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snopes_feed) wrote2025-07-23 01:30 am
dailykos_feed) wrote2025-07-23 12:01 amDon't look now, but Ghislaine Maxwell's time in federal prison for aiding and abetting accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein could be cut short.
In an effort to distract from the fact that President Donald Trump is refusing to release all of the files the government possesses about Epstein, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the Department of Justice to speak with his known accomplice Maxwell to see if she has any information that implicates third parties, as Epstein died by suicide while in custody before going to trial.
Maxwell has a whole lot to gain in this situation.
The former British socialite is currently serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for helping Epstein carry out “heinous crimes against children,” as the Department of Justice said in 2022 when she was sentenced for “conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport minors to participate in illegal sex acts, transporting a minor to participate in illegal sex acts, sex trafficking conspiracy, and sex trafficking of a minor.”
That means Trump—who wished Maxwell "well" in 2020 after she was arrested for her role in Epstein's sex-trafficking schemes—has the power to pardon her and set her free.
And that gives Maxwell motive to tell federal prosecutors lies that could exculpate Trump from Epstein's sordid deeds.
Related | White House offers new shiny objects to distract from Epstein scandal
"The Epstein files don’t have an incentive to lie for a coverup. A convicted sex trafficker in search of a pardon does," New York University law professor Ryan Goodman wrote in a post on X. "The dead giveaway: DOJ can simply release all the Epstein files, but refuses."
Even more fishy is the fact that the person who will meet with Maxwell to interview her is Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche—who served as Trump's defense attorney during his numerous federal indictments that have now been corruptly dismissed.
"Justice demands courage. For the first time, the Department of Justice is reaching out to Ghislaine Maxwell to ask: what do you know?" Blanche wrote in a post on X. "At @AGPamBondi’s direction, I’ve contacted her counsel. I intend to meet with her soon. No one is above the law—and no lead is off-limits."
The fact that Trump's former criminal defense attorney is meeting with Maxwell should also give everyone pause, as Blanche would likely put Trump's best interests over the truth.
"Any meeting between Blanche, DOJ, or any other Trump representative, on the one hand, and Ghislaine Maxwell and her attorneys or other representatives, on the other, should be audiovisually recorded. Full stop," George Conway, a lawyer and frequent Trump critic, wrote in a post on X, adding that the situation "reeks of corruption."
Even if Maxwell isn’t pardoned, the Trump administration’s announcement that it will interview her is just another attempt to distract the public from the fact that the government is not releasing more information about the Epstein case. It feeds into speculation that Trump—who was friends with Epstein and took trips with the accused sex trafficker on multiple occasions—is worried about being implicated by the documents.
Already, Bondi has sought to change the subject from the Epstein files by releasing hundreds of thousands of documents relating to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, as well as the probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails.
In an Oval Office appearance, Trump also said he is going to go after former President Barack Obama for “treason” over the Russia investigation—an insane and authoritarian declaration, as even Trump’s own Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw a Senate investigation that found that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election.
But the biggest sign yet that Trump is worried about what’s contained in the Epstein files is that he is now calling the scandal the “Epstein hoax”—his favorite way to claim that something that will make him look bad is fake.
Ultimately, the Epstein files scandal is not going away. And how Trump and his cronies handle Maxwell could fuel the flames even further.
dailykos_feed) wrote2025-07-22 08:22 pmA daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know.
ICE is paying retirees big bucks to come back and terrorize immigrants
It takes a heartless person and a lot of money to do this awful job.
Senate candidate shows Democrats how to run on Trump’s Epstein scandal
Sometimes you just have to be direct.
White House offers new shiny objects to distract from Epstein scandal
From assassination files to Hillary Clinton’s email investigation, Trump is willing to try anything.
Trump's tariffs are wrecking this key industry
Big Auto is losing billions.
Trump just can’t escape.
Top House Republican will never stop investigating Biden
Rep. James Comer is a dog with a bone when it comes to Biden.
‘Border czar’ makes ridiculous excuse for ICE goons acting like Nazis
Sure, rhetoric is the real problem here.
Trump team fails to get lax sentence for cop involved in Breonna Taylor raid
For once, justice is (kind of) served.
Here’s how Trump wants to weaponize the DOJ next
When in doubt, use a conspiracy theory.
FEMA official quits after Trump cuts hobble Texas flood response
Cuts to federal agencies are doing more and more damage.
thebloggess_feed) wrote2025-07-23 01:24 amlawyersgunsmoneyblog_feed) wrote2025-07-23 12:29 am
The Trump administration’s attempt to quite literally whitewash American history at the National Parks is beyond depressing. But it does show what happens in America when the nation decides to do something about the problems of Black people for 5 seconds, such as suggesting that their lives matter or perhaps that a Black person was president.
