Lies, damn lies, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
Texas Dems' fight against GOP cheats is just the tip of a terrifying iceberg
The Republican motto — since Nixon sabotaged LBJ‘s Vietnam peace negotiations and Reagan blew up Carter’s deal to get the Iranian hostages back — has been: “If you can’t win, cheat.”
As Republicans rush to redistrict/gerrymander Texas, if enough Dems leave town there won’t be a quorum so the redistricting can’t happen. Which is why Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was threatening to lock up Democratic lawmakers to prevent them from leaving the state.
Gov. Greg Abbott thought he had a pretty slick plan. Have Texas Republicans refuse to consider legislation funding aid to the people stricken by the recent disastrous, climate-change-fueled floods until after the state had been more severely gerrymandered. Because of massive FEMA cuts, those people are pretty desperate.
Calling his bluff on Sunday, Democrats fled the state to Illinois, where Gov. JB Pritzker offered sanctuary to the 51 Texas legislators in need of it.
Texas Democratic Caucus Chair Gene Wu said:
“Gov. Abbott has turned the victims of a historic tragedy into political hostages in his submission to Donald Trump. He is using an intentionally racist map to steal the voices of millions of Black and Latino Texans, all to execute a corrupt political deal. Apathy is complicity, and we will not be complicit in the silencing of hard-working communities who have spent decades fighting for the power that Trump wants to steal.”
But that’s just the smallest tip of the iceberg of election rigging that Trumpy Republicans are pushing all across the country. Sadly, because Democrats are not making a big deal nor being theatrical about it, the media is paying almost no attention to the number one way Republicans are rigging the next two elections.
If the Republican Party insists on invoking Abraham Lincoln’s name, they might want to pause and read something the man actually said. “The ballot is stronger than the bullet,” Lincoln famously declared a principle he fought an actual civil war to uphold. But today, the party that claims him as its founder is waging a different kind of war; not against slavery, but against democracy itself.
This time, their biggest weapon isn’t the bullet or even gerrymandering: it’s the purge.
From Georgia to New Jersey, from Congress to the courts, the GOP is in the middle of an all-out assault on the very foundation of American self-governance: the vote. And unlike Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election in full public view, this campaign is quieter, more technical, and far even more destructive.
In a breathtaking abuse of power, Trump’s Department of Justice — just eight days after he took the oath of office — began dismantling the legal safeguards meant to protect voters from being purged from the rolls.
Before Trump’s handpicked crony Pam Bondi — the former Florida AG who ignored Jeffrey Epstein for years — was even confirmed, Trump’s DOJ had already dropped a lawsuit challenging Virginia’s last-minute voter purge throwing massive numbers of people off the voting rolls. Then came Alabama. Then Kentucky.
This wasn’t just some small policy change; it was a purge. And these early moves were just the opening salvo.
By spring, Trump’s captive DOJ wasn’t even pretending anymore. It was openly threatening lawsuits and demanding statewide voter rolls under the flimsy pretext of “citizenship verification,” code for intimidating states into purging voters and making registration harder. At least 16 states have already been contacted, including by federal prosecutors, a deeply disturbing move, considering the DOJ has no legal role in administering elections.
The message couldn’t be clearer: this is about building the infrastructure to interfere with future elections, just as Trump demanded in 2020 before career DOJ officials stopped him.
Now, under his second regime, he’s making sure there’s no one left to say no. The hijacking of the DOJ is not just corrupt: it’s a full-scale assault on democracy, laying the legal groundwork to steal 2026 and 2028 in plain sight.
This is just one aspect of how the modern Republican Party has made voter suppression a central plank of its political strategy, and they’re counting on you not to notice until it’s too late.
To start with Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is often held up by mainstream media as the “reasonable Republican” who stood up to Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election. But scratch beneath that surface and you’ll find a man fully on board with the GOP’s long-standing war on voting rights.
This month, Raffensperger announced that his office is canceling the voter registrations of nearly 500,000 Georgians, one of the largest such purges in American history.
Half a million people, gone from the rolls with a bureaucratic keystroke in a state Trump only won by 115,100 in 2024 and lost by a bit over 11,000 in 2020.
That’s not protecting democracy. That’s blowing a hole in the side of the ship and hoping nobody notices the water pouring in.
Raffensperger claims this is about “cleaning” the voter rolls. But Greg Palast, who’s spent decades investigating voter suppression, showed years ago that this kind of mass purge disproportionately targets young people, people of color, and low-income Americans, the exact same groups that tend to vote Democratic.
In fact, in 2018, Palast uncovered that 340,134 voters were wrongly removed from Georgia’s rolls: people who hadn’t moved or died or become ineligible, but were still wiped out under the excuse of “list maintenance.” That purge likely cost Stacey Abrams the governor’s race. In 2020, it happened again and Trump may have lost anyway, but voter suppression certainly made it close.
Then BBC/Rolling Stone/Guardian reporter Greg Palast told us the truth about the 2024 election after going through the roughly 4 million voters who were purged just before that contest with the piece he wrote for this newsletter titled: “TRUMP LOST. Vote Suppression Won”:
“Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.
“And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.”
Harris didn’t lose to Trump. She lost to the vote suppressors and the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to publicly raise a fuss about it or fight back by purging Republican voters in Blue states (a tactic that former Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Pocan endorsed on my program last Friday).
Now, Raffensperger (pronounced “Raff-ens-purger”) wants to go even further. He wrote to Congress this month urging them to repeal the National Voter Registration Act, the 1993 “Motor Voter” law that explicitly says we have a “right to vote” and prevents states from aggressively purging voters without due process.
He wants to make it easier for Republican-controlled states to wipe voters off the rolls without having to follow even the most minimal of those pesky federal rules.
This is not an isolated case. This is part of a larger GOP strategy to quietly dismantle the machinery of voting rights under the guise of “election integrity.”
In Congress, Republicans recently held a hearing stacked with anti-voting extremists who pushed for weakening federal voting laws and expanding purges. And in New Jersey — not even a swing state — the RNC just filed a lawsuit demanding access to the state’s voter rolls and voting machine records, another front in their broader war to “find” nonexistent voter fraud and justify new crackdowns.
Why New Jersey? Because there’s a governor’s race this fall, and Republicans are desperate for a win they can spin into momentum.
This isn’t just about fraud; it’s also about fear. They know their policies are unpopular. They know the American majority doesn’t want forced birth, dirtier air, gutted Medicaid, book bans, billionaire tax breaks, the military in our streets, and an adjudicated fraudster and bribe-accepting rapist in the White House. So instead of changing their platform, they’re changing the rules of the game.
We’ve seen this playbook before. After the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, Republican-controlled states wasted no time enacting new voter ID laws, slashing polling places and drop boxes in Black neighborhoods, ending Sunday voting, and purging rolls en masse.
These weren’t reforms or even list-cleaning efforts. These were weapons, and they worked and continue to work.
The strategy is simple: create enough barriers to voting that millions of eligible Americans either don’t know they’ve been purged, or give up trying to fight their way through the red tape.
Even the Department of Justice, now fully politicized, is getting in on the act. They’ve reportedly sent letters to states demanding voter information, supposedly in search of “illegal voting.”
