Donald Trump puts energy and FBI resources into purging his name out of the Epstein files while Louisiana waits for FEMA funds

Letter to the Editor: Epstein files cover-up shows Trump is fighting for himself, not you. Opinion letter published in Reveille, the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge newspaper, by Dustin Granger.

I never fell for Trump because I grew up in Louisiana. And down here, we learn early: you can’t BS a BS’er.

From the start, he came off like a con man. Loud. Shameless. Always blaming someone else. 

I get why some folks supported him, at first. Maybe you believed in tax cuts. Maybe you were tired of the system failing you. I understand that.

But let’s be real. He wasn’t fighting for you. He was fighting to escape justice.

The Epstein files are a turning point. For years, there were stories. Modeling scams. Abuse. Women with nothing to gain came forward. And Trump’s name was always nearby.

Now that the files are coming out, what does he say?

“So much of the things we found were fake, with me.”

That’s not a denial. It’s a deflection. His go-to move: announce the crime, blame someone else, and dare you to stop him.

He even sent 1,000 FBI agents to scan the files for his name. He’s not worried about victims. He’s worried about himself.

And what are our leaders doing? Speaker Mike Johnson. Higgins. Scalise. Letlow. Kennedy. Cassidy. They’re covering for him. Blocking the release. Shutting down Congress.

Families in Louisiana are still waiting on FEMA. Still watching their insurance go up. Still losing land to the Gulf. And these men are using their power to protect a predator.

You don’t owe him anything. Not your silence. Not your loyalty.

Because you already know the truth:

You can’t BS a BS’er. 💩💩

From Dustin Granger, an LSU alumnus residing in Lake Charles LA. He is the treasurer of the Louisiana Democratic Party.

Democrats must support people who show examples of hope and courage in the dangerous age of maga Trumpzi-ism

Maria Shrivere writes in "Sunday Paper": The other evening as I watched the news, I listened to a national anchor interview a young, up-and-coming Democratic Texas representative James Talarico. 

An unnamed political strategist said: "Only a savior can save the Democratic Party." The strategist supposedly went on to say that the country and party need an actual, real-life savior, and that this so-called savior will not appear until after the midterms.

The young Texas representative smartly responded by saying, “I already have a savior. And furthermore, I don’t believe we have to wait until then to save ourselves.”

He went on, “We must all acknowledge what is broken in both parties and offer a vision for how to fix it. I think folks are hungry for the truth.”

Amen to that.

The next morning, looking at the trees and listening to the birds, I found myself thinking again about the privilege of being alive and how absurd the idea of waiting for some fantasy political “savior” is.

Sitting around waiting for someone to save you—be it politically, romantically, financially—is dangerous. Isn’t that what gets us into trouble in the first place? Believing that someone else is going to save us, make the hard choices, or know what’s better for us than we do?

Sadly and truthfully, I’ve been there before. Waiting for someone to come along and save me. Waiting for someone to come along and tell me what to do, how to move myself forward, and tell me that it’s all going to be okay.

Yes, I hate to admit it, but there was a time when I thought someone other than myself would know how to build my media company, would know how to grow MOSH, would know how to expand my work at the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement, or would tell me what to do regarding certain personal decisions. 

I was waiting for someone to walk in the door, make my troubles go away, and ease my pain. I often wondered silently when I met someone new: Is this the person who will show me the way?

But guess what ❓No one did.

It was only when I realized that I was the person who knew what was best for me that I was able to get busy building what I envisioned for myself. It was only after I took responsibility for myself that I was able to see my life differently. It was only after leaning into my faith in God, my faith in myself, and my faith in my dreams that things started to become clearer and that my confidence grew.

I didn’t need to be saved by some unknown person, and neither do you. We also don’t need a political savior. First, we need to believe in our country. We need to believe in the potential of ourselves. We need to take responsibility for ourselves. We need to take responsibility for things that are broken. We need to find a way to work with others—yes, even those we think we can’t work with—to build something we can all be proud of.

Someone can always emerge who can help us amplify our dreams. That happens a lot. But when we sit around abdicating our power, waiting for some unnamed savior to come along and save us, that’s when we get in trouble. 

We surrender our thinking skills. We surrender our judgment, our clear vision, and perhaps worst of all, we lose our courage. And courage is what this moment needs.

Whenever we sit around thinking someone else is smarter, or that someone else knows us better than ourselves, that’s when we enter dangerous territory. And when you are in this territory, you can talk yourself into all kinds of things. You start seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. But trust me, now is not the time to see the world through someone else’s eyes.

Please do not allow yourself to believe crazy, outlandish things, like the “story” that former President Barack Obama is guilty of treason, as some are alluding to. I mean, please. That video❓😧😒 C'mon.

Do not allow yourself to become a victim to a distract-deflect strategy. Do not let someone come along and gaslight you or manipulate you—be it in your personal life, your professional life, your public life, or your political life.

We all need courage. You are smart. You are clear-eyed. You know the truth when you see it, hear it, witness it. You can see that children and others are starving in Gaza. You can see that it’s possible to denounce this tragedy without being labeled antisemitic. You can see that chaos reigns in Washington, and that it’s not just one party that needs saving, but that both must take accountability and offer the change the American people deserve. You know that courage isn’t reserved for so-called saviors. You have courage, too. Don’t tell yourself otherwise.

Rep. Melissa Hortman and Mark Hortman murdered in Minnesota

Which brings me back to that “savior” comment from the Democratic strategist. Don’t tell the family of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman that we need a savior—what we need is someone with the courage to lead. I hope we can remind ourselves that there are already so many people in public life exhibiting courage on the front lines, every single day. You may not agree with everything they say or do, but courageous they are: Josh Shapiro, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Pete Buttigieg are just a few, but there are plenty of others—including people running for statewide and local offices now. They may not be “saviors.” That’s the wrong word. But they are public servants, risking their lives for our country.

This is not the time to abdicate your courage. It’s not the time to lie down and wait for some so-called savior to come along. 

Rather, this is the time to see yourself as smart, capable, and courageous, no matter your age, no matter what you have been through. Because it’s true.

I am 100 percent sure that you have had to be courageous to get to this moment in your life. Maybe you haven’t used that word before, but it’s the truth. Getting through life requires courage. Staying true to your principles requires courage. Falling down and getting back up requires courage. Starting again requires courage. Going, staying, persevering—it all requires courage.

This week, courage was on display everywhere I looked. The Wall Street Journal showed courage when it stood by its reporting, even though the president threatened it. They stood strong. PBS also came out swinging. “We intend to stay the course,” they said.

At least, let’s hope so.

Andrea Gibson’s wife showed courage in the face of her grief. The families in Texas who buried their little girls showed courage—wow, did they ever. Actor Gary Sinise displayed tremendous courage in talking about his grief and his son. The families of the Idaho victims showed unwavering courage as they stood to face their children’s killer in court. This coward just sat there like a motionless wax figure. Disgusting.

Courage or cowardice. It’s a choice.

Speaking of courage, every week I’m blown away by so many Sunday PLUS members who show courage in their weekly comments. I’m often left speechless by all they are juggling, dealing with, and managing without complaint. They are grateful to be here and to be alive, to be in service to family, to community, to one another. They give me so much hope. They really do. They are caregiving, 

So here we are. And here I am. In a way, I’m back to where I started. It’s early in the a.m. on yet another summer day. The sun is out. A butterfly flies by. Negative news abounds. 😒😞For some reason—maybe it’s a good one, I don’t know—Jeffrey Epstein still dominates the news, something, no doubt, Donald Trump finds beyond irritating. But thankfully, I’m focused on the hope that abounds.

Yes, I’m focused on the hope in you and in me. So that’s what today’s edition of The Sunday Paper is all about. The hope that lies in medical research. The hope that lies in our kids. The hope I have in the Pope and so many other spiritual leaders that I look to for daily inspiration. The hope that resides in the millions of us who are grandparents, who are right there alongside our kids offering a helping hand, some wisdom, some perspective—and always, some laughs. (Hope is a motivator, said Pope Francis.  Hope does not disappoint, said Pope Leo XIV)

"Hope is a thing with feathers," wrote Emily Dickinson.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

Mr. Fred Rogers used to say, “Look for the helpers.” Amen to that, but also keep your mind on hope. Do not let the news, the negativity, or the algorithm take you down.

The early morning is full of hope, as is the world around you. 

Can you hear the birds? (...a thing with feathers). Can you hear the sounds of summer❓ Can you smell the grass and the morning air❓ That’s hope you see coming ‘round the bend and down the street. It makes me smile. And I hope it has the same effect on you as well.

I’ll leave you with this message I got from my friend Jimmy. Thank goodness it was the first message I read this summer morning: “I’m on a train from Poland to Prague ~ watching life go by outside the window. Our time together is so incredibly brief. We think we are here forever. Our lives are but a blip on the great big screen of life. It all goes by SO FAST ~ a gentle reminder to savor this moment, because I promise you this: it will not last.”

Donald Trump and maga Republicans have spent down their political capitol and now desperate to fix what is broken

"Trump and the Republican Congress have already squandered the polling advantages they enjoyed at the start of the year, rapidly bleeding the support of young people and failing to cement the gains the president had made with nonwhites."

Trump Took Office With a Lot of Political Capital. In 6 Months, He’s Squandered It, by Ross Barkan published in New York Magazine Intelligencer.

For a brief, shimmering moment in the aftermath of the 2024 election, almost everything seemed possible for Donald Trump.

Maine Writer premonition.....IMO, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde set the tone for the over inflated election euphoria. 

 "From the pulpit, Bishop Mariann Budde spoke directly to Trump, who was seated in the front row. 'I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” she said, invoking gay, lesbian, and transgender children, as well as undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers. Her plea for mercy caused an international firestorm; critics condemned her politicization of the church, and admirers praised her courage'." Washingtonian

Unlike 2016, Trump had won the popular vote, and Americans, against all odds, 😒 had developed a warmer view of him. 🙄

MAGA was ascendant. It was plausible to perceive Trump’s victory as a harbinger of a broader realignment: Among Black, Latino, and Asian voters, Trump had made tangible gains, and those under 30 moved decisively toward the former and future president relative to 2020. The social-justice or woke era was in eclipse, and there was no shortage of ruminations on the rightward shift of the youth and the inability of liberals to matter to this new counterculture.

Conservative intellectuals like Oren Cass and a number of right-populist politicians, including Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance, heralded a new Republican Party that could, if savvy and disciplined enough, triangulate or even break the American left. 

These MAGA leaders expressed support for organized labor and offered stinging critiques of laissez-faire capitalism — it’s easy to forget that portions of Vance’s speech at the Republican National Convention sounded like they were cribbed from Bernie Sanders — while maintaining a sense of cultural conservatism. They were anti-immigrant, staunchly patriotic, and skeptical of the Reaganite wing of the GOP that had, over the decades, alienated the working class. Trump appeared to intuitively grasp this, beating the Biden administration to the site of a toxic train derailment in Ohio and later, upon winning again, nominating a Labor secretary who genuinely embraced labor rights.

If Trump had rhetorically wrenched his party left on economics, his actual presidency has proved that the realignment chatter was at best premature and at worst foolhardy. Trump and the Republican Congress have already squandered the polling advantages they enjoyed at the start of the year, rapidly bleeding the support of young people and failing to cement the gains the president had made with nonwhites. Trump’s overall approval rating has plunged, and unlike even Biden’s decline — driven by his advanced age and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan — it has been almost entirely self-inflicted and within his control.

Consider the state of the nation on the day Trump took office: Inflation was beginning to cool, the economy was expanding, and even border crossings were falling. 

