Spy magazine co-founder Kurt Anderson, former host of the radio program Studio 360, offers the mainstream press what seems like sound advice for a blindfolded nation riding the slippery slope to kleptocracy:
Serious question/suggestion. The press (and normal people) routinely refer to the billionaire allies of Russia’s corrupt autocratic president as oligarchs. Shouldn’t the U.S. press routinely also call the politically influential billionaire media allies of the would-be autocratic U.S. president—Musk, Bezos, Ellison—oligarchs?
If you are particularly disheartened by yesterday’s non-rollout of the Epstein files and need a healing belly-laugh, behold this brilliant takedown of PR firms from Spy (April 1992): Bunny Burgers. A SPECIAL, INANELY ELABORATE SPY EASTER PRANK
Epstein files release images via US Justice Department, presented by The Guardian.
The first Donald Trump presidency brought us the Trump University settlement, then a massive New York Times expose on the Trump Organization’s years of tax evasion, then the forced shutdown of the Trump Foundation, then his first impeachment over Ukraine, then the botched response to the COVID pandemic (aside from Operation Warp Speed). After Trump lost reelection in 2020 to Joe Biden came his well-documented, criminal efforts to overturn the election and a second impeachment: this one over inciting a violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Then came multiple federal felony indictments for the insurrection and for his removing and concealing classified documents. Then came his May 2024 conviction in New York on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records and a Supreme Court decision a month later granting the president absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions “within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.”
Americans reelected Trump president in November 2024. The indictments were dropped.
Just so we are up to speed.
Simmering below the surface was financier and former Trump pal Jeffrey Epstein’s 2008 non-prosecution agreement in Florida for solicitation of prostitution and one count of solicitation of prostitution from a minor, and then his arrest in 2019 for child-sex trafficking. Epstein died in prison awaiting trial. His partner in perversion, Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted and sentenced four years ago to 20 years in federal prison. Trump ran in 2024, in part, on promising his pedophile-conspiracy-obsessed MAGA base that he would release immediately all the Epstein investigation files. Epstein survivors mounted a vigorous public lobbying effort to demand he follow through. In the end, that took an act of Congress.
After twelve months of delay, after twelve months of Trump 2.0 cabinet sycophants like AG Pam Bondi prostrating themselves before such a man and snarling through non-responsive answers to oversight committee questions, Trump and his Department of Justice were forced by law and an overwhelming vote in Congress to release the Epstein files in full by Dec. 19. They released only about ten percent of them on Friday. Surprise.
What did you expect? Former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori cautioned Politico readers on Friday to temper their expectations:
Needless to say, we should not expect the Trump administration to prominently produce this information given their handling of all this to date — as well as Bondi’s own, over-the-top personal and political dedication to Trump. For all we know, they may never produce it — or at least not all of it. (Yes, the law mandates this disclosure, but there are plenty of laws that the Trump administration has simply decided to ignore.)
If material pertaining to Trump is not produced early, there is reason to believe that the Trump administration is engaged in a (continuing) cover-up of information that would be harmful to the president. That is reason alone to be cautious about jumping to conclusions about other political and media figures.
The Associated Press reported last night on the heavily redacted document release:
But it was clear soon after the release that it would fall far short of those expectations. The partial release angered Democrats who accused the Trump administration of trying to hide information. The Justice Department said it would continue releasing documents in the weeks ahead.
The file dump — dominated by photographs, but also including call logs, court records and other documents, many with redactions — comes after politicians and the public waged a massive campaign for transparency about the government’s investigations into the wealthy financier.
President Donald Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years before the two had a falling-out, tried for months to keep the records sealed. Though he hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, he has argued there is nothing to see in the files and the public should focus on other issues.
Bondi was AWOL on Friday with a medical appointment. She sent former Trump attorney and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (he who cut the non-prosecution deal with Epstein) to announce on Fox News that the Friday release would be only several hundred thousand files, with more to be rolled out later, perhaps by year’s end. Just in time to be obscured from view by holiday vacations and festivities.
And Epstein’s victims?
“America is getting a look tonight into how we have all felt for years,” a disappointed Sharlene Rochard told Sarah Fitzpatrick of The Atlantic:
Sharlene Rochard first met Epstein in New York in the mid-1990s, when she was still a teenager. She told me that she has taken additional security precautions in and around her home in recent days, not knowing what would be released or whether she would be mentioned. She and other victims had asked the DOJ for advance notice and preparation for what was coming, she said, so that they didn’t find out what was in the files on television or social media. But she didn’t get that.
Nor did the country get full compliance from the criminal-in-chief and his accomplices.
“We’re exploring all options—including impeachment,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said. “They’re delusional if they think this is going to go away.”
Elise Stefanik is suspending her gubernatorial campaign, and won’t seek reelection to a sixth term in Congress.
The North Country Republican said the challenge of unseating Gov. Kathy Hochul had been difficult from the start but became harder when Republican Bruce Blakeman, the county executive of Nassau County, announced his candidacy earlier this month, setting up a primary that many in the GOP had hoped to avoid.
“After a great deal of reflection and discussions with my family, it’s just not the right political time,” Stefanik said in an interview Friday morning, a few hours before she posted her decision on X. “Part of our assumption was there would be no primary, and while we would overwhelmingly have won that primary, it’s a challenge in a state like New York — even in a perfect political year.”
And for Republicans, 2026 seems unlikely to be anything close to perfect.
Election results last month suggest that the Democratic electorate is energized and motivated, a problem for any Republican seeking to win in New York. President Donald J. Trump’s sagging approval rating also won’t help
Stefanik also said it would be difficult to run in New York while serving in Congress, but she emphasized that her decision was more than a political calculation. She wants to spend more time with her 4-year-old son.
Sure, ok. The fact is that despite her completely turning herself inside out for him, Trump treated her like shit, just as he does all women in one way or another. Like Marge, the veil has fallen from her eyes — these people have no respect for her and she has no future in politics.
ROBERTS: If you cut something by 100%, the cost goes down to 0. If you cut it by 600%, the drug companies are actually paying you to take their product. So it raises the question — how much of last night's speech was hyperbole?
ROBERTS: If you cut something by 100%, the cost goes down to 0. If you cut it by 600%, the drug companies are actually paying you to take their product. So it raises the question — how much of last night’s speech was hyperbole?
LUTNICK: No. What he’s saying is if a drug was $100 and you bring the drug down to $13, if you’re looking at it from $13, it’s down 7 times
ROBERTS: It’s not a 600% cut
LUTNICK: But it’s 700% higher price before. It’s down 700% now. So $13 would have to go up 700% to get back to the old one. So it all depends on when you look at it.
Maybe the average Fox viewers will see that and say, “sure, that makes sense.” Others just think “oh that’s just Trump he’s exaggerating for effect.” But the rest of the world is alarmed that Trump quite obviously doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Today he had the Pharma executives at the White House to lick his boots.
jesus — they're forcing the pharma CEOs to go to the podium and kiss Trump's ass pic.twitter.com/g82JdBKTf9
LOL — Trump announces that his new healthcare plan, which he says was inspired by watching the pharma CEOs kiss his ass, is simply asking the healthcare companies to lower their prices pic.twitter.com/unfANSQVW7
I’m sure that’s going to work. If the king proclaims that they must lower their costs so they will lower their costs. He’s just that powerful.
I wonder how many people in this country now see this un-American, monarchical behavior as normal? I have to assume that to anyone under the age of 25 and many under 30, this is politics as usual. And after a decade of this lunacy, it is. A president demanding to be worshiped like a god by everyone in his presence, blathering incoherently and routinely treating his constituents like dirt is all they’ve ever known. The collective memory of how presidents are supposed to behave in office — have always behaved until 2016 — is fading fast. It leaves the door open for all kinds of transgressive behavior from leaders going forward.
Thanks so much for your support this year. I know there are a lot of claims on people who follow political news and it’s a special burden on those who really would like to just pull the covers over their heads (as I do pretty much every morning.) It’s been a very tough year and I understand if you just don’t have anything left to give. This site will always be free to read and without ads so I hope if you’ve decided to spend your money on sites that require a sub, that you’ll keep stopping by over here anyway.
It’s been a long year, full of horrors and barbarities. But we are 25% through the second Trump administration and I believe the next year is going to be different.
Last December we were all shell shocked and reeling from the election and it has taken months for many of us to snap out of it. I suspect many people found that their mental health and sense of well being was much better if they simply stopped paying close attention to politics. At various holiday gatherings I’ve attended so far this year, it’s been clear that a lot of us just don’t want to hear about it. And interestingly, that includes Trump people as well which I didn’t expect. Many Americans have lost the desire to deeply engage on a daily basis and networks are seeing that in ratings, newspapers are getting lower circulation and I’m seeing it in traffic and financial response. It’s understandable.
However, that doesn’t mean people are disengaged altogether. It’s just that they know their minds and don’t need to wallow in it. Progressives, mainstream Democrats and Independents alike are protesting and voting in large numbers and they are coming out in their neighborhoods to support their immigrant neighbors. The numbers tell the story.
They don’t need a lot of analysis or discussion to tell them that they are economically stressed or that the federal government is assaulting our democracy and setting the constitution on fire. And most don’t need to know what specific crimes Trump and his henchmen are perpetrating every day to know that we are in an existential crisis which must be repudiated at the ballot box.
But I think it is still important that some of us are dedicated to documenting the atrocities so that we can keep track of what needs to be done if we ever expect to make this country function under the constitution again. That’s what we try to do here, as best we can. It’s not comprehensive by any means but we are pretty good at trainspotting (and trainwreck watching.) With at least seven posts a day, seven days a week, we attempt to at least touch on the highlights and give you an easy way to check what’s happening without having to immerse yourself in hours of podcast interviews or several different newspapers and dozens of substacks.
If that service is valuable to you and you have the means and desire to help support that work I’d be so grateful for your support. This is the time of year that I pass the hat, and if you have been meaning to throw a few coins our way, you can do so below or over on the snail mail address on the left. And thank you so much for stopping by to read what we post and share it with others from time to time. It means the world.
The United States hasn’t yet declared war on Venezuela—but it’s getting closer. This week, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a blockade on sanctioned ships in and out of Venezuela ports, a decision that led authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro to order his navy to escort other ships in the Caribbean. With a massive U.S. Navy presence nearby, it’s not difficult to imagine an unintended escalation.
What does the White House actually want in Venezuela? What could a war look like? And were Maduro to magically agree to leave the scene, what happens next? James Story, a former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela under both the Trump and Biden administrations, puts the likelihood of U.S. military action in Venezuela at 80 percent. Speaking on FP Live, he said this past week’s blockade “increases the odds of a mistake being made by either side.”
Story has gamed out a range of scenarios for U.S. involvement in Venezuela. What keeps him up at night? “What has kept me up at night, even when I ran counternarcotics in Colombia between 2010 and ’13 and for the Western Hemisphere from 2013 to ’15, is that the 5,000 man-portable shoulder fire and anti-aircraft missiles in the country could fall into the wrong hands and be utilized against commercial aviation. That’s something that really worries me.”
There are dozens of similar scenarios that could spark a shooting war.
Radio transmissions reviewed by CNN show that the pilots of a private jet narrowly avoided a collision with a United States Air Force refueling tanker near Venezuela on Saturday – one day after a similar incident nearby.
The pilots of a Falcon 900EX business jet flying from Aruba to Miami reported the near collision to air traffic controllers in Curaçao shortly after the incident Saturday afternoon, according to audio captured by LiveATC.net.
“They were really close,” one of the pilots told controllers of the encounter at approximately 26,000 feet. “We were climbing right into him,” the unidentified pilot said. “It was big, maybe a 777 or a (767).”
The incident marks the second reported near-collision near Venezuela in two days. On Friday, the pilots of JetBlue flight 1112 from Curaçao to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport radioed controllers that they were forced to abruptly stop their climb after a US Air Force aerial refueling tanker crossed directly in front of their flight path with its position-reporting transponder turned off.
