“Former President Bill Clinton told members of the House Oversight Committee that he never witnessed the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse young women or girls, nor did he himself ever have sexual contact with anyone introduced to him by Epstein
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Addressing a photo showing Clinton in a pool with an unknown woman, the former president told lawmakers that he could not recall the identity of the woman.
“It appears there’s a — this photo there’s a girl over here,” said one questioner.
“Yeah, I don’t know who that is,” Clinton said.
“But he’s also asking in the pool area. Were there other individuals?” an attorney asked.
“I don’t know who that is,” Clinton repeated.
“And then I have to ask this, did you engage in any sexual activities with this person?” the questioner asked.
“No,” Clinton said, appearing visibly frustrated.
Clinton was also asked about a photo showing him appearing to get a massage in an airport by an unknown woman. He claimed that his “neck had spasmed” and that one of the women offered to help.
“The problem I remember from that trip was that my neck had spasmed and I was in — and so they offered to help and I let them help one,” Clinton said. He said that he could not recall any other massages from the trip.
“This is an email from Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein victim that alleged that you walked into Vanity Fair and threatened them not to write sex trafficking articles about your good friend Jeffrey Epstein,” a lawmaker asked. “Mr. President, is this true?”
“No. And no, not no. Hell no. Not close. No,” Clinton said.
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Clinton suggested to members of the House Oversight Committee that he first met Epstein after being connected by his former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, shedding light for the first time on the origin of his and Epstein’s relationship.
“He was calling because a man named Jeffrey Epstein, who had made a substantial commitment of several million dollars … to brain research, and he was an information hungry person, and he wanted to spend some time talking to me about economics and politics,” Clinton said.
“He said he’s got this massive airplane, and he said he would take you, your staff, your Secret Service detail, anybody else you wanted to bring on the trips that he knew I was planning to set up a global network to provide lifesaving AIDS medicine to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible,” Clinton said.
“Did you witness anything unusual with Epstein that would lead you to believe that Epstein was creepy?” he was asked.
“No, I never saw him do anything that I was suspicious,” Clinton responded.
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While Clinton acknowledged a photograph showing him and Epstein in the White House in 1993, the former president said he did not remember Epstein from the encounter, which he said was a generic meet-and-greet with donors.
“I first remember meeting him when I got on his airplane to take the first trip with my foundation in, I think 2002, whatever it was,” Clinton said.
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“Through my brief acquaintance with Jeffrey Epstein, though it ended years before his crimes came to light, and though I never witnessed during our limited interactions any indication of what was going on, I’m here to offer what little I know so I can do my part to prevent something like this from happening again,” Bill Clinton said.
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He also criticized the Oversight Committee for subpoenaing and questioning Hillary Clinton, arguing she had nothing to do with Epstein.
“I have to just say one personal thing. Since Hillary came in yesterday, she had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. Nothing,” he said.
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No Epstein survivor or associate has ever made a public allegation of wrongdoing or inappropriate behavior by the former president or his wife in connection with his prior relationship with Epstein.”
“Israel’s determination to attack Iran and the certainty that US troops would be targeted in response forced the Trump administration to take pre-emptive strikes, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said, in a new explanation for Washington’s surprise entry into the conflict.”
Hegseth’s speech really did sound like an SNL version of a Hegseth speech.
The administration is claiming multiple goals to this war. Trump telling the Iranian people that this is their chance, and then also saying he is looking for someone to put in charge, shouldn’t give the Iranians confidence to risk their lives and rebel. Although, I’m not sure they are seeing his comments.
“A last chance to avert war with Iran played out Thursday in Geneva, where Trump administration officials told Iranian counterparts they must not take certain steps needed to build a nuclear bomb.
It didn’t go well.
As the U.S. delegation laid out its position that Iran couldn’t enrich uranium for the next 10 years, the Iranian side balked, said a senior Trump administration official who described the meeting on condition of anonymity.
Iran has an “inalienable right” to enrich uranium, Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, told the Americans. And the U.S. has an “inalienable right” to stop you, Steve Witkoff, a member of the U.S. delegation, replied.
After having heard the U.S. demands, Araghchi started yelling at Witkoff, who was accompanied at the meeting by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, among others, said the senior official.
“If you prefer, I can leave,” Witkoff said.
Araghchi’s representatives didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Afterward, the American delegation reported back to Trump what had happened. Trump was “nonplussed,” the senior official said.
By Saturday morning, the U.S. was at war.
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“They weren’t willing to stop their nuclear research,” Trump said. “They weren’t willing to say they will not have a nuclear weapon. Very simple.””
“Trump appointees who defy the president’s will are showing the courage of their convictions, applying the law as they understand it rather than reflexively deferring to the politician who gave them their jobs. But Trump, who takes it for granted that justices vote the way they do for political reasons, neither understands nor appreciates judicial independence.”
“These new tariffs are likely unlawful too.