Americans were largely supportive of Trump’s call to tighten the borders further and were open to how he might combat inflation. 

The tariff regime of his first term was popular enough, and some of it, like the taxes slapped on China, were embraced by the Biden administration. 

Trump had promised, as a candidate, to not blast apart the social safety net, and Americans believed him. He had political capital to spend down — far more, certainly, than he did at the start of 2017.

Trump has had a consequential presidency, thrilling enough if you are a particular kind of person — one who is not actually well-represented in the American electorate. Nativists and outright racists have much to delight over, and followers of Stephen Miller are reaching their own dark nirvana. Trump has dramatically increased the reach of (evil❗) ICE, attempted to revoke birthright citizenship, and made immigration to the United States inordinately more challenging. Little of this is broadly celebrated, and the most American voters, independents especially, desired out of a second Trump term was a curtailment of mass illegal immigration. 

Legal immigration is plenty popular, and there’s enough fresh polling to suggest that Trump’s hypermilitarized ICE is not fulfilling any broader mandates. Thanks to Trump, Americans are becoming gradually more pro-immigrant again, perhaps recalling what nativist cruelty looks like in practice.

Trump’s economic agenda is another deep, lasting strike against the realignment. Tariffs, in theory, belong to the protectionist, populist cause Trump championed, but they mean little if they aren’t paired with any greater federally funded industrial policy. Unlike Biden, Trump has not attempted to directly boost domestic manufacturing or America’s withering supply chains, especially as China looms as the world’s greatest 21st-century industrial superpower. 

In April, Trump temporarily tanked the stock market, and while markets have recovered and are now at new highs, Americans are much more wary of Trump’s stewardship of the economy. Trade wars aren’t especially exciting to voters.

More crucial, though, is the One Big Beautiful Act (aka, "the big bad, ugly bill) and the enormous social safety-net cuts, particularly to Medicaid, 

 that will be felt in the coming years. Beyond tax cuts, there’s little for Republicans to easily campaign on, and the reduced funding to rural hospitals and clinics will make for great Democratic campaign fodder next year. The reconciliation package, largely, was a hodgepodge of orthodox Republican fiscal policy that never found much support from voters after the 1990s. This was Trump’s great insight, after all — he’d run against pure supply-side economics in 2016, swerving away from Mitt Romney–style conservatism. 

But, campaigning and governing are entirely different matters, and Trump has shown he’s willing to bow to the traditionalists in his party when it comes to bills that arrive on his desk for a signature.
The other populist Republicans wilted, too. 

Senator Josh Hawley "run Josh run", cowardly escape during the January 6th insurrection at the capitol 

Hawley vowed to not vote for a package that slashed Medicaid and then did it anyway. Now he meekly wants to reverse those cuts, but the damage has been done. Vance, as Trump’s vice-president, must cheerlead whatever his boss does, especially with a fight for the 2028 nomination on the horizon. The Jeffrey Epstein saga, meanwhile, threatens to overshadow the lawmaking and cause great anguish for MAGA, who are caught between obeying their beloved leader (who wants all Epstein discourse to cease) and chasing Epstein threads in perpetuity. Epstein, the late sex criminal, bedevils them because Trump is no less implicated than any Democrats, and answers will prove elusive for all time.

The more banal fallout of this all is that America remains a nation split between red and blue, with neither party gaining a decisive advantage. Republicans cannot triangulate or realign the electorate in such a manner to doom the Democrats to irrelevancy. Democrats can’t seem to excite voters enough to revive the promise of an Obama-esque landslide. Democrats have the edge to flip the House next year, while Republicans should be the favorites to retain Senate control. The 2028 race is probably going to be a closely divided slog, no matter whom the major parties nominate. This is what we are, and what we are going to be.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans all directly related to immigrants but now they impose cruel deportations as punishment for innocent people

What will you do when they come for you?

Regarding “Closed immigration cases are being resurrected under Trump,” (July 22): I’m in awe — and deeply disturbed — by the growing number of people being deported from the so-called land of the free and home of the brave. (As the Trump administration intensifies its efforts to deport a record number of immigrants, Houston immigration lawyers are seeing an increase in the government’s efforts to resurrect cases that have been placed on hold, sometimes for several years. The legal maneuver to add an old case to a current docket isn’t new. But attorneys now think it’ll become commonplace as the Trump administration moves forward with its plans for mass deportations.)

The Statue of Liberty still stands in New York Harbor, holding her torch high as a beacon of freedom, democracy and hope. She was gifted as a symbol of friendship, built to welcome immigrants seeking a better life.

(Paul Pirela, a Houston immigration lawyer, said the government used to resurrect old immigration cases once or twice a year. He had one, in 2023, maybe two. Now, “it's probably, I think, four or five in the last two weeks,” he said.)

The Statue of Libery's torch represents enlightenment, the crown’s seven rays are thought to represent the seven continents and seven seas and the broken chains at her feet represent the end of tyranny and oppression. Her very foundation, in part, honors the abolition of slavery after the Civil War.

Many Americans still believe deportation is just about people from Mexico or Central America, but look again. Immigrants from Guatemala, India, China, Iran and Russia — people from every corner of the globe — are being rounded up.

So, to every immigrant, to every person of conscience, I ask:

• What will you do when it’s your turn?
• What will you do when you’re the one being harassed, threatened, jailed or cast out?

It’s time — past time — to break the cycle of hate and stand together.

Donald Trump made it clear: He has no love for immigrants in America.

This is not just about politics. It’s about justice, freedom and humanity.

What kind of nation are we becoming❓😔😞😠😯😥 

And will we finally stand together to reclaim the promise that Lady Liberty was meant to hold?

