WHERE IN THE WORLD IS MITCH MCCONNELL?

The Senate’s languorous August recess ends today, and the rumor mill around the Russell Building is sure to be buzzing with this question: Will Mitch show?

The five-week summer break provided Team McConnell with a convenient reprieve from questions about his whereabouts. But now it’s back to business. Aides will have to play magicians and make the former Senate Majority Leader reappear.

When our colleague Nicole Silverio asked McConnell’s staff whether he would return today, they could only email back a press release from 38 days ago. McConnell has not made a public appearance or cast a vote in the Senate since his hospitalization on June 14.

And another warning signal is blinking communist red: When McConnell’s Taiwan-born wife Elaine Chao said her husband’s hospitalization “did not warrant an immediate return” from her trip to China, it raised some eyebrows. Our colleague Philip Lenczycki dug in, and as he reported last week, discovered that Chao has held multiple positions with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). She held some of them while serving in the Cabinets of two American presidents. Chao was championed as a role model of the United Front Work Department, China’s foreign influence arm, on a United Front website from 2004 to 2018.

Foremost Group, the shipping firm owned by her father James S.C. Chao, who also held United Front positions, may have benefited from Chao’s lack of action on America’s deteriorating maritime industrial base while she served as Transportation Secretary.

Even before he fell unconscious in June, McConnell seems to have been oblivious.

The word “senate” derives from the Latin word senatus, literally meaning “council of elders,” and for good reason. The Upper Chamber is the upper chamber because the Founders meant the Senate to be a wise and level-headed bulwark against the tyranny of a hotheaded and capricious majority. But they also intended the Senate to be the dignified venue of great debates. And there’s nothing dignified about elder abuse perpetrated to extend the dying days of an outmoded Republican Party — a GOP sound asleep while globalization undermines America.

THE EXECUTIVE

‘He’s Not As Orange As He Looks’

Over the weekend President Donald Trump’s renegade approach to European allies found a new outlet, Ireland. Trump broke from prior presidents’ strategic ambiguity about whether Protestant Northern Ireland and the Catholic Republic of Ireland should reunify, expressing his support for its reunification after meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin in Dublin.

“I think it would be a great feather in everybody’s cap if that happened. You know what? The way I look at it, it’s going to happen eventually. It may as well happen now,” he said.

The news rattled Northern Irish politicians who prefer being part of the United Kingdom.

“Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom because that is the settled democratic will of its people,” said Gavin Robinson, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, in an X post. “As unionists we are not interested in the destruction of our country by joining with the Irish Republic.”

But Trump found unusual bedfellows in his stance. The leader of Ireland’s Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern Ireland Claire Hanna said of Trump, “turns out he’s not as orange as he looks,” a reference to the color representing Protestant British loyalists.

Trump also met privately with Irish President Catherine Connolly, who gave him a passive aggressive gift: Ceasefire, a poem by Belfast-born Michael Longley.

Trump also attended the Irish Open golf tournament at Trump International Golf Links, in Doonbeg, Ireland, on Sunday.

Could The Iran War Affect The 2028 Election Too?

Just hours before Vice President JD Vance made a pitch to young conservatives to vote GOP in the 2026 midterm elections, even if they disagree with the Iran War (“I’m not asking anybody to agree on every single policy of the administration. What I am asking you to do is to recognize the contrast with the radicals…”) a report has emerged via the Wall Street Journal that Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are privately grappling with the possibility the war will continue long enough to drag down their presidential prospects in 2028 too.

Vance and Rubio have said in behind-closed-doors meetings that the hardline Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) could withstand the administration’s economic pressure and even further bombing campaigns, echoing critics like University of Chicago Prof. John Mearsheimer, who argues that the regime views the war as an existential threat to its survival.

Trump’s public predictions have been rosier, insisting that the Iranians will squeal once they’ve sabotaged Republicans’ midterm chances.

“They can’t hold out any longer. They are desperate to try to influence the elections so that we get a weak group of people who will leave them alone and allow them to get their nuclear weapons,” he said last week.

Meanwhile gas has topped $100 per barrel and diesel prices have climbed, squeezed in part by the Houthis’ seizure of a strategic island and port city in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and the closure of a Saudi Arabian pipeline after an Iraqi drone strike.

So Why Did We Need The Patriot Act Again?

The U.S. received dozens of warnings about Osama bin Laden, including his intention to use hijacked planes, three years before the 9/11 attacks, intelligence memos declassified by the CIA on Friday show in vivid detail.

Presidential Daily Briefs (PDB) are delivered to the Commander in Chief and a handful of other senior officials and summarize the half dozen or so most pressing intelligence matters of the day. The 9/11 Commission Report in 2004 found Bin Laden had routinely appeared in PDBs under Clinton and Bush. But now Americans can read them for themselves, and they include startling levels of specificity.

It raises a major question about the culture of enhanced domestic surveillance 9/11 ushered in. If U.S. intelligence had detailed warnings before 9/11 all along, why were Americans subsequently asked to hemorrhage their Fourth Amendment protections to catch the terrorists?

In the 25 years since the passage of The Patriot Act, that culture of domestic surveillance has only deepened, between Flock Cameras and FISA Section 702. But we haven’t had any national reckoning over whether it was ever truly necessary.

THE LEGISLATIVE

The House and Senate will be back in session this afternoon.

iCongress

Democrat Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune are reportedly working on a plan to establish safeguards for artificial intelligence as more Americans question its safety.

Klobuchar said she’s working on a bipartisan agreement on “legislation for commonsense guardrails to address the risks posed by AI systems,” SEMAFOR reported last Thursday.

The day before the report, Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz posted on X that he’s “working with” Klobuchar and Thune on “legislation to address catastrophic risks involving biological or nuclear threats.”

This all came after news of OpenAI’s agentic artificial intelligence models hacked open-source AI platform Hugging Face.

Around 700 OpenAI agents from the company’s Highly Persistent Internal Model (HPIM) and GPT-5.6 Sol research models launched a cyberattack against Hugging Face, sending over 70,000 unauthorized messages to each other despite being designed to be isolated from one another, according to an Aug. 26 report by Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR) and Redwood Research.

Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee, launched a probe into OpenAI over the incident.

“OpenAI knew that the AI agents were exhibiting rogue behavior and let the evaluations continue anyway,” Hawley stated in his Thursday letter to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Hawley gave OpenAI until Oct. 1 to respond to 16 questions aimed at clarifying the incident.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned in an essay on his blog Saturday that a similar incident “could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage)” in 6-12 months at AI’s current rate of development.

Open AI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk agreed.

Could This Somali Immigrant Face Deportation For Fraud?

Rep. Ilhan Omar could face deportation for immigration fraud in light of evidence she married her brother, according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

“We know that she married her brother to try to bring him to the United States,” Mullin said. “There may be more to this, the whole family migration and possibly some illegal activity for them to come to the United States to begin with. … If you lied about certain things about your application. There’s no expiration to that.”

Omar has denied the accusation as “absurd” and “offensive.”

Republican activists continue to push the administration to put the pedal to the metal on the deportation of all Somali fraudsters and other illegal immigrants amid questions about the accuracy and precision of DHS numbers.

Meanwhile, Democrat members of Congress continue to double down on their suicidal woke-maximalist positions.

Wisconsin Rep. Gwen Moore described the illegal foreigner detainees of Immigrations Customs and Enforcement (ICE) as her “constituents” in a press conference and condemned immigration law enforcement, even as she conceded that her visit to a Leavenworth ICE facility revealed no inhumane treatment.

“While my constituents said they were being treated well, I can’t figure out why they’re here. They’re asylum seekers and moms with no criminal records, they’re far from the ‘worst of the worst,’” she said.

Texas Rep. Al Green held his own anti-ICE press conference outside a Houston LGBTQ community center earlier in the week: “In recent months, the federal government has halted the provision of specialized medical care for transgender detainees in at least 10 detention centers across the nation, which experts have warned can cause physical and mental health complications,” he said.

COMMITTEES TO WATCH:

House Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust — Examining Healthcare Markets: Fraud and Competition — Monday, Sept. 14, 9:00am

House Subcommittee on Energy — Nuclear Spent Fuel Policy: Examining Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses — Tuesday, Sept. 15, 10:00am

House Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement — The Continuing Tragedy of Sanctuary Laws — Tuesday, Sept. 15, 10:00am

Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions — Hearing on Nominations for Deputy HHS Secretary, Surgeon General, and SAMHSA — Tuesday, Sept. 15, 10:00am

House Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee — Twenty-Five Years After 9/11: The Evolving Terrorism Landscape and State’s Counterterrorism Response — Wednesday, Sept. 16, 10:00am

House East Asia and Pacific Subcommittee — Lives, not Leverage: the Long Arm of China and North Korea’s Repression — Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2:00pm

Senate Committee on Aging — Half the Country, Zero Hearings: Meeting the Moment to End the Menopause Care Gap in America — Wednesday, Sept. 16, 3:30pm

House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions — Main Street Capital Access Act: Empowering Community Banks to Drive Economic Growth — Friday, Sept. 18, 12:00pm

THE JUDICIAL

The Supreme Court of the United States begins its 2026-2027 term on Oct. 5.

