President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he would ask Congress to extend the 30-day limit on his takeover of D.C. police as federal agents ramp up arrests in the nation&#8217;s capital.
Speaking to reporters during a press conference at the Kennedy Center, Trump was asked if he would seek to keep National Guard troops and federal agents in D.C. past the initial 30-day limit under the District of Columbia Home Rule Act. To extend his federalization of the D.C. police, Congress would need to issue a joint resolution approving of that move.
&#8220;We expect to be before Congress very quickly,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;And again, we think the Democrats will not do anything to stop crime, but we think the Republicans will do it almost unanimously.&#8221;
The president added that Congress will need to pass a crime bill that will &#8220;pertain initially to D.C.,&#8221; adding that he would ask for &#8220;long-term extensions&#8221; of his federalization of the police force. He argued that while the federal government would work quickly to address violent crime in D.C., 30 days wasn&#8217;t long enough.
&#8220;We&#8217;re going to do this very quickly, but we&#8217;re going to want extensions,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to call a national emergency. If I have to, I will.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
REPORTER: Your federalization of the police has a 30 day limit unless Congress acts to extend it&#8230;<a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a>: &#8220;We expect to be before Congress very quickly&#8230; We&#8217;re going to need a crime bill&#8230; We&#8217;re going to be asking for extensions on that—long-term extensions.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/SRuIWBGTHq">pic.twitter.com/SRuIWBGTHq</a>
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1955663185119445155?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 13, 2025</a></blockquote>
&nbsp;
Republicans would likely approve Trump&#8217;s request to extend the 30-day limit. Both Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) have voiced support for Trump&#8217;s D.C. takeover, The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/why-congress-holds-the-key-to-extending-trumps-d-c-police-takeover?author=Daniel+Chaitin&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Why+Congress+Holds+The+Key+To+Extending+Trump%E2%80%99s+D.C.+Police+Takeover">reported</a>.
“I’m grateful for [Trump’s] leadership and for this administration’s commitment to protecting communities large and small across America. Washington, D.C., should be a place where people can safely live, visit, work, and raise a family, and today’s announcement is a positive step in that direction,” said Thune.
Johnson added, “Every American should be able to visit and enjoy Washington, D.C. without fear. House Republicans support this effort to CLEAN UP Washington, END the crime wave, and RESTORE the beauty of the greatest capital in the world.”
Democrats are united in their opposition to Trump&#8217;s federalization of D.C. law enforcement, with Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) calling the president&#8217;s move an &#8220;unjustified power grab&#8221; and claiming that it will put people &#8220;in danger.&#8221;
&#8220;President Trump’s plan to federalize Washington, D.C.’s local police department and unleash the National Guard on the city’s youth and homeless population has no basis in law and will put the safety of the people of our Nation’s capital in danger,&#8221; Jeffries <a href="https://democraticleader.house.gov/media/press-releases/leader-jeffries-statement-donald-trumps-takeover-dc-police">said</a> in a press release.
Since last week, federal agents in D.C. have <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/d-c-will-be-safe-again-feds-kick-off-trumps-violent-crime-crackdown-with-over-100-arrests?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Zach+Jewell&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=1&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=D.C.+%E2%80%98WILL+Be+Safe+Again%E2%80%99%3A%C2%A0Feds+Kick+Off+Trump%E2%80%99s+Violent+Crime+Crackdown+With+Over+100+Arrests">arrested</a> over 100 people, including arrests on homicide, firearms, and drug charges, according to Fox News.

Donald Trump

Trump Says He’ll Push For ‘Long-Term Extensions’ Of D.C. Federal Takeover

Congress

Police

Republicans

Washington D.C.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — “Everybody needs to be reading more history.” 
While not a typical applause line, it was a favorite of the crowd of twenty and thirty-somethings listening to Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti speak at the National Young Republican Convention. Skrmetti, fresh off a landmark victory at the Supreme Court, implored the crowd to take seriously their duty to know how America works and leave it better off for future generations. 
“You’re the ones who are coming into this, and you’ve got the future ahead of you, we run the country, and we need to do it wisely,” Skrmetti told the crowd of sharply-dressed attendees in the ballroom of the Sheraton Music City Hotel last weekend. “That means everybody needs to be reading more history. You’ve got to have the perspective of knowing how things have worked in the past.”
Skrmetti, who loves American history and has four young children, praised the Founding Fathers for their sacrifices to build the United States. 
“America is not just a short-term thing where we get what we can get and then run for the hills,” he said. “It is literally created to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, and we have to have the multi-generational perspective and be looking not just to get short-term wins, but to strengthen our country.”
This year’s convention was attended by more than 1,000 Republicans between the ages of 18 and 40 from all 50 states. It was the largest convention in decades, and the second largest ever, according to organizers. 
Speakers and participants included a variety of Tennessee political staples, such as Governor Bill Lee and Reps. John Rose and Tim Burchett, in addition to sports commentator Clay Travis and conservative CNN commentator Scott Jennings. 
From Thursday to Sunday, attendees milled about the convention space, which featured booths from diverse organizations such as Trump Mobile, PETA, and WinRed. Multiple attendees told The Daily Wire they were there to meet like-minded people. 
Kellie Lynch, a Republican from New York, said that she thought the most significant issues facing young people were the economy, the cost of living, and the rise of artificial intelligence. While much has been made of the gender divide in voting patterns, Lynch said that the GOP did a “great job” reaching out to women. She thought media bias played a major role in some women’s perception of Republicans. 
<div id="attachment_957525" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-957525" class="size-full wp-image-957525" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/IMG_6866-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1920" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/IMG_6866-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/IMG_6866-300x225.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/IMG_6866-768x576.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/IMG_6866-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/IMG_6866-2048x1536.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Booths at the Young Republican convention/ Photo: Catherine Maxwell.</div>
Another attendee, Kyle Mason, an investment property specialist from Texas, said he believed President Donald Trump’s embrace of masculinity was key to the reason many younger men were starting to vote Republican. In his spare time, Mason volunteers with Republican political efforts in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. 
After his panel appearance, Skrmetti told The Daily Wire that he had a lot of older mentors who helped him be involved in civic action, and he now wants to play that role for others. Asked about some young people who see politics as hopelessly corrupt, Skrmetti pointed out that America was founded by men who were skeptical of the government. 
“Cynical people are a critical part of America, and we need them, but we need them not to sit on the sidelines and gripe. We need them to take their cynicism and put it to work on behalf of all the American people,” he said. 
He added that one way to expose corruption and push for change was on the internet, which he said really opened up the national conversation for input from anyone. 
Skrmetti’s sentiment was present in other speeches, including by Governor Lee, who noted that he would probably float into “political obscurity” once his term in office was over.
“You’re the future of America, you have an obligation and a responsibility to wake up every day and ask yourself those questions so you’ll be engaging in the things that matter and that change the lives of the people around you,” Lee said. 
<div id="attachment_957531" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-957531" class="size-full wp-image-957531" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/YRNC_250731_131724_1243-scaled.jpg" alt="Young Republicans National Convention Thursday, July 31, 2025, at Sheraton Music City Hotel in Nashville, TN. " width="2560" height="1707" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/YRNC_250731_131724_1243-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/YRNC_250731_131724_1243-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/YRNC_250731_131724_1243-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/YRNC_250731_131724_1243-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/YRNC_250731_131724_1243-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/YRNC_250731_131724_1243-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/YRNC_250731_131724_1243-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/YRNC_250731_131724_1243-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Lee speaks at convention: Photo by: Jonathan Williams | NationalPhotography.us via YRNC.</div>
The National Young Republicans now have chapters in almost every state, with a Delaware chapter being chartered over the weekend, Chair Hayden Padgett told The Daily Wire. The last state needing a chapter is Wyoming. 
Padgett said that the purpose of the Young Republicans was twofold: to build community and to aid in political campaigns.
During the 2024 election cycle, which he described as “wild” in the “best way,” Padgett said a contingent of Young Republicans knocked on the doors of 3% of Montana voters in support of Tim Sheehy, who successfully defeated incumbent Democrat Senator Jon Tester. 
His pitch to young people was that Republican policies would help them achieve the American dream of starting a family, owning a business, and buying a home. Padgett was re-elected as chair of the Young Republicans after a contentious challenge from New York State Young Republicans Chair Peter Giunta.
“If you want to have a better life, if you want to have a family, if you want to have the ability to actually achieve the American dream, we are putting in the policies, and have been for 150 years, whatever it is, that actually make that possible,” Padgett said. “So come join that.”

YRNC_250731_122447_0999

‘America Is Not A Short-Term Thing’: Lawmakers Urge Young Republicans Take Up The Fight

American History

Bill Lee

Nashville

Scott Jennings

Tennessee

Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott said that he is open to using &#8220;every tool&#8221; to go after the 50+ Democratic state representatives who fled the state to block a vote on a new GOP-backed congressional map.
In an interview with <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/texas-gov-greg-abbott-moves-amp-pressure-democrats-fled-redistricting-rcna223581?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_content=Click%20here&amp;utm_campaign=Gov%20Abbott%20push%208.8.25">NBC News</a> that aired on Friday morning, Abbott said that state officials are preparing to arrest the Democrats who ran off to Illinois earlier this week. The governor would not say if the FBI should get involved, but added, &#8220;All I can say is we&#8217;re going to use every tool that we can to make sure that these runaway Democrats are going to be held accountable.&#8221;
Abbott told NBC News that it doesn&#8217;t matter how long Texas Democrats shirk their responsibilities in the legislature, saying that he will push the congressional map through, even if it takes years. The new map would likely <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/texas-republicans-drop-new-congressional-map-that-would-flip-5-democrat-seats-red?author=Nathan+Gay&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Texas+Republicans+Drop+New+Congressional+Map+That+Would+Flip+5+Democrat+Seats+Red">boost</a> the GOP&#8217;s hold on the Texas delegation by five seats ahead of the 2026 midterms.
&#8220;Democrats act like they&#8217;re not going to come back as long as this is an issue. That means they&#8217;re not going to come back until like 2027 or 2028, because I&#8217;m going to call special session after special session after special session with the same agenda items on there,&#8221; he said.
Abbott defended the push for the new congressional map in his state, saying that &#8220;both the law and facts have changed since we drew the lines back in 2021.&#8221;
&#8220;A lot of people who voted Republican, who voted for Donald Trump, were trapped into Democrat districts,&#8221; the governor said. &#8220;And so when you look at the facts, when you look at the law, there is every reason to go ahead and draw the lines so that we can assure that every voter is going to have the opportunity to vote for their candidate of choice.&#8221;
The new map would give Republicans nearly 80% of the state&#8217;s congressional districts. The move from Texas Republicans has resulted in some Democratic leaders threatening to take seats away from Republicans through redistricting in other states. California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom said earlier this week that his state would &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/newsom-threatens-retaliation-says-texas-redistricting-will-trigger-new-california-election-maps?author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Newsom+Threatens+Retaliation%2C+Says+Texas+Redistricting+Will+%E2%80%98Trigger%E2%80%99+New+California+Election+Maps">punch back</a>&#8221; if Texas approves its new congressional map.
Texas can&#8217;t approve the Republican-favored map, however, until enough Democrats show up to reach a quorum.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said on Thursday that the FBI agreed to assist Texas in tracking down the AWOL Democrats after he sent a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel, The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fbi-assisting-texas-in-hunt-for-runaway-democrats-gop-senator-says">reported</a>. An FBI spokesperson declined to comment when The Daily Wire reached out to the bureau.
President Donald Trump said earlier this week that the FBI &#8220;may have to&#8221; get involved in finding the Texas Democrats. Republicans pushing for the FBI to get involved sparked outrage among Democratic leaders in Washington.
&#8220;Shouldn&#8217;t the FBI be tracking down terrorists, drug traffickers and child predators? The Trump administration continues to weaponize law enforcement to target political adversaries,&#8221; House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) <a href="https://x.com/hakeemjeffries/status/1953468425273024976">said</a>.
&#8220;This is authoritarianism. Plain and simple,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/SenSchumer/status/1953571261956698298">added</a> Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). &#8220;Texas Democrats are standing up for Democracy, and Republicans want to send in the federal government to round them up? That is not American.&#8221;
Texas Republicans are also going after a group <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/beto-orourkes-pac-bankrolls-texas-democrats-escape-from-redistricting-standoff?author=Sam+Korkus&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Beto+O%E2%80%99Rourke%E2%80%99s+PAC+Bankrolls+Texas+Democrats%E2%80%99+Escape+from+Redistricting+Standoff">bankrolling</a> Texas Democrats as they block the vote. On Wednesday, Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/beto-orourke-led-group-under-investigation-over-potential-bribes-to-help-runaway-texas-dems">launched</a> an investigation into Powered by People, a Left-wing political organization led by Texas Democrat Beto O&#8217;Rourke. Paxton said the group might have violated laws on bribery, campaign finance, and abuse of office.

Greg Abbott

Abbott Vows To Use ‘Every Tool’ To Round Up And Arrest Runaway Texas Dems

Abbott Vows To Use 'Every Tool' To Round Up And Arrest Runaway Texas Dems

Democrats

Politics

Texas

Texas Governor Orders Arrest Of Democrats Who Left State To Block Redistricting Vote

The Real Reason Democrats Are Panicking About Redistricting

Census Bureau

Louisiana

Matt Walsh

Opinion

Redistricting

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Politics

A massive controversy has now broken out over a Democratic lawmaker in the House of Representatives who announced at a Pan-American Congress taking place in Mexico City that America was terrible.
Illinois Democratic Rep. Delia Ramirez — who was born in the United States, although her parents were illegal immigrants and her husband is also an illegal immigrant who is a DACA recipient — declared in Spanish that she was a proud Guatemalan before she was an American. She followed by suggesting that the United States prioritizes imperialism, militarization, conquest, and control in its attempt at domination.
The White House assistant press secretary, Liz Huston, said, “These Democrats’ comments are despicable and underscore their commitment to putting America last.”
That is exactly right.
Nobody is suggesting that if you are an immigrant to this country and your parents are Italian, for example, that you can&#8217;t have pride in your Italian heritage. But to say that you&#8217;re prouder to be Italian than American while living in America is a wild statement that goes to a deeper problem inside the Democratic Party, which suggests that they are not America First, but, in fact, America Last.
Why would you be prouder to be a Guatemalan than an American? Just on a raw level, the murder rate in Guatemala is 16.1 per 100,000 compared to the United States, where it&#8217;s 6.8 per 100,000. The GDP per capita in Guatemala is $6,100 per capita. Since 2019, some two million people have left the Northern Triangle; many of those are from Guatemala.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2254-the-america-last-left-cuts-loose-plus-new-epstein-subpoenas?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=The+Ben+Shapiro+Show&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
This conference took place in Mexico City. Mexico is, of course, a disastrous hotbed of crime and corruption. It is partially run by the drug cartels. According to the 2023 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, Mexico ranks 126th in the world in terms of fighting corruption.
Mexico has a $14,000 GDP per capita, and the murder rate is 19.3 per 100,000, down from 24 per 100,000 in 2023. This entire conference is taking place in a country vastly inferior to the United States.
It wasn&#8217;t just Delia Ramirez; other people who showed up included Rep. Ilhan Omar, who came from Somalia and has suggested on “Democracy Now!” that America is one of the worst countries in the world, saying, “To be coming out of our country, I mean, I grew up in, in, in a dictatorship, and I don&#8217;t even remember ever witnessing anything like that. To have a democracy, a beacon of hope for the world, to now be turned into one of the worst countries where the military are in our streets, without any regard for people&#8217;s constitutional rights, while our president is spending millions of dollars, [propping] himself up, like a failed dictator with a military parade &#8230;”
Somalia, of course, has a GDP per capita of $636. It&#8217;s one of the worst places on planet Earth. And she says America is one of the worst places on planet Earth.
Don&#8217;t worry, it is not just the children of immigrants like Delia Ramirez or actual immigrants like Ilhan Omar who say nefarious stuff like this; it is also homegrown Americans like Ayanna Pressley, who believes that America is a terrible place. She also spoke at this Pan-American conference. You might remember not all that long ago when she voted against the formation of a tough-on-China committee, because she said that that would further anti-Asian hate in the United States.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the Democratic congresswoman from Michigan and a terrorist sympathizer who literally just last year refused to condemn chants of “Death to America,” showed up, too.
Pennsylvania Democrat Rep. Summer Lee, who has suggested in the past that requiring only American citizens to be allowed to vote is actually xenophobic, was there.
All these wonderful people showed up to a conference outside the United States to rip America and talk about how terrible America was.
In a TV interview before the event. David Adler, the general coordinator for the Progressive International organization that was in charge of this event and one of the summit&#8217;s main coordinators, said the intention of the summit was to “confront authoritarian and fascist threats and shift authority from Washington, D.C. to developing countries.”
This is the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and they are going to be the next governing wave of the Democratic Party. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hides it a little bit better, but she is a fellow traveler with this caucus. Zohran Mamdani is much louder. He is not just a fellow traveler. He is one of the main spears at the tip of this caucus. The new mayoral candidate in Minnesota for the Democrats is a person who agrees with this sort of stuff. Bernie Sanders, of course, agrees with this take on America, this sort of Howard Zinn-hatred for the United States.
You can say this is TDS, that this is specifically about Donald Trump, but it clearly is not. It goes deeper than that. It goes to an oppressor/oppressed narrative whereby America is the great oppressor, America’s allies are the great oppressors, and everybody in the world who is unsuccessful, every failed country around the world, is simply oppressed by the First World, and that&#8217;s why they are in such dire circumstances right now.
This is a recipe for more chaos around the world. It is a matrix that you use for the world in which no one has personal responsibility, particularly if they fail. That matrix on both a personal level and a national level is horribly dark. It wrecks human beings; it wrecks nations, and it wrecks the planet overall.
Yet this is the growing movement inside the Democratic Party that shirks responsibility and presents the United States as the great aggressor in the world, despite the fact that the world is inestimably more wealthy, better off, healthier, living longer, and more democratic because of the presence of the United States on planet Earth.
A bizarre hatred for the United States is a driving force behind everything from the open borders immigration platform of the Democratic Party to their redistributionist view of free market economics, to their belief that the world is better off if the United States basically lays down its arms and allows all of its enemies to dominate the world situation.
If this is where the Democratic Party wants to go, I don’t think Americans will follow.
Question: Why are the American people running headlong away from these folks?
Answer: Why wouldn’t the American people run headlong away from these folks?

