I was going to write about how the Democrats actually won the government shutdown. But bigger news has broken. I’ll get to the shutdown story after that and then some news about Kash Patel, Trump’s incompetent FBI director.
It looks like the Epstein shit is about to hit the fan.
Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein referred to Donald Trump as the “dog that hasn’t barked” and told his former companion Ghislaine Maxwell that an alleged victim had “spent hours at my house” with Trump, according to email correspondence released Wednesday by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump,” Epstein wrote in a typo-riddled message to Maxwell in April 2011. “[Victim] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.”
“I have been thinking about that … ” Maxwell replied.
That email exchange — which came just weeks after a British newspaper published a series of stories about Epstein, Maxwell and their powerful associates — was one of three released by the Democrats from a batch of more than 23,000 documents the committee recently received from the Epstein Estate in response to a subpoena.
The other messages are between Epstein and author Michael Wolff.
“I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you–either on air or in scrum afterwards,” Wolff wrote to Epstein in December 2015, six months after Trump had officially entered the race for the White House.
“Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever,” Epstein wrote, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop” [….]
Wolff in a phone interview on Wednesday said of the 2015 exchange that he couldn’t remember “the specific emails or the context, but I was in an in-depth conversation with Epstein at that time about his relationship with Donald Trump. So I think this reflects that.”
“I was trying at that time to get Epstein to talk about his relationship with Trump, and actually, he proved to be an enormously valuable source to me,” Wolff said. “Part of the context of this is that I was pushing Epstein at that point to go public with what he knew about Trump.”
You can read the original emails along with more context at the ABC link.
Also in the emails released by Oversight Democrats Wednesday, Wolff wrote in a 2015 message to Epstein that he heard Trump – then a presidential candidate – would be asked by CNN about the convicted sex offender. Epstein asked Wolff what he thought an ideal response from Trump would be.
Michael Wolff
“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff responded. If [Trump] says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency.
“You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you,” Wolff continued, “or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt.”
Wolff added that Trump could potentially praise Epstein when asked. Wolff’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The materials were received by the House Oversight Committee last Thursday, meaning the move by Democrats to release the materials was likely timed to coincide with the House’s return from a lengthy recess to vote Wednesday evening on ending the prolonged government shutdown.
House Democrats on Wednesday released emails in which Jeffrey Epstein wrote that President Trump had “spent hours at my house” with one of Mr. Epstein’s victims, among other messages that suggested that the convicted sex offender believed Mr. Trump knew more about his abuse than he has acknowledged….
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA)
…Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said the emails, which they selected from thousands of pages of documents received by their panel, raised new questions about the relationship between the two men. In one of the messages, Mr. Epstein flatly asserted that Mr. Trump “knew about the girls,” many of whom were later found by investigators to have been underage. In another, Mr. Epstein pondered how to address questions from the news media about their relationship as Mr. Trump was becoming a national political figure….
“These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the president,” Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said in a statement.
The three separate email exchanges released on Wednesday were all from after Mr. Epstein’s 2008 plea deal in Florida on state charges of soliciting prostitution, in which federal prosecutors agreed not to pursue charges. They came years after Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein had a reported falling out in the early 2000s.
See the ABC story above for descriptions of the emails.
House Democrats, citing an unnamed whistle-blower, said this week that Ms. Maxwell was preparing to formally ask Mr. Trump to commute her federal prison sentence.
The emails were provided to the Oversight Committee along with a larger tranche of documents from Mr. Epstein’s estate that the panel requested as part of its investigation into Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence on sex-trafficking charges.
Republicans argued that Democrats omitted context from the emails they released.
Republicans on the Oversight Committee accused Democrats of politicizing the investigation. “Democrats continue to carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate clickbait that is not grounded in the facts,” a committee spokeswoman said. “The Epstein Estate has produced over 20,000 pages of documents on Thursday, yet Democrats are once again intentionally withholding records that name Democrat officials.”
The Republicans also identified the victim whose name was redacted in the emails as Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April. Ms. Giuffre had said that Ms. Maxwell recruited her into Mr. Epstein’s sex ring while she was working at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach, as a teenager.
In a 2016 deposition for a civil case, Ms. Giuffre was asked if she believed Mr. Trump had witnessed the sexual abuse of minors in Mr. Epstein’s home. “I don’t think Donald Trump participated in anything,” she said.
“I never saw or witnessed Donald Trump participate in those acts, but was he in the house of Jeffrey Epstein,” Ms. Giuffre added. “I’ve heard he has been, but I haven’t seen him myself so I don’t know.”
Use the gift link to read the whole article.
This afternoon at 4:00, Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) will finally be sworn in. She will then sign the discharge petition to require the DOJ to release all of the Epstein files.
Arizona Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, who is set to be sworn in on Wednesday, said she will confront House Speaker Mike Johnson after waiting nearly 50 days to be seated as a member of Congress.
“I won’t be able to like sort of move on if I don’t address it personally and we’ll see what kind of reaction he has,” Grijalva, a Democrat, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source” Tuesday.
Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.)
“I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to say,” Grijalva added but said she will stress that Johnson refusing to swear her in for over a month is “undemocratic.”
“It’s unconstitutional. It’s illegal. Should never happen — this kind of obstruction cannot happen again,” Grijalva said.
The monthslong bipartisan effort to sidestep Speaker Mike Johnson and force the release of all Justice Department files on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein is kicking into high gear this week, setting up a December floor battle that President Donald Trump has sought to avoid….
The process of doing so will begin around 4 p.m., when Johnson swears in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva right before the House votes to end the government shutdown — ending a 50-day wait following the Arizona Democrat’s election. Shortly afterward, Grijalva says she will affix the 218th and final signature to the discharge petition led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to force a vote on the full release of DOJ’s Epstein files.
That in itself will be the culmination of months of drama that blew up into a full crisis for Johnson this summer, with a GOP mutiny grinding the floor to a halt and forcing leaders to send the House home early for August recess. The uproar over a possible Epstein cover-up faded but never disappeared entirely.
The completion of the discharge petition, a rarely used mechanism to sidestep the majority party leadership, will trigger a countdown for the bill to hit the House floor. It will still take seven legislative days for the petition to ripen, after which Johnson will have two legislative days to schedule a vote. Senior Republican and Democratic aides estimate a floor vote will come the first week of December, after the Thanksgiving recess.
The discharge petition tees up a “rule,” a procedural measure setting the terms of debate for the Epstein bill’s consideration on the House floor. This gives the effort’s leaders greater control over the bill, which will still require Senate approval if it passes the House.
Senate Republican leaders haven’t publicly committed to bringing up the Epstein measure if the House passes it. Republicans expect it will die in the Senate, but not before a contentious House fight.
Could Johnson stop the petition from getting a vote in the House?
While Johnson has options to short-circuit the effort before it gets to the floor, he said in an interview last month he would not seek to do so. Republicans on the Rules Committee have also warned Johnson they will not help him kill the bill in the panel, and he’s in turn privately assured some of them the Epstein measure will get floor consideration if the petition reaches 218 signatures.
At that point, the speaker can only defeat it if he siphons away enough Republican votes — a tall order in a majority where Johnson has only a two-vote margin after Grijalva is sworn in. GOP leaders don’t plan to formally whip against the Epstein vote when it gets to the floor, according to three people granted anonymity to describe internal deliberations.
“I’m certain the House vote will succeed,” Massie said in an interview. “Some Republican members who are not signers of the petition have told me they will vote for the measure when the vote is called. I suspect there will be many more.”
Read about which members might end up voting for the release of the files at the link.
Like Dr. Strange, I have seen all six possible endgames from the shutdown fight and I’m here to tell you that yes, Democrats could have done better. They probably should have done better. But they exit this event in a stronger position than they entered. And also: They could have done much worse.
We’re going to rank the shutdown endgames from best to worst and then I’m going to make the case simultaneously that (a) Democrats played their hand poorly from the start, but that (b) they were ultimately bailed out by Trump’s obsession with dominance, and (c) we ought to appreciate the bad stuff that didn’t happen here.
You’ll need to go to the link to read the possible endgames; I can’t copy that much from the post. But here’s the final argument:
Here’s what Democrats should have said from the start:
Republicans control the White House, the House, and the Senate. They have the votes to pass this budget any time they want. They do not need a single Democratic vote.
All Republicans have to do is repeal the filibuster.
If Republicans are so inept that they can’t find the votes to repeal the filibuster or to pass their legislation, then they should feel free to come to the minority and ask for help.
But the Democrats have no offer. The voters gave Republicans unified control of government. If Republicans are incapable of governing, voters deserve to see that.
The problem isn’t that Democrats caved on the shutdown. Just objectively speaking, they emerge from this fight in a slightly better position than they entered it.
They prolonged the longest government shutdown in history.
This shutdown damaged Trump politically. (Just look at the polling.
They centered health care costs as a major issue for 2026.
The fake concession they got from Senate Republicans—a meaningless future vote on extending the ACA subsidies—will (a) put Republican senators on the spot and (b) create a point of vulnerability for House Republicans when they refuse to take up the bill.
They avoided the worst-case outcome. Which is not nothing.
At first blush, the deal that paved the way to end the government shutdown this week looked exactly like the kind of feeble outcome many Democrats have come to expect from their leaders in Washington.
After waging a 40-day fight to protect Americans’ access to health care — one they framed as existential — their side folded after eight defectors struck a deal that would allow President Trump and Republicans to reopen the government this week without doing anything about health coverage or costs, enraging all corners of the party.
But even some of the Democrats most outraged by the outcome are not so certain that their party’s aborted fight was all for naught.
It may turn out that the long-term outcome of the longest government shutdown in history will be a grand-scale political and policy defeat for Democrats. The head-scratching end to a fight they were not willing to see through to victory deflated the party and deepened long-simmering divisions ahead of next year’s critical midterm elections. But in the shorter term, there could be benefits.
Senate Democrats believe that they held together long enough for Mr. Trump to reveal a new level of callousness in his refusal to fund food stamps for 42 million Americans who rely on the nation’s largest anti-hunger program. And they believe all of that helped contribute to a mini-blue wave last week, one that could continue if Democrats can keep the right issues at the forefront.
In my opinion, the shutdown fight demonstrated to many voters who don’t usually pay attention to politics that Trump doesn’t care one bit about their concerns.
On Halloween morning, FBI Director Kash Patel had a big announcement to make: “The FBI thwarted a potential terrorist attack,” he said in a 7:32 a.m. social-media post that referenced arrests in Michigan.
There was one problem: No criminal charges had yet been filed and local police weren’t aware of the details. Two friends of the alleged terrorists in New Jersey and Washington state caught wind of the arrests and moved up plans to leave the country, according to court documents and law-enforcement officials familiar with the investigation.
Justice Department leaders complained to the White House about Patel’s premature post, saying it had disrupted the investigation, administration officials said.
In his nine months on the job, Patel has drawn flak from his bosses in the Justice Department and from his underlings at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he has fired dozens of agents deemed hostile to Donald Trump or to conservative ideals.
But the Halloween announcement wasn’t the biggest controversy to envelop the director that week. Patel hit the news for taking an FBI plane to attend a wrestling event where his girlfriend, a country western singer, performed, and then to her home in Nashville. A former FBI agent, Kyle Seraphin, publicized the trip and called the taxpayer funded travel in the middle of a shutdown “pathetic.”
After that, Patel visited a Texas hunting resort called the Boondoggle Ranch, according to flight records and people familiar with the trip, which hasn’t been previously reported.
Patel’s travel has frustrated both Justice Department officials, who complained to the White House about it, and the White House itself, which had told cabinet officials months ago in writing to limit their travel, particularly if it was overseas or unrelated to Trump’s agenda, according to an administration official. Details about Patel’s trips to visit his girlfriend and an August trip to Scotland have been passed around the White House in recent days, officials said.
The FBI director is required by law to take the bureau’s private plane instead of commercial flights in order to have access to secure communications. If the travel is personal, the director is required to reimburse the government for the cost of a commercial flight—typically far less than the actual costs of private-jet use.
A bit more:
Last month, Patel gave Trump an unusual public presentation in the Oval Office, where he credited the president for the bureau’s successes on everything from drug seizures to the arrests of several most-wanted fugitives.
“We are absolutely crushing violent crime like never before and defending this homeland, sir,” Patel said, gesturing toward large poster boards showing a surge in arrests this summer.
Patel’s presence at the bureau has been something of a culture shock for a buttoned-up workforce, used to wearing suits and ties. Instead, Patel has appeared at events in hooded sweatshirts, jeans or hunting vests, and often speaks colloquially, calling agents “cops,” and telling podcaster Joe Rogan that the job of FBI director was “effin wild.”
He has also handed out an oversize commemorative coin to colleagues resembling the logo of the Marvel “Punisher” character, who came to embody a general distrust of the U.S. justice system. The coin also has a large number nine on it, in a reference to himself as the FBI’s ninth director.
Patel’s supporters say he is trying to present himself as down-to-earth and accessible to the workforce. He “wants the Bureau to get back to focusing on field and agent work vs. an elitist D.C. culture,” FBI spokesman Ben Williamson said. The FBI declined to discuss Patel’s plane travel, citing safety concerns. Justice Department and FBI representatives said the two agencies closely coordinated plans for the terrorism operation in advance.
The story is behind a paywall, but I was able to get through by clicking the link at Memeorandum.
At a secret gathering in May, south of London, the head of Britain’s domestic security service asked Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, for help.
British security officials rely on the bureau for high-tech surveillance tools — the kind they might need to monitor a new embassy that China wants to build near the Tower of London. The head of MI5, Ken McCallum, asked Mr. Patel to protect the job of an F.B.I. agent based in London who dealt with that technology, according to several current and former U.S. officials with knowledge of the episode.
Kash Patel and girlfriend Alexis Wilkins
Mr. Patel agreed to find funding to keep the posting, the officials said. But the job had already been slated to disappear as the White House moved to slash the F.B.I. budget. The agent moved to a different job back in the United States, saving the F.B.I. money but leaving MI5 officials incredulous.
It was a jarring introduction to Mr. Patel’s leadership style for British officials. They had long forged personal ties with their U.S. counterparts, as well as with three other close allies, in an intelligence partnership known as the Five Eyes.
The relationships among the organizations matter because many top national security officials view trust and reliability as paramount to sharing critical information with allies — vital for communication between agency directors, and hard to restore once lost.
On the same day in 1946 that Winston Churchill delivered his Iron Curtain speech in the United States, Britain and the United States secretly signed the pact that formed the basis for their intelligence alliance. It was an outgrowth of their collaboration during World War II. The partnership expanded during the advent of the Cold War to include other countries — Australia, Canada and New Zealand — earning it the name Five Eyes.
All rely heavily on American intelligence to help keep their countries safe. Though the F.B.I. is a criminal investigation agency, it is also a major part of the Western intelligence-gathering community. Alongside other U.S. agencies like the C.I.A., the F.B.I. has offices in embassies around the globe.
Mr. Patel’s inexperience, his dismissals of top F.B.I. officials and his shift of bureau resources from thwarting spies and terrorism have heightened concerns among the other Five Eyes nations that the bureau is adrift, according to the former U.S. officials and other people familiar with allies’ reactions to the bureau changes.
Five Eyes officials have watched with alarm as Mr. Patel has fired agents who investigated President Trump and invoked his powers to investigate the president’s perceived enemies. The officials and others spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Immigration and deportation are dominating the news today, with stories about ICE in Los Angeles and developments in the Abrego Garcia story. The Texas flood is still in the news, with articles about failures of local officials and the Department of Homeland Security. Finally, MAGAs are still very worked up about Pam Bondi’s handling of the “Jeffrey Epstein files” and Epstein’s supposed suicide.
A federal judge on Friday found that the Department of Homeland Security has been making stops and arrests in Los Angeles immigration raids without probable cause and ordered the department to stop detaining individuals based solely on race, spoken language or occupation.
US District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ordered that DHS must develop guidance for officers to determine “reasonable suspicion” outside of the apparent race or ethnicity of a person, the language they speak or their accent, “presence at a particular location” such as a bus stop or “the type of work one does.”
Friday’s ruling comes after the ACLU of Southern California brought a case against the Trump administration last week on behalf of five people and immigration advocacy groups, alleging that DHS — which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement — has made unconstitutional arrests and prevented detainees’ access to attorneys.
The ruling is limited to the seven-county jurisdiction of the US Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles and surrounding areas.
Frimpong said in her ruling that the court needed to decide whether the plaintiffs could prove that the Trump administration “is indeed conducting roving patrols without
reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers.”
“This Court decides—based on all the evidence presented—that they are,” Frimpong wrote.
Frimpong went on to say that the administration “failed” to provide information about the basis on which they made the arrests. The temporary restraining order also applies to the FBI and the Justice Department, which were also listed as defendants in the lawsuit and have been involved in immigration enforcement.
A farmworker at a Southern California cannabis farm is in critical condition after being injured during a chaotic immigration raid by federal officers, local officials said Friday.
Jaime Alanis Garcia is hospitalized at Ventura County Medical Center and remains in critical condition, county officials said in a statement authorized by the man’s family.
His family told NBC Los Angeles that the man is on life support using an assistive breathing machine and has “catastrophic” injuries. He has a broken neck, broken skull and a severed artery, a niece said.
The United Farm Workers had previously said Garcia, an employee of Glass House Farms, died after falling some 30 feet.
“These violent and cruel federal actions terrorize American communities, disrupt the American food supply chain, threaten lives and separate families,” UFW President Teresa Romero said in a statement to NBC News.
More on the incident:
Immigration officials said in a statement that Garcia was not in federal custody at the time of the fall.
“Although he was not being pursued by law enforcement, this individual climbed up to the roof of a green house and fell 30 feet,” Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. “CBP immediately called a medivac to the scene to get him care as quickly as possible.”
Outside federal agents lobbed less-lethal weapons and tear gas at protesters who gathered at the Camarillo grow house Thursday while employees were being rounded up and arrested inside.
It’s not surprising that this person was terrified. DHS/ICE terror tactics are still responsible, IMO.
The Guardian mistakenly reported that the worker, Jaime Alanis, had died, but still provided important information about the incident, which is likely representative of what ICE is doing.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that authorities executed criminal search warrants in Carpinteria and Camarillo, California, on Thursday. They arrested immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally and there were also at least 10 immigrant children on site, the statement said.
Four US citizens were arrested for “assaulting or resisting officers”, the department said. Authorities were offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of one person suspected of firing a gun at federal agents. At least one worker was hospitalized with grave injuries.
During the raid, crowds of people gathered outside Glass House Farms at the Camarillo location to demand information about their relatives and protest against immigration enforcement. A chaotic scene developed outside the farm that grows tomatoes, cucumbers and cannabis as authorities clad in helmets and uniforms faced off with the demonstrators. Acrid green and white billowing smoke then forced community members to retreat.
Glass House, a licensed California cannabis grower, said in a statement that immigration agents had valid warrants. The company said workers were detained and it was helping provide them with legal representation.
More details:
Federal authorities formed a line blocking the road leading through farm fields to the company’s greenhouses. Protesters were seen shouting at agents wearing camouflage gear, helmets and gas masks. The billowing smoke drove protesters to retreat. It was unclear why authorities threw the canisters or if they released chemicals such as teargas.
Ventura county fire authorities responding to a 911 call of people having trouble breathing said three people were taken to nearby hospitals.
At the farm, agents arrested workers and removed them by bus. Others, including US citizens, were detained at the site for hours while agents investigated.
The incident came as federal immigration agents have ramped up arrests in southern California at car washes, farms and Home Depot parking lots, stoking widespread fear among immigrant communities.
The mother of an American worker said her son was held at the worksite for 11 hours and told her agents took workers’ cellphones to prevent them from calling family or filming and forced them to erase cellphone video of agents at the site.
George Retes, 25, works as a security guard at Glass House Farms, where the raid took place Thursday. His sister and wife told Eyewitness News that he was trying to leave the area as tensions escalated between federal agents and protesters.
They say they saw AIR7 footage of the scene and were able to see his white vehicle.
“ICE thought he was probably part of the protest, but he wasn’t, he was trying to reverse his car,” said his sister, Destinee Majana. “They broke his window, they pepper-sprayed him, they grabbed him, threw him on the floor. They detained him.”
Retes’ sister and wife have been trying to call anybody she can to find out where he was taken, but they say nobody can tell them where he is.
“We don’t know what to do, we’re just asking to let my brother go. He’s a U.S. citizen. He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s a veteran, disabled citizen. It says it on his car,” Majana added.
His wife, Guadalupe Torres, said he hasn’t seen or spoke to him since Thursday.
At the brand new Everglades immigration detention center that officials have dubbed “ Alligator Alcatraz,” people held there say worms turn up in the food. Toilets don’t flush, flooding floors with fecal waste, and mosquitoes and other insects are everywhere.
Inside the compound’s large white tents, rows of bunkbeds are surrounded by chain-link cages. Detainees are said to go days without showering or getting prescription medicine, and they are only able to speak by phone to lawyers and loved ones. At times the air conditioners abruptly shut off in the sweltering heat.
Days after President Donald Trump toured it, attorneys, advocates, detainees and their relatives are speaking out about the makeshift facility, which Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration raced to build on an isolated airstrip surrounded by swampland. Detainees began arriving July 2.
“These are human beings who have inherent rights, and they have a right to dignity,” immigration attorney Josephine Arroyo said. “And they’re violating a lot of their rights by putting them there.”
More details:
Insider accounts in interviews with The Associated Press paint a picture of the place as unsanitary and lacking in adequate medical care, pushing some into a state of extreme distress.
“The conditions in which we are living are inhuman,” a Venezuelan detainee said by phone from the facility. “My main concern is the psychological pressure they are putting on people to sign their self-deportation.”
The man, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, characterized the cells as “zoo cages” with eight beds each, teeming with mosquitoes, crickets and frogs. He said they are locked up 24 hours a day with no windows and no way to know the time. Detainees’ wrists and ankles are cuffed every time they go to see an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, accompanied by two guards who hold their arms and a third who follows behind, he said.
Such conditions make other immigration detention centers where advocates and staff have warned of unsanitary confinement, medical neglect and a lack of food and water seem “advanced,” according to immigration attorney Atara Eig.
The Archdiocese of Miami is condemning a controversial migrant detention facility in Florida — which state officials have named “Alligator Alcatraz” — calling it “unbecoming of public officials” and “corrosive of the common good.”
In a strongly worded statement posted to the archdiocese’s website, Archbishop Thomas Wenski criticized both the conditions at the remote detention site in the Everglades and the rhetoric surrounding it.
He wrote: “It is unbecoming of public officials and corrosive of the common good to speak of the deterrence value of ‘alligators and pythons’ at the Collier-Dade facility.”
Wenski’s statement also highlighted humanitarian concerns, noting the isolation of the facility from medical care and the vulnerability of the temporary tent structures to Florida’s harsh summer weather and hurricane threats. He also called for chaplains and ministers to be granted access to serve those in custody.
Meanwhile, a group of Democratic state lawmakers has filed a lawsuit against the state after being denied entry to the site last week. The complaint argues they are legally entitled to “immediate, unannounced access” to the facility.
A federal judge in Maryland sharply rebuked a Justice Department attorney Friday after an immigration official could not answer basic questions about the Trump administration’s plans to deport Kilmar Abrego García if he is released pending trial on federal human-smuggling charges against him in Tennessee.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis has been considering an order that would require the administration to keep Abrego close to Tennessee for 48 hours should the federal judge there decide he can be released pending trial — time enough for her to hold an additional hearing on a motion by Abrego’s lawyers seeking to have him returned to Maryland. But the Maryland judge did not issue a decision Friday, saying an order would be delivered in advance of a hearing in that case next week.
“I can’t assume anything to be regular in this highly irregular case,” Xinis said on Friday during what was continuation of a hearing that began Thursday, suggesting that she did not trust the government’s claims about how it will handle Abrego’s due process rights moving forward after the administration had previously flouted court orders.
In a sharp exchange, Xinis asked Justice Department lawyers if they could produce the detainer filed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Abrego’s case. The document would serve as the government’s request for officials in the Nashville jail where Abrego is being held to keep him there until ICE takes him into custody, should the judge in his criminal case determine he could be released during his trial. The lawyers said they did not have the detainer, which Xinis had requested on Thursday. They said they were working to obtain it.
“What’s to work on? It’s a piece of paper,” Xinis said.
She then told the government’s lawyers that she would have doubts about whether the detainer existed until they provided a copy.
“We’re a court of laws, and we don’t operate on ‘take my word for it,’” she said.
About an hour later, the Justice Department lawyers produced the detainer and shared it with the court.
Two days after catastrophic floods roared through Central Texas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not answer nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The lack of responsiveness happened because the agency had fired hundreds of contractors at call centers, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal matters.
The agency laid off the contractors on July 5 after their contracts expired and were not extended, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who has instituted a new requirement that she personally approve expenses over $100,000, did not renew the contracts until Thursday, five days after the contracts expired. FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
The details on the unanswered calls on July 6, which have not been previously reported, come as FEMA faces intense scrutiny over its response to the floods in Texas that have killed more than 120 people. The agency, which President Trump has called for eliminating, has been slow to activate certain teams that coordinate response and search-and-rescue efforts.
After floods, hurricanes and other disasters, survivors can call FEMA to apply for different types of financial assistance. People who have lost their homes, for instance, can apply for a one-time payment of $750 that can help cover their immediate needs, such as food or other supplies.
On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls.
That evening, however, Ms. Noem did not renew the contracts with the four companies and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter.
The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show.
Some FEMA officials grew frustrated by the lapse in contracts and that it was taking days for Ms. Noem to act, according to the person briefed on the matter and the documents. “We still do not have a decision, waiver or signature from the DHS Secretary,” a FEMA official wrote in a July 8 email to colleagues.
The Texas county where nearly100 people were killedand more than 160 remain missing had the technology to turn every cellphone in the river valley into a blaring alarm, but local officials did not do so before or during the early-morning hours of July 4 as river levels rose to record heights, inundating campsites and homes, a Washington Post examination found.
Kerr County officials, who have come under increasing scrutiny for their actionsas the Guadalupe River began to flood, eventually sent text-message alerts that morning to residents who had registered to receivethem, according to screenshots of the texts. But The Post’sreview of emergency notifications that night found that even as a federal meteorologist warnedof deteriorating conditions and catastrophic risk, county officials did not activate a more powerful notification tool they had previously used to warn of potential flooding. The National Weather Service sent its own alerts through this system, beginning at 1:14 a.m. on July 4.
That mass notification system, known as the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, or IPAWS, is used by National Weather Service meteorologists to warn of imminent threats. Warnings of life-threatening weather events sent on that system — similar to Amber Alerts — force phones to vibrate and emit a unique, jarring tone as long as they’re on and have a signal. They also allow qualified local officials to send tailored messages to targeted areas.
The lack of alerts sent through IPAWS from Kerr County officials as the Guadalupe River flooded was a critical misstep in their response, said Abdul-Akeem Sadiq, a professor at the University of Central Florida who researches emergency management. Residents are more likely to trust — and listen to — their local government officials, he said, and the alert could have made a difference for some people despite the spotty cellphone service along the river and the fact that many people were probably asleep as floodwaters surged.
“If the alert had gone out, there might be one or two people who might have still been able to receive that message, who now, through word of mouth, alert people around them,” Sadiq said.
Federal regulators repeatedly granted appeals to remove Camp Mystic’s buildings from their 100-year flood map, loosening oversight as the camp operated and expanded in a dangerous flood plain in the years before rushing waters swept away children and counselors, a review by The Associated Press found.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency included the prestigious girls’ summer camp in a “Special Flood Hazard Area” in its National Flood Insurance map for Kerr County in 2011, which means it was required to have flood insurance and faced tighter regulation on any future construction projects.
That designation means an area is likely to be inundated during a 100-year flood — one severe enough that it only has a 1% chance of happening in any given year.
Located in a low-lying area along the Guadalupe River in a region known as flash flood alley, Camp Mystic lost at least 27 campers and counselors and longtime owner Dick Eastland when historic floodwaters tore through its property before dawn on July 4.
The flood was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by FEMA, experts said, and moved so quickly in the middle of the night that it caught many off guard in a county that lacked a warning system.
But Syracuse University associate professor Sarah Pralle, who has extensively studied FEMA’s flood map determinations, said it was “particularly disturbing” that a camp in charge of the safety of so many young people would receive exemptions from basic flood regulation.
“It’s a mystery to me why they weren’t taking proactive steps to move structures away from the risk, let alone challenging what seems like a very reasonable map that shows these structures were in the 100-year flood zone,” she said.
According to a Friday report from Axios, Bongino and Bondi clashed over President Donald Trump’s administration’s handling of the case of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The Justice Department, led by Bondi, released a joint memo with the FBI announcing that the rumored “Epstein list” naming his associates never really existed. That conclusion contradicted Bondi’s previous claims that the supposed list was on her desk.
As a result, Bongino and Bondi reportedly got into it. That led to Bongino taking off from work on Friday “in protest.” The deputy director, according to The Daily Wire’sMary Margaret Olohan, had also made it clear that he would be leaving his post if Bondi kept hers.
Not long after that reporting, Olohan added that Patel has joined Bongino in his stand against Bondi.
“Source close to DOJ says Kash Patel also wants Pam Bondi gone, and that he’d consider leaving if Bongino leaves,” Olohan said. “Also that there are more frustrations with other documents Bondi hasn’t released.”
The Trump administration’s complete dismissal of the Jeffrey Epstein case continues to backfire as some of the most intense, involved members of his voting base think they’ve lost him to the “deep state.”
As the Student Action Summit conference hosted by Charlie Kirk’s right-wing Turning Point USA group kicked off on Friday, multiple MAGA loyalists expressed anger and exasperation with President Trump’s handling of the case that has dominated much of the conspiratorial far-right.
“It’s not about just a pedophile ring and all that. It’s about who governs us, right? And that’s why [the Epstein case] is not gonna go away,” MAGA godfather Steve Bannon yelled from the conference stage. He then went on to detail just how important the case is to the deep base. “For this to go away, you’re gonna lose 10 percent of the MAGA movement. If we lose 10 percent of the MAGA movement right now, we’re gonna lose 40 seats in [20]26, we’re gonna lose the presidency, they won’t even have to steal it … because [the Trump administration] will have disheartened the hardest core populist …”
Trump supporters who felt that the president was the answer to years of liberal and neoconservative deep state corruption are now reeling, feeling lost and confused as their knight in shining armor turns his back on one of their most important issues.
Bannon turned to three young conference attendees and asked them for their take on the situation.
“We need to, we need to enforce the laws of this country and you know, like you said, Steve, there’s no better question than who rules America. It’s not the people. So we need to obviously have the declassification of the Epstein files,” one said before Bannon chimed in.
A bit more:
“You don’t think Donald Trump as president — you would tell Donald Trump in the Oval Office that you think there’s an open question, with him as commander-in-chief and doing all he’s doing, you would actually tell Trump you don’t know, you question who rules this country?”
“I definitely would because it’s a blackmail ring and anybody who wouldn’t is not paying attention. Simply put, Epstein himself said that he was best friends, on the stand, with Donald Trump. So anybody who thought that these files were going to get just declassified because we pressured him enough or you voted harder enough is just lying to yourself frankly.”
“In 2016, we trusted the plan with Trump, but now Trump has become the deep state. The exact thing he we voted him in—”
‘Why do you say he’s become the deep state?” Bannon asked.
“What is more deep state than covering up for pedophiles? Why would you go to that island? Why? Tell me why would you go to that island? Why would you go on the plane? … Why his top donors—why are his top donors neighbors with Epstein?”
It seems that Trump’s most ardent supporters are finally asking the important questions. And while some in the MAGAsphere zero in on Attorney General Pam Bondi, others grasp that the one person with the most power over the case, the one person who could even come close to validating any of their theories, is Trump. And he has expressed no interest whatsoever in doing that. In fact, he can’t even believe that his base is still talking about it. And as we approach one full week of uproar, it’s clear that the Epstein thing won’t be going away anytime soon.
MAGA activist Laura Loomer has set her sights on ousting Attorney General Pam Bondi, as the White House fends off fury from the president’s base over its handling of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal case and death.
Loomer called on FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino to ask for Bondi’s public resignation Friday morning, writing on social media that Patel and Bongino had clashed with Bondi over the investigation.
Loomer also claimed that Bongino had taken the day off from work “to evaluate whether or not he wants to continue his position,” which POLITICO has not independently confirmed. Axios later reported that Bongino did not attend work on Friday after butting heads with Bondi earlier this week.
“Pam Blondi is very damaging to President Trump’s image. She drags the administration down and the base doesn’t want her as AG,” Loomer wrote in a post on X. “She is harming Trump’s administration and she’s embarrassing all of his staff and advisors by creating a PR crisis for them. It’s incredibly unfair to President Trump and his team.”
Read more at Politico.
That’s all I have for you today. What’s on your mind?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
As usual lately, here’s a massive amount of news today, and I can’t possibly address everything. So I’ve decided to focus on the Texas flooding story, and then I’ll turn to a crazy story about Trump and his MAGA cult.
The catastrophic floods in Texas are still a huge story, and we’re beginning to see the recriminations on how badly the disaster was handled, by local, state, and federal officials. As of now, the death toll is 111, and there 173 missing. 116 of the missing are from Kerr County.
No survivors have been found since Friday in Kerr County, where the worst flooding occurred. The statewide death toll rose to 111, with at least 173 unaccounted for statewide….
At least 173 people remained missing on the fifth day after devastating floods swept through the Texas Hill Country, Gov. Greg Abbott said on Tuesday. Those unaccounted for include 161 in Kerr County, where the worst of the flooding occurred and where local officials said no one has been rescued since Friday.
The number of missing cited by the governor — the first time an official had identified the scale of the recovery operation still ahead — suggested the death toll of 111 could more than double as rescue teams sift through debris in search of bodies….
Search and rescue teams from across Texas, other states and even Mexico are pouring into flood-ravaged Central Texas to aid the strained crews that have been hunting for victims along the Guadalupe River.
Volunteer fire departments from across Texas have sent teams to the hardest-hit areas, as have fire departments from out of state, including those from Shreveport, La., and Memphis….
What about FEMA? I’m reminded of George W. Bush’s handling of Katrina. Remember “Heck of a job, Brownie”?
From his very first day as Acting Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), David Richardson’s approach was clear: “I’ve never read a book on leadership,” he said in an all-staff Zoom on May 9th, a fact that quickly became abundantly clear. He told anyone who planned to obstruct his work on behalf of President Trump “I will run right over you. Don’t get in my way…I know all the tricks.”
There have been many Weird Little Guys since the start of Trump’s second administration. In this context, a Weird Little Guy is someone who’s elevated to a position of power with little to no relevant experience and has proved unwavering loyalty to Trump. He allows the higher ups to exert actual power, while he exists mostly as a face and warm body. And as we watch the paltry FEMA response in Texas after floods killed at least 119 people on July 4th and where at least 160 remain missing, Acting Administrator Richardson is proving he can’t even be the face of the agency by staying silent.
Search and recovery crews use a large excavator to remove debris from the bank of the Guadalupe River in Center Point, Texas, on Wednesday. Jim Vondruska Getty Images
As I wrote on Monday, FEMA staffers are alarmed by what they say is the agency’s impossibly slow and deficient response to the death and destruction wrought by the Texas floods. Figures shared with The Handbasket showed just 86 people deployed as of Monday evening. Per Tuesday’s FEMA evening briefing, an additional 204 people had been deployed—just 19 from FEMA, and 185 from other agencies. Few—if any—federal staff are on the ground to help survivors register for assistance.
But perhaps as galling as the weak response is Richardson’s disappearing act: While the former Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office is not a particularly vocal leader even during quieter weeks, he still has yet to make a single internal or public comment about the impact of the Texas floods and how his agency is helping survivors.
“It is unprecedented for the leader of FEMA to be absent from the public response to a disaster that has killed over 100 Americans,” Dr. Samantha Montano, Associate Professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, told The Handbasket on Wednesday. “Richardson should be on the ground in the impacted areas meeting with local, state, and nonprofit stakeholders. He should be holding press conferences and providing interviews for national outlets. He should be monitoring FEMA’s resources and the broader federal response to ensure it is moving effectively and efficiently.”
As monstrous floodwaters surged across central Texas late last week, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency leapt into action, preparing to deploy critical search and rescue teams and life-saving resources, like they have in countless past disasters.
But almost instantly, FEMA ran into bureaucratic obstacles, four officials inside the agency told CNN.
As CNN has previously reported, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — whose department oversees FEMA — recently enacted a sweeping rule aimed at cutting spending: Every contract and grant over $100,000 now requires her personal sign-off before any funds can be released.
For FEMA, where disaster response costs routinely soar into the billions as the agency contracts with on-the-ground crews, officials say that threshold is essentially “pennies,” requiring sign-off for relatively small expenditures.
Kristi Noem meets with Gov. Abbott and others in Texas
In essence, they say the order has stripped the agency of much of its autonomy at the very moment its help is needed most.
“We were operating under a clear set of guidance: lean forward, be prepared, anticipate what the state needs, and be ready to deliver it,” a longtime FEMA official told CNN. “That is not as clear of an intent for us at the moment.”
For example, as central Texas towns were submerged in rising waters, FEMA officials realized they couldn’t pre-position Urban Search and Rescue crews from a network of teams stationed regionally across the country.
In the past, FEMA would have swiftly staged these teams, which are specifically trained for situations including catastrophic floods, closer to a disaster zone in anticipation of urgent requests, multiple agency sources told CNN.
But even as Texas rescue crews raced to save lives, FEMA officials realized they needed Noem’s approval before sending those additional assets. Noem didn’t authorize FEMA’s deployment of Urban Search and Rescue teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding began, multiple sources told CNN.
In the first three hours after the National Weather Service sent out an alert at 1:14 a.m. on July 4, warning of “life-threatening flash flooding” near Kerrville, Texas, the Guadalupe River would rise 20 feet. Yet local leaders would remain largely unheard from, raising questions about both local preparedness and whether the state of Texas should be doing more to notify flood-prone rural counties when they are in danger.
Camp Mystic, a girls’ camp along the river where at least 27 people lost their lives, experienced severe flooding sometime between 2 and 3 a.m., according to accounts from parents whose children were at the camp. Counselors in one cabin had to force open windows to help young girls get out. “The girls were saying it was a rushing river,” said Lisa Miller, whose 9-year-old daughter, Birdie, had to climb onto a counselor’s back to escape.
At the nearby Presbyterian Mo-Ranch Assembly camp, a facilities manager was awake around 1 a.m. when he saw the rising waters and alerted his boss, which prompted a quick effort to move people to higher ground, camp officials said. No lives were lost.
Yet even as these dramas were unfolding, many of the key local leaders in Kerr County were still asleep or had not been alerted to the danger. The survival of people in local camps and low-lying areas in many cases depended not on official evacuations, but on whether they were paying attention, on their own, to weather alerts in the middle of the night.
After the flood alert shortly after 1 a.m., the National Weather Service went on to put out a series of warnings of mounting intensity, with one at 4:03 a.m. warning of “catastrophic” flooding.
“This came at night when people were asleep, in bed,” Kerrville’s mayor, Joe Herring Jr., said at a news conference. He later told CNN that he had not received the weather alert and was not awakened until 5:30 a.m.
Sheriff Larry Leitha of Kerr County said he had first been notified around 4 or 5 a.m., when “one of my sergeants was in dispatch when the first calls started coming in.”
It’s been reported that campers and counselors at Camp Mystic weren’t allowed to have cell phone with them. Apparently cell phone coverage is poor in the area anyway.
Nearly a week after floodwaters swept away more than a hundred lives, Texas officials are facing heated questions over how much was – or was not – done in the early morning hours of Friday as a wall of water raced down the Guadalupe River.
Several officials in the past few days have deflected or become defensive when asked clarifying questions about the county’s actions before and during the disaster.
“We’re in the process of trying to put together a timeline. That’s going to take a little bit of time,” Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said Tuesday, adding his priority was recovering victims, identifying bodies and notifying families.
Authorities were pressed again Wednesday when they shared little information about the early hours of the emergency, instead calling attention to their swift response later in the day on July 4.
“I know that this tragedy, as horrific as it is, could have been so much worse,” Kerrville Police Department Sgt. Jonathan Lamb said.
As search and rescue efforts continue for a seventh straight day, frustration grows over lingering questions about what officials did during those crucial early hours, if existing warning systems worked and whether any loss could have been prevented.
I suppose any even could be worse, but that is hardly the point. See the post for a timeline CNN has created.
Years before the flooding took more than 90 lives in Kerr County, Texas, local officials knew residents faced threats from rapidly rising water. They started planning a flood warning system, one that could alert residents when a flash flood was imminent.
Still, like many other communities around the country, Kerr County struggled to find a way to pay for it. They turned to the largest source available for most localities: funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
For years, Kerr County officials debated how to fund a flood warning system. Under Trump administration changes, disaster funding opportunities are getting more limited for communities. Denise Rios WaPo
FEMA has granted billions over the last five years to help communities prepare for disasters. The idea is one that has been proven on the ground: When communities invest in infrastructure and preparation before a disaster, it can dramatically lessen the damage when a disaster hits, as well as save lives.
Kerr County’s funding application was turned down by Texas officials in charge of administering the federal funds. As with most of FEMA’s programs, there was more demand for money than was available. Kerr County looked into a Texas state grant program for flood projects, but gave up when they learned it would cover only a small portion of the cost. In Texas alone, more than $54 billion in flood projects are waiting to be built, and state legislators have only dedicated a small fraction of that funding so far.
Now, funding prospects for communities at risk are getting even more limited. The Trump administration has frozen or canceled billions of dollars dedicated to help communities prepare for disasters. Trump signed an executive order saying states should be responsible for funding disaster preparedness, instead of the federal government.
I know I’ve spent a lot of time on this story, but it seems to me that we will see more disasters like this with hurricane and tornado seasons coming up.
Now I want to address a crazy story about Trump and his MAGA cult. This story grew out of Pam Bondi’s announcement that the Jeffrey Epstein files would not be released, as she previously promised.
President Trump‘s Justice Department and FBI have concluded they have no evidence that convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein blackmailed powerful figures, kept a “client list” or was murdered, according to a memo detailing the findings obtained by Axios.
— The administration is releasing a video — in both raw and “enhanced” versions — that it says indicates no one entered the area of the Manhattan prison where Epstein was held the night he died in 2019.
— The video supports a medical examiner’s finding that Epstein died by suicide, the two-page memo claims.
Why it matters: The findings represent the first time Trump’s administration has officially contradicted conspiracy theories about Epstein’s activities and his death — theories that had been pushed by the FBI’s top two officials before Trump appointed them to the bureau.
– As social media influencers and activists, Kash Patel (now the FBI’s director) and Dan Bongino (now deputy director) were among those in MAGA world who questioned the official version of how Epstein died.
– Patel and Bongino have since said Epstein killed himself. But it has become an article of faith online, especially on the right, that Epstein’s crimes also implicated government officials, celebrities and business leaders — and that someone killed him to conceal them.
– The memo says no one else involved in the Epstein case will be charged. (Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking and related offenses.)
You can read more at the link. The problem is that Bodi promised a big reveal and a client list and now she’s changed her mind–probably because Trump is all over the Epstein files. But MAGA is enraged. They don’t get that she’s probably protecting Trump. They think Democrats and the “deep state” are involved.
Years have gone by since Jeffrey Epstein was tried, convicted, sent to prison, and committed suicide (allegedly). Trump made it through his first election and term with the Epstein case not affecting him negatively with his MAGA base despite his obvious personal connections with him, which were pretty extensive. His MAGA cult accepted his explanations that none of his contacts with Epstein involved girls and he cut ties with him as soon as he learned about the allegations against him.
In February, MAGA influencers showed off their copies of the so-called Epstein files.
Four years went by with Trump out of office and the Epstein story largely fell out of the public consciousness as these things do with so much other news happening. But not with Trump’s MAGA base. The various conspiracies surrounding the case continued to build online on social media and in right-wing podcasts. The conspiracies garnered huge numbers of clicks and views for the grifter class, so they were more than happy to feed the beast.
There were many different conspiracies involving Epstein, but most who are obsessed with the case generally fall into either one of two camps. The first believes that there is a “Deep State” cabal that secretly controls all aspects of government and society run by elites from both parties, and that many of them were caught up in what Epstein was doing so there is ample incentive for leaders of both political parties to cover everything up to try and get the public to move on. The second group believes that Epstein was a Mossad agent used to gather blackmail videos of powerful elected officials so Israel would be able gain control of the US government through extortion.
