Jamie Raskin Tries to Force Republicans to Vote on Ghislaine Maxwell

House Democrats, led by Representative Jamie Raskin, are trying to force Republicans on the record against Ghislaine Maxwell.

Raskin introduced a resolution Wednesday “expressing the opposition of the House of Representatives to any grant of commutation, clemency, or pardon to federal convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, who refuses to take responsibility for her crimes.”

Maxwell was the accomplice of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Over the past month, the House Oversight Committee has released several damning emails from Epstein’s estate detailing his and Maxwell’s network of contacts, including President Trump. The president has not ruled out commuting Maxwell’s 20-year prison sentence or even pardoning her.

“Ghislaine Maxwell is the exact opposite of the kind of prisoner who deserves a pardon. She continues to lie about the crimes she committed and enabled, continues to disparage and denigrate the women who she victimized and continues to cover up for perhaps the worst global sex-trafficking conspiracy ever run out of the United States,” Raskin said in a statement.

“Every Member should support this Resolution to send a clear and unequivocal message in advance to President Donald Trump before he makes a mockery of the pardon power once again,” Raskin added. “America opposes the grant of any get-out-of-jail-free card to the unrepentant, unremorseful liar and criminal who was an indispensable actor in a vicious billion-dollar international child sex trafficking ring.”

Over the summer, Maxwell gave an interview to the Department of Justice claiming that she never saw Trump doing anything improper and that he wasn’t close to Epstein, which seems to be a lie. Shortly after that meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Maxwell was transferred to a minimum-security facility in Texas, where she has enjoyed a cushy life, getting perks such as secret meetings in the prison chapel, meal service in her cell, and unlimited toilet paper.

Last week, Maxwell said she wouldn’t cooperate with a House Oversight Committee probe into Epstein and how the DOJ handled his case. Trump still might pardon her anyway, but Raskin and other Democrats are hoping to make sure that GOP representatives are on the record first.

Just one hour after angrily ranting about how he is in perfect physical and mental health, President Donald Trump was posting about how his supporters should be called “Tpublicans.”

“There is a new word for a TRUMP REPUBLICAN, which is almost everyone (GREAT POLICY IS THE KEY!),” he mused Wednesday morning on Truth Social. “It is, TEPUBLICAN??? Or, TPUBLICAN???

The president may want to go back to the drawing board here, as neither of these really roll off the tongue well.

More importantly, posts like these don’t do much to instill faith in his mental acuity—especially the morning after a report from The New York Times that noted his slowed schedule compared to his first term, suggesting his age is impacting his ability to govern. The report also mentioned his moments of grogginess, his usual incoherent ramblings, and his more recent existential comments about his chances at getting into heaven.

This set the president off, claiming that he had “never worked so hard” in his life, and that all those facts showed that the Times—which he again referred to as a “rag”—was lying. But his “Tepublican” posting doesn’t exactly bolster his case.

Even military veterans and people not in public office are receiving death threats for standing up to Donald Trump’s unlawful commands.

Days after the president called for the “death” of several Democratic lawmakers who reminded America’s service members to follow the rule of law, Richard Ojeda—a retired Army major running as a Democrat for North Carolina’s 9th congressional district—joined a choir of ex-military voices elevating their message. In a video statement, Ojeda urged members of America’s military and intelligence community to refuse unlawful orders issued by their commander in chief.

“As a former leader who spent 24 years in service to this country, I think it’s important to remind everyone that we teach our soldiers … that if they are ever given an order that is unlawful, illegal, or immoral, it is their duty to refuse those orders,” Ojeda said in the video last week. “This isn’t rocket science.”

It was apparently, however, fuel for Libs of Tiktok’s Chaya Raichik, who shared the clip with her 4.5 million followers on Twitter alongside an incendiary claim that Ojeda was urging America’s military to “REFUSE and DEFY orders from Trump.”

That post made over a million impressions. It also put Ojeda in enough danger that he said he received a visit from the FBI, who warned him they had observed several threats for him to be “shot on sight.”

