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Trump says it’s ‘no time to be talking about pardons’ for Ghislaine Maxwell as he lands in Scotland ahead of UK and EU talks – live
by Evelyn Reynolds 25 July 2025, 21:23
Speaking to reporters at Prestwick airport, Trump denied reports that he was briefed about his name appearing in the Epstein files.Asked about the justice department’s questioning of Ghislaine Maxwell, Trump said: “I don’t know anything about the conversation, I haven’t really been following it.”“A lot of people have been asking me about pardons [for Maxwell]. Obviously, this is no time to be talking about pardons” he went on. “You’re making a very big thing over something that’s not a big thing.”He then deflects further, suggesting the media should talk about Clinton and the ex-president of Harvard, but “don’t talk about Trump”.Donald Trump has arrived at his Turnberry golf resort on the coast of Ayrshire, in south-west Scotland.His motorcade, escorted by Police Scotland vehicles and ambulance crews, drove past a small group of protesters, and at least one supporter.While Trump has spoken fondly of Scotland, where his mother was born and raised, the country has not always returned his warmth.During a previous visit, in 2018, Trump was greeted at his Turnberry resort by a Greenpeace activist who paraglided directly over his head trailing a banner that read: “Trump: Well Below Par”.Ahead of his visit, one local newspaper, the National, which supports independence for Scotland, ran a preview of the visit with the headline: “Convicted US felon to arrive in Scotland – Republican leader, who was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, will visit golf courses”.In his remarks to reporters at Prestwick airport earlier, Donald Trump was asked about his scheduled talks with UK prime minister Keir Starmer, which the White House has used to portray his mainly golf-themed truip as a working visit.“Can you explain”, a reporter asked Trump on the tarmac outside Air Force One, “what is missing in the UK deal that you have to work out?”“Nothing”, Trump replied. “I think it’s more of a celebration than a workout. It’s a great deal for both, and we’re going to have a meeting on other things, other than the deal. The deal is concluded”.Trump previously suggested that the talks were to “refine” the US-UK trade deal. Starmer told Bloomberg News in an interview on Thursday that the UK is still pressing for “full implementation” of the deal with the US.The sticking point appears to be that while Trump agreed to cut US tariffs on steel imports from the UK that currently stand at 25%, the tariffs have not yet been lifted.In response to the House ethics committee’s report into Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s attendance of the Met Gala four years ago, her chief of staff Mike Casca said:“The Congresswoman appreciates the Committee finding that she made efforts to ensure her compliance with House Rules and sought to act consistently with her ethical requirements as a Member of the House. She accepts the ruling and will remedy the remaining amounts, as she’s done at each step in this process.”The House ethics committee has ordered progressive Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to pay nearly $3,000 to resolve an investigation into her attendance of the 2021 Met Gala in New York City.The inquiry began in 2022 following an allegation that Ocasio-Cortez accepted impermissible gifts when she attended the annual gala wearing a white floor-length gown with “Tax the Rich” written on the back.In its bipartisan report released today, the ethics committee determined that despite making “significant attempts” to comply with congressional rules around accepting gifts, Ocasio-Cortez failed to do so “fully” by “impermissibly” accepting free admission to the gala for her partner, and did not pay full market price for some of what she wore to the event.The committee found that a former campaign staff member tried to lower the congresswoman’s costs for attending the gala and made late payments to vendors involved. While it faulted Ocasio-Cortez for not properly supervising the staffer, the committee “did not find evidence that she intended to seek to lower the cost of goods provided to her or to delay payment for those goods and other services received.”The committee determined that they will close the matter and Ocasio-Cortez will not face sanctions if she donates the $250 cost of her partner’s meal, and pays $2,733.28 to the designer from which she rented the dress and accessories.A former Department of Justice lawyer has provided evidence to a justice department watchdog corroborating explosive claims that Emil Bove and other top officials wilfully and knowingly defied court orders, according to Whistleblower Aid, a non-profit representing the person.A top department official and Donald Trump’s former defense attorney, Bove is currently being considered for a lifetime seat on the federal bench.Whistleblower Aid said it was not identifying its client. They said the person had turned over “ substantive, internal DoJ documents” to the justice department’s inspector general. The evidence, the organization said, corroborate allegations from Erez Reuveni, a fired DoJ employee, who has publicly said that Bove told DoJ lawyers to defy the courts.“What we’re seeing here is something I never thought would be possible on such a wide scale: federal prosecutors appointed by the Trump Administration intentionally presenting dubious if not outright false evidence to a court of jurisdiction in cases that impact a person’s fundamental rights not only under our constitution, but their natural rights as humans,” said Andrew Bakaj, chief counsel at Whistleblower Aid.“Our client and Mr Reuveni are true patriots – prioritizing their commitment to democracy over advancing their careers.”Trump also said a trade deal with the European Union would be a big agreement and repeated his view that there was a “good 50-50 chance” for it.“With the European Union, we have a good 50-50 chance,” he told reporters. “That would be the biggest deal of them all if we make it.”He is due to meet with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday to discuss trade.Speaking to reporters at Prestwick airport, Trump denied reports that he was briefed about his name appearing in the Epstein files.Asked about the justice department’s questioning of Ghislaine Maxwell, Trump said: “I don’t know anything about the conversation, I haven’t really been following it.”“A lot of people have been asking me about pardons [for Maxwell]. Obviously, this is no time to be talking about pardons” he went on. “You’re making a very big thing over something that’s not a big thing.”He then deflects further, suggesting the media should talk about Clinton and the ex-president of Harvard, but “don’t talk about Trump”.The US president was greeted by Scottish secretary Ian Murray as he walked off Air Force One at Prestwick airport.The pair could be seen shaking hands at the bottom of the aircraft stairs before Donald Trump walked across to a group of journalists to answer questions.Air Force One has just landed in Scotland. I’ll bring you any key lines here if Donald Trump speaks to the media.Disgraced former US representative George Santos reported to a federal prison in New Jersey earlier today to begin serving a seven-year sentence for the fraud charges that got him ousted from Congress.The federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed to the Associated Press that the New York Republican was in custody at the Federal Correctional Institution in Fairton, in southern New Jersey.Santos pleaded guilty last summer to federal wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges for deceiving donors and stealing people’s identities in order to fund his congressional campaign.Lawyers for Santos didn’t respond to phone and email messages seeking comment.The ever-online Santos, 37, hosted a farewell party for himself on X last night.“Well, darlings … The curtain falls, the spotlight dims, and the rhinestones are packed,” he wrote in a post afterwards. “From the halls of Congress to the chaos of cable news what a ride it’s been! Was it messy? Always. Glamorous? Occasionally. Honest? I tried … most days.”In a Thursday interview with Al Arabiya, a Saudi state-owned news organization, Santos said he’ll serve his sentence in a minimum-security prison “camp” that he described as a “big upgrade” from the medium-security lockup he was initially assigned to.In April, a federal judge declined to give Santos a lighter two-year sentence that he sought, saying she was unconvinced he was truly remorseful. In the weeks before his sentencing, Santos said he was “profoundly sorry” for his crimes, but he also complained frequently that he was a victim of a political witch hunt and prosecutorial overreach.Santos lied extensively about his life story both before and after entering the US Congress, where he was the first openly LGBTQ+ Republican elected to the body. He was ultimately convicted of defrauding donors.He has apparently been holding out hope that his unwavering support for Donald Trump might help him win a last-minute reprieve.The White House said this week that it “will not comment on the existence or nonexistence” of any clemency request.A senior justice department official has told NBC News that attorney general Pam Bondi is still healing from a torn cornea, but it has not prevented her from doing day-to-day work and meeting with staff.The update comes after Bondi abruptly canceled a scheduled appearance on Wednesday at CPAC’s anti-trafficking summit in Washington, citing recovery from a health issue.As all the political firestorm over the Epstein saga continues to dominate the news cycle and consume Washington, there has been much online chatter about Bondi’s whereabouts.She was last seen on Tuesday morning swearing in the new DEA administrator Terry Cole at the justice department.NewsNation reports that following the conclusion of the DOJ interviews, David Oscar Markus, Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorney, said they were “very grateful” for the opportunity.Markus said:
This was a thorough, comprehensive interview by the deputy attorney general. No person and no topic were off-limits. We are very grateful. The truth will come out.
Some more detail on that from the Tallahassee Democrat.David Oscar Markus, Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorney declined to say whether Donald Trump was the focus of any of the Department of Justice’s questions during the interviewing sessions that have taken place behind closed doors at the federal courthouse in Tallahassee over the last two days.“I’m just not going to talk about the substance,” Markus said.Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche had asked Maxwell “every possible question”, Markus said. “He did a really good job and asked her a lot of things.” More
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Joe Rogan anoints a new progressive star – can James Talarico triumph in Texas?
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 July 2025, 13:00
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In late May, four of Texas’s top Democrats convened on Zoom to strategize about the 2026 election. The upcoming Republican primary battle for Senate pits incumbent senator John Cornyn against the state’s more right-leaning attorney general, Ken Paxton, and is expected to be bruising – greasing the skids for a potential Democratic pickup. With governor, attorney general and lieutenant governor also in play, the question the liberal quartet aimed to answer was whether they might divvy up these contests, thereby avoiding a contentious primary of their own.On the call were three fixtures of Lone Star Democratic politics: Beto O’Rourke, Colin Allred and Representative Joaquin Castro. Less well-known was the fourth man, a 36-year-old member of the state’s house of representatives from Austin’s district 50 named James Talarico. A former middle-school language arts teacher and aspiring Presbyterian minister with the earnest demeanor and yearbook-ready countenance of a young Ron Howard, Talarico had begun his political career in 2018, flipping a swing district to become the youngest member of the house. A good bit greener than his colleagues, Talarico seemed an unlikely aspirant for the Senate run.Then along came Joe Rogan.The world’s most influential podcast host had learned of Talarico from comedian Brian Simpson, who had been awestruck by a viral clip of the state senator taking a Republican colleague to task for her “idolatrous” bill forcing public schools to display the Ten Commandments. A producer reached out, and within a few weeks the virtually unknown official was stepping into Rogan’s Austin studio to offer his gloss on the radical teachings of Jesus. If the conversation was friendly – about two hours in, Rogan was practically begging Talarico to run for president – the reviews from Rogan’s right-leaning, MMA-loving fanboys were less so. Many took particular issue with Talarico’s reading of the Bible as arguably pro-choice or at least ambivalent about abortion.Even so, Daniel had entered the lion’s den and held his own. Within hours of the show’s airing, Politico was enthusing that “Joe Rogan’s Latest Guest Might Turn Texas Blue” and Talarico’s beaming choirboy mug was front and center on the Drudge Report.“I learned this when I flipped the Trump district at the beginning of my career,” Talarico said. “It’s almost like asking someone on a date, or any relationship in your life – you have to put effort into it. If we’re not going to make the effort to show up in these places where people are, then we can’t be surprised when they don’t make the effort to get off the couch and vote for us.”The week marked a notable turnaround for a politician who just a few years ago hit what he calls his political “rock bottom”. It was the fall of 2021, a year that had begun with the January 6 insurrection and a catastrophic winter storm that killed hundreds of Texans. Meanwhile, “Maga” was ascendant in the Lone Star state. Officials rammed through the nation’s most unforgiving abortion ban, legalized permitless carry and implemented a new civics curriculum Talarico describes as a “historical whitewash”.Then came an aggressive attempt to curtail voting rights that led him and dozens of Democratic lawmakers to flee the state in an attempt to deny the legislature a quorum. After 38 days, Talarico was among a handful who saw the writing on the wall and returned to Austin. As he explained in a lengthy op-ed, Texas Democrats held a dwindling stack of cards, and Congress would need to address the problem at the federal level. (The House delivered, but the bill failed in the Senate due to opposition from senators Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema.)Despite Talarico’s hopes that ending the standoff might preserve a modicum of bipartisanship, it was not to be. In October, the legislature voted to redraw the state’s congressional districts – an attempt to dilute the political power of Black and Latino voters and “kill me off politically”, he said. “Walking on to that floor and realizing that my [Republican] colleagues weren’t looking me in the eye, I felt like I had lost hope, not just in my colleagues and the institution, but in whether democracy was even possible in such polarized and divided times. It was my lowest point in public service so far.”Overcoming an urge to pack it in, he opted to fight. As it happened, a seat in solid-blue Austin, where he’d grown up, was open. Talarico moved home and won handily. (Now, Texan Republicans are contemplating another redistricting as a way to further dilute the Democratic vote. “Clearly their gerrymandering didn’t hold from five years ago, and so now they’re having to get back in there and do some touch-ups and fortifying,” Talarico said.)Following his crisis of political faith, he made another critical life decision, enrolling in the seminary with the goal of becoming a minister. “Jesus gave us these two commandments, to love God and love your neighbor,” he explained, noting that he considers his political career a vehicle for doing the latter. Now he understood: the two injunctions went hand in hand. Getting in touch with God, “or whatever you consider to be the ground of your being”, is what Talarico says makes love of neighbor sustainable. “Whether that’s in public service, as a teacher or a nurse or a firefighter or a police officer, or whether it’s with activism or volunteering or just being a good person in your community, it is difficult and sometimes exhausting work, and that’s why we have to be connected to something deeper.”An outspoken progressive Christian is something of a unicorn in today’s political environment – a sign not only of the secularism that has characterized the Democratic party since the Reagan years but of the ever-increasing ties between the far right and the evangelical movement. Perhaps nowhere is this alliance more pronounced than in Texas, where the last legislative session saw a flurry of bills that would, among other things, allow prayer in public schools, fund parochial schools with taxpayer money and outlaw the provision of litter boxes for students – an actual bill based on a debunked rightwing hoax. The latter proposal stalled after Talarico’s polite if methodical humiliation of the bill’s author became one of his many viral TikToks; the others, including the Ten Commandments bill, became law.Talarico has done more than simply oppose what he considers to be bad legislation. He regularly calls out fossil fuel barons Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who backed the legislative crusade. “They basically own every Republican member of the state senate,” he said, noting that they are by far the state’s biggest political donors. “They own a majority of Republicans in the state house. They own every statewide elected official. And they run a massive network of thinktanks and advocacy organizations and media outlets. So their empire has really taken over state government. And they have a pretty extreme theocratic vision for for the state and the country.” Asked whether a Handmaid’s Tale-style dystopia seemed possible, he said, “We’re a lot closer than people think.”Talarico defines the effort to wed government with biblical ideology as Christian nationalism, “the worship of power – social power, economic power, political power, in the name of Christ”, as he put it in a 2023 guest sermon. Accusing adherents of turning Jesus “into a gun-toting, gay-bashing, science-denying, money-loving, fear-mongering fascist,” he declared it “incumbent on all Christians to confront it and denounce it”. Posted to YouTube, the sermon has since garnered 1m views.The question now is not merely whether Talarico can translate that kind of social media buzz into votes but whether he wants to. He expects to obtain his master’s in divinity next year, and he often speaks of his desire to one day take over the ministry at his home church, St Andrew’s Presbyterian.But a slight detour to the US Senate seems increasingly possible – an indication of his growing popularity and ambition as well as a notable vibe shift on the left. A recent poll