So, “How Many Republicans Will Defy Trump and Vote to Release the Epstein Files?” is a question Julianne McShane addresses at Mother Jones. As McShane explains, “On Tuesday, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will finally vote on the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act. If passed, the bill would force the Department of Justice to release all unclassified records related to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of minors, including flight logs, names of people and entities with ties to Epstein, sealed settlements, and internal DOJ communications related to the case…The Tuesday vote—which was first reported by Politico on Friday, citing three anonymous sources—has been a long time coming. The bill was first introduced in the House by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) in July; in early September, he and co-sponsor Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) put forth a discharge petition to force the legislation out of the Rules Committee for a floor vote. Last week, when House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) finally swore in Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), they secured the last signature needed to make the legislation eligible for a vote…Now, the question is whether enough House Republicans will turn on President Donald Trump—who has been doing everything he can to tank the vote—to move the bill forward. Only four Republicans—Massie, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)—signed onto the discharge petition, and CNN reported that the White House held a meeting with Boebert in the Situation Room to pressure her to take her name off of it. (She declined.) Trump has called the effort to release the files “a Democrat hoax” but, confusingly, also ordered the DOJ on Friday to investigate Epstein’s ties to prominent Democrats…But at least some on the right appear undeterred. On ABC’s This Week on Sunday morning, Massie said he expects “a deluge of Republicans” to vote for the bill, adding, “There could be 100 or more.” (On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Khanna offered a more conservative estimate, of at least 40 Republicans he expects to vote in support of the bill.)” More here.

At Semafor, David Weigel writes that “Poll: As Trump loses ground with Latinos, Democrats still lag,” and explains: “New polling from the Latino polling group Equis finds that President Donald Trump has lost most of his 2024 gains with Latino voters, but Democrats haven’t won those voters back…The “pulse check” study of 2,000 registered voters, taken before the Nov. 4 elections, found 68% of Latino voters disapproving of how Republicans handled the “cost of living.”…That was higher than the share who disapproved of sending military units into cities (62%), but the support for Trump on both questions has plunged since last year. Yet only 45% of Latino voters viewed Democrats favorably…“What we’ve seen is this feeling of not knowing who is leading the party, and not visibly seeing leaders fighting against the Trump administration,” said Maria Isabel Di Franco Quiñonez, director of research at Equis. “I think that there will be so many opportunities in the coming months to fight on affordability.” Weigel shares the following chart:

If you think the transgender issue of the 2024 election was a one-time concern, for Democrats, you should read “What’s Next in the Transgender Wars” by Joseph Figliolia, who writes at The Dispatch: “For years, there has been a growing chorus arguing that, in an era where Americans are increasingly devoid of faith and transcendent meaning, our sublimated religious impulses have found a new home in our political sphere, turning every policy debate into a zero-sum game with existential stakes. Add to this our social media echo chambers and the algorithms that highlight outlier positions on the left and right, and it’s no wonder that we assume the worst about our political rivals… Nevertheless, few issue areas in our political discourse are as tense as the discourse surrounding transgender issues, particularly the medical transition of minors. Indeed, the discourse is likely to be reignited, with NPR recently reporting that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services plans to issue two proposed rules later this month which would prohibit Medicaid and CHIP reimbursements for pediatric medical interventions for dysphoric minors, and Medicaid and Medicare funding for any hospital that renders these practices…Ironically, both the “affirming” and what I’ll call the “restrictionist” camps are united by compassion for what they perceive as highly vulnerable and exploited groups, yet they diverge radically in how they define those groups and their needs. In the spirit of lowering the political temperature, I think it is useful to map out some of the basic assumptions underlying the affirming and restrictionist perspectives. Although years of research—and my own value judgments—have led me to conclude that the available evidence supports the restrictionist position, I view this exercise as a good-faith attempt to help readers, and each camp, better understand the nature of the debate…after the success of Trump’s “they/them” ad in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, some within the Democratic Party have suggested moderating on transgender issues… The recent success of Democrats like Zohran Mamdani in New York City—who promised to set aside $65 million for “affirming care”—has convinced some that the left should instead double down on transgender rights. Of course, New York is not representative of America. But the fact remains that the debate over pediatric medical transition is not going anywhere. The U.S. is functionally divided into “affirming” sanctuary states and states that prohibit physicians from treating dysphoric minors with medical interventions.” More here.

Check out “How To Win the Midterms: Yasmin Radjy on her New Campaign Initiative Ground Truth” by Jennifer Rubin ands Yasmin Radjy at The Contrarian. As Rubin and Radjy writes, “Yasmin Radjy, Executive Director of Swing Left, unveils their new initiative Ground Truth, a deep-canvassing strategy aimed at not only speaking to voters face-to-face, but implementing their feedback directly into a candidate’s policy proposals. As Radjy and Jen discuss voter frustration and distrust of a “broken system,” it becomes clear how vital a grassroots campaign for voters is needed to take back the House in 2026…Yasmin Radjy: Jen, you, as… I think this is the second time that you are one step ahead of us. You’re, like, you’re previewing what we will be sharing soon, so the answer is yes, we are going to definitely be sharing more seats very, very soon, but I think there’s a couple factors that we’re weighing, so I cannot wait to share the updated list with you. They won’t be super surprising. Right now, we are… we’ve got 14, defensive districts and 8 offensive districts. And we really… I think the balance that we have here is we’ve gotta focus on the most competitive districts, so we’re talking about Democrats who won their races by 3 percentage points or less. Republicans who, won their races that we need to defeat, by either 4 percentage points or less, or The Republican won by more, but Kamala Harris won the district, so people split their tickets, so districts like Mike Lawler’s, where people assume he’s a moderate, even though he’s not. So we’re starting there, and then there is a dynamic that I’m sure you’re familiar with, because so many of your listeners and viewers are the same folks who volunteer and give to Swing Left. That a lot of folks are feeling a level of, sort of, paralysis about giving to house races, volunteering for house races, because they’re like. there’s so many redistricting fights, it’s a whack-a-mole game, and so I can’t keep track, so I’m not gonna do anything. And so, what we will be sharing soon, and I can’t wait to share with you, is, first of all, what, how our California map has just changed with Prop 50, which is very exciting. Thank you to your home state, to my home state. But then also, to your point. we’ve got to get a little more aggressive, right? But we also, I think there is a risk when we are both riding high from these incredible wins in 2025, we are riding high on, you know, we won back so many voters that we lost in 2024, maybe everything is different, and I think our job is to stay really sort of steady, pragmatic. We consider ourselves the smart political friend of so many people who don’t know where to put their time, where their dollars, to make sure that we are winning the House. And there is a reality of the math is still the math. These are districts that are still… there’s only so many, and unfortunately it’s a shrinking number rather than a growing number, with a redistricting asterisk, of competitive races, and so we’ve got to stay the course.” More here.