Lazy Caturday Reads: News Accompanied by Japanese Cat Art

Posted: February 21, 2026 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, Epstein Files, iran, Japanese cat art, Jeffrey Epstein, New Mexico, sex trafficking, Supreme Court tariff decision, tariffs, Trump temper tantrum, Zorro Ranch | 2 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

By Toshiwo Katsuma

Yesterday was quite a day. The Supreme Court actually decided against Trump’s insane tariffs instead of bowing down once again to the man who thinks he’s a king. Predictably, Trump threw a gigantic tantrum and then decided to more or less ignore the SCOTUS decision.

Nina Totenberg at NPR: Trump throws a temper tantrum after tariff loss.

At a hastily called press conference, an agitated Trump railed against the conservative [John] Roberts and two of the courts other conservatives, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both Trump appointees.

“They’re just being fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats,” Trump said, using the apparently derisive acronym for “Republicans in name only.”

And that was hardly all. Trump called the three conservatives “disloyal, unpatriotic,” and at one point he launched into a rant about how the court should have invalidated the election results in 2020, which Trump lost to Joe Biden….

Writing for a hefty 6-to-3 majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that the nation’s founders deliberately and explicitly placed the power to impose taxes, including tariffs, with Congress, not with the president.

As the Chief Justice put it, “Having just fought a revolution motivated in large part by taxes imposed on them” by the King of England without their consent, the Framers wrote a Constitution that gives Congress the taxing power because the members of the legislature would be more accountable to the people.

Nonetheless Trump asserted at his press conference that he will go ahead with his tariffs, using alternative statutes that allow him to act without the consent of Congress.

A bit more:

There are, in fact, several statutes that allow him to impose some tariffs on his own, but they are limited. For example, one of the key statutes he cited Friday does allow him to impose certain tariffs on his own, but only for six months, and after that he must get approval from Congress. The other statutes he cited have other provisions that make it far more difficult to act unilaterally.

The other problem that Trump faces is that the billions of dollars already collected in tariffs were supposed to offset the tax cuts that the Republican-dominated Congress adopted last year at Trump’s behest. Now, however, the money isn’t there.

The federal government has been collecting about $30 billion a month in tariffs, about half of which will be eliminated by Friday’s court ruling. So it’s a big deal for U.S. businesses that have been paying the lion’s share of these tariffs. That said, tariffs are still a fairly small slice of overall government revenues; about 5%. So if half that tariff money goes away, that will mean a larger, but not crippling federal deficit.

In contrast to the stock market’s plunge when the tariffs were first put in place, the market reaction on Friday was fairly stable. That could be because investors believe the White House will try to make good on that threat to replace the outlawed tariffs with other taxes, using different statutes where the president’s claims his authority is more clear. Even those statutes, however, have more strings attached. None give Trump the power he claimed to have to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from any country for any reason….

Unresolved by the Supreme Court’s decision was the question of whether U.S. businesses that paid the tariffs for the last year can get their money back. Chief Justice Roberts did not address how refunds might work, so a lower court will have to figure that out.

There’s more at the NPR link.

David Rothkopf at The Daily Beast: Trump’s Unhinged Tantrum Is Just the Beginning. Buckle Up.

Donald Trump on Friday attacked the Supreme Court majority that ruled against him in a landmark decision on tariffs with a venom and ferocity he has never directed against America’s foreign enemies. He suggested they were disloyal to the country, under the sway of other nations. The entire performance was unhinged, an old man’s tantrum about an affront to his manhood. He called the three Republican appointed justices who voted against him “fools and lapdogs.” [….]

The president seemed to miss the entire point of the Supreme Court ruling—that the power to levy tariffs lay with the Congress—as well as the nuance in the majority opinion, such as a footnote by Chief Justice John Roberts that suggested while there were may be other ways by which he could seek to put tariffs in place, those “contain various combinations of procedural prerequisites, required agency determinations and limits on the duration, amount and scope of the tariffs they authorize.”

By Kazuaki Horitomo Kitamura

In other words, he could not behave like a king. He could no longer go around the world threatening other leaders whenever it suited him. He could no longer ignore the law, existing U.S. treaties, or the role Congress is assigned by the Constitution. He said he could—he said he didn’t need Congress to impose the new types of tariffs he mentioned during his press conference. But that was either denial or ignorance or a special Trumpian combination of both.

Because it will be very difficult for Trump to recreate the tariffs of the past year. Should he attempt to put some in place, and should he get the Congress and government agencies to work with him on this, the process is going to be more complex, require periodic renewals, and be far more limited in scope.

But watching Trump, it was clear that the thrust of his remarks had nothing to do with the letter of the law. With him, it seldom does. His feelings were hurt. Someone told him “no.” And he was going to lash out until he felt better.

The outburst was notable, then, because it revealed just how battered, exhausted, and at wits’ end the president is after weeks and weeks of similar experiences, of serial defeats and embarrassments, and of the prospect of many more such humiliations in the months ahead in a world that is finally learning how to say “no” to him.

With pressure building on him because of a soft economy, public anger at his immigration policies, fears of spiking healthcare costs for millions of Americans, the Epstein scandal and a looming massive defeat in the November midterms, Trump has returned regularly to the authoritarian playbook in the hopes that it would make him feel more powerful, less enfeebled by age, more like the kind of leader the slavering courtiers in his daily retinue say he is.

Go read more and enjoy the schadenfreude.

Naturally, reacted immediately with a new round of tariffs. He could have decided to work with Congress on rational trade policy, but he’d rather be a king.

Politico: Trump signs order imposing ‘temporary’ 10 percent global tariff after Supreme Court ruling.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing a new “temporary” 10 percent global tariff following the Supreme Court’s decision Friday striking down many of the global tariffs he raised last year.

“It is my Great Honor to have just signed, from the Oval Office, a Global 10% Tariff on all Countries, which will be effective almost immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Trump is invoking Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the president to impose tariffs of up to 15 percent to address a “large and serious balance-of-payments deficit,” according to a White House fact sheet. Tariffs imposed under the authority may remain in effect for no more than 150 days unless Congress passes legislation extending them….

The announcement seeks to keep many of his tariff policies intact even after the court’s ruling.

Tama the Cat, Woodblock Print by Hiroaki Takahashi, 1926

“Effective immediately, all national security tariffs under Section 232, and existing Section 301 tariffs — they’re existing, they’re there — remain in place, fully in place, and in full force and effect,” Trump told reporters at a White House press conference Friday afternoon. “Today, I will sign an order to impose a 10 percent global tariff under Section 122, over and above our normal tariffs already being charged. And we’re also initiating several Section 301, and other investigations, to protect our country from unfair trading practices of other countries and companies.”

The duties are set to take effect Feb. 24 at 12:01 a.m.

The White House fact sheet lists exemptions that are similar to the ones included with the tariffs that were invalidated Friday, carving out specific products within sectors such as energy, pharmaceuticals, autos, and aerospace, and shielding goods from North American neighbors compliant with U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade pact Trump signed in his first term.

Yet, it won’t allow the president the kind of flexibility he has wielded under the emergency powers law. By statute, the tariff must be “nondiscriminatory,” meaning the U.S. can’t give breaks to certain trading partners and not others.

Today, Trump decided to increase the newly announced tariffs to 15 percent.

The New York Times: Trump Says He Will Raise Global Tariff to 15 Percent.

President Trump announced Saturday that he would raise his new, global tariff to 15 percent, a day after he took steps to replicate some of the punishing duties that had been struck down by the Supreme Court.

Mr. Trump announced the change in a post on social media, and said the tariff would take effect immediately, as he signaled anew that he would press ahead with his trade war despite the stunning legal setback.

On Friday night, Mr. Trump had set that tariff at 10 percent, using a provision in a law that allows him to impose an across-the-board tariff for 150 days unless Congress agrees to extend it.

“I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been “ripping” the U.S. off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “During the next short number of months, the Trump Administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs, which will continue our extraordinarily successful process of Making America Great Again — GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!”

This man is looney tunes and he controls our nuclear arsenal.

By Ayako Ishiguro

Meanwhile, Trump and Hegseth continue to order the murders of people in small boats. NBC News: U.S. military says it struck another alleged drug boat in eastern Pacific, killing 3.