From J.L. Leonard, in Houston, Texas

Republican outrage about Donald Trump's Epstein Files betrayal gives Democrats the chance to find the cause of this cover up without acting political

Echo opinion published in the Seattle Times by Matthew Yglesias

Right wing maga conspiracy theorists are betrayed.....by Trump❗ Who knew❓ Bipartisan outrage over Epstein

The controversy over the mysteriously evil “Epstein Files,” which  Donald Trump’s administration first pledged to release and then decided not to, has Democrats back in touch with one of America’s great political traditions: anti-establishment conspiracy theories. 

Not only is this good for the party, it is also — dare I say it — healthy for U.S. politics. (This theory is likely the reason why Trump's monotonous mantra of a "hoax" is not sticking.)

Theories of this type differ from the more extreme Russiagate allegations against Trump (or Trump’s infamous charges that former President Barack Obama was secretly born in Kenya) in that they are not narrowly partisan. 

As such, they are especially appealing to the kinds of people who are disengaged from politics and alienated from mainstream institutions. In other words, just the kinds of people who’ve flocked to Trump’s banner over the past decade.

These sorts of views used to be distributed much more evenly across the political system, or even primarily on the left. When I was a kid, the kinds of people who believed the government was covering up evidence of extraterrestrial life also tended to believe that the government played a role in the spread of crack cocaine.

A classic pop-culture work of conspiratorialism such as Oliver Stone’s 1991, film “JFK” did not exactly endorse the Democratic Party’s criticisms of President George H.W. Bush. But the general thrust of the film — that oil interests, Cuban exiles and Cold War superhawks conspired to murder the president in order to escalate military involvement in Vietnam — was certainly left-wing. 

After all, when the movie came out, conservatives had held the presidency nearly continuously for two decades. Why shouldn’t people on the outs with the system gravitate toward the left?

Joseph Uscinski, a University of Miami political scientist who studies conspiracy theories and politics, emphasizes that conspiratorial thinking is typical of the politics of outsiders. It’s normally seen on the losing side. 

Shortly after “JFK’s” movie release, Bill Clinton was elected president. (Hmmm❓Not sure I agree with this correlation...😞😩😧- the movie "JFK" had nothing to do with Clinton's election, BUT, the photo with young Clinton shaking JFK's hand on July 24, 1963, probably had a nostalgic influence)

Nevertheless, so the leading conspiracies of the 1990s, often attracted a right-wing gloss because a Democrat was in the White House. Then came George W. Bush’s term, full of dark whispers regarding the real truth about 9/11 and Michael Moore’s popular documentary suggesting the whole thing was part of some scheme to build a pipeline through Afghanistan.

What’s unusual about Trump is that he leveraged conspiratorial thinking in a very explicit way for a politician. He overcame the Republican establishment with outsider support in 2016 — and then managed to retain his outsider status even while he was (still trying to be 🙄) president.😞

Which is not to say that Epstein conspiracy theories will deliver the midterms for Democrats. But, it is worth thinking about how they can build on the Epstein story, which continues to dominate the news cycle. Uscinski and eight co-authors published a 2021, paper suggesting a two-axis organization of American politics. 

Rather than the conventional political compass, with economic issues on one axis and cultural issues on another, they put essentially all ideological conflict on one axis and an establishment/anti-establishment on the other.

They show that both parties used to have large anti-establishment wings, with Bernie Sanders gaining a lot of support in 2016 not only from left-wing Democrats but also from a bigger tent of anti-establishment Democrats. Across the next several cycles, those less ideological Sanders voters became Trump supporters. The Epstein controversy has fractured Trump’s movement in a more profound way than any number of seemingly more substantive issues precisely because some of his supporters are basically anti-establishmentarians with vague or disorganized policy views.

Democrats, especially Democrats who aren’t socialists, need to relearn the habit of standing up for the little guy, versus the establishment, in ways that go beyond the distributional tables of a tax bill. 

A core reason that Epstein conspiracy theories are so widespread is that the public is broadly cynical about the way rich people are treated by the state and the legal system.

These themes complement standard Democratic Party policy goals, but many voters understand them in terms of personalities. 

When Barack Obama first ran for president, he was the fresh-faced outsider who was going to bring new people into government and fix the mess in Washington. He was in office for eight years. But who have been the party’s nominees since? A former first lady and secretary of state followed by two vice presidents in a row. It’s not hard to see the party as a closed circle of establishmentarians.

The kind of change many people want is not necessarily dramatic policy change, but change in personnel — the elevation of outsiders uncorrupted by ties to the system, either the party’s or the government’s. To maximize the opportunity provided by Trump’s various stumbles, whether on policy or personal corruption or Epstein, Democrats need to do more than pound the table. They need to find people who can constructively channel the kind of anti-establishment outrage that made Trump president, and is now testing his presidency.

Matthew Yglesias: is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A co-founder of and former columnist for Vox, he writes the Slow Boring blog and newsletter. He is author of “One Billion Americans.”

Donald Trump and Bible Thumping Republican hypocrites must protect immigrant children from ICE family separations

When deportations leave immigrant children parentless

Echo editorial published in the Boston Globe, by the Editorial Board🙏 : Horrible situation❗ Ways for undocumented parents to prepare for the worst. Trump cruelty

During 23 days in June, amid news of increased arrests by federal immigration authorities, staff at the Brazilian-American Center in Framingham helped 73 families fill out affidavits indicating who they would like to care for their child if they could not. 

Center officials had worked with families where one parent was detained or deported. But, as the Globe has reported, there are also immigrant children whose sole caretaker has been detained or deported by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (aka "Evil ICE"), often leaving the child with family friends or relatives.

“This situation is creating a lot of anxiety and fear,” the center’s executive director, Liliane Costa, told the editorial board. “I’m telling families to be prepared to find someone to take care of the kids just in case.”

Community-based nonprofits and state agencies that interact with such families should look to expand their efforts to help them with these tasks. All workers at the Department of Children and Families who interact with families should be trained in how to help them navigate immigration issues.

There are multiple legal paths parents can use to designate a caregiver for their child, each one giving the caregiver a different authority for a different time period. 

