Dear Weekend Jolter,
The louder the Epstein clamor gets, the clearer it is that elected officials hope to wield the scandal as a political cudgel — the same delusion, incidentally, that many have about government shutdowns.
"This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats," President Trump recently "truthed."
"Our Oversight investigation has Donald Trump panicked and desperate," California Representative Robert Garcia, the top Oversight Committee Democrat, countered.
One would hope genuine sympathy for Jeffrey Epstein's victims motivates the push for transparency. But congressional Democrats and the Trump administration seem interested at least as much in scoring points against one another — heedless of how the child sex predator traveled for years in elite circles and dirtied everyone in the process.
As Rich Lowry writes, Epstein was a "networker." He did not discriminate by party (only class). Which is why his crimes and connections make for a poor, ultimately uncontrollable, political weapon.
This week, after months of resistance, Trump was pressured into backing and ultimately signing legislation, which overwhelmingly cleared Congress, that compels the administration to release the so-called Epstein files. The vote was bipartisan, though the mini mutiny within the GOP that preceded it may have been an early effort to put some distance between members and Trump in response to shifting electoral winds.
That's the intraparty drama — the interparty conflict is nastier: Democrats had earlier released three emails in an eager attempt to tar the president. As James Lynch reported, "In one email, sent to author Michael Wolff in 2019, Epstein wrote, 'Of course [Trump] knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.'" (NR's editorial notes that this is cryptic, "but a very plausible interpretation is that it's confirmation of Trump's story that Epstein was recruiting girls from Mar-a-Lago, and the future presidential candidate told him to stop.") Not to be outdone, Trump directed his Justice Department to investigate prominent Democrats and donors linked to Epstein including Bill Clinton and Larry Summers, who is already facing scrutiny. This was an "overtly political task," Andrew McCarthy writes, and one wholly inappropriate for the DOJ to undertake — naturally, Attorney General Pam Bondi agreed to undertake it.
But, as Rich observes, the conspiracy has been in plain sight all along: "Some of the most privileged members of our society" embraced Epstein for years, seeing him as an important contact and source "for advice, for banter, for introductions, for information, and for donations."
Any political players who think they can direct the weapon of this scandal at a particular target are fooling themselves. Or, in the case of the Washington reality star with no television show, Jasmine Crockett, who smeared Republicans for taking donations from "somebody named Jeffrey Epstein" even though, at least in one case, it was an entirely different Jeffrey Epstein, trying to fool voters.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
Good start, keep going: Trump's Overdue Tariff Rollback
The Saudi sit-down was tough to watch: Trump Gets Cozy with the Saudis
Who is this person? The New Marjorie Taylor Greene
Happy anniversary, to us: National Review at 70
ARTICLES
Mark Antonio Wright: On the Ground in Dnipro, Ukraine, as the Russians Advance
Noah Rothman: The Party of Democracy Abandons Democracy
Andrew McCarthy: Lindsey Halligan's Botched Grand Jury Presentation Against Comey
Gregory W. Slayton: Russia Is at Hybrid War with NATO
Rebeccah Heinrichs: Christians Should Defend the Jewish People
Avik Roy: Now Is the Moment to Deregulate Obamacare
Jason Locasale: What 60 Minutes Got Wrong About Harvard and the Biomedical Research Enterprise
Jeffrey Blehar: The Sordid Olivia Nuzzi Saga, Explained
Haley Strack: Federal Judge Separates Male Inmates from Female Prison Population in Landmark Ruling
John Puri: Congress Quietly Strangles the Hemp Industry It Accidentally Created
Robert P. George: Why I Resigned from the Heritage Foundation Board
Dan McLaughlin: Don't Let Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Turn America Against People
Kristopher Kaliebe: Trans Activists Now Have Veto Power over Medical Education Courses
Brittany Bernstein: NYC College Student Government Blocked TPUSA Chapter After Kirk Assassination
Abigail Anthony: 'Gender-Affirming Care' Proponents Had a Chance to Pick Apart a Critical HHS Report. They Didn't Have Much to Say
John Gustavsson: How the EU Lost the East
Sarah Schutte: When It Comes to Abridged Books, Just Say No
CAPITAL MATTERS
Matthew Lau issues report cards: Mark Carney's Failing Grade
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Brian Allen comes to Connecticut for the Buckley Institute, and stays for the museums: A Day in New Haven
Armond White puts James Vanderbilt's film on trial: Nuremberg in the Age of Lawfare
Michael Brendan Dougherty checks in on country music and one of its biggest acts, whose new album treats city life with not just suspicion but hostility: Country Music Goes Apocalyptic
FROM THE NEW, JANUARY 2026 ISSUE OF NR
Philip Klein: Ted Cruz's Finest Hour
Charles C. W. Cooke: Pot Anarchy in the U.S.A.
