Wednesday, November 19, 2025. Tuesday was a historic day in the House and in the Senate.
The
House passed legislation Tuesday mandating the disclosures of a trove
of government files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a milestone
in a long-running fight that divided the Republican Party and President
Trump’s MAGA movement.
The 427-1 vote came
after a band of Republicans bucked party leaders and joined with
Democrats to force the matter over the opposition of GOP leadership. The
one lawmaker to vote against the measure was Rep. Clay Higgins (R.,
La.).
Here
for the run down of the vote at THE NEW YORK TIMES. Clay Higgins,
Republican known to Lake Charles residents as "Miss Higgins," voted
against the measure. He mumbled something about three months ago one of
his nuts climbed up his sack and it still hasn't descended back to
normal. Five members of the House didn't vote -- 3 Dems, 2 Republicans
-- presumably, they were attempting to help Miss Higgins find his
missing nut. Some jokers insisted they'd seen in Mike Johnson's office
or maybe his mouth but, to date, the testicle has not been discovered.
THE WSJ reporters also note:
Trump,
in comments to reporters Tuesday, said he has “nothing to do with
Jeffrey Epstein. I threw him out of my club many years ago because I
thought he was a sick pervert, and I guess I turned out to be right.”
When
Manhattan modeling management executive Faith Kates wrote to Epstein,
asking where he was having Thanksgiving dinner in 2017, he answered
“eva” – apparently referring to Epstein’s ex-girlfriend Eva
Andersson-Dubin. Kates asked “who else is down there?” “david fizel.
hanson. trump,” Epstein responds. Trump was in West Palm Beach for
Thanksgiving and hosted a large public dinner at Mar-a-Lago. There is no
indication that they met for Thanksgiving that year.
Newly released emails suggest that President Donald Trump may have
spent his first Thanksgiving in office accompanied by none other than
Jeffrey Epstein.
Buried in a batch of thousands of documents
released Wednesday by the GOP-led House Committee on Oversight and
Reform, one email chain between Epstein and someone called “Faith
Kates,” likely referring to the founder of NEXT Model Management,
suggested that the convicted sex offender was still hanging out with
Trump long after the president claims he cut ties.
[. . .]
That
wasn’t the only message that suggested Trump and Epstein were still
spending time together. In another email chain from December 2017, a
guest of Epstein’s claimed
they didn’t want to risk running into Trump at Epstein’s Paris
apartment. In other emails sent just days after the presidential
election, Epstein claimed he was headed for New York as “Trump gives many new things to do,” and later said he was visiting Trump Tower.
The president has long claimed
that his friendship with Epstein ended before his Palm Beach neighbor
was indicted for soliciting prostitution in 2006. But clearly, the two
remained linked long afterward.
In
an attempt to forestall the vote, Speaker of the Closet Mike Johnson
sent the House home for weeks on an extended vacation and refused to
swear in Adelita Grijalva for over fifty days. Yet today? Johnson voted for the measure.
David Moye (HUFFINGTON POST) notes a reaction to that:
On
Tuesday, the Louisiana Republican announced he would vote to release
Department of Justice files related to the late sex offender.
Considering
the decision came two days after he accused the Democrats of only using
the scandal to bring down President Donald Trump, some people wondered
the reason behind Johnson’s change of heart. The speaker previously shut
down the House early and held off on swearing in a new member during
the government shutdown as part of his effort to delay a vote.
Rep. Eric Swalwell had a theory that he offered on social media that was pretty vicious.
“Daddy gave you permission??” Swalwell asked.
Befor
the vote on Tuesday, Epstein survivor and House Reps Ro Khanna
(Democrat), Thomas Massie (Republican) and Marjorie Taylor Greene
(Republican) held a press briefing.
US
House Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene: I was called a traitor by a man that
I fought for five, no, actually, six years, and I gave him my loyalty
for free, I won my first election without his endorsement beating eight
men in a primary, and I've never owed him anything, but I fought for
him, for the policies and for America first, and he called me a traitor
for standing with these women and refusing to take my name off the
discharge petition. Let me tell you what a traitor is. A traitor is an
American that serves
foreign countries and themselves. A patriot is an American that serves
the United States of America, and Americans like the women standing
behind me. The only thing that will speak to the powerful, courageous
women behind me is when action is actually taken to release these files
and the American people won’t tolerate any other bulls**t.
Leonhardt:
Donald Trump reversed course on social media, where he makes many of
his big announcements, on Sunday night. Where were you when you found
out that he was reversing himself?
Khanna: As I
was about to get to bed, my phone starts to blow up. Someone says:
Donald Trump endorsed your bill. And I said: What do you mean? Because
Thomas Massie and I, we’ve been working all weekend texting Republicans
we knew, trying to get a veto-proof vote in the House.
Leonhardt: Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican, with whom you’ve been working very closely.
Khanna:
He has been an instrumental partner. So the underlying bill is my bill,
but Thomas Massie has the discharge petition that would get the bill to
a vote in the House. But Donald Trump saw that he was going to lose. I
mean, this is the first time it has happened that probably almost a
hundred Republicans would’ve voted for a Democratic bill, for the Khanna
Epstein Files Transparency Act. And he was having Rasmussen, the
Republican pollster, People’s Pundit, a Republican pollster, say: What
are you doing, Donald Trump? You’ve forgotten the forgotten Americans
you campaigned against. So I think he bowed to reality and now is
endorsing our bill.
Leonhardt:
And so just to walk people through what happened for those who haven’t
been following this as closely as you have: You spent months scraping to
get just enough Republicans to get their signatures on this petition
that then forced the House leadership to hold a vote on a bill. The
House leadership didn’t want to hold a vote on the bill. How many
Republicans did you ultimately get to sign that petition?
Khanna: We got four.
Leonhardt: Four — all Democrats and four Republicans.
Khanna:
All Democrats, four Republicans. I’ve been in Congress nine years. It
was the most herculean effort to get that discharge petition through for
a few reasons. You had a full-court press here by the White House and
the speaker to make this not possible. You had the speaker adjourn
Congress early in the summer, if you remember, trying to get the whole
issue to go away. At the same time, you had the White House launch the
most intense pressure campaign on Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace and
Lauren Boebert, to get them to remove their names from this petition.
Leonhardt: And they are the three along with Massie. Those are the only four Republicans.
Khanna:
They’re the only four. So with Massie, they came out right away: “We’re
going to primary you. The president’s team is going to run the campaign
against you.” Why? Yes, they didn’t like what Massie was doing, but
they were also sending a signal to every other Republican in the caucus
to not defy Donald Trump.
And Donald Trump then
un-endorses Marjorie Taylor Greene. I mean, can you imagine this? He is
treating Ghislaine Maxwell better than he is treating Marjorie Taylor
Greene these days. Once Trump starts to un-endorse Marjorie Taylor
Greene, we think, OK, people are going to have understandably cold feet.
I mean, do you really want Donald Trump endorsing a primary challenger
against you over this vote? And yet, Massie’s thought — and from the
people I was talking to — that we thought that some Republicans would
still defy him. And obviously that’s what Donald Trump calculated.
Ultimately, it was a surrender to justice. But it shows that you can get
Donald Trump to come to your side as opposed to having to cave to his
side.
Things moved quickly yesterday. At one point in the afternoon, NYT posted Annie Karni's "House Is Expected to Vote on Tuesday to Release Epstein Files."
It was.
It did.
The surprise was what happened next.
Jordain Carney, Hailey Fuchs and Meredith Lee Hill (POLITICO) explain:
The
Senate moved swiftly to approve legislation Tuesday forcing the Justice
Department to release more information about the case it built against
the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — acting hours after an
overwhelming House vote to send the bill to the desk of President Donald
Trump, who spent months trying to kill it.
The
Senate acted by unanimous consent, which requires signoff from every
senator but does not require them to take a roll call vote. Earlier in
the day, the House passed the bill on a 427-1 vote.
Ben covers the developments this morning at MEIDASTOUCH NEWS.
And let's note some other coverage in the last 24 hours.
A
“whistleblower” who came forward to House Democrats alleging convicted
sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell received preferential treatment at a
federal prison camp in Texas says she was not motivated by politics.
Instead,
“this was about common human decency and doing what’s right for all
inmates,” Noella Turnage, a nurse who worked at Federal Prison Camp
Bryan since 2019 until she was fired last week, told NBC News on Monday.
She
added that when even one inmate is wrongly retaliated against, “and
influence gets another one protected, somebody had to say something.”
Maxwell’s
time at FPC Bryan, an all-women’s minimum-security facility, has come
under scrutiny since her transfer there in early August from a
low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida. Her relationship with the
late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has become a focal point as
Democrats and some Republicans renew their push to compel the Justice
Department to make all investigative files surrounding Epstein’s case
public.
Turnage said she was not driven by
public outrage surrounding Epstein, Maxwell or any other public figures,
but acted because she felt “failed by the institution” when colleagues
and others have spoken out about alleged leadership misconduct and
retaliation.