But the death threats have done little more than inspire him to “invest in a decent gate.” Ojeda, a former West Virginia state senator, told The New Republic that he’s “not going to be bullied” from running for office, let alone stating the law.

Ojeda cautioned that America’s service members aren’t safe from prosecution simply because they were following orders. Instead, he said that they could be the ones left holding the bag for carrying out Trump’s indiscretions long after he leaves office.

“He is by far the most corrupt man to ever occupy the office, period,” Ojeda told TNR.

In a Facebook post on Saturday, Ojeda noted he wasn’t fazed by the death threats. “I don’t want hardworking men and women in the U.S. military to end up prosecuted because the draft dodger in the White House ordered them to break the law,” he wrote.

He pointed to the Trump administration’s recent wave of airstrikes against small boats in the Caribbean as a prime example. Pentagon officials have claimed that the boats were trafficking narcotics to the U.S. from Venezuela and Colombia, despite skipping out on any typical investigations or interdictions that would provide such evidence.

The White House’s careless killing spree has so far killed at least 83 people aboard the tiny watercraft. It has also rallied tens of thousands of Venezuelans in favor of war against the United States.

The attacks have been condemned by U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and foreign human rights advocates alike, including the United Nations’ human rights chief.

It’s been a week since six Democratic members of the House and Senate—a coalition of veterans and former national security professionals—urged service members not to “give up the ship.” In a video statement posted to Facebook, the bloc repeated that America’s military and intelligence communities “can” and “must … refuse illegal orders.” They made no reference to disobeying Trump directly, only reminding people to uphold the Constitution.

But that didn’t stop Trump from taking things personally. He responded to the video Thursday by warning that “their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???” He followed up on that Truth Social post an hour later by calling for their “DEATH.”

Dissent under the Trump administration has become a tenuous game, with militant vigilante groups ready and willing to act on Trump’s behalf to silence his critics. Just in June, a Trump supporter allegedly assassinated Minnesota Democratic state Senator Melissa Hortman, her husband, and their dog, and allegedly attempted to assassinate Democratic state Senator John Hoffman.

Ojeda is still just a primary candidate, far from actually holding public office, and yet his perceived slight to Trump has put him in enough danger that the FBI took notice.

Weighing the volatile reaction he received from the American public for what should be an uncontroversial stance, Ojeda commented to TNR that Trump’s more outspoken opponents are probably facing even more heat.

“With the temperature that’s going across this country, it wouldn’t surprise me if all elected officials aren’t catching flack from folks,” he said.

President Trump was sent into a Truth Social rage after The New York Times reported on what appears to be a serious drop in his energy compared to his first term, as he is attending fewer events and starting them much later.

As the report highlighted, the Roll Call official presidential schedule database shows that in his first term, Trump arrived at scheduled events by 10:31 a.m. on average. Now he starts about 90 minutes later, at 12:08 p.m. From January 20 to November 25 in his first term, Trump held 1,688 official events. This term, that number is at 1,029 by the same point, a 39 percent decrease. His days still end around 5 p.m., as in his first term.

The Times also noted Trump’s apparent grogginess, his classic ramblings, and his existential musings about death.

This report got the president posting bright and early Wednesday morning—nearly a full five hours before his typical scheduled event arrival.

“The Creeps at the Failing New York Times are at it again … I settled 8 Wars, have 48 New Stock Market Highs, our Economy is Great, and our Country is RESPECTED AGAIN all over the World, respected like never before. The last Administration had the Highest Inflation in history—I have already brought that down to normal, and prices, including groceries, are coming down,” Trump wrote. “To do this requires a lot of Work and Energy, and I have never worked so hard in my life. Yet despite all of this the Radical Left Lunatics in the soon to fold New York Times did a hit piece on me that I am perhaps losing my Energy, despite facts that show the exact opposite.”

Those “facts” are a bit murky.

In 2020, Mr. Trump weighed in at six-foot-three, 244 pounds—a frame that used to be classified as obese. In 2025, his physician, Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, had him down to 224 pounds, still overweight. Trump also reportedly loves red meat, McDonald’s, and candy.

“President Trump exhibits excellent cognitive and physical health and is fully fit to execute the duties of the commander in chief and head of state,” Barbabella said in April.

Others note that while he appears to be up and running at these events and Oval Office appearances, we really have no clue what goes on afterward—or what happens when he goes into his golf clubs every weekend.

“[Trump’s aides] show him as effective,” former White House physician Dr. Jeffrey Kuhlman told the Times, “but every time he’s in the Oval Office, he’s sedentary.”

While Kuhlman thinks it’s “commendable” that Trump uses the Air Force One stairs, “you don’t know what he does as soon as he walks in the door.”

Political historian Matthew Dallek drew comparisons between how Trump’s and Biden’s teams have presented their health.

“The people around him are similar to Biden’s aides,” he said. “They would talk as if we’re living in a little bit of a fantasy world. Trump, in that way, with the help of his aides and his doctors, [has] created this fiction about his health to hide the hard, cold truth that he is 79 and one of the oldest people to ever occupy the Oval Office.”

To Trump’s credit, he has completed more international trips than he did in his first term. And even at a lower rate, he is still (just ever so slightly) more active and alert than President Biden was. When taking his constant dialogue with the media and his near-prolific social media posting into account, Trump is perhaps—for better or worse—the most accessible president of the century. But it’s unclear how much longer that can last.

“They know this is wrong, as is almost every thing that they write about me, including election results, ALL PURPOSELY NEGATIVE. This cheap ‘RAG’ is truly an ‘ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.’ The writer of the story, Katie Rogers, who is assigned to write only bad things about me, is a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out,” Trump continued in his reaction post. “Despite all of this, I have my highest Poll Numbers, ever, and with record setting investment being made in America, they should only go up. There will be a day when I run low on Energy, it happens to everyone, but with a PERFECT PHYSICAL EXAM AND A COMPREHENSIVE COGNITIVE TEST (‘That was aced’) JUST RECENTLY TAKEN, it certainly is not now! GOD BLESS AMERICA & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

On Tuesday, Donald Trump had to defend the contents of a leaked call between his envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Yuri Ushakov, a senior foreign policy adviser to Vladimir Putin.

The call took place on October 14, days before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to meet Trump at the White House. On the call, Witkoff seemed to be coaching Ushakov on convincing language to use on Trump, and promising to give Russia Ukrainian land under a final peace deal.

On Air Force One Tuesday evening, a reporter asked Trump if he had heard the “audio of Witkoff coaching the Russians on how to appeal to you.” Trump said no, and dismissed the call as “a standard thing.”

“He’s gotta sell this to Ukraine, he’s gotta sell Ukraine to Russia.… That’s what a dealmaker does. You’ve gotta say, look, they want this, you’ve gotta convince them of this. You know, that’s a very standard form of negotiation. I haven’t heard it, but I heard it was standard negotiation, and I would imagine he’s saying the same thing to Ukraine,” Trump responded.

Another reporter asked Trump if he was worried Witkoff was too pro-Russian, alluding to the envoy’s chumminess with Ushakov on the call. Trump’s answer blew past that premise.

“I think, look, ahh—this war could go on for years, and Russia’s got a lot more people, got a lot more soldiers. So I think if Ukraine can make a deal, it’s a good thing. Frankly, I think it’s great for both. But, Ukraine’s gotta—it’s a much smaller group of people. They’ve lost a lot of people, Russia’s lost a lot of people. But Russia has a much bigger pool of people,” Trump said.

The released transcript of the call seems to show Witkoff effectively telling Russia how to sell the early peace deal draft to Trump, as if it was being proposed by Putin to the United States, with Witkoff suggesting Putin praise Trump as a “man of peace.”

We know now that the initial deal was effectively drafted by Russia and contained what Secretary of State Marco Rubio describes as a “wish list” for the country, with no Ukrainian input at all. It turns out that Trump wasn’t even that involved himself.