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Data guru highlights 'really weird' findings about JD Vance

Vice President JD Vance is building up a significant lead as the Republican presidential frontrunner thanks to some "really weird" numbers, according to CNN's Harry Enten.

The prediction markets love the vice president's chances of as the heir apparent to President Donald Trump, and Enten told "CNN News Central" that Vance was building up a historic lead in a key Republican primary state more than two years out from the presidential election cycle.

"It is never, never too early to talk about political risks because these guys are running already, even if they haven't formally declared they're already running, and JD Vance is running well ahead of the field," Enten said. "I mean, take a look here: Top chances to be the 2028 GOP nominee, the prediction market odds. Look at this: JD Vance, 48 percent chance – nobody else is even close. Marco Rubio is way back at 12 percent, and no one else is even above a 5 percent chance of being the 2028 GOP nominee."

"JD Vance is like Mario Andretti, and Marco Rubio and the rest of the field are like going around in go-karts at this point. I mean, that's really what we're looking at: JD Vance is the clear, heavy favorite at this time."

The vice president has amassed a 42-point polling lead in New Hampshire over Nikki Haley, who's in second place with nine points, and Enten said he's never seen anyone race so far out front.

"There's a reason why he's such a heavy favorite in the prediction market so far, because if you win the GOP primary in New Hampshire, chances are you're going to be the Republican nominee for president," Enten said. "I saw this 51 percent [support for Vance], and all of a sudden there was a buzz going around my head. I said, boy, this seems really weird. I can't recall anyone being this far ahead at this early stage in New Hampshire. I looked back, hitting 50 percent-plus in the early New Hampshire polls for a sitting president, JD Vance is the only one, the only one you can go all the way back in the polling archives, all the way back to 1980, which is the earliest I could look at. JD Vance is the only one ever to getting a majority of the New Hampshire vote, according to the early primary polls."

"At this point, JD Vance is pulling off something historic at this time, and that is the key reason why at this point, he is the far and away favorite for the Republican nomination," Enten added. "He's just way out ahead of the pack."


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'My friends will get hurt': Trump blew up over threats to expose Epstein accomplices

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) revealed new details about her split with President Donald Trump over the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

The retiring Republican congresswoman spoke to the New York Times for a nearly 7,600-word profile covering her decision to leave Congress after two terms, and she told the newspaper that she overlooked some glaring clues about Trump's longtime friendship with the late sex offender, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.

“The story to me was that I’d seen pictures of Epstein with all these people, and Trump is just one of several," Greene told the newspaper, "and then, for me, I’d seen that Bill Clinton is on the flight logs for his plane like 20-something times. So, for people like me, it wasn’t suspicious, and then we’d heard the general stories of how Epstein used to be a member of Mar-a-Lago, but Trump kicked him out. Why would I think he’s done anything wrong, right?”

But doubts began to creep into her mind after meeting with some Epstein survivors in a closed-door House Oversight Committee meeting, and she found their stories credible and surprisingly inspiring.

"Greene herself had never been sexually abused, but she knew women who had," the Times reported. "In her own small way, Greene later told me, she could understand what it was like for a woman to stand up to a powerful man. After the hearing, Greene held a news conference at which she threatened to identify some of the men who had abused the women."

The congresswoman didn't know those names herself but said she could have gotten them from the victims, and she told the Times that Trump called her to voice his displeasure with the threat.

"Greene was in her Capitol Hill office, and according to a staff member, everyone in the suite of rooms could hear him yelling at her as she listened to him on speakerphone," the Times reported. "Greene says she expressed her perplexity over his intransigence. According to Greene, Trump replied, 'My friends will get hurt.'"

"When she urged Trump to invite some of Epstein’s female victims to the Oval Office, she says, he angrily informed her that they had done nothing to merit the honor," the report added. "It would be the last conversation Greene and Trump would ever have."

'We need to see that': Victims' attorney flags documents that hold the key to Epstein case

An attorney for Jeffrey Epstein's victims questioned the Department of Justice's "slow-drip" rollout of files related to the late sex offender's alleged criminal network.

Florida attorney Jack Scarola has represented nearly 20 Epstein survivors and spent 18 years litigating cases against the disgraced financier, and he told "CNN News Central" that President Donald Trump's administration was putting his clients and other victims through unnecessary pain.

"Unfortunately, the slow drip release of these files is very much like Chinese water torture for the Jeffrey Epstein victims, the survivors of this abuse suffered terribly at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein," Scarola said. "However, what they have been suffering over the course of the last, for many of them, more than 18 years is absolutely inexcusable. This is either terribly gross negligence on the part of the Department of Justice, or it is an intentional effort to try and hope that the attention span of the American public does not outlast this release process."

"I think it's highly unlikely that that's going to happen," he added. "I think there is a very strong commitment to require a full and complete release, but why that has not happened already is absolutely inexcusable."

An attorney for the late Virginia Giuffre, who is probably Epstein's most well-known victim, says she provided names of other prominent men who raped her to the FBI, and Scarola said his clients also named their abusers to investigators, but none of the documents produced so far have included their names.

"There have been formal statements taken of some of my clients in which specific names were referenced," Scarola said. "I have not seen those specific names included in any release so far, and what I think is particularly significant is the fact that in 2007, 2007 – nearly 20 years ago now – the Southern District of Florida's federal prosecutors prepared a 60-count indictment detailing the sexual abuse of minors in which Jeffrey Epstein was engaged. That 60-count indictment was supported by an 82-page prosecution memorandum detailing the evidence supporting those allegations. Had that federal indictment been filed and prosecuted, there is no doubt that Jeffrey Epstein would have been convicted back in 2007 and would have served a lengthy jail sentence that would have ended, presumably, the abuse that continued long after that."

"The real questions that need to be answered in connection with this investigation is why that federal prosecution never occurred, and instead, Jeffrey Epstein was permitted to plead guilty to a relatively minor offense in state court in Florida," Scarola added. "He served a 13-month sentence that was spent largely on work release, working in an office for a charity that he created specifically for the purpose of having a job to go to, and it is alleged that during the period of time that he was on work release, his abusive pattern continued."

There's one key document that has not yet been released that holds the key to the case against Epstein, according to the attorney.

"We need to see that indictment," Scarola said. "We need to see the 82-page prosecution memorandum and, most significantly, we need to see the internal communications within the Justice Department about why that case was not prosecuted. [Then-U.S. attorney] Alex Acosta had direct communications with multiple members of Jeffrey Epstein's high-profile defense team. Those communications, which took place under very unusual circumstances, have to be detailed in internal memoranda and communications that have not been released, and there is no basis for failing to release those kinds of documents."


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'Possible retirement?' All eyes on Alito after decades on the bench

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has bent American law to his conservative vision with audacious conversions from minority dissents to majority opinions, but somehow he seems even grumpier than ever.

In his 20 years on the bench, the 75-year-old Alito has cast decisive conservative opinions and authored closely fought decisions on abortion, voting rights and religion, and all eyes will be on him in 2026 as the court considers upcoming cases on transgender rights, religious freedom and executive power, reported CNN.

"Alito will also likely be the most-watched justice for anyone wondering if President Donald Trump will soon get another vacancy to fill. Trump had three appointments to the nine-member bench in his first term," wrote CNN's Joan Biskupic. "Alito, 75, and Clarence Thomas, 77, are the eldest justices. Thomas, who was appointed in 1991 at the young age of 43 and is now the fifth-longest serving justice in U.S. history, has suggested that he has no intention of retiring while he is healthy."

"Alito, on the other hand, has pondered a possible retirement, according to people close to him," Biskupic added. "But he has not signaled any eagerness to leave."

The conservative justice's most consequential victory came with his 2022 Dobbs decision overturning nearly half a century of abortion precedent, but his pattern extends far beyond reproductive rights.

In recent months, Alito reversed his position on racial gerrymandering — moving from dissent in a 2017 North Carolina case to majority opinion in 2024's South Carolina decision, then weaponizing that new framework to uphold Texas's controversial Republican-drawn congressional map this month.

The transformation was audacious. Where Justice Elena Kagan once wrote that "the sorting of voters on the grounds of their race remains suspect," Alito instituted a new test granting state legislatures presumption of good faith and imposing higher burdens on civil rights challengers. When Kagan bristled at this reversal — noting "we have seen all this once before — except that it was in dissent" — Alito fired back with a separate opinion, unable to simply accept victory.

His combativeness extends throughout the courtroom. During oral arguments, Alito regularly grimaces, rolls his eyes, and interrupts lawyers mid-sentence. When one attorney asked to finish speaking, Alito later declared with visible impatience: "On that hypothetical, three or four sentences later.…" Other justices laughed, apparently accustomed to his barely concealed irritation.

Even past victories wound him. Nearly 16 years after Citizens United, Alito still feels compelled to defend the decision as "much maligned, I think unfairly maligned," referencing President Obama's 2010 State of the Union criticism — the moment Alito was caught on camera mouthing "not true" at the hyperbole.

Public scrutiny particularly galls him. When ProPublica investigated his luxury fishing trip with hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, Alito preemptively published a Wall Street Journal op-ed. After the New York Times reported on controversial political flags at his family properties, Alito blamed his wife Martha-Ann: "My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not."

He told the Wall Street Journal in 2023: "I marvel at all the nonsense that has been written about me in the last year." Yet rather than ignore critics, he insists someone must defend the court — and apparently that someone is him.

Trump has signaled he wants Alito to remain on the bench, and Alito has emerged as Trump's strongest judicial defender, penning scalding dissents when other conservatives waver. When the court temporarily blocked Trump's Venezuelan deportation in April, Alito denounced the majority for issuing relief "literally in the middle of the night" without proper procedure.

As pending cases loom on transgender rights, religious freedom, and executive power, Alito's trajectory suggests a justice determined to reshape American jurisprudence according to his vision — and equally determined to punish anyone who questions his handiwork.

Photographer reveals how White House Epstein panic scrambled now-infamous photo shoot

The photographer who illustrated last week's bombshell Vanity Fair profile of President Donald Trump's inner circle revealed that his photo shoot was scrambled by the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

The West Wing profile featured remarkably candid quotes from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and unvarnished portraits by Christopher Anderson, and he gave the magazine a behind-the-lens account of his tightly choreographed day at the White House, reported The Daily Beast.

"There were interesting moments during the day," Anderson said. "For instance, at one point our schedule — we spent the entire day there and we had scheduled moments with each one of the players throughout the day in their office to take the pictures — and at one point in the middle of the day the schedule got completely thrown off because we were told that the Cabinet had been called to the Situation Room."

At first, he assumed a military operation was underway, but Anderson soon realized it was a political battle related to the Epstein case.

"It was, you know, we wonder if the Situation Room is used when things like going to war are taking place," Anderson said. "So we, together with the Vanity Fair team, were speculating while we were waiting for what could possibly be happening. We later found out that day that it was Congresswoman Lauren Boebert who had been called into the Situation Room to put pressure on her about not pushing to release the Epstein files, so to speak. That was an interesting one."

The photographer's account confirms a reported pressure campaign against the Colorado congresswoman and other renegade Republicans who intended to sign a discharge petition to Republican “rebels” who were backing a discharge petition to

The 79-year-old president, a longtime associate of Epstein, invited Boebert to the White House meeting, which the White House described as a briefing, along with Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.

Anderson's account shows the meeting was focused on her decision to sign the discharge petition circulated by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) to force the Department of Justice to release investigative files about Epstein and his network.

However, the effort ultimately failed, and the House voted 427-1 to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Trump signed into law the next day after it also passed the Senate.

The DOJ has been releasing documents since Friday in effort to comply with the law.

