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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The argument for paying more attention to the Epstein story [1]
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Date: 2025-07-12
Brian Beutler/Off Message:
Jeffrey Epstein, Trumpcare, And The Influencer Problem What if the people Democrats want to reach aren't terribly interested in policy per se? Generating mass interest in policy has always been a challenge. Even a few years back, when political content was a backwater for nerds and information about elections and candidates flowed outward from a relatively small number of sources, Democrats struggled to reach voters with policy appeals. But there was still a broad consensus across politics that issues and solutions helped shape campaign narratives. Democrats would talk about the number of Americans without health insurance, and the number of children living in poverty, and the ways the tax code favored the rich, and it would communicate something meaningful: we’re empathetic, we’re fair. Immigration still drew ugly nativism out of the woodwork, but from a fringe that most Republican leaders found embarrassing. The policy discourse turned on technical questions about border security and legalization. Democrats liked to talk about creating a pathway to citizenship for most immigrants, in no small part because it portrayed them in flattering light: humane, solutions oriented. That’s all changed now. Policy is obviously still important—it is the “why” of liberal politics. But do these kinds of appeals—here’s what my policies say about me—make much sense in a world where the decisive voter never has to grapple with politics on those terms? Where he or she gets information from people who don’t generally care or talk about policy?
Look ,you may think the whole Epstein thing is garbage (see Julie K Brown from the Miami Herald for why it isn't - it's about law reform and transparency), but MAGA doesn't. And most of the public has a passing interest, which is more than I can say from the public for most policy I read and write about.
More from Beutler:
Do many of them take genuine interest in getting an answer to that question: Are Trump’s minions covering it up, or did they just exploit the sexual abuse of children to help get their guy elected? Or do they mostly think the whole issue is sordid and beneath them… To square their objectives, Democrats will have to stop wishing away distractions from their best issues, and start asking whether and how those issues slot into existing online fixations.
It’s also a wedge issue for MAGA:
x Dan Bongino is considering quitting as Deputy Head of the FBI after having a massive fight with Pam Bondi over the Epstein Files.
He didn’t show up to work today.
pic.twitter.com/4tPRahSULo — Spencer Hakimian (@SpencerHakimian) July 11, 2025
x WH officials "are very frustrated," @kaitlancollins says, "because they feel like this news cycle is only getting worse for them. It is not from people that they can easily dismiss – or say 'it's the media' or Democrats – it is their own base that is so furious and so angry..." pic.twitter.com/7iOzBOUog7 — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) July 12, 2025
x The Trump loyalists helped spread a conspiracy theory to gin up votes for Trump and to fatten their own wallets. Now they don’t know how to handle the fire they started.
https://t.co/IEejvrIMa5 — @ijbailey (@ijbailey) July 11, 2025
x The Trump admin's handling of the Epstein files has been a massive unforced error.
Trump may wish it goes away, but Google searches for Epstein are up 1,200% this week. It's the top topic searched with Trump today.
More have Googled Epstein this week than Grok or tariffs. pic.twitter.com/jrzP3KGC0p — (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) July 11, 2025
Aaron Parsley/Texas Monthly:
“The River House Broke. We Rushed in the River.” On July 4, the Guadalupe ripped our home from its pillars, pulling my family into its waters and into the night. Then morning came. I tried to imagine a scenario that would turn out okay. I imagined rescuers in a yellow raft emerging from the darkness. I imagined being stuck in the house for hours or days, grateful for all the groceries we’d brought for the weekend. I imagined my husband pointing out that the floodwaters were starting to recede. I imagined the relief I would feel when I realized he was right. The river rose. Within a minute or two it was about a foot high against the glass door. We got dressed, put on shoes, and packed bags so we could be ready to leave in case someone, anyone, miraculously arrived.
x I’ve lived through & reported on more hurricanes than I can remember & once almost died in a raging river
But nothing I’ve witnessed or written can match this peerless, sad & incredble survivor’s account from @FreshParsley about the Guadalupe flash flood
https://t.co/favGzuBaDR — Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) July 12, 2025
Washington Post:
Trump administration moves away from abolishing FEMA As the president visits Texas to see the impact of last week’s deadly flash floods, the White House has backed away from plans to abolish the agency, officials said. For months, President Donald Trump and his homeland security secretary have said the Federal Emergency Management Agency could be eliminated. But as the president visited Texas to view the impact of last week’s deadly floods, administration officials say abolishing the agency outright is not on the agenda. A senior White House official told The Washington Post that no official action is being taken to wind down FEMA, and that changes in the agency will probably amount to a “rebranding” that will emphasize state leaders’ roles in disaster response
POLITICO:
Joni Ernst is the next GOP senator on retirement watch The Iowan has had a tough few months, and Rep. Ashley Hinson is waiting in the wings. But three people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions said there is rising concern among fellow Senate Republicans that Ernst will retire rather than run for reelection, giving Republicans another seat to defend next fall. Many will be watching closely for clues next week when Ernst files new campaign fundraising totals. She raised just over $1 million in the first quarter of 2025, a solid but not overwhelming number for an in-cycle senator. Asked about the senator’s 2026 plans, Ernst spokesperson Palmer Brigham declined to say definitively that she would run again: “Senator Ernst is focused on her work delivering for Iowans in the Senate to make Washington ‘squeal,’ making President Trump’s historic tax cuts permanent through the One Big Beautiful Bill, and advancing a strong NDAA.”
x It would probably be easier for Democrats to beat Ernst than it would be to win an open seat, so this isn't necessarily the big win for them that everyone thinks it is.
https://t.co/HH549QrKQ7 — Lakshya Jain (@lxeagle17) July 11, 2025
Lisa Needham/Public Notice:
The worst chief justice of all time Move over, Roger Taney and Melville Fuller. The case for Roberts (derogatory) In Roberts’s 20 years atop the Court, conservatives have rolled back the already meager protections for LGBTQ people, making sure to finish the most recent term by kicking trans kids in the teeth. Reproductive rights have been comprehensively gutted, from allowing private for-profit companies to invoke religion to refuse to provide birth control coverage to overturning the constitutional right to abortion. Also, racism is apparently completely fixed, so school desegregation and affirmative action had to go. So too did the core of the Voting Rights Act, letting Roberts fulfill his lifelong ambition of making it harder for Black people to vote. There’s an obvious connection between the Fuller Court’s fiction that workers and employers have the same amount of power and the Roberts Court’s open and obvious goal of tilting the playing field toward employers. More workers are being forced to agree to arbitration, which strongly favors employers, and waive their right to bring class actions. Public sector unions are now barred from collecting fair share fees, undercutting their ability to bargain collectively. But don’t worry: per Justice Samuel Alito, that’s totally fine because of the “considerable windfall that unions have received.” Roberts spared America the tyranny of a requirement that agriculture companies allow labor organizers to come onto their property, saying that such a requirement was a “taking” by the government for which the employers needed to be compensated.
x People want Trump’s old 2016 applause line of an impenetrable wall with a big beautiful door to let immigrants in legally, every time one party deviates too far from either side of that equation they get punished
https://t.co/VcOh8Mz2wT — Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) July 11, 2025
New York Times:
Justice Dept. Whistle-Blower Warns of Trump Administration’s Assault on the Law In an interview with The New York Times, a former Justice Department lawyer, Erez Reuveni, said officials pressed subordinates to mislead judges, and dared the courts to stop it. Mr. Reuveni, speaking publicly for the first time about his experiences, was fired in April after he appeared in court to defend the administration’s mistaken deportation of a man in Maryland, accused of refusing a superior’s directive. He pointed to the planes of immigrants rapidly flown to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador on March 15, warning that it offered a distressing example of the administration’s disregard for facts and the law. The flights that took off that day also included the Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was initially detained at the prison, known as CECOT.
More takes on Gallup, highlighting how stunning the numbers are:
x Pretty stunning numbers here, via @Gallup:
About 7 in 10 independents disapprove of Trump's handling of immigration -- despite a historic drop in border crossings. pic.twitter.com/FC1VYfx8Zx — Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) July 11, 2025
x Gallup Poll shows a swelling backlash to immigration raids.
All Trump gains with Latino are gone.
Massive move of IND away from Trump
Record high level of support for immigrants
And….Republicans abandoning Trump on immigration policy!
More here:
https://t.co/Mzv5KZ5DUZ — Mike Madrid (@madrid_mike) July 11, 2025
x 35% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, including 21% strongly approving.
62% disapprove of his handling of immigration, including 45% strongly disapproving.
45% of independents *strongly disapprove* of how he’s handling it. pic.twitter.com/rVmMfnzj60 — Adam Carlson (@admcrlsn) July 11, 2025
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