NOSE OFF, SPITE FACE UPDATE: Looks like the Senate and House Republicans are at loggerheads over whether to fund the Government Accountability Office (GA) — the investigative arm of Congress — or assuage President Donald Trump’s anger by chopping the agency’s budget in half. My update on The Washington Stand.

FED-FUNDED RAIL PROJECTS ARE $23 BILLION OVER BUDGET: No surprise that California’s High-Speed Rail Project tops the list here, but there are a bunch more identified by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa). One of them is 19 years behind schedule (Yes, you read that right!). No wonder Ernst titled her report “Off the Rails.”

THE INFORMATION WAR AGAINST ISRAEL: It began long before the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre of more than 1,200 Israelis, but in months since that tragedy, the Mainstream Media (MSM) has over and over lied about the Gaza War, according to Richard Pollock.

MAYBE HILLARY NOT OUT OF THE WOODS: Turns out FBI officials suppressed a bunch of evidence concerning national security problems linked with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email. But now there’s a new Sheriff in town at the Bureau, and he’s digging into all of that stuff. Stay tuned.

“NO” IS SENATE DEMS PLAN FOR TRUMP NOMINEES: Even if it means forcing the Senate to forego some or all of its traditional August recess, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and his Democratic colleagues have just one word for every nomination President Donald Trump sends to the Senate for confirmation.

END OF THE CLIMATE CON: Hard to believe but it’s true – two Ivy League physics professors do the numbers and describe the result, much to the delight of Tim Lynch on Substack.

WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE PINCH ME: I keep hearing that NPR and PBS are getting their federal tax-paid subsidies eliminated. But that can’t be true, not even Ronald Reagan could get that through Congress, right? Right???

GOOD NEWS: New survey by the American Bible Society finds upswing in church attendance by Gen Zers, especially among young males. Remember, politics is downstream from culture, which is downstream from faith.

GRAHAM, CORNYN CALL FOR SPECIAL PROSECUTOR: Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) are jointly calling for Attorney General Pam Bondi to appoint a Special Prosecutor to assess evidence former President Barack Obama managed the Russia-gate effort to undermine Donald Trump during his first term in the Oval Office.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Special prosecutors don’t seem that good at getting to the bottom of things.

ANTI-SEMITISM UP CLOSE: Unless you live in the nation’s capital, you aren’t likely to hear much about American University (AU), but you should, at least if you care about eradicating the swelling chorus of anti-semitic voices on American university and college campuses.

As Richard Pollock reports in blistering detail, AU is among the worst offenders  — and that is saying something considering events at NYU, Columbia, Berkeley, etc. since the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre of more than 1,200 Israelis. It will likely come as no surprise to learn that AU’s president is Sylvia Burwell, veteran Democrat activist who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations.

EXPOSING THE LEFT’S TAX-FUNDED NGO MACHINE: One of the silver linings from Biden’s Open Borders catastrophe is it has focused congressional and [some] media attention on the Left’s tax-funded legions of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

On just about every phase of the political battlefield, NGOs provide the foot soldiers, air cover, G2, shock troops, and logistics for the armies of the Left. But recent testimony to two House committees ripped the veil off of this rip-off on a massive scale. I’ve got the initial details on The Washington Stand today. There will be more.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE CHILDREN: The Biden administration lost track of an estimated 300,000 Unaccompanied Migrant Children (UMC) who crossed the border into the U.S., but House Democrats asked by The Washington Stand what they are doing about it had nothing to say. Maybe their interest depends on whose children are involved?

CUTTING OFF YOUR NOSE TO SPITE YOUR FACE: House GOPers are moving to impose a 48 percent operating budget cut on the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the “investigative arm of Congress.” They’re also rewarding the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which never met a GOP tax cut it couldn’t trash, with a $20 million budget increase.

I explain the backstory in my latest Substack column, which BTW has been re-christened Tapscott’s Copy Desk, which may ring a few bells for old-timer Instapunditeers here.

ED FEULNER, RIP: Edwin J. Feulner Jr., longtime president of the Heritage Foundation, has passed away. I worked for Ed for six years and those were six of the best years of my career, in great part because of Ed. He recognized talent and quietly but steadfastly mentored its growth. I owe so much to this man’s patient encouragement.

