Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Congress Passes Epstein Files Transparency Act
The Congress of the United States can act quickly when it wants to. Yesterday, a bill was put on the floor of the House of Representatives that had not been in committee and had no hearings. A majority of Congresspersons forced the vote with a discharge petition, and such was the public support, that the president reversed his anti-release attitude and yielded to the inevitable. The vote in the House was 427 for and 1 against. The Senate, reading the writing on the wall, passed it by unanimous consent, no debate at all. The president now has no choice but to sign the bill into law, a perfect example of a man being hoisted by his own petard.
The MAGA crowd have had a fixation on pedophiles for years. The Qanon idiocy convinced some that the Clintons ran a child-trafficking ring out of a pizzeria in DC. Jeffrey Epstein was a figure of their hatred, and they were certain that the Democrats were his best pals. Like he always has, Donald Trump found out what they backed, and he backed it, too. Like most of his promises to his voters, he had no intention of doing anything about releasing the Epstein Files, but it got him their votes. Now, he does not need them, and so, he would like them to drop it. They did not.
The whole time he has been president, Mr. Trump has had the authority to release any or all of the documents in the Epstein Files. He could, this very morning, call AG Pam Bondi and order her to release it all. But he has not. Now, he faces an Act of Congress forcing him to do what he does not want to do. He will try to avoid compliance.
The fact is that there is a lot of embarrassing stuff in the files, as it involves rape of children. Being named would be a social and political death sentence in many circles. But unless Merrick Garland decided to give Mr. Trump a pass on baby-raping (for which there is no proof), it is unlikely that evidence of anything illegal is going to be found that reaches the level of beyond a reasonable doubt. The embarrassment is the problem for Mr. Trump and others. That said, future revelations could prove otherwise.
What Mr. Trump is probably going to do now is delay. The documents will need to be scrubbed to avoid privacy concerns, revelation of classified information and the release of anything that might compromise an ongoing investigation. Coincidentally (not), Mr. Trump ordered the investigation of Bill Clinton and Larry Summers as part of the Epstein crimes over the week-end.
One does not believe the White House has thought the ramifications of that all the way through. If the information is not released in a way MAGA hardliners think is adequate, they are going to agitate for more. As the four Republicans in the House who signed onto the discharge petition showed, it is possible to rebel against this White House and win. The split that Majorie Taylor Greene and Mr. Trump have opened up between them is just the beginning.
MAGA has always had a problem with its distinct factions. Mainly there are the populists who want to put the white American working-class at the heart of US policy, and there is the big-business crowd, who want to stay billionaires by any means necessary, including making economic war on the white American working-class.
While one is cautious in making comparisons with the Nazis of 1934, this does look like the split between the working-class revolutionary wing of the party under Ernst Rohm and the SA and the wealthy aristocrats, the Junkers. In the Night of the Long Knives, Herr Rohm and his people were purged (killed). There is a similar split among MAGA interests, and only one can win.
The decline under the Trump administration continues to accelerate.
© Copyright 2025 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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