Maxwell
is serving 20 years in prison for conspiring with Epstein to sexually
abuse minors over the course of a decade. Blanche interviewed Maxwell in
Tallahassee, Fl., on July 24 and 25. Days after the interview, Maxwell
was transferred from a low-security federal prison in Florida to an
all-women minimum-security prison northeast of Houston called Federal
Prison Camp Bryan. The Department of Justice did not respond to a
request for comment for this story.
I'd
hoped to get some Justice Dept news in here today. There's not room.
We will move over to the economy, however. Yes, Donald Cump continues
to destroy the economy.
Zoe Schneeweiss (BLOOMBERG NEWS) reports:
Initial
applications for US jobless benefits totaled 232,000 in the week ended
Oct. 18, according to the Labor Department website showing historical
data for claims.
Continuing claims, a proxy for
the number of people receiving benefits, came in at 1.957 million, up
slightly from 1.947 million in the prior week. For initial claims,
weekly data for the previous three weeks weren’t made available.
The
department did not release its weekly jobless claims report during the
government shutdown, which ended last week, but it has published data on
its website through other channels.
Unadjusted
state-level claims data were available for download throughout the
shutdown. Economists have used those state figures along with
pre-released seasonal adjustment factors to estimate weekly claims.
The
seasonally-adjusted initial claims figure was accessed through an
online database, and the recently posted figure is roughly in line with
prior estimates.
This as
MONEY TALK NEWS notes, "American
families will pay an average of $2,700 more annually due to President
Trump's new tariff policies. Research shows consumers have different
tolerance levels for price increases depending on the product category
and how businesses explain the hikes." And
Trevor Jennewine (THE MOTLEY FOOL) explains:
The
S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) stumbled out of the gate in November,
historically the strongest month of the year for the U.S. stock market.
The index has declined 1.5% month to date as investors have received bad
news about the economy and become increasingly concerned by elevated
valuations, particularly where artificial intelligence stocks are
concerned.
Indeed, the S&P 500 recently flashed a warning signal seen just once in the last 25 years. Here's what you should know.
Trump
Media & Technology Group, the social media and crypto company, is
trading at all-time lows as Bitcoin and other tokens keep plunging.
The
stock, known by its ticker DJT, was down 0.9% at $10.76 in afternoon
trading Tuesday. Earlier, it hit an intraday low of $10.32—the lowest
price since DJT’s predecessor company announced in October 2021 it had
entered a merger agreement to take Trump’s social networking company
public.
President Donald Trump indirectly owns
nearly 115 million shares of DJT that are held in a revocable trust in
the name of son Don Jr. The son sits on the Trump Media’s board. The
holdings make the Trump family the company’s largest shareholder.
DJT stock has fallen nearly 70% this year and 34.6% in the past month.
The
little con artist can afford to pay E Jean Carroll because he doesn't
have the cash on hand and probably never will. He wanted to make a
little money on bonds but
Ja'han Jones (MS NOW) explains that required breaking rules and ethical guidelines:
Trump
— who waged a yearslong conspiracy-driven campaign against former
President Joe Biden, accusing him of using the presidency to enrich
himself and his family — claimed prior to his inauguration that his
business ventures would be controlled by his children when he returned
to the White House. The White House did not immediately respond to
Reuters’ request for comment on Saturday. The administration has said
before that Trump has continued to file mandatory disclosures about his
investments but that neither he nor his family has a role in running the
portfolio, which is managed by a third-party financial institution.
But
the suggestion that the president is staying out of his family’s
business affairs has been contradicted by Trump Organization statements
to foreign governments and by Eric Trump himself.
The
timeline for these investments (late August into early October) shows
Trump, through his private investments, positioned to profit from
decisions in his role as president, all while his administration was
contributing to unemployment through government layoffs and federal cuts
and fueling an affordability crisis via the president’s ongoing
tariffs.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:
McMahon previously admitted to Warren that she did not have the authority to dismantle the Department of Education
Washington, D.C. - Today, in reaction to news that
Secretary McMahon plans to further dismantle the Department of Education
by moving multiple parts of the agency to other federal departments,
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released the following
statement:
“The Trump administration is waging an illegal assault on public
school kids. Instead of working to lower costs for Americans, the Trump
administration is hellbent on punishing underserved students.
“Linda McMahon is a liar who knows she doesn’t have the power to
single-handedly dismantle the Department of Education – she admitted
that to me herself. Only Congress has the authority to close the
Education Department, and I will not let that happen on my watch.”
Senator Warren has led the fight to make our higher education system
more affordable, cancel student loan debt, and hold student loan
servicers accountable for incompetence and malfeasance. She launched the
Save Our Schools campaign in a coordinated effort to fight back against President Trump’s attempts to abolish the Department of Education:
-
On November 17, 2025, Senator Warren led over 40 of her colleagues in a letter urging
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Secretary of the Treasury
Scott Bessent to immediately end any plans to sell or transfer the
federal student loan portfolio to the private market.
