Michigan Republican Rep. Tom Barrett, seeking reelection in one of the nation’s most competitive congressional districts, is attempting to stake a new path on the Iran issue which would empower the president but forbid a lengthy engagement. Barrett has introduced a bill which would authorize the use of military force against Iran. However, the bill also would cap hostilities at 90 days and limit the use of ground troops. The bill would block the military from pursuing “sustained ground combat operations in Iran” and also from “engaging in nation-building, stabilization operations, or the establishment of long-term security governance within Iran.” “Two things have been clear from the very beginning: Iran cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, and the United States of America cannot be dragged into another endless war,” Barrett said of the bill, per The Detroit News. Iran and the Midterms Barrett, a freshman, is seeking reelection in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, which The Cook Political Report rates a “Toss Up” in 2026.  The price of gasoline has soared since the start of the Iran conflict amid Iranian disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, with the national average price per gallon of regular gasoline sitting at nearly $4.56 as of Thursday morning, per AAA. Operation Epic Fury began in late February—more than 60 days ago. The War Powers Resolution is meant to restrict the executive branch from going beyond 60 days without receiving congressional authorization for the use of force against foreign adversaries. However, the White House has argued Operation Epic Fury has ended, stopping the 60-day clock. “The operation is over,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday of Epic Fury. “We’re done with that stage of it.”

The White House is contemplating executive orders on artificial intelligence regulation, but the specifics of the orders are still the subject of active debate, sources close to the administration told The Daily Signal. The New York Times first reported that the White House is looking into an executive order to create a vetting system for frontier AI models.  The White House has worked on several draft executive orders, but the matter of which proposals make it to the president’s desk is still being debated, sources familiar with the matter said. It is likely that one or more AI executive orders will be signed in the next two weeks.  There are differences of opinion within the administration about how strong the vetting process of new models should be, as some officials prefer a light touch to regulation while others want to aggressively vet new models. The administration had previously taken a light touch to AI regulation, with officials like former AI czar David Sacks criticizing AI “doomers” who fear negative outcomes from the rapidly advancing technology.  However, White House officials were motivated to implement a more heavy-handed approach due to increased awareness of the national security risks posed by new models like Anthropic’s Mythos, as well as concerns about AI-enabled cyber attacks before the midterms, sources said.  A White House official told The Daily Signal that any policy announcement on the subject will come directly from the president. “Discussion about potential executive orders is speculation. The White House continues to proactively engage across government and industry to protect our country and the American people,” the official said. “This includes working with frontier AI labs to discuss opportunities for collaboration, as well as shared approaches and protocols to address the challenges associated with scaling this technology,” the official added. “We are also exploring the balance between advancing innovation and ensuring security. The collective effort of all involved will ultimately benefit our country and economy.” Some officials want labs to submit AI models for review pre-deployment as a condition for government contracts, sources familiar with the matter said.  On May 5, Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and xAI agreed to work with the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, the Commerce Department’s safety-centered artificial intelligence arm started under the Biden administration. The center will conduct pre-deployment evaluations and targeted research to assess frontier AI capabilities, according to a news release. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said he wants every AI lab to go through a safety review process before releasing a new model, similar to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of new drugs.  “We’re studying possibly an executive order to give a clear road map to everybody about how this is going to go and how future AIs that also could potentially create vulnerabilities should go through a process so that they’re released to the wild after they have been proven safe,” Hassett said on Fox News. “Just like an FDA drug.”  The reviewing role could fall to Center for AI Standards and Innovation. There are also ongoing conversations about how executive orders can address using AI models for cyber defense, sources said.  The potential executive orders could help the Trump administration secure the votes in Congress to pass its National Framework on AI. Since the news of possible orders requiring AI vetting, Democrats have shown more interest in negotiating on the framework, an AI industry source said.  President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Dec. 11 ordering the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to recommend federal AI legislation preempting any state laws in conflict with the administration’s policy. The White House released its AI framework on March 20. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Trump administration is “determined to work with our AI companies to allow them to continue to innovate, but our charge in the U.S. government is maintaining safety.” “And there is a very important calculus here between innovation and safety,” he said. “And the U.S. government, we’re going to make sure that things stay safe.” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on AI:“What we’ve had in the past month was a step change in the power of one large language model, but we’re going to see it from the other AI companies. And it’s important, Maria, that the U.S. stays ahead here. Imagine if China or some… pic.twitter.com/xEbAQwmO95— Kyle Chan (@kyleichan) May 6, 2026 Following Bessent and Hassett’s remarks stressing AI guardrails, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles made a rare X post saying that “President Trump is the most forward leaning president on innovation in American history.” “When it comes to AI and cyber security, President Trump and his administration are not in the business of picking winners and losers,” she said, seemingly indicating that an FDA-like approval regime for AI is unlikely. “This administration has one goal; ensure the best and safest tech is deployed rapidly to defeat any and all threats. We appreciate the effort being made by the frontier labs to ensure that goal is met.” “The White House will continue to lead an America First effort that empowers America’s great innovators, not bureaucracy, to drive safe deployment of powerful technologies while keeping America safe,” she added. “Really, it’s common sense!” President Trump is the most forward leaning president on innovation in American history. When it comes to AI and cyber security, President Trump and his administration are not in the business of picking winners and losers. This administration has one goal; ensure the best and…— Susie Wiles (@SusieWiles47) May 7, 2026

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes. Jack Fowler: So, let’s start off with corruption in Maine. And here’s this—Steve Robinson posted this on X the other day. “Maine Democrats are actively recruiting voters who have never lived in Maine and never paid taxes in Maine. “Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who previously tried to disenfranchise Maine voters by removing Donald Trump from the ballot, has publicly admitted that noncitizens are registered to vote in Maine. She’s refusing to give Harmeet Dhillon [from the Justice Department] Maine’s voter files so that the Department of Justice can prevent noncitizens from raiding our elections. “And Bellows has partnered with the Community Organizing Alliance. This is a, quote-unquote, ‘migrant-run ACORN-style group created by the alleged Medicaid fraudsters at Gateway Community Services.'” Etc., etc.  You know, Maine was once a bastion of republicanism. It has important elections coming up, Victor, and we’re gonna talk about that separately with [Graham] Platner. But this is that infamous woman who tried to keep Donald Trump off the ballot. And she is a pure ideologue and in a position of power.  Your thoughts? Victor Davis Hanson: Well, I think there’s two issues here. One is Platner and the worry about him. The rumors are, and these are alleged rumors, but I think Mark Halperin mentioned them, that his long social media history, which is pretty crazy. Women need to wear Kevlar pants if they don’t want to be raped. White people, rural people are stupid and lazy. He’s a communist. Fowler: All cops are bastards.  Hanson: All cops are … Yeah. And I don’t know how you can be on 100% disability for post-traumatic stress syndrome and then say you’re going to run for Senate because you’re disabled. But he’s doing that. And of course, no one has called him on it.  The other thing is if you have a candidate like that and you’re going to nominate him over, she’s not very moderate, the governor, but that he was going to win. And then once he’s in the general—Susan Collins, I know that a lot of the true-blue conservatives like us, Jack, get irritated with her, but she has to operate in the confines of Maine.  And I would say, I haven’t looked at her voting record, but I imagine—don’t you think it’s 75% or 80% with the administration?  Fowler: Yeah.  Hanson: On key votes, the SAVE Act and things like that, she disappoints, but she gets elected. And she’s smart. There’s no comparison between the two.  So, the point I’m making is that he is out of the ordinary. He also represents this new strain of elite, very wealthy—here in California, Tom Steyer is really off the scale, hard-Left, but a billionaire. We saw [Zohran] Mamdani. His two parents are billionaires. I mean, they’re not multimillionaires, but they’re very affluent. They’re from a very exclusive family in Uganda. And then we go to Platner. He went to Hotchkiss School. He’s the son of a famous architect. His father was a lawyer. His mother is a restaurateur. So, he’s among the elite, and yet he keeps yelling and screaming about billionaires and millionaires. His parents are millionaires, no doubt. He grew up as a millionaire.  