Weekly Roundup

Is Lindsey Graham Still Dead?

Yep!

Endeavorance

16 Jul 2026 — 8 min read

A Programming Note

Hello, dear reader.

Stuff Keeps Happening will be on break for the next few weeks as I will be undergoing surgery to address a recent skin cancer diagnosis in addition to a few other ongoing medical issues. Today's issue is newsletter-only as well.

Of course, taking time off means losing out on the grind, so if you have the means and wish to support my work, it would go a super long way to consider grabbing a paid subscription to give me a bit of breathing room to focus on recovery.

Regardless, thank you for being you. Now, on to the stuff.

Is Lindsey Graham Still Dead?

Yes.

Lindsey Graham—a dead guy—died and is now dead. His death happened due to an aortic dissection: basically the big artery coming out of his heart decided it didn't wanna keep moving blood, so it just kinda tore itself up. Aortic dissections are incredibly dangerous, painful, and deadly with about a 50% mortality rate overall, with sudden-onset aortic dissections bearing a 40% rate of immediate death.

So, to summarize again; Lindsey Graham has died at the age of 71. Barely a child, in terms of the Senate.

You might be wondering how I felt about the man. Or rather, you've probably got a pretty good idea already. While various politicians and corporate news outlets run tributes for Graham calling him a "statesman" with a good heart, I would like to highlight the man's actual legacy: a career-long advocate for death abroad and a dismantler of minority rights at home.

Regarding his Sexuality

I want to acknowledge one of the several elephants in this particular room. There's a widely circulated rumor—or open secret depending on who you ask—that Graham was a closeted gay man and was deeply repressed, coloring his position as one of self-loathing. While it may be relevant to the overall discussion of Graham's life, I'd rather not harp on speculation when there is a mountain of tangible output from his time in power.

Graham infamously spoke out against Donald Trump back in 2016, saying, "If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it." The post is still up on Twitter actually:

That of course didn't last long, as Graham would turn around and surgically attach himself to Donald Trump's ass to optimize his intake of bullshit. He gleefully pushed for even harsher attacks on Iran, something he has been advocating for throughout his political career.

He specifically called for the United States to join Israel in making direct strikes in Lebanon, saying "I want our fingerprints on that" during a visit to Israel. Republican Tim Burchett is quoted in saying, "Lindsey hasn't seen a fist fight he hasn't wanted to turn into a bombing" Even right-wing commentator Megyn Kelly took to her favorite AI-generated CSAM hosting website, X Dot Com, to say this about our dearly departed Good Senator:

Let's get real. The problem with Lindsay [sic] Graham isn't (just) that he's a homicidal maniac, it's that Trump likes and is listening to him, and Trump's favorite channel is parading him around like a Hefner bunny in stockings on every show.
— Megyn Kelly, being actually pretty correct

Beyond his tendency to seek the mass killing of foreigners using our money, he has routinely sacked attempts to help minority communities in this country. He loudly opposed Medicaid expansion to majority-black communities in his own state. He routinely backed bills banning gay marriage and queer visibility such as voting against the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"—a policy of the US military that essentially tried to hide queer people's existence outright.

Fifty years ago, back in 2013, Graham also opposed the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (which is supposed to reduce violence against women) because it also includes legal protections for gender, sexual, and other minorities.

If you come at all of this from the perspective of believing that the United States federal government's actions on the global stage are Actually A Good Thing, then sure—I can see how you would find Graham's advocacy for enhanced genocide of brown people abroad counts as being a "statesman" and a "real fighter."

Similarly, if you don't think queer people deserve rights and should instead be lambasted on cable news interviews for decades, I can see how you would find Graham's domestic policy positions to further your goals. Doubly so if you want to ensure Americans have disastrous medical costs, given his work to push back on expanding Medicaid and gutting the ACA.

But for anyone who doesn't specifically want the death of foreigners and the crushing of queer rights to be the things we focus our tax dollars on, it's safe to say that Lindsey Graham was probably not your idea of a wonderful, good-hearted man who Just Did What He Thought Was Right.

My sympathies to Lucifer.

Daylight High Yield Savings Account

Daylight Savings is always a hot topic. For those blessed to live somewhere without it, Daylight Savings is the practice of synchronizing a change to clocks twice a year, shifting our measurement of time to try and optimize for sunlight during waking hours.

