Author: news Guest

My current obsession is pretty simple: Democrats need to focus relentlessly on making people’s lives better—immediately and demonstrably, and they need to brand the hell out of it when they do.

Take the COVID-era stimulus checks. Donald Trump—who is evil, but not dumb about marketing—literally signed his name on them. Joe Biden didn’t do the same when he became president, which he now acknowledges was a big mistake.

“Within the first two months of office I signed the American Rescue Plan,” Biden recently said. “And also learned something from Donald Trump—he signed checks for people, $7,400 for people because we passed the plan. I didn’t—stupid.”

Exactly. Democrats constantly bury their accomplishments in the fine print of the tax code. Working parents get help via confusing credits. Many don’t even benefit because they don’t itemize their taxes. And no one walks away from tax season thinking, “Thanks, Democrats, for that obscure $200 break!” Even those of us who believe in fully funding a functioning society mostly think, “Fuck this shit!” while doing our taxes.

If you want to help parents of young children? Send them a damn check. Every month. Signed by the Democratic president. And then say it clearly: “If Republicans win the next election, you don’t get that check anymore.”

---

Related | Stop overthinking it: Cost of living is the most important issue

---

Do that, and the political landscape looks very different. Republicans make the same mistake too, which is why I wrote this piece urging Democrats to capitalize on Trump’s broken “no taxes on tips” promise. Their branding sucks too—so let’s use that to our advantage.

Obviously we can’t do direct stimulus right now, as Democrats are out of power. But we can absolutely make clear how Trump’s policies are screwing over the very people who voted for him.

Trump is directly gutting services for his new lower-income, less-educated base. Many of them are MAGA dead-enders, and no one is trying to convert them. They are lost to the cult. 

But this is a 49-48 Democratic country, and our base turns out less reliably than the GOP’s. We need everything to go right in order to win. Shift the electorate just 5 points, and suddenly we’re a 54-43 country. That kind of margin gives us breathing room. It lets us win even in a rough year. It opens up Senate and House seats that seemed out of reach.

That’s why I love what the Democratic National Committee just did.

They’re launching a billboard campaign targeting Trump in rural communities where hospitals and clinics are shutting down. As NOTUS reports, the billboards are going up in Silex, Missouri; Columbus, Indiana; Stilwell, Oklahoma; and Missoula, Montana—each declaring “Under Trump’s Watch…” followed by what’s been lost.

In Montana, for example, the message reads: “Under Trump’s Watch, Providence St. Patrick Hospital Is Closing Its Maternity Center.”

I would make the language even more direct. Saying it happened “under Trump’s watch” makes it sound like an accident, like a storm or a fire, something that just happened while he was around. But these aren’t natural disasters: They’re the result of deliberate policy. So let’s say it plainly: “Trump killed the maternity ward at Providence St. Patrick Hospital.”

Still, I’m thrilled the DNC is doing this and I hope it’s just the beginning. I’ve written about a Nebraska clinic that closed, and another in rural North Carolina that was set to reopen—until Trump’s policies killed the possibility. There will be dozens, maybe hundreds more of these stories. And every single one should have a billboard calling him out.

---

Related | Trump hasn’t delivered ‘no taxes on tips’ promise—but Democrats should

---

And when Democrats take power again? Brand everything they create and fund with the name of the elected officials who voted to make it happen—and add their party affiliation.

Suddenly, you’ll see a lot fewer Republicans pretending to support federal projects they voted against. And voters? They’ll finally be able to see—clearly and directly—which party actually shows up for them, and what they stand to lose if they stick with the GOP. 

AMY GOODMAN: We are also joined in Detroit by Congressmember Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress. She addressed members of the flotilla, the Handala, earlier this week.

What are you calling on the Trump administration to do to ensure the safety of the ship? You previously called for the safe passage of the ship before, that Israel raided, the Madleen, Congressmember.

