The Dictatorship
Trump sought to get Boebert to drop her name from Epstein discharge petition
Trump administration officials met with Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., at the White House on Wednesday, attempting to convince her to remove her name from the Jeffrey Epstein discharge petition before it couldn’t be changed, according to a White House official and a source close to Boebert.
Boebert is just one of four House Republicans who signed the Epstein discharge petition — a procedural maneuver allowing legislation to reach the House floor without the blessing of its leadership. On Wednesday afternoon, the petition reached 218 signatures after the swearing-in of Rep. Adelita GrijalvaD-Ariz., the bar for triggering House action.
Now, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., will be forced to hold a floor vote on an issue that has roiled the Republican base and would, if successful, order the government to release more of its files related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Under House rules, no more names can be added or removed from the petition since it hit 218 signatures.
Trump administration officials and President Donald Trump — who on Wednesday was fending off new allegations about his connection to Epstein — had sought to stop the House from acting in what would be a decisive rebuke of the president, who has argued that the Epstein controversy is a sideshow he thinks the GOP should ignore. House Democrats released new emails Wednesday from Epstein suggesting that Trump “knew about the girls,” which Trump has repeatedly denied.
Under House rules, no more names can be added or removed from the petition since it hit 218 signatures.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Boebert was not persuaded to remove her name despite the White House effort, said one of the sources who requested anonymity to discuss a confidential meeting. FBI Director Kash Patel was among those at the meeting, the source said, noting that Trump was not present. But Trump did call the Colorado congresswoman on Tuesday, said two sources familiar with the call who requested anonymity to discuss a private discussion.
During that conversation, Trump tried to encourage Boebert to remove her name from the discharge petition, which is led by one Republican and one Democrat. Boebert gave the impression that she would not follow suit, the sources said.
While the discharge petition reached the magic number of 218 Wednesday afternoon, floor action will not be immediate. According to House rules, seven legislative days must pass before a member can call the legislation to the floor for a vote. After that, the speaker has to set a vote within two legislative days.
With Thanksgiving recess around the corner, any action on the discharge petition would likely not take place until December.
Even if the House passes the legislation, it is unlikely to be signed into law. The Senate would have to approve the bill, which would be an uphill battle, and Trump can still veto it should the resolution land on his desk.
During a White House press briefing on Wednesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt acknowledged the meeting Boebert attended — which was first reported by CNN — when asked by a reporter about it.
“Doesn’t that show the level of transparency when we are willing to sit down with members of Congress and address their concerns?” Leavitt said to reporters when asked about the meeting with Boebert. “I’m not going to detail conversations that took place in the Situation Room,” she said, seemingly referencing the meeting.
Boebert did not respond to BLN’s request for comment. But she thanked White House officials on X for meeting with her, saying, “Together, we remain committed to ensuring transparency for the American people.”
Boebert is not the only signer the president has tried to persuade. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., has been playing “phone tag” with Trump, according to a source.
Three other House Republicans signed the petition in addition to Boebert: Mace, and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ga., and Thomas Massie, Ky. But House Republicans have been busy fending off multiple calls for legislative action from Democrats who are demanding transparency and also seeking to further drive a wedge among Republicans who are divided on the issue.
Before Trump was elected, both he and several of his allies now in the government called for the full release of the Epstein files and many supporters of that effort felt betrayed when Attorney General Pam Bondi released a memo in July that essentially closed the case. Trump has loudly called for his followers to move on, but not all of them have.
The House Oversight Committee continues to investigate Epstein and his convicted associate Ghislaine Maxwell, taking depositions and issuing subpoenas. Democrats on that committee released a tranche of documents on Wednesday, including emails mentioning Trump.
“The Democrats selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump,” Leavitt said afterwards. “The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees[.]”
In an effort to placate lawmakers pushing for the release of documents, the House in September passed a resolution expressing support for the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into Epstein. That was not, however, enough to satisfy that cohort of members.
She covers Capitol Hill involving both Democrats and Republicans. She previously covered Congress at Blue Light News. She graduated from George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communication and political science.
Jake Traylor is a White House correspondent for BLN.
