In a stunning move Thursday, President Donald Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to release sealed grand jury testimony related to Jeffrey Epstein—a move that completely blows up the narrative…

It was supposed to be a fun-filled night at a Coldplay concert (no, really, apparently they still do those) for Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and some co-workers—a night of music and dancing to get away…

The House of Representatives voted 216-213 to approve President Donald Trump’s spending cuts bill. The recission legislation was a companion piece to the One Big, Beautiful Bill, which passed two weeks…

Yet another prominent Democrat has been referred to authorities for investigation and possible prosecution for a crime. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, a Florida Democrat, has become just the latest…

Politics What on Earth Is Happening to the Democrats? The boys and girls in blue are going back to the future. Credit: Chris duMond/Getty Images Parties go through secular periods of decline and crudescence: the Republicans in the ’30s and ’40s, Democrats in the ’70s and ’80s. No matter what boneheaded antics the other team got up to, the party on hard times just couldn’t get a toehold. (Even with the gift of Watergate, the premier scandal of American political history, the best the Democrats could manage was Jimmy Carter’s single hapless term.) There are a few usual reasons for this. The country simply becomes tired of a party, often after their long period in power comes to a bad end, as happened to the Republicans at the dawn of the Depression. Or the party elite gets sclerotic and its base gets restless, as in the Democrats’ ’68 and ’72 presidential nomination races, and this inaugurates a season of infighting. You wonder whether something like this is happening again when you look at the Democrats now. They should be looking down on midterms from a position of strength. While Trump decisively won the 2024 election, it was hardly the landslide that his most ardent propagandists claimed; about half the country would rather vote for Kamala Harris—Kamala Harris—than for Trump. Not even the Democrats enjoy taking a loss, but it didn’t look like a blowout that would inaugurate seven lean years for the Democrats. Clearing a little room at the top of the party would make way for the rising cohort of telegenic younger talent like Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, and Chris Murphy. The Republican legislative majority is very small, not exactly the stuff of quasi-permanent mandate. The first six months of the Trump administration have been checkered at best—bungled trade policy rollouts, floundering in foreign affairs, a budget bill nobody liked, ongoing economic anxiety as inflation remains higher than we’d like and growth lower. Trump’s approval rating is comfortably underwater, as usual, and his issue ratings for immigration and the economy are slipping. Absolved from the obligation of having to make policy, you’d think the boys and girls in blue would be having a field day on Medicaid cuts, fly-by-night military improvisation, and Epsteinmania. They’re not, though. Midterms polling is equivocal at best; while the Democrats seem to have an enthusiasm advantage, the American people seem to pretty much loathe both parties—28 percent approval for the Ds and 33 percent for the Rs, per a CNN poll published Thursday. CNN’s Harry Enten observed that the Dems have only a slight lead on the generic ballot and appear to be losing on a seat-by-seat basis. This is not the stuff of the classic midterm blowout. What gives? Well, let’s go through what we said can go wrong at the start of this column. Institutional sclerosis and rebellion seem to be the main things. There is still internal foment within the Democratic Party between the hardline, often identity-based “groups” and the increasingly embattled-looking moderates. While the country may have for now moved on from “peak wokeness,” the enwokened still have a big share of the money, power, and especially enthusiasm in the party, and it is not at all clear that they’re going anywhere. Something similar happened in the New Left’s takeover of the party in the ’70s and ’80s, well after the peak of the counterculture. They weren’t strong enough with the general electorate to get candidates over the top, but they were strong enough consistently to pull the party in their own direction. In the long run, there is a warning here for the right: The New Left eventually got it together and professionalized. Twenty-five years after the 1968 Chicago meltdown, a dope-smoking, free-love Deadhead was president. (I am more than half convinced that the most important chronicle of the Democratic Party in the latter half of the 20th century is Jann Wenner’s badly written but revelatory memoir, Like a Rolling Stone.) Maybe the woke Democrats will find a viable synthesis the way the New Left did, but they’re not there. While a Pramila Jayapal or a Cori Bush can win in a safely deep-blue district, it’s not clear the hard left can take competitive districts (yet). The Woke Clinton may not even have entered the arena, although, if you made me pick the likeliest active politician to fill the role, I’d say AOC—radical on paper, but increasingly institutionalist.  Much can happen very quickly, of course, and the Republicans aren’t immune to blowing it bigly. An economic downturn, a war, an administration scandal—the GOP isn’t immune to any of these. Their choices could still catch up with them. But, for the time being, the Democrats are not looking like contenders. The post What on Earth Is Happening to the Democrats? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs The Origin—and Limits—of Trump’s Ukraine Pivot Reform does not occur in a political vacuum. About a month ago, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) took a trip to Ukraine to advocate for greater pressure against Russia.  “President Trump said Ukraine doesn’t have good cards…but the world has a lot of cards against Russia,” Graham said. “And one of those cards we have is about to be played in the United States Senate.”  He continued the analogy: “In America you have more than one person at the card table. We have three branches of government, and the House and the Senate are poised to act.”  In other words, the Senator saw himself as working against President Donald Trump’s stated foreign policy agenda regarding Russia and Ukraine. But after the president’s recent announcement that the U.S. will now be sending more weapons to the latter and potentially imposing additional sanctions on the former, both Trump and Graham now appear to be playing for the same team. What changed? As so often tends to be the case in foreign policy, the answer is almost certainly tied to domestic political considerations.  In March, Graham proposed the Sanctioning Russia Act with the Democratic senator from Connecticut Richard Blumenthal. That legislation would have not only imposed yet another tranche of primary sanctions on Russia primarily focused on its energy export industry, but it would have also levied secondary sanctions on countries such as India, China, and even certain EU states like Slovakia and Hungary that receive Russian energy products; those secondary sanctions include a minimum 500 percent tariff on imports to the United States of products coming from those same countries. That provocative bill was sidelined while the president attempted to pass his signature budget legislation, the One, Big Beautiful Bill Act. Now Trump seems to be taking a different path to the same end. The president has set a 50-day deadline, before which Russia must renege on its strategic objectives, cede its ability to secure those objectives on the battlefield, and effectively accept political defeat. If those demands are not met, the United States will allegedly impose up to 100 percent tariffs on goods exported to the United States from countries in the Middle East, Asia, and South America who do business with Russia. Most notably, that would include India and China. In a departure from the Senate bill, primary sanctions have not as of yet been threatened by Trump as a possible repercussion. It is very unlikely Russia will accede to those demands. It is also hard to believe that the president does not recognize that reality, not only due to his instinctive grasp of the war’s dynamics but also the geopolitical wherewithal of many within the administration (many, who also happen to be those who are most loyal to Trump’s reform agenda). So again: What has changed? For one, avoiding the passage of the Senate bill provides much more flexibility for the president to deal with the war. Maximalist threats followed by moderate compromise are part and parcel of Trump’s approach. Even if one disagrees with the effectiveness of that approach, it is hard to deny that there is a clearly discernable, systematic quality to it. Retaining as much discretionary power in the hands of the executive will allow Trump to haggle his way down from the 100 percent tariff initially proposed—which, considering precedent, will almost certainly happen. But, as mentioned, domestic political considerations were probably the definitive factor in the recent change in course.  The president’s political agenda first and foremost required the passage of the OBBBA; thus, priority number one was ensuring the necessary votes in a shaky and uncertain Senate. The Graham and Blumenthal sanctions bill has gathered the support of 84 cosponsors in the Senate (51 at the time of its initial introduction in April, growing to 84 this month), including 41 Republicans—many of whom needed to be won over for the landmark bill. Importantly for many of those Republicans, Trump’s recent announcement that the weapons supplies will increase to Ukraine means an increase in U.S. defense production. While European countries send their own stocks of weapons systems to Ukraine, the United States will sell additional products to those countries in order to restock their inventories. This is certainly a concern for Graham himself. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and General Electric all maintain production facilities in South Carolina.  The support of men like Graham—and Kentucky’s Senator Mitch McConnell, whose state also has important ties to the defense industry—was absolutely essential in passing Trump’s OBBBA. Notably, Senator Tom Cotton’s Arkansas maintains one of the primary facilities for the production of the interceptor portion of Patriot missile systems, which is set to be one of the primary systems being sent to Ukraine via Europe.  As such, the apparent change in policy course is not hard to imagine as being the result of backroom dealmaking that won the support of Senate hawks. This is unfortunate for the president’s immediate foreign policy agenda, not to mention for the many losing their lives because of the war’s prolongation. Sanctions and the delivery of additional weapons systems will not change the strategic dynamics. While the increased aerial defense capabilities in the form of Patriot missile batteries specifically will aid Kiev, they will still do nothing to counter the primary factors that compose Russia’s strategic advantage (namely, manpower and industrial capacity). But such is the world of politics: Reform must take place within the system, and that means prioritization and dealmaking, especially when one is attempting to progress an agenda that goes against the status quo. Reclaiming our national sovereignty begins with securing the border and addressing the immigration crisis, and the OBBBA was an unprecedented step towards that end.  At the same time, bombastic rhetoric aside, Trump does not want a war with Russia—nor does Russia want war with the U.S. One would therefore expect that there are back-channel communications with Moscow ensuring certain red lines will not be crossed. Additional limitations will also be inherent to U.S. provisions, not least due to the fact that significant support is likely needed in the operation and especially targeting of those weapons. The recent change in tack may very well have been the most realistic option for an executive operating within a hostile system. But it still remains unlikely that Trump will allow his hand to be forced into open hostilities against Russia. Just like with the strikes on Iran, the intention will be to retain a certain image while finding a path to deescalation. This “new” course will therefore likely do little to significantly change the situation on the ground or the general U.S. posture towards the conflict. This is nonetheless a risky state of affairs. It also raises important questions about sovereignty and political control of American policy, considering that Trump was elected on a platform of reducing U.S. involvement in the Russo–Ukrainian War. Nor should anyone discount unforeseen developments, or cease championing the substantive meaning of a truly sovereign America First agenda.  The post The Origin—and Limits—of Trump’s Ukraine Pivot appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics Why Jeffrey Epstein Won’t Die Trump should tell the whole sordid story, not try to kill it.  President Donald Trump wants to bury Jeffrey Epstein for good. “We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein,” Trump wrote on Truth Social this weekend. In the same post, Trump claimed that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, among other political rivals, had fabricated the Epstein files. Since influential MAGA voices—including members of Trump’s administration—had long speculated that Epstein’s child sex crimes implicated Democratic elites, Trump’s claim provoked whiplash across the country. But in a new post Wednesday morning, Trump doubled down. “Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bulls***,’ hook, line, and sinker.” Trump denigrated those “past supporters” as “weaklings” who unwittingly advance a Democratic agenda. “I don’t want their support anymore!” the president exclaimed. Trump’s aggressive dismissal of the controversy—and of his own supporters who care about it—poses significant political risks. The Epstein affair, despite the president’s best efforts to kill it, isn’t dying. Indeed, Trump’s post this weekend was his first ever on Truth Social—his own platform—to be “ratioed,” getting more comments than likes. MAGA voters, evidently, won’t move on from Epstein just because the president instructs them to. Just how much grassroots Republicans care about the issue isn’t clear, but they don’t like how it’s being handled. Only 4 percent of Republicans (and 3 percent of Democrats) are “satisfied” with the amount of info released about Epstein, according to a new CNN poll. “When you only have 4 percent [of Republicans] that is with Donald Trump on a particular issue, that is ridiculously low,” said CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.” Of course, interest in Epstein will recede as new controversies arise, a fact that Trump may be trying to take advantage of. This weekend, the president threatened to take away the citizenship of the comedienne Rosie O’Donnell, rekindling a decades-long feud. Critics of Trump suspected a calculated diversion.  But the Epstein scandal, I predict, won’t ever fully go away. Indeed, it will join the ranks of the JFK assassination in the annals of America’s counter-establishment obsessions, and not only because its lurid details suggest a grand—and irresistibly alluring—conspiracy involving high-powered elites. Since Trump and Epstein were friends for more than a decade, the media will continue to uncover awkward facts about their relationship, as the Wall Street Journal did in a story published Thursday about a bawdy birthday letter the former allegedly once sent the latter. The president, if he doesn’t want the issue to cloud his administration and legacy, will need to order an actual, comprehensive, transparent investigation that satisfies the public. One reason the scandal lately has ignited such fiery passions is that it synergizes with Israel-critical views that are gaining prominence in American politics, since Epstein had numerous ties to the Jewish state, including a close relationship with an Israeli prime minister. A Pew Research survey published in April found that a shockingly high number of U.S. adults—53 percent—expressed an unfavorable opinion of Israel. As Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza—and its related antagonisms in the West Bank, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and Iran—incite public backlash around the world, more and more Americans are wondering why their government spends billions each year supporting the wealthy, powerful, and increasingly belligerent Mideast nation. Many are learning for the first time that the Israel lobby, not American interests, drives the U.S. policy of unconditional support.  Thus, Trump’s attempt to squash the Epstein scandal comes at a time when many Americans are primed to suspect that he’s doing so on Israel’s behalf. No proof has emerged that Epstein worked for Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, as he reportedly boasted. Still, prominent MAGA voices have plausibly argued that Epstein was an agent or asset for Israel. Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson leads the charge. “It’s extremely obvious to anyone who watches that this guy had direct connections to a foreign government,” Carlson said last week in a speech to young conservatives. He added that “every single person in Washington, DC” thinks that the foreign government was Israel. But when Attorney General Pam Bondi was asked last week whether Epstein “ever worked for an American or foreign intelligence agency,” she gave the impression of never having considered the possibility. “To him being an agent, I have no knowledge about that,” Bondi said. “We can get back to you on that.” Bondi’s non-answer points to another reason, in addition to Israel-related factors, that Epstein just won’t die: The administration’s ham-fisted effort to close the curtain on Epstein has only prompted more people to suspect that powerful elites are working behind the scenes to cover up a scandal of significant public interest. Until the White House convincingly addresses the question of Epstein’s intelligence ties, the case cannot truly be considered closed. Another question must also be answered: How did Epstein, an apparent multi-millionaire or billionaire with unclear professional achievements, gain such incredible wealth?  Nevertheless, last week a two-page memo from the Justice Department and FBI declared the case closed. As I covered in my column days later, the memo not only failed to address Epstein’s intelligence ties and other important matters but raised more questions than it answered. For example, it said the agencies had found no evidence that Epstein ever blackmailed prominent individuals, yet the Wall Street Journal has reported that he used knowledge of businessman Bill Gates’s affair with a Russian woman to threaten him. Why, then, did the memo deny any evidence of blackmail? And if Epstein wasn’t blackmailing high-profile associates, why did he bug his own palatial residences with concealed cameras? Many suspect he recorded powerful guests engaged in embarrassing if not criminal acts and later used the tapes to compromise them. At least one of Epstein’s accusers has claimed that in his home she saw pinhole cameras, including in bedrooms and bathrooms, and that she entered a “media room” in which strange men were “monitoring private moments.” What—and whom—did those men see?  We might have a better idea of what those monitors showed if the FBI hadn’t lost track of binders containing CDs and computer hard drives (and diamonds and passports) that they had recovered in a safe at Epstein’s New York City mansion. One of Epstein’s lawyers later returned the missing items, but can we be sure that no incriminating evidence was removed? These are all legitimate questions, and Trump shouldn’t expect his supporters, on command, to stop asking them. “This Epstein sex ring operation… I’m not letting it go ever, ever,” said Dan Bongino, now deputy director of the FBI, back when he was a rabble-rousing podcaster. While Bongino is indeed letting it go, many MAGA voters and influencers are not. And that’s not surprising. The most sensational version of the alleged conspiracy holds far too much symbolic significance for MAGA to simply move on, involving a secretive network of transnational elites evading accountability for heinous crimes against working-class American children. Therein lies the danger for the president. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?” Trump famously bragged during the 2016 campaign. Maybe so. But some lines even Trump can’t cross.  The president’s defensive behavior this past week has aroused suspicions that he participated in Epstein’s crimes, though Trump and the convicted sex offender seem to have had a falling out before the latter’s legal troubles began. Given this background, it’s understandable that Trump would be wary about releasing the Epstein files. But with the sword of Damocles hanging over his head, Trump seems to have reacted by shooting his own foot. Surely there are better ways to manage a PR crisis than denouncing one’s own supporters as dupes and traitors. Trump should instead come clean. My guess is the president never engaged in criminal activity with Epstein, and instead that the two uber-wealthy men did the sorts of unsavory and sometimes misogynistic things that New York City playboys did decades before the MeToo era. Let’s be honest: No one would be surprised.  If Trump took down the Damoclean sword on his own terms, the administration could then release the files without fear of too much blowback. The president’s supporters would understand and still back him. What many of them can’t understand, or support, is pretending that the Jeffrey Epstein scandal never happened, or that it was a “hoax” invented by Democrats, or whatever other narrative the administration offers to avoid speaking candidly about the subject. So allow me to give President Trump some Biblical advice: The truth will set you free. The post Why Jeffrey Epstein Won’t Die appeared first on The American Conservative.

UTL COMMENT:- How frustrating would it be to be a young early 20's Australian / American / Canadian / European these days!! How could you ever buy a home without your parents help? I was lucky I bought in the 90's and literally paid my home off in 2 years! Mass immigration is mostly driving this!! STOP ? THE MASS IMMIGRATION NOW!!!

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