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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