Happy Tuesday, I’m Teddy Schleifer. 

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We’ve got a potpourri of items in today’s email. Some names mentioned: Christine Pelosi, Scott Wiener, Matt Haney, Adam Nash, Steve Phillips, Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance and Melinda French Gates.

But first, a few observations…

• MacKenzie Scott caused quite a stir in December by declining to disclose any information about the organizations to which she had donated over the past six months. Scott later said that her grantees were free to volunteer that info themselves, if they wanted to, but basically no one did. Over the last 10 days, however, a bunch of them suddenly opened up about where Scott’s latest round of donations went: $133 million for school support services, $15 million for a nonprofit fighting teen suicides, $5 million for a Latino-led education group in Boston, and more. Is change afoot?

• Remember when Jeff Bezos donated $100 million to the Obama Foundation but asked that they put John Lewis’s name on the door, in an admirable attempt to change the custom of wealthy donors naming buildings after themselves? Perhaps Bezos should have expressed the same wishes after donating $2.7 million to the D.C. Public Library Foundation, which decided on its own, apparently, to rename the library’s auditorium in his honor. (Only $3 million gets you that sort of billing, really?) Instead, the auditorium naming became mired in anti-Bezos protests...

The Pelosi Nepotism Succession Question

With Republicans expected to retake the House in November, could Pelosi’s congressional seat become a family dynasty? Plus: Zuckerberg loses Thiel, Melinda goes rogue (or not), and Silicon Valley discovers diversity.

Democrats haven’t lost the House yet, but San Francisco is already positioning for the likelihood that the city’s 81-year-old congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi, won’t finish her term if she’s forced to give up the Speaker’s gavel next year. Pelosi made some “news” last month when she announced that she is indeed running for reelection—duh—but the smart money says Republicans are very likely to take the majority, and the expectation is that Pelosi would then ultimately step down after getting her caucus organized for a new session of Congress. 

Both the progs and the mods, in San Francisco parlance, have been jockeying for this moment forever. If Pelosi steps down early next year, her replacement could very well be decided in a special election that spring, and so it behooves aspirants to begin cultivating support ahead of a possible snap race. And trust me, they already have been. In a city crawling with stifled ambition, the race is likely to be hella savage.

Most of the chatter in political circles has centered on Christine Pelosi, the Democratic National Committeewoman and the daughter of the woman who has represented the city for the last 30 years. Christine, a lawyer, has a lengthy political resume of her own, but her greatest asset is certainly her last name and her mother, a feared political force who would...

FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT