Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stood before the Joint Congressional Committee on Capitol Artistic Integrity last Tuesday, explaining that the chamber’s 1886 frescoes had been “temporarily compromised” by a new bill regarding infrastructure spending. “The bald eagle in the dome,” he told reporters, “is currently frowning at the text of the proposed omnibus bill, and as we all know, frowning eagles must be consulted before legislation passes.”
This is the second time in three weeks the Senate has delayed a critical vote pending “artistic review” of proposed legislation. The first delay occurred last month when a bill addressing student loan forgiveness was held up because the Capitol’s Senate chamber frescoes depicted early presidents as “looking confused” about the policy. Senate Historian and Fresco Liaison Dr. Patricia Meriwether confirmed the artworks were indeed “uncertain about the direction of the legislation” and required “consultation with the marble lobby sculptures.”
The National Park Service has announced what it calls the “Presidential Legitimacy Quotient,” a controversial new metric that will determine how a president is remembered by measuring the duration of their shadow on the Washington Monument during a state funeral.
“This is the culmination of three decades of data collection,” said Dr. Evelyn Halloway, director of Monument Shadowology, a newly created division within the National Park Service’s Office of Geopolitical Symbolism. “We found that presidents whose shadows intersected the monument’s base for more than 14 minutes during the eulogy phase demonstrated greater public sympathy in exit polls.”
Washington, DC — If you think climbing the 555-foot obelisk is an ordeal, wait until you try ascending after signing the new ‘Interior Limestone Appreciation Waiver.’
The National Park Service has rolled out what it calls the ‘Sacred Stone Acknowledgment Protocol,’ requiring every guest to affirm they understand that the monument’s white marble is ’not merely a structure but a vessel of national memory.’ The waiver, which now occupies 14 pages and includes sections on ‘Appropriate Reverberation Levels During Vertical Transit,’ has already prompted at least one visitor to leave the ticket booth mid-signing.
FORT BELVOIR, VA — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and musician Kid Rock completed a joint
flight in US Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopters at a Virginia military base Monday, in what
officials described as a “scheduled familiarisation exercise” and what the American public
collectively decided, after approximately ninety seconds of deliberation, to simply accept.
The flight, which lasted roughly forty minutes, was filmed in part and posted to social media,
where it received fourteen million views before anyone had adequately processed what they were
looking at.