Today’s notice: Big day in the House for big bills. A must-read civics lesson. Don’t put too much stock in the stock-banning push. DHS has a contract to buy body-worn cameras. And: A top DHS official investing like a Democrat.
THE LATEST
What the president’s watching: House Republicans are about to bolt for August recess, and thus have a make-it-or-break-it day to push through a litany of White House priorities they can deploy as fodder on the campaign trail. Donald Trump put on a charm offensive in the Oval Office last night, a source familiar with the meeting told NOTUS’ Kadia Goba, sending a dozen of his allies back to the Capitol with signed baseball hats and a nudge to deliver on his agenda.
The remaining question is whether the House GOP conference will be able to get it all done before members depart this week, and if the Senate, which is sticking around for at least another week, will go along — or if they’ll all go home empty-handed.
Trending
“We’re dead set on fulfilling our role in this partnership with our president,” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-Louisiana) told Manuela, calling the final legislative lift and Senate negotiations “beautifully messy right now.”
Already done: The House passed the government funding stopgap 220-205 last night.
Left on the plate: A must-pass defense policy bill, as well as the $95 billion budget blueprint for the Iran war, farm aid and parts of Trump’s voting-restrictions bill.
The problem for House members is twofold. First, they don’t know what the Senate will do with these bills — especially the supplemental measure with portions of the SAVE America Act that are DOA in the upper chamber right now. (Senate Majority Leader John Thune also said yesterday that the White House has a different plan for the stopgap than the House’s.) And second, spending large sums of money and the war with Iran aren’t popular talking points back home.
Adding it all up: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth finally offered a preliminary price tag for the war in a tense back-and-forth with senators yesterday. Hegseth said the war will cost taxpayers nearly $38 billion by the end of September — though experts last month had already estimated its cost to be roughly $40 billion, and that’s before the ceasefire collapsed and daily strikes resumed, NOTUS’ Joe Gould and Hamed Ahmadi report.
Open tabs: A Houthi Blockade Could Worsen an Already Fragile Oil Market (NYT); Software Glitch Put Thousands of Noncitizens on New Jersey Voter Rolls (NOTUS); Zelensky ousts Ukraine’s military commander as major shake-up continues (WaPo); Trump Approves Landmark Nuclear Deal With Saudi Arabia (WSJ)
THE BIG ONE
A civics lesson: Aangad Singh and his family left Washington in June with no trophy but a lot of questions. They believe Aangad correctly answered nearly every single question in the Presidential 1776 Award civics competition, and yet he didn’t even finish in the top three.
“It doesn’t make sense,” his mother, Ramandeep Singh, told NOTUS’ Sam Fortier for a dizzying, spellbinding story about doubts and distrust in our age of suspicion.
The prospect that the Department of Education may have fixed the competition and a chorus of validation from Aangad’s fellow contestants shook his immigrant family, who strongly believe in American ideals, to the core. So they went searching for answers, and recourse, not knowing what they might find.
From the campaign trail
Michigan money: Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign raised $3.3 million in just three weeks, with 68% of donors giving to his camp for the first time, according to numbers his campaign shared exclusively with NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz. El-Sayed will face off against Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Aug. 4 Democratic primary.
From the Hill
What ban? After an exhausting few months of legislative sausage making, the House is finally set to vote today on a bill that would restrict stock trading by members of Congress. Curtailing lawmakers’ ability to profit off of individual stock has been a longtime priority for some members. However, it’s not a safe bet it’ll make it through the Senate, NOTUS’ Avani Kalra and Taylor Giorno report.
House Republicans have tied the stock-trading ban to a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and voter identification to cast a ballot — two issues the Senate lacks the votes to pass. A second reason? The Senate hasn’t even scheduled it.
“We have a whole list of things that we’re going to talk about on how to prioritize, because it takes a lot more time in the Senate to get things done,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming), the Republican whip, told reporters.
From the administration
Body-worn cameras on the way? The Department of Homeland Security ordered more than $30 million in body cameras from Axon Enterprise after recent fatal shootings by federal immigration agents, NOTUS’ Jackie Llanos reports — from contracts awarded just days ago.
DHS has already spent millions on body cameras, but immigration agents weren’t wearing them at the time of the shootings in Maine and Texas.
Not moving: The Department of Agriculture announced in July 2025 that it was reorganizing, a mammoth project that would relocate more than half of its D.C. workforce and other employees around the country. Critics argued it could be a sneaky way to lay people off. Now a year later, workers say they don’t want to move and the shake-up would severely hurt the department, NOTUS’ Tyler Spence, Eric Katz and Natalie Alms report.
Employees are sounding the alarm: policy rollouts, damage research, wildfire response and getting money out the door will all be delayed, they say, if the workforce is significantly diminished.
ON NOTUS PODCAST
From your favorite podcast app: On today’s episode of On NOTUS, Rep. Jim Himes (D-Connecticut) warned that Trump could interfere in November’s midterm elections and urged Americans to think through the president’s election claims. “If an individual citizen can’t exercise the critical faculties involved in seeing the president’s lies for what they are, if 50% of America believes lies that are easily disprovable, we’re done,” Himes told NOTUS’ Kadia Goba, though he added that he wasn’t pessimistic about voters. He also discussed the fight over FISA, his belief in a “big tent” Democratic Party, his beekeeping hobby and what Congress has in common with a jar of bees.
NOTUS METRO
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Local news: What to Do in the D.C. Area This Weekend, by Torrie Herrington
From Cycling to Fishing, Concerns About East Potomac’s Future Go Beyond Golf, by Shamira Muhammad
NOTUS PERSPECTIVES
The secretary of defense is offering hormone replacement therapy for warfighters with low testosterone. But his Senate testimony yesterday left Dana Milbank wondering: Does Pete Hegseth have too much?
NEW ON NOTUS
Stocking up: A top DHS official is intentionally investing his money like a congressional Democrat, according to his federal financial disclosures reviewed by NOTUS’ Dave Levinthal. Pedro M. Allende, a department under secretary, recently purchased between $15,001 and $50,000 worth of shares in an exchange-traded fund that mimics moves made by Democratic members of Congress.
Dan Weiskopf, the senior portfolio manager for the group that oversees the ETF, told Dave it is an “inherent conflict of interest” for someone in Allende’s role to invest in the fund.
More: Trump Lifts the Ban on Direct U.S. Flights to Lebanon, by Jenna Monnin
Cleo Fields Won’t Seek Reelection After Redistricting in Louisiana, by Torrie Herrington
Mamdani Says He Can’t Arrest Netanyahu if He Comes to New York, by Manuela Silva
Wisconsin Dems Ask Elections Commission to Allow Voters to Recast Absentee Ballots, by Torrie Herrington
NOT US
- The Secretary of Homeland, by Nick Miroff for The Atlantic
- The New York Young Republican Club Has an Antisemitism Problem, by Nathan Taylor Pemberton for New York magazine
- How the G.O.P. Turned Olive Garden Into a Voter ID Talking Point, by Michael Gold for The New York Times
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The newsletter was produced by Thomas Burr, Brett Bachman and Andrew Burton. Photo by Mark Schiefelbein/AP.
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