This is the same phony excuse used by Trump’s disbanded voter fraud commission in 2017 — which spent millions and didn’t find any voter fraud anywhere in America — and it’s just as baseless now as it was then.
But that doesn’t matter. The point is to discourage, intimidate, and overwhelm; to make voting feel difficult, risky, or futile.
Marc Elias, one of the few high-powered lawyers still fighting for democracy in the courts, put it plainly:
“Make no mistake: these efforts to make it easier to remove voters from the rolls are actively weakening our democracy.”
He’s right. We are watching, in real time, the intentional hollowing-out of our most sacred civic act that’s at the foundation of democracy: voting.
It’s not just that the GOP is unwilling to stand up for voting rights. It’s that they’re actively engineering our democracy’s collapse. Trump’s Justice Department just demanded voting information from Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, New York, Utah, and Wisconsin.
They’re attacking our democracy itself; not openly, not with slogans, but with data files, database matching tricks, and lawsuits designed to strip you of your rights and your vote before you even realize what’s happened.
Abraham Lincoln said the ballot was stronger than the bullet. Ronald Reagan — a man I rarely quote favorably — once called voting “the crown jewel of American liberties.” But today’s Republican Party has betrayed both. They have traded Lincoln’s legacy for Trump’s lies and turned Reagan’s jewel into a cheap trinket sold off for power.
Thus, the New Civil War the GOP has declared on America is in a way reminiscent of the Old South’s Confederacy, although this time it isn’t being fought with bullets; it’s with ballots.
The 2025 elections and the 2026 midterms and beyond will be fought not just on the campaign trail, but at your county elections office, at your state legislature, and in your mailbox.
And if we don’t demand that our Democratic state officials gerrymander, purge, publicize, litigate, and employ every other legal method to counter this GOP assault on democracy, we may wake up one day soon and find that, like in Russia and Hungary, the ballot has become meaningless.
Our ancestors bled for the right to vote and have it count. Our enemies fear it. The only question left is will we — and elected Democrats — demand change loudly enough to provoke action before it’s too late?
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This massive corporate bonus reveals everything about Trump's America
Tesla announced on Monday that it’s granting additional shares to Elon Musk worth around $29 billion. Tesla’s board describes it as a “first step, ‘good faith’ payment” to Musk — even as Tesla continues to battle in court over reinstating an even bigger pay package that a Delaware judge struck down.
Why is this giant pay package necessary, you might ask, when Musk already holds 13 percent of the company, worth hundreds of billions?
It’s not as if Tesla is thriving and Musk has contributed to its profitability. In fact, Tesla’s sales and profit are falling and it’s losing market share. Tesla’s stock is now down about 20 percent for the year. The company hasn’t reported an increase in quarterly earnings since the third quarter of 2024.
Tesla’s downward profit spiral is mainly due to Musk’s involvement in right-wing politics, which has alienated many car buyers. Although Musk has officially left the Trump administration, he is still nosing around politics. He’s even talking about starting a third party.
And let’s be clear: His political power comes directly from his wealth. Tesla’s making him $29 billion wealthier arguably makes American politics $29 billion dirtier.
It’s not as if Musk needs the additional money. He’s already the world’s richest person, worth about $350 billion.
So why is Tesla’s board giving him a $29 billion raise?
Because Musk hinted last month that he wanted more shares in Tesla to prevent his ouster by “activist” shareholders. It was a “major concern,” he said on an earnings call with analysts.
But this excuse begs the question of why activist shareholders would want him ousted if he were doing such a good job at Tesla. The answer is he’s obviously not doing a good job, and he knows it.
Tesla’s directors aren’t exerting better control over Musk because the board is packed with Musk’s close friends and his brother. This is called a conflict of interest, people.
In fact, what Musk is doing to Tesla is a smaller version of what Trump is doing to America: fleecing it while running it into the ground.
And Tesla’s board’s response is a miniature version of the way congressional Republicans are responding to Trump: rubber-stamping whatever he wants.
Many Tesla shareholders, meanwhile, resemble Trump’s MAGA base. They’ve made a cult out of Musk and applaud anything that keeps him at Tesla despite his breathtakingly irresponsible performance as CEO.
Call it authoritarian capitalism.
- Robert Reich is a professor emeritus of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com
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Exclusive: A very important letter from President Donald J. Trump
Dear Undeserving Americans,
It was been many years since I have written you a Very Important Letter, but with all the good news out there right now, I thought it was important for you to hear from me again in this terrific forum of collateral damage, and disintegrating ideas.
I want to remind everybody who is new to reading my Very Important Letters that much like Presidents Jefferson, Franklin and Eisenhowzer before me, my words are terrifically eloquent, sometimes gigantic, and are best read slowly so that you can appreciate their meaning as much as I do.
So I will appreciate it in advance if you could stop doing whatever it is you are doing right now, and give me, your greatest president, all the time I deserve to read slowly on this fine morning. You will thank me for this when you’re done, so you are welcome in advance.
Before I get into all the tremendous things I have done for you since beginning my third term in office, I want to address these ergonomic and horrible job numbers that came out for no, good rotten reason Friday from a very nasty woman who used to work for the traitor, sleepy Joe Biden.
In addition to inexcusably looking like a complete dog in her dress, she has no idea what she is talking about. The economy has never been better in the entire history of America, and all the people I know have never had more money in their pockets. This is important because when all the people I know have money, that means the people they know have lots of money, too, and before you know it we all have lots of money to spend on things you are selling.
WE stimulate YOUR economy and you can thank us all — but mostly me — for that. This isn’t easy on us, and mostly me.
Why just the other day, I bought the tall kid who lives in New York with Melanie, a fancy train set. When I was told he had outgrown that kind of stuff, I bought him a strip club on Long Island.
I hear he is doing very well, and hope to see him during my next trip to the city. I will be bringing three suitcases full of two-dollar bills to stimulate the economy of the strip club. See how that works?
You are welcome in advance for me doing all that for you, for him, and for them. Oh, and let me tell ya, that kid has gotten tall. Not as tall as me yet, but still remarkably and tremendously tall.
So back to this terrible, terrible woman, who could never work in a strip club by the way, for putting out these sanctimonious job numbers yesterday. She obviously hates this country, and for as long as I am around she will never work again. And because of her horrible, disgusting numbers, I will now be the one reporting numbers like this for the foreseeable future, which will basically be a very, very long time because my eyesight is incredibly good as you can imagine, and can foresee many tremendous and not so tremendous things.
Why I’m still the only one who saw me winning the election in 2020.
You’d think I already had enough to do, but these numbers have to be just right, and I will take the time to make sure they are.
For now on, everything I say and report will be the truth, so that you don’t have to worry about it. As your overwhelming president, what is important is what I think is true, because I am really the only one who matters here or knows the truth. I know you appreciate it and worship me when I tell you things straight, whether they are true or not, so you are welcome for me being so straight with you when I could be crooked like Obama.
In addition to giving out all the terrific and sensational numbers we all like to hear, it will also streamline the government process for doing these kinds of things, and save the taxpayer, you, not me (because as you know, I don't pay taxes), lots, and lots of money. So you see I am doing this all for you, and you can thank me for that whenever you feel like it, but just as soon as possible so you don’t forget. Maybe right now.
You’re welcome.
