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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, the last remaining American media product not owned by David Ellison. Oh wait, that’s him walking up to our house right now with lawyers and a suitcase full of cash!

We bookend this week with a couple of primaries to watch in Texas on Tuesday—beyond the Senate primaries, as you already know to watch those. What else we’re watching: Another MAHA nominee in the Senate. War with Iran. Robots taking over the Pentagon. Hockey. Some speech Donald Trump gave.

In the meantime, some exciting news for House Republicans: Be as gross as you want the rest of the year, because House leaders will still need your vote.

No morality clauses with a House majority this small.

We wrote last week about the scandal surrounding Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales, who had been accused of having an affair with a staffer who later took her own life by self-immolation, after her husband discovered the texts and the staffer was allegedly ostracized at work. It got worse this week (apparently possible). Extracted texts between Gonzales and the former staffer, Regina Santos-Aviles, were published showing him repeatedly sending her explicit sexual texts and her rebuffing him.

This is the stuff that usually ends in short order with a resignation, either of the member’s own volition or at the speaker’s insistence. That’s not the case now. While some individual Republicans have called on Gonzales to resign, Gonzales has said he won’t, and Speaker Mike Johnson is saying he’ll allow House investigations into the matter to run their course. Johnson also observed that Gonzales is facing a primary on Tuesday and “these things will play out.” Well sure, but that’s for a term that wouldn’t start for another 11 months. Can we be clear about what’s going on here? Mike Johnson’s majority is 218–214, and he doesn’t want to lose another vote. That’s the bottom line. And it gives all other House members the green light to be as sinister as they’d like for the rest of the year.

Once again, we have to ask if these people have watched the Terminator movies.

The Pentagon has been in a dispute with Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind Claude, about what it can and cannot use its A.I. tech for. Claude is already the only A.I. model that the military uses for its most delicate systems, but the Pentagon wants more. Anthropic is resisting the Pentagon’s requests to use its tech in ways that violate two company ground rules: That it won’t be used for mass surveillance of Americans or to power fully........

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