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The Trump White House is descending into a "bloody" pressure cooker, according to a one-time biographer of the president, with everyone out to get as much as they can "while the getting is good" before things come to a grinding halt.

Michael Wolff is a longtime author and reporter, best known for his extensive coverage of President Donald Trump's political career, including several books about his chaotic first term in the White House. In the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," Wolff and co-host Joanna Coles at one point discussed the scandal surrounding Trump's former personal attorney and failed U.S. Attorney attack dog, Alina Habba Mildon, who received a $50 million contract to serve as general counsel for the family of a Venezuelan billionaire, shortly before a member of the family received a clemency deal from the White House.

As Wolff argued, the Trump White House has been behaving like any other authoritarian government, with a bunch of bit players using access to the "central power in the middle" to make money or pursue other personal goals.

"But that's what so many other people around Donald Trump are also doing," Wolff explained. "And this is going to get more intense as... the end comes for the Trump administration. And... the feeling may be that it is ending much sooner [than anticipated], with Tuesday's election... that everybody is going to be so much more focused on getting what they can while the getting is good, which is going to increase the pressure, increase the resentment, increase the competition around Trump. And it's going to be bloody."

On the subject of impending GOP doom in the midterms, Wolff suggested that Trump's recent attempt to back out of several planned rallies might have come down to him getting tired, and the fact that "if he decides he doesn't want to do it, it's very hard to get him to do it."

"It's very hard to get him to focus. I mean, you don't tell Trump what to do," Wolff said. "And, and if he got to the point of saying, I don't want to do this anymore, then you don't do it."

He continued: "Now, in this case, he was pressured. I mean, the entire Republican Party comes and says, 'Come on... We're really in an every last vote situation. I mean, you have one job, Mr. President, and that's to get your base to come out and vote'... You're certainly not going to change the minds, at this point, of Democrats or independents or people who have once voted for you and now hate you."

A prominent New York Times columnist pulled no punches while discussing President Donald Trump's main new pretense for election meddling, calling out the White House for harping on about "a fake problem made up by losers."

In a recent edition of his "Takes" video series on YouTube, liberal NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie discussed the Trump administration's recent attempt to target "noncitizen voters," with a new demand that California purge names of suspected noncitizens from its ballot prior to the election. The state's government hit back, claiming that there would be no way to inspect the voter rolls in time for Election Day, and that trying to do so would inevitably result in law-abiding voters getting purged by mistake.

Bouie argued that there was no merit to this line of attack from Trump, accusing the administration of merely trying to prop up an excuse to delegitimize the eventual results out of California after the midterms. More to the point, however, he also went scorched earth against the idea that noncitizen voting was anything close to a real problem, let alone one warranting a massive mobilization by the federal government.

"I think it's actually very reasonable for someone who isn't paying a ton of attention and doesn't know a ton to assume that the U.S. has a problem with non-citizens voting in federal elections, but I'm here to tell you that that's wrong. Just completely and totally wrong," Bouie explained. "Over the last decade, any number of groups, organizations and the like have done detailed studies of non-citizen voting, trying to find out what is the actual amount of non-citizen voting that happens in the United States, and the consistent answer no matter who you ask is that there is effectively none. Statistically equivalent to zero."

He continued: "I use those terms effectively and statistically zero because it's important to remember that in any given election year there are tens of millions of votes being cast; in a presidential election year, those numbers are north of a hundred and fifty 160 million votes. And so when you have that many people voting in that many places, there is bound to be some instance of something, basically anything. The question is whether it's prevalent, whether it's common, whether it happens at a frequency high enough that would justify actions that might disenfranchise completely legal voters and the answer to that question is no; it doesn't. It happens so infrequently that it's effectively the same as it not happening at all."

Bouie further cited a 2016 study from the Brennan Center for Justice, which found that out of around 23.5 million votes cast in 42 jurisdictions, only about 30 instances of non-citizen voting could be found, a percentage that of the total votes cast that was ultimately negligible, and far from a trend that could meaningfully shift a race.

"My odds right now of being struck by lightning three times in a row, higher than the rate of non-citizen voting, according to [the conservative Heritage Foundation's] data," Bouie added.

MS NOW analyst Hayes Brown says President Donald Trump doesn’t have a problem with corruption. Trump loves corruption, actually. He adores it. What he hates, however, is corruption that doesn’t give him a cut.

“Trump’s jealousy over money that he feels was unfairly earned on his coattails is legendary,” said Brown. “Brad Parscale, Trump’s digital strategist in 2016 and campaign manager in 2020, raked in millions via his strategy company’s contracts with Trump-affiliated groups. ‘That’s my money!’ Trump reportedly exclaimed after learning about the high-spending lifestyle Parscale had cultivated.”

Parscale was demoted in July 2020, and he abandoned the administration before Election Day.

Trump’s former personal lawyer (and not-quite AG) Alina Habba Mildon, similarly, was the latest to draw the president’s ire for “profiting off her place in his orbit,” said Brown.

Mildon allegedly signed a $50 million contract last year to serve as general counsel for a billionaire Venezuelan family, just weeks away from a family member nabbing a clemency deal from Trump. But Trump allegedly grumbled to aides and allies that Mildon should donate a portion of her money “to his future presidential library or another Trump-related entity, according to multiple people briefed on the conversations.”

In another recent example, 2024 co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita and adviser James Blair caught fire from Trump for their political work in a Balkan territory whose nationalist government is aligned with Russia.

“This side hustle taking their focus off the U.S. midterms was bad enough, but the hundreds of thousands of dollars they each reportedly earned certainly didn’t help matters,” said Brown. … Trump threatened to cut LaCivita and Blair off entirely but allowed them back into his good graces through an act of, as the president put it to reporters last week, ‘charity.’ Again, the two men donated the money they made consulting to the Trump presidential library, according to social media posts.

“The money flowing to his presidential library instead of his businesses or personal bank account makes it no less of a racket,” said Brown. “There still have been no good answers as to where millions of dollars pledged to the library went after the initial fund was dissolved last year. … A sitting president even considering a tithe of this nature from a former staffer necessary is shocking, but it fits perfectly into Trump’s zero sum understanding of the world.”

But Trump’s personal brand is a money-maker, said Brown, and licensing some of that clout for dirty deeds requires Trump wetting his beak on a share of the gains.

“The alternative is risking Trump harnessing the full power of his office to collect what he sees as his due,” Brown concluded.

Once again, we’re seeing American impatience at work.

While early voting is happening, Election Day is on Tuesday, yet the political talk is already focused on congressional leadership contests, the would-be Democratic agenda, Donald Trump’s anticipated “super lame duck” status and all that will follow.

Can we please get through this election first before having to devour competitive speculative articles and punditry about whether Hakeem Jeffries can hold together a strategy-diverse caucus post-election or whether Chuck Schumer will return as a Democratic Senate majority leader when many individual candidates have staked out positions for change?

After all, at the same time, we keep hearing about the dangers of an election denialist Trump government that is willing to undertake a variety of legal, financial, social and political pressures to cast doubt on the outcome of elections. Take a breath: The election count itself could take three weeks in some areas.

Clearly, the administration and its agencies have been adept at filing lawsuits, however legally frivolous, to halt mail ballots, to limit voters, close precincts, and lobby hard about the presence of non-citizen voters that no one else seems to be able to find in sufficient numbers to change an election outcome. There are warnings about the National Guard gearing up for unknown reasons, shared fears that federal agents will seize ballots, and a slew of challenges if votes are close in various states about declaring winners.

Yet even a cursory glance at headlines shows a bevy of concerns about which personalities will emerge more “powerful” when the anticipated Blue Wave hits this week and who will be left behind. Does it really matter who the House minority leader will be if Republicans lose their majority status?

Anticipating Troubles

What may matter more in the anticipation of Election Day are the number of administration policies that have been held back or delayed for execution once we pass Tuesday.

Those Trump policies that will increase pressure on housing and health, and on renewed warfare and upside-down foreign dealings that improve relations with Russia and China over protection of democracies in Europe and Asia is where our attention ought to be.

We know some of what to expect from a cornered Donald Trump.

At the top of this list is the possibility or even probability of renewed warfare in Iran. The Pentagon has been ordered to move a new aircraft carrier group to the Middle East, diplomatic personnel and families have been warned to evacuate in anticipation of retaliatory attacks, and Gulf nations are hard at negotiations with Iran to consider any options to forestall renewed air attacks from the United States and Israel.

No matter how much criticism of an unsuccessful, continuing war situation in the region has filled campaign ads and rallies, Trump is insisting he can do as he wants with our military, that any attempt by Congress to be involved in approving or defunding war efforts is beyond any of his reasoning. The fact is, the military is getting itself ready for an order to renew conflict that may or may not come – with absolutely no assurance that bombing will result in Iran walking away from nuclear weapons aspirations or the full re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz or abandonment of proxy armies that are attacking Israel, Saudi Arabia and Gulf nations working with the U.S.

The lame duck session of Congress will be filled with the election vitriol over the war and whether to continue to finance it,

The delayed domestic agenda reportedly also includes new broadsides against medical abortion and other aspects of intrastate travel for abortion, a doubling down on Homeland Security anti-immigrant campaigns, and more cuts for health insurance coverage for those not covered by their jobs.

Trump’s insistence on making the election about himself – “Pretend I’m on the ballot” – while ignoring the reports on the ground from across the nation, from urban and rural areas, about the effects of high prices from his tariff and war policies while evidence of official corruption seems to multiply by the day is where our attention ought to be. Instead, we’re busily speculating about presidential candidates for 2028 or what happens to Rep. Jim Jordan’s dream to replace Mike Johnson as head of House Republicans.

If we get a decisive result from elections this week and we can get to January actually seating the winners through vote challenges and certification fights, the new Congress will sort itself quickly. If Democrats win, it will become evident quickly how much investigating and how much policy work on prices will be targeted.

It would be more effective for us to focus on what is right before us rather than speculate about personality clashes ahead.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

President Donald Trump's overnight posting spree is prompting questions from those online about his mental stability.

Trump's final post on TruthSocial came about 2:45 a.m. EDT with a post about conspiracy theories around the "birth tourism industry."

It isn't unusual for Trump to go off on a TruthSocial posting spree, and it's the second time in a week.

The spree began about midnight EDT and lasted over an hour. For a moment it seemed like he might stop, but about 90 minutes later he began sharing content from filmmaker Clint Eastwood.

It was just one of 16 posts that ranged in attacks on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama, claiming that they were both part of some kind of conspiracy to keep him from the presidency in 2016. At one point, he shared a post saying that Clinton and Obama committed treason.

The comments prompted liberal political commentator Harry Sisson to question if the president had lost it.

He wrote on X, "It's 1 am in the morning, and Trump is awake ranting incoherently. He's now calling for the 2020 election to be 'permanently wiped from the books and be of no further force or effect.' Someone check him into an insane asylum."

Trump posted at one point: “If it is true, the 2020 Presidential Election should be permanently wiped from the books and be of no further force or effect! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT”

"Trump had another mental health episode and spiraled out of control on social media last night," said Sisson, listing off the topics that Trump posted about.

"Trump’s 1:13 AM post is basically a nocturnal emission of late-night brain static," said satirical influencer SundaeGirl.

Columnist and editor Philip Bump commented on Trump's attack on the Southern Poverty Law Center, characterizing it as: “I say you threw garbage in my lawn therefore I own your house.”

He later added: "Also: does this suggest that the contrived SPLC lawsuit is what Patel was talking about with his claim about an imminent crackdown on the 2020 election?"

Clinical psychologist Dr. Tracy King expressed alarm last week about what she said was a troubling cognitive trend in his nighttime social media behavior, reported the Irish Star.

The post about Eastwood comes from a fake story that has been circulating online for years, and one account has been fact-checked. Snopes debunked it in 2020.

The spree comes a few days after the Wall Street Journal posted a bombshell report that Trump was too agitated to be in the crisis room where the military was working on saving two airmen forced to eject over Iran.

Ghislaine Maxwell appeared before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Monday, where she was poised to face questions about documents pertaining to the investigation into her activities with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell has been convicted of being an accomplice and was willing to speak in great detail to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. But when it came time to testify before the House behind closed doors, she refused to give information.

Maxwell's attorney said she would answer questions openly if President Donald Trump granted clemency. She has been asking for a new trial, but it's unclear if that is possible. The attorney also mentioned that neither President Donald Trump nor President Bill Clinton is "culpable" in any wrongdoing.

Oversight chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) has been criticized by former President Bill Clinton and former First Lady Hillary Clinton after he subpoenaed them. The Clintons have requested that the full hearing be public.

Comer claimed a "standard deposition" is behind closed doors. He argued that he would release everything immediately, so it doesn't need to be public, but that raised the question of why it must be kept behind closed doors if it's going to be released.

Hillary Clinton previously attacked Comer on X, asking why he was refusing to hold the hearings in public. She told him if he wants the first, then "bring it on" in public.

When the Trump Administration, with the help of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), was aggressively downsizing a long list of federal agencies, the future of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was very much in doubt. Critics of President Donald Trump feared that FEMA would be eliminated altogether.

A year into Trump's second presidency, however, FEMA remains. Trump appeared to back down from eliminating FEMA.

But according to NOTUS reporters Anna Kramer and Torrence Banks, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is holding up more than $1 billion in "hazard mitigation funds."

In an article published on January 28, Kramer and Banks report, "Since July, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved hazard mitigation grants that cost more than $100,000 in only three states, according to a NOTUS review of publicly available data and internal FEMA documents. The three states to get through the logjam: Georgia, North Carolina and Oklahoma. As of December 31, before the North Carolina and Oklahoma projects were approved, Noem's office was sitting on $1.3 billion in requested funds — all of which had been approved at the regional level, according to documents obtained by NOTUS."

The NOTUS reporters add, "This is the first time the scope of Noem's funding hold on the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program has been reported."

According to Kramer and Banks, "hundreds of projects across nearly all 50 states, four territories and two tribal nations remain stuck at Noem's level elected representatives in 10 states."

Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Washington State) told NOTUS, "Unfortunately, Secretary Noem has virtually frozen FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program."

Michael Coen, who served as FEMA's chief of staff under the Biden Administration, warns that holding up Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) funds could be dangerous.

Coen told NOTUS, "HMGP is authorized by Congress. The Trump Administration's failure to execute mitigation is reckless and I believe a breach of duty. Lives will be lost during future disasters that could have been avoided. HMGP funding is one of the few tools the federal government has to reduce future disaster costs and suffering."

Read the full NOTUS article at this link.

When Donald Trump was facing four criminal indictments, two of them stemmed from his efforts to overturn the United States' 2020 presidential election results: a federal case prosecuted by then-special counsel Jack Smith for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and a Georgia case prosecuted by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Both of those cases were doomed when Trump narrowly defeated Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in 2024.

In 2020, Trump and his allies claimed, without evidence, that Democrats stole Georgia's electoral votes from him — a claim that two prominent Republicans in the Peach State, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, pushed backed against. Kemp and Raffensperger adamantly maintained that then-President-elect Joe Biden won Georgia fair and square.

Kemp and Raffensperger spoke publicly and on the record. But according to New York Times reporters Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim, other Republicans spoke candidly about Georgia's 2020 election results in closed-door testimony from 2022.

In an article published on January 13, Fausset and Hakim explain, "Transcripts of secret grand jury testimony from the Georgia election interference case against Mr. Trump and his allies, obtained this week by the New York Times, show just how alarmed and exasperated a number of senior Republicans felt about the president's efforts to overturn an American presidential election. The testimony, given in 2022, is emerging at a time when Mr. Trump is again raising complaints about his 2020 defeat and voicing regret that he did not order the National Guard to seize voting machines after the election."

Those transcripts, according to the Times reporters, "were part of the investigative file" in Willis' election interference/RICO case against Trump and others and were "conducted by a special purpose grand jury."

Republicans who testified included Kemp, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and former Georgia House Speaker David Ralston.

Describing the testimony, Fausset and Hakim report, "Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina found President Trump's claims of election fraud in 2020 'unnerving.' Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia described Mr. Trump's efforts to get his state's lawmakers to intervene a 'fruitless exercise.' David Ralston, a former speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, called the plan to create slates of fake pro-Trump electors in states he had lost 'the craziest thing I’ve heard.'"

Graham, according to Fausset and Hakim, had no doubt that Biden won Georgia when he spoke to the grand jurors in 2022.

Graham testified, "I have told him more times than we can count that he fell short…. If you told him Martians came and stole votes, he'd be inclined to believe it."

Recalling a conversation with Trump after the 2020 election, Ralston testified that "right off the bat, I've got to tell him I disagree with him."

Read Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim's full article for The New York Times at this link (subscription required).

A union-backed auto worker at Ford Motor Co. was caught on video heckling President Donald Trump as a “pedophile protector” when he visited a Dearborn factory on Tuesday ahead of his address to the Detroit Economic Club. The video that has now gone viral shows Trump responded in kind by mouthing an expletive at the worker, twice, and displaying a middle finger as he walked away.

Now, the union says the worker has been suspended while Ford looks into the matter.

A representative from the UAW told Michigan Advance that they could confirm that he was suspended but the length of the suspension was unknown. The union was also uncertain about the process that would follow to investigate the matter.

A message seeking comment from Ford to confirm if the worker was fired or suspended was not immediately returned on Tuesday evening.

In a statement to the Advance, White House communications director Steven Cheung called the worker “a lunatic” who was “wildly screaming expletives in a complete fit of rage.”

“And the president gave an appropriate and unambiguous response,” Cheung said.

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Detroit) said she spoke to a well placed source in the worker’s local union who said he was facing disciplinary action.

