‘Very savage time of cruelty’: Whispers of deal as Dems keep shutdown spotlight on Trump

WASHINGTON — Happy Groundhog Day. Again.

With the US federal government shutdown entering its fifth week and a growing number of Americans feeling deepening economic pain, there are whispers of a thaw on Capitol Hill. At the very least, some more middle-of-the-road Democratic and Republican senators are talking to each other.

Such signs of bipartisanship seemed to have spooked President Donald Trump, who took to Truth Social late last week to demand GOP leaders “INITIATE THE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION’” and get rid of the filibuster, so Republicans can more easily ram Trump-approved policies through Congress.

Democrats are dubious about anything Trump might say.

“I’m not sure if you can really trust the president,” Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NM) told Raw Story mere hours before Trump called for nuking Senate norms.

“You're going to have to maybe take a leap of faith at some point, but you better come out and do something. This is his shutdown. He owns the White House, the House and the Senate. It's up to him to be a leader and bring us together to be sure people have the dignity of health care.”

Health care, specifically the soon-to-spiral cost of insurance under the Affordable Care Act — aka, Obamacare — is the issue that drove the Democrats to trigger a shutdown now rocketing towards the record for the longest such closure.

That mark sits at 35 dismal days, set during Trump’s first administration.

After that shutdown, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost to the U.S. economy at $11 billion.

Then, as now, Republicans controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress.

Democrats say that means the onus is on the GOP to come up with a deal to get government workers paid and food stamp recipients fed, and to shame vacationing House members into returning to Washington for the first time in more than a month.

“This is a president and a Republican Party that is taking a battle ax to bedrock that American families rely on,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) told Raw Story.

“They've already cut a billion out of SNAP [food stamps]. Now they're putting in health-care work requirements that even Republican states like West Virginia have said don't work and actually cause people who are eligible to lose their coverage that was intended by Congress.

“So this is just a very, very savage time of cruelty where you're going to see millions of Americans suffering because of the things that they're doing to bedrock programs and providing health care and food programs.”

On Friday, a federal judge in Rhode Island blocked the Trump administration from suspending Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, as was due on Saturday.

Speaking before that ruling, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) told Raw Story. “SNAP beneficiaries are not a part of this fight.

“Whatever you think about the fight, they're not in it. They're being dragged into it by the administration. They've got $5 billion in a contingency fund and they ought to use it.”

‘They’ll get some votes’

Republican senators, publicly at least, remain resolute: if Democrats back down and re-open the government, GOP leaders are promising to hold votes on whether to extend Obamacare subsidies without which insurance costs will soar.

“They'll get some votes, and you can't assure an outcome on a particular vote,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) told reporters. “You can provide them with a chance.”

But Rounds also indicated resolute Republican opposition to extending subsidies.

“You have to recognize that the marketplace does not support what we're trying to do with the product in the first place,” he said, “and it's exactly what has been said by Republicans for 15 years,” going back to passage of the ACA in 2010.

Extending subsidies has found support among remaining Republican moderates, but their ranks have dwindled since the MAGA era kicked off in 2016. Most in the party seem opposed to continuing the subsidies.

“The Democrats voted for this identical spending level in December of last year, and [now] they're voting against the spending levels that they instituted,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said.

“So to me, it seems to be an untenable position. Continue to oppose spending levels they've already stated support for, and their rationale for doing it is they want to preserve Obamacare subsidies for somebody making $200,000 a year.

“I think most people out there think it'd be kind of crazy to close down the government to keep a subsidy of $1,500 a year. So I'm surprised that they've gone this long with us.”

Democrats have refused to budge.

Political watchers are sensing change in the air now the country is starting to lose patience — though polling shows majorities blame the GOP.

Republicans remain bullish.

Saying he had “no issues” with the Trump administration using a $130 million private donation to pay the military during the shutdown, despite concerns about possible corruption, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) told reporters he thought the shutdown would end this week, after high-profile state and city elections in Virginia, New Jersey and New York.

“I would assume [after Democratic] victories on Wednesday, even though it's blue states and they elect a communist in New York City [Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, favorite to be elected mayor], they're going to consider that a victory,” Mullin said.

“And then they're going to go out there and say they fought hard and it's time to open the government.”

‘People will be hungry’

The more progressive wing of the Democratic Party begs to differ, as members continue trying to focus the conversation on the deepening human cost of the shutdown.

Politics aside, the cost of the government shutdown to federal workers, contractors and those dependent on federal programs is undeniable — and increasing by the day.

“People will be hungry, people will not be paid,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said, starkly.

“And people are going to have to pay so much more for their health insurance that there are people making the decision this weekend to drop their insurance because it's the only way they can still afford rent.”

Dems demand probe as Trump's favorite Biden attack gets turned on him

WASHINGTON — If Republicans want to debate allegedly illegal pardons, Democrats are all in.

After House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) dropped a new report that claims President Joe Biden’s end-of-term pardons should be deemed “void” because they were signed by an autopen, Democrats questioned the get out of jail free cards President Donald Trump doled out to some 1,500 Jan. 6, 2021 rioters after his inauguration this year.

“I hope [the report] will be an analysis by Republicans of Trump's pardon of 1,550 people,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) — who received a Biden pardon arising from his work on the House Select Committee on January 6th — told Raw Story.

“He must have a very fast hand to have signed all those, so I look forward to Comer announcing that investigation.”

While Comer and company are looking back to Biden, Schiff and other Democrats say America’s overdue for a discussion about Trump’s own pardon practices.

“Are they gonna go examine all the pardons that Trump did of the January 6 rioters?” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told Raw Story.

“I mean, do you think he actually sat down and he signed every single one of those? I'd be happy to have them review those.”

Republicans aren’t investigating Trump — they’re hungry for retribution instead.

‘Signed and settled’

Throughout U.S. history, presidents of both parties have leaned on autopens to help them sign the stacks of official and unofficial documents that demand their attention daily.

While the Supreme Court has never weighed in on autopens, a 2005 Department of Justice memo went so far as to okay presidential underlings signing official documents on a president’s behalf.

“The President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law,” the memo reads.

“Rather, the President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 [of the Constitution] by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen.”

That’s partly why Democratic senators Raw Story spoke to Wednesday dismissed the Comer report as partisan and legally flawed.

“Look, executives use autopens, with appropriate processes and authorization, all the time,” said Sen. Coons — who fills the seat Biden vacated when he became vice president to Barack Obama in 2009.

“The question isn't, ‘Did Joe Biden actually effectively illegally pardon?’ The question is, ‘Did he follow appropriate procedures for making the decisions, individually documenting them and then authorizing the appropriate person to audit.’”

“How dangerous is it having the party in power trying to negate [past pardons]?” Raw Story asked.

“They're doing a lot to negate things that were signed and settled into law,” Coons said, before using this week’s deadly Caribbean storm as an example.

“A hurricane just roared over Jamaica, and we had appropriated money for disaster assistance and for humanitarian relief, and they shut down USAID, laid off some of the world's most experienced and capable disaster response people, and today our neighbors in Jamaica are waking up without a well-coordinated and robust American response because of it.”

‘A legitimate issue’

Ignoring growing questions about Trump’s fitness for office, Republicans are welcoming Comer’s report.

“I think [Biden’s autopen use is] a legitimate issue the American public cares about,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Raw Story.

“I would ask about whether, you know, all the autopen is legal or not. So I think there ought to be an investigation, and we can make a good decision.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) is conducting an investigation of his own.

“It all speaks to the question, ‘Who was in charge?’” he said.

“That's a serious question, and what we're doing in my committee is we're interviewing the constitutional officers — ‘What did you know? What did you see?’ — for the historical record.

“Because if this happens in the future, they've got to realize they have a responsibility to the Constitution. You can't allow somebody who's not capable of fulfilling the awesome duties of President to do this and let somebody else completely unelected, unknown to the American public, run the show.”

Should the American people expect prosecutions?

“Depends on what crimes may have been committed,” Johnson said. “That's all hypothetical about something in the future, but now we should get to the bottom of this. People need to come forward … I always have way more questions than we ever get answers for.”

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), one of President Trump’s most ardent supporters, was happy to call for investigations and perhaps prosecutions.

Last-minute Biden pardons “should be voided,” Tuberville said. “If they were done by an autopen, I mean, this doesn't seem very constitutional to do it that way.”

Adam Schiff Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) speaks with reporters. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

“I'm sure they probably are, yeah,” Tuberville said when asked if pardon recipients, such as his colleague Sen. Schiff, should be investigated by the DOJ.