Jim Geraghty: Our Indian Partner
James Rosen: My Encounter with Paul McCartney
Luther Ray Abel: Rubber Side Down
Tal Fortgang: An Insidious New Morality Is Giving License to Kill
Kayla Bartsch: Annette Kirk, Keeper of the Flame
HOPEFULLY YOUR DATA PLAN INCLUDES EXCERPTS
The new issue of NR is out, and the cover is all about American vice. As in gambling, drinking, doing drugs. But first, Phil Klein has an article on, and interview with, Ted Cruz, who is leading the fight against antisemitism from all sides:
Cruz is no stranger to being an object of derision, dating back to his days as a rookie senator leading a lonely crusade to defund Obamacare. But the vitriol directed at him now is for another reason: He is a Christian who has been a leading advocate for strong U.S.-Israeli ties and an indefatigable fighter against the scourge of antisemitism.
Other political leaders have spoken up in recent years against this worrisome trend, but Cruz has distinguished himself. At every opportunity, he raises the issue without being specifically asked. Unlike politicians who are willing to attack antisemitism only on the other political side, Cruz has been fighting it on all fronts.
Cruz recently told the Republican Jewish Coalition that he considered antisemitism a "poison," ominously observing, "In the last six months, I've seen more antisemitism on the right than I have in my entire life." Speaking to a Christians United for Israel audience about the rise of antisemitism among younger Evangelicals, he said, "I'm here to tell you the church is asleep right now."
While cynics may dismiss such remarks as pandering to specific audiences, Cruz has taken his message to other, less obvious forums. Though the Federalist Society's National Lawyers Convention was expecting him to speak about the First Amendment, he took the opportunity to highlight the antisemitism problem. He recalled George Washington's 1790 letter to the Jewish congregation in Newport, R.I., in which our first president wrote, "May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid." After reviewing examples of the recent uptick in antisemitism on the right, Cruz urged the room of influential conservative lawyers, "Every one of us has an obligation to stand up and say it is wrong." Unfortunately, he told the audience, many of his Republican colleagues who share his concerns are afraid to speak up.
"Ted Cruz is a righteous Gentile in that he's not just principled, he's courageous," Mark Levin tells me. Levin has been fighting the same fight as Cruz on talk radio and on Fox News Channel. "There are very few politicians" in either party "who are speaking out against what is the most pervasive and ubiquitous antisemitism that I've ever seen."
In an interview with Cruz, I ask him to explain why he is dedicating so much energy to this topic. "I think we are facing an existential crisis in the conservative movement," he says. In his telling, for over a decade, antisemitism grew within the Democratic Party, and fellow Democrats didn't condemn it because they thought it was confined to a small fringe. Now, it's reached the point where Democrats are lining up to celebrate the election of antisemitic socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City. Cruz is deeply concerned that Republicans may be consumed "by the same poison that destroyed the Democrat Party."
Mark Antonio Wright reports from Ukraine, giving a picture of what the daily struggle is like in the city of Dnipro:
The city of Dnipro itself is grim. I won't lie to you about that. From the far side of the river, you see rows and rows of massive grey apartment blocks. You see industrial buildings and decay. You see gaudy signs advertising karaoke and hookah and prepaid cellphone cards. The people are bundled up to keep out the cold. It's grey and gritty the way Detroit looks in mid-November.
And in Dnipro — this city of a million souls — you can see whole blocks with shattered windows and burnt-out buildings.
The night before we arrived, Dnipro had a bad night. Last night, the city was burning. The Russians launched ballistic missiles and Iranian-designed Shahed kamikaze drones at the city. Across the street from the Makarov National Youth Aerospace Education Center, the local public television station took a direct hit. The TV news truck is a burned-out wreck. Shattered glass crinkles underfoot. There's a smell of ash and burning rubber.
"Did the Russians intentionally aim for the TV station?" I ask Alex, a local journalist who can't be more than 25. "I do not know," he answers. "The Russians all the time hit us. They hit us every night."
"We have a five-minute warning — and then, Boom."
Here's how it works. Everyone in Ukraine has the Повітряна Тривога — Povitryana Tryvoha — Ajax Systems air-raid alert app downloaded on his smartphone. You input your current location, or allow it to geotrack you the way your Uber app works, and the system sounds the alarm when Ukrainian radar or intelligence gets word of an impending strike on your region. Mark Hamill, the man who played Luke Skywalker, narrates the alert. "Take cover!" Hamill tells you. Complacency can get you killed.
