Bill Kristol

“Garber, in a conversation with a faculty member, said the suggestion Harvard was open to paying $500 million is ‘false’ and claimed the figure was apparently leaked by White House officials…Garber said the University is treating academic freedom as nonnegotiable.”
www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

ICE crackdown imperils Afghans who aided U.S. war effort, lawyers say Advocates fear President Donald Trump’s ambitious deportation plan jeopardizes Afghan interpreters and other allies who worked for U.S. troops during the war.

A disgrace.

“One former interpreter for U.S. forces in Afghanistan was detained by immigration agents after he showed up for a routine green card appointment. A second was arrested just minutes after attending his first asylum hearing in San Diego.”

www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...

When one of your favorite writers reads your book 😍☺️🤯 and of course nails the summary.
@jvl.bsky.social
open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

NEW. U Mass Poll.

Trump approve/disapprove: 38%/58% (cf. April, 44/53).

How much have you read, seen, or heard about Jeffrey Epstein?
A lot 36%
Some 41%
Not much 19%
Nothing 4%.

Trump administration hiding important information on Epstein? Agree 63%. Disagree 15%.

www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zgf7d...

I’m against Alligator Alcatraz, but if anyone deserves to be there it’s Ghislaine Maxwell.

The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.

The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand:

$678M raised through those spam tactics

$282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies.

$11M to actual campaigns (1.6%)

The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.

If only some Democratic professionals were 1/10th as interested in fighting Trump as they apparently are in milking donors.

If you’re an immigrant with legal status who’s committed 0 crimes you can be sent to a torture prison where you’ll be raped and dehumanized.

If you’re old pals with Trump and ran a pedophile ring you get sent to a cushy minimum security prison despite being ineligible because you’re a sex offender.

Trump's Mar-a-Lago Spa Was Tailor-Made for Epstein The Trump Spa sought "young, attractive" college students to wear mini-skirts and "skin-tight" tops

You inspired me to dig up what we knew about Mar-a-Lago at the time.

Trump basically created a perfect hunting ground for Epstein and Maxwell:

“These and other unearthed details about Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein may address a question Trump hasn’t been asked: Why did Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell make Trump’s club one of the spots where they hunted for victims?”

open.substack.com/pub/jonathan...

Bulwark on Sunday with Bill Kristol YouTube video by The Bulwark

How much of a problem will the Epstein coverup be for Republicans over the August recess? And when they come back in September?

How split are the Senate Democrats on a government shutdown? What does Booker v. Klobuchar foretell?

@cheetah.bsky.social and I discuss.

www.youtube.com/live/bIlsGOE...

The Harder Right I spent 25 years in uniform, including four as a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point and two and a half more teaching economics and national security at West Point’s Department o...

“Every member of the Long Gray Line knows the Cadet Prayer. It asks that we ‘choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong’…The harder right is never easy. That’s the whole point.”

www.linkedin.com/pulse/harder...

To Live Inside a Lie Firing the top labor statistics official for doing the normal monthly jobs report is only the last attempt to force everyone else to abandon reality too

“'Reality,' wrote Philip K. Dick, 'is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.'”

www.arcdigital.media/p/to-live-in...

To Live Inside a Lie Firing the top labor statistics official for doing the normal monthly jobs report is only the last attempt to force everyone else to abandon reality too

"This is considered impolite to point out in many mainstream venues, but to be a Republican in good standing today, you have to believe, or at least go along with, an insane amount of lies."

www.arcdigital.media/p/to-live-in...

So much for any pretense of the rule of law.

BREAKING: Ghislaine Maxwell Moved to Club Fed — Just Like I Warned You The cover-up has begun. Ghislaine gets comfort — the victims get silence. And just like I warned you, the plan is unfolding in real time.

"Don’t let anyone tell you Maxwell was a bystander or just Epstein’s pawn. She was an active predator, a planner, a participant. A woman who used her privilege, her access, and her power to destroy young girls’ lives. And now they’re giving her comfort?"

open.substack.com/pub/levremem...

How Close Is America’s Fascist Moment? Maybe things aren’t as bad as they seem.

JVL: How Bad Is It?

"Maybe these small markers are just noise.

But also, if you’re standing on a beach and the water starts going out while birds and animals head inland, maybe there’s something coming."

open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

Democratic senators should ignore GOP attacks over not confirming Trump's nominees, and instead go on the offensive: Attack Republican senators for not voting to release the Epstein files. And urge voters to go to Republican senators' town halls or find them elsewhere to challenge them on this.

Stefan Zweig, in his memoirs (completed in 1942): "The herd instinct of the mob was not yet as offensively powerful in public life as it is today," and "toleration was not, as it is today, deplored as weakness and debility, but was praised as an ethical force."

Schumer’s response to this should be four words:

Release the Epstein Files.

The Uncle Luke interview adds to a growing body of evidence that Donald Trump brought underage girls to Mar-a-Lago under the rubric of modeling and/or pageants, particularly during the 1990s.

2/2 Trump Justice Department July 2020:

"The powerful testimony of these victims, who had strikingly similar experiences with Maxwell, together with documentary evidence and witness testimony, will conclusively establish that the defendant groomed the victims for sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein."

08-01-2025 (2) ⚡️ Special Edition AM IN THIS EDITION Thune, Schumer and WH struggle over nominations and rescissions SPECIAL EDITION Thune, Schumer and WH struggle over nominations and

Shouldn’t Senate Dems insist on a floor vote on adding a “Release the Epstein files” provision to any deal on nominees and appropriations/rescissions?

punchbowl.news?p=112559

The simple way Democrats should talk about Trump and Epstein | Peter Rothpletz The scandal has haunted the president in part because of a truth voters already feel: Republicans protect elites

"As Bill Kristol noted over the weekend: “[Richard Nixon] said of Watergate, ‘I gave them a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish.’ Trump may have given us a sword. We should use it.” Kristol is right, to a point."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“The memo suggests DHS pressure on the Defense Department to get the military much more involved in immigration enforcement, potential tension between top officials at both agencies over this imperative, and possible resistance to it by Pentagon officials…”

Trump’s Domestic Use of Military Set to Get Worse, Leaked Memo Shows A Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by TNR signals top-level discussions about a potential escalation of the Pentagon’s domestic anti-immigration role, and lays out new details.

“The memo lays out the need to persuade top Pentagon officials to get much more serious about using the military to combat illegal immigration—and not just at the border. It suggests that DHS is anticipating many more uses of the military in urban centers…”

newrepublic.com/article/1987...

If the good senator is concerned to avoid criminals, he’d better not visit the White House.

The firing of the BLS Commissioner, favorable treatment of Maxwell, intimidation of the universities—a notable week on the slide to a banana republic.

McEntarfer fired today as head of BLS. In his post announcing it (and embracing crazy conspiracy theories about jobs numbers), Trump complains about Powell. I’ve got to think Powell is next, and perhaps soon.

Trump Shoots the Messenger Firing the BLS Commissioner moves us into banana republic territory

“McEntarfer was a career civil servant…A widely respected economist, she was backed by four former BLS Commissioners when nominated, and was approved overwhelmingly by the Senate with 86 votes in favor and just eight against.”

open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni...