|
 |
Thanks for being patient with me while I spent time with our daughter this week. I know I’ve answered fewer of your questions than usual, and I apologize for that. Even though I was off in the Maine woods, we covered some important topics this week, and I want to make sure you didn’t miss out on any of them. With all eyes focused on the Trump/Epstein debacle that’s brewing inside of MAGA, I spent some time on those issues, but also covered developing issues you might not have seen elsewhere.
And, I got to spend some time with Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and The League of Women Voters’ Ann Luther. Shenna understands running elections and what it takes for people who believe in democracy to succeed. You won’t want to miss our podcast on Maine radio, which you can listen to on Apple or Spotify. Not only did I learn a lot, I was also inspired by the hard work, common sense, and intense belief in the importance of the right to vote that Mainers bring to the polls. There is also a bit about the importance of “pastry to the polls,” which I now believe is every bit as important as the Southern traditions of “souls to the polls.” It’s a good listen!
Democracy Forum 7/18/25: Constitutional Crisis: Will We Still Have Free and Fair Elections? Democracy Forum |
This week’s pieces on L’Affaire Epstein are here and here. We started with FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino’s feint about leaving DOJ if Pam Bondi didn’t resign. The former ultra right-wing podcaster clearly saw where the whole “nothing to see here” news out of DOJ on Epstein was headed, and decided to get ahead of it himself and throw Bondi to the wolves. Trump stood by Bondi, which is fairly remarkable for him, although there was reporting later in the week he was tiring of having to do so. As the furor in MAGA heated up (and Democrats joined in), we also evaluated the push for a special counsel. Trump clearly understood the lessons of Bill Clinton and White Water—there’s no telling what a special counsel might decide to look at once in place, and waived that one off too.
Trump landed on asking a federal judge to release “pertinent” grand jury transcripts, which, as we discussed, is a very narrow slice of the material in a case and likely to be limited to a summary witness or two who prosecutors brought in to indict the case. It’s unlikely those transcripts would reveal rich details about much of anything, let alone the relationship between Trump and Epstein. Your only goal as a prosecutor in this setting is to give the grand jury the information they need to vote to indict on the specific charges in front of them, and nothing more. And beyond that, given the legal standard used by judges to decide when secret grand jury material should be publicly released, it’s unlikely a judge would order that release. I wrote about how that works out strategically for Trump.
The news after I wrote that piece, was that the FBI put 1,000 personnel on 24-hour shifts to review about 100,000 Epstein-related records. It’s an unprecedented use of expensive overtime resources that takes away from other matters and smacks of politics and protecting the president, especially since there is no ongoing prosecution of Epstein here. And it’s telling that after that review, which presumably gave FBI, DOJ, and the White House a comprehensive picture of all of the information gathered during the investigation that resulted in Epstein’s indictment, the only thing Trump was willing to release publicly was “pertinent” grand jury material. I’ve never been more curious.
But the week wasn’t just about Epstein. We took up three other incredibly important topics:
Why we should be concerned about Trump’s efforts to politicize the military,
Supreme Court reform, which we tackled in a Friday night Five Questions with Norm Ornstein, who offered some very specific advice, and,
Trump’s war on women. It’s a feature not a bug, and now a doctor in Tennessee has decided not to treat a pregnant woman who wanted to carry the baby to term. His reason? She was unmarried. How very pro-life. Women and the people who love them should already be preparing for the 2026 elections, because women’s lives are on the line in very real ways.
There were no chicken pictures this week since I was away, but I can home to a very judgmental hen who sat on my lap for 30 minutes this morning, demanding constant pets and pats, and would have stayed longer but for the fact that I had to get to work. It’s always something around here.
I hope you’ll use this week’s posts to stay up to speed and that you’ll share them widely—it’s going to take every last one of us to reset guardrails in Congress in the 2026 election. There will be nothing more important, and the time to start educating people around you is now. Thanks for being here with me at Civil Discourse, as we take on the challenges ahead!
We’re in this together,
Joyce
You're currently a free subscriber to Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance . For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.