Organizations in Massachusetts have compiled resources, including the forms in multiple languages, to help families determine which path is right for them. It’s important for community organizations that work with immigrants to ensure families are aware of these varying options and are able to fill out the forms.

The American Immigration Council estimates that in Massachusetts, there are 29,400 children who are US citizens and living with at least one undocumented parent. Amid a federal crackdown on immigrants without legal status, parents in those families should be preparing paperwork to have their children placed with a trusted caretaker in case they are swept up in a raid.

Ideally, this will allow for a smooth transition to a trusted caregiver, if a child’s parents are detained, avoiding placement in a foster home. 

Department of Children and Families social workers who interact with these families should respect these affidavits and avoid opening a case unless it’s absolutely necessary.

To its credit, the state has been using its Office for Refugees and Immigrants to help families fill out caregiver affidavit forms, with help from volunteer probate attorneys. A spokesperson for DCF told the editorial board that if the agency comes into contact with a family with an undocumented member, social workers give the family resources to help them develop a family preparedness plan.

In cases where a parent is deported, that parent still maintains parental rights, and the agency will seek to contact the parent, work with them and other relatives on a plan for safe care, and work with federal immigration authorities to arrange visits.

If a child without legal status enters state custody for any reason there are ways DCF can help them. Advocates for children have long lobbied the department to let children be placed with kin even if they lack legal status. As a general rule, kinship placements — where a child lives with a grandparent, aunt or uncle, or other relative — provide children with more stability and better outcomes than placement with strangers.

A department spokesperson said such placements with undocumented relatives are allowed provided the prospective guardian fills out a waiver, receives agency approval, and passes a background check.

But, Claire Valentin, managing director of innovation and advocacy at Children’s Law Center of Massachusetts, said social workers often don’t know they can place a child with undocumented family members. “A lot of the times, folks are being told it’s not possible,” Valentin said. “Training would substantially help so social workers know this possibility exits.”

The Department of Children and Families should also ensure it provides adequate access to immigration attorneys for children who need them. If an undocumented child becomes dependent on the state due to abuse, neglect, or abandonment, they may be eligible for Special Immigrant Juvenile status, which could grant them a path to legal residency. Asylum seekers or refugees may also have paths to permanent residency. (If children don’t have a path to legal status, they may be subject to deportation with their parents.)

There are indications the Trump administration is seeking to limit programs that offer a path to permanent residency. But as long as they exist, DCF should prioritize helping eligible children petition the court for legal status. Currently DCF contracts with two immigration lawyers to manage such cases. But attorneys who work with children told the editorial board the agency has a shortage of providers and not all immigrant children who could benefit from legal representation get it.

The Trump administration is cruelly putting children and families in positions of fear and uncertainty. As long as community organizations and state agencies can take small steps to help these children- YES❗ They should.😢💗 

Republicans putting innocent legal Mexican tourits in the evil Florida Alligator Alcatraz

Mexico asks the United States to repatriate 14 nationals (illegally) held in Florida' evil  'Alligator Alcatraz':  Reported by Reuters

MEXICO CITY/WASHINGTON, July 22 (Reuters) - Mexico is seeking the repatriation of 14 nationals being held at the United States' detention center known as "Alligator Alcatraz", President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Tuesday.

"All arrangements are being made to ensure the Mexican nationals are repatriated❗ immediately," Mexoco's President Sheinbaum told a daily press conference.

The evil facility, about 37 miles (60 km) from Miami, sits in a subtropical wetland teeming with alligators, crocodiles and pythons, fearsome imagery the White House has leveraged to show its determination to purge migrants it says were wrongly allowed to stay in the United States under former President Joe Biden.

Since Donald Trump took office on January 20, a total of 73,533 people have been returned to Mexico, mostly by air, including 67,008 Mexican nationals, Sheinbaum said in another daily briefing this month.

Mexican migrants' father Martin Gonzalez told local radio station W that his sons, Carlos and Alejandro, were now held in the detention center.
"It's really bad. The facility is completely closed, not even sunlight gets in," Gonzalez said. "The lights are on 24-7, so they don't even know if it's day or night."

He said they were sent there after Carlos, 26, was stopped by a state trooper while driving, adding that he was visiting the U.S. as a tourist and had a valid visa.

The trooper asked for the car's registration, which was missing. When his brother, Alejandro, arrived to provide the document, he too was detained, and both were sent to the facility, their father said.

"Obviously my sons are desperate to get out of this situation," he said. U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the brothers had been detained during a traffic stop on July 7, adding Carlos had not registered his vehicle with the state and accumulated 212 toll violations.

McLaughlin said Carlos was working illegally while on a tourist visa and Alejandro had overstayed his visa.

Mexico's consul in Orlando, Juan Sabines, said in a video shared on Monday alongside the men’s father that the two were in "legal limbo," because a lawyer appointed to their case did not have access to their file, and a judge had not been assigned.

Reporting by Natalia Siniawski, Ana Isabel Martinez and Adriana Barrera in Mexico City and Ted Hesson in Washington.

Republicans must hold MAGA supporter Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan accountable for ignoring Ohio State sexual abuse

A new film about the Ohio State wrestling team sex abuse scandal indicts those who looked away. Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times by Robin Abcarian. 

Robin Abcarian
A new film about the Ohio State wrestling team sex abuse scandal indicts those who looked away

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), House Judiciary chairman and staunch ally of Donald Trump, has denied knowing anything about the sexual abuse of male wrestlers when he was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University.
(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

For more than 30 years, Fred Feeney refereed matches for the Ohio State University’s powerhouse wrestling team.

Unlike the dozens of young men whose athletic scholarships depended on staying in the good graces of the team doctor, Richard Strauss, who could withhold permission for them to compete, Feeney didn’t have to persuade himself that what Strauss did was OK.