Indeed, Trump’s own attorneys even admitted as much during the legal battle over the original tariffs.
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Trump is leaning on Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974
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Section 122 allows presidents to impose tariffs of up to 15 percent for up to 150 days to “deal with large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits.”
What’s that? The Trump administration wants to pretend—or perhaps wrongly believes—that it’s the same thing as a trade deficit. It’s not.
A balance-of-payments deficit is an archaic problem that existed before the introduction of floating exchange rates for foreign currencies. Changes made to the international monetary system in the 1970s—changes that Milton Friedman advocated, it’s worth noting—eliminated the circumstances that could lead to a balance-of-payments deficit.
“The United States does not have an international payments problem, fundamental or otherwise, and has not had one since we adopted a floating exchange rate more than five decades ago,” explains Bryan Riley, director of the Free Trade Initiative at the National Taxpayers Union. “Therefore, Section 122 does not give President Trump the legal authority to impose tariffs.”
Just like with the IEEPA tariffs, Trump’s use of Section 122 ignores the plain language of the law and invokes a broad executive power where Congress clearly provided a narrow one.”
“Economics creates the conditions — insecurity, a sense of decline, distrust of elites. But immigration (framed as cultural threat, not just economic competition) is what converts that grievance into a right-wing populist vote. The slogan “It’s the economy, stupid” famously explained Bill Clinton’s 1992 win. For right-wing populism, researchers are now saying almost the opposite: it’s the culture, not just the economy.”
“an attorney and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) instructor, Ryan Schwank, testified before Congress that the agency’s new training program is “deficient, defective, and broken,” leading to constitutional violations and unlawful arrests. “Deficient training,” Schwank added, “can and will get people killed.””
“Commercial real estate firm CBRE reported in an October 2024 research brief that single-family rental inventory had declined by 1.7 million units since 2016. Investors who own more than 100 homes are also responsible for some 3 or 4 percent of single-family home purchases each year.
The vast majority of homes are owned, bought, and sold by either individual owner-occupiers or small mom-and-pop investors who own fewer than 10 homes.
This is the windmill that Trump and lawmakers of both parties are tilting at.
And even though large investors are not major purchasers of single-family homes, they do provide benefits that would be lost if federal regulation excluded them from the single-family rental market.
A 2022 study by Neroli Austin of the University of Michigan found that institutional investment in real estate increases neighborhood diversity by opening up more affordable rental housing options. That study did find that these investors were raising home prices overall.
Banning institutional investors from the single-family market would reduce the accessibility they provide to renters who can’t qualify for mortgages.”
“Human soldiers can disobey unconstitutional orders, but “with fully autonomous weapons, we don’t necessarily have those protections,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Ross Douthat in a recent interview. Amodei also worried that AI could help the government track protesters and political opponents and “make a mockery of the Fourth Amendment.”
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While not explicitly expressing a desire to use AI for those purposes, the Pentagon has insisted that Anthropic setting any limits on the military’s use will not do. It wants Anthropic to grant the government the right to employ its products for “all lawful use,” according to CNN.
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This refusal hasn’t gone over well with the Trump administration. Hegseth has reportedly demanded that Anthropic remove its restrictions on certain military uses or else face consequences.
These consequences could include the Defense Department ending its business relationship with Anthropic as soon as Friday—which, OK, fine.
While not reassuring that the government won’t respect these limits around robot death machines and mass spying, it’s sadly not surprising. Ending its relationship with Anthropic’s contract in response would be a disappointing but not outrageous or beyond bounds.
What pushes this above and beyond normal government villainy are the other potential consequences that Hegseth has been floating, including using the Defense Production Act to compel compliance or declaring Anthropic a “supply chain risk”—possibly both. An anonymous senior official reportedly told Axios that severing ties with Anthropic would be “an enormous pain in the ass” for which Anthropic would have to “pay a price.”
Declaring Anthropic a supply chain risk would mean anyone who wants to work with the U.S. military in any capacity must sever ties with the AI company.
“Activating this power would cost Anthropic a lot of business—potentially quite a lot—and give investors huge skepticism about whether the company is worth funding for the next round of scaling,” writes Dean Ball, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation. “Capital was a major constraint anyway, but this makes it much harder. This option could be existential for Anthropic.”
Declaring an entity a supply chain risk is usually a move reserved for risky dealings with foreign companies. Deploying this designation against a U.S. company just because its leaders have some morals and some backbone is highly undemocratic—the sort of move one would traditionally expect from the Chinese Communist Party, not a U.S. administration.
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But it gets worse. Hegseth is also threatening to “invoke the Defense Production Act to force the company to tailor its model to the military’s needs” and remove all safeguards, per Axios.
So, here we have an AI company trying to act ethically and prevent government abuse of this technology and the government threatening to seize the company’s property and do with it whatever the Pentagon wants. If that’s allowed, it means no limits on what abuses the government can force private companies to participate in.”