Socialists are winning elections across the United States. That’s not because voters suddenly love socialism. They don’t. Less than half of Americans say they’d support a socialist presidential candidate, a recent poll by Washington Post-Ipsos found. Instead, socialists are making waves because they’re laser-focused on Vlad Lenin’s “Peace, Land, and Bread” appeals while media outlets keep the hacky uniparty take machine humming.
However, though Americans see through the thin veil of socialism that reveals itself to be communism the minute a nation marries itself to it (communism killed over 100 million people, by the way), that doesn’t absolve America’s leaders from addressing the very real problems that make socialism seem so attractive to a growing segment of the population.
The Drain Pipe will pump out the stories you actually need to determine whether America is becoming a safer, freer, and healthier place to live. — Spencer Lombardo
THE EXECUTIVE
POTUS is in Washington this morning. He will sign an executive order at 1:30 p.m.
‘It Is In Your Best Interest To Not Be Stupid’
On Saturday night, Trump abruptly canceled a reported World War II-scale bombing campaign against Iran. The strikes were set to include attacks on energy targets, according to a Friday story by Axios bullet point list maker Barak Ravid. Instead, Trump signaled an impending too-good-to-be-true deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end Iranian nuclear development, and said that he had been asked by Iran and other Middle Eastern countries to hold off.
But you don’t need a bureau in Tehran or a degree from the Harvard Kennedy School to see that Trump isn’t telling the full story. You only need Google Translate.
Before the pull back, Iranian officials hectored Trump that they would further widen the war into all-out regional conflagration.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned officials in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan that the Islamic Republic would act “decisively” in the event of any further U.S. aggression, he said on Telegram.
Esmaeil Baqaei, spokesperson for the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, claimed Saturday that Iran had sought to be a good neighbor to other Muslim countries, but asked “does welcoming the enemies of Muslims and providing support for their military operations against a neighboring Muslim state agree with the rights of neighbors and Islamic brotherhood?”
“If Iran is struck, we will return the entire region and its facilities to the #StoneAge,” said Ebrahim Rezaei, a member of parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, on Saturday. “It is in your best interest not to be stupid.”
“The response to a possible enemy attack will not be limited to the Persian Gulf region; we will respond to all enemy bases and the origin of attacks from anywhere,” he said.
And before you accuse The Drain Pipe of being a mouthpiece for any foreign country’s bluster, consider that both Saudi Arabia and the U.S. State Department took Iran’s warnings seriously.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly voiced concerns to Trump about further escalation Saturday. Saudi Arabia had just days earlier first acknowledged its entry into the war via strikes in Iraq. The Saudi Ministry of Defense said the country seeks to deter further attacks on Saudi oil without further escalation.
Meanwhile, U.S. embassies across the Middle East — from Cairo and Jerusalem to Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Muscat — quietly issued identical messages to Americans to make escape plans Saturday, warning of “unexpected escalation.”
“The Iranian regime is unpredictable, as seen by its recent decisions to attack areas in the region without warning or provocations as well as to expand attacks to areas not previously targeted (such as Egypt),” the embassies said.
A few hours after the alerts, Trump announced he had canceled the attacks.
The Poster In Chief may have mollified the markets, yet it’s not clear whether negotiations will be successful.
Baqaei claimed Sunday that the Strait of Hormuz will never return to the pre-Epic Fury status quo and that there are no talks with Washington about reopening it.
Despite greater energy independence under the Trump administration, gas prices are nearly a dollar higher than they were this time last year, according to AAA.
The Boy Who Cried Wolfowitz
Trump has often announced an imminent conclusion to the war only for those glimmers of hope to evaporate.
Does the U.S. or Iran benefit more from the delays? Here are University of Chicago realist John Mearsheimer and Hudson Institute historian Walter Russell Mead:
Mead: “Assets and relationships cultivated over decades have been torched, and the longer the conflict lasts, the weaker Iran’s regional networks are likely to become. And while the regime’s internal opponents seem unlikely to rise up in protest, Iran can’t indefinitely function as a society without economic relief.”
Mearsheimer: “When the United States and Israel punish Iran in the way they’ve been punishing Iran since February 28, and in fact before February 28, it actually has a rally around the flag effect. You want to remember that President Trump talks about dealing with Iran in genocidal terms. And when you talk about dealing with Iran in genocidal terms, when you talk about putting them back into the Stone Age, that’s going to cause Iranians to rally around the flag, which cuts against the Walter Russell Mead line of argument. The second argument that I would submit to you is that we have a rich history of countries being pummeled by their adversaries and huge numbers of people dying in those countries — Japan in World War II, Germany in World War II, North Korea in the Korean War and Vietnam and so forth and so on — and in every single one of those cases the countries did not surrender because the population was being pummeled.”
Invasion
U.S. border security remains top of mind for the Trump administration after our social media feeds showed Spain being flooded with hundreds of thousands of migrants.
“You know, I saw Spain yesterday, and I watched the catastrophe that took place. It looks like an invasion of a country by hundreds of thousands of people. And that same thing is going to happen to us if Republicans don’t get elected,” President Trump said Friday at a meeting at Camp David.
The Department of Homeland Security boasted in July that it had deported a record 365,000 illegal aliens in the current fiscal year, but it’s important to read the fine print.
Further inspection reveals that DHS counts a hodgepodge of lesser enforcement actions as “removals.” Critics allege the top line numbers do not tell the whole story.
Shortly after those statistics were released, Office of Homeland Security Statistics Director Marc Rosenblum announced that he was “thrilled” to “end his relationship” with the Trump administration.
“Between the war on immigrants, the war on feds, and the war on facts (not to mention the crazy war in Iran and the brazen corruption), I just need a change,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “I’m also thrilled that my next role will allow me to continue working on immigration data and immigration policy, with goals that actually align with my values and those of most other Americans.”
