Welcome to The Drain Pipe, your guide to the week ahead in Washington.
The Republican Party’s big tent isn’t tearing at the seams yet, but it is showing major strain.
Two Republican Senate candidates, Ashley Hinson in Iowa and Mike Rogers in Michigan, have called for an immediate end to the war in Iran. A writer for The Daily Wire started taking potshots at libertarians over the weekend, prompting threats of complete defection from the coalition. And influential members of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) faction — frustrated by the administration’s continued endorsement of mRNA vaccines for COVID and flu — are in outright revolt. (The administration has dismissed them as “irrelevant.”) Republican Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy has nonetheless signaled he’ll hold up the administration’s revolving-door-endorsed nominee for FDA commissioner for being insufficiently solicitous to the pharmaceutical lobby.
At a campaign event Friday, Hinson adopted Trump’s outsider brand of politics while creating distance from Trump’s top foreign policy priority.
“I’m incredibly frustrated that for too long politicians on both sides of the aisle don’t seem to resonate with the struggles that everyday Iowans are facing while continuing to play games in Washington, DC,” she said. “I’ve called for an immediate and successful end to the war in Iran so that families can see some relief at the pump and at the checkout line.”
Thankfully for the Republican Party, many corners of the left remain tormented by callouts and cancellations for anything less than lockstep ideological purity (and COVID masking seven days a week). Vice President JD Vance is trying to sell voters on a Republican Party so expansive it can encompass the needlers and the naysayers too.
“Even if you don’t agree with us on every issue, the other party is consumed by craziness,” Vance said in a recent interview.
The ramshackle Republicans remain the big tent party.
THE EXECUTIVE
President Donald Trump attended the President’s Cup yesterday. He will make an unspecified announcement at 2:00 p.m., followed by an interview with a print publication.
Is Claude Docile Enough To Tell Us How To Keep It Under Control?
Trump dined with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei Sunday amid a rift over the risks of artificial intelligence (AI), he told reporters.
Amodei warned in a treatise of sorts earlier this month that we’re on the precipice of the singularity, or Trump’s preferred term, “superintelligence”: The machines may soon build upon themselves to create better machines, making human input defunct and jolting mankind into an unpredictable future.
“The first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control,” British mathematician I.J. Good wrote in 1965.
Amodei called for AI companies to work together to set standards under antitrust waivers to slow development by as much as one to two years while taking measures to ensure China can’t catch up.
But Amodei’s call to action has been met with some skepticism.
“The problem with these collectivized approaches is that they defray accountability away from the actual decision-maker,” Trump’s AI Czar David Sacks said on a Friday podcast.
The hypocrisy is hard to miss: Anthropic has been at the forefront of pursuing so-called “recursive self-improvement” — Claude’s ability to develop superior Claudes. As of May 2026, Anthropic relies on Claude to develop more than 80 percent of its code.
Eyebrows have also been raised over the third-party watchdog that Anthropic has tapped to look over its shoulder. Its founder once argued that AI agents have “moral weight” akin to the human soul. If chatbots possess the same rights as humans, Anthropic can make all sorts of liability-immunizing and competitor-throttling legal arguments.
“The United States of America is not going to be putting on brakes,” Trump said in a gaggle with reporters Saturday.
Meanwhile, Chinese competitor DeepSeek has given no indication of slowing down.
“I especially don’t want Anthropic to master the most advanced artificial intelligence or AGI; to exaggerate, the seriousness of that would be no less than Hitler acquiring atomic bomb technology before the Allies,” a DeepSeek engineer said.
PSA
Fans of Sunday night football may have caught one of the taxpayer-supported public service announcements for the White House.
One line in particular in the voice-over of one ad caught people’s attention: “We will expel the warmongers from our government.”
Trump said on Saturday that he rejected an Iranian proposal to open the Strait of Hormuz communicated through Qatari negotiators during the United Nations General Assembly last week, but said on Sunday that talks would continue this week.
“We stand firm in the face of any new aggression, even if it comes to a doomsday war,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on NBC News. “We stand ready for diplomacy. It is up to President Trump to choose.”
Araghchi and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz both indicated (in, awkwardly, back-to-back interviews) that the Iranian proposal resembled the June memorandum of understanding, including the lifting of sanctions, release of frozen assets and end of the U.S. naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian indicated U.N. nuclear inspectors would be allowed back into the country.
THE LEGISLATIVE
The Senate is in session until Oct. 5. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives is skipping town and its duties until after Election Day.
Doctors Don’t Want You To Know This One Weird Trick To Reduce Government Bloat
Friday evening news dumps rarely bring good news, so it was a pleasant surprise when the Office of Management and Budget announced that Trump had used a pocket rescission to cut nearly $1 billion in funding, with over half going to NGOs promoting illegal immigration.
The threat of pocket rescissions could undermine any plans for a spending bonanza in the lame-duck session between Election Day and the start of the next Congress.
