Politics

The Epstein scandal is taking down Europe’s political class. In the US, they’re getting a pass.

Published

9 months ago

February 6, 2026

Across the Atlantic, heads are rolling over the Jeffrey Epstein revelations.

In Norway, one prominent diplomat has already been suspended and a police investigation has been opened into a former prime minister. In the U.K., the former ambassador to the U.S. has been fired; on Tuesday, he resigned from the House of Lords. Police are reviewing reports he shared market-sensitive information with Epstein.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, was stripped of his royal titles and residence. A charity founded by his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York, will shut down indefinitely following the release of emails where she called Epstein a “legend” and “the brother I have always wished for.”

But as Europe’s political class moves to clean up its mess and address its shame concerning ties with the convicted sex offender, it’s inadvertently highlighting something else — the comparative lack of accountability in the U.S.

No prominent politicians have taken a fall. Consequences have been limited. Wagons have been circled around the most prominent political figures whose names have surfaced in the legal document dumps.

In the U.K., former ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson — who has said he was wrong to believe Epstein following his conviction and to continue his association with him afterwards — has emerged as a millstone around British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s neck. While Starmer never actually met Epstein, some are calling for his resignation over his appointment of Mandelson. The prime minister publicly apologized Thursday to Epstein’s victims.

“I am sorry,” Starmer said. “Sorry for what was done to you, sorry that so many people with power failed you, sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies and appointed him and sorry that even now you’re forced to watch this story unfold in public once again.”

It’s a different story in the U.S. Donald Trump’s Republican Party has largely averted its eyes or rallied to the president’s defense despite his documented ties to Epstein and the unverified additional allegations against the president that appeared last week.

Trump has denied wrongdoing in relation to the Epstein allegations, and no evidence has suggested that he took part in Epstein’s trafficking operation. The president also has maintained that he and Epstein had a falling out years ago.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick remains unscathed in his Cabinet post. Lutnick said on a podcast last year that he was so disgusted by his neighbor Epstein in 2005 that he vowed to never be in the same room with him again. But when the Justice Department released more than three million pages of materials related to the late American financier last Friday, emails surfaced suggesting a closer relationship and that Lutnick had actually seen Epstein some years later on a trip to Epstein’s Caribbean island. A spokesperson said the Commerce secretary “had limited interactions with Mr. Epstein in the presence of his wife and has never been accused of wrongdoing.” So far, there are no signs it affected his standing in the Trump Cabinet.

Likewise, Goldman Sachs and its CEO David Solomon have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the company’s general counsel Kathryn Ruemmler as she’s faced brutal headlines for months for her associations with Epstein, which include gifts of a $9,400 Hermes bag and a spa treatment at the Four Seasons Hotel in D.C. Solomon told the Wall Street Journal several weeks ago that Ruemmler, a former White House counsel to Barack Obama, “is widely respected and admired at the firm.”

Ruemmler has said she regrets “ever knowing him, and I have enormous sympathy for the victims of Epstein’s crimes.”

Even Dr. Peter Attia, the author and influential longevity researcher who is a contributor to CBS News, remains on the job despite his appearance in numerous emails with Epstein, where they discussed female genitalia and how Epstein’s life was “so outrageous.” In an email that he posted on X, Attia apologized and said he was not involved in any criminal activity, his interactions with Epstein had nothing to do with his sexual abuse or exploitation of anyone and that he was never on his plane or island, and never present at any sex parties.

Some see the relatively limited fallout — in a public arena where infidelity or even smoking marijuana were once enough to sink a career — as a reflection of the diminished standards of the Trump era, when the president’s own indiscretions and extreme polarization has led to a greater tolerance of the scent of scandal. They point to the Cabinet nominations of former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, both of whom would have been unthinkable in the past given allegations about their involvement in sex crimes that both men have denied.

“Some of that has to do with the general chaos on this side of the pond where it’s a never ending stream of scandal emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Trump has set a tone of defiance on refusal to accept and feel any shame,” said Norm Eisen, a former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic who is now a top Trump critic and the founder of Democracy Defenders Action, a bipartisan group that tracks what it calls “autocratic” behavior by the administration. “Those who should feel shame are hunkering down instead.”

It’s true that several American figures linked to Epstein have been forced to step away from public life. They include former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who has said he is “deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” and Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp, who resigned as the law firm’s chair on Wednesday saying it’s in the best interest of the firm. David Ross, former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, stepped down this week from his position at a Manhattan art school and said in a statement that he felt ashamed for falling for Epstein’s lies. But for many of the best-known elites who were in contact with the late convicted sex offender — including former Trump aide Steve Bannon and billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk — the only consequence has been the reputational hit.

