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Time Magazine
13 hours ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
From the Grave, Jeffrey Epstein Shuts Down the House
This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME's politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. There's no pretending otherwise: disgraced and deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein has hijacked Washington. Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday announced he was starting the August recess a few days early to avoid the chamber having to vote on whether Congress should force the Justice Department to publish everything it has on Epstein, who was accused of running a sex ring of minors for the rich and powerful. The move amounted to Johnson veering toward an emergency off-ramp to avoid a toxic topic that has crippled President Donald Trump, and by extension most Republicans in Congress. We are now in the second week of Trump trying and failing to get out from under Epstein's shadow. At the Capitol, disagreements about how to pursue justice for Epstein's alleged victims are erupting into screaming matches and quiet acrimony, and even some of Trump's ardent apologists are finding themselves in a circular text chain asking if the White House gets just how boxed-in the President has become. Ever since the Department of Justice and the FBI jointly released a memo on July 7 affirming that Epstein died by suicide in 2019 and that there is no 'incriminating client list' in the government's Epstein files, almost nothing else has been able to break through here. A revolt in the MAGAverse stalled votes in the House. The White House has been unable to reclaim control of the story, let alone take a victory lap on Trump's tax- and spending-cuts law. Donors are simultaneously titillated by the tabloid fodder and disgusted that the long-promised disclosures have not been produced. Trump and his allies have long fed the myth that Epstein's life and death alike were pieces of a coverup to protect powerful players. It became something of a cottage industry, up there with Hillary Clinton's emails and Joe Biden's mental acuity. Now, Trumpists are finding the shrapnel does not spare them when the expectations and the reality are not neatly aligned. Among more sober-minded Hill staffers, a variation of the same meme has become ubiquitous: you live by the sword, you die by the sword. House Rules came to a standstill on Monday as Republican troublemakers demanded Congress move to force the Justice Department to publish what it has on Epstein. Democrats were more than happy to join that push and it became clear that Leadership had lost its leash on a movement that Trump has tried for two weeks to shut down. Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California have joined forces on a discharge petition to force transparency on Epstein's dossier, which would allow for a vote on the House floor over the objections of the GOP Leadership team. If that unlikely pair can cobble together 218 signatures on their petition, the measure could sidestep Johnson's veto. At the same time, a House Oversight subcommittee on Tuesday moved ahead with a motion from Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee to subpoena Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. Rather than keep playing with fire, Johnson sent everyone home. A hasty exit was seen as a better option than a slow-burning self-own. This is not the summer Trump and his sycophants had planned. Epstein has pulled focus from One Big Beautiful tax- and spending-cut package the President signed on July 4 replete with a military flyover. Yet increasingly, signs in the Capitol are of a party at war with its own members. Even Trump's Congressional allies have depleted their patience. 'I am tired of making history,' Johnson told reporters last week after holding open the vote on an ultimately successful cryptocurrency bill for a record nine hours as an Epstein sideshow invaded. 'I just want a normal Congress.' You're hardly alone, Mr. Speaker. But with Trump at the helm and increasingly backed into a corner by an Epstein saga that has split his typically lock-stepped Republican Party, it seems like the White House is turning to the oldies in an attempt to recapture the narrative. It is not working, and that means we once again are at the mercy of Trump's whims. Trump remains in open contempt of his base, which is peeved he promised a bombshell release of a celebrity client list of Epstein. He bemoaned that Jerome Powell was ever nominated to lead the nation's central bank, a position Trump himself put Powell in. He's even rewriting the recipe for Coke via social media posts, sending some suppliers racing to an unexpected sell-off. And, as this week began, he threatened Washington's football team and its new stadium if it didn't return to a former name that was ditched because it was demeaning to Native Americans. Oh, and for good measure Sunday evening, he posted a video showing Democrats saying no one is above the law before cutting to what appears to be an A.I.-created clip of federal agents arresting Barack Obama in the Oval Office, pushing the former President to the ground before hauling him to a prison. If Joe Biden were acting this way, there would be hearings. The House is on its way home, and Senators are all but done, too. That leaves Trump here in Washington without any prospects of legislative movement until September, a stretch that typically gives administrations time to regroup and plot a push ahead of the Oct. 1 start of the next federal fiscal year. But instead of setting up a spending plan and plotting how to finish out the year, the White House is facing unending questions about Trump and his friendship with Epstein, which has never been in dispute. As GOP lawmakers rush to their flights out of Reagan, many are harboring the same hope: that their districts are not as consumed by the Epstein scandal as Washington has been. For those working in Washington, little else has seemed to matter. Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.