found that 62% of Democrats wanted their party’s leadership replaced. And a strong contingent has shown a hunger for candidates, such as Talarico, who are willing to lean into progressive values without apology (he has, for example, mounted a forceful defense of gender-affirming care for trans kids).While Talarico makes a strong case for the undercurrent of wealth redistribution inherent in Jesus’ teachings, he doesn’t call himself a socialist – certainly not in Texas. Still it’s not hard to see parallels between his meteoric rise and that of New York City’s socialist mayoral hopeful, Zohran Mamdani, another young state legislator whose online savvy, bold progressivism and evident sincerity have endeared him to liberal voters. (In 2019, Talarico walked across his 25-mile district – nearly double the distance of Mamdani’s recent Manhattan hike.)For Talarico, the key to winning over the electorate is authenticity. “Voters can sniff out that consultant-driven messaging,” he said. “The poll-tested stuff is just not going to cut it.”Moreover, voters are spoiling for a fight. One quality they appreciated in Trump, he said, was the aggression he’d shown on behalf of his vision, however malevolent. Democrats, he said, need to bring that kind of energy to the fight for a better world. And while Jesus Christ was famous for his humility and pacifism, Talarico noted, he was also an uncompromising radical who could tap into a combative side when needed.“If we are doing our best to mimic Jesus, being kind and humble and meek are all part of it,” he said. “But when the powerful are abusing people, we have to stand in the way, and that requires courage and bravery, and speaking truth to power.”In late June, Talarico appeared at a town hall in San Antonio alongside Castro and O’Rourke, a show of unity before what may well turn into a heated primary race. Befitting his status as the youngest and least seasoned politician on the stage, he spoke first. But as Talarico recalled the story of Jesus’s cleansing of the temple, when he ejected the money-changers and merchants from the Lord’s house, he didn’t sound like a man inclined meekly to wait his turn to run for higher office. “To those who love democracy, to those who love our neighbors,” he proclaimed, “it’s time to start flipping tables.”As for the Senate race, Talarico is praying on it. He’ll make a decision this summer, he said. More
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Should Democrats pursue progressivism or moderation? That’s a false choice | Michael Massing
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 July 2025, 10:00
“How the Democrats lost the working-class vote”, ran the headline on the New York Times’s front page on 6 January. According to the Times, the Democrats’ estrangement from the working class was decades in the making. The party’s enthusiastic embrace of trade and globalization led to the closure of factories across industrial America, eliminating jobs that had been a prime source of stability, identity and prestige.While many Democrats attributed Trump’s success to the left’s embrace of “woke” language and causes like transgender rights, the Times observed, the economic seeds of his victories “were sown long ago”. A longtime AFL-CIO official was quoted as saying that “one of the things that has been frustrating about the narrative ‘the Democrats are losing the working class’ is that people are noticing it half a century after it happened”.Given the long incubation of this development, one might say the Times itself was late in recognizing it. But the question remains: how can Democrats win back those working-class voters?One key question has dominated: should the party move to the left or tack toward the center? Should it stress progressivism or moderation? In a way, though, it’s a false choice. The Democrats could combine both approaches in a policy of pragmatic populism, fusing the insurgent ideas and galvanizing fire of an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with the plainspoken bread-and-butter appeal of a Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto-repair shop owner who represents a rural district in Washington state.Pragmatic populism would offer sweeping solutions to the economic anxiety facing so many American families but without the polarizing rhetoric. It would avoid labels like “oligarch” and “tycoon”, drop references to socialism and redistribution and refrain from saying that billionaires should not exist (even though a strong case can be made for that proposition).Instead, pragmatic populists would adopt a message of “let us join together to create a more perfect union”. They would promote the idea of a social contract, founded on the notion that those who have surged ahead economically have an obligation to help those who have been left behind. They would argue that the .01% have thrived thanks to an economic system built over decades of public investment in schools, roads, ports, communications, regulatory agencies, the police and the courts, and that the very wealthy need to “give back” (as super-rich philanthropists are fond of saying) so that ordinary working people can share fully in the fruits.To consider how this would work, take the issue of childcare. A pragmatic populist would say: “The skyrocketing cost of childcare is crushing families across the country. In New York City, the typical family is spending a quarter of its income on such care, and many parents, especially mothers, have to quit the workforce to look after their kids. And childcare providers earn so little that many are leaving the industry. We need to provide parents more in tax credits and providers more in wage subsidies. The cost will not be negligible, but such a policy would not only ease the struggles of parents but also make them more productive workers. So we’re going to ask corporations and the very wealthy to contribute somewhat more in taxes to help make that happen.”Or take dental care. While food deserts have gotten a lot of attention, dentistry deserts have not. According to the CDC, nearly 60 million Americans live in areas in which dental services are in short supply. Even where such services are available, the cost of root canals, implants and crowns can be prohibitive, especially for the working class. Two-thirds of the shortages are in rural America, and a program to expand the Affordable Care Act to include dental insurance could help the Democrats make inroads in a part of the US they have all but lost.Small businesses offer another ripe constituency. Such enterprises (defined as having revenues of less than $40m and workforces of under 500) make up more than 99% of all firms in the country. Many of them are hampered by fines, fees and red tape. The Democrats have long been seen as indifferent or even hostile to this sector. In a promising sign of change, the New York mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, has proposed creating a “mom-and-pop czar” to help ease the regulatory burden on the city’s bodegas, pharmacies, barber shops and beauty salons.These businesses also have a hard time getting credit. Most are too small to interest the mega banks that dominate the US financial system. The thousands of small banks in the country that do cater to this community are themselves under tremendous strain. The Democrats could propose ways of easing the availability of credit for small-business owners, especially Black and Latino ones, who often lack the necessary credit records and collateral.The hemorrhaging of Black and Latino voters is among the most troubling developments for Democrats. Many complain that the party shows up every four years asking for their vote, then forgets about them. During the recent election, Trump’s surge among Latinos in Texas’s Rio Grande valley offered a stinging rebuke to a party that had long counted on their support. “I think Democrats have historically taken the Rio Grande valley for granted,” Beto O’Rourke, the former senatorial candidate, told the Guardian last summer. “Republicans saw an opportunity, they’re hungry, and they’ve gone after it, investing money and running strong candidates with resources behind them.” The Democrats have by contrast spent heavily on Washington-based consultants and lobbyists, starving local operations of funds and hollowing out the party’s infrastructure on the ground.Where the Democrats are present, they have a reputation for being bad listeners given to lecturing people about what’s good for them. This has to change. Here are some recommendations for Democrats – politicians and otherwise:
Don’t ask what’s the matter with Kansas.
Don’t ask how Trump voters can vote against their interests.
Don’t ask evangelical Christians how they can support someone like Trump.
Don’t claim that the facts and science are on your side.
Don’t claim that Trump voters are victims of disinformation.
Don’t blame the Democrats’ unpopularity on Fox News and other rightwing outlets.
