Hey, there. Glad you're here. Welcome to Saturday, July 18, 2026. Today is Insurance Nerd Day, Bridal Sale Day, Caviar Day, Sour Candy Day, Woodie Wagon Day, Perfect Family Day, Strawberry Rhubarb Wine Day, Toss Away the "Could Haves" and "Should Haves" Day, Women's Dive Day, World Listening Day, Tropical Fruit Day.
Today In History:
1290: King Edward I issues the Edict of Expulsion, ordering all Jews to leave England.
1792: Naval hero John Paul Jones dies in Paris while awaiting a diplomatic commission.
1830: Uruguay adopts its first constitution, establishing itself as an independent republic.
1870: The First Vatican Council decrees the doctrine of papal infallibility.
1872: Great Britain passes the Ballot Act, establishing secret voting in parliamentary elections.
1925: Adolf Hitler publishes the first volume of Mein Kampf, written during his imprisonment for treason.
1936: General Francisco Franco launches his revolt against Spain's Republican government, igniting the Spanish Civil War.
1942: Germany's Me-262, the first jet-propelled aircraft to fly in combat, makes its inaugural flight.
1947: President Harry Truman signs the Presidential Succession Act, revising the line of succession first codified in 1792.
1968: Intel is founded in Santa Clara, California, later becoming the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer.
1969: Sen. Edward Kennedy drives off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, killing passenger Mary Jo Kopechne.
1976: Nadia Comaneci becomes the first gymnast to score a perfect 10 at the Olympics, during the Montreal Summer Games.
1993: Agathe Uwilingiyimana is elected prime minister of Rwanda; she is later assassinated at the outset of the Rwandan genocide.
2013: The city of Detroit declares bankruptcy, becoming the largest municipal entity in the country's history to do so.
Birthdays Today include Vin Diesel, actor and filmmaker (Fast & Furious, Guardians of the Galaxy); Kristen Bell, actress (Veronica Mars, The Good Place); Priyanka Chopra, actress (Quantico, Citadel); Richard Branson, business magnate founder of the Virgin Group; James Brolin, actor (Hotel, Life in Pieces); Martha Reeves, of Martha and the Vandellas (“Dancing in the Street”, “Heat Wave”); Nick Faldo, World Golf Hall of Fame champion and broadcaster; Joe Torre, Baseball Hall of Fame manager and former Yankees skipper; Margo Martindale, actress (Justified, The Americans); Elizabeth McGovern, actress (Downton Abbey); Elsa Pataky, actress (the Fast and the Furious films); Ricky Skaggs, bluegrass singer and musician; Steve Forbes, publisher and businessman; Penny Hardaway, retired NBA All-Star and college basketball coach; and Paul Verhoeven, film director (RoboCop, Basic Instinct).
If today's your birthday, too, happy birthday — hope it's a good one
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The headline this morning in the New York Post reads:
Party's over: Highest-ranking woman in House calls for ban on sex with Capitol staff after The Post's Ruben Gallego exposé
Oh, this ought to be good. Nothing screams "functional government" like Congress waking up every few months to rediscover basic ethics, as if it just found a rare Pokémon.
WASHINGTON — The highest-ranking woman in the House of Representatives is calling for a "bright-line rule" prohibiting lawmakers from having sexual relationships with congressional staff after The Post revealed Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) slept with at least two aides to Texas Democrats.
Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), chairwoman of the House Republican Caucus, told The Post that "Senator Gallego's relationships fall short of the standard the public expects from elected officials."
"Congress should have a bright-line rule that Members should not have romantic or sexual relationships with congressional staff," the No. 4 House Republican said.
McClain's right on the first part. I'll give her that much. But the moment she demands a "bright-line rule," she announces to the world that Congress can't trust itself to behave like adults without laminated instructions taped to the fridge.