President Donald Trump Delivers Address To A Joint Session Of Congress

The ‘America Last’ Left Cuts Loose

The 'America Last' Left Cuts Loose

Ben Shapiro

Guatemala

Ilhan Omar

Mexico

President Trump

Rashida Tlaib

A lot of folks have tried to figure out exactly why the Donald Trump phenomenon happened.
Donald Trump has been the most transformative political figure of the 21st century. Without a doubt, it was going to be Barack Obama. And then Trump came in and completely remade American politics in global geopolitics.
But what led to the Trump phenomenon in the first place? There have been a lot of attempts to philosophize about Trump. Maybe it was all about economic grievances in the Midwest? Maybe it was all about offshoring? Maybe it was all about tariffs or about immigration?
The reality is the biggest thing that drove Donald Trump to victory in 2016 and again in 2024 is the fact that the Left went culturally insane.
The backlash against the Left has been less about tax rates than about a generalized feeling that the Left was trying to dissolve the culture of the United States on traditional, basic issues such as “men are not women.” Or “There is such a thing as America, and America is good.” Or, “Christianity ought to be held with a high level of esteem.”
These are certain things Americans took for granted. Things like church, apple pie, baseball, the flag, all the stuff people used to think was corny.
And then the Left decided, they weren’t just corny, they were bad.
But it turns out most Americans don&#8217;t think like that.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2253-the-ben-shapiro-show?elementPosition=3&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
Why do I bring this up? Because you&#8217;re seeing all of this crystallized in what I would term a culture division between the Sydney Sweeney Americans and the Cynthia Erivo Americans.
Cynthia Erivo, whom I’ve praised before, is a terrific actress from Great Britain, a great singer, and unbelievably talented. But Cynthia Erivo has also become emblematic of a leftist social value belief system.
This became a hot issue online over the course of the last 48 hours, because she was the star of a production of Jesus Christ Superstar, a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
Jesus Christ Superstar, as a musical, is quite respectful to Christian traditions. It is not meant to make fun of Christian traditions.
But at the Hollywood Bowl, they decided they were going to cast Cynthia Erivo as Jesus Christ.
There are a few problems with this: Cynthia Erivo is a woman; Jesus Christ was a man. Cynthia Erivo is black; Jesus Christ was a Middle-Eastern Jew. Cynthia Erivo describes herself as queer and bisexual. Jesus Christ was not, to say the least, any of that.
So they took all the things that Jesus Christ was not, and morphed them into what the Left wishes Jesus Christ were. The whole goal of this production at the Hollywood Bowl was to be completely subversive of Christianity, and to supplant traditional values with the values of the far-Left social sphere.
Theater critic Charles McNulty&#8217;s <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2025-08-04/jesus-christ-superstar-review-hollywood-bowl-cynthia-erivo">gushing review</a> in the L.A. Times stated:
<blockquote>Cynthia Erivo, a noted theatrical divinity, redeemed the title of “Jesus Christ Superstar” at the Hollywood Bowl last weekend in a magnetic, heaven-sent performance that established God the Savior as a queer Black woman, as many of us suspected might be the case all along. Divine dispensation allowed me to catch the final performance of this revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s 1971 breakout musical. I returned from vacation just in time to join the pilgrimaging hordes carting cumbersome picnic baskets and enough wine for a few dozen Sicilian weddings. The vast number of attendees caused bottlenecks at entry points, prompting one wag to crack, “What is this, the Second Coming?</blockquote>
Notice all of the extraordinarily seething comments of hatred for Christianity just in the first two paragraphs. “God the Savior as a queer Black woman, as many of us suspected might be the case all along.” That everyone suspected all along that God the Savior was a “queer black woman.” Erivo is a “theatrical divinity.” It was only “divine dispensation” and the favor of God that caused him to catch this performance of Cynthia Erivo.
“The headliners, Erivo as Jesus and Adam Lambert as Judas, certainly have sizable fan bases,” he continued. “But so too does the subject of this Greatest Story Ever Told, a messiah whose following has few equals in the history of the world. Suffice it to say, it was a supercharged evening, comparable more to a rock concert than one of the Bowl’s forays into the musical theater past.”
He goes on to talk about Cynthia Erivo and the magic of a queer black woman playing Jesus and Adam Lambert, who is openly gay, playing Judas, adding, “Phillipa Soo’s Mary Magdalene brought a probing, tentative and profound intimacy in her adoration of Erivo’s Jesus. In her exquisite rendition of ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him,’ the tenderness between Mary Magdalene and Jesus, at once earthy and ethereal, deepened the expressive range of the love between them.”
The whole idea from the Left is that the entire story of Christianity must be flipped on its head. The imagery that emerges from this performance of JC Superstar is astonishingly hedonistic, truly subversive. That is the entire goal of the enterprise.
I&#8217;m not a Christian, but I have great respect for Christianity. I&#8217;ve encouraged tens of thousands of people to go back to church and many, many people to move back toward their belief system.
Do these performances sound like Jesus and Judas to you, or do they sound like a queer, bisexual black woman and a very, very gay man cosplaying as Jesus and Judas?
The reason that&#8217;s important is because the backlash is one of the things driving America&#8217;s politics right now. The backlash to the left-wing view that everything must be subverted; the church must be subverted; Christianity must be subverted; heterosexuality must be subverted; whiteness must be subverted. All of these things  “must be subverted because they are all emblematic of an evil system of power.”
That is why when Donald Trump said “Make America Great Again,” all he really meant by that was “Stop this stuff. Stop this crap.”
Donald Trump represented a giant, pulsating orange middle finger to all of this nonsense.
On the one side, you have Jesus Christ played by Cynthia Erivo, and on the other side, you have the cultural controversy surrounding Sydney Sweeney.
Sydney Sweeney is all-American, and a throwback to every cheesecake star of the 1940s. She&#8217;s the kind of woman who was painted on the front of World War II bombers, and so she looks like a pinup girl from 1944. She grew up in rural areas like Spokane, Washington, and her values reflect that. When she moved to Florida, she registered as a Republican.
There&#8217;s nothing in Hollywood that gets people&#8217;s goat more than being a registered Republican.
But Sydney Sweeney being a Republican shouldn&#8217;t be that big a deal, right? In a country that is at least 50% Republican at this point, why shouldn&#8217;t Sydney Sweeney, who is now a popular actress and advertising icon, be a registered Republican?
When you look at Sydney Sweeney, obviously, she&#8217;s a beautiful woman. But there are lots of beautiful young women in Hollywood. What is it about Sydney Sweeney that drove the Left insane?
Sydney Sweeney is not one of them.
It&#8217;s not just that the Left wishes to uphold the values and rights of the marginalized. They wish to recenter the marginalized and to turn the mainstream, the “normies,” into the marginalized. 
Thus, they must attack anyone who is not one of them.
This is why, for years, every couple of weeks on Twitter, Chris Pratt would randomly trend. That was because Chris Pratt is not of the Left. It doesn&#8217;t mean that he&#8217;s a rabid Right-winger, but because Chris Pratt was not openly saying all of the idiotic nostrums of the Left, from BLM to LGBTQ+-, that made him verboten.
The same thing happened to Sydney Sweeney.
But it&#8217;s now backfiring because Americans have had enough of this crap.
The backlash against Sweeney says that the actual realities of life must be Cynthia Erivo as Jesus Christ and Sydney Sweeney as a Nazi. But the backlash against Sydney Sweeney for being a pretty blonde white girl with blue eyes who can shoot a gun and isn&#8217;t a registered Democrat is the reason that Donald Trump is president.
If that&#8217;s going to be the juxtaposition Democrats and the Left make, they will lose until the end of time.
And they will deserve it.