He was one of the most consequential figures in the Conservative Movement that transformed American politics in the 1970s and led to the Reagan Era, an era shaped in great part by the first edition of “The Mandate for Leadership,” which was the Great Communicator’s blueprint.

I could go on and on about Feulner’s significance, but this official bio  and this statement (especially the tribute from Bridgette Wagner) from Heritage brings it all together. God bless him, Ed will be missed.

MACHINE-LEARNING/AI FOR THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS: When researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands combined radio-carbon dating with Machine Learning/AI approaches to textual script analysis, they found strong evidence that the Dead Sea Scrolls are older than previously thought, according to Patterns of Evidence’s Lora Gilb.

“Until recently, the scrolls were assumed to date somewhere between the 3rd century BC and the 1st century AD. However, a new assessment suggests that some scrolls are significantly older than previously thought. Based on AI analysis, some scrolls are dating as far back as the 4th century BC, closer to the lifetimes’ of the original authors, according to lead study author Mladen Popović from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands,” Gilb reports.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are hugely important ancient documents because they include texts of all the Old Testament books except Esther. There are an estimated 15,000 fragments, representing 1,000 or more ancient manuscripts. They were first discovered by a young Shepherd beginning in the late 1940s.

“The new timeline for the Dead Sea Scrolls has wide implications. By placing more scrolls closer to the authors of Biblical texts, allows for deeper insight into the religious, political, and cultural changes of the time. The updated chronology could change how researchers understand the spread of literacy, the rise of the Hasmonaean dynasty, and the early roots of Christianity. It also strengthens the case for the accurate transmission of Biblical texts by pushing the oldest known copies closer to the original authors,” Gilb writes.

AND DON’T MISS: Glenn’s post on multiple fascinating aspects of the Dead Sea and it’s immediate surroundings. For a wilderness, this region is full of interesting stuff.

TAPSCOTT TWO-FER THURSDAY: First on The Washington Stand today, President Donald Trump is doing more with a smaller, less costly White House staff than any of his three predecessors, according to spending and personnel data compiled by Open the Books.

Second, again on The Washington Stand, Open the Books dug deep into foia.gov data on response times of federal departments and agencies and found some stunning statistics about lengthy delays. At the Department of Commerce’s Office of the Undersecretary for Economic Affairs, for example, the average wait time for “simple” FOIA requests is 836 days!

And while we’re at it, whaddya say, let’s just go ahead and make it a three-fer: Over on HillFaith, J. Warner Wallace, the cold-case murder whiz, examines claims that whole Jesus thing is a product of ancient pagan myths.

NOT-SO-BEAUTIFUL BIG BILL: Don’t think for a minute that lobbyists working on behalf of all kinds of special interests took a holiday while the Senate and House were wrangling through their competing versions of that Big Beautiful Bill.

In my latest Substack column, you will find details, courtesy of the American Accountability Foundation’s (AAF) Thomas Jones, of what appears to be a worrisome connection, albeit indirect, between a Senate GOP staffer working for Sen. Bill Cassidy on the HELP Committee and a big liberal lobbyist outfit.

CAN THE BIG CITIES BE SAVED? Did you know Philly voters have not elected a Republican Mayor since 1948? Or that it was 1961 the last time Los Angeles had a GOP Mayor and 1969 that New York City had a “real” GOPer in the Mayor’s office?

(Michael Bloomberg was elected NYC Mayor in 2001 and again in 2005 as a Republican but switched back to Democrat midway through his second term, which confirmed what everybody already knew. John Lindsay, the then-previous NYC GOPer, was the very essence of RINO, and a lousy Mayor to boot).

For the record, Dallas and Fort Worth are the only entries in the 20 largest U.S. cities that currently have Republican Mayors. Seven of the top 20 have Democrat Socialists, and NYC may well be on the verge of making that eight.

Unless you live in one of these cities, odds are you could care less who residents there put in the Mayor’s office. But, as Issues & Insights pointed out earlier this week, the consequences for everybody, not just those who have yet moved out of the big cities, are quite real.