So, there’s a problem with him. And when you’re a Democrat and your heart says, I love this guy, but your brain says, he’s not gonna be electable under normal circumstances, then you opt for the change the system. And the change the system is what they always do. James Carville outlined it. He said, when the Democrats come in, no more filibuster. No more Electoral College with a national voting compact solution to that. Four more Democratic senators under the Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico entrance. And pack the court. What does that show? He doesn’t have confidence in the Democratic message appealing to 51%.  They don’t have confidence that this guy can win. So, when they do that, they either open the border or they try to say that felons can vote or they try to change the system, and that’s what they’re doing, whether it’s off the radar or transparently in Maine because they have a problem. And as I said, Mark Halperin reviewed his problems, and apparently, allegedly, there’s a lot more to come, Jack, about him. His record.  And it’s very ironic, well, not ironic. I should apologize for that. But the Democratic Party made such a fuss about Elon Musk’s Nazi salute. It wasn’t a Nazi salute. He saluted like we’ve seen everybody do that. Cory Booker, I think Elizabeth Warren. They all do it. And they’ve said nothing about this Totenkopf death head, Third Panzer Division [tattoo] and also used as the Einsatzgruppen people at the death camps, and he knew. People have said, that were in his cohort, he knew what it was. He bragged about it.  He’s changed his story twice. He said, well, you know, I didn’t really know what it was until I ran for Congress, I mean, for Senate. And they told me what it was. And then he’s also said, well, you know, I was brainwashed. I imbued or absorbed this toxic Marine culture. And that made me do it.  So, he can’t tell the truth. And he thinks he’s going to win. Put it this way. 30 years ago, if you were a Democrat and you wore a Nazi tattoo for 20 years and people knew about it, that would exclude you from being nominated. Today in the Democratic Party, the fact that he had a Nazi tattoo and he removed it will mean, A, the grandees will explain it away, or wink, nod, it will be something that will be of value because of the rising antisemitism. It sends a message. It sends a message, and he’s reiterated again and again and again about Gaza, Gaza, Gaza, genocide, Israel, Israel, Israel, cut off—so that sends a message to the new Democratic Jacobin Party. And it’s not the Democratic Party anyway. It’s a Jacobin Party, a French revolutionary party. And they have institutionalized antisemitism. So, when a candidate sends those signals and we think they’re disqualifying, we’re in a time warp. That was 20, 30 years ago.  It’s not now.  Fowler: Victor, I want to—we have to talk about Tucker Carlson now. Here’s a headline: “Tucker praises Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner.” Quote, “I certainly appreciate his foreign policy views, and I appreciate how different they are from everybody else in his party. I haven’t met him yet, and I plan to meet him.”  Hanson: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. How is he different than anybody else? He’s representative of the Democratic party, isn’t he?  Fowler: Other than [John] Fetterman, I guess so, yeah.  Hanson: I mean, everything he’s right with Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and the older guard that has flipped like Nancy Pelosi and Schumer. They’re for that stuff now. He basically wants open borders, doesn’t care about illegal immigration, critical race theory, DEI, transgender, all of that stuff. He can’t get elected if he wasn’t.  He’s a green guy, no fossil [fuels]—all of that stuff. And the whole He-Man, white working guy, all in the tough talk, and often laced with profanities, all of that is just superficial pablum for this mythical white working class that’ll vote for him because he’s tough.  It’s kind of insulting to the white working class because the people that I see in my neighborhood that are white working class, are pretty well-informed.  Fowler: Yeah.   Hanson: But I don’t know what Tucker-  Fowler: Oh, you said F, I’m going to vote for you.  Hanson: Yeah. I don’t know what Tucker means, but if he says that he would prefer Graham Platner, and I guess he does, because he didn’t say at the same time, he’s an interesting person. I want to interview him. But of course, I’ll also interview Susan Collins because her record, even though I don’t embrace it all, has been more representative of my entire life in the conservative movement. He didn’t say that.  So, I assume that he likes Graham Platner not because his views are at odds—I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt—with the new hard-Left Democratic Party, unless Tucker’s gone the whole Bill Kristol route. I don’t know if he has or not. Or Max Boot route. I don’t think he has. But he must like him because Graham Platner has been outspoken in his hatred of Israel, Gaza, genocide, all this stuff. And that, it seems to me, that that’s—and he’s had people on—he has appeared with people who have endorsed, and correct me if I’m wrong, I think he’s appeared with or he’s talked with people who have been classified as pro-neo-Nazi. Really, you know, there’s kind of the Darryl Cooper, I don’t know how you’d [say it], revisionist.  So, is that why Tucker is attracted to this new face in the Democratic Party? Because if you look at the totality of what he said, it’s no different than “the squad” or AOC. It really isn’t.  Fowler: Yeah.  Hanson: And I thought Tucker’s criticism of Donald Trump was, I am a principled conservative, and I voted for Donald Trump and campaigned for him and frequented Air Force One and Campaign One. And I was at Mar-a-Lago, habitué a lot. And I did this because I agreed with 90% of his platform. I thought that’s the reason why.  And I still haven’t been enlightened by anybody. Candace. Any of them. Why, if you disagree with him on a particular issue, like you classify the 60-day, and it hasn’t been 60 days of kinetic activity, it’s been 40 days, maybe less, against Iran. You want to classify that as a forever or endless war, that he campaigned against. Okay, that’s a legitimate opinion. But why would you take one particular issue and then say, well, I thought it over and I don’t like that wall that’s growing on the border. I don’t like the idea there’s no illegal immigration. I don’t like the idea we’re deporting 500,000 criminals. I don’t like the deregulation, the tax cuts. They’re all an abomination. No. It’s just you crossed me on one issue and I’m done with you. Unless they can cite others, you know, that you don’t like Trump’s language or you feel that his impulsiveness or when he wasn’t respectful of the dead, with Rob Reiner’s passing, or he uses the F-word on his—something like that. But you have to come forward with something that would nullify your whole life’s conservatism.  Fowler: It’s interesting because one of the criticisms from Tucker was—recent criticisms—was that Trump was the Antichrist. And then he was interviewed by The New York Times this past weekend who—and he denied saying it. And they showed the video he clearly—yeah.  Hanson: I saw that. And he said he didn’t know what the Antichrist was, so how could he say that? And that would suggest that somebody always says things he knows.  Fowler: Yeah.  Hanson: Tucker gave an interview with the mayor of Bethlehem, who flat out said that Christians have been fleeing his city because of Jewish pressure, when in fact one of the destinations they go is to Israel, and they’re fleeing Muslim intolerance.  So, you don’t need to know everything to say something. He did say that. The Antichrist—you know, he said he didn’t know what the Antichrist was. And as I remember in the Bible, I’m just doing this—it’s in John, I think. It’s in Revelations, too. The Greek word for it is pseudochristos. The pseudo just means false. The false Christ.  And I have a feeling, isn’t he referred to in Acts or Letters as the person who, as the end of days come, he’s gonna be popular and work miracles?  Fowler: Yes. Right.  Hanson: But he’s not satan or Lucifer. He’s some type of—he’s not referred to very much in the Bible. He’s some person who’s going to emulate Christ and try to deliberately fool people. And then rob them of eternity through his sin. And they’re following his sin as deluded people. And so if he meant that, I don’t believe he doesn’t—he’s very religious, so when he says, I don’t know what the Antichrist is, when he’s talking about Trump as the Antichrist, and he said that Trump had used foul language on Easter, and that Trump was a very magnetic person, you get the impression he did know. Because he was trying to, I think, say that Donald Trump led us, in what I thought was a moral crusade, but it was a pseudo-crusade. Maybe that’s what he meant. I think he did. I just don’t believe that someone that aware and well-read and familiar with Christian exegesis does not know what the antichrist is.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

In this preview from the latest “Signal Sitdown” podcast with Bradley Devlin, Michael Knowles discusses how the MAGA coalition can stay together despite all the infighting on the right. The full interview premieres on The Daily Signal’s YouTube page at 6:30 a.m. EST on May 7. Bradley Devlin: And yet there’s this shift in the American lexicon that’s happened, I guess, over the last 100 years. I hate attributing everything to the progressives. Don’t get me wrong. Many bad things can be attributed to the progressives. Yes. But they’re not responsible for every single social evil that we face right now.  Michael Knowles: Right.   Devlin: But this really does kind of start with Woodrow Wilson, where politics in the American lexicon becomes a dirty word, whereas politics, according to the Western tradition, was the good thing.   Knowles: Yes.   Devlin: That was the good thing as opposed to mob rule, as opposed to perverted democracies, perverted aristocracies, oligarchies, things of that nature.  And so, I think you have to recover politics properly understood in order to get there. And so often I see on the right is a full-on rejection of politics for principle. Right? You see this all the time on social media everywhere, that, well, my principles forbid me from working with or building a coalition with somebody.  And it can be something rather serious, right? There are fences on the island where we need to protect those fences and make sure that we keep those unsavory characters out. But these issues are super petty. It’s like, I reject a 25% tariff on EU automobiles—rather than the 15% tariff. Like, that’s the type of level that we’re dealing with when we say ‘my principles forbid me from working with you!’ How do we go about shedding the right of this idea that politics is a dirty word?   Knowles: Well, I think you’ve gotten right to the heart of the matter, and it requires a restoration of the classical view of politics over the myriad errors that have set in, not just since the 1960s or not even since the 1910s, but that have set in since, I don’t know, the 16th century, the 17th century at the latest.  