I didn’t make blogging a priority this week. Catching up on recent events in some stories I’d recently addressed, and then later today I’ll hopefully have a new post covering some more recent news issues.

• OBBBA. The Republican House managed to get their big beautiful tax bill adopted, overcoming last week’s hiccup in the Budget Committee. The Budget Committee met again Sunday night and the 4 previously dissenting budget hawks were persuaded to switch their votes from no to present, allowing the bill to move out of committee by a single vote. Two main types of amendments were made to the bill this week: a modest increase in the SALT deduction from $30,000 to $40,000, and with the phase-out now commencing at $500,000 instead of $400,000; and an acceleration in the timing of some of the bill’s Medicaid cuts. The combination of these changes got enough of Speaker Johnson’s left and right flanks in line to allow the final bill to pass, after a marathon all-night session, by a single vote: 215-214. If Rep. Connolly (D-VA) had not died of cancer earlier in the week, and if two safe Democratic seats weren’t already vacant due to earlier deaths, I do wonder if Johnson could have squeezed out an additional vote. The ball is now in the Senate’s court, where Majority Leader Thune similarly has to find a balance between his right (Paul, Johnson), left (Collins, Murkowski), and quixotically populist (Hawley) flanks.

• MAGA Accounts. One of the minor changes made this week to OBBBA is that the new savings vehicle for children was renamed from “MAGA account” to “Trump account”. Having said that, the new vehicle is not particularly appealing, with one think tank economist quoted as saying “realistically, this is the sixth or seventh best tax-free savings account option.” Its main selling feature is that OBBBA would seed these Trump accounts with a $1,000 deposit, but only for children born between 2025 and 2029.

• Trump v. CASA. No news from SCOTUS in the 7 days since the oral arguments in the birthright citizenship case. While on some level that is not surprising, it does seem to suggest that SCOTUS is not inclined to take the potential path of calling for additional briefing on the merits issue. Of course, Kavanaugh’s solo concurrence in A.A.R.P II, released the day after the Trump v. CASA oral argument, strongly suggested that a majority of the Court was not temperamentally inclined to turn itself into a court of first review on merits issues. I did read an interesting analysis this week, which unfortunately right now I cannot locate, noting that SG Sauer consistently talked about how the administration would acknowledge a SCOTUS ruling on the merits as constituting binding nationwide precedent, but that this is qualitatively different than saying that SCOTUS can overturn the order. As such it appears Sauer’s view of the world is that no one in the judiciary — not even SCOTUS — can enjoin the administration from implementing an order. Instead, SCOTUS can make it clear to all that the order is unconstitutional, but the executive could still take actions in accordance with that order, forcing people to sue in order to get relief from the unconstitutional order. What a system.

• Air Farce One. This week Trump officially accepted the offered gift from the Qatari government of a luxury 747, which Trump intends to have the Pentagon refit into his Air Force One. There has been widespread criticism of this from both sides of the political spectrum; in a recent poll, 62% of Americans (and 40% of Republicans) said the gift “raises ethical concerns about corruption.” In other corruption news, last night was the private dinner with Trump for large purchasers of his memecoin; the invite list has not been released but is believed to consist predominantly of foreigners.

• The War on Harvard. Finally, yesterday afternoon DHS Secretary Noem took the administration’s war against Harvard University to another level, telling the university that she has withdrawn its ability to enroll international students. If this action were to stand, then Harvard will not be allowed to have any students on F-1 or J-1 visas for the 2025-26 school year, forcing any continuing or new students who require those visas to find a different school. Harvard is, naturally, suing.