“That's a huge part of breaking the law, to me, if you're going to do something that notorious, on such an important topic.”

‘Really disturbing’

Crocodile tears are all the GOP’s offering, Senate Democrats said.

“Considering that this President uses pardons to extort from people, I would hope that the Republicans would be more concerned about the use of pardon powers in that way,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) told Raw Story, nodding to controversial Trump pardons of powerful financial figures like Changpeng Zhao, the founder of crypto company Binance.

Comer released his report while the federal government is shut down and the U.S. House of Representatives is closed for business.

“[Conspiracies have] already been debunked,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) told Raw Story. “And they should wish they were equally passionate about trying to re-open [the] government and avoid impact to people who rely on nutrition assistance programs.”

Other Democrats are even more blunt when asked about congressional Republicans feeding a sympathetic DOJ fodder to go after the President’s personal, if perceived, enemies.

“I find that really disturbing,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) told Raw Story.

Biographer plans to subpoena Trump, Melania and Maxwell about Epstein ties in new lawsuit

Michael Wolff plans to subpoena President Donald Trump, Melania Trump, and convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell in the lawsuit he filed against the first lady on Tuesday, the reporter and Trump biographer said.

A legal threat against him by Melania Trump last week represented “exactly … what a SLAPP suit is,” Wolff said, going on to define “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” or intimidation suits, as weapons wielded by wealthy people saying, “We're suing you so you shut up.”

“That's against the law in New York state, to use the law for such purposes,” Wolff told the former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal and Michael Popok, a lawyer and host of the Legal AF podcast, on Wednesday.

“So last night, we went, we sued. We sued in court in New York, asking for a declaratory judgment, a judgment that says, ‘You can't do this.’

“And this process will give us now the right to call witnesses, subpoena power, and those witnesses might very well, will very well include Melania Trump and Donald Trump, and therefore afford me the opportunity to really have an in-depth discussion with them, under oath before a court reporter, about their relationship with … Jeffrey Epstein.”

Melania Trump’s threat to sue Wolff arose from comments he made on his Daily Beast podcast, Inside Trump’s Head, about how the first lady met her husband.

Pictures showing both Trumps with Epstein, the late financier and sex offender whose crimes and ties to powerful men are the subject of renewed and fierce attention, have long been discussed.

Wolff has spoken widely about interviews he conducted with Epstein in which Epstein’s long friendship with Donald Trump and their acrimonious falling out were discussed in depth.

Wolff has said Epstein showed him pictures of Trump in potentially embarrassing poses with young women. He also said he presumes the FBI now possesses such photos.

Epstein died in prison in 2019, when Trump was first in the White House. Authorities said the death was a suicide.

Six years on, intense speculation over the so-called “Epstein files” continues, stoked by the emergence of documents prominently including a suggestive 50th birthday poem and drawing from Trump, and by the publication of the autobiography of Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein victim who killed herself earlier this year.

“Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein had this long, long, long friendship,” Wolff told Blumenthal and Popok. “Really a joined-by-the-hip friendship. So there will be a lot of questions” in court.

Blumenthal asked: “And there may be other witnesses called as well?”

Wolff said: “Yes … anyone who might have information about their relationship, Donald Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, Melania Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and his circle.”

Referring to Epstein’s long-time partner, Blumenthal said: “You could call Ghislaine Maxwell, couldn’t you?”

“Oh, we certainly could,” Wolff said.

Maxwell's involvement in Epstein's affairs and links to men such as Britain's Prince Andrew are a major focus of Giuffre's memoir.

Recently, Maxwell was moved to a relatively comfortable federal facility after a controversial jailhouse interview with Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general who was previously Donald Trump’s lawyer.

An edited transcript was released.

Donald and Melania Trump vehemently deny wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. In August, the Beast withdrew a story about the Trumps and Epstein that was based on comments by Wolff.

“I'm very fond of The Daily Beast,” Wolff said, “… a young person in the office wrote an article based on the podcast that I did. And in fact incorrectly said that I said that Jeffrey Epstein introduced Melania to Donald Trump … I didn’t say it and I don’t know … that he made the direct introduction.”

A spokesman for the first lady, Nick Clemens, recently said: “First Lady Melania Trump’s attorneys are actively ensuring immediate retractions and apologies by those who spread malicious, defamatory falsehoods. The true account of how the First Lady met President Trump is in her best-selling book, ‘Melania.’”

In that book, Melania Trump says she met Donald Trump at the Kit Kat Club in New York City in September 1998. Trump was with another woman but asked Melania out anyway, she writes.

On the Legal AF podcast, Blumenthal quoted recent remarks in which Donald Trump appeared to say he was behind his wife’s legal threats, saying he said he had “done pretty well on these lawsuits lately” and had told Melania to “go forward” because “Jeffrey Epstein has nothing to do with Melania and I introducing but they do that. They make up stories.”

Wolff said suing Melania was “not about defamation. This is about the effort, on the part of the Trumps, to shut people up. And it's an extraordinary effort.

“I don't know of any instance in the modern age where the President of the United States or the First Lady, in this instance basically they are one and the same, have sued the media … and they have done it now repeatedly, over and over and over again and … it has worked. It has chilled everybody's sense of safety in our business.

“… This is the White House in all its power, acting against the media and me … I'm hardly the media. I'm just a single writer.”

Though Wolff said “frankly, it is frightening” to take on the Trumps, he said he felt he did not have any alternative.

“Thinking this through, ‘How do I get this to go away,’ I just couldn't figure out a way, and also, I felt, well, you know, damn it. You know, there's a responsibility here. You got to do it now.”

Faced with the expense of mounting the suit, Wolff said he would probably ask for financial support from the public.

Wolff also noted that in 2018, Donald Trump tried to stop the publication of Fire and Fury, the first of Wolff’s four books on the president. When the publisher refused to blink, Wolff noted, Trump backed down.

'Where are those tapes?' Epstein victim Giuffre begs for files release in posthumous book

WASHINGTON – In a posthumously published memoir, the Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre makes an impassioned plea for the release of all files and records related to the late financier and sex offender who abused young girls and facilitated abuse by powerful men.

“I hope for a world in which predators are punished, not protected; victims are treated with compassion, not shamed; and powerful people face the same consequences as anyone else,” Roberts Giuffre writes.

“I yearn, too, for a world in which perpetrators face more shame than their victims do and where anyone who's been trafficked can confront their abusers when they are ready, no matter how much time has passed.

“We don't live in this world yet – I mean, seriously: Where are those videotapes the FBI confiscated from Epstein's houses? And why haven't they led to the prosecution of any more abusers? – but I believe we could someday.”

Roberts Giuffre killed herself in April. She was 41.

Her book — Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice — will be published next Tuesday. Raw Story obtained a copy.

Excerpts published by Vanity Fair and the Guardian have concerned how Roberts Giuffre met Epstein and his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, and was sexually abused by them and other powerful figures.

Roberts Giuffre’s descriptions of sex with Prince Andrew have generated headlines in the U.K.

In 2022, Roberts Giuffre reached a settlement with Andrew, reportedly worth millions of dollars. The prince did not admit wrongdoing.

The same year, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in jail on sex-trafficking charges.

The so-called Epstein files — records seized after his second arrest and death in prison in 2019 — remain the subject of fascination.

Epstein’s relationship with Donald Trump, with whom he was long close, generates intense speculation.

The president campaigned on a promise to release the Epstein files but reversed course in office. Revelations have included a sexually suggestive poem Trump contributed to Epstein’s 50th-birthday book, and reports Trump’s name appears many times in the Epstein files.

In July, Maxwell gave an unprecedented jailhouse interview to Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general who was previously Trump’s own lawyer. Maxwell was moved to a more comfortable prison.

Now, as House Republicans exploit the government shutdown to hold up a motion to force release of the Epstein files, many detect an attempt to shield Trump.

The author Michael Wolff, who has written four books on Trump and claims to have hours of interviews with Epstein, has said Epstein showed him a picture of Trump in a compromising position with young girls.

Wolff has said he presumes the FBI has the picture.

Trump vehemently denies wrongdoing.

Roberts Giuffre writes about Trump but does not implicate him in improper behavior.

The writer who worked on Nobody’s Girl, Amy Wallace, this week told the Washington Post Roberts Giuffre “was a huge Trump fan … she was a Trump supporter.

