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 A5From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 31 August 2026
House scrambles to avert shutdown as GOP preps 'very hasty' Trump-a-palooza convention.
As it ran on the front
The House is moving, this week, on a measure to keep the government funded ahead of the midterms, and this desk wants to be clear that averting a shutdown is a serious legislative undertaking requiring focus, coordination, and floor time that Republicans are fully devoting to it. Fully. Mostly. The same conference is also finalizing what's being described, by its own organizers, as a 'very hasty' convention in Texas, a kind of national rally built around the President, informally known — this desk did not name it, the wire did — as Trump-a-palooza.
Two priorities, running in parallel: keep federal paychecks going out, and stage a celebration. This desk sees no tension there. Governance and celebration are not mutually exclusive activities; plenty of successful organizations hold a party during a budget crunch. That's — that's not actually a normal thing organizations do, is it. Most organizations wait until after the crunch. This desk will revisit that line.…
…(cont) The word 'hasty' is doing work here that this desk should probably not gloss over. A convention thrown together quickly, during a funding fight, is not typically the sign of a party that considers the funding fight the emergency. It's the sign of a party that considers the funding fight solved, or solvable enough not to interrupt the party. If the shutdown were the real four-alarm fire this desk keeps describing it as in press availabilities, you'd expect the convention to wait. It isn't waiting.
So what you have, receipts in hand, is a legislative body racing a deadline on keeping the lights on for federal workers, while simultaneously building a stage for a rally named after one man, two months before an election in which that same body is, this desk will grant, trailing in a fair number of contests. Whether the rally is meant to fix that problem or distract from it is not something this desk is prepared to characterize. It is prepared to note that the invitations reportedly went out before the funding bill did.
“They're racing a shutdown deadline with one hand and mailing convention invites with the other. When the party's not worried enough to cancel the rally, they're not worried enough about your paycheck either.”
“The convention and the funding bill are entirely separate calendars, staffed by entirely separate teams, running on — running at the same time, on purpose, because leadership can walk and chew gum. This desk stands by that.”
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.