Texas Democrats Trying to Stop Gerrymandering Face Bomb Threat

On Sunday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called on law enforcement to “hunt down” Democrats who left the state in protest against Republicans’ gerrymandering efforts. On Wednesday, those same Democrats were forced to evacuate the Illinois hotel they were staying in due to bomb threats.

Police responded to the threat around 7:15 a.m. on Wednesday, and evacuated 400 people, including the Texas Democrats, after a “thorough” scan of the building confirmed that there was no bomb present.

“I am aware of reports that threats were made against Texas elected officials in our state. Threats of violence will be investigated and those responsible will be held accountable,” Illinois Governor JB Pritzker wrote on X. “I have instructed @ILStatePolice to ensure we maintain public safety.”

Democrats left Texas over the weekend in an effort to deny quorum in the state House to prevent Republicans from moving forward with their shamelessly skewed redistricting plans, which are likely to add five more seats to the Republican congressional majority in 2026. And while we’re still awaiting more information about the bomb threat, it’s hard to ignore the fact that Paxton and Governor Greg Abbott called on law enforcement to round up Democratic politicians like dogs.

“A bomb threat this morning forced an evacuation—because of dangerous republican rhetoric. As a former human trafficking prosecutor, I’ve faced threats before, but never from the Governor or President Trump,” state Representative Ann Johnson wrote after the evacuation on Wednesday. “Paxton told his supporters to ‘hunt us down’—but we won’t be silenced.”

Jeffrey Epstein’s accusers are blasting the government for its mismanagement of the Epstein files case, and calling for survivors’ perspectives to be formally considered.

After hearing that Vice President JD Vance called a “strategy session” about the Epstein files, in what is presumably another attempt to rectify the administration’s botched efforts at transparency, the family of Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre spotted that the guest list had some notable omissions.

“We understand that Vice President JD Vance will hold a strategy session this evening at his residence with administration officials. Missing from this group is, of course, any survivor of the vicious crimes of convicted perjurer and sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein,” said family members in a statement Wednesday to MSNBC.

They asked that survivors be given an opportunity to testify, with Giuffre’s family volunteering to testify in her stead. “Their voices must be heard, above all,” the statement said.

Another accuser, Annie Farmer, issued a letter to the court supporting the release of Epstein’s and Ghislaine Maxwell’s grand jury documents. Farmer, via her lawyers, expressed anger at the meager amount of justice that has been brought for “over one thousand victims” who suffered at the hands of Epstein and Maxwell.

“To date, however, the combined forces of our country’s law enforcement agencies have only ever arrested these two individuals in connection with crimes committed against countless young women and girls, and the Government’s recent suggestion that no further criminal investigations are forthcoming is a cowardly abdication of its duties to protect and serve,” the letter says.

The letter goes on to request that the grand jury files be unsealed to “help expose the magnitude and abhorrence of Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes.”

Farmer also expressed horror at how Maxwell is “attempting to escape justice” by angling for a pardon.

An underage sex-trafficking scheme should have consequences for every abuser, not just the man at the top. These statements should remind Donald Trump and his administration that to survivors and their families, their fumbling of this case is not just a campaign promise betrayed, it is a miscarriage of justice.

Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard’s stupendous evidence that former President Barack Obama masterminded the Trump-Russia investigation boils down to a single word choice.

Gabbard was pressed to explain her theory—which has been roundly condemned as a thinly veiled distraction from the Trump administration’s Epstein files scandal—during an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham Tuesday.

“You said there was irrefutable evidence that Obama was the mastermind of this intelligence manipulation and the perpetuation of the Russia hoax. What is that irrefutable evidence for our viewers tonight?” asked Ingraham.

Gabbard, in turn, directed Fox’s audience to her office’s website, which hosts heavily redacted versions of her report.

“And those who go in and read this will see how President Obama directed that a National Security Council meeting be called to talk about Russia, that the report that came out of that meeting was filled with tasks that were delivered by James Clapper’s assistant to [FBI Director] John Brennan and to other elements of the intelligence community,” Gabbard said.

“And very specifically, they were tasked to create an intelligence assessment that detailed how Moscow tried to influence the election—not if, but how,” she said.

But that differentiation doesn’t mean very much within the larger context of the Russia investigation, which established—via a Republican-led House investigation as well as a bipartisan Senate investigation fronted by now–Secretary of State Marco Rubio—that Russia had worked to intervene in the 2016 election. So having a president inquire “how” that occurred, rather than “if” it occurred, makes sense.

In MAGA world, however, the difference is apparently treasonous. Several of Donald Trump’s allies have called for investigations as to whether the forty-fourth president committed “treason” by looking into Russian influence in the 2016 election.

Other efforts to reframe what Trump has deemed a “hoax” have also proven to be duds. Last week, a declassified report intended to add fuel to a debunked theory that Hillary Clinton cooked up the Trump-Russia connection actually revealed that a critical document to the plot was the likely invention of Russian spies, undermining the administration’s revisionary campaign.

Republican Utah state Senate President J. Stuart Adams used his power to change local law to help a family member facing charges of allegedly raping a 13-year-old.

Adams’s family member, an 18-year-old high school student, was arrested and looking at four first-degree felonies. Then Adams stepped in.

Before Adams, 18-year-olds who had sex with 13-year-olds in Utah were treated like the adults they legally were and could face first-degree felony charges of child rape. In Utah, anyone under the age of 14 cannot legally consent. Adams successfully changed the law to allow 18-year-olds charged with child rape to be essentially tried as minors if they were enrolled in high school at the time of their crime. Adams’s family member was in high school, and although the law was not made retroactive, the 18-year-old-still went from facing years in prison to accepting a plea deal for reduced charges and no jail time beyond the week already served after the initial arrest.

While Adams swears his family member’s charges had nothing to do with his pushing of the rule change, the prosecution, defense, and judge alike all acknowledged that it played a major role in changing the charges.

The victim’s family was devastated. “It was out of nowhere,” the middle schooler’s mother told The Salt Lake Tribune. “I felt like I was punched in the gut.”

“I feel like a law is the law, regardless of who you are, but that wasn’t what was going on here,” she continued. “I feel like [Adams’s relative] just got special treatment … and nobody was going to say anything about it.”

This piece has been updated to correct the explanation of the law and to remove potentially erroneous references to the genders of the suspect and victim, which are publicly unknown.

A number of FEMA employees were told via email Tuesday night that they would be reassigned to ICE.

Sources familiar with the matter say that those who received the email were probationary employees who had been on administrative leave for months after the Trump administration attempted to fire them, according to The American Prospect.

The email told FEMA employees that they would be reassigned to ICE “due to the mission requirements of the Department [of Homeland Security].” The DHS houses both ICE and FEMA.

The kicker: If the workers don’t accept the new position, they could be fired.

Showering ICE with resources has become a central feature of the Trump administration’s mass-deportation campaign. Congress has just awarded $170 billion toward immigration enforcement, with ICE getting an unprecedented $75 billion of that sum. Meanwhile, ICE agents are complaining about the unrealistic quotas placed on them by deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller and wondering why they’re spending so much time “arresting gardeners.”

And FEMA, which provides crucial services to Americans experiencing natural disasters, is already in dire straits: While Texans were overwhelmed by flooding, the agency didn’t answer two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line, reported The New York Times. As climate catastrophes become more and more common, the president wants to eliminate the agency meant to respond to them altogether.

The priorities of the Trump administration have never been clearer: Remove immigrants at all costs, disasters be damned.