Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: May 2, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Good Day!!

Girl holding a cat, by Albert Anker, 1881

There was  a lot of discouraging news yesterday, as is usually the case under Trump’s presidency. An appeals court in Louisiana temporarily limited access to abortion pills; we’re still adjusting to the Supreme Court’s voting rights decision; Trump and Hegseth are pulling 5,000 troops out of Germany for no good reason; the Iran war continues, but Trump is pretending it’s over; Trump is insane and getting worse. Here’s the latest:

Tierney Sneed at CNN: Appeals court blocks FDA rule that allows women to obtain abortion drugs by mail.

A federal appeals court temporarily reinstated a nationwide requirement that abortion pills be obtained in person, undermining access to the method of abortion that has only grown more widespread since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Friday’s ruling from the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals is a major victory in the anti-abortion movement’s war against medication abortion, which now accounts for roughly two-thirds of all abortions in the United States.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by Louisiana last year against the US Food and Drug Administration, after President Donald Trump’s administration refused to act on calls to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement for abortion pills through the regulatory process.

The opinion was written by Trump-appointed Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan, joined by Circuit Judges Leslie Southwick and Kurt Engelhardt, who were appointed by Presidents George W. Bush and Trump, respectively.

Referring to Louisiana abortion prohibitions, they wrote that the current federal regulations create “an effective way for an out-of-state prescriber to place the drug in the hands of Louisianans in defiance of Louisiana law.”

Mifepristone manufacturer Danco Laboratories has asked the 5th Circuit to put its ruling on hold for seven days so it can appeal.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, abortion-seekers have been able to obtain mifepristone – one of the two drugs in the medication abortion regimen – through telehealth appointments. President Joe Biden’s administration finalized rules that ended the requirement that the pills be obtained through an in-person doctor’s visit in 2023, after the US Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe precedent protecting abortion rights nationwide with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Louisiana alleged that that regulatory maneuver was aimed at undermining the abortion ban that went into effect in the state with the reversal of Roe and says that now, hundreds of abortions are occurring every year within its borders because women are able to obtain pills via mail after telehealth visits with providers.

Read more at CNN.

Gabrielle Cannon at The Guardian: US appeals court blocks mail-order access to abortion drugs.

Access to mifepristone, the FDA-approved medication used to end pregnancy, could become severely limited following a ruling from US appeals court on Friday, which temporarily blocked the drug from being dispensed through the mail.

The decision is for now the most sweeping threat to abortion access since the supreme court rolled back abortion rights in 2022, said Kelly Baden, vice-president at the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights advocacy group.

“If allowed to stand, it would severely restrict access to mifepristone in every state, including those where abortion is broadly legal and where voters have acted to protect abortion rights,” she said.

The so-called “abortion pill” is part of a two-drug regimen backed by decades of evidence for its efficacy and safety, and is used in the majority of abortions in the US.

Usage has risen in recent years, especially in the aftermath of the 2022 ruling from the supreme court that overturned federal protections for a right to an abortion. In the year after that decision, the FDA formally modified its regulations to allow the drug to be prescribed online, expanding its use even in states where abortion care was being constricted.

The drug has become a key target for the anti-abortion movement, and a series of lawsuits have challenged the drug’s initial approval in 2000 and the subsequent rules making it easier to obtain.

And Trump controls the FDA.

Meanwhile, with the FDA now under Trump, the agency has opened a review of the medication. Once this analysis is completed, officials at the agency said, they will determine if changes to its regulations are warranted.

The Girl with the Cats, by Christian Kroag, 1909

Reproductive rights advocates have voiced concerns that the review could further limit mifepristone’s use, despite the evidence supporting its safety.

Developed in France in the 1980s, mifepristone is used around the world and is authorized in 96 countries. Its use is backed by roughly four decades of peer-reviewed research, according to a 2025 brief written by public health experts at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

“Anti-abortion politicians have just made it much harder for people everywhere in the country to get a medication that abortion and miscarriage patients have been safely using for more than 25 years,” Julia Kaye, a senior staff attorney for the Reproductive Freedom Project of the ACLU, said in a statement.

Some relevant commentary from Jessica Valenti at Abortion Everyday: My Favorite Abortion.

This week, U.S. Rep. Brandon Gill asked an understandably confused American University scholar to name her “favorite type of abortion.” Law professor Jessica Waters went before a House Judiciary subcommittee to talk about the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act; instead, she was questioned by a visibly pleased with himself Texas lawmaker who clearly crafted his question to be a viral social media moment.

When you see Rep. Gill’s shit-eating grin, you’ll know exactly who he is.

Since Rep. Gill is so interested in our favorite types of abortions, I thought I’d share a few of mine.

My favorite type of abortion is the one that prevents a raped ten-year-old from breaking her pelvis in childbirth.

I also like abortions that keep women from carrying dead fetuses for weeks on end, which is what happened to Marlena Stell in Rep. Gill’s home state of Texas.

My favorite abortions are the kind that stop women from going septic, or prevent 28-year-olds from losing both of their fallopian tubes.

Another favorite? The abortion that means a Texas 21-year-old won’t be forced to carry a fetus developing without a head.

I like the abortion that means a pregnant mother of five with cervical cancer doesn’t have to beg a hospital panel for chemotherapy.

I like the abortion that doesn’t force a woman to travel far from home when faced with a fatal fetal abnormality.

I really like the abortion that stops patients from having to plead for help in videos made in hospital parking lots.

My favorite types of abortions are the ones that allow women to live. Maybe if Candi Miller, or Amber Nicole Thurman, or Tierra Walker had access to abortion, they would still be here.

My favorite types of abortions are the ones that allow women to go to college.

My favorite types of abortions are the ones that let women leave abusive relationships.

My favorite kinds of abortions are the ones that mean women get to choose their own life path, to decide what is best for them, and to figure out if and when they want to start a family.

I suppose this case will ultimately end up in the Supreme Court. Who knows what they will do with it?

And of course we’re still dealing with the aftermath of the Roberts Court’s decision gutting the Voting Rights Act.

An opinion piece by Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan at The New York Times (gift link): Ruling by Ruling, the Supreme Court Is Undoing the Civil Rights Movement.

With its decision this week in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court gutted a core part of the Voting Rights Act, Congress’s landmark prohibition on voting rules that have the effect of excluding people of color from the political process. In doing so, the court has, not for the first time, claimed an authority to reject laws passed by Congress in service of equal justice and a free society.

By Susanne Clements

And it has effectively killed the Second Reconstruction, the mid-20th-century civil rights revolution. In the face of this decision, Congress must once again defend democracy from a hostile court. A plan of action already exists.

When the Supreme Court challenged the first Reconstruction 150 years ago, abolitionists and Republicans in Congress debated measures ranging from declaring certain federal laws beyond judicial reach to changing the number of justices. The partial measures they enacted saved Reconstruction — for a time. But more relevant for us today are the comprehensive reforms they proposed but never fully enacted. These reforms offer us and our representatives in Congress the tools we need now.

In the era surrounding the Civil War, opponents of slavery confronted a Supreme Court that was threatening their life’s work. In Dred Scott v. Sandford, in 1857, the court declared unconstitutional the Missouri Compromise — a congressional statute banning the spread of slavery in federal territory. A decade later, the court similarly menaced the Reconstruction laws that Congress was enacting to begin the project of multiracial democracy amid the wreckage of the former Confederacy.

But Congress did not submit to this judicial rule. Members of an ascendant Republican Party decried a court “inflated with supremacy” and declared that whenever a decision is, “in the judgment of Congress, subversive of the rights and liberties of the people,” it is the “solemn duty of Congress” to override it. In 1862, Congress and President Abraham Lincoln enacted legislation that banned slavery in places the Dred Scott decision had protected it. Congress also drafted the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, all of which advanced Congress’s goals of freedom and political equality while empowering Congress to enforce its terms by “appropriate legislation.”

When the postwar court appeared likely to challenge legislation Congress considered “appropriate” to enforce these amendments, Congress changed the size of the court. The House of Representatives then passed a bill that prohibited the court from invalidating any federal law without the concurrence of two-thirds of the justices. Representative John Bingham of Ohio, the primary author of the 14th Amendment, insisted that such a requirement was necessary to prevent a second Dred Scottdecision. Some members agreed but pushed for a unanimity rule (concurrence among all the justices) instead.

In the Senate, the author of the 13th Amendment, Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, proposed that Congress declare its Reconstruction Acts “political in their character, the propriety or validity of which no judicial tribunal is competent to question.” As the threat from one pending Supreme Court case became urgent, Congress enacted a narrower but decisive measure stripping the court of appellate jurisdiction over the particular challenge before it.

That strategy worked. Disciplined by Congress, the court declined to interfere with its abolition or Reconstruction Acts. As federal prosecutors and lower courts enforced these statutes, over 750,000 Black Americans voted for the first time. Black men even took seats in Congress, where they helped draft and pass the nation’s first national voting rights laws.

Use the gift link to read the rest if you’re interested.

Why on earth does Trump want U.S. troops out of Germany? Because German Chancellor Friedrich Merz hurt his feelings.

By Nelly Tsenova, Bulgarian artist

NBC News: Trump administration is pulling 5,000 troops from Germany.

The U.S. is withdrawing approximately 5,000 troops from Germany, Pentagon officials said Friday, after President Donald Trump was angered by criticism from the German chancellor over the war with Iran.

The move would include one brigade combat team as well as other forces inside Germany, the officials said. The decision does not appear to affect the U.S. military’s massive medical support bases, like Landstuhl, where thousands of troops, including those who have been injured during the war, have been taken for medical treatment.

The decision was a direct response to comments made by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, but also reflected Trump’s frustration that U.S. allies aren’t doing enough, according to a senior Pentagon official. Trump has been threatening Germany and other NATO allies over their refusal to engage in the U.S. and Israel-led war on Iran. He suggested earlier this week he might pull troops from Germany.

“The Europeans have not stepped up when America needed them,” the official said. “This cannot be a one-way street.”

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell confirmed the withdrawal figure in a statement Friday and said it would be completed over the next six months to a year.

“This decision follows a thorough review of the Department’s force posture in Europe and is in recognition of theater requirements and conditions on the ground,” he said.

I’m pretty sure that last claim is a lie.

Mark Hertling at The Bulwark: The Last Time We Reduced Troops in Europe, a War Broke Out.

ONE OF THE BIGGEST MISTAKES of my career wasn’t something I did. It was something I failed to prevent.

I was commander of U.S. Army Europe in the early 2010s when U.S. forces were being drawn down in the European theater. I argued—forcefully, with member of Congress, the administration and the Department of Defense, and even my military commanders—that we shouldn’t do it.

In the final throes of the discussion, I pleaded to keep just one more tank brigade combat team on the continent. Those tanks, armored vehicles, and supporting forces would have signaled not to our allies but to our foe, Putin, presence and commitment. I believed then, as I do now, that removing that force created an opportunity for Russia to test the NATO alliance and to pursue its longstanding objective of expanding its influence.

I wasn’t persuasive enough. My arguments fell on deaf ears, and the brigade’s soldiers were ordered to return to the United States. Not long after, Russia seized Crimea and invaded Ukraine’s Donbas region. I won’t claim that the decisions of those who were my superiors caused that aggression—but I believe it contributed to it. I remember a warning from the then-president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, who told me plainly that if we pulled that kind of capability out of Europe, Moscow would act.

By Sylvia Anita, 1968

He was right. I still question myself as to how I could have been more persuasive.

On Friday night, when I heard that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced a reduction of 5,000 U.S. troops in Europe based on what he called a “thorough review”—but more likely because of the desire of President Donald Trump’s retribution against German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for his recent comments about the war in Iran—I hear an echo of the argument from more than a decade ago. And I worry we are about to make an even bigger mistake.

I WOULD LIKE TO SEE the Department of Defense’s “thorough review.” Because I was part of a similar one conducted over a decade ago. I helped plan and later execute the last major transformation of U.S. Army forces in Europe—one that took that force from 90,000 troops to about 34,000 between 2004 and 2012.That wasn’t a decision made quickly or casually. It took years of analysis, coordination, and constant negotiation across governments, services, and commands. It required aligning troop movements with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan to avoid tearing apart families and units. It involved extensive consultation with host nations such as Germany and Italy, where political, legal, and economic considerations were as important as military considerations. It required detailed planning for base closures, infrastructure consolidation, and a plan for a strategic long-term presence on the continent. It also took unique action to ensure families of those forces were treated well as we hurried their return to the United States in massive waves of base and housing closures. The planning and the execution were phased deliberately, executed carefully, and constantly reassessed. Those are the kinds of procedures and actions that constitute a real, “thorough review.” I don’t believe for a second that there was anything like that kind of process before the withdrawal announcement made yesterday evening.

This decision does not bear the hallmarks of a plan that resulted from careful thought, deliberation, consultation, and diplomacy. It reflects a misunderstanding of what U.S. forces in Europe are and what they do to contribute to the security of both the United States and our European allies.

Read the rest at the Bulwark link.

The Iran war isn’t over, but Trump is trying to pretend it is. He claims he has already won it. He’s created mess and doesn’t know how to clean it up. He is truly insane and he controls our nuclear arsenal.

The Washington Post: Trump says Iran conflict is ‘terminated’ as he hits congressional deadline.

President Donald Trump claimed in a letter to Congress on Friday that hostilities with Iran have “terminated” as he reached a legal deadline that requires military operations to halt unless lawmakers authorize force.

Trump’s claim came as the United States continues to enforce a naval blockade of Iran and as he declined to rule out additional strikes on the country.

Country Girl and her Kitten, Charles Lansdelle

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires presidents to remove U.S. forces from any conflict that Congress has not authorized within 60 days of the White House notifying Congress of hostilities — a deadline that Trump hit on Friday.

Trump wrote in his letter to lawmakers Friday that the conflict has been effectively over since the United States and Iran agreed last month to a ceasefire.

“There has been no exchange of fire between United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026,” Trump wrote in the letter, obtained by The Washington Post. “The hostilities that began on February 28, 2026, have terminated.”

The president’s argument echoed what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Trump also suggested Friday that he believes the requirement to withdraw U.S. forces within 60 days is unconstitutional.

“Most people consider it totally unconstitutional,” Trump told reporters. “Also, we had a ceasefire, so that gives you additional time.”

Democrats immediately pushed back. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) described Trump’s argument in a post on X as “bullshit.”

“President Trump declaring the war with Iran ‘terminated’ doesn’t reflect the reality that tens of thousands of U.S. service members in the region are still in harm’s way, that the Administration continually threatens to escalate hostilities or that the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and prices are skyrocketing at home,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. “President Trump entered this war without a strategy and without legal authorization and today’s announcement doesn’t change either fact.”

Meanwhile:

CNN Live Updates: Iran says renewed conflict possible after Trump rejects latest peace proposal.

Here’s the latest

  —  Shaky peace: A senior Iranian military official has said renewed conflict with the US is possible after President Donald Trump rejected Iran’s latest peace proposal. On Friday, Trump said the US may be “better off” if no deal is reached, after stating he was unsatisfied with Tehran’s offer….

  —  Sanction threat: The US has warned shipping companies they could face sanctions if they pay tolls to Iran to safely use the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, analysts say the impact of the waterway’s closure on the economy will deepen in the coming weeks.

  —  In Lebanon: Israel’s military warned residents in southern Lebanon to evacuate amid a fragile ceasefire. Several people were killed in Israeli strikes Friday.

  —  A senior Iranian military official has said renewed conflict with the US is “possible” after President Donald Trump rejected the latest peace proposal from Tehran. The nations are currently observing a ceasefire.

On Friday, Trump said the US may be “better off” if no deal is reached.

Meanwhile, official Iranian outlets restated an uncompromising position on navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.

I’m going to end with some recent examples of Trump’s insanity.

Josh Marcus at The Independent: Trump is calling himself ‘the most powerful person to ever live’ in private conversations, allies say.

President Donald Trump, a former reality TV star known for his taste in all-gold everything, has never been one for modesty, but the Republican has in recent days begun speaking about himself as a figure of all-time historical power, according to allies.

“He’s been talking recently about how he is the most powerful person to ever live,” a Trump confidant told The Atlantic. “He wants to be remembered as the one who did things that other people couldn’t do, because of his sheer power and force of will.”

“He is unburdened by political concerns and is able to do what is truly right rather than what is in his best political interests,” an administration official added in an interview with the magazine. “Hence the decision to strike Iran.”

Unlike any U.S. leader in recent history, President Trump has pushed the boundaries of what is legal within the U.S., while making massive unilateral gambles on the world stage: threatening a U.S. takeover of allied Greenland, kidnapping the leader of Venezuela, and launching a war with Iran.

Country Girl and her Kitten, Charles Lansdelle

Unreal. The man is a megalomaniac. He’s also demonstrating that by trying to put his name on everything from the Kennedy Center to airports, National Park passes, passports, and even dollar bills.

Trump has begun holding campaign rallies again. Yesterday he gave an unhinged speech at the Villages in Florida. Dan Diamond at The Washington Post: Trump returns to public events, delivering profane speech.

President Donald Trump said Friday that he was eager to deliver his first public speech since he was hustled from a hotel stage Saturday, after an attempted shooter breached the perimeter of the White House correspondents’ dinner.

And the president picked a familiar stop for his return address: The Villages, a retirement community in Florida and a longtime Republican stronghold.

“They want me to be in a secure place. I said, ‘What’s more secure than The Villages?’” Trump said to applause, as he kicked off a 94-minute event that featured several guests — and was peppered with Trump’s profane jokes and complaints, including about the president’s microphone setup.

“Turn up the mic!” the president said, criticizing the logistics. “I don’t believe in paying people that do a bad job. … I’m screaming my ass off.” [….]

Trump seemed unburdened [by the events at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner]. He mocked Democrats in crass terms, including one unnamed lawmaker that he said was a “sleazebag,” for focusing on affordability ahead of the midterm elections.

“They’ve got one good line of bullshit,” the president said, blaming Democrats for policies that he said had led to inflation. Trump also polled the crowd on which nickname he should use to mock former president Joe Biden, who Trump said had “set a record, most falls in history.”

I don’t know how that went over in The Villages, but most voters are not going to like his attitudes about affordability. He also indicated that he’s bored by information about Medicare and Medicaid.

Trump also gestured toward some of his policies, saying that his administration was defending entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, before acknowledging that he wasn’t particularly focused on the details.

“We have a man here who knows more about Medicaid, Medicare, medical crap than any human being. Where’s Dr. Oz? Where the hell are you, stand up,” Trump said, referring to Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “It’s the most boring trip I’ve ever made. He’s telling me about Medicare, Medicaid. All I want to do is take care of you, I don’t care. I said, ‘You work out the details.’”

He also performed his “greatest hits,” like the transgender weightlifter and “dancing” to “YMCA,” which he says people claim is a gay anthem but he loves it anyway. He also told the audience that it is “treasonous” to claim that he’s not winning the Iran war.

I could go on and on, but this getting way too long. I hope you found something here worth reading. Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Lazy Caturday Reads: Epstein Files, Brown U. Shooter, and Trump Insanity

Posted: December 20, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

By Zakir Akmedov

The DOJ released a small portion of the Epstein files yesterday, with massive redactions. They seem to have tried to focus on Bill Clinton and conceal anything about Donald Trump. Democrats are angry, noting that the DOJ has broken federal law by holding back and selectively redacting the files that they released.

In this post, I will focus mostly on the Epstein files and reactions to the release. I also include stories on the Brown shooter and Trump’s insanity.

Sam Levine at The Guardian: Trickle release of Epstein files on a Friday signals move to bury Trump ties.

The justice department’s partial release of the Epstein files on Friday signaled how the agency is using a variety of tactics to try to bury and obfuscate Donald Trump’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein.

As the department raced towards a legally mandated Friday deadline to release its files, little emerged about what it planned to release. There never really seemed to be a doubt that the department would release the files late on Friday afternoon, deploying the well-worn Washington trick of burying unflattering news before a weekend.

Then, on Friday morning, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, went on Fox News to say that the department wouldn’t actually be releasing all of the files on Friday as required by the law. “I expect that we’re going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks, so today, several hundred thousand, and then over the next couple weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more,” Blanche said on Fox News. “There’s a lot of eyes looking at these and we want to make sure that when we do produce the materials we are producing, that we are protecting every single victim.”

By the time the department eventually did release thousands of pages of materials on Friday evening – not the hundreds of thousands Blanche promised – many of the documents had been heavily or completely redacted. Other than a few pictures, the materials made no mention of Trump, even though attorney general Pam Bondi reportedly told Trump earlier this year his name was in the files.

The release underscores how the Trump administration is trying to balance both the demand to release the files – something encouraged in large part by the Maga base – while also obfuscating with a slow trickle of document dumps to prevent any embarrassment to Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years before they had a falling out. Blanche has said the department will continue to produce documents on a rolling basis in the coming weeks – a holiday period – a bet that Americans will simply tune out the story as it drags on.

Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who sponsored the law to release the files, was one of many members of Congress to express outrage. He said on Twitter that the release “grossly fails to comply” with the statute….

Trump is mostly missing from the release.

While Trump barely made an appearance in Friday’s release, Bill Clinton appears in several images. The Daily Wire, a Trump-friendly site, obtained a photo of Clinton and Epstein on Thursday, a day before the release. Photos of Clinton lounging in a pool and a hot tub were among those released on Friday. Justice department and White House spokespeople were quick to highlight the images on Twitter.

By Magdalena Lobao-Tello

“Beloved Democrat president. The black box is added to protect a victim,” Gates McGavick, a justice department spokesperson, posted alongside a photo of Clinton in what seems to be a hot tub with another person whose face is redacted. Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, posted another photo of Clinton with someone whose face is redacted and, quoting the song Jumpman by Drake and Future, wrote “them boys is up to something”.

Angel Ureña, a Clinton spokesperson, released a statement on Friday saying the Trump administration was using the former president to try to distract from Trump’s connection to Epstein.

“The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever,” he said. “So they can release as many 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be.”

Several other celebrities appeared in the images released on Friday, including Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, Richard Branson, Chris Tucker, David Copperfield and Kevin Spacey. Like Clinton, none has been accused of any crime in connection to Epstein. But their immediate appearance in the files benefits Trump, creating the impression that it was not unusual for famous men to hang out with Epstein.

Liz Crampton and Andrew Howard Politico: Epstein files put Bill Clinton under scrutiny – and the White House wants him there.

The Trump administration, initially wary over the Justice Department’s release of Jeffrey Epstein documents, pounced on go-to villain Bill Clinton’s appearance in Friday’s trove of pictures, emails and interviews.

“I wonder why the Biden DOJ refused to release the files…,” DOJ spokesperson Chad Gilmartin posted from his personal X account, alongside one partially-redacted photo of Clinton in a pool with an unidentified woman. Another swimming pool photo Gilmartin posted shows Clinton with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime co-conspirator who was convicted of sex trafficking charges in 2021….

Clinton has long been linked with Epstein, contributing to his status as MAGA’s favored boogeyman. Some high-profile members of the movement cited him in pushing for the release of the files, and continued that message after the DOJ made public a trove of documents from the government’s investigation into Epstein.

“Slick Willy! @BillClinton just chillin, without a care in the world. Little did he know…” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung posted to X.

“Here is Bill Clinton in a hot tub next to someone whose identity has been redacted. Per the Epstein Files Transparency Act, DOJ was specifically instructed only to redact the faces of victims and/or minors. Time for the media to start asking real questions,” White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson posted to her personal X account….

Clinton appears in photos posing with Epstein in coordinating shirts, interacting with a dancer, sitting with a redacted woman on his lap on what looks like an airplane and with someone who appears to be the late pop icon Michael Jackson. The music legend faced his own child sex abuse allegations as early as 1993, though he was never convicted of any crimes.

Edward Helmore at The Guardian: Bill Clinton says White House is using him as scapegoat after Epstein files release.

A spokesperson for Bill Clinton accused the White House late on Friday of using him as a scapegoat after pictures of the former president with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as with a young woman in a pool, were included as part of congressionally ordered release of government files.

“The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton,” the spokesperson said in a statement on X.

“This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be,” the statement added.

Lady sitting with Siamese, Sharyn Bursic

It continued: “Even Susie Wiles said Donald Trump was wrong about Bill Clinton,” it said, referring to comments made by White House chief of staff to Vanity Fair in which Wiles acknowledged that Clinton had not been on Epstein’s Caribbean island despite repeated claims by Trump to the contrary.

Clinton has long maintained that he cut ties with Epstein around 2005, before the disgraced financier plead guilty to solicitation of a minor in Florida.

In the statement, Clinton’s spokesperson Angel Ureña said: “There are two types of people here. The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light. The second group continued relationships with him after. We’re in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that. Everyone, especially MAGA, expects answers, not scapegoats.” [….]

Epstein visited the White House at least 17 times during the early years of Clinton’s presidency, according to White House visitor records cited in news reports. He later travelled with Epstein on the financier’s private jet in the years after he left office in 2001, including to Asia and Africa, on trips related the Clinton Global Initiative. Clinton has never been formally accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.

Democrats were outraged. Zachary Schermele at USA Today: ‘Grossly fails.’ Lawmakers behind Epstein files’ release slam DOJ.

The Epstein files are out, and the lawmakers who forced their release are not satisfied.

High-profile Democrats are among the most enraged at the Justice Department’s decision to release hundreds of thousands of documents on a “rolling basis”about the late accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein .

“A fraction of the whole body of evidence,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York. To demonstrate his point, he highlighted how 119 pages of one document were entirely redacted.

“Simply releasing a mountain of blacked out pages violates the spirit of transparency and the letter of the law,” Schumer said in a statement. “We need answers as to why.”

Schumer wasn’t alone in his criticism. Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, the ranking member of House Oversight Committee, said on CNN that the Justice Department was “defying the Congress.”

The bipartisan authors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act – Reps. Ro Khanna, D-California, and Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky – also accused the Trump administration of failing to comply with their law, which nearly unanimously passed Congress in November.

“It is an incomplete release with too many redactions,” Khanna said in a social media post.

“Unfortunately, today’s document release … grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law,” Massie added.

The law required the Justice Department by Dec. 19 to fully disclose all information in its possession related to its investigations of the well-connected financier who died by suicide in a jail cell in 2019. DOJ under the law is also required to make the files publicly searchable, but basic searches of what DOJ called the “Epstein Library” show that even basic queries – such as for “Trump” or “Clinton” – come up blank.

Read more at USA Today.

One more from Julie K. Brown, who researched and wrote the series on Epstein at the Miami Herald that forced new investigations into the sweetheart deal that Epstein got from the DOJ in September 2007.

From her Substack: The Epstein Files: My observations. Nothing to See Here.

Pages and pages of blacked-out documents. Photographs of Epstein’s mop closet and HVAC systems in house. Message pads, notes and other material from the Florida case that has been on the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s website since at least 2018. They didn’t even release the victim interviews; just pictures of the tapes of the interviews. Think about that. A photograph of a tape cassette.

This would be funny if it wasn’t about a crime involving the rapes of 14-year-old girls.

It’s clear that the Department of Justice is not only thumbing its nose at the public’s demand for transparency and accountability, it is not taking the crimes committed against children seriously. It’s as if they think we are so hungry for any crumbs about Epstein that stale bread will do.

What’s worse is that the documents and photos they did release were tossed up like a salad and served in such a mixed-up way that few people will even understand the significance of the material that was released on Friday.

Miss Kitty, a lazy afternoon, by Jan Panico

Imagine being a survivor who was raped by Epstein, and having to click, one photo at a time, through hundreds of photographs, just searching for something, anything, to explain how Jeffrey Epstein did what he did, hoping for some shred of hope that the FBI actually investigated your complaint — the story you painfully found the courage to tell.

There were few stories in the thousands of pages released Friday. Even victim Maria Farmer, who found some validation in the fact that her 1996 FBI report about Epstein’ was tucked into the mess, would learn that the FBI did nothing about it. Had they taken some steps, they may have prevented the sexual assaults of countless other girls and young women.

And what about Epstein’s clients? Pam Bondi, the attorney general, said there was no list. But Rep. Tom Massie has said he knows of 20 men who have been implicated in Epstein’s crimes. And what about Ghislaine Maxwell? Well, she filed a habeas corpus petition a few days ago that claims that 25 men arranged civil settlements with Epstein victims who could have “equally been considered as co-conspirators.” She adds: “None of them have been prosecuted.” [….]

Here is a link to the Epstein Files on the Palm Beach State Attorney’s website. You will learn more about the case here than what was released by the DOJ Friday: https://sa15.org/public-records/

Claudio Manuel Neves Valente

The Boston Globe: Brown campus shooter harbored resentment from time as a PhD student in the early 2000s, friend says.

Growing up in Portugal, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente stood out for his intellectual potential. In high school, he traveled to national and international physics competitions. He later graduated from Portugal’s top university for science and engineering.

But when he moved to the United States in 2000 to pursue a doctorate in physics at Brown University, his colleagues experienced an ill-tempered young man who felt that even an American Ivy League college was no match for his own intellect. Neves Valente complained the classes were too easy and left the school months after enrolling, apparently with hard feelings.

“He could be kind and gentle, though he often became frustrated — sometimes angry — about courses, professors, and living conditions,” said Scott Watson, a Syracuse University physics professor who befriended Neves Valente at Brown.

After authorities linked him to the mass shooting on Brown’s campus and the killing of an MIT professor earlier this week, Neves Valente, 48, was found dead by suicide Thursday night. In the immediate aftermath, a fuller picture of the suspect emerged: of a brilliant student whose academic promise seemed to dissipate abruptly, an angry genius with long-simmering resentment, a loner who painstakingly planned and executed extraordinary violence.

His death ended a frantic manhunt that began following the Brown shooting Saturday afternoon, according to police. He entered a storage unit in southern New Hampshire about an hour after shooting the MIT professor Monday night, officials said; based on an autopsy, authorities believe he died on Tuesday from a self-inflicted gunshot wound….

Investigators are still trying to determine what motivated his homicidal rampage after he seemingly abandoned the ambitions of his youth, what pushed him to finally act upon old grudges.

She and her cats, by Madison Moore

What’s clear is that he took careful steps to hide his identity and evade detection both before and after the shootings. Authorities believe he acted alone. They said he had been canvassing Brown’s campus for weeks, targeting a building where he spent significant time as a student in the early 2000s….

Both natives of Portugal, Neves Valente and Loureiro attended university together in Lisbon, authorities said. They graduated from Instituto Superior Técnico, a premier science institution that’s part of the University of Lisbon. Loureiro went on to pursue a lauded career as a professor and fusion researcher, with stops at Princeton University and in Europe; he joined MIT in 2016. Colleagues from across the world overwhelmingly praised his accomplishments and character, but none reported knowing Neves Valente.

More from Scott Watson, Valente’s friend:

Watson, his former classmate, said the two became friends despite Neves Valente’s standoffish nature.

“During orientation he was sitting alone, and I walked up and said hello. He was terse at first, but we eventually broke the ice and became close,” Watson told the Globe in an e-mail Friday, describing himself as essentially Neves Valente’s only friend at the university.

Neves Valente was a brilliant student, but he could be frustrated by the curriculum at Brown, which he found underwhelming, Watson said.

“He was by far the best graduate student in our class. Through our conversations, he was already ready to graduate when he arrived,” Watson said. “I don’t like the word genius, but he was.”

The Boston Globe: How a single anonymous tipster cracked the Brown University shooting case.

Information from a tipster who had a strange encounter with another man on a sidewalk outside Brown University was key to police identifying the suspect they believe killed two students at the school and then two days later gunned down a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.

Known only as “John” in a Providence police affidavit, the source is being hailed by investigators as the key figure who gave law enforcement the details needed to determine who was behind the Brown shooting, as well as the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who was shot in his Brookline home Monday.

Ever since a shooter unloaded more than 40 rounds inside a Brown engineering building, anxiety and frustration has plagued the Providence, Rhode Island, community as police appeared no closer to identifying the person.

Yet on the sixth day of the investigation, the case gathered steam, ending with police announcing late Thursday they had found the suspected gunman dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound….

“John” gave them the information they needed.

According to police, John had several encounters with 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente before Saturday’s attack. As police posted images of a person of interest — now identified as Neves Valente — John began posting on the social media forum Reddit that he recognized the person and theorized that police should look into “possibly a rental” grey Nissan. Reddit users urged him to tell the FBI, and John said he did. The police affidavit said they learned about the tip on Dec. 16, three days after the shooting and a day after the tip line was created….

Up until that point, the police affidavit says officials had not connected a vehicle to the possible shooter.

That detail led them to get more video of a Nissan Sentra sedan with Florida plates and enabled Providence police officers to tap into a network of more than 70 street cameras operated around the city by surveillance company Flock Safety.

Bedtime Story, by Jeanette Lassen

The affidavit says John gave investigators additional critical details: he encountered Neves Valente in the bathroom of the engineering building just hours before the attack, where John noted the suspect’s clothing was “inappropriate and inadequate for the weather.”

John also bumped into Neves Valente outside, mere blocks from the building, where John watched Neves Valente “suddenly” turn around from the Nissan when he saw John. What ensued was then a “game of cat and mouse,” according to John’s testimony — where the two would encounter each other and Neves Valente would run away.

At one point, John says he yelled out “Your car is back there, why are you circling the block?”

“The Suspect responded, ‘I don’t know you from nobody,’ then Suspect repeatedly asked, ’Why are you harassing me?’” according to the affidavit.

John told police he eventually saw Neves Valente approach the Nissan sedan once more and decided to walk away.

I’ve quote a lot, because The Boston Globe doesn’t allow gift links or readers without subscriptions.

Trump Insanity Report

Jack Revell at The Daily Beast: https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-79-complains-the-fbi-made-a-mess-of-melanias-panties.

President Donald Trump raged at the FBI for making a “mess” of his wife Melania’s “panties” during a raid on their Mar-a-Lago estate.

In a rambling speech delivered at a rally in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, on Friday night, Trump went off on a wild tangent about federal law enforcement agents, revealing how they had disturbed the First Lady’s underwear drawer during their 2022 search of the Palm Beach, Florida, property.

Her Quiet Companion, by David Arstamyan

“They went into my wife’s closet. I’ll say this. Number one, it’s very bad, but it sounds a little strange. They looked at her drawers,” Trump told the crowd while both himself and the crowd laughed.

“You have drawers, and then you have drawers. They looked at both,” he continued, miming the difference between the storage item and the undergarment.

The unprompted revelation of intimate details did not stop there, however, with Trump going full disclosure on the way his third wife likes to store her underwear.

“She’s a very meticulous person… Everything is perfect. Her undergarments, sometimes referred to as panties, are folded perfect, wrapped, they’re like so perfect. I say, ‘That’s beautiful,’” Trump continued.

“You know, that’s the part of the world she came from. Everything was perfect, no problem. Fold, fold, fold. I think she steams them just to make sure.”

No doubt Melania was thrilled with these revelations, which are likely just Trump fantasies.That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?