Lawmakers seeking to force the release of files related to the sex trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein are predicting a big win in the House this week with a “deluge of Republicans” voting for their bill and bucking the GOP leadership and Donald Trump, who for months have disparaged their effort.
The bill would force the Justice Department to release all files and communications related to Epstein, as well as any information about the investigation into his death in federal prison. Information about Epstein’s victims or ongoing federal investigations would be allowed to be redacted.
“There could be 100 or more” votes from Republicans, said Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., among the lawmakers discussing the legislation on Sunday news show appearances. “I’m hoping to get a veto-proof majority on this legislation when it comes up for a vote.”
So the orange cancer stalled long enough for the FBI to scrub his name from the files then? Wouldn’t doubt it if he had them add new names.
🖕🤬
The fact that orange is now about facing the issue makes that very likely.
Exactly. I wouldn’t put it past them to regard the scrubbing as an “ongoing federal investigation” — which the article clearly mentions can still be redacted.
The fact that WH is green lighting this effort is super sus. The witches are mixing the pot….
They will open another Epstein enquiry, and then will not be able to release any further documents while it is still “under investigation”.
You know, how tRump delayed and then NEVER released his taxes because they are perpetually “under audit”.
They are going to release 1 page, entirely redacted except for Bill Clinton’s name.
“A veto-proof majority”
Imagine Trump vetoing this
He can still veto it, it will then go back to Congress for a veto override vote. That’s the process for “veto proof majority”.
Wouldn’t put it past Republicans to vote no on the override.
I hope we fall a few votes short of veto-proof. Then Trump vetos. Then we get a veto-proof vote. Maybe that’s asking for too much, though.
For storytelling purposes, I like your idea a lot. The dramatic tension and release are there, and at epic proportions in terms of potential real-world devastating impact on powerful people.
But… For lived reality, I really would love the easy win without the added will-they-won’t-they drama. If this hits TACOman’s desk, he’s probably going to veto it anyway, so we will all still need to wait and see if anyone flips their stance during the veto override vote, and that’s plenty enough to be worried about on its own.
He is going to 100% pocket veto it.
It might be veto-proof, but it sure isn’t pedo-proof! My guess is that, if the vote passes, the DoJ will release edited files that absolve Trump but implicate someone he wants to get rid of.
I like how now that it’s inevitable, he’s pivoted to saying the Republicans should release them. He’s like a fucking toddler who shit himself and is insisting he meant to do that.
He does wear diapers daily, so the shitting part always happens.
He ordered the shutdown of paying snap benefits, rejected court orders forcing him to, threatened states that paid anyway, then blamed democrats for snap benefits not being paid.
He just says whatever lie he wants to be true and his shit-eating cult just, well, eats all the shit.
If I were a Republican, I would want Trump to veto it. Simply because he has nothing to lose if Congress does have the votes to overturn a presidential veto. The Republicans that voted for the release look good and it helps their numbers. Trump isn’t getting re-elected anyway, that’s why he’s digging so hard. It’s actually a smart move for anyone in the party who isn’t in the Epstein files. The idea is that those who are will quietly go away, and as for Trump, he’s not going to get impeached or anything, because Congress doesn’t have the votes, and if enough Republicans fought for the release of the files, they should do well next year against their Democrat challengers. Republicans keep the majority, no impeachment. That’s probably the game plan.
A VETO Proof Majority to RELEASE the Files of the World’s most PROLIFIC Child Rapist and Sex Trafficker? WHY do Republicans HATE Trump?
Republicans have been accommodating, shielding, covering and delaying for the old fat orange felon right up until they saw the handwriting on the wall. They would continue if it were possible. They are co-conspirators.
right up until they saw the handwriting on the wall.
That’s it exactly.
Thwy have realized that this trin is coming whether thwy want it to or not. And they’re choosing to jump on board rather than getting run over.
IF the midterms are free and fair (a big if, considering the efforts by the GOP to ratfuck every federal election since Biden won) then the Democrats need to make electoral reform a priority. Proportional representation in Congress and replacing the electoral college with ranked choice/runoff ballots is the only feasible way to save what’s left of US democracy besides a revolution.
That doesn’t solve campaign finance laws or any of the other issues stemming from Citizens United.
Politicians have not represented their voters for a long time they represent their wealthy donors. Changing the mechanism for how we vote won’t change enough.
It does in an indirect way due to having more parties.