Miami Herald
3 days ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
The Trump-Epstein circular firing squad is just like an episode of ‘Seinfeld'
The Jeffrey Epstein scandal that has engulfed the Trump administration and MAGA world is like an episode of 'Seinfeld.' Somebody does something stupid and the remainder of the show is about the reactions of a cast of soulless characters who are so without redeeming qualities, you can't root for any of them. Donald Trump's decision not to release whatever is in the Epstein files has paralyzed the most MAGA of conservative media outlets. When I checked earlier today, The Federalist, The Daily Caller and Breitbart were all doing their best to ignore the story dividing Trumpists like never before. It is like the digital outlets are waiting for orders from on high, but the leading voices are a confused cacophony, not the usual Trumpy chorus. Fox News and the Wall Street Journal opinion page are both promoting an op-ed by former Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz that is as confused as this Seinfeldian story about nothing. You see, Dershowitz says there's nothing to see here, Epstein committed suicide and was not murdered, but the jail staff may have helped him. Oh, also there's nothing incriminating about Trump. Suicide is a fraught subject that must be handled delicately in all instances, but I am not so clear on how there can be help from the people who are supposed to be guarding you. I didn't know it was OK for the guards to deliver 'assisted' suicide services normally provided by medical personnel. Wouldn't that be a scandal? Dershowitz blames the fact that you can't see the Justice Department files on court-ordered secrecy, as if suddenly the Trump administration has gotten all Emily Post about following judges' orders. Meanwhile the formerly conservative Drudge Report, enemy of all things Emily Post and still frequented by many on the right who want a dose of the day's tabloid fare, is promoting rumors that a big Trump-Epstein story is about to appear in the pages of either The Washington Post, The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. Just as I am writing this, The Wall Street Journal breathlessly published a story marked 'exclusive' that, along with dozens of other people, Trump wrote a bawdy letter to Epstein for his 50th birthday. In this letter, Trump allegedly drew a naughty picture with breasts and pubic hair. Oh, my. The only thing worth being on the front page is that Trump called the Journal's top editor to try to stop the story with a lawsuit threat. So it is no wonder the White House and Trump himself are livid at all this attention with the press secretary blasting people like me who keep covering this 'like it's the biggest story that the American people care about.' For once, Karoline Leavitt appears to be sticking to the facts. Conservative talk radio hosts who I listen to, such as Erick Erickson, report that while their 'very online' listeners are mad as hell, their ideological cousins who have touched grass more recently couldn't care less. If it is not clear already, I am watching the whole kerfuffle and enjoying every minute. If a political movement born of nothing but Trump's grudges, conspiracy theories and self-interest deserves anything, it is to suffer a circular firing squad about Trump holding a grudge against his supporters who still believe a conspiracy theory that is suddenly no longer in Trump's self-interest. This won't be the last time that Trump's imaginary hobgoblins will come back to haunt him. Wait until his handpicked Attorney General Pam Bondi fails to come up with anyone to indict for stealing the 2020 election, as all Trump's supporters have been promised. We'll think back on this week's Epstein blowup as a little family disagreement. If we were watching a 'Seinfeld' episode, this is where Jerry would be told, 'No soup for you,' and we'd all have a good laugh. It isn't so funny when the job prospects of our top law enforcement officers depend on the outcome of a scandal about nothing and the president seems more engaged with the fate of a dead sex trafficker than the real lives of the people he is supposed to govern.
