Good morning! Today is Wednesday, August 12th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Luke Nicastro dissects Mike Lee's failed August recess gambit to argue that Congress has become a hollowed-out stage for viral clips and donor theatrics, passing fewer laws than at any point since before the Great Depression while surrendering its role as a coequal branch. On day 165 of the Iran war, a U.S. helicopter struck a Panama-flagged tanker off Oman as Trump and Tehran traded maximalist demands, the Houthis expanded their maritime embargo in the Bab al-Mandab, and Brent crude pushed past $90 a barrel with gasoline hitting $4.01 at the pump. and now for the details. We begin on Capitol Hill, where a small procedural fight late last month has become a window into the state of the legislative branch. Senator Mike Lee of Utah publicly objected to the Senate going into its August recess before passing the SAVE America Act, a bill imposing national voter ID requirements. Lee demanded a roll call vote and reportedly had more than twenty Republican colleagues willing to back him. But on August 8, the Senate recessed without objection, no roll call was held, and the bill remains unpassed. Writing for The American Conservative, Luke Nicastro uses that episode to argue that Congress, as an institution, is fake — not in the sense that it does nothing, but in the sense that it has been hollowed out. Nicastro notes that 18,350 bills have been introduced in the 119th Congress, near a historic high, yet only 104 have become law — the fewest since before the Great Depression. Many of those simply rename post offices or make narrow administrative fixes. Nicastro describes members treating the Capitol as a stage for donors and viral clips rather than a jobsite, with committee hearings organized around producing punchy video for X and YouTube. Down-dais members, he writes, arrive to secure their place in the questioning order and then leave, while staffers text them when their turn approaches. Most striking, Nicastro argues, is that Congress has lost any sense of itself as a coequal branch. He points out that the current Congress has allowed President Trump to prosecute what he calls an illegal and unwinnable war in the Middle East, just as the 117th Congress stepped aside when President Biden effectively suspended immigration enforcement. Nicastro contrasts this with the 1970s, when Congress passed the War Powers Resolution and the Impoundment Control Act, and even the Reagan years, when Bob Dole opened a congressional probe of Iran-Contra. He closes with Gibbon's description of the Roman emperors preserving the forms of the Senate long after emptying it of power — and with Trump's own quip, in a Monday press conference, that "sometimes I'd like to get rid of the Senate too." To the Iran war, now in its 165th day. The Wall Street Journal reports that on Tuesday a U.S. military helicopter fired a missile at a Panama-flagged vessel the Pentagon says was trying to run the American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Maritime security firm Vanguard identified the ship as the Vela Nova, struck off the coast of Oman. Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative that the strike comes amid a hardening of positions on both sides. On Monday, President Trump posted a list of demands to end the war on Truth Social, including compensation from Iran for U.S. soldiers killed by the IRGC during the Iraq War, and damages for casualties in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Gaza. That came in reply to Tehran's own six demands for reopening Hormuz: an end to U.S. threats, a permanent halt to fighting across the region, the withdrawal of U.S. naval and air forces, the end of the American blockade, the lifting of international sanctions, and reparations to Iran. Meanwhile, Yemen's Houthis attacked a cargo ship crossing the Bab al-Mandab, killing at least three people in what Berger reports is the first non-Saudi vessel targeted since the Houthis declared their maritime embargo last month. The economic effects are showing up at home: Brent crude rose above $90 a barrel Tuesday morning, up more than ten percent over the past week, and AAA now records the national average price of regular gasoline at $4.01 a gallon. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.
