This is C.I.'s "The Snapshot" for Tuesday:
Lisa Phillips felt sick to her stomach.
She stood on the east side of the U.S. Capitol on a clear fall day as one woman after another described how Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused them.
They were groomed as teenagers and young women under the guise that they would just be providing massages to an older man. They said they were scared of saying anything for years.
Phillips looked down at her phone, then across the way at her friends, then back to her phone. She took deep breaths. She adjusted her shirt, moved her shoulders back, and stood up tall. Finally, she stepped to the podium.
“I stand here today for every woman who has been silenced, exploited and dismissed,” Phillips said. “We are not asking for pity. We are here demanding accountability, and I’m demanding justice.”
Phillips set aside the speech she'd prepared. Instead, she would take back power for herself, the women who spoke before her, and the women who would come after her. They had spent years finding their voices, and this was the first time so many had come together in person as a united force against the late financier and convicted sex offender.
“I would like to announce here today us Epstein survivors have been discussing creating our own list,” she said. “We know the names. Many of us were abused by them. Now, together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know.”
Six years after Epstein's death, there are hundreds of these women. They call themselves Survivor Sisters, and they're the driving force behind the renewed public pressure to identify Epstein associates they say assaulted them or participated in his trafficking ring. Epstein's estate did not respond to requests for comment. Before he died in 2019, he pleaded not guilty to related charges.
President Donald Trump, who was friends with Epstein in the 1990s, has reneged on previous promises to release the Epstein files, and top officials in the Department of Justice have denied that certain records exist and said they are unable to obtain others. A bill to force the Department of Justice to release the documents is stalled in Congress. But the issue is unlikely to go away given the unabating public interest.
Adelita Grijalva, the recently elected representative from Arizona’s Seventh Congressional District, has already begun making history—without having stepped foot into the Capitol. Grijalva is now officially the longest-delayed member of the House to be sworn in—41 days and counting.
She was elected in a special election on Sept. 23 by a two-to-one margin over her Republican opponent, following the death of her father, Raúl Grijalva, who had represented the district from 2003 until early 2025. The district includes a large portion of Arizona’s southern border with Mexico.
Despite being elected more than 40 days ago, Grijalva has not been given the opportunity to begin her work representing Arizona in the House of Representatives.
The Washington Blade sat down with Grijalva to discuss the historic delay in her swearing-in, the importance of protecting transgender rights, book bans, environmental issues, and much more.
While Speaker Johnson has given many explanations for the delay, Grijalva said one stands out above the rest—the Epstein files. She ran on a promise to sign a discharge petition to force a vote for the release of the complete Epstein files, a hypothesized document containing the names of high-profile clients to whom the American financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein trafficked young girls. Her signature on the petition would be the 218th, the minimum number required to force a vote.
“I’ve now broken all the records for speaker obstruction. Nobody else has ever had to wait this long just to represent their constituents… I never received one communication directly from his office,” Grijalva said of Speaker Johnson’s lack of reasoning for the delay. “It seems to me they’re doing everything they can to stop the release of the Epstein files, and I just don’t know what else it could be.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Monday went after President Trump and Republican leaders over the Jeffrey Epstein case, saying their refusal to press for the release of the government files on the convicted child sex offender is tantamount to protecting pedophiles.
Jeffries pointed specifically to Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) decision not to seat Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D) as evidence of his charge. Grijalva won a special election in Arizona on Sept. 23 and is vowing to be the deciding signature on a discharge petition that would force the Justice Department to release the undisclosed Epstein documents — whenever she’s sworn in.
So what’s the holdup? Tough to say, exactly. Johnson has not met with or even spoken to Grijalva about the situation. His office pointed me toward his existing statements, but these justifications for foot-dragging have been a little hard to follow, much less swallow.
The speaker has blamed the government shutdown, which officially began Oct. 1, although he sent the House home early on Sept. 19. He says he is simply following the precedent of swearing in members only when the chamber is in regular session. He has even taken to calling this “the Pelosi precedent,” referring to an episode in 2021 when Nancy Pelosi, then the speaker, waited nearly a month to swear in a Republican member who had won a special election that March.
Not to nitpick, but this argument would sound more convincing if not for the fact that, when two Republicans won special elections in Florida in April, Johnson leaped to seat them within 24 hours even though the House wasn’t in regular session. He used a “pro forma” session to get the job done.