SCOTUS Presses Brakes On Redistricting Effort

Just when you thought the war to redraw America’s congressional districts ahead of the election was over, SCOTUS froze a federal judge’s order that would’ve allowed the state to use a new map that would’ve given Republicans an additional seat in Congress.

Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed the “Missouri First Map” (pictured) in September 2025, according to the governor’s press release. The map would’ve kept the number of seats in Missouri at eight while rendering one of its two blue districts Republican.

Courtesy of the Missouri Office of Administration’s Division of Budget and Planning

“I was proud to officially sign the Missouri First Map into law today ahead of the 2026 midterm election,” Kehoe stated in the press release. “Missourians are more alike than we are different, and our values, across both sides of the aisle, are closer to each other than those of the congressional representation of states like New York, California, and Illinois. We believe this map best represents Missourians, and I appreciate the support and efforts of state legislators, our congressional delegation, and President Trump in getting this map to my desk.”

People Not Politicians executive director Richard von Glahn and other opponents of the map reportedly submitted over 300,000 signatures to put the map up for a vote on the November 2026 ballot before its implementation.

However, after Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins rejected the petition on Aug. 4, Von Glahn filed a lawsuit asking the judiciary to reverse Hoskins’ decision. The Missouri Supreme Court approved his request on Sept. 4.

Hoskins then asked SCOTUS to weigh in, which Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected last Tuesday, according to SCOTUSblog.

That same day, Chief U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark filed a restraining order requiring Missouri to use the Missouri First Map in the 2026 elections. The 8th Circuit Court rejected Von Glahn’s subsequent appeal last Wednesday, leading him to take it up to SCOTUS which ultimately paused Clark’s order.

Regardless, of the ten states that redrew their maps ahead of the 2026 elections, California and Utah were the only ones to have likely caused seats to flip blue, the DCNF reported in June.

Federalism Is A Two-Way Street

While the judiciary is determining how Americans can get elected into the legislative branch, the legislature will be determining which Americans can get appointed into the judicial branch.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a nomination hearing this Wednesday at 10:15am, and will hold an Executive Business Meeting this Thursday at 10:15am, where they may vote on which nominees to advance.

However, before that, the Senate is expected to hold a roll call vote today at 5:30pm regarding Matthew R. Byrne’s nomination to serve as U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Ohio.

Byrne began his first term on the Ohio Court of Appeals for the 12th District in January 2021, according to his Federalist Society bio. He was recommended to Trump by JD Vance, who briefly represented Ohio in the Senate before assuming the vice presidency.

“He comes strongly recommended by our Great Vice President, JD Vance, and Senators Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted,” Trump posted on Truth Social in May. “Matt previously worked as an attorney at two major Cincinnati Law Firms, received his J.D. from The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and earned his B.A. from Xavier University. The Constitutional Rights of the incredible people of Ohio are in good hands with Matt on the Federal Bench.

While serving as a visiting judge on the Ohio Supreme Court, Byrne was the only one on the court who voted against keeping a freeze on the state’s 2023 6-week abortion ban, Ohio Capital Journal reported December 2023.

MISCELLANEOUS

The Left Calls Wolf After Right-Wing Party Gains Ground In Germany

As Sweden continues counting the votes of its most recent parliamentary election, the world reacted to the Alternative for Germany (AfD)’s historic election gains last week.

After AfD secured nearly 44% of the vote in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, the Associated Press was lockstep with the right-wing populist party’s critics labelling it as “far-right.”

In an address to the Bundestag after the election results rolled in, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called AfD a “destructive force” and that its anti-immigration policies amount to “ethnic-cleansing” for workers, the BBC reported last Wednesday.

However, AP slapped the same “far-right” label on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Michael Shellenberger wrote for Public last Tuesday. Yet, many critics of right-wing populism have described Meloni’s leadership as conventionally conservative.