California voters will consider a controversial proposal in November to temporarily raise taxes on billionaires after the labor union backing the measure announced Thursday it would forge ahead despite pressure from critics to withdraw it.
The proposal, backed by the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Workers West, would impose a one-time 5% tax on individuals whose net worth exceeds $1 billion and who were living in the state as of Jan. 1, 2026. The goal is to generate $100 billion in revenue, mainly to fund the state’s Medicaid system after federal cuts.
“I am all in on this,” union President Dave Regan said on a Zoom call, adding that opponents of the proposal are “totally out of touch.”
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and many traditional allies of the union oppose the measure. They argue it is a temporary fix for an ongoing problem and that it would push the ultrawealthy to leave the state, taking the money they would contribute in income taxes with them. Newsom, who is considering a presidential run as he prepares to leave office in January, has generally opposed tax increases during his time as governor.
A coalition of healthcare, education and housing groups — including the California Medical Association and California School Boards Association — banded together last week to fight the tax.
“The dangerous wealth tax directly threatens vital funding for education and schools, healthcare and clinics, public safety, and infrastructure projects by making California’s revenue even more volatile,” the coalition said in a statement.
Brian Brokaw, a Newsom political adviser who is leading a political committee opposing the tax, said it would “make California’s biggest challenges worse.”
“Driving away the state’s sustainable tax base for a one-time grab is bad policy and an even worse deal for 40 million Californians who will be left holding the bag,” he said in a statement.
Under the proposal, the state would spend the money generated from the tax over multiple years. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the proposal would generate tens of billions of dollars in the first few years, but that income tax revenues would subsequently decline by hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Many of the Silicon Valley tech moguls who oppose the measure have already moved their assets to other states or threatened to do so to avoid the possible tax. They have also spent millions to try to defeat it.
Since the proposal was announced in October, Google co-founder Sergey Brin has donated $82 million to a political committee called Building a Better California that backs a variety of initiatives designed to blunt the billionaire tax proposal. It has raised more than $118 million, counting Brin’s contributions, from fewer than a dozen donors.
California relies on its top 1% of earnersfor nearly half of its personal income tax revenue.
The union offered to scale back its proposal last week, asking Newsom to back a 2% tax on billionaires instead. But the governor’s office said the lower rate didn’t change his stance.
The proposed tax may have piqued the interest of many Democrats because it comes at a time when they are particularly concerned about affordability, income inequality and federal cutbacks to government programs, said Martin Gilens, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“There’s kind of a perfect storm that sort of bolsters preexisting inclinations to be sympathetic to the idea of raising taxes on the well-to-do,” he said.
But there’s a catch. Support for ballot initiatives often declines as the election nears, and if the measure passes, it’s likely to face legal challenges, Gilens said.
Since taking office one week ago, Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligence, has busied himself on social media posting flattering photos of President Donald Trump, trivia about a former counterintelligence agent and praising his current staff.
What the Trump loyalist with no intelligence experience has not done is address the public about his plans, or calm the unease and confusion inside the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is being described by top officials as “chaotic” amid firings of senior personnel with threats of more to come.
One image posted to the official X account of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, apparently artificial intelligence-generated, features Trump raising a clenched fist in the air with two B-2 stealth bombers in the sky behind him. Another is an image of the president, his fist clenched, glowering as he stands behind the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk.
In another post, Pulte, who was expected to gut the workforce of the National Counterterrorism Center, instead declared the staff there “true professionals and American patriots” after he said he spent time with them, adding “it is a privilege to work beside them.”
And in an apparent attempt at levity, Pulte reposted a message reminding Americans that Tuesday was “National Typewriter Day” and informing them of the role that a former Army counterintelligence agent played.
“Fun CI fact,” the post reads. “Former Army CI Special Agent Leroy Anderson composed ‘The Typewriter’ on October 9, 1950.”
But Pulte’s arrival has sparked anxiety and fear among the office’s workforce, three former U.S. intelligence officials told MS NOW, granted anonymity to address a sensitive topic.
They said that a half dozen political appointees were removed from their posts and several dozen staffers were sent back to their home intelligence agencies. Beyond that, little else is known about Pulte’s plans.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told MS NOW that his requests for more information from the office, known by the acronym ODNI, have been rebuffed.
