The Dispatch — July 28, 2026

I · Smithsonian order

Trump orders warning signs at the Smithsonian's history museum

Visitors to the Smithsonian's flagship history museum in Washington will soon walk past federal signs telling them the exhibits inside contain inaccurate information.[1] President Trump signed the order on July 24, directing the Interior Department to post notices near the National Museum of American History and to mount temporary displays that "correct" what the administration calls errors.[1][2] The order rests on a Domestic Policy Council report, "Saving America's Story," which accuses the institution of ideological capture.[2] Historians' groups read it as an attempt to impose one celebratory narrative on the nation's museums.[3]

250th

anniversary year the order invokes

56

Declaration signers the order says go unhonored

21

Smithsonian museums under the broader review

01 What the order commands

The order tells the Secretary of the Interior to install temporary signage near the museum informing visitors of the report's findings and pointing them toward "accurate information regarding America's history."[1] It further directs officials to mount temporary exhibits or signs that, in the administration's words, correct inaccurate content so that the country's founders are honored during the Republic's 250th year.[1] The National Park Service, which manages the grounds, would carry out the posting.[3] The document names no deadline and sets no dollar figure.[1] Officials singled out the museum's failure, as they framed it, to properly honor the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence during the anniversary.[4]

02 The report behind it

The accompanying White House report charges that Smithsonian leadership does not present American history as a shared national inheritance and instead treats it as a "prime tool" for advancing social-justice ideas.[4] It accuses the institution of "anti-white rhetoric and transgender activism" and of insufficient patriotism.[3] The findings followed months of review by the Domestic Policy Council.[4] The action extends a push that began with a March 2025 order directing the Smithsonian to remove what the administration termed improper ideology from its galleries.[2]

The signs would tell the public that the history inside cannot be taken at face value.

03 The response

Beth English, executive director of the Organization of American Historians, said the White House seeks to impose a narrow, singular celebratory narrative of American greatness.[2] She warned that the signs would erase the conflict, struggle, diversity and complexity that have defined the American experience.[2] Mike Gonzalez of the Heritage Foundation defended the order at a House subcommittee hearing, arguing that visitors deserve to know when exhibits may not offer an objective account.[2] The Smithsonian and the Park Service declined to comment.[3]

The fight reaches beyond one building. The Smithsonian draws the bulk of its budget from federal appropriations, which gives the White House leverage that private museums do not face, and the order tests how far a president may direct what a congressionally chartered institution tells the public about the national past.[2]

Sources

II · Price transparency

Congress moves to force hospitals to post real prices

Americans who routinely face hospital bills they cannot decode moved a step closer this week to a legal right to see actual prices before they are treated.[2] On July 22 the Senate health committee advanced the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act, which would require hospitals to publish negotiated prices in plain dollars and carry penalties for those that refuse.[1][3] Two days earlier the House commerce committee advanced a companion transparency package.[2] The hospital lobby, which has fought disclosure rules for years, is warning of a costly compliance burden.[1]

1

senator opposed the price-tag bill in committee

$35

monthly insulin cap in the companion INSULIN Act

~21%

hospitals fully complying with current rules

01 Two committees, one week

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee cleared the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act, sponsored by Roger Marshall of Kansas and John Hickenlooper of Colorado, with a single dissenting vote.[1][6] Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky cast the lone no.[3] The bill would make permanent, and toughen, the price-disclosure rules first set by executive action, requiring hospitals to compile and publish prices monthly, free of charge and without a subscription.[6] Across the Capitol, the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced its own Lower Costs, More Transparency Act, folding in roughly ten separate health bills, and it demands prices posted in dollars and cents with, in the sponsors' phrasing, no loopholes and no exceptions.[2][4]

Measure	Committee	What it does
Patients Deserve Price Tags Act (S. 2355)	Senate HELP	Requires hospitals to post negotiated prices; adds penalties
Lower Costs, More Transparency Act	House Energy & Commerce	Real prices in dollars; Medicare Advantage and drug reforms
INSULIN Act (S. 4189)	Senate HELP	Caps insulin at $35 a month for commercial and uninsured patients

02 Why it matters now

Existing federal rules already tell hospitals to post their prices, yet compliance remains thin. A review by the advocacy group PatientRightsAdvocate found only about one in five hospitals fully complying, with roughly three-quarters posting price data that require interpretation to read.[5] The new bills aim to convert loose guidance into an enforceable duty, so that a patient could learn the cost of a procedure before agreeing to it.[6] The same Senate markup also advanced the INSULIN Act, from Susan Collins and Jeanne Shaheen, capping insulin at $35 a month for people with commercial coverage or none at all.[3]

Patients deserve price tags, not surprise bills.