But people are tired. They are tired of getting hit and hit . . . and hit. Sometimes getting to a shelter means quickly dressing at 3 a.m. and hustling your kids out the door, into the cold, and down the block to the nearest bomb shelter. Sometimes you do this and nothing happens, and then you are tired and broken at work the next day. Sometimes you decide to take the risk — just this once — and stay in bed, and the result is what happened to Artem, who fled Donetsk in 2022 ahead of the full-scale Russian invasion and ended up with his wife and young daughter here, in Dnipro.
He lost his car and his house when the Russians stormed into the east. Now he has lost this new apartment as well. When the missile hit his building and blasted a hole four stories up, Artem and his family were trapped in their flat by an avalanche of rubble, which blocked the exits. He lived, thanks be to God. But the Russians are still advancing, and Artem is worried.
Have you been following the case of Representative Chuy García's seat? If not, Noah Rothman's got you, and it, covered:
If Democrats are the "party of democracy," as they so often say of themselves, the implication is that Republicans aren't. That's been the Democratic Party's inferable (sometimes explicit) self-conception since at least January 6, 2021, if not earlier. It is a label that Democrats struggle to earn when defending "democracy" conflicts with the demands of partisanship.
Representative Chuy García's sordid attempt to subvert democratic conventions has put the party's self-image to the test. So far, it's a test Democrats are failing.
García announced his intention to retire at the end of his fourth term in office on November 4, Election Day. But his announcement came just hours after the filing deadline to run for his Illinois seat in Congress had elapsed, blocking an open competition to succeed him. As it turns out, though, García's office had been covertly gathering signatures for his chief of staff, Patty García (no relation), to run for that seat. Her petition was filed just prior to the Monday deadline in what looks like a conspiracy to transfer García's seat to his hand-picked successor.
When Washington Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez objected to that undemocratic maneuver and sought her colleagues' consent to condemn it, it resulted in "chaos" among her "shocked and dismayed" Democratic colleagues. To survey the reaction to Gluesenkamp Perez's gesture in the direction of good governance from the loudest members of her caucus, you'd be forgiven for concluding the villains in this story were those who merely notice García's misdeed.
Representative Delia Ramirez rushed to the defense of García, "an unwavering fighter for our democracy and our communities." Indeed, she went so far as to imply that his detractors object only to the existence of "a strong progressive Latino leader," not his anti-democratic behavior.
In a guest column, Kristopher Kaliebe describes how activists were able to near-instantly suppress video courses he was featured in:
Who's afraid of medical evidence? Unfortunately, the "experts" who oversee continuing medical education. They're so terrified of transgender activists, they won't even let physicians listen to skeptical conversations about invasive and irreversible sex-change treatments for children.
On October 29, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education pressured Washington State University to stop offering seven video courses that review a range of topics concerning pediatric transgender medicine. I spoke in one of the videos, and while I'm well aware of the medical establishment's bias, I'm still shocked at how quickly the ACCME caved to activists.
The campaign against these continuing medical education courses — which any physician in the U.S. could take to maintain his or her license — went from zero to a hundred in less than a day. On the morning of the 29th, a transgender activist posted a blog article criticizing the courses. The blog attacked their creator, the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, for being a "hate group"; it also attacked Washington State University for hosting the courses for nationwide use. The blog then provided a link for readers to complain to the ACCME, which has the ultimate authority to decide what constitutes legitimate continuing medical education for physicians.
The ACCME's president, Dr. Graham McMahon, told the blog that his organization couldn't comment "on an activity we have not (yet) reviewed." Yet before the day was over, the ACCME had launched an investigation of the courses, and the university stopped offering them for credit. Physicians can no longer watch them through the school's continuing medical education portal. As far as I can tell, the ACCME has never before launched an investigation immediately after receiving complaints. While there's no telling how the ACCME will rule or when, its near-instantaneous decision to pressure Washington State University — the only university to offer the courses for continuing education — speaks volumes. There wasn't even enough time for a single person to view all seven videos, which can still be viewed on the SEGM website but not for credit.
But what, exactly, is in these courses? Two things that ought to be utterly unobjectionable in the context of medicine. First, a focus on scientific evidence. Second, earnest discussion about what that evidence means for patient care.
CODA
I've been listening to David Gilmour's first solo album, specifically its trio of top-notch instrumentals. "Raise My Rent" is probably the most recognizably Pink Floydish of the three, at times evocative of Animals, released around the same time.
Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend — the countdown to overstuffing ourselves begins . . .
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