So on Sunday night, #Trump did something he has rarely been forced to do: He caved in the face of pressure from his party & called on #House #Republicans to go ahead & back a bill that would order his #DOJ to release all of its investigative files on the convicted #SexOffender #JeffreyEpstein.

By Monday, he was saying, “Sure,” he would sign the legislation he has spent months trying to kill.

#Congress #law #criminal #Epstein #rape #SexualAssault #SexTrafficking #felon47 #CoverUp

It’s not clear that doing so would have any concrete impact; #Trump could have ordered the release of the files without an act of #Congress, & has not. And it remains to be seen whether his #DOJ will ultimately release the files.

#House #law #criminal #Epstein #EpsteinFiles #rape #SexualAssault #SexTrafficking #felon47 #CoverUp

"This action is taking direct aim at Target, for caving to this administration’s biased attacks on DEI; Home Depot, for allowing and colluding with ICE to kidnap our neighbors on their properties; and Amazon, for funding this administration to secure their own corporate tax cuts."

~ We Ain't Buying It

#Trump #EconomicElites #SuperRich #corporations #Amazon #Target #HomeDepot
/19

https://weaintbuyingit.com/#about

"The 'We Ain’t Buying It' boycott, organized by grassroots organizations Black Voters Matter, Indivisible and Until Freedom, is pushing consumers across the country to 'hit pause on shopping from major corporations,' according to the campaign’s website.

The boycott specifically targets Amazon, Target, and Home Depot, accusing each company of 'undermining democracy.;”

~ Patricia Battle

#Trump #EconomicElites #SuperRich #corporations #Amazon #Target #HomeDepot
/18

https://www.thestreet.com/retail/home-depot-to-suffer-massive-boycott-from-holiday-shoppers

"The Center on Faith & Justice at Georgetown University recently launched a new campaign encouraging people to pledge not to shop on Amazon during this Advent season. The 'No Amazon for Advent' effort is also backed by numerous other groups, including Faithful America, Red Letter Christians, and state councils of churches in California, Maine, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin."

~ Brian Kaylor

#Trump #EconomicElites #SuperRich #corporations #JeffBezos #Amazon
/17

https://publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/no-amazon-for-advent

"Amazon earns millions each year by providing cloud computing services to ICE—services that ICE relies on to conduct its operations. Amazon represents a moral crisis in corporate America."

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #CEOs #corporations #JeffBezos #Amazon #ICE #surveillance
/16

"Amazon has stood complicit in the current administration's attack on democratic norms and human dignity by continuing to profit from government contracts and surveillance technologies that enable these injustices."

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #CEOs #corporations #JeffBezos #Amazon
/16

"The close relationship between Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos is indicative of an alarming trend of the ultra-wealthy gaining access to political power at the highest levels, solidified through exchanges like Amazon’s $1 million donation to Trump’s 2025 inauguration."

~ No Amazon for Advent

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #CEOs #corporations #JeffBezos #Amazon
/15

https://noamazonforadvent.com/

As the US House prepares for its vote on the Epstein files, Aaron Parnas interviews Epstein abuse survivor Annie Farmer, whom Epstein (and Maxwell) groomed when she was 16.

What stands out in her testimony here: the "systemic failures" of institutions including the criminal justice to listen to Epstein's victims. "It's time to do the right thing," she tells Parnas.

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #EconomicDisparity
/1

https://aaronparnas.substack.com/p/exclusive-epstein-survivor-has-a

"Epstein’s 'friends' are everywhere. They are giants of finance, academic leaders, politicians. There is nary a corner of power within the United States that hasn’t been infected with his evil. ...

It helps to understand that for an individual to reach the highest echelons of wealth and power in this system they must be willing to hurt people."

~ Jared Yates Sexton

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #EconomicDisparity
/2

https://jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/its-rotten-all-the-way-down-epstein

"It isn’t a surprise that a Jeffrey Epstein would come to such prominence and influence in a period like this one. Decades of Neoliberal redistribution and the corruption of our politics and the rigging of our economy, which is what always happens in these types of eras, has created a class of insulated elites whom predictably engage in debauchery."

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #EconomicDisparity
/3

"Here is what is so utterly gross about tranche of emails released by the House Oversight Committee last week: really powerful people — people at the highest echelons of finance, academia, and government — continued to treat Jeffrey Epstein like a friend and confidant virtually until the moment of his arrest on July 6, 2019."

~ Julie Roginsky

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #EconomicDisparity
/4

https://saltypolitics.substack.com/p/epsteins-last-days-get-even-weirder

"The people at the highest echelons of 'polite society' — from Washington to New York to Palm Beach to Cambridge to Europe to the Middle East — continued to treat Epstein like one of their own.

The fact that he was a pedophile meant nothing to them."

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #EconomicDisparity
/5

"In and of itself, that should disqualify these people from ever functioning in polite society themselves — though it will not, because we do not have, and never have had, a society that is polite."

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #EconomicDisparity
/6

"The legacy media is not going to demand his resignation. A clutch of rapacious, plundering oligarchs owns most of the newspapers, TV stations, cable news channels, and social media outlets, and it does not serve their interests to do so.

Neither Wall Street nor Silicon Valley is going to demand his resignation."

~ Greg Olear

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #EconomicDisparity #media #SiliconValley #TechBros
/7

https://gregolear.substack.com/p/cast-him-out-no-more-magamazement

"It does not serve their financial interests to do so. (Also: many of the most powerful people on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley were also friends with the dead pedophile who ran the industrial scale child sex trafficking operation.)"

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #EconomicDisparity #media #SiliconValley #TechBros
/7

"The high court won’t stop him; he owns six of them so completely, it is fair to wonder if any of them, especially the sexual harasser and the sexual assailant, were friends with the dead pedophile. ...

We cannot rely on help from any of these people or institutions.

We—we the people—must demand his resignation."

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #EconomicDisparity #media #SiliconValley #TechBros #SupremeCourt
/8

“'Epstein scandal' is an entirely inapt description of what we are facing. The shorthand minimizes the underlying, horrific criminal enterprise, airbrushing out the victims and their quest for justice. It shields Trump, Bondi, and the entire Justice Department from the appropriate level of scrutiny."

Jennifer Rubin

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #EconomicDisparity #media #SiliconValley #TechBros #SupremeCourt
/9

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/words-and-phrase-we-could-do-without

"And it lessens pressure on congressional Republicans to distance themselves from this travesty and conduct a full investigation. Worst of all, it treats Trump as a bystander."

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #EconomicDisparity #media #SiliconValley #TechBros #SupremeCourt
/10

"When the Supreme Court’s Trump-loving majority makes decisions without explanation, ignores precedent, explicitly calls for precedents to be discarded, and abandons some the most important laws in our history, it’s because they think the Constitution and the law belong to them."

~ Dan Holtmeyer

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #EconomicDisparity #media #SiliconValley #TechBros #SupremeCourt
/11

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/we-must-reclaim-a-government-that-belongs-to-all-of-us/

"From the Washington Post, this headline tonight:

'Larry Summers stepping back from "public commitments" over Epstein emails.'

'Former Democratic treasury secretary Larry Summers is "deeply ashamed" of his years-long communication with Jeffrey Epstein and will be "stepping back from public commitments," he said in a statement Monday night.'”

~ Lucian K. Truscott

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #LarrySummers
/12

https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/this-is-a-rather-major-epstein-development

“'After Summers’ statement, a growing number of boards and think tanks said they no longer had relationships with him.'

Which appears to mean that the 'boards and think tanks' had already cut their ties to Summers, and thus his contrition is somewhat after-the-fact."

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #LarrySummers
/13

"Every single one of these men who was an associate of Jeffrey Epstein should be shamed and barred from public posts and relationships with prestigious institutions."

All guilty as sin. All pigged up together in the conspiracy of silence, self-protection, protection of each other. Summers is now trying to get ahead of the curve of shame and others are doing the same by distancing themselves from him.

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #SexualAbuse #pedophiles #coverup #SuperRich #LarrySummers
/14

World’s hardest core / most respected investigative journalists over at #ICIJ dropping carpet bombs all over the #crypto industry today with a massive long form investigatory series called The Coin Laundry… #Trump family and #Tether catching some serious strays.

> "Funds from a...ring of Chinese traffickers of #fentanyl... flowed to various accounts at #OKX, and a Russian money launderer specializing in moving crypto for North Korea’s weapons program maintained an account at [Donald Trump’s business partner #JustinSun's] #HTX [crypto exchange]".

https://www.icij.org/investigations/coin-laundry/

#corruption #cryptocurrency #USDT #DPRK #northKorea #Russia #putin #VladimirPutin #Ukraine #UkraineWar #uspol #uspolitics

"Charlotte is the latest city targeted in a nationwide Trump administration immigration enforcement blitz that has included Los Angeles and Chicago -- which, like Charlotte, are Sanctuary Cities that are run by a Democratic mayors."