I’ll admit that with Gallego, of whom I’ve written before, she may have a point. If you need an actual law to stop yourself from sleeping with people who work for you, you probably don't belong in Congress. Come to think of it, you probably don't belong near a middle school civics class, either. Obvious question, however, is this: Will a law make a difference to such people? Forgive me, I have decades of evidence causing me to doubt it.
Look, gang, let's not pretend this counts as some shocking new revelation. Capitol Hill treats ethics like a seasonal trend… out one year, back the next, always worn poorly. Every time a scandal breaks, they clutch pearls, act stunned, and propose rules that any functioning adult already follows without a committee hearing telling him or her to do so.
Now let's look at what actually happened, because the details make McClain's "bright-line rule" look even more like a fig leaf.
Gallego, now 46, represented Phoenix in the House from 2015 to 2025 before trading up to the Senate, and the two relationships in question ran during that decade, both with aides who worked for Texas Democrats rather than for him personally… a technicality that let him skate past the existing House rule barring members from sleeping with their own subordinates. One source told the Post that the pattern amounted to a string of "mistakes and missteps and judgment calls," and flagged something McClain's press release conveniently left out: a real power imbalance, with one of the aides described as considerably younger than the sitting congressman… ummmm, okay, for lack of a better word, here, courting her.
Gallego's response to all this, when NBC News asked him directly? "I'm not going to engage in gossip." That's not a denial. That's a man declining to use the word "no" while hoping the sentence sounds as if he used it anyway.
This didn't come out of nowhere, either. Just last month, the Senate Ethics Committee dismissed a separate complaint against Gallego, this one that Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) filed, alleging both campaign finance violations and inappropriate advances. Luna had gone public back in April, claiming she'd "heard of 4 women who have had multiple and uncomfortable/inappropriate advances/comments/touching, etc." from Gallego, and complained that "the Senate is being awfully quiet about it." The Ethics Committee cleared him anyway. Funny how that keeps happening. And I don’t think I have to point out too forcefully that these are the same Democrats who for the last decade have been trying to pin similar yet totally unprovable charges on President Donald Trump.
Worth pointing out loudly: Gallego counts the now-disgraced Eric Swalwell as a pal. You will recall my writing on that point a few days ago.
Swalwell resigned from the House back in April, after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct. One, Lonna Drewes, alleged he raped her… and he suspended a gubernatorial run in the fallout. Let’s also remember that he skated on the Chinese spy issue. You remember Fang Fang, with whom he was also doing the bop. Real classy guy, Swalwell.
Gallego spent the weeks following that affair (pun intended) publicly distancing himself, denying he was the second man allegedly caught on video with Swalwell, and telling anyone who'd listen that his friend's "double life" "shocked" him. I think we have in Gallego a working definition of what ol’ Bill Shakespeare called “protesting too much.”
Still, somehow all that shock didn't inspire Gallego to take a hard look at his own extracurriculars. Congress loves talking about "standards," but half of its members treat those standards as if they were speed limits … suggestions meant for other people, strictly enforced against whomever gets caught first.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) (you just knew that name was going to come up, didn’t you?), when reporters asked him about his own party's senator, didn't defend Gallego, didn't condemn him, didn't do much of anything at all. He just changed the subject to Trump's primetime address and moved on. That's not leadership. That's a man hoping he can make it all go away, and that the so-called news media will do that job for him.
Look, gang… I know McClain's an up-and-coming GOP member working hard to make the right noises. I'm not really coming down on her. But if she genuinely believes a statute is going to change the minds of people such as Swalwell and Gallego… men who already had rules, committees, and a very public and nearly legendary cautionary tale sitting right next to them and ignored all three, well, maybe she doesn't belong in Congress, either. You don't fix a culture of entitlement by adding a line to the employee handbook.
Remember, these are the people who have been relentlessly attacking Republicans for what they claim are issues of morality. Says a lot, doesn’t it?
Thought of the day: A cynic is just an optimist that reads the news.
VIP members: Let's hear from you. I'd like to hear your thinking on the topic.
Take care and have a great Saturday. I'll see you here tomorrow.
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