“What matters is not release of some subset of the Epstein files, but rather the prosecution of those who committed heinous crimes with Epstein,” Musk wrote on X. “When there is at least one arrest, some justice will have been done. If not, this is all performative. Nothing but a distraction.”

Bannon has said little publicly about their relationship, but he did previously call for an independent investigation into the files.

Bannon, a frequent visitor to Epstein’s New York house, was planning a documentary to help revive Epstein’s image and even was texting documentary scheduling questions with Epstein the day he was arrested in 2019. Even so, there are few outward signs that the scandal has touched him: Bannon still does his “War Room” show on Rumble and his political musings are widely covered in the press.

It’s an approach in keeping with Trump’s own never-concede-an-inch style.

“We as Americans need to be looking at ourselves in the mirror. Why are we not having that same reaction [as Europe]?” said Rufus Gifford, a former Obama-appointed ambassador to Denmark. “Without a doubt how Trump has acted has filtered down to broader society. But I think the question that we have to ask is whether or not this existed before Trump, and Trump is just a symptom of that larger problem.”

Politics

Bernie Sanders lost the fight in 2016. A decade later, he won the war.

Published

7 hours ago

November 5, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

In 2016, two populist revolutions threatened to remake American politics. Donald Trump’s conquered the Republican Party and delivered him the presidency. Bernie Sanders’ fell short against Hillary Clinton, but introduced a populist economic vision that, at the time, much of the Democratic establishment dismissed as politically impractical.

Ten years later, Trump and MAGA were hit with a devastating midterm repudiation, as candidates across the country in blue and red states echoing versions of Sanders’ message broke through in places that once seemed beyond Democrats’ reach.

Sanders, as cantankerous as ever, isn’t surprised.

“If you’re asking me, am I shocked by that? That the argument about economic justice and taking on oligarchs and fighting for the working class is working in Texas, is working in Ohio, is working in Montana, is working in Florida, is working all over the country — no, I am not shocked,” Sanders said in an interview Wednesday, fresh off over 20 rallies in October alone. “That is what I’ve always believed.”

Sanders’ laser focus on economic populism in 2016 faced criticism from his own party during his contentious primary against Clinton for being too dismissive of identity politics — often couched as his lack of support among Black voters. Now, his brand of relentless focus on corporate and billionaire election interventions and income inequality proved a winning formula not only for Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, but for James Talarico in Texas, Sam Forstag in Montana and Rebecca Cooke in Wisconsin.

“Bernie normalized the kind of campaigning that really is about making a direct appeal to working people,” El Sayed told Blue Light News. “Wherever I went in Michigan, there are people who remember Bernie 2016 and Bernie 2020 — we stand on the shoulders of giants.”

Given the booming results on Tuesday and the breadth of wins for the left, Democrats will test whether they can avoid the same pitfalls that ultimately dogged them following their last major win in 2020 with Joe Biden’s blue-collar charm at the top of the ticket, after which the party gradually slipped back down the culture war slope.

To avoid that, Sanders said the party can do both, but that Democrats need to have the “courage” to focus on the day-to-day needs of working families, no matter what the billionaires funding the Democratic Party say.

“It’s not either or. You can fight against bigotry and discrimination, but you have got to have the courage,” he said. “The courage now to say to the billionaires who are funding the Democratic Party: ‘Thank you very much for your help, but right now we are going to focus on the needs of the working families of this country, whether you like it or not.’”

Sanders’ reach is perhaps nowhere more evident than in New York City, which has emerged as the mecca of American progressivism, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani — once a Sanders-endorsed local official — is now perhaps the heir-apparent to Sanders’ progressive mantle.

The man behind Mamdani’s seismic rise, progressive wunderkind Morris Katz, had more than most on the line this week. After his top client Graham Platner dropped out of the Senate race in Maine earlier this year amid scandal, Katz worked this cycle for Gina Hinojosa in Texas, Randy Villegas in California and Brian Poindexter in Ohio, while his firm, Fight Agency, worked with El-Sayed and Pennsylvania’s Bob Brooks.

The day before the election, The Atlantic published a 3,500-word piece that put “Katz’s theory of politics” on the ballot.

“A lot of people wanted to know what I’d say if we lost,” Katz said, referencing an infamous Kanye West quote on Wednesday and running on 45 minutes of sleep. “I guess we’ll never know. That’s about how I feel today.”

Like Sanders, Katz sees a progressive future laser-focused on economics as the clear way forward — and nowhere is that more clear than in Texas.

