Why Is Ghislaine Maxwell Being Transferred to a Nicer Prison?

Ghislaine Maxwell has been moved to a minimum-security prison amid speculations that Donald Trump might pressure the Epstein co-conspirator to clear his name.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons confirmed that Maxwell had been moved to the Federal Prison Camp Bryan, a women-only, minimum-security prison in Bryan, Texas. She had previously been held at FCI Tallashassee, a low-security facility in Florida.

Just 24 hours earlier, a Trump administration official told CNN that the government had no such plans to go easy on Maxwell. “No leniency is being given or discussed. That’s just false,” the official said. “The president himself has said that clemency for Maxwell is not something he is even thinking about at this time.”

Maxwell’s sudden move arrives amid swirling rumors that the president may try to offer her a presidential pardon in exchange for helping him disperse the heightened scrutiny over his numerous mentions in the Epstein files, which the government had coincidentally decided not to release.

The family of Virginia Giuffre, the former Trump employee who claimed she was recruited by Maxwell at 16 to travel with the convicted sex offender, previously warned against giving Maxwell leniency and blasted Maxwell’s favorable treatment in a Friday statement. 

It is with horror and outrage that we object to the preferential treatment convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has received. Ghislaine Maxwell is a sexual predator who physically assaulted minor children on multiple occasions, and she should never be shown any leniency. Yet, without any notification to the Maxwell victims, the government overnight has moved Maxwell to a minimum security luxury prison in Texas. This is the justice system failing victims right before our eyes.  The American public should be enraged by the preferential treatment being given to a pedophile and a criminally charged child sex offender. The Trump administration should not credit a word Maxwell says, as the government itself sought charges against Maxwell for being a serial liar. This move smacks of a cover up. The victims deserve better.

Earlier this week, the president claimed that Epstein “stole” Giuffre, sparking widespread outrage and inviting even more questions about whether he had been aware of his old friend’s alleged sex trafficking.

Other high-profile inmates at the Maxwell’s new digs in the Lone Star State include fake-blood extractor Elizabeth Holmes and Jen Shah of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City infamy.

Donald Trump has reportedly ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned closer to Russia after escalating a war of words with former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

The president posted on Truth Social on Friday, saying, “I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.”

Trump and Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, have been sparring online since Trump shortened his deadline for Russia to reach a ceasefire with Ukraine, lest the country incur his famous tariffs. Medvedev wrote on Monday that “each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war” with the U.S.

Trump fired back, telling the chairman to “watch his words.” Then Medvedev responded, warning Trump about the “fabled ‘Dead Hand,’” Russia’s secretive nuclear missile system, set to fire automatically if Moscow’s leadership is taken out.

Now Trump has responded by sending nuclear submarines—which have the capacity to launch nuclear weapons but do not necessarily carry them—to the “appropriate regions.”

Known for his hawkishness, Medvedev is generally regarded as nothing more than a “social-media attack dog” by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his circle, according to The New York Times. But luckily for Medvedev, we have a social media president. If only he wasn’t armed with the nuclear codes.

The last time America’s job numbers were this bad—besides the pandemic—was during the Great Recession.

Revisions to the last three months of job reports have moved the three-month growth average to 35,000, a lag that hasn’t emerged since 2010, and which some economists have said could indicate a recession is on the horizon.

“The labor market is much weaker than originally reported the last two months. While payrolls grew 73k in July, May and June data were revised down a total of 258k to 19k and 14k, respectively,” wrote Economic Policy Institute economist Elise Gould.

The health care and social assistance industries supplied practically all the new jobs over the last three months, while other sectors—including manufacturing, professional and business services, warehouse, retail, and government—lost jobs, according to the new figures.  

“Without health care, the last three months of payroll gains look like this: -53,000 in May, -45,000 in June, and -300 in July,” reported Bloomberg U.S. economy editor Matthew Boesler.

EPI chief economist Josh Bivens posited that if the U.S. enters a recession in the coming months, the “rapid softening/deterioration in the labor market” over the last three months will likely be marked in retrospect as the start of the country’s economic decline.

Trump administration officials blamed the abysmal numbers on “seasonal adjustment quirks,” though they failed to provide rationale on what made this season so different. In light of that, economists had their own ideas, pointing directly at Donald Trump’s trade policies.

“I’ve been calling this a ‘Frozen’ job market for awhile. Now I would call it a red flag,” wrote Navy Federal chief economist Heather Long. “Companies do not want to hire or invest with this much uncertainty about tariffs, inflation, etc.”

A federal judge offered a scathing rebuke of Donald Trump’s massive deportation scheme, while blocking the government’s attempts to remove immigrants who entered the country on parole.

U.S. District Court Judge Jia Cobb blocked three recent Department of Homeland Security actions that expanded the expedited removal of parolees, arguing that new policy changes were arbitrary and capricious and had exceeded its statutory authority.

In her 87-page ruling, Cobb slammed the Trump administration’s extrajudicial removals of immigrants who had been temporarily granted entry to the United States while awaiting admission application results, calling the case “a question of fair play.”

Plaintiffs who had followed the rules of their parole had suddenly been detained by immigration authorities. In some instances, their asylum cases had been abruptly dismissed, but in others they had not. Immigrants who had entered the country on parole were made subject to expedited removal, which provides minimal opportunities for immigrants to challenge their deportation.

“In a world of bad options, they played by the rules,” Cobb wrote. “Now, the Government has not only closed off those pathways for new arrivals but changed the game for parolees already here, restricting their ability to seek immigration relief and subjecting them to summary removal despite statutory law prohibiting the Executive Branch from doing so.”

“This case’s underlying question, then, asks whether parolees who escaped oppression will have the chance to plead their case within a system of rules. Or, alternatively, will they be summarily removed from a country that—as they are swept up at checkpoints and outside courtrooms, often by plainclothes officers without explanation or charges—may look to them more and more like the countries from which they tried to escape?”

Cobb determined that the parolees represented by the plaintiff nonprofit organizations, and the hundreds of thousands of immigrants like them who’d been paroled at a port of entry, faced “imminent, irreparable injury” that “outweighs any harm to the Government or the public from pressing pause.”

The government actions, including the termination of the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan parole program in March, would be stayed until a final verdict is reached.

The FBI went through the Epstein files and redacted Donald Trump’s name, according to the “FOIA Files” newsletter by reporter Jason Leopold, published in Bloomberg Friday.

It was previously reported (in a July letter to the Justice Department from Dick Durbin, the Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member) that, under Attorney General Pam Bondi’s direction, FBI Director Kash Patel ordered around 1,000 FBI personnel to sift through more than 100,000 Epstein-related documents throughout two weeks in March. Working on 24-hour shifts, the staff were reportedly instructed to “flag” records mentioning Trump, prompting Durbin to ask the DOJ: “What happened to the records mentioning President Trump once they were flagged?”

Leopold reveals that Trump’s name was blacked out—as were the names of dozens of other public figures. The files then went before a unit of FOIA officers, and “Trump’s name, along with other high-profile individuals, was blacked out because he was a private citizen when the federal investigation of Epstein was launched in 2006.”

The FOIA team reportedly cited an exemption protecting individuals from “clearly unwarranted invasions[s] of personal privacy” and another protecting “personal information in law enforcement records.” As Leopold notes, it’s not very rare that even prominent public figures’ names are redacted from records on privacy grounds.

The rest is history: Bondi reportedly notifying Trump that he appears in the files; the DOJ and FBI releasing the case-closed memo; the ensuing (and ongoing) public outcry; the congressional attempts to force the files’ release; and, now, speculations that Trump might corruptly wield the pardon power to pressure Ghislaine Maxwell, the currently imprisoned Epstein co-conspirator, to clear his name.

The bottom line here, Leopold writes, is that the chances of Trump’s name being unredacted anytime soon are slim to none. We can wait for all the people mentioned in the files to die. Or Trump could decide to voluntarily waive his privacy rights, allowing his name to be unredacted, which at present seems very unlikely.

One of Trump’s economic advisers grasped at excuses for Trump’s pitiful job growth numbers on CNN Friday morning, citing “seasonal adjustment quirks around teachers,” among other reasons.