Don’t campaign with celebrities.
Don’t sermonize when discussing climate change.
Don’t call Trump supporters stupid.
That last suggestion might pose the greatest challenge of all. Even after the accumulation of so much evidence about the resentment that blue-collar Americans feel at the hands of white-collar liberals, condescension remains rampant. This was clear from the more than 2,000 reader comments posted on the Times article about the Democrats’ loss of the working class.Some samples: “They’re just dumb, bitter jerks who were looking for permission to be as resentful and judgmental in public as they were in private.” “The working class has, by and large, left the 4th estate for the purveyors of disinformation.” “I have to live with trump as president the next 4 years and possibly the rest of my life because of these ‘working class’ idiots who vote against their own interests.” “Most working class people are not reading the NYT, or any conventional news sources—this goes double for the Trump supporters amongst them. They are ignorant.”In the end, such an outlook is neither pragmatic nor populist.
Michael Massing is the author of Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind. He is writing a book about money and influence More
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According to our research, 11% of Trump voters can be won back. Here’s how | Dustin Guastella
by Evelyn Reynolds 22 July 2025, 10:00
To win in 2028, Democrats need to win back a lot of working-class voters, including a lot of blue-collar Donald Trump voters. Doing so requires dispensing with some long-held myths that have captured the minds of Democratic party strategists. The first is that persuading working-class Trump supporters is a waste of time. They are – so the story goes – so totally absorbed in Magaland that there is no winning them back. Why bother? On the flip side, some liberals insist that some of these voters are winnable, if only Democrats can make themselves more like Trump by embracing tax cuts and tough talk. A third notion, favored by progressives, says that if liberals just crank the progressive economic message up to 11, blue-collar voters will come running home.The truth is, none of these strategies are particularly useful. Because none of them take working-class interests, values and attitudes seriously enough. Fortunately, new research from the Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) can help shed light on what working-class voters actually want. And it can offer the Democrats a path out of the wilderness.In a report published by Jacobin magazine, we analyzed working-class responses to 128 survey questions from academic surveys stretching back to 1960. We looked at class attitudes toward major topics like immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, civil rights, social norms and economic policies. The result is the most sophisticated, comprehensive and up-to-date portrait of American working-class social and economic attitudes available. And it provides the best evidence yet for the potential of a certain kind of populist politics.Our work shows that working-class voters are, and have always been, decidedly less progressive than their middle- and upper-class counterparts when it comes to social and cultural issues. But the story is more complicated than it seems. It’s not the case, for instance, that blue-collar workers are becoming more socially conservative. Instead of a rising tide of reaction, we show that working-class attitudes have actually drifted slowly toward more socially and culturally liberal positions over decades. At the same time, however, middle- and upper-class Americans have raced toward uber-liberalism, especially in recent years, opening up a yawning class gap on social attitudes. A first step to winning back workers is closing that gap.On the economic front, the situation is different. Most working-class voters are what we call “economic egalitarians” – they favor government interventions to level the playing field, they take inequality seriously, and they support programs that increase the economic and social power of working people. Large majorities favor raising the minimum wage, import limits to protect jobs, increasing spending on social security and Medicare, using federal power to bring down the cost of prescription drugs, expanding federal funding for public schools, making it easier to join a union, increasing infrastructure spending, implementing a millionaires’ tax, and even the notion of a job guarantee. Luckily for Democrats, middle- and upper-class voters have drifted to the left on many of these economic issues, embracing a more social democratic outlook. That bodes well for developing an economic platform that can appeal to the broadest electoral coalition. Yet there is an important caveat here. While working-class voters are strongly in support of a range of progressive measures, they are wary of big new government programs, skeptical of new regulations and broadly suspicious of welfare spending. Their economic progressivism is jobs-centered and pro-worker, not built around cash transfers and expansive social services.So working-class voters are more socially moderate than the middle- and upper-class voters that make up the Democratic party’s core support. Yet they are also broadly economic egalitarians – on some questions even more so than their well-educated and well-heeled counterparts. They agree with a populist economic agenda but not an excessively liberal cultural one. The path to winning them back, and stitching together a majority, then, is clear: adopt social populism. Embrace working-class social and cultural attitudes and a worker-focused economic program that promises to raise the minimum wage, protect industrial jobs from free trade, increase infrastructure spending, expand social security, strengthen Medicare and guarantee full employment.And what about blue-collar Trump voters? After analyzing the broad working class we tried to find just how many Trump-voting workers might be won over by that kind of program. In fact, a lot of them hold progressive views across a range of economic issues. We found that “over 20% of working-class Trump voters were in favor of an economic policy package that included increasing federal funding for public schools, increasing federal funding for social security, and increasing the minimum wage.” Of course, many of these same voters have such conservative views on social issues that they would never vote for a Democrat. But are there any working-class populists in the Trump coalition who hold socially moderate attitudes? There are.Eleven per cent of them, to be exact.We found that about 11% of Trump voters maintained socially moderate and economically egalitarian views.Now, that may not sound like a lot, but it’s a significant slice of the electorate, comprising about 5% of the total. No Democrat could win all of those voters. But given that these are working-class voters, many of whom are concentrated in swing states, each single vote has tremendous electoral value. In fact, even winning half of these voters – a little more than 2% of the electorate – would be significant enough to sway a national election in our age of razor-thin vote margins. Moreover, it could set the Democrats on the path to a more durable majority in the future.Given all this we can put to bed the various myths about working-class voters – that they are bigots, hardened reactionaries, hopelessly unwinnable, etc – and instead embrace a strategy that can win. With the right kind of candidate (preferably a working-class one) and the right kind of political message, Democrats can win back a working-class majority.The evidence is clear: it’s social populism or bust.
Dustin Guastella is director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a research associate at the Center for Working-Class Politics More
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Are non-voters the key to Democrats winning in 2028? | Alex Bronzini-Vender
by Evelyn Reynolds 21 July 2025, 10:00
Since Bernie Sanders’s first presidential campaign, the electoral theory of the American left has rested upon the idea that a sizable bloc of Americans – alienated from the traditional politics of left and right – have withdrawn from politics entirely. They stand closer to the Democrats on many issues, but, seeing little by way of material benefit from the party’s soaring rhetoric of “defending democracy”, they have opted out of the political process. And, as the theory goes, a bold, populist candidate – someone like Sanders himself – could bring this silent constituency back into the fold.If that logic once explained how Sanders might have won, it might now explain why Kamala Harris lost. And, as new troves of post-election data surface, the debate over whether Democrats might have avoided last year’s defeat by mobilizing non-voters has become one of the party’s hottest factional disputes.Among those strategizing within the Democratic party, one’s confidence in voter activation is often a proxy for their broader politics. Those who believe Harris’s campaign failed to activate non-voters typically argue her platform lacked the populist edge needed to mobilize disaffected Americans. Their critics tend to believe the problem ran in the opposite direction: the electorate had moved right and the Democrats’ failure lay in their inability to meet it there.Detractors of the activation theory point to a 26 June Pew Research report – which found Donald Trump leading Harris by three points among non-voters – as decisive proof that non-participants lean Republican. The catch, though, is that the survey concluded less than two weeks after Trump’s victory. Polling taken in the aftermath of a race is notoriously vulnerable to distortion, and the bandwagon effect can temporarily inflate a victorious candidate’s popularity. That effect is especially pronounced among disengaged or loosely affiliated voters. That number almost certainly marks the high-water line of Trump’s support among non-voters.Another oft-cited figure from the New York Times/Siena College, which the Democratic strategist and data scientist David Shor referenced during his own interview with the Times’s Ezra Klein, found Trump leading by 14 points among 2020 non-voters. But it uses survey data collected before Biden dropped out of the race. Then there is Shor’s own post-election poll, conducted through his polling firm Blue Rose Research, which found Trump leading by 11 points among non-voters – though the underlying data remains private and the methodology undisclosed.The Cooperative Election Study (CES) – a late-November survey of more than 50,000 voters – offers one of the few high-quality, public windows on 2024. An analysis of the CES data by political scientists Jake Grumbach, Adam Bonica and their colleagues found that a plurality of non-voters identified themselves as most closely aligned with the Democratic party – and an absolute majority of registered voters who declined to cast a ballot in 2024 considered themselves Democrats. The non-electorate certainly wasn’t blue enough to have swung the race, but by no means as red as the activation theory’s opponents claim.What’s even clearer is the geography of turnout. Voter participation dropped especially sharply in Democratic strongholds – particularly urban counties in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. By contrast, turnout in Republican areas held steady or even increased modestly. In other words, the Democratic campaign had more to gain from energizing its own base than from chasing centrist swing voters.Harris wouldn’t have prevailed under conditions of 100% turnout. (Grumbach, Bonica, etc don’t claim as such.) But a more focused strategy – mobilizing the Democratic base, speaking directly to material concerns, and resisting the pull toward bland centrism – might have narrowed the margin significantly.Ironically, the aforementioned Pew report concludes the same. “As in prior elections, a change in voters’ partisan allegiances – switching from the Democratic to the Republican candidate or vice versa – proved to be a less important factor in Trump’s victory than differential partisan turnout,” write the authors. “Republican-leaning eligible voters simply were more likely to turn out than Democratic-leaning eligible voters in 2024.”Even so, the CES data may disappoint progressives, if not for the reasons their critics imagine. An analysis of the CES from the Center for Working Class Politics’s Jared Abbott and Dustin Guastella found that Democrats who stayed home in 2024 were, on average, less ideologically liberal on hot-button social questions – more skeptical of an assault-rifle ban, receptive to a border wall, less concerned with climate change, and cooler to the language of structural racism – than the Democrats who showed up.Yet, as Abbott and Guastella found, those same non-voters were more economically populist: disproportionately working-class and non-college, while eager for bigger public investment programs, a higher corporate tax rate, and a stronger social safety net.The Democratic non-electorate doesn’t clearly align with progressive orthodoxy. Equally clear, though, is that a blanket lurch toward cultural moderation, absent populist economics, would do little to fire up non-voters who already share many progressive economic instincts.Making decisive claims about non-voters is necessarily difficult. By definition, they are the least likely to respond to pollsters, and their political preferences are often tentative or inconsistent. Yet certain commentators’ eagerness to cast non-voters as Trump supporters reveals more about elite assumptions than about public sentiment.There’s been a rush to cast non-voters as conservatives, not because the evidence demands it, but because the alternative – that Democrats need to speak more directly to the working class – remains uncomfortable for the party establishment. There is no way around the fact that in 2024, those Americans didn’t hear anything worth voting for.
Alex Bronzini-Vender is a writer living in New York More
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Carol Moseley Braun, first black female senator: ’Sexism is harder to change than racism’
by Evelyn Reynolds 20 July 2025, 13:00
“Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton … ”Carol Moseley Braun was riding a lift in the US Capitol building when she heard Dixie, the unofficial anthem of the slave-owning Confederacy during the civil war. “The sound was not very loud, yet it pierced my ears with the intensity of a dog whistle,” Moseley Braun writes in her new memoir, Trailblazer. “Indeed, that is what it was in a sense.”The first African American woman in the Senate soon realised that “Dixie” was being sung by Jesse Helms, a Republican senator from North Carolina. He looked over his spectacles at Moseley Braun and grinned. Then he told a fellow senator in the lift: “I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing Dixie until she cries.”But clearly, Moseley Braun notes, the senator had never tangled with a Black woman raised on the south side of Chicago. She told him calmly: “Senator Helms, your singing would make me cry even if you sang Rock of Ages.”Moseley Braun was the sole African American in the Senate during her tenure between 1993 and 1999, taking on legislative initiatives that included advocating for farmers, civil rights and domestic violence survivors, and went on to run for president and serve as US ambassador to New Zealand.In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian from her home in Chicago, she recalls her history-making spell in office, argues that sexism is tougher to crack than racism and warns that the Democratic party is “walking around in a daze” as it struggles to combat Donald Trump.As for that incident with Helms, she looks back now and says: “I had been accustomed to what we now call microaggressions, so I just thought he was being a jerk.”Moseley Braun was born in the late 1940s in the post-war baby boom. Her birth certificate listed her as “white” due to her mother’s light complexion and the hospital’s racial segregation, a detail she later officially corrected. She survived domestic abuse from her father, who could be “a loving advocate one minute, and an absolute monster the next”, and has been guided by her religious faith.In 1966, at the age of 19, she joined a civil rights protest led by Martin Luther King. She recalls by phone: “He was a powerful personality. You felt drawn into him because of who he was. I had no idea he was being made into a modern saint but I was happy to be there and be supportive.“When it got violent, they put the women and children close to Dr King in concentric circles and so I was close enough to touch him. I had no idea at the time it was going to be an extraordinary point in my life but it really was.”Moseley Braun was the first in her family to graduate from college and one of few women and Black students in her law school class, where she met her future husband. In the 1970s she won a longshot election to the Illinois general assembly and became the first African American woman to serve as its assistant majority leader.But when she planned a historic run for the Senate, Moseley Braun met widespread scepticism. “Have you lost all your mind? Why are you doing this? But it made sense to me at the time and I followed my guiding light. You do things that seem like the right thing to do and, if it make sense to you, you go for it.”Moseley Braun’s campaign team included a young political consultant called David Axelrod, who would go on to be a chief strategist and senior adviser to Obama. She came from behind to win the Democratic primary, rattling the party establishment, then beat Republican Richard Williamson in the general election.She was the first Black woman elected to the Senate and only the fourth Black senator in history. When Moseley Braun arrived for her first day at work in January 1993, there was a brutal reminder of how far the US still had to travel: a uniformed guard outside the US Capitol told her, “Ma’am, you can’t go any further,” and gestured towards a side-entrance for visitors.At the time she did not feel that her trailblazing status conferred a special responsibility, however. “I wish I had. I didn’t. I was going to work. I was going to do what I do and then show up to vote on things and be part of the legislative process. I had been a legislator for a decade before in the state legislature so I didn’t at the time see it as being all that different from what I’d been doing before. I was looking forward to it and it turned out to be all that I expected and more.”View image in fullscreenBut it was not to last. Moseley Braun served only one term before being defeated by Peter Fitzgerald, a young Republican who was heir to a family banking fortune and an arch conservative on issues such as abortion rights. But that did not deter her from running in the Democratic primary election for president in 2004.