Good morning and happy Friday! I’m reporting to you from Lawrence, Kansas, where I had the pleasure of participating in a panel last night at the Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas.
It was great chatting with so many smart students, and to be able to peruse the institute’s exhibits about its namesake, the late Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole.
The Dole Institute, I was told, would have been the site of the senator’s presidential library had the three-time presidential candidate — and 1996 Republican presidential nominee — ever won the White House.
Instead, it stands as a monument to Dole’s 35 years in Congress, including his central role in numerous bipartisan legislative efforts, from the Americans with Disabilities Act to the McGovern-Dole international food program, which (as of 2022) had provided 5.5 billion school meals to more than 31 million children around the globe. You don’t need to become president to leave an enormous legacy.
And maybe we should have a few more congressional libraries to remind people of that!
Anyways, thanks to everyone who sent in such great questions for this week’s mailbag edition. Here’s what we’ll be tackling this morning:
How is the Iran war being paid for?
What’s the latest with Trump’s executive order on mail-in ballots?
Will ICE agents be sent to the polls?
Could Alaska become a 2028 swing state?
Can Congress change the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket”?
And more!
If you’ve found yourself wondering about any of these questions, then this morning’s newsletter is for you.
There will be no newsletter on Monday in observance of Labor Day, but I will see you back in your inbox on Wednesday. I hope you all have a great holiday weekend.
Let’s dive in!
Paying for the war
Q: I am interested in how America pays its bills for the Iran war in 2026. It seems the budget has been set and I don’t know that any additional funds were approved for the war. What happens if the Pentagon goes over budget? Do they take money from elsewhere? Can they just overrun the budget without consequence? Who stops them from spending money that wasn’t approved by Congress?
The Pentagon has a massive budget: more than $800 billion from the regular appropriations process, plus $150 billion from the One Big Beautiful Bill.
That huge store of money has given the Defense Department a lot of room to move funds around and put together the resources to wage a war. However, the questioner is right that Congress has not approved a cent in extra funding for the Iran war — which means (even with almost a trillion dollars in its coffers) the war has forced the Pentagon to take money away from other important priorities and left the military squeezed for cash.
Per NBC News, the Defense Department has been forced to cancel some training exercises. It has had to delay repairs to bases in the Middle East that have been damaged by Iranian attacks. It also has little money to purchase new weapons amid a munitions shortage that has many military experts concerned about America’s ability to respond to future conflicts.
The questioner is right that, eventually, the Pentagon was bound to just run out — and potentially have to take money from elsewhere. In fact, that appears to be exactly what’s happened. Just yesterday, House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) alleged that the Defense Department signed an interagency agreement to give it access to funding appropriated to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for biomedical research, in order to make up for the budget crunch created by the Iran war.
The Pentagon has yet to confirm this — though DeLauro said the NIH confirmed it to her — and we don’t know how much money was handed over. But this does provide us with a clue of how the DOD is paying for the war: taking money from other parts of the Pentagon, and then taking money from other parts of the federal government to make up for it.
In response to a request from the Trump administration, the House has advanced a plan to supply the Pentagon with $60 billion to help refill its coffers, but the measure has stalled in the Senate, leaving its future unclear.
How much has the war cost overall? The Defense Department has not been too transparent. Secretary Pete Hegseth offered an estimate of $37.5 billion in late July, though that number is already outdated — and even at the time, many experts said they believed the true cost of the war was likely much higher.
Blue-laska?
If Mary Peltola wins her Alaska Senate race, how seriously should Democrats take the state in the 2028 presidential race?