According to internal documents reviewed by The New York Times, employees of the National Park Service have flagged descriptions and displays at scores of parks and historic sites for review in connection with President Trump’s directive to remove or cover up materials that “inappropriately disparage Americans.”
In an executive order in March, the president instructed the Park Service to review plaques, films and other materials presented to visitors at 433 sites around the country, with the aim of ensuring they emphasize the “progress of the American people” and the “grandeur of the American landscape.”
Employees had until last week to flag materials that could be changed or deleted, and the Trump administration said it would remove all “inappropriate” content by Sept. 17, according to the internal agency documents. The public also has been asked to submit potential changes.
In response, a coalition of librarians, historians and others organized through the University of Minnesota has launched a campaign called “Save Our Signs.” It is asking the public to take photos of existing content at national parks and upload it. The group is using those images to build a public archive before any materials may be altered. So far, it has more than 800 submissions.
What is being reviewed?
At Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which straddles Tennessee and North Carolina, park officials have also flagged for review a plaque about the harm that air pollution poses to plants and animals. The plaque notes that “fossil fuel-fired power plants, motor vehicles and industry are the primary sources of these pollutants.”
The bulk of the content identified for review in the internal documents addresses the struggle for equality of Black Americans, from slavery to the civil rights movement.
“Text addresses slavery as the primary cause of the American Civil War,” one Park Service official noted of a plaque at the Stones River National Battlefield in Tennessee, the site of one of the bloodiest conflicts of the Civil War.
“This is both historically correct and legislatively mandated, but we ask for further review to confirm it is aligned” with the executive order, the official wrote.
At Cane River Creole National Historical Park in Louisiana, a park official noted an exhibit about slaves who tried to escape but were captured. The official was concerned because the exhibit identified the enslavers by name and mentioned that returned slaves were publicly whipped.
Rolonda Teal, an anthropologist who has studied the Cane River park, said that Congress established it in 1994 to preserve the history of two plantations that housed hundreds of slaves for over 200 years.
“If you don’t talk about the names of the slaves, the names of the enslavers, the whipping of the slaves, then you’re only telling white history in America,” Dr. Teal said.
“Why would you visit a plantation if you don’t want to hear the whole story, and how could it be a plantation if there weren’t slaves?” she added. “So that’s the ridiculousness of it all.”
Well, what if you think that Gone with the Wind is a documentary?
One other note here–it’s clear from the story that plenty of park employees are cooperating with Trump and I am engaging in speculation here….but the bane of the NPS for years–and this is something most people are not comfortable talking about publicly–is the preferential hiring of veterans, which is a problem not because of their politics, but because they are often far less competent and prepared for these jobs than, say, someone with actual training in public history, for example. Internally, other NPS people know this is a huge problem in the agency, but who will go after veterans? Anyway, dollars to donuts that is where the snitches are.
The post Whitewashing American History appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.
snopes_feed) wrote2025-07-22 11:38 pmlawyersgunsmoneyblog_feed) wrote2025-07-22 11:30 pm
But Steve Bannon says the story is over, and when has he ever made an argument in bad faith?
The House has largely come to a halt as Republican leaders struggle to assuage a group of irate lawmakers who are demanding that the Justice Department release files related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The House will adjourn Wednesday, a day earlier than expected, for its five-week recess from Washington after Republicans blocked most legislation from reaching the chamber floor for a vote this week. That means any move to release the files won’t come to the floor until at least September, if ever.
The move by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) will effectively avoid dealing with an issue — for now — that is causing worry and anger among rank-and-file Republicans after a decision by President Donald Trump’s Justice Department not to release the files, which stirred a furious backlash among the MAGA base — and from lawmakers’ GOP constituents. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), a key Trump ally who has criticized the administration on this issue, said “the call volume on Epstein” to her congressional and district offices “has almost been 100 percent.”
I assume those callers thought they were calling the Wall Street Journal‘s offices?
As Josh Marshall says, the fact that both the executive and legislative branches are acting with increasing desperation to shut the story down it increasingly hard to reconcile with the idea that there’s nothing incriminating in the DOJ’s records:
Today we learn that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will be meeting with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell looking for the “real pedophile” and presumably coordinating stories. And just this morning while meeting with the President of the Philippines, President Trump told reporters his intelligence chief has now proven that Hillary Clinton and “Barack Hussein Obama” are guilty of “treason” and they “ought to take a look at that and stop talking about” the Epstein files.