Meanwhile, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez — who is also the general secretary of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party — called AfD’s gains “a warning that the far-right threat is gaining ground in Europe and the world” and that “a progressive coalition government is more necessary than ever” on Sept. 7, ABC News reported last Tuesday.

It’s bold of Sanchez to speak of “gaining ground” after over 60,000 Moroccans gained some Spanish ground for a short while after swarming the city of Ceuta in July.

With so many migrants flooding Europe over the years that Mohammad has been the most common baby name for boys in the United Kingdom for the third year in a row, one could argue that status-quo open border policies couldn’t be any less extreme than a right-wing party that’s led by a lesbian who’s married to an immigrant (like AfD).

The Man Who Refused Royalty To Get ‘Colossus’ Statue

George Washington, “the man who would not be king,” could soon be the subject of a statue worthy of a Roman emperor.

Trump proposed a 30-foot statue to America’s first president be built by the Smithsonian and replace the underwhelming abstract statue that currently adorns the front of the National Museum of American History.

“I am … calling on the Smithsonian to erect a 30-foot ‘Colossus statue’ of the Father of Our Country outside the Museum, to replace the so-called ‘Infinity’ sculpture that stands there today. That strange modernist sculpture tells visitors nothing about America, inspires no one, and honors none of our Great American Heroes,” Trump said in a Friday night Truth Social. “Instead of focusing on ideological activism, the leaders of America’s taxpayer-funded, National History Museum should be focused on telling America’s story—fairly, accurately, and coherently—and there is no better person to start with than George Washington.”

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/117255720319253709

Trump said that Washington’s crossing of the Delaware is not even mentioned in the museum — Emanuel Leutze’s famous painting is in The Met in New York City — an unfortunate reality for a museum that celebrates Anthony Fauci for combatting a “cacophony of misinformation.”

On the one hand, a massive monument may seem out-of-step with Washington famously declining to seize monarchic power despite overwhelming popularity. On the other hand, the move could be a pro-America gesture by an institution that many conservatives have grown weary of.

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Heads down, pencils up. It’s the back to school edition of The Drain Pipe, your guide to the week ahead in Washington.

The Science^TM Embraces Fanaticism

The Jason Arday scandal is unsettling, and not just because of its morbid end.

From its earliest days, the scientific journal Nature defined science as the rigorous practice of professionals. Gatekeeping excluded the genuine discoveries of quixotic amateurs, leaving Gleanings in Bee Culture to report the miraculous flight of two genius bicycle mechanics. But it helped define scientific authority as observable, objective, atheistic.

Until now. The new religion of Wokeism has taken over. Heretics need not apply. Why else would editors at Science demand that researchers say whether they’re gay?

Editorials downplaying the University of Cambridge sociologist’s blatant plagiarism in some of the most prestigious and storied scientific journals in the world, like Nature (est. 1869), the British Medical Journal (est. 1840), and the New England Journal of Medicine (est. 1812) are a watershed moment in the deterioration of academic standards.

It’s not just that political pandering wastes space in otherwise competitive scientific publications. And it’s not just that junk science has siphoned conservatives’ tax dollars towards liberal political ends. (Nature’s parent company Springer Nature has received $13 million in tax dollars this fiscal year.) All that’s bad enough.

But the Arday scandal contains this daunting realization: The scientific editors we’ve trusted to parse truth from popular fanaticism for 150 years are no longer up to the task.

When faced with a scandal in which they had to decide whether to prioritize their historic function, uncovering the truth, or the comfortable fantasy, they chose the fantasy that Arday was unfairly victimized.

THE EXECUTIVE

President Donald Trump is at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, as of this Labor Day morning and is scheduled to return to the White House this evening.

Back To School … For Some

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’s new rule aimed at phasing out a system that often allowed international students to stay indefinitely (“duration of status”) in favor of a fixed 4-year limit will be put into effect on Sept. 15.

“For nearly half a century, the outdated ‘duration of status’ system has compromised national security and created an environment ripe for immigration fraud,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin stated in the July press release that accompanied the rule’s publication.

The status quo allowed foreign students to “perpetually enroll in courses to avoid having to leave the U.S.,” Mullin said.

The U.S. hosted nearly 1.2 million international students in academic year 2024-2025, with more than 265,919 being from China despite the national security risks, Open Doors reported in November.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X in last spring that the U.S. would begin revoking visas of Chinese students altogether, including those “with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”

But the following month, Trump endorsed accepting Chinese international students, and pledged 600,000 new visas for Chinese students that August.

“OUR DEAL WITH CHINA IS DONE, SUBJECT TO FINAL APPROVAL WITH PRESIDENT XI AND ME … LIKEWISE, WE WILL PROVIDE TO CHINA WHAT WAS AGREED TO, INCLUDING CHINESE STUDENTS USING OUR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES (WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN GOOD WITH ME!),” Trump posted on Truth Social.

DEI Crackdown Reaches New Heights

The Trump admin’s back-to-school reforms aren’t just focused on foreigners, but also on private institutions within America’s borders.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service submitted proposed regulations aimed at ending the federal tax-exempt status for private schools that engage in racial discrimination, the Daily Caller scooped last Thursday.

“Schools rebranding race-based preferences as equitable, inclusive, or diversity-enhancing does not change their discriminatory nature,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “The institutions that continue to use discriminatory practices will no longer receive the benefits of federal tax-exempt status.”

The proposed regulations could affect up to 18,000 private schools as early as May 31, 2027.

Lessons Learned?

Friday will mark the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) issued a 66-page report last week assessing how U.S. intel collection has changed since the historic intelligence failures that contributed to 9/11 attacks.

One thing remains the same: Since the inner workings of the intelligence community are by nature secret, Americans rely on Congress to ensure the CIA is protecting the homeland while respecting their liberty. But aside from small tweaks, congressional oversight of the intel community remains as dysfunctional and toothless as it was before the 9/11 attacks.

Lessons Learned? Part 2

Friday will mark the one year anniversary of the assassination of conservative activist and genius political strategist Charlie Kirk. And political violence remains an issue, as a development in the Ohio governor’s race made clear Sunday.

Democratic Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton said in a tweet Sunday night that a man had lunged at her with a knife at a fair in northeast Ohio and that multiple people had been injured.

Republican opponent Vivek Ramaswamy immediately denounced the attack, saying “candidates should be able to meet with voters without having to worry about threats or violence.”

Many Republicans online want more details.

Acton’s slurred, boisterous speech in a campaign rally Saturday remains a subject of controversy. News 5 Cleveland confirmed in a report last week that Acton’s daughter reported to police that her mother had been drinking and throwing glass after making a 911 call in 2019.

Recall that Department of Justice probes into the leftist political networks that funnel money to extremists who endorse killing as a political tactic appear to have petered out somewhat after conservative donors became jittery that Democrats could retaliate after they regained power.

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THE LEGISLATIVE

The House of Representatives has adjourned yet again, wiping two weeks’ worth of workdays off the calendar. These people are paid at least $174,000 per year, by the way. The insider trading helps too. Meanwhile, August recess will stretch into mid-September for the upper chamber.

Guess Which Word Is Nowhere To Be Found In The GOP’s Midterm Convention Agenda

Midterm election season kicks off in earnest as Republicans gather at an arena in Dallas on Wednesday and Thursday for the party’s first ever midterm convention.

The party hopes to inspire voters to turn out for competitive races in Texas, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina and Georgia and cure the overall bad vibes many conservatives feel about the looming possibility of losing one or both chambers of Congress.

It will be hard to match the electric energy of the 2024 Republican National Convention, hosted less than 48 hours after Trump survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pa.

Nevertheless, the convention seeks to galvanize conservatives around domestic priorities like securing the border, reshoring manufacturing, eliminating fraud and creating a more sane education system, per the agenda. (The word “Iran” appears zero times.)

Pressed on whether Trump’s sagging approval numbers could lead the convention to backfire on Face the Nation, House Republican Conference Rep. Lisa McClain said this:

“I’ll remind everybody what Republicans did was secure the border. We passed the largest tax cuts in history. We want to keep more money in your pockets. And what our goal is with the midterm convention is really to compare and contrast the two roads: one communist, crazy, versus traditional American common-sense values.”

We can also expect the hard left pivot of the Democratic Party to be a central theme.

Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed — who has been dogged by his friendship with Los Angeles’s multimillionaire revolutionary Hasan Piker — will be a particular focus, Axios reports.

Since this is the education issue of The Drain Pipe, take a look at El-Sayed’s scholarship as a PhD in public health: 8 of the 10 papers that show up on the first page of a PubMed search for his name involve race (always Arab identity), immigration status, or socioeconomic factors.

Three Bills, Two Angry Letters, and Another Vacation

In its 4-day break from taking breaks, the House successfully passed the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act of 2025, the Protecting Domestic Mining Act of 2025, and the Northeast Lobsterman Protection Act of 2026.