The U.S. military said that it struck an alleged drug trafficking boat in the eastern Pacific on Friday, killing three people.

U.S. Southern Command said the strike in the eastern Pacific was against a boat that was traveling along a drug trafficking route.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” the military said.

U.S. Southern Command said earlier this week that the military hit three boats on Monday, killing 11 people, in the Pacific and Caribbean.

Since September, the military has conducted strikes against boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that it alleges are involved in drug trafficking, which has been criticized by some members of Congress as legally questionable.

Before the strike Friday, there had been at least 41 boat strikes that have killed at least 134 people, according to statements from the Department of Defense tracked by NBC News.

We still have seen no evidence that these murdered people were actually transporting drugs to the U.S. and even there was such evidence, the U.S. government would have no right to kill them.

From The New York Times, an update on Trump’s possible attack on Iran (gift link): Dozens of U.S. Planes Are at Jordan Base, Satellite Images and Flight Data Show.

New satellite imagery and flight tracking data show a base in central Jordan has become a key hub for the U.S. military’s planning for possible strikes on Iran.

Imagery captured on Friday shows more than 60 attack aircraft parked at the base, known as Muwaffaq Salti, roughly tripling the number of jets that are normally there. And at least 68 cargo planes have landed at the base since Sunday, according to flight tracking data. More fighter jets could be parked under shelters.

The satellite images also show more modern aircraft, including F-35 stealth jets, compared to the aircraft normally seen there. Several drones and helicopters are also seen.

Soldiers also installed new air defenses to protect the base from incoming Iranian missiles.

Jordanian officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said that the American planes and equipment are deployed there as part of a defense agreement with the United States.

The changes at the base in Jordan are part of a large U.S. military buildup across the region, which comes amid negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. On Friday, President Trump told reporters he was considering a limited military strike to pressure Iran into a deal.

One benefit for Trump of the tariff decision has been the Epstein story has temporarily faded in U.S. news, so here are some Epstein files updates:

The Guardian: Epstein files place renewed attention on US authorities’ failure to stop him.

The Department of Justice’s release of millions of Jeffrey Epstein files has not only prompted questions about his crimes – but renewed attention on authorities’ failure to stop him after an accuser reported him in 1996.

By Kazuaki Horitomo Kitamura

This new cache of Epstein files has provided more insight into authorities’ familiarity with allegations against him in the years that followed, including time between his sweetheart plea deal in 2008 and federal arrest nearly six years ago.

While it’s known that accuser Virginia Giuffre’s attorneys met with federal prosecutors in 2016 about Epstein to no avail, recently disclosed files indicate that detailed information was provided to federal authorities years before that sit-down. This included allegations against Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor; documents indicate that he appeared on the FBI’s radar about 15 years ago.

A woman, whose name is redacted from these documents, gave an interview to FBI agents about Epstein and Maxwell in 2011, with a federal prosecutor in attendance by phone; her account echoes Giuffre’s public and legal allegations against the sex traffickers.

The US embassy in Australia told the country’s national police: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation Miami Field Office (FBI Miami) is assisting the Palm Beach Police Department in Florida with an ongoing investigation into JEFFREY EPSTEIN, a US citizen.”

The accuser, who was told in late 2008 about Epstein’s plea deal as she was found to be one of his victims, contacted federal authorities in south Florida three years later. Federal agents questioned her at the US consulate in Sydney on 17 March 2011.

This woman provided an extensive account of Epstein’s abuse and alleged participation of co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as other men as a teenage girl during the late 1990s. The woman, who described suffering at the hands of several predatory men after leaving a rehab facility, told agents that her father, a maintenance man at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, secured a job for her as a locker room attendant there.

That woman was Virginia Giuffre. There are other examples of FBI reports in the article. Why didn’t the government act?

Also from the Guardian: New Mexico to reopen inquiry into Epstein’s ranch amid pressure campaign.

New Mexico will reopen its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro ranch in the state after a public pressure campaign for a fuller accounting of the role the location played in the late financier’s sex-trafficking conspiracy.

The New Mexico department of justice’s announcement came less than two weeks after the Guardian reported that federal agents did not appear to have ever searched Zorro Ranch.

The Guardian’s reporting also revealed that there appeared to be no active criminal investigations into Zorro Ranch at that time.

New Mexico’s department of justice said at the time that it was working with lawmakers on launching something it styled as a truth commission. That commission was given the green light several days ago.

“Upon reviewing information recently released by the US Department of Justice, attorney general Raúl Torrez has ordered that the criminal investigation into allegations of illegal activity at Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch be reopened,” the New Mexico department of justice posted online on Thursday.

“Upon reviewing information recently released by the US Department of Justice, attorney general Raúl Torrez has ordered that the criminal investigation into allegations of illegal activity at Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch be reopened,” the New Mexico department of justice posted online on Thursday.

One more from Nicholas Kristof at The New York Times: What Trafficked Girls Think of Jeffrey Epstein and His Pals.

As the world follows the drip-drip of sensational revelations about Jeffrey Epstein, here’s a number to ponder: Last year the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received more than 113,000 reports of child sex trafficking.

Yiota Souras, the center’s chief legal officer, says that while no one knows the actual number of children trafficked annually in the United States alone, “the real number is absolutely higher” than that. Most of the victims reported to her organization are 15, 16 or 17, she said, but some are as young as 11 or 12.

By Toshiwo Katsuma

“This is happening in every community, in every city and state,” she added.

I’ve been speaking in the past few days with survivors of sex trafficking and those who work with them, and they’re thrilled that the Epstein files are bringing more attention to trafficking. But they’re also frustrated that the focus has been tightly on Epstein and his circle — and not on the victims or on the way we as a society enable the abuse.

We rightly condemn powerful associates of Epstein’s for their indifference to young girls being sexually assaulted. But collectively we show the same indifference, in a way that I fear leaves us complicit.

“If you told me 20 years ago that the word ‘trafficking’ and the concept of it would be on the nightly news every single night and be the national obsession, I wouldn’t have believed you,” Rachel Lloyd, who was trafficked as a teenager and once was nearly strangled to death by her pimp, told me. “But it’s bizarre to me that we’re having a national conversation about trafficking and yet it hasn’t made any difference.”

Lloyd, who now runs GEMS, an outstanding program for trafficked young women and girls, said of the increased attention: “It’s not elevating the lives of my young women. It’s not shining a light on their vulnerabilities and the things that they go through or the gaps in the systems. It’s not doing any of that.”

It’s terrific to see the scrutiny of Epstein’s world, and I hope that there’ll be investigations of allegations made against President Trump and many others, even as we acknowledge that, for now, they are lacking in evidence. If Britain can arrest the former Prince Andrew and Norway can charge a former prime minister, how is it that the United States has barely taken action?

Lloyd says she is not surprised that Epstein’s friends appear to have gotten away with raping children: In her experience and that of the girls she has worked with, she said, predators almost always get away with their abuse.

I’ll end this post on that powerful note.

Those are recommended reads for today. What else is on your mind?

Lazy Caturday Reads: Trump’s Racism and Epstein Fallout

Posted: February 7, 2026 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: Bobby Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump, Dulles Airport, Epstein Files, Ghislaine Maxwell, Howard Lutnick, Hudson Tunnel project, Jeffrey Epstein, Mariam Ibrahim, Melania documentary, Penn Station, Peter Mandleson, Prince Andrew, Racism, US military, Video depicting Obamas as apes, women in Epstein world | 9 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about Trump’s disgusting Truth Social post of a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. Trump left it up for at least 12 hours before someone at the White House finally deleted it. Of course Trump, who is a hateful and repulsive racist, won’t apologize.

The Washington Post: Trump refuses to apologize over video showing the Obamas as apes.

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Donald Trump declined to apologize for sharing a social media video that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, saying he did not realize the image of the former president and first lady was tacked on to the end of the clip.

The president said Friday that he had watched and passed along the video — which focused on claims of voter fraud until the final seconds of the clip — to unidentified “people” to post to his Truth Social account, but that he “didn’t see the whole thing,” including the brief portion that showed the heads of the Obamas edited onto the bodies of apes.

In response to a question from The Washington Post about whether he would heed the calls of some Republicans to apologize for posting the video, which was widely condemned as racist and offensive, Trump said he would not.

