Takeaways from the Epstein Dump

We did our write-up of the first tranche of Epstein files on Saturday. Now let's take a look at how others saw it:

The New York Times:

• Nothing new in them
• Muted reaction from the right
• Bill Clinton was featured prominently
• Few mentions of Trump
• Epstein attracted the rich and famous
• There is more to come, eventually

The Washington Post:

• Trump and Clinton are mentioned
• Some files were heavily redacted, others were deleted later
• Epstein had many celebrities in his orbit
• Years of victims' allegations were documented
• There is more to come

CNN:

• The administration failed to follow the [new] law
• A heavy dose of Clinton
• A remarkable lack of Trump
• A confirmation that law enforcement was warned very early
• The documents continue to turn up more famous people

AP:

• Thousands of photos, but far fewer files than expected
• Multiple photos include Bill Clinton
• Nothing new about Trump
• Partial release upsets some lawmakers

ABC News:

• The DoJ did not release all the files, as the law requires
• Most of the files were photos taken by the FBI while searching Epstein's homes
• A number of the other photos featured Bill Clinton
• Many files were redacted

NBC News:

• Many of the files had already been released
• Lots of records are still missing
• There were few mentions of Trump
• Bill Clinton makes numerous appearances
• More celebrity sightings

An executive summary of the above is this: In violation of the law, only a small fraction of the files were released. Many of the documents were already out there and the new ones were largely uninformative or heavily redacted (Black Lines Matter--thank you, J.S.). The only person who came up a lot is Bill Clinton. People who were demanding all the files are not impressed at all.

In other words, the DoJ is stonewalling and hoping all the fuss will go away. By featuring Bill Clinton and other celebrities, the message they are trying to send is "Everybody and his uncle was involved with Epstein—except Donald Trump and other high-ranking Republicans." The fact that so many celebrities, including newly revealed ones like Richard Branson, Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, Kevin Spacey, and Chris Tucker, were in Epstein's orbit does raise a question, though: Why were so many famous people hanging around with a small-time financier and big-time sex predator? What was so attractive about him?

Here is one of the Clinton photos. He is swimming with Ghislaine Maxwell and a third person (blacked out) who is likely a minor and an Epstein victim. At least all three are wearing bathing suits in this photo. Maybe they waited until the photographer was gone before ditching them:

Congress really needs to hold hearings and ask the folks mentioned in the files (under oath) what they knew about Epstein and what made him so popular. It would also be interesting to have Jamie Dimon, who is vastly richer and more powerful than Epstein, testify to ask him if he also has an Oort cloud of famous celebrities revolving about him all the time. Maybe it is normal for large numbers of A-list celebs to hang out with rich high-profile financiers all the time. Or was Epstein different from the usual boring banker in some way? Inquiring minds want to know.

One noteworthy photo is of a handwritten note that reads: "I have a female for him." Who was the caller and who is meant by "him?" The note was to Epstein. If the missed call was from Ghislaine Maxwell to Epstein and she had just located a new female for Epstein, the note would have read: "I have a female for YOU." But it says "him," implying that whoever located the female was apparently taking special orders for other men. Who? Here is the note:

But even the meager first dump, which was carefully scrubbed to limit Trump's exposure, was apparently too much for Trump. Shortly after the files went up, at least 16 photos were taken down from the website, including one with Donald Trump in it. No explanation was given for the removal. This is giving rise to more people saying: "What is he hiding?" In fact, the removal has become a mini-story unto itself here, here, here, and here, among many other news sites.

Among the files that are still up there, over 550 pages are completely blacked out. The law provided for very limited redaction, basically to protect the victims and to avoid undermining ongoing criminal cases. Blacking out 550 pages in their entirety was not what the law called for. When reporters began complaining about this, the DoJ said: "Documents and photos will continue to be reviewed consistent with the law and with an abundance of caution for victims and their families." They are full of it. There is no way 550 pages are just listings of victims' names. There were a lot of victims, but not enough to fill 550 pages. There is clearly a lot of material the DoJ does not want released and is not going to release, law or no law. They think that releasing all the pages but blacking out the ones they don't like will prevent the courts from ordering them to release all the files, as required by the law.