And the thinker that I come back to as, to immediately abstract it all the way out into the realm of theory, is Michael Oakeshott.   Devlin: You are a podcaster. This is okay. You’re not in the—  Knowles: Yeah, I get a pass, right? And I think Michael Oakeshott, the 20th-century British political philosopher, gives us a good sense of this.  In his essay “Rationalism in Politics,” he says that ideology is to be eschewed by the conservative because he defines ideology as the formalized abridgment of the supposed substratum of rational truth contained in the tradition. A delightfully flowery way of describing this, but it bears repeating.  The formalized abridgment of the supposed substratum of rational truth, only rational truth contained within the tradition. And he says that’s not what we do. At that point, you have such a thin understanding of the world. This is the manifesto of the liberal or the leftist that fits in five bullet points on the back of a napkin.  But you don’t want that. In a different essay, “On Being Conservative,” Oakeshott says that to be conservative is to prefer the actual to the possible, to prefer present laughter ultimately to utopian bliss. It’s a practical inclination, and that works for me.  So a lot of these debates that have broken out among the podcasters, one, involve, you know, you fired me from this job 10 years ago, and you said this mean thing about me on some other podcast. Like, a lot of it really is petty.   Inasmuch as it involves ideas, which I’m happy to debate, I delight in debating ideas, but a lot of that debate is taking place at too abstract, too high a level.  So one will say, well, this person is advancing, this podcaster is advancing through some nebulous means. I don’t know how. Through his microphone and magic, he is advancing a postliberal integralist paleoconservative, and that is completely unacceptable. I will never dine with this person because I, you see, am a pure libertarian neo-paleoconservative, who in the arrangement of Frank Meyer, but only from 1963, not 1965.  And you just say, can you—what are we talking about? What are we talking about?   Devlin: And that is actually what presents the real challenge, is for people at home who are watching this all play out, they think to themselves, the sky is falling. The sky is falling.  Now, I might be a little bit more black-pilled than you are on some of this stuff, because you’ve recently been touring the country doing speeches with TPUSA and YAF, and you said this experience has kind of been white-pilling, that there’s still a lot of really good youth energy—for as much as we talk about how young men in particular who swung heavily toward Trump in 2024 might be—not swinging back to the left, but not as enthusiastic about showing up for the midterms or in 2028.   Knowles: No, I was just in Idaho. It was with TPUSA. TPUSA decided to continue Charlie [Kirk]’s tour, and coincidentally, I was the first person to do that.  Charlie and I were supposed to do an event together at the University of Minnesota 12 days after he died, and they asked if I would come out and sub in on his radio show, because they still had the radio show when he was killed. You know, the show must go on, I guess.  They were getting a bunch of his friends to sub in for weeks afterward, and I show up there days later, and they asked me, hey, are you going to do that event in Minneapolis?  I said, guys, this is entirely up to you. It’s totally your thing. If you want me to do it, I will do it. I’ll do it alone with an empty chair. If you don’t want to do it, it’s your call. It’s your event. You make the decision. I don’t want to weigh in on it.  And they said, we think you should do it, which was obviously the right answer. Very much in the spirit of Charlie. And so we did that.   It was a good event up there. This was right in the wake of it. People were still quite traumatized. It was clear at that point that the left was celebrating Charlie’s death.  So we finished that one out, and then TPUSA decided to continue the tour.  I was a little worried, because the thing about assassinations is that they work, and no one wanted to acknowledge that. Everyone said, oh, well, you’ve struck Charlie down, and we’re devastated, but we’re going to come back 10 times stronger. And it’s like Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, and that’s copium.  That’s actually not how it works. Assassinations do hurt people. That’s why people keep doing them.  I was a little concerned. The left also has been very aggressive in terms of reserving seats and then not showing up, or showing up and then leaving in the first 10 minutes. I’ve dealt with these tactics for 10 years now in my own tours.  So there was a real fear.  There were kerfuffles when the administration was helping them out. But anyway, [Matt] Walsh and I show up in Idaho, totally packed house, maximum capacity, very big venue, and then more than 1,000 people were turned away at the door.  Devlin: Yeah, you didn’t even know that many people lived in Idaho.  Knowles: Truly. It was just amazing. Some of the guys were following my car out of the venue. I was doing an event afterward at a cigar lounge, of course, and they were just stopping by the car as I got out and saying, “Hey, can you sign the hat? Can you sign this? Can we talk about this?”  But it was really great. It was really white-pilling. The questions in the room were great. I was waiting for it to be all sorts of inside baseball personality podcast nonsense like we were just discussing.  