<....But what does this public shaming, this outrage, this witch hunt, actually achieve? Who are we doing it for?

I suppose Andy Byron’s wife now knows she’s being cheated on, although I don’t think we can pretend this entire spectacle is for her benefit. Her name, too, is being published. Her photos trawled through, her life unpacked. We might think we’re restoring the moral order by deriding him, expressing a tacit solidarity with her, but I’d imagine she a) wishes this isn’t the way she discovered her partner’s infidelity (if that’s even what happened), and b) is far more concerned with the very real threats to her family’s privacy than a stranger’s virtual (rather patronising) pat on the back.

Are we doing it for women, broadly? Is this justice/vengeance/symbolic power for every wife and mother who cared for their family at home while their husband cheated on them in public?

Is this about wealth? Privilege? The level of unrestrained confidence it must take to assume that you can do s**tty, unethical things and never have to face the consequences?

I think it’s about all of those things. Andy Byron is a Rorschach test, and we’re all projecting onto him the qualities of an ‘Andy Byron’ we’ve encountered in our own lives. The philanderer, the absent dad, the immoral boss. We’re also projecting onto him the full extent of the social ills he represents. He is the deep gender inequality that allows a father-of-two to cheat with a woman at work. He is the unjust system of capitalism that means some people get to be multi-millionaires while others are homeless. He <is> arrogance. He <is> privilege. He <is> misogyny.

But therein lies the problem.

Because as convenient as that reality would be, Andy Byron is none of those things.

Andy Byron is just a person. Flesh and blood. Like you or me.

He might be really, really generous. Laugh-out-loud funny. Perhaps he cared for his sick mother, or mentored a group of disadvantaged youth. Maybe he struggles with his mental health. He clearly quite likes Coldplay. I also like Coldplay. Most of us like Coldplay.

If this were a novel, Andy Byron would be a character who never wanted to be the CEO of some confusing company. He’d be a guy who always dreamed of being a musician. Someone whose life doesn’t look the way he wishes it did. In the story, that misery would keep him awake at night, because he’s grown, now, and he’s made his decisions, and he’s not sure he has the time left to throw it all away and start again. At 2am, the weight of it all would hit this version of Andy Byron. He would lie awake for hours, contemplating the fact that he feels like a @#$%* terrible person, a liar, a fraud. Over hundreds of pages, though, a reader would discover the qualities that redeem him. The parts of this man that connect him to us all.

Novels, of course, compel us towards empathy in a way 30-second clips on Instagram do not.

Maybe Andy Byron is none of these things. Maybe he’s one of those few people you come across in life who are, simply, awful. But maybe he isn’t. We don’t actually know.

Because there is so much the internet cannot tell you about a person. It flattens us and dehumanises us, and it demands we see each other as effigies - crude ideological symbols deserving of being burnt in protest.

The challenge of being human is that we are all more complicated than that. Including, as inconvenient as it is, cheating dirtbags like Andy Byron.>

“In particular, the reviewers applied two FOIA exemptions to justify their redactions. The first, Exemption 6, protects individuals against ‘a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.’ The Supreme Court has said the exemption protects ‘individuals from the injury and embarrassment’ that would result from the disclosure of personal information in possession of the government. … The second, Exemption 7(C), protects personal information contained in law enforcement records, the disclosure of which ‘could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.’”....>

<....You and me and everyone we know are entitled to privacy protections, because without them, we are more or less powerless. The president is not powerless, nor is entitled to such protections. He is the president.

The public has a right to know whether Trump was part of Epstein’s pedophile ring; whether he covered up his involvement; and whether he has induced government agents to pervert privacy laws in the furtherance of an ongoing conspiracy to hide his sexual crimes.

Trump could waive his rights to privacy and order the release of the Epstein files, with his name appearing through them “multiple times.” He could let the chips fall where they may, but he’s never done that. There’s too much at stake and, evidently, there’s too much to hide.

“Smacks of a coverup”

In addition to the government scrubbing Trump’s name from the Epstein files, it moved Epstein’s accomplice from a maximum-security prison to a cushy one in Texas. Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred after being interviewed by the second in command at the Department of Justice. Journalist Michael Wolff has said that was an effort to ascertain whether she has more incriminating evidence on Trump.

The family of Maxwell’s best-known victim, Virginia Giuffre, said the news is an offense to her memory (she killed herself in April) and “smacks of a coverup.” In a statement, the family said: “Without any notification to the Maxwell victims, the government overnight has moved Maxwell to a minimum-security luxury prison in Texas. This is the justice system failing victims right before our eyes.

“The American public should be enraged by the preferential treatment being given to a pedophile and a criminally charged child sex offender. The Trump administration should not credit a word Maxwell says, as the government itself sought charges against Maxwell for being a serial liar. This move smacks of a cover up. The victims deserve better.”

Indeed, the deep state is real and it works for Donald Trump.>

<President Donald Trump had a Saturday night meltdown as Democratic leader in the Senate Chuck Schumer threatened to bring negotiations to approve nominees for multiple administration positions to a screeching halt.

As the Senate Republicans rush to push through Trump’s choices before heading out for a month-long summer vacation, Schumer is throwing out multiple conditions for Democratic support.

They include unfreezing federal funds for programs such as foreign aid and the National Institutes of Health that were shut down in the administration's purge on spending.

The demands were reportedly rejected by Trump, bring the negotiations to a standstill.

In a rage and insult-filled Truth Social post, Trump demanded that Republicans in the Senate not back down.

“Senator Cryin’ Chuck Schumer is demanding over One Billion Dollars in order to approve a small number of our highly qualified nominees, who should right now be helping to run our Country,” he wrote.

“This demand is egregious and unprecedented, and would be embarrassing to the Republican Party if it were accepted. It is political extortion, by any other name. Tell Schumer, who is under tremendous political pressure from within his own party, the Radical Left Lunatics, to GO TO HELL!

“Do not accept the offer, go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are, and what a great job the Republicans are doing, and have done, for our Country. Have a great RECESS and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”>

Of all people, <taco> should grasp the concept of 'extortion', given his love of strongarm.

<Nearly 70% of Americans now believe that the Trump administration is concealing information about the notorious sex trafficker and child rapist, Jeffrey Epstein. But still, among my progressive circles, a fair proportion of people are still dismissing this possibility—and, with it, the idea that Trump actually abused teen girls at Epstein’s “parties”—as a baseless conspiracy theory. To be sure, much of MAGA’s conviction that Trump is hiding something personal have dubious origins in the wild and pernicious lies perpetuated in QAnon, the cult that spread the belief that a cabal of elite child cannibals and molesters have been trafficking toddlers. But you can, of course, believe the right thing for the wrong reasons. And, given the solid evidence to hand about Trump’s misconduct—some of it new, much of it old—the real conspiracy theory at this point has a radically different basis. Nobody in the mainstream media has yet named it, and it desperately needs acknowledgement.

The real conspiracy theory around Trump and Epstein is that multiple apparently unconnected women lied, and continue to lie, about Trump’s behavior. This with nothing to gain, and much to lose, by speaking out about his misdeeds.

Let’s start with Katie Johnson, the pseudonym adopted by the woman who I wrote about here last time. Her story, if we take her word for it, goes like this: for decades, she was silent, after Trump allegedly raped her at the age of thirteen, at the home of Jeffrey Epstein, in 1994. She also alleges that Trump sexually abused her there on three prior occasions. Katie never planned to speak about this publicly until 2016, when Trump was running for president. Katie met a TV producer at a party who offered to tell her story: Norm Lubow, who adopted the pseudonym Al Taylor. He shopped around her video testimony to multiple media outlets, who found—upon vetting him—that he had once been a producer on the Jerry Springer show and that he had an anti-Trump agenda, among other red flags. The story fizzled out and Katie was assumed to be a liar who Lubow had coached or scripted. At the same time, her lawsuit in California was filed incompetently, and her lawsuit in New York (filed by a respectable attorney, who met and video conferenced with Katie) was dropped, after she received threats, including death threats. For the same reason, she cancelled her planned press conference in LA a few days before the presidential election, where she had planned to warn America about the kind of man they were on the verge of electing.

Again, that’s all if we take Katie’s word for it. Another possibility, of course, is that Lubow did coach or script Katie’s lengthy video testimony. A few points, however: that testimony is compelling, at least in my view. It was widely dismissed when it surfaced in 2016 partly because what Katie was saying was judged just too incredible when it came to Epstein’s sex trafficking of teen girls. Remember, the full story about his crimes didn’t emerge until late in 2018, thanks to Julie K. Brown’s trenchant and prize-winning reporting in The Miami Herald. We now know that what Katie said about Epstein was not only plausible but completely true. Moreover, Katie wouldn’t be the first woman to mistakenly rely on an unscrupulous huckster in order to tell her story: the same is true, notoriously, of the former sex worker Stormy Daniels. People initially dismissed Daniels’s account because she was represented by the huckster lawyer, Michael Avenatti. But Daniels was clearly telling the truth about Trump’s hiring her in 2006 and then, a decade later, paying her hush money. To cite the fact that her lawyer was shonky was, intentionally or not, dismissing Daniels via guilt by association. Many people may have made the same mistake vis-à-vis Katie Johnson. After all, as we’ll consider shortly, numerous women have testified in ways that corroborate her story....>

<....Katie’s lawsuits and video testimony have long stuck in my mind. Back in 2016, and even 2024—when they briefly resurfaced on Twitter—I didn’t know quite what to make of them. But now, I suggest, we should at least listen to Katie. Here is one especially relevant part of the video transcript, which I did myself (it simply isn’t out there). I am making it available to you now in full (at the end of this post) partly because the video has—interestingly enough—disappeared from one common source, on X, and also because no journalist has seemingly ever bothered to write down her words. This despite the video providing the clearest and fullest account of what Americans are now clamoring for: a sense of Trump’s alleged entanglement with Epstein. When women speak, and tell us of rich and powerful white men’s misdeeds, we not only don’t believe them; we often don’t even bother to listen in the first place. One hopes that now, in the wake of 2017’s #MeToo moment, we are at least slightly savvier about the importance of hearing even imperfect victims (or, rather, those who had deeply imperfect initial representation). Here’s Katie, on her final encounter with Trump at Epstein’s mansion, where she alleges she was tied to the bed for an orchestrated rape “fantasy.” (“It was a rape fantasy to him, but I wasn’t playing,” as she put it.)

[Trump] ripped off all my clothes and he started to basically have sex with me and I was screaming. I’d never had sex before, it was my first time and [Epstein’s handler] Tiffany was yelling at him too. She was saying I was a virgin and he told us to just shut the f*** up and just basically took my virginity while I was crying and telling him to stop and basically begging for him to just stop...

[Afterward] I was crying and Tiffany was consoling me and she was apologizing. She told me that she would never put me in that situation again. But he comes over mad because I was crying and he said that I should be thankful that someone like Donald Trump took my virginity. Well, he didn’t say took my virginity. He said, I should be glad that someone like Donald Trump popped my cherry and not some pimply little 14 year old. And I just was like, “What if I get pregnant?” Not even talking to him. I didn’t want to talk to him. I was talking to Tiffany and he said, “Well you’ll get an abortion then, bitch.”

I find Katie’s story believable, not only because it is obviously truthful with respect to Epstein, as we know now: it is also plausible regarding Trump’s own behavior. Some telling details, which emerge below, include Trump’s germophobia (he would only allow his penis to be touched with a glove or a condom); his well-documented sexual proclivity for his own daughter, Ivanka (he allegedly enjoyed her likeness to Katie when she donned a blonde wig); Trump’s racism and Islamophobia and anti-immigrant vitriol (including in one abusive “fantasy” Katie details involving a Hispanic “maid” who Trump threatened to call immigration on); his domineering speech; the sheer tone of it, even. And, just as importantly, Katie’s testimony squares with that of several apparently independent witnesses and victims. Namely:

Tiffany Doe, the handler referred to above in the transcript, in the 2016 court cases, who corroborated each key element of Katie’s account in a sworn affidavit. (Joan Doe, a friend of Katie’s, also provided corroboration that Katie had told her about the incident with Trump and Epstein during the 1994-1995 school year.)

Maria Farmer, who recently testified that, when she was working for Epstein in 1995, he brought her to Trump’s office late one night. After Trump leered at her legs, Epstein corrected him: “No, no, she’s not here for you.” The seeming implication being, other girls were or would be. Farmer overheard Trump remarking that he thought she looked about sixteen, though she was actually in her twenties. (Farmer originally accused Epstein of sexual assault in 1996, when she brought the matter to the FBI. Farmer said then that Trump was also worthy of their attention. She repeated both claims a decade later when she was re-interviewed.)

Stacey Williams, who testified last October that, in the 1990s, when she was a model in her twenties dating Epstein, he took her to Trump’s office at Trump tower. Williams alleges that Trump groped her, she froze, and then Epstein got mad at Williams. (Yes, Williams.) “They were not mere acquaintances,” Williams told The Bulwark’s Tim Miller in an interview this morning. (She also testified that Epstein took a non-consensual video of Williams undressing at his residence.)....>

<....None of the women testifying to Trump’s misdeeds apparently had or have much, if anything, to gain by coming forward. On the contrary, they had or have a lot to lose, and risk being discredited as well as shamed and blamed for their victimhood or act of witnessing. This can ruin women’s lives—or even end them. Virginia Giuffre, an important advocate for justice for sex trafficking victims, died tragically by suicide in April. She, notably, was working as a spa attendant at Trump’s resort, Mar-a-Lago, in 2000, when Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her to be part of Epstein’s entourage at the age of 17. (Guiffre was instrumental in the court case against Epstein in 2008 that ended with him getting a sweetheart non-prosecution agreement, as well as the second criminal case against Epstein in 2019. Guiffre also obtained a $16 million settlement from Prince Andrew, an alleged Epstein client.)

Then there are the following puzzle pieces regarding Trump’s history of sexual misconduct in general, and involvement with Epstein in particular:

Five Miss Teen USA contestants, aged as young as 15, testify that Trump walked in on them while changing in 1997—something Trump actually boasted about to Howard Stern in 2005. Trump also hosted a “calendar girls” competition at Mar-a-Lago in 1993. The only other guest? Jeffrey Epstein.

The “bawdy” letter Trump wrote to Epstein for his 50th birthday, in 2003, as reported by The Wall Street Journal last week. The letter said: “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey” and “Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?” Then: “Happy Birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret,” and a doodle of a naked woman with the signature “Donald” rendered as a squiggle over her pubic area.

Trump also told New York Magazine in 2002 that he’d known Epstein for fifteen years, and called him a “terrific guy.” “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life,” he told the reporter. He flew on Epstein’s private jet four times in 1993, as well as once in 1994, 1995 and 1997. Epstein later described Trump as his closest friend in an interview.

Ivana Trump testified, to the Trump biographer Harry Hurt III, that her then husband raped her in 1989. (She subsequently recanted, under pressure from Trump’s lawyers, as I detail in Down Girl in the introduction, “Eating her Words.”)

Trump is a legally adjudicated rapist in the case of E. Jean Carroll, who brought a civil suit against him in 2023 for raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. Carroll was initially awarded $5 million in damages. She was then awarded over $80 million in a second lawsuit—as she details in her recent New York Times bestselling book, Not My Type. (The book’s title is a reference to Trump’s chief defense against these allegations in the media: Carroll was “not his type;” ergo, he didn’t rape her.)

Obviously, and notoriously, Trump boasted about non-consensually kissing and grabbing women “by the pussy” to Billy Bush in 2005—hot mic footage of which emerged in the run-up to the 2016 election, producing a brief public outcry.

Trump has also been accused by dozens of other women of sexually assaulting them—predominantly by alleged non-consensual kissing and/or groping—as meticulously documented in the book, All the President’s Women.

