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Donald Trump signed an executive order about hunting and was visibly surprised to learn what was in it as he read it aloud. Mitch McConnell returned to the Senate after a 92-day absence and promptly went missing again. ICE has started quietly firing agents it hired during a recruitment blitz that skipped background checks. And Fox News host Laura Ingraham told her viewers that many Republicans in Congress secretly want their own party to lose the midterms.
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Trump Doesn’t Know What’s in His Own Executive Order
The president apparently treats executive orders the way most people treat terms and conditions.
Trump signed an executive order Thursday called “Reinvigorating America’s Hunting Heritage” during a Rose Garden dinner for about 100 outdoorsmen. The order contained a provision protecting the use of lead ammunition, a point Trump apparently learned for the first time as he read it aloud.
Trump fumbled through it in real time, turning to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and saying he never knew lead ammunition was a problem. He then asked if it was better than other ammo.
Trump also used the dinner to revisit his incoherent story about being electrocuted in an electric boat near sharks, joke about banning fishing because “the power of this office is crazy,” and ramble about how much duck hunters love him.
Trump has signed more than 200 executive orders since taking office in January 2025. It is unclear how many of them he read before signing.
Sponsored Kalshi poll: Which party will win the U.S. Senate?
McConnell Returns to the Senate and Immediately Disappears Again
If a senator votes in the Capitol and no one is allowed to see it, did it really happen?
Sen. Mitch McConnell, 84, was hospitalized June 14 and spent 92 days away from the Senate. He returned this week, and his staff has been busy making sure no one gets a good look at him.
McConnell looked confused when his name was called for a vote at a Senate Agriculture Committee meeting Wednesday. It took two calls and aides urging him to vote before he lifted a finger and said “aye” in a raspy voice. Video of the meeting showed him staring blankly as other senators spoke around him.
On Thursday, he was loaded into an SUV at his home in Washington and taken to the Capitol, where he cast one procedural vote before leaving ahead of the next two. No one photographed him inside the building and he declined to talk to reporters.
Since coming back, McConnell has not answered a single question from a reporter. He’s greeted every meeting with the same frozen smile and alternating thumbs-up and peace sign.
ICE Is Quietly Firing the Agents It Hired Without Background Checks
ICE has spent the better part of two years demanding everybody else’s documents and never even looked at its own.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is quietly firing some of the officers it hired during its “Homeland Defenders” hiring binge. Three former DHS officials told the Washington Post the agency is citing poor performance and red flags that should have been caught during the vetting process.
The Trump administration paid a $50,000 signing bonus to attract recruits, who signed up faster than the agency could process them. In August 2025, a whistleblower told the DHS Inspector General that ICE was approving people for duty without fingerprints, identity checks, or credit checks.
Other whistleblowers exposed former acting ICE Director Todd Lyons in February for lying to Congress about how much training new agents receive. Recruits were receiving almost 250 hours less training than previous classes, with entire modules on use of force and criminal encounters eliminated.
Agents who made it through the broken vetting process have shot a man through a closed door in Minneapolis and killed two American bystanders. Others were accused of locking detainees in phone-booth-sized outdoor cages.
Fox News Host Says Republicans Secretly Want to Lose the Midterms
Laura Ingraham accidentally committed journalism on Thursday.
On Thursday’s edition of The Ingraham Angle, Ingraham told her viewers that many Republican members of Congress would be relieved to lose their majority in November. Her reasoning was that it would save them the job of passing legislation supported by Trump.
“How many Republicans secretly want Trump to lose?” she said. “I actually think there are a lot of Republicans on the Hill who will be happy not to have the burden of having to pass legislation, Larry. They’re almost going to be relieved for a little while, at least, to be in the minority.”
The numbers support her theory, even if she refused to say that part. Republicans trail Democrats by eight points on the generic congressional ballot and Trump’s approval rating is in the 30s in a handful of recent polls.
Even a Fox News poll released this week found that more than 60 percent of Americans say that gas and grocery prices are a major problem for their families, driven in large part by Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
USPS Confirms It Will Not Enforce Trump’s Mail-In Voting Restrictions. The U.S. Postal Service has halted work on a system to process statewide voter registration rolls after the Supreme Court invalidated Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in ballots. Postmaster General David Steiner told the Associated Press on Thursday that the agency is obeying the injunction, after USPS sent a memo to all employees on Wednesday clarifying that none of the new rules will be enforced for the 2026 elections. Trump’s original order, signed in March, would have required mail-in ballots to carry unique barcodes and states to hand over voter rolls to the postal service.
Federal Judge Strikes Down the Education Department’s Anti-DEI Policy. U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley ruled Thursday that the Trump administration’s decision to slash $600 million in teacher training grants over DEI concerns was “arbitrary and capricious.” The judge noted that the Education Department could not even define what qualifies as DEI, and that the grants it terminated included programs focused on opposing discrimination. The ruling restores funding for the Teacher Quality Partnership and Supporting Effective Educator Development programs, which were cut by Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who notoriously refused to clarify during her confirmation hearings which subjects schools would still be allowed to teach.
Texas Freezes Installation of Flock Surveillance Cameras on State Highways. Governor Greg Abbott froze state funding for Flock surveillance cameras in late August after The Texas Tribune prepared to publish an investigation showing that a small state agency had quietly funneled at least $30 million toward more than 3,200 of the devices across Texas. The Texas Department of Transportation followed up on September 8 by halting all new permits for Flock cameras and other automated license plate readers along state roads. At the time of the freeze there were an estimated 13,000 Flock cameras in the state, and hundreds have already been shut down, though more than 900 cameras on state highways remain in place.
Newsom Signs Executive Order Requiring AI Labs to Build a Kill Switch. On Friday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order that requires companies that make artificial intelligence to create an emergency shutoff switch for their models. It also calls for oversight of AI labs by an independent third party and tasks a group of experts to make safety recommendations within two months. Newsom blamed Congress and Trump for not regulating the technology, calling the federal government’s inaction “alarming.” The order speeds up the timeline for creating independent verification organizations under a bill Newsom signed earlier this week, pushing the deadline from 2028 to May 2027.
Tracks. He doesn’t know much of anything.
Mitch had to be prompted to say “aye!”