“No, I didn’t make a mistake,” Trump said on his way to Palm Beach, Florida, for the weekend. “I look at a lot of — thousands of things. And I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine.”

Trump referred to the controversial video, which was online for about 12 hours before being deleted, as “a very strong post in terms of voter fraud.” [….]

…[T]he pushback was swift, including from Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina), the chamber’s only Black Republican, who also serves as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Scott called the post “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.” Several other GOP senators and House members joined Scott in condemning the video, with some calling on Trump to apologize….

Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One on Friday, Trump dismissed the notion that the post and his handling of it could hurt him with the minority voters he had made gains with during the 2024 election. He touted criminal justice reform legislation passed during his first term, as well as his efforts to ensure funding to historically Black colleges and universities.

We’ll see. I think Trump expects to be able to rig the 2026 election anyway.

Hanna Kiros at The Atlantic (gift link): The Obama Meme on Trump’s Truth Social Was Exactly What It Looked Like.

Donald Trump supercharged his political career by claiming that Barack Obama wasn’t American. Yesterday, 16 minutes before midnight, the president’s account on Truth Social posted a video that suggests Obama isn’t even human. It briefly shows the head of the first Black president and that of his wife superimposed onto the bodies of apes. They dance along to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

The video, which Trump’s account shared twice, seems to be a screen recording. Its first minute shows a clip promoting the lie that voting-machine tampering handed Joe Biden the presidency in 2020. Then, someone seems to swipe up, and the clip depicting the Obamas as apes flashes into focus. [The post was removed after about 12 hours.]….

In the interim, hundreds if not thousands of people responded to the clip with enthusiasm. Immediately after the video was first posted on Truth Social, the memecoin $APEBAMA was minted. Within 12 hours, more than $4 million worth of $APEBAMA had been traded back and forth. In an X group with the same name that now has hundreds of members, the pinned tweet implies that the meme stock will succeed because of how outrageous the video is: “this is pretty much on par with him calling Obama a nigga.” Some members posted their own depictions of Obama as a monkey or ape. The ape video’s apparent creator, the X user @xerias_x, reposted the full video to their X account early this morning. Besides the Obamas, the video shows a menagerie of Democratic politicians as animals, bowing down to Trump, who appears as a lion. It now has more than 1 million views. (@xerias_x also seems to be the originator of an AI-generated video Trump reposted in October that shows the president raining down what appears to be excrement on protesters from the sky.)

The “joke” that Trump’s account spread is plainly sinister. The idea that Black people sit somewhere between white people and apes has long been used to justify cruelty. In 1377, a historian wrote that Africans “have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals,” meaning they “are, as a whole, submissive to slavery.” Cartoons circulated during the Civil War were printed with images similar to the one Trump posted: One labels a monkey holding a book upside down as a NEGRO-MAN; another depicts a Black man on all fours, accompanied by the words WHAR’S JEFF DAVIS. In 1906, a man born in what was then the Belgian Congo, Ota Benga, was displayed at the Bronx Zoo in a cage with an orangutan. In 1975, white teenagers harassed Black students desegregating a Boston public school with the chant “Two, four, six, eight, assassinate the nigger apes.”

The ape caricature still colors how Black people are received in America. But this morning, the administration played the video off for laughs. “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in response to a comment request before the Truth Social posts were removed. (The Lion King features a monkey named Rafiki, but no apes appear in the film.)

There is absolutely no question that Trump is a vicious racist.

In other news, there are so many fascinating revelations coming out of the latest release from the FBI’s Epstein files. I haven’t had the patience to actually try searching through them myself, but I’ve been following what reporters are finding. Some of the latest examples:

Allison Quinn at The Daily Beast: Epstein’s Top Secret Relationship With Trained Russian Spy Revealed.

Jeffrey Epstein had a years-long relationship with an FSB-trained Russian official who sought his help connecting with a well-known hacker in 2016.

The late sex trafficker’s corresponJeffrdence with Sergei Belyakov is among the strangest revelations in the millions of case files released by the Justice Department last month.

Belyakov, a former deputy economic minister, helped Epstein secure visas to visit Russia, provided him with a dossier on a Russian woman Epstein had complained was trying to blackmail “a group of powerful businessmen,” and reported to Epstein about his work for the Russian government.

Epstein’s frequent bids to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov feature heavily in the newly released files—his assistant reminds him in one September 2011 email that he’d told his bodyguard he “had an appointment with Putin” coming up—but he appears to have had Belyakov at his beck and call.

In one January 2016 email under the subject, “My new position,” Belyakov told Epstein he’d started working at the Russian Direct Investment Fund–now led by Kirill Dmitriev, one of Vladimir Putin’s most trusted envoys, and a key player in ongoing peace talks with the Trump administration to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Much of their correspondence focused on investment opportunities and potential investors, though it’s unclear to what extent Belyakov involved Epstein in his work beyond the emails documented in the latest files.

The pair met several times in person over the years. In numerous email exchanges from 2014 through 2018, they reference personal meetings they had together, along with sporadic phone calls.

Epstein described Belyakov as a “very good friend” in a 2015 email to billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel as he tried to arrange for the pair to meet. Belyakov also apparently put Epstein in touch with other Russian officials, with emails showing he helped Epstein apply for a Russian visa in 2014 to meet with then-Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak and Alexei Simanovsky, the deputy head of Russia’s Central Bank at the time.

There’s more interesting stuff at the link.

J Oliver Conroy at The Guardian: The Epstein files reveal that a vast global conspiracy actually exists – sort of.

The millions of Jeffrey Epstein files dumped last Friday by the US Department of Justice will provide journalists, conspiracy theorists and interested members of the public with months of reading. And what they will read is enraging.

What makes these files so infuriating, however, is not just Epstein’s horrific predatory behavior, which is well-known, but the more mundane examples of elite conduct that the documents continue to expose. They vividly illustrate a world whose existence many everyday people, whether fevered with visions of the Illuminati or just jaundiced by banal anti-establishment cynicism, already suspected exists: an informal global club of powerful, ultra-rich people who all seemingly know each other, help one another out, and protect each other from the consequences of their depravity.

The new files will probably not provide satisfying answers to questions about, say, whether any of Epstein’s famous friends participated in his sex trafficking, or if his death in custody in 2019 was truly a suicide, as authorities have said. But conspiracy theorists may still feel vindicated – and to some extent they should, Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, said.

Although the documents may not expose an actual criminal conspiracy, he said, they confirm the belief behind most conspiracy theories: that elites “get special treatment, that they’re shielded from the rules that are supposed to apply to everyone equally, and that there is a kind of corruption in the broadest sense of the word”.

The new material is the largest, and possibly last, tranche of the so-called Epstein files, though the government is keeping as many as 3m more pages under wraps. Yet even the initial revelations of these files deepen the astonishing constellation of ties between Epstein and members of the global elite – including tech billionaires; a former US president; British, Norwegian and Saudi royalty or royal courtiers; current and former US cabinet secretaries and governors; and prominent business executives and academics….

[T]he files, especially Epstein’s typo-filled email and text-message correspondences, are fascinating – and ultimately grim – in what they show of how elites act in private, among themselves. At the least, many of Epstein’s powerful acquaintances remained friendly with him years after the notoriously lenient sweetheart bargain, in 2008, in which he pleaded guilty to soliciting an underage girl for prostitution, and as survivors continued to accuse Epstein of further crimes.

Again, there is lots more enraging material at the link.

AP: Epstein revelations have toppled top figures in Europe while US fallout is more muted.

LONDON (AP) — A prince, an ambassador, senior diplomats, top politicians. All brought down by the Jeffrey Epstein files. And all in Europe, rather than the United States.

The huge trove of Epstein documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice has sent shock waves through Europe’s political, economic and social elites — dominating headlines, ending careers and spurring political and criminal investigations.

Former U.K. Ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson was fired and could go to prison. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces a leadership crisis over the Mandelson appointment. Senior figures have fallen in Norway, Sweden and Slovakia. And, even before the latest batch of files, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, brother of King Charles III, lost his honors, princely title and taxpayer-funded mansion.

Apart from the former Prince Andrew, none of them faces claims of sexual wrongdoing. They have been toppled for maintaining friendly relationships with Epstein after he became a convicted sex offender.

