James Comer Officially Sends Subpoena to Jeffrey Epstein’s Estate

The Republican-led House Oversight Committee on Monday sent a to subpoena the estate of deceased serial sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.

“It is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of Mr. Epstein and [his former partner Ghislaine] Maxwell,” Oversight Committee Chair James Comer wrote in a letter alongside the subpoena. “It is our understanding that the Estate of Jeffrey Epstein is in custody and control of documents that may further the Committee’s investigation and legislative goals.

The subpoena demands things like Epstein’s infamous 50th “birthday book” that includes a letter from Trump, flight logs, bank information, anything that “could be reasonably construed to be a potential list of clients,” and more. Comer’s committee has already spoken to William Barr, who was attorney general when the Justice Department indicted Epstein in 2019, and Alex Acosta, who as federal prosecutor in 2007 refused to press charges against Epstein, giving him the sweetheart plea deal that allowed him to continue his sex trafficking.

This subpoena has the potential to cede new information, an opportunity that hasn’t been raised since Trump’s Justice Department conveniently declared the case closed in July. Trump, who has spent all of his time trying to convince the public that none of this matters despite having a well-documented close friendship with the infamous serial abuser, has yet to comment on the Oversight Committee’s subpoena.

As questions swirl about recurrent bruising on the back of Donald Trump’s right hand, the 79-year-old president’s injury was clearly visible—without the daub of mismatched makeup with which it’s usually covered—during his public appearances early on Monday.

The bruising was spotted repeatedly during a Monday morning executive order–signing, and again during an afternoon meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung. While Trump has previously sought to hide the mark with a (quite conspicuous) smear of concealer, observers noticed on Monday that it was exposed, despite apparent efforts by the president to hide his bruised hand from view.

In Trump’s second term, the bruising has been spotted regularly, in at least February, April, June, and July, thus giving rise to speculations about the president’s health—including as to whether he is receiving undisclosed intravenous treatment.

Such concerns mounted in July, as images circulated of the hand bruise as well as of swelling in his ankles. At the time, the White House attributed the swollen ankles to “a benign and common condition,” chronic venous insufficiency.

As for the bruising, the White House cites “frequent hand shaking and the use of aspirin”—a dubious line, given that the mark appears on the part of the hand subjected to the least, if any, pressure during a handshake.

This can be seen in a video, posted by a communications staffer, of Trump greeting Lee Jae Myung outside of the White House. The South Korean president shakes Trump’s right hand, making contact only with the area around the bruise. When Myung goes to rest his left hand on the back of Trump’s right, he abruptly grabs the president’s sleeve instead, perhaps to deliberately avoid touching the empurpled part.

More than 180 employees at the Federal Emergency Management Administration sent Congress a letter Monday, warning that President Donald Trump’s efforts to phase out the agency could make way for another Hurricane Katrina-level environmental disaster.

The letter argued that the Trump administration’s mismanagement of FEMA had undone critical emergency rules, gutted essential federal programs, and saddled the agency with insufficient and inexperienced leadership. “Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration,” the letter stated.

More than 150 FEMA employees signed the letter anonymously, while only 36 signed their names. The agency has already lost one-third of its workforce since Trump entered office, who either quit or were fired. FEMA’s former acting head Cameron Hamilton was fired in May after defending the agency Trump claimed he would like to “phase out.” The employees wrote that they wanted better protections from “politically motivated firings.”

“I think the unfortunate reality is that our agency is on such a dangerous trajectory and drastic action is needed,” said one FEMA employee behind the letter, who spoke to The Washington Post under the condition of anonymity. “Congress passed laws after Katrina to protect Americans and FEMA from inadequate leadership, inaction, and unpreparedness, but I don’t think Congress realizes how many of those laws have been broken, been violated.”

Signed into law in 2006, the Post-Katrina Emergency Reform Act granted FEMA with more power and responsibility—but in its efforts to dissolve the agency, the Trump administration has undone much of this legislation.

The letter advocated that FEMA be removed from the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, and made into an independent Cabinet-level agency. Trump has previously said that he would like DHS to take full control of disaster responses.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem however, was widely criticized for her pitifully delayed response to the deadly flooding in Texas earlier this summer. Noem severely botched FEMA’s Texas response by reportedly failing to renew contracts with companies staffing FEMA call centers, and instituting a policy that required her to personally sign off on all DHS expenditures exceeding $100,000.

Noem’s “review of contracts is superfluous, given that FEMA is already required to develop ‘pre-scripted mission assignments’” the letter stated. Noem has been charged with running the agency alongside David Richardson, who has no experience at all in emergency management, and didn’t even know that the United States had a hurricane season.

The Trump administration’s response to the deadly flooding in Texas “proved the inefficiencies, ineffectiveness, and dangers of the processes and decisions put forth by the current administration,” the letter stated. Noem, in denial of her own disastrous work, claimed that the federal response in Texas was a model for what’s to come.

The group of FEMA employees also wrote that the administration’s decision to scrap federal programs related to climate change were particularly dangerous.

“This administration’s decision to ignore and disregard the facts pertaining to climate science in disasters shows a blatant disregard for the safety and security of our Nation’s people and all American communities regardless of their geographic, economic or ethnic diversity,” they said.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is ready to throw down in court over his state’s upcoming redistricting referendum.

President Donald Trump vowed legal retaliation against the Golden State Monday, telling reporters during a White House press briefing that his administration would be filing a lawsuit against California “pretty soon” over its plan to put the state’s congressional lines to a vote.

“I think I’m going to be filing a lawsuit pretty soon and I think we’re going to be very successful in it. We’re going to be filing it through the Department of Justice, that’s going to happen,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

Trump also condemned the use of blue slips in the Senate, which allow home-state lawmakers to veto district court nominees as well as appointments to U.S. attorneys’ offices.

“We’re also going to be filing a lawsuit on blue slipping. You know, blue slips make it impossible for me as president to appoint a judge or a U.S. attorney because they have a gentleman’s agreement, nothing memorialized, it’s a gentleman’s agreement that’s about 100 years old, where if you have a president, like a Republican, and if you have a Democrat senator, that senator can stop you from appointing a judge or a U.S. attorney in particular, those two.”

But Newsom was already ready and willing to meet Trump at his level.

“BRING IT,” the governor wrote on X, in response to the president’s comments during the presser.

Newsom announced the Election Rigging Response Act earlier this month, a statewide Democratic gerrymandering plan intended to offset Republican efforts to strip liberal areas around the country of their electoral votes. California will invite residents to vote on whether or not to pursue redistricting in their own state, in reaction to the battle raging in Texas, on November 4.

In July, the president demanded that Texas Republicans create five more House seats by redrawing its congressional map, eliminating a handful of blue districts. The order, and Texas’s subsequent obedience, elicited shock and contempt from two of the country’s most populous regions—California and New York. Both states have launched their own redistricting wars in the wake of the vote.

“This is radical rigging of a midterm election,” Newsom told The Siren podcast Wednesday. “Radical rigging of an election. Destroying, vandalizing this democracy, the rule of law. So, I’m sorry. I know some peoples’ sensibilities. I respect and appreciate that. But right now, with all due respect, we’re walking down a damn different path. We’re fighting fire with fire. And we’re gonna punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”

President Trump was given an honorary U.S. Marshals badge at his executive order press conference on Monday, once again displaying how easily impressed he is by meaningless gifts.

“I think Gady Serralta had something he wanted to give you on behalf of all of the law enforcement who are out there every single night,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump with a grin, speaking to the President of the United States like a kid on Christmas.

“Mr. President, thank you for putting me in charge of this search as the director of the United States Marshals Service,” Serralta said. “On behalf of all the federal law enforcement agencies that we’re working with, and those that have yet to join the team, we thought it was only appropriate to present you with [an] honorary United States Marshall service badge,” he told Trump.

He then handed the president the badge and a handcuff key, to Trump’s delight. “That’s very nice,” Trump said directly to the camera while smiling without his teeth.

“You continue, through your policies and your efforts with your staff to un-handcuff law enforcement officers all over this nation,” Serralta said. “And I can tell you personally that they thank you for that. You can continue un-handcuffing law enforcement.”

“That’s a very great honor,” Trump replied. “I’ll save that and put it some place up, which is important.”

An honorary service badge is something law enforcement officials hand out to just about anyone, even children. The most notable instance of this was DJ Daniel, the cancer-stricken child who attended the State of the Union earlier this year. Daniel was made an honorary Secret Service member for dressing up and pretending to be a police officer in his hometown. But from children’s badges, to golden paperweights, to a literal Diet Coke bottle, it doesn’t take much to flatter Trump.

Asserting federal control over the private sector is as American as apple pie, according to Donald Trump.

The president apparently sees nothing wrong with his administration’s latest deal with Intel, the only chipmaker allowed to make the tech parts in the U.S.

Last week, the government took a 10 percent stake in the company, purchasing 433.3 million shares for a total price of $8.9 billion. In a press release Friday, Intel underscored that the exchange came at a “discount” to the company’s current stock rate. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also confirmed the deal.

The transaction has made the U.S. government Intel’s largest single shareholder, though Intel said that the White House would not have a board seat or hold any governing rights of the company. The terms of the deal do, however, allow the U.S. to buy an additional five percent of Intel’s market shares if the company is “no longer majority owner of its foundry business,” according to MSNBC.

But Trump’s recounting of the events has been remarkably different. By Monday morning, Trump still refused to acknowledge that the stock purchase came with a price, deriding his critics of the deal with simple insults.

“I PAID ZERO FOR INTEL, IT IS WORTH APPROXIMATELY 11 BILLION DOLLARS. All goes to the USA,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Why are ‘stupid’ people unhappy with that? I will make deals like that for our Country all day long. I will also help those companies that make such lucrative deals with the United States States.”

“I love seeing their stock price go up, making the USA RICHER, AND RICHER. More jobs for America!!! Who would not want to make deals like that?” he added.

Trump’s insistence that the White House’s involvement in private business is a good thing does not bode well for the rest of the private sector: The government is already looking to take equity stakes in other companies, according to one of Trump’s top economic advisers.

“I’m sure that at some point there’ll be more transactions, if not in this industry, in other industries,” National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNBC Monday.

The deal with Intel followed several weeks of personal attacks by Trump against Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, in which the president openly questioned the Malaysian-born American business executive’s previous investments in Chinese tech firms. Since the deal was announced, however, the president has noticeably pulled back on his calls for Tan’s resignation.

The Trump administration’s Intel deal represents only the first of more such interventions into the private sector, according to Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council.

Trump last week announced that the U.S. government will be taking a 10 percent passive ownership stake in the tech company Intel. The deal came just weeks after the president called for Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign after Senator Tom Cotton alleged the executive has problematic ties to China.

Trump made remarks Friday indicating that the move was something more of a shakedown than a deal, and that more such interventions may eventually be in the works. “[Tan] walked in wanting to keep his job, and he ended up giving us $10 billion for the United States,” the president told reporters. “So we picked up 10 billion. And we do a lot of deals like that. I’ll do more of them.”

On Monday, CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Hassett about that prospect.

“So, we should expect the U.S. government to be taking more equity stakes in businesses around the country?” Sorkin asked. “That is something that if you’re a CEO, this morning, watching us, you should say, ‘OK, the sovereign wealth fund may be coming and trying to effectively buy in some kind of equity stake?’”

Hassett replied in the affirmative. “It’s possible, yeah,” he said. “That’s absolutely right.”

To allay fears of government meddling in business decisions, the adviser insisted that the government would only ever acquire non-voting stock.

But such assurances are likely to be met with skepticism, given that a major tenet of Trump’s agenda appears to be bending American businesses and institutions to his will. Take, for example, recent reports that the administration is keeping a scorecard of companies’ loyalty to the administration’s agenda.

Donald Trump claimed the American people are asking for a dictator—and he seems more than happy to give them what they want.

While signing executive orders in the Oval Office Monday morning, Trump whined that people were up in arms after he suggested that he would deploy National Guard troops in Chicago, following his federal takeover of Washington D.C.

Not everyone in Chicago was unhappy with this plan, he claimed.

“A lot of people are saying ‘maybe we’d like a dictator,’” Trump said.

The president then attempted to course-correct. “I don’t like a dictator, I’m not a dictator,” he quickly said. “I’m a man with great common sense, and I’m a smart person.”

It’s not clear that there is any meaningful difference between a dictator, and a leader pleasing the people who are asking for one. What is apparent, however, is that Trump’s plan to move federal forces to other American cities is so unpopular that he’s concocting consent for tyranny as a means to justify it.

Crucially, Trump gets closer to becoming a dictator everyday. On Monday, he signed an executive order which would criminalize flag burning, an act of political expression protected by the First Amendment, claiming that it incited riots.

If Trump truly believed that inciting a riot earns you a year in prison, then the president himself is well overdue for a stint behind bars.

President Trump on Monday signed an executive order instructing the U.S. attorney general to pursue criminal charges against anyone caught burning the American flag, blatantly violating basic freedom of speech and expression laws.

“Flag burning. All over the country they’re burning flags. All over the world they burn the American flag,” Trump said at his press conference, where he signed another executive order revoking cashless bail in Washington, D.C. “What happens when you burn a flag is, the area goes crazy. If you have hundreds of people they go crazy…. When you burn the American flag it incites riots at levels that we’ve never seen before.”

“If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail, no early exits, no nothing. You get one year in jail,” Trump said. “You don’t get 10 years, you don’t get one month, you get one year in jail. And it goes on your record. And you will see flag burning stopping immediately.”

The president claimed the Department of Justice would “investigate instances of flag burning” in situations where “prosecution wouldn’t fall afoul to the First Amendment.” But the order does exactly that. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that flag burning is a protected right under the Constitution.

Trump also made unsubstantiated claims that flag burning is a rampant practice in America right now (it is not) and that anyone doing it is being paid by the “radical left.”

It’s extremely unclear how exactly the administration can throw American citizens in jail for burning a piece of fabric without “running afoul” of the Constitution. This is a move that would be relentlessly vilified if someone like Russian President Vladimir Putin or North Korean leader Kim Jong Un did it. Instead, Trump is using this despotic tactic to crack down on protesters and further push his dark MAGA agenda.

The Covid vaccine could be off the shelves in a matter of months.

Despite the coronavirus shot saving millions of lives during the pandemic, the Trump administration is planning to nix nationwide access to the vaccine “within months,” a close associate of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told the Daily Beast.

Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who has repeatedly claimed, contrary to scientific evidence, that the vaccine has more ramifications than the disease it is intended to treat, told the Daily Beast that people around Kennedy “cannot understand” why the vaccine is still on the market. Malhotra noted that the administration intends to remove it from shelves even if it sows a “fear of chaos,” or sparks major legal consequences.

“It could [happen] in a number of stages, including learning more about the data,” said Malhotra. “But given the increased talk of vaccine injuries in the past few weeks among the administration, it could also come with one clean decision.”

The skepticism stems from a 2022 paper, published in the science journal Vaccine, that examined “serious adverse events” that occurred during clinical trials of Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Covid-19 vaccines. The widely dismissed study found that individuals who had gotten the jab were at a 16 percent higher risk of “excess serious adverse events” than those who did not.

Critics of the paper claimed that the researchers underestimated the benefits of the vaccine, overstated methodological risks, selectively chose data, and ignored the broader public health impacts of the vaccine.

It wouldn’t be the first vaccine that Kennedy has canceled on the grounds of his unscientific doubts. Earlier this month, the health secretary said his agency would divest $500 million from mRNA research, effectively axing 22 mRNA studies since—according to Kennedy—the vaccines “fail to protect” against “upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.”

Instead, Kennedy said that his agency would shift the funding toward “safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate”—which apparently does not include the latest and greatest medical advances.

The problem with Kennedy’s approach is twofold: It will result in a sacrifice of time and money. Traditional vaccines injected a weakened or dead version of a virus, triggering the body’s immune response and the development of antibodies. Researching and developing these vaccines is a “lengthy and costly” process that becomes further complicated when researchers have to respond to mutations in the virus, according to Penn Medicine.

mRNA technology, meanwhile, employs a synthetic genetic code that instructs the body to produce proteins akin to the viral protein, training the body’s immune system without ever actually exposing the individual to the disease. Once the response is initiated, the synthetic genetic sequence breaks down in the body, according to Medline Plus. The result is a “plug-and-play” vaccine technology that offers rapid development times at a lower cost to traditional vaccines.

In the years since mRNA technology debuted on the U.S. market, biomedical researchers have also framed mRNA as a potential cancer treatment. But its sudden emergence in the U.S. prompted suspicion from anti-vaxxers, including Kennedy.

After Kennedy took the reins at HHS, he replaced independent medical experts on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel with vaccine skeptics. He also warned against the use of the MMR vaccine during Texas’s historic measles outbreak, recommending that suffering patients instead take vitamins. And he founded his new directive for America’s health policy—the “Make America Healthy Again” report—on studies generated by AI that never existed in the real world.