03 The industry pushback

The American Hospital Association opposed the price-tag bill in its current form, acknowledging that a manager's amendment had improved earlier drafts.[1] The group argued the measure would pile on new reporting requirements that are difficult to execute and costly to maintain.[1] It warned the mandates could fall hardest on small and rural hospitals already straining to serve their communities.[1] Supporters counter that the resistance itself makes the case, noting the bills have been fought by hospital and insurance interests opposed to patients knowing real prices.[6]

Committee passage is only a first gate, and both bills must still clear their full chambers before either becomes law.[2] The bipartisan margins, rare on health policy, suggest transparency has become one of the few consumer-cost fights that draws votes from both parties.[3]

Sources

III · Grid lifeline

The city's newest power lifeline failed in its first summer

For three weeks this month, one of the city's newest and largest sources of electricity sat dark beneath the Hudson River. The Champlain Hudson Power Express, a $6 billion cable that carries Canadian hydropower 339 miles to a converter station in Astoria, tripped offline on July 4 and did not return to service until July 26.[1] The line had reached full commercial operation only in June, and it failed during the exact stretch of summer heat it was built to help the grid endure.[5][6] Governor Kathy Hochul's office called the repeated failures unacceptable.[1]

1.25 GW

line capacity

~1M

households served

22 days

offline in July

01 A three-week failure in peak season

The trouble began quietly on July 1, when a fault at a Canadian substation briefly interrupted the flow and was cleared the next day.[2] The serious break came on July 4. A damaged splice in the five-inch cable on the line's New York land section forced the whole link offline, and it stayed down for the better part of the month.[3] Crews from the cable's manufacturer cut out the ruined segment, spliced in a replacement, and ran days of testing before power resumed.[4] Hydro-Québec, the line's Canadian supplier, said a full analysis of the root cause is underway.[1]

July 1	Brief outage traced to a Canadian substation, restored the next day
July 4	Line trips offline after a damaged cable splice on the New York land section
July 24	Operator announces repairs are nearly finished
July 26	Service restored after post-repair testing

02 A lifeline sized for a million homes

The cable is built to move 1,250 megawatts, enough to light roughly a million households and, by Con Edison's accounting, as much as a fifth of the city's baseline supply on an ordinary day.[1] It draws on 61 hydroelectric plants in Quebec under a 25-year purchase agreement, and it runs almost entirely underground and underwater to reach the five boroughs.[5] State officials had spent years selling the project as the backbone of a cleaner grid, and it began commercial service in the spring before the governor marked its completion in June.[6]

We're right at the edge of the capacity that New York City's power can currently deliver.

03 A grid with little slack

Con Edison says it can keep the lights on without the line, and it did so through the heat.[1] The margin, though, is slim. One energy consultant tracking the outage said the city is operating near the ceiling of what its power system can deliver.[1] A Bronx assemblymember has called for an oversight hearing into why a brand-new cable failed twice in its first full summer.[3]

The immediate crisis has passed, and the cable is carrying power again. What lingers is the question of how much weight the city can safely place on a single link, and what happens the next time it slips.[1]

Sources

IV · Prediction markets

Why a Super Bowl contract is still a bet in New York

A bet on who wins the Super Bowl is still a bet in New York, whatever a federal trading license might suggest. That is the practical result of a Manhattan federal court ruling that clears state regulators to move against Kalshi, an online marketplace where users buy and sell contracts tied to elections, the weather and the outcomes of games.[1][3] Judge Analisa Torres refused to block New York from enforcing its gambling laws against the platform, and the company has carried the fight to a federal appeals court.[2][5] Nearly nine of every ten dollars traded on the site ride on sports.[1]

~90%

of volume on sports

$1B+

traded on the Super Bowl

July 8

injunction denied

01 From cease-and-desist to courtroom

New York's Gaming Commission ordered Kalshi to stop taking sports wagers last October, warning that the company was running unlicensed gambling in the state.[3] State law requires anyone offering sports betting to hold a Gaming Commission license, and Attorney General Letitia James joined the effort to enforce it.[1] Rather than seek a license, Kalshi sued, asking a federal judge to shield it from state action while the dispute played out.[2]

02 A fight over who gets to regulate

Kalshi's central claim is that its markets are financial instruments, not games of chance, and that the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission holds exclusive authority over them.[1] Judge Torres was not persuaded. She pointed to a provision of the Commodity Exchange Act that expressly preserves the states' own regulatory powers, and found nothing in the law that wipes away New York's gambling statutes.[1] The jurisdictional tangle runs both ways, as the federal commission has separately sued New York claiming the same ground for itself.[4]

Nothing in the federal statute, the judge found, was meant to supersede or limit the states' own gambling laws.

03 A test case with a national audience

The stakes reach well past New York. Sports contracts account for close to 90 percent of Kalshi's trading, and the platform says more than a billion dollars changed hands on the last Super Bowl alone.[1] Regulators in several other states are pressing similar challenges, which makes New York's case an early read on whether prediction markets can sidestep state betting rules.[4] For now the ruling lets the state proceed, though the appeals court could still change that.[5]

If the decision holds, it draws a line other states are likely to follow, treating a market contract on a ballgame as the wager it resembles.[4] If it falls, a federal license could become a path around every state betting law in the country.[5]

Sources