“It was terrible,” she recalls. “I couldn’t raise the money to begin with and so I was staying on people’s couches and in airports. It was a hard campaign and the fact it was so physically demanding was a function of the fact that I didn’t have the campaign organisation or the money to do a proper campaign for president.“I was being derided by any commentator who was like, ‘Look, this girl has lost her mind,’ and so they kind of rolled me off and that made it hard to raise money, hard to get the acceptance in the political class. But I got past that. My ego was not so fragile that that it hurt my feelings to make me stop. I kept plugging away.”Eventually Moseley Braun dropped out and endorsed Howard Dean four days before the opening contest, the Iowa caucuses. Again, she had been the only Black woman in the field, challenging long-held assumptions of what a commander-in-chief might look like.“That had been part and parcel of my entire political career. People saying: ‘What are you doing here? Why are you here? Don’t run, you can’t possibly win because you’re not part of the show and the ways won’t open for you because you’re Black and because you’re a woman.’ I ran into that every step of the way in my political career.”Since then, four Black women have followed in her footsteps to the Senate: Kamala Harris and Laphonza Butler of California, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware.Moseley Braun says: “I was happy of that because I was determined not to be the last of the Black women in the Senate. The first but not the last. That was a good thing, and so far the progress has been moving forward. But then we got Donald Trump and that trumped everything.”Harris left the Senate to become the first woman of colour to serve as vice-president, then stepped in as Democrats’ presidential nominee after Joe Biden abandoned his bid for re-election.Moseley Braun comments: “I thought she did as good a job as she could have. I supported her as much as I knew how to do and I’m sorry she got treated so badly and she lost like she did. You had a lot of sub rosa discussions of race and gender that she should have been prepared for but she wasn’t.”Trump exploited the “manosphere” of podcasters and influencers and won 55% of men in 2024, up from 50% of men in 2020, according to Pew Research. Moseley Braun believes that, while the country has made strides on race, including the election of Obama as its first Black president in 2008, it still lags on gender.“I got into trouble for saying this but it’s true: sexism is a harder thing to change than racism. I had travelled fairly extensively and most of the world is accustomed to brown people being in positions of power. But not here in the United States. We haven’t gotten there yet and so that’s something we’ve got to keep working on.”Does she expect to see a female president in her lifetime? “I certainly hope so. I told my little grandniece that she could be president if she wanted to. She looked at me like I lost my mind. ‘But Auntie Carol, all the presidents are boys.’”Still, Trump has not been slow to weaponise race over the past decade, launching his foray into politics with a mix of false conspiracy theories about Obama’s birthplace and promises to build a border wall and drive out criminal illegal immigrants.Moseley Braun recalls: “It was racial, cultural, ethnic, et cetera, backlash. He made a big deal out of the immigration issue, which was racism itself and people are still being mistreated on that score.“They’ve been arresting people for no good reason, just because they look Hispanic. The sad thing about it is that they get to pick and choose who they want to mess with and then they do. It’s too destructive of people’s lives in very negative ways.”Yet her fellow Democrats have still not found an effective way to counter Trump, she argues. “The Democratic party doesn’t know what to do. It’s walking around in a daze. The sad thing about it is that we do need a more focused and more specific response to lawlessness.”Five years after the police murder of George Floyd and death of Congressman John Lewis, there are fears that many of the gains of the civil rights movement are being reversed.Over the past six months Trump has issued executive orders that aim to restrict or eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. He baselessly blamed DEI for undermining air safety after an army helicopter pilot was involved in a deadly midair collision with a commercial airliner. Meanwhile, Washington DC dismantled Black Lives Matter Plaza in response to pressure from Republicans in Congress.None of it surprises Moseley Braun. “It should have been expected. He basically ran on a platform of: ‘I’m going to be take it back to the 1800s. Enough of this pandering and coddling of Black people.’”But she has seen enough to take the long view of history. “This is normal. The pendulum swings both ways. We have to put up with that fact and recognise that this is the normal reaction to the progress we’ve made. There’s bound to be some backsliding.More than 30 years have passed since Moseley Braun, wearing a peach business suit and clutching her Bible, was sworn into the Senate by the vice-president, Dan Quayle. Despite what can seem like baby steps forward and giant leaps back, she has faith that Americans will resist authoritarianism.“I’m very optimistic, because people value democracy,” he says. “If they get back to the values undergirding our democracy, we’ll be fine. I hope that people don’t lose heart and don’t get so discouraged with what this guy’s doing.“If they haven’t gotten there already, the people in the heartland will soon recognise this is a blatant power grab that’s all about him and making a fortune for himself and his family and has nothing to do with the common good. That’s what public life is supposed to be about. It’s public service.” More
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How can Democrats win back working-class voters? Change their tune | Joan C Williams
by Evelyn Reynolds 19 July 2025, 10:00
Doing the same thing and expecting a different result – that’s the definition of insanity. So I fall into despair when I hear yet another news story, and yet another politician, talking incessantly about assaults on democracy. It’s as if folks have read no post-2024 election polling. Defense of democracy was a top issue for Democrats but way, way down for those who voted for Donald Trump: their top concerns were inflation and the economy. Democrats lost the popular vote. They need to attract voters they lost in the last election. What’s complicated about this?Assaults on democracy are driven by narcissistic authoritarianism, for sure – but they’re also a strategy to control the narrative in ways that aid and abet the far right. Democrats need to stop walking into the same old trap, and supplement defense of democracy with a viable strategy to lure back enough non-college-educated voters to win elections.The first step is to understand why defense of democracy doesn’t work with non-college voters. Both white voters and voters of color without degrees typically care more about the economy than democratic norms. Inequality predicts low trust in political institutions, and the US has a serious inequality problem. Many feel democratic institutions have failed them: while over 90% of Americans did better than their parents in the decades after the second world war, only about half of those born in the 1980s will, with particularly sharp declines in “blue wall” states Democrats need to win.Democrats’ failure to connect with non-college voters has been analyzed as an institutional problem of “the groups” inside the beltway – the web of non-profits that reflect the values of the 8% of Americans who are progressive activists. But Democrats’ problem is less an institutional than a cultural problem.Many Democratic candidates feel compelled to keep talking about the issues their core college-educated constituencies care most about – defense of democracy, the climate crisis, abortion rights – in language that appeals to college graduates.What a gift for Maga: in 2024, 84% of voters cared more about the cost of living than the climate crisis and 79% cared more about the cost of living than abortion rights. Only 18% of voters said “preserving American’s institutions” was more important than “delivering change that improves Americans’ lives” (chosen by 78%).Remember the famous ad: “Kamala Harris cares about they/them. Trump cares about you.” That definitely attracted the transphobic – but it also attracted working-class people angry that Democrats weren’t campaigning on the kitchen table issues that mattered most to them. The path forward for Democrats is to learn how to connect with non-college voters, using three arguments.First, Trump is not focused on the kitchen table issues he ran on. Second, he has cut government programs that provide security for ordinary Americans in order to finance huge tax cuts for big business. Third, he’s playing checkers in a world where the big boys play chess, making American weak again in the process.For college grads, the key point about Trump’s tariffs is that they’re chaotic and “dumb”. But the key point for voters without degrees is that Trump isn’t delivering on his core election promise to make middle-class life work for hardworking Americans. The most effective ads of 2024 focused on economics: one called out the cost of rent, groceries and utilities; another decried Trump for fighting “for himself and his billionaire friends” to finance a national sales tax that would raise prices on middle-class families (which is precisely what tariffs do). Democrats should provide a clear contrast, insisting on a society “where hard work is repaid with a stable life” (to quote Zohran Mamdani’s acceptance speech).Tariffs take us in the opposite direction. Not only do they raise prices for American consumers but they also hurt two constituencies non-college voters care about: farmers and small business. America’s most farming-dependent counties went for Trump by 77%; tariffs cut American farmers off from key markets abroad for soybeans, almonds and other agricultural products. Trump’s tariffs also threatened to destroy small business supply chains – the small flower shop that imports flowers from Mexico and the small manufacturer whose supply chains includes Canada – which is why more than half of 600 small business owners surveyed expressed concern about tariffs. That’s important because they represent twice the proportion of voters as compared to Europe. Non-college grads hold small business in high esteem; it’s the most trusted institution in the US. Many non-college Americans’ fondest hope is to own a small business so they can stop being order-takers and become order-givers instead.College grads are upset that the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has terminated National Science Foundation grants (including mine), and fired climate scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency. But for non-college voters the key message is that Doge is robbing the settled middle class of the security they yearn for and deserve. Ethnographies show again and again that stability and order are highly valued by the blue-, pink- and routine white-collar voters who are flocking to the far right.Trump’s budget cuts include blue-collar jobs, such as federal firefighters. Also targeted is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema
), which helps ensure that ordinary Americans don’t fall out of the middle class when their house floods or burns down in a wildfire. Doge also has fired so many Social Security employees that people now face long waits at Social Security and Medicare – benefits Trump promised to protect. Doge also eliminated USAID programs that bought grain from hard-pressed Kansas farmers.Why are all these assaults on the middle class necessary? To enable huge tax cuts for big business and Trump’s billionaire friends. Three-fourths of Americans are dissatisfied with the size and influence of major corporations, and 58% believe upper-income Americans’ taxes are too low.As a central theme, Democrats should insist that government defend small business and stop catering to big business. Anti-elitist rhetoric is important, as evidenced by both research and the big crowds at the Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez Fighting Oligarchy rallies.The third crucial theme is that Trump’s foreign policy is not Maga but “Mawa” (Make America Weak Again). His Taco (Trump Always Chickens Out) tariffs are making the US look foolish and ineffectual. He plays into our enemies’ hand by insulting allies while sucking up to dictators who stroke his ego: Russia and North Korea were among the only countries not included in his initial tariff plan.His administration is trying to fire nearly 1,000 FBI agents whose only fault is that they followed orders, threatening our chief anti-terrorism agency’s ability to do its job in a dangerous world. Fired, too, is the head of cybersecurity, a four-star general summarily dismissed on the advice of a known dingbat after a distinguished 33-year military career.The “Mawa” theme taps into working-class patriotism, security-mindedness, and masculinities. As compared to elites, non-elites are more patriotic, because everyone stresses the highest-status categories they belong to and being American is one of the few high-status categories non-elites can claim. For similar reasons, non-elites endorse traditional masculinities at higher rates: unlike class ideals, gender ideals are social ideals they can fulfill. Blue-collar families are more security-minded for a different reason: they often feel the world is a scary and uncertain place – which, for them, it often is.The left needs to get as conversant in working-class values as the far right is. Masculinity is a good example. We need a lot more jibes like Taco tariffs and political cartoons (Instagram, TikTok, anyone?) that contest Trump’s macho self-image. He’s not a Real Man; he’s a little rich boy so vain and frantic for attention he’s readily manipulable. His fragility is his Achilles’ heel, which is fast becoming America’s Achilles heel.None of these themes resonate as much with college grads as does defense of democracy. But if you care about democracy or immigrants or LGBTQ+ issues or the climate – and I care about them all – we need to build a coalition with working-class people whose values center kitchen table economics, security and patriotism. We haven’t done so yet, and who’s paying the price? The climate and marginalized groups. Not to mention our democracy.
Joan C Williams is distinguished professor of law and Hastings Foundation chair (emerita) at University of California College of the Law San Francisco. She is also the author of Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back More
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Trump administration orders release of Epstein court documents amid mounting pressure – US politics live
by Evelyn Reynolds 19 July 2025, 09:34
The US Department of Justice asked a federal court on Friday to unseal grand jury transcripts in Jeffrey Epstein’s case at the direction of Donald Trump amid a firestorm over the administration’s handling of records related to the wealthy financier.The move – coming a day after a Wall Street Journal story put a spotlight on Trump’s relationship with Epstein – seeks to contain a growing controversy that has engulfed the administration since it announced that it would not be releasing more government files from Epstein’s sex trafficking case.Todd Blanche, the US deputy attorney general, filed motions urging the court to unseal the Epstein transcripts as well as those in the case against British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. Epstein killed himself in 2019 shortly after his arrest while awaiting trial.The justice department’s announcement that it would not be making public any more Epstein files enraged parts of Trump’s base in part because members of his own administration had hyped the expected release and stoked conspiracies around the well-connected financier.Trump’s demand to release the grand jury transcripts came after the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday on a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper says bore Trump’s name and was included in a 2003 album for Epstein’s 50th birthday.The letter bearing Trump’s name includes text framed by the outline of what appears to be a hand-drawn naked woman and ends with, “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret,” according to the newspaper. The outlet described the contents of the letter but did not publish a photo showing it entirely.Trump denied writing the letter, calling it “false, malicious, and defamatory” and promised to sue. Trump said he spoke to both to the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, and its top editor, Emma Tucker, and told them the letter was “fake”.In other developments:
Attorney general Pam Bondi called the case “a matter of public concern” in a formal request asking a federal judge to unseal grand jury transcripts from the 2019 investigation into Epstein, the late sex offender and longtime associate of Donald Trump.
Dick Durbin, the senior Democrat on the senate judiciary committee wrote to Bondi to ask about the work of the 1,000 FBI personnel who reviewed approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in March. “My office was told that these personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned”, Durbin wrote. “What happened to the records mentioning President Trump once they were flagged?” he asked.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has called for Barack Obama and former senior US national security officials to be prosecuted after accusing them of a “treasonous conspiracy” intended to show that Trump’s 2016 presidential election win was due to Russian interference.
The Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7m worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need. A state department spokesperson confirmed that the decision had been made – a move that will cost US taxpayers $167,000.
Marco Rubio, the secretary of state barred Brazilian supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes from the United States in retaliation for the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil who has been charged for his role in allegedly leading an attempted coup following his loss in the 2022 election.
Democrats are condemning CBS for its decision to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, noting the news comes a few days after its host criticized the network’s parent company, Paramount, for settling a $16m lawsuit with Donald Trump. Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who appeared as a guest on Colbert’s show on Thursday night, later wrote on social media: “If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.”
As Donald Trump tries to claim he was “not a fan” of Jeffrey Epstein, photos, videos and anecdotes paint a picture of their relationship, writes Adam Gabbatt:Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has called for Barack Obama and former senior US national security officials to be prosecuted after accusing them of a “treasonous conspiracy” intended to show that Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election win was due to Russian interference.She said Obama and senior officials in his administration had “[laid] the groundwork for … a years-long coup” against Trump after his victory over Hillary Clinton by “manufacturing intelligence” to suggest that Russia had tried to influence the election. That included using a dossier prepared by a British intelligence analyst, Christopher Steele, that they knew to be unreliable, Gabbard claimed.The post-election intelligence estimates contrasted with findings reached before the election, which indicated that Russia probably was not trying to interfere.In extraordinary comments calling for prosecutions, she added:
The information we are releasing today clearly shows there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government.
Their goal was to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup with the objective of trying to usurp the President from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people.
No matter how powerful, every person involved in this conspiracy must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, to ensure nothing like this ever happens again. The American people’s faith and trust in our democratic republic and therefore the future of our nation depends on it.