REP. RASHIDA TLAIB: Yeah, I mean, we use the power of the letterhead, and getting a lot of my colleagues, so it’s not just me alone, but other fellow Americans that don’t share my faith or ethnicity or have a close connection to the movement for human rights for the Palestinians. But I can tell you, you know, many of my colleagues are expressing in words to me about the starvation, the forced starvation of the people in Gaza, the Palestinians there, but they’re lacking action. Their votes don’t meet up with the words of “it needs to stop.” They have the leverage. They can sign letters, send their own letters.

And so, for all those listening to, you know, Huwaida, who’s from Michigan, from my home state, you know, talking to Chris Smalls, Jacob and so many, hearing their stories come out of why they’re there, they are risking their lives and sacrificing so much to try to break the siege, to go there, while they continue, as all of us continue, to see the images of just children and so many others, even the parents, you know, just dwindling, their organs shutting down, mothers, just like me and Huwaida and so many others, expressing, like, “Is it because my child is Palestinian? Is it because they’re in Gaza?” And it is really incredibly difficult.

But the Trump administration knows more — a letter is coming, knowing that, again, all eyes on the flotilla. I’m asking everyone to keep your eyes on there. Pay attention, no matter what country, no matter what community you live in. You know, the majority of folks globally have been standing up and saying, “Enough is enough. End the genocide and the forced starvation.”

You know, I’ve been, you know, awakened and understanding. Sometimes I wish my colleagues would maybe pretend that they weren’t Palestinian; then they would actually care and do something to end this madness of, again, allowing people that are just hungry to go death traps, that we, the American people, are paying for to lure them in because they’re so hungry. And they know, from hearing from other stories, that they could lose their life trying to get food, and again, stories after stories, not only from the doctor we listened to and Huwaida’s previous experience of even trying to break the siege. This is not the first, nor will it be the last time that, again, the Israeli government violates international law. They consistently do it. They have for decades. And so, we’re going to continue, again, trying to elevate and make Congress move. And we can do that by having members, Americans from outside that institution, demand their member do what they’re asking.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to ask you about where you’re from, your family from the West Bank, and I want to ask you about the killing of another U.S. citizen by Israeli forces. Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank fatally beat 20-year-old Palestinian American from Tampa, Florida, earlier this month, Sayfollah Musallet, known as Saif by his family. He was visiting his village, al-Mazra’a ash-Sharqiya, reportedly the seventh American killed in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon since October 2023. A second Palestinian, Mohammad al-Shalabi, was shot dead during the settler attack. Musallet’s cousin Diana read a statement from the family.

DIANA MUSALLET: We are devastated that our beloved Sayfollah Musallet, nicknamed Saif, was brutally beaten to death in our family’s land by illegal Israeli settlers who were attempting to steal it. Israeli settlers surrounded Saif for over three hours as paramedics attempted to reach him, but the mob of settlers blocked the ambulance and paramedics from providing lifesaving aid. After the mob of Israeli settlers cleared hours later, Saif’s younger brother rushed to carry him to the ambulance. Saif was killed and died before reaching the hospital.

AMY GOODMAN: And just this week, the Israeli Knesset, the parliament, voted 71 to 13 for a nonbinding motion to annex the occupied West Bank. It calls the West Bank an “inseparable part of the land of Israel.” Can I get your response to what the U.S. government is doing about the killing of its citizen, Saif, and this latest news from the Knesset?

REP. RASHIDA TLAIB: The American government is doing absolutely nothing, as per usual, around an American citizen that has been killed. Again, military and others watch this happen, watch extremists. And, you know, again, these are Israelis. And people call them “settlers.” They’re extremist Israelis. Nobody knows what these — these are folks coming into — with Israeli citizenship, coming in to take land. But it’s — you know, I don’t like when people call it a “clash.” They came for the intention of forcibly, with force, with violence, killing people, to take, again, property or to harass. And sometimes it’s just to intentionally harass and target the Palestinian people, because the goal here is — and the Knesset told us — is to ethnically cleanse anyone who is a Palestinian. That is, again, different faiths. But if you’re Palestinian, if you’re — if you’re Christian, if you’re Muslim, you, again, are going to be pushed out of this — of the land, being pushed out again, all under this, you know, movement, again, to completely get rid of the Palestinian people from all corners of the country. And again, this is even Palestinian citizens of Israel being targeted. I don’t know if people realize, there’s integrated communities, where the Palestinian people there, again, that have Israeli citizenship, are also being targeted.

All this to say is I don’t care if it’s in Jerusalem, in the integrated neighborhood or community, or in the West Bank. You know, what happened to Saif, what happened to Mohammad, what happened again, continues to happen to American people, is the experience of the Palestinian people there that are not American. It happens all the time. It is consistent. And one of the things that people need to know is that these are — these are Israeli citizens, folks just walking around, with the enabling and the support of the Israeli military and the genocidal maniac, Netanyahu. They have set out the [inaudible], “Go for it. Go ahead and ethnically cleanse.” And then, the Knesset just showed them with the vote that’s exactly what they want to do.

And the American government, and my colleagues, Democrat and Republican, sit by idly and say, “That’s terrible,” or “I don’t like Netanyahu.” Great. Then stop sending him and the country our money. Use it as leverage to uphold human rights. Use it in a way, again, to uplift what we all believe in. No one should be forced to starve. No one should be pushed out of their land, again, illegally, to violate international laws.

All of those things to say is, you know, Amy, I watched in a committee people just distressed of an American being brutally killed in Syria, and wanting to insist on sanctions, again, that hurt the people on the ground. But the fact that they were willing to do it there, but not when it comes to the Israeli government, there’s always an exception when it comes to the Palestinian people. It is completely racialized. Again, I intentionally say in my speeches on the House floor, “If you need to close your eyes and pretend they’re not Palestinian, they’re not Brown, they’re not Muslim, they’re not [inaudible] — all of these things, I wonder if my colleagues would act differently.” I really do think they would.

And again, you know, many of my colleagues try to send letters, but even their letters are — there’s racist tropes in those letters. There’s words in those letters that even erase, again, the brutality of what happened to Saif and so many others. And, you know, I’ve been there seven years, and it’s getting worse, not better, even as we watch the genocide live on social media platforms, even as we hear from Americans in our own backyard talk about their loved one — loved ones being targeted and brutally murdered. And again, Saif and Mohammad has exposed to us what happens to the Palestinian people who are not Americans, every single day that they live there.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the Republicans in the Financial Services Committee voted to block an amendment from you, Congressmember Rashida Tlaib — this is on a different issue — which would have forced the first release of Jeffrey Epstein’s financial files, particularly details about his shady, suspicious financial transactions, the dead child sex trafficker. Recent reports reveal billions of dollars in payments to women, including those in Belarus and Russia. You also signed on to a House bipartisan measure introduced by Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna demanding the release of the files. In this last 30 seconds we have, why is this so critical to you? And this on the second-day meeting of Trump’s former personal lawyer, now the deputy attorney general, and Ghislaine Maxwell.

REP. RASHIDA TLAIB: I think it’s important to know there are three banks, very large banks, Morgan — JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America and another bank, Mellon, in New York. All three of them did not, within the regulations or requirements, within 60 days of those transactions by Epstein, report those transactions. They’re, again, required within 60 days. Amy, they waited until he was arrested in 2019. We’re not talking about 100 or 200 — over 4,000 transactions, amounting to $1.5 billion. It is important and critical to understand who was involved directly in the human trafficking of young women — 

AMY GOODMAN: Three seconds.

REP. RASHIDA TLAIB: — who, again, enabled it.

AMY GOODMAN: Democratic Congressmember Rashida Tlaib, I want to thank you for being with us, of Michigan, the only Palestinian American member of Congress. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.

This week fresh rumblings from the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency emerged, outlining more anti-climate science plans — just as the International Court of Justice took a defining step to safeguard the planet.

The EPA, under the direction of Administrator Lee Zeldin, appears increasingly serious about scrapping the “endangerment finding,” a rule that serves as the fulcrum of U.S. climate action. Or, to borrow Zeldin’s words, “the holy grail of the climate change religion.”

The finding, dating to 2009, indicates that “the elevated concentrations of the six greenhouse gases in the atmosphere — carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) — endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.” In addition, the rule identifies motor vehicles as a culprit of the greenhouse gas emissions that sully the air and jeopardize our collective health.

It’s hard to overstate the significance of this rule. Regulating greenhouse gas emissions is essential to have any chance of mitigating the climate crisis, and the endangerment finding supplies the legal muscle to do so. Without this foundational leverage for tackling one of the most existential threats of our time, it’s virtually inconceivable how the U.S. could remain a meaningful player in global climate efforts.

The United Nations’ top court won’t be too pleased about that. As it turns out, on Wednesday, the ICJ issued a first-of-its-kind advisory opinion on climate change that starkly diverges from the narrative playing out in the Trump administration.

While Trump has infamously mocked climate change as “a great hoax,” the ICJ unanimously declared that international law obliges “the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.”

While the EPA has couched its rationale for reconsidering the endangerment finding in language about “lowering the cost of living for American families,” the ICJ posited that “a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a precondition for the enjoyment of many human rights, such as the right to life, the right to health and the right to an adequate standard of living, including access to water, food and housing.”

The court’s opinion, though considered nonbinding, has inspired some hope.

More than 130 countries supported Vanuatu, the Pacific island nation that spearheaded the efforts to bring this case to the ICJ. This matters both practically and symbolically. As the Trump administration has all but forfeited the U.S.’s role in global climate leadership, many have wondered whether this move would offer convenient guise for other big emitters to do the same. Though it’s perhaps too early to gauge whether this pretext will, for example, lower the threshold for what counts as ambitious commitments, there’s little evidence so far of widespread backsliding or a domino effect of disengagement in climate action.

Instead, the U.S appears to be standing on lonely ground. As the international community inches toward a framework that increasingly recognizes the indivisibility of environmental protection, public health and human rights, Americans are left holding the tatters of a Trumpian “America First” agenda that, for some baffling reason, is concomitant with polluted air.

It’s worth noting that the cost we’re incurring extends far beyond slower progress on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Our climate commitments are not merely being postponed. This is no longer a matter of climate change being demoted to a back-burner issue. We’re not just playing another round of kick-the-policy-can-down-the-road until someone remembers our world is on fire.

No, what we’re witnessing now is a full-on hollowing out. We’re facing a fundamental dismantling of levers — institutional, scientific and diplomatic — that risks leaving us with too little to rebuild from.

The second Trump term is attacking climate policy with a ferocity we didn’t see in the first. As this approach pulls us further away from international norms and trusted partners, it stands to erode both our planet’s prospects and our capacity to reclaim what we lose.

Questions about the Epstein files keep coming.

So do bits of information about President Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex offender who died by suicide while in prison nearly six years ago.

The White House is employing lots of strategies to try to distract and deflect in an effort to beat back the story. The president said fellow Republicans, people who voted for him, were being “duped” by Democrats, said he doesn’t want their votes and called those continuing to demand the release of the files “weaklings.”

Trump went on a social media posting spree Monday night, lashing out at familiar foes — former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as well as his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, while pointing back to the now almost decade-old investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

He went after the media for coverage of last month’s bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, and that came after blasting the Wall Street Journal for reporting last week on a risque birthday letter to Epstein in 2003 that had Trump’s name on it. Trump then sued the paper for $20 billion, contending that “no authentic letter or drawing exists.”

It looked like the blame-the-media strategy might work with his base after that, but his response has been more muted this week after the Journal broke that Trump was briefed by his attorney general in May that his name appears multiple times in the files. A spokesperson called it a continuation of “fake news,” but Trump did not directly address the story.

The administration’s recent comments and actions — including releasing more documents on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. nearly 60 years ago and even wading into the years-old controversies around changed professional sports team names — have done little to quell the controversy.

Polling has shown that neither Trump’s base nor the public writ large is very satisfied with the amount of information released or how Trump’s administration is handling it, though Trump’s approval with Republicans remains stable.

All of it represents an ironic turn for Trump. His political career was born out of the false birther conspiracy, and he has peddled lots of others for years, stoking a distrust in expertise and the government to help fuel his runs for office.

But now, he is the government — and dealing with a story in which conclusions were already drawn by many in his base that have roots in the QAnon movement that there is a satanic cabal of high-profile people in government who are also pedophiles.

In many ways, the Epstein files are a self-created perfect storm, and now it’s blowing back.

The calls for releasing the files have impacted all three branches of government this week. Trump said that releasing the files won’t likely quell the conspiracies, but even in that acknowledgment, he deflected, trying to blame Democrats.

“[N]othing will be good enough for the troublemakers and radical left lunatics making the request,” Trump said in a social media post last weekend that began with him calling for the release of grand jury testimony from the Epstein case. “It will always be more, more, more. MAGA!”

Where do things stand and what’s the latest?

Justice Department interview of Ghislaine Maxwell: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former personal attorney of President Trump’s, interviewed Maxwell in prison on Thursday. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors. What new information the DOJ is seeking or what it would learn — and what Maxwell could get out of it, if anything, is unclear.

Whether anyone can believe what Maxwell winds up sharing is another question. Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told NPR’s Morning Edition that if he were Maxwell’s lawyer he’d advise her to share nothing and invoke the Fifth Amendment, which gives people the right to not self-incriminate.

“Even though she’s already been tried and convicted and sentenced, she still could at least theoretically have other exposure to additional crimes,” Honig said.

Grand jury transcripts: The government, encouraged by Trump, also sought to release grand jury transcripts from the Epstein case. A federal judge denied one of those requests. Two others are pending.

Getting out of Dodge: In Congress, House Speaker Mike Johnson had Congress get out of town early for its August recess rather than take a vote aiming to force the Trump administration to release the Epstein files.

House Oversight Committee seeks Maxwell interview, too: After a subcommittee vote in which Republicans joined Democrats to approve a subpoena to compel Maxwell to speak to the committee, committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican, issued a subpoena for an interview to occur Aug. 11.

“While the Justice Department undertakes efforts to uncover and publicly disclose additional information related to your and Mr. Epstein’s cases, it is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of you and Mr. Epstein,” Comer wrote in a letter to Maxwell released by the committee. “In particular, the Committee seeks your testimony to inform the consideration of potential legislative solutions to improve federal efforts to combat sex trafficking and reform the use of non-prosecution agreements and/or plea agreements in sex-crime investigations.”

Trump knew his name was in the files in May, according to the Wall Street Journal and others: The Journal reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy briefed Trump two months ago, letting him know that his name appeared in the Epstein files.

NPR has not confirmed that reporting, and the appearance of Trump’s name alone is not an indication of wrongdoing. He and Epstein were friends for years; they were seen on video partying together; and Trump was even on flight logs for Epstein’s plane before a falling out over a property dispute.

Honig told Morning Edition that it was highly unusual for an attorney general in the modern era to tell a president the details of an investigation it is conducting, particularly when it involves the president himself.

“Not at all,” it’s not normal for an attorney general to do so, Honig said. “And the question that this begs to me is, why? Why would the attorney general go and tip off the president — ‘Hey, you’re named in these criminal, closed criminal investigative files,’ whatever ‘named’ may mean. That is highly abnormal, and if we look back at the history of attorneys general, through both parties, that would be seen as a breach of the attorney general’s independence.”

For Trump’s part, a White House spokesperson said in a statement that Trump kicked Epstein “out of his club for being a creep,” dismissed the story as a continuation of “fake news” and pivoted to talking about Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election.

What does the Russia investigation have to do with this?

It’s hard to believe, but the government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was almost a decade ago now.

And yet, it’s something Trump continues to point to when asked about Epstein.

On Wednesday, Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, from the White House Briefing Room podium, alleged a “yearslong coup and treasonous conspiracy” enacted by the Obama administration against Trump.

But there wasn’t much new. In fact, the assessments she referenced largely affirm what’s been known about Russian interference for years — while weaving a newly packaged web with that information.

The charged allegations led Obama’s office to issue a rare response to the Trump administration.

“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,” the statement read. “But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”

It also noted that bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee findings, a committee then-chaired by Marco Rubio, now Trump’s secretary of state, “affirmed” the intelligence community’s findings.

From “phony stuff” to “whatever’s credible” to “unverified hearsay,” a pattern emerges

The Wall Street Journal reported that Bondi and her deputy, who told the president his name was in the files multiple times, said they felt the files contained “unverified hearsay.”

That might help explain how Trump has talked about this for more than a year.

“Yeah, whatever’s credible, she can release,” Trump said in the Oval Office on July 16, responding to a reporter’s question about whether he wants Bondi to release the full files.

“If the — if a document is credible, if a document is there that is credible, she can release. I think it’s — I think it’s good,” he said.

Note him saying whatever is “credible.” He’s used the word “credible” on this story multiple times in the last 10 days.

Here’s a sampling:

“Well, I think in the case of Epstein, they’ve already looked at it and they are looking at it, and I think all they have to do is put out anything credible,” Trump said in an interview on the same day on Real America’s Voice, a conservative media outlet. “But you know, that was run by the Biden administration for four years. I can imagine what they put into files.”

The day before, Trump talked to reporters twice, once before departing the White House and once after returning on Air Force One. Again, multiple times, emphasized the credibility of what’s in the files and deflected to try and shift the focus to Democrats and former FBI Director James Comey.

Before takeoff:

“[T]he credibility is very important,” Trump said. “And you want credible evidence for something like that. And I think the attorney general’s handled it very well.”

He was also asked if Bondi briefed him about his name being in the files — and this was days before the Wall Street Journal report.

“No, no,” he said before adjusting his language. “She’s given us just a very quick briefing, and in terms of the credibility of the different things that they’ve seen. And I would say that, you know, these files were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama. They were made up by the Biden inform–, you know, uh, we, and we went through years of that with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, with all of the different things that we had to go through. We’ve gone through years of it, but she’s handled it very well and it’s gonna be up to her. Whatever she thinks is credible, she should release.”

After returning, he again addressed it:

“Why they would be so interested in — he’s dead for a long time,” Trump said of Epstein. “He was never a big factor in terms of life. I don’t understand what the interest or what the fascination is. I really don’t. And the credible information’s been given. Don’t forget, we went through years of the Mueller witch hunt and all of the different things.”

He continued: “I think well, really, only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going.

But credible information, let ’em give it. Anything that’s credible. I would say let them have it.”

That tracks with what Trump said during the presidential campaign last year, despite the impression that many in his base were left with — that he would release the files.

Asked on Fox News in June 2024 if he would release them, he said, “Yeah. Yeah, I would. I guess I would. I think that less so [than MLK or JFK files], because you don’t know — you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, ’cause there’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world.”

Of course, releasing “credible” information is an important reason, for example, why grand jury testimonies remain sealed with few exceptions — to protect witnesses and the integrity of investigations.

Despite all the controversies Trump has faced in his political career, this is one he hasn’t been able to talk his way out of. That’s particularly true because this is a story influential people in his base have pushed — and some of them are now in his administration directly responsible for handling this.

What the White House has tried to do hasn’t satisfied many, including in his base — and could make for headaches for swing-district Republicans

A CNN survey conducted July 10-13 found half of respondents were dissatisfied with how much information has been released, including 4 in 10 Republicans.

Reuters/Ipsos asked the question differently in mid-July, connecting it specifically to Trump. In doing so, about half still said they disapproved of Trump’s handling of the Epstein matter — 35% of Republicans were reserving judgment, saying they didn’t know.

What’s more, almost 6 in 10 respondents in the Ipsos polling said they believed the government is probably or definitely hiding information about his death, and 69% said they think it’s hiding information about the alleged clients of the accused sex trafficker.

In both cases that included solid majorities of Republicans.

A CBS/YouGov poll published Sunday found that 9 in 10 think the government should release all of its information on Epstein, and Republicans are split on the Trump administration’s handling of matters related to the case, though self-identified MAGA Republicans are more likely to say they are satisfied.

Republicans appear to be giving Trump a long leash — 89% of them approve of the job he’s doing overall as president, despite his approval slipping to just 42% overall in the survey.

That could be because the Epstein case isn’t the most important issue respondents considered in evaluating the job he’s doing. Top of the list for saying an issue mattered “a lot” in their evaluation was immigration and deportation policies (61%), followed closely by inflation and prices and the tax-and-spending bill that recently passed Congress (both at 56%). About 36% said so of the Epstein case.

Republican members of Congress, though, continue to get questions about it. For example, Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, a Republican from a swing district in Pennsylvania, addressed the administration’s approach at a tele-town hall Wednesday night.

“They have not released as much as I would like to see to date,” he said, per audio from public radio reporter Carmen Russell-Sluchansky of WHYY, who was on the call. “But hopefully they’re going to be doing that, and if not, then Congress should potentially step in and compel them to do that because again, the American people deserve to have full transparency.”

It’s a reminder that Trump’s not the only one who has to navigate this — and these are exactly the types of members of Congress who will be in races that will likely determine control of the House next year.

The Federal Communications Commission gave its approval to a pending merger between Paramount Global and the movie studio Skydance on Thursday, clearing the way for the multibillion-dollar deal to close.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement that he was moved to approve the deal thanks to Skydance’s “commitments to … a diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum.”

“Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately and fairly,” Carr said. “It is time for a change. That is why I welcome Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once-storied CBS broadcast network.”

The commission’s approval and Carr’s comments about CBS come mere weeks after Paramount settled a lawsuit with President Donald Trump for $16 million. The president had sued the corporation over a pre-election interview of Kamala Harris on “60 Minutes.” Though CBS News stood by its reporting and eventually released transcripts and all recorded video from the interview, the parent company opted to settle while the merger with Skydance was still awaiting approval from the Trump admin’s FCC. CBS host Stephen Colbert called the move a “big, fat bribe” days before the network announced the cancellation of his long-running late-night show. The network said that the decision was made for purely financial reasons.

While Carr celebrated a supposed diversity of views on the soon-to-be Skydance-owned network, he also painted the merger as part of “the FCC’s efforts to eliminate…forms of DEI.”

“Skydance will … adopt measures that can root out the bias that has undermined trust in the national news media. These commitments, if implemented, would enable CBS to operate in the public interest and focus on fair, unbiased, and fact-based coverage. Doing so would begin the process of earning back Americans’ trust,” he said.

Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democrat, called the entire saga “alarming” and a “violation of the First Amendment.”

“After months of cowardly capitulation to this Administration, Paramount finally got what it wanted. Unfortunately, it is the American public who will ultimately pay the price for its actions,” she said. “In an unprecedented move, this once-independent FCC used its vast power to pressure Paramount to broker a private legal settlement and further erode press freedom… Even more alarming, it is now imposing never-before-seen controls over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment, in direct violation of the First Amendment and the law.”