The House is back in session this week after a monthlong August recess, with lawmakers aiming to avert a government shutdown before funding expires Sept. 30 amid the 2026 election season. The biggest item on the agenda will be a…
Page A8From§Eachthe late evening edition — 30 August 2026
House GOP rushes to avert a shutdown while readying a 'Trump-a-palooza' convention in Texas.
As it ran on the front
The House is moving with appropriate urgency to pass a measure averting a government shutdown ahead of the midterms, and I want to be clear that 'appropriate urgency' is the correct term here, not 'panic,' not 'we should have done this in June,' appropriate urgency, full stop. Keeping the government funded through an election is a routine legislative function that Congress performs constantly, competently, and with no relationship whatsoever to electoral considerations, which is why they scheduled it for right before the election, for scheduling reasons.
At the same time, and I want to stress this is a completely separate calendar item, Republicans are readying what is being described, by their own people, as a 'very hasty' convention — the party's word, not mine, 'hasty' — a Trump-a-palooza in Texas. I'm told the hasty timeline reflects enthusiasm, not the fact that- actually, I don't have a good version of that sentence. It reflects enthusiasm.…
…(cont) Here's my position, and I'm sticking to it: a party can walk and chew gum. It can avert a shutdown and throw a convention in the same news cycle, because governing and campaigning are two different muscles, and no reasonable person should read anything into the fact that one of those muscles got a 'very hasty' label from inside the building. The shutdown measure is about keeping federal employees paid, veterans' benefits processed, and the lights on in agencies regular families depend on every day without thinking about it. The convention is about a stage, a schedule, and a name in lights, in Texas, hastily.
I'll say this plainly, because it's the job: it does not look good, scrambling to avert a shutdown with one hand while planning a party with the other, and I've spent four paragraphs trying to make it look like two unrelated stories and I don't think I actually- I think I just made the argument for why it's the same story. Both items are about priorities, filed the same week, from the same conference, and I was hired to defend one of them convincingly. I got two out of three sentences there.
“They're racing to keep the lights on for federal workers with one hand and planning a hasty convention with the other — you don't get to call something an emergency and a party in the same news cycle and expect nobody to notice which one they actually rushed.”
“Governing and campaigning are two entirely separate functions of the party, there's no crossover there, the timing is purely coincidental, coincidental scheduling happens, that's just — okay, it's the same building, same week, but that doesn't mean anything.”
The receipts
The Republican National Committee’s (RNC) first-of-its-kind midterm convention has been cloaked in mystery until a few weeks ago. Details are finally emerging about what’s expected to be a two-day pep rally to bolster hype and encourage…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.