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New Mexico Sues DOJ over Epstein files

With the Felon's failing war against Iran dragging on with increased news reports of US munitions shortages, the constant chaos the Felon generates domestically, and growing focus on the approaching mid-term elections, it is easy to be distracted from the Department of Justice's ("DOJ") ongoing coverup of the Epstein scandal, particularly by withholding files ordered to be released and stonewalling both Congress and other investigations. No doubt the Felon likes things this way, but now the State of New Mexico is suing the DOJ for withholding information concerning Epstein's Zorro Ranch and is seeking a court order forcing the DOJ to turn over unredacted copies of files.  One can only hope New Mexico's lawsuit is successful and that the names of more of Epstein's coconspirators are made public - including the Felon's name.  Although Todd Blanche met with Epstein survivors under duress, the survivor's have condemned his dismissive attitude and strongly oppose Blanche's nomination for Attorney General.  A piece in Salon looks at the new lawsuit: 

While Jeffrey Epstein’s island or his various mansions get a lot of attention, the late sex offender and financier’s New Mexico Zorro Ranch was also allegedly the site of extensive abuse and criminal activity. Now, in a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the Department of Justice and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, are accused of “stonewalling” New Mexico’s criminal investigation of Epstein’s activities at the ranch outside of Santa Fe.

New Mexico’s Attorney General Raúl Torrez, who is behind the lawsuit, argues that the DOJ unlawfully withheld records, therefore delaying justice for victims. The lawsuit accuses Blanche and the DOJ of perpetuating “that disgrace” of failing to investigate or hold Epstein accountable before his death. The suit requests the court to order the DOJ to provide the requested unredacted records.

“USDOJ and Acting Attorney General Blanche are refusing to facilitate the investigation of state law crimes by hiding information about Epstein and his co-conspirators from Attorney General Torrez and state law enforcement, when New Mexico is one of few jurisdictions that still may have an opportunity to hold Epstein’s associates accountable or otherwise provide some sense of justice to survivors,” the lawsuit reads.

Meanwhile, New Mexico’s legislative “truth commission” released its first report on Zorro Ranch Wednesday, but the 119-page document offers little in the way of new revelations or recommendations. It draws heavily on news reports and what has so far been released from the Epstein files, but does underscore numerous hurdles the investigation has faced. 

“Those in law enforcement most responsible for protecting New Mexicans from Epstein played a passive role in investigating him, letting others in Miami and in New York do it. As a result, the conduct of Epstein and his co-conspirators in New Mexico went unexamined and unpunished,” the authors conclude. “Going forward, this commission endeavors to uncover the truth so many for too long were blind to.”

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Americans Are Turning on Trump

With the Felon having been documented to have told in the neighborhood of 30,000 lies during his first occupancy of the White House, I still find it baffling that many young voters, Hispanics and even blacks voted for the Felon apparently believing his 2024 campaign lies.  It should have been obvious to anyone who had paid attention to his first term would have believed him in 2024. Whether voter opposition to a black woman as president, Joe Biden's late exit from the race  or other dynamics were at work, we may never know. Now, polls are show huge levels of buyer's remorse among voters who in my view foolishly believed the Felon.  Instead of lowering prices "on day one" the Felon's tariffs, war of choice with Iran, and slashing of social programs have fueled more inflation that shows no signs of abating anytime soon, especially as a peace deal with Iran appears elusive. The Felon, of course, lies that his poll numbers are very high outside of "fake news" outlets, that a peace deal with Iran is close, and that "affordability" is a Democrat hoax. A piece at The Atlantic looks at Americans' souring view of the Felon and the losses of support among demographics who foolishly voted for the Felon in 2024.  Here are article excerpts:

Fundamental realignments in the way Americans vote are rare, but predictions that they have occurred are not. Nearly as soon as Donald Trump was declared the winner of the presidential race in November 2024, people started saying the election represented a new era. “Trump just realigned the entire political map. Democrats have ‘no easy path’ to fix it,” announced NBC News.

The election had been very close. Trump won slightly more electoral votes than Joe Biden had in 2020 (312 to 306), but he also won fewer total popular votes and a smaller percentage of the vote. This was still significant because it was the first time in three tries that Trump had captured a plurality of the electorate, but the case for realignment hinged less on raw numbers than on demographic breakdowns. The Republican Party had strengthened its grip on the white working class and had done historically well with young voters—young men in particular—and Hispanic voters. Writing in The Atlantic in May 2025, the pollster Patrick Ruffini argued that a new era of politics had dawned, in which Trump had broken Democrats’ solid grip on minority voters.

The Democratic Party’s problems remain very real, but for the moment, Trump and the GOP have more serious ones. The most glaring one is Trump’s deep personal unpopularity. In the current polarized and dyspeptic political environment, all presidents seem to be unpopular, but Trump is in a different league. A CNN poll released last week measured Trump at 34 percent support, matching the low he reached in that poll following the January 6 insurrection. Still, that was better than his showing in the AP-NORC survey, which found his approval at 33 percent, just one point above a 2017 low. Quinnipiac University found Trump at 32 percent, the lowest ever in that poll. . . . . digging into polling results shows particular deterioration with the particular groups that were supposed to be at the center of the Trump 2024 realignment.

Consider young voters. Kamala Harris won a slim majority of them in 2024, a huge drop from the 25 percent margin that Biden enjoyed four years earlier. The Yale Youth Poll found in May that 68 percent of voters ages 18 to 22 and 72 percent of voters ages 23 to 29 disapproved of Trump. Echelon Insights also found that younger voters disapprove of Trump more than the general population—the number has fallen 37 percent since the start of this administration.

One reason Trump’s numbers have sunk so much among young people is his poor performance among young men. A popular explanation was that a feminized, woke Democratic Party had driven them away and into the arms of Trump and a growing manosphere of influencers. To the extent that that was true, it was ephemeral. These voters are still wary of the Democrats, but they’ve soured on Trump as well. The Yale Youth Poll found that men under 30 were one of the two groups that had turned the most against Trump since last fall.

Trump is also bleeding support among Black and Hispanic voters, and especially men, as Bloomberg Government reports. In 2024, Trump won almost half of Hispanic voters, but polls show Republicans drawing 27 to 35 percent support in the midterms, which would be their worst performance with the group since the Democratic-wave year of 2018. . . . A May poll found that a quarter of Hispanics who voted for Trump in 2024 wouldn’t do so again.

The decay has even reached Trump’s core supporters. A New York Times review of polling data found in June that white working-class voters’ views of the president’s handling of the economy were tanking. During the first two years of his first term, these voters rated him higher than the overall population; now they rate him much worse.

Echelon finds his approval down to 41 percent among those with a high-school education or less. Polling from the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism finds a shrinking Trump base and less personal connection to Trump, which is a particular problem for a personalist leader and movement. Republican strategists are now worried that even consistent GOP voters might not turn out in November, according to The Washington Post.

[S]everal convincing explanations existed for Trump’s 2024 victory that didn’t involve realignment, including the lingering effects of the pandemic, global anti-incumbent sentiment, and the peculiar dynamics of Biden’s ill-advised decision to run and his late exit from the race. But the foremost was inflation. Americans were angry at the Democratic Party because of persistently higher prices. Now Trump is losing support for the same reason. Not only has Trump not ended inflation, as he promised—in June, it ran at 3.5 percent—but his decisions, especially the Iran war, have driven prices higher. Voters were willing to give Trump a chance because of their disgust with Biden. Now they’re seeing the results, and they don’t like them.

Although some observers believed a sea change had occurred, the Brookings Institution scholar (and Atlantic contributor) Jonathan Rauch concluded on November 9, 2024, that the result did not represent “a pro-MAGA realignment or a sweeping repudiation of Democrats. Rather, this was an ordinary election.” He added, prophetically, “While the Republicans undoubtedly scored a clear victory, they may be tempted to claim a stronger mandate than the voters intended to deliver—and they may respond with policies that are more extreme and disruptive than the public wants or expects.” Now the realignment looks nearly as moribund as GOP chances in the midterms.

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Trump’s Reversal on Escalation Shows Iran Has the Upper Hand

In what is becoming a familiar pattern, the Felon has again backed down from threats launch new attacks against Iran and claims I ran is negotiating towards a peace deal.  The Felon had made such threats before and oil prices surged - driving up US gasoline prices higher - only to have the Felon back down and claim negotiations have restarted and have oil prices subside somewhat.  Currently, Iran denies that negotiations are again underway and seems happy to allow the Felon to twist on the rope he put around his own neck. Indeed, Reuters reports that "Iran is betting it can outlast Washington by turning the Middle East's trade routes, shipping lanes and energy infrastructure into pressure points that steadily raise the cost of confrontation, according to Gulf officials and analysts." The reality is that the USA remains in a position where no good off-ramps exist and the war's continuation is creating a drag for Republicans as the mid-term elections approach.  This very scenario is what the Felon was warned about by experts but chose to ignore and instead listen to Benjamin Netanyahu rosy picture of how the war would be quickly over. A piece in the New York Times looks at where we find ourselves currently:

When [the Felon] President Trump appeared to back down once again from a threatened military escalation against Tehran, he offered fresh fodder to the narrative Iranian officials are eager to promote: They are not the ones who fear war — Mr. Trump is.