Indigenous leaders have warn higher education institutions will close if the funding-slashing 2026 budget proposal passes, Meliss Hellmann reports:The former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison will testify at a US House panel hearing next week about countering China’s “economic coercion against democracies,” the committee said on Friday.Rahm Emanuel, the former US ambassador to Japan, will also testify before the House select committee on China.Relations with China, already rocky after Australia banned Huawei from its 5G broadband network in 2018, cooled further in 2020 after the Morrison government called for an independent investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 virus.China responded by imposing tariffs on Australian commodities, including wine and barley and limited imports of Australian beef, coal and grapes, moves described by the United States as “economic coercion”.Morrison was defeated in a bid for reelection in 2022. His successor, Anthony Albanese, visited China this week, underscoring a warming of ties.Away from the main story on the blog today, Japan’s top tariff negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, said on Saturday he planned to visit Washington next week to hold further ministerial-level talks with the United States.Tokyo hopes to clinch a deal by a 1 August deadline that will avert President Donald Trump’s tariff of 25% on imports from Japan.“I intend to keep on seeking actively an agreement that is beneficial to both Japan and the United States, while safeguarding our national interest,” Akazawa told reporters in the western region of Osaka, according to Reuters.Akazawa was visiting Osaka to host a US delegation, led by treasury secretary Scott Bessent, that participated in the US national aay event at World Expo 2025. Akazawa said he did not discuss tariffs with Bessent.Here is the Guardian’s story on Donald Trump’s plans to sue the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch over its Jeffrey Epstein report:Donald Trump has sued Rupert Murdoch and two Wall Street Journal newspaper reporters for libel and slander over claims that he sent the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a lewd letter and sketch of a naked woman.Trump’s lawsuit on Friday, which also targets Dow Jones and News Corp, was filed in the southern district of Florida federal court in Miami.The lawsuit seeks at least $10bn in damages.It came after the Journal reported on a 50th birthday greeting that Trump allegedly sent to Epstein in 2003 that included a sexually suggestive drawing and reference to secrets they shared.It was reportedly a contribution to a birthday album compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence in Florida after being found guilty of sex-trafficking and other charges in 2021.“A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair,” the Journal reported of the alleged drawing. The letter allegedly concluded: “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.”Trump vehemently denied the Journal report and claimed the letter was fake. He said on Truth Social that he warned Murdoch, the founder of News Corp, the newspaper’s parent company, that he planned to sue.Donald Trump has sued Rupert Murdoch and two Wall Street Journal newspaper reporters for libel and slander over claims that he sent the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a lewd letter and sketch of a naked woman.In the filing, Trump calls the Wall Street Journal’s report “false and defamatory” and demands at least $10bn in damages and court costs from Rupert Murdoch, two Wall Street Journal reporters, News Corporation chief executive Robert Thomson and related corporate entities.Read the court documents in full at the below link:A lawsuit. Angry calls to editors. Public denunciations. In the wake of the Wall Street Journal’s story claiming Donald Trump contributed to a “bawdy” letter to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – featuring a drawing of a naked woman’s silhouette around a typewritten personal message – the president’s relationship with the outlet’s proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, appears on the surface to have deteriorated from temperamental to terminal.Just a few days ago, the 94-year-old mogul was spotted among the president’s high-profile guests at the Fifa Club World Cup final. Following the publication of the article, however, Murdoch now finds himself on the president’s lengthy list of media opponents threatened with court action.In an unprecedented environment in which a sitting president regularly takes direct aim at the media, there have been numerous claims of big outlets making decisions that make life easier for their billionaire owners. Yet the Journal published the Epstein allegations even after Trump picked up the phone to its British editor, Emma Tucker, to demand that she ditch the story. Trump also claims Murdoch himself was approached to stop the article, to no avail.According to some media watchers, it is the latest sign that Murdoch is taking a different approach to Trump’s return than some of his fellow billionaire moguls. Even before the Epstein story dropped on Thursday, Murdoch’s Journal continued to criticise Trump from the right over some of his early decisions.The justice department said in the court filings that it will work with prosecutors in New York to make appropriate redactions of victim-related information and other personally identifying information before transcripts are released.“Transparency in this process will not be at the expense of our obligation under the law to protect victims,” Todd Blanche, the US deputy attorney general wrote.But despite the new push to release the grand jury transcripts, the administration has not announced plans to reverse course and release other evidence in its possession. Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, had hyped the release of more materials after the first Epstein files disclosure in February sparked outrage because it contained no new revelations.A judge would have to approve the release of the grand jury transcripts, and it’s likely to be a lengthy process to decide what can become public and to make redactions to protect sensitive witness and victim information.The records would show testimony of witnesses and other evidence that was presented by prosecutions during the secret grand jury proceedings, when a panel decides whether there is enough evidence to bring an indictment, or a formal criminal charge.The US Department of Justice asked a federal court on Friday to unseal grand jury transcripts in Jeffrey Epstein’s case at the direction of Donald Trump amid a firestorm over the administration’s handling of records related to the wealthy financier.The move – coming a day after a Wall Street Journal story put a spotlight on Trump’s relationship with Epstein – seeks to contain a growing controversy that has engulfed the administration since it announced that it would not be releasing more government files from Epstein’s sex trafficking case.Todd Blanche, the US deputy attorney general, filed motions urging the court to unseal the Epstein transcripts as well as those in the case against British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. Epstein killed himself in 2019 shortly after his arrest while awaiting trial.The justice department’s announcement that it would not be making public any more Epstein files enraged parts of Trump’s base in part because members of his own administration had hyped the expected release and stoked conspiracies around the well-connected financier.Trump’s demand to release the grand jury transcripts came after the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday on a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper says bore Trump’s name and was included in a 2003 album for Epstein’s 50th birthday.The letter bearing Trump’s name includes text framed by the outline of what appears to be a hand-drawn naked woman and ends with, “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret,” according to the newspaper. The outlet described the contents of the letter but did not publish a photo showing it entirely.Trump denied writing the letter, calling it “false, malicious, and defamatory” and promised to sue. Trump said he spoke to both to the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, and its top editor, Emma Tucker, and told them the letter was “fake”.In other developments:
Attorney general Pam Bondi called the case “a matter of public concern” in a formal request asking a federal judge to unseal grand jury transcripts from the 2019 investigation into Epstein, the late sex offender and longtime associate of Donald Trump.
Dick Durbin, the senior Democrat on the senate judiciary committee wrote to Bondi to ask about the work of the 1,000 FBI personnel who reviewed approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in March. “My office was told that these personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned”, Durbin wrote. “What happened to the records mentioning President Trump once they were flagged?” he asked.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has called for Barack Obama and former senior US national security officials to be prosecuted after accusing them of a “treasonous conspiracy” intended to show that Trump’s 2016 presidential election win was due to Russian interference.
The Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7m worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need. A state department spokesperson confirmed that the decision had been made – a move that will cost US taxpayers $167,000.
Marco Rubio, the secretary of state barred Brazilian supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes from the United States in retaliation for the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil who has been charged for his role in allegedly leading an attempted coup following his loss in the 2022 election.
Democrats are condemning CBS for its decision to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, noting the news comes a few days after its host criticized the network’s parent company, Paramount, for settling a $16m lawsuit with Donald Trump. Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who appeared as a guest on Colbert’s show on Thursday night, later wrote on social media: “If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.” More

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