Without knowing what horrors may lie in the Epstein Files, you can pretty clearly see it’s dividing Trump from elements of his MAGA base, as I explained at New York:
November 12 was a very busy day in the White House as Donald Trump’s congressional allies worked overtime to end the longest government shutdown in history. But it does not appear the president was spending any time burning up the phone lines to Congress to ensure the reopening of the government. Instead, he was worried about something unrelated: trying to talk House Republicans into removing their signatures from a discharge petition forcing a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a mostly Democratic-backed bill to make the Justice Department disgorge all its material on the late sex predator and his associations.
Trump spoke with one signatory, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who also met with Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel on the subject in the White House. She did not change her mind. Trump also tried to reach another, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who sent the president a message explaining why she, too, would turn down his blandishments, as the New York Times reported: “Ms. Mace, who is running for governor, wrote Mr. Trump a long explanation of her own history of sexual abuse and rape, and why it was impossible for her to change positions, according to a person familiar with her actions.”
And so from the White House’s point of view, the worst-case scenario happened despite Trump’s personal lobbying. When recently elected Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva was finally sworn in after a long and very suspicious delay, she quickly became the 218th signature on the discharge petition, and House Speaker Mike Johnson duly announced the chamber would vote on the Epstein Files bill next week.
This is really odd for multiple reasons.
First of all, one of the most important political stories of 2025 has been the abject subservience of congressional Republicans to Donald Trump. They’ve rubber-stamped nearly all of his appointees, even some they probably privately considered unqualified; devoted much of the year to developing and enacting a budget reconciliation bill that they officially labeled the “One Big Beautiful Act” to reflect Trump’s distinctive branding; stood by quietly as he and his underlings (at first DOGE honcho Elon Musk and then OMB director Russ Vought) obliterated congressional prerogatives in naked executive-branch power grabs; and regularly sang hymns of praise to the all-powerful leader. But the Epstein-files issue appears to be different. Politico reports that House Republicans expect “mass defections” on the bill forcing disclosure now that a vote cannot be avoided. That’s amazing in view of Trump’s oft-repeated claim that any Republicans interested in the Epstein-files “hoax” are “stupid,” or as he has most recently called them, “soft and weak.”
Second of all, Boebert and Mace are Trump loyalists of the highest order. Boebert always has been a MAGA stalwart. And after some earlier rifts with Trump, Mace has become a huge cheerleader for him, backing him over Nikki Haley in 2024 and receiving his endorsement for her own tough primary contest last year. Mace desperately needs and wants his endorsement in a multicandidate gubernatorial primary next year. That she spurned his request to back off the Epstein Files discharge petition speaks volumes about how important it is to her to maintain solidarity with Epstein’s victims right now. That seems to be the primary motive for Boebert as well, as the Times noted a couple of months ago:
“Ms. Boebert, who grew up moving around the country and living with different men her mother was dating, has been less vocal [than Mace] about her own experiences. But she has also alluded to abuse and trauma. In her memoir, Ms. Boebert wrote that one of the men she lived with for a time in Colorado when she was young was verbally and physically abusive to her mother.
“During her divorce last year, Ms. Boebert was also granted a temporary restraining order against her ex-husband, Jayson Boebert, after she said he was threatening to harm her and enter the family’s home without permission.”
Third of all, it’s important to remember that Epstein in particular, and the idea of a cabal of elite sex traffickers in general, are highly resonant topics for elements of the MAGA base. Boebert and a third Republican signatory of the Epstein-files discharge petition, Marjorie Taylor Greene, first came to Congress closely identified with the supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, in which Epstein and his global-elite friends are key figures. Indeed, as my colleague Charlotte Klein observed this summer, discussion of the Epstein files has for years served as a routine conservative dog whistle to QAnon folk:
“‘All of this gives more mainstream right-wing figures an opportunity to take advantage of some of that QAnon energy: They can use Epstein’s story as a way to nod to the QAnon theories of widespread Democratic child-sex trafficking and to bolster their own audiences,’ said Matthew Gertz of Media Matters. ‘You can run segments on it on Fox News in a way that you just can’t about QAnon, and so that makes it a much broader right-wing story.’”
Trump himself has often fed this particular beast, as Karen Tumulty reminds us in arguing that this is a “wedge issue” dividing the president from his otherwise adoring followers:
“Trump was stoking conspiracy theories about Epstein at least as far back as the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2015. Asked for his opinion of Bill Clinton, Trump replied, ‘Nice guy.’ Then he added: ‘Got a lot of problems coming up in my opinion with the famous island. With Jeffrey Epstein.’”
Interestingly enough, the president now seems to be going back to the idea that the Epstein Files isn’t a problem for him at all, as can be seen from a Truth Social post on November 14:
“The Democrats are doing everything in their withering power to push the Epstein Hoax again, despite the DOJ releasing 50,000 pages of documents, in order to deflect from all of their bad policies and losses, especially the SHUTDOWN EMBARRASSMENT, where their party is in total disarray, and has no idea what to do. Some Weak Republicans have fallen into their clutches because they are soft and foolish. Epstein was a Democrat, and he is the Democrat’s problem, not the Republican’s problem! Ask Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, and Larry Summers about Epstein, they know all about him, don’t waste your time with Trump. I have a Country to run!”
This doesn’t just beg, but scream the question: If this is a Democrat Problem, why not release the files like your base wants you to do?
This is an issue for him that he cannot wave or wish away.
A Democratic Alternative:
(1) Expand the private sector part of the retirement system by raising the maximums on 401Ks and IRAs, anb by going national with the Galveston plan (investment in conservative bank funds);
(2) Cut SS outflow by jumping the retirement age to 70 in the year 2025, shaving the top-level payment, and means testing all payments on a sliding scale;
(3) Replace the payroll tax with a flat tax on personal income from all sources with no ceiling; take the corporate share out of net profits not labor overhead.
The political result: (1) will appeal the free marketeers without getting a govt-run program in the stock market; (2) will be hard sell but will give Dems an image of decisive toughness; and (3) is simple tax justice.
This piece just firms up my opinion that Bush’s privatization scheme is dead in the water. This is my reasoning: One, he has had to use a huge amount of capital on Iraq as of late. Little is left to push this behemoth through Congress. Two, to finance the privatization Congress will have to raise the debt ceiling. The fiscal conservatives will not go for this and I think the public will outcry when they see the cost. Three, to quell conservatives (and maybe because the time is right) the issue of entitlements needs to be addressed. Certainly, this is a euphamism for cuts in social security and medicare and no one will like this.
I think the Demos can score much needed political capital in opposing the privatization plan. But as this piece aptly states, a cogent arguement with feasible alternatives needs to be crafted rather than the a “sky is falling” reactionary response.
Hey Ruy, how about some polling as to how the public feels about the increased public debt under the Bush administration, I haven’t heard anything about that in a while?
“If Social Security isn’t broken, the overall US retirement and pension system is and the public knows this. ”
Maybe part of the answer to your question is to define the problem. In what way is the retirement and pension system broken?
There was no compelling reason for the tax cuts, nor were they popular in opinion surveys, but they did them anyways. They’re very determined – but unless there is an equally determined opposition, they will get their way.
Democratic plan: First assure people’s basic retirement needs by keeping a system that invests in the most stable investment available, government bonds. Second, simplify the tax rules to encourage private savings and investments for retirement. Third, demand a Social Security Flat tax – tax all income.
Political plan: All out attack patterned after the Republican’s health care ambush. Attack the presidents motives, his rationality, and his math. Enforce party discipline. Make this the one issue that if you cross you’re out of the party.
Yes, there will be losses. But wouldn’t it have been better for the party to have kicked Zell Miller out?
We Need A Wage Policy
I think the central, domestic organizing principle of the Democratic Party should be to promote wage growth among the American workers. Real wages for median income workers have stagnated since the beginning of “Reganomics” almost 25 years ago, something I expect has never occurred before over such a long period of time. Just as Republicans chant “cut taxes, cut taxes” we should repeat “increase wages, increase wages.”
The math signifying the advantages to the middle class of wage growth over tax cuts is convincing. Take someone making $35,000 a year. For simplicity, let’s say he or she pays about $10,000 in taxes per year. A 10% tax cut equals a one time $1000 increase in such individual’s take home pay. But policies that generate a yearly real income growth rate of 3% mean that this individual will get at least a $1000 raise every year and the amount of raise will increase as his or her income increases. Moreover, while tax cuts are “paid for” by either cuts in programs that help the middle class or add to the defecit, which increases interest middle class individuals have to pay, extra wages do not have this negative budgetary effect.
So, how to raise wages? The best way that I can think of is through a tax incentive. For example, my understanding is that currently a business deducts one dollar of its income for every dollar it pays to its workers as a business expense. Why not give an “enhanced” write off for wage payments that represent growth above the rate of inflation, let’s say 1.5 dollars for every dollar paid to a worker as a “real” wage increase. Other ideas are more traditional. We need to constantly attempt to raise the minimum wage. Additionally, we need to advocate trade agreements that push up wages in foreign countries, a policy that helps by lessening the undercutting of our wages and by giving foreigner workers more money to buy our products.
While there may be some disagreement on specific policy proposals, I think wage growth should be the Democrats signature issue.
We need to decisively win the Social Security debate and then move on to bigger and better battles having demonstrated unequivocably that the Bush Administration was simply lying through its teeth on this issue. The general public is uneasily aware that it was lied to in the runup to Iraq, but is emotionally tied up with the message of patriotism in wartime/support the troops, they signed up and many feel that have to stay the course. But nobody enlisted in the War on Social Security. The Administration is publicly pushing growth numbers for 2005 (3.5%) that if plugged into the conventional model for Social Security (the Intermediate Cost alternative) totally fill the gap. The current model which produces the 2042 shortfall date is based on an economic model which predicted 2.7% growth for 2004 and 1.8% for 2005. Instead we are looking at 4.0% and 3.5%. Hello?
We just have to follow the numbers to create a crushing victory here.
2004 Social Security Trustees Report: Economic Assumptions under the Three Alternatives (http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR04/V_economic.html#wp159107) &
2004 Report: Trust Fund Ratios under the Three Alternatives (http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR04/II_project.html#wp106217)
And along the way establish the narrative: “They are lying to you. Again.”