When Trump won the 2024 election, many of the influencers with huge followings believed that all the information would finally be released by his new FBI Director and Attorney General. They believed that former AG Bill Barr was very much part of the Deep State and covered everything up in term one. They were primarily interested in 3 things: 1. The names of everyone who Epstein brought into his orbit to rape girls; 2. Evidence that his death was not a suicide and who killed him; 3. Who were Epstein’s co-conspirators?
Filipkowski notes that Trump appointed heavy-duty MAGA conspiracy theorists to high level law enforcement posts.
…which only poured gasoline on the fire for MAGA anxiously awaiting the big reveal. Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, and Pam Bondi may have been chosen for their loyalty to Trump over qualifications and competence, but they also carried with them a lot of baggage on Epstein. Their mouths had written a lot of checks to MAGA on this issue, and they expected to be cashing them right about now.
But it was not to be. Patel and Bongino told Maria Baritromo on Fox last month that they had reviewed the files and were convinced that Epstein killed himself, which infuriated MAGA. But still they were assuaged by the fact that Bondi gave two separate interviews to Fox where she said there were hundreds of victims and thousands of videos that were “on her desk” that she was reviewing. She said some of the materials had to be “redacted,” but everything would be released shortly. Then DOJ posted a memo on their website this week that nothing would be released and the case was closed. No formal announcement, no press conference, no Fox interview. Just an unsigned memo posted on a website.
So now the crazies are outraged. Click the link to read the rest of Filpkowski’s post.
Top MAGA influencers warn the Trump administration is bleeding trust over its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, and that the president is drifting out of step with the movement he built.
Why it matters: The MAGA base was blindsided by the Justice Department’s conclusion that the notorious sex trafficker died by suicide in 2019 and had no “client list.” Days after the initial shock, Trump’s insistence on moving on is fueling a deeper sense of betrayal.
“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” Trump asked incredulously during Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting after a reporter pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi on the findings.
“I can’t believe you’re asking a question about Epstein at a time like this,” he added, calling it a “waste” of time and a “desecration.”
Driving the news: The chorus of MAGA outrage has only intensified since the Justice Department and FBI released a memo on Sunday finding no evidence that Epstein was murdered, had a “client list” or had blackmailed powerful figures.
Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk and Steve Bannon — influential Trump allies who have feuded with the president at times — are among those who have accused the administration of a cover-up.
But even MAGA’s most loyal foot soldiers are struggling to explain how top Trump officials could close the Epstein case after promising — for years — that it would expose shadowy global elites.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said Americans are “not going to accept” that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had no client list.
A memo released by the Justice Department and the FBI on Monday stating there was never any client list caused waves among President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again base.
Greene, a prominent MAGA figure, told Real America’s Voice network on Wednesday, “I think the Department of Justice and the FBI has more explaining to do — this is Jeffrey Epstein,” The Hill reports.
“This is the most famous pedophile in modern-day history, and people are absolutely not going to accept just a memo that was written that says there is no client list,” she said.
Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers had pressured Attorney General Pam Bondi to release what was suspected to be a record of high-profile names associated with Epstein, a wealthy financier who died in jail ahead of his trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019.
You’d think it might dawn on these morons that Bondi and the rest are protecting Trump, who was pals with Epstein for at least 15 years, but they are too brainwashed, I guess.
Pam Bondi is clinging to her job as she faces a firestorm of criticism from MAGA loyalists over her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
It’s hard to find a Trump official who has faced more wrath than Donald Trump’s attorney general, as the president’s supporters pile on after the Justice Department indicated this week there was no more information to release on the convicted sex offender and denied the existence of an Epstein “client list.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi released a memo on Monday stating that the department and the F.B.I. had determined “that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”Credit…Pete Marovich for The New York Times
Across social media, the president’s supporters have been accusing Bondi of lying to the American people. They’re calling for the president to fire her or for her to resign. Some have even thrown around the word “impeachment.”
Some of the biggest conservative activists have added fuel to the burning outrage with their heated takedowns of the attorney general.
“She can say whatever she wants to say. She also said she is committed to ‘combatting human trafficking.’ Do you really believe her? I don’t,” posted far-right activist Laura Loomer.
“She can say whatever she wants to say. She also said she is committed to ‘combatting human trafficking.’ Do you really believe her? I don’t,” posted far-right activist Laura Loomer.
The MAGA’s are angry because they were invited to the White House in February where they received binders of information that turned out to be old news.
Alt-right podcaster Jack Posobiec skewered her on his show for calling the Epstein case closed and saying that’s “not how you treat the American people.”
“I feel very angry, upset, used… from having gone to the White House and receiving this binder full of baloney that was completely publicly available information already that we were told was new information on Epstein. It wasn’t,” he said. “We were told that more information was coming. It wasn’t.”
He was referring to influencers being invited to the White House in February, where they were handed binders marked “Phase 1” and “Declassified” that contained Epstein material that was largely already public knowledge.
Megyn Kelly suggested on Tuesday that Bondi was “too lazy” to check if any of the information was new before handing it over to influencers earlier this year.
Now Trump and the gang have leaked supposed criminal investigations of James Comey and John Brennan, most likely in an effort to change the subject.
President Trump responded Wednesday to reports that former CIA director John Brennan and former FBI director James Comey are being investigated over allegations that they made false statements to Congress during the Russia probe.
…Brennan and Comey were under criminal investigation over the FBI probe into possible links between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia after CIA director John Ratcliffe referred evidence to the FBI of possible wrongdoing….
“I know nothing about it other than what I read today, but I will tell you, I think they’re very dishonest people,” Trump said when asked about the investigation by a reporter during a White House meeting with African leaders….”I think they’re crooked as hell and maybe they have to pay a price for that….”I believe they are truly bad people and dishonest people,” Trump added. “So whatever happens, happens.”
Ratcliffe last week released a review that criticized intelligence leaders for rushing the Russia report and for the intelligence community assessment relying on a single source to express “high confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin “aspired” to help Trump win the 2016 election….However, it did not dispute “the quality and credibility” of the CIA’s conclusions….”Agency heads at the time created a politically charged environment that triggered an atypical analytic process around an issue essential to our democracy,” Ratcliffe said in a statement on the report.
What they’re saying: Brennan told MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” Wednesday afternoon that neither the Department of Justice nor the CIA had contacted him about the investigation.
The Secret Service had the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey followed by law enforcement authorities in unmarked cars and street clothes and tracked the location of his cellphone the day after he posted an image on social media in May that President Trump’s allies said amounted to a threat to assassinate the president, according to three government officials.
Mr. Comey and his wife, Patrice, were tailed by the authorities as they drove from the North Carolina coast, where they had been vacationing, through Virginia to their home in the Washington area, the officials said, describing the details of the surveillance on condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a federal investigation.
At the same time, the Secret Service was receiving information showing the location of Mr. Comey’s phone while federal authorities were stationed at his home waiting for him to return, the officials said.
The intense surveillance occurred a day after Mr. Comey, long perceived by Mr. Trump as an enemy, had posted a photo on social media of seashells he said he had found while walking on the beach. The shells were arranged in the formation “86 47,” combining a slang term meaning to dismiss or remove with the numerical designation of Mr. Trump’s second presidency. Trump critics have often displayed the phrase on signs and clothing at protests….
Shortly after the image was posted, Donald Trump Jr. wrote on social media that Mr. Comey was “casually calling for my dad to be murdered.” The accusation created a firestorm online, as Mr. Trump’s supporters accused Mr. Comey of plotting to assassinate the president.
When Mr. Comey learned of the uproar, he deleted the post, said he did not know that it had a violent connotation and that he opposed violence of any kind. The Secret Service interviewed him by phone that evening, and Mr. Comey said he had no intent to cause the president harm.
The Secret Service followed him home and then insisted on taking him back to DC to be questioned. I don’t know that is what the so-called “investigation” is about. Frankly, I don’t think there really are investigations of Brennan and Comey. It’s just Trump’s effort to distract from the Epstein furor.
That’s it for me today. What do you think? What’s on your mind?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
I don’t know about you, but these first 100 days of #FARTUS have taken a toll on me. So many bad policies in such a short time have me spinning and anxious. I can’t even plan my one-person, small-house, semi-retired life. I can’t even figure out what state and local governments, big and small businesses, and the courts have on their hands right now.
The assessment of these first 100 days, coming from polls and pundits, is stunningly bad. Bad to the point that any polling firm is considered to be a criminal organization by yam tits. I will start with this analysis in The Guardian by Steven Greenhouse. “Trump’s second term will be the worst presidential term ever. Tragically, the president’s second term is already more lawless and more authoritarian than any in US history.”
In his first 100 days back in office, Donald Trump has made a strong case that his second term will be by far the worst presidential term in US history. So many of his flood-the-zone actions have been head-spinning and stomach-turning. His administration seems to be powered by ignorance and incoherence, spleen and sycophancy. Both he and his right-hand man, Elon Musk, with their resentment-fueled desire to disrupt everything, seem intent on pulverizing the foundations of our government, our democracy, our alliances as well as any notions of truth. Tragically, Trump’s second term is already more lawless and more authoritarian than any in US history.
From Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, every president since the second world war has worked hard to build alliances to promote peace and prosperity and deter aggression. But right out of the box, Trump 2.0 has rushed to blow up our alliances and cavalierly alienate our allies. Trump quickly rejected the US’s traditional foreign policy and ideals by warmly embracing Vladimir Putin, a brutal dictator, and turning against Ukraine and its noble fight against Putin’s aggression. Trump sounded like a rapacious 19th-century imperialist when he threatened to take over the Panama canal and, ditto, when he talked of using force to seize control of Greenland, which belongs to our longtime Nato ally, Denmark. Then there’s Trump’s astoundingly idiotic talk – and taunt – that Canada should be our 51st state. What a way to anger and alienate a nation that has long been the US’s best friend.
Then there is the disaster – or should we say clown show – of Trump’s on-again, off-again, on-again, who-knows-what’s-going-to-happen-tomorrow tariffs. His “liberation day” tariffs were put together by a clown-car crew, just three hours before he announced it, and Trump and company seemed to have zero idea that his hodgepodge of tariffs would send the world’s stock markets into a nervous breakdown. Trump’s team was stupid enough to think that China was too feeble to respond effectively to Trump’s trade war – treasury secretary Scott Bessent said China had “a losing hand” with just “a pair of twos”. Trump and his clown car failed to realize that China had the ability to retaliate in devastating ways – by clamping down on rare earth exports that American manufacturers and tech companies desperately need, and perhaps by selling off hundreds of billions of dollars in US bonds. Former treasury secretary Janet Yellen was appalled, saying: “This is the worst self-inflicted policy wound I’ve ever seen in my career inflicted on our economy.”
What really gets to me is his “bombastic rhetoric.” It’s like you’re either with the bully or being bullied. But what appalls me is his stewardship of the US and global Economy. He is completely detached from all we have learned about policy impacts from the 1930s. It was clear that as industrialization increased, the old mercantilism of the colonial days was fading fast. Industrialization created a different trade paradigm.
The switch from the Gold Standard created a different-looking financial economic system. The Information Age and the rise of advanced technology like robotics have changed us even more. We have complex, intertwined, mixed market economies. While the basics of market structure remain similar, the frictions within them have become much more complicated. You may check the academic research of Nobel Prize-winning Joseph E. Stiglitz for his legendary study on how the various quirks in producing specific goods and services can lead to fairly serious economic issues.