“Ford said they can’t talk about it because it’s a human resources issue,” Tlaib said. “In the past, when President Obama (went) onto the plant floor and other times people have said some terrible things, they didn’t get fired.”

@michiganadvance #trump #epsteinfiles @Distillsocial ♬ Quiet Music – Stacey Barelos

U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Ann Arbor) also told the Advance that the union confirmed that the confrontation meant the man was facing disciplinary action.

Dingell also said she was inquiring with Ford about the status of the man’s employment, and if he was being suspended and investigated in violation of his free speech rights.

“When you’re on a factory floor with union members that have strong feelings, you need to be prepared for whatever they’re gonna say, and I hope they’re not firing him because I believe in free speech,” Dingell said in an interview. “The UAW worker was expressing his right to free speech, and I’m asking questions as to what has happened.”

The video, which was first published by Distill Social shows Trump walking around a raised portion of the Dearborn F-150 plant when the worker, who is not seen on screen, yells to Trump and calls him a “pedophile protector,” a reference to Trump’s widely reported connections to deceased pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffery Epstein and the Trump administration’s bungling of a new law that ordered the FBI to release all of the files that the department had available to them.

Some have seen the constant delays from the FBI and the slow walk to release the files as Trump protecting either himself or his wealthy elite friends from scrutiny or a clear connection to Epstein.

In response to the confrontation, the Democratic National Committee denounced Trump for being “more concerned with his ego than his spiraling economy, where job cuts are skyrocketing, hiring has slowed, unemployment remains high, and prices continue to soar.”

“As working families struggle to make ends meet in Trump’s economy, the Trump family and their wealthy donors keep getting richer — there’s no bigger ‘F-you’ than that,” said DNC Senior Advisor for Messaging, Mobilization and Strategy Tim Hogan in a statement. “The real question is: Why does the mere mention of Epstein set him off?”

Tlaib echoed that point.

“The worker could have said anything, but this worker felt compelled to say you’re protecting a pedophile. I feel very strongly that Ford Motor Company is sending a message that people can’t stand up for sexual abuse survivors,” Tlaib said.

What does Trump have against Minnesota? Not only is ICE causing mayhem in Minneapolis, but Trump is halting hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for social services programs there, according to a Tuesday announcement from Health and Human Services.

It’s not just Minnesota. Trump is also stopping billions in funding for social services in Colorado, Illinois, New York, and California.

Why? Could it be because all of them are led by Democrats and inhabited by voters who overwhelmingly rejected Trump in 2024?

It’s not the first time Trump has openly penalized “blue” states. What’s new is how blatant his vindictiveness toward blue states has become.

Angry at Colorado’s votes against him in three successive elections and at its refusal to free Tina Peters — the former clerk of Mesa County, who was convicted in 2024 of tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed plot to prove they had been used to rig the 2020 election against Trump — Trump has cut off transportation money to Colorado, relocated the military’s Space Command, vowed to dismantle a major climate and weather research center located there, and rejected disaster relief for rural counties hammered by floods and wildfires.

Two weeks ago Trump used the first veto of his second term to kill a pipeline project that had achieved bipartisan congressional support, to provide clean drinking water to Colorado’s parched eastern plains. (Trump’s action enraged Republican congresswoman and formerly dedicated Trumper Lauren Boebert, who stated: “Nothing says America First like denying clean drinking water to 50,000 people in southeast Colorado, many of whom voted for him in all three elections.”)

If there were any doubts about Trump’s sentiments toward Colorado, he posted a New Year’s Eve message telling Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, and Daniel P. Rubinstein, the Republican district attorney in Mesa County who prosecuted Ms. Peters, to “rot in Hell,” adding “I wish them only the worst.”

Is it even legal for Trump to reward red states and penalize blue ones? In a word: No.

In early December, Justice Department lawyers openly admitted that Trump withheld Department of Energy grants to Minnesota and other states according to “whether a grantee’s address was located in a State that tends to elect and/or has recently elected Democratic candidates in state and national elections.”

It’s the first time the Trump regime clearly acknowledged in court that which states get what depends on whether most people in a state voted for or against him.

What’s the legal argument? Trump’s Justice Department lawyers claim that such overt political vindictiveness “is constitutionally permissible, including because it can serve as a proxy for legitimate policy considerations.”

This, my friends, is utter rubbish.

Punishing states based on whom their residents voted for directly violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which requires that the government treat citizens equally under the law: No “State [shall] deprive … to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Penalizing a state for how its citizens vote also violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. Voting is one of the most basic forms of speech in a democracy; it cannot be abridged or punished depending on for whom one votes.