MixCollage-05-Aug-2025-02-38-PM-7926

Jesus Christ Erivo Vs. MAGA Sweeney

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Democrats — who have a habit of puffing out their chests as they boast of their courage — are having a very tough time with continued Republican victories as their poll numbers continue to be in the trash. All of this is now manifesting in their latest routine in Texas.
Texas Republicans are looking right now at redistricting the state congressionally, a process called gerrymandering.
That’s quite typical around the United States. Every state has some form of gerrymandering — and some of the worst gerrymandered states are Democrat-dominated states.
If you look at a map of Illinois with its congressional districts, it looks insane. The congressional districts make no sense because they&#8217;re all over the place. One congressional district, the 13th, looks like a snake that travels halfway through the state, and that is juxtaposed with the 17th congressional district, which was created simply to get to a Democratic majority.
<div id="attachment_956575" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-956575" class="size-large wp-image-956575" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-04-Aug-2025-02-18-PM-2730-384x576.jpg" alt="Screenshot: @kerpen/X. https://x.com/kerpen/status/1952175690176221608" width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-04-Aug-2025-02-18-PM-2730-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-04-Aug-2025-02-18-PM-2730-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-04-Aug-2025-02-18-PM-2730-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-04-Aug-2025-02-18-PM-2730-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-04-Aug-2025-02-18-PM-2730-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-04-Aug-2025-02-18-PM-2730-1360x2040.jpg 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-04-Aug-2025-02-18-PM-2730-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" />Screenshot: @kerpen/X</div>
The attempt to treat gerrymandering as though it is unnatural and those kinds of politics are only pursued by one side — which is what the Democrats are claiming — is absolute nonsense.
The Texas state Republicans are now attempting to re-gerrymander the state. Texas Democrats have threatened that they would run away from the state so the state legislature cannot reach a quorum.
In order for them to do that, they have to claim that the gerrymandering is an authoritarian threat to democracy, as opposed to a way that congressional districts have been created since the beginning of our Republic.
There is nothing new here. Elbridge Gerry, from whom the word “gerrymander” is derived, was the Vice President of the United States who served under President James Madison from 1813 until his death in 1814.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2252-texas-democrats-run-away-plus-the-real-gaza-starvation?elementPosition=1&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
But according to former Barack Obama Attorney General Eric Holder, what the Texas Republicans are doing is “authoritarian” and a “threat to democracy.” Holder, who once called himself Barack Obama&#8217;s “wingman,” stated, “What we&#8217;re seeing now is an attempt by the White House to insulate itself from any kind of congressional scrutiny, any kind of congressional oversight, to make sure that Donald Trump remains the authoritarian figure that he has become. We have a compliant Congress, and he wants to ensure that given the fact that they pass this bill — that is unpopular, that takes healthcare away from people, that gives tax breaks to billionaires, and it puts at risk the Republican majority — that he continues to have that compliant Republican House of Representatives.”
The idea that the president is responsible for gerrymandering as opposed to the party that happens to be in control of the particular state legislature is ridiculous.
So what are Texas Democrats doing? They&#8217;re doing what they&#8217;ve done before. They&#8217;re running away.
POLITICO <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2025/08/04/the-mess-with-texas-00491589">reported</a> on Monday:
<blockquote>When the Texas legislature reconvenes today at 4 p.m. ET, it will be 57 Democrats short of a quorum. While a small number of Democratic legislators remain in Austin, many more have fled. Instead, some will be in New York, meeting with Gov. Kathy Hochul; they’ll hold a media availability at 10 a.m. in Albany. Others will be hunkered down at an undisclosed hotel in the Chicagoland area; Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is providing them with logistical support. Still others are expected in Boston for the National Conference of State Legislators.</blockquote>
There&#8217;s great irony that legislators from Texas are fleeing to Chicago, considering Illinois one of the most gerrymandered states in America. Illinois Democratic governor J.B. Pritzker is providing them with logistical support, which is no shock, as he wants to run for president in 2028.
Texas Democratic State Representative James Talarico told POLITICO, “I’m hoping that what we’ve heard from blue state lawmakers talking about retaliation may give Texas Republicans pause, it may give Speaker Mike Johnson pause, because he’s got members in blue states that may lose their seats if this escalates further.”
POLITICO continued:
<blockquote>Aboard the bus, he and other members talked about how Abraham Lincoln once broke quorum in the Illinois state legislature by jumping out of a window. “Everybody is hungry and tired, but in good spirits,” Talarico told Playbook.</blockquote>
The genuine heroism of these people.
This is not the first time Texas Democrats have run away to break the quorum. They did this back in 2021; in doing so, they released some of the worst social media ever. They went to Washington, D.C., and started releasing photos of themselves eating salads and talking about what absolute heroes they were.
Talarico was on Joe Rogan’s show recently, where he promoted a bunch of very Left-wing ideas that Rogan — who is not a Right-winger, possibly a heterodox person who voted for Donald Trump, but not traditionally conservative — started buying into. 
“My Democratic colleagues and I have just left our beloved state to break quorum and stop Trump&#8217;s redistricting power grab,” Talarico huffed, adding:
<blockquote>Trump told our Republican colleagues to redraw the political maps here in Texas in the middle of the decade to get him five more seats and protect his majority in Congress. They&#8217;re turning our districts into crazy shapes to guarantee the outcome they want in the 2026 elections. If this power grab succeeds, they will hang on to power without any accountability from the voters. But Texas Democrats are fighting back. We&#8217;re leaving the state, breaking quorum and preventing Republicans from silencing our voices and rigging the next election.</blockquote>
“We are not fighting for the Democratic Party,” he puffed. “We are fighting for the democratic process. And the stakes could not be higher. We have to take a stand.”
“We have to take a stand.” 
By running away.
That, assuredly, must be the only way to take a stand.
“Brave Sir Robin ran away — bravely.”
Run away? Yes. They are so brave.
I am loving every element of this tremendous bravery.
This demonstrates the extent to which Democrats are in real national trouble. They&#8217;re in trouble in states such as Texas.
California has already been basically gerrymandered to death by the Democrats, so this is nothing new. The Democrats are whimpering, “If you go after Texas, we might redistrict California.”
They already did it. How many more seats are they going to take away from Orange County? There&#8217;s not that much more they can do to gerrymander Republicans out of existence in places like California.
All of the posturing speaks to the desperation of Democrats; they have no national brand. Whatever national brand they might possibly have is quite negative.
So they run away.

Texas Democratic Lawmakers Flee State In Effort To Halt Redistricting Legislation

Texas Democrats Fight Back — By Running Away

Austin

Illinois

J.B. Pritzker

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What Is An American?

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Theodore Roosevelt

Republicans Just Launched An Open Revolt Against Trump’s Deportation Operation

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A poll from Reuters/Ipsos conducted this week showed that a large majority of Americans believe the federal government is hiding information on the Jeffrey Epstein case, as President Donald Trump calls those continuing to focus on the case &#8220;pretty bad people.&#8221;
The <a href="https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-TRUMP/EPSTEIN-POLL/zjvqoexxgvx/">poll</a>, which surveyed 1,027 U.S. adults and ran on Tuesday and Wednesday, found that 69% of respondents said that the federal government is covering up details about Epstein&#8217;s alleged client list. Only 6% said there was no cover-up, and 25% said they were unsure or did not answer. The survey results also showed that around two-thirds of Republicans believe the government is hiding something about Epstein&#8217;s supposed clients.
On Epstein&#8217;s death, 60% of Americans said the federal government is hiding information from the public, including 55% of Republicans.
Trump has been <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-says-epstein-story-is-kept-alive-by-pretty-bad-people-including-fake-news?author=Zach+Jewell&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=3&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Trump+Says+Epstein+Story+Is+Kept+Alive+By+%E2%80%98Pretty+Bad+People%2C+Including+Fake+News%E2%80%99">asked</a> about the case multiple times this week, and on Wednesday, he lashed out at his &#8220;past supporters&#8221; who he says have fallen for a &#8220;hoax&#8221; pushed by Democrats.
&#8220;Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this &#8216;bulls***&#8217; hook, line, and sinker,&#8221; he wrote on Truth Social. &#8220;They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years.&#8221; He added that he no longer wants the support of those who continue to focus on the Epstein case.
In a press gaggle on Tuesday night, Trump told reporters, “I don’t understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody. It’s pretty boring stuff. It’s sordid, but it’s boring, and I don’t understand why it keeps going. I think really only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going.”
The Trump administration&#8217;s handling of the case has sparked controversy among the president&#8217;s base as Republicans and Democrats gear up for the 2026 midterm elections. Democrats have already <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/democrats-put-previous-misgivings-hit-trump-jeffrey-epstein-files-rcna218608">latched</a> onto the issue to attack Trump, voting in the House to release the Epstein files, a move that Republicans <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/house-gop-rejects-claims-of-blocking-epstein-files-a-misunderstanding">called</a> a political stunt and a power grab.
Among all of the issues respondents were asked about in the Reuters/Ipsos poll, Trump scored the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-faces-backlash-69-believe-epstein-details-concealed-reutersipsos-poll-2025-07-17/">worst</a> on his handling of the Epstein case, with just 17% of Americans approving of the job his administration has done on the issue. Thirty-five percent of Republicans said they approved of Trump&#8217;s handling of the Epstein case compared to 30% who disapproved. The rest of the Republicans polled either said they were unsure or didn&#8217;t answer the question.
Conservatives have <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ben-shapiro-pam-bondi-botched-epstein-rollout-eight-ways-from-sunday">blasted</a> Attorney General Pam Bondi&#8217;s handling of the Epstein case after the Department of Justice said last week that it did not find evidence of a client list existing and concluded that Epstein committed suicide in his jail cell in 2019. Bondi said in February that she had the client list sitting on her desk, but months later, she clarified that she meant that she was reviewing the Epstein files.
FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino were also reportedly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bondi-or-bongino-bongino-wont-remain-at-fbi-if-bondi-keeps-job-source-says">frustrated</a> with Bondi&#8217;s handling of the case, and Bongino considered resigning if Bondi remained in her position. Trump said that Bondi did &#8220;very well&#8221; handling the Epstein case, and is also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hes-in-good-shape-trump-speaks-with-bongino-after-flare-up-with-bondi">continuing</a> to back Patel and Bongino as the White House attempts to smooth things over. Bongino has not resigned, and Trump said on Sunday that he&#8217;s &#8220;in good shape.&#8221; Bongino&#8217;s official X account, which is usually active, has not <a href="https://x.com/FBIDDBongino/with_replies">posted</a> since last Wednesday.
Some right-wing political commentators and Republican lawmakers have urged the administration to be more transparent with the details surrounding the Epstein case. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/15/politics/epstein-files-trump-bondi">said</a> earlier this week that he&#8217;s &#8220;for transparency&#8221; on the issue.
“It’s a very delicate subject. We should put everything out there and let the people decide it,” Johnson said.