Pressed on the discrepancy, Johnson has offered a convoluted explanation involving a preset swearing-in date, the Republicans’ families having traveled to Washington, the relative timing of the elections and so on. Simply trying to follow his logic leaves you needing a chiropractor.
Bolder still, Johnson has taken to publicly scolding Grijalva to stick to doing her job and stop wasting time … um … spotlighting his refusal to let her officially start that job.
It bears repeating that Johnson is jerking around not just Grijalva but the 813,000 people of Arizona’s 7th District, which runs along the state’s southern border. For instance, until Grijalva is a full-fledged member, her office cannot collect and track a lot of the sensitive information needed to do casework for constituents.
But perhaps the speaker thinks he doesn’t owe the people of Grijalva’s district anything since they overwhelmingly rejected his party’s House pick. Such is the essence of Trumpist leadership: If you don’t support my tribe, you deserve to be ignored, even punished. To have your government funding frozen. To have federal troops swarm your cities. To have your duly elected representative delayed from getting down to work for you. Then maybe next time you’ll know better.
Johnson’s unjustifiable refusal to swear Grijalva in, and his refusal to let the House come back into session to deal with the budget, food and health care crises his party has created, are deeply unprincipled.
Indeed, there’s good reason to suspect that Johnson has a very bad reason for his behavior. Grijalva would cast the deciding vote to force the Trump administration to disclose the files it has on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Watching Johnson stumble through humiliatingly bogus justifications for his action makes me wonder: When Johnson said that God raised him up to be Speaker of the House as an American Moses to lead our country through a Red Sea moment, did he imagine that his calling would be to take food out of the mouths of 40 million Americans and force millions of families to face devastating health insurance costs — all to protect a president potentially hiding embarrassing revelations in the Epstein files?
America, meet your new John Fetterman: Graham Platner.
He's one of many vying for the spot of Democratic Party nominee for a senate seat out of Maine.
One of many.
And he needs to drop out. He was whining Monday night that the Democratic Party was attacking him -- his own party.
Believe his party is the Communist Party -- isn't that what he declared online. Let's go to WIKIPEDIA:
In October 2025, various news outlets reported on Reddit posts by Platner from between 2013 and 2021 in which he called himself a "communist", declared that all cops are bastards, and agreed with a post calling rural white Americans "racist and stupid". In an interview with CNN, Platner said of those comments, "That was very much me f**king around the internet ... I don't think any of that is indicative of who I am today".[39] In a 2013 Reddit discussion about anti-rape underwear, Platner commented that people worried about assault should "take some responsibility for themselves and not get so fucked up they wind up having sex with someone they don't mean to".[40] He also referenced political violence in multiple posts; in 2018, he wrote: "Fight until you get tired of fighting with words and then fight with signs, and fists, and guns if need be." Platner also wrote that "an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice" and urged readers to "Get Armed, Get Organized. The Other Side Sure As Hell Is."[39][41] He has said that many of the comments do not represent his current political beliefs, and that they were the product of disillusionment after his military discharge and struggles with PTSD.[42][43] Collins called Platner's internet history "terrible" and "offensive".[44] Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said that while he did not approve of Platner's comments, he did not consider them "disqualifying".[45] After the reporting on these comments, Platner's political director, former Democratic state representative Genevieve McDonald, resigned from his campaign.[46]
Platner said in an interview with Pod Save America that he has a skull-and-bones tattoo resembling the Totenkopf, a symbol worn by the Nazi Schutzstaffel paramilitary organization. Platner said that he and some other Marines got the tattoo while on leave in Croatia in 2007, not knowing its symbolism,[47] and that he learned that his tattoo resembled the Totenkopf only when reporters and political operatives from DC contacted him during his campaign. He said he had recently gotten it covered up.[48][49] Maine Governor Janet Mills, one of Platner's opponents in the Democratic primary, described the tattoo as "abhorrent". She stated, "I obviously vehemently disagree with the things he's been quoted as saying and doing" but that it was "up to the people" to decide whether he should continue in the Senate race.[50] However, Platner also called himself an anti-fascist "supersoldier" in an old Reddit comment.[51]
Is there some homo-erotic desire on the part of DSA -- among others -- when it comes to male candidates who are pure trash? Like Fetterman, Platner doesn't look like he's managed more than two showers a month and DSA tends to mistake that for fortitude.
Tonight, Jen Pskai was all but licking him on air on the soon to be MS NOW.
Weirdo Branco Marcetic took to JACOBIN (the DSA bible) at the start of the week to insist there was a smear job being done on Platner.
Not a smear job, an expose.
He got a Nazi tattoo. Instead of calling that out, the DSA is acting as ridiculous as the fright-wing does when they rush to defend Confederate monuments. And CNN's already exposed his lie that he didn't know he'd tattooed himself with a Nazi symbol until recently was a lie -- he knew as far back as 2006 when CNN was able to unearth the social media posts he'd deleted as part of his effort to run for the senate. Part of that effort, by the way, was getting married (for the first time) last year at the age of forty.
He knew it was a Nazi tattoo and he knew it nearly 20 years ago. He's lied repeatedly and publicly. He's also a mercenary who worked for Blackwater which is somehow being ignored.
Why? Because he cites Bernie as a hero (as did Fetterman) and he cites Socialists as heroes (without noting their political affiliation) (as did Fetterman) so it's time for the same booming voices to try to shout reality down. There are many candidates running of that Democratic Party nomination. Why are Jen Psaki, POD SAVE AMERICA, JACOBIN and others doing advance work for his campaign while ignoring other nominees? And on other comments, he did not minimize rape accusations as some idiots in the media keep typing, he minimized rape. There's a big difference. One is really bad (mining accusations), the other is outright evil (minimizing rape itself). Christopher Wiggins (THE ADVOCATE) explained:
The controversy has rattled Maine’s Democratic primary. Platner, a Marine and Army veteran and political newcomer, admitted to posting homophobic slurs and crude antigay jokes on Reddit as recently as 2021. He apologized for misogynistic and racist comments on Reddit before that. And, he covered up a tattoo he’s worn for 18 years that resembles the Nazi Totenkopf symbol, which he said he got in his 20s during his time in the Marines.
This is the hill Jen Psaki and others want to die on?
And instead of letting it play out, they're trying to rig it, they're trying to railroad the American people.
While they try to lie to us to pimp their favored candidate, they ignore the war on immigrants and so much more.
For example?
Hey, commentators at websites, on YOUTUBE, on MSNBC, every where -- where the hell have you been?
Donald Chump has savaged Joe Biden over the use of an auto pen to sign documents. He's insisted that Joe didn't even know what he was signing. Well last week, Donald served himself up for that kind of criticism but where the hell were you?
“The founder of Binance,” the reporter replied.
“The recent one, yes,” Trump said. “I believe we’re talking about the same person, ’cause I do pardon a lot of people.”
“I don’t know -- he was recommended by a lot of people,” Trump continued. “A lot of people say that -- are you talking about the crypto person?”
But there was always an important point to make that no one seemed to grasp.
Last month, AP reported:
President Donald Trump has added a Presidential Walk of Fame to the exterior of the White House, featuring portraits of each of the previous commanders-in-chief — except for one.
Instead of a headshot of Joe Biden, the Republican incumbent instead hung a photo of an autopen signing the Democrat’s name — a reference to Trump’s frequent allegation that the former president was addled by the end of his term in office and not really the one making decisions.
Chump doesn't know who he pardoned -- and not from earlier this year or even a month ago. He didn't know who he just pardoned. Seems he's guilty of everything he's accused Joe of. Also seems like his not knowing who he pardoned is even more important after Monday's assault by the Republican controlled House Oversight Committee which stated this week their 'finding' that Joe Biden's pardons are not legitimate because they were signed with an auto pen. That's their 'finding' and they can talk about it however they want; however, it is not a judicial finding and it has no weight at all on the pardons Joe issued which stand in spite of Chump and GOP spin.
Last week, William Priest (BARRON'S) observed, "Democracy, once thought to be self-sustaining, is on defense. Like every system before it, democracy has gone through cycles of strength and weakness—but its survival is no longer guaranteed. What is at stake is not simply a style of governance, but the wealth, freedom, and happiness of its citizens." We agree. In the 20th century, there was communism, democracy, socialism, totalitarianism, fascism, etc. When the USSR fell, some political observers declared it a victory for democracy. It wasn't. Democracy, like any political system, can fall. We have to fight for it -- right now, we're really having to fight for it -- and we can't take it for granted. But when we see the media refusing to cover something or refusing to cover it accurately or using their time (while wasting our time) to lie about the candidate they personally support, it becomes obvious that democracy does not mean as much to them as it does to us. If it did, they'd be better at their jobs.
Abortion may not technically be on the ballot in Tuesday’s off-year state elections, but in the post-Roe v. Wade era, abortion is always on the ballot. Since the US Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs ruling that ended the federal right to abortion, statewide elections have become opportunities for reproductive rights supporters and opponents alike to expand or limit access to care by voting on the politicians who create the laws, the judges who enforce them, and, sometimes, on the laws themselves.
