With America’s stockpiles of crucial munitions getting worryingly low, America’s adversaries seem to be getting interested in testing the boundaries of what they can get away with. Citing U.S. intelligence reports, the Wall Street Journal reports that Vladimir Putin is mulling the possibility of “testing NATO’s resolve” with a “limited assault” on a member country in the next few years. Hey, Vlad, there’s a lot going on over here—could you give us a minute?
In other news, we got some pretty disappointing jobs numbers today: The economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, while May and June’s reports were revised down by a combined 103,000 jobs more. The unemployment rate actually ticked down a hair, to 4.1 percent, as 260,000 people left the labor force. In other words, employers aren’t hiring and workers are starting to notice. To wit, this stat from the Journal: “In recent months, almost three in 10 of the unemployed have been looking to work for more than six months, the greatest share since the pandemic recovery four years ago.” Happy Friday.
Join Catherine Rampell and Sam Stein for Receipts Live on Substack and YouTube today at 12:00 p.m.
Cassidy in the Spotlight
by William Kristol
[Update (August 7, 2026, 12:30 p.m. EDT): In remarks on the Senate floor an hour after this newsletter was published, Sen. Cassidy announced he would be voting for Blanche after all. So it goes.]
With Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) announcement early this morning that she will oppose Todd Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general, it all comes down to the senior Republican senator from Louisiana, Bill Cassidy.
Cassidy could join Murkowski in opposition. They had, after all, met together with Blanche on Wednesday. This morning Murkowski cited “the politicization—even weaponization” of the Department of Justice that “accelerated” during this administration as her reason for opposing Blanche. Cassidy had already said prior to that meeting that he was “very concerned about the weaponization of the Justice Department” under Blanche. All Cassidy has to say now is that Blanche didn’t satisfy his concerns, as he didn’t satisfy Murkowski’s.
And Cassidy owes Trump nothing. After he voted to convict Trump in the February 2021 Senate impeachment trial, Cassidy was targeted by Trump, and was crushed in the Republican primary earlier this year by a Trump-backed challenger.
What’s more, at the beginning of Trump’s second term, after much public agonizing, Cassidy, a physician and chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, provided the decisive vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health of Human Services. He’d received several assurances from Kennedy about what Kennedy would do and wouldn’t do as secretary—assurances that Kennedy has subsequently broken. So you’d think Cassidy would have plenty of reason to resolve not to be fooled again.
But will he so resolve? Will he do the right thing? Or will he follow in the footsteps of his Republican colleague, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis?
Tillis was elected to the Senate in the same year as Cassidy, in 2014. A businessman who had entered politics a decade before and had become Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, he ran for the Senate that year with the backing of Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and the Chamber of Commerce. He was the establishment pick. And after he defeated a couple of Tea Party Republicans for the nomination, he seemed set to be a relatively centrist North Carolina senator.
Then came Trump. Tillis joined the vast majority of his colleagues in years of accommodation, appeasement, and acquiescence. In February 2021, he chose not to follow Cassidy or, for that matter, his fellow Republican senator from North Carolina, Richard Burr, in voting to convict Trump. But Burr wasn’t planning on running for re-election in 2022, while Tillis was focused on his bright political career ahead.
Nonetheless, by June 2025, his lack of true Trumpist zeal meant that he would face a likely primary challenge from the Trump wing of the party. So Tillis announced he wouldn’t run for re-election.
A couple of weeks ago, Tillis demanded as a condition of his support that Blanche meet with the Epstein survivors whom he’d shunned for eighteen months. Once Blanche’s behavior in that meeting turned out to be utterly disrespectful of the survivors, it would have been easy for Tillis to announce his opposition to Blanche, which would have killed the nomination.
But Tillis caved.
You might think that such a record of repeated capitulation to Trump would induce Tillis to slink off quietly into the sunset. But he didn’t even have the dignity for that. Instead, as the publishing house HarperCollins announced yesterday, he has written a book.
According to HarperCollins, How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents brings us Tillis “outspoken and uncensored.” The book is a “bare-knuckled, darkly funny wake-up call,” a “sharp, no-BS book, “ “a bracing tonic to stiffen spines.” Tillis “pulls no punches” about the “spineless Republican yes-men (and -women), and the weirdos of the MAGA world,” about “the grifting sycophants and useful idiots in Trump 2.0.”
As the kids used to say, gag me with a spoon.
Underscoring the absurdity of it all is the book jacket. It features as examples of the sycophants and idiots of Trump 2.0, photos of Kristi Noem, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Pete Hegseth. Tillis voted to confirm all three to their Cabinet posts, along with every other Trump nominee.
Does Cassidy now look at Tillis—and the other pathetic, gag-inducing Respectable Republicans™—and find it just too much? Is it possible that this morning Bill Cassidy is saying to himself: Don’t be Thom Tillis? Or does he too decide that he can write a post-Senate memoir about fake courage without displaying actual courage when he could make a difference?