It’s really not too much to say that just as the House has been shut down to avoid more Epstein cover-up votes, the executive branch is now more or less exclusively focused on trying to shut down the Epstein story: MLK assassination documents, a meeting with Maxwell, a new Hillary/Obama treason investigation. It’s all they’re doing.
I keep thinking some new thing will happen or people will lose interest. This weekend there was an emerging conventional wisdom in the Beltway publications that Trump had flipped the script with the Wall Street Journal article, something that never made much sense. But that clearly wasn’t the case and Trump himself forced it back to the top of news attention with his flurry of new diversions.
What can possibly be in those files?
It’s a very good question.
The post Republicans shut down the House to protect Trump from the Epstein Files appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.
dailykos_feed) wrote2025-07-22 11:30 pmA bipartisan group of lawmakers is reportedly demanding answers from right-wing billionaire Elon Musk after his AI chatbot, Grok, repeatedly parroted antisemitic hate speech on X, his social media site.
Led by Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, the lawmakers slammed Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, for failing to prevent Grok from spitting out hate speech, including Holocaust denial, praise for Adolf Hitler, and use of the antisemitic meme “every damn time,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by Axios.
“xAI’s failure to take reasonable measures to mitigate against its AI models from engaging in hate speech is reckless, unacceptable, and antisemitic,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, which they sent on Tuesday.
But the antisemitism scandal is only one of Grok’s many ugly episodes recently.
Just days after that firestorm erupted online, Grok rolled out two animated characters who pushed users into sexually explicit and violent conversations. One, a flirty anime woman named Ani, promised to make users’ lives “sexier.” The other, a red panda named Bad Rudi, insulted users with vulgar language and tried to recruit them into a gang.
According to NBC News, Bad Rudi said it wanted to bomb banks, spike a town’s water supply with hot sauce and glitter, spike baby formula with liquor, and kill billionaires, among other chaos. In other encounters, it reportedly claimed inspiration from a notorious Russian anarchist.
Musk brushed it off, saying, “Just wanted to do a soft launch to make sure things are stable and working well.”
Meanwhile, the backlash to Grok’s antisemitic speech has only intensified. Musk admitted earlier this month that Grok was “too eager to please and be manipulated,” and Grok’s X account claimed that xAI had since taken steps to prevent hate speech from making it onto X.
“We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts. Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X,” the chatbot’s account posted on July 8.
But that’s not reassuring to lawmakers. Their letter tells Musk to explain how Grok’s antisemitic responses made it past internal testing, and whether any red flags were raised before its latest updates were deployed.
So far, more than a dozen lawmakers have signed on, including Democratic Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Jon Ossoff of Georgia and Reps. Dan Goldman of New York and Chris Smith, a Republican. The timing of the letter is striking: It lands just as xAI secured a Pentagon contract worth up to $200 million.
It also hits as Musk announces plans to develop a kid-friendly version of Grok, after the adult version went so well. And while Musk has floated the idea of being done with the federal government—especially after his public falling-out with President Donald Trump and sliding Tesla sales—he’s clearly not out of the political arena.
Lawmakers are deep in debates over how to regulate AI. But Grok’s behavior, paired with Musk’s willingness to personally steer how his chatbot answers controversial questions, is adding urgency—and ethical red flags—to the conversation.
Musk may dream of building an empire on his own terms. But for now, the federal government isn’t done with him. And with Grok’s growing list of scandals, it looks like they have plenty of reasons not to be.
dailykos_feed) wrote2025-07-22 11:25 pmGOP Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri appeared on CNN with Kasie Hunt Tuesday, and it was certainly something to behold.
When asked if he would consider using his position as House Ways and Means Committee chair to investigate Jeffrey Epstein, Smith pretended like the very idea was absurd.
“Well, you may use subpoena powers at any point,” he replied. “That is not a common thing that I have utilized within the Ways and Means Committee. But if I felt like that it was a priority for Americans, then of course.”
“But you did use subpoena power with Hunter Biden,” Hunt said.
“Exactly. We have the authority to use it, but that is the only time that I have used it,” he responded. “Epstein is not the priority of the everyday American who's working 9 to 5, just trying to put food on their table, clothes on their backs, and gasoline in their cars.”
A couple of years ago, Smith used that same subpoena power in one of the many dead ends in the GOP’s quixotic search for proof of a Biden crime family—a crusade that Republicans like House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer refuse to abandon.