You know, I really can’t believe nobody has thought of this terrific idea before, but I am glad it was me and I expect people will be talking about this for many years and probably centuries. It will be right up there with President Franklin discovering electricity while flying his kite on the White House lawn.
I’m still shocked he wasn’t electrocuted …
That’s a joke, you dummies. Laugh.
What isn’t a joke is all the sensational numbers I will be providing you in the future. You know these outdated elections we have in this country with all the broken down voting machines? Forgot about them. I will be presenting the numbers in the future.
If a result doesn’t sound right to me, I will give you a number that does, and it will be the only thing that really matters.
All numbers for now on will be revised to meet my incredibly high expectations.
I am hoping that if this all goes as planned, you will never have to vote again, and can take more time for yourselves and for me.
You’re welcome.
This will also make things easier for me, because sometimes I need to reward myself for all I have done for you. This isn’t fair to me, but I get it, you can’t think of me all the time, but you can never try hard enough.
I am always here for you, and for me, and plan to be for the next decade or so.
Speaking of making things easier for me, this morning I had another physical with my doctor who told me that my ankles had lost 10lbs. since the last time he checked on them.
This was obviously great news, because I’ve always had sensational ankles. I was always very proud of my ankles and thought they did a terrific job connecting my knees to my feet. Much better than average.
Anyway, after he told me my ankles had lost weight, he made kind of a sad noise.
I asked him why he was making sad noises after bringing me such joy that my ankles had lost weight, and he said, “Well, that’s the good news. The bad news is that you are still 322lbs.”
I told him that number didn’t sound right, especially after all the incredible, sensational work I had done in the state-of-the-arts gym at Mar-a-Lago, home to the fattest steaks and thinnest broads on the planet. Just the other day I walked a plank and bench-pressed my caddie.
So when my doctor insisted on telling me I weighed 322lbs., I fired him.
See how easy that is?
Just so you know, my number is 185lbs., and thanks to that, I’ve never felt better. Light as a feather, and such a weight off my broad shoulders, on which I carry the entire world like Atilla the Hun ...
Well, I’d like to stay here and keeping bringing you incredible numbers, but I have a hard-earned tee time this morning. I’ll be playing with Lindsey, who has become incredibly good at putting numbers on the scorecard that sound right to me.
But before I go, I want to say a prayer for Ghislaine Maxwell, who has been treated so, so terribly by our corrupt, lying, no-good, awful media.
This whole Epstein thing has been incredibly and terrifically hard on me as you can imagine. The guy was stealing girls from me, and now because he killed himself in prison I have to answer for all of it. I don’t know who the jackass was that was president when all this happened, but I’ll tell you what, he should hang like Mike Pence almost did.
Now they are going after Ghislaine who was babysitting all these girls that Jeffrey was stealing from me. Well, not on my watch they’re not. I expect her testimony will clear everything up. She can get a job at the tall kid’s strip joint, and I can go back to feeding everybody numbers that feel right to me.
This has all been so, so unfair to me.
Where was I? Oh yeah, a prayer …
“Dear Father in the artmost skies. Please bring they shepherds to look down on the flocks of people who walk this earth without sandals. See that their ankles don’t swell too much, and that they bring gold, crypto and mirth to thy cradle of wealth. In Moses’s name we ask that my commandments are heard, and that those who stray from the beast are struck down with lightning from the heavens. -Amen”
Sorry, if that wasn’t as powerful as my usual prayer, but I have spent more then enough time on you this morning, and you can thank me for that the very first chance you get.
You’re welcome.
May God bless the fruits on your plane.
-DONALD J. TRUMP
- (D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and in addition to finishing up this latest letter, finished a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)
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Trump is going to need a cellmate. I've got just the man
Israel has become a global pariah — “increasingly isolated,” the New York Times recently reported. Polls in the U.S. and around the world reveal growing opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza, particularly since Israel has no obvious plan to end its war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has himself, and his right-wing government partners, to blame. He doesn't give a damn about Palestinian lives or the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. He primarily cares about expanding his power and staying out of prison on corruption charges. He thinks that extending the war in Gaza will help him do that. Sound familiar?
I'm proud to be Jewish. I'm proud of the fact that Jews have disproportionately been involved in all the major American progressive movements since the 1800s. I believe in the core Jewish value of tikkun olam — repairing the world and ending human suffering.
I support Israel's right to exist. I've been to Israel three times — the first time in 1965 and most recently in 2015. I have family members there. But I am 100% opposed to Netanyahu's government, its war crimes in Gaza, its support for Jewish settlements on the West Bank, its racism, its attacks on the country’s progressive organizations (which I wrote about in 2016), and its efforts to undermine what’s left of Israeli democracy.
I support Palestinians' right to a sovereign homeland, but not one run by Hamas, a theocratic, fascist, anti-woman, anti-gay terrorist organization.
I'm pleased that most American Jews, and a small but growing number of American Jewish organizations — including, most recently, the Union of Reform Judaism, the largest and most liberal of all Jewish religious movements — oppose Israel's atrocities in Gaza, including thwarting food, water, medical, and other aid from reaching those who need it. (Yes, Hamas stole some of the aid that was sent there, but not much of it. That's Netanyahu's lame excuse for blocking all humanitarian aid. That's an outrage).
I believe, along with a majority of Democrats in the Senate, that the U.S. should end military aid to Israel until there is a ceasefire and ultimately a peace agreement.
I know there's been an upsurge of antisemitism and hate crimes against Jews in the United States. And yes, some of those incidents have occurred on a handful of college campuses. But the overall number is quite small — not close to the level that the Anti-Defamation League wants you to believe, which they falsely quantify by equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
A few anti-Israel protesters use rhetoric that can be described antisemitic and that understandably makes some Jews feel uncomfortable. But college campuses are not hotbeds of Jew hatred. That's a big lie that Trump and the ADL and groups like Mothers Against College Anti-Semitism use for their own overlapping purposes.
In fact, most people protesting Israel's actions are not antisemites. They just want the killing and suffering in Gaza to end. I've protested Israel's atrocities and I'm not an antisemite.
If colleges want to address antisemitism, limiting protest and free speech (and caving in to Trump's demands over curriculum, admissions, and DEI programs) is not the way to do it. Instead, colleges should do more to educate students, faculty and staff about the history and current reality of antisemitism — and how it is similar to and different from other kinds of bigotry, including racism, sexism, nativism, Islamophobia, and homophobia.
More courses, more speakers, more dialogue, and more opportunities for Jewish, Muslim, and Christian students to work together on regular academic, extracurricular, community-oriented, and social justice projects to build and foster connections and trust.
The biggest threat to American Jews are not on college campus. They are the right-wing hate groups who Trump has encouraged, emboldened, and pardoned.
- These are the "Jews will not replace us" Nazis who marched in Charlottesville.
- These are the insurrectionists who wore "Camp Auschwitz" sweatshirts on January 6, as they invaded the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. to try to overturn the 2020 election.
- These are the Trump supporters who shoot Jews in synagogues (in Pittsburgh and elsewhere), at public parades (like the one in Highland Park, Illinois), and at the Jewish museum in D.C.
- These are the conspiracy theorists who spout antisemitic stereotypes about an alleged international Jewish cabal run by George Soros and others.
It is no accident that the upsurge of right-wing antisemitism began soon after Trump announced his first campaign for president in 2015. That Trump is himself a long time anti-semite is well-documented. He traffics in antisemitic stereotypes and he cultivates and encourages hate groups, including neo-Nazi groups. He has long admired Hitler.
Trump mainly cares about appealing to his base. Only 26% of Jews voted for Trump last year and few Jews support his policies or actions. A huge part of his base, however, are white evangelical Christians. About 80% of them voted for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024, accounting for almost half of his total vote.
The extreme wing of the evangelical movement are the Christian nationalists (like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and several other high-level Trump appointees), who now account for almost 30% of all Americans.
They advocate authoritarianism. They are white supremacists and anti-semites. They believe that the United States is and should be a Christian nation, governed by Biblical doctrine and not by the Constitution. In that scenario, Jews are, at best, second-class citizens.
Trump doesn't give a damn about protecting Jews from antisemitism. His attacks, and those of the Republicans in Congress (led by Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York), on universities for allegedly fostering antisemitism are really about intimidating a major bastion of liberalism and free speech. Trump is on a crusade against institutions he considers his enemies — unions, artists and performers (and institutions like the Kennedy Center), the courts, the media, and universities and colleges. He wants to intimidate and silence them. He is weaponizing antisemitism to gain more power and stifle his opponents.
And so is Netanyahu. But it is backfiring on both of them.
Israel has become a global pariah. And Trump is a laughing stock among world leaders for his authoritarian policies, his ignorance, his megalomania, and his pathological lies.
Trump’s declining support in the U.S. is likely to help the Democrats win a major of House seats next year, which would allow them to neutralize many of Trump’s policies, hold investigations and hearings to expose his corruption, and even put pressure on Israel by limiting or ending U.S. arms sales.
In my fantasy world of the not-too-distance future, Trump and Netanyahu share a prison cell. That would be equal justice under the law.
- Peter Dreier is the E.P. Clapp distinguished professor of politics at Occidental College. He is the author of "The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame" (2012), an editor (with Kate Aronoff and Michael Kazin) of "We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style", and co-author of "Baseball Rebels: The Players, People and Social Movements That Shook Up the Game and Changed America" (2022).
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Trump just debunked his own lie—and it should get him sued
Walmart, Apple , and Amazon, the most successful companies in the U.S., base their corporate strategies on data: consumer behavior data, market research, financial, product, and competitive analysis data.
Any CEO who deliberately relied on falsified data, or who demanded cooked books, would be fired immediately — and likely sued by the Board of Directors.
Any CEO of any company who tried to manipulate the appearance of short-term success for his own personal gain, at the expense of long-term viability for the company, would also be fired and likely sued for malfeasance, and worse.
A successful CEO knows that falsifying economic or financial data can lead to charges of securities fraud, wire fraud, and other financial crimes, because false data can ruin investors, corporations, and markets overnight.
Enter Donald Trump, whose self-proclaimed governing philosophy is “running the country like it’s a business.” Debunking the lie of his own manufactured image as a “successful businessman,” last Friday Trump angrily fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner because he didn’t like her data — even as he wears 34 felony convictions for falsifying records.
Dr. Erika McEntarfer, a widely respected statistician, enjoyed bipartisan support, including confirmation votes from Marco Rubio and JD Vance. Appointed commissioner under the Biden administration, she holds a Ph.D. in economics from Virginia Tech, and served at the Census Bureau for two decades under both parties prior to her BLS appointment.
By federal law, McEntarfer’s appointment ends in 2028. Trump fired her anyway because he was embarrassed by jobs data that didn't match his own hype.
In May, the White House said that April's jobs report "proved" that Trump was "revitalizing" the economy. In June, Trump posted, "GREAT JOBS NUMBERS." After the Labor Department released revised jobs figures for those months — a common practice because jobs reports are sample projections that get adjusted when actual employer data come in — Trump fired the messenger.
Trump’s penchant for hiding and falsifying data has put American corporations and the economy in more danger. Just as he scrubbed government websites of climate data to bolster his fossil fuel donors, just as he ordered the Smithsonian to remove an exhibit accurately reflecting his own impeachments, Trump thinks reality is whatever he says it is.
As he fantasizes about returning America to the Gilded Age, where robber barons extracted the earth’s resources for unimaginable profit while laborers worked for starvation wages, he’s forgetting that his oligarch donors need accurate economic data too. At least oligarchs creating real products and delivering real services—as opposed to merely speculating in Trump’s image—need real, reliable, and uncooked data.
McEntarfer should sue
When Trump fired McEntarfer in a social media post, he declared that her numbers were “phony.” He wrote on Friday, “In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” adding: “But, the good news is, our Country is doing GREAT!”
He said the numbers had been manipulated for political purposes, and announced he fired McEntarfer as a result.
Trump also baselessly accused McEntarfer of manipulating jobs numbers before the November election to advantage Kamala Harris. Trump said to reporters, “I believe the numbers were phony, just like they were before the election, and there were other times. So you know what I did? I fired her, and you know what? I did the right thing.”
When asked what his source was, he said, “my opinion,” confirming that there was no evidence to back up his reckless claims, claims that permanently tanked the reputation of a celebrated career professional.
Presidents not immune from civil prosecution
No doubt Trump slurred McEntarfer based on his own “opinion” to avoid defamation liability, but an opinion that implies a false fact is still defamatory, it is still actionable, and presidents are not immune from civil lawsuits for defamation.
The four legal elements of defamation are easily found here: false statement; publication; negligence in repeating the falsehood; and reputational harm.
More, a president has immunity from civil lawsuits only for actions taken in furtherance of his core constitutional powers. One of the main “core constitutional powers” of a president is ensuring the faithful execution of laws, such that acting to impede the execution of federal law would fall outside core official responsibilities. (As an aside, even under the disastrous Trump v. US criminal immunity ruling, Trump’s J6 conduct would likely have fallen outside his core function, had it proceeded to trial.)
Trump knowingly and intentionally lied about the BLS commissioner in a manner that directly conflicts with the Department of Labor’s statutory mission; as such, it was not a “core Constitutional function.” Announcing that previous labor reports were “falsified” causes immediate reputational harm to the Commissioner, the Department of Labor, and the US economy overall. It directly impedes the accurate compilation of labor data, a charge mandated by the Wagner-Peyser Act of 1933 as well as the Fair Labor Standards Act.
By implicitly directing that all future US data should be falsified to suit his own political narrative, Trump’s statements not only harm America’s economy, but they hinder rather than aid the faithful execution of laws.
As McEntarfer’s predecessor puts it, McEntarfer’s “totally groundless firing” sets a dangerous precedent and “undermines the statistical mission of the bureau.”
“We need accurate Jobs Numbers,” Trump told reporters, suggesting McEntarfer’s jobs numbers weren’t.
“She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified,” he added, suggesting McEntarfer was neither.
Missing the risible irony as he seeks manipulated jobs data for his own political purposes, Trump added, “Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.”
- Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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This phony conspiracy is a cover for a shocking truth
Bloomberg journalist Jason Leopold recently reported 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.
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Ghislaine Maxwell seems to have new friends in high places
On July 24 and 25, convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — the number two official in the Department of Justice. At the time, Maxwell was three years into her 20-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institute in Tallahassee, Florida (FCI Tallahassee). A week later, the Bureau of Prisons — an agency of the Department of Justice — confirmed that she’d been transferred to the Federal Prison Camp at Bryan, Texas (FPC Bryan).
It’s not a pardon, but it’s a big improvement in her quality of life.
On the outside, it’s the difference between double-fenced barbed wire and a wrought iron fence akin to that of a gated community. On the inside, the differences are more dramatic.
FCI Tallahassee
After Maxwell’s conviction in 2021, her legal team requested that she serve her sentence at FCI Danbury — known as a “Club Fed” for its reputation as one of the more hospitable penitentiaries. But the Bureau of Prisons sent her to the low-security prison in Florida. Her incarceration began in July 2022.
Maxwell’s quarters were in an area of the facility known as the “snake pit” where “violence wasn't just common, but expected.” According to news reports, she was “living in fear of experiencing it first hand after she tattled on two other inmates.” In November 2024, Maxwell was promoted to the “honor dorm” — the prison's supposedly “cushier living quarters” reserved for 30 to 40 of the best-behaved inmates.
But “cushier” has little meaning at FCI Tallahassee. Two years ago, it was the subject of a damning inspector general’s report: The facility had “several serious operational deficiencies … Among the most concerning were the alarming conditions of its food service and storage operations … ”
In particular:
- Contaminated food: A food preparation refrigerator contained “moldy bread” along with “discolored and rotting vegetables.” In the food storage warehouses, the inspection revealed “likely evidence of rodent droppings, as well as bags of cereal with insects in them….”
- Decaying infrastructure: “Many female inmates live in housing units in which water frequently leaks from ceilings and windows on or near their living spaces. Additionally, we observed worn bedding, rusted inmate storage lockers, issues with showers and toilets, and black substances on walls and ceilings.”
- Inadequate Health Services: Staffing shortages “have negatively affected healthcare treatment and caused staff to modify the time of day it distributes insulin and drugs to female inmates, which may limit the therapeutic benefit of these drugs for certain inmates.”
At age 60 and not eligible for parole until 2037, Maxwell’s future was bleak.
FPC Bryan
After Maxwell’s meeting with Blanche, the Bureau of Prisons moved her from the Florida low-security prison to an all-female minimum-security camp in Texas. Her experience there will be dramatically different.
Fellow inmates are mostly non-violent and white-collar criminals considered low-risk, including former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes and "Real Housewives of Salt Lake City" star Jennifer Shah. Violence in FPCs is rare. Inmates can walk the grounds, work out in the gym, and generally have greater freedom of movement in a camp than in any other federal correctional institution.
Wait, what?
But here’s the kicker: Sex offenders typically aren’t eligible for federal prison camps. According to Forbes, “The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) classifies individuals with sex offense convictions using a Public Safety Factor (PSF) designation, which automatically excludes them from placement in minimum-security camps — the lowest custody level. While the BOP employs a point-based system to determine appropriate placement, sex offenders are assigned a PSF regardless of their score.”
In Federal Prison Guidebook – Sentencing and Post-Conviction Remedies (Revision 5), noted criminal defense attorney Alan Ellis and former high-level Bureau of Prisons official J. Michael Henderson explain:
SEX OFFENDER PUBLIC SAFETY FACTOR
Regardless of what a person is incarcerated for, if their history indicates sexual misconduct (in the pre-sentence report or other official documentation), they will receive a “sex offender” Public Safety Factor (PSF).
[1] Sexual misconduct includes evidence of non-consensual sexual contact, child pornography offenses, any sexual conduct with a minor, or any aggressive or abusive sexual acts.
This PSF means that the person is disqualified from placement in a minimum-security placement, and will thus be placed in at least a low-security institution. They will most likely be housed in standard general prison populations…
Perks of power
With power comes the ability to reward friends — and punish enemies. Maxwell’s transfer could be the inverse of what the Bureau of Prisons did to Trump’s former fixer, Michael D. Cohen. As Trump completed his first term in July 2020, Cohen arrived at a Manhattan courthouse to complete routine paperwork. It allowed him to finish his prison sentence at home because of the pandemic.
But probation officers asked Cohen to sign a document barring him from speaking to reporters or publishing a book for the remainder of his three-year sentence. With his tell-all book nearing publication, he refused on First Amendment grounds. Federal marshals took him into custody and back to prison.
Two weeks later, a federal judge ruled that the government’s actions were retaliation and ordered Cohen’s return to home confinement. On September 8, 2020, he published Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump. Cohen completed his sentence in November 2021.
The Bureau of Prisons hasn’t provided a reason for Maxwell’s transfer. Maybe that’s because there isn’t a good one.
- Steven J. Harper is an attorney, adjunct professor at Northwestern University Law School, and author of several books, including Crossing Hoffa -- A Teamster's Story and The Lawyer Bubble -- A Profession in Crisis. He has been a regular columnist for Moyers on Democracy, Dan Rather's News and Guts, and The American Lawyer. Follow him at https://thelawyerbubble.com.
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Why Trump's ballroom is a sign of his own doom
U.S. President Donald Trump’s $200 million plan to construct a new golden ballroom at the White House is not just a monument to narcissism. It is statecraft by spectacle, financed by national rot. The timing is not subtle. It arrives alongside his “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” a federal budget that slashes Medicaid, food stamps, public housing, and climate programs, all while inflating the national deficit past $40 trillion. In this juxtaposition — architectural self-glorification for the ruling executive, fiscal starvation for the governed — we are not witnessing innovation. We are watching reruns of Versailles.
Louis XVI’s France operated on the principle of dépense utile, or “useful splendor” — the idea that royal extravagance was a form of political investment. Gold leaf and crystal chandeliers weren’t indulgence. They were instruments of authority. Versailles was never merely a residence. It was theater. It showcased the king’s ability to dominate not only his nobles but the metaphysical order of the kingdom itself. Every garden vista, every mirrored hallway, whispered the same thing: Obedience is beautiful, and beauty belongs to the crown.
This logic broke the country.
Charles-Alexandre Calonne, Louis XVI’s finance minister in the 1780s, argued with sincerity that royal pageantry had diplomatic utility. France, he said, could not afford to appear poor. To reduce spending would be to lose face, both at home and abroad. It would risk undermining the delicate myth of royal omnipotence that kept the aristocracy groveling and foreign rivals guessing. So he doubled down. The state borrowed to cover Versailles’ operating costs. The result was a debt spiral so vast that it cracked the ancien régime wide open.
Fast forward to 2025. The United States now faces annual interest payments approaching $2 trillion, nearly one-third of all federal revenue. Unlike France in 1789, America has no tax-exempt aristocracy. Instead, it has tax-exempt billionaires. And instead of court ballet, it has cable news. But the fiscal structure is no less absurd. Trump’s budget performs the same dark magic: redirecting public funds toward elite vanity while accelerating structural collapse
The ballroom is a symptom. A projected $200 million marble-and-gold performance space, modeled loosely on Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors, will sit at the center of Trump’s renovated West Wing. It will host foreign dignitaries, Republican fundraisers, and presidential photo ops. This is how kleptocracy dresses itself — in borrowed grandeur, gilded walls, and florid illusions of permanence.
