Greetings, and welcome back to The Stratosphere.

We’ve got about 10 items on matters ranging from deadly serious to purely entertaining in today’s edition. We break news here every Tuesday that makes you better at your job, so break out your corporate card and just expense it already.

Mentioned in today’s edition: Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin de Becker, Reid and Dmitri, Mark Pincus, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jeff Yass and the three political fixers on his payroll, Ken Griffin and how the Club for Growth reached a détente with the Congressional Leadership Fund, Keith Rabois and Jake Helberg, Doug Leone, David Sacks, Marc Andreessen and the fall of grilled-cheese mogul Jonathan Kaplan.

But first…

• Get me Gretchen: Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is headlining multiple fundraisers for Joe Biden in the Bay Area next month, per invites—including a happy-hour reception in Palo Alto next month, and then another with David and Brooke Rusenko in Marin County. Small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, sure, but it strikes me as a vote of confidence from the Biden team that Whitmer—who serves as a national co-chair of the reelection campaign—can pull. So much of how an event performs is driven by the name atop the invite.

  Whitmer, of course, has been discussed as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, and she’ll get plenty of batting practice if she does solo surrogate finance events for the Biden reelect. Whitmer has relationships—she’s headlined meetings of the Democracy Alliance, and has put on Bay Area fundraisers for herself. But this is her first swing here for Biden, and the team will be watching closely. Could it be that Whitmer generates more revenue than, say, yet another Kamala event?

• Kennedy’s bridge to nowhere, cont’d: The Democratic National Committee has filed an F.E.C. complaint against the R.F.K. Jr. super PAC, in part citing my reporting on a so-called “bridge loan” that security consultant to the stars Gavin de Becker extended to the group. The D.N.C. alleges that they essentially engaged in an illegal scheme when de Becker provided the PAC $10 million (and counting), artificially inflating the group’s fundraising in the media, and potentially misleading other donors, when the group never anticipated keeping the money.

  Gavin, who is close friends with Kennedy and whose firm has been paid handsomely by the campaign for security services, has called these funding tranches a “bridge loan,” but this arrangement is, objectively, highly unusual, unlike anything I’ve ever seen covering money in politics. The D.N.C. is keying in on the idea that I’ve surfaced here, which is that this should have been disclosed as a loan, rather than a donation. Yes, perhaps it’s all very tsk-tsk compliance pedantry, but it speaks to the fact that the D.N.C. clearly sees Kennedy and his big-money operation as a threat. The PAC, American Values, hasn’t yet replied to the complaint, nor to my request for comment.

Their conversation centered on how Biden might use digital, influencer-driven platforms such as TikTok to circumvent the mainstream media, and ideally present the president in a more flattering, less filtered light. The lunch, which hasn’t previously been reported, was part of a new effort by Biden world—orchestrated by the master producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, who is playing match-maker—to better cultivate business elites, who have oodles of cash, healthy egos, and who have never really felt like they were in the president’s inner circle, as they did during the Obama era.

Back then, especially during the 2012 campaign, tech leaders like Hoffman and Pincus maintained a special relationship with the White House. Of course, Obama’s aides went out of their way to create that impression—and fundraisers were more than happy to feed tech donors that narrative as long as the check cleared. But the chumminess wasn’t entirely manufactured, and the president would often consider their advice, and hear their perspectives, on issues both political and technological.

Alas, that’s not the case today. Biden has some work to do, and his team knows it. “There’s been a broad campaign to try and help the Biden team understand that they need to engage business leaders,” said a person familiar with the lunches. “A lot of the business community that was involved in 2020 is now mostly unaware of Biden, other than the things that have irritated them.” A second source familiar with the strategy said that Biden wanted to win over tech and was “cultivating that group more with higher touches.” And if Biden got some constructive feedback along the way, all the better.

It was previously expected in Democratic circles that Hoffman would retire from his extensive political engagement after 2020; during the Trump years, he once said that he would even step out of board meetings to focus on politics if need be. But then January 6 happened, and Reid (first-name-only required in this context…) decided to double down. Now, the billionaire LinkedIn founder is as active as ever, hosting regular briefings for allied donors in the tech industry, and drawing up strategies that might give Democrats a much-needed edge. Pincus, for his part, is not as virulently anti-Trump as Hoffman. But he has described his partisan political giving as a form of philanthropy, and Democratic aides have worked hard over the last year or so to cultivate him, appealing to the magic of Obama’s 2012 operation.

Hoffman and his chief political adviser, Dmitri Mehlhorn (first-name-only required there, too…), have always been big believers in partisan-owned media channels, and I’m told that, at that same lunch, the coterie of techies pitched Biden on ways to reach voters who don’t read The New York Times. In other words, on finding opportunities to “let Joe be Joe,” in settings where he feels more comfortable, fun, and authentic, and on platforms where Biden hasn’t traditionally had any sort of presence. But perhaps the hard truth is that this high-visibility strategy doesn’t work as well for an 81-year-old Biden as it did for a 51-year-old Obama.

Yass, a formerly low-profile hedge funder out of the Philadelphia area, is advised by Matthew Brouillette on Pennsylvania matters, but any conversation about his team should begin with David McIntosh, who heads the Club for Growth. Yass and his wife, Janine, have historically focused on the expansion of charter schools, and Club-friendly libertarian priorities like tax cuts. But as TikTok gained enemies, so has Yass, who has a $30 billion stake in ByteDance through his hedge fund, Susquehanna International Group, or SIG. Early last year, I’m told, Yass hired Tony Sayegh, a former Trump administration official, to lead public affairs at SIG, and to effectively serve as his donor adviser, helping dole out money to groups during the G.O.P. primary. In turn, Sayegh has advised TikTok on some political matters.

Yass isn’t doing hand-to-hand combat on TikTok, but the Club most definitely is. And unlike some other organizations, the Club as an entity is highly dependent on a few major donors—Yass, the Uihleins, the Virginia James family—so it can sometimes be hard to tell where the Club’s interests begin and Yass’s end. Yass, after all, has put almost $90 million into the Club’s super PACs over the last five years, and who knows how much into its dark-money groups.

So it was very interesting to G.O.P. finance hands when they saw that Yass had cut two checks in the second half of last year to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the then-McCarthy-led establishment House Republican super PAC, which had regularly knocked heads with the Club over the past decade or so. The apparent détente between the two groups, reached in the midst of McCarthy’s ascension to speaker, wouldn’t have happened accidentally. I’m told that Yass and Ken Griffin, a G.O.P. megadonor close to C.L.F., received some credit for helping broker the ceasefire.

Yass, who is also a major donor to Zionist causes in Israel, met very briefly with Trump the other day—just before Trump flipped and trained his fire not on the Chinese-owned app, but instead on Facebook and the philanthropic faux-scandal known as “Zuckerbucks.” Trump denied that Yass put any pressure on him, saying that he just talked with Yass and his wife about charter schools. I’m told that is accurate. It’s unclear how hard Trump plans to whip on this issue, especially given that the House’s support for the bill seems pretty overwhelming. So while he has had a recent rapprochement with the Club, it’s still brand new, and it could very well come to nothing, anyway.

Up against Yass’s TikTok evangelism is a motley coalition of tech investors who moonlight as China hawks and are fans of Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican with strong ties to the industry’s biggest players, who has been leading the Washington charge. Vinod Khosla, a major Democratic donor, suggested he would spend real money of his own to unseat any senator who tried to block the bill in the upper chamber. (I reached out for more detail, but he declined to clarify further.) You already know that Marc Andreessen is loving this. Joe Lonsdale told me he’s talking with “friends” in D.C. about the bill. (No details, sadly.) South Florida eminence Keith Rabois, who is more politically active than he has been in years—and is married to Jacob Helberg, a leader among the Silicon Valley anti-China hawks—said on Tuesday that he would “never fund any Republican candidates or leadership PACs (or the N.R.S.C.) run by Republicans who vote against the TikTok legislation.” Funny, since just last month Rabois and Helberg hosted the current N.R.S.C. chair, Steve Daines, at their home in Miami, according to an invite I’ve seen.

But the Silicon Valley venture capitalist most top-of-mind for me is Doug Leone, the global managing partner at Sequoia, which has a big stake in ByteDance. I wonder what Leone, Sequoia’s most politically active person on the right, with a range of relationships, is doing to help his firm’s embattled portfolio company. He is once again allied with Trump, whom Leone famously dropped in the wake of January 6. Sequoia didn’t return a request to share what he’s up to on TikTok’s behalf, although they do have a relatively new lobbyist on retainer: Will Dunham, a former top aide to McCarthy.

• The Joy of Sacks: It was quite something to behold the hundreds of young conservative activists who came out for David Sacks at the conservative nonprofit American Moment’s fundraising gala in Washington last week. Sacks was just “Silicon Valley famous” a few years ago, when I first met him. But now he’s at a whole other level in the culture. Sacks, of course, is also a favorite recurring character in this newsletter. Senator J.D. Vance, who introduced him, called him “one of his closest confidants” in politics.

  Onstage, Sacks was professorial, as if teaching a political-science lecture. He presented some 20 slides about the war in Ukraine, repeating arguments he’s made in numerous public forums—saying at one point that the “RussiaGate hoax has metastasized into a new Cold War with Russia.” But those who dismiss him as a mere podcast loudmouth are wrong about his legitimate sway in Washington. He was mobbed after his remarks.

• Marc Andreessen Eats West Virginia: If you’ve missed my reporting on the political return of Marc Andreessen—who secretly hosted Ron DeSantis, has dunked on anti-Trump writers with Mike Pence memes, and recently launched a massive pro-crypto lobbying effort in Washington—consider that Andreessen is now speaking at the House G.O.P. retreat this weekend in West Virginia. He’s ostensibly there to talk about A.I., and while I imagine he’d do the same if House Democrats asked him to, I highly doubt their membership would be comfortable with inviting him.
• Fall of a grilled cheese mogul: Finally, a lot of tongues have been wagging around Silicon Valley following a scathing report about Jonathan Kaplan, whom techies know as one of the founders of the Flip camera but will also forever, in my mind at least, be associated with founding The Melt, the pretty disgusting S.F. grilled-cheese chain. Kaplan was one of the few Silicon Valley bundlers to get an ambassadorship—to Singapore, no less!—and yet now he’s mired in scandal over mistreatment of his staff… So, uh, yeah, his peers stateside are paying attention to this, especially those that didn’t get an ambassadorship.