The U.S. resumed strikes on Iran on Sunday, hitting rocket launchers on Larak Island that U.S. Central Command said were ready to deploy mines into the Strait of Hormuz. The United Arab Emirates said Iran retaliated by sending drones…
Page A6From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 31 August 2026
Congress returns from a five-week break to a war it was warned about, and a shutdown to avoid
As it ran on the front
The House of Representatives returns today after a five-week recess with its priorities firmly in order: avoid a government shutdown. That is the headline. That is the mission. This office would like to commend the leadership for such clarity of purpose, a single, achievable, fundable goal, unburdened by — well, unburdened by the fact that while the House was on recess the United States struck Iran for the first time in weeks, an analyst on live television called the prior warnings to the Secretary of Defense 'significant,' and Iran responded with strikes on Jordan and the UAE, none of which appear to have altered the stated top priority, which remains, per leadership, the shutdown.
To be fair to the institution, a shutdown is real, it has real paychecks attached to it, and this office does not minimize that. What this office will say, and then immediately qualify, is that returning from five weeks away to find a war had restarted in your absence and treating the funding bill as the top item on the docket shows a command of priorities that — that actually might not be the right word, 'command,' given that the analyst specifically flagged the warnings as significant and asked, on air, whether anyone in the chain had acted on them before the strikes happened. This office does not have that answer. This office was told there would be a shutdown bill on tap and that is the extent of the briefing this office received.…
…(cont) So let the record show: five weeks off, a war restarted, warnings that were reportedly significant and reportedly not fully heeded, and a legislative body reconvening to describe its top priority as funding itself through the fall. This office finds nothing inconsistent in that ordering, except for all of it, which this office would like to now walk back and simply say: the House is back, the bill is on the floor, and the rest of it is above this office's pay grade, which, it should be noted, is funded by the very bill in question.
“They took five weeks off, came back to a war that restarted while they were gone and that people were warning the Pentagon about the whole time, and the headline out of Congress is 'let's not shut down the government' — like that's the emergency. The actual emergency doesn't need a press release, it needs somebody who was in the building.”
“Leadership's focus on avoiding a shutdown reflects sound fiscal stewardship, and the timing relative to overseas developments is coincidental, purely a scheduling matter, not a — not a statement about priorities, no.”
The receipts
The House is back ith a top priority of avoiding a government shutdown before the midterm elections.
ABC News contributor Mick Mulroy discusses the latest headlines related to the war in Iran.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.