Good morning, it's Friday, Sept. 18. Speaker Johnson sent the House home seven weeks early — dodging a vote on impeaching Defense Secretary Hegseth and leaving an active war, a government funding deadline, and AI regulation without oversight until after the midterms.

Also in today's issue: Diesel hits all-time high, Trump called the Fed chair, Russia sanctions head to Trump, RFK Jr.'s vaccine homecoming, Data centers told to pay up.

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The U.S. House of Representatives won't vote on anything again until November 3 — and the reason it left early tells you more about Washington right now than anything that happened while it was in session.

Here's what that means for you. The Iran war will continue with zero congressional oversight for at least seven weeks. Government funding expires September 30, and only the Senate will be in town to deal with it. No vote on AI safety. No vote on energy costs. Diesel just hit an all-time record. Gas rose 12 cents in four days. And the people you elected to the House will spend the next 49 days asking for your vote — without spending one of those days doing the job you already gave them.

Now look, here's what actually happened. On Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson sent members home a day ahead of schedule. The move killed a direct vote on an eight-article impeachment resolution against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, filed by Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who lost his primary in May to a Trump-backed challenger.

Massie's 34-page resolution accuses Hegseth of waging the Iran war without congressional authorization, carrying out the capture of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro without approval, and ordering the killing of alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Pacific without due process. He filed it as a "privileged resolution" — a procedural move that forces the full House to vote within two days. Johnson called it a publicity stunt and said it would be tabled when Congress returns.

But here's where it gets interesting. Massie claimed that Republican leaders found "other Republicans" willing to vote for impeachment — and rushed the recess to keep those names off the record. If that's true, leadership chose to protect its members from a hard vote rather than let the process play out. That's a decision worth scrutiny no matter which party is making it.

And this wasn't a chamber buried in work. The House spent fewer than two weeks in session across all of August and September combined. It passed exactly two bills this week — Russia sanctions and a data center electricity measure — then left. Over 100 House Democrats had urged Johnson to stay and take up AI safety legislation after an Anthropic researcher resigned claiming the technology could kill us all by the end of the decade. Massie's separate push to force the release of Epstein investigation files was also blocked. Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused Republicans of leaving "without providing any relief to hard-working American taxpayers."

Here's the honest truth. The deeper problem isn't only partisan — it's institutional. Congress is the branch that's supposed to check executive power, especially during wartime. When lawmakers leave for seven weeks during a military conflict they never voted to authorize, they aren't just skipping work. They're handing away the one lever the Constitution gave them. The war doesn't pause because Congress does. And neither does the cost of fighting it.

The next date that matters is September 30 — when government funding runs out. The Senate is still in session, but it can't pass a spending bill alone. If no deal comes together, the government shuts down weeks before midterms, and the blame falls on the party that controls both chambers. Whether that pressure brings the House back early or forces a last-minute Senate workaround is the question worth watching.

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Diesel hit an all-time national record of $6.40 per gallon on Wednesday, with regular gas rising to $4.43 — up 12 cents in four days. At a North Carolina rally, President Trump called the costs "a very inexpensive price to pay" for the Iran war, adding "frankly, even if it was a lot more." Former ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who had a public falling-out with Trump, posted video from a California station showing $8.49 diesel and said: "This is Trump's fault." The pain is concrete. A Missouri farmer called filling his harvest tanks "painful to buy." A Virginia trucker has parked 7 of his 20 trucks. An Arkansas school district cut bus routes after fuel spending jumped $17,000 this year

Trump revealed Wednesday that he spoke to Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh before the board's unanimous vote to raise interest rates, telling him "you might as well vote with the board because it's not going to matter." Trump called the rest of the rate-setting committee "very hostile" and later posted that rates should be "1%, or less." Warsh declined to confirm the conversation, saying only that "independence is a two-way street." The rate hike itself — covered in yesterday's edition — raises costs on credit cards, auto loans, and adjustable mortgages. What's new is the president publicly admitting he tried to shape a Fed vote, a direct test of central bank independence with midterms seven weeks out.

The House passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act 262-159, sending it to President Trump's desk. Named for the late South Carolina senator who died in July, the bill lets the president impose tariffs up to 100% on goods from the top five importers of Russian oil — potentially China and India — and up to 500% on Russian goods directly. The Senate passed it 86-11 in August. Fifty-eight Democrats voted yes in the House; seven Republicans voted no, reflecting the party's ongoing split over Ukraine support. Rep. Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat, warned the bill hands Trump tariff authority "with no guardrails or oversight, and no expiration."

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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a keynote Thursday at a conference hosted by Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit he co-founded. He told the crowd "you have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House" and spent over an hour questioning the safety of childhood vaccines — claims that contradict decades of established science. The next speaker was Andrew Wakefield, the discredited British physician whose fraudulent research helped launch the modern anti-vaccine movement. The speech came amid active measles outbreaks and falling vaccination rates nationwide. STAT reported Kennedy "has now made it central to his legacy as health secretary."

The House passed the Ratepayer Protection Act 417-3, requiring data centers that use more than 100 megawatts — enough to power roughly 80,000 homes — to pay for their own grid upgrades instead of passing costs to household customers. The bill puts into law the White House's March 2026 pledge signed by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and others. But it uses a framework that only asks states to "consider" the standard, not follow it — a gap Harvard's Electricity Law Initiative has flagged as potentially toothless. The bill also covers only data centers, not other large power users like steel mills or chip factories.

The all-time record national average for a gallon of diesel, per AAA data — up 77% in 2026. Diesel powers nearly all freight, farming, and construction in the U.S., meaning this number shows up in everything from groceries to heating oil.

P.S. Should Congress recess during wartime? Hit Reply — one word is enough.