The House also passed two bipartisan — albeit ceremonial — resolutions. One censured Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards of North Carolina over sexual harassment allegations, the other condemned socialism “in all its forms.”

It’s not immediately clear why Speaker Mike Johnson adjourned the House so early. However, outgoing Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky suggested one potential reason on X last Sunday…

Regardless, both the House and the Senate are scheduled to get back to work on Sept. 14.

COMMITTEES TO WATCH: Elites To Watch:

This is usually where we list what congressional hearings you should look out for this week. However, due to the “mini recess,” that is on recess too. Fortunately, Massie provided Americans another list to watch for the time being.

“On the House floor tonight, I read the names of several Epstein coconspirators who should be investigated and prosecuted,” Massie posted on X last Monday.

This is part of Massie’s crusade to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, which aims to make the government release the rest of the files pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking.

Massie reportedly filed a discharge petition for the bill last Monday — which would’ve forced it to be put to a vote if 218 members signed it — and told The Washington Times he’d only need three Republicans to sign on if all Democrats join him in doing so.

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California co-sponsored the bill.

Massie said that he’ll soon be kicked out of his Capitol Hill office and relegated to the basement after his May electoral defeat in an interview with Dave Smith.

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THE JUDICIARY

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2026-2027 term begins on Oct. 5.

While It May’ve Packed Its Bags ‘Til Fall, SCOTUS Is Still Packable

A proposed constitutional amendment aimed at capping the number of seats in the U.S. Supreme Court to nine was shot down 212-206 last Wednesday.

“There is nothing magical or sacred about having nine Supreme Court justices. Congress has repeatedly expanded—and reduced—the size of the Supreme Court,” Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland posted on Facebook last Wednesday.

Raskin suggested on the House floor that Congress could raise the number of justices to thirteen; one for each federal circuit. He argued that freezing it at nine within the constitution was “another partisan power grab” by his “MAGA” colleagues who “fear for the results of the November election.”

Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, who sponsored the proposal, singled out Raskin in a Thursday press release.

“The Court has been set at nine justices for more than 150 years … But Ranking Member Raskin made clear in his remarks: he believes President Trump’s ability to appoint two Justices who more closely adhere to the Constitution than the Justices replaced is simply unfair,” Biggs stated. “In fact, he said the quiet part out loud, accusing President Trump of ‘stealing’ the two seats and calling it ‘the rightwing capture of the Court.’ This is a dangerous narrative that undermines the system established by the Founders and creates a slippery slope ending in the total decimation of the integrity of the Court.”

Election Integrity Faces Another Standstill

Trump’s March executive order aimed at ensuring mail-in voting in federal elections is accountable to the federal government reached yet another bump in the road.

After SCOTUS allowed the Trump administration to continue implementing the executive order in an Aug. 24 opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani placed a 14-day freeze against certain provisions of the order pertaining to the U.S. Postal Service on Aug. 27.

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked SCOTUS last Thursday to pause Talwani’s order, warning in a letter that waiting for the freeze to thaw would “irreparably harm” the federal government’s election integrity efforts.

“Even before September 10, two States—North Carolina and Alabama—will begin sending ballots to voters, the first as soon as September 4. Once those ballot envelopes enter the mailstream, there is no retrieving them,” Sauer wrote.

MISCELLANEOUS

Did Trump Ditch ‘Flyover County’ For Big Tech?

Last Monday, we discussed the ever-growing — and mutual — disdain between Silicon Valley and “flyover country” over the former’s unrelenting promotion of mass surveillance and data centers. Hours later, President Donald Trump gave data centers his full endorsement.

“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Given Trump’s apparent love for data centers, perhaps the theory that he’s building one underneath his roughly $400 million White House ballroom project is worth serious investigation?

Neither the White House nor Clark Construction responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment as of publication.

However, since theories surrounding the project took off, Trump himself has admitted that he isn’t just building a ballroom.

“The Military/Ballroom Complex being built on the hallowed grounds of the White House, which is so vital for National Security,” Trump posted on Truth Social hours after SCOTUS greenlit its construction on Aug. 21.

If the project is something more than a ballroom-doomsday shelter hybrid, then this sidequest might be Trump’s hottest take this summer. After all, according to a Gallup poll published in May, over 70% of Americans oppose data centers being built near where they live.

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