~ Bill Hutchinson and Luke Barr

#Charlotte #NorthCarolina #Trump #GregBovino #ICE #BorderPatrol #racism #KavanaughStops #immigrants #deportations
/11

https://abcnews.go.com/US/federal-agents-make-130-arrests-48-hours-immigration/story?id=127591461

"The insane thing is this was the second time he’d been stopped by immigration agents — so clearly they’re relying just on him being a brown person out in the world to stop and assault him."

#Charlotte #NorthCarolina #Trump #GregBovino #ICE #BorderPatrol #racism #KavanaughStops #immigrants #deportations
/10

"In Charlotte, we got another window and reminder about how those 'Kavanaugh stops' play out in reality: A Honduran-born US citizen who possessed a valid 'Read ID' had his truck window smashed by the Border Patrol and he was hauled out and thrown to the ground. And then, ultimately, he was released because he was, you know, an actual US citizen."

#Charlotte #NorthCarolina #Trump #GregBovino #ICE #BorderPatrol #racism #KavanaughStops #immigrants #deportations
/9

"In many ways, in fact, Bovino’s shock troops have the most in common with the Klan 'night rides' of the Reconstruction and Jim Crow era South, where hooded Klan members on horseback — often 'respectable' leaders of the White community like the local sheriff — terrorized Black families and abused their civil rights."

#Charlotte #NorthCarolina #Trump #GregBovino #ICE #BorderPatrol #racism #KavanaughStops #immigrants #deportations
/8

"Bovino is basically leading a rebel cavalry, a la Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who raided and terrorized communities in Kentucky and Tennessee in the Civil War. That latter analogy holds up particularly well in one specific respect: Forrest became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan after the war."

~ Garrett Graff

#Charlotte #NorthCarolina #Trump #GregBovino #ICE #BorderPatrol #racism #KavanaughStops #immigrants #deportations
/7

https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/trump-border-patrol-retreat-in-failure-from-chicago

"His major entry point into politics was some 15 years ago as a proponent of the utterly false, racist birther theory that President Barack Obama was not born in the US."

~ Noah Berlatsky

#Trump #Epstein #SexualAssault #SexualAbuse #racism #WhiteEvangelicals
/2

https://www.everythingishorrible.net/p/mri-says-trump-is-a-bad-person

"White evangelicals don’t care that Trump is a RAPIST. They’re ecstatic that he’s a RACIST."

~ Bishop Talbert Swan

#Trump #Epstein #SexualAssault #SexualAbuse #racism #WhiteEvangelicals
/1

https://www.threads.com/@talbertswan/post/DRH3o6yESAG

For anyone wanting to follow what Trump-Bovino-ICE-Border Patrol are doing to Charlotte right now, the Charlotte Observer offers a liveblog — link below.

#Charlotte #NorthCarolina #Trump #GregBovino #ICE #BorderPatrol #racism #KavanaughStops #immigrants #deportations
/6

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article312919602.html

"On Sunday morning, he all but admitted this was nothing more than a weekend of Kavanaugh stops."

#Charlotte #NorthCarolina #Trump #GregBovino #ICE #BorderPatrol #racism #KavanaughStops #immigrants #deportations
/5

"Bovino, the Border Patrol official who has appeared eager to become the face of President Donald Trump’s authoritarian anti-immigrant efforts — and whose actions in Chicago led a federal judge to get him to agree to use a body-worn camera — is unsurprisingly at the center of the Charlotte story."

~ Chris Geidner

#Charlotte #NorthCarolina #Trump #GregBovino #ICE #BorderPatrol #racism #KavanaughStops #immigrants #deportations
/4

https://www.lawdork.com/p/gregory-bovino-is-exactly-who-eb-white-warned-of

"Charlotte is very diverse, and more than 150,000 of its 950,000-ish residents are foreign-born. But the more rural parts of the state are deep red, and a whole lot of yeehaws are surely cheering this spectacle of human misery on with great happiness. Promises kept!”

#Charlotte #NorthCarolina #Trump #GregBovino #ICE #BorderPatrol #racism #KavanaughStops #immigrants #deportations
/3

"The power-grabbing Republican legislature has been trying to pass a bill to force local law enforcement to cooperate anyway, but Democratic Governor Josh Stein vetoed it. So now Bovino is here to ride to those good ol’ boys’ rescue and get revenge on Charlotte for not honoring ICE’s demands."

#Charlotte #NorthCarolina #Trump #GregBovino #ICE #BorderPatrol #racism #KavanaughStops #immigrants #deportations
/2

"So, another blue city with a Black mayor! As it also happens, the sheriffs of five large counties in the state — Charlotte’s Mecklenburg, Wake, Durham, Forsyth and Buncombe — are Black Democrats who ran and won election on platforms that included not collaborating with ICE."

~ Marcie Jones

#Charlotte #NorthCarolina #Trump #GregBovino #ICE #BorderPatrol #racism #KavanaughStops #immigrants #deportations
/1

https://www.wonkette.com/p/greg-bovino-brings-his-little-man

"Contrast [what Bunch says] to a prominently displayed New York Times feature story that puts a nostalgic gloss on Epstein’s world. Looking back on that world and the people who inhabited it, it carried the headline, Epstein Emails Reveal a Lost New York."

~ Margaret Sullivan

#Trump #EconomicElites #wealth #EconomicDisparity #WealthDistribution #SuperRich #GildedAge #Epstein #food #prices #beef #coffee #tariffs #HealthInsurance #food #NewYorkTimes
/11

https://margaretsullivan.substack.com/p/two-opposing-media-takes-on-epsteins

"When this perfect storm strikes, an electoral bloodbath in the 2026 midterms is the best outcome Trump can hope for, on a list of dire possibilities."

#Trump #EconomicElites #wealth #EconomicDisparity #WealthDistribution #SuperRich #GildedAge #Epstein #food #prices #beef #coffee #tariffs #HealthInsurance #food
/10

"The timing couldn’t be better, or worse, for this midnight of the elites. The overblown stock market fueled by an AI hallucination is set to burst any moment, and new hiring is already grinding to a halt — just as the price of everything from steak to coffee goes through the roof and health insurance is doubling or tripling for millions of Americans."

#Trump #EconomicElites #wealth #EconomicDisparity #WealthDistribution #SuperRich #GildedAge #Epstein #food #prices #beef #coffee #tariffs
/9

Pointing to Eric Trump as the "patron saint of the stupid rich," Cliff Schechter says,

"Hello Second Gilded Age.

An era where a reality-show President with the wit of a drunken walrus would actually fight in court to starve Americans. Yes, Trump argued in court that food our laws required him to give people—so they don’t die—should be denied. So they do."

#Trump #EconomicElites #wealth #EconomicDisparity #WealthDistribution #SuperRich #GildedAge
/4

https://www.blueamp.co/p/end-stage-democracy-has-a-mascot

"And now, we’ve arrived at the logical conclusion of all this—Eric Trump, the barking embodiment of dumb-son nepotism. A laughable lout with inherited intellectual necrosis and the empathy of a Terminator wrapped in designer smugness."

#Trump #EconomicElites #wealth #EconomicDisparity #WealthDistribution #SuperRich #GildedAge
/5

"It would be funny if it weren’t so perfectly tragic. The dopey-ist son of a fake billionaire (pre-crypto scams) turned fake president, who likes Gatsby parties and golden toilets, go on oligarch-tv to lecture the struggling masses about how easy it is to move half a billion dollars. While sipping Merlot."

#Trump #EconomicElites #wealth #EconomicDisparity #WealthDistribution #SuperRich #GildedAge
/6

And as Will Bunch reminds us, the Epstein cover-up is part and parcel of this story of the overweening power and arrogant immunity of the grossly rich:

"I don’t know if the emails, so far, are enough to take down Trump, but the president should be even more worried — and he probably is —" (continued in /8)

#Trump #EconomicElites #wealth #EconomicDisparity #WealthDistribution #SuperRich #GildedAge #Epstein
/7

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/epstein-emails-trump-summers-elites-20251116.html

(continued from /7)

"about the much deeper rot that’s already been laid bare about the entire decrepit class of men (because they’re almost all men) who rule the world with atrocious grammar amid a non-stop booty call.

I’m not a financial expert, but if I had disposable cash I’d avoid the hyperinflated AI bubble and invest in a company that manufactures pitchforks."

#Trump #EconomicElites #wealth #EconomicDisparity #WealthDistribution #SuperRich #GildedAge #Epstein
/8

@wdlindsy

""Trump capitulated because he did not want to suffer a crushing defeat in the House, where some had speculated that the Epstein Files Transparency Act would pass with support from 100 Republicans.""

A second point comes to mind:

By allowing a vote in the House, #Trump is making #Republicans provide him with an explicit list of *exactly* who is for him, and who is against him

#DonaldTrump: "Vote against me to release the #Epstein files and watch what I'll do to you. I dare you! I'll know exactly who you are."

"Trump folds under pressure like a card table."

~ Greg Dworkin

#Epstein #Trump #EconomicElites #pedophiles #SexualAbuse #coverup
/3

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/11/17/2354058/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Roundup-Trump-folds-under-pressure-like-a-card-table