AROUND THE BULWARK
Amy Acton’s Prescription for Ohio: Bipartisanship… The Democratic candidate for governor explains why voters are exhausted by the rancor of politics—and shares her vision for renewal with JIM SWIFT in Cincinnati.
Trump’s Fabricated World Is Crashing…SAM STEIN and Kansas Democratic U.S. Senate nominee ADAM HAMILTON join TIM MILLER to discuss his sleeper race everyone is waking up to.
Did you miss Adrian Carrasquillo’s Reddit AMA? No worries, you can catch up on it here.
Did MAGA Infiltrate the Green Party in Michigan? ‘Welcome to the ballot, random internet stranger.’ Be sure to read BRENDAN HARTNETT and SAM STEIN in a special Press Pass.
Banks Knew About Jeffrey Epstein and Looked Away… SEN. RON WYDEN joins CATHERINE RAMPELL on Bulwark Takes to discuss his yearslong investigation into Epstein’s finances.
Quick Hits
BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP, AGAIN: When it comes to throwing out constitutional amendments via executive order, Donald Trump has a simple philosophy: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Two months after the Supreme Court tore up his last attempt to restrict birthright citizenship as “facially unconstitutional,” Trump signed a pair of executive orders attempting to nibble around the edges of which infants born on U.S. soil automatically qualify as citizens. Here’s the New York Times:
It was not immediately clear how the twin orders could realistically be enforced. They would restrict those who could qualify for birthright citizenship, to exclude children of staff working for foreign governments but serving in the United States, and the babies of mothers who lie about their intentions for visiting the country while pregnant. There is a third category, for babies born in U.S. territories, but that would first require congressional action.
And then there are children whose parents are tagged by the government as being part of known terrorist groups or who are “alien enemies.”
Given how tightly the summer’s ruling has tied the administration’s hands on this matter, most of yesterday’s signing ceremony was simply an occasion for grumping. Stephen Miller fumed that the 14th amendment had been passed “exclusively . . . to ensure that the children of slaves would be citizens,” and that it “had no other meaning and purpose outside of that.”1 But there may be some policy levers left to the administration. For example, White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf suggested that they were considering guidance to deny visas to visitors who they suspect are entering the country for the purpose of delivering a child here.
PRESIDENT CARLSON?: Could Tucker Carlson run for president? At the very least, he’s plainly trying to keep the possibility on people’s minds. The former Fox News broadcast star raised eyebrows this week after photos were released of him eating dinner at his Maine home with several exiled MAGA dissidents, including Rep. Thomas Massie, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and former administration official Joe Kent. “We said no more foreign wars and we meant it and supported Donald Trump because he made that promise,” Greene posted. “The movement has begun.”
Then, on Wednesday, Carlson released a 90-minute livestream containing what he described as a a ten-point program for “whatever comes next”—a program marrying typical MAGA and MAHA impulses (America should be “sovereign,” “beautiful,” “healthy,” and “united”) with populist attacks on the sort of open corruption and foreign adventurism Trump has embraced (one set of rules must apply to everyone, even presidents, and government officials should be punished for lying to citizens).
There was a lot more to it than that, some of which JVL, Andrew, and Will Sommer discussed on video yesterday. But we have a feeling we’re going to be hearing a lot more from Tucker in the days and weeks to come.
LOSING ALLIES: The list of Republicans calling on Rep. Max Miller to suspend his re-election campaign and resign from Congress continues to grow. Yesterday, two more senators joined the chorus: Jon Husted, who serves alongside Miller’s father-in-law Bernie Moreno as Ohio’s other senator, and Montana Sen. Tim Sheehy. Husted’s statement was more diplomatic—Miller, he said, ought to resign “to focus on what is in the best interest of his daughter”—while Sheehy’s was somewhat less so:
This guy is clearly a degenerate sociopath. Max should step aside and seek help. Staying in this race makes it far more likely we lose this seat and hand Democrats a majority to impeach President Trump.
It’s already too late for district Republicans to hold a special election to replace Miller as their nominee, but party leaders could still replace him in the ballot if he were to drop out before Monday. Miller continues to insist he’s being railroaded and doesn’t intend to drop out. But our old colleague Marc Caputo reports for Axios that not everybody is convinced he’ll stick with it: “Republicans privately expect that Miller will drop his re-election bid by the end of this week, according to two sources.”
Cheap Shots
We lost a real one this week:
For the record, this is such a cartoonish reading of history that not even the judges who dissented from this summer’s decision would agree.
As to Lisa Murkowski, I’ll wait until the plus size lady actually sings instead of just warning up backstage. If the history of the current Republican Party proves anything, it is that one needs to wait for the actual vote before assuming what any of them will do.
Cassidy already sold his soul. Souls are notoriously hard to reclaim.
Doesn't anyone in Washington do anything out of spite anymore ? Cassidy has nothing to lose by tanking Blanche's nomination, but we all know how this is going to go: Cassidy will virtue-signal for a bit, and then vote for Blanche after claiming he received "assurances" blah blah blah. Then he'll just slink out of town. Pathetic.