Hugh Hewitt

From @Axios, @StefWKight with the summary. @LeaderJohnThune is very likely to be re-elected today to lead the @SenateGOP for the next two years. Knight: “The bottom line: At this point, none of the leadership elections are competitive. •No one has thrown their hat in the ring to challenge Thune. •And Barrasso, Cotton, Policy Committee Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Conference Vice Chair James Lankford (R-Okla.) are expected to keep their spots as Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5 atop the conference. •Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) is the sole candidate for NRSC chair.”

The editors at @WSJ are exactly correct: “Republicans had better get moving with a lame-duck reconciliation bill that gives defense enough funding to survive Democratic intransigence. The Pentagon is facing two nuclear adversaries and a major technological evolution in warfare—and the department doesn’t know whether its budget next year is roughly $840 billion (continuing resolution from fiscal 2026), $1.5 trillion (the President’s proposal for 2027), or somewhere in between. Also unknown: When that money is arriving. Spare us lectures about inefficient defense spending as long as Congress operates this way.” Read the whole thing. Democrats are soft on defense spending generally and think they can impinge on Commander-in-Chief powers (which they can’t.) But if we are looking at two years of Democrat-driven government shutdown (which we are) then the outgoing Congress should fill up the Pentagon’s tanks and then top them off stat.

For OLC “there are pressing questions about ‘court packing,’ statehood for the District of Columbia and the constitutionality of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact that can be asked and answered by OLC before the executive privilege debates begin.” All President Trump needs to do is to direct OLC to provide answers to those questions, which are all legal questions of first impression.

DOJ’s OLC is the legal brain of the Executive Branch. President Trump should pose three questions of first impression to OLC’s Assistant AG @ElliotGaiser this week: foxnews.com/opinion/hugh-hew…

Also from “News Items” from @EllisItems (substack.news-items.com): “9. France has accused Iran of being behind an “‌unprecedented” cyber attack ‌on its supermarket fridges that spoilt food worth millions of pounds. Jean-Noël Barrot, the country’s foreign minister, vowed to retaliate against Tehran as he blamed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for the Oct 11 and 12 hacks. He also summoned the Iranian ambassador. “I can confirm that this attack was carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” said Mr Barrot. “This attack is unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression,” he said. (Source: telegraph.com/uk)”

From “News Items” from @EllisItems (substack.news-items.com): “3. California Institute of Technology: A robotic truss builder that was conceived, designed, and built by Caltech researchers and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has successfully built a structure in space—without the help of astronauts—for the first time. The truss builder, part of DARPA's Novel Orbital and Moon Manufacturing, Materials, and Mass-efficient Design (NOM4D) program, consists of an autonomous manipulator that picks up struts and joints held in nearby dispensers to repeatedly assemble identical sections, or bays, of a perimeter truss. (Sources: caltech.edu, darpa.mil)”

Tom Massie doing the political equivalent of the 1973-74 streaking idiocy. And you don’t remember any of the streakers either because they were weird and in desperate need of attention.

So all the leaking by Team Appeasement this afternoon was nonsense.

Bravo Chris!