The Guardian
7 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
America's famed ‘checks-and-balances' governance system is failing
It has been said many times, but saying it appears to have no consequences: our system of checks and balances is failing. The US supreme court allowing the president effectively to abolish the Department of Education only reinforces this sense; Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, explicitly wrote that 'the threat to our Constitution's separation of powers is grave' – but she did not explain how to counter the threat. The picture is complicated by the fact that what critics call 'the stranglehold the checks and balances narrative on the American political imagination' has prevented positive democratic change. Hence it is crucial to understand where the separation of powers itself needs to be kept in check and where it can play a democracy-reinforcing role. Most important, we need counterstrategies against the Trumpists' usurpation of what should remain separate powers. While pious talk of the founders' genius in establishing 'checks and balances' is part of US civil religion and constitutional folklore, the system in fact never functioned quite as intended. The framers had assumed that individuals would jealously guard the rights of the branches they occupied. Instead, the very thing that the founders dreaded as dangerous 'factions' – what we call political parties – emerged already by the end of the 18th century; and thereby also arose the possibility of unified party government. The other unexpected development was the increasing power of the presidency; the founders had always seen the legislature as the potential source of tyranny; instead, the second half of the 20th century saw the consolidation of an 'imperial presidency', whose powers have steadily increased as a result of various real (and often imagined) emergencies. Some jurists even blessed this development, going back to Hamilton's call for an energetic executive, and trusting that public opinion, rather than Congress or the courts, would prove an effective check on an otherwise 'unbound executive'. The dangers posed by unified party control and a strong presidency were long mitigated by the relative heterogeneity of parties in the US; internal dissent meant that Congress would often thwart an executive's agenda. Less obviously, Congress's creation of largely independent agencies, acting on the basis of expertise, as well as inspectors general within the executive itself established an internal system of checks. It also remains true, though, that, compared with democracies such as Germany and the UK, an opposition party in the US does not have many rights (such as chairing committees) or ways of holding a chief executive accountable (just imagine if Trump had to face a weekly prime minister's question time, rather than sycophantic Fox hosts). Most important, though, the executive itself tended to respect the powers of other branches. But Trump: not so much. In line with his governance model, of doing something plainly illegal and then seeing what happens, Trump is usurping powers reserved for the legislature. He uses money as he sees fit, not as Congress intended; he, not Congress, decides which departments are necessary. The tariff madness could be over if Congress called the bluff on a supposed 'emergency' which justifies Trump's capricious conduct of slapping countries with apparently random levies. The most egregious example is his recent threat vis-à-vis Brazil which has nothing to with trade deficits, but is meant to help his ideological ally, former president Jair Bolsonaro, escape a criminal trial for a coup attempt. Trump is also destroying the internal checks within the executive. Inspectors general have been fired; independent agencies are made subservient to the president – in line with the theory of a 'unified executive' long promoted by conservative jurists. The US supreme court, occupied to 67% by Maga has been blessing every power grab. As the legal scholar Steve Vladeck noted, the court has granted Trump relief in every single emergency application since early April, with seven decisions – like this week's on the Department of Education – coming with no explanation at all. If this were happening in other countries, one would plainly speak of a captured court, that is to say: one subordinated to the governing party. As commentators have pointed out, it is inconceivable that this court would simply rubber-stamp a decision by a President Mamdani to fire almost everyone at the Department of Homeland Security. Still, the main culprit is the Republican party in Congress. There is simply no credible version of 'conservatism' that justifies Trump's total concentration of power; and anyone with an ounce of understanding of the constitution would recognize the daily violations. This case can be made without buying into the separation of powers narrative criticized by the left (though what they aim at is less the existence of checks as such, but the empowerment of rural minorities in the Senate and the proliferation of veto points in the political system, such that powerful private interests can stop popular legislation). Paradoxically, Democrats should probably make Congress even more dysfunctional than it already is: use every procedural means to grind business to a halt and explain to the public that – completely contrary to the founders' anxieties – the emasculation of the legislature is causing democracy's demise (it never hurts to slip in such gendered language to provoke the Republican masculinists). Of course, one might question what role public opinion can really play as a check, and whether there's still such a thing at all given our fragmented media world: it never constrained the George W Bush administration's 'global war on terror' in the way that Hamilton's self-declared disciples had hoped. But it's still the best bet. After all, there is a reason why some jurists see 'we the people' as the fourth branch that ultimately makes the difference. Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University
