OPINION: Lindsey Graham is gone, and South Carolina’s Aug. 11 special GOP primary has become a test of whether Trump’s endorsement of his sister, Darline Graham Nordone, still moves the base. Polls point to a runoff — but don’t bet against Trump.
A divided D.C. Circuit blocked President Trump’s privately funded White House ballroom on a single neighbor’s aesthetic complaint — and teed up a Supreme Court fight the administration is likely to win on standing.
In a 50-49 overnight vote just before recess, the Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as Attorney General over unanimous Democrat opposition and two Republican defectors. The establishment threw everything it had and still came up one vote short.
OPINION / COMMENTARY. For the first time in 18 months, Trump landed in California — Gavin Newsom’s backyard — to tout a nearly 70% drop in net migration, record-low crime, a $1.3B Medicaid fraud clawback, and the Working Families Tax Cuts. ARES breaks down the numbers Sacramento has to share credit for, and why the trip enraged the left.
OPINION / COMMENTARY. After months of GOP warnings that Democrats would force a pre-midterm shutdown, Chuck Schumer folded — the Senate advanced a bipartisan CR funding the government at existing levels through Dec. 11. ARES breaks down the cave, Schumer’s victory-lap spin, and why John Kennedy says the OMB grant fight isn’t over.
Third Way is torching $15 million to crush the socialists who just conquered their own primaries. After Abdul El-Sayed’s razor-thin Michigan Senate upset, the Democratic establishment isn’t fighting Republicans — it’s fighting its own voters. Let them.
OPINION / COMMENTARY. Six weeks after the Supreme Court struck down his first-day order in Trump v. Barbara, President Trump signed two executive orders targeting birthright citizenship and ‘birth tourism’ — built on the Court’s own exceptions. ARES breaks down the orders, the Miller and Scharf quotes, and the legal fight ahead.
OPINION / COMMENTARY. In the pre-dawn hours of Saturday the Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as Attorney General, 50-49 — every Democrat plus Collins and Murkowski opposed, McConnell absent. ARES breaks down the vote, the killed $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” and what a confirmed, Trump-loyal DOJ means now.
OPINION / COMMENTARY. The Senate is set to bolt for its August recess today — and President Trump is demanding John Thune keep it in session until it passes the SAVE America Act’s proof-of-citizenship and voter-ID rules, or kills the filibuster. ARES breaks down the 53-47 math, Mike Lee’s leadership threat, Thom Tillis’s reconciliation block, and the excuses between Republicans and the most popular idea in their platform.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee voted 8-5 to hold Anthony Fauci in criminal contempt after he took the Fifth on every question about COVID’s origins. Biden’s preemptive pardon doesn’t cover last week’s stonewalling — and Rand Paul is hand-delivering the referral straight to the DOJ.