I doubt very seriously that the Trump administration has taken into consideration any potential for mistakes or overreach because they are convinced that all Trump has to do is make threats and swing his stick around and Maduro will abdicate. Maybe that will work. But what comes next is a real conundrum. Let’s just say that they all aren’t going to greet America with flowers and tell them “welcome to our oil fields!”
This is a bubbling crisis that should have all of us very worried. Trump can’t find Venezuela on a map and Hegseth is champing at the bit to go to war. With Trump getting more and more desperate to change the subject I think there’s a very good chance that this is going to happen.
They actually took Trump’s tweets and turned them into bronze plaques. (He might have checked a 4th grade social studies book for some additional facts to pad the report.)
He thinks this makes him look very smart — mostly because all the sycophants around him have undoubtedly told him so.
Paul Brandeis Raushenbush and Ian Bassin (R&B) publish this morning in The Bulwark a call for a new Great Awakening. Students of history know that there have been three recognized in colonial history and in the democratic republic that followed. Each grew “out of periods of moral dislocation” and a recognition that character is an essential element of a stable government.
Today we face a need for another, R&B declare. Our current crisis is not merely a political one but spiritual too. Nowhere, they write, “is this more painfully evident than in how our government treats immigrants in our name.”
I wrote yesterday about my Wednesday sign: REMEMBER DECENCY? | YEAH, ME TOO. On Thursday, that sign elicited a middle finger from one driver. On Tuesday, a woman passenger flipped me off for displaying another reading ETHNIC CLEANSING | IS ILLEGAL AND UNAMERICAN. I assume HOW WOULD JESUS | TREAT STRANGERS was too on the nose to elicit a “fuck you” from such people. But they represent the America that R&B believe needs an intervention.
Yes, the country has a duty to enforce its laws, R&B insist, but enforcing them with gleeful cruelty “deforms institutions and deadens consciences.” Moreover, it degrades the moral character of people who tolerate it and look away:
When we normalize the humiliation of the powerless, something in us breaks. When suffering becomes bureaucratic routine, our moral imagination shrinks. And when that happens, democracy itself is imperiled—because a society willing to deny the humanity of some will eventually rationalize denying the rights of many.
This is why if we are to survive this moment, let alone rise from it, we must do more than reform our politics, we must call forth a new Great Awakening.
Mutual regard matters. Decency matters. Sharing power with others with different views and backgrounds matters in a democratic republic. Freedom “untethered from responsibility corrodes the soul of a people.” Plainspokenness is one thing. “Telling it like it is” with intent to insult and wound in the name of freedom is another.
Organizations R&B lead have launched an ad campaign to promote rejection of our government’s cruel, terror-based approach to applying immigration law.
The pair conclude:
EVERY GREAT AWAKENING in American history arose not because conditions were ideal, but because they were intolerable. People sensed that the old ways were failing, and they dared to believe that renewal was possible.
They are not alone. You see it. We see it. Bishop William Barber has preached for years on the need for a Third Reconstruction, a moral movement of renewal dedicated to “overcoming the politics of division and fear” R&B decry today. In Barber’s book he shares this anecdote:
Not long ago I was a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher, with one of America’s most prominent atheists. Wearing my clerical collar, I realized that I stood out among his guests. So I decided to announce to Bill that I, too, am an atheist. He seemed taken aback, so I explained that if we were talking about the God who hates poor people, immigrants, and gay folks, I don’t believe in that God either. Sometimes it helps to clarify our language.
Sometimes it helps to stare at oneself in the mirror.
Today is the day. Or not. Today, Friday, December 19, is the legal deadline for the Department of Justice to release the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation files that Donald Trump pledged to release throughout his 2024 campaign and did not. Semafor suggests that if the DOJ is diligently at work on the release, “you wouldn’t know it by watching the White House.“
Following the letter of the law is not exactly muscle memory with this administration. So the question for the day is, will they? And if they do release the files, how many will they withhold and how redacted will be the documents they actually release?
Don’t expect anything before the close of business. Do expect that Team Trump has prepared workshopped excuses.
