world, Glass settles for being barely ordinary, when it could have been something extraordinary.”
The reviews are in and critics, like Mashable’s own Angie Han, agree across the board: Glass should have been a dramatic, spellbinding finale for longtime fans, but instead, director M. Night Shyamalan has delivered an underwhelming squelch of a conclusion not worth the price of admission.
Starring Bruce Willis, James McAvoy, and Samuel L. Jackson, Glass completes Shyamalan’s Eastrail 177 superhero thriller trilogy. Preceded by Unbreakable (2000) and Split (2016), Glass follows the escalating superhuman abilities of three men recently placed under the care of psychiatrist Dr. Ellie Staple, played by Sarah Paulson.
Shyamalan’s heroes are grounded in a tangible reality to a degree that makes their crises of faith particularly potent, but the longer the attempted rehabilitation stretches out, the less interesting and more inert it becomes. No matter how you think it’ll shake out — that they’ll be cured of their superheroic delusions or transcend the boundaries that have been set upon them — that question alone isn’t enough to sustain such a large chunk of a film that has so many other avenues it could explore. The idea of a definitive answer also starts to undermine the “real” trappings of Unbreakable and Split, especially the former’s sense of ambiguity; being able to climb walls or bend steel loses meaning when it’s made the rule rather than the exception.
The other problem is that Shyamalan’s premise disarms his greatest strength. Shyamalan has always thrived on the power of the unseen, and his best films are so enduringly tense because of how they exploit inference and off-screen space; think of the pantry scene in “Signs,” and the general pall of fear that settles over “The Village.” Think of how both movies lose their luster as soon as the truth is put on full display. With “Glass,” the issue isn’t that there’s nothing to see, but rather that there’s nothing to hide. McAvoy is climbing on the walls in the first 20 minutes, and the Wizard of Oz is staring you straight in the face. Shyamalan never corners himself into his old compositional brilliance — he never uses the darkness to make us desperate for the light.
James McAvoy’s talents shine despite dull surrounding narrative
Throughout this, the character given the most screen time is the Horde. In fact, the second act of Glass is primarily a showcase for McAvoy’s acting abilities. (Which, to be honest, are pretty extraordinary, considering we meet even more of Kevin’s many personalities this time around.) But as he’s going through those impressive transformations and motions, the film doesn’t go through many of its own. Any tension or suspense built out of the first act is almost totally removed and we’re left with an exposition-heavy story that’s spinning its wheels waiting for the real plot to kick in, or at least another action set piece.
Speaking of shattering: This is not Mr. Glass’s movie, despite what the title and billing might tell you. The title Split 2 wouldn’t make for as flashy a Blu-ray collection box, but this movie belongs to McAvoy. One of the most impressive aspects of the script is the way it gives entire character arcs to several of the personalities that dwell inside Kevin Crumb’s head, and McAvoy plays them out fully across his face and body. Shyamalan loves a good, striking close-up on an actor’s face, which gives the audience prime opportunity here to watch McAvoy cycle through personalities in a single take. I suggest paying attention to the actor’s eyes; it’s astounding to note the ways they change with each alt. They exude innocence when the 9-year-old Hedwig is in control, grow primal when The Beast is unleashed, sharpen when Ms. Patricia takes the floor.
For fans, it is undeniably thrilling to see Unbreakable and Split meet
As a fan of both earlier movies (although I prefer the intellectual rug-pulling of Unbreakable to the grim, captivity-themed Split), seeing these three characters first assembled in the same room is thrilling. But Shyamalan doesn’t seem to know what to do with his dense mythology once he’s convened his long-awaited superhero loony-bin summit meeting. Instead of having his two earlier movies dovetail to create something deeper and richer, it quickly begins to feel like subtraction by addition.
