Transparency, But Make It Optional

The Epstein deadline, Congress on vacation, and a government allergic to sunlight

Good morning! Today is the legally mandated deadline for the release of the Epstein files, and in a move so subtle it practically came with jazz hands, Speaker Mike Johnson responded by sending the entire House of Representatives home. Congress was abruptly dismissed Wednesday night, clearing the building just in time for the Justice Department’s midnight obligation to release “all unclassified records” connected to Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and anyone named in their orbit. Nothing says confidence like empty hallways and unanswered phones.

Johnson has spent months slow-walking, stalling, and proceduralizing the Epstein issue into near-oblivion, delaying votes, keeping the House in recess, and doing everything short of flipping the breakers to avoid having Republicans physically present when the consequences arrive. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the quiet part out loud: view every political development this week through the lens of the Epstein deadline. The sudden cancellation of Friday’s session fits the pattern perfectly. If the files drop, Johnson won’t be there to answer questions. If they don’t, he won’t be there to explain why.

The files are only coming at all because Congress forced the issue. After months of resistance from the Trump administration, the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed the House 427–1 and cleared the Senate by unanimous consent. Trump signed it only once opposition became politically untenable after campaigning on releasing the files, then backtracking, then dismissing the entire affair as a “Democrat hoax,” then lashing out at his own supporters for refusing to let it go. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who once claimed an Epstein client list was “on her desk,” spent the summer insisting there was nothing more to release. Now she is legally required to produce the archive in searchable, downloadable form by midnight.

Whether what emerges will be complete is another matter. The Justice Department is allowed to withhold material identifying victims, containing child sexual abuse imagery, or deemed classified. It may also withhold records that could prejudice an ongoing investigation, including one Trump conveniently ordered last month targeting Epstein’s links to prominent Democrats. But the law also requires Bondi to publish an unclassified explanation for every redaction. For once, the excuses have to be itemized.

As the clock runs down, Democrats on the House oversight committee have been applying pressure the only way left: by releasing pieces of the Epstein estate themselves. Yesterday brought another tranche of photographs, undated, uncaptioned, and deliberately stripped of narrative framing, but deeply disturbing all the same. Several show lines from Lolita written across a woman’s body: on her chest, foot, neck, and spine. The quotations are unmistakable. So is the worldview they reflect.

Other images place Epstein alongside figures long rumored to orbit his world: Bill Gates posing with a woman whose face is redacted, Noam Chomsky seated with Epstein on a plane, appearances by Woody Allen, Steve Bannon, and New York Times columnist David Brooks. The committee has repeatedly emphasized that appearing in photos is not evidence of criminal wrongdoing, and that matters. But what the images document is access. Who moved freely, who was photographed, and who belonged in Epstein’s ecosystem.

The release also included images of Epstein’s U.S. passport and multiple foreign passports with identifying details redacted, along with a fragmentary text exchange referencing the procurement of young women, including mention of an 18-year-old from Russia and payment per girl. It reinforces what courts have already established: Epstein’s operation was organized, transactional, and international.

All of this lands on top of a history the government would prefer remain buried. Years ago, an FBI sting tied to Epstein’s network quietly collapsed without public accounting, evidence gathered, leads mapped, and then contained. That failure explains a great deal about what we’re seeing now: the frantic redaction scramble, the vague guidance given to DOJ attorneys, the fear of paper trails that don’t just implicate individuals but expose institutional decisions about what was pursued, what was narrowed, and what was allowed to stop.

Which brings us to the White House’s sudden announcement of a marijuana executive order, rolled out just as the Epstein deadline closed in. After years of punitive rhetoric, Trump abruptly discovered reform, or at least a headline that looked like one. The order is thin, largely symbolic, and carefully preserves federal discretion. It is not a policy shift; it’s another distraction. This is classic Trump counter-programming: flood the zone with a shiny, culture-war-adjacent story while trying to smother one he cannot control.

It works especially well when Congress is gone. With lawmakers sent home for Christmas, any remaining chance of preserving Affordable Care Act protections millions rely on quietly evaporates along with them. No hearings, no floor fights, and most definitely no urgency. Just another holiday recess while coverage protections, subsidies, and regulatory guardrails are left to wither offstage. Congress emptied. Files delayed, and photos leaked, and suddenly, a last-minute attempt at populism to change the subject, conveniently timed to ensure no one is around to stop anything else from breaking.

Zoom out far enough, and the pattern becomes unmistakable. Transparency is treated as a threat, and oversight is framed as persecution. Institutions are hollowed out, then blamed for failing. This same logic is playing out across democracies, fueled by fear campaigns that thrive on chaos and resentment.

An investigation by Al Jazeera lays that out with chilling clarity, tracing how Europe’s very real demographic crisis, aging populations, collapsing birth rates, shrinking workforces, has been deliberately weaponized by the far right. Immigration, which is economically necessary to keep entire systems functioning, is reframed as an existential threat through the “great replacement” conspiracy theory. This isn’t organic panic, it’s financed, amplified, and coordinated by American tech billionaires, dark-money networks, and MAGA-aligned strategists who don’t just oppose immigration, they oppose liberal democracy itself.

Steve Bannon wants to fracture the EU. Curtis Yarvin wants to end democracy altogether. Elon Musk wants to dismantle regulatory regimes that constrain tech power. Immigration panic is the accelerant du jour. The same contempt for democratic institutions driving attacks on Europe shows up here at home: in the sabotage of oversight, the dismissal of accountability, and the insistence that transparency itself is dangerous.

That institutional corrosion shows up in smaller, uglier ways too. In Wisconsin, a sitting judge was found guilty of obstruction for intervening in a federal immigration arrest inside her courtroom. Judge Hannah Dugan faces up to five years in prison for guiding an undocumented immigrant out a private exit after learning ICE agents were waiting to arrest him. Prosecutors called it obstruction. The defense argued she was following draft courthouse guidance and resisting government overreach. Both sides invoked “the rule of law.”

What the case really illustrates is how warped the system has become. When courthouses turn into enforcement traps, judges are forced into impossible positions. When immigration policy is designed to intimidate rather than administer justice, it drags courts into political warfare. The verdict will be held up as proof the system works, but it looks more like proof of how badly trust between institutions has eroded.

The speed of the response to the Brown University and MIT shootings only underscores how selectively this country chooses to act. Within hours of the suspect being identified as a Portuguese national, Trump suspended the diversity green card lottery program that had allowed him to immigrate legally years earlier. No hearings, data, and certainly no facts. Just an immediate knee jerk policy strike aimed squarely at immigration, even though the suspect entered the U.S. lawfully, passed vetting, lived here for years, and used guns that were readily available here. The message was unmistakable: when a mass shooting can be blamed on an immigrant, action is swift. When it’s carried out by a U.S. citizen, paralysis sets in.

This is the familiar choreography. Gun violence committed by “regular Americans” produces thoughts, prayers, and an NRA-shaped shrug. Gun violence that can be folded into a xenophobic narrative becomes grounds for sweeping immigration crackdowns, even when the policy being dismantled is a congressionally created lottery used by a tiny number of people and overwhelmingly by applicants from underrepresented countries. The diversity visa program issues 50,000 green cards a year out of nearly 20 million applicants, with Portuguese citizens receiving just a handful.

Trump’s move has nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with narrative control. He has long opposed legal immigration pathways, and tragedy simply provides the excuse. We’ve seen this before: an Afghan suspect, followed by sweeping restrictions on Afghan immigration; now Brown and MIT, followed by the suspension of a lawful visa program. Guns remain untouched, access remains unchanged, and accountability remains theoretical.

It’s worth noting how other democracies respond to crisis. After a mass shooting at Bondi Beach, Australia didn’t offer thoughts and prayers or stage a culture war. It announced the largest gun buyback in thirty years, tightened licensing laws, capped firearm ownership, and declared a national day of reflection for the victims. No “our hearts go out to the victims” melodrama, and no gun rights legislative paralysis. Just governance.

By midnight, the Epstein files are supposed to be released. What arrives, and what doesn’t, will tell us far more than any press conference ever could. Not just about Jeffrey Epstein, but about who still believes the rules don’t apply to them, and how far institutions will bend to protect power from sunlight.

Marz and I are hunkered down between intermittent power outages and wind gusts that keep trying to push the car into a different zip code, having survived our final major gift run before the family arrives. I’ll keep doing my best to stay alert to the shenanigans in DC, but if our dispatches arrive a little late, feel free to blame the weather and the season. Stay happy, healthy and safe!