Last Friday, OMB Director Russ Vought, who oversees the implementation of the Trump agenda across federal agencies, confronted National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya in a heated meeting in the White House about his continued funding of liberal priorities, according to several news reports.
Bhattacharya has been a mentee of Harvard President Alan M. Garber for three decades and maintains close communications with several professors in Cambridge who oppose the Trump administration, according to The Harvard Crimson.
Reports that the White House intended to create a super-structure outranking Bhattacharya spurred opposition from Republican Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, scuttling the plans for now. Collins also immediately made her opposition to Friday night’s pocket rescissions known.
The White House has applied pressure to Republican senators who have opposed pocket rescissions before. But Collins is in a tight race for reelection in Maine against Democratic nominee Troy Jackson.
Sen. John Kennedy said he disagreed with Collins and argued that the money that Vought cut amounts to “spending porn.”
“I love Susan like a taco, but she’s wrong,” Kennedy said. “First, Congress didn’t approve this stuff. When Congress approves stuff, they do it in broad categories… and then the money goes to the bureaucracy. And a lot of times the bureaucracy wastes it.”
Kennedy said he believes the real sticking point with Collins is those NIH grants.
Uncle Sam
AI executives will visit the White House Tuesday to meet with Trump and Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson amid industry leaders’ calls for stronger guardrails, POLITICO reported.
“We want to emphasize the necessity of them providing safe products and self-regulating,” Johnson said earlier this month. “There is also a role potentially for Congress to play, but we have to do this with a balanced approach to ensure that we maintain our edge over China.”
Amodei expressed pessimism that Congress could pass a law with sufficient regulations in the time required in his well-publicized essay earlier this month.
“Unfortunately, passing laws can take time, and AI is advancing very quickly,” he said.
Some members of Congress may not be well equipped for this critical fork in the road for humanity, possibly akin to the Industrial Revolution multiplied by ten.
“I didn’t know what that was until about a week ago … ChatGPT or whatever it is,” said Democrat Rep. Jim Clyburn last month.
https://youtube.com/shorts/WYWOCGH42kI?si=v9uwa8W2kXckltXb
Mr. Smith Answers To Washington
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hear testimony on Tuesday from DOJ Special Prosecutor Jack Smith as they investigate how Smith’s investigation into Trump trampled on the Constitution.
A new report by the House Judiciary Committee concluded last week that Smith was so persuaded of the righteousness of his investigation that he flagrantly flouted the nation’s founding document.
Smith made repeated intrusions into the communications of members of Congress, the same branch of government tasked with providing oversight of the DOJ and the FBI’s secret work and reining in its excesses.
The report released Wednesday states that Smith violated the Speech and Debate clause, which provides legal protection for the Legislative Branch against legal retaliation by the Executive Branch and maintains a balance of powers between the two coequal branches.
But the FBI and the DOJ paid little mind to this fundamental American principle, or the delicate care required when investigating public officials, when it spied on 17 members of Congress in an investigation into the 2020 election codenamed “Arctic Frost.” Gag orders prevented the targets from learning they had been spied on for years.
COMMITTEES TO WATCH:
Senate Committee on the Judiciary — Oversight of Jack Smith’s Abuse of Authority and the Targeting of Republicans and Related Matters — Tuesday, Sept. 29, 9:00 a.m.
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions — Nominations — Wednesday, Sept. 30, 9:45 a.m.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee — Nomination Hearing — Wednesday, Sept. 30, 10:00 a.m.
Senate Committee on the Judiciary — Nomination Hearing — Wednesday, Sept. 30, 10:15 a.m.
Senate Subcommittee on Disaster Management, District of Columbia, and Census — Rogue AI: Securing the Homeland Against AI Agent Attacks — Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2:30 a.m.
Senate Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Transnational Crime, Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights, and Global Women’s Issues — Nicaragua’s Political Crisis: Ortega’s Assault on Democracy — Wednesday, Sept. 30, 3:00 p.m.
Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs — Nomination Hearing — Thursday, Oct. 1, 10:00 a.m.
THE JUDICIARY
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) begins its 2026-2027 term next Monday at 10:00 a.m.
Trump’s Deportation Promises Hang In The Balance … Again
In a ruling that U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche described last Thursday as being made “in the dark of night,” a federal court froze some of the president’s deportations.
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld most of sole Massachusetts U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy’s February 2026 ruling on Sept. 18 that required the DHS to give prospective deportees notice and an opportunity to challenge being deported to countries they didn’t originate from if they fear being tortured there.
The lawsuit, D.V.D. v. Department of Homeland Security, stemmed from an executive order Trump signed during his first day back in office where he instructed the DHS to take “all appropriate actions” to deport illegal aliens in the U.S.
However, the plaintiffs reportedly responded to the three-judge panel’s ruling last Wednesday, minutes before midnight after hearing that a plane carrying 70 alleged aliens was soon to take off from Louisiana to Rwanda and the Central African Republic.
