Could the Ghost of Jeffrey Epstein Save Us From MAGA?

THIS WEEK'S BIG HEADLINES

#1 Jeffrey Epstein

Six years after his apparent death by suicide, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s friendship with President Trump has come back to haunt the president. So, too, has Trump’s campaign promise to expose a supposed cabal of elite Democrats who allegedly conspired with Epstein to abuse children. The ensuing scandal may be the first time Trump and his sycophants in the White House have been overwhelmed. But, never underestimate Trump’s ability to nonsensically redirect attention, or MAGA’s willingness to fall for it.

Background: One week after the DOJ announced there was no Epstein “client list” — despite Trump campaigning on the promise that there was—backlash erupted over the administration's decision to close the book on Epstein. And it wasn’t just from Democrats. The week began with:

• Steve Bannon calling on Trump to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate. (The White House says it won't).
• MAGA supporters turning on Trump on social media.
• House Speaker Mike Johnson calling on Trump to “put everything out there and let the people decide.”
• Trump lashing out at his own base—calling them weaklings and claiming he didn’t want their support anymore.
• Elon Musk—after appearing to reconcile with Trump and deleting prior tweets accusing him of being in the Epstein files—once again accused Trump of a cover-up.

By Wednesday, Trump was in panic mode—focused on damage control and laying the groundwork to discredit anything that might make him look bad. He clearly knew something was about to be exposed. More on that below.

• Trump accused Democrats of doctoring the Epstein files. “I can imagine what they put into files, just like they did with the others,” Trump said. “I mean, the Steele dossier was a total fake, right? It took two years to figure that out for the people, and all of the things that you mentioned were fake.” (ABC News)
• The DOJ abruptly fired Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey—who worked on the Epstein case and is the daughter of former FBI Director Jim Comey—without explanation. (NBC News)

By Thursday, the situation had taken a new turn:

• The Wall Street Journal (gift link) reported that Trump wrote Epstein a “bawdy” letter for his 50th birthday in 2003. The letter was included in a collection compiled by Epstein’s partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, and bound into a book as a gift.

• Trump’s letter “contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.” Trump threatened to sue the WSJ.
• Conveniently, also on Thursday, the White House announced that Trump had been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency after noticing swelling in his legs. Distract much? (Axios)

The WSJ reached out to Trump two days before the article was printed for comment—so he knew it was coming. Trump claimed he had nothing to do with it. “This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story,” he said. Adding, “'I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,' he said. 'It’s not my language. It’s not my words.'"

By Friday, Trump seemed to regain (some) control—using the parental equivalent of telling a toddler upset about spilled milk, “Oh, look! A birdy!”

• Trump pivoted to his reliable “fake news” defense—accusing the WSJ of fabricating the story to make him look bad. MAGA, for now, took the bait.
• He followed through on his threat and filed a lawsuit against the WSJ, its parent company, publisher, and Rupert Murdoch for libel.
• Trump has a long history of filing frivolous lawsuits to pressure media companies into submission. In the past year alone, he’s reached settlements with ABC ($15 million) and CBS ($16 million)—over editorial decisions. Some outlets likely settled to make the problem disappear or, as in Paramount’s case, to curry favor with the president ahead of their potential merger with SkyDance.

• Hoping MAGA would latch onto something else, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced she had asked the courts to unseal grand jury testimony in the Epstein case. But as the AP notes, such records are almost never released. Grand jury testimony is sealed for a reason—to protect the identities of reluctant witnesses, particularly those testifying against their abusers. Releasing it could have a chilling effect on future victims coming forward.
• The request also conveniently buys time. As the AP notes: “The Justice Department’s decision to seek grand jury transcripts gives the administration a reason to point to the courts to explain why more material hasn’t yet been released. But the uproar over the Epstein files was never about the grand jury transcripts—it was about the thousands of other pages in the government’s possession that the administration now says it won’t release.”

How the week ended:

#2 Up in Smoke

The Trump administration is set to burn over a million pounds of expired high-nutrition biscuits—originally paid for by U.S. taxpayers to feed 1.5 million malnourished children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to an investigation by The Atlantic (gift link). The biscuits expired after the State Department ignored requests from aid organizations to distribute them.

• Taxpayers spent $800,000 to purchase the biscuits and will spend another $130,000 to incinerate them.
• These weren’t just crackers. They were specialized, ready-to-eat nutritional supplements designed for emergency food aid and severely malnourished children.
• Thousands of tons of similar aid are sitting in warehouses across the globe—enough to feed 3.5 million people for a month.
• Millions are suffering catastrophic hunger in places like Gaza, Sudan, Haiti, and Mali.
• Nearly 6 million children under 5 die every year—almost half from malnutrition.
• Before this administration gutted USAID, it was saving six lives every minute—that’s 3.1 million people per year.

The official responsible? Jeremy Lewin, a 28-year-old lawyer with no relevant experience. In addition to working for DOGE, he has a disturbing personal record, including allegations of racism and misogyny and a police report accusing him of threatening a minor with a knife.

While ignoring urgent requests to release the aid, Lewin fast-tracked $30 million in taxpayer funds to the misleadingly named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)—a U.S.-Israeli-backed organization tasked with distributing aid in Gaza but operating more like The Hunger Games. More than 800 people have died at the hands of the GHF, the Israeli military, or due to conditions created by the organization’s and the State Department’s negligence. (More on GHF below.)

When asked about the aid stockpiled around the world, Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed the distribution problem wasn’t on the U.S. and implied he would ensure the food wouldn’t go to waste.

FROM THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH

RUSSIA

• On Monday, Trump threatened Russia with “severe [secondary] tariffs” if President Vladimir Putin doesn’t end the war in Ukraine within 50 days. (Newsweek)

• In a deal proposed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the EU will donate weapons to Ukraine, and the U.S. will sell replacements to the EU. (USA Today)
  • So how did Zelenskyy get Trump to reverse course on Ukraine aid without making him look like TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out)?
  • According to the Washington Post, it took months of behind-the-scenes work by European leaders, Republicans in Congress, and other allies of Ukraine. They coached Zelenskyy on how to appeal to Trump using the only language he seems to respond to: transaction and flattery. (Washington Post)

Immigration

• The U.S., Venezuela, and El Salvador have successfully executed a prisoner exchange:
  • Venezuela released ten Americans who, according to the State Department, were “wrongfully detained” and identified as such over the past year.
  • El Salvador announced it had released “all the Venezuelan nationals” imprisoned at the notorious CECOT prison—individuals the Trump administration had accused of belonging to the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua.
  • While no official list of those released has been made public, AP reports that among them was a makeup artist imprisoned simply because U.S. authorities misinterpreted his tattoos as gang-related (they weren’t).

• The government will now continue deporting people to countries they are not from, after the Supreme Court lifted a ban on the practice. Deportees may be given as little as six hours’ notice — and may be sent to countries with no assurances they won’t be harmed or abused. (Washington Post)
  • Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a scathing dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, warned that the Supreme Court’s decision could endanger lives: “In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution. In this case, the Government took the opposite approach.”
• A new ICE policy denies detained immigrants the right to bond hearings — effectively preventing them from being released. Immigration experts warn that this undermines due process for everyone — including U.S. citizens mistakenly detained. (Washington Post)
  • Among them: Army veteran George Retes, who was dragged from his car, pepper-sprayed, and held for three days — despite telling agents he was a U.S. citizen. Another man died from injuries sustained during the same raid. (The Military Times)
• A federal immigration judge has ruled that ICE attorneys will no longer be identified by name in court. Immigration courts fall under the executive branch, and judges can be fired by the president. (The Intercept)
• An investigation by 404 Media revealed that the government deported dozens more immigrants than it publicly acknowledged — and now no one knows where they are or what happened to them. (404 Media)
• The DOJ has requested voter records from at least nine states, raising concerns about how the information will be used. In addition to complete lists of registered voters, the department is asking how states flag ineligible voters. Trump has repeatedly claimed widespread fraud by non-citizen voters — but in reality, such fraud is extremely rare. And anyone concerned about their immigration status is highly unlikely to risk voting. (Stateline)
• Conditions inside Florida’s new $450 million detention center — built in the middle of the Everglades and dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz"— are reportedly horrific. Detainees describe unsanitary conditions, medical neglect, maggots, inadequate food and water, and lights left on 24/7. (Newsweek)
  • That reportedly included a 15-year-old boy who was arrested and held in the facility for three days. Gov. DeSantis claimed the teen lied about his age. He is now in a migrant shelter. (Miami Herald)
• The IRS has agreed to share sensitive personal and medical information for 79 million Medicaid enrollees with ICE as part of its immigration enforcement. (Pro Publica)

More from the Executive

• Thanks to Trump and his administration, crypto is booming — with Bitcoin hitting an all-time high this week, doubling in value since last year. They’re cashing in, too: nearly 70 Trump officials — including the president himself — hold a combined $193 million in crypto assets.In contrast, no one in the Biden Administration held crypto. (Washington Post)

• Trump wants Texas to redraw its district lines — which are already skewed to dilute minority voting power — so Republicans can pick up more seats in next year’s midterm elections. (The Guardian)
• The OMB is accusing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell of overspending on renovations to the agency’s headquarters. But those upgrades were actually pushed by the Trump administration back in 2020. (AP)
• In a recent interview, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed doctors have “perverse incentives” to recommend vaccines, including profiting from them. But public health experts say that sends a dangerous message — and that most pediatricians either break even or lose money administering vaccines. (New York Times)

• The State Department has fired 1,300 employees — not for performance issues, but for perceived disloyalty, according to sources who spoke to The Washington Post. The purge was orchestrated by Jeremy Lewin (yes, the same Lewin from the biscuits scandal), who was promoted the same day to the department’s third-highest role.Some employees were even “unfired” after mistakenly receiving termination emails. Among those fired:
  • Employees who had previously been told they were exempt from layoffs. (Federal News Network)
  • The entire staff of the Office of Casualty Assistance — which supports families of State Department employees who die while serving abroad. (New York Times)
  • A security specialist who had just shipped his belongings to Pakistan for a new assignment.

• The DOJ is recommending just a one-day prison sentence for former police officer Brett Hankison, convicted of using excessive force for blindly firing 10 shots into Breonna Taylor’s apartment during a 2020 raid. Hankison faces life in prison — but the DOJ argues he shouldn’t serve that time because he didn’t fire the fatal bullet. Hankison’s sentencing is scheduled for next week. (Louisville Courier Journal)
• The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration can move forward with plans to fire 1,400 employees, overturning a lower court decision that had paused the layoffs and ordered the reinstatement of those workers.

CONGRESS

This week, Republicans:

• cut $1 billion in previously approved funding for NPR and PBS, and another $8 billion from foreign aid programs in a 216–213 vote. All Democrats and two Republicans voted against the measure.
  • It has already passed the Senate and now heads to Trump’s desk.
  • House Speaker Mike Johnson — who supported Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy, which will add nearly $4 trillion to the deficit — claimed the cuts were necessary to “get fiscal sanity” back. (The Hill)
• blocked additional testimony or debate on Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, Emil Bove, who has been nominated to a federal district court — prompting Senate Democrats to walk out of the hearing in protest during the vote.
  • Bove served as a senior DOJ official and played a key role in deporting immigrants to El Salvador — including Kilmar Abrego Garcia — in defiance of a federal court order grounding all outgoing flights and requiring planes already in the air to return.
  • Democrats wanted the committee to hear from whistleblower and former DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni, who claims Bove said “f* you”** while pushing for deportations — fully aware they might violate court orders. Bove also allegedly fired DOJ officials working on cases related to the January 6 insurrection. (New York Times)
  • Hundreds of judges and lawyers have signed letters opposing Bove’s nomination. (MSNBC)

GAZA

• A BBC investigation reveals that Israel has been leveling vast swaths of land in Gaza. Satellite images show “entire blocks torn to the ground” in recent weeks — including areas where fighting is no longer active. The destruction is especially extensive in Rafah, where Israel has proposed building concentration camps for Palestinians, which it refers to as a “humanitarian city.” (BBC)

• The BBC also “identified dozens of adverts posted to Israeli Facebook groups offering work in Gaza to demolition contractors. The majority of the posts have been shared by recruiters since May.”

• On Thursday, an Israeli airstrike hit Gaza’s only Catholic church, killing three people and injuring several others — including a priest whom the late Pope Francis had called nightly to offer prayers and support.
  • Pope Leo XIV renewed his calls for a ceasefire, and the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem condemned Israel’s “targeting of innocent civilians and of a sacred place.”
  • Israel claimed the strike was a mistake. The military has frequently hit religious sites. In October 2023, Israel bombed a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza, killing 18 people. (Al Jazeera | The Guardian)
• Earlier in the week, another Israeli airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp killed 10 people, mostly children who had been collecting water. Israel also claimed this was a mistake. (Al Jazeera)
• On Saturday, the Israeli military shot and killed at least 32 people attempting to reach GHF aid stations. (AP)
• At least 20 more died in a stampede that began after witnesses said GHF personnel fired tear gas into the crowd. (Al Jazeera)
• Meanwhile, leaders from 30 countries met in Colombia this week to discuss imposing sanctions on Israel. At least 12 countries committed to taking action, including:
  • Suspending military exports to Israel
  • Blocking Israeli weapons from transiting through their ports and airspace
  • Reviewing public contracts to prevent state institutions and pension funds from supporting Israeli companies or the occupation
  • Supporting universal jurisdiction cases and ICC warrants for alleged war crimes

More countries are expected to join in the coming weeks. (Middle East Eye)

• In a rare move, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee says he has asked Israel to “aggressively investigate” the murder of an American citizen whose family says he was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.
  • Israel has enjoyed decades of impunity for crimes against American citizens. At least five Americans have been killed since October 2023. (Mike Huckabee, X)
  • Huckabee — a former Baptist minister — also visited a Christian Palestinian town in the West Bank, where attacks by Israeli settlers have intensified in recent weeks.
  • He specifically condemned the burning of a church by Israeli settlers, calling it an “act of terror.” (Huckabee statement | X)

FYI

GOOD NEWS

• The Pentagon has pulled back the 2,000 National Guard troops it had deployed to Los Angeles to support immigration raids. (KPLC-TV)
• After cooperating with ICE to deport immigrants, low-cost airline Avelo says it’s shutting down West Coast operations — but claims the move has nothing to do with widespread protests and boycotts. (Washington Post)
• The Energy Department has delayed new rules that would have stripped funding from schools for noncompliance, after receiving “significant adverse comments” from the public. (K-12 Dive)
  • "The rules would have undone key student protections related to sex discrimination under Title IX, disability discrimination under Section 504, and racial discrimination under Title VI."
  • And yes, this is the Energy Department — not Education — as part of a multi-agency strategy to impose the administration’s agenda. (Higher Ed Dive)
• There was bipartisan pushback in Congress to Trump’s proposal to gut NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and the president didn’t get what he wanted. (Roll Call | Space Policy Online)
• Overall, cancer death rates are down since the 1990s.The five-year survival rate for children with leukemia has risen from 60% to 90%.(Semafor)