He didn’t have to pretend it was OK that Strauss was constantly taking showers with athletes. Or that it was OK when, after a match, Strauss masturbated next to Feeney in the shower, then grabbed the ref’s ass.

A visibly shaken Feeney recounts in the new documentary, “Surviving Ohio State,” that he left the locker room that day in distress and immediately told wrestling coach Russ Hellickson and assistant wrestling coach Jim Jordan what had happened.

Both coaches shrugged, said Feeney, who added that Jordan told him, “It’s Strauss. You know what he does.”

Dan Ritchie, who quit the wrestling team in his third year because he could no longer tolerate Strauss’ sexual abuse — which included forcing athletes to drop their pants and endure genital and rectal exams when they saw him, for even the most minor complaint — said that Jordan once told him, “If he ever did that to me, I’d snap his neck like a stick of dry balsa wood.”

But Jordan, now the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and an unwavering ally of President Trump, has assiduously denied ever seeing or knowing about assaults committed by Strauss during Jordan’s eight years with the team.

He emerges as one of the bad guys in the new film, which is based on the Sports Illustrated 2020 investigation, “Why Aren’t More People Talking About the Ohio State Sex Abuse Scandal?” Produced by the Oscar-winning documentarian Eva Orner and George Clooney’s production company, it debuted on HBO Max in June.

“To say that [Jordan] knew nothing, that nothing ever happened, it’s a flat out lie,” Ritchie says in the documentary.

A callous response to reports of sexual assault was the norm at Ohio State. While administrators deflected reports about Strauss for years, claiming they were just rumors, the university’s 2019 investigation, performed by an outside law firm, found that during his 1978-1996 tenure in the athletics department and at the student health center, Strauss assaulted at least 177 students thousands of times.

The school’s fencing coach, Charlotte Remenyik, complained about Strauss for 10 years until he was finally removed as her teams’ doctor. (In response to her efforts to protect her athletes, Strauss accused her of waging a vendetta against him.)

A complaint finally caused the university to remove him as a treating physician at OSU in 1996, but he was still a tenured faculty member when he retired, with “emeritus” status, in 1998. He died by suicide in 2005.

It was not until the Larry Nassar gymnastics abuse scandal exploded between 2016 and 2018 that the former Ohio State wrestlers understood that they, too, had been victimized by their team doctor, and that there were probably a lot more of them than anyone realized.

“I said, ‘Wow, that’s us,’” said former OSU wrestler Michael DiSabato, one of the first to go public. “It unlocked something in me.”

A group of former teammates met in 2018, then later sat down with their old coach, Hellickson, in an emotional encounter. 

Hellickson promised to write letters supporting them, the wrestlers said, then ghosted them. He did not respond to filmmakers’ requests to be interviewed.

Likewise, Jordan shunned requests for interviews, and he has appeared exasperated in news clips when questioned about what he knew. He’s not a defendant in any of the abuse lawsuits filed against OSU.

In 2020, Michael DiSabato’s brother, Adam, a former wrestler and team captain, testified under oath during a hearing on an Ohio bill that would have allowed Strauss’ victims to sue OSU for damages, that Jordan called him “crying, groveling … begging me to go against my brother.” Jordan has denied that conversation took place.

It seems to me that a normal human being, operating from a place of empathy, might express feelings of sorrow that the young male athletes in his charge were abused to the point that some considered suicide and others quit sports altogether, instead of accusing them of lying. Ritchie, for example, said his father was so disappointed about his decision to quit wrestling — he could not bring himself to tell his father why — that it permanently overshadowed their relationship.

I find no evidence that Jordan ever expressed feelings of regret for his wrestlers, though he did insist to Politico in 2018, “I never knew about any type of abuse. If I did, I would have done something about it. And look, if there are people who are abused, then that’s terrible and we want justice to happen.” If?

Although the explosive new documentary has been overshadowed by the implosion taking place in MAGA world over the “Jeffrey Epstein files” and questions about Trump’s relationship with the serial sexual predator, the OSU scandal is far from being yesterday’s news.

So far, OSU has settled with nearly 300 abuse survivors, each receiving an average of $252,000. But many are not willing to settle for what they consider peanuts and note that the average payout to Nassar’s victim is more than $1 million.

On Friday, as part of a federal civil lawsuit filed by some of them, Jordan was reportedly due to be deposed under oath for the first time about the allegations that he knew about the abuse and failed to protect his wrestlers.

Steve Snyder-Hill, one of the first OSU non-athletes to report that he’d been assaulted by Strauss in 1995, told NBC that he planned to be present for Jordan’s deposition.

“I expect him to lie under oath,” said Snyder-Hill. “I don’t know a nicer way to put it.”

Bluesky: @rabcarian

Donald Trump and the Department of Justice under the direction of Pam Bondi are obviously involved in an Epstein files cover up

Inquirer readers on the Epstein files

Donald Trump talks with Jeffrey Epstein at a Mar-a-Lago party in NBC footage from 1992.

Declassify the Epstein files. #EpsteinFilesCoverUp

Donald Trump “is in the Epstein files,” wrote Elon Musk in June. “That is the real reason they have not been made public.” 

When a person with inside knowledge makes a public claim that the president has a purely personal reason for suppressing certain portions of the files describing the criminal investigation into charges of child sex trafficking by Jeffrey Epstein and his convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell — both known associates of Trump — how does that matter evaporate from our consciousness in just a couple of days? This administration’s strategy is to create so much chaos and angst that we are too stunned and numb to focus on any specific claim. I call on the FBI and U.S. Justice Department to pursue Musk’s allegation. 

If these federal government agencies are unable or unwilling, I call on Congress to do its job now and investigate if this is an abuse of presidential power, as we had with Watergate. I have a right to know about the character and integrity of the people running the United States of America. We all do.

From Kathy Dwyer, Hollywood in Mongomery County, Pennsylvania

P.S. Calling on Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to find another "deep throat"....."follow the money".  💲

Donald Trump and the Republican maga cult are making innocent migrants disappear!

