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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Kamala Harris, Lula, and the "Fossil Fool" [1]
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Date: 2025-07-31
We begin today with The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick and her interview with the family of Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre and their outrage that the tacky shoe salesman spoke of their late relative as if she were a “thing” while being interviewed on Air Force One.
When Donald Trump told reporters yesterday that Jeffrey Epstein “stole” a young woman named Virginia Roberts Giuffre from Mar-a-Lago, her surviving siblings were shocked—not just because the president had described their late sister as he would an object, but because his comment raised the possibility that Trump might know more about his onetime friend’s behavior than he has previously acknowledged. “It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal actions, especially given his statement two years later that his good friend Jeffrey ‘likes women on the younger side … no doubt about it,’” Giuffre’s two brothers and her sisters-in-law told The Atlantic in an exclusive statement, their first public response to the president. “We and the public are asking for answers; survivors deserve this.” Giuffre died by suicide at her home in Australia in late April. In civil litigation and information provided to law enforcement, Giuffre alleged that she had been recruited by Maxwell while working at Mar-a-Lago as a high schooler and had then been sexually abused from around 1999 to 2002 by Epstein, Maxwell, and others. Giuffre also alleged that Epstein had trafficked her to other prominent men. Epstein died in jail in June 2019 while he was awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges. Giuffre’s family told me that Virginia’s work at Mar-a-Lago was meant to be a fun summertime job but instead led to her being sex trafficked.
Errin Haines of The 19th News looks at the decision of former Vice President Kamala Harris declining to enter the California governor’s race and how that decision might serve as a guide for the political decisions of Black women for the foreseeable future.
While it is unclear what she will do next, Harris’ decision to sit out the California gubernatorial contest has immediately raised questions about whether she will decide to run for president a third time in 2028. [...] As the highest-profile Black woman in politics, Harris is not unlike many Black women now weighing if or how they will wield power in our democracy going forward. “I have extraordinary admiration and respect for those who dedicate their lives to public service—service to their communities and to our nation,” Harris said in her statement. “At the same time, we must recognize that our politics, our government, and our institutions have too often failed the American people, culminating in this moment of crisis,” the statement continues. “As we look ahead, we must be willing to pursue change through new methods and fresh thinking—committed to our same values and principles, but not bound by the same playbook.” Her explanation spoke volumes about Black women’s understanding of our current political moment...
Paul M. Krawcak of Roll Call writes that Republicans are in a bit of disarray over the amendment to a bill sponsored by Missouri Senator Josh Hawley that will ban lawmakers and elected officials of the executive branch the ability to trade stocks.
The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved the bill on a slim 8-7 vote after earlier adopting a Hawley substitute amendment that extended the prohibitions beyond just members of Congress, reaching into the Oval Office. The compromise amendment would give officials elected before the date of enactment until after their current term to divest their assets. So President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance would need to sell their holdings in 2029 — exempting Trump from the requirements, since this is his last term — current House members would have until 2027, and so forth. The original bill only applied to lawmakers and was co-sponsored by Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio. The bill was titled the “PELOSI Act,” a reference to past accusations by Republicans that former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., benefited from inside information in stock trading. [...] Pelosi issued a statement in support of the bill. “While I appreciate the creativity of my Republican colleagues in drafting legislative acronyms, I welcome any serious effort to raise ethical standards in public service,” she said.
Even if this bill passes the Senate, it will be voted down in the House.
Jack Nicas with photographer Victor Moriyama of The New York Times interviewed Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, mostly about the retaliatory tariffs the United States have now imposed against Brazil.
Mr. Lula granted his first interview to The New York Times in 13 years on Tuesday, in part because he wanted to speak to the American people about his frustration with Mr. Trump. [...] In the interview, Mr. Lula said that the American president is infringing on Brazil’s sovereignty. “At no point will Brazil negotiate as if it were a small country up against a big country,” he said. “We know the economic power of the United States, we recognize the military power of the United States, we recognize the technological size of the United States.” “But that doesn’t make us afraid,” he added. “It makes us concerned.” There is perhaps no world leader defying President Trump as strongly as Mr. Lula. The president of Brazil — a leftist in his third term who is arguably this century’s most important Latin American statesman — has been hitting back at Mr. Trump in speeches across Brazil. His social media pages have suddenly become filled with references to Brazil’s sovereignty. And he has taken to wearing a hat that says “Brazil belongs to Brazilians.”
The executive director of an Israeli human rights organization, Yuli Novak, writes for the Guardian explaining why the Israeli actions in Gaza constitute genocide.
Genocide does not happen without mass participation: a population that supports it, enables it or looks away. That is part of its tragedy. Almost no nation that has committed genocide understood, in real time, what it was doing. The story is always the same: self-defense, inevitability, the targets brought it on themselves. In Israel, the prevailing narrative insists this all began on 7 October, with Hamas’s massacre of civilians in southern Israel. That day was a true horror, a grotesque burst of human cruelty: civilians slaughtered, raped, taken hostage. A concentrated national trauma that summoned, for many Israelis, a profound sense of existential threat. But 7 October, while catalytic, was not enough on its own. Genocide requires conditions – decades of apartheid and occupation, of separation and dehumanization, of policies designed to sever our capacity for empathy. Gaza, sealed off from the world, became the apex of this architecture. Its people became abstractions, perpetual hostages in our imagination, subjects to bomb every few years, to kill by the hundreds or thousands, with no accountability. We knew more than 2 million people were living under siege. We knew about Hamas. We knew about the tunnels. In hindsight, we knew everything. Yet somehow we were incapable of understanding that some of them might find a way to break out. What happened on 7 October was not only a military failure. It was a collapse of our social imagination: the delusion that we could corral all the violence and despair behind a fence and live peacefully on our side. That rupture arrived under the most extreme rightwing government in Israel’s history, a coalition whose ministers openly fantasize about Gaza’s erasure. And so, in October 2023, every star in our darkest nightmare aligned.
Finally today, I rather like Paul Krugman’s latest nickname for Donald Trump.
The optics of the Trump-EU deal were humiliating, and optics matter. If you examine the substance, however, it starts to look as if Europe played Trump for a fool. Specifically, a fossil fool. [...] The EU made two sort-of pledges to Trump. First, that it would invest $600 billion in the United States. Second, that it would buy $750 billion worth of U.S. energy, mainly oil and gas, over the next three years. The first promise was empty, while the second was nonsense. About those investments: European governments aren’t like China, which can tell companies where to put their money. And the European Commission, which made the trade deal, isn’t even a government — it can negotiate tariffs but otherwise has little power. On Sunday Politico spoke with Commission officials, who effectively confirmed that the investment pledge was meaningless...[....] Bottom line: Whatever Trump may think, Europe is not going to provide a big boost to U.S. fossil fuel production. He won’t like that, if anyone tells him. But the rest of us should be glad. As I’ve written before, renewables are clearly the energy technology of the future. Trump and his allies are Luddites, trying to stand in the way of progress and keep us burning fossil fuels. Their “burn, baby, burn” obsession is very bad for America and the world. But at least we can be reasonably sure that Europe won’t help, um, fuel that obsession.
Everyone have the best possible day that you can!
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