-
On November 10, 2025, Senator Warren led her colleagues in a letter urging
the Trump administration to use the IRS’s existing legal authorities to
stop the looming “tax bomb” facing borrowers who obtain income-driven
repayment (IDR) discharges of their student loan debt.
-
On October 15, 2025, Senator Warren and Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) led 70 members of Congress
in a letter calling on the Trump administration to address the ongoing
and unprecedented wave of student loan delinquencies and defaults, which
threatens the financial stability of millions of people and could have
disastrous effects on the American economy.
-
On September 19, 2025, following a push by Senator Warren and nine
other senators, the Acting Inspector General of the U.S. Department of
Education agreed to open an investigation
into DOGE’s infiltration of internal systems, including the scope of
its access to sensitive student loan borrower information and its impact
on borrowers’ rights and privacy.
-
On August 26, 2025, Senator Warren led colleagues
in sending a follow-up letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon
condemning the Department of Education for deliberately hiding the
“Submit a Complaint” button on the Office of Federal Student Aid’s
website, firing employees responsible for providing customer service to
borrowers and families and misleading Congress about the scope of these
firings.
-
On August 7, 2025, Senator Warren publicly released
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s response to the senator’s 60+
questions and pressed for additional information. Senator Warren
announced that she would refer certain matters where the Department has
proved uncooperative to the Government Accountability Office and the
Education Department’s Inspector General.
-
On August 4, 2025, Senator Warren led
eight Senators in pressing major private student loan lenders on their
plans to serve the incoming surge of borrowers who will be pushed to the
industry because of Republicans’ recently passed “Big, Beautiful Bill.”
-
On July 17, 2025, Senator Warren released a new 23-page report,
“Education At Risk: Frontline Impacts of Trump’s War on Students,”
highlighting warnings from 11 major national education and civil rights
organizations on the impact of the Trump Administration’s dismantling of
the Department of Education (ED), slashing support to millions of
American students, primary and secondary school teachers,
administrators, parents, and student loan borrowers.
-
On July 15, 2025, Senators Warren and Sanders, along with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, sent a letter
to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, urging her to reverse the
interest hike on student loan borrowers in the SAVE forbearance.
-
On July 14, 2025, Senator Warren joined
a letter to the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ
Vought, and Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, demanding that the
Department of Education stop blocking nearly $7 billion in funds for
K-12 schools, including for afterschool programs.
-
On July 3, 2025, Senator Warren led
her colleagues in submitting an amicus brief for NAACP v. US, arguing
to the United States District Court District of Maryland that President
Trump’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education violate
separation of powers and lack constitutional authority.
-
On June 10, 2025, Senator Warren met
with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and delivered over 1,000
letters to McMahon that the senator had received from people in all 50
states who were worried about the Secretary’s efforts to dismantle the
Department of Education.
-
On June 9, 2025, Senator Warren led her colleagues in pushing
the Acting Inspector General of the Department of Education to open an
investigation into new information obtained by her office, revealing
that DOGE may have gained access to two FSA internal systems, in
addition to sensitive borrower data.
-
On May 20, 2025, Senator Warren and 27 other senators pushed for full funding for the Office of Federal Student Aid.
-
On May 14, 2025, Senator Warren led a Senate forum
entitled “Stealing the American Dream: How Trump and Republicans Are
Raising Education Costs for Families,” highlighting the consequences of
Secretary Linda McMahon’s reckless dismantling of the Department of
Education and President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” for working- and
middle-class students and borrowers.
-
On May 13, 2025, Senator Warren agreed
to meet with Education Secretary Linda McMahon and promised to bring
questions and stories from Americans across the country to highlight how
the Trump administration’s attacks on education are hurting American
families.
-
On May 6, 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren highlighted
the consequences of President Trump and Secretary Linda McMahon’s
reckless dismantling of the Department of Education for American
families in a Senate forum.
-
On April 24, 2025, Senator Warren launched a new investigation
into the harms of President Trump’s attacks on the Department of
Education, seeking information on the impact of the Trump
administration’s actions from the members of twelve leading
organizations representing schools, parents, teachers, students,
borrowers, and researchers.
-
On April 10, 2025, following a request
led by Senator Warren, the Department of Education’s Acting Inspector
General agreed to open an investigation into the Trump administration’s
attempts to dismantle the Department of Education.
-
On April 2, 2025, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Mazie Hirono, along with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, sent a letter
to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon regarding the Department of
Government Efficiency’s proposed plan to replace the Department of
Education’s federal student aid call centers with generative artificial
intelligence chatbots.
###
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