“I’ve been calling over there all day and can’t get my calls returned,” said Himes.
He later said, “I spoke directly to their office of congressional affairs. They said they had nothing for me.”
“It seems like it’s totally chaotic at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on a podcast Wednesday. “There was word that there was going to be firings and then he said he changed his mind. We don’t know.”
Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA official and now an MS NOW contributor, said that staff in the intelligence community do not know what to think.
“Everyone is in the same boat and unsure of what is going on,” he said. “That said, there is no love lost for the DNI, as many believe that there is redundancy that does need to be cut.”
The other former U.S. intelligence officials said they agree that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is in need of reform. The agency was created after a lack of information sharing among U.S. intelligence agencies played a role in the failure to stop the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. ODNI’s mission is to ensure that the country’s now 18 different intelligence agencies share information with one another.
But the former intelligence officials said Pulte is patently unqualified to design or carry out those reforms.
“As with many things Trump alights upon, there is a sliver of truth here but he goes about addressing it in the worst possible way,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told MS NOW, granted anonymity over concerns of retaliation. “But mass firings without any kind of sense of what you are trying to accomplish is addressing it in the most ham-handed way.”
That former official, as well as Warner and Himes, have said they fear that Pulte’s mission is to use his position as the nation’s top intelligence official to help Trump interfere in the midterm elections in November.
Pulte, who simultaneously serves as the Trump administration’s top federal housing official as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, used government mortgage information to file several criminal referrals against Democrats whom Trump considered enemies, including Sen. Adam Schiff of California and New York State Attorney General Letitia James. None of Pulte’s referrals have resulted in criminal convictions.
One fear expressed by Warner and some former intelligence officials is that Pulte may try to falsely claim that his office has found evidence that foreign governments are secretly funding Democratic candidates.
One way he could do that, they say, is by falsely claiming foreign actors have hacked U.S. voting machines and altered vote totals in favor of Democrats. And Pulte and FBI agents could seize voting machines, ballots and election records in November — as Gabbard did in Fulton County, Georgia, last year at Trump’s behest — as part of voter fraud investigations that please the president.
“I have to tell you, I was extraordinarily concerned about the former director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, interfering in our election,” Warner told NPR earlier this month. “The concerns I had with Tulsi Gabbard now, upon reflection, look small versus the concerns I have with Bill Pulte.”
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
Former President Barack Obama slammed President Donald Trump for obsessing over him while serving in the nation’s highest office.
“I obviously, you know, have a room in his head. A suite in his head,” Obama said an an episode of the podcast “All The Smoke,” posted Wednesday.
“Look, first of all, when I was president, the last thing I had time to do was worry about what somebody said, or what my predecessor did,” Obama told the two hosts, former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. “They’re gone. I’ve got work to do.”
Trump has a long history of publicly insulting the former president, often invoking Obama’s middle name, Hussein.
Trump has also heavily promoted the false and racist “birther” conspiracy theory, which claimed that Obama was ineligible to serve as president because he was born in Kenya rather than the United States.
Earlier this year, Trump drew criticism after sharing a racist artificial intelligence-generated video on his Truth Social account depicting the former president and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes. The video was later deleted, and Trump did not apologize.
Before launching the war against Iran with Israel on Feb. 28, Trump repeatedly criticized the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 diplomatic agreement primarily negotiated by Obama that also limited Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for sweeping economic sanctions relief.
More recently, Trump trashed the newly debuted Obama Presidential Center in Chicago as a “very unattractive building” and “total disaster,” adding that when his presidential library opens, it will be “on time, on budget, best location in Miami.”
Without mentioning Trump by name, Obama criticized leaders who fixate on their predecessors, characterizing their priorities as misplaced.
“If you’re doing the job right, everyday, you’ve got five, ten things that are real hard. And you have to be constantly focused,” Obama said.
“The idea that I’d be worrying about somebody who came before and me trying to measure, ‘What’s he done today?’ Constantly worrying about that is a strange thing to me. It shows me somebody who’s not focused on the American people and the job they’re supposed to do.”
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
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