For One Day at Least, Long Live the King
King Charles III shows us—but, really, congressional Republicans—what actual accountability looks like when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein.
Donald Trump had an announcement for Senate Republicans last night: It’s time to nuke the filibuster.
“BECAUSE OF THE FACT THAT THE DEMOCRATS HAVE GONE STONE COLD ‘CRAZY,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social last night, “THE CHOICE IS CLEAR—INITIATE THE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION,’ GET RID OF THE FILIBUSTER AND, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
In a follow-up post, Trump correctly noted that most Senate Democrats would have happily jettisoned the filibuster—the longstanding Senate convention that requires sixty votes to pass most legislation—years ago, if they hadn’t been blocked by then-Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Still, it’s a move Senate Republicans have fiercely opposed for years even as Trump, well before this latest episode, said they should do it. In recent weeks, they’ve demonstrated a certain amount of backbone when it comes to Trump telling them how to do the procedural parts of their jobs. But this command is a significant escalation in that department. We’ll see how they respond. Happy Friday.
Yes, King!
by William Kristol
I am no longer a proud Republican. But like almost all Americans I remain a proud republican. Indeed, I’m more convinced now than ever before that, as Federalist No. 39 put it, “the general form and aspect” of our government ought to be “strictly republican.” As James Madison explained:
It is evident that no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the Revolution; or with that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.
So: No Kings! Not then! Not now!
But you can be a good republican and still give a foreign king credit where credit is due. So let me offer an American tip of the hat to King Charles III. As you probably know, yesterday Charles stripped his brother Andrew of the title of prince—and also of the titles His Royal Highness, the Duke of York, Earl of Inverness, and Baron Killyleagh. The king also evicted Andrew from the Royal Lodge near Windsor Castle.
This belated but just act was prompted by the publication of the posthumous memoir, Nobody’s Girl, by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, who took her own life earlier this year at age 41. It is a sadly posthumous victory for Giuffre, but it is a victory nonetheless. The lesson is that new evidence, or renewed attention to old evidence, about Epstein’s awful crimes can have an effect. As Giuffre’s brother, Skye Roberts, said, “Today, an ordinary American girl from an ordinary American family brought down a British prince with her truth and extraordinary courage.”
If only the truth and courage of this “ordinary American girl” could prevail here in the United States! It is humiliating that we are failing to live up to the example of our monarchical cousins across the Atlantic.
It’s too much to hope our current president will be moved by any appeal to what is right. But we do also have a legislative branch of the government as well. Yet the Speaker of the House continues to refuse to swear in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva more than five weeks after her election in Arizona’s 7th Congressional District. Speaker Johnson swore in two newly elected Republicans earlier this year during pro forma sessions. But he won’t swear in Grijalva during a pro forma session now.
Why? Because Grijalva would be the critical 218th signature on a discharge petition that would force a House vote on the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, something Donald Trump opposes.
This is a disgrace. But it is a reminder how much Trump doesn’t want those files released. And it’s also a reminder that the Republican party is now a full co-conspirator in the coverup. Epstein has become a Republican problem, not simply a Trump problem.
There are so many instances of Republican complicity in the Trump administration’s authoritarianism that it can be a challenge to keep attention on Republican complicity in covering up Epstein’s crimes. But it’s all of a piece. The Trump administration is committed across the board to these practices: No Accountability. No Truth. No Justice. They have applied these practices to U.S. military actions, to the administration of the Department of Justice, to the executive’s expenditure of appropriate funds—and to the release of the Epstein files.
Could the example of the British monarch jolt Republicans free from their pathetic servility to their king, Donald Trump? Could King Charles the Third shame Mike Johnson the First into action? Or have we fallen so far from the republican spirit of the nation’s founding that we cannot now even live up to the standard of a British king?
The Rot at the Top
by Andrew Egger
Writing in False Flag yesterday about Tucker Carlson’s extended friendly interview with fashy wonderboy Nick Fuentes,1 our Will Sommer stated a simple truth: “The right has no immune system against hatemongers and grifters.”
Many people in today’s institutional Republican spaces don’t agree with the hate-drenched views espoused by the likes of Fuentes. But the incentives of the political ecosystem have become so perverse that it’s become risky to express these disagreements out loud—lest you open yourself to accusations of being a RINO cuck who would team up with libs against a fellow member of the right.
A few hours after Will’s piece was published, we got perhaps the most staggering demonstration of this fact to date. Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, cut a straight-to-camera video offering a ringing defense of Carlson. Heritage hadn’t become “the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement,” Roberts said, “by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians.” Carlson, he said, was under attack from “the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda.” This “venomous coalition,” Roberts said, was “sowing division.”2
“Most importantly, the American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right,” Roberts went on. “I disagree with and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says. But canceling him is not the answer either. When we disagree with a person’s thoughts and opinions, we challenge those ideas in debate. And we have seen success in this approach as we continue to dismantle the vile ideas of the left.”
The sleight of hand here is obvious. Roberts spares a single half-sentence towards putting some distance between himself and Fuentes, without elaborating on which of the young white nationalist’s views he disagrees with. All language of moral condemnation is saved for the left—and for Carlson and Fuentes’ critics on the right, who are apparently supposed to consider Carlson and Fuentes “friends” even when Carlson and Fuentes plainly do not return the favor.
All of this is revolting. But what’s particularly interesting is why Roberts felt the need to weigh in at all. He didn’t express these sentiments immediately after the Tucker-Fuentes interview, after all. Instead, he only went to camera after eagle-eyed sleuths online noted that Heritage had quietly taken down a Carlson sponsorship page on their website after that interview aired.
This revelation put Roberts on the spot. Ideally, he would have been able to take what one might call the Mike Johnson approach to the whole controversy: Say nothing in public and, if asked, lie that you haven’t seen anything about it. But being caught in flagrante delicto scrubbing a Tucker quote amid the fracas opened Heritage to MAGA accusations of intolerable squishiness, virtue-signaling, and a generally lib way of looking at the world.
So Roberts did what Republicans have been doing for a decade now. Faced with a choice he’d have preferred not to make at all, he resigned himself to wallowing in the muck. You have to wonder if he ever thought it would come to this—if he imagined that a career in professional conservatism would ever require tiptoeing around the sneering bigotry of a Gen-Z nihilist livestreamer; if he contemplated that the responsibilities of taking over a once well-regarded conservative think tank would include looking the other way as antisemitism took root in that movement. Either way, it’s plain he’s made his peace with it. The folks who haven’t are long gone.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Why is the Trump Administration Purging Our Military’s Best? GEN. MARK HERTLING joins BILL KRISTOL on Bulwark Takes to discuss the wave of senior military officers forced out under Trump, the redeployment of forces toward Venezuela, and growing signs of unlawful or politically driven military actions that threaten alliances, strategy, and the rule of law.
Trump’s Targeting of ‘Narcoterrorists’ Is a Crime in Itself… Shoot first, ask questions when? MONA CHAREN has questions.
‘Bugonia’ Review… Mean-spirited, but in the sort of way we all kinda-sorta deserve, reviews SONNY BUNCH.
An International Folk-Horror Double Feature… The Japanese and British isles bring us Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees and The Appointment—terrific but obscure films that make for great Halloween viewing, writes BILL RYAN.
Quick Hits
THE SNAP CLIFF: Will food stamps go out tomorrow? The Department of Agriculture has said it has run out of money to send out the next tranche of benefits to the millions of households that rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, beginning November 1. But a coalition of states sued the Department this week, arguing USDA should dip into a multibillion-dollar emergency SNAP fund to keep at least partial benefits flowing. At a hearing yesterday, a federal judge in Boston seemed to agree. Here’s CNN:
“Right now, Congress has put money in an emergency fund for an emergency, and it’s hard for me to understand how this isn’t an emergency when there’s no money and a lot of people are needing their SNAP benefits,” US District Judge Indira Talwani said near the end of a hearing, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the formal name for food stamps.
Though the judge’s options vary, one possibility is that she issues an emergency order that essentially compels the administration to tap into the emergency funds. While she indicated from the bench that she was likely to issue a ruling favorable to a group of Democratic attorneys general and governors who sued the administration earlier this week, she acknowledged that benefits, which should start being sent to recipients on November 1, will be delayed.
Even if the White House is compelled to tap the fund in question, the result will be only a temporary reprieve. The $5.3 billion in the fund isn’t sufficient to cover even a single month of typical SNAP costs. If it is tapped and depleted, it’s hard to envision another funding source appearing to backstop SNAP until the Senate reaches a deal to end the shutdown—the well really will have run dry.
SYMBOLIC OBJECTION: The Senate just keeps passing resolutions disapproving of Donald Trump’s tariffs. Yesterday was the third time this week. This time, lawmakers voted to end the “national emergency” Trump declared earlier this year in order to slap massive “reciprocal” tariffs (his term—they were anything but) on pretty much every country. ABC News reports:
In a 51 to 47 vote, four Republicans joined Democrats to approve the resolution. Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky, along with Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, supported the resolution. It was not subject to the 60-vote threshold needed for most legislation, requiring just a simple majority.
The resolution is largely symbolic since it almost certainly won’t be taken up by the House, where GOP leaders have taken steps to prevent lawmakers from forcing a vote on the president’s tariffs. Senate Democrats forced a vote on the resolution, which was led by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, by bypassing GOP leadership using a provision of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the law that the president invoked to impose the tariffs.
It’s still amazing to contemplate that the House has deliberately gimped its own lawmaking ability this year by voting to prevent themselves from voting on any Trump tariff declarations until the end of January 2026. With the tariff pain continuing to mount, we’ll see how they feel about it then.
DEPORTED BY MISTAKE: The Trump administration is deporting people as fast as it can get its hands on them, and the pressure from the higher-ups is always the same: more, more, faster, faster. So it’s little surprise they’re making major errors here and there: detaining people they shouldn’t, deporting people they shouldn’t. A new New York Times profile goes deep on one such case: Alejandro Juarez, an illegal immigrant who worked at a Trump golf club in New York for a decade, who was deported to Mexico by mistake before his immigration hearing:
As U.S. immigration officials unshackled restraints bound to his arms and legs, Mr. Juarez, 39, pleaded with them. He told them he was never given a chance to contest his deportation in front of an immigration judge after being detained in New York City five days before.
The federal agents told him that they were just following orders. They handed him a small bag with his phone, belt and documents, and forced him to cross the bridge. He thought of the wife and four children, whom he was leaving behind. After a five-minute walk back to his homeland, a highway sign greeted him: “Bienvenidos.” . . .
Back in the United States, officials at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency were just beginning to realize the brewing problem on their hands: They had mistakenly expelled Mr. Juarez from the United States, placing him on the wrong plane and erroneously dispatching him across a port of entry to Mexico instead of sending him to a detention center in Arizona.
Their actions probably violated federal immigration laws, which entitle most immigrants facing deportation to a hearing before a judge—a hearing Mr. Juarez never had.
Cheap Shots
You know, the one in which Fuentes discussed the need to rid conservatism of “these Zionist Jews” and the country of “organized Jewry,” and Carlson tried to redirect the conversation to his own hatred of “Christian Zionists” instead.
You heard that right, folks: In Roberts’s view of the world, pledging to rid American politics of “organized Jewry” isn’t “sowing division”—but expressing concern about those who make such pledges is.
Great. Do it. Blow up the filibuster. I triple dog dare Republicans to own every bit of this . They think their plan is so great?!! Pass it. Take full credit. Let the voters see exactly what they got.
The fact that we have a lawfully elected representative who has not been sworn in because Mike Johnson knows Donald Trump is in the Epstein Files tells me all I need to know about how far the rot goes in the Republican Party.
"Many people in today’s institutional Republican spaces don’t agree with the hate-drenched views espoused by the likes of Fuentes."
You sure about that? I'm not.