The Guardian
7 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
America's famed ‘checks-and-balances' governance system is failing
It has been said many times, but saying it appears to have no consequences: our system of checks and balances is failing. The US supreme court allowing the president effectively to abolish the Department of Education only reinforces this sense; Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, explicitly wrote that 'the threat to our Constitution's separation of powers is grave' – but she did not explain how to counter the threat. The picture is complicated by the fact that what critics call 'the stranglehold the checks and balances narrative on the American political imagination' has prevented positive democratic change. Hence it is crucial to understand where the separation of powers itself needs to be kept in check and where it can play a democracy-reinforcing role. Most important, we need counterstrategies against the Trumpists' usurpation of what should remain separate powers. While pious talk of the founders' genius in establishing 'checks and balances' is part of US civil religion and constitutional folklore, the system in fact never functioned quite as intended. The framers had assumed that individuals would jealously guard the rights of the branches they occupied. Instead, the very thing that the founders dreaded as dangerous 'factions' – what we call political parties – emerged already by the end of the 18th century; and thereby also arose the possibility of unified party government. The other unexpected development was the increasing power of the presidency; the founders had always seen the legislature as the potential source of tyranny; instead, the second half of the 20th century saw the consolidation of an 'imperial presidency', whose powers have steadily increased as a result of various real (and often imagined) emergencies. Some jurists even blessed this development, going back to Hamilton's call for an energetic executive, and trusting that public opinion, rather than Congress or the courts, would prove an effective check on an otherwise 'unbound executive'. The dangers posed by unified party control and a strong presidency were long mitigated by the relative heterogeneity of parties in the US; internal dissent meant that Congress would often thwart an executive's agenda. Less obviously, Congress's creation of largely independent agencies, acting on the basis of expertise, as well as inspectors general within the executive itself established an internal system of checks. It also remains true, though, that, compared with democracies such as Germany and the UK, an opposition party in the US does not have many rights (such as chairing committees) or ways of holding a chief executive accountable (just imagine if Trump had to face a weekly prime minister's question time, rather than sycophantic Fox hosts). Most important, though, the executive itself tended to respect the powers of other branches. But Trump: not so much. In line with his governance model, of doing something plainly illegal and then seeing what happens, Trump is usurping powers reserved for the legislature. He uses money as he sees fit, not as Congress intended; he, not Congress, decides which departments are necessary. The tariff madness could be over if Congress called the bluff on a supposed 'emergency' which justifies Trump's capricious conduct of slapping countries with apparently random levies. The most egregious example is his recent threat vis-à-vis Brazil which has nothing to with trade deficits, but is meant to help his ideological ally, former president Jair Bolsonaro, escape a criminal trial for a coup attempt. Trump is also destroying the internal checks within the executive. Inspectors general have been fired; independent agencies are made subservient to the president – in line with the theory of a 'unified executive' long promoted by conservative jurists. The US supreme court, occupied to 67% by Maga has been blessing every power grab. As the legal scholar Steve Vladeck noted, the court has granted Trump relief in every single emergency application since early April, with seven decisions – like this week's on the Department of Education – coming with no explanation at all. If this were happening in other countries, one would plainly speak of a captured court, that is to say: one subordinated to the governing party. As commentators have pointed out, it is inconceivable that this court would simply rubber-stamp a decision by a President Mamdani to fire almost everyone at the Department of Homeland Security. Still, the main culprit is the Republican party in Congress. There is simply no credible version of 'conservatism' that justifies Trump's total concentration of power; and anyone with an ounce of understanding of the constitution would recognize the daily violations. This case can be made without buying into the separation of powers narrative criticized by the left (though what they aim at is less the existence of checks as such, but the empowerment of rural minorities in the Senate and the proliferation of veto points in the political system, such that powerful private interests can stop popular legislation). Paradoxically, Democrats should probably make Congress even more dysfunctional than it already is: use every procedural means to grind business to a halt and explain to the public that – completely contrary to the founders' anxieties – the emasculation of the legislature is causing democracy's demise (it never hurts to slip in such gendered language to provoke the Republican masculinists). Of course, one might question what role public opinion can really play as a check, and whether there's still such a thing at all given our fragmented media world: it never constrained the George W Bush administration's 'global war on terror' in the way that Hamilton's self-declared disciples had hoped. But it's still the best bet. After all, there is a reason why some jurists see 'we the people' as the fourth branch that ultimately makes the difference. Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University
