curated news excerpts & citations
Rachel Hurley: Start Here: Welcome to The GriftMatrix
Yesterday, the House Oversight Committee released over 20,000 documents from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate. Democrats on the committee cherry-picked three emails to release first, all mentioning Donald Trump. Republicans followed hours later with the full dump.
The White House immediately called it a hoax. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the emails “prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”
Technically, she’s right. These specific emails don’t prove Trump committed a crime.
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But let’s be clear about something else. Even if these three emails that Democrats released don’t prove Trump committed a crime, there are more than 20,000 pages in this document dump. And some of them are far more interesting …
(Rachel Hurley more…)
GriftMatrix
Rachel Hurley: How Did Jeffrey Epstein Know About Pence?
If there was one person I was not expecting to be in this Epstein Estate file dump, it was Mike Pence. But here we are.
On July 14, 2016, someone sent Jeffrey Epstein an email. Just [these] words: “good call on pence.”
Trump announced Mike Pence as his running mate the next day, July 15. Which means Epstein knew before the public did. Someone had told him. And he’d told other people. And he was right.
This is what insider campaign knowledge looks like.
(Rachel Hurley more…)
GriftMatrix
Rachel Hurley: Why Was a Former Treasury Secretary Asking a Sex Trafficker About Trump?
In the 23,000 documents released this week, there’s an email from July 2018, right after the Helsinki summit where Trump met with Putin. It raises a question worth examining.
Why was Larry Summers asking Jeffrey Epstein if the Russians had kompromat on Trump?
(Rachel Hurley more…)
GriftMatrix
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – November 13, 2025
We are watching the ideology of the far-right MAGAs smash against reality, with President Donald J. Trump and his cronies madly trying to convince voters to believe in their false world rather than the real one.
That spin has been hard at work in the past few days over the economy. Trump is clearly worried that the Supreme Court is going to find that much of his tariff war is unconstitutional, as the direction of the justices’ questioning in its November 5 hearing suggested. On Monday he claimed that the U.S. would have to pay back “in excess of $2 Trillion Dollars” if the Supreme Court ruled the tariffs unconstitutional, and that “would be a National Security catastrophe.” He blamed “Anarchists and Thugs” for putting the U.S. into a “terrible situation” by challenging his tariffs. Hours later, he increased the number to $3 Trillion—the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says the number was actually about $195 billion.
Yesterday, White House officials suggested they would never be able to release October’s jobs report or inflation numbers, blaming the Democrats. They did, however, claim that prices are “beginning to drop,” citing DoorDash, the delivery platform, as their source.
The administration has justified its violence against undocumented immigrants by insisting those they round up are violent criminals, “the worst of the worst.” That claim is increasingly exposed as a lie, and Americans are pushing back.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson: The govt’s deranged social media presence
“You see Trump administration accounts that look like they’re literally run by Groypers,” Charlie Warzel tells us.
It’s safe to say that when the president of the United States is posting an AI-generated video of him dropping feces on Americans from a fighter jet, something is wrong.
But, as we all know, something has been wrong for a long time.Trump’s use of social media has always been disturbing and bizarre, even if it feels like things have gotten worse over time. Now, however, he’s remaking government social media accounts in his own deranged image.
Consider this recent Department of Homeland Security tweet that characterizes immigrants as a plague to be destroyed by ICE.
(Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson more…)
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Jennifer Rubin: Frightening Wake-up for MAGA
Scandal, corruption, chaos, and cruelty define the Trump regime
As the government reopens, five stubborn realities greet the Republicans, less than 10 months into Donald Trump’s shambolic presidency:
- The Jeffrey Epstein scandal has exploded with incriminating new emails that undermine Trump’s feigned ignorance about the pedophile ring and put Attorney General Pam Bondi in extreme jeopardy.
- The job market has crumbled.
- The affordability crisis is getting worse, with health insurance costs set to skyrocket absent a MAGA humiliating about-face.
- The rich and Trump-connected are making out like bandits.
- The increasingly decrepit president couldn’t care less about Americans. (In fact, he’s willing to maximize their pain).
Jess Piper: Excusing Abuse as Political Strategy
Megyn Kelly and the rot within the GOP
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Fix Homelessness: Springs Rescue Mission: More Than Food and a Bed
“We gently incentivize them to improve their mental, physical, and spiritual health, as well as their prospects for employment and housing. These activities can be characterized as relief, restoration, and reintegration.…Relief is something we do for people. They’re starving; we feed them. They haven’t slept safely in weeks; we give them a safe place. Restoration and reintegration are things we do with people. We help them make progress toward housing, health, and work.”
Marvin Olasky: Helping without hurting those who are homeless
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Marisa Kabas: WH claims ‘inflation tamed,’ per DoorDash stats. Company says that’s not in its report.
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Hamermesh explained that the DoorDash report is “hardly representative of what the average person buys each month,” and was flabbergasted that the White House would extrapolate larger meaning from it. “I’m quite sure as long as we don’t have the national information, these guys will cherry-pick information that makes them look good,” Hamermesh said. “And there’s always something that makes you look good—even in a recession.”
(Marisa Kabas more…)
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Intercept: Dozens of Gaza Medical Workers Are Still Disappeared in Israeli Detention
One woman’s husband was taken from his job as an ambulance paramedic two years ago. She waited after the ceasefire, but he never came home.
(Intercept more…)
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Patricia J Wentzel: My kid might get shot. I’m not calling 911.
Alternatives to 911 in Behavioral Health Emergencies
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Chief Rick Myers (Ret.): I was a police chief in seven cities. Here’s how ICE undermines local law enforcement.
I was sworn in as a police officer in 1977, and since then, I’ve led police departments as small as five officers and as large as over 1,000 employees in a major city. So I speak from a lifetime of experience when I say: You will not find a police officer in the US who opposes deporting immigrants who break the law. Why would we want immigrants who commit crimes here in the US?
However, the overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants in the US fly below the radar, and don’t break criminal laws; unlawful presence under Federal Law is not even a criminal violation, and unlawful entry for a first offense is a misdemeanor. Most lead normal lives and start families. They go to work, pay taxes, send money home to help people, and take jobs many American citizens don’t want and won’t do. If anything, they tend to be far more conscientious not to break the law, for obvious reasons.
At the start of Donald Trump’s second term, the federal government said that ICE would prioritize going after the “worst of the worst”, which again, police officers strongly support. Instead, we’re seeing thousands of non-criminals being detained. Of course, ICE has the authority to detain anyone here in the country who is undocumented, but why not prioritize pursuing the hardened criminals first?
(Chief Rick Myers (Ret.) more…)
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Independent: Trump admits he didn’t have to tear down East Wing for ballroom, but just wanted to
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Ken Klippenstein: Trump Slaps Antifa With First-Ever Foreign Terror Label
Move cites NSPM-7, saying four European Antifa groups espoused “anti-Christianity,” “anti-capitalism,” and “anti-Americanism”
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CNN: What to know about the judge’s key questions in the Halligan hearing
emptywheel: Lindsey Halligan’s Seven Times 18-Minute Gap
Above the Law: Lindsey Halligan’s Day In Court
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NY Times: Far Right’s Fixation on Jan. 6 Pipe Bomb Suspect Reaches F.B.I.’s Top Ranks
For all his bluster, the F.B.I.’s deputy director Dan Bongino played a central role in stoking expectations that the bureau would quickly find the suspects who planted pipe bombs.
…For some of Mr. Trump’s supporters, the case — an overshadowed sideshow to most Americans — is an important missing link that might prove the pipe bombs were an inside job by deep-state law enforcement and intelligence officials intended to discredit the far right.
That, according their logic, would prove the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was not an attempt to overturn the election by Trump supporters, as hundreds of successful prosecutions overwhelmingly proved.
The pipe bomb case was never likely to rival the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier, in scope, public interest or political importance. But both cases share a key characteristic: They spawned conspiracy theories that were promoted, to one degree or another, by Trump loyalists now occupying top positions in the F.B.I. and Justice Department.
Mr. Bongino and his boss, Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, promised to pursue investigations based on fictional or exaggerated premises, pledging to reveal deep-state secrets and vowing swift vengeance on their enemies.
(NY Times more…)
GriftMatrix
Trump Action Tracker
Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
Trump Pardons Database
Project 2025 Tracker
DOGE Tracker
ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew
Wired: 6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties