VIDEO OF THE DAY: Jamie Raskin exposes Trump and Bondi's Epstein bait-and-switch
Rep. Jamie Raskin sits down with Brian Tyler Cohen to discuss the Trump team's obvious attempt to placate their furious fans by releasing cherrypicked grand jury testimony, NOT the Epstein files that everyone wants, and why it is 100% not going to work.
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Donald Trump is having one of his worst weeks, ever
Michael Tomasky, The New Republic: "So this is the thing about stories like the Jeffrey Epstein saga: There’s always new stuff waiting to come out. The explosive story that The Wall Street Journal dropped Thursday evening about Donald Trump’s alleged note to Epstein in a “birthday book” compiled for the child molester in 2003 by Ghislaine Maxwell was bound to come out. And if other things are out there about Trump’s history with Epstein—as there almost certainly are—they’re bound to become public someday, too. That’s the first reason Trump needs to be worried. Even if his name does not appear on some master list created by Epstein with a heading like 'Good Friends of Mine Who Raped Underage Girls With Me,' it still has to be the case that there are emails, photographs, and other material that at the very least won’t look good. And here’s the second and more interesting reason. These cracks in the MAGA coalition right now are only that—cracks—but time may prove this week to have been a pivotal, even decisive, moment in MAGA history. On Monday, several voices in MAGA world (Charlie Kirk, Laura Ingraham, Megyn Kelly) were outraged over the administration declaring the Epstein matter closed. On Tuesday, a lot of those same voices said okay, nothing to see here, time to move on. Then, on Wednesday, they pivoted back to outrage, suggesting that on this one matter, social-media marching orders from Dear Leader could not staunch the blood flow. And Thursday night, the Journal story broke. Now? As I said, we can’t make any conclusions just yet. But this is the week the pixie dust didn’t work. Maybe it’s a one-time thing. On the other hand, maybe it’s not."
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Arkansas farmer takes on one of the worst Senators we’ve EVER had
Hallie Shoffner for Senate: For over a decade, Tom Cotton has been working to gut the social safety net, handing out tax breaks to billionaires, and trying to drag the United States to get involved in every possible foreign war — even leading the infamous 46 GOP Senators who backstabbed President Obama with their letter to Iran. It’s time to replace him with Hallie Shoffner, who is running for the Senate to fight for the Americans that Tom Cotton’s spent ten years shoving to the back of the line. She’s not a politician, she’s not much for political parties, and she’s never run for office in her life—the only thing Hallie ever wanted to do was farm. But if she can’t farm, she’s going to fight. For ALL US! Will you chip in to help jump-start her campaign and kick one of the worst of the worst Republicans out of the Senate for good?
Jeffrey Epstein’s victims are again being wronged by Donald Trump’s circus
Jeet Heer, The Nation: "The contours of the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein scandal are defined by two suicides: one famous, and one relatively obscure—but the true moral heart of the controversy. Epstein’s apparent suicide in prison in 2019 is course a major reason his scandalous life continues to be the subject of hot political debate. But Epstein’s death is ultimately a forensic matter, one of settling the factual question of murder or suicide. Much more morally troubling was an event that received far less press attention: the suicide earlier this year of Virginia Giuffre at age 41. In 2000, when she was 17 years old and working as spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago (Donald Trump’s resort), Giuffre was recruited and groomed by Ghislaine Maxwell to be part of Epstein’s sexual entourage. Epstein and Maxwell recruited not just Giuffre but countless other children and young teens. Giuffre was a central figure in the criminal case against Epstein in 2008 (which ended with a sweetheart non-prosecution agreement), the 2009 victims’ suit that kept the case alive, and the second criminal case against Epstein in 2019. Giuffre also accused Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom of abusing her, which ended in the prince paying a settlement, although Andrew continues to deny the charges. One striking aspect of the Epstein case is that the most important people—victims such as Giuffre—are the most quickly forgotten. Even as the case now dominates political discourse, the focus has been not on the crimes committed but the much more trivial matter of the partisan political fallout and the various strategies politicians are adopting to exploit the controversy. On Tuesday, California Representative Ted Lieu told reporters, “This is the case of the powerful protecting the powerful.” This gets to the heart of the political controversy. Beyond partisan wrangling, the Epstein case is about whether the ultra-wealthy enjoy absolute impunity or whether they can be held accountable by the law. Virginia Giuffre in her short life never received the justice she deserved. The only way to honor her memory is to push for accountability and transparency in the Epstein case.