San Francisco Chronicle
13-07-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Dear Kamala Harris, don't run for office. There's a far more important job for you
From: Joe Mathews Please don't run for governor in 2026. Don't bother running for president in 2028. Instead, take a job more important than either of those posts. It's a job that would fit you even better than the Chloé suits you wore during last year's campaign. It's a job that doesn't exist, but one that California will need to survive this awful moment. Madame Vice President, please use your stature to convince the state to establish the California Autonomy Authority — as an independent commission or part of the executive branch — with you as its founding director. California needs a new agency with broad powers to defend itself against the existential threat of a criminal, authoritarian American nation-state. President Donald Trump's regime has effectively declared war against Californians. Trump dispatched secret police to seize Californians off the streets, deployed troops to back up the secret police, canceled our environmental laws, and illegally cut off funding for vital programs. While Trumpists attack us constantly, we Californians have no full-time body to defend ourselves in this war. Instead, our officials are forced to split their attention between governing their own jurisdictions and defending against federal attacks. In Los Angeles, the federal secret police started arresting people before local leadership, preoccupied with fire rebuilding, knew they were there. Gov. Gavin Newsom has struggled to reconcile the monumental job of managing California's housing and climate crises with the new full-time job of fighting against the federal invasion. His shifting public stances (He's fighting Trump! He's reaching out to Trump!) and presidential ambitions sow cynicism rather than trust. Attorney General Rob Bonta is in a similar bind, juggling litigation against the U.S. with serving as the state's top law enforcement official. We need our public officials to focus on their actual jobs. And we need someone else to take charge of protecting our democracy and defending California against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Your whole career has prepared you for this urgent assignment. Your deep experience in local law enforcement — as San Francisco district attorney — should help you convince local governments, especially local police, to collaborate in defense against Trump. Your six years as California attorney general, representing the entirety of the state government, gave you visibility on state vulnerabilities that Trump might exploit. Your four years in the White House as vice president taught you how intelligence agencies, departments, the military and the U.S. government respond in crises — all lessons that can be applied now in defense of California. You also built contacts across this country (from your presidential campaign) and in world capitals (from your VP travels) that could support California in this moment. In this novel role, you'd combine your public service experiences. For starters, this is a crime-fighting job. Trump is a convicted felon who is violating the law and the Constitution, and his administration, which embraces corruption, has likely been infiltrated by criminals or foreign enterprises seeking advantage. Using the authority's subpoena power, you should investigate and expose criminality — because the Trump-controlled U.S. Department of Justice won't. You also could identify and seek prosecution or civil remedies against masked federal agents who violate Californians' rights. In the process, your authority would create a record of the U.S. regime's crimes to support future federal or international prosecutions, or even a truth-and-reconciliation commission. The job would also involve policymaking. You would determine which laws or governing structures offer California and its local governments the most protection against federal attack. To do that, you might end up creating new agencies in California and possibly other allied states, to replace the federal departments Trump is dismantling. To make this work, you must commit to a term of at least five years. That way, you can serve as the bridge between Newsom, who leaves office at the end of 2026, and the next governor — thus discouraging the Trump administration from exploiting California's transfer of power. And since your term would go to 2030, two years beyond the 2028 presidential election, you'd make clear that California won't stop defending its autonomy even after Trump is gone. Yes, taking this new gig would mean not running for governor or president. But that's not a big sacrifice. Your donors are unenthusiastic about the governor's race, and polls show California voters are at best lukewarm about you. And the Trump people are already busy making sure the 2028 presidential election won't be free or fair. (Betting markets actually give Trump better odds of winning an unconstitutional third term than of any Democrat winning the election.) So, stop debating between running to serve the state (in two years) or the nation (in four). Instead, and right now, start creating and leading a new authority to serve both.