July’s job numbers came in far lower than anticipated, and the administration issued revisions for stated job growth in May and June—reducing nearly 260,000 jobs off its last two reports. Stephen Miran, the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, attempted to explain the chasm between prediction and reality.

CNN reporter Kate Bolduan pointed out that this marks the weakest month of jobs growth since December 2020, during the pandemic. Bolduan asked Miran what he attributed those numbers to, if not “the uncertainty created, in part, by the president’s trade war.” Miran rattled off reasons.

“About 40 percent of that is due to seasonal adjustment quirks around teachers, some of it is due to declining foreign-born employment, even as we created more American-born employment, and that is going to net out in a way that you see ultimately reflected in the data like that,” Miran said.

“Seasonal quirks” could hardly be responsible for such a massive revision, given that they occur, predictably, every year.

“Finally, there’s the uncertainty: Don’t forget, we are in the midst of restructuring the global trading system in a way that hasn’t been done in decades,” Miran said, echoing Bolduan’s assumption that the trade war was to blame, in so many words. “The president is standing up for American workers and American firms for the first time in decades,” Miran argued, “and of course that was going to induce some uncertainty.”

Miran was later asked about an auto parts maker in Detroit that blamed Trump’s tariffs after being forced to shut down a warehouse and lay off 100 workers. “It’s always convenient to blame political changes when your business fails,” he replied curtly.

May through July has been the weakest three-month period for job growth since December 2020, reported independent journalist Jamie Dupree on X. The next-weakest period was in the aftermath of the 2008 recession.

If we must rely on Trump’s unwavering commitment to his stated tariff rates and deadlines, we may be heading back in that direction.

The White House just botched the distraction from its Epstein scandal.

A declassified report, intended to add fuel to a debunked theory that Hillary Clinton cooked up the Trump-Russia connection in 2016, actually reveals that a critical document in the plot was the likely invention of Russian spies.

The 29-page annex to the special counsel’s 2023 report includes alleged communications made by Clinton that several Republicans have claimed were intended to “smear” Trump with Russian collusion. But the documents outline that, despite having spent considerable time and resources to prove the connection was real, special counsel John H. Durham could not do so.

The foundational document includes an email, dated July 27, 2016, and allegedly sent by a Soros Open Society Foundations staffer, that claimed the Democratic presidential candidate had signed off on a proposal to tie Trump to Russia in an effort to distract from the fact that she sent and received emails during her time as secretary of state from a private server.

“HRC approved Julia’s idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections,” the email reads in part. “That should distract people from her own missing email, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level. The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue.”

Durham concluded that the purported communication was most likely manufactured.

Trump administration officials, however, were quick to hype the supposed findings of the release. FBI Director Kash Patel bragged on social media that the annex included “evidence that the Clinton campaign plotted to frame President Trump and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax,” and CIA director John Ratcliffe said in a statement that the documents proved there was “a coordinated plan to prevent and destroy Donald Trump’s presidency.”

Amid rising intraparty tensions over Trump’s apparent ties to the pedophile and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, the president has wildly alleged that investigations into his presidential campaign’s ties with Russian assets were the invention of President Barack Obama. Several of his allies have followed suit, calling for investigations as to whether the forty-fourth president committed “treason.”

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee met with the U.S.-backed aid organization that’s been setting death traps for starving Palestinians.

Huckabee said Friday morning that he and special envoy Steve Witkoff visited Gaza to “learn the truth” about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, whose aid sites have become the locus of mass casualty events on a near-daily basis.

The United Nations reported Thursday that at least 859 Palestinians have been killed while attempting to receive aid at GHF sites between May 27 and July 31, mostly by the Israeli military.

Huckabee seemed pleased after receiving a briefing from the Israeli military and meeting with GHF workers on the ground. “GHF delivers more than one million meals a day, an incredible feat!” Huckabee wrote in a post on X.

But GHF has now been implicated in hundreds of Palestinians deaths, as the widespread famine in Gaza worsens.

“Israeli forces are not only deliberately starving Palestinian civilians, but they are now gunning them down almost every day as they desperately seek food for their families,” said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. “US-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarized aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths.”

GHF’s funding sources are opaque, but Trump said Friday that Israel had agreed to match a $30 million donation, according to Reuters.