“Epstein collected powerful people the way others collect frequent flyer points,” said Mark Stephens, a specialist in international and human rights law at Howard Kennedy in London. “But the receipts are now in public, and some might wish they’d traveled less.”

The documents were published after a public frenzy over Epstein became a crisis for President Donald Trump’s administration and led to a rare bipartisan effort to force the government to open its investigative files. But in the U.S., the long-sought publication has not brought the same public reckoning with Epstein’s associates — at least so far.

Rob Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said that in Britain, “if you’re in those files, it’s immediately a big story.”

“It suggests to me we have a more functional media, we have a more functional accountability structure, that there is still a degree of shame in politics, in terms of people will say: ‘This is just not acceptable, this is just not done,’” he said.

In other words, our media sucks and many of our politicians are shameless. I can’t argue with that.

A couple of Trump cabinet members captured in the files:

CBS News: Lutnick and Epstein were in business together, Epstein files show.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said he had “limited interactions” with Jeffrey Epstein, but documents show they were in business together as recently as 2014.

Lutnick and Epstein each signed on behalf of limited liability companies that agreed on Dec. 28, 2012, to acquire stakes in a now-shuttered advertising technology company called Adfin, documents released among the so-called Epstein files show.

Epstein and Lutnick’s signatures appear on neighboring pages in the contract, with Epstein signing for his Southern Trust Company, Inc. and Lutnick for a limited liability company called CVAFH I. The documents list nine shareholders in total.

Lutnick, the former chairman of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald who at one point lived next door to Epstein, told the New York Post in October that he and his wife Allison had cut ties with Epstein in 2005, deciding after taking a tour of Epstein’s New York townhouse, “I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.”

However, it appears Epstein and Lutnick continued to maintain contact and emails show they arranged calls and planned to have drinks in 2011.

The following year, the couple and their four children planned a visit to Epstein’s island, Little St. James, emails show. Lutnick was invited for lunch on Dec. 24, 2012, and later, Epstein’s assistant wrote on behalf of Epstein, “it was nice seeing you.”

Their Adfin deal was signed four days later.

Lutnick is such a fucking liar.

Farah Tomazin at The Daily Beast: RFK Jr.’s Bizarre Trip With Epstein and Ghislaine Exposed in Files.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went hunting for dinosaur bones in the Dakotas with child sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, according to the latest tranche of documents released by the Justice Department.

As the fallout over the Epstein files continues, an email exchange between the two sex predators centers on the now-Trump Cabinet secretary, one of the many prominent people whose friendship the pair cultivated over the years.

The exchange took place in 2012, seven years before Epstein died in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial.

In one email, Epstein writes to Maxwell about a trip involving “dinosaur and fossill hunitng (sic) with jack horner on the ranch, found 90 million year old clams and fossils.”

“Right up your alley,” he adds.

The following day, Maxwell replies: “Love that – didn’t we go fossil hunting with him and Bobby Kennedy in N Dakota?”

“Yes,” Epstein replies.

Maxwell, a former British socialite now serving 20 years for her crimes, also disclosed the fossil hunt during an interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last year, apparently catching him off guard when she said of Epstein: “Bobby Kennedy knew him.”

One more from Amelia Gentleman at The Guardian on women in the Epstein files: Sex and snacks, but no seat at the table: the role of women in Epstein’s sordid men’s club.

Pluck an email at random from the millions in the Department of Justice’s Epstein Library. It is a Saturday evening in February 2013, and Jeffrey Epstein is messaging Bill Gates’s assistant about guests for a dinner he wants to organise.’

“People for Bill,” the email begins. Epstein starts listing possible candidates: the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, the film director Woody Allen, the prime minister of Qatar, a couple of Harvard academics, the billionaire CEO of Hyatt hotels, a White House communications director, a former US secretary of defence.

He names 10 powerful men, before suggesting “Anne Hathaway (really)”. Epstein has to make it clear, with the bracketed word, that he is not joking when he proposes that a woman might join them at the table. The lists ends tentatively: “victoria secret models?” Epstein wonders: “Who on the list do you think he would enjoy the most?”

The Epstein files reveal a patriarchy in action. This is a world where the men are rich and powerful, and the women are not. The emails showcase the private behaviour of a male ruling class, as they network, joke and trade information. Women exist at the periphery, tolerated because they organise the diaries of the busy men, they arrange food, they grace a table, they provide sex.

A typical email from Epstein to a woman might say: “Take a selfie of your pussy and send.”

Spend three days rummaging through the chaotic, sprawling, sordid pit of information contained in the Epstein files, and you learn valuable lessons about how this modern global patriarchy operates: through flattery, the exchange of favours and occasional curt reminders of who owes what to whom.

For women, these files offer an unprecedented chance to eavesdrop on conversations from which they are usually excluded. They provide salutary insights into what a set of distinguished global figures think and say about women when they assume the women aren’t listening.

Read the rest at The Guardian.

I’ll end with a few tales of Trump idiocy:

Jonathan Karl at ABC News: Trump wants Penn Station, Dulles Airport named after him in funding deal with Schumer, sources say.

President Donald Trump last month told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., that he would be willing to unfreeze $16 billion in funding for a major infrastructure project in New York if Schumer would agree to rename New York’s Penn Station and Washington’s Dulles Airport after him, two sources familiar with the conversation told ABC News.

The Hudson Tunnel Project — which would connect New York City and New Jersey — had already started. The project includes building nine miles of new passenger rail track and rehabilitating the North River Tunnel, according to the commission responsible for it.

Officials in New York and New Jersey said if the money isn’t freed-up by Friday, the project would stop, leaving approximately 1,000 construction jobs in jeopardy.

Sources told ABC that Schumer rejected Trump’s offer.

Daniel Dale at CNN: ‘I did that’: Trump takes credit for a prisoner release that happened before he even ran for president.

At the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, President Donald Trump spoke from prepared remarks as he discussed the persecution of Mariam Ibrahim. Ibrahim was unjustly imprisoned and sentenced to death in Sudan in 2014, in a case centered on her Christian faith, until she was released that same year following a global outcry.

Trump correctly said: “Believers all over the planet rallied to Mariam’s cause, prayed for her protection, and successfully pressured for her release.”

But then the president appeared to ad-lib – and claimed that he was the one who got Ibrahim freed.

“I did that. I did that. I did that with one phone call, actually,” he said. “And she had such support, it was so easy. And when I explained it to the powers that be: ‘Yes, sir, we will do it right away.’ I just wish I knew earlier. But it’s a big world with a lot of people.”

For years, Trump has told fictional stories that feature unnamed people referring to him as “sir.” This was another one.

Ibrahim was released in 2014, during the Obama administration. Trump did not become president until January 2017. He was not even a presidential candidate until June 2015. There has never been the slightest indication that a private citizen in the US, a businessman and celebrity at the time, was the person who convinced Sudanese authorities to let her out of prison.

A former Obama administration official who served on the National Security Council in 2014 told CNN on Friday: “I neither had at the time nor have now any knowledge of Trump’s involvement whatsoever. It’d be very surprising if he were.”

Jack Jenkins, a reporter for Religion News Service, first raised skepticism about Trump’s story on Thursday.

Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor who is a prominent conservative legal scholar, said in a Friday email: “As Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in 2014, I advocated for Mariam Ibrahim. I do not recall Donald Trump being involved in the case or assisting our Commission’s efforts. Of course, he was not President at the time.

Jack Revell at The Daily Beast: Military Pressured to See ‘Melania’ Against Their Will.

Thousands of active-duty military personnel may have been “pressured” into seeing the Melania documentary at cinemas around the country, a watchdog has warned.

The $75 million Amazon film opened last week to $7 million at the box office—despite universally terrible reviews.

According to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, those numbers have been artificially inflated by pressure from MAGA-aligned officers leaning on their troops to buy tickets.

“People are scared,” Mikey Weinstein, president and founder of the MRFF, said. Weinstein said he has received letters from members of the U.S. military at eight facilities worldwide, complaining that their superiors encouraged or pressured them to see the film.

He told Business Insider. “They were pressured to see the movie. Your military superior, that’s not your shift manager at Taco Bell or Starbucks. They have complete and total control over you.”

