AIPAC Hits Back at Reports It Dropped Pro-Famine MAGA Representative

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee was forced to clarify that it had not actually un-endorsed Florida Representative Randy Fine for his grotesque statements wishing starvation on Palestinians.

AIPAC responded Tuesday to a Times of Israel report claiming that the group appeared to have “dropped” its endorsement of Fine, after he went missing from the group’s database of pro-Israel candidates.

“This reporting is based on an unsourced speculative piece,” AIPAC wrote in a statement on X. “We will be endorsing candidates for the 2026 election throughout the cycle. Current endorsees for 2026 so far are listed on the AIPAC-PAC website.

“As Rep. Fine was elected only in April, consideration of his endorsement will take place later in the cycle, as is the case with many other freshmen members of Congress,” the statement continued.

It turns out that it was simply wishful thinking to believe that the pro-Israel action group would ever draw the line at cheerleading famine—or advocating for violence against protesters.

But AIPAC’s response doesn’t quite add up. It’s not clear why the group would choose only to list endorsees for 2026, and why Fine wouldn’t be grandfathered in after earning the group’s endorsement just four months ago. After all, the group did pour more than $126,000 into Fine’s campaign, according to FEC filings. Now they say they need more time to decide?

Fine’s absence on AIPAC’s list was first observed by Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for Justice Democrats, a political action group working to see progressive Democrats elected to office.

Donald Trump claims that his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein ended after the pedophilic sex trafficker “stole” several of the president’s underage employees.

Speaking with reporters on Air Force One Tuesday, Trump said that he had confronted Epstein about hiring away underage girls on his payroll at Mar-a-Lago.

“Epstein has a certain reputation obviously. I’m just curious, were some of the workers that were taken from you, were some of them young women?” asked one reporter.

“Well, I don’t want to say, but everyone knows the people that were taken, and the concept of taking people that work for me is bad. But that story has been pretty well out there, and the answer is yes, they were,” Trump said. “People were taken out of the spa.

“Hired, by him, in other words—gone,” Trump continued, referring to Epstein. “Other people would come and complain, ‘This guy is taking people from the spa.’ I didn’t know that. And then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, ‘Listen, we don’t want you taking our people.’ Whether it was spa or not spa, I don’t want him taking people.

“And he was fine, and then not too long after that he did it again and I said, ‘Out of here,’” he added.

“Did one of the stolen persons—did that include Virginia Giuffre?” asked another reporter, referring to one of Epstein’s earliest and most prominent accusers.

“Um, I don’t know. I think she worked at the spa,” Trump said. “I think so. I think that was one of the people. He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know. None whatsoever.”

The anecdote partially corroborates Giuffre’s account of being abducted in 2000 by Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago, where she worked at the time as a pool attendant. But Trump continued to maintain ties to Epstein for years after the alleged confrontation.

In a 2002 New York magazine profile of Epstein, Trump said he had known Epstein for 15 years and referred to him as a “terrific guy.”

“It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump said at the time.

It wasn’t until 2004 that the longtime friends would fall out over a Palm Beach real estate deal.

Giuffre committed suicide in April.

Trump has previously claimed he cut off contact with Epstein after the financier was convicted in 2009 for soliciting underage prostitutes, referring to Epstein as a “creep.” But the pair of Manhattan socialites shared a long and apparently cozy history together.

Prior to his death, Epstein described himself as one of Trump’s “closest friends.” The duo were named and photographed together on several occassions—including at Trump’s second wedding. Trump reportedly flew on Epstein’s jets between Palm Beach and New York at least seven times, and the first time that Trump slept with his now-wife Melania was reportedly aboard Epstein’s plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express.”

Earlier this month, the former president and chief operating officer of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, Jack O’Donnell, revealed that he had caught Trump and Epstein in the late 1980s shepherding underage girls into the establishment.

“They were pretty good buddies,” O’Donnell told CNN, recalling that he warned Trump against spending more time with Epstein.

This story has been updated.

Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted co-conspirator of notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, explicitly appealed to President Donald Trump for clemency on Tuesday.

In a response to the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena to force Maxwell to testify on August 11, her attorney David Oscar Markus enumerated certain conditions for her deposition. Or, he wrote, Maxwell could be given clemency.

Markus’s letter, posted to X, says, “if Ms. Maxwell were to receive clemency, she would be willing—and eager—to testify openly and honestly, in public, before Congress in Washington, D.C.” Markus said Maxwell would welcome the opportunity to “share the truth” and address purported “misconceptions and misstatements that have plagued this case from the beginning.”