And it violates a president’s duty under the Constitution to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” At the least, this requires that a president apply the law in a nonpartisan way. Congress may award grants or benefits to certain states and not others, but this power is reserved for Congress, not the president.

The issue will almost certainly end up in the Supreme Court. Although my expectations for our highest court could not be much lower, I’d be surprised if the justices sided with Trump here.

Any other result would effectively allow Trump to pit red states against blue and wreak havoc on the very idea of a national government.

Trump has made it clear he regards himself as president only of the people who voted for him. But that’s not how the Constitution works. Nor is it how American democracy works.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Two Democratic leaders in the US Senate revealed Tuesday that they’re demanding answers from the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, about her access to federal files on deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and whether she’s involved in their “bungled and potentially illegal partial release.”

President Donald Trump had a well-documented friendship with Epstein—at least until a reported falling out in 2004. Although the president ultimately signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, it came after he faced intense criticism for his administration not willingly releasing the records, and congressional Republicans delayed passage of the bill, which requires the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to publish materials related to the late financier’s sex trafficking case.

Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), ranking member for the Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights, began their letter to Wiles by pointing to a two-part Vanity Fair series featuring interviews with Trump’s top advisers, including Wiles.

As Chris Whipple reported:

Wiles told me she’d read what she calls “the Epstein file.” And, she said, “[Trump] is in the file. And we know he’s in the file. And he’s not in the file doing anything awful.” Wiles said that Trump “was on [Epstein’s] plane… he’s on the manifest. They were, you know, sort of young, single, whatever—I know it’s a passé word but sort of young, single playboys together.”

Noting those remarks, the senators wrote to Wiles, “Please be kind enough to explain when and where and under what authority you gained access to this material.”

They also sent Wiles the list of questions below and requested her response by January 5:

1. What were the materials in “the Epstein file” you referred to in your Vanity Fair interview?
2. Had material in the file you reviewed been presented to a grand jury?
3. When did you first gain access to “the Epstein file” and what was the schedule of your review of it?
4. For what purpose did you gain access to this information?
5. Did you share with President Trump any information contained in the file you reviewed?
6. Please describe your role in any process related to the review, redaction, withholding, or release of material in the “Epstein file,” including any processes involving the Department of Justice or Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The letter is dated December 22, just three days after the deadline set by the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The DOJ has missed the deadline, released files in batches, and faced scrutiny for redactions.

Over the course of the year, President Donald Trump endeavored to stack the deck of the 2026 midterm elections by demanding red states redraw congressional lines and gerrymander out Democratic voters. Trump's problem, according to a Politico report, is that he can't win the fight that he started.

Thus far, six states crafted new maps, which accounts for "nearly one-third of congressional seats," the report calculated. It puts tens of millions of Americans in a new district, effectively "overnight."

The plot came from top political aide James Blair. Both he and Trump are well-aware that if Democrats take control of Congress, the administration will be plagued by hearings and impeachments of top Cabinet officials.

One person familiar with their conversation told Politico they remember Trump asking, “Wait a minute, you mean redo the census?

"No. Just states redrawing with the authority they already have," said Blair.

“We could either go on offense, or we could let the Democrats sue the majority away,” recalled Adam Kincaid, director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust. He was among the first contacted about putting the plan into action.

"Thus began an ongoing caper that did more to shape American politics in 2025 than anything else," wrote Politico.

Ex-Trump campaign manger Chris LaCivita launched a new organization to put political pressure on lawmakers who might oppose the plot.

The stunt hasn't gone quite as well as Republicans hoped. Kincaid and Blair saw blue states enacting non-partisan district maps and assumed those would stop Democrats from countering the GOP with their own plot. They didn't count on Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calf.), who used his political clout to run a ballot measure to institute partisan gerrymandering to counter Texas Republicans doing the same. It canceled out any wins the GOP thought they'd score in 2026.

“You can shake the pinball machine a little bit and sure that helps,” an ex-lawmaker in Indiana told Politico. “But if you hit it too hard, it will go on tilt.”

“If we are relying on redistricting to hold the majorities, we have bigger issues,” a Republican operative who works on Senate and House races told POLITICO in July.

Meanwhile, Democrats had another plan. Former Attorney General Eric holder and ex-President Barack Obama joined forces in 2017 to form their own redistricting group. The GOP thought it was just in preparation for 2030, but when Trump's team decided to enact their mid-decade redistricting plan, the group was ready.