The MRFF, a non-profit founded in 2005 to promote the separation of church and state within the military, has roughly 100,000 members.

“Nobody that I know wanted to go except for those that did not want to get jacked up by our unit commander for not attending,” one of those members told Weinstein in a letter seen by journalist Jonathan Larsen.

That’s it for me today. What stories have you been following?

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: January 31, 2026 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: 2, cat art, caturday, DHS funds, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Epstein Files, Ghislaine Maxwell, Howard Lutnick, Jeffrey Epstein, Melania documentary, temporary government shutdown, Trump's triumphal arch | 7 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Young Girl With Cat, by Berthe Morisot

Before I get going with the latest news, I want to share this hilarious review of “Melania,” the “documentary” financed by Jeff Bezos as a bribe to Donald Trump. The reviewer was the only person in theater when he saw the film.

Xan Brooks at The Guardian: Melania review – Trump film is a gilded trash remake of The Zone of Interest.

When Brett Ratner’s contentious, Amazon-backed documentary previewed at the White House last weekend, the guestlist included Mike Tyson, Queen Rania of Jordan and the president himself. Today it’s just me in the room and Melania on the screen. It makes for a more intimate and exclusive affair.

This mood of cosy conviviality extends all the way through the opening credits; at which point the chill descends and the novocaine kicks in, as the film’s star and executive producer proceeds to guide us – with agonising glacial slowness – through the preparations for her husband’s second presidential inauguration. She glides from the fashion fitting to the table setting, and from the “candlelit dinner” to the “starlight ball”, with a face like a fist and a voice of sheet metal. “Candlelight and black tie and my creative vision,” she says, as though listing the ingredients in a cauldron. “As first lady, children will always remain my priority,” she coos, and you can almost picture her coaxing them into her little gingerbread house.

No doubt there is a great documentary to be made about Melania Knauss, the ambitious model from out of Slovenia who married a New York real-estate mogul and then found herself cast in the role of a latter-day Eva Braun, but the horrific Melania emphatically isn’t it. It’s one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality. I’m not even sure it qualifies as a documentary, exactly, so much as an elaborate piece of designer taxidermy, horribly overpriced and ice-cold to the touch and proffered like a medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne.

And so it goes on. Melania moves through the action like a listless automaton, talking constantly but saying nothing, squired from Mar-a-Lago to Trump Tower to her final destination, the White House. What drama there is chiefly hinges on her concern that her white blouse is too loose at the neck and needs to be cut and then tightened, much to the consternation of the fitters. Melania misses her mother, she says, but she loves Michael Jackson and Barron and possibly her husband as well, although Trump himself is mostly a background presence here, shuffling in at intervals to brag about his election win and complain that his inauguration clashes with the televised college football playoffs. “They probably did it on purpose,” he says.

It’s dispiriting, it’s deadly and it’s spectacularly unrevealing. Ratner’s film plays like a gilded trash remake of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest in which a button-eyed Cinderella points at gold baubles and designer dresses, cunningly distracting us while her husband and his cronies prepare to dismantle the Constitution and asset-strip the federal government.

This review by Owen Gleiberman at Variety is pretty good too: ‘Melania’ Review: Brett Ratner’s First Lady Documentary Is a Cheeseball Infomercial of Staggering Inertia.

“Melania” is a documentary that never comes to life. It’s a “portrait” of the First Lady of the United States, but it’s so orchestrated and airbrushed and stage-managed that it barely rises to the level of a shameless infomercial. Is it cheesy? At moments, but mostly it’s inert. It feels like it’s been stitched together out of the most innocuous outtakes from a reality show. There’s no drama to it. It should have been called “Day of the Living Tradwife.”

Julie Manet with cat, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

The movie was shot, by director Brett Ratner and a trio of prestige cinematographers, over the course of the 20 days leading up to (and including) the 2025 Presidential Inauguration of Donald Trump. And to the extent that it allows Melania Trump a whisper of personality or agency, it’s as a designer. She helps to tweak the design of her own outfits. She has chosen the color of the inaugural invitation envelopes (a lovely shade of scarlet). She offers design tips about the plates and flowers and glassware. And, during the first Trump presidency, she helped to redesign sections of the White House.

The movie was shot, by director Brett Ratner and a trio of prestige cinematographers, over the course of the 20 days leading up to (and including) the 2025 Presidential Inauguration of Donald Trump. And to the extent that it allows Melania Trump a whisper of personality or agency, it’s as a designer. She helps to tweak the design of her own outfits. She has chosen the color of the inaugural invitation envelopes (a lovely shade of scarlet). She offers design tips about the plates and flowers and glassware. And, during the first Trump presidency, she helped to redesign sections of the White House.

The movie plunks us down at Mar-a-Lago, where Melania struts out the door and into the back of an SUV, which will take her to the red-white-and-blue private plane painted with the word TRUMP that’s waiting for her at the airport. Wherever she lands, she’s in a mobile bubble, jetting from the palace of Palm Beach to Trump Tower in New York, where she meets for a fashion fitting in what looks like a dining room of the Titanic designed by Liberace, then to St. Patrick’s Cathedral right down the block (where she attends an anniversary mass for her mother) and on to the renovated 19th-century charm of Blair House in Washington, D.C., then back to Trump Tower and back to the Capital.

Poor Melania. At least she got her $40 million payoff from Bezos. I think the film could have been interesting if Melania had talked about her life in Slovenia, why she chose to come to the U.S., how she got the genius visa, how she really met Donald Trump, and her friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and Gislaine Maxwell. After all, she’s not a real first lady. She doesn’t live in the White House and Trump reportedly has to pay her for any appearances she makes with him.

The big headline news today is all about Jeffrey Epstein. It’s almost as if the Trump administration decided to release some shocking Epstein files in order to distract from the violence perpetrated by their secret police AKA ICE in Minneapolis and elsewhere. Here are a few of the top revelations in the files.

The Independent: What are the main revelations from the new Epstein files release?

The U.S. Justice Department released millions of files related to the case of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, shedding further light on his expansive network of high profile figures.

The latest dump – expected to be the last – contains some three million pages, including 180,000 images and some 2,000 videos attached to the case.

Initial findings from the drop include emails from Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former British prince, inviting Epstein to Buckingham Palace years after the financier was convicted of sex crimes.

Messages from billionaire Elon Musk asked Epstein when his wildest party would be and discussed visiting his notorious island. It is unclear whether Musk, who is not accused of wrongdoing, ever visited.

And inn other emails, Epstein made allegations Bill Gates had engaged in extra marital affairs. A spokesperson for Gates vehemently denied the “absurd” allegation.

Some details:

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor invited Epstein to Buckingham Palace for dinner and “lots of privacy” years after the financier was convicted, the new documents suggest.

In one email, Andrew said that he was travelling to London, where Epstein was staying. He told Epstein: “We could have dinner at Buckingham Palace and lots of privacy”.

The Cat at Play, by Henriëtte Ronner-Knip

Epstein responded: “Already in london [sic]. what time woudl [sic] you like me and we will also need/ have private time.”

It is not clear whether a meeting at the palace took place….

The latest release also included pictures that appeared to feature Andrew poised on all fours over a woman on the floor. It is unclear where and when the photos were taken, and the woman’s identity is masked….

The newly published files included hundreds of documents that mention Trump, many of which were collections of media reports.

One file details what appeared to be internal emails by federal investigators looking into salacious accusations involving the president and Epstein. The emails, from August 2025, give no indication that any claims had been substantiated. Investigators said several of the accusers were deemed not credible.

Another message, whose sender and recipient were both redacted, reads, “What does JE think of going to Mar-a-Lago after xmas instead of his island?” referring to Trump’s Florida club. The message is from 2012, years after Trump said the two men had stopped socialising.

Wednesday Reads: Trump’s Corruption on Full Display

Posted: November 19, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: ABC News reporter Mary Bruce, Adelita Grijalva, Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey, discharge petition, Donald Trump, Epstein Files, Epstein Files Transparency Act, Jamal Khashoggi, Jeffrey Epstein, Pam Bondi, Ro Khanna, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Thomas Massie, Trump polls | 7 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Long-time friends Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump

Yesterday was a dramatic day in the efforts by Congressional Democrats and a few Republicans to force the release of the Epstein files held by the DOJ. Could the Epstein scandal along with the struggling economy finally bring down Donald Trump after all these years?