Donald Trump and Pam Bondi

More Than Two-Thirds Of Americans Believe Government Is Hiding Details On Epstein Case: Poll

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Democrats expecting another &#8220;blue wave&#8221; in 2026 should &#8220;hold the phone,&#8221; CNN&#8217;s chief data analyst warned this week, revealing that the party&#8217;s generic ballot advantage has collapsed to less than half of what it was before their historic midterm victories in 2006 and 2018.
CNN data guru Harry Enten delivered the “reality check” to Democrats in a Wednesday CNN segment, noting their current two-point lead pales in comparison to the seven-point advantage they held at this stage before previous wave elections.
“Their lead is less than half, less than half of where it was in either 2017 or 2005 in July of those years – the year before the midterm election,” Enten said, noting that democrats had a generic ballot lead of 7 points in both the 2005 and 2017 midterms, respectively, compared to just 2 points in the leadup to 2026.
The data paints a drastically different picture than what many Democrats might hope for heading into the midterms.
&#8220;Yes, Donald Trump may be unpopular, but Democrats have not come anywhere close to sealing the deal at this particular point,&#8221; Enten told CNN host John Berman, adding that Republicans are &#8220;still very much in the game&#8221; for control of Congress.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Reality check: Dems are way behind their 2006 &amp; 2018 pace on the generic ballot at this point in the cycle.
Ahead by only 2 pt vs. 7 pt in 2006/2018 cycles.
Seat-by-seat analysis actually reveals more GOP pickup opportunities than Dems! Very much unlike 2006 &amp; 2018 at this pt. <a href="https://t.co/CRgXukTjz6">pic.twitter.com/CRgXukTjz6</a>
&mdash; (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) <a href="https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/1945492536836993510?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 16, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Enten noted this election cycle more closely resembles 2024 than either of the previous Democratic wave years, telling viewers expecting a Democratic sweep to &#8220;hold the phone.&#8221;
&#8220;At this particular point, this election cycle looks a lot more like 2024 than it does than either 2018 or 2006,&#8221; Enten said based on recent polling from Ipsos and other organizations.
The CNN data guru notes that the Cook Political Report&#8217;s seat-by-seat analysis actually reveals more pickup opportunities for Republicans than Democrats, at a projected net gain of +12 for the GOP.
In July 2017, Cook projected a net gain of +33 for democrats, and they ended up picking up 41 House seats during the 2018 midterms of Trump’s first term.
Midterm elections have historically served as a referendum on the party controlling the White House, and in only one instance in the past half century has the president’s party both held the House going in and managed to keep it: the 2002 midterms, following the 9/11 attacks.
The 2024 election, which Enten cited as most similar to current trends, saw Republicans maintain their House majority, with Democrats netting just a single seat — a stark contrast to the 31 and 41 House seats Democrats captured in the 2006 and 2018 wave elections.

119th Congress Begins Its Term On Capitol Hill

CNN Data Chief Shatters ‘Blue Wave’ Hype: Democrats’ 2026 Lead ‘Less Than Half’ Of Past Midterms

