Democrats Demand Epstein Files Audit to See if They’ve Been Altered

Senate Democrats, along with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, want an independent review of Epstein case files released by the government to ensure that the records haven’t been tampered with or concealed.

Senators Adam Schiff and Dick Durbin wrote a letter to the Justice Department’s inspector general Thursday asking for a formal review of the files to check for chain of custody issues. Some Epstein survivors, through representatives, are also asking for an independent review to see if any of the documents have been “scrubbed, softened, or quietly removed before the public sees it,” according to CBS News.

“To reassure the American public that any files released have not been tampered with or concealed, the chain of custody forms associated with records and evidence in the Epstein files must be accounted for, analyzed, and released,” wrote Durbin and Schiff, both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in their letter.

Last month, Congress and President Trump passed a law requiring all of the Epstein files in government hands to be released by December 19, with as few redactions as possible. Three federal judges have also ruled this month to unseal grand jury records from the criminal investigations into Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.

As several batches of files on Epstein are now due to be released for the first time, the Trump administration’s past actions do not lend much confidence into whether these documents will be released untouched. FBI Director Kash Patel has said that it may not be “lawful” to release certain files, and the bureau has already spent nearly $1 million dollars redacting sensitive information from the files.

House Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t seem to understand why President Donald Trump’s violent racism is his problem.

Trump confirmed Tuesday that he’d used the epithet “shithole countries” eight years ago during a closed-door meeting with senators, though he had initially denied it. While walking through the Capitol Wednesday night, CNN’s Manu Raju asked Johnson if he was OK with the president using that kind of language.

Johnson winced. “Look, I’m baited every day with asking—being made to ask to comment on what the president or other members say,” he replied.

“It’s the president of the United States; don’t you have an opinion on it?” Raju pressed.

“Of course I have an opinion, that’s not the way I speak, and you know that. But the president is expressing his frustration about the extraordinary challenge that is presented to America when you have people coming in, not assimilating, and then taking over the country,” Johnson said.

Recently, the Trump administration has taken aim at the Somali American community in Minnesota with an immigration crackdown, and members of his administration have bent over backward to defend his blatant race baiting. Johnson—who clearly sees himself as part of Trump’s political machine more than a check on the president’s power—seems content to help translate Trump’s frothing at the mouth as good-faith concern for Americans.

Donald Trump’s big mouth could cost him more Republican votes in Indiana as he pushes the Hoosier State to redistrict.

Anxious about the 2026 midterms, Trump issued directives to several red states, including Indiana, to redraw their congressional maps in order to bolster Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House. In Indiana’s case, that unprecedented, long-shot effort would win just two more seats in the U.S. House.

On Thursday, hours before the state Senate is set to vote, Trump issued another nasty missive, attacking more local leaders while threatening to back primary opponents for anyone who votes against his plan. This time, the ire of Trump’s focus was Senate President Pro Tem Rod Bray, who has formed a coalition of allies averse to the measure that very soon could see its death knell.

“Every other State has done Redistricting, willingly, openly, and easily. There was never a question in their mind that contributing to a WIN in the Midterms for the Republicans was a great thing to do for our Party, and for America itself,” Trump wrote in a lengthy Truth Social rant Wednesday night. “Unfortunately, Indiana Senate ‘Leader’ Rod Bray enjoys being the only person in the United States of America who is against Republicans picking up extra seats, in Indiana’s case, two of them.

“He is putting every ounce of his limited strength into asking his soon to be very vulnerable friends to vote with him.

“The people of Indiana don’t want the Party of Sleepy Joe Biden, Kamala, Ilhan Omar, or the rest to succeed in Washington,” the president continued. “Bray doesn’t care. He’s either a bad guy, or a very stupid one!

“Anybody that votes against Redistricting, and the SUCCESS of the Republican Party in D.C., will be, I am sure, met with a MAGA Primary in the Spring,” Trump wrote. “Rod Bray and his friends won’t be in Politics for long, and I will do everything within my power to make sure that they will not hurt the Republican Party, and our Country, again.”

Trump’s fury is unlikely to win him any friends. At least one Republican in the state—a longtime disability advocate—has already sworn off voting in favor of Trump’s new congressional maps, blaming the president’s decision to call Minnesota Governor Tim Walz “seriously retarded.”

Still, the fact that there is a vote on the measure at all could be a sign of twisting attitudes regarding the gerrymandering effort: Indiana’s Senate announced late last month that it would not meet until January, signaling at the time that redistricting would not be on the state’s legislative agenda this year. Now the state could be just hours away from new maps.

Et tu, ChatGPT?

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled his department’s new AI chatbot for military personnel, GenAI.mil. Almost immediately, the bot called a “hypothetical” situation where the government orders a strike on a suspected drug-smuggling boat and then double-taps said boat to kill the survivors, “unambiguously illegal.”

A military source who spoke to Straight Arrow News Wednesday pointed reporters to a Reddit thread that featured the alleged interaction with the bot. The source said that military personnel wasted no time in testing the bot’s capabilities.

Hegseth has spent recent weeks ardently defending the legality of a situation just like the one described to the chatbot. Backed by President Donald Trump, Hegseth has ordered at least 22 (likely illegal) airstrikes against numerous boats in international waters under the guise of stopping “narcoterrorism,” which have so far killed at least 87 people. After the very first strike on September 2, he ordered a double-tap attack on an already bombed boat in order to kill two survivors.

The outright killing of shipwrecked survivors has sparked bipartisan outrage, though many Republicans claim to still need more information before they abandon Hegseth. Trump is distancing himself from the situation, saying he’s “not involved.”

At least someone—or something?—in the Trump administration has moral clarity.

The Department of Homeland Security just paid nearly $140 million to be in charge of managing its own deportation flights. 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has signed a multimillion-dollar contract to purchase six Boeing 737 aircrafts from Daedalus Aviation Corporation, whose owners already have ties to massive DHS contracts, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement previously chartered planes to carry out deportations. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the Post that owning its own planes would allow ICE to “operate more effectively, including by using more efficient flight patterns.” 

Now the agency would be responsible for managing its own fleet of aircraft, flight crews, and all the logistics involved in transporting immigrant detainees around and out of the country. But John Sandweg, former acting ICE director, said that dealing with all of this might be more trouble than it’s worth.  

“It’s so much easier to issue a contract to a company that already manages a fleet of airplanes,” Sandweg told the Post. “So this move I’m surprised by because what the administration wants to accomplish, by and large, can be accomplished through charter flights already.”

$140 million is just a small drop in the $170 billion bucket that is DHS’s new four-year budget—but it’s not clear that the decision to run its own deportation airline won’t incur more costs as part of the Trump’s administration’s ongoing efforts to drive up the rate of removals.

The owners of Daedalus Aviation, William Allen Walters III and Taundria Cappel, are also the figures behind Salus Worldwide Solutions Corporation, which won a three-year $915 million air services contract to carry out deportations. That contract is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit, over allegations that it was an “unlawful, rushed, and non-competitive award.”