It remains to be seen whether the hazy data reporting from DHS was symptomatic of the Trump administration capitulating to the Amnesty Lobby, or simply the sabotage of one liberal bureaucrat.
THE LEGISLATIVE
Will The Senate Confirm Trump’s Attorney General?
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to mull Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination to the full-time role Wednesday.
Blanche formally rescinded an order establishing an “anti-weaponization” fund of $1.8 billion late Sunday night, teeing up his confirmation.
Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis had vowed to vote against Blanche’s confirmation unless the White House ended the anti-weaponization fund and rewrote an Internal Revenue Settlement to no longer protect Trump and his family from tax audits, the DCNF reported Wednesday.
Before the pivot, Sen. John Kennedy had expressed some pessimism about Blanche’s confirmation.
“The weaponization fund – Todd Blanche can say that it’s a dead letter, but the fact of the matter is, he conceded that there is a settlement agreement, which creates an enforceable contract, it could be revived at a later time,” Cornyn told reporters Thursday.
“I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined,” Trump posted Friday on Truth Social. “Millions of people agree with me, as was proven in my landslide Presidential win, where this was a major subject of debate, and so did John Cornyn, until he lost his Election to an opponent that I Endorsed. Todd Blanche, a good man, should be immediately approved as U.S. Attorney General.”
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is also scheduled to vote on more of Trump’s nominees Wednesday. Likely picks include Kari Lake for ambassador to Jamaica and Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano for ambassador to Slovakia — both of whom were endorsed by Trump during their respective gubernatorial campaigns in 2022.
The SAVE America Act Is Saveable
The fight to pass Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s SAVE America Act continues this week after the House passed it as part of a budget reconciliation July 22.
“Senator Lee is currently exploring a promising avenue to pass key provisions of the SAVE America Act through the reconciliation process, as new pathways have become viable. A lot will depend on negotiations through next week—stay tuned,” Lee’s communications director, Billy Gribbin, told the DCNF on Friday.
Lee previously announced on X that he will “object to any effort to put the Senate into recess in August” until the SAVE America Act is passed. Since his July 26 post, at least 13 senators have reportedly joined him in that vow.
The bill aims to require voters to present their ID when voting in federal elections. Roughly 83% of Americans support that, per an August 2025 study by Pew Research Center.
Other Hearings
Sen. Rand Paul’s Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) is expected to vote Wednesday on whether to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress during his July 29 appearance before the committee.
The Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care is scheduled to meet at 10:00 a.m. Tuesday to discuss strategies for reinforcing the healthcare system through biotech. Concurrently, the Senate Budget Committee will mull Medicaid fraud. Fifteen minutes later, the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to scrutinize Pharmacy Benefit Managers over many independent pharmacies being effectively priced out of the prescription drug market.
THE JUDICIARY
The Supreme Court won’t be hearing cases until Oct. 5 for the next term. Here are a couple of interesting cases to expect:
Give Me Back My Plane
In 2012, Kenneth Jouppi, an Alaskan bush pilot, was taking a passenger to a remote village in Alaska that banned alcohol. Before departure, state authorities checked Jouppi’s plane and found three cases of beer, the suit states. The alcohol was removed before takeoff. He was nevertheless ordered to forfeit his plane.
Jouppi sued, claiming that the attempted seizure of his plane was a violation of his Eighth Amendment rights stating that “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Jouppi vs. Alaska will be heard later this fall.
Video Privacy
Salazar vs. Paramount Global will present the question of whether streaming services can team up with social media companies to track what you watch, according to Ballotpedia.
Michael Salazar subscribed to an online newsletter for a website owned by Paramount Global. Paramount then shared information to Facebook about Salzaar’s video-viewing activity. Salzaar sued, claiming violations of the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA). It’s not clear whether the VPPA applies to streaming services.
MISCELLANEOUS
World Economic Forum’s Wooden Clog
Klaus Schwab — the former chair of the globalist World Economic Forum — previously called artificial intelligence the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” and some recent stats suggest that he may be closer to the truth than many Americans may hope.
AI may slow the wage growth of around 5.8 million workers in the United States, Fortune reported Thursday. Additionally, around 29% of employees admitted to sabotaging their company’s AI strategy, according to a study by enterprise AI firm WRITER published in April.
At least half of Americans admitted to being more worried than excited about AI’s growing role in everyday life, according to a 2025 study by the Pew Research Center.
This reaction shouldn’t surprise you. The origin of the word “sabotage” comes from the French word “sabot,” or wooden clog. One popular myth says that this is because French textile workers during the early 1800s would throw their clogs into automated looms over frustration with the machinery taking so many of their colleagues’ jobs.
The Twitch Election
A growing number of Democrats are turning away from establishment media, The Mercury News reported Wednesday. This follows conservatives leading the charge on anti-establishment politics since the 2010s.
One place this appears to be playing out is Michigan.
Bernie Sanders-endorsed Abdul El-Sayed is running against Rep. Haley Stevens for the Democratic Party’s nomination in Michigan’s 2026 Senate election.
Similarly to how Trump and Vance made appearances on independent media channels in the 2024 presidential election (“The Podcast Election”), El-Sayed appears on podcasts, streams on Twitch, and has a YouTube channel.
“I think in a lot of ways, where traditional media has been gatekeepers, we’re watching that gatekeeping function fall away,” El-Sayed — a long-time podcaster himself — told the paper.
El-Sayed reportedly said that the rise of independent media lets voters compare news across different channels and identify biases.
Michigan’s primary Tuesday might not just be a contest between one Democrat and another, but a stress test of one of the establishment media’s final fortifications.
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