TRUMP HAS WAY TO CAGE CHINA? Hans van Leeuwen, guest author on the Rod Martin space on Substack, makes the case that President Donald Trump has found an approach to trade negotiations with Asian nations that has the potential to surround Beijing in a manner most favorable to the U.S.

WELCOME TO D.C., MR. OPM DIRECTOR: Scott Kupor is a Silicon Valley venture capital giant who will be sworn-in Monday as President Donald Trump’s Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). As I report in The Washington Stand today, Kupor is undertaking one of the most challenging but least heralded agency chief positions in the nation’s capital.

Because OPM manages the federal bureaucracy, people on the Right mostly just ignore it, which is a profoundly significant mistake. Recalcitrant federal bureaucrats have a thousand ways of slowing down, and outright subverting popular policies voters put a president in the Oval Office to carry out.

The career civil service is supposed to be professional, objective and non-partisan in carrying out presidential policies. When there’s a Democrat in the Oval Office, that’s what happens. And regardless who is president, 95 percent+ of the campaign contributions from unionized federal workers go to Democrats.

But put a Reagan, Bush or Trump there, and legions of costly, time-consuming and often nonsensical roadblocks suddenly appear out of nowhere. How Kupor performs at OPM will have a great bearing on how much success Trump has in reforming the federal government in the remainder of his second term.

WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY: People on the Right hear it frequently from those on the Left, but why is it they always think they are on the right side of history? What Would You Say?

CUTTING OFF MY NOSE TO SPITE MY FACE: That’s an apt description of congressional Republicans intent on slashing the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) operating budget by half. The GAO is the investigative arm of the legislative branch and among the most important oversight tools available to the Senate and House.

Foundation for American Innovation Senior Fellow Dan Lips points out that former Comptroller-General (GAO’s top boss) David Walker, who commands respect in both political parties to this day after leading the investigative agency from 1998 to 2008, says the current budget reduction is like Congress “shooting itself in the head.” Lips makes a strong case for reforms instead of budget slashing.

Here’s my suggestion: Instead of slashing GAO’s budget by half, Hill GOPers should start cutting funding of the many executive branch agencies that have ignored or outright refused to implement literally thousands of solid cost-saving recommendations from GAO auditors and investigators. Congress should have been doing this decades ago, but it’s not yet too late to reinvigorate the “ultimate weapon” the Constitution assigns to Congress.

As the agency noted at the outset of a May report pointing to $100 billion in potential savings, “since 2011, implementation of GAO’s work in this area has led to $725 billion in savings for the federal government. This year’s report adds 148 new measures in 43 topic areas that Congress and federal agencies could take to reduce costs, improve programs, and boost revenues. Implementing our newest measures, in conjunction with our existing recommendations, could save over $100 billion for the American people.”

There is strong dissatisfaction among House GOPers with GAO because of several recent rulings that upset the Trump administration. With a new Comptroller-General coming soon to GAO, those on the Hill who are angry with the agency have an opportunity to set things straight in such regards.

WHAT A CONTRAST! Between the Right’s most determined conservatives in the House of Representatives responding to a big legislative setback and how Democrats did so. Can you guess which of the two parties’ responses would be cheered by the Federalist Papers authors?

HOPE IN HEBRON FOR MIDEAST PEACE: Did you know two separate assemblages of Palestinian Sheiks are pushing for “Emirates” status under the Abraham Accords, including official relations with Israel? Richard Pollock reports that these Sheiks represent more than half a million people now under the thumb of the uber-corrupt Palestinian Authority (PA).

Pollock also digs into recent reports that Hamas faces increasingly powerful opposition within the Gaza Strip and that collapse appears imminent for the vicious hate group behind the October 7 Massacre of more than a thousand Jews.

WHOA! RICHARD DAWKINS’ ‘RIGHT-HAND-MAN’ NOW A CHRISTIAN: His name is Josh Timonen. Christian-to-Atheist conversions like that of Josh Harris make the news. This Josh reverses that sequence but odds are you’ve never heard about it in the Mainstream Media. Check out his interview on HillFaith.