Trump’s Commerce Secretary Faces Calls to Resign Over Epstein Files

Members of Congress are calling on Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to resign after the government’s latest release of Jeffrey Epstein files show that the pair had a close relationship, contradicting Lutnick’s earlier denials.

Lutnick, who lived next door to Epstein in New York, claimed last year on the conservative Pod Force One podcast that after he met the convicted sex offender in 2005, he swore off future interactions with Epstein. But revelations late last month show that Lutnick’s financial services firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, was making deals with Epstein long after that, with Lutnick traveling to Epstein’s private Caribbean island and continuing to correspond with the billionaire via email.

Republican Representative Thomas Massie and several Democrats over the weekend called for Lutnick to step down, with the Kentucky congressmen telling CNN’s Inside Politics on Sunday that Lutnick “should just resign.”

“Howard Lutnick clearly went to the island, if we believe what’s in these files; he was in business with Jeffrey Epstein, and this was many years after Jeffrey Epstein was convicted,” Massie said. “He’s got a lot to answer for, but really, he should make life easier on the president, frankly, and just resign.”

Democratic Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove posted Sunday afternoon, “In between gaslighting Americans about the economy & sucking up to Trump, Lutnick took up TV air time to lie about his relationship with Epstein. He visited Epstein’s island in 2012 yet claimed he cut ties with Epstein years earlier. What else is he hiding? He must resign.”

Representative Robert Garcia later said, “It’s now clear that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been lying about his relationship with Epstein. He said he had no interactions with Epstein after 2005, yet we now know they were in business together. Lutnick must resign or be fired. And he must answer our questions.”

Representative Ted Lieu called out Lutnick for having gone “on national TV and lied to the American people.”

“You were despicable then for planning a visit to Epstein island, and you are despicable now for brazenly lying. You should resign,” Lieu posted Sunday.

“He has no business being our Commerce Secretary. He should resign,” Senator Adam Schiff also posted Sunday, calling out Lutnick for lying about his business ties with Epstein.

On Monday, Representative Melanie Stansbury called for Lutnick to appear before the House Oversight Committee and said, “I personally believe that Mr. Lutnick needs to step down immediately.”

The U.S. health secretary’s motivation for ending childhood obesity apparently rests on military recruitment.

Speaking at a Heritage Foundation event Monday morning, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that America’s fat kids need to lose weight so they can go to war, lest we “lose” the country.

“Seventy-seven percent of our children can no longer qualify for military service and most of that is diet-related,” Kennedy said. “We need to change what we’re feeding these children or we’re going to lose our country.”

The Pentagon’s 2020 Qualified Military Available Study found that just 77 percent of young Americans would qualify for service without a medical waiver due to reasons such as obesity, drug use, and mental or physical health disorders. The report noted, however, that just 11 percent of America’s youth would be disqualified from service for obesity. Kennedy appears to have his numbers backward.

But the U.S. does have a severe obesity problem. Federal administrations dating back to the 1970s have attempted to address it, though seemingly to no avail, as rates are higher than ever. Roughly two in five Americans are obese, according to data from the National Institutes of Health. Meanwhile, one in five children are affected by obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For all the political noise Republicans made when former first lady Michelle Obama decided to tackle childhood obesity rates, Kennedy’s efforts are totally cool with conservatives—even, or perhaps especially, if his end goal is to use children’s bodies for America’s militaristic aims.

Back in September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made clear that his version of the U.S. military would have no room for “fat troops.” Speaking before hundreds of America’s top military commanders at a mandatory in-person meeting in Quantico, Hegseth unveiled his efforts to de-wokify the country’s armed forces, including resetting military combat requirements to the “highest male standard only” and updating the branches’ height and weight requirements. He not-so-subtly admitted he wanted to force women out of service, as well as Black men by way of a ban on military beard waivers.

But it’s not clear if Kennedy’s MAHA agenda—which was generated by AI—will work. Last month, the health secretary unveiled the outcome of his department’s monthslong project to reimagine the food pyramid. The result: an upside-down triangle, in which butter, steak, and cheese play a leading role.

Furthermore, a fraction of Americans volunteer for military service, raising questions about whether obesity rates actually have an effect on recruitment efforts. Less than one half of one percent of the general public is active duty, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Only roughly 6 percent of the population has ever served in the military, representing some 18 million veterans.

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice blocked prosecutors in Minnesota from investigating Renee Good’s killing, several people told The New York Times.

Before he resigned from his role last month, former acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson emailed colleagues at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which reviews police shootings, indicating they would team up with the FBI to launch a civil rights investigation into Good’s death. But as soon as FBI agents received a signed search warrant to examine the blood splatter and bullet holes in Good’s vehicle, they received orders to stop their investigation, according to several who spoke anonymously with the Times.

The orders came from senior DOJ officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel, who were apparently concerned the investigation could undermine the administration’s claims that Good was a violent insurrectionist who had attempted to mow down a federal agent, according to the Times.

The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension previously claimed that the FBI had outright refused to cooperate with its investigation into Good’s killing, forcing it to withdraw its efforts entirely. In late January, Department of Homeland Security officers also blocked BCA access to the scene of Alex Pretti’s brutal killing.

In the days following Good’s death, DOJ officials suggested that prosecutors launch a criminal investigation into whether Good had assaulted Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed her. DOJ officials also suggested that prosecutors investigate Good’s widow, Becca, who had been present at the incident and whom Trump smeared as a “professional agitator.” Rather than engage in their frivolous investigations, Thompson and three other senior prosecutors resigned.

Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News at the time that the prosecutors had resigned because they “suddenly decided they didn’t want to support the men and women at ICE.”

Anti-abortion demonstrators at the March for Life may have helped spread a potentially fatal disease.

The march and concert, held on January 23 in Washington, D.C., draw thousands to the National Mall each year. This time, though, the D.C. Department of Health says that multiple cases of measles have been reported following the event.

“DC Health was notified of multiple confirmed cases of measles whose carriers visited multiple locations in the District while contagious,” the department said in a press release Sunday. “DC Health is informing people who were at these locations that they may have been exposed.”

D.C. health officials said that the disease could have easily spread at major transit points, including Ronald Reagan National Airport and Union Station. Infected people also visited Catholic University of America and the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

The march is a big event for religious conservatives, this year attracting politicians such as Vice President JD Vance, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and Republican Representative Chris Smith. Many on the right oppose vaccination, with some citing religious reasons, making the march a possible hotbed of measles infections. The two major outbreaks in the U.S. right now are in South Carolina, which is facing the largest outbreak in the U.S. since 2000, and Texas, where an ICE family detention center had to go on lockdown last week.

Both of these states are Republican-run and home to countless anti-vaxxers. The March for Life gathers people from right-wing areas all over America in one city, and it’s not shocking that an outbreak was the result. What is shocking is how much the Republicans in power right now are still undermining a return to widespread vaccination, leaving other public officials begging people to get vaccinated.

Convicted sex trafficker and Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell refused to answer a single question during her virtual deposition with the House Oversight Committee on Monday.

“Unfortunately, she had an opportunity today to answer questions that every American has, questions that would be very important in this investigation, and she chose to invoke her Fifth Amendment,” House Oversight Chairman James Comer said.

This is a departure from the norm for Maxwell, as she was quite talkative in her July interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and in a more recent habeas petition claimed that 29 of Epstein’s friends had been “protected” by the Justice Department by way of “secret settlements.”

“After months of defying our subpoena, Ghislaine Maxwell finally appeared before the Oversight Committee and said nothing,” Democratic Oversight Committee member Robert Garcia said. “She answered no questions and provided no information about the men who raped and trafficked women and girls.”

Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Markus, later explained why his client was staying mum: She’s holding out for a Trump pardon.

“She must remain silent because Ms. Maxwell has a habeas petition currently pending that demonstrates that her conviction rests on a fundamentally unfair trial,” Markus wrote. He then claimed that jurors “lied during voir dire” and that the government broke a promise to grant Maxwell immunity.

“If this Committee and the American public truly want to hear the unfiltered truth about what happened, there is a straightforward path. Ms. Maxwell is prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump,” he continued. “Only she can provide the complete account. Some may not like what they hear, but the truth matters. For example, both President Trump and President Clinton are innocent of any wrongdoing. Ms. Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation.”

This is nothing more than an attempt to get a convicted, infamous sex trafficker out of prison.

Maxwell continues to serve out her 20-year sentence while members of Congress begin viewing unredacted files on Monday—and while Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton prepare for their own private depositions.

This story has been updated.