Meanwhile, Medicaid is being “restructured.” Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program benefits are being “realigned.” These are words chosen to disguise cruelty. The One Big Beautiful Bill is an exercise in anti-governance. It is designed to shrink the public sphere until only the strong, the connected, and the loyal remain. The money isn’t gone. It’s just moved — upwards.
There is bitter historical irony here. The French Revolution did not erupt because peasants lacked bread. Bread shortages had existed for centuries. What changed was the visibility of the farce. The illusion cracked. People saw a monarchy bleeding the treasury dry for glitter and pride, while demanding austerity from everyone else. The palace at Versailles, once a symbol of majesty, began to look grotesque. The line between luxury and insult collapsed.
Today, Americans are watching that same shift in real time. A president calls himself “king” on social media and receives thunderous applause from his base. He designs a ballroom while communities lose clinics. He throws gala dinners while food pantries see record demand. The White House is not a palace, but it is being remade into one.
The parallels to 18th-century France are not metaphorical. They are operational. Royal France justified excess as necessary to preserve order and prestige. Trump’s America justifies it with the language of branding. In both systems, the result is the same: obscene pageantry disguising political decay. The court is televised now. The courtiers wear microphones. And the people foot the bill.
There is no modern equivalent of Calonne’s Assembly of Notables. No gathering of billionaires will be summoned to justify the deficit or explain why America can afford a golden ballroom but not insulin. The rituals of accountability have vanished. The theater remains.
Trump’s defenders will call the ballroom symbolic. They are right. It symbolizes a state that has abandoned the moral obligations of government and replaced them with architecture. It is the spatial embodiment of policy by spectacle. The Roman emperors built circuses. Louis built Versailles. Trump builds ballrooms. The continuity is not ideological. It is psychological.
And it is ending the same way.
History offers no guarantees, but it does offer warnings. The French monarchy believed it could govern through performance. It fell because people eventually realized they were not guests at the party. They were the bill.
The question is not whether America can afford another ballroom. The question is whether it can survive the regime that thinks it should build one.
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The 3 reasons Trump's moral squalor is doomed
It gets bleaker and bleaker. He’s eviscerating environmental protections. He accuses Barack Obama of treason. He’s ripping up labor protections. He wants to privatize Social Security. He fires the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he doesn’t like the job numbers. He forces the Smithsonian to take down an exhibit that includes his two impeachments. The European Union, Japan, Columbia University, and CBS are all surrendering to him.
Many of you ask me where I get my hope from, notwithstanding.
Three sources.
First, from all the young people I work with every day. They’re enormously dedicated, committed to making the world better. They’ll inherit this mess, and they’re ready to clean it up and strengthen our democracy. They also have extraordinary energy. And they’re very funny. It is impossible not to be hopeful around them.
Second, from history. We are now in a second Gilded Age that, like the first one (from the late 19th century to the start of the 20th), features wide inequalities of income and wealth, abuses of power by the oligarchs (then called “robber barons”), and a bullied and abused working class.
What happened then? The great pendulum of America swung back. The first Gilded Age was followed by what historians call the Progressive Era. Taxes were raised on the wealthy. Antitrust laws were enacted. Regulations stopped corporate malfeasance. Big money was barred from politics. And reformers — starting with Teddy Roosevelt in 1901 and extending through his fifth cousin, FDR, in 1933 — made life better for average working people.
I don’t know exactly how or when the pendulum will swing back this time, but I am certain it will. And the regressive moral squalor of Trump and his lackeys will be swept into the dustbin of history.
My third source of optimism comes from people I meet all over America, including self-described Republicans in so-called “red” states and “red” cities, who detest what’s happening to the nation and to the world under Donald Trump (as well as under Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin).
There’s a profound decency in the sinews of America. Most Americans are generous and kind.
Opinion polls show the vast majority don’t want ICE agents disappearing their neighbors off the streets and into detention camps. They reject Trump prosecuting his so-called enemies. They think it’s wrong for him to pocket billions from crypto and other pay-to-play schemes. They don’t like him or his lackeys verbally attacking federal judges, or silencing critics.
Over 80 percent believe the minimum wage should be raised, that no full-time worker should be in poverty, that corporations should share their profits with their employees, that working people should get paid family leave, and that child care and elder care should be affordable.
I don’t want to minimize the repugnance of Trump and his sycophants. Like you, I wince when I read the news. Some days I despair.
But there are sources of hope all around us. Find them. Cling to them. Never give up.
- Robert Reich is a professor emeritus of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com
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Ghislaine Maxwell just made a classic Florida move—and it stinks
Al Capone liked to relax in Miami Beach.
Ex-dictators, junta leaders, and death squad commanders from Cuba, Nicaragua, Peru, Honduras, Venezuela, and Panama have moved here when things got too hot at home.
Then there are the dodgy New York billionaires, including the felonious current occupant of the White House and his erstwhile pal, the late Jeffrey Epstein, who installed themselves in ocean-front mansions and became Florida Men.
Epstein’s girlfriend/posh pimp Ghislaine Maxwell made herself a Florida Woman, too, shopping for young girls in Palm Beach County.
Then she moved north, although not by choice: She was sentenced to 20 years for sex trafficking and imprisoned at FCI Tallahassee.
Now the feds have whisked her off to some tennis prison in Texas.
If you’re a halfway rational human being, you probably haven’t given much thought to her over the past six months, what with the attacks on science, the attempts to wreck higher education, the dismantling of environmental protections, and destruction of the rule of law.
Obsession
Our brothers and sisters in MAGA, however, just can’t get her out of their heads.
They’re fixated on her, Jeffrey Epstein, and these alleged files which may or may not still be sitting on the attorney general’s desk.
They’re convinced the files contain mighty secrets about nefarious cabals, Pizzagate, Lizard People, and sex island dirt on the Clintons.
Pam Bondi claimed on Fox “News” she would “review” the files then put Epstein’s stuff out there for everyone’s delectation.
Yet no files have been forthcoming, and boy, is MAGA mad.
Recently some “personal finance” website voted Tallahassee the ninth most boring city in America.
Unfair!
Until last Friday when Maxwell left us, everybody wanted to visit Tallahassee.
Florida’s capital was the focus of the political world, an object of slathering fascination especially among podcast hosts, news junkies, cable TV reporters, Never Trumpers, Ride-or-Die Trumpers, and people on psychotropic medication.
Call that boring? We hadn’t gotten this much attention since the Great Presidential Vote Count Screw-Up of 2000.
Trump acolyte Todd Blanche (his side-hustle is being Bondi’s deputy AG) recently descended upon the United States Courthouse in downtown Tallahassee to interview Maxwell in the presence of her Miami attorney David Markus.
Look over there!
Blanche and Markus admit they are good friends but swear there’s no conflict of interest, no sir, nothing to see here.
We don’t know what they said, but Ghislaine-o-mania isn’t going away.
Hoping to distract us, the regime keeps hollering “Squirrel!”
The FBI just released 230,000 files on the assassination of Martin Luther King.
National Security Tsarina Tulsi Gabbard has accused Barack Obama of treason, claiming he cooked up a coup against Trump in the 2016 election.
Speaker Mike Johnson was all for releasing the Epstein files until he wasn’t (maybe there was a phone call from the Oval Office?), so he adjourned the House early to avoid a vote on it.