“We can’t do what [Republicans] think we’re going to do,” Holder said in a recent interview with Politico. "Which is, I’ll go on MSNBC and CNN and say, ‘that’s a terrible thing.’ Somebody will write an op-ed. You know, we have to do something that really meets this moment, even if it’s a little inconsistent with what we have been trying to do since 2017.”

Democrats proposed legislation that would stop partisan gerrymandering, but with the GOP in control of the House, Senate and White House, they'd have little success. They lent their voices to Newsom's effort and encouraged other blue state governors.

Trump's pressure campaign was rebuffed by Indiana Republicans who were concerned that redrawing the lines would spread Democratic voters out to four congressional seats instead of isolating them in two districts. In a year with a blue wave, Republicans feared they could run the risk of losing more than winning.

By July, Trump was growing so unpopular that any Republican standing up to him didn't suffer the consequences LaCivita hoped. At least, not yet. Instead, off-year elections destroyed the GOP at the state and local level across the country, but particularly in New Jersey and Virginia.

"In the end, the pinball machine had gone on tilt, jamming up to undermine a player trying to game the system," Politico wrote. "Even with all the states that decided not to move forward with new maps in 2025, it still represented the most redraws in a non-census year since the 1984 election cycle, when the activity was driven largely by judicial decisions rather than political opportunism."

There is still a chance for Florida and New Hampshire to redraw lines, but the report explained those efforts failed in 2025. So, it's unclear if it would "yield any more red fruit in 2026." Other states like Kansas and Kentucky could make a go, but both have Democratic governors likely to veto the attempt.

Meanwhile, Virginia, which just achieved a huge Democratic majority, could pass legislation before April and change the lines for the 2026 election, making more Democratic districts. Maryland could also attempt an effort to remove it's single GOP district, with it's deadline in February.

The worst possible option for Democrats comes from a Supreme Court case set to be decided in the coming year that would effectively eliminate key parts of the Voting Rights Act that mandates "racial balance" when drawing congressional lines in red states across the South.

Liberal groups warned it could mean a 19-seat pickup for Republicans.

The scenario “would be nuclear,” Holder said.

He's hopeful the justices won't go that far, but Chief Justice John Roberts penned a decision in 2013 that weakened Section 5 of the VRA. In the ruling, Roberts claimed that the conditions of racism that necessitated the VRA in 1965 don't exist. He wrote, they "no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions." Roberts did uphold Section 2 in that ruling, however.

Kincaid maintained, “At the end of the day, Republicans are gonna be fine. Having done this redistricting thing for a while now, one thing that I am well aware of is that Democrats are very good at declaring victory prematurely.”

Read more in the report here.

On Wednesday night, December 17 — ahead of President Donald Trump's State of the Union address — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was dining in a Washington, DC wine bar when he was confronted by an angry protester who voiced her opposition to Trump's economic policies.

In video posted on X, formerly Twitter, by journalist Brian Allen, the woman is heard saying she wanted to "make a toast for the secretary of treasury, Scott Bessent." However, she wasn't really honoring Bessent, but rather, attacked him for "eating well" in a pricy wine bar "as people starve across the world." And she attacked Bessent's policies are "economic warfare."

The protester's comments drew loud boos from Bessent's supporters, but a man who agreed with her told them, "Of course you're going to boo. It's the truth."

The protester continued, saying that Trump "cheers for the Monroe Doctrine" and attacking his Venezuela policy as a pursuit of "oil."

Bessent shouted at her, "You are ignorant, and you have no idea how ignorant you are."

And she responded, "You are responsible for the death of 600,000 people annually because of sanctions…. The blood is on your hands."

Allen tweeted, "After the encounter, Bessent complained to the staff and when it didn't work in his favor, he spat into his own food before storming out."

I first met actor, producer and director Rob Reiner and photographer Michele Singer Reiner some 15 years. I was on the road with my SiriusXM show, broadcasting from The Abbey, a legendary West Hollywood gay cafe and bar.

We were deep in the fight for marriage equality, and the Reiners were leading the charge against Proposition 8, the ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in California in 2008. They had helped found the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which eventually took the case all the way to Supreme Court. They came on the show to talk about the fight.

It turned out that both of them were avid listeners of my program—Michele, in fact, listened for three hours a day—and they knew the regular guests and even some of the regular callers. This blew me away, of course. But it shouldn’t have. Rob Reiner’s commitment to civil rights was deep. It wasn’t just a cause that he and his wife threw some money at—though they donated millions to causes over their lifetimes.