When voters have had the opportunity to weigh in directly on ballot measures enshrining abortion protections, those measures have mostly won, even in red states. When the vote is indirect—that is, for people rather than policies—the results are much more mixed. Just consider what happened in 2024, when states that approved abortion-rights measures also went for anti-abortion judges and Donald Trump. This week’s elections are the first time that large numbers of voters can express their feelings about the country’s radical change in direction under Trump 2.0. In five states, the results will also have major statewide and even national implications for access to reproductive care.
CALIFORNIA
California’s Proposition 50, the blockbuster redistricting measure designed to stop Republicans from rigging next year’s midterm elections, will affect all kinds of democratic rights, including reproductive autonomy. Prop 50 would temporarily suspend California’s current congressional maps, which were drawn by an independent citizens commission, and allow the Democratic-controlled legislature to create new maps that would remain in place through 2030. Governor Gavin Newsom and his allies got the idea after Texas lawmakers, buckling to Trump’s demands, redrew their congressional map to elect more Republicans—potentially enough to keep the US House of Representatives under GOP control in 2026 and beyond. If approved by voters, Prop 50 could sufficiently alter the partisan makeup of California’s House delegation—currently 43 Democrats and nine Republicans—to effectively negate the Texas redistricting effort. Polls show that California voters are very much on board.
Republicans currently have a slim six-seat majority in the House; a wider margin could empower them to unleash all manner of new legislative horrors on the country, including, potentially, an extension of this year’s temporary defunding of Planned Parenthood and even a national ban on abortion after 15 or 20 weeks of pregnancy. A Democratic majority, on the other hand, would bring the GOP legislative machine in Congress grinding to a halt. With so much at stake, total spending by both sides is well north of $175 million. During a press call, Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, described the GOP efforts to further gerrymander red states as “a naked attempt to steal congressional seats” and “an emergency for our democracy.” Prop 50, added John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, is “a defensive shield for our democracy and for reproductive rights.”
Continue reading for other states.
Abortion may not technically be on the ballot in Tuesday’s off-year state elections, but in the post-Roe v. Wade era, abortion is always on the ballot. Since the US Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs ruling that ended the federal right to abortion, statewide elections have become opportunities for reproductive rights supporters and opponents alike to expand or limit access to care by voting on the politicians who create the laws, the judges who enforce them, and, sometimes, on the laws themselves.
When voters have had the opportunity to weigh in directly on ballot measures enshrining abortion protections, those measures have mostly won, even in red states. When the vote is indirect—that is, for people rather than policies—the results are much more mixed. Just consider what happened in 2024, when states that approved abortion-rights measures also went for anti-abortion judges and Donald Trump. This week’s elections are the first time that large numbers of voters can express their feelings about the country’s radical change in direction under Trump 2.0. In five states, the results will also have major statewide and even national implications for access to reproductive care.
CALIFORNIA
California’s Proposition 50, the blockbuster redistricting measure designed to stop Republicans from rigging next year’s midterm elections, will affect all kinds of democratic rights, including reproductive autonomy. Prop 50 would temporarily suspend California’s current congressional maps, which were drawn by an independent citizens commission, and allow the Democratic-controlled legislature to create new maps that would remain in place through 2030. Governor Gavin Newsom and his allies got the idea after Texas lawmakers, buckling to Trump’s demands, redrew their congressional map to elect more Republicans—potentially enough to keep the US House of Representatives under GOP control in 2026 and beyond. If approved by voters, Prop 50 could sufficiently alter the partisan makeup of California’s House delegation—currently 43 Democrats and nine Republicans—to effectively negate the Texas redistricting effort. Polls show that California voters are very much on board.
Republicans currently have a slim six-seat majority in the House; a wider margin could empower them to unleash all manner of new legislative horrors on the country, including, potentially, an extension of this year’s temporary defunding of Planned Parenthood and even a national ban on abortion after 15 or 20 weeks of pregnancy. A Democratic majority, on the other hand, would bring the GOP legislative machine in Congress grinding to a halt. With so much at stake, total spending by both sides is well north of $175 million. During a press call, Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, described the GOP efforts to further gerrymander red states as “a naked attempt to steal congressional seats” and “an emergency for our democracy.” Prop 50, added John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, is “a defensive shield for our democracy and for reproductive rights.”
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