The DoJ has promised more files later on. A few more came out Saturday. However, this drip, drip, drip release of a few files a day is not working. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) tweeted: "People are raging and walking away." Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) said Friday's dump "grossly fails to comply with the spirit and the letter of the law." Also, after Friday's dump, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) tweeted: "RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES." Saturday morning, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said: "I want to hear from MAGA voters who have stood for transparency on the Epstein files. Are you satisfied with the excessive redactions & missing 60-count draft indictment? Or do you want Bondi & Blanchard [sic; he probably meant Deputy AG Todd Blanche] to release the docs that will hold the Epstein class accountable?"

Khanna and Massie went on Face the Nation yesterday and complained loudly about the DoJ stonewalling them. When asked if the DoJ was obeying the law, Massie said: "No, they're flouting the spirit AND the letter of the law. It's very troubling the posture that they've taken." Khanna and Massie are drafting articles of impeachment against AG Pam Bondi for openly violating the law. Who said bipartisanship is dead? These two seem to get along just fine.

Nevertheless, a few people were happy with the paltry Friday dump. Maria Farmer, an artist who worked for Epstein, took nude photos of her sister Annie for her artwork. She has claimed that Epstein stole the photos and the negatives and sold them. Epstein also abused Annie when she was 16. Maria reported these incidents to the FBI but there was no response. No one believed that she had reported these crimes to the FBI and they did nothing. The article from The Guardian linked to just above gives more detail on Maxwell's and Epstein's modus operandi and what Epstein did to Annie. It is definitely relevant but we would rather not print it. On Friday, Maria's complaint to the FBI was in one of the documents released, confirming that she has been telling the truth all along. If the FBI had acted on her complaint, thousands of victims would have been spared. Did someone high up give an order to ignore Maria Farmer's complaint? Who? Why? The dump is raising more questions than it is answering.

If you want to download the files yourself, here is a place to start. But be warned, nothing is indexed (although some media outlets are working on indexing). (V)

Gruesome Stories about Health Care Costs Are Starting to Appear

If nothing happens on the health care front this year—and Congress went on Christmas vacation Friday and won't be back until January, so it probably won't—ACA premiums will skyrocket and people will have to quickly make very unpleasant choices that will lock them in for a year. There will be horror stories all over the media about this, many of them personal stories about some family's dire situation. This is almost sure to resonate with other people in the same boat, and will drive the 2026 election campaigns.

The Washington Post ran a doozy yesterday. It is about Stacy Newton, her husband, and their two teenagers. They live in Teton County, WY. They use the ACA, but there is only one insurance company in their county, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wyoming. It is offering a plan for an annual premium of $43,000 for the cheapest plan. The Newtons are a middle-class family. The parents each run a small business, but there is no way they can pay $43,000 for health insurance. But they need it because Stacy has chronic leukemia. What are they supposed to do? And also important, who will they blame and who will they vote for next November?

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has determined that, starting in 2026, there will be 146 counties with only one insurance company offering ACA plans. That number is expected to jump if the ACA subsidies are not renewed in January. When there is a monopoly, prices usually don't go down. There are many counties that have two insurers, but it really doesn't guarantee much competition. Often what happens is that the bigger one sets its premiums and the smaller one sets its premiums just slightly below that, enough to attract some customers but not enough to annoy the bigger one and set off a price war. The bigger one just accepts the loss of a small number of customers rather than cut prices for everyone and get into a price war.

The scenario that is going to play out next year is that healthy families that can't afford a $43,000 annual premium will drop insurance and join a church to pray for good health. This will make the pool of insurees full of sick people, which will cause the insurance companies to either raise premiums or get out of the state altogether.

Heather Huhn knows this. She is an insurance broker in Jackson, WY. People come to her begging for affordable insurance, but she can give them only what the insurance companies offer. She has a stack of applications from 30 families in her "Hold Tight" stack. These are for people who have immediate medical needs, such as chronic conditions or expensive prescriptions and who cannot afford $43,000 or anything close to that. She says they sit across from her and say: "I just don't know what to do." She tells them to try to avoid a mental breakdown just yet. Maybe the government will get something done eventually.

State officials are talking about a cheap plan they are calling "BearCare." It would cover emergency situations, like being attacked by a bear or having a heart attack, but would not cover ongoing or chronic conditions. You would be on your own for those. Margie Lynch (58), an energy consultant, said that would not work for her. She is not worried about being bitten by a bear, but she is worried about getting cancer. For her alone, the cheapest ACA plan is $19,000 per year but she would have to pay a deductible of $10,600 before it kicks in. She says the plan is as expensive as her mortgage.

Newton, Lynch, and others have shared their concerns with Sens. John Barrasso (R-WY), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY). All three oppose the ACA and would like to be rid of it. They also oppose the enhanced subsidies that were instituted by Joe Biden and which the Democrats want. Barrasso is not up until 2030 and Lummis is retiring, so they don't care. Hageman, of course, is up in 2026. We wonder if Newton and Lynch will vote for her.

As this process unfolds, there are going to be an endless stream of stories all over the media about families like the Newtons and brokers like Huhn. This is going to force the story into the news and people will demand that something be done. Since the Republicans control the show, they will be the ones expected to deliver. If they don't, they will hear about it come next November. (V)

Trump Has a New Plan to Win over Voters

Donald Trump cares a great deal about things with his name on them. One of them is the new "Trump accounts"—accounts that can be opened for babies born in the Trump v2.0 period in which the government deposits $1,000 as a nest egg. Employers and others may also make deposits. Trump's newest gimmick is to have rich people make deposits to these accounts. While this is not a personal grift (Trump does not get a cut here), if in 18 years the recipient gets a lot of money from his or her Trump account, they are likely to think well of Trump. If some of them later become historians, in polls of historians on "worst president ever," they may be more inclined to give top honors back to James Buchanan, thus improving Trump's legacy. While Trump doesn't care about his legacy as much as he cares about stroking his ego, he surely knows it is not going to be great and if someone else is paying to improve it, that's fine.

The first rich person to put some money in all the Trump accounts is Michael Dell, who has pledged $6.25 billion to be spread over all the Trump accounts. This will probably be about $250 each. Hedge fund manager Ray Dalio was next up, with a promise of $75 million for Trump account holders in Connecticut, where he lives. Both "gifts" come with conditions. Trump is also "pressing" (when Mafia dons "press" someone, usually a different word is chosen) companies to make Trump account donations. So far, Visa, Mastercard, Charter Communications, and BlackRock have "volunteered" to make donations. Trump is also "urging" states to contribute to the accounts.

Of course, if the Democrats get the trifecta in 2028, they could foil Trump by renaming the "Trump accounts" something else—for example, "Freedom accounts."

Will the parents of every newborn immediately run to the bank after leaving the hospital to open a Trump account for junior? Maybe not so fast. The tax benefits aren't actually that good, especially compared to other savings vehicles like 529 accounts. Also, there are conditions attached to withdrawing the money at 18 and the funds taken out are taxable. Congress' official scorekeepers estimated that the Trump accounts would cost the government about $15 billion in lost revenue in all, a smaller amount than the no-tax-on-tips program. In other words, they do not expect a lot of demand for the new accounts. (V)

Young Conservatives Are Worried about the Future

Turning Point USA helped turn out millions of young people for Donald Trump in 2024. He promised them lower prices, an end to foreign wars, and generational change. He is not keeping any of his promises and they have noticed. At this year's annual America Fest gathering, a CNN reporter talked to attendees and got decidedly mixed messages. One thought Trump's energy policies will lower gas prices, his dismantling of the Department of Education will make college debt go away, and his cracking down on immigrants will create jobs and lower housing prices. It is true that "drill baby drill" may lower gas prices, but getting rid of the DoEd will not make college debt vanish. Arresting immigrants might make their jobs available, but the reason employers hire them is that many are willing to work for less than native-born workers. As to lowering housing prices, replacing cheap immigrant labor with much more expensive American labor is not going to achieve that result, to say the least.

And many other respondents were disillusioned about their future. In the past, kids would move out of their parents' house at 18, go to college or get some kind of training, find a job, get married, buy a house, and have kids. Now, only a quarter of 34-year-olds have done all of those. The median age of first-time homebuyers is now 40. Some interviewees thought they might be able to buy a house some day, whereas previous generations assumed that would be possible. In a recent Harris poll, two-thirds of the people making $100,000 said they were just barely getting by. Many think AI will take away jobs they might have gotten.

The mood was glum and "doomerism" has taken over with many young people. Only 13% of 18-to-29-year-olds think the country is moving in the right direction. These feelings are flashing warnings for Trump and the Republicans heading into the midterms. The kids are angry and don't want "more of the same." Charlie Kirk was tuned into this, which is why he was so popular with some young people. In one of his final interviews, Kirk accused the Republicans of being blind to the suffering of young voters. Kirk also said that if the Republicans continued to repeat their "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" philosophy, the Party would squander its hard-won advantage among young voters. It is already happening. In the Harris poll, by a 13-point margin, young voters want Democrats to control Congress after 2026. Only half of young Trump voters definitely plan to vote in 2026 (vs. 66% of Kamala Harris voters).

While the rank-and-file TP USA members are grumbling, the leadership of the movement has other plans. Erika Kirk has already endorsed J.D. Vance for president and vowed to get him elected president in 2028. Her group is planning to put volunteers in all of Iowa's 99 counties to try to help Vance win the Iowa caucuses.

But the reaction to this was mixed as people are now openly talking about a post-Trump era. Vance's wife, Usha, has been spotted several times without her wedding ring and there have been rumors that Vance might be interested in trading her in for a whiter model, which would go over better with the America Firsters in 2028. This photo of Kirk and Vance did not help dispel these rumors. They seem to be enjoying themselves here.

Besides being real friendly with Erika Kirk, Vance gave a speech at America Fest. He glossed over the brewing fight within the Republican Party about whether the Party should accept the antisemitism, hate speech, and general all-purpose bigotry espoused by Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and others on the far right. Vance clearly did not denounce them, as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has done. Vance said everyone is welcome in the big conservative tent. When you make Ted Cruz look like a serious statesman that is quite an achievement. There is clearly a growing split within MAGA, with Fuentes, Owens, Carlson, and others on one side and Laura Loomer, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and others opposing them. So far only people paying close attention to conservative politics notice this, but it is sure to go mainstream at some point (the article linked to in the first sentence of this paragraph is from The New York Times). Then Vance will have to choose. Are people like Fuentes welcome or not? How he handles this could be a big test of his moral character and political skills. Actually, we already have a pretty good idea about his moral character but how good his political skills are is still an open question.

Not everyone is on board with crowning Vance as the heir apparent. Kayleigh McEnany, one of Trump's press secretaries in Trump v1.0, went on Fox News Saturday to say "I think it's very important that the Republican Party have a competitive primary." (Hint: She does not want Vance as the nominee.) She won't be the last person saying that. In fact, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has already ruled out the possibility of his endorsing Vance. Usually, the presidential campaigns have the decency to wait until the midterms are over before getting going. No more. And anyone who thinks Vance is a lock this far in advance ought to have a word with President Giuliani about how well that worked for him in 2008. (V)

U.S. May Drop Vaccine Recommendations

When Secretary of HHS Robert Kennedy Jr. talked to the Senate during his confirmation hearing, he assured Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a physician, that he was not anti-vaccination. Kennedy lied. Cassidy was either too dumb to realize that or smart enough, but afraid of what Donald Trump would do to him if he cast the deciding vote to kill the nomination. Now Cassidy is seeing the consequences of his vote.

Kennedy is rapidly moving toward having the federal government no longer recommend a list of many childhood vaccinations. He wants to emulate Denmark, which doesn't mandate all vaccinations but makes many of them voluntary. That seems to work in Denmark.

However, there are key differences between the health care systems in the U.S. and Denmark that Kennedy failed to address. The basic difference is that Denmark has a universal, free health care system that is easily accessible to every Dane. Some of the vaccinations that are currently mandatory in the U.S. are not in Denmark, because if a child gets one of the diseases prevented in the U.S. the child can always get to a hospital in a minimum amount of time and get an effective treatment for free. Except for people on isolated islands, no one in Denmark ever has to drive for many hours to get to a decent hospital, as is true in rural areas of the U.S. (and which is getting worse as Donald Trump's policies are forcing rural hospitals to close). And care in Denmark is always free, which is certainly not true in the U.S. As a consequence, the U.S. has chosen a system of prevention whereas Denmark has chosen a system of "let a few kids get sick and then get them quickly to a hospital for excellent and free treatment." If Kennedy wants to adopt that system, he also needs to arrange for everyone in the country to be fairly close to excellent and free treatment for kids who get a disease that could have been prevented in the first place.

For some diseases, like hepatitis B, every pregnant woman in Denmark is screened for the disease. For those that have it, the baby gets a vaccination. That works because the system is airtight. Every pregnant woman is screened. That is certainly not the case in the U.S. for many reasons, not the least of which is that some women get no prenatal care at all in the U.S.

In short, there are many differences between the U.S. system and the Danish one. Adopting the entire Danish system would probably work well, but that is impossible in the U.S. for political, geographic, financial, cultural, and other reasons. Cherry-picking just one aspect of it and leaving everything else the way it was is a recipe for repeated epidemics and many childhood deaths. If Kennedy forges ahead, there will be a lot of stove touching and maybe some changes in the future.

It is also noteworthy that Kennedy has cherry-picked Denmark as his model. It has the fewest required vaccinations of any European country. Why didn't he try to emulate France, which requires vaccinations for 11 different diseases, or Italy which requires 10? Or Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, or Poland, which require 9 vaccinations? What makes Denmark a better model than France, a much bigger country than Denmark, other than it fits his crazy theories better?

If federal vaccination requirements disappear, it is possible that blue states will require vaccinations and red ones will not. Then we will read about polio and hepatitis and meningococcal disease epidemics in Texas but not in California. The parents of children who die in Texas might just complain out loud and ask why this is happening in their state but not in blue states. Who knows? (V)

Anti-abortion Activists Want the Administration to Ban Mifepristone

During his campaign, Donald Trump was very careful not to talk about abortion, saying it should be up to the states. Saying abortion was fine with him and that some of his best female friends have had one or two would have infuriated his base. Saying he wanted to ban it would have caused some women who were with him on affordability to switch sides. He even went as far as saying if Congress passed a bill to ban abortions nationwide he would veto it.

But the anti-abortion forces in his base are very unhappy about this standpoint. They understand that he will indeed not sign a bill enacting a nationwide abortion ban, so they are trying something else. They now want the FDA, which is part of Robert Kennedy Jr.'s kingdom, to review (and hopefully cancel) the approval of Mifepristone. That wouldn't stop surgical abortions, but since getting a surgical abortion would require out-of-state travel and much greater expense than taking a pill, it would indeed force many women to carry fetuses they don't want to term.

Is there a medical reason for reviewing mifepristone? No. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine maintain that mifepristone is safe and works well. Is there a religious reason to decertify it? Sure, if you don't mind a couple of far-right religious groups forcing their will on the rest of the country.

In June, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary told Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) that he would review the safety of mifepristone. So far, he hasn't done it. The Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America group is demanding Makary's head on a pike. Since Kennedy hasn't done that yet, they are now demanding Kennedy's head on a pike next to Makary's. So far, Trump has not intervened. He probably senses that banning mifepristone would cause the Republicans to lose 50 seats in the House next year. He doesn't have to run for election ever again, so he can afford to ignore part of his base if they are getting to be a problem. Liz Mair, a Republican strategist who calls herself anti-Roe pro-choice, summed up the situation by saying the anti-abortion forces are the cheapest dates in all of American politics. All a politician has to say is that he is pro-life. Then they are happy. The politician can later find 1,000 reasons why he can't actually do anything right now, but never mind, he is pro-life. (V)

TikTok Has Signed a Deal Spinning Off Its U.S. Operations

U.S. law required that the U.S. operations of TikTok be sold to an American entity many months ago. It didn't happen. Now a greatly watered down deal has happened. A new entity will be created to run the U.S. part of TikTok. Forty-five percent of that entity will be owned by a consortium consisting of investors, including Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and a UAE state-backed firm called MGX. Another third will be held by existing investors in ByteDance, the Chinese firm that wrote the code and runs the app. Another 20% will be held by ByteDance itself. A seven-member board will run the company.

However, the deal basically avoids the whole purpose of the law: To keep Americans' data out of the hands of the Chinese government. The deal essentially means that the Oracle/Silver Lake/MGX consortium will get 45% of the profits TikTok generates, the original ByteDance investors will get a third, and ByteDance will get 20%. But ByteDance will continue to own the algorithm and manage the operation. The problem with TikTok was who controls it, what algorithm does it use, and what happens to the data? It wasn't about who gets the profits, but that is all that has been changed with this deal.

The new board will have some say about censorship—that is, what is allowed and what is not allowed. This may be better than having a Chinese company do it. Maybe not. Oracle is controlled by Larry Ellison, a close buddy and strong supporter of Donald Trump. This deal enhances the Ellisons' role in the media. Ellison's son, David Ellison, runs Paramount, and wants to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, which also owns CNN. (V)

Could Letters of Marque and Reprisal Make a Comeback?

Art. I, Sec, 8 of the Constitution contains this sentence in the section enumerating the powers of Congress:

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

Letters of marque and reprisal haven't been around for a while, but the Constitution does explicitly authorize Congress to issue them. The situation with Venezuela is heating up. Republicans want to stop the "drug" boats but don't want to have the U.S. involved in a war with Venezuela. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) has thought of a brilliant way out of this dilemma, thanks to the t(rusty) old Constitution: Issue letters of marque and reprisal!

Basically, ship captains who want to turn pirate could apply for such a letter. If granted, they would be authorized to capture and seize "enemy" ships and could keep and sell the cargo, usually giving the government a small cut. The captain and sailors would also specifically be granted immunity for breaking any U.S. laws they had to break when capturing ships. Generally these folks think of themselves as "privateers," rather than "pirates," because they are sort of legal in the government's eyes but to the victims, the difference is pretty subtle. Being a privateer was seen as an honorable, patriotic, and profitable profession.

In the days before regular navies, kings granted Letters of Marque and Reprisal all the time to get what is effectively a private navy at no cost to the royal treasury. The U.S. used them during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Usually, Congress granted the president the authority to issue them under certain conditions, rather than issuing them directly itself. If you want to get into the weeds on these letters, here is a good source. The practice tends to be frowned upon now and probably violates international law. But Donald Trump doesn't even care about domestic law let alone international law. He might well go for Lee's idea. (V)

Twelve Days of Christmas... Games, Part IX: Amazon-ukkah

We had four days' worth of Hanukkah games planned, and we intended to run them all last week, but then the real world made that... not appropriate. So, this one gets pushed to today.

Below are 13 books. Five of them are fake. All you have to do is figure out which ones are the fakes, and the list will be down to 8 books, all of them real, all of them for sale on Amazon.com.

Bring on the Hanukkah books (and note that no AI was utilized in the production of this feature):

1. Real or fake?




2. Real or fake?




3. Real or fake?




4. Real or fake?




5. Real or fake?




6. Real or fake?




7. Real or fake?




8. Real or fake?




9. Real or fake?




10. Real or fake?




11. Real or fake?




12. Real or fake?




13. Real or fake?

Tiebreaker: How many different Hanukkah books does Amazon have available for purchase for their Kindle device?

Register your guesses here! (Z)

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