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In every single criminal trial in this country, whether the crime is petty theft or murder or anything in between, there are very clear standards that deal with video evidence. In particular, if the government wants to introduce video evidence, they have to provide all of the available footage that they have. It&#8217;s a pretty intuitive concept. So if someone robs a convenience store, and the police recover surveillance tapes from the store, then they need to turn those tapes over to the defense. The prosecution can&#8217;t modify the tapes in any way. They can&#8217;t splice different tapes together. They certainly can&#8217;t delete anything. They have to provide the raw, unedited footage to the defense team. And on top of that, they have to verify that the tapes are authentic, and that they haven&#8217;t been tampered with, by establishing a sworn chain of custody. This is about as basic as it gets. Every judge in the country  — even Ketanji Brown Jackson — can grasp this very straightforward concept. You can easily get a case thrown out of traffic court if they won&#8217;t give you all of the relevant footage they have.
On the other hand, when it comes to the single most-watched sex trafficking case in the history of the United States, this rule apparently does not apply. You can forget about &#8220;chain of custody.&#8221; And you can forget about obtaining raw footage as well. Instead, in the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the DOJ produced a video that was clearly manipulated. As we&#8217;ve discussed previously, WIRED Magazine <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-fbis-jeffrey-epstein-prison-video-had-nearly-3-minutes-cut-out/">found</a> that the footage from outside Epstein&#8217;s jail cell — which the DOJ claimed was &#8220;raw&#8221; footage — had actually been edited and saved multiple times back in May of this year. Specifically, &#8220;the file was assembled from at least two source clips, saved multiple times, exported, and then uploaded to the DOJ’s website.&#8221; Additionally, viewers noticed that there was a glitch when the timer in the footage moved from 11:58 to 11:59 p.m.; it seemed to jump ahead to midnight.
None of this was initially explained or disclosed by the DOJ, which again, referred to the footage as &#8220;raw.&#8221; Of course, the reason that the DOJ claimed the footage was &#8220;raw&#8221; is that they understand, as most people do, that any edits — for any reason — would immediately raise a lot of questions. There should be no need to save the file multiple times, or to combine clips. They could&#8217;ve just posted everything they had, and let the public sort it out. But the DOJ didn&#8217;t do that. It&#8217;s possible they were hoping that no one would look at the metadata, or study the videos closely.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mws-ep-1624-member-exclusive?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
If that was the plan, it didn&#8217;t last very long. After the footage was posted, and Wired Magazine noticed the problem, Pam Bondi had to come up with a justification for all of the discrepancies. What she said, ultimately, is that the security system in the jail resets every night for around a minute. Therefore, we were told, there was nothing nefarious about the missing footage. It&#8217;s just a fact of life that, in one of the most secure prisons in the country, we can&#8217;t design a camera system that stays online 24/7. That&#8217;s beyond our capacity. We can land a man on the moon, but we can&#8217;t prevent the cameras from shutting down every night, just long enough to maybe allow someone to get murdered. We also can&#8217;t make sure there&#8217;s more than one functioning camera in the vicinity of this cell block.
Already, this was an unsatisfactory explanation. The DOJ didn&#8217;t actually provide proof that the system needs to go offline for a minute every night. Bondi just claimed it was normal, and we were all supposed to accept it. She also didn&#8217;t say anything whatsoever about why the footage needed to be edited in the first place. Again, this wouldn&#8217;t fly in traffic court. And it definitely doesn&#8217;t pass muster when we&#8217;re talking about Jeffrey Epstein, who had the potential to implicate the most powerful people in the world.
And yet — somehow — the story just got much, much worse for Bondi and the DOJ. It turns out that, even after they were exposed for hiding relevant information from the public about this tape, they still haven&#8217;t come forward with the full story. So it falls on WIRED Magazine, a small internet publication, to fill in even more details. Here&#8217;s what they <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-fbis-jeffrey-epstein-prison-video-had-nearly-3-minutes-cut-out/">reported</a> the other day: &#8220;Newly uncovered metadata reveals that nearly three minutes of footage were cut from what the US Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation described as &#8216;full raw&#8217; surveillance video from the only functioning camera near Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell the night before he was found dead. &#8230; Further analysis shows that one of the source clips was approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds longer than the segment included in the final video, indicating that footage appears to have been trimmed before release. It’s unclear what, if anything, the minutes cut from the first clip showed.&#8221;
Before we read on further in the article, there&#8217;s simply no way to justify this. It doesn&#8217;t matter if the extra 2 minutes and 53 seconds were irrelevant. It doesn&#8217;t matter if those extra 2 minutes and 53 seconds were duplicated in another video file. In this case, and in every other case, the duty of the government is to be transparent. It&#8217;s not to save people a very small amount of time when they&#8217;re watching an hour&#8217;s worth of video footage. Any government that&#8217;s functioning properly would understand this calculation immediately. Just give people all of the information you have.
The article continues: &#8220;The nearly three-minute discrepancy may be related to the widely reported one-minute gap—between 11:58:58 pm and 12:00:00 am—that attorney general Pam Bondi has attributed to a nightly system reset. The metadata confirms that the first video file, which showed footage from August 9, 2019, continued for several minutes beyond what appears in the final version of the video and was trimmed to the 11:58:58 pm mark, right before the jump to midnight. The cut to the first clip doesn’t necessarily mean that there is additional time unaccounted for—the second clip picks up at midnight, which suggests the two would overlap—nor does it prove that the missing minute was cut from the video.&#8221; Close quote.
In other words, we can&#8217;t say definitively what&#8217;s in the three minutes of footage that were cut. It&#8217;s possible there&#8217;s nothing of interest. But there&#8217;s one way that the government could provide some more clarity. They could simply dump all of the files on the DOJ&#8217;s website, without any editing whatsoever. At the moment, no one in the Trump administration can come up with a coherent justification for why this hasn&#8217;t been done. They also can&#8217;t explain why they haven&#8217;t released &#8220;Phase 2&#8221; of the Epstein files &#8212; or the &#8220;truckload&#8221; of &#8220;documents&#8221; that Pam Bondi said the DOJ had recovered in the last few months from the Southern District of New York. She says there are graphic depictions of children on the videos that she can&#8217;t release, but she hasn&#8217;t said anything at all about any of the &#8220;documents,&#8221; beyond telling us that they&#8217;re not important. Nor has she unsealed the search warrants or financial disclosures in the case.
Instead of getting any transparency here, the Trump administration is continuing to tell us that these materials are &#8220;boring&#8221; and that we shouldn&#8217;t care about them. Here&#8217;s how the president put it yesterday:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
🚨TRUMP: &quot;I don&#39;t understand why my supporters are so interested in Epstein. He&#39;s been dead for a long time. He was never a big factor. I don&#39;t understand the fascination&#8230;it&#39;s pretty boring stuff. I think only pretty bad people want to keep that going.&quot;<a href="https://t.co/Ca4gWS80Cs">pic.twitter.com/Ca4gWS80Cs</a>
&mdash; Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) <a href="https://twitter.com/AutismCapital/status/1945272429661634863?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 16, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Look, I know some people are annoyed at me for harping on this and criticizing the president, who in many other ways is doing a fantastic job. But I happen to believe that bringing sex predators to justice is extremely important. And I just can’t accept being blatantly gaslit by people in power, even if they’re people I otherwise support. In fact, ESPECIALLY if they’re people I otherwise support. So I must say that this answer from Trump is just simply awful. First, there&#8217;s the personal attack on anyone who asks questions, saying they&#8217;re &#8220;bad people.&#8221; That&#8217;s always a winning argument. If you want to convince millions of skeptical people that their leaders are lying to them about their behavior, then the best approach is to mock them. Works every time. Then there&#8217;s the implication that the Epstein files are &#8220;boring.&#8221; Well, in that case, release everything. Bore us to death. Then the story&#8217;s over, and everyone can go on with their lives. The 9/11 report was something like 600 pages. Parts of that document were boring. Almost no one actually read the entire thing. But it was still very important that the 9/11 report was written.