They immersed themselves in the issues, soaking up as much news and information as they could, so that they’d be informed activists and could use their influence to pressure people in power. I was honored to be one place they were turning to for details on the fight they would help lead to victory.

Over the years Rob Reiner came on the program many times, including just last year when he produced the documentary, “God and Country,” based on Katherine Stewart’s book "The Power Worshippers,” warning of the dangers of Christian nationalism and how theocrats were cementing their relationship with Donald Trump. His and his wife’s deaths are simply gut-wrenching.

Reiner was a big voice, from his days as a sitcom star on the iconic “All in the Family” to his years as an actor, director, and producer of films that had a big impact on American culture. And he used that voice to speak fervently in defending democracy against Trump’s authoritarianism.

That’s why Trump, upon Reiner’s death, couldn’t help but try to defile Reiner, but only defiled himself, and in a much bigger way than usual. Trump wrote a really sick screed on Truth Social yesterday that even had his own fans and some GOP members of Congress lambasting him, another example of how he’s losing his grip.

Trump claimed that Reiner, found stabbed to death with Michele in their LA home, died “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS.”

Trump wrote: “He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before.”

This was so appalling—and a new low — because besides being grotesquely callous, Trump was putting out the message that those who speak against him can and will pay a price. It was another call to violence and revenge, and it was also an attempt to force himself into the tragic story. (Law enforcement arrested the Reiner’s 32-year-old son Nick, who suffered from drug addiction and mental illness, on murder charges; this had nothing to do with Rob Reiner’s political beliefs).

But the blowback was strong even from some in MAGA—on Truth Social itself, many in Trump’s own base responded to his post with disgust—and Trump in the end only let people see just how much his power is receding. Robby Starbuck, a MAGA influencer and big Trump supporter, slammed him hard.

“What happened last night to Rob Reiner and his wife was a savage butchering of 2 human lives. I don’t care what their politics were or how they felt about Trump, no law abiding human deserves this. We should pray for + send condolences to his loved ones and NOT make it political,” Starbuck wrote on X.

Others pointed to the glaring double standard in the response to Charlie Kirk’s assassination—with MAGA lashing out at anyone who even criticized Kirk, calling for ramifications—and this horrible murder. That includes the spokesperson for Kirk’s Turning Point USA, who wrote: “Rob Reiner responded with grace and compassion to Charlie’s assassination. This video [of Reiner responding to Kirk’s death with sadness] makes it all the more painful to hear of he and his wife’s tragic end. May God be close to the broken hearted in this terrible story.”

Piers Morgan, Trump’s sensationalist buddy, said, “This is a dreadful thing to say about a man who just got murdered by his troubled son. Delete it, Mr President.” And Marjorie Taylor Greene excoriated Trump again.

Right wing Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie wrote: “Regardless of how you felt about Rob Reiner, this is inappropriate and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered. I guess my elected GOP colleagues, the VP, and White House staff will just ignore it because they’re afraid? I challenge anyone to defend it.”

Speaker Mike Johnson ran away from reporters—saying he doesn’t “do ongoing commentary about everything that’s said by everybody in government every day”—when he usually defends every vile statement Trump makes. (And Senate Majority Leader John Thune also ducked the question about Trump’s screed while sending “sympathies and prayers” to the Reiner family.)

This may seem like the same few voices but rather than get universal defense of his statements, Trump found himself the target of a lot of disgust and anger from his own base, and yet more criticism from those GOP politicians who’ve been speaking up in recent weeks. He also didn’t get any support inside the White House, even off the record. Reporter Asawin Suebsaeng, formerly of Rolling Stone and now at Zeteo, who has a lot of sources in the White House who often offer him comments on Trump, noted this:

We reached out to several Trump administration officials, advisers, and close allies immediately after the president posted that. Only a couple replied, and weren’t even willing to try to justify the comments, off the record or otherwise. The White House did not immediately respond to Zeteo’s request for comment.

Many Americans who don’t pay attention to politics pay attention in moments like this, when there’s a gruesome murder of a beloved Hollywood figure whose politics they may not have known but whose work they liked. And to see the president, who some of them supported, speaking in this way was probably jarring. It’s the kind of thing that wakes people up, like the Jimmy Kimmel saga. The entire attack backfired spectacularly on Trump.

And it also showed how effective Rob Reiner was as an activist. Even in his death he caused the insecure, narcissistic Trump to unravel, to face humiliation from his own supporters—and his own White House—and expose his loosening grip on MAGA. I think Reiner would see it as a badge of honor.