“There were two reasons for it: One, she’d met him. She worked at Mar-a-Lago. Her dad worked at Mar-a-Lago. She met Trump several times, and he was always very kind to her. So she had personal memories. She thought the place was beautiful. She loved working there.

“And secondly, he said he was going to release the Epstein files. He was on her side. That’s how she felt.”

Nobody’s Girl most often opts not to name men Roberts Giuffre says she was forced to have sex with. Exceptions include Prince Andrew and individuals now dead.

She writes: “You may notice that while I've named some men in this book, I have not named all the men I was trafficked to.

“Partly that is because I still don't know some of their names. Partly, too, that is because there are certain men who I fear naming.

“The man who brutally raped me toward the end of my time with Epstein and Maxwell, for example — the man whom I've called ‘the former Prime Minister’ in court documents — I know his name, and he knows what he did to me, even though when others have sought comment from him about my allegations, he has denied them.

“I fear that this man will seek to hurt me if I say his name here.

“There are other men whom I was trafficked to who have threatened me in another way: by asserting that they will use litigation to bankrupt me.

“One of those men's names has come up repeatedly in various court filings, and in response, he has told my lawyers that if I talk about him publicly, he will employ his vast resources to keep me in court for the rest of my life.

“While I have named him in sworn depositions and identified him to the FBI, I fear that if I do so again here, my family will bear the emotional and financial brunt of that decision.

“I have the same fears about another man whom I was forced to have sex with many times — a man whom I also saw having sexual contact with Epstein himself. I would love to identify him here. But this man is very wealthy and very powerful, and I fear that he, too, might engage me in expensive, life-ruining litigation.”

Roberts Giuffre acknowledges that “some readers will question my reluctance to name many of my abusers. If I am, indeed, a fighter for justice, why have I not called them out?

“My answer is simple: Because while I have been a daughter, a prisoner, a survivor, and a warrior, my most important role is that of a mother … I won't put my family at risk if I can help it. Maybe in the future I will be ready to talk about these men. But not now.”

Elsewhere, Wallace writes that Roberts Giuffre wanted the book published in the event of her death.

'If the KKK shot a Black man': GOP rep's hair-raising hypothetical on Jimmy Kimmel affair

WASHINGTON — ABC and Disney were right to suspend Jimmy Kimmel over his remarks about the killing of Charlie Kirk, a leading far-right U.S. House Republican told Raw Story — only to bizarrely equate the national flashpoint with a hypothetical instance in which the late-night TV host might have made similar remarks about “the KKK [shooting] a Black man.”

Kimmel’s suspension last week was an instance of a “private company making a choice [regarding] somebody who took the side of the shot that's heard around the world,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) told Raw Story at the Capitol.

“Let him do it and face the consequences. I could … if the KKK had shot a Black man, what would the result be? Wouldn't be close.”

Norman, who has served in the House since 2017, appeared to be suggesting that Kimmel would have been suspended without outcry from Democrats and the press, if he had made remarks about that hypothetical racist murder.

In fact, Kimmel was suspended over remarks about the search for a motive in the killing of Kirk, who was shot on 10 Sept., during an appearance on a college campus in Utah.

A 22-year-old suspect, Trent Robinson, has been charged.

Kimmel first condemned the killing and stated his sympathy for Kirk’s family.

Then, on air last Monday, Kimmel said: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

He then joked about Donald Trump’s response to questions from reporters who asked him about Kirk’s death and how he was coping, which was to boast about his project to build a new White House ballroom.

“Yes, he’s at the fourth stage of grief: construction,” Kimmel said. “Demolition, construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish.”

Kimmel was suspended indefinitely after Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr discussed his remarks and rising rightwing anger about them on a far-right podcast, suggesting Kimmel’s employers could “do this the easy way or the hard way.”

It also emerged that two companies that control TV networks that carry ABC content, Nexstar and Tegna, were close to a merger and that Nexstar wanted action against Kimmel.

Kimmel had also long been a target of Trump. In July, the president celebrated CBS’s cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show by saying Kimmel would be next.

Republicans who spoke to Raw Story at the Capitol as the drama unfolded had zero sympathy for Kimmel.

Some also hit out at media coverage of the affair, particularly charges that Trump and his administration were attacking free speech rights under the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Another South Carolina far-right firebrand, Rep. Nancy Mace, told Raw Story: “It wasn't the FCC or Trump, it was ABC themselves” who chose to suspend Kimmel.

“So it's just a media lie to say Trump did this, or that the FCC did this. They didn't. ABC News made the call themselves. Trump didn't call them, the FCC didn't call them. So they did it on their own because of the blowback. It's a free market.”

Kimmel’s suspension was not ordered by ABC News but by Disney, parent company of all ABC divisions.

Legal observers agree that private companies can fire people over speech. Many, however, say a president cannot lean on companies to fire individuals on such grounds.

The issue may now be moot — or at least will remain so until Kimmel next crosses Trump and his supporters. On Monday, Disney said Kimmel would return Tuesday night.

“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” a statement said.

“It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”

‘Payback for cancel culture’

Needless to say, Democrats see the affair differently to Norman, Mace and their allies.

“You can't even say a good joke in public anymore,” Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA) laughed ruefully, before predicting: “Based on what I've seen so far, you’ll probably have more attempts at censorship.”

Correa was under no doubt as to who was really responsible for Kimmel’s suspension.

“He [Trump] essentially controls the FCC, controls Congress, controls the Senate, very strong influence on the Supreme Court,” Correa said.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex) said the president was guilty of “an abuse of power,” adding: “Without the pressure of Donald Trump and the federal government, I doubt Disney or Nexstar would have done what they did.

“Nexstar has a multi-billion-dollar merger pending. That very much played into their decision.”

Like Correa, who wondered “if the voters speak loudly next year” on free speech, Castro signaled Democrats will look to use Kimmel’s suspension on the campaign trail, going into the crucial midterms next year.

“Donald Trump is spending way too much time looking after late-night comedians and not enough time working on improving the economy for the American people,” Castro said.

To Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT), Kimmel’s plight was in large part an instance of Republican “payback for all the cancel culture” – instances of public figures being called out, mostly by liberals and progressives, for remarks deemed inappropriate or offensive.

But, Courtney said, “This is different because it's the arm of the government that's now involved, and that’s different than having, you know, people tweet at you and complain about nasty things you said.

“Having the government weighing in … obviously … that puts this in a much different place.”

'Kill the people': Dems double down as Congress leaves for break days before shutdown

WASHINGTON — Democrats are “not going to cave” and approve a Republican funding measure to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the month because “the whole health care system is going to be under attack,” a senior Florida congresswoman said, adding that lives were at stake.

On Friday morning, House Republicans passed a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open past Sept. 30. It failed to pass the Senate the same day.

“Look, nobody really wants to have a shutdown, but we're not just going to cave,” said Lois Frankel (D-FL), a former mayor of West Palm Beach turned seven-term member of Congress. She was talking as both sides of the U.S. Capitol headed towards a week’s break for Rosh Hashanah, with no solution to the shutdown stand-off in

Last time government funding came to a crunch, in March, Democrats did cave, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) corralling enough votes to pass a Republican measure.

Schumer and other senior Democrats say that won’t happen this time.

House Democrats are angry Republicans cut them out of negotiations over the CR, which would keep the government open until Oct. 31.

The GOP measure therefore does not address Democratic concerns prominently including the impending lapse of tax credits under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as Obamacare, through which millions of Americans are able to access affordable health insurance.

“I think for most of us, the ACA, the running out of the tax credit is going to be a calamity,” Frankel told Raw Story.

“The premiums are expected to rise about 75 percent and there's 24 million people on the ACA.”

This week, the Congressional Budget Office said extending the ACA tax credits would let 3.8 million more people access health insurance by 2035. It also said doing so would cost $350 billion.

In a statement, Schumer said the CBO report showed it was “beyond time for Republicans to come to the negotiating table and work with Democrats to find a solution to this upcoming catastrophe.”

Speaking to Raw Story, Frankel cited cuts to Medicaid contained in the GOP “One Big Beautiful Bill” budget that passed earlier this year but is not yet in effect, saying: “The whole health care system is going to be under attack.”

“They want to kill Obamacare,” Raw Story said.

“Or kill the people, I don’t know,” Frankel said in reply.

Another veteran Democratic representative, Mike Thompson of California, told Raw Story, “Trump and Republicans aren't interested in helping people get the health care that they need and deserve.

“I think the health care thing is people’s top priority and I don't think we should take a knee to this guy. He's come out and instructed Republicans. It's just crazy.”