It&#8217;s extremely confusing, to put it mildly, to see the president of the United States take the opposite position. He says he doesn&#8217;t understand why people care about Jeffrey Epstein, as if it&#8217;s some kind of moral failing on our part. Yes, why would anyone care about some of the most powerful people on the planet spending time on a sex trafficker&#8217;s private island? Who could possibly be concerned about the possibility that a cabal of pedophiles and perverts is running entire countries and major corporations?
This is where the comparison to RussiaGate comes in, and it&#8217;s probably the worst part of the answer you just heard. RussiaGate was a disaster for this country precisely because we didn&#8217;t get the whole story. RussiaGate was premised on lies and distortions, at every stage. If Donald Trump made a joke at a rally, the media interpreted it as a coded message to Putin. They pretended he had a secret computer in Trump Tower that was communicating with Moscow. They said there was a &#8220;pee tape.&#8221; They claimed Russian hackers were being housed at a non-existent Russian consulate in Miami. They claimed Trump had weakened the GOP&#8217;s platform on Russia, even though the opposite was true. When Hunter Biden dropped his laptop off at a repair store, full of incriminating evidence about Joe Biden&#8217;s influence peddling operation, the media blamed that on Russia too. And on and on. RussiaGate was an utter fraud. And to the extent it was successful, it worked because the media (and the Obama administration) repeatedly lied to us. They didn&#8217;t give us information. Instead, they lied to our faces for the better part of a decade.
With Epstein, we want the opposite response from the media and the government. We want total transparency. At the end of his answer, Trump talks about filtering the documents so that we only obtain &#8220;credible&#8221; information. But that&#8217;s not the job of the government. Their job is to give us whatever information they can. Once they start assessing &#8220;credibility,&#8221; they give themselves a license to hide incriminating information. And there&#8217;s no reason to grant the government that license — no matter which political party is in charge.
That&#8217;s what makes the Democrats&#8217; sudden interest in the Epstein files so galling and intolerable. They&#8217;re obviously turning this into a dumb partisan issue, when it isn&#8217;t one. We talked about this a bit yesterday. All of a sudden, after years of complete disinterest in the entire topic, Democrats are suddenly clamoring for the release of the Epstein files — or at least, they&#8217;re publicly pretending to want the Epstein files to be released. <a href="https://x.com/adamkinzinger/status/1945107151300526218?s=46">Here&#8217;s</a> Adam Kinzinger, for example. He&#8217;s essentially a Democrat at this point: &#8220;EVERY, and i mean EVERY Republican incumbent or candidate or even anyone THINKING about running as a Republican for even dog catcher needs asked over and over and over about Epstein.&#8221;
This is a guy who spent his only significant time in Congress — the only time people knew who he was — screeching hysterically about elderly women and a &#8220;Q Shaman&#8221; walking around the Capitol Building on January 6th. That was the issue he claimed to care about. But no one actually cared about January 6th, so the whole plan backfired. So now that he&#8217;s out of office, he&#8217;s demanding that everyone talk about Epstein — an issue he didn&#8217;t seem to care about until this week.
It&#8217;s not hard to see what&#8217;s going on here. Neither party — Democrat or Republican — wants to see the full, unredacted release of the Epstein files. At a minimum, we can assume that top donors of both parties are implicated in some way. So they both want to neutralize this whole issue as quickly as they can. For Democrats, that means turning the Epstein files into yet another partisan football. They&#8217;re going to make performative efforts to get the files released, even though they know it&#8217;ll never work. For example, here&#8217;s Axios&#8217; <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/07/15/epstein-house-democrats-republicans-trump-doj">reporting</a> from yesterday: &#8220;House Republicans on Tuesday voted down another Democratic procedural maneuver aimed at forcing the Justice Department to release documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. &#8230; Democrats&#8217; procedural motion would have scuttled the GOP&#8217;s legislative agenda for the day in favor of the bill, making it difficult for Republicans to vote for it. &#8230; It came after Republicans on the House Rules Committee voted Monday night against attaching the Epstein language to a broader cryptocurrency and defense funding vote.&#8221;
Specifically, that &#8220;broader cryptocurrency vote&#8221; involved legislation that could&#8217;ve paved the way for a &#8220;central bank digital currency,&#8221; as well as restrictions on cryptocurrency ownership. Whatever you think of this bill — although it seems to be a pretty terrible idea — the fact remains that it has nothing whatsoever to do with Jeffrey Epstein. So Democrats are using this whole issue to play very transparent political games. That’s how seriously they take child sex trafficking.
But ultimately, if we&#8217;re being honest, the problem here goes back to the White House. They&#8217;ve given the Democrats this opening by bungling the situation so badly. The Trump administration seems mystified (or is acting that way) by the anger from the base. But the Epstein scandal isn’t happening in a vacuum. We haven’t seen any high profile or powerful people held accountable for their crimes. No one’s even been fired, let alone arrested, for allowing an assassin to almost kill Trump last year. Trump was elected in 2016 on a promise to “lock her up.” So when do we start locking people up? Trump himself has spent 10 years calling out many different crimes and scandals. Just this past weekend, he was talking again about the rigged election in 2020. Why hasn’t anyone been arrested or charged for any of this? What about the people who lied about the COVID shot? What about the people who funded the BLM riots in 2020? What about the cabal of unelected bureaucrats who were using Joe Biden&#8217;s autopen to sign pardons and executive orders, effectively seizing control of the federal government?
The New York Times just <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/13/us/politics/biden-pardon-autopen-trump.html">uncovered</a> emails from Biden officials in which they made executive decisions to sign certain documents: &#8220;Mr. Zients hit &#8216;reply all&#8217; and wrote, &#8216;I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons.'&#8221; That&#8217;s a reference to Jeff Zients, the White House chief of staff. That&#8217;s a sentence that no government official &#8212; other than the president &#8212; should ever write. The chief of staff does not have the authority to use the president&#8217;s signature to pardon people. But that&#8217;s exactly what happened.
That&#8217;s not to say that digital signatures shouldn&#8217;t be allowed. Various outlets, including NBC News, have tried to claim that conservatives are attacking the idea of digital signatures. But that&#8217;s not the case. If Joe Biden had said, &#8220;Use my autopen to approve these pardons,&#8221; there would be no story. But that&#8217;s not what happened. Instead, a bunch of aides got together, said they &#8220;heard&#8221; Joe Biden authorize certain things. And then, solely based on their claims about what Joe Biden wanted, they used his signature.
Republicans are saying this is a major scandal. I agree that it is. So then who will be held responsible? Who will be punished? Republicans are constantly “investigating” things. But nobody is ever punished at the end of it. Meanwhile, Democrats spent the last four years prosecuting Trump and throwing conservative activists and political advisers in prison. And now, even after the majority of Americans voted for transparency and justice, we&#8217;re not anywhere close to getting it.
That&#8217;s not going to work. It&#8217;s not what any Republican voted for in the last election. We want to see accountability. We want to know that even the rich and powerful will pay for their crimes. It hasn’t happened. And for a lot of people, understandably so, this Epstein stuff is the last straw. Give us the information you&#8217;ve been promising. Give us the information we&#8217;re entitled to. If you refuse to do that — if you insist on insulting us instead — then we&#8217;re facing a much worse outcome than Democrat control of Congress in less than two years. We&#8217;re also facing a total collapse of legitimacy in our country. You can only deny reality for so long before people decide they&#8217;ve had enough. And whatever donors or intelligence assets are being protected here, they&#8217;re not that important. They&#8217;re not worth risking a revolt. So give us the &#8220;boring&#8221; Epstein files. Publish all of the &#8220;uninteresting&#8221; footage you clipped out of those videos from Epstein&#8217;s cell block, for reasons that no one has bothered to explain. Otherwise, in the absence of transparency, people will come to their own conclusions. And when they do, whether you&#8217;re a Republican or a Democrat, you won&#8217;t like what happens next.

Jeffrey Epstein Mug Shot

Yelling At Us Over The Epstein Files Only Means That We’ll Keep Talking About The Epstein Files

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