'Utterly corrupt': White House slammed for 'lawless' move to manage Epstein blowback

The White House has taken control of the Department of Justice's social media account to manage the public relations battle over the Jeffrey Epstein files, alarming some.

The Trump administration estimates there's another week to go in the congressionally mandated release of the DOJ's files on Epstein's sex trafficking network, with up to 700,000 more pages to review, and the White House wants to control the message coming out of the federal agency, reported Axios.

"Trump and the Justice Department also have compounded their problems with clumsy messaging and puzzling redactions made while pledging transparency," Axios reported. "The White House has begun managing the DOJ's account on X, an effort to finish out the year and the Epstein file disclosure requirements set by Congress."

"The account is also taking on a sharper tone that has more of a rapid-response campaign edge and less of the stodgy just-the-facts tone associated with the department," Axios reported.

That new tone was on display in the DOJ account's response to the widely followed "Pop Base" account, refuting a widely reported letter purportedly from Epstein to sex offender Larry Nassar, as "fake," and followed up with a snippy retort to veteran congressional reporter Jamie Dupree's question about knowingly releasing a fake document.

"Because the law requires us to release all documents related to Jeffrey Epstein in our possession so that’s what we are doing, you dope," the DOJ account posted. "Are you suggesting we break the law?"

Critics blasted the White House for taking control of an independent executive agency's social media account.

"Utterly corrupt. Utterly lawless," said former Republican congressman Joe Walsh. "Continuing to destroy the very independence of the Justice Department. But not one member of my former political party will say a damn thing. Every Republican, every single Republican on the ballot, needs to lose in 2026."

Administration officials are frustrated and annoyed by the headlines related to Trump's presence in the files and their inability to explain away his relationship to the disgraced financier, and the White House is furious at Congress.

"It's a combination of extreme frustration at everything: at what Congress did, at our response to it, and a concern that it won't go away," an official said. "There's also a little bit of indignation at the media — that this wasn't even a story for years and years, and now, not only is it a story, but the top of many news pages on a given day."

Some 750,000 records have already been reviewed and disclosed by a team of around 200, according to one official, and another official said that not all of the remaining 700,000 documents would be released because many of them are duplicates, but that person said the public could expect thousands more.

"This will end soon," another official said. "The conspiracy theories won't."

Read the Axios report here.

Experts warn Supreme Court tried to rein Trump in but accidentally gave him his next move

The Supreme Court's decision blocking President Trump from deploying the National Guard into American cities has alarmed legal experts who fear the ruling may inadvertently create a pathway for the administration to invoke the Insurrection Act.

Trump and his aides have repeatedly suggested they would invoke the rarely used law, which would be politically unpopular but give him broad authority to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a footnote that the court's opinion "could cause the president to use the U.S. military more than the National Guard," reported CNN.

The implication is stark: Having lost his first legal avenue, Trump may pursue a more dramatic option.

Legal experts express deep concern about this trajectory. William Banks, a Syracuse University law professor specializing in the Insurrection Act, warned that deploying the 82nd Airborne "in heavy armor and gear" would create "heavy martial images" far more alarming than National Guard presence. "There's only a little bit of daylight between no law and the Posse Comitatus prohibition and the Insurrection Act," Banks noted.

Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program, predicted the administration will "run into similar trouble" attempting to invoke the Insurrection Act, though the legal terrain remains murky.

Justice Neil Gorsuch's dissent underscored the constitutional stakes, asking: "When, if ever, may the federal government deploy the professional military for domestic law enforcement purposes consistent with the Constitution?" He expressed discomfort venturing answers to these questions, preferring they receive "full airing" in a future case.

The Supreme Court's decision, while blocking National Guard deployment, left the Insurrection Act question unanswered — a legal gap that could prove consequential.

The administration's defeat on this narrow front may simply redirect it toward a more constitutionally troubling path, potentially setting up future litigation over the military's role in American cities.