Asked if constituents back in California had told him not to work with Trump’s Republican party, Thompson, 74, said: “Well, I think there's folks who express those concerns.”

Blame game

Any shutdown swiftly becomes a blame game as much as an endurance test, the longer federal employees go without pay and members of the public go without vital services.

Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress but they think a shutdown will work in their favor, Democrats attracting more blame.

It’s set to be a key test before the 2026 midterm elections, when Democrats desperately need to take back at least one chamber of Congress, if they are to press the brakes on Trump’s agenda.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, told Raw Story he wasn’t overly concerned about Republicans taking all the blame for a shutdown.

“I'm not worried, we're doing our job,” he said. “I don't like a CR, but it's the way to go. I’m sure we’ll get some blame. Comes with the territory.”

Raw Story asked: “Would your base like a shutdown?”

“I don't think so,” said Norman, 72. “There's all the good things going on.”

In March, Democratic leaders explained their climbdown by saying they worried Trump would fill the vacuum of a shutdown, moving to seize yet more power for himself and attack federal government functions.

Asked if Trump would move aggressively if a shutdown happens this month, Norman said: “Oh, yeah … the only thing we can do is what we’re doing.”

Another Republican, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX), said it was “kind of ridiculous” for Democrats “to shut the government down in order to try and force some kind of weird policy wins here.

“They're irresponsible. So I think that the CR play makes a ton of sense.”

Raw Story asked if Gill, 31, was worried Republicans would attract any blame for a shutdown.

No, he said, “Because it's not our fault. We'll do our job and then expect the Democrats to do their job.”

When Congress returns from its week-long break, a shutdown will be just two days away.

'Hell to pay': SCOTUS justices fear ruling against Trump, leading scholar says

Rightwing justices on the U.S. Supreme Court fear “hell to pay” if they oppose Donald Trump on key cases, because the president may refuse to follow their rulings, a leading constitutional scholar said.

Asked about recent decisions by the court’s rightwing majority to let controversial Trump policies stand, notably including allowing racial profiling by federal immigration enforcement agents, Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor, said: “I think there are a couple ways to understand it."

“One is that a majority of the court thinks that the legal arguments the lower courts have made for stopping the initiatives in question are not strong, and either they're wrong or we need to have a holding action until we can decide whether they're right.

“So that's kind of the view that they're being minimalist here. They're not deciding a whole lot. That's part of it.

“I suspect here's another part of it, which is both the Chief Justice [John Roberts] and the court are in an extremely difficult position, the hardest position at least since the 1930s and maybe the hardest position going back a lot longer than that.

“And I think this is part of it, where the justices are aware that the president might say, ‘We're not going to follow what you do.’ That [Trump might say], ‘You said it, I'm the president, I get to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and the judiciary isn’t final.’”

Most observers think such a situation would pitch the U.S. into a constitutional crisis.

Sunstein was speaking to The Court of History, a podcast hosted by the Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz and Sidney Blumenthal, a Clinton aide turned biographer of Abraham Lincoln.

Sunstein has himself been close to the center of power: a White House official under Barack Obama, he is married to Samantha Power, also a Harvard professor, having served as UN ambassador under Obama and USAid administrator under Joe Biden.

Photographs of the pair’s wedding in Ireland in 2008, available online, show Elena Kagan among attendees. Then Obama's solicitor general, she is now one of three liberal justices outnumbered by six conservatives on the Supreme Court.

Asked if his suggestion of justices' attempts to avoid confrontation with Trump came from knowledge of justices’ thoughts, Sunstein indicated having a source or sources close to the court.

“I don't know this from any of the justices,” he said, “not from them, but I think what I'm saying is … it's not merely speculation. [It’s] authoritative.”

Blumenthal then asked: “How do you feel about them factoring in the idea that as JD Vance, the Vice President, has said, the President should ignore Supreme Court decisions if he does not like them?”

Sunstein said: “Well, I feel of two minds.”

Though he was “very concerned by” the racial profiling case, “and concern is probably too weak,”, Sunstein added: “I haven't studied the briefs or anything, so I’m being a little cautious here [about] legal arguments.

“The tariffs case I have studied a bit.”

An appeals court recently said Trump lacked constitutional authority to levy tariffs on foreign trade, the centerpiece of his economic policy, saying the power is reserved for Congress.

The Supreme Court has said it will take up the case.

“I think the better argument is against the president,” Sunstein said. “I think I need to spend more time on it. But that’s I think what a neutral lawyer would be inclined to think. But the court is going to understand that there will be hell to pay if they go against the [president] on tariffs.”

The court has courted criticism among liberals by using the so-called “shadow docket” to let Trump policies stand, without definitive rulings.

Sunstein said: “I’m thinking that every month the court’s, let's say, caution about striking down things that are on balance unlawful looks less like a form of prudence and more like … I'm not sure what the right word is, well, it's not 'imprudent,' I don't think. I think the … easy words would be, like, 'cowardice.' But I think that's not precise enough.”

Sunstein then sounded a note of optimism about whether the court to which Trump appointed three right-wingers, and which last year ruled that as president he would have absolute legal immunity for official acts, might yet stand up to him all the same.

Of Roberts, Sunstein said: “I’m hopeful that the Chief Justice I admire — I’ve met him, but I don't really know him, still, I admire him, I think he's a person of integrity — and I'm hopeful that in very extreme cases, which we might well see sooner rather than later, he will be on the side of the law.”

'I see it in his eyes': Mary Trump links uncle’s bizarre behavior to grandpa’s Alzheimer’s

Donald Trump’s niece, the clinical psychologist and bestselling author Mary Trump, sees “similarities” between the 79-year-old president’s increasingly erratic behavior, which has stoked questions about his physical and mental health, and that of his father, the New York property magnate Fred Trump, who suffered from Alzheimer’s before dying in 1999 at the age of 93.

"I think the most important thing to know about Donald's health is that this is a person who has had very serious, severe psychiatric disorders that have gone undiagnosed and they have worsened because they've never been treated," Mary Trump said. "So much of what we're seeing is the result of those undiagnosed, untreated psychiatric disorders. On top of that … there are clearly some physical health issues, and often it seems that … it's not just that he's forgetting things. He doesn't seem to be oriented to space and time or place and time.

"And I'm not a neuropsychologist or neurologist of any kind. I used to do neuropsychological testing, but that aside, I think the best frame of reference is, as you said, my experience with my grandfather and I do see similarities again. That occasional confusion, ‘where am I, who's around me,’ the forgetting of people who were right in front of him.

"And that was one very interesting experience with my grandfather. The least important people in his life were the people he forgot first. So you could sort of gauge your importance to him by how quickly he forgot you or how long it took for him to forget you.

“He ended up forgetting my grandmother. He never forgot Donald. So that was always fascinating to me, and he’d been married for over 60 years.”

Mary Trump was speaking to the Court of History podcast, hosted by the Clinton aide turned Lincoln biographer Sidney Blumenthal and the Princeton historian Sean Wilentz.

An author herself, Mary Trump has published three books since her uncle became president: "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man" (2020), "The Reckoning: Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal" (2021), and "Who Could Ever Love You: A Family Memoir" (2024). All achieved bestseller status.

Continuing to ponder her uncle and his father — her grandfather — Mary Trump said: “I think that there are a few differences."

“My grandfather was a sociopath. He was a born sociopath. He was not made one. And Donald’s psychology is much more complex, and a lot of what we're seeing now isn't new. It's actually just previous conditions that are worsening and just becoming more obvious to people who haven't been paying attention.

“So I think that sort of complicates our sense of, ‘Is this the psychiatric disorders? Is this some kind of dementia? Does he have Alzheimer's?' Is it some physical ailment that is having an impact on his memory, etc, and we don't know, and I think it's likely we never will.

“I sort of believe that we're at the point it doesn't matter. We know it's very, very bad. It's only going to get worse, as everything does with him, whether it's his outrageous cruelty, incompetence, vindictiveness.

“What I say about Donald, and I think this is true whether we're talking about his psychological, emotional, physical health or his behavior, there's no such thing as worst. He will always get worse.”

Trump is the oldest man ever to take the presidential oath — in succession to the previous record holder, Joe Biden. As Biden was plagued by questions over his fitness for office, before withdrawing from last year’s election, so Trump’s rambling public pronouncements and erratic behavior stoked questions even before he recently exhibited signs of physical deterioration and spent a rare week out of public view.

