• House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Tuesday he’s been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which he called “a very treatable blood cancer.” Scalise said he’s begun treatment and expects to continue serving throughout his treatment.
  
  

• COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to rise and deaths from the virus jumped 21 percent last week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A new booster is expected to be approved in late September.
  
  

• The Congressional Black Caucus called on Republican Party leaders to condemn GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy‘s recent comparison of Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) to “modern day grand wizards” of the Ku Klux Klan. Ramaswamy was referring to a 2019 comment from Pressley that he described as racist.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez is out of the Republican presidential primary. The announcement comes after Suarez failed to meet the party’s polling threshold for inclusion in the first debate last week.

From Suarez’s release: “I look forward to keeping in touch with the other Republican presidential candidates and doing what I can to make sure our party puts forward a strong nominee who can inspire and unify the country, renew Americans’ trust in our institutions and in each other, and win.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has announced the first 10 drugs that will be subject to Medicare price negotiations according to a provision of the Inflation Reduction Act. (Find the list of drugs here.)

• President Biden often touts the program to lower prescription drug prices as a “key part of Bidenomics.”
  
  
• The program faces legal challenges from pharmaceutical companies and industry groups.
  
  

Learn about this and more in Joseph Choi‘s 5 things to know about the first 10 drugs chosen for Medicare negotiation.

X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, will allow political ads again, reversing a policy in place since 2019. The company also said it’s expanding its safety and elections teams.

X’s policy prohibits “the promotion of false or misleading content, including false or misleading information intended to undermine public confidence in an election, while seeking to preserve free and open political discourse” in political ads.

A New York Times analysis found 40 percent of wells hit all-time low levels in the past 10 years.

From The Hill’s Zack Budryk: “Human-caused climate change is a major driver of the depletion, reducing the snowpack that flows into rivers and leaving groundwater to make up the deficit for watering lawns and crops — which already requires additional water as temperatures spike.” Read more here.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C), who is running in the GOP presidential primary, released an education platform that he called “a bold agenda to support and empower parents — from the classroom to the locker room to the smartphone.” Among other things, it sets out to increase school choice and “save Title IX and women’s sports.”

“Prisons shouldn’t be called homes, especially in the Census” —  Montana state Sens. Shane Morigeau (D) and Jason Small (R) (Read here)

“Solving homelessness requires more evidence and less politics” — write professors Bill Evans, David Phillips and Jim Sullivan (Read here)

President Biden holds a meeting to discuss wildfire recovery efforts on Maui.