Jason Lange and Tim Reid at HuffPost: Brutal New Poll Shows Just How Badly Donald Trump Is Tanking On Epstein And The Economy.

President Donald Trump’s approval rating fell to 38%, the lowest since his return to power, with Americans unhappy about his handling of the high cost of living and the investigation into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

The four-day poll, which concluded on Monday, comes as Trump’s grip on his Republican Party shows signs of weakening. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a measure to force the release of Justice Department files on Epstein. Trump had opposed the move for months while one of his closest supporters in Congress, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, turned into a harsh critic over his resistance. Trump reversed his position on Sunday as lawmakers prepared to move forward without him.

The survey showed Trump’s overall approval has fallen two percentage points since a Reuters/Ipsos poll in early November.

The poll, which was conducted online, surveyed 1,017 U.S. adults nationwide and had a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.

Trump started his second term in office with 47% of Americans giving him a thumbs up. The nine-point decline since January leaves his overall popularity near the lows seen during his first term in office, and close to the weakest ratings for his Democratic predecessor in the White House, Joe Biden. Biden’s approval rating sank as low as 35% while Trump’s first-term popularity fell as low as 33%

NPR: Poll: Democrats have biggest advantage for control of Congress in 8 years.

Heading into the 2026 midterm elections, there are some very big warning signs for Republicans in the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.

The survey of 1,443 adults, conducted from Nov. 10-13 found:

Democrats holding their largest advantage, 14 points, since 2017 on the question of who respondents would vote for if the midterm elections were held today;
President Trump’s approval rating is just 39%, his lowest since right after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol;
A combined 6-in-10 blame congressional Republicans or Trump for the government shutdown; and
Nearly 6-in-10 say Trump’s top priority should be lowering prices — and no other issue comes close….

Coming off huge wins up and down the ballot across the country in this year’s off-year elections, Democrats lead Republicans, 55%-41%, when people were asked who they would vote for in their district if the election for Congress were held today.

It’s the largest Democratic advantage on this question, known as the congressional ballot, in the Marist poll since November 2017. The parallel is striking, considering that was at the same point in Trump’s first term as this poll now. Democrats wound up winning 40 House seats in 2018.

If the midterms were today, most say they would pick a Democrat. What’s more, independents chose Democrats by a 33-point margin on this question. It’s all quite the reversal of fortune from a year ago when, just before the 2024 elections when President Trump won back the White House, the parties were tied on the congressional ballot.

Historically, Democrats have needed a sizable advantage on the congressional ballot to signal that they would do well in upcoming midterms.

After months of efforts by Democrats to force the release of the Epstein files, suddenly yesterday their plans came to fruition in surprising fashion.

AP: Congress acts swiftly to force release of Epstein files, and Trump agrees to sign bill.

Both the House and Senate acted decisively Tuesday to pass a bill to force the Justice Department to publicly release its files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a remarkable display of approval for an effort that had struggled for months to overcome opposition from President Donald Trump and Republican leadership.

Congressman Thomas Massie speaks at a news conference on the Epstein Files Transparency Act on November 18, 2025, with fellow Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ro Khanna [Annabelle Gordon Reuters]
When a small, bipartisan group of House lawmakers introduced a petition in July to maneuver around Speaker Mike Johnson’s control of the House floor, it appeared a longshot effort — especially as Trump urged his supporters to dismiss the matter as a “hoax.”But both Trump and Johnson failed to prevent the vote. The president in recent days bowed to political reality, saying he would sign the bill. And just hours after the House vote, senators agreed to approve it unanimously, skipping a formal roll call.The decisive, bipartisan work in Congress Tuesday further showed the pressure mounting on lawmakers and the Trump administration to meet long-held demands that the Justice Department release its case files on Epstein, a well-connected financier who killed himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial in 2019 on charges he sexually abused and trafficked underage girls.For survivors of Epstein’s abuse, passage of the bill was a watershed moment in a years-long quest for accountability.“These women have fought the most horrific fight that no woman should have to fight. And they did it by banding together and never giving up,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as she stood with some of the abuse survivors outside the Capitol Tuesday morning.“That’s what we did by fighting so hard against the most powerful people in the world, even the president of the United States, in order to make this vote happen today,” added Greene, a Georgia Republican.In the end, only one lawmaker in Congress opposed the bill. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican who is a fervent supporter of Trump, was the only “nay” vote in the House’s 427-1 tally. He said he worried the legislation could lead to the release of information on innocent people mentioned in the federal investigation.

Read more about the bill and Trump’s sudden reversal at the AP link.

This morning, the bill went to Trump. Politico: Senate sends Epstein files bill to Trump.

The Senate has officially passed legislation forcing the Justice Department to release more information about the case it built against the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Senators had locked in an agreement to automatically pass the bill as soon as it was received from the House, which overwhelmingly passed it on Tuesday.

It now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk, where he has said he will sign it. That comes despite the fact that Speaker Mike Johnson sought eleventh-hour changes to the House-passed bill and didn’t rule out the possibility he would encourage Trump to veto it.

Assuming Trump follows through, the Justice Department will have 30 days to release the materials with redactions to protect Epstein’s victims.

Will Pam Bondi resist releasing the files? William Kristol at The Bulwark: ‘The Epstein Class.’

Who says Congress never gets anything done?

It was only a week ago that newly sworn in Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) provided the final signature needed on the discharge petition to force a vote on The Epstein Files Transparency Act. Yesterday, the House approved the act by a vote of 427–1. About three hours later, the Senate deemed it passed by unanimous consent. The legislation will be transmitted to the White House today. President Trump has said he will sign the bill into law.

Epstein survivors speak at Capitol Hill news conference.

This act requires that the Justice Department make public within thirty days all the unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in its possession related to any of Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activities, civil settlements, immunity, plea agreements, and investigatory proceedings. It specifies that “no record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”

The authors of the legislation tried to make sure any exceptions were narrowly drawn. The attorney general can only withhold or redact information from personal or medical files—the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy—or information that would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution, “provided such withholding is narrowly tailored and temporary.” The law requires that all redactions must be accompanied by a written justification in the Federal Register.

Obviously, there is no guarantee that Donald Trump’s attorney general will carry out these legislative instructions in good faith. Pam Bondi could try to turn tight and reasonable exceptions into wide open loopholes. Her boss, the president, has already ordered up an investigation of Democrats tied to Epstein—and she quickly said she’d comply. Could that be a predicate for withholding documents?

But would she even bother to cite that investigation? There are, after all, no assurances that the attorney general won’t try to simply withhold documents and information without telling us she’s done so.

And so “distrust and verify” should be the motto going forward. Congress, the media, the survivors—everyone committed to having the truth come out—needs to be prepared to keep the pressure on throughout, and to scream from the rooftops if there seems to be evasion or stonewalling.

Read the rest at The Bulwark.

Trump’s blatant corruption and his disdain for women reporters were both on display as he struggled to deal with his failure on the Epstein files issue.

Trump hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in his tacky, gold-encrusted oval office yesterday, and then held a state dinner in bin Salman’s honor last night. The U.S. intelligence community found that bin Salman gave the order to murder Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2019, but also Saudi Arabia was largely responsible for the 9/11/2021 attacks.

Kathryn Watson and Jennifer Jacobs at CBS News: Trump welcomes MBS for White House visit with fanfare for Saudi crown prince and military flyover.

President Trump welcomed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, to the White House with an elaborate military display Tuesday, praising the crown prince and insisting the U.S.-Saudi relationship has never been better as the two countries look to sign major business and national security deals.

Trump meets with Saudi Crown Prince in the oval office.

The pomp and circumstance — and the president’s praise and warmth toward MBS — were more typical of a visit from an allied Western democracy than an absolute monarchy with a troubled human rights record, pointing to the president’s focus on economic and business ties above virtually all else. The White House sees Saudi Arabia as a critical security partner in a turbulent Middle East, as well as an economic partner.

The White House arrival ceremony for the crown prince on Tuesday morning was laden with fanfare, complete with a U.S. military flyover, cannons, horses, and a red carpet. American and Saudi flags adorned the White House South Lawn, and a military band greeted the Saudi royal. Mr. Trump and the crown prince exchanged greetings as they shook hands, and then watched the formation of F-35 and F-16 fighter jets fly by before going inside the White House….

Ahead of bin Salman’s arrival, Mr. Trump told reporters Monday that the U.S. would sell F-35 fighter jets to the Saudis. In the Oval Office, MBS said the Saudis will increase a planned investment of $600 billion in the U.S. to closer to $1 trillion, an announcement that pleased Mr. Trump greatly.

Mr. Trump praised the crown prince in the Oval Office, calling him a “very good friend” and insisting his record on human rights is commendable, despite the State Department’s long list of concerns of human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia. Arbitrary and unlawful killings, disappearances, torture, serious restrictions on freedom of expression and restrictions on religious freedom continue to plague the nation, according to the latest 2024 State Department report.

Trump’s businesses are heavily involved with Saudi Arabia.

During the meeting with bin Salman, Trump denigrated reporter Mary Bruce for asking questions about Jeffrey Epstein and Jamal Khashoggi.

CNBC: Trump calls for ABC’s license to be revoked after reporter asks about Jeffrey Epstein files.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday called for ABC’s broadcast license to be revoked as he angrily lashed out at a reporter from the network who asked why he has not released files on notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, his former friend.

ABC News reporter Mary Bruce

“I think you are a terrible reporter,” Trump told ABC News White House correspondent Mary Bruce.

The president said he did not like Bruce’s “attitude.”

“You ought to go back and learn how to be a reporter. No more questions from you,” Trump said in the Oval Office, where he was meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.

Trump’s tirade came shortly before the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill to compel the Department of Justice to release all of its records on Epstein.

Bruce also asked the Crown Prince about ordering the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

Brian Stelter at CNN: Analysis: Trump’s anti-press outburst hits differently with a Saudi prince by his side.

President Trump frequently demonstrates his disdain for journalists. He expresses his admiration for authoritarians almost as often.

Tuesday showed how intertwined those two instincts really are.

Trump repeatedly objected to press questions during an Oval Office photo op with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, whose country does not have a free press.

He lashed out at an ABC correspondent, Mary Bruce, after she invoked the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents.

The president said his ally, Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, should “look at” punishing ABC over its news coverage.

“I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it’s so wrong,” he asserted.

Trump misstated how FCC licenses actually work, but his message was clear: He’d like his government to retaliate the way a dictator would.

The president also called Bruce “insubordinate,” a word he rarely ever uses, while sitting next to the son of the Saudi king.

According to Reporters Without Borders, which tracks press freedom all around the world, “independent media are non-existent in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi journalists live under heavy surveillance, even when abroad.”

Trump even defended bin Salman. BBC: ‘Things happen’ – Trump defends Saudi crown prince over Khashoggi killing.

US President Donald Trump said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “knew nothing” about the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as he welcomed the kingdom’s de facto ruler to the White House.

Trump’s comments appeared to contradict a US intelligence assessment in 2021 which determined the crown prince had approved the operation that led to Khashoggi’s death at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

Jamal Khashoggi

The crown prince, who has denied any wrongdoing, said at the White House that Saudi Arabia “did all the right things” to investigate Khashoggi’s death, which he called “painful”.

It was his first US visit since the assassination, which sent shockwaves through the US-Saudi relationship.

In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump shot back at a reporter who asked a question about the killing.

“You’re mentioning someone that was extremely controversial,” the US president said.

“A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”

“But he [the Crown Prince] knew nothing about it,” Trump added. “You don’t have to embarrass our guests.”

The crown prince added that Saudi Arabia “did all the right steps” to investigate the murder, which he called “painful” and a “huge mistake”.

A US intelligence report made public in 2021 – under President Joe Biden’s administration – determined that the crown prince had approved of a plan to “capture or kill” Khashoggi in Istanbul. During his first administration, Trump White House officials declined to release the report.

While dozens of Saudi officials faced sanctions in the wake of the assassination, none directly targeted the crown prince.

Trump attacked another reporter on Air Force One on Friday for asking about the Epstein files. The Guardian: Trump faces criticism for referring to female Bloomberg reporter as ‘piggy’

Donald Trump, who has a history of making extremely personal attacks on female journalists, referred to a Bloomberg News correspondent as a “piggy” during a clash onboard Air Force One on Friday.

While the remark did not initially get much attention, it picked up some traction on Tuesday and has drawn backlash from fellow journalists, including some who have previously been attacked by Trump themselves.

Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey

Catherine Lucey, Bloomberg’s White House correspondent, had taken advantage of a press opportunity with the president – known as a gaggle – to ask a question about the unfolding Jeffrey Epstein scandal and the possibility of the House voting to release all of the files related to his case, which now appears likely.

As Lucey started to ask why Trump was behaving the way he was “if there’s nothing incriminating in the files”, Trump pointed at her and said: “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.” [….]

“Disgusting and completely unacceptable,” CNN anchor Jake Tapper wrote on X, sharing a clip of the incident. Former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson also called the remark “disgusting and degrading”.

When asked about the incident, Lucey directed the Guardian to a spokesperson for her news organization.

“Our White House journalists perform a vital public service, asking questions without fear or favor,” a Bloomberg News spokesperson said on Tuesday afternoon. “We remain focused on reporting issues of public interest fairly and accurately.”

The New York Times on the guests at the state dinner for Crown Prince bin Salman last night (gift link): Who Attended Trump’s Dinner for the Saudi Crown Prince?

The world’s richest man. One of the world’s most famous soccer players. The president of soccer’s governing body. Dozens of executives from the finance, tech and energy sectors.

These are some of the guests who attended President Trump’s black-tie dinner for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia at the White House on Tuesday evening.

The red carpet welcome for Prince Mohammed is an extraordinary moment in diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. It is his first visit to the United States since the 2018 killing of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which U.S. intelligence determined the prince ordered. Prince Mohammed has denied involvement.

After Mr. Khashoggi’s murder, some Western business executives and government officials backed out of Saudi Arabia’s global investment conference, including leaders of major American financial institutions. But by the following year, top deal makers were back at the event in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump and the crown prince cast their partnership as one that would reap benefits for both countries. Already, Mr. Trump has agreed to sell F-35 fighter jets to the kingdom, and the prince has promised to invest nearly $1 trillion in the United States.

Use the gift link to see the list of powerful people who saw fit to honor the Saudi Crown Prince at last night’s state dinner.

Lazy Caturday Reads: Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, and More News

Posted: November 15, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: Bill Clinton, cat art, caturday, China soybean purchases, Donald Trump, Epstein Files, Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Summers, Nicolas Maduro, Pam Bondi, Reid Hoffman, Steve Bannon, TACO Trump, Trump Tariffs, Venezuela | 6 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Elizabeth Taylor with her Siamese cat, 1956, photo by Sanford Roth

Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. He’s everywhere in the news. We still haven’t seen the DOJ Epstein files, but we’re already learning more about Epstein’s relationship to Trump from the recently released text messages. We don’t know yet how bad it will get when the files are released, but the extent to which Trump is publicly panicking suggests it will be very bad for him.

In Trump’s latest effort to control the Epstein story, he ordered Attorney General Bondi to investigate Democrats who had connections to the child sex trafficker.

AP: At Trump’s urging, Bondi says US will investigate Epstein’s ties to Clinton and other political foes.

Acceding to President Donald Trump’s demands, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday that she has ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Trump political foes, including former President Bill Clinton.

Bondi posted on X that she was assigning Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to lead the probe, capping an eventful week in which congressional Republicans released nearly 23,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate and House Democrats seized on emails mentioning Trump.

Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years, didn’t explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate. None of the men he mentioned in a social media post demanding the probe has been accused of sexual misconduct by any of Epstein’s victims.

Hours before Bondi’s announcement, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would ask her, the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Clinton and others, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.

Trump, calling the matter “the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans,” said the investigation should also include financial giant JPMorgan Chase, which provided banking services to Epstein, and “many other people and institutions.”

There’s no evidence that any of the people Trump is targeting were involved in sexual abuse or sex trafficking.

A JPMorgan Chase spokesperson, Patricia Wexler, said the company regretted associating with Epstein “but did not help him commit his heinous acts.”