“Hundreds of millions were spent against James and Gina trying to tag them on a trans issue,” he said. “It failed in epic fashion because there was no room for misunderstanding or ambiguity over what they stood for, because they had grounded themselves in such affirmative and positive economic messaging.”

“Those attacks have succeeded in the absence of an affirmative message,” he added. “Once you’re able to define yourself and provide a message, it’s just a lot harder for that to work.”

It’s the same formula Mamdani rode to Gracie Mansion — and, Katz argues, the lesson Democrats finally absorbed. “For a long time, politicians accepted the realities of how people felt about the economy but refused responsibility for having to take an active role in changing it,” he said. “There’s no room for that anymore.”

Katz sees his and Sanders’ theory of politics as having won out across the Democratic spectrum — not just on the left flank, but among the moderates who once resisted it.

“The more moderate wing of the party has changed the definition of what a moderate is. I think that’s great,” he said. “We should be a big tent party, but you are seeing a big tent that is unified in opposition to the oligarchy, that is unified in opposition to corruption, and that is united in a pursuit of fundamental and structural change. And that’s going to be really encouraging if that can carry over to 2028.”

For Sanders, it’s vindication of an argument he’s made for years and that Democrats have ignored — despite what he says is its simplicity.

“Focusing on the needs of the vast majority of American people who are struggling in the richest country on earth, while the very rich are getting richer, man, you don’t need a Ph.D. in economics or political science to figure that out,” he said. “That is the issue. How do we create a decent standard of living for all of our people? How do we end the corrupt campaign finance system? That is exactly what Democrats have got to do.”

At 85, Sanders campaigned this cycle like a man running out of time.

In the wake of Trump’s historic return to power in 2024, Sanders launched the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, which came when many democrats were on the sidelines but provided a lot of the arguments, and even helped discover actual candidates, who a year later would swamp races earlier this week. Since the tour, Sanders has held 58 rallies during the midterms, endorsed more than 150 candidates across the primaries and general election, spent north of $16 million on organizing and deployed staff and volunteers into key Senate states including Michigan, Minnesota and Florida, an adviser to Sanders told Blue Light News.

“People say, ‘you know, Bernie, you’re not 21 years of age. What keeps you going?’” Sanders said. “What keeps me going is you look at the people who we have just elected yesterday, and look at the hundreds of other people who we have elected in school board and city council. You have wonderful people, black and white and Latino, coming from rural areas, urban areas.”

“I hope the Democratic leadership has seen what’s happening around the country,” he added.

Looking ahead to 2028, progressives see Tuesday as evidence the left’s economic politics can win anywhere — and that any doubt from moderates that a progressive should run for president should be laid to rest.

“I think we’ve got to rethink politics,” Sanders said. “We can win over millions of Republicans and independents who are struggling economically if we focus on the issues that are important,” he added, pointing to Villegas in Bakersfield, “a Republican town,” along with Forstag, Cooke and others who flipped Republican-held seats.

“These are people who ran on a progressive agenda, taking on a Republican district, and they won,” he said.

Katz said Tuesday was proof that heading into 2028, voters want candidates who look nothing like Washington — the kind he’s helped elect from Texas to California.

“You saw a hunger for a different kind of candidate — on congressional [level], teachers and waitresses and firefighters and iron workers and smokejumpers. And on the Senate level, pastors and doctors and teachers,” he said. “This hunger for expanding who is in Congress, who’s in the positions of power, feels real.”

What progressive candidate can pick up the left’s momentum heading into 2028 remains a question, but Katz said he viewed Tuesday’s results as more evidence that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who closed out Villegas’ campaign in California a week before the election and stumped in Michigan, Montana and Pennsylvania — should consider running for president.

“You’d be hard pressed to look at the results of the election and say they’re anything other than encouraging in the context of her ability to win nationwide,” Katz said.

Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.

Politics

Bernie’s populist moment

Published

7 hours ago

November 5, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Bernie’s populist moment

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Politics

‘This is an earthquake’: Latino voters rush back to Democrats

Published

22 hours ago

November 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

AUSTIN — Texas. Florida. Pennsylvania. Colorado. Arizona. Nevada. California.

The historic landslide of Latino voters toward Democrats hit battleground after battleground Tuesday, crumbling the coalition that helped carry President Donald Trump to victory just one cycle ago.

“This is an earthquake,” Democratic Latino operative Sergio Gonzalez told Blue Light News on the sidelines of Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa’s victory party in Austin. “Latinos were angry. They were angry this election.”