Let’s say you have $1M to try to buy off some politicians with campaign funds. If there are only two viable candidates, you give $500k to both. Now you’ve bought both parties and can win no matter the outcome.
If there are three or four or five parties, though, you have to guess who is going to win. You can’t split it up that many times and still have much influence on the politicians in question. Your funds can be easily swamped out by grassroots groups. Your guess based on polling can also end up being dead wrong when some party makes a sudden surge in the final weeks.
That said, it’d still be better if we ditched Citizens United and publicly funded elections.
You’re right, but just look at what happened to Biden’s “day 1 priority” Voting Rights Act. Dumpstered after 1 week in office.
How do you propose we hold democrats’ feet to the fire and force them to work on passing such legislation?
So block it and once you can’t stop it everyone pretends like they wanted it like that the whole time. classic.
I’ve been saying this for a long time, but in software development, we have many practices that I think should be carried over to government.
One example is the idea of doing one change at a time. A decent software engineer would never accept a request that had a lot of wide-ranging changes. They would force all of the changes to be submitted individually, and to be accepted or rejected on their own merits.
Politicians constantly create enormous abominations of bills, like the ill-named “Big Beautiful Bill”. With something like that, individual politicians have their power greatly diminished. They can do nothing but vote along party lines. They probably don’t even have time to read the contents of the bill they are voting for. The only ones who have any power at all are the party leaders and those in the committees where those bills are created. But committee membership is limited.
You can see what happens when things are separated. If your bill is simply about releasing the Epstein files, and nothing else, then it’s very difficult to explain why you’d vote against that. Suddenly, the individual politicians have the power they were intended to have by the founding fathers, as well as the ability to be held accountable by their constituents.
Software development has the advantage of happening in an environment where the cost of failure is relatively low. A bad change might be caught by the test suite before it ever sees production. If it does get to production, there might be consequences, but not the kind that typically kills people.
In fact, I think software engineering in general should lean into this idea on most things. Don’t try to ignore failure, but catch failure as fast as possible. Things like medical devices and aeronautic software should continue using formal verification methods, but the rest of us should iterate fast.
Iterating fast doesn’t work for other things. I’m a programmer by trade, but I have enough electrical knowledge that I once took up a contract for designing a PCB. I tried to do the “one thing at a time” approach, and it just doesn’t work very well there. Non-trivial PCBs will have errors in them the first few times you try them, and you’ll need to go back for a redesign. In software, that potentially takes minutes or even seconds. But in PCBs, you have to order out to a company to make them and wait at least a week for them to turn it around. Even if you have equipment to do it yourself, it still takes hours. You just have to batch up your changes. (Electrical simulators can potentially help with this, though.)
In government, the effects of policy could take years or even decades to work out. Single change at a time would be a stranglehold on the ability to fix problems.
You are closely tying together the timelines for the way that the change is proposed/designed/approved and the way that the change is validated/iterated. There is no need to do that, and I’m not sure how you came to that way of thinking.
They probably don’t even have time to read the contents of the bill they are voting for.
cough PATRIOT Act
I always wonder, there wasn’t enough time to read through it and debate it because we had to act quickly, but damn, someone sure wrote it quickly. Unless it was there all along, waiting for a crisis.
Not even suggesting the crisis itself was a conspiracy, only that they were ready to jump on anything to gain power.
Not even suggesting the crisis itself was a conspiracy, only that they were ready to jump on anything to gain power.
Yup. Just like project 2025, portions of which were more likely than not written in the early 90s if not before.
Hell, whether it’s The Heritage Foundation, ALEC, The John Birch Society, or some of the hundreds of others, it’s almost 100% certain that the abominable patriot act was written mostly or solely by dark money financed far right think tanks.
The one change at a time works only when there isn’t so much overhead it grinds the system to a haul. The government isn’t software, and software development has less overhead than running a whole country. At this level of overhead, one change at a time would mean we would get sufficiently less passes. Software development is also about efficiency and understanding when to make trade offs. You have to trade off the one change at a time paradigm so you can accomplish your job.
The problem is that many issues today aren’t as simple and require a lot of compromises to happen which then makes it way more complex if an issue to vote for something.
I agree that the way it is today is absurd. A couple of years ago there was a speech of a politician in germany congratulating his party for making so hard to read laws that it often take weeks for critics to even understand and explain what’s happening in that law and by that time they could farm support for it.
I guess that’s a slightly different issue to yours though.
Narrator: they were, for the most part, wrong.
I don’t care what they say (for the most part). I care what they do.
