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"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August 2018)
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"How do you spell ICE in German? GESTAPO."
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First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me. Pastor Martin Niemoller (c. 1946)
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First, on the End of the Shutdown, which, as is (very) well-known, was facilitated in the Senate by seven moderate Democrats and one Independent, who were roundly criticized by many on the Left (and some in the Center too), primarily because the resolution to do so did not include funds to subsidize premiums for the Affordable Care Act, which will rise astronomically.
As I said in a comment on a Substack column: As for the end of the Shutdown, about which so many Democrats/anti-Trumpers have been highly critical, while being a long-time member of that group (who in print was characterizing Trump as a fascist in early 2016), I am not among that number. Yes, the ACA (which affects 6% of the population) did not get the increases it needs. BUT, for example, SNAP was fully funded, certain fired Federal employees will have to be hired back, Fed. workers will get back pay, the ATCS will be fully back in time for the Thanksgiving holidays, AND, historically likely the most important outcome of ending the shutdown, Speaker Johnson was forced to call back the House, Rep. Grijalva was sworn in in the House, the needed 218 votes for the Release-the-Files resolution were provided.
For me, in historical terms, this is the most important outcome of ending the shutdown, because of its potential effect on the TrumpRepubloFascist Administration. For look (as just about every possibly-interested party is) at what has happened to what is generally being referred to as "Trump-Epstein." The passage of the resolution in the House, plus the coincident release of a vast trove of Trump-Epstein emails under the leadership of Rep. Ro Khanna in cooperation with the Epstein survivors organization, has created a firestorm of problems for Trump and his in-government allies.
It is worth a reminder that the Deputy Attorney General was a Trump defense attorney [the one who lost the New York election interference case]) and that, among other things, yesterday [Nov. 13], Trump was silent for the whole day, something that has not happened for a VERY long time. It remains to be seen just how Trump, his DOJ, his Congressional allies, and his dwindling numbers of supporters in the general population (see his dropping poll numbers), are going to deal with this situation.
First up in the "Release the Files" saga is the Senate vote on the House resolution to force the Justice Department to release the files (apparently a huge trove of them) which it has. As noted, Trump is trying hard to get the Senate to use the filibuster rule against any vote on the resolution, but for a variety of reasons, that tactic apparently is not going to work. And it seems as if a slowly increasing number of Republican Senators, like an increasing number of their colleagues in the House, are in any case going to vote against Trump's interest on this one, either on principle or because they see th way the wind is blowing.
Trump is indeed going nuts, right now, if only because he knows a lot more than the rest of us (yet) about what is in The Files. As noted, apparently, among Republican Senators up for re-election next year (and there might even one or two who would stand on principle on this one --- hey, you never know) he is not going to be able to engineer rejection of the Release-the-Files resolution. If it does pass the Senate, of course he could veto it, which would tell anybody who would agree to listen everything they would want to know. BUT, the "Epstein emails" are flooding the zone anyway. The Kraken have been released (at least some of them).
Obviously (and it is obvious to MANY observers), if there were not a significant amount of Trump-incriminating evidence of, shall we say, participation in one way or another in the Epstein/Maxwell horror-show, he wouldn't still be fighting so hard to prevent the Files release. But supposing they do come out, but in a Trump-edited version (that, apparently, the FBI has already created with a good deal of very creative editing). What would be needed in that case is a full, unredacted, certifiable, copy of them sitting somewhere, just waiting for the moment after Trump is unable to fully stop their formal release.
One useful summary of the depth of the Epstein-sex-crimes horror that Trump is:
Donald Trump spent hours with a sex trafficking victim that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell recruited from his Mar-a-Lago club and abused for years.
Moments after explosive new emails suggested the president may have known more about Epstein's conduct than he has previously acknowledged, pro-release MAGA Republicans identified the victim at the heart of the documents as the late Virginia Giuffre, Epstein's most high-profile survivor.
In one email to Maxwell, which was dated April 2, 2011, Epstein refers to Trump as the dog that hasn't barked and reveals that a certain victim whose name was redacted in the files "spent hours at my house with him."
(By the way, the "dog that didn't bark" is a reference to a Sherlock Holmes short murder mystery in which the killer was eventually identified because when the murders [of a horse and its trainer] were committed, in a stables, around mid-night, the stables dog was there. As it happened, he/she didn't bark --- because he/she knew the person who had just entered the stables, and it could only have been a particular person. Case closed [at least for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle].)
On a different subject which is being mentioned, that is what the Russian President Vladimir Putin "has on Trump," and speculation on how he might use that information at the most critical time in either Trump Presidency. Among other items, the list includes: the details the Deutsche Bank affair; the details (of course) of Russian interference in the 2016 election (from the U.S. side, see the Mueller Report); Putin's interpreter's notes from the famous 2018 Helsinki meeting (Trump had his interpreters notes destroyed); and Roger Stone and the DNC tapes, supplied to him by Julian Assange (who got them from where?), which Stone then conveniently dropped a couple of hours after the Access Hollywood tape was released.
Of course, this intense drama and Trump's increasingly desperate attempts to prevent the release of the unredacted version of The Files makes one wonder what's in his tax returns and medical records that he has also fought for years to avoid having released to the public.
In conclusion, of course the history of this --- the most sordid, the most illegal, the most Unconstitutional --- series of events in U.S. history, make the Nixon-from-49-state-winner-to-the-only-President-ever-to-resign-the-office saga --- look mild by comparison.
(Article changed on Nov 14, 2025 at 12:10 PM EST)
(Article changed on Nov 14, 2025 at 12:27 PM EST)