Iran’s leadership believes it has found the world’s Achilles’ heel. With the help of regional militia allies, Tehran spent the past week underscoring its ability to threaten several of the world’s most critical energy facilities and waterways.

It has continued to up the ante in its face-off with Washington over when and how to stop their renewed hostilities and return to a short-lived deal to start peace negotiations, which fell apart last month.

When Mr. Trump signaled in recent days that a major escalation was imminent if no concessions were made, two former Iranian officials said Tehran’s leadership told him to go right ahead.

“They are ready for the war, and they won’t back down,” said Amir al-Mousawi, a former Iranian diplomat, who said he had met over the weekend with the team surrounding Iran’s head negotiator and speaker of Parliament, . . . The Iranians refused, he said, unless Washington returned to the previously agreed “memorandum of understanding,” which many experts say was in Iran’s favor.

“‘We have no problem with war at all, and we are ready for the big confrontation,’” Mr. al-Mousawi said the Iranians told the Americans. “Trump told the Iranians: ‘I will hit the power in Iran.’ So, the Iranians said: ‘If you strike, we strike.’”

Iranian officials have spotted a pattern in Mr. Trump’s attempts to shape negotiations . . . . Mr. Trump starts to pressurize the situation by threatening Iran, so he can try to get further concessions,” he said. “But Iran is not so easily manipulated.”

On Sunday, Mr. Trump said he had relented from his planned escalation after Iran and other Middle Eastern countries requested a delay because the “perimeters of a deal” had been agreed to.

Yet, there are no outward signs of any return to U.S.-Iranian negotiations. What does appear to have happened is that Saudi Arabia and Qatar expressed concerns over their ability to adequately defend their oil and gas facilities, according to two regional diplomats.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, had recently spoken with Mr. Trump to stress “the necessity of prioritizing dialogue to de-escalate tensions” and “prevent a wider conflict.”  Recent strikes in the region reflect the severity of those concerns.

Two weeks ago, the Houthis, an Iran-aligned militia force in Yemen, blockaded Riyadh’s use of the Bab al-Mandab waterway in the Red Sea. The Saudis had been piping oil to their west coast port on the Red Sea in order to circumvent Iran’s stranglehold on global shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the primary route for oil shipments out of the Persian Gulf.

At its heart, the current struggle “is about redesigning the regional security architecture,” said H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.  The core of that struggle is the issue of who controls the Strait of Hormuz, he said. “The Iranians are very, very serious about not giving up control, and they’re willing to bomb things to make sure that’s the case.”

Beyond that dynamic, there was also the startling July 17 attack on U.S. military sites in Jordan that killed three American soldiers. “The strike in Jordan was the game changer,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. It not only showed that Iran’s missile arsenal remained well stocked, he said, but also that Tehran’s intelligence capabilities were higher than previously believed.

“The entire Iranian strategy in this period has been aimed at making the United States understand that if there is another round of escalation, the scope and scale of Iranian response would be so much more devastating for the region and the global economy,” Mr. Vaez said.

Mr. Trump, he added, has never fully grasped the motivations of the Iranians, how they refuse to be bullied or cowed. Throughout both his current and previous term, Mr. Trump “is reluctant to learn the lesson” that aggressive tactics toward Iran have only hardened its position, Mr. Vaez said.

At the same time, Washington is grappling with depleted stores of munitions. Some military officials say their abilities to fight future conflicts — such as a so-called great-power war against China — could be hobbled by shortages that might take years to reverse, particularly of defensive weapons like Patriot missiles.

“The U.S. military options aren’t great, and it’s not simply reported munitions shortages,” said Farzan Sabet, an Iran analyst at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland.

“One, it’s not clear that the limited and time-bound military escalation Trump is willing to undertake at this point will be enough to change Iran’s calculus,” he said. “Two, it’s hard to imagine these options can degrade Iran’s missile and drone capacity, such that it cannot effectively close the Strait of Hormuz or further damage the Gulf’s critical and energy infrastructure.”

Emboldened, some well-known Iranian hard-liners mocked the dilemma the Trump administration seems to find itself in.

“If a strike is made on Iran,” Mr. Rezaei wrote in a response on X to Mr. Trump’s renewed threats in recent days, “we will return the entire region and its facilities to the Stone Age.”

When Mr. Trump said he was postponing an escalation, a prominent hard-line commentator, Seyed Mohammad Marandi, posted a picture of chicken tacos on his X account. It was a reference to a sarcastic acronym used by Mr. Trump’s critics: TACO, or “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

“Iran has not budged,” he wrote above it. Far from being closer to talks, some regional experts feel the two sides are further away than ever.

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