'You dope!' DOJ insults critic's intelligence in snippy retort to Epstein question

The official social media account for the Department of Justice insulted a critic's intelligence in a Christmas Eve post.

The DOJ initially responded Tuesday afternoon to the widely followed "Pop Base" account on X to rebut its post claiming "a newly released Epstein document includes a letter that Jeffrey wrote to fellow sex offender Larry Nassar, alleging that Donald Trump 'shares [their] love of young nubile girls.'"

That handwritten letter was purportedly sent by Epstein shortly before his 2019 death in federal custody to the sports doctor who had been convicted of sexually abusing Olympic athletes, and its existence had been previously reported and its inclusion in the documents released by DOJ was widely reported, but the department insisted to "Pop Base" that it was fake.

The FBI has confirmed this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is FAKE," the DOJ account posted. "The fake letter was received by the jail, and flagged for the FBI at the time."

"The FBI made this conclusion based on the following facts," the post continued, claiming: "The writing does not appear to match Jeffrey Epstein’s. The letter was postmarked three days after Epstein's death out of Northern Virginia, when he was jailed in New York. The return address did not list the jail where Epstein was held and did not include his inmate number, which is required for outgoing mail."

"This fake letter serves as a reminder that just because a document is released by the Department of Justice does not make the allegations or claims within the document factual," DOJ added. "Nevertheless, the DOJ will continue to release all material required by law."

However, veteran Capital Hill correspondent Jamie Dupree challenged the department to explain the document's inclusion in the Epstein files.

"Okay. So then why would DOJ publicly release something that's fake?" Dupree posted Tuesday afternoon. "Your answers please."

The DOJ responded Wednesday morning, about 17 hours later, with a snippy retort.

"Because the law requires us to release all documents related to Jeffrey Epstein in our possession so that’s what we are doing, you dope," the DOJ account posted. "Are you suggesting we break the law?"

'It was a miscalculation': GOP strategist admits Trump error is worsening Epstein scandal

The Jeffrey Epstein scandal has hovered like a dark cloud over the first year of Donald Trump's second presidency, and a Republican strategist released a forecast on where the political fallout would land.

The president's longtime association with the late sex offender has periodically exploded into the foreground after backtracking on campaign promises to release investigative files about Epstein's trafficking network, and GOP strategist Malik Abdul told "CNN News Central" that Trump was largely to blame for the scandal's durability.

"They got the messaging all wrong," Abdul said. "You can't deny, deny, deny, and because Donald Trump surrounded himself with people like [FBI Deputy Director] Dan Bongino, who built a cult following on the Epstein files, well, they're now a part of his administration, and so you can't that same energy that people had as far as releasing the information, even though Democrats didn't do anything on it when [Joe] Biden was in office, the energy behind it is still there, and I think, do believe that in that sense it was a miscalculation."

However, Abdul doubts the scandal will be an issue during the midterm election cycle, even thought the Department of Justice has not complied with a law passed last month compelling the release of all the Epstein files.

"I don't think that it will be a factor going into next year and especially the midterms," he said, "because I am convinced that if there were any evidence that Donald Trump was complicit in any sort of crime and not just a crime, even knowledge of a crime, we would already know that by this point. So I think by this time next year, I think that we will, of course, we would have had the midterm elections. But I think that by this time next year it won't be an issue. The economy and what the administration's message is on the economy will be the issue next year, for sure."


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'Was I being lied to for my vote?' GOP strategist spots crisis of faith among Trump's base

A Republican strategist warned that President Donald Trump's seeming impunity did not carry over into a scandal that's threatening to consume his presidency.

The U.S. Supreme Court's immunity ruling before he won re-election emboldened Trump, GOP strategist Maura Gillespie told "CNN This Morning," and she said that had set the tone from the start of his second term.

"The executive orders, I think, from the pardons to how it emboldened President Trump 2.0 and the White House," Gillespie said. "I think you mentioned the Supreme Court ruling on immunity. That also further emboldened him in ways that I don't know that we're necessarily prepared for, because it really does feel as though once that came down, he thought, 'I can do whatever I want and I cannot be stopped, and if they try to stop me, nothing will happen to me.'"