While the entire country shifted toward Democrats, nowhere shifted as dramatically as predominantly Latino areas. Across the nation Latino voters of all backgrounds — Mexican Americans and Central Americans in the Southwest, heartland and on the West Coast, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in Pennsylvania, Venezuelans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans in Florida — unhappy with the economy and furious over Trump’s immigration enforcement fled the party in droves.

In a single cycle, Democrats appeared to reset Republicans’ gradual decade-long gains with Latino voters.

Latino voters who “broke for President Trump in historical numbers [in 2024] … had to make a hard change because their paycheck wasn’t moving fast and far enough for them,” said Trump’s former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer in an interview Tuesday night. “And Republicans ran out of runway on that.”

The epicenter of the earthquake was Texas, where a turnout surge — especially among younger first-time Latino voters — helped Democrats sweep Texas’ statewide offices — the first time since 1994 they’ve won any at all. Republicans won only one of the five House seats they had gerrymandered.

“What we’re seeing today is a political realignment,” said Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, who romped to a 30-point victory Tuesday night in a newly redrawn district Trump carried by double digits two years ago.

“Republicans were renting the Hispanic vote — yet governed like they owned it,” said Giancarlo Sopo, the GOP strategist behind Trump’s viral2020 Spanish-language campaign jingle.

But Democrats have been here before. Then President Barack Obama and his Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton posted similarly strong numbers with Latinos, before Trump’s blue-collar populism helped break through for the GOP.

Some Democrats warn that their party should not misread this week’s results to assume that Latinos are once again loyal Democratic voters.

“Tonight ought to scare the hell out of both political parties,” said Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Business Council, on Tuesday. “Americans are running out of patience, and the politicians who keep mistaking their votes for unconditional loyalty are going to find themselves unemployed.”

Latinos’ swing right two years ago had been fueled by frustration over inflation combined with some voters’ dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s border policy. A cycle earlier, in 2020, Trump made significant inroads in Florida and Texas as well. But growing economic woes under Trump, combined with his hardline interior immigration enforcement, swung those communities hard this time around.

“In the Hispanic community, the hyper-aggressive ICE raids, I think, will go down as one of the darkest blemishes in modern history,” Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, who cruised to reelection Tuesday in a seat Trump had won by 10 points, told Blue Light News Tuesday night. “The American people are struggling right now, and and and they delivered a very heavy punishment at the ballot box today.”

Heavily Latino counties swung more toward Democrats than any other type of place, according to preliminary returns. A handful of counties in Texas that are more than 90 percent Latino swung more than 25 points toward Democrats from 2024, the results show. Latino-majority Miami-Dade County in South Florida swung nearly 20 points.If current results hold, roughly half of the 10 Latino Republicans who served in the last Congress won’t be returning, while Democrats’ Latino caucus will grow significantly.

“We put in the hard work. Talk to Latino voters early and often, and they’re showing up,” Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ BOLD PAC, told Blue Light News. “They trust Democrats more on the economy now. They see us as real champions and fighters.”

Trump won Starr County, Texas — part of Cuellar’s district — with 58 percent of the vote two years ago, the first time in more than a century that a Republican had won a presidential election there. On Tuesday, Democrat James Talarico won 77 percent there.

That county, like many others in the Rio Grande Valley, had long favored Democrats but moved toward the GOP during the Trump era. That’s now all been erased, as Brownsville native Gina Hinojosa will become the first Hispanic governor of Texas since it became a U.S. state. “We’ve called the RGV a bellwether for so long,” Melissa Morales, the executive director of SOMOS PAC, told Blue Light News. “But to actually get the first Latina governor of Texas from the RGV I think is a bellwether in its own of what the next generation of leadership looks like.”

In California’s 22nd District, a Central Valley district which is roughly three-quarters Latino, progressive Democrat Randy Villegas was leading incumbent GOP Rep. David Valadao 66%-34% with roughly two-thirds of the vote in. A handful of rural majority-Latino counties in Kansas — Seward, Finney and Ford — that Trump had won by more than 30 points in 2024 were narrowly won by Democratic Senate candidate Adam Hamilton. The counties were among those shaken by ICE raids earlier in the fall.

“Recent ICE activity in southwest Kansas turned around the electorate out here,” said Republican state Sen. Bill Clifford, who represents Finney County.

The results are a vindication for Democrats who’ve been clamoring for more investment into Latino voters.

“I think this would be a wake-up call to the Democratic Party in general that investing in Latino outreach, communication, and good candidates makes a big difference, especially in areas that you think were considered red back in the day,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) told Blue Light News Tuesday night.