With America’s stockpiles of crucial munitions getting worryingly low, America’s adversaries seem to be getting interested in testing the boundaries of what they can get away with. Citing U.S. intelligence reports, the Wall Street Journal reports that Vladimir Putin is mulling the possibility of “testing NATO’s resolve” with a “limited assault” on a member country in the next few years. Hey, Vlad, there’s a lot going on over here—could you give us a minute?
In other news, we got some pretty disappointing jobs numbers today: The economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, while May and June’s reports were revised down by a combined 103,000 jobs more. The unemployment rate actually ticked down a hair, to 4.1 percent, as 260,000 people left the labor force. In other words, employers aren’t hiring and workers are starting to notice. To wit, this stat from the Journal: “In recent months, almost three in 10 of the unemployed have been looking to work for more than six months, the greatest share since the pandemic recovery four years ago.” Happy Friday.
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Cassidy in the Spotlight
by William Kristol
With Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) announcement early this morning that she will oppose Todd Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general, it all comes down to the senior Republican senator from Louisiana, Bill Cassidy.
Cassidy could join Murkowski in opposition. They had, after all, met together with Blanche on Wednesday. This morning Murkowski cited “the politicization—even weaponization” of the Department of Justice that “accelerated” during this administration as her reason for opposing Blanche. Cassidy had already said prior to that meeting that he was “very concerned about the weaponization of the Justice Department” under Blanche. All Cassidy has to say now is that Blanche didn’t satisfy his concerns, as he didn’t satisfy Murkowski’s.
And Cassidy owes Trump nothing. After he voted to convict Trump in the February 2021 Senate impeachment trial, Cassidy was targeted by Trump, and was crushed in the Republican primary earlier this year by a Trump-backed challenger.
What’s more, at the beginning of Trump’s second term, after much public agonizing, Cassidy, a physician and chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, provided the decisive vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health of Human Services. He’d received several assurances from Kennedy about what Kennedy would do and wouldn’t do as secretary—assurances that Kennedy has subsequently broken. So you’d think Cassidy would have plenty of reason to resolve not to be fooled again.
But will he so resolve? Will he do the right thing? Or will he follow in the footsteps of his Republican colleague, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis?
Tillis was elected to the Senate in the same year as Cassidy, in 2014. A businessman who had entered politics a decade before and had become Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, he ran for the Senate that year with the backing of Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and the Chamber of Commerce. He was the establishment pick. And after he defeated a couple of Tea Party Republicans for the nomination, he seemed set to be a relatively centrist North Carolina senator.
Then came Trump. Tillis joined the vast majority of his colleagues in years of accommodation, appeasement, and acquiescence. In February 2021, he chose not to follow Cassidy or, for that matter, his fellow Republican senator from North Carolina, Richard Burr, in voting to convict Trump. But Burr wasn’t planning on running for re-election in 2022, while Tillis was focused on his bright political career ahead.
Nonetheless, by June 2025, his lack of true Trumpist zeal meant that he would face a likely primary challenge from the Trump wing of the party. So Tillis announced he wouldn’t run for re-election.
A couple of weeks ago, Tillis demanded as a condition of his support that Blanche meet with the Epstein survivors whom he’d shunned for eighteen months. Once Blanche’s behavior in that meeting turned out to be utterly disrespectful of the survivors, it would have been easy for Tillis to announce his opposition to Blanche, which would have killed the nomination.
But Tillis caved.
You might think that such a record of repeated capitulation to Trump would induce Tillis to slink off quietly into the sunset. But he didn’t even have the dignity for that. Instead, as the publishing house HarperCollins announced yesterday, he has written a book.
According to HarperCollins, How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents brings us Tillis “outspoken and uncensored.” The book is a “bare-knuckled, darkly funny wake-up call,” a “sharp, no-BS book, “ “a bracing tonic to stiffen spines.” Tillis “pulls no punches” about the “spineless Republican yes-men (and -women), and the weirdos of the MAGA world,” about “the grifting sycophants and useful idiots in Trump 2.0.”
As the kids used to say, gag me with a spoon.
Underscoring the absurdity of it all is the book jacket. It features as examples of the sycophants and idiots of Trump 2.0, photos of Kristi Noem, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Pete Hegseth. Tillis voted to confirm all three to their Cabinet posts, along with every other Trump nominee.
Does Cassidy now look at Tillis—and the other pathetic, gag-inducing Respectable Republicans™—and find it just too much? Is it possible that this morning Bill Cassidy is saying to himself: Don’t be Thom Tillis? Or does he too decide that he can write a post-Senate memoir about fake courage without displaying actual courage when he could make a difference?
AROUND THE BULWARK
Amy Acton’s Prescription for Ohio: Bipartisanship… The Democratic candidate for governor explains why voters are exhausted by the rancor of politics—and shares her vision for renewal with JIM SWIFT in Cincinnati.
Trump’s Fabricated World Is Crashing…SAM STEIN and Kansas Democratic U.S. Senate nominee ADAM HAMILTON join TIM MILLER to discuss his sleeper race everyone is waking up to.
Did you miss Adrian Carrasquillo’s Reddit AMA? No worries, you can catch up on it here.
Did MAGA Infiltrate the Green Party in Michigan? ‘Welcome to the ballot, random internet stranger.’ Be sure to read BRENDAN HARTNETT and SAM STEIN in a special Press Pass.
Banks Knew About Jeffrey Epstein and Looked Away… SEN. RON WYDEN joins CATHERINE RAMPELL on Bulwark Takes to discus