"Then he realized he had the pardon power, and he can pardon everyone and anyone," Gillespie added, "and what Joe Biden did before he left office, pardoning Hunter Biden and for past and future, you know, issues he may come up against. Trump saw that was like, 'Great, I will do that for my world as well,' and so we've already seen him use the pardon power to an extreme degree. Obviously, with the Jan. 6 of Day One, but I do think that really set the tone, and there are some things that I don't know we'll be able to claw back with the immunity."

However, that impunity does not seem to cover the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, which Gillespie said had caused a crisis of faith among the MAGA base.

"It feels like the biggest moment for MAGA, I think, in terms of creating an actual rift where MAGA voters and Trump loyalists were faced with the question, 'Was I being lied to for my vote or is the president hiding something from me?'" Gillespie said, "and that is a stark thing for people who have given their entire loyalty to him, who don't want to blame him for anything, who are constantly looking for somebody else to blame, and even in those first moments, they were looking at [Attorney General] Pam Bondi, 'Get her, get rid of her, Trump,' like she's hiding something, she's doing something. You know, they were trying to find some way not to blame Trump, and I think that has really created this first big rift that we've actually seen in MAGA world, and over the Epstein files."

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ICE plans to stuff migrants into 'dehumanizing' warehouses: 'Like Prime, but with humans'

The Trump administration is planning to warehouse more than 80,000 immigrants in industrial storage facilities in a dramatic expansion of its detention system treating human beings as logistics problems to be processed and moved along like packages.

According to a draft solicitation reviewed by the Washington Post, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to establish seven large-scale warehouses holding 5,000 to 10,000 people each, with 16 smaller facilities holding up to 1,500. The warehouses would be strategically positioned near major logistics hubs in Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, Georgia and Missouri, creating a "feeder system" where newly arrested detainees cycle through processing sites before being staged for deportation.

ICE Acting Director Todd M. Lyons articulated the administration's operational philosophy bluntly: "We need to get better at treating this like a business," he said earlier this year. "Like Prime, but with human beings."

The plan raises serious practical and ethical concerns. Commercial real estate experts warn that warehouses — designed for storage and shipping — are fundamentally unsuitable for human habitation. They typically lack adequate ventilation, temperature controls, and proximity to plumbing and sanitation infrastructure needed to support thousands of residents.

Tania Wolf, an advocate with the National Immigration Project, captured the brutal nature of the proposal, in her opinion: “It’s dehumanizing," she said. "You're treating people, for lack of a better term, like cattle."

Current conditions already reflect systemic problems. ICE currently holds more than 68,000 people — a record — with nearly 48 percent having no criminal convictions or pending charges. The Fort Bliss tent encampment, ICE's largest existing facility, employed less than two-thirds of its contracted security personnel, according to government inspectors.

Former ICE Chief of Staff Jason Houser warned that staffing such massive facilities will prove challenging, requiring specialized training and federal security clearances. "We can always find more warehouses," Houser noted. "The ability to operate the facilities safely is always limited by staffing."

The administration has already awarded a $30 million contract for facility design, sparking backlash from the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, whose leadership withdrew involvement after the tribe's business partner pursued the contract against tribal wishes. Tribal Chairman Joseph "Zeke" Rupnick stated the tribe would "ensure that our nation's economic interests do not come into conflict with our values in the future."

The warehouse plan follows the administration's $45 billion detention expansion initiative, which revived dormant prisons, repurposed military bases, and built remote tent encampments. The administration has deported more than 579,000 people this year.

'I really can't point to much': Republicans admit they got little accomplished in Congress

Republican lawmakers admitted 2025 was a legislative wasteland, with Congress setting a modern record for lowest output in a president's first year, but some attributed their inaction to a simple explanation: President Donald Trump did much of their work for them through executive orders.