GHF has also been criticized as systematically ineffectual. Anthony Aguilar, a retired 25-year U.S. Army veteran and Green Beret who’d been working for the group as a security contractor described GHF as “an enterprise that has failed from the beginning.”

“It’s abhorrent. If it weren’t so tragic, it would be comedy. It’s not comedy, because it is absolutely tragic,” he told Mother Jones. Aguilar also alleged that his fellow contractors used nonlethal and lethal munitions in unauthorized ways, cheering as they fired blindly into a crowd of Palestinians.

For his part, Huckabee doesn’t seem all that interested in easing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza—seeing that it would require him to acknowledge Palestinians’ humanity. Earlier this week, Huckabee said that France’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state was “like letting the Nazis have a victory after World War II.”

And for all of Trump’s too-little too-late statements about the starvation in Gaza, he seems to feel about the same. After Canada issued a statement backing a two-state solution Thursday, Trump lashed out in a Truth Social post, threatening a prospective trade deal between the U.S. and Canada.

Laura Loomer is feeling emboldened, as the Trump White House this week further deepened the impression that it farms out personnel decisions to the far-right provocateur.

Loomer, who seems to enjoy ready access to the president’s ear, on Thursday unveiled a tip line to help fire more Trump officials. “Know an Obama-Biden holdover inside the Trump admin who needs to be exposed for their misdeeds?” she posted on X. “Contact the Loomered Tip Line.”

“I guess you could say that my tip line has come to serve as a form of therapy for Trump administration officials who want to expose their colleagues who should not be in the positions that they’re in,” Loomer told Politico. She also mentioned that she has “people in the West Wing,” as well as fans and informants “in pretty much every single agency within the federal government.”

Loomer promised that the string of staffing shake-ups for which she’s already responsible—including firings of federal prosecutors, National Security Council personnel, and top National Security Agency officials—is only the beginning. She told Politico she plans to purge “hundreds” more in her effort to address a “vetting crisis” supposedly plaguing the Trump administration, which she considers to be overrun with Democratic sleeper cells.

Strikingly, within the course of 24 hours earlier this week, Loomer played a direct role in two high-profile departures.

First, she ginned up a campaign against supposed “progressive leftist saboteur” Vinay Prasad, a top Food and Drug Administration official, who stepped down on Tuesday so as not to be “a distraction.” Loomer then targeted Jen Easterly, a newly announced distinguished chair at West Point and former Biden official (who also worked for the Bush II administration), as a “Biden holdover.” Not only did the secretary of the Army then order West Point to fire Easterly, but it also announced plans for the academy to adjust its hiring practices, seemingly obliging Loomer’s demands that it further weed out “moles.”

“So many scalps this week! Stacking them up” Loomer posted to X Wednesday, before adding, the following day, “I will continue my independent vetting operation to help protect President Trump, his administration and the American people from nefarious people.”

A federal judge ruled on Thursday against the Trump administration’s plans to end Temporary Protected Status for 60,000 immigrants from Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua, saying that the decision was partly motivated by the “discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population.”

TPS is a protected status that allows immigrants to live and work in the United States if conditions in their home countries are deemed unsafe. The administration has already ended the protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, Haitians, Ukrainians, and people from Afghanistan and Cameroon.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem put Nepalese, Honduran, and Nicaraguan immigrants next on the chopping block, claiming that the situations in their home countries no longer qualified them for the protections.

But Judge Trina L. Thompson disagreed, saying that the termination was too hasty without an “objective review of the country conditions,” like political violence in Honduras and the impact of recent hurricanes in Nicaragua, as reported by the AP.

“The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty, and the American dream. That is all Plaintiffs seek. Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names, and purify their blood,” Thompson said.

She also agreed with the plaintiffs’ lawyers that the decision to remove protections was part of upholding racist campaign promises rather than the product of any legitimate review. On the campaign trail, Trump echoed common talking points of the “great replacement” theory, a conspiratorial belief that white people will be replaced by people of color in the U.S.

“Color is neither a poison nor a crime,” Thompson added.

The protections will remain in place while the case proceeds. The next hearing is November 18.