This past Wednesday, the news broke that Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump during the Spring that he is named, in some capacity, in the Epstein files.

So when it comes to the idea that Katie was a TV producer’s plant, and that the women testifying in congruent ways—many of which jibe with established facts about Trump’s behavior—all happen to be lying, I have to say: sounds like a conspiracy theory. And simply implausible.

Consider all of the above points, and then consider Katie’s testimony—which I reproduce in full below (save for brief edits for length and clarity). Does it constitute an open and shut case that Trump did what she said he did and raped her at the age of thirteen? Of course not. But “beyond reasonable doubt”—and, for that matter, “innocent until proven guilty”—are legal standards, not moral or epistemic ones. The question that concerns me now, and that I pose to you here, in light of the foregoing, is whether Katie’s story is credible and plausible. Should we, as concerned citizens, deign to believe her?>

<....I say yes. Her story is all too believable. And we have buried and ignored it to our national peril.

I came to this interview of my free will. No, there was nothing promised to me for doing this interview. Yes, everything that I say in this interview will be the truth.

I met Donald Trump at some parties that I was working for Mr. Jeffrey Epstein. There were about three or four times that I had encounters with Donald Trump. I was 13. The first time that I met Donald Trump was at a party at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion. There was an orgy going on and he was kind of watching off in the distance.

He basically asked if I could come over and give him a hand job. At first I wasn’t very comfortable with it. This was my first party and I didn’t think that that was my responsibility. But my recruiter told me that I needed to do it. So I agreed to it and then he, you know, I began to—sorry this is a little difficult. But before I gave him a hand job he kind of slapped my hand away and said, “You need to use a glove.” The recruiter ran over and handed me a glove and said, “No one touches Mr. Trump’s penis without a glove.” So I needed to use a glove. I gave him a hand job and then immediately after he had an orgasm he left and I didn’t see him again at that party…

I originally came to New York trying to be a model and in my travels I met a girl named Tiffany there who was very interested in me and said that that’s what she did is that she helped girls, you know, get what they wanted. She could help me get into modeling, that she knew a lot of people that were higher-ups and that it would be no problem. And so that’s why, you know, I would just basically have to come model at a couple of events and meet some people, there would be no sweat. So of course I went, you know, that sounded like no big deal. And she was recruiting the girls to come to these parties and they all looked, I mean most of them were my age. There were maybe a couple girls that were maybe 14 or 15 but it seemed to me like we were all very young.

Jeffrey Epstein knew that I was 13 years old. When he interviewed me, he asked me to get down to my bra and just my panties and I thought that was weird but, I mean, modeling. Maybe it was something about my figure. He asked me to give him a massage. He asked me my age, I told him that I was thirteen, I told him why I was there, and he basically said, “Well, you’ll do, you know, I’m sure that you’ll fit pretty nicely here.” And then he tried to basically slip himself inside of me. And I pushed him away and I said, you know, I’m—because at that point in time I still believed that there were models and then there was the girls that did that. Like I thought there was a separation. So I told him that I wasn’t interested in that but he said that I would do.

And as far as Donald Trump, he knew that I was 13, and I believe that Tiffany told him. He seemed to take a liking to me because I was so young and I was also a virgin. So, I don’t know, he seemed like he wasn’t really into having girls that were liked by the other guys. The whole glove thing—he kind of liked things to be his first, you know, for lack of a better term. He was the one who wanted to get to a girl before everyone else did.

Donald Trump knew that I was 13 because the first night that I was there, Tiffany actually suggested that and she had a whole bunch of different wigs and I expressed interest in them and I always told her that I would love to walk around with blue hair. And so I tried some on and there was a blonde wig that she said that looked great on me. So, I wore that wig and Donald Trump had specifically asked about me because I remind him of his daughter and she said, “Well, she’s 13 as well.” So, he knew the first time that he saw me. He took a liking to me because I looked like his daughter.

The reason I’m coming out now is—when it happened originally, I just wanted to forget about the whole incident. And when I saw that he was running for president, I felt that it was my responsibility to come out and tell our country what kind of man this person is. I don’t think that he should even be the dog catcher, let alone running the greatest country in the world…

The first time that I met Jeffrey Epstein, he did try to force himself inside of me without getting the go-ahead or anything. And then it was probably about the third or fourth party is when he basically forced—it was another massage and it was basically like, it wasn’t sex, but it was, there was penetration. And I told him that I didn’t want that, but he kind of got a little irritated. So, I don’t know, there was something about him that, I guess I kind of held a lot of resentment towards him. By the time that that happened, I already started catching on that maybe I wasn’t there for modeling and maybe I was just getting used for things and I kind of held him responsible....>

<....I did receive money to go to these parties. After every party, I was paid by Mr. Epstein. There wasn’t, out of all the girls that were there with me, most of them were 13, 14. I think the oldest one might have been 16, but just turned 16 and she’d been there for a while…

Second time that I saw Mr. Trump was, same scenario, he was an onlooker at an orgy and Tiffany came over to me and said that Donald Trump had requested that I perform oral sex on him. And never, I’d never done something like that with anybody, so I was a little nervous. So, I walked up to him and he was sitting there very proud-like and I just kind of moved in that direction and he kind of slapped me away and said, “What are you doing? You need to put a condom on.” Like I was some dirty filth or something. Tiffany ran over and handed me a condom and apologized profusely and said that would never happen again. And she looked at me and scolded me basically like a child and said that, “That’s not how: Donald Trump always, anytime anyone touches his penis it needs to have a condom on or a glove. Especially when it comes to performing oral sex.”

So, I apologized and then I performed oral sex on him. And once again, once he was done, he hopped up and that’s the last I saw of him at that party. It’s like once he’s done, he’s out. Some of the things that I noticed that were weird with him: sometimes before the parties he would come over and Jeffrey Epstein and himself would kind of banter back and forth and he was very, Donald Trump was very racist. He said a lot of racist things. There was a lot of comments towards Mr. Epstein about being Jewish and he called him a Jew bastard, said that he was cheap and there were some words I didn’t even understand.

Something about his, you know, the shape of his penis being directly related to his mole or, I mean, I’m not too familiar with the Jewish tradition—but I’m pretty sure that whatever he was saying wasn’t very nice. He also referred to, you know, people of Hispanic origin, he called them Spicks. That was around the first time that the World Trade Center had gotten bombed in the 90s. And he was talking about the towel heads and how we would just be better off if we didn’t let them in and basically got rid of everyone, every single one that was already here. And it made me really uncomfortable, really, really uncomfortable.

He also loved to call Black people n----- and Arabic people he called sand n-----. The only time that he tried to give me some money was our last encounter together, where he acted out a rape fantasy. I was forced to give that money back because Jeffrey Epstein paid us after the party. I don’t even know why he gave it to me, maybe to make me feel more cheap. It was a rape fantasy to him, but I wasn’t playing.

The next thing that Tiffany approached me with was that he had a fantasy where he walked in on his maids, maids basically making out and it was some type of fantasy for him. At that point, I was like, “I don’t want to be involved with anything that has to do with him.” But she’s like, “You are just basically the other one. So, there’s nothing that you will have to do. Just—he’s requesting you to be involved.” So, I reluctantly—I mean, I felt like I didn’t have a choice there, but it was basically, he’s walking in on his two maids, I was one of the maids, I was the white maid. And there was a Spanish girl, Maria, who was the Hispanic maid. And we were making out and he walks in and he gets really angry and threatens to call immigration on Maria if she doesn’t come over and make things right and give him a blow job.

So, while she is over there giving him a blow job, I am supposed to look scared like, “Oh, oh no,” cleaning up things and pretending like I’m trying to go back to my job as a maid. And then he’s being so rude to Maria. I felt so bad for her. It just didn’t seem like a fantasy. It’s the weirdest fantasy as far as that goes. He was threatening, he was threatening to call immigration on her. She wasn’t even near going down to give him, perform oral sex on him before he slapped her away and said, “What are you doing? You know you need to put a condom on.” And she’s trying to say “I’m so sorry.” And he’s like, “You can’t even, I can’t even understand what you’re saying. Just speak English!” He called her derogatory comments. And then he’s like, “You know what, you don’t know what you’re doing. Have her come over and show you how it’s done.” And so I, again, I said that I didn’t—I had to go over there or else he was going to call immigration on Maria. I didn’t know if it was true or not, but he said that if I didn’t show her how to perform oral sex on him, then he was going to call immigration on her and then get rid of us both....>

<....Anything that was in relation to him getting off or being satisfied or happy had to do with him being in power, extreme power. And it was always intimidating when he was like that. You didn’t really know if it was true. If you refused to play along, would he really call immigration on Maria? Would he really get rid of us both? And I didn’t even want to know what that meant. It wasn’t a game.

The one night that I had the blonde wig on, he mentioned that I reminded him of his daughter. And actually the maid’s fantasy, I didn’t have a blonde wig on. I was trying to stay away from blonde wigs at the time. But he actually requested, told Tiffany that that’s what he wanted me to wear. Like he wanted it, and anytime I put it on, anytime I had it on and he’d see me, he would say, “Oh man, you look—” and it wasn’t like a, “Oh, you remind me of my daughter.” It was this sick, evil “You remind me of my daughter.” It was just this weird pleasure, sick smile. Like I don’t even want to know what he was thinking about. I could imagine what he was thinking about.

After the parties would end, we were to report to Mr. Epstein and basically tell him everything that happened, with who, what they liked, what they disliked, if there was any requests, if there was any talk about anything. That’s what we told Mr. Epstein—everything. And then he paid us, and then we got to go home.

The fact that Trump has a chance to be the next president makes me feel disgusting inside. I’ve always been proud to be an American. I think we live in a beautiful country. But I just see him ruining everything. He’s horrible, what he portrays on the outside isn’t even that great, but people don’t even know the half of how evil, how sick and twisted that man is. I have a friend that’s been my friend ever since the school year that I stopped going, the eighth grade. I confided in her, and she knows all about it. She knows everything…

I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to save the country that I believe that we have. I know what he does behind closed doors. I’m willing to sacrifice my life to put our country back in the right—like, going maybe in some type of positive direction. Not even, there’s no right or wrong, but a positive direction. This guy’s not going to take us anywhere positive.

You know, as far as my life changing by coming out with this information, I’ve thought long and hard about whether or not I should. And I’ve gone back and forth. But I think that the American people need to know what kind of man this person is. And if my life changes because of that, then so be it. But the American people need to know what they’re dealing with. If I had the chance to talk to Donald Trump, I would run the other way. I’m scared of him like I’ve never been scared of anything else in my entire life. I can’t explain it to you, but the fear of him even being in a next room, I have a panic attack....>

<....The last encounter that I had with Donald Trump, Tiffany approached me about a rape scene that was supposed to be played out. And I didn’t like the sound of that at all. But Tiffany promised, assured me that it wasn’t going to be—if it was anything I wasn’t comfortable with, we could stop. That she would be right there and that it wouldn’t get out of hand. And that it was just a fantasy, like it wasn’t really going to happen. And so I told her that I would. I mean Tiffany was always nice to me. I trusted her, or else I wouldn’t have always done what she asked me to.

But she was there and he came in and I was basically tied to a bed with pantyhose. And they were so tight it hurt to even lay there. And I tried to say something and he was just “Shut up! Shut up, bitch!” He was being really, really rough.

It just didn’t seem like a fantasy. And I started to get scared and he was basically like ripping my clothes off. And I got freaked out. I told him that I didn’t want to do this. I screamed over for Tiffany and she was like, “Mr. Trump, she’s only, she’s not—this is scaring her.” And he’s like, “Oh you shut up too.” He just turned into this animal. It was like a completely different, completely different person. It was like everyone in the room was scared of him. And I couldn’t do anything about it.

He ripped off all my clothes and he started to basically have sex with me and I was screaming. I’d never had sex before, it was my first time and Tiffany was yelling at him too. She was saying I was a virgin and he told us to just shut the @#$% up and just basically took my virginity while I was crying and telling him to stop and basically begging for him to just stop. And Tiffany didn’t know what else to do either. No one was there to help us, or me. And so, after the fact, he basically finishes. It didn’t take that long at all. But it felt like it was like five and a half hours. It felt like it was an eternity.

I was crying and Tiffany was consoling me and she was apologizing. She told me that she would never put me in that situation again. But he comes over mad because I was crying and he said that I should be thankful that someone like Donald Trump took my virginity. Well, he didn’t say took my virginity. He said, I should be glad that someone like Donald Trump popped my cherry and not some pimply little 14 year old. And I just was like, “What if I get pregnant?” Not even talking to him. I didn’t want to talk to him. I was talking to Tiffany and he said, “Well you’ll get an abortion then, bitch.” And then just walked away. And I told Tiffany I needed to go home. I never went back again.

I guess it’s for you to decide. I don’t have any kids myself because I’m afraid to have kids because who knows what kind of damage they can get into, but if you have a 13-year-old daughter, would you be okay with the person who’s running our country doing that to your little girl? And I just, I don’t know. I just want people to know. I think that I have a faith in our society that we’ll make the right choice. He seemed to be taking great pleasure in dominance and control and the more I screamed, the more I got scared, the more he was enraged with power and it was like he was just charged with it. It was scary.>

<Democrats must not let Jeffrey Epstein die.

They must highlight how this saga exposes the president for who he has always been.

In the decade Teflon Don has spent on the national stage, no scandal has stuck to and haunted him quite so viscerally as the Epstein affair. He’s never before appeared so flustered, forced to answer question after question about the women and girls whose lives were destroyed by his former “best friend”.

The world may never know what is inside the so-called “Epstein files.” What is clear is that the contents are damaging enough for the president and his human flak jackets to call the whole affair a “hoax”, recess Congress to prevent a vote on releasing the materials and send the deputy attorney general to visit Tallahassee, Florida, to speak to the convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, who was subsequently moved to a “cushy”, celebrity-riddled minimum security prison in Bryan, Texas.

As the conservative pundit Bill Kristol noted over the weekend: “[Richard Nixon] said of Watergate, ‘I gave them a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish.’ Trump may have given us a sword. We should use it.” Kristol is right, to a point. Liberals, progressives and never-Trump Republicans must not let voters forget Trump’s festering, open wound without neglecting the kitchen table, cost-of-living matters that hurt them last fall.

In 2007, a far sharper and far more spry Joe Biden delivered a quip so clever and cutting that it ended another man’s entire political career. Rudy Giuliani was never able to recover after Biden observed how it seemed “there’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb, and 9/11”. The line was funny because it was true; it was lethal because it exposed the emptiness behind the former New York City mayor’s tragedy-fueled candidacy.

This is the challenge for Democrats: how do they maintain a spotlight on a scandal that reveals Trump for who he is in a way that finally resonates with his base without appearing to exploit a tragedy, à la Giuliani? They must ground the abstract conspiracy in everyday terms relatable to the average American.

It goes like this: Trump protects elites.

Say it in every stump speech, vent about it in vertical videos and keep it alive as a dominant narrative in the zeitgeist. Do not back away. The modern media environment rewards repetition and omnipresence, so Hakeem Jeffries should promise an Epstein select committee, Chuck Schumer should make Republicans release the Epstein files in return for votes to fund the government, and every leftwing activist in the country should be burying Pam Bondi’s justice department in a blizzard of Freedom of Information Act requests.

In doing so, recognize that the response to the scandal is an encapsulation of a deeper truth that voters already feel. The president and the GOP protect the elite at the expense of ordinary Americans.

Savvier Democrats get this. Some of the party’s best communicators have already been grasping for a message along these lines, as seen in the focus on Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders’s nationwide Fighting Oligarchy tour. But while those efforts have paid some political dividends, they have not come close to capturing the public imagination to the degree the Epstein files have.

For at least some portion of the Maga movement, the past three weeks have finally managed to expose Trump for the hobnobbing, name-dropping, pompous ass that he’s always been. Why is this one particular story so effective – especially as most voters have known Trump to be a plutocratic wannabe for decades? Maggie Haberman’s hypothesis is noteworthy: New York high society operates in two concentric circles. The Big Apple has a glittering “elite” with status at the center of a broader ring that wields power.

Trump has always tried to straddle those rings, painting himself as the renegade billionaire. The Epstein affair shatters that mythos. It casts him not as a brash, bull-in-a-china-shop outsider but as the ultimate insider, rubbing shoulders with the very aristocracy his campaign rhetoric promised to upend.

Democrats must lead with Epstein. Then they need to connect it to the president’s myriad failures. Why did Trump cut taxes for the richest Americans while cutting Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act? For the same reason he is protecting Epstein and his buddies. Why is Trump risking union jobs in auto manufacturing so he can have a trade spat with Mexico and Canada? For the same reason he is protecting Epstein and his buddies. Why is Donald Trump talking about firing the head of the Fed? For the same reason he is protecting Epstein and his buddies....>

<....Mallory McMorrow of Michigan, a Democratic Senate candidate, is already reading from this script. In recent weeks, she has demonstrated mastery in pairing Epstein with broader anti‑elite rhetoric. In one vertical video, she emphatically declared:

This is exactly why there’s eroding trust in our institutions, because until we confront the rot that exists in our institutions, until we hold everyone, everyone accountable under the same set of rules and laws, we will keep living in a country where there are two systems of justice, one for the rich and powerful, and one for everybody else. We deserve better. Release the files now.

Trump’s friendship with Epstein is a proof point for elite favoritism and all of us who oppose the orange god king must use it to condemn inequality and unaccountable power within the GOP ecosystem.

The Epstein scandal has captured our attention not just because it’s a lurid horror story, but because it confirms a truth people already believe: the rich view them as objects for exploitation. And if there’s one thing Trump has successfully messaged to all Americans, it’s that he’s very, very rich.

Epstein is the story. But he is also a stand-in for every closed maternity ward in a rural county, for every mom choosing between insulin and groceries and for every veteran battling the Department of Veterans Affairs while Silicon Valley billionaires buy senators. Democrats’ message is simple enough, actually: “Trump and the GOP protect the elite. They abandon you.”

Think this messaging can be overdone? Look no further than Benghazi, a truly made-up scandal, which Republicans turned into a true political liability with Hillary Clinton’s emails. That story stuck because of repetition and omnipresence, but also because it struck a chord with something Americans already believed: that the Clinton family viewed themselves as above accountability.

Even Trump’s own supporters are asking hard questions. Where are the files? Why is there a two-tiered system of justice? Why is Trump more interested in protecting his friends than releasing the truth? The Democratic response should be a noun, a verb and Jeffrey Epstein, and then the rot at the core of the American system. Deployed effectively, it can be as impactful and as memorable as Trump’s cruel but devastating 2024 attack line: “Kamala is for they / them, President Trump is for you.”

Trump protects elites.

That’s why Trump is protecting Epstein’s circle.

But who’s protecting you?>

<As the Jeffrey Epstein scandal engulfs President Donald Trump, I suspect a few wealthy right-wing figures are secretly smiling, none more than president-in-waiting JD Vance.


The vice president is nothing if not a slithery opportunist. With stunning expediency, he went from calling Trump an “idiot” and “America’s Hitler” to bear-hugging the MAGA movement, becoming Trump’s running mate and saying of the aforementioned idiot, “I’m proud to stand beside him.”

Vance is an ideological contortionist backed by dodgy tech billionaires like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and David Sacks, whose money helped elevate him to become Trump’s unlikely vice presidential pick.

If you don't think JD Vance is loving the Epstein scandal, think again

So is it that hard to believe Vance is watching Trump digging his Epstein hole deeper and deeper and thanking his lucky stars for the president’s incompetence and history of loutish behavior? The vice president was already on a magical political ride buoyed by his own lack of principles. Now all he needs to do is sit back and let Trump self-immolate while occasionally furrowing his brow at liberals and feigning support for the president.

Vance certainly behaves like a loyal Trump advocate, but given the heat coming from the Epstein drama, he hasn’t protested much.

He recently defended the president and the Department of Justice’s decision not to release the Epstein files, saying: “We’re not shielding anything. ... Donald J. Trump, I’m telling you, he’s got nothing to hide. His administration has got nothing to hide. And that’s why he’s been an advocate for full transparency in this case.”

That’s not true, obviously. Full transparency would involve releasing the files in a manner that protects Epstein’s victims and exposes anyone who was involved with sex trafficking girls or young women.

Trump's bumbling of the Epstein scandal could open the door for Vance

Instead, I assume, to Vance’s delight, the administration is trying to bury the files. Bloomberg reported on Aug. 1 that Trump’s name was redacted from the files by FBI agents who were previously prepping them for possible public release.

That surely puts a sparkle in Vance’s eye. And in the event more damaging details about Trump’s connection to Epstein come out, the vice president can always say, “Gosh, he told me he had nothing to hide. Who could’ve imagined?”

Vance could even backtrack to his earlier comments about the Epstein case. On Dec. 30, 2021, he posted on X: "What possible interest would the US government have in keeping Epstein’s clients secret?” Curiously, that post hasn’t been deleted.

Vance used to be really concerned about everyone seeing the Epstein files

That same day, Vance wrote of the Epstein files: “If you’re a journalist and you’re not asking questions about this case you should be ashamed of yourself. What purpose do you even serve?”

Now he’s playing the part of the good soldier, but he’s also seeing how the president’s bumbling has pulled Trump himself into the conspiratorial narrative that has long surrounded Epstein and his imprisoned partner-in-sex-trafficking, Ghislaine Maxwell....>

<....Maxwell prison transfer only makes this look more like a cover-up

On Aug. 1, we learned that Maxwell, fresh off a meeting with a Justice Department official who was previously Trump’s personal defense attorney, has been moved from a federal prison in Florida to a lower-security prison camp in Texas.

What’s that all about? Trump hasn’t ruled out a pardon for Maxwell, who’s serving 20 years for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors.

It seems the previous version of Vance would have said if “you’re not asking questions about this case you should be ashamed of yourself.” It’s as dodgy as the day is long.

But present-day Vance seems to be saying: “Shhhhhhhh. Let’s hang back and see how this plays out.”

MAGA is mad about Epstein files, giving Vance an opportunity

Many MAGA loyalists aren’t happy with Trump’s handling of the Epstein files, and polling shows the public at large wants far more transparency.

Heck, it was Elon Musk, one of the pro-Vance tech billionaires, who first lashed out at Trump over Epstein, claiming on social media that the president is in the files.

Trump built his political career on conspiracies, and now he’s knee-deep in one. So I’m comfortable throwing a not-unreasonable conspiracy onto the fire.

Suggesting Vance wants to be president doesn't seem conspiratorial

Vance was an odd VP pick: inexperienced, from a state – Ohio – Trump didn’t need to worry about, in sync with the MAGA base but repellent to many outside that base. He was hoisted on Trump by rich dudes with the ability to help bankroll Trump’s campaign.

And now those rich dudes are a few stunning Epstein revelations away from potentially seeing their malleable young VP pick take over.

Vance would never make a move on Trump or publicly root against him. But if you don’t think he’d gladly slide into the big boy chair, you haven’t been paying attention.

Trump needs to focus on the massive Epstein scandal burning around him. But if you ask me, he also needs to watch his back.>

<A legal expert flagged an "ominous" order the U.S. Supreme Court slipped into view over a summer weekend that could even further erode voting rights.

The court's intentions can be difficult to parse through cryptic orders or offhand comments justices make and the questions they ask during oral arguments, but UCLA law professor Richard L. Hasen published a column for Slate Monday analyzing a new filing in a voting case over the drawing of Louisiana’s six congressional districts.

"A technical briefing order in a long-pending case out of Louisiana, posted on the Supreme Court’s website after 5 p.m. on a Friday in August, was ominous," Hasen wrote. "The order was likely intended to obscure that the court is ready to consider striking down the last remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act, known as Section 2. Such a monumental ruling, likely not coming until June 2026, would change the nature of congressional, state, and local elections, all across the country, and likely stir major civil rights protests as the midterm election season heats up."

Louisiana's population is about one-third Black, but after the 2020 census the state legislature passed a new congressional map over the Democratic governor's veto that created only one district where Black voters would likely elect their preferred candidate, which is being challenged in the Louisiana v. Callais that was the subject of last weekend's cryptic order.

"Before <Callais>, Black voters had successfully sued Louisiana in a case called Robinson v. Ardoin, arguing that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act required drawing a second congressional district giving black voters that opportunity," Hasen wrote. "Section 2 says minority voters should have the same opportunity as other voters to elect their candidates of choice, and courts have long used it to require new districts when there is a large and cohesive minority population concentrated in a given area, when white and minority voters choose different candidates, and when the minority has difficulty electing its preferred representatives."

The GOP legislature drew up a new plan after the Robinson challenge that created a second congressional district to otherwise favor Republicans in the state, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, and another group of voters argued in <Callais> that the new map was a racial gerrymander that violated the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

"When the Supreme Court first held oral argument in the Callais case in March, it appeared to be another in a long series of cases (many out of Louisiana) in which the court considered whether race or partisanship predominated in the drawing of district lines," Hasen wrote. "I’ve long written that this is an impossible exercise in places like Louisiana where the factors overlap — most white voters in Louisiana are Republicans and Black voters are Democrats, so when the state discriminates against Democrats it is also discriminating against Black voters."

Oral arguments in March suggested the court would once again determine whether race or party predominated, but instead of deciding the case by the end of its term in June the justices set up the case for another round of arguments in a move that reminded Hasen of the court's actions ahead of its eventual ruling in the controversial Citizens United case.

"We waited weeks for the court to issue its rescheduling order and when it came this past Friday it was a doozy," Hasen wrote. "Although the court’s order did not explicitly mention Section 2 or even the Voting Rights Act more generally — unquestionably to obscure things further — there is no doubting what’s going on here. The court is asking the parties to consider whether Louisiana’s compliance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by drawing a second majority-minority district ... was unconstitutional under a view of the Constitution as requiring colorblindness."

That would amount to a "sea change" in voting rights, Hasen said, but it would also be in line with what observers have come to expect (from) the Roberts Court.

"Court conservatives likely thought teeing up the issue of overruling Section 2 on a hot summer weekend would avoid public notice," he wrote. "But that’s a short term strategy. Come next June, any decision to strike down what’s left of the Voting Rights Act could kick off the start of a new civil rights movement and more serious talk of Supreme Court reform in the midst of crucially important midterm elections. A court fundamentally hostile to the rights of voters places the court increasingly at odds with democracy itself.">

<Bloomberg journalist Jason Leopold reported this morning that the president’s name has been redacted from more than 100,000 documents the FBI has on child-sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Leopold said that after 1,000 FBI personnel pored over more than 300 gigabytes of data and evidence in the government’s investigation of Epstein, the files were sent to US Attorney General Pam Bondi.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Bondi met with Donald Trump in May to say his name appears “multiple times” in the files. On the basis of that finding, she decided not to release them to the public, despite the president’s campaign promise to do so. Trump apparently agreed.

On July 8, Pam Bondi issued a memo, saying that “no further disclosure” of the Epstein files “would be appropriate or warranted.”

“While we have labored to provide the public with maximum information regarding Epstein,” the memo said, “it is the determination of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”

If so, why did the FBI spend so much time and manpower redacting Trump’s name? And why did they redact his name on the flimsy basis of protecting his privacy, as if the president were a private citizen – as if the public did not have an overwhelming interest in knowing about his relationship with the country’s most notorious child-sex offender?

The answer?

The deep state is real and it works for Donald Trump.

A real conspiracy and a theory of one

Some conspiracies are real. Most conspiracy theories are not. But the phony ones can be used to cover up for the real ones. And that’s what I think has happened in the case of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.

They were friends. They clearly shared an interest in sex with underage girls (or in statutory rape, if you prefer). But Trump has avoided serious public exposure in part by deliberately obscuring his past and in part by exploiting a conspiracy theory about his friend.

That conspiracy theory is sometimes known as QAnon. More generally, it’s known as “the deep state.” It tells the story of a shadowy cabal of powerful (Jewish) elites embedded in the government, in businesses and the media. They conspire with enemies foreign and domestic to hijack democracy out from under the noses of the American people.

Among Trump’s most loyal supporters, Jeffrey Epstein was the great (Jewish) representative of “the deep state,” and Trump was the hero who was supposed to defeat it. Whenever a story came up about sex offenses in Trump’s past, as when a judged said that he had raped a famous magazine columnist, his followers chalked it up to another attempt by the deep state to bring him. The conspiracy theory became cover for the actual conspiracy to obscure Trump’s sexual crimes....>

<....Too much to hide

That conspiracy continues with this latest report showing the FBI chose to black out Trump’s name, because he was a private citizen at the time of the Epstein investigation in 2006. Here’s Jason Leopold:

“In particular, the reviewers applied two FOIA exemptions to justify their redactions. The first, Exemption 6, protects individuals against ‘a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.’ The Supreme Court has said the exemption protects ‘individuals from the injury and embarrassment’ that would result from the disclosure of personal information in possession of the government. … The second, Exemption 7(C), protects personal information contained in law enforcement records, the disclosure of which ‘could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.’”

You and me and everyone we know are entitled to privacy protections, because without them, we are more or less powerless. The president is not powerless, nor is entitled to such protections. He is the president.

The public has a right to know whether Trump was part of Epstein’s pedophile ring; whether he covered up his involvement; and whether he has induced government agents to pervert privacy laws in the furtherance of an ongoing conspiracy to hide his sexual crimes.

Trump could waive his rights to privacy and order the release of the Epstein files, with his name appearing through them “multiple times.” He could let the chips fall where they may, but he’s never done that. There’s too much at stake and, evidently, there’s too much to hide.

“Smacks of a coverup”

In addition to the government scrubbing Trump’s name from the Epstein files, it moved Epstein’s accomplice from a maximum-security prison to a cushy one in Texas. Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred after being interviewed by the second in command at the Department of Justice. Journalist Michael Wolff has said that was an effort to ascertain whether she has more incriminating evidence on Trump.

The family of Maxwell’s best-known victim, Virginia Giuffre, said the news is an offense to her memory (she killed herself in April) and “smacks of a coverup.” In a statement, the family said: “Without any notification to the Maxwell victims, the government overnight has moved Maxwell to a minimum-security luxury prison in Texas. This is the justice system failing victims right before our eyes.

“The American public should be enraged by the preferential treatment being given to a pedophile and a criminally charged child sex offender. The Trump administration should not credit a word Maxwell says, as the government itself sought charges against Maxwell for being a serial liar. This move smacks of a cover up. The victims deserve better.”

Indeed, the deep state is real and it works for Donald Trump.>

<A federal judge has barred the Trump administration from terminating legal protections for immigrants from three countries, finding that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's attempts to do so were likely driven by "racial animus."

Temporary protected status (TPS) designations are given to people from foreign countries entrenched in conflict, such as natural disasters, the Department of Homeland Security details, allowing citizens in those countries to seek temporary refuge in the U.S.

But while Noem argued in her orders terminating TPS for Nepal, Nicaragua, and Honduras that conditions in the countries had improved enough to warrant the designation revocations, U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson was unconvinced the secretary had truly given the countries a fair review.

As the judge put it in her 37-page order, the plaintiffs – led by a TPS advocacy group named the National TPS alliance – "provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the Secretary's TPS Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua terminations were based on a preordained determination to end the TPS program, rather than an objective review of the country conditions."

As the court recounts, Noem published a federal registrar notice in June that terminated TPS for Nepal effective on Aug. 5. The next month, she did the same for Honduras and Nicaragua, effective Sept. 8. The immigration advocacy group and individual TPS holders sued, seeking a motion to postpone the terminations by arguing that the designation revocations violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Fifth Amendment.