With fewer than 40 bills signed into law, the House and Senate managed historically low productivity, reported the Washington Post. The House cast just 362 votes — barely half the number from 2017, Trump's first year, when Republicans also held the majority. Meanwhile, nearly 60 percent of Senate votes focused on confirming Trump's nominees rather than passing legislation.

Rep. David Joyce (R-OH), a 13-year veteran lawmaker, captured the sentiment succinctly: "I guess we got the big, beautiful bill done. Other than that, I really can't point to much that we got accomplished."

The problem, according to some Republicans, was Trump's reliance on executive orders rather than legislative action. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) gave Congress an "incomplete" grade, noting that Trump signed more executive orders in 11 months than during his entire first term.

"He has signed every executive order he could possibly think of on this," Hawley said. "There just comes a point at which it's like, Congress sooner or later has to legislate."

Trump issued more than 70 percent of the combined 12-year total of executive orders from the Barack Obama and Joe Biden presidencies, according to former House parliamentarian Thomas Wickham. This shift has fundamentally altered the balance of power between branches — all numbers indicating healthy congressional productivity are declining, while presidential power expands.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) defended Trump's approach, invoking the president's March address: "He said people said you needed a new law to secure the border. Turns out all you needed was a new president."

However, this approach created significant challenges. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) repeatedly shuttered the House due to gridlock, including a seven-week closure that contributed to a 43-day government shutdown. Republicans never developed a coherent health care strategy, leaving the party divided heading into 2026 as expiring tax credits loomed.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), serving since 1997, noted unprecedented divisiveness, while Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) warned of ballooning debt after Republicans raised the ceiling by $5 trillion in a single vote.

The practical consequence: Congress ceded authority to the executive branch, reducing its own relevance and legislative capacity while establishing a troubling precedent for future administrations.

Stephen Miller targets migrant children as nationwide crackdown gets uglier: report

Stephen Miller has been increasingly targeting the children of immigrants in the Trump administration's nationwide crackdown, according to a new report.

President Donald Trump's deputy White House chief of staff has been a driving force in the mass deportation campaign, and the New York Times reported that Miller believes that millions of immigrants in the U.S. take more than they give, which has been refuted over and over by economic data.

“With a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful," Miller told Fox News this month. "Again, Somalia is a clear example here. You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”

The administration is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, and Miller's statements signal his intention to remove recent arrivals and their children without legal basis.

“He wants to unilaterally upend the idea that we are a nation where immigrants can ever become citizens with full and equal rights as native-born Americans,” said Andrea Flores, a former White House official during the Biden administration who worked on immigration matters.

Miller's arguments also call to mind anti-migrant rhetoric from the early 20th century, when Congress imposed strict quotas to block immigrants from Asia and southern and Eastern Europe through the 1924 National Origins Act.

“Just as we saw with immigrants who arrived around the turn of the 20th century, the children of immigrants who have arrived to the United States since the 1960s consistently learn fluent English, obtain more education than their immigrant parents and achieve higher earnings, showing strong patterns of integration,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute. “Study after study has demonstrated the upward mobility of children of immigrants.”

The administration's anti-immigrant rhetoric has sharpened as the birthright citizenship case makes its way to the high court, and both Miller and Trump have singled out the Somali community in Minnesota, where nearly 60 individuals from that migrant community have been convicted of fraud schemes against social services providers.

“This is the great lie of mass migration,” Miller posted on social media. “You are not just importing individuals. You are importing societies. No magic transformation occurs when failed states cross borders. At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.”

Pratheepan Gulasekaram, a law professor at the University of Colorado Law School, said Miller seems to believe migrants are “forever branded by their origins, distinct and antithetical to the fabric of our community.”

“In short, he views immigration solely through the lens of cultural threat," Gulasekaram said.

FBI sought handwriting analysis of Epstein letter claiming Trump linked to abuse: document

The FBI requested a handwriting analysis after a message allegedly sent by Jeffrey Epstein to another notorious sex offender apparently suggested the implication of Donald Trump.