The White House vehemently denies that anything is wrong with Trump, and he reappeared this week to dismiss social media speculation that he might be dead or dying.

In one appearance, Trump angrily dismissed questions about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal even as victims of the late financier and sex offender, a longtime Trump friend, spoke on Capitol Hill.

Mary Trump told the Court of History: “He's always been an angry person, or maybe I should put it this way: he's always been somebody who uses threats and performative rage to get his way.

“So how do you distinguish between what is performative and what is a sincere reaction to his inability to control the narrative, which is clearly what we're seeing, certainly in regards to the Epstein files most prominently right now?”

The United States, Mary Trump added, is “at a particularly dangerous inflection point” regarding the president’s health.

“Because the more he understands who he is, what's happening to him, the more scared he gets, and the more cruel he's going to become, the more desperate he's going to become.

“As with anybody, people who start having dementia, Alzheimer's, there are moments of insight. They recognize what's going on, and it's actually one of the cruelest things about that disease ….

“Like my grandfather, for example, he was fine. Once he stopped remembering who people were, and he thought that he was still running the world, he was fine. But it's those early-on moments of insight into what's happening to you, that really have a negative impact. And this is starting to happen to Donald with increasing frequency, and it is freaking him out.”

Asked if she saw signs of anger and lashing out, as exhibited by her grandfather, in her uncle, Mary Trump said: “It's so hard to say because Donald has always been paranoid and vindictive and angry.

“… There are looks of confusion on his face at times, which are very reminiscent of when we would be out in public with my grandfather, for example … and he would get this startled like a deer in the headlights look. Like, 'Where am I? Who are these people? I don't want to be here.’"

"I see that in Donald's eyes sometimes.”

Watch the clip below or at this link.

‘Get the deal done’: GOP hardliner hails new Jan. 6 committee as Dems cry foul

WASHINGTON — This week House Republicans formally launched their long awaited new January 6 subcommittee. Unlike the first select committee, which investigated the attack on the Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, the new panel is tasked with investigating the investigators.

“I want to see all the documents and find out how many lies were told by the people that were sitting on that committee,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) said on Thursday. “That's what I want.”

The former chair of the far-right Freedom Caucus joined 211 of his fellow Republicans — with only Rep. Kevin Kiely (R-CA) voting present, as not a single Democrat joined the effort — in unveiling and then establishing a “Select Subcommittee to Investigate the Remaining Questions Surrounding January 6, 2021.”

It will be chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA). He’s been helping the GOP rewrite the record on J6 for years but now he’s got a formal if hyper-partisan mandate, along with subpoena power hailed by Biggs and others on the far-right.

“Now I think the structure is going to really be much more helpful for it,” Biggs said. “In other words, I think the structure is necessary. It's a good structural change.”

‘I’ve done that’

The panel will have eight members, including three Democrats appointed after consultations between Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).

The subcommittee’s subpoena power is expected to be a gamechanger.

“I think so, yeah,” Biggs said: “In talking with Chairman Loudermilk about it, he's been doing some good work. I've watched what he's done. We've talked. I think he just needed a new structure, and I think it's gonna provide the structure necessary to get the deal done.”

The first January 6 committee was formed in 2021. It staged high-profile hearings in 2022 and issued its report in January 2023, shortly after Republicans re-took the House.

That committee consisted of seven Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans — deputy chair Liz Cheney, then representing Wyoming, and Adam Kinzinger, then a congressman from Illinois.

Both no longer sit in Congress, Cheney having lost her seat, Kinzinger having retired.

On Wednesday, Kinzinger posted a meme of the actor Will Ferrell beckoning a confrontation and said: “The fact that the so-called moderates in the House voted for this, is especially corrupt. But bring it on, happy to remind America how you guys attempted a coup.”

The next day, a Democrat who sat with Kinzinger on the original committee, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), told Raw Story the new panel was another instance of the GOP “trying to rewrite history.

“That's just kind of clearly what they've done since January 6,” he said. “This all fits the narrative.

“And it's dangerous. We'll see where they take the committee but it's dangerous behavior.”

Still, Aguilar has no desire to sit on another J6 panel.

“No. I’ve done that,” Aguilar said.

‘Distraction, deflection’

Loudermilk’s previous efforts to investigate the January 6 investigation and investigators were carried out from his perch on the House Appropriations Committee.

Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) told Raw Story she was “so infuriated” by Loudermilk’s new effort.

“It’s distraction, deflection,” Dean said.

“And I have said that the president pardoning insurrectionists, pardoning criminals, violent criminals, was a whitewashing, an attempt to rewrite history, and most importantly, he was pardoning himself. This is a continuation of that.”

On returning to power this year, Donald Trump pardoned around 1,500 offenders convicted over their actions on Jan. 6 2021, as part of the mob that listened to Trump speak then stormed Congress, in an attempt to block certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.

Dean also lamented what she called “the stupid, the insane fight over the plaque” — a memorial to police who defended Congress which Republicans have refused to display.

“I actually went to the archives, to the basement, to see the actual plaque,” Dean said. “They have it. It's there. Oh, it's been there for months. It's done.”

“I don't know at what point the fever breaks,” Dean added of a Republican party in Trump’s grip.

“At what point do they say, ‘No, this is too much?’ Do you think Epstein might do it?”

Even through emotional and high-profile appearances on Capitol Hill from survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse, House GOP leaders are refusing to release files relating to the late financier and sex offender who was long close to Trump.

Groceries, rents, tariffs

On the other side of the Capitol on Thursday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) told Raw Story Republicans should focus on kitchen table issues, not rehashing old wars over January 6.

“Maybe they should be focused on the price of groceries,” Klobuchar said. “That might be better.

“Maybe they should focus on the tariffs and what's happening to people, not just their grocery bills, but their health care and their rent. So that would be a much more useful thing.”

There seems little chance of that.

Raw Story caught up with Rep. James Comer (R-KY), a leading Trump ally and chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee. Asked about the new Jan. 6 panel, he deflected.

“Trying to just keep up with my own portfolio,” Comer told Raw Story before lauding the new committee he expects “to investigate the investigators, to see if they were truthful in what they put in that final report. That’s what I understand.”

Biographer claims Epstein and Bannon joked about Trump: 'Both thought he was a moron'

The U.S. House Oversight Committee should subpoena Steve Bannon for testimony about extensive interviews with Jeffrey Epstein in which both men made clear “they both thought that [Donald] Trump was a moron, and neither could ultimately believe that Trump had become president of the United States,” Trump biographer Michael Wolff said.

Wolff was speaking on the Court of History podcast, hosted by Clinton aide turned Lincoln biographer Sidney Blumenthal and Princeton historian Sean Wilentz.

Bill and Hillary Clinton were among names subpoenaed before the summer recess, as the House committee seeks information about the so-called Epstein files, records on the deceased financier and sex offender the Trump administration first said it would release, then said it would not.

That decision has led to weeks of speculation about Trump’s relationship with Epstein, with whom he was friends for years.

Amid spiraling scandal, Trump vehemently denies wrongdoing.

Epstein was arrested in 2006 and sentenced in 2008 for offenses related to sexual exploitation of underage girls. He was again arrested in 2019, amid scandal over his lenient treatment by Florida authorities. In August 2019, Epstein killed himself in custody in New York.

Ghislaine Maxwell, his sometime partner, was convicted on sex trafficking charges in 2021. Maxwell's interview with Deputy Attorney General and former Trump lawyer Todd Blanche, and transfer to a less onerous jail, has this month generated significant controversy amid speculation Trump may hand her a pardon.

Blumenthal asked Wolff: “Who should be subpoenaed, who might have information, by this committee? Because the people they've subpoenaed almost certainly know nothing.”

Wolff said: “Well, Steve Bannon for starters.”

Bannon was Trump’s campaign chair in 2016 and White House strategist in 2017. After leaving that role he remained an influential far-right voice and Trump ally.

Bannon is known to have conducted hours of interviews with Epstein, which he says will form the basis of a documentary.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, has said he wants Bannon to be subpoenaed.

Wolff said Bannon “was extremely close to to Epstein for the better part of two years before he died, they were brought together because … they both had had a close relationship with Donald Trump, and they both had significant animosity toward Donald Trump, and they spend hours and hours, countless hours, talking about Donald Trump.

“So if there is anyone who knows about that [Trump-Epstein] relationship from the horse's mouth, it certainly would be Steve Bannon.”