In other words, Maxwell has offered to give our TV president the televised spectacle of his dreams, testifying in public if he simply waves away at least part of her sentence.

The suggestion comes as Trump’s allies increasingly regard Maxwell, currently serving a 20-year sentence for helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls, as a potential means for the administration to escape the persistent scandal surrounding his past ties to, and lack of transparency about, Epstein’s case.

Trump, for his part, has conspicuously avoided answering whether he’s considered granting Maxwell a pardon or clemency, while asserting that he’s “allowed” to do so.

Meanwhile, Trump’s deputy attorney general last week met behind closed doors with Maxwell twice, leading many critics and Democratic lawmakers to observe the plain potential for corruption in such sit-downs.

Markus’s letter mentioned clemency as an alternative to a set of three conditions he asked the Oversight Committee to grant, lest Maxwell invoke the Fifth Amendment and decline to testify: first, granting her immunity; second, sharing its questions in advance; and third, having her appear only after the resolution of two pending attempts at post-conviction relief (these being a Supreme Court petition and a forthcoming writ of habeas corpus).

Hovering over all of this are obvious concerns about Maxwell’s credibility. While House Speaker Mike Johnson said he supported the committee’s decision to subpoena, he also, of all people, sensibly observed: “Could she be counted on to tell the truth? Is she a credible witness? I mean, this is a person who’s been sentenced to many, many years in prison for terrible, unspeakable, conspiratorial acts, and acts against innocent young people. I mean, can we trust what she’s going to say?”

America’s business class is openly admitting to using the president’s tariffs as “great cover” for its rising prices.

A report published Tuesday by the Groundwork Collaborative found that executives were, in their own words, taking advantage of Donald Trump’s unstable tariff policies to jack up the price tags on consumer goods. Analyzing earnings calls from major corporations in the first half of 2025, Groundwork found executives admitted that they intended to raise costs even if they were not affected by the administration’s economic agenda.

The CEO of auto parts manufacturer Holley, Matthew Stevenson, reportedly said that the marketplace had showcased “price increases well in excess of what we put out into the market.” He noted that “we’ve seen increases as high as 30 percent or more on some categories from some competitors.”

Aaron Jagdfeld, the CEO of generator manufacturer Generac Power Systems, claimed on an earnings call that “even if we have metals that weren’t impacted directly by tariffs, the indirect effect of tariffs is that it gives steel producers and the mills and other fabricators ... great cover for increased pricing in some cases.”

In their first quarter, the world’s largest wholesale distributor of pool supplies, POOLCORP, reported to their shareholders that they “expect that currently announced tariffs will positively impact net sales by approximately 1 [percent] based on vendor price increases to-date.”

Thomas Robertson, the CFO of footwear company Rocky Brands, said that “regardless” of whether Trump relaxed his tariffs on China, his company intended to keep its high prices.

“We certainly welcome a reduction in the Chinese tariffs, but we’ll be announcing a price increase here regardless of any changes of the Chinese tariffs over the next week or two to go into effect in June,” Robertson said, according to the Groundwork Collaborative.

In the end, it will be America that pays the price for Trump’s chaotic trade blitz. Earlier this month, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said that the central bank likely would have lowered its key interest rate if Trump hadn’t announced his tariff plan. Trump’s tariffs are slated to go into effect for more than 80 countries on August 1.

But at least 71 percent of consumer goods in the U.S. are already grappling with the new trade policy, according to a report published Monday by the Tax Foundation that suggested that everything from manufacturing to food imports could be squeezed by Trump’s agenda.

Public perception of Israel has plummeted to a new low in the United States, particularly among Democrats. And yet the party continues to cut the country a blank check to carry out its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, lagging sorely behind its voter base on the issue.

A new poll from Gallup, conducted in July, shows that only 32 percent of Americans approve of Israel’s “military action taken in Gaza,” down 10 percentage points since last September. Among Democrats, only 8 percent support Israel’s actions, the lowest approval rating to date. Compare that to 25 percent of independents and a robust 71 percent of Republicans.

The poll also saw Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receive a negative rating from the majority of Americans for the first time since 1997, with only 29 percent of the country viewing him positively.

These numbers reflect a new reality in U.S.-Israel relations, and the Democratic Party must act accordingly if it wants to be successful. As New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani showed, mindless capitulation to Israel is no longer a prerequisite for Democratic voters. If party leadership was actually in touch with its base, it’d be baking aid to Gaza and funding cuts to the Israeli military into the foundation of its campaigns. Only time will tell if they’ll wake up and capitalize.