Trump Is Building a Machine to Disappear People

Intentional Cruelty❗ Opinion published in the The New York Times by Jeff Crisp*

In May, the United States flew a group of eight migrants to Djibouti, a small state in the Horn of Africa. For weeks, the men — who are from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam and South Sudan — were detained in a converted shipping container on a U.S. military base. More than a month later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the men, who had all been convicted of serious crimes, could be transferred to their final destination: South Sudan, a country on the brink of famine and civil war. Tom Homan, the border czar, acknowledged that he didn’t know what happened to them once they were released from U.S. custody. “As far as we’re concerned,” he said, “they’re free.”

Deporting foreign nationals to countries other than their homeland has quickly become a centerpiece of the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Thousands of people have been sent to countries in the Western Hemisphere, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico and Panama. At a recent summit of West African leaders, President Trump pressed them to admit deportees from the United States, reportedly emphasizing that assisting in migration was essential to improving commercial ties with the United States. All told, administration officials have reached out to dozens of states to try to strike deals to accept deportees. The administration is making progress: Last week, it sent five men to the tiny, landlocked country of Eswatini in southern Africa after their home countries allegedly “refused to take them back,” according to an assistant homeland security secretary, Tricia McLaughlin. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In some ways, this is nothing new. It has become increasingly common for the world’s most prosperous countries to relocate immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees to places with which they have little or no prior connection. Previous U.S. administrations from both parties have sought third-country detentions as easy fixes. In the 1990s, Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton both sent thousands of Haitian refugees to detention camps in Guantánamo Bay before forcibly repatriating most of them to Haiti.

What is new about the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, unlike previous European or even past U.S. attempts, is their breadth and scale, effectively transforming migrant expulsions into a tool for international leverage. By deporting foreign nationals to often unstable third countries, the Trump administration is not only creating a novel class of exiles with little hope of returning to either the United States or their country of origin,😟😢 but, also, explicitly using these vulnerable populations as bargaining chips in a wider strategy of diplomatic and geopolitical deal making.

This strategy marks a significant evolution in a practice that has been gaining traction throughout the developed world. In the early 2000s, Australia devised the so-called Pacific Solution, an arrangement that diverted asylum seekers arriving by boat or intercepted at sea to holding centers in the island states of Nauru and Papua New Guinea in exchange for benefits, including development aid and financial support. In 2016, amid what was then the largest displacement of people in Europe since World War II, the European Union struck a deal that allowed it to send migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey through irregular means back to Turkey — to the tune of six billion euros.

Some of these efforts have faced legal challenges. Starting in 2022, for example, the United Kingdom attempted to establish a program that would have automatically deported some asylum seekers and migrants entering the U.K. illegally to Rwanda, costing over half a billion pounds — more than 200 million of which were paid upfront. The British Supreme Court ruled that the policy was unlawful, and Britain’s prime minister scrapped the plan last year.

But many countries remain undeterred. In 2023, Italy signed a deal that allowed it to send certain migrants rescued by Italian ships in international waters to detention centers in Albania, and is persisting with the effort even in the face of legal setbacks. This spring, the European Union proposed establishing “return hubs” in third countries for rejected asylum seekers.

Although these deals take various forms, states that enter them are motivated by similar concerns. The world’s richer states wish to retain control of their borders and are particularly aggrieved by the arrival of people who enter by irregular means, especially when they are coming from low-income countries that many associate with crime, violence and terrorism. Governments in destination countries are attracted to such deals by the promise of financial, diplomatic and military support.

Throughout much of the West, as public sentiment has turned against newcomers, policymakers and pundits alike have portrayed migrants as a threat to national security and social stability. 

These innocent migrants, they argue, impose an unsustainable burden on government budgets and public services and deprive citizens of jobs. (Maine Writer: These desperate migrants carry a lable being "migrant", as though they are somehow not really human beings!)

Racism and xenophobia, fueled by populist politicians and right-wing media outlets, have also played an important part in creating a toxic environment in which the expulsion of migrants to arbitrary destinations is increasingly considered legitimate.

But how legitimate is it? Third-country deportations often sidestep due process and violate international law, under which it is forbidden for states to deport such people to any place where their life or liberty would be at risk. It is also plainly unethical, imposing additional stress on people who have undergone traumatic journeys and who are then dumped in far-off, unfamiliar places.

Several of the countries slated as deportation destinations have bleak human rights records and are unsafe for all civilians, let alone foreign deportees, who are likely to be targets of abuse and exploitation. In the worst instances, as with U.S. deportees in El Salvador, they can find themselves in jails where the authorities routinely inflict physical and psychological violence on inmates.

These deportation deals also have corrosive consequences for international politics. They encourage smaller, weaker countries to engage in transactional behavior, commodifying human life by trading immigrant bodies for cash, development aid, diplomatic support and international impunity. They may even strengthen the impunity of authoritarian regimes that violate the human rights of their own citizens. In the case of El Salvador, for example, deportees from the United States reportedly included some leaders of the criminal gang MS-13, who were thought to be in a position to expose links between President Nayib Bukele and the gang.

For nearly three-quarters of a century, a network of international instruments, institutions and norms have acted as guardrails, if imperfect ones, to ensure that refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants are treated humanely. Now it seems as though the president is looking to rewrite the rules of this system to one in which people are pawns.

By expanding the practice of forced relocation, Trump is using migrants as currency in a global network of geopolitical negotiation. His administration is normalizing the use of vulnerable people as bargaining chips to extract better deals with friends and foes alike. He is setting a dangerous precedent for other democratic countries by ignoring the moral and reputational cost of shipping desperate people into terrible conditions. 

As Trump works to bring this evil 👺👿new paradigm to life, leaders the world over will be watching closely. If he can pull it off, so can they.

*Mr. Crisp is an expert on migration and humanitarian issues.

