Good afternoon. This is the Final NOTUS newsletter for Aug. 21, 2026. You can get it in your inbox every day by signing up here — it’s free!
THE LATEST
President Donald Trump’s ballroom construction can continue while the Supreme Court weighs an emergency application, Chief Justice John Roberts ruled today. It’s unclear how long the administrative stay will last.
The Department of Education is moving to strip an organization with ties to the American Bar Association from its role in accrediting law schools after conservatives argued the trade group has become too liberal and embraced DEI policies.
Trending
The administration will exempt 300,000 metric tons of ground beef from import tariffs, President Donald Trump announced today, the latest attempt at lowering the price of groceries ahead of midterms.
THE ADMINISTRATION
The Daily Beast published in full a pair of fawning letters Natalie Harp wrote to Trump, in which she apologized for sprinting behind Trump’s golf cart during a round at his course in Scotland and declared: “no one knows or cares about me more.”
- She also wrote that she envied the women in Trump’s orbit “whose only ‘job’ seems to be to talk to you, and look pretty. I want that job!!”
Trump threatened to file a $5 billion defamation lawsuit against the Center for American Progress if it did not retract a report that found his National Guard deployments failed to reduce urban crime in the way he has repeatedly asserted.
- The liberal think tank is standing by its work, President and CEO Neera Tanden said this afternoon.
The Kennedy Center board’s second attempt to affix Trump’s name to the storied arts institution is facing an emergency court challenge filed by Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio).
THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
Former Rep. Mark Sanford has handed a rare endorsement to Rep. Ralph Norman as he takes on Sen. Darline Graham for the Senate seat in South Carolina previously held by her late brother. Sanford, once the state’s governor, said the ballooning national debt was his primary motivation to get off the sidelines.
GOP Senate hopeful Mike Rogers endorsed the idea of a temporary moratorium across Michigan on data center construction projects, sparking a war of words.
- “He’s running for U.S. Senate, meaning he can’t actually do anything at the state level,” his opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, said on MS NOW last night. “These aren’t serious people.”
K STREET
Log Cabin Republicans, a group that represents gay conservatives, will no longer advocate for transgender rights. “We are an LGB advocacy organization,” the group’s president wrote.
RUN, NATALIE, RUN
EXCLUSIVE
— Mikey Smith (@mikeysmith) August 21, 2026
THE HUMAN SPRINTER
First known pictures of NATALIE HARP chasing after Donald Trump's golf cart in Scotland pic.twitter.com/vfQ6xk3hbD
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