Yet Another Red State Kills Trump’s Redistricting Dreams

Republicans in a red state have failed to initiate their pro-Trump gerrymandering efforts for the second time this month.

On Friday, Indiana’s state Senate Republicans announced that they failed to gather enough votes to redistrict their state in their favor ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

“Over the last several months, Senate Republicans have given very serious and thoughtful consideration to the concept of redrawing our state’s congressional maps,” state Senator Rodric Bray said, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle’s Niki Kelly. “Today, I’m announcing there are not enough votes to move that idea forward, and the Senate will not reconvene.”

This is a massive failure in the GOP’s plan to redraw districts in the middle of the decade to help it gain more seats in Congress. Last week, Kansas Republicans gave up on a weeks-long effort to accelerate the redrawing of their state’s congressional map. Days later, a Utah judge rejected a Republican-drawn map and instead instituted the state’s first blue-leaning one in 25 years.

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were apparently so close that the billionaire child sex offender once paid the now-president a hefty bet.  

Emails released by the House Oversight Committee show an exchange between Epstein and alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra discussing a time to video chat, when Chopra asked Epstein if he knew Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples. Epstein replied, “Yes  ,  in fact when she told donald she was pregnant. I lost a 10k dollar bet with him, and sent him a truck of baby food in payment. but i have not spoken to her in many years since then.”

The email, dated July 29, 2016, didn’t end there. Epstein added that “she can tell you the story of her friend who was caught having sex with her shoes. yes-shoes.” 

The entire exchange took place months before Trump would win the presidential election for the first time, and details the extent of the president’s relationship with the now-dead Epstein. When Trump and Maples got married in 1993 at the New York Plaza Hotel, Epstein was in attendance. Maples and Trump would divorce in 1999 after having one child together, Tiffany. 

Chopra and Maples spoke together at a “Sages & Sciences Symposium” in 2010, and Maples posted a picture of the two together on Instagram in 2016, in which she called him her friend. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told The Independent that “These emails prove literally nothing.”

On the contrary, these emails show that Epstein and Trump have a long-standing relationship, refuting the president’s denials. They may have even spent time together while Trump was president. With every new release of Epstein’s correspondence, Trump’s denials are looking more and more pathetic. 

Jeffrey Epstein’s victims are pleading with Congress to release the Epstein files.

In a haunting letter, the family members of deceased abuse survivor Virginia Giuffre—along with several victims who have accused Donald Trump of participating in Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring—asked lawmakers to “be brave” in the coming days as they vote to potentially make the case files public.

“There is no middle ground here. There is no hiding behind party affiliation,” they said, in a letter jointly addressed to members of the House and Senate.

“Epstein and [Ghislaine] Maxwell’s crimes exposed a double standard of justice, where rich and powerful men and women evade repercussions. Despite years of work to bring them to justice, most of Epstein and Maxwell’s co-conspirators remain completely free, continuing to amass power and prestige, living without apparent shame.

“As you gather with your family this season, remember that your primary duty is to your constituents,” the writers continued. “Look into the eyes of your children, your sisters, your mothers, and your aunts. Imagine if they had been preyed upon. Imagine if you yourself were a survivor. What would you want for them? What would you want for yourself? When you vote, we will remember your decision at the ballot box.”

Pressure on lawmakers dramatically ramped up this week after a discharge petition to force a vote on the files’ release succeeded. Just ahead of the petition passing, the House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 documents Wednesday that it had obtained from Epstein’s estate, revealing that Trump was a frequent topic in correspondence between Epstein and his pen pals.

In a 2011 email, Epstein expressed he was grateful Trump had stayed quiet about details of his life. The “dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein wrote, despite the fact that Trump had spent hours at one of Epstein’s properties with a known victim.

In a 2017 exchange with former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Epstein said that Trump was the worst individual he knew.

“I have met some very bad people, none as bad as Trump,” Epstein wrote. “Not one decent cell in his body.”

When queried by Trump biographer Michael Wolff in 2019 about the extent of the president’s knowledge of abductions of young girls, Epstein remarked: “Of course he knew about the girls he asked Ghislaine to stop.”

The White House immediately brushed off the reports, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisting that the emails prove nothing. Trump, in turn, has accused Democrats of inventing the Trump-Epstein connection, repeatedly referring to it as a “hoax.”

In the halls of Congress, conservative lawmakers are turning on Trump. Senior Republicans privately expect dozens of their party members—“possibly 100 or more”—to vote in favor of a bill that would make the federal government’s trove of Epstein files publicly available, Politico reported Wednesday. A handful have already voiced their intention to back the forthcoming bill, including Representatives Eli Crane, Don Bacon, and Warren Davidson.

Border Protection commander Gregory Bovino has finally left Chicago, after a federal judge said he’d lied about using excessive force to target protesters opposing immigration operations.

During an appearance on Fox News Thursday, Bovino, who’d been tasked with leading “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, said that he had retreated to West Virginia, where he was “undergoing training with several hundred border patrol agents.” Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, is home to Custom and Border Protection’s Advanced Training Center.

The CBP chief said he could soon redeploy in either New York, Chicago, or Charlotte, North Carolina, adding that he could “guarantee” that Illinois Governor Pritzker would see “a lot more” immigration enforcement in Chicago.

Earlier this week, officials told CBS News that Bovino planned to leave, taking many of his Border Patrol agents with him.

It seems that Bovino left with his tail between his legs, after suffering a lashing from a federal judge. Last week, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a preliminary injunction barring federal agents from using tear gas and other riot prevention methods against protesters, “unless such force is objectively necessary to stop an immediate threat.”

Ellis said that Bovino had admitted to lying about being hit in the head with a rock before deploying tear gas canisters on protesters in Little Village, during his hourslong deposition, and that she’d reviewed video that “disproved” his prior claim. Ellis also said she’d reviewed a trove of evidence that federal agents had used excessive force against protesters, despite little evidence of any actual criminal activity.

Her preliminary injunction requires officers to issue two clear warnings before administering crowd-control measures, to place identifiers conspicuously on their person, and to wear a body camera. In line with her request from a previous hearing, the government’s lawyer confirmed that Bovino would now wear a body camera.

Several prison employees at the facility holding Ghislaine Maxwell have been fired since internal whistleblowers revealed the extent of the child sex criminal’s cozy digs.

News of their termination came by way of Maxwell’s attorney, who on Friday cited the recent release of Maxwell’s emails by Representative Jamie Raskin earlier this week as the rationale for the prison staffers’ sudden firing.

“The release to the media by Congressman Raskin, of Ms. Maxwell’s privileged client-attorney email correspondence with me is as improper as it is a denial of justice,” Leah Saffian, a California-based attorney who has long represented Maxwell, said in a statement.

“There have been appropriate consequences already for employees at Federal Prison Camp Bryan,” Saffian continued. “They have been terminated for improper, unauthorised access to the email system used by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to allow inmates to communicate with the outside world.”

Maxwell was transferred to a minimum-security prison camp mere days after she met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in July to help curate a new list of Jeffrey Epstein’s potential associates.

The information exchange resulted in an extremely cushy transfer for Maxwell—one of the worst sex criminals of the century—shipping her from a Florida prison to a low-security prison camp in Texas that lawmakers have described as “not suitable for a sex offender.”

The British ex-socialite has since raved about her new digs, celebrating the difference between the two facilities as akin to having “dropped through Alice in Wonderlands [sic] looking glass,” according to emails obtained by the House Judiciary Committee.

She has also been granted many privileges not typically afforded to inmates, including meal service in her cell, unlimited toilet paper, and access to private visitations in a chaplain’s office outside standard visiting hours. Her requests to be separated from other inmates have also been granted, with tables and cellmates reportedly being relocated at her whim.

Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in jail for playing an active role in Epstein’s crimes, identifying and grooming vulnerable young women while normalizing their abuse at the hands of her millionaire boyfriend. Maxwell’s attorneys have pressed the White House for a pardon for several months now.