Trump himself has been slinging delusions around like a chimp with a barrel of feces, claiming the Epstein files were created by James Comey or Joe Biden or maybe sinister Greenlandic elves.
When that didn’t seem to work, he started barking about changing the names of NFL teams in Cincinnati and Washington back to “Indians” and “Redskins.”
Then he tried to change the subject by flouncing off to Scotland (where three-quarters of the population heartily despise him) to (in order of importance) 1. Play golf; 2. Make a “trade deal” with the EU that will cleverly raise costs for Americans.
The Scots and the international press made sure nobody forgot how the president and Florida’s favorite pedophile used to be bosom buddies, dogging him with questions and snark.
There’s a grand sign at the entrance to his Aberdeenshire golf course proclaiming “Trump International Golf Links.” Underneath, somebody placed a smaller, quite official-looking sign which said, “Twinned with Epstein Island.”
Overboard
Neither heat domes nor killer floods nor ICE agents nor gloom of night will stay Americans from their fixation with Epstein and Maxwell.
And so — inevitably — back to Florida, always the humid center of bad behavior, back to Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach palace of horrors, and back to Ghislaine Maxwell, surely the most uptown inmate in FCI history.
She was once an heiress, the youngest child of megabucks London newspaper baron Robert Maxwell. As a student at Oxford, she was described as a “shiny glamazon.”
But her father was not only physically and emotionally abusive, he was embezzling from his own company and defrauding its employees.
In 1991, they found Robert Maxwell face down in the sea.
He’d been sailing near the Canary Islands on his yacht “The Lady Ghislaine.” Nobody ever figured out whether he jumped or was pushed.
Next thing you know, Ghislaine is Jeffrey Epstein’s arm candy, hard at work procuring young girls for him.
Like Trump, Epstein was a New Yorker trying to be a big deal in Palm Beach. In 1990 he bought a 14,000 square foot mansion and partied at Mar-a-Lago.
Like Trump, noisome stories about sexual abuse swirled around him like a nasty cocktail of skunk spray and dog poop.
Enabling Epstein
You will not be surprised to learn that the state of Florida played a major role in enabling Epstein.
Having amassed vast evidence he’d raped and sexually assaulted at least a dozen under-age girls, Palm Beach County cops searched his Palm Beach mansion in 2005, only to find his six computer hard drives had disappeared.
Epstein finally got arrested, and though a federal grand jury returned a 60-count indictment, he was allowed to plead guilty only to “soliciting a prostitute.”
In 2008, he was put into the private wing of the Palm Beach County jail. He had his own television room. His personal driver arrived every morning to take him to his office.
Turns out the Palm Beach County state attorney, the FBI, prosecutors and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida — a man named Alex Acosta, later appointed Secretary of Labor by Donald Trump — colluded to give Epstein the sweetest of sweet deals: a 20-month sentence.
He served about a year.
This is corrupt even by Florida standards.
When he got out in 2009, Epstein went back to living the lifestyle of the rich and infamous while the young women he assaulted and exploited were forgotten.
We might never have known all this were it not for the relentless and brilliant work of journalist Julie Brown, whose 2018 series in the Miami Herald gave voice to his victims: She tracked down more than five dozen of them.
‘Pyramid scheme’
Brown’s reporting detailed how he’d prey on homeless girls or especially vulnerable kids, paying them to bring in other girls.
This sex-trafficking “pyramid scheme,” as Brown calls it, was run by Ghislaine Maxwell.
Maxwell would visit South Florida gyms and spas, telling petite blonde high schoolers — apparently Epstein’s “type” — they could make big money giving massages to “this old guy.”
She encountered 17-year old Virginia Giuffre working at Mar-a-Lago’s spa and convinced her to “work” for Epstein.
Virginia Giuffre said Epstein passed her around to various men, including Prince Andrew and prominent lawyer Alan Dershowitz, instructing her to have sex with them. Prince Andrew denied the allegations but he wound up reaching a settlement with Giuffre. Dershowitz has also repeatedly denied allegations. Giuffre dropped her allegations against Dershowitz in 2022 and said she “may have made a mistake.”
Trump claims he had no idea what his good friend Jeffrey was up to back then, variously insisting he ditched Epstein for being “sleazy” (insert your own pot-and-kettle joke here) or they quarreled over Epstein’s “stealing” his pretty young Mar-a-Lago employees.
Brown’s attention to the shady nonprosecution deal in Palm Beach eventually led to his 2019 New York arrest on federal sex trafficking charges.
Epstein, of course, is now dead, most likely by suicide — though lots of MAGAs don’t believe that.
Virginia Giuffre is also dead, definitely by suicide.
Ghislaine Maxwell, however, is still here.
She wasn’t exactly living her best life in Tallahassee, spending her days giving yoga classes, teaching etiquette (even criminals want to be ladylike!) and, no doubt, explaining over and over that her name is not pronounced “Gizz-Lane.”
MAGA (and quite a few Democrats) want her to talk; she wants out of prison.
She may be about to get lucky.
Pardon
Thanks to Trumpists’ rich fantasy life, in which everything is a conspiracy of the Deep Swamp, she suddenly has some power.
She says she’ll testify in public as long as Congress agrees to a few little provisions as spelled out by her lawyer, chiefly immunity and a chance to see the committee’s questions in advance.
She also doesn’t want to appear before them until after the Supreme Court hears her appeal, in which she makes the thoroughly bizarre argument that the nonprosecution deal the Southern District of Florida cut with Epstein should apply to her, too.
Classic Florida move: The rules are different here.
Anyway, if they don’t comply, she’ll take the Fifth.
Trump keeps saying he’s “allowed” to pardon her, though he evades the question of whether he actually would.
That, no doubt, depends on what kind of dirt he thinks she has on him and whether that outweighs dirt she might have on his perceived enemies.
Here in Tallahassee, we’re feeling a little sore, a little mad at Texas for stealing our celebrity sex offender.
But once a Florida Woman, always a Florida Woman.
Texas will never take that away from us.
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The simple reason Trump will never release the Epstein files
Let’s get right to it, because time is not on our side, America: Donald Trump won’t order the release of the Epstein files because he is prominently featured in them.
Bare minimum, he associated with pedophiles.
Why is this so hard to understand?
Why isn’t this the end of the road for this monster?
Why isn’t this the only thread that is being pulled on right now with urgency by our bought-off and/or incompetent mainstream media?
Or did I just answer my own question?
Why isn’t every American calling (202) 224-3121 (that's the U.S. Capitol switchboard) and demanding that Trump release the Epstein files like he said he would on the campaign trail?
Thank God, identifying and stomping out pedophiles is not yet a partisan issue in America.
An unheard of 82 percent of Americans — including 76 percent of Republicans — want these files released immediately. And while Democrats are doing what they procedurally can to get at the files, it will take time that we should all have decided by now that we do not have.
Shouldn’t Americans know, and just as soon as possible, the full details of their president's relationship with a man who raped children? And shouldn’t THAT finally end the long, national nightmare we have endured for 10 years, while this dirty old man breaks everything in his blurry sight?
- We know without a shadow of a doubt that the man is a grotesque racist.
- We know without a shadow of a doubt he is a convicted felon, who assaults women.
- We know without a shadow of a doubt he cheats on his taxes even more than he has cheated on all his wives.