While there's a lot of reasons to love or hate daylight savings (mostly hate, I mean, come on), it remains something we do each year, despite congressional attempts to end the practice. Most recently, the US House of Representatives passed a bill to permanently end the practice, using Daylight Saving Time as the permanent new standard.

Daylight Savings Time is the summertime variant, as opposed to Standard Time which we use during the winter months. The argument for keeping DST as the standard is that it keeps the sun up later into the day, while the argument against is that, well, it means mornings will be darker and longer, creating risk for morning travel such as children heading in to school.

This is far from the first bill to be passed about daylight savings, and it proooobably won't be the last. We've seen a flurry of activity in the "where should the sun be" space since 2022 when the Senate passed their own bill for the same thing. It died in the House.

There's been some floundering action since then, but nothing has really stuck the landing.

Many doctors, especially sleep doctors, are actually against the idea of keeping Daylight Savings Time as the standard. For human sleep, doctors push for using Standard Time, as it aligns more closely with our natural circadian rhythm (the thing that makes us sleepy when it's time for sleep). That said, sticking with one of the two options and ending the practice of changing the time may be good regardless, since the act of doing the time change causes a spike in things like heart attacks and car crashes due to the additional strain on people.

Worth noting: the public is somewhat evenly split here. 56% of Americans say they would prefer permanent Daylight Savings time, while 42% would prefer a permanent Standard Time.

I, personally, would prefer that we simply abolish time altogether. Death to Chronos.

Interesting lil' bonus tidbit: the Uniform Time Act of 1966 mandates that any state in the US can opt-out of observing Daylight Savings Time entirely, but they are not permitted to move to DST and drop Standard Time. This bill would change that, but also allows for state legislatures to opt out before the bill is enacted.

Still a big "if" so I wouldn't start getting all your clocks changed just yet.

Masterful Play, Sir

So, them tariffs? The cornerstone of the current administration's economic policy? Pretty dumb! Kinda like what every economist ever said!

Trump's infamous tariffs were struck down by the Supreme Court back in February. Immediately after that, Trump declared new, slightly more different tariffs using a wildly niche law that grants him temporary power to enact tariffs. That temporary power ends later this month, and the White House is reportedly ready to announce more tariffs after that.

A reminder: tariffs are taxes on imported goods, paid by the importer on record. Local Company wants to sell their Widget, but their Widget requires parts that are only available overseas. Local Company imports the parts from Foreign Company, but has to pay a tax on those imported goods. In order to still make a profit, Local Company now has to increase the price of their Widget. Consumers, in turn, have to pay more for goods.

This is widely understood if you are a person with a functioning brain. Unfortunately, the leader of our nation does not fall into that category.

After the original tariffs were struck down, the US government was suddenly tasked with refunding the more than $100,000,000,000 in additional taxes it collected via tariffs.

So who gets those refunds? And how? And is it riddled with corruption? I mean, come on—you know the answer to that last one.

Ripping off the bandage first: no, consumers will not be seeing refunds. The only way that'll happen is if a company getting a refund chooses to actually then go and issue consumer refunds on specific purchases. I will call out that there's a non-zero number of companies offering that option, such as UPS who has a form to look up if a shipment is eligible for a refund.

For most of the refunded money, it'll just be going right back into the pockets of the companies who happily just raised their prices to cover costs. If a corporation increased prices to cover the increased taxes, then the taxes were struck down and refunded, and the corporation keeps the refunded cash, that just means the government basically created a loophole for the corporation to charge more money for their products for no market reason, then double the gains in a lump-sum payout.

And that is assuming a clean refund. For some smaller companies weathering the economic storm that is the Trump economy, they chose to sell their future potential refunds to banks and equity firms for pennies on the dollar; netting a bit of cash sooner at the expense of losing out on the full refund if or when they happen. And they're happening now, so, that's the if/when.

Put simply, before the SCOTUS gave their decision, people were trying to hedge their bets on what the ruling would be. If the tariffs were struck down, the buyer of the refund rights wins big. If the tariffs are held, the big firms buying up the possible payouts can just absorb the loss.

Ultimately, it's a mess! And I've not even mentioned the fact that the son of the current Commerce Secretary sits as chairman and CEO overseeing Cantor Fitzgerald—a financial institution who has been a big player in this secondary refund market game. Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, often pushed that the tariffs were here to stay, while his family profits from the tariff refund scheme. This has been called into question by some folks in congress, but that's about it. Howard Lutnick maintains innocence from wrongdoing.