The letter, postmarked Aug. 13, 2019, three days after Epstein died in federal custody, to former U.S. gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, who was convicted of sexually abusing scores of young gymnasts, alleges that President Donald Trump shared their "love of young, nubile girls."

"Dear L.N. as you know by now, I have taken the 'short route' home," the handwritten letter states. "Good Luck! We share one thing … our love & caring for young ladies at the hope they’d reach their full potential. Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to 'grab ------,' whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair. Yours, J. Epstein."

Epstein was found dead in his cell Aug. 10, 2019, and his death was ruled a suicide. The letter was eventually marked "return to sender," according to an FBI request for a handwriting analysis that was also released Monday in a new batch of files disclosed by the Department of Justice.

"On Wednesday, September 25, 2019, Special Agent (SA) received a phone call from Bureau of Prisons Special Investigative Section (SIS) Lieutenant (LT) Tijuana Doctor regarding a letter that was received by the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC)," that document states. "The letter was a 'return to sender' and the following was written at the top left corner of the letter: J. Epstein Manhattan Correctional NYC NY 10007 The letter was postmarked NOVA 220 13 August 2019 and was addressed to Larry Nassar at 9300 S. Wilmot Road, Tucson, Arizona, 85756."

"This address is that of another Federal Bureau of Prisons facility," the document adds. "The reason for the 'return to sender' was the addressee was 'no longer at this address.'"

The FBI's office in New York, where Epstein was being held while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, asked for the analysis to determine whether the disgraced financier had written the letter to Nassar.

"FBI New York requests the Laboratory perform a handwriting analysis comparing the letter received from MCC and the handwriting of Jeffrey Epstein to conclude if the individual who wrote the letter was Epstein or another unknown person," the document states. "Handwriting samples from Jeffrey Epstein's cell at MCC will be submitted along with the letter in question (in IA envelope 1A65)."

It's not clear whether that analysis was conducted or what it might have determined.

'A complete mess': Survivors' attorney slams DOJ's botched release of Epstein files

An attorney for Jeffrey Epstein's survivors ripped into the Department of Justice Tuesday for making "a complete mess" of its release of files about the late sex offender's network.

Congress passed a law last month compelling the release of DOJ investigative files, with redactions of victims' names, but attorney Helene Weiss told "CNN News Central" that documents that were briefly disclosed Monday night were revealing, but not quite what the law requires.

"It's troubling to say the least," said Weiss, whose law firm represents some survivors of Epstein's abuse. "This is a release from the Justice Department that we've been waiting for. As you know, it's a release that we were promised on Dec. 19, and the documents that we received in this release, again, were heavily redacted.

"They included some very inappropriate redactions, and the statement now from the DOJ being on the defensive when it was really their job to release these documents, their job to properly redact victims' names, that they completely failed to do.

"So the statement from the DOJ now, it's a little confusing and concerning in the context of what we're really seeing happening and what the DOJ has delivered to us, which is, quite frankly, a complete mess."

"The Department of Justice has officially released nearly 30,000 more pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein," DOJ said in a statement issued Tuesday morning. "Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election."

"To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already," the statement added.

"Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims."

More than a dozen survivors have already issued a complaint about the redactions accusing the DOJ of violating the law by exposing their names and personal information, but Maria Farmer – the first to file a complaint against Epstein, in 1996 – has said she felt vindicated that her name and complaint were part of the release.

"Maria Farmer, ... she's the exception we received in the batch from Friday, a document that's an FBI report from 1996 that says Maria Farmer reported her child sexual, her sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell to the FBI," Weiss said. "But this was just one document. We don't have Maria's interview notes, we don't have additional notes from 2006.

"We've received them before, but this new tranche didn't reveal notes. We also know that many survivors have interview notes. Dozens and dozens of survivors have reported that they were talking to the FBI, they interviewed with the FBI. Where are the victim interviews? Where are all of the victim interviews that we were promised?"


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