Glass collides with the classic pitfalls of most sequels
It’s good to see Shyamalan back (to a degree) in form, to the extent that he’s recovered his basic mojo as a yarn spinner. But “Glass” occupies us without haunting us; it’s more busy than it is stirring or exciting. Maybe that’s because revisiting this material feels a touch opportunistic, and maybe it’s because the deluge of comic-book movies that now threatens to engulf us on a daily basis has leeched what’s left of the mystery out of comics. In “Unbreakable,” Elijah said, “I believe comics are a form of history that someone, somewhere felt or experienced.” He still believes that, but today’s comic-book culture looks more like a dream broadcast from corporate central. What it no longer feels connected to, even in “Glass,” is experience.
Glass is a major step down from Unbreakable, which remains one of Shyamalan’s best-conceived films visually, structurally, and thematically. The way Unbreakable is shot — mostly in long, ahem, unbroken takes — underscores the things it is about. It’s also moody and ominous and simultaneously uplifting and depressing. Looking at it in 2019, it’s obvious what critics saw in the young Shyamalan, and why he was compared to filmmakers like Spielberg and Hitchcock. The guy who made Unbreakable warranted those comparisons.
So where is that guy in Glass? Shyamalan throws in a few long takes and one or two bold camera angles. Otherwise, Glass is perfunctorily shot — and the flashbacks to the events of Unbreakable (using footage from that film) only serve to remind viewers how interesting it was to look at, and how this one is mostly just … there.
The film’s finale is open-ended, if not outright confusing
The tension between wish-fulfillment heroics and realism was tantalizing in Unbreakable. Here, it’s more confused. Those of us who have steered clear of gossip sites or promotional interviews may find ourselves, after the big showdown Mr. Glass has engineered, not certain what we have seen. Is Glass the least satisfying chapter of an often enjoyable, conceptually intriguing trilogy? Or is it an attempt to launch a broader Shyamalaniverse, in which ordinary men and women throughout Philadelphia and its suburbs will discover their own inspiring abilities? Marketplace realities make the latter more likely. Here’s hoping the former is the case.
Tom Steyer, a 61-year-old former hedge fund manager from San Francisco, has long harbored political aspirations. | John Minchillo, File/AP Photo
Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmental activist, said Wednesday he will not run for president and instead pump more money into his effort to remove Donald Trump from the White House.
Steyer detailed his plans in downtown Des Moines, one of several states where he’s launching a new round of ads as part of his multi-million-dollar TV and digital campaign calling for Trump’s impeachment.
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“We have a lawless president in the White House who is eroding our democracy and it is only going to get worse,” the 61-year-old former hedge fund manager from San Francisco said in a statement. “Donald Trump’s removal from power ultimately decides whether or not we can tackle every other challenge we face in America — and whether or not we continue to live in a democracy of, for, and by the people. It is past time for members of Congress to fulfill their constitutional duty. The question remaining is what will Congress do?”
Steyer has flirted with runs for office before, including for governor of California in 2018 and the Senate in 2016. But people close to him said this was most serious he’s ever been about running.
He has spent recent weeks working the phones and reshuffling staff, after spending more than $120 million in the midterm election cycle. While leaning toward a presidential run, Steyer also has been courting staffers and speaking with high-level operatives who could guide a campaign.
People familiar with his operation — groups with different names that are largely autonomous — said Kevin Mack, one of the architects of Steyer’s impeachment push, is splitting his time between the Bay Area and Washington.
Steyer has long harbored political aspirations; he spent years traveling the world sounding the alarm on climate change. But after Trump took office, he devoted more time to making himself the face of impeachment, dialing up pressure on fellow Democrats by generating 6.6 million signatures.
For all of his efforts, he’s struggled to build a national brand for himself and remains a virtual unknown in early polls. The location of his announcement turned some heads. As one Democratic operative put it, “Why go to Iowa and say you’re out?”
But Steyer, for his part, said he plans to invest another $40 million into the impeachment gambit, including more town halls in early states and supporting House investigations into Trump‘s actions.
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Daily Trends Hunter 