“The government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks,” she said. The company agreed previously to pay millions of dollars to Epstein’s victims, who had sued arguing that the bank ignored red flags about criminal activity.

Clinton has acknowledged traveling on Epstein’s private jet but has said through a spokesperson that he had no knowledge of the late financier’s crimes. He also has never been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s known victims.

Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Angel Ureña posted on X Friday: “These emails prove Bill Clinton did nothing and knew nothing. The rest is noise meant to distract from election losses, backfiring shutdowns, and who knows what else.” [….]

Summers and Hoffman had nothing to do with either case, but both were friendly with Epstein and exchanged emails with him. Those messages were among the documents released this week, along with other correspondence Epstein had with friends and business associates in the years before his death.

Nothing in the messages suggested any wrongdoing on the men’s part, other than associating with someone who had been accused of sex crimes against children.

At Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson writes:

In a transparent attempt to distract from the many times his own name appears in the documents from the Epstein estate members of the House Oversight Committee released Wednesday, President Donald J. Trump asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Democrats whose names appeared in the documents. He singled out former president Bill Clinton, former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers, and Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn and who is a Democratic donor.

Marlon Brando and cat

Although the attorney general is the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and is supposed to be nonpartisan in protecting the rule of law, Bondi responded that the Department of Justice “will pursue this with urgency and integrity.” Maegan Vazquez and Shayna Jacobs of the Washington Post note that reporters have already covered the relationship of Epstein with Clinton, Summers, and Hoffman for years, and that in July, Justice Department officials said an examination of the FBI files relating to Epstein—a different cache than Wednesday’s—“did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

Meidas Touch noted: “In normal times, it would be a major scandal for the President to direct his AG to criminally investigate his political opponents to deflect from his own involvement in a major scandal—and for the AG to immediately announce she is doing it. The Epstein scandal and cover up just got even bigger.”

This scandal truly has Trump flailing. I hope this will be the one that really brings him down, but he somehow seems to wriggle out of every scandal. But he certainly is terrified of the Epstein files being released.

Politico: House plans to vote Tuesday on releasing Epstein files.

House Republican leaders are planning to hold a vote Tuesday on legislation to force the release of federal files related to Jeffrey Epstein, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss internal plans ahead of a public announcement.

The tentative scheduling decision follows a successful effort by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to sidestep Speaker Mike Johnson and force a floor vote on their bipartisan bill to compel the Justice Department to release all of its records related to the late convicted sex offender.

President Donald Trump has made repeated attempts to kill the effort, which continued in a series of Truth Social posts Friday. But Johnson said Wednesday he intends to move quickly to hold the vote and put the matter to bed.

Under the current GOP plan, the House Rules Committee would approve a procedural measure Monday night to advance eight bills for floor consideration, including language to tee up the Epstein legislation. If that measure is approved on the floor, likely early Tuesday afternoon, debate and a final vote on the Epstein bill could immediately follow. GOP leaders are considering whether to postpone the Epstein vote until Tuesday evening….

The four Republicans who signed on to the discharge petition forcing the vote — Massie, plus Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Nancy Mace of South Carolina — are likely to examine Johnson’s moves very closely. They could together block any procedural measure that would undercut the Epstein legislation, postpone it or otherwise alter it.

One more story on the Epstein texts from Jason Wilson at The Guardian: Steve Bannon advised Jeffrey Epstein for years on how to rehab his reputation, texts show.

Hundreds of texts over almost a year show Maga influencer Steve Bannon and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein workshopping legal and media strategies to protect Epstein from the legal and publicity quagmire that enveloped him in the last year of his life.

The texts, released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday, show that as early as June 2018, the pair were devising responses to the gathering storm of public outrage about Epstein’s criminal history, his favorable treatment by the justice system, and his friendships with powerful figures in business, politics and academia.

Bannon conspiratorially described the renewed scrutiny of Epstein as a “sophisticated op”, and over time he counseled Epstein in his adversarial responses to media outlets, the justice system and his victims.

All the while, both men were also strategizing how best to promote Bannon’s rightwing populist agenda, and the political fortunes of its standard bearer, Donald Trump.

In all of Epstein’s messages, the identity of his correspondent is redacted. But Bannon’s identity in the threads cited in this reporting is clear from contextual clues including his documented activities at the time, details of his business and media pursuits, and other disclosures. In one document, the sender’s phone number is not redacted – and it is the same number linked to Bannon in a legal case against Trump adviser Roger Stone.

Read the rest at The Guardian.

Trump is also beginning to panic about the economy and the negative effects of his insane tariffs.

David J. Lynch at The Washington Post: Trump goes on defense over tariffs as prices on everyday items keep rising.

President Donald Trump’s bid Friday to sootheconsumers by dropping tariffs on a wide array of groceries, including coffee, beef, bananas and tomatoes — contradicting his repeated claims that the levies were not affecting retail prices — shows he is on the defensive over his signature policy initiative.

Public opposition, eroding support on Capitol Hill and a potentially lethal challenge before the Supreme Court have Trump scrambling to defend his economic strategy even as the administration notches diplomatic agreements that are cementing its high-tariff approach to rebalancing global trade.

Sophia Loren with her cat, 1959

Public opinion is the immediate worry, following recent Democratic electoral victories in Virginia and New Jersey that were fueled by Americans’ ire over the cost of living. By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, registered voters disapproved of the president’s tariffs in a recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, a finding that has been consistent all year and could imperil Republican candidates in next year’s congressional elections.

The president on Friday issued an executive order rolling back import taxes on many foods, his most significant retreat on the emergency tariffs he imposed in April, which were billed at the time as loophole-free. In September, the White House had signaled that some products that are not generally produced in the United States could be spared tariffs once nations where they originate reached trade deals with the United States. But Friday’s exemptions apply to products from any nation, even those that have not agreed on trade terms.

“They know that they shouldn’t have imposed a lot of these tariffs and that they’re hurting affordability for consumers. Now they’re looking for a way to justify lowering them. And that’s fine. But did we really need to go through all this in the first place?” said Christopher Padilla, senior adviser to the Brunswick Group and a former trade official in the George W. Bush administration….

This week’s tariff cuts appear aimed at responding to public concern over high prices. Inflation overall is running at an annual rate of 3 percent, above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target for price stability but well down from the mid-2022 peak of 9.1 percent.

Prices on many everyday items, however, continue to soar. Through September, the most recent data available, coffee prices were up 19 percent over the previous 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bananas were up 7 percent.

Elizabeth Buchwald at CNN: Trump’s latest tariff TACO probably won’t make your life more affordable.

Americans could soon see some goods get cheaper after President Donald Trump exempted certain agricultural imports from a set of tariffs on Friday. But any price drops likely won’t be enough to make life feel more affordable any time soon.

The executive order exempted products like coffee, beef and some fruit from Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs, which began rolling out in April.

The new exemptions are part of what traders have dubbed TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out, to describe times when the president backs off a policy after unintended consequences pop up. In the case of tariffs, Trump has already reversed a number of his measures, a sign that the administration is reshaping his signature economic tool.

The latest TACO comes after voters, worried about affordability, gave Republicans a drubbing in recent off-year elections.

Why this likely won’t help consumers much:

Nevertheless, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the new exemptions generally won’t help improve affordability.

“It depends on what the importers do with the tariff,” he said in a CNBC interview on Friday. “So when you look at the overall price trend, it hasn’t been because of tariffs. It’s been because of these other events going on and just supply and demand.”

Steve Martin and cat

But in cases where tariffs have been passed along to consumers, prices could drop, Greer said.

One potential example: bananas. American consumers are paying about 8% more for bananas than before Trump’s second term began.

The US largely imports bananas from South American countries. With bananas exempt from “reciprocal” tariffs that started at 10%, prices could go back to where they were earlier this year, said Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo. But it’s unlikely to be something most consumers notice unless they’re buying bananas often, she added.

But not everyone is convinced it will even do that much.

“It is not clear that lowering tariffs will lower prices — it depends on what retailers think they can get away with. The import price of bananas has fallen since tariffs were imposed, but the US consumer price has risen,” Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS global wealth management, said in a note last week. (The United States tracks import prices before accounting for tariffs. In some cases, import prices have fallen as exporters lower what they charge as a way to share in the tariff expense importers pay.)

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