I don’t think anyone in the West Wing or the Agencies knows how economic policy works. For that matter, Trump doesn’t even know how many countries there are in the world since he keeps mentioning 200 trade deals when there are only 195. Maybe the Penguin islands are more autonomous than we know?
In fact, the communication style of the entire MAGA movement makes it an impossible environment for governing. This is how Amanda Marcotte–writing for Salon— puts it. “MAGA loves a tantrum: How public meltdowns became the preferred method of GOP communication. Why Nancy Mace, Pete Hegseth, and Stephen Miller keep throwing fits on camera.”
If there were an Oscar for the category “hard to watch,” I’d have to nominate the video of Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., barking expletives at a constituent after he asked her if she would have a town hall soon. It’s produced in a beauty supply store instead of a movie studio, but in a brief minute and 42 seconds, the video finds its place in the canon of horror films shot from the villain’s perspective. The camera focuses entirely on the story’s hero, a man in a polo and shorts holding a bottle of what appears to be face cleanser, as he holds his own against his congressional representative getting increasingly shrill as she yells invective at him. Even though he said nothing about gay marriage, she demands his gratitude for voting “for gay marriage twice.” When he gets annoyed at her reductive assumption, she calls him “crazy” and “absolutely f—king crazy,” and repeatedly says “f—k you” to him.
In the eyes of normal people, Mace, as her interlocutor said when he fled from this encounter, is a “disgrace.” Most adults who act like Mace in public immediately wish to disappear off the face of the earth in shame. But not our Nancy! No, she’s the one who posted this video online, proud of her emotional incontinence. She even offered a homophobic “gay panic” defense, by describing the man as “wearing daisy dukes, at a makeup store.” (Sorry, Miss Nancy, they aren’t daisy dukes until we see cheeks.) To people outside the MAGA bubble, it’s a baffling choice. She’s not even a fun villain. There’s none of the sleek appeal of Loki from the “Avengers” franchise or camp glee of Ursula from “The Little Mermaid.” Mace is serving pure toddler here. She likely wished to throw herself to the floor and start pounding it, but doing so would have meant dropping her iPhone.
Mace isn’t wrong, however, to think that what most adults find embarrassing, the MAGA base will eat right up. The public meltdown, in which you declare yourself the world’s greatest victim, is the preferred GOP method of political communication these days. Despite this effort, Mace didn’t even come close to nabbing last week’s gold star for the most histronic MAGA performance. She was outdone by Stephen Miller, whose usual register on TV is “verge of a nervous breakdown,” but got so shrill on Fox News Tuesday that Lauren Tousignant at Jezebel worried she’d soon have to “look at Stephen Miller’s face as he pops a dozen blood vessels as his brain explodes.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth turned in two performances that would cause Al Pacino to tell him to settle down. While carping about “the fake news media” during the White House Easter egg roll, Hegseth’s whining got so pitched his voice started to crack, while his children stood behind him, embarrassed at the spectacle.
Despite his own family’s discomfort with his antics, Hegseth kept up the scenery-chewing, bellowing about the all-powerful, forever-mysterious “they” have “come after me from day one.” (“They,” in this case, means close friends and advisors who got pushed out after beginning to question Hegseth’s fitness for the job.)
All this yelling and bellyaching serves a pragmatic purpose: to distract from how what they’re saying makes no sense. Miller’s claim that the six Republican judges on the Supreme Court — three appointed by Trump — are “communist” wouldn’t withstand even a moment’s thought at a normal volume. Because he’s delivering his commentary at “front row at Led Zepplin” levels, the brain can’t even process how preposterous the lie is. Mace’s routine showed this working in a literal way. Her target runs away, because trying to talk to someone behaving like her is like trying to converse with a wildfire.
It’s part of the overall too-muchness that is the signature of the MAGA aesthetic, which goes right back to Trump’s gold-plated tastelessness. We see it in the infamous “Mar-a-Lago” face, which uses plastic surgery and spackled-on make-up to turn women into terrifyingly exaggerated caricatures of femininity. Or the love of roided-out male bodies, which try to recreate the impossibly huge muscles of comic books on human bodies. It’s a maximalist aesthetic, minus all the playfulness of Las Vegas casinos or “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” There’s a grim vibe to the undertaking, as if they’re trying to pound your head into the ground with the excess.
“Fake Melania mystery solved. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.” John Buss, @repeat1968
The week our interview was supposed to occur, Trump posted a vituperative message on Truth Social, attacking us by name. “Ashley Parker is not capable of doing a fair and unbiased interview. She is a Radical Left Lunatic, and has been as terrible as is possible for as long as I have known her,” he wrote. “To this date, she doesn’t even know that I won the Presidency THREE times.” (That last sentence is true—Ashley Parker does not know that Trump won the presidency three times.) “Likewise, Michael Scherer has never written a fair story about me, only negative, and virtually always LIES.”
Yes, it was full-on #FARTUS Bully Verbal Bombing them publicly. They actually just called him later. He picked up. This article is the result
Despite his attacks on us a few days earlier, the president, evidently feeling buoyed by a week of successes, was eager to talk about his accomplishments. As we spoke, the sounds of another conversation, perhaps from a television, hummed in the background.
The president seemed exhilarated by everything he had managed to do in the first two months of his second term: He had begun a purge of diversity efforts from the federal government; granted clemency to nearly 1,600 supporters who had participated in the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, including those caught beating police officers on camera; and signed 98 executive orders and counting (26 of them on his first day in office). He had fired independent regulators; gutted entire agencies; laid off great swaths of the federal workforce; and invoked 18th-century wartime powers to use against a criminal gang from Venezuela. He had adjusted tariffs like a DJ spinning knobs in the booth, upsetting the rhythms of global trade and inducing vertigo in the financial markets. He had raged at the leader of Ukraine, a democratic ally repelling an imperialist invasion, for not being “thankful”—and praised the leader of the invading country, Russia, as “very smart,” reversing in an instant 80 years of U.S. foreign-policy doctrine, and prompting the countries of NATO to prepare for their own defense, without the protective umbrella of American power, for the first time since 1945.
…
We asked Trump why he thought the billionaire class was prostrating itself before him.
“It’s just a higher level of respect. I don’t know,” Trump said. “Maybe they didn’t know me at the beginning, and they know me now.”
“I mean, you saw yesterday with the law firm,” he said. He was referring to Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, one of the nation’s most prestigious firms, whose leader had come to the Oval Office days earlier to beg for relief from an executive order that could have crippled its business. Trump had issued the order at least partially because a former partner at the firm had in 2021 gone to work for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, where he was part of an investigation of the Trump Organization’s business practices. Also that week, an Ivy League institution, threatened with the cancellation of $400 million in federal funding, had agreed to overhaul its Middle Eastern–studies programs at the Trump administration’s request, while also acceding to other significant demands. “You saw yesterday with Columbia University. What do you think of the law firm? Were you shocked at that?” Trump asked us.
Yes—all of it was shocking, much of it without precedent. Legal scholars were drawing comparisons to Franklin D. Roosevelt and the early stages of the New Deal, when Congress had allowed FDR to demolish norms and greatly expand the powers of the presidency.
As ever, Trump was on the hunt for a deal. If he liked the story we wrote, he said, he might even speak with us again.
“Tell the people at The Atlantic, if they’d write good stories and truthful stories, the magazine would be hot,” he said. Perhaps the magazine can risk forgoing hotness, he suggested, because it is owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, which buffers it, he implied, from commercial imperatives. But that doesn’t guarantee anything, he warned. “You know at some point, they give up,” he said, referring to media owners generally and—we suspected—Bezos specifically. “At some point they say, No más, no más.” He laughed quietly.
Media owners weren’t the only ones on his mind. He also seemed to be referring to law firms, universities, broadcast networks, tech titans, artists, research scientists, military commanders, civil servants, moderate Republicans—all the people and institutions he expected to eventually, inevitably, submit to his will.
We asked the president if his second term felt different from his first. He said it did. “The first time, I had two things to do—run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys,” he said. “And the second time, I run the country and the world.”
More like the country and the world run from him. I have to admit. I admire the Chinese method of trolling him. It’s funny and effective. Philip Bump at the Washington Postanalyzes this self-defeating policy of the second term. “The bubble that created Trump is the reason he’s stumbling. The White House is now a bubble where loyalty, not ability, defines success.”
Consider Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
No one should be surprised that Hegseth is flailing in his new role, one of the most arduous and complicated in the U.S. government, if not the world. When Donald Trump proposed that Hegseth run the agency, the response was broadly unified: Hegseth lacked the experience needed to do the job effectively. You could debate the othercontroversies surrounding his bid for the role ad nauseam, but there was no way to reasonably argue that the Fox News talk-show host was prepared to run the Pentagon.
Hegseth was confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate anyway because Trump and a universe of voices who support him insisted Hegseth was the best choice for the job — because he was Trump’s choice for the job. Republican senators who undoubtedly knew better went along, betting that things wouldn’t get so bad under Hegseth that it was worth stirring up the fury of that pro-Trump bubble.
It’s the same bet that prominent Republicans have been making on Trump himself since 2015. Now, as Trump too is flailing — polling and the data make clear that he is — it’s trivial to identify that insular chorus of cheerleaders and cynics as a root cause.
The president owes his political career to that same bubble. Over the past few decades, the fringe right and then Republicans more broadly embraced discussions of the world that were mostly devoid of nuance: left bad, right good. The internet allowed for the emergence of bespoke “news” organizations (and, later, social media accounts) catering to conspiratorial partisan rhetoric — an alternative to traditional reporting unhampered by criticism or unpopular truths.
Trump secured the 2016 Republican nomination not because he was the best spokesperson for the Republican Party but because he echoed the refrains of that surreal universe of information. When you hear his supporters praise his straightforwardness, this is what they are referring to: He says the false things with which they agree.
We’re about to say goodbye to Musk. Hopefully, Hegseth will be a quick second out. But what comes next? Certainly, nothing better. Even Rubio seems to have caught the munificently Kiss Ass Fever. The speed of light is the rate at which he contradicts the old Little Marco makes me wonder if he a Musk AI robot and the ex-Senator is up in space some where. Here’s the latest example from The Independent. “Marco Rubio claims Canada should be 51st state as PM told Trump they ‘couldn’t survive’ without U.S. Rubio says State Department has not taken action on the president’s push to annex Canada and Greenland.”
America’s top diplomat was questioned on Sunday about Donald Trump’s reasoning for repeatedly calling for Canada to join the United States as the 51st state.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared on NBC’s Meet the Presson Sunday where moderator Kristen Welker asked him if the administration was actually taking any steps to make Trump’s vision a reality.
The president has made his opinion clear: he wants Canada to join the United States and suggested his administration would also acquire the Danish-held territory Greenland by any means.
The secretary of state gave his own translation of the president’s remarks on the matter:
“What the president has said, and he has said this repeatedly, is he was told by the previous prime minister that Canada could not survive without unfair trade with the United States, at which point he asked, ‘Well, if you can’t survive as a nation without treating us unfairly in trade, then you should become a state.’ That’s what he said.”
Rubio told Welker that the administration had taken no action to realize this particular strain of Trump’s bluster, which has alarmed U.S. allies.
There’s a U.S. military base on Greenland, and the president has cited the self-governing nation’s geographical importance as a reasoning for his expansionist goal. Trump has made the comments on numerous occasions, including in conversations with his Canadian counterparts.
