Good morning! It’s National IPA Day, so congratulations to all the owners of aggressively mid breweries out there. In other news, a breakdancing musical making fun of that Raygun lady is a hit in Scotland, the olds are mad at the youths for not going to Vegas, and multiple people are (probably) disappointed by the coming death of the standalone Hulu app.

On the government side of things, President Trump threatened a federal takeover of Washington, D.C., after the infamous young DOGE staffer known only as "Big Balls" got the crap beaten out of him during an attempted carjacking.

Free bonus drama: Over in the House, Florida Rep. Cory Mills probably longs for the days when $85,000 in unpaid rent on his D.C. penthouse was his biggest scandal. Now, a former Miss United States (no, not that one) pageant winner says the congressman threatened to release nude videos of her after she broke up with him.

SPACE

🌕️ NASA to build nuclear power plant on the moon

There’s no good way to introduce this, so we’ll just come out and say it. In case you missed the gigantic headline above: NASA wants to build a nuclear power plant on the moon. Step one? Go back to the moon.

In his temporary role as acting NASA administrator, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy outlined the agency's fast-track plan on Tuesday. “We’re in a race to the moon, in a race with China to the moon. And to have a base on the moon, we need energy.”

• He called the nuclear power plant "critically important" to building a permanent base on the moon.

• The moon receives rotating two-week periods of darkness and sunlight. That makes solar power difficult.

NASA wants to have this thing ready to launch by 2030. Hundreds of millions of dollars have already been spent studying the idea and, according to Duffy, it's time to "deploy our technology" and "make this a reality."

• The plan calls for a 100-kilowatt reactor, which is enough juice to power about 80 houses. It would probably be about the size of a truck.

• In an attempt to ease safety concerns, Duffy confirmed that the reactor won't go live until it's physically on the moon.

Space race: China and Russia have similar plans to send nuclear reactors to the moon, and beating them to the punch could be critical. The first country to do this could, if you ask Duffy, "declare a keep-out zone" for safety reasons. And nobody wants to get stuck with the second pick.

• Budget cuts to NASA could pose a problem here. But many of the cuts have come at the expense of NASA's research projects.

• The Trump administration says it wants to reorient NASA around space exploration and has asked Congress for extra cash for that purpose.

As for next steps? Duffy told Fox News in July that NASA astronauts would orbit the moon in 2026. A manned mission to the lunar surface would follow in 2027.

Back on earth: Thankfully, there’s no one up there playing defense on behalf of the moon (that we know of, at least). The same can’t be said for the United States. As you’ve come to expect in 2025, we have some immigration news:

• Rwanda agreed to take in 250 migrants deported from the U.S and give them job training.

• Some visa applicants will have to pay $15,000 to come to the U.S. They’ll get the money back if they leave on time.

• A new trend among rich Boomers? Buying citizenship in some Caribbean island countries, including St. Lucia and Grenada.

• To boost its effort to hire 10,000 new agents, ICE lowered its age minimum from 21 to 18 and lifted its cap of 40.

• The White House claimed on social media that the U.S. has achieved net negative migration for the first time in 50 years.

GOVERNMENT

💉 Over at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. terminated $500 million in contracts focused on developing mRNA vaccines and related technology. The contracts were part of an HHS program that worked with pharmaceutical companies to create vaccines for public health emergencies. Kennedy explained that experts at two HHS agencies — the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — found mRNA tech is riskier than the viruses it attacks. He added that HHS is "moving beyond the limitations of mRNA ... and investing in better solutions."

🥇 President Trump signed an executive order creating a White House Task Force on the 2028 Summer Olympics. The chairman? Him, naturally. Among the task force's other members are Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. The stated purpose? Coordinating the transportation work across federal, state, and local governments. The task force will also be tasked with smoothing out the visa process for visiting athletes, the security situation, and anything else the LA28 organizers need.