Trump and close aides have attacked Wolff repeatedly, since his first Trump bestseller, Fire and Fury, was released in 2018, charging that he is at best an unreliable narrator. Wolff has written three more Trump books, most recently All or Nothing, about the 2024 election.

Wolff has said he has seen photos of Trump with Epstein and young women, and has hours of tapes of his own interviews with Epstein — excerpts having been published, though Wolff says major publishers regard them as “too hot to handle.”

“I know literally everything,” about Bannon and Epstein’s conversations “because I was there,” Wolff told Blumenthal and Wilentz. “And I have tapes of Bannon tapes … Bannon maintains, of course, that he was making a documentary … this is entirely 100% not true. Bannon was coaching … Epstein for a theoretical mea culpa media appearance.

“I mean, this was at a moment in time when, when forces were closing in on Epstein, where the public perception of what he had done could not have been worse. And the proposition was that Epstein should go on a national news show, 60 Minutes, something like that, and bare his chest.

“And Bannon took it upon himself to train Epstein in how to do this. And there were three separate sessions in which Bannon worked on coaching Epstein.”

Saying Bannon “believed that Epstein was not an unsympathetic narrator of his own life story, and that this might play to his benefit,” Wolff said that judgment was “frankly … pretty dicey stuff.”

Wolff also said Bannon acted as a “hostile” questioner, in an attempt to prepare Epstein for an interview on national TV.

Blumenthal asked: “Did Bannon prepare him to discuss the Trump relationship?”

Wolff said: “Somewhat, but … that was not a key part of these tapes. But you know, it … certainly was touched on and was a factor in terms of who might be called before Congress. Certainly, as I say, Bannon was well versed in all aspects of Epstein's relationship with Trump.”

Wolff added that it was “interesting that at that point in … 2019, in the several months before Epstein was re-arrested, the Trump-Epstein relationship was certainly in the media, and … that was not looked at as a major part of the Epstein story … the media was reluctant to take an interest. This key aspect of the significance of Jeffrey Epstein was overlooked or denied.”

Blumenthal asked: “What did Epstein tell Bannon about his relationship with Trump?”

Wolff said: “They compared notes … they had a lot of enjoyment doing this because they both thought that Trump was a moron, and neither could ultimately believe that Trump had become the president of the United States. So it was a back-and-forth sharing of anecdotes about the deficiencies, let's call them, of Donald Trump as a manager, as a politician and most of all as a human being.”

Blumenthal asked: “Did Epstein talk about [Trump’s] deficiencies … with his relations with women and how he approached them?”

Wolff said: “He did at great length, and that was one of the things that one can find somewhat chilling in hindsight, is that Jeffrey Epstein deeply disapproved of Trump's treatment of women.

“I think he found him, well, as he said to me, ‘Donald has no scruples.’ And he went on at some length, which in part was amusing length, about Trump's efforts to sleep with the wives of his friends that Epstein billed as one of Trump's compulsions.”

'Terrorized' Republicans fume to Dem about 'stupid damage' done by Trump

WASHINGTON — A senior Democratic senator slammed President Donald Trump as trying to realize the "wet dream of the dirtiest players in the fossil fuel industry."

The vivid comment was made to Raw Story after Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency chief announced the scrapping of a key control on greenhouse gas emissions.

Speaking at the U.S. Capitol, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) fumed to Raw Story that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, the former New York Republican congressman and 2022 gubernatorial candidate, was doing “the bidding of the fossil fuel industry, which paid good money for this kind of corruption."

“The endangerment finding is what brings carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act,” Whitehouse added of the measure Zeldin promised to scrap this week.

Issued in 2009, the endangerment finding also imposes emissions standards on cars, trucks and buses.

Announcing its demise, Zeldin claimed “the Obama and Biden EPAs twisted the law, ignored precedent and warped science to achieve their preferred ends and stick American families with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every single year.”

The move is being hailed within the administration as “a monumental step toward returning to commonsense policies that expand access to affordable, reliable, secure energy and improve quality of life for all Americans,” as Energy Secretary Chris Wright claimed.

But Whitehouse charged the Trump administration with simply rewarding polluters who are also big money donors, by pursuing “the deletion of all regulation of carbon emissions, which is obviously the wet dream of the dirtiest players in the fossil fuel industry and the result of a lot of dark money spending by the industry to buy an administration that will do its dirty bidding.”

Zeldin’s move has prompted outcry among climate crisis activists but it is not a done deal, as lawyers on both sides gear up for what promises to be a drawn-out legal battle.

“I think it has … legal problems,” Whitehouse said, “because there really isn't a factual basis for what they are doing, outside of the boardrooms of Big Oil and creepy front groups who pretend climate change isn't real.”

Raw Story asked Whitehouse if he had any hope that the MAGA-infused GOP of Trump and Zeldin might resist efforts to cripple the fight against climate change. He said he did.

“You could actually see fairly significant efforts within the Republican Senate Caucus to try to repair some of the stupid damage that Trumpsters were trying to do,” Whitehouse said.

“We continue to have ongoing, healthy conversations about carbon water tariffs, about interesting solar investments, we had a very good conversation last night with a Republican member about the threat to the real estate markets arising out of the uninsurability and hence unmortgageability of so much American real estate.

“I think there's a lot of genuine and underlying concern, but Trump’s political strategy is to try to terrorize Republicans in the Senate, and he's done a pretty good job of it, and most of their money comes from fossil fuels, so they are also having that problem.

“But facts don't go away. As [President John] Adams said [in 1770], facts are stubborn things, and so I have not given up.

“It may take a real kick in the head, like a collapse of Florida's insurance and real estate market, to get them to focus on this as a today issue and not a someday issue.”

'I didn't see it'

At least one Republican from that climate-vulnerable state seemed unlikely, at first glance, to heed Whitehouse’s words.

Catching up with Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) as he walked through the Capitol, Raw Story asked: “Have you been able to look at the EPA announcement this week on climate change?”

“I didn't see it,” Scott said, of the widely publicized, reported and debated announcement.

Another Republican, from a state historically dominated by the coal industry, was giddy when discussing the dismantling of the EPA.

“What do you make of what Zeldin is doing at EPA, his announcement this week?” Raw Story asked Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, (R-WV). “Do you think it’s a game changer?”

“It's a huge announcement,” Capito said. “I think it just shows [it’s about] getting rid of the over-regulation [of fossil fuel industries]. So I'm gonna support it.”

Many Democrats are retooling their message and focusing on public health, rather than rising temperatures and seas.

“What Lee Zeldin announced was the greatest crime against nature ever committed in American and world history,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) fumed to Raw Story.

“What Zeldin announced was a complete capitulation to the oil, gas and coal industry, and giving them a permission slip to continue to pollute and endanger the planet and the health of all Americans.

“There is now going to be a dramatic increase in the number of cancers, asthmas and other diseases in the United States of America, and it's going to hit kids and it's going to hit pregnant women disproportionately.

“So what Zeldin just did was to fulfill the payoff that Trump is providing to the oil, gas and coal industry for their contributions by the hundreds of millions to his re-election campaign, but the price is going to be paid by American families.”

No matter what Zeldin and Trump’s EPA are up to, Democrats say the GOP and their funders can’t just wave a wad of cash and reverse the globe’s changing climate.

“It's very bad for the climate,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) told Raw Story, of Zeldin’s move. “The best thing we can do is help people to understand that all these increasing natural disasters are being made worse because of Republican policies.”

‘Maybe he saw things’: Expert floats overlooked big name as key to unlocking Epstein case

If President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice wants to talk to someone in prison for sexual offenses who may have information about Jeffrey Epstein and his links to well-known men, it should talk to Harvey Weinstein, according to the reporter whose work led to Epstein’s final arrest.

“Why don't they talk to Harvey?” Julie K. Brown said. “Harvey might know something, too.”

Brown was speaking to The Court of History podcast, as controversy continued to rage over a jailhouse interview between Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, formerly Trump’s personal lawyer, and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s sometime girlfriend, who was convicted in 2021 of offenses including sex trafficking of underage girls.

Epstein, a financier and convicted sex offender, killed himself in federal custody in 2019.

His links to Trump are at the center of an ongoing scandal, ignited last month when Trump’s Justice Department said it would not fulfill his campaign promise to release the so-called Epstein files, lists of prominent men believed to have been closely connected to Epstein.

That announcement triggered fury among Trump’s supporters and a torrent of reporting and speculation about why Trump would block the files’ release.

Trump vehemently denies all wrongdoing, but the Wall Street Journal and other outlets have reported on his long friendship with Epstein.