Congressional Republicans are scrambling to shut down for summer break, dancing around questions about why—after years of vowing to release the Epstein files—they have suddenly decided it’s “not a priority.”
dailykos_feed) wrote2025-07-22 10:30 pmThe Trump administration has found a new way to harass transgender military members.
A newly surfaced Defense Department memo, which 404 Media unearthed via Freedom of Information Act request, revealed that taxpayer dollars are being used to monitor military bathrooms out of fear that transgender people are using the facilities.
The memo details the department’s efforts to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which he signed on Day 1 of his second term.
Related | How the military is dealing with Hegseth's order to remove transgender troops
The department assured the Office of Personnel Management that it’s working to “monitor intimate spaces” to comply with the order and that it “updated signage to reflect biological sex, removing any references to gender identity.”
The GOP has engaged in anti-transgender bigotry under the guise of protecting women, but the disclosure of the memo and the Pentagon’s bathroom monitoring operations come as congressional Republicans and Trump are stonewalling on disclosures about Jeffrey Epstein, an alleged sex trafficker who abused underage women.
The most visible manifestation of the right’s transphobia has been the decision to ban transgender people from serving in the military. Under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Trump’s orders, the military is now working to withdraw transgender troops, even after being deployed.
Another notable manifestation was House Speaker Mike Johnson's November decision to segregate Capitol Hill bathrooms by “biological sex,” a blatant attack on Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, who is the first openly trans person to serve in Congress.
“I just don't understand why bathrooms are top of mind for her, why [GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina] is thinking about where future members are going to piss and shit,” Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida said at the time.
Johnson’s decision led to an incident in January where GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado joined Mace in investigating a purported sighting of “a guy” in the Capitol Hill women’s bathroom. It was a false alarm, leading to mockery across the country.
Republicans are obsessed with bathroom behavior, which Democrats rightfully labeled “weird” during the 2024 election. But in Trump’s America, taxpayers are now financing this bizarre and bigoted bathroom monitoring.
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scans_daily2025-07-22 05:50 pmmaru_feed) wrote2025-07-22 11:00 pmbbcnewsworld_feed) wrote2025-07-22 10:19 pmicanhascheezburger_feed) wrote2025-07-22 03:00 pmWhat if we told you that dinosaurs never really went extinct… they just shrunk, got fluffier, and moved into your living room? That's right, your cat might be less house pet and more meowsaurus rex than you think. With their stealthy stalks, dramatic silhouettes, and occasional wild zoomies that echo prehistoric stampedes, it's no wonder so many cats are giving full dino vibes.
From loafing like a tiny triceratops to posing like a fierce feline velociraptor surveying its domain, these cats are clearly the reincarnations of ancient beasts, just with more attitude and slightly better grooming. Their tails? Perfectly balanced, like a raptor's. Their gaze? Pure predator. Their claws? Let's just say they're ready for any Jurassic Bark crossover.
Whether they're prowling through the grass like jungle lords or just perching weirdly on furniture with alarming power, these kitties are here to prove one thing: dinosaurs never left… they just learned how to purr.
Scroll down for some prehisstoric proof that your cuddly companion might actually be a couch-bound dino in disguise.
Fluff. Chaos. Drama! Our weekly cat newsletter has it all - subscribe here.
icanhascheezburger_feed) wrote2025-07-22 02:00 pmWork emails are like that one office cat who never stops knocking things off your desk, relentless and impossible to ignore. They pile up faster than you can say "inbox zero," and reading them feels like chasing a laser pointer that keeps darting just out of reach. You think you're finally caught up, but nope. More emails flood in like an unstoppable furball frenzy. Opening one promises clarity but usually delivers a tangled mess of jargon and vague demands that make you want to hide under your desk.
Writing emails is no picnic either. Trying to craft the perfect message requires the patience of a saint or a cat whisperer trying to reason with a stubborn feline. You carefully type your polite note, only for autocorrect to sabotage you with hilarious (and embarrassing) mistakes. Email threads turn into a chaotic game of cat and mouse, with surprise replies popping up at the worst possible times, like paws smashing your keyboard just to mess with you.
At the end of the day, surviving the work email jungle is no small feat. It's a daily dance between dodging nonsense, decoding cryptic messages, and resisting the urge to reply all with a dramatic meow. But hey, if cats can nap through chaos, so can we… right after we answer just one more message.
Fluff. Chaos. Drama! Our weekly cat newsletter has it all - subscribe here.
snopes_feed) wrote2025-07-22 10:49 pmsnopes_feed) wrote2025-07-22 10:46 pmsnopes_feed) wrote2025-07-22 10:38 pm