Trump himself made his goals of northward expansion apparent during his address to Congress in February.
“We need Greenland for national security and even international security. And we’re working with everybody involved to try and get it,” Trump said at the time. “And I think we’re going to get it one way or the other. We’re going to get it.”
But he was making similar remarks publicly as early as December 2024.
“No one can answer why we subsidize Canada to the tune of over $100,000,000 a year? Makes no sense!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Many Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State.”
“They would save massively on taxes and military protection. I think it is a great idea,” added Trump.
So tell me if you ever thought you’d see the day that an American Secretary of State believes annexing your best allies, the ones you’ve fought beside in Wars, and stood by you when you were attacked, would say that sort of thing? Meanwhile, the entire Deportation debacle continues on its cruel and ugly path. This is from Politico. “Homan presses undocumented immigrants to self-deport, threatening prosecution. The push comes as the monthly deportation numbers have lagged behind the Biden administration’s.” Homan is now the antonym for Human. Deportation in this country does not just fall on the undocumented. It impacts everyone.
White House border czar Tom Homan on Monday warned undocumented immigrants that they “cannot hide” and will be prosecuted in they remain in the U.S. illegally — the latest effort from the Trump administration to push self-deportation.
“Get your affairs in order. If you’re in the country illegally, work with ICE, go to CBP One Home app, and leave on your own,” Homan said from the White House press briefing room.
Homan said every immigrant in the U.S. illegally must register with the federal government and carry documentation. And those who fail to register with the Department of Homeland Security or neglect to update any new address will have those actions treated as criminal offenses “starting today.” He also warned other undocumented immigrants that if they have a final order to leave the country but remain anyway, the Trump administration will “aggressively prosecute” and issue daily monetary fines of up to $998.
The border czar’s briefing room appearance comes as the Trump administration marks its 100th day in office this week, with Homan touting the administration’s progress on border security. He pointed to a significant drop in illegal border crossings, which have plunged since Trump took office to the lowest level in decades.
Homan said Monday that the administration has deported 139,000 migrants since Jan. 20 as Trump officials have struggled to ramp up removal numbers. This figure includes people deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and the Coast Guard, who would have been encountered at or before they reached the border, according to a DHS official. The Trump administration’s monthly deportation numbers have lagged behind the Biden administration’s, according to data obtained by NBC News.
The bluster is abusive, but the actions are unconstitutional, illegal, and inhumane. The New York Timesreports on the weekend’s 60 Minutes sign-off. Every voice raised against the dismantling of US democracy is a voice that counts! “‘60 Minutes’ Chastises Its Corporate Parent in Unusual On-Air Rebuke. The show’s top producer abruptly said last week he was quitting. “Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways,” the correspondent Scott Pelley told viewers.”
In an extraordinary on-air rebuke, one of the top journalists at “60 Minutes” directly criticized the program’s parent company in the final moments of its Sunday night CBS telecast, its first episode since the program’s executive producer, Bill Owens, announced his intention to resign.
“Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways,” the correspondent, Scott Pelley, told viewers. “None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.”
A spokesman for Paramount had no immediate comment, and has previously declined to comment on Mr. Owens’s departure.
Mr. Owens stunned the show’s staff on Tuesday when he said he would leave the highest-rated program in television news over disagreements with Paramount, CBS’s corporate parent, saying, “It’s clear the company is done with me.”
Mr. Owens’s comments were widely reported in the press last week. The show’s decision to repeat those grievances on-air may have exposed viewers to the serious tensions between “60 Minutes” and its corporate overseers for the first time.
Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of Paramount, has been intent on securing approval from the Trump administration for a multibillion-dollar sale of her media company to a studio run by the son of Larry Ellison, the tech billionaire.
President Trump sued CBS last year, claiming $10 billion in damages, in a case stemming from a “60 Minutes” interview with the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, that Mr. Trump said was deceptively edited. Ms. Redstone has expressed her desire to settle Mr. Trump’s lawsuit, although legal experts have called the case far-fetched.
So that’s it for me today. I’m just trying to keep my head above water and my thoughts on calm, clear awareness. I hope you’re finding a way to cope with this mess. I try to tune out as much as possible, but my job is to teach folks about financial and economic policies, so I can only shut out so much. A friend of mine posted a picture of American NAZIs partying in the French Quarter and getting drinks from the Dungeon. The tattoos and the t-shirts said it all. What’s most disturbing about all of this is these folks are out of their hidey holes, and they don’t care who sees them and what they say. I’ll be out on Wednesday at a protest in front of the ICE offices here in the Central Business District. I need to do something, even just being with like-minded people.
This morning The Atlantic’s Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg released the full Signal text exchange that was the top news story all day yesterday. I’m sure you’re familiar with the story, but in case you missed it (unlikely), Goldberg was sent an invitation to a Signal group that included top administration officials. He accepted out of curiosity. Here is the original story published two days ago in The Atlantic (gift article): The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.
On Monday, shortly after we published a story about a massive Trump-administration security breach, a reporter asked the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, why he had shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen on the Signal messaging app. He answered, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.”
At a Senate hearing yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, were both asked about the Signal chat, to which Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently invited by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz. “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group,” Gabbard told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Ratcliffe said much the same: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”
President Donald Trump, asked yesterday afternoon about the same matter, said, “It wasn’t classified information.”
These statements presented us with a dilemma. In The Atlantic’s initial story about the Signal chat—the “Houthi PC small group,” as it was named by Waltz—we withheld specific information related to weapons and to the timing of attacks that we found in certain texts. As a general rule, we do not publish information about military operations if that information could possibly jeopardize the lives of U.S. personnel. That is why we chose to characterize the nature of the information being shared, not specific details about the attacks.
Pete Hegseth
The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions. There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared.
Experts have repeatedly told us that use of a Signal chat for such sensitive discussions poses a threat to national security. As a case in point, Goldberg received information on the attacks two hours before the scheduled start of the bombing of Houthi positions. If this information—particularly the exact times American aircraft were taking off for Yemen—had fallen into the wrong hands in that crucial two-hour period, American pilots and other American personnel could have been exposed to even greater danger than they ordinarily would face. The Trump administration is arguing that the military information contained in these texts was not classified—as it typically would be—although the president has not explained how he reached this conclusion.
Karoline Leavitt
The Atlantic approached multiple people in the Trump administration, asking if they had objections to the publication of the entire Signal chant. Only press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded:
“As we have repeatedly stated, there was no classified information transmitted in the group chat. However, as the CIA Director and National Security Advisor have both expressed today, that does not mean we encourage the release of the conversation. This was intended to be a an [sic] internal and private deliberation amongst high-level senior staff and sensitive information was discussed. So for those reason [sic] — yes, we object to the release.” (The Leavitt statement did not address which elements of the texts the White House considered sensitive, or how, more than a week after the initial air strikes, their publication could have bearing on national security.)
Here is the relevant part of the text chain:
At 11:44 a.m. eastern time, Hegseth posted in the chat, in all caps, “TEAM UPDATE:”
The text beneath this began, “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.” Centcom, or Central Command, is the military’s combatant command for the Middle East. The Hegseth text continues:
“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”
“1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”
“1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”
“1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)”
“We are currently clean on OPSEC”—that is, operational security.
“Godspeed to our Warriors.”
Read the whole article at The Atlantic. It isn’t very long. Those certainly look like war plans to me. This is a great opportunity for Democrats to fight back against Trump’s rapidly advancing coup. They did an excellent job in the Senate hearing yesterday.
Senate Democrats on Tuesday hammered the Trump administration’s top intelligence officials on how and why the vice president, defense secretary, national security adviser and other top Cabinet members made the “reckless” decision to use a commercial messaging app to discuss secret war plans for Yemen — while also inadvertently including a journalist in the group chat.
The Senate hearing, which featured five of the nation’s top intelligence officials, including Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe — both of whom were involved in the group chat over the Signal messaging app — was meant be a forum for the nation’s spy chiefs to offer their assessments of the top national security threats facing the nation.
Instead, the routine annual hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence became a staging ground to interrogate the kind of “mind-boggling” behavior that the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Mark R. Warner (Virginia), said would easily have gotten a lower-ranking military or intelligence officer fired.
Mike Waltz
In the Signal group chat, convened by national security adviser Michael Waltz, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others reportedly detailed the targets, the attack sequencing and the weapons they would use in a U.S. air attack on Yemen’s Houthis, before the Pentagon launched the strikes on March 15, according to a bombshell report published Monday by the Atlantic.
“If this was the case of a military officer or an intelligence officer, and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired,” Warner said in his opening remarks at Tuesday’s hearing, noting that in addition to the targeting information, the text chain included the identity of an active CIA officer. “This is one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly toward classified information,” exhibited by the Trump administration, Warner said. “This is not a one-off.”
How is it that “nobody bothered to even check? … Who are all the names?” Warner added.
Gabbard, Ratcliffe and the other government witnesses provided few answers.After Gabbard at first declined to say whether she was involved in the group chat at all, she and Ratcliffe then told senators that the information shared over Signal was not classified. At other times, they denied the details contained in the Atlantic’s reporting or said they could not recall the exact contents of the messages. They repeatedly deferred to Trump’s defense secretary and national security adviser to answer for them.
The deflections triggered an incredulous and angry backlash from the committee’s liberals.
Warner, who accused Gabbard of “bobbing and weaving and trying to filibuster,” demanded repeatedly that she reconcile her conflicting assertions that the information in the text chain was not classified, but also that she was not at liberty to talk about it. “If there are no classified materials, share it with the committee. You can’t have it both ways,” he said.
Well, now it has been shared with everyone, and the Trump officials look exactly as incompetent as we assumed they were. On top of everything else, one of the participants in the Signal chat, special envoy Steve Witkoff, was actually in Moscow waiting to speak to Vladimir Putin, while using his personal cell phone.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA director John Ratcliffe appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee to testify about global threats facing the U.S. However the annual hearing, which typically focuses on threats posed by China, Russia, Iran, largely concentrated on the lapse.
FBI Director Kash Patel, National Security Agency Director Gen. Timothy Haugh and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse also appeared, but received few questions.
Senator Mark Warner
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the committee, addressed the controversy at the top of the hearing, calling it “mind-boggling” that none of the intelligence officials in the chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal thought to check who else was included.
“Are these government devices? Were they personal devices? Have the devices been collected to make sure there’s no malware?” Warner said in his opening remarks. “There’s plenty of declassified information that shows that our adversaries, China and Russia, are trying to break into encryption systems like Signal.”
Gabbard and Ratcliffe both denied that classified information was shared in the group chat in a feisty exchange with Warner. Confronted by Warner, Gabbard initially declined to say whether she was part of the chat….
Ratcliffe confirmed to Warner that he was a participant in the message thread, but pushed back on whether the decision to use Signal to communicate was a security lapse. Ratcliffe said Signal was on his CIA computer when he was confirmed as director earlier this year….
Ratcliffe confirmed to Warner that he was a participant in the message thread, but pushed back on whether the decision to use Signal to communicate was a security lapse. Ratcliffe said Signal was on his CIA computer when he was confirmed as director earlier this year. “As it is for most CIA officers,” he said, adding that the agency considers the commercial app “permissible” for work use.