The Journal also revealed that Pam Bondi, the attorney general, told Trump his name was in the Epstein files in May, before the administration decided not to release them.

In a highly unusual and controversial move, Blanche interviewed Maxwell at a jail in Florida last week.

This week, Maxwell was moved from a Florida jail to a lower-security facility in Texas amid reports she seeks a pardon or clemency in return for helping the Trump administration.

Brown’s work for the Miami Herald led to Epstein’s 2019 arrest on charges of sex-trafficking minors, after Brown exposed how, in the mid-2000s, Epstein gained a sweetheart deal from Florida prosecutors regarding similar charges.

Brown’s reporting led to the resignation of Alex Acosta, Trump’s first labor secretary, who gave Epstein the deal. Such work won awards, and in 2021 Brown published Perversion of Justice, a book about the Epstein case.

Speaking to Court of History hosts Sidney Blumenthal, a Clinton aide turned Lincoln biographer, and Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, Brown discussed links between Epstein and Weinstein, the Hollywood mogul convicted of sexual assault and now in jail in New York.

Weinstein “was also on the message pads the Palm Beach Police Department [took from Epstein’s] home at the time … he was first arrested,” Brown said. “These were the old-fashioned pink message pads, where somebody called, you write their name and why they're calling … you tear it off, but there was a copy right underneath. So they got these books of message pads.

"Harvey Weinstein was one of those people that called [Epstein]. Trump called him. There were a lot of names of people who would call him. Now, of course, it didn't say what they wanted. Just said, you know, ‘Trump called’ or ‘Harvey called.’

“That raises another question. Why don't they talk to Harvey? Harvey might know something too.”

Blumenthal asked Brown: “Do you think Harvey Weinstein should be called as a witness … or approached by Todd Blanche and the Justice Department?”

Referring to doubts over the veracity or value of interviews with Maxwell, who has also been subpoenaed by Congress, Brown said: “I mean, [Weinstein is] a sex predator himself. So again, [it would be] the same laundry, involving someone who, are they talking because they're really being honest or because they want some kind of a deal?

“So I think you have the same credibility issue [as with Maxwell] with him, although I feel like … he might be able to provide information from a different vantage point, because he might not have been part of this Epstein sex trafficking operation, but maybe saw things.”

That said, Brown added, “I just don't think that anyone wants those names to get out, of the men who were very powerful and wealthy who … participated in sex with these girls and young women … I think they're very powerful people, and I don't think that even Trump wants those names to get out.”

Brazil's only astronaut begs for help as Trump tariffs threaten to cripple country: Dem

WASHINGTON — Farmers, bankers and international policymakers find themselves in the same camp as President Donald Trump’s international trade war gathers pace: confused, freaked out and lobbying for clarity — if not a carve out.

Just this week, after Trump signed an executive order introducing 50 percent tariffs on most goods from Brazil, a leading Democratic senator met with a handful of concerned Brazilian counterparts, among them a friend from the senator's literally stellar contact book.

“I've met with eight Brazilian senators in my office, and one of them is a guy I’ve known for 30 years, who was the only Brazilian astronaut,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a former U.S. astronaut himself, told Raw Story at the Capitol.

“I worked with him for over a decade. So he brought a bunch of people, because we have a [trade] surplus with Brazil and [yet] … they were told 50%.

“They don't know what to do. Because usually, [tariffs are imposed on] a country where you’ve got a trade deficit. This is the opposite.”

Kelly was a U.S. Navy aviator and flew combat missions in the first Gulf War before becoming a NASA astronaut and taking part in four space missions.

His Brazilian astronaut friend, 62-year-old former air force pilot Marcos Pontes, completed a mission to the International Space Station in 2006.

In 2019, Pontes became Brazil’s Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation. In 2022, he was elected as a federal senator for São Paulo.

Trump announced punitive tariffs against Brazil July 9. On Wednesday he put his order into effect. Some Brazilian products were exempted — including orange juice, some aircraft, wood pulp and energy products.

But a U.S. government fact sheet explicitly linked the tariffs to what it called “the Government of Brazil’s politically motivated persecution, intimidation, harassment, censorship, and prosecution of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and thousands of his supporters.”

Bolsonaro and seven associates are on trial regarding his attempt to stay in power in 2022, which opponents call an attempted coup similar to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol that Trump incited in an attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden.

In his fact sheet on Wednesday, Trump claimed the current Brazilian government, under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known simply as Lula, was guilty of “serious human rights abuses that have undermined the rule of law in Brazil.”

Kelly gave that short shrift.

“There's this whole political component that has to do with Bolsonaro and this prosecution, trying Bolsonaro, but they [Brazilian politicians] can’t interfere with their judicial process,” the senator said.

“They can't interfere. Lula's not going to interfere with their judiciary.

“That's just something that we do. This administration.”

Raw Story asked: “So [your Brazilian friends are] kind of freaked out” by Trump’s tariffs?

Kelly said: “Yeah, they're like, ‘Hey, have you got any advice?’ So I reached out to the Secretary of Commerce [Howard Lutnick] on this because they’d like an extension to try to figure [this] out, so this doesn't get put in at all. And they’re good trading partners.

“If these tariffs go into effect, prices are gonna go up on a lot of things. Depends on the country. Using Brazil as an example, I think something like a third of the coffee in the United States comes from Brazil, so you're gonna see higher coffee prices.”

Raw Story asked: “Are we gonna see now individual nations do like Brazil, ask for a carve out?”

Kelly said: “I think everybody's gonna try to ask for something. And I think some of these might benefit us, but the big picture is incredibly chaotic and haphazard, and not the way you're supposed to run trade policy, and the American people are going to be on the losing end of this.

“But I was trying to, you know, help out my friend of 30 years.”

‘Clearly afraid’: Warren and Cruz trade barbs over Texas redistricting scheme

WASHINGTON — Texas Republicans are “clearly afraid” of their own voters, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) told Raw Story after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) compared the Lone Star State’s mid-decade redistricting effort to “gerrymandering” in Democratic strongholds like Massachusetts.

Under pressure from President Donald Trump, Gov. Greg Abbott called the Texas legislature into a special session in an effort to ram through a controversial redistricting plan designed to net as many as five extra GOP seats in next year’s midterm elections.

That’s had Democratic leaders and rank-and-file members calling foul, but Cruz told Raw Story blue state progressives are being hypocrites.

“The Democrats have long used gerrymandering to subvert democracy and expand their congressional delegation,” Texas’s junior senator said.

“For example, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a liberal state. There are Republicans in Massachusetts. Indeed, they've elected multiple Republican governors, and yet, of the entire Massachusetts congressional delegation, there are zero Republicans.

“They have drawn the lines in Massachusetts so that only Democrats need apply. [It’s] not surprising that the state of Texas is deciding to redraw the lines to elect more Republicans who reflect views of the vast majority of the state.”

When Raw Story presented Cruz’s argument to Sen. Warren, she laughed.

“Massachusetts is not afraid of our voters, and we don't need to engage in gerrymandering in order to elect our representatives in the state house or in Congress,” Warren said.

“Texas Republicans are clearly afraid that if the good people in Texas are given a chance to vote for who they want, that those Republicans are going to lose power.”

Polling gives President Trump and congressional Republicans reason to believe their unpopular “Big Beautiful Bill” tax cut and spending cut package and the deepening Jeffrey Epstein scandal will severely damage their electoral prospects.

The proposed Texas redistricting is a break with the customary 10-year cycle that lines up with the nation’s census, in an attempt to give the GOP an edge before any votes are cast.

“What do you think about [the Texas redistricting effort] being directed from the White House?” Raw Story asked Warren.

“It’s one more indication that Donald Trump leads the charge when it comes to undercutting democracy, for the Republicans,” the senator said.

‘Everybody's happy at the White House’

Texas Republicans are facing constant questions about the redistricting plan, leading to many representatives running from reporters or offering a dismissive “no comment.”

“I know from a bunch of you Texas members, y'all don't want this,” Raw Story pressed veteran Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX).

McCaul smiled broadly.

“A lot of y'all are freaked out by it,” Raw Story added.

“Everybody's happy at the White House, now they're looking at an opportunity to get some seats and they talked to the state legislature, and it's their prerogative,” McCaul said.

“So that's kind of where it stands.”

“Maybe put forward policies people like and you can combat that midterm boom the other party always gets?” Raw Story suggested.

“A lot of times it's a game of numbers too. But anyway, this is actually sort of like the White House,” McCaul said. “So, that's about all I can say.”

Gerrymandering — the practice of drawing district lines to favor your own electoral prospects — is named after Elbridge Gerry, a founder, Massachusetts congressman, and U.S. vice president in 1813-14. The practice has always been part of U.S. politics, openly discussed by politicians and advisers.

“The objective is to get Republican seats,” House Budget Committee Chair Jody Arrington, another powerful Texas Republican, told Raw Story.

“But we don't get to draw the maps.”

That was a reference to state authorities set to carry out redistricting. Arrington dismissed suggestions his own seat could disappear, adding: “I think every Republican member from Texas wants to expand our number of seats if we can. I think there's a way to do it.”

Prominent Democrats are urging California governor Gavin Newsom to initiate aggressive redistricting in response to Texas, to reduce the number of Republicans from his overwhelmingly blue state.

Republicans like Arrington dismiss that as dirty politics.

“I think it would be problematic,” Arrington said, adding: “I don't think they can do what we can do because of the system for redistricting … there's not as much behind that threat than there is a realistic opportunity to have more seats in Texas.

“How many, I don't know, but there's definitely more there.”

‘How ugly’

Redistricting is easier in Texas than in California.

“Well, Texas can do what it wants but Newsom doing so would be in direct face of the voter initiative that puts [redistricting] in the hands of an independent commission which I supported as a legislator and as a private citizen back in the day,” Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) told Raw Story.

“That would have a really very bad look. And the way Newsom is bragging about how, ‘Well we got a three-to-one majority, we could just force this thing through’ … that's a bad look. The people directly said they wanted [redistricting] to be independent of politics and politicians.”

California “voters wanted [redistricting] in the hands of an independent commission,” LaMalfa added.

“I've watched personally, before I was in office, how ugly the process turned when politicians on both sides were drawing the lines in order to benefit their political vendettas and things like that.”

Asked about Texas, LaMalfa repeated that it could do what it wanted.

Another California Republican, Rep. Darrell Issa, was more cynical about the independent commission.

“They already gerrymandered my state,” Issa told Raw Story. “[Democrats] just think they can do a little better. California is already highly gerrymandered. You look at it, we [Republicans] have eight seats. And you look at the [last] election … we should have more than double that.”

“The independent commission is a farce,” Issa added, alleging “gerrymandering, clearly by a commission to create safe seats for Democrats.”

‘It’s racial’

Rep. Al Green (D-TX) is a Capitol Hill institution in himself, a fiery orator and leading figure in the Congressional Black Caucus.

He told Raw Story the Texas redistricting plan was “targeted for minority districts.”

Al Green Rep. Al Green (D-TX) is a fiery presence on Capitol Hill. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

“When you target people like that, you have to say what it is. This is racial gerrymandering … to eliminate minority voices in the process,” Green said.

“And there is a fear in this country of using the word ‘racial’ or ‘racism.’ There's a fear.

“We hear ‘antisemitism’ on a daily basis, and we should … but when there is this racial thing occurring, and that's what's happening in Texas, we're not hearing the voices, and that's what it is.”

Green also accused Republicans of “changing the rules in the middle of the game,” with a “mid-decade redistricting without the proper empirical evidence necessary to make judicious decisions.

“This is comparable to saying at a basketball game, ‘We're going to take out two of your players because you may outscore us in the next half,’” Green said. “So at halftime, we decide two of your five won't play. So you're gonna have to play with three, not five. We'll continue to play with five.

“We may even have six. Let's have six for our side and you have three on your side. Oh, we supposed to have 10 on the court? That's right. Okay. Well, look, we'll have seven and you have three.

“That's what this is all about, changing the numbers so that the President can maintain his authoritarian rule.”

Epstein believed Trump was the 'rat' who snitched on him to FBI: biographer

The late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein believed Donald Trump was the “rat” who informed on him to the FBI, leading to his 2006 arrest and sentencing for offenses involving underage girls, the Trump biographer Michael Wolff said.

“Trump was aware of what was going on in Epstein's house for a very long time … and … he then used that against Epstein,” Wolff said.

Wolff made the startling claim on Wednesday — the same day that, in the latest in a series of bombshell revelations, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump has been told his name appears in the so-called Epstein files that recorded investigations into the financier’s conduct.

Trump’s links to Epstein have billowed into the public consciousness in the past month after a Department of Justice attempt to shut down calls from Trump supporters for the release of Epstein’s supposed “client list” spectacularly backfired.

Since then, repeated attempts by Trump and allies to distract from the scandal have failed; House Republican leadership has adjourned early for the summer, to avoid a vote on releasing the Epstein files; and Trump’s own DOJ has said it wants to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend who was imprisoned after being convicted of sex trafficking charges.

Epstein and Trump are known to have been close friends for some time, with new photos of their socializing released this week by CNN.

But Wolff, who was speaking to The Court of History, a podcast hosted by the former Clinton aide turned Lincoln biographer Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz, a Princeton history professor, said that in 2004 the two men fell out over what Epstein alleged to be a money laundering scheme involving a Florida property, Trump, and a Russian oligarch.

“And at that point,” Wolff said, “the investigation of Epstein began, and Epstein … believed that it began because Trump notified the police about what was going on at Epstein's house, which Trump was fully aware of, because he was a frequent visitor to the house.”

Epstein was arrested but ultimately received a lenient deal from Florida authorities, pleading guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution and soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18, and being sentenced to 18 months in a low-security jail.

His avoidance of federal charges became an issue in 2019, when he was arrested again, while Trump was first in the White House. In August that year, Epstein died in federal custody in New York. Authorities said he killed himself.

Trump has said his friendship with Epstein ended because Epstein was a “creep.”

On Wednesday, Blumenthal asked: “So Epstein believed that Donald Trump was an informant, or in Trump's own words, a rat.”

Wolff said yes, and confirmed that Epstein told him so personally.

Wolff has frequently detailed his extensive interviews with Epstein, sometimes sharing excerpts. Many were carried out during research for Wolff’s first book on Trump’s entry to politics, Fire and Fury, which was a huge bestseller in 2018.

Three more Wolff Trump books followed, two on his first term and 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, then last year All or Nothing, about how Trump returned to power despite criminal convictions, multimillion-dollar civil penalties and undecided criminal cases involving the retention of classified information and his incitement of the January 6th insurrection.

Trump and his aides have regularly abused and derided Wolff. The author has frequently spoken to Blumenthal and Wilentz about his relationship with Epstein and the tapes of their conversations, including recently saying a series of major publishers called the tapes “too hot to handle.”

On Wednesday, Wolff repeated his description of compromising photographs of Trump and Epstein with young girls, which he says Epstein showed him and which Wolff says would presumably have been confiscated by the FBI in 2019.

Trump vehemently denies wrongdoing relating to Epstein and has angrily demanded his supporters focus on other issues – without success, Trump and key allies having long stoked the notion that Epstein is key to various rightwing conspiracy theories.

Being labeled a “rat” by a former close friend would likely sting Trump, who has used the word to deride people who co-operate with law enforcement.

In 2018, for example, Trump used the word rat to describe Michael Cohen, his former attorney and fixer who ended up going to jail despite co-operating with investigations of Trump.

Yet Trump is widely reported to have been close to the FBI himself. In 2016, the Washington Post reported on Trump’s links to an informant, Daniel Sullivan, during his time in the casino business.

Trump denies such links. In 2019, asked if he would tell the FBI if a foreign government offered him dirt on a political opponent, he told ABC: "I'll tell you what, I've seen a lot of things over my life. I don't think in my whole life I've ever called the FBI. In my whole life.

“You don't call the FBI. You throw somebody out of your office, you do whatever you do."

On Wednesday, Blumenthal asked Wolff: “What was [Epstein’s] view of Trump for serving as the snitch?”

Wolff said: “Epstein believed that Trump dropped a dime on him, and that began his legal difficulties. And that's, I think, a significant window into Donald Trump.

“But the perhaps broader point is that Trump was aware of what was going on in Epstein's house for a very long time before this and because of that awareness, which he had not previously disclosed, he then used that against Epstein.”

Blumenthal said: “But he'd also been a participant, as Epstein showed through the photographs he displayed to you.”

Wolff said: “Yes. That is all I know, is that Donald Trump knew what was going on at Jeffrey Epstein's house. There was a set of photographs in which he was with girls of indeterminate age around Epstein's pool.

“I mean, let me not go further than that. That's what I know.”

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