Donald Trump could not create enough evil to satisfy the cult base insatiable appetite for diabolicle Epstein evilism

Behind Trump’s Jeffrey Epstein Problem published in The New Yorker by Benjamin Wallace-Wells

Donald Trump tried to blame Democrats, and, more unexpectedly, he has called those in his base who have asked for a fuller accounting about Jeffrey Epstein, “weaklings” and “stupid.”

Donald Trump’s cult political allies have long insisted, with more than a little condescension, that the press should take the President seriously, but not literally. Yet the people who take Trump most literally are among his own supporters, who over the years have absorbed his most hyperbolic claims as if they were settled truth: that Hillary Clinton and various Bidens were guilty of high crimes, that the 2020, election was stolen, that the circumstances surrounding the death of the billionaire Jeffrey Epstein warranted “a full investigation” and might have involved Bill Clinton. Rarely do the diehards demand proof. So earlier this month, when the Department of Justice and the F.B.I. issued a statement asserting that there was, in fact, no deeper mystery behind Epstein’s death—which occurred in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019, as he was facing trial for sex trafficking, and was determined to be suicide by hanging—the White House likely assumed that the magaverse would simply move on, as it had so many times before. The surprise—one that, two weeks in, Trump has still not been able to quell—is that it didn’t.

Squirming, the President has tried to dismiss the uproar (“Are people still talking about this guy?”) and to blame it, somehow, on Barack Obama and Joe Biden (the Democrats’ “new SCAM”). More unexpectedly, he has called those in his own base who have asked for a fuller accounting “weaklings” and “stupid,” lamenting that “my PAST SUPPORTERS have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker.” But that has been just blood in the water, both to the Democrats who are now calling for the full release of the Epstein files and to the anonymous Republican strategists who have begun to warn of a drop in turnout in the midterms.

Among Trump’s aides, one theory was that his team had erred in promising not just vibes and insinuation, as he normally does, but something to which he is generally allergic: hard evidence. The details of Epstein’s life—the formidable connections he cultivated among political, financial, and academic élites; his conviction in Florida in 2008 for solicitation of prostitution; the way he avoided more serious punishment—have been exhaustively documented. But the maga fixation was that the government had participated in a coverup and had in its possession a list of Epstein’s clients, which could, the theory went, implicate scores of the powerful in heinous crimes. Last October, Trump’s running mate, J. D. Vance, said, “Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list.”

Then in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi responded to a question about whether the Justice Department would soon make public the “list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients” by saying it was “sitting on my desk right now to review.”

Fifteen right-wing influencers had gone to the White House and were given binders titled “Epstein Files: Phase One. But, those “files” offered nothing new.

To Trump’s allies in the right-wing media, many of whom had been predicting spectacular revelations about Epstein for years, this seemed like a dodge. “The fact that the U.S. government, the one I voted for, refused to take my question seriously and instead said, ‘Case closed, shut up, conspiracy theorist,’ was too much for me,” Tucker Carlson said. Megyn Kelly posted on X that there were only two possibilities: that there was no client list and Bondi had misled the public or that “there is a scandal that’s being covered up & it’s at his”—Trump’s—“direction.” Steve Bannon estimated that the backlash would cost Republicans forty seats in the House of Representatives next year. That last prediction is probably worth taking seriously, but not literally.

More interesting was the reaction among Trump’s most recent allies: the Silicon Valley billionaires and the podcast bros who were key to his win in 2024. Elon Musk has been making gleeful accusations against Trump for weeks. The comedian and podcaster Andrew Schulz complained, “He’s doing the exact opposite of everything I voted for.” Joe Rogan, among the most important of Trump’s allies in November, now sounded betrayed: “Why’d they say there was thousands of hours of tape of people doing horrible shit? Why’d they say that?”

Trump is vulnerable to the Epstein case, and not only because the two men were photographed partying together, or because Trump praised Epstein in a quote that was widely circulated, or because Epstein had told the reporter Michael Wolff that, for ten years, he had been the President’s “closest friend.” (Trump eventually said that they had had a “falling out.”) On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that, for Epstein’s fiftieth birthday, Trump, among others, sent him a “bawdy” birthday letter, which Trump denied, saying that he would sue the Journal, “just like I sued everyone else.” Liberals, taking all this in, might suspect that it’s a simple comeuppance for Trump’s political choices: if you build a following on the internet fringe, you can become beholden to its obsessions. But the uproar also has to do with the ways in which the Trump movement has evolved.

In the post-pandemic atmosphere of fury and distrust, Trump moved much more nimbly than the Democrats to expand his support among people who are only irregularly interested in politics, and he has reached a group that is young, nonwhite, male, and less likely to have a college degree. That group, and the podcasters whom they supply with an audience, has seemed drawn to Trump’s persona as an outsider, an inveigher against the establishment. And yet, in the six months since the Inauguration, what Trump, despite adopting a cruel and autocratic style, has given them are Republican establishment policies: a budget that cuts Medicaid, stripping seventeen million people of health insurance, and gives huge tax breaks to the rich; a military intervention in the Middle East. A CNN poll released on Wednesday suggests that the number of Americans who “approve strongly” of Trump’s Presidency—one measure of his base—is now at its lowest of any point in his first and second terms.

No wonder Trump sounds so exasperated. (On Thursday, he said that Bondi would produce “any and all” grand-jury testimony from Epstein’s case, though this seems unlikely to satisfy anyone.) The central illusion of his political career has been that, despite his wealth and evident clout, he remains an outsider. But that was always a fiction, and now—with the G.O.P. leadership unified behind him and the Supreme Court mostly backing him—he may feel strong enough to leave some of his movement’s weirdness behind. Second-term Trump is no longer acting as a populist, and the Epstein case is unfolding as a test of how maga responds to this news. ♦

Published in the print edition of the July 28, 2025, issue, with the headline “The Epstein Problem.”