The spy chiefs also denied that the conversation included information on weapons packages, targets or timing of the strikes, as Goldberg reported.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Ratcliffe said, with Gabbard adding “same answer.”
I guess they weren’t paying attention. There’s more at the CBS link.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe are back on Capitol Hill to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday after new text messages came to light from a group chat in which top Trump officials discussed sensitive plans to strike targets in Yemen.
Shortly before the hearing began, The Atlantic published additional messages showing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth provided detailed information to the group of senior Trump officials about the strikes, including a timeline of when fighter jets would take off and what kind of weapons would be used. The group inadvertently included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic who revealed the first batch of texts earlier this week….
Gabbard and Ratcliffe are appearing Wednesday alongside FBI Director Kash Patel, National Security Agency Director Gen. Timothy Haugh and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse at a hearing ostensibly focused on the global security threats facing the U.S. But the Signal leak and its fallout dominated the early portions of questioning.
Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the committee, chastised the intelligence leaders at the start of the hearing, saying they put the lives of troops at risk.
“Everyone here knows that the Russians or the Chinese could have gotten all of that information, and they could have passed it on to the Houthis, who easily could have repositioned weapons and altered their plans to knock down planes or sink ships,” Himes said.
Gabbard acknowledged that the conversation was “sensitive” but again denied that classified information was shared in the chat.”There were no sources, methods, locations or war plans that were shared,” she told lawmakers, echoing the defense from the White House that “war plans” were not discussed, despite the detailed guidance for an impending attack.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s texts to a Signal group chat about military operations against the Houthis almost certainly contained classified information, according to current and former Pentagon officials.
The Atlantic on Wednesday released excerpts of a conversation among top national security leaders to which a journalist had accidentally been invited. Hegseth and the White House have denied sharing classified information or war plans.
“This information was clearly taken from the real time order of battle sequence of an ongoing operation,” said Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant Defense secretary under the first Trump administration. “It is highly classified and protected.
Hegseth identified the aircraft used and the precise timing of the attacks, according to texts from the group chat, which was started by national security adviser Mike Waltz. That information, if obtained by adversaries, could put U.S. troops in danger.
Kash Patel
A current defense official and former Air Force official both said that any forecasting of future operations and planned weapons are almost always classified information. The former and current officials were granted anonymity to speak about a sensitive issue.
Details about future airstrikes and the timing of launches is tightly controlled and usually provided only through classified documents, conversations and in secure email traffic. Few outside of top leadership and those involved usually know about the plans.
“The information that you have fighter aircraft launching off of an aircraft carrier, flying over enemy territory and impending combat operation is the most sensitive information we have at the federal government,” said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a former Navy pilot, who added it was likely classified.
“Mike Waltz did a boneheaded thing. It was careless. I think what Pete Hegseth did was reckless and dangerous.”
Hegseth should be fired, but Waltz is more likely to be the scapegoat.
President Donald Trump was upset when he found out that National Security Adviser Mike Waltz accidentally included a journalist in a group chat discussing plans for a military strike. But it wasn’t just because Waltz had potentially exposed national security secrets.
Trump was mad — and suspicious — that Waltz had Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s number saved in his phone in the first place, according to three people familiar with the situation, who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. A fourth person said the president was also particularly perturbed by the embarrassing nature of the episode.
“The president was pissed that Waltz could be so stupid,” the person said. (A “Mike Waltz” invited Goldberg to the chat, according to The Atlantic).
But by Tuesday afternoon, the two men had made a show of smoothing things over and the White House was closing ranks around Waltz. Trump conducted brief interviews with both NBC News and Fox News pledging to stand behind his national security adviser. Two top Trump spokespeople suggested in posts on X that national security hawks were colluding with the media to make the issue bigger than it actually was. And Waltz attended a meeting of Trump’s ambassadors Tuesday afternoon.
Tulsi Gabbard
“There’s a lot of journalists in this city who have made big names for themselves making up lies … This one in particular I’ve never met, don’t know, never communicated with, and we are looking into and reviewing how the heck he got into this room,” Waltz said during the meeting.
Trump followed up by calling Waltz “a very good man” and suggested he had been unfairly attacked. Yet the president also said he would look into government officials’ use of Signal, the app used in the chat with Goldberg that could have resulted in a security breach as top U.S. officials discussed plans to launch strikes in Yemen.
Still, several Trump allies cautioned this may not be the end of Waltz’s troubles. One of them, who like others was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, said the incident has strained Waltz’s relationship with Trump’s inner circle.
A public watchdog group sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a slew of other Trump administration officials Tuesday after a journalist revealed he was inadvertently added to a text chain discussing U.S. war plans.
The lawsuit, brought by the watchdog group American Oversight and first reported by HuffPost, requests that a federal judge formally declare that Hegseth and other officials on the chat violated their duty to uphold laws around the preservation of official communications. Those laws are outlined in the Federal Records Act and, according to lawyers for American Oversight, if agency heads refuse to recover or protect their communications, the national archivist should ask the attorney general to step in.
On Monday, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported that national security adviser Michael Waltz inadvertently added him to a Signal group chat with more than a dozen Trump administration officials and aides including Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, homeland security adviser Stephen Miller and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. CIA Director John Ratcliffe told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that he was also in the Signal chat. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard would not admit whether she was a participant, though Goldberg reported she was; instead, she said the matter was “still under review.”
As American Oversight lawyers pointed out in their lawsuit Tuesday, Rubio is also the acting archivist of the United States and, as such, “is aware of the violations” that allegedly occurred.
He is also “responsible for initiating an investigation through the Attorney General for the recovery of records or other redress,” the lawsuit said.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently offered a chilling glimpse into the Trump administration’s indifference to Social Security’s importance. “Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month,” Lutnick said, according to Axios. “My mother-in-law, who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain.”
Perhaps the commerce secretary’s mother-in-law wouldn’t call. But millions of other Americans would—and not just to complain. They would call because they couldn’t pay rent, buy food, or refill essential medications. Lutnick’s casual comment downplayed the gravity of a missed Social Security check.
The comment also exposed the distance between elites and others. Elites may not care if they miss a Social Security check, but for a typical Americans a missing check is a gut punch. Calls to the Social Security office would be pouring in. But no one may answer.
Howard Lutnick
Lutnick’s remarks come during a time when the Social Security system faces record demand and historic strain. And the remarks come during a month of extreme alarm and confusion about the system. Elon Musk demeaned the system publicly, calling it “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” the New York Post reported. Field offices are overrun, wait times are spiking, and staffing levels have been slashed by 12% since 2020, notes The Washington Post. The very system that ensures timely payments to 73 million Americans is being stomped on, and senior citizens and families are feeling anxious and worse.
To be clear, Trump and DOGE have not cut or delayed Social Security checks—yet. The Social Security Administration does not miss checks. In 80 years, it never missed payment….
While Lutnick and others suggest that delays wouldn’t matter, the data tell another story. Social Security is the foundation of retirement security for most American seniors.
According to the Social Security Administration, nearly 90% of Americans over age 65 receive benefits, and those benefits make up an average of 31% of their income. But for many, the reliance is much deeper: 39% of older men and 44% of older women count on Social Security for more than half their income. Even more sobering, 12% of older men and 15% of older women rely on it for at least 90% of their income.
Older women, in particular, are at risk. They tend to earn less over their lifetimes, outlive their spouses, and have less saved for retirement. For them, Social Security is often not just the main source of income—it’s the only source.
The Social Security Administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts. In the field, office managers have resorted to answering phones in place of receptionists because so many employees have been pushed out. Amid all this, the agency no longer has a system to monitor customer experience because that office was eliminated as part of the cost-cutting efforts led by Elon Musk.
And the phones keep ringing. And ringing.
The federal agency that delivers $1.5 trillion a year in earned benefits to 73 million retired workers, their survivors, and poor and disabled Americans is engulfed in crisis — further undermining the already struggling organization’s ability to provide reliable and quick service to vulnerable customers, according to internal documents and more than two dozen current and former agency employees and officials, customers and others who interact with Social Security.
Frank Bisignano, nominee for Social Security chief
Financial services executive Frank Bisignano is scheduled to face lawmakers Tuesday at a Senate confirmation hearing as President Donald Trump’s nominee to become the permanent commissioner. For now, the agency is run by a caretaker leader in his sixth week on the job who has raced to push out more than 12 percent of the staff of 57,000. He has conceded that the agency’s phone service “sucks” and acknowledged that Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service is really in charge, pushing a single-minded mission to find benefits fraud despite vast evidence that the problem is overstated.
The turmoil is leavingmany retirees, disabled claimants, and legal immigrants needing Social Security cards with less access or shut out of the system altogether, according to those familiar with the problems.
“What’s going on is the destruction of the agency from the inside out, and it’s accelerating,” Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said in an interview. “I have people approaching me all the time in their 70s and 80s, and they’re beside themselves. They don’t know what’s coming.”
The Trump administration has installed a DOGE operative as the new Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the Social Security Administration (SSA) in an apparent effort to evade a federal court order blocking DOGE affiliates from accessing databases containing the sensitive personal information of millions of Americans.
Popular Information obtained an internal memorandum from Acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek announcing Scott Coulter, a DOGE operative previously assigned to NASA and the SSA, as the SSA’s new CIO.
The move, which was not announced publicly, seems related to a federal lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions — including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO, and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — on February 21. The lawsuit alleged that DOGE officials were accessing “personal, confidential, private, and sensitive data from the Social Security Administration” in violation of federal law, including the Privacy Act. The labor unions sued the SSA, Dudek, and then-CIO Michael Russo to stop the disclosure of the data to DOGE.
On March 21, the federal judge overseeing the AFSCME case, Ellen Lipton Hollander, granted the plaintiffs a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) which prohibited SSA, Dudek, and Russo from “granting access to any SSA system of record containing personally identifiable information” to DOGE or any “members of the DOGE team established at the SSA.” The order defined the DOGE team at SSA as “any person assigned to SSA to fulfill the DOGE agenda.”
Read the rest at the link.
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
What really gets to me is his “bombastic rhetoric.” It’s like you’re either with the bully or being bullied. But what appalls me is his stewardship of the US and global Economy. He is completely detached from all we have learned about policy impacts from the 1930s. It was clear that as industrialization increased, the old mercantilism of the colonial days was fading fast. Industrialization created a different trade paradigm.
More like the country and the world run from him. I have to admit. I admire the Chinese method of trolling him. It’s funny and effective. Philip Bump at the 
So tell me if you ever thought you’d see the day that an American Secretary of State believes annexing your best allies, the ones you’ve fought beside in Wars, and stood by you when you were attacked, would say that sort of thing? Meanwhile, the entire Deportation debacle continues on its cruel and ugly path. This is from 
The bluster is abusive, but the actions are unconstitutional, illegal, and inhumane. 
So that’s it for me today. I’m just trying to keep my head above water and my thoughts on calm, clear awareness. I hope you’re finding a way to cope with this mess. I try to tune out as much as possible, but my job is to teach folks about financial and economic policies, so I can only shut out so much. A friend of mine posted a picture of American NAZIs partying in the French Quarter and getting drinks from the Dungeon. The tattoos and the t-shirts said it all. What’s most disturbing about all of this is these folks are out of their hidey holes, and they don’t care who sees them and what they say. I’ll be out on Wednesday at a protest in front of the ICE offices here in the Central Business District. I need to do something, even just being with like-minded people.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments