Missouri Republican Warns His Party as It Passes Gerrymandered Maps

Missouri Republican state Representative Tony Harbison rebuked his party on the state House floor for choosing to submit to President Trump’s gerrymandering demands rather than address the actual problems of their constituents.

“The needs are heavy, the list is long. Our plate is full of things that we need to be doing for the people of this state, and this ain’t one of ’em,’” Harbison said on Monday. “I thank you for your time, Mr. Speaker.”

The room immediately erupted with applause.

Even still, the House on Tuesday voted to pass the redistricting effort after Republican Governor Mike Kelhoe called the legislature back at the behest of Trump. The gerrymandered congressional map will now head to the Senate, where Republicans also hold the majority.

The House proposal would split the Democrat-held 5th congressional district into three districts, giving Republicans a 7-to-1 advantage heading into the 2026 midterms.

State Democrats have condemned the move.

“The Missouri GOP is aiding and abetting the systematic destruction of our democracy by an authoritarian regime led by a geriatric conman who knows the only way he can win is to cheat,” House Minority Leader Ashley Aune told The Missouri Independent. Democrats and Missouri NAACP have also argued that it’s unconstitutional to draw congressional maps before the completion of the next census.

Harbison wasn’t the only Republican against the gerrymandering decision, either. Several Republicans came out against it, including Speaker Jon Patterson.

“Unfortunately, it’s not ethics.… It’s not morality. It’s definitely not liberty. It’s just political power,” said Republican Bryant Wolfin. “There’s certainly nothing conservative about ignoring the moral implications of our actions.… Morality is not defined by what is legal. Morality is not defined by what you can get away with.”

The Republican-led state Senate is eager to get it over with and get good news back to Trump in D.C.

“The map and the initiative petition reform measures will strike a huge blow to progressives and their efforts to turn Missouri into California,” Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin wrote Saturday on Facebook. “We are not California. We are not progressives.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt unleashed an angry, nonsensical tirade Tuesday claiming that she’d never said the Jeffrey Epstein files were a “hoax.” 

Actually, she’d said it less than 24 hours before.

On Monday, Leavitt published a statement claiming that Trump had not drawn the crude picture on the birthday note to Epstein, or signed it, writing, “This is FAKE NEWS to perpetuate the Democrat Epstein Hoax!” 

But speaking to reporters at a White House press briefing the next day, Leavitt fumed when asked to explain her claims undermining the Epstein documents. 

“You said the Epstein documents are a hoax the Democrats are perpetrating against the president,” reporter Maggie Haberman of The New York Times asked. “You said he didn’t sign that check, that he didn’t sign the birthday card that he allegedly signed. So, what is the theory, since these documents came from the Epstein estate? Who is, I guess in your view, faking these documents?” 

“I did not say the documents are a hoax,” Leavitt snapped. “I said the entire narrative surrounding Jeffrey Epstein right now that is absorbing many of the liberal cable channels on television is a hoax, that is being perpetuated by opportunistic Democrats—” she ranted.  

“What exactly is the hoax?” Haberman pressed. “I’m just trying to understand what’s fake. What’s fake is not the documents?”

“The hoax is the Democrats pretending to care about victims of crime, when they do not care about victims of crime,” Leavitt explained. “When they have done nothing to solve crimes, when they have done nothing to lock up child pedophiles and child rapists across the country, and when they are now using victims as political props, to again, try and smear the president of the United States—” she went on, lost in the spiral of her own semantic spin.

It seems that by contrast, Trump is not even pretending to care about the victims of crime. Last week, the president described calls to release the documents from survivors of Epstein’s abuse as a “Democrat hoax that never ends.” 

Spin aside, Leavitt seems to know that there is nothing fake about the government’s documents on Epstein—but that conviction doesn’t extend to the ones that might incriminate her boss. 

As the White House flailingly denies the authenticity of Donald Trump’s lewd 2003 birthday note to his then-friend Jeffrey Epstein, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is, apparently, just creating evidence out of whole cloth.

Since the letter was released Monday—as a result of the House Oversight Committee subpoenaing Epstein’s estate—Leavitt and other Trump spokespeople have sought to deny its veracity by arguing that the signature at its close doesn’t match Trump’s current handwriting.

In reality, examples abound of nearly identical signatures by Trump from around the time of the letter’s writing.

Nonetheless, Leavitt dug in her heels at a Tuesday press conference, where she even claimed to have brought receipts: “I have already seen many forensic analysts of signatures coming out. I believe it was The Daily Signal that published a piece with three separate signature analysts who said that this absolutely was not the president’s authentic signature,” the press secretary said.

No such Daily Signal story exists, as Matthew Gertz of Media Matters observed on X. Instead, Leavitt was likely thinking of an article by another conservative website, The Daily Wire. But even that story was a far cry from her description.

The Daily Wire, for instance, did not cite “three separate signature analysts,” It cited three “AI research systems”—which did not remark, at all, on Trump’s signature, but rather compared the diction in the 2003 letter to Trump’s other publicly available writings. The AI models apparently cast doubt on the note’s authenticity, finding it inconsistent with the president’s speech habits (namely, too “sophisticated” for Trump).

And the AI models’ conclusions are quite dubious. For example, although the AI systems flagged that the 2003 letter employs third-person narration, words like “enigma,” and a theatrical opening line (“There must be more to life than having everything”), these by no means prove Trump was not the author.

In July, when The Wall Street Journal first reported on the existence of the letter, Judd Legum of Popular Information showed that each of these elements of the letter are plausible Trumpisms. This is not to mention that The Daily Wire overlooks the fact that one’s verbiage varies depending on context.

The Daily Wire story, in other words, is quite thin gruel—failing in its desperate mission to prove the letter was faked (and certainly not proving that Trump’s signature was forged). It’s no wonder Leavitt had to invent an imaginary article instead.

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman had a gross and callow response to Israel’s attack on Qatar’s capital city.

Israel struck Hamas’s political leadership in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday, as they gathered to discuss a U.S. ceasefire proposal, killing six people.

Qatar, a U.S. ally, has condemned what it called a “flagrant violation of international laws and norms,” and President Donald Trump said in a statement that this bombing “does not advance Israel or America’s goals.”

But Fetterman’s take on the strike, which left five lower-ranking Hamas members along with a Qatari security guard dead, was horrific and infantile all at once.

The senator shared the AP’s story with a gif of Winnie the Pooh gleefully dancing, about to dig into a pot of “hero hunny.”

Pod Save America host and former Obama staffer Tommy Vietor wrote of Fetterman’s response, “I fucking hate this idiotic, childish memeification of deadly serious issues. Any hope of getting the remaining Israeli hostages out alive could be gone, any hope of ending the war in Gaza could be dead, and this clown is posting a Winnie-the-pooh gif.”

Since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and during the ensuing genocide in Gaza, Fetterman has been fervently pro-Israel—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even gifted him an honorary pager, mocking the Israeli attack on Hezbollah in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed at least 12 people, including two children, and wounded around 2,800, in September 2024.

In addition to being a likely violation of international law, the strike may very well destroy any progress that’s been made toward reaching a ceasefire agreement, and comes as Israel threatens a full invasion of Gaza City, which is sure to add to the already horrific death toll of more than 64,000 Palestinians.

But that significance is clearly lost on Fetterman.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump is awfully sorry about Israel’s military strike on Qatar Tuesday—but wouldn’t divulge whether Israel had told them ahead of time.

Speaking to reporters at a White House press briefing Tuesday, Leavitt delivered a strange statement on behalf of the president, expressing just how sad he’d been to hear about the deadly attack.

“This morning the Trump administration was notified by the United States military that Israel was attacking Hamas, which—very unfortunately—was located in a section of Doha, the capital of Qatar,” Leavitt said. While attacking Qatar “does not advance Israel or America’s goals,” eliminating Hamas was a “worthy goal,” Leavitt said.

Leavitt claimed that Trump had “immediately directed” U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff to inform the Qatari government of the impending attack.

“The president views Qatar as a strong ally and friend of the United States, and feels very badly about the location of this attack,” Leavitt said, adding that Trump believed that the incident could be an “opportunity for peace.”

Unsurprisingly, Qatar didn’t quite see it that way. It condemned the attack as a “flagrant violation of all international laws and norms.”

Leavitt also repeatedly refused to answer questions about whether Israel had warned Trump about the strike on the U.S. ally ahead of time, referring reporters back to her “lengthy and thorough” statement.

In the aftermath of Israel’s attack on Qatar Tuesday, Israeli sources told multiple outlets—including CNN and Israel’s Channel 12—that the U.S. had prior knowledge of the attack. It looks like not even a $400 million luxury jet could buy Trump’s protection, and Leavitt’s statement was just crocodile tears.

This isn’t the first time the Trump administration hasn’t been forthcoming about its coordination with Israel.

When Israel launched a sweeping attack on Iran in June, two Israeli officials claimed that Trump had given them the green light to do it, despite the U.S. president’s claims that he’d had nothing to do with it. The sources said that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had lied to reporters about coordinating the attack in the days before. Later, when Trump was asked whether Israel had given him a “heads-up,” he replied: “Heads-up? It wasn’t a heads-up. It was, we know what’s going on.”

A Georgia judge plans to throw out the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, charges against the 61 defendants who were protesting the construction of “Cop City,” the $90 million, 85-acre police training facility in the lush forest of a majority-Black Atlanta neighborhood in 2023. The facility opened in April. 

Fulton County Judge Kevin Farmer told the court that he did not think Attorney General Chris Carr had the authority to pursue the sweeping RICO indictments under Georgia law, as he had never obtained the necessary permission from Governor Brian Kemp. 

“It would have been real easy to just ask the governor, ‘Let me do this, give me a letter,’” Farmer said. “The steps just weren’t followed.” 

The “Stop Cop City” protests and subsequent arrests that followed were sparked by the police killing of environmental activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a.k.a. Tortuguita, at the Stop Cop City Encampment in January 2023. Autopsy reports showed that they were shot over 50 times while sitting cross-legged with their hands up, and no traces of gunpowder were found on them, contradicting the police report stating that Terán shot first.  

“The 61 defendants together have conspired to prevent the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center by conducting, coordinating and organizing acts of violence, intimidation and property destruction,” Carr said when the Cop City protesters were first indicted.

In addition to the RICO charges, three of the defendants were originally hit with charges of money laundering after organizing a bail fund, but those charges also failed to stick. Another three activists were charged with federal intimidation after making flyers calling Jonathan Salcedo, the state trooper who murdered Tortuguita, a “murderer.” Five of the protesters were charged with domestic terrorism and arson. Farmer is considering dismissing all of the separate charges attached to the RICO, allowing Carr to pursue the domestic terrorism ones. 

Even still, this is a massive victory in the face of a state looking to bring the hammer down on people trying to stop an environmentally destructive, military-style police base from being built in their city after all legal options had been exhausted. That shouldn’t get you charges that used to be reserved for the Mafia. 

At 61 defendants, this was one of the largest RICO cases in U.S. history. 

In an 8–4 party-line vote Tuesday, Republicans on the House Rules Committee shot down a bid to put the Epstein Files Transparency Act—which would compel the Justice Department to release all unclassified records related to Jeffrey Epstein—to a floor vote.

The motion was introduced by Democratic Ranking Member Jim McGovern, who prior to the vote stressed the importance of transparency in the case of the notorious late pedophile.

“I can see why the administration might want to hide [the Epstein files] if the creepy birthday note from Trump to Epstein is any indication of what might be in those files,” McGovern said—referencing a 2003 letter, released Monday by the House Oversight Committee, in which Donald Trump appeared to offer Epstein an unsettling 50th birthday message and lewd drawing.

“But if the administration won’t follow through on their promises, Congress should force them to,” McGovern said, adding that the Epstein files legislation “does exactly that, while protecting the victims and the survivors.”

The ranking member’s ultimately unsuccessful effort comes as Democratic Representative Ro Khanna of California and Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky continue a broader campaign to force a vote on their bill. Their petition remains, as of this writing, two signatures short of the 218 required to do so. All 212 House Democrats are on board, but just four Republicans.

McGovern urged his GOP colleagues to “see the light and sign Mr. Massie’s discharge petition.” Last week, survivors of Epstein’s abuse also held a press conference in front of the Capitol demanding Congress pass the bipartisan bill.

Nonetheless, all Republican Rules Committee members present voted against it. The only “yes” votes came from McGovern and his three fellow Democratic committee members.

Here is the name of every Republican who voted to block the Epstein Files Transparency Act on Tuesday.

• Virginia Foxx—North Carolina
• Michelle Fischbach—Minnesota
• Ralph Norman—South Carolina
• Chip Roy—Texas
• Nicholas Langworthy—New York
• Austin Scott—Georgia
• H. Morgan Griffith—Virginia
• Brian Jack—Georgia

Representative James Comer, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, said Tuesday that he has no intention to follow up on President Donald Trump’s lewd birthday letter to alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaking to CNN’s Manu Raju Tuesday, Comer said that he believed the White House’s desperate claim that the letter and signature were fake.

“The president says he did not sign it. So I take the president [at] his word,” Comer said, according to Raju on X. “You asked if I’m going to be trying to figure out whether that, you know, fake or not, probably not. We’re going to be trying to get justice for the victim.

“Twenty-two years ago was when that was allegedly sent,” Comer added. “So, I don’t think the Oversight Committee is going to invest in looking up something that was 22 years ago.”

But Comer saying that he won’t look into an incident from 22 years ago directly contradicts his claim that he’s seeking justice for survivors of Epstein’s decades-long abuse of women, which allegedly occurred more than 22 years ago.

It seems clear that the timing isn’t an issue. It’s just that the Kentucky Republican is unwilling to point a finger at Trump.

Comer had issued the subpoena of Epstein’s estate, demanding 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.” But the actual results of the subpoena don’t seem to interest him, as the head of Congress’s main investigative arm.

During the previous administration, Comer relentlessly pursued debunked claims against former President Joe Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Now Comer is convinced that Trump, a famous and well-documented liar, is telling the truth.

President Donald Trump’s administration wants the last four digits of every voter’s Social Security number—as part of its sweeping efforts to compile a federal voting database, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Michael Gates, deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s recently overhauled civil rights division, told top state elections officials in a private meeting that he planned to request information from all 50 states. Specifically, he wanted the last four digits of voters’ SSNs, so they could be cross-referenced with a database of noncitizens at the Department of Homeland Security.

The administration could use the database to investigate claims of noncitizen voting, an obsession of Trump and other Republicans who claimed the 2020 election had been stolen through massive voter fraud.

In reality, the only ones concocting a scheme to fake votes in that election were in Donald Trump’s camp.

The issue of noncitizen voting remains small to nonexistent. In 2016, noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001 percent of the votes cast, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. One might notice that Trump’s complaints about noncitizen voting evaporated after his victory last November. However, Trump seems to have revived his obsession ahead of the midterm elections.

The DOJ has already sent requests to 16 Republican-led states and at least 17 Democrat-led states or swing states, including Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, and Wisconsin. Some states, like North Carolina, were approached by the DOJ and DHS with an offer to simply use the federal SAVE database to run their voter list.

But such a sweeping request for personal information may not be legal, according to Justin Levitt, a former Justice Department official and election law expert at Loyola Marymount University’s law school. He said that it could potentially violate the 1974 Privacy Act, which requires agencies to be careful in their handling of sensitive information.

Across the country, both Democratic and Republican leaders have refused to hand over information. California’s Secretary of State Shirley Weber said her office was “not obligated to follow along” with Trump’s efforts to “conscript states to carry out nonstatutory policy priorities of the president.” Al Schmidt, the Republican secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania said the requests “represent a concerning attempt to expand the federal government’s role in our country’s electoral process.”

Earlier this month, a South Carolina local judge blocked the DOJ’s request for the “full name, date of birth, residential address, his or her state driver’s license number, or the last four digits of the registrant’s social security number” of every South Carolina voter, after one woman sued, saying it would violate citizens’ constitutional privacy rights.

The project, led by election deniers, has also raised serious concerns that the Trump administration could use the database to fuel claims of voter fraud in future elections.

“The biggest structural concern is using this information in an irresponsible manner to fuel the narrative that something is amiss in any election in which the preferred outcome is not the actual outcome,” Sophia Lin Lakin, the director of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Times.

GOP lawmakers are tying themselves in knots to defend President Donald Trump after his unsettling, sexually suggestive 2003 birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein was released Monday. The damning document appeared in a scrapbook that the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed from the deceased sex criminal’s estate.

Below are some of the most pitiful reactions and denials from congressional Republicans.

1. “We’ve seen autopens they’ve used in the Biden administration”—Tim Burchett

Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee, shown the letter by CNN’s Manu Raju, denied its veracity and weaved a fanciful narrative.

“I mean, anybody can do a signature. We’ve seen autopens they’ve used in the Biden administration,” he said, adding, “I’ve never known Trump to be much of an artist either”—even though, as Raju noted, there is actually a history of Trump making sketches.

“So you think really someone might have just forged this somehow?” Raju asked.

“Yeah,” Burchett replied. “I mean, ‘somehow’? It’s so easy to do.”

The Tennessee congressman suggested the document was created by the Biden administration, despite it having come from Epstein’s estate. “They’ve had all this stuff for four years, and now they’re bringing it out? I just don’t buy it,” he said.

Asked how the Biden administration could possibly be behind the letter—given that it was contained in a 2003 book subpoenaed from Epstein’s estate—Burchett replied, “I mean, was I there in 2003 when they got it? Were you? No. That’s the problem. You got to look at the chain of command on this stuff.”

2. “It’s not his signature”—Byron Donalds

Representative Byron Donalds of Florida joined the chorus of conservatives claiming that Trump’s first name at the bottom of the letter is different from the president’s current autograph. (Analyses, however, show the 2003 sign-off to be a perfect match with contemporaneous examples of Trump’s signature.)

“From what I see, it’s not his signature,” Donalds told reporters. “I’ve seen Donald Trump sign a million things.”

“This doesn’t look like his signature to you?” a reporter asked.

“Nope!” he replied.

Donalds is, indeed, quite familiar with Trump’s signature—or, at least, its current iteration. In July, when Trump was seeking to rally the GOP around his signature tax and spending plan, Donalds was among a gaggle of Republicans to visit the White House and leave with signed MAGA merchandise. (Burchett was there too, and posted a video online afterward in which Donalds encouraged him to show off his signed goodies.)

3. “Been a little busy today”—Mike Johnson

House Speaker Mike Johnson reacted to the letter by reflexively deferring to the president’s word.

First asked about the message on Monday, Johnson said: “Been a little busy today. I haven’t dialed in on that. I’m told that it’s fake.”

Asked again on Tuesday, Johnson said that he had not seen the drawing: “I’ve heard about it. But no,” he told reporters, per PBS reporter Lisa Desjardins. “And the White House say[s] it’s not true. So.”

Never mind that Trump has been caught in lie after lie about Epstein.

4. “I take the president at his word”—James Comer

House Oversight Chair James Comer on Monday deflected questions about Trump’s letter, accusing Democrats of attempting to score political points.

“The Democrats, they find one thing in there and they promote it and try to get a narrative. This investigation’s about providing justice and accountability for the victims,” Comer told reporters, apparently seeing pursuing accountability and scrutinizing the commander in chief’s close relationship with Epstein as incompatible.

On Tuesday, Comer, like Johnson, approached the claims of the man known as the most dishonest president in U.S. history with utmost credulity.

“The president says he did not sign it,” Comer told CNN. “So I take the president [at] his word.”

5. “I haven’t seen it”—Jim Jordan

Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio appears happy to take the ignorance-is-bliss approach on the matter.

Asked about the letter by CNN’s Raju, he said, “I don’t know if that’s legit, and I haven’t seen it. I’ll take a look at it.”

“Don’t you want to learn more about Trump’s relationship and friendship with Epstein?” the reporter asked him on Monday.

“No,” he said. “I want to have [FBI] Director [Kash] Patel in next week, where we’ll ask him about all kinds of things.… I haven’t seen it. Don’t buy it.”

Throughout the Epstein affair, Jordan hasn’t always been so quick to dismiss new evidence—or, at least, not when it’s favored Trump.

When it was revealed that Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell told the FBI that Trump wasn’t guilty of any misdeeds, Jordan was eager to believe the claims of the convicted sex trafficker currently angling for a pardon from the president.

“This confirms what we all knew,” he told Fox News at the time. “We knew President Trump didn’t do anything wrong here.”