- We know without a shadow of a doubt he is a nuclear-powered liar, who is simply incapable of telling the truth, and lied 30,573 times the first time he tried to sink this country.
- We know without a shadow of a doubt he invited Russia to help him win the 2016 election, and then refused to call them on it in Helsinki.
- We know without a shadow of a doubt he is using the White House as his own personal ATM, and by many estimates has already pocketed billions of our dollars in crypto and airplanes, while taking endless vacations to his golf properties all over the world on our dime.
- We know without a shadow of a doubt he stalked girls in the dressing rooms of Miss Teen USA beauty competitions, because “(He's) seen it all before, and (he’s) the owner of the pageant. And therefore (he’s) inspecting it.”
These are his words.
HIS WORDS.
And now we know that the shadow of doubt concerning his real relationship with Epstein and his victims is receding into the light, because this is where we are right now, good people:
Given Trump’s new-found executive powers granted to him by our corrupt Supreme Court that are fit for a king, we can be assured that if there wasn't any damning evidence in these melting files that point to grotesque behavior with stolen children — or even better for him, there were names of his political enemies mentioned in the thing — he would have ordered these files replace the Bible in all these Christo-fascist churches as must-read material for his gurgling and snorting cult. In other words: It would be EVERYWHERE right now. There would be endless celebratory, back-patting press conferences, and Trump would order that it be read slowly, and with emphasis, on the CBS Evening News, which he recently acquired to add to his budding propaganda kingdom. You couldn’t escape it.
Except he’s doing none of this, is he?
Instead, he’s turning that certain color of rust orange, as he bends over at the waist, barrel-butt out, his 6-foot tie scraping his fat ankles, while his little, chubby hands do that weird accordion thing as he lashes out at anybody within his odious vicinity.
He’s posting INSANE distractions on his SOCIAL media channels THAT are ODDly capitalized and carrY the grammatical WAIT of a 4-year-OLD who has Trapped himself in a DOOR jam.
They have quietly moved the disgusting Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's ex-girlfriend and co-conspirator, to a cushy federal prison in Texas. WHY?
Trump has no answers, which is why we need to keep asking this question:
WHY WON’T YOU JUST SHUT UP AND RELEASE THE DAMN FILES LIKE YOU SAID YOU WOULD?
Meantime, the stink has somehow gotten even worse, because there is breaking news that it has taken only six months for Trump to destroy the solid economy Joe Biden helped meticulously build after inheriting Trump’s mess in 2021 following the attempted insurrection.
Trump inherited the strongest economy in the entire world, and has screwed it up in record time. Job growth has stalled again, and is at a 16-year low — or the last time a Democrat was fixing a battered economy left in shambles by a Republican.
Prices are rising, not falling.
Why did anybody think it would be any different this time around?
Here’a another fact that never gets enough attention: Democrats make economies and Republicans break them. Go ahead, look that up.
I could stand to hear a helluva lot more about this, too, because while billionaires are being rewarded like never before in America, the rest of us are getting royally screwed.
The numbers back this up.
Right now, though, I want to know why our president is providing safe haven for pedophiles.
Based on what we know, you’d have to be a damn fool not to believe the worst.
(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)
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This right-wing lunacy is a violation of everything conservatives hold dear
According to a new report by a state commission on banned books in Virginia schools, Hanover County Public Schools removed the book Medical Discoveries: Medical Breakthroughs and the People Who Developed Them from libraries sometime between July 2020 and March 2025.
Censored, too, was a book entitled Sexual health information for teens: health tips about sexual development, described by its publisher as “basic consumer health information for teens about puberty, sexuality, reproductive health, contraception, and disease prevention.””
Likewise jettisoned were copies of Encyclopedia of the Human Body, The Way We Work: Getting to Know the Amazing Human Body, and The Medical Advisor: The Complete Guide to Alternative and Conventional Treatments.
The conservative library review movement in Virginia’s public schools, which has galvanized during the tenure of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, purports to be about protecting parents’ rights to know what their children read. The July report by Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) put the lie to that claim.
Book banners in schools want to dictate what students can learn in their classrooms and from their libraries, regardless of what individual parents and guardians believe. No greater violation of adults’ child-rearing choices exists than the moral arbitration right-wing extremists hope heap on them.
JLARC found that 63 percent of Virginia public schools removed no books from their libraries. That good news was tempered by the fact that one in three had removed at least one book. But the real bad news is that the public-school book ban movement is just getting up to speed, as holier-than-you evangelical Christians try to take over school boards across the country. We’ve seen it in Pennsylvania, Florida, and other states. As many of those types of people gain positions of power in the administration of President Donald Trump, violations of parents’ First Amendment rights by radical theocrats seem likely to accelerate.
Hanover County, which lies about 30 miles north of Richmond, serves as a cautionary tale. Hanover schools are governed by a conservative majority and the school board is appointed, not elected like most school districts in the state. The JLARC report revealed that Hanover accounted for 36 percent of all “book removal actions” in the state. Hanover removed 125 titles from its schools from July 2020 until March 2025, the report found.
This is the last step in a progression that begins with challenging content in library books, then pulling them from shelves and requiring guardian consent to check them out, and finally, removing them from libraries entirely.
Letting political and religious ideologues control children’s reading choices leads to censoring their exposure to prize-winning literature and reflects obvious prejudices against books about racism and LGBTQ+ issues. It sacrifices scientific knowledge to faith and, in some cases, ignorance. Hanover proves that.
The conservative attack on diversity, equity and inclusion — all fundamental American values — will lead to a literal whitewash of U.S. history and doesn’t serve anyone who believes that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Censorship to shape politics and culture like what is happening in Hanover often finds its natural conclusion in symbolic or actual book burnings, like those that famously fired up Hitler’s power in Germany.
Banned books in Hanover don’t just include books about gender or sexual identity. The list also includes literary classics by Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, Booker Prize winner Maragaret Atwood, and National Book Award winner Kurt Vonnegut.
For would-be book banners, a single sex scene in hundreds of pages or a suggestion of white racism now serves as justification for exclusion from a school library.
As that continues, taboos grow. Hanover County dumped The Freedom Writers Diary. The book tells the story of a California teacher who taught students about the Holocaust by making them read and write about The Diary of Anne Frank.
To get an idea of how far-gone Hanover is, the county Board of Supervisors removed references to school library censorship from a certificate it gave a Hanover student who won a national Girl Scout award. Kate Lindley received a “Freedom to Read” award from the Girl Scouts for establishing a website and a series of “Banned Book Nooks” in the county where students could read books the school board had removed from libraries.
As she accepted her certificate from the Board of Supervisors, Lindley showed more class than the governing body.
“You have shown the world that you are afraid to call something what it is, be that a banned book or a deselected one,” she told the board’s conservative majority. “Thank you for this recognition.”
What the rest of us must recognize and resist is the assault on our rights by people who, without our consent, would deprive Virginia kids of access to books like Jesus Land: A Memoir. A New York Times bestseller, it tells the true story of a 16-year-old white girl and her Black adopted brother trying to survive a brutal, violent fundamentalist upbringing. It could be that Hanover County banned the book because it does not cast Christian fundamentalism in the light that evangelicals want it seen.
That is the polar opposite of parents’ rights.
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