The panel then dissolved its March 2026 ruling that placed Murphy’s freeze on hold.
“Without even allowing the government a chance to respond, and in the dark of night, a federal appeals court blocked us from conducting all third-country removals of illegal aliens, an entirely legal and invaluable tool to stem the tide of illegal immigration,” Blanche posted on X in response. “We will immediately seek relief from the Supreme Court, which previously granted a stay in this very same case.”
Hours later, Blanche announced on X that the Trump administration filed an emergency stay with SCOTUS against the ruling.
“DHS informs us that it has already canceled a flight to three separate countries carrying 70 aliens with criminal convictions (including aggravated assault and serious drug offenses), and that the cancellation has required a new round of diplomatic engagement with each of the three countries,” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer stated in the Thursday motion. “Those disruptions will only get worse. To halt that chaos, an immediate administrative stay should be entered while the Court considers this application.”
Sauer also wrote that the Executive Branch determined that those countries are “acceptable places of removal,” and that there is a “lack of any realistic risk” that deportees would be persecuted or tortured there.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson promptly gave the other side until Monday at 4:00 p.m. (today!) to respond to the government’s motion.
Mainstream Media v. United States
Another legal battle the White House has been embroiled in involved its decision to disable press credentials for three legacy media outlets.
Trump announced in a Sept. 18 post on Truth Social that he banned CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the White House for “their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!”
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/117293599348325006
However, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly — who Trump appointed to preside over the District of Columbia’s district court in 2017 — ordered a 14-day pause on the press ban last Thursday after the three outlets filed a lawsuit against the administration last Monday.
The DOJ swiftly signaled its opposition to the restraining order.
“Presidents have long decided which journalists should receive privileged access, which has varied substantially by administration,” DOJ senior counsel Michael Velchick stated in a Tuesday filing.
Velchick also wrote that the plaintiffs’ reporting “gives rise to reasons to doubt their trustworthiness” and that the president has determined that they “have reported classified or sensitive information bearing on national security.”
As you’d expect, multiple mainstream media outlets spent the subsequent weekend trying to grill Trump officials over the ordeal.
“What do you think the job of the press is? What does the First Amendment mean to you?” ABC News “This Week” host Martha Raddatz asked Blanche yesterday morning regarding the DOJ’s Tuesday filing.
“Well, what does it mean to me? What it means to me is not the issue. But what the law says, what the free press can do is they are free to report whatever they want. OK? Of course, they can. But when it comes to the White House, it is the People’s House. It is a privilege and not a right to be there,” Blanche replied before saying that it’s “absolutely the president’s duty to make sure that the American people are hearing accurate news.”
Additionally, Waltz dismissed concerns that the White House is cracking down on anti-Trump outlets during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” that same morning.
“There are over what… Fifty seats in the press room? Uh, I don’t think all of them like Washington Post or New York Times, are exactly positive towards this administration,” the UN ambassador told Jake Tapper.
MISCELLANEOUS
A Congressional Report On The JFK Assassination Is Coming
JFK Facts Editor Jefferson Morley is working on a new report about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy for the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna. The report will reflect on the nearly 95,000 new declassified documents under the Trump administration.
“The next couple of months are going to be interesting,” he said in a podcast interview.
One major focus is CIA “assassination czar” William Harvey, whom many suspect of having played a role in Kennedy’s assassination, per Morley.
“We’re continuing to make inquiries. The first round, the CIA wasn’t very responsive,” he said.
Is “AI Populism” The Future Of American Politics?
Aside from affordability, another apparent rift in the Republican coalition concerns data centers. However, this one appears to be creating unlikely alliances.
Robert Reich, who served as U.S. Secretary of Labor under former President Bill Clinton, noted in an op-ed to the Hartford Courant last Thursday that both socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders and conservative commentator Steve Bannon keynote the Sept. 18 Pro-Human Assembly in D.C., where they “both lambasted the corporate oligarchs behind AI.”
Reich wrote that AI may be the “final tipping point” to “the greed, venality, cupidity and corruption of America’s wealthy corporate elites” that he accused Trump of enabling through favoritism.
“Data centers are unpopular — some 70 percent of the public opposes them. And Americans harbor deep suspicions of AI. Over 60 percent believe AI could destroy humanity (this includes 60 percent of Trump supporters),” Reich claimed.
Reich’s angry letter came out the same day as a CBS poll finding that support for capitalism among Americans under 30 dropped from 52 percent to 48 percent since 2018, whereas support for socialism rose from 19 percent to 21 percent.
Public Opinion Strategies pollster Micah Roberts told CBS that the rise in support for the Democratic Socialists of America’s platform is “really about frustration with the status quo.”
America appears to be in an environment where the status quo is geared towards rapid changes that aren’t always immediately clear to the American people whether they benefit them.
These changes include, but are not limited to: Affordability (more costly), technology (more disruptive), and foreign entanglements (more destructive).
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