7 Things: Trump makes moves to deal with oil and gas prices, Alabama’s Flock camera issues, and more …

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August 31, 2026

7. The Southeastern Conference said it will fight a temporary restraining order that now covers the conference and Commissioner Greg Sankey, stating it is “prepared to contest the allegations in the plaintiffs’ petition” at Thursday’s Baton Rouge hearing while complying with the court in the meantime.

6. Twitch streamer Hasan Piker insisted Michigan Democrat Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed asked him to “stump” on the campaign trail, saying “He asked me to stump for him, and I had not considered that ever before,” even as El-Sayed tried to recast him as “a streamer from California,” as both of them have problems with their anti-Semitism continues to be an issue.

5. Doug Jones, the cowardly caretaker former junior senator in an ill-fitting suit, who looks like he just woke up and stole his shoes from a homeless person and who will never be governor, attorney general, or U.S. Senator again, sided with Canada against President Donald Trump’s lumber tariffs and later stupidly noted that Governor-elect National Championship-winning Coach U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) “sure wasn’t a hero to most of the people in the state since he coached at Auburn.”

4. X identified about 200 suspected China-linked bot accounts trying to stoke American opposition to AI data centers, while China is pursuing a state-led “East Data, West Computing” buildout of roughly $295 billion in the “arid” part of their country.

3. Birmingham will not say what happens to data from a growing Flock license-plate network after denying contract requests, as Cullman Sheriff and PSC candidate Matt Gentry said, “If they misuse it, then they need to be arrested for it” and Alabama State Sen. Arthur Orr (R-Decatur) teased, “I’ll have a very strict bill with warrants, audits, the whole works.”

2. President Donald Trump called the new U.S.-Venezuela oil pact “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY,” saying Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth secured majority U.S. control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven reserves “at no cost to the American Taxpayer,” while Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodríguez said arrangement could bring $100 billion in investment and more than $209 billion in taxes.

1. U.S. forces struck Iranian missile launchers and said Tehran planned to fire mine-carrying rockets into the Strait of Hormuz, Iran attempted to retaliate against bases in Jordan, as it appears that Iranian leverage in the Strait of Hormuz is over, with Goldman Sachs estimating Hormuz oil flows at about two-thirds of pre-war levels.

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