Welcome back to The Stratosphere.

There are a lot of new subscribers and first-time readers flowing in, so it’s worth re-setting the table: Every Tuesday, you’ll get a private email from me that takes you inside the economic stratosphere of billionaires, their political influence, philanthropic intrigues, and family offices. I tend to focus on the Silicon Valley set, given my years enmeshed in the San Francisco tech money scene, but not exclusively.

It has been a busy few weeks—our last three editions have covered the ascendancy of Rory Gates, the Microsoft scion moonlighting as a political player; Dustin Moskovitz, the Facebook co-founder preparing to spend big to beat Trump in 2024; and Nicole Shanahan, the only-in-Silicon Valley running mate of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Subscribers can read about all this and more, from myself and the rest of my Puck colleagues. Non-subscribers, obviously, cannot. We maintain a tough paywall, but good journalism is worth paying for. We all know you can expense it, anyway.

Today’s edition is full of previously unreported intel from the political fundraising world. But first…

• Silicon Valley meets the speaker: On Friday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson dropped into Silicon Valley for breakfast with notable business leaders, I’m told, marking his very first...