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Ron DeSantis’ debate strategy? ‘Tell the truth.’

Amid dueling strategy memos from the Ron DeSantis campaign and the Never Back Down super PAC, the candidate himself is suggesting his approach in Wednesday night’s GOP presidential debate in Milwaukee boils down to a simple precept.

“Tell the truth,” DeSantis said during a pre-taped interview that ran Monday on Manchester, New Hampshire’s WGIR.

DeSantis slipped into the second person, saying the goal was to “let people know why you want to be President and how you’re going to fix the country.” Then he flashed a stump-speech line.

“We’ve got to send Joe Biden back to his basement in Delaware and we’ve got to reverse this country’s decline and we’ll show him how it’s done,” DeSantis vowed.

The humble and straightforward approach here accords more with that outlined by his campaign than his super PAC.

“Viewers at home will see the fighter who volunteered to serve our country and deployed to Iraq after 9/11, the father who wants to restore America’s promise to future generations for his children and theirs, and the champion of freedom who stood up time and again as governor to defeat the left,” wrote Campaign Manager James Uthmeier, in a memo first reported by Axios.

DeSantis pitches outsider campaign, relies on Florida insider cash

While Gov. Ron DeSantis travels the country, painstakingly checking off each of Iowa’s 99 counties to try to expand his appeal, he’s received outsize support from a place much closer to home: the mid-size Florida city where he both governs with an iron grip and has built a political machine.

Roughly half a million dollars in campaign cash flowed to DeSantis’ political operation from Tallahassee through June, buoyed by contributions from lobbyists, staffers in his office and businesses that receive millions in taxpayer-funded government contracts. Six leaders of state agencies, all directly appointed or recommended by the governor, also gave. This total includes money given to both DeSantis’ campaign and a supportive super PAC.

While the full-throated financial support from the center of DeSantis’ power is not unexpected, it underscores how much he has leaned on Florida, sometimes prompting questions about the scalability of his campaign. The money also comes after several instances of DeSantis or his staff blurring the lines between his official and political operations.

Earlier this year, top aides in the governor’s office asked lobbyists to open up their checkbooks for the campaign when DeSantis still was considering the budget and could veto items sought by their clients. Three staffers laid off from his campaign have since been hired by the state of Florida, according to Axios, while DeSantis’ chief of staff, James Uthmeier, is taking a leave of absence from state government to serve as the new campaign manager.

Florida lawmakers urge NOAA to enhance coral rescue efforts

A bipartisan group of Florida lawmakers has written a letter to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration urging the agency to use its emergency powers to support the rescue and protection of corals threatened by the current marine heat wave.

Florida’s coral reef tract, the third largest in the world, has been suffering a coral bleaching event due to a marine heatwave this summer. Coral bleaching happens when stressors cause corals to expel the algae living in their tissues, turning the coral white.

The algae’s photosynthesis provides the coral with nutrients. If the bleaching event is short-lived, corals have been known to regain algae and recover, but if the stress is prolonged, the corals often die.

The letter, addressed to NOAA administrator Richard Spinrad, stated, “We urge you to expeditiously use the emergency mechanisms available to you under to the Coral Reef Conservation Act (CRCA) to maximize the efforts being undertaken by state and federal managers and their non-profit partners to identify and monitor continuing heat stress across the reef, maintain essential genetic diversity of coral populations, and plan for responsible reintroduction and restoration.”

A peek at Big Pharma’s playbook that leaves many unable to afford drugs

America’s pharmaceutical giants are suing this summer to block the federal government’s first effort at drug price regulation.

Last year’s Inflation Reduction Act included what on its face seems a modest proposal: The federal government would for the first time be empowered to negotiate prices Medicare pays for drugs — but only for 10 very expensive medicines beginning in 2026 (an additional 15 in 2027 and 2028, with more added in later years). Another provision would require manufacturers to pay rebates to Medicare for drug prices that increased faster than inflation.

Those provisions alone could reduce the federal deficit by $237 billion over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office has calculated. That enormous savings would come from tamping down drug prices, which are costing an average of 3.44 times — sometimes 10 times — what the same brand-name drugs cost in other developed countries, where governments already negotiate prices.

These small steps were an attempt to rein in the only significant type of Medicare health spending — the cost of prescription drugs — that has not been controlled or limited by the government.