Thompson, a Joe Biden appointee, found that the plaintiffs were "likely to succeed" on the merits of both of these claims. Regarding the APA, not only were Noem's efforts "preordained," as the TPS holders argued, but they "deviated from prior practice without good reason" – with that prior practice being the allowance of six months for TPS holders to "transition" out of the country, not the 60 days Noem allowed.

The immigration advocates' other claim was that Noem violated equal protections under the Fifth Amendment. It was here that Thompson was especially critical of the former South Dakota governor.

Pointing to past statements by Noem, the San Francisco-based judge wrote that they "reflect the Secretary's animus against immigrants and the TPS program even though individuals with TPS hold lawful status—a protected status that was expressly conferred by Congress with the purpose of providing humanitarian relief."

"Their presence is not a crime," Thompson added. "Rather, TPS holders already live in the United States and have contributed billions to the economy by legally working in jobs, paying taxes, and paying contributions into MediCare and Social Security."

"By stereotyping the TPS program and immigrants as invaders that are criminal, and by highlighting the need for migration management, Secretary Noem's statements perpetuate the discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population," the judge said.

Thompson also zoomed out, looking at President Donald Trump's administration and its larger agenda as evidence that prejudice was afoot. "The political climate surrounding the Secretary's comments on immigrants further supports the likelihood of racial animus," she wrote, later adding, "[c]olor is neither a poison nor a crime."

Roughly 60,000 people from Nepal, Nicaragua, and Honduras are protected by TPS, according to the Associated Press. Their TPS designations are set to be extended for months – as the next hearing for the case is scheduled for Nov. 18.

The Trump administration must write by Aug. 7 whether it intends to appeal Thompson's ruling.>

Damn that wretched judge! How <dare> she block the regime!

But it's okay to shoot a defenceless animal cos one takes a dislike to the poor creature.

<President Donald Trump has issued a series of executive orders that are both vague and illegal, a lawsuit filed by the City of Seattle alleges.

During the first two days of his second term, the 45th and 47th president issued an executive order targeting "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI) initiatives followed by an executive order purporting to stand up for women and against "gender ideology extremism."

Each order variously seeks to limit – and ultimately root out – federal government funding to states, counties, municipalities, agencies, and federal contractors – with clampdowns focused on programs and entities deemed to be promoting DEI and transgender acceptance.

This week, in a 42-page complaint, the Emerald City asked a federal judge in Washington to put a kibosh – in the form of an injunction – on Trump's efforts to restrict such contracts and grants.

"Plaintiff challenges the Anti-Diversity and Gender Orders as violations of Separation of Powers, the Spending Clause, the Fifth and Tenth Amendments of the United States Constitution, and the Administrative Procedure Act," the lawsuit reads. "These Orders are unlawful because they are arbitrary and capricious, contrary to constitutional rights, and issued in excess of the President's authority."

The plaintiffs allege the federal government is attempting something not entirely unlike a full-scale revamp through the use of executive orders like the ones being directly challenged in the lawsuit.

The filing spends considerable time chiding Trump for the number of orders he has issued this year – and concomitant efforts of federal agencies to effectuate those orders through policy directives.

From the Thursday filing, at length:

In his first 100 days since assuming the Office of the Presidency for a second-term, President Donald J. Trump endorsed an unprecedented number of Executive Orders—143, to be exact. Many of these Executive Orders are nothing more than short-cut attempts to advance the Trump Administration's agenda by circumventing the law via executive fiat. The ultra vires, unconstitutional actions by the Trump Administration addressed in this Complaint threaten Plaintiff City of Seattle with vague directives designed to eliminate lawful policies and programs in the workplace. Plaintiff risks losing committed federal grants and contracts if it does not abide by newly and improperly imposed (and impossibly vague) funding conditions, and faces unjustified False Claims Act investigations and lawsuits, as well as significant financial hardship and uncertainty, based on forced adherence to the Trump Administration's unlawful interpretation of federal anti-discrimination laws in connection with projects that bear no relationship to its decrees.

While broad-based in its rhetorical jabs, the lawsuit is only challenging the two aforementioned executive orders. The complaint seeks to enjoin the orders themselves as opposed to any specific funding rescissions caused by the orders. The filing alleges those orders alone have left Seattle's leaders "confounded" and in jeopardy of losing "funds needed to support critical local programs and services." "We should not have to forgo our own local policies in order to obtain that money that has already been provided to us," Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison said in a statement to The Seattle Times.

Seattle says they stand to lose upwards of $370 million due to the orders. The lawsuit says this number includes "funds to support major safety initiatives and vital infrastructure projects."

Losing access to such funds would violate myriad constitutional precepts, like the separation of powers, and the federal law governing administrative agency actions, the plaintiffs allege.

"These Orders seek to interfere with congressionally authorized federal grants," the lawsuit continues. "The power to appropriate and spend money, such as through the issuance of federal grants, is conferred by the Constitution on Congress and Congress alone. An Executive Order does not have the force and effect of law and cannot be issued to usurp congressional authority or to advance unconstitutional or illegal policies."

The lawsuit has been assigned to Senior U.S. District Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein, a Jimmy Carter appointee.>

https://www.bing.com/images/search?...

<My father was gay. He was born in 1918. In my 20s, he started telling me stories about his early life. He was out in the 1930s at a time when it wasn’t common. He had dreams that most would not believe he dared to dream. The problem with my dad telling me all of this was that he was still married to my mother.

In 1939, at a party in the Hollywood Hills with gay filmmakers and musicians, he was arrested. Police officers handcuffed the men, herded them into a van, and took them to jail. The following morning, he appeared before a judge for sentencing. Because the arresting officer couldn’t swear that he saw him touching his dance partner, he was released.

Then he was caught up in an illegal sting operation in Pasadena that targeted gay men. They were extorted by the police for cash payments in return for conditional release. His dreams of being a schoolteacher and living with his boyfriend were destroyed.

As World War II loomed, he attempted to enlist in the U.S. Navy, but he was rejected when his record revealed that he was gay. The Army eventually accepted him, perhaps because war was imminent and able-bodied men, even gay ones, were needed.

Before my father shipped out for war, he attended a USO dance on the San Francisco Peninsula. When he and a fellow soldier arrived, his buddy yelled over the loud music, “Hey, Hall, let’s get outta here. There aren’t any girls to dance with.” My mother, still in high school, was dancing with the company cook at the time. She looked up and saw what she described as “a handsome soldier with big blue eyes and white teeth,” and said, “I’ll dance with you.” My parents would retell this origin story for the rest of their lives.

Granted a furlough in September of 1942, Dad sent a telegram to my mom that read, “Arrive in Frisco tomorrow. Marry me dearest.” To my grandmother’s horror, she accepted his proposal. She was only 18.

When the war ended, four babies followed. I was the second born. By the time I was 6, I was aware of how friendly my father was with my mother’s friends. The dinner parties they hosted in the 1950s and ’60s were glamorous affairs. Women vied to dance with my father, and told my mother that his smooth moves and good manners made him unlike the other men they knew. During some of those parties, I snuck down the hallway late at night and saw women that were not my mother sitting on my father’s lap. I was infuriated.

When I reached my early 20s, I found myself juggling partners. I was not proud of this. One day, on a hike in the hills above the family home, I confronted my father about what I assumed were his affairs. If he had dabbled with infidelity, maybe I wasn’t such a bad person after all. When we reached the top of the hill, I came right out and asked him if he had ever been unfaithful to Mom. His face flushed. After a pause, he told me the truth. It wasn’t what I expected.

“Honey, I’m gay,” he said, adding, “I’ve always been gay.”

I was shocked, though I knew he wasn’t a stereotypical dad in the neighborhood where I grew up. He selected my siblings’ and my clothes. He cut and styled our hair, one time giving me what he called a “Mia Farrow.” I didn’t even know who Mia was and I did not appreciate the fact that he had lopped off my ponytail. He did a better job styling my mother’s hair.

He taught me how to crochet, needlepoint, and make paper chains out of his cigarette packs. He created beautiful table centerpieces and whipped up fancy desserts for dinner parties. One of his fancy frozen desserts included sliced grapes that appeared to be floating in ice cream, which impressed us kids. He took us to operas, musicals, plays, and museums in San Francisco. He was a cool dad. There were no guns, roughhousing, hunting, or violent football games for our family.

His stories poured out of him once he came out to me. When I asked him if my mother knew, he said she discovered he was gay in the 1950s after finding revealing photos of him with other men. I was 6 at the time. She called him at work, hysterical. He sped home, thinking one of us kids had been hit by a car. When he found out what had happened, he offered to leave so she would never have to see him again. He promised to support her and us for the rest of his life. He packed up his things that night after my siblings and I were asleep. As he backed out of the driveway, Mom ran toward him, pleading with him to stay and telling him that she still loved him.

So, he stayed. He stayed forever.

For years after he shared these stories with me, I felt sorry for my parents. I doubted they had the marriage they wanted, though neither of them ever let on to me that they were unhappy. Decades later, I asked my mother if she wished they had split up when she found out he was gay.

“Oh, nooo, Laurie,” she said, drawing out the word no. “I love your father.”....>

<....The years passed. As far as I could tell, they didn’t have an open marriage. But my mother supported my father when he created the first LGBT section in the local library and volunteered as an AIDS buddy for the Shanti Project in the 1990s.

On the night before my mother died in 2006, she lay unconscious in bed while my father hosted relatives in the kitchen. I sat at my mother’s bedside, wondering if he might let her final moments slip away without saying goodbye. I wondered if I had been wrong all along about their relationship being a loving one.

I wasn’t wrong.

At one point I left her room, and to my surprise, I watched as my father lumbered down the dark hallway toward her room. He was 88. I wondered if he had been waiting for me to leave. I stood at her bedroom door like an insecure child, hoping to hear that she had been happy with the life she had chosen.

“Rus-ty,” he said in a sing-song voice, calling her by the nickname she went by when they first met, “I’m so glad you said yes.”

Mom, who had been unconscious the prior 24 hours, responded, “I’d do it all over again.”

Dad looked stunned and asked her to repeat what she’d said. I guessed he was as surprised as I was. In the end, though, that was all I longed to hear. I left them alone to say their final goodbyes. My mother died the next morning, five months shy of their 65th anniversary.

My father lived for another two years. He often spoke of my mother, one time telling me he heard her calling his name from another room. He thought she’d be pleased with the way he decorated his new place. After all, she had always been his biggest fan. Theirs was an unconventional love — but love just the same — and one they chose under trying circumstances.

After my father’s death, I began to write about my family and speak publicly about us. I gave my first talk in San Francisco’s famed Castro District, one of the most historic gay neighborhoods in the U.S. I was surprised when I received pushback from two men in attendance. One declared my father was a traitor to the gay movement. Another accused him of being cruel to my mother for hiding his sexual orientation from her.

I was speechless and uneasy — ashamed might be a better word — and it hurt. I didn’t know how to respond, so I didn’t. Had I been wrong about my dad — this man I knew to be so wonderful and caring and loving, not only to my mom and my siblings and me, but seemingly to everyone he knew? I grappled with these thoughts and feelings for years.

Then, a few months ago, I watched “Maestro,” Bradley Cooper’s biopic of Leonard Bernstein, and something shifted in me. The film tells the story, in part, of the famous conductor’s marriage to Felicia Montealegre while he also pursued relationships with men. At one point, Bernstein tells Montealegre that he found it deplorable that the world wanted their marriage to be one thing, when it wasn’t just one thing.

Though Bernstein and Montealegre’s relationship was obviously much different from my parents’ relationship, I felt like I had been hit by a lightning bolt. I began to rethink and re-feel what I had been carrying inside of me since that day in the Castro. At the time, I didn’t speak up for my father as he had always done for me, which pains me. Watching “Maestro” allowed me to articulate what I had been feeling all these years: a deep regret that judgment from others led me to question my father’s integrity.

I am happy my parents found each other and I don’t doubt the love they had — or what I heard that night just before my mother died....>

<....The environment in which my father was raised isn’t good for anyone. My father didn’t get to live the life he should have been able to live. But despite what he faced, what he lost, and what was taken away from him, he did what he could with what he had. He loved fiercely and his love allowed me to be who I am. I’m grateful for that, and still my heart breaks for him.

What happened wasn’t fair to my mother, either. I don’t pretend to know exactly what she felt, but I believe it must have been unthinkably difficult to be in her shoes. And yet, I also know she experienced great happiness and much of that was because of my father. I never once heard her criticize him in my presence.

Ultimately, my parents’ story is complicated. To even begin to try to understand it requires context and nuance and a consideration of the time in which it happened. But I’m not sure that’s the point. For me, the point is that love comes in all different forms, and my parents’ lives, as imperfect and unfair as they may have been, were filled with love and, thanks to them, so was mine.

As my father lay dying in his hospital room in 2008 at the age of 90, he uncharacteristically barked out an order to me. He pointed to the large plastic clock on the wall.

“Turn the clock back, Laurie,” he said, adamantly. “Turn it back!”

Those were his final words to me. I was bewildered. But I told him I would, even though I had no idea what that meant. Maybe he wanted more time with my mom and his children. Maybe he wanted another chance to live his life as an openly gay man. Maybe he meant something else entirely.

I can’t turn back the clock — for him, for my mother, or for myself. But, going forward, I can promise that if I ever hear another negative word about my father, I will stand up for him without shame or regret. There are and were many men and women who faced situations like the one my parents faced. Their stories deserve to be told and heard. They may not fit neatly into a particular box, but what love story does?>

<Texas Gov. Greg Abbott filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to remove one of the state's House Democratic leaders, Rep. Gene Wu, calling him "the ringleader" of the dozens of Democratic lawmakers who left the state in an effort to block a redistricting vote.

Abbott filed the emergency petition with the Texas Supreme Court to have Wu, who represents Houston and serves as Democratic caucus chair, removed from office. On Sunday, the governor had threatened to seek Democratic lawmakers' removal from office if they did not attend a Monday afternoon House session.

"They have not returned and have not met the quorum requirements. Representative Wu and the other Texas House Democrats have shown a willful refusal to return, and their absence for an indefinite period of time deprives the House of the quorum needed to meet and conduct business on behalf of Texans," Abbott wrote in a statement. "Texas House Democrats abandoned their duty to Texans, and there must be consequences."

Abbott claims Wu has forfeited his elected position and that his actions, as well as those of other House Democrats who left the state, "constitute abandonment of their office, justifying their removal."

The governor also alleged Wu and other House Democrats "appear to have solicited and received certain benefits in exchange for skipping a vote, further supporting their removal from office and allegations of bribery."

Abbott has argued in the past that Democrats can be legally removed from office if they don't show up. He's cited a non-binding 2021 opinion by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that said a "district court may determine that a legislator has forfeited his or her office due to abandonment and can remove the legislator from office, thereby creating a vacancy."

But Mark Jones, a Rice University political science professor, has told CBS News the only way to remove a Texas lawmaker — other than at the ballot box — is by a two-thirds vote of the legislature.

Texas Democrats break quorum in effort to block redistricting vote

Over the weekend, dozens of Texas Democrats fled the state to block a vote on a Republican-backed congressional redistricting plan that President Trump wants before the 2026 midterm elections, escalating a standoff that has stalled the legislative session.

The Democrats' absence meant the Texas House of Representatives did not have enough members present to hold a debate on a bill to redraw the state's congressional districts to add five seats favoring Republicans. That prompted a Republican-backed motion for their civil arrest.

Abbott then ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety to "locate, arrest and return any House member who abandoned their duty to Texans." However, Texas DPS has no jurisdiction out of state. A civil arrest could force the lawmakers back to the Capitol....>