Politico’s Jacob Wendler notes that the legislation Trump signed last month orders the DOJ to declassify any covered files “to the maximum extent possible.” But it also includes no penalties for failure to meet the deadline. Wendler offers more observations on Epstein Friday:
The DOJ has provided scant details on how it intends to comply with the law, which specifies only that it must “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” in its possession related to Epstein and his convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said last month that the Justice Department would “continue to follow the law with maximum transparency while protecting victims.”
[…]
It allows for the department to redact or withhold records that “would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution” but explicitly prohibits omissions “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.” The prohibition is an effort to prevent the Trump administration from withholding files that could provide further insight into Epstein’s relationship with the president, his allies and other powerful people.
Frustration mounts at the DOJ as it rushes to handle redactions (CNN):
A substantial number of redactions are needed, one of the sources said, and the documents each attorney is processing since Thanksgiving week can number more than 1,000 — a time-consuming task that likely will come down to the wire. The sensitivities of executive and legal privacy, victims’ protections and other concerns all could play in to the choices the lawyers must make when it comes to potential redactions.
Lawyers working on the Epstein files at the DOJ’s National Security Division also believe they aren’t getting clear or comprehensive direction on how to make the most information available under the law, several sources said.
Counterintelligence specialists were asked to drop nearly all of their other work to process the Epstein documents, two people said, but some lawyers declined to participate.
Expect more redactions than necessary as well as mistakes that may jeopardize sensitive personal information.
“Either they’re going to screw it up or they’re going to withhold things. It wouldn’t surprise me,” said one lawyer outside the Justice Department who is awaiting the release to determine whether there should be complaints made about how the redaction work was done. “Some of it may be incompetence as much as deliberate.”
Politico’s magazine side offers five rules for how to interpret the documents.
Rule #1: Don’t Read the Files. Resist the temptation to “pluck information — even something as simple as an email communication — from a large body of material and assume that you can fully understand it.” Instead, “trust serious reporters and media outlets with a track record of reporting deeply and responsibly on Epstein.” Don’t jump to conclusions and eagerly post them to social media. (Right, like that’s going to happen.)
Rule #2: Understand What Kind of Documents You Are Reading. “The documents likely to attract some of the closest attention are the FBI’s interview memos — known as 302s in law enforcement parlance — but you cannot simply presume that their contents are true.” Recognize your “factual sources, their biases and their limitations.”
Rule #3: Remember: Sleazy Behavior Isn’t Criminal. But if it’s salacious and draws clicks and likes, that will be enough for many. Ask Ken Starr.
Rule #4: Be Skeptical of the Early Releases. This one is perhaps the most important:
It’s critical to remember that there’s nothing that prevents the Trump DOJ from trying to manipulate the flow of information — for instance, by frontloading early releases with material that is particularly harmful to Trump’s political opposition.
The administration could also produce seemingly damaging information about people early on, only to release exculpatory material later in the process — after much of the damage will already have been done — and could selectively withhold material on the grounds that it would impede an ongoing investigation or harm national security.
As always, exculpatory information will appear on Page 6 weeks after front-page smears.
Rule #5: Ask Yourself: Where’s Trump? Expect as much Trump-related information as possible not to be in the releases. This takes us back to my comment about the Trump administration’s aversion to following the law:
Needless to say, we should not expect the Trump administration to prominently produce this information given their handling of all this to date — as well as Bondi’s own, over-the-top personal and political dedication to Trump. For all we know, they may never produce it — or at least not all of it. (Yes, the law mandates this disclosure, but there are plenty of laws that the Trump administration has simply decided to ignore.)
If material pertaining to Trump is not produced early, there is reason to believe that the Trump administration is engaged in a (continuing) cover-up of information that would be harmful to the president. That is reason alone to be cautious about jumping to conclusions about other political and media figures.
All this assumes that there is anything Epstein to read by the time tonight’s cable news shows air. Until then, Happy Epstein Files Friday for those who celebrate.
UPDATE: Say it ain’t so!
surprise, surprise. DOJ will release docs over a rolling production over a few weeks — violation of terms of Epstein law but who's to stop them. Big point is timing — remember first spin of Mueller Report by Bill Barr? What comes out first will be big influence on public perception.