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The secret to Baltimore's extraordinary year
Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims, Popular Information: "This April, Baltimore saw five homicides. That is the fewest of any month since 1970, when the city began tracking monthly homicide numbers. In the first six months of the year, homicides were down 22% compared to 2024, and non-fatal shootings were down 19%. This is the latest in a string of historic declines in violent crime. In 2024, homicides dropped 23% from 2023 numbers, and non-fatal shootings dropped 34%. In 2023, the city also saw record-breaking decreases. What has made Baltimore — which President Trump and other conservatives deride as a “filthy” Democrat-controlled “slum” — so successful in making its streets safer? Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D), who was first elected in 2020, has brought the city’s homicide rate down by treating violent crime as a public health crisis. That means treating violent crime as a symptom of multiple factors, including racism, poverty, and past violence. Addressing violent crime as a public health issue involves going beyond arresting people after violence is committed and taking proactive and preventative measures. “What Baltimore did that's so impactful is really invested in a whole ecosystem of community–oriented interventions,” The Vera Institute for Justice's Daniela Gilbert told Popular Information. Under Scott, Baltimore has fought violent crime not only through policing but through a network of programs that provide support for housing, career development, and education. In today's political environment, these approaches are frequently derided as "woke" and "naive." But the dramatic decline in violent crime in Baltimore over the last few years suggests that there is a better word to describe its holistic strategy: effective."
Zohran Mamdani is right: we shouldn’t have billionaires
Christopher Marquis, Jacobin: "When Zohran Mamdani declared on Meet the Press that 'we shouldn’t have billionaires,' the backlash was swift. Wealthy elites and their defenders rushed to paint billionaires as indispensable benefactors. Defenders of extreme wealth love to argue that billionaire success benefits everyone. A recent Financial Times article, for instance, argues that 'billionaires make the rest of us richer, not poorer,' claiming that the economy isn’t zero-sum, and pointing to figures like Jeff Bezos as proof. With his $240 billion fortune, they argue, he hasn’t taken anything from the rest of us — he’s made our lives better. Amazon’s convenience, low prices, and fast shipping are held up as examples of how one man’s riches supposedly translate into shared prosperity. We’re told to thank Bezos, not question him. This is just trickle-down economics in new packaging. The idea that billionaire wealth is the “rising tide that lifts all boats” is a rerun of the Reagan-era theory that slashing taxes and regulation for the rich would spark investment and raise living standards across the board. Forty years later, the evidence is in: billionaire wealth has soared, wages have stagnated, inequality has exploded, and upward mobility has collapsed. Mainstream institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) now admit that the trickle-down model doesn’t work. When wealth pools at the top, it doesn’t trickle down — it consolidates power. In 2024 alone, the top 1 percent in the United States became more than $6 trillion richer while the entire bottom half of the country has just $4 trillion of collective assets, only 2.5 percent of the nation’s total. The issue is that billionaires don’t participate innocently in the economy — they rewrite the rules to benefit themselves. Elon Musk, for instance, owes his rise to billions in public subsidies. Yet after becoming the richest man on Earth, he became an ardent crusader against government oversight, labor protections, and democratic accountability. Like that of Bezos, Musk’s trajectory shows how vast wealth begets vast power — to shape laws, markets, and narratives that serve the ultrarich at the expense of everyone else. Another common defense of extreme wealth is that billionaires are essential for innovation — that without the lure of limitless riches, no one would take the risks or make the breakthroughs that move society forward. But this idea doesn’t stand up to historical scrutiny, either. Perhaps the most prolific period of American innovation — from the birth of modern computing to the Apollo program — unfolded at a time when the top tax rate averaged 81 percent. Far from dampening ambition, high taxation prevented hoarding and channeled surplus wealth into public goods and scientific progress. The biggest breakthroughs of the past century — like the internet, GPS, and mRNA vaccines — weren’t driven by billionaire visionaries. They came from government-funded research, university labs, and publicly backed infrastructure. Gates, Musk, and Bezos didn’t create these technologies from scratch; they commercialized them after decades of public investment had laid the foundation. Abolishing billionaires is not about envy of their wealth as some claim — it’s about rebalancing power. As Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis famously said, “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” We must stop treating billionaires as saviors and start seeing them for what they are: products of broken systems, symbols of a moral failure to distribute opportunity, and agents of oligarchic capture. Mamdani’s comment was a glimpse of a saner future. We should heed it.
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