🌏️ Sorry, India. Tariffs on your exports to the United States will soon be doubled to 50%. President Trump raised the rate as punishment for India's continued purchase of oil from Russia, which helps fund its war in Ukraine. The new tariff kicks in on August 27 unless India starts getting its oil elsewhere. On a related note, Trump said he wants to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin as soon as next week and follow that up with another sit-down that also includes Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

TRIVIA

Did Vice President JD Vance meet with top Department of Justice (DOJ) officials last night to iron out their strategy on this whole Epstein situation? He called the story "completely fake news," so perhaps not. Who knows?

Either way, the alleged dinner was set to take place at the vice president's official residence, Number One Observatory Circle. Every president since 1800 has lived in the White House, but most VPs had to rough it. In what year was the vice president finally given an official residence?

Hint: It was during the term of Vice President Gerald Ford.

POLITICS

🤠 Will Texas Democrats be arrested?

Sometimes, things get so big in Texas that they somehow end up clear across the country in Chicago. That’s where the Democratic members of the Texas House of Representatives have been since fleeing their state on Sunday to stop their Republican colleagues from redrawing the state’s congressional districts (to favor Republicans).

This strategy is called quorum busting. The Texas legislature requires two-thirds of lawmakers to be present. If too few are there, the chamber isn’t allowed to hold a session because it doesn’t have a quorum.

• Texas Democrats fled to Illinois because it has a Democratic governor, JB Pritzker.

• Had they fled to a Republican state, like neighboring Oklahoma, they likely would have been arrested, hauled back home, and tossed into the House chamber.

The move is a somewhat common last-ditch effort by parties at the end of their rope. Like Democrats in Texas. Or Republicans in Oregon. But it rarely works in the long run because, let’s face it, they’ve got to come home eventually.

Breaking quorum isn’t without punishment. These Texas Democrats are currently being slapped with $500-per-day fines. Campaign funds can’t be used to pay them, so the lawmakers have raised personal, non-campaign cash. But Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says that’s a “pay me and I’ll do what you want” situation and is threatening to charge them with bribery.

• Abbott also went nuclear with a lawsuit that argues the Democrats have abandoned their offices.

• If that’s successful, their seats would be declared vacant and *poof* no more quorum problem.

Is the FBI involved? Texas Republicans have asked the FBI to hunt down the missing Democrats for them, but the feds haven't responded. And this is an issue of state law, so the FBI is unlikely to get involved.

Meanwhile, other states, on both sides of the aisle, are itching to jump in on the Great Redistricting War of 2025.

BRIEFS

● Apple will invest an extra $100 billion in its U.S. manufacturing plants, expanding on its earlier pledge to invest $500 billion and hire 20,000 workers. The plan, announced by CEO Tim Cook in the Oval Office, could help Apple avoid some tariffs.

● A 28-year-old U.S. Army sergeant is in custody, accused of shooting five fellow soldiers with his personal handgun at Fort Stewart in Georgia. He’ll be tried in court by the Army's Office of the Special Trial Counsel. All victims are expected to fully recover.

● Months after cutting more than 550 jobs, the National Weather Service (NWS) is now hiring 450 people. The cuts had spurred concern that the agency wouldn’t be ready for hurricane season. But officials say most of the new jobs are new roles, not replacements.

● As OpenAI prepares to open an office in D.C. and deepen its ties to regulators, it’s now offering top-shelf ChatGPT Enterprise subscriptions to federal agencies for just $1. Helping government "work better,” it says, will "bring the benefits of AI to everyone."

● A strike by Boeing manufacturing workers has hit its fourth day. More than 3,000 machinists union members are striking at military aircraft plants in Missouri and Illinois in response to salary negotiations going south.

QUOTE

ANSWER

America’s first 40 vice presidents had to find their own place to live in Washington, D.C. Congress finally did something about that in 1974, and kicked the Navy’s top-ranking admiral out of his official residence at the Naval Observatory.

The VP at the time was Gerald Ford, but he took over as president before moving in. His VP, Nelson Rockefeller, was loaded (see: Rockefeller) and preferred his own mansion to some sloppy government house. Vice President Walter Mondale finally took the deal in 1977, yadda, yadda, yadda, JD Vance lives there now.