How could you work for that dastardly Ben Shapiro? Why won’t you denounce the evil Tucker Carlson? All of this kind of meta-political stuff. It really wasn’t that at all.  It was people asking what to do now, how to deal with the Iran war, which is controversial among the wonk class, the right-wing think tanks, and many rank-and-file conservatives, what to do about the economy.  We had one little kid show up, mention that he wanted to become a priest, and Walsh decided to grill him on it. Very Matt Walsh thing to do. He said, “Why do you want to be a priest?” And the kid said, “I think God is calling me,” which is the pitch-perfect answer.  You had people debating matters of theology, and it was just really substantive, really good, a very positive event.  And I thought, okay, I’m now reaffirmed in my previously held belief that I was doubting, that there is a distinction between Twitter and real life. There’s overlap, but there is a distinction.  And even to your point, that it’s not just affecting the podcast class, that’s true. It’s all over society.  But it occurred to me that 20 years ago, you say, what kind of Republican are you? Someone would say, I’m a John McCain Republican. I’m a Ron Paul Republican.  Sixty years ago, what kind of Republican are you? I’m a Barry Goldwater conservative. No, I’m a Rockefeller Republican. It was always referring to actual politicians who created public policy.  Now if you ask, you’re much more likely to get the answer, well, I’m a Ben Shapiro conservative, or I’m a Tucker Carlson conservative.  In other words, it now appears that the tail is wagging the dog, that the political media are really in the driver’s seat of prominence over the conservative politicians.  Which I guess is fine by me, because I’m in that class, so I’m fine to be the belle of the ball. But in a proper political order, that would not be the case.  You would have more of a focus on the real.  In some ways, the sociologist Jean Baudrillard has become very popular in certain corners of the right. The man who promotes society of hyperreality. wrote a famous book about how the Gulf War didn’t really happen. It was just a sort of illusory phenomenon on television.  Delightful writer if you’re into plausibly right-wing postmodernism. He’s a delightful writer.  But his idea that you kind of abstract and concentrate something so far away that it’s almost unrecognizable from the source material, I think that’s where we’ve gotten with politics.  And so you have to bring those things back together, or we will become frivolous. We will become superfluous. And the upshot of that will be that the left will actually do the governing, and we will all lose.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told a House panel behind closed doors Wednesday that his interactions with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, with whom he met three times, were limited to being neighbors, according to a person familiar with the testimony. Lutnick told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he met three times with Epstein and never saw Epstein with any young women. He said he never witnessed anything inappropriate. The two were neighbors from 2005 to 2019.  Lutnick purchased the property near Epstein’s home in 1997 but did not move in until renovations were complete in 2005.  The commerce secretary told the committee that he and Epstein had no personal or professional relationship. Lutnick said he and his wife visited Epstein’s home for coffee and a short tour when they became neighbors, in a meeting that lasted about 10 to 15 minutes.  Lutnick said that’s where he saw a massage table, according to a person familiar with the testimony. He said he decided he didn’t want a personal or professional relationship with Epstein.  A massive batch of files released by the Justice Department in January included emails showing Lutnick had apparently visited Epstein’s private island for lunch in 2012. The emails also showed Lutnick invited Epstein to a November 2015 fundraiser at his financial firm for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Democrats on the committee were critical after the closed door testimony. “Howard Lutnick should resign. That was absolutely mindboggling what we just heard,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., told reporters. “He was evasive, nervous, dishonest. He says he was never in the room with Epstein again after the first time he met him, yet he then admitted he was in the room with Epstein. I had to ask him whether he and I were in the same room just now because I couldn’t understand his meaning of in the same room,” Subramanyam said. The commerce secretary said he and his family were invited to Epstein’s home for lunch when he was in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  Lutnick said he didn’t know how Epstein’s assistant knew he was visiting the islands and thought it was unsettling. The families had a short lunch.  Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said that Lutnick was transparent on Wednesday. “The only thing that I’d seen that Lutnick did wrong was [he] wasn’t 100% truthful on the brief visit to the island with his family. He corrected that in his opening statement,” Comer told reporters. Lutnick had previously stated he cut off contact with Epstein by the time of the island meeting. “If we find that there were any misstatements by Lutnick, it’s a felony to lie to Congress and he’ll be held accountable,” Comer said. Lutnick said he and Epstein met one time to discuss scaffolding in Epstein’s foyer.  Reuters contributed to this report.