Category: Politics

In breaking ranks to end the federal government shutdown this week, Nevada’s two Democratic senators showcased the shifting politics of the once solidly blue state, home to a diverse, working-class population that relies heavily on tourism.

In the national battle for party expansion, Republicans have the edge in the Silver State.

Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen joined an octet of members in the Senate Democratic Caucus who backed ending the shutdown. Their home state politics made their gambit an electoral calculation and an economic necessity, even as it angered some Nevada Democrats, according to interviews with more than a dozen political strategists, staffers and elected officials in the state.

“Nevada isn’t a blue state — it’s a swing state with a Democratic lean and a Republican trend line,” said Mike Noble, a pollster who focuses on the Southwest. “Both senators are reading the room, and brinksmanship doesn’t play well with the middle.”

The GOP advantage in Nevada has been building for several years. Republicans overtook Democrats in voter registration for the first time in nearly two decades this year, the result of a dedicated campaign from the Nevada Republican Party. Polls show GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo with a slight lead in his reelection bid, which will be one of the most competitive gubernatorial races next year. And Republicans are trying to flip Democrats’ three House seats in Nevada next year. In 2024, Donald Trump became the first Republican to win the state in 20 years, beating Kamala Harris by 3.1 points, while Rosen won reelection by just 1 point.

“Nevada has really tightened up,” said Robert Uithoven, a GOP strategist from the state .

Republicans and Democrats are fiercely courting Nevada’s working class. In 2024, Trump appealed to the state’s service, hospitality and construction industries with promises to end taxes on tips and overtime — both policies that were passed in the GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” And his campaign also made significant investment in reaching Latinos, who make up one in five registered voters.

Democrats, meanwhile, are hoping that the sluggish economy, GOP-backed healthcare cuts and aggressive deportations under Trump will help them win back anxious Nevadans.

“If you hear someone who is saying we are not going to tax your tips, that’s compelling,” said Washoe County Commission Chair Alexis Hill, who is running in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. “That economic message is consistently what we need to drive home as Democrats and get away from that corporate message.”

Nevada’s economy is tethered to the tourism industry, fueled by hourly-wage hospitality workers. The state has seen a massive downturn in travel this year after major post-pandemic increases, which — coupled with a sharp dropoff in construction jobs — sparked concern among economists and local officials, who largely gauge the health of the local economy on its tourism industry.

The state’s heavy reliance on federal aid also makes it more susceptible to partisan swings. The freeze on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program resulting from the government shutdown hurt the 15 percent of Nevadans who receive SNAP benefits, among the highest shares of any state. And recent disruptions around air travel significantly affected flights coming and going from Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. On Saturday, the airport recorded 198 flight delays.

Ted Pappageorge, the secretary-treasurer of the politically influential Culinary Union, praised the two senators for “clearly fighting for working-class folks,” but noted now is the time to “get the government going and get the benefits moving.”

“At the end of the day, it’s about who is going to be in the corner of working-class folks,” he said. “The Democrats’ ship has been wandering the last few years, and the voters have been very clear about that.”

Both Cortez Masto and Rosen signaled they sided with Republicans on ending the shutdown because of its severe effects on workers. Cortez Masto, who also voted to end the shutdown over a month ago, defended her recent vote by citing the pinch felt by small businesses and other workers. Rosen, meanwhile, said she hit a breaking point in recent days as she saw the effect of “fully withholding SNAP benefits and gutting our tourism industry by grinding air travel to a halt.”

“How do you stay the course when people are rummaging through the trash for food because Donald Trump took away their SNAP benefits?” said one Rosen aide, granted anonymity to speak openly. “At some point, you’re hurting the people you’re trying to help by not putting an end to the Trump cruelty.”

Rosen is up for reelection in 2030; Cortez Masto in 2028.

Scott Gavorsky, the GOP Elko County chair, predicted the senators would have dealt with blowback from voters had they prolonged the shutdown, especially in areas that have trended to the right, like in the rural region he represents that helped Lombardo flip the governorship in 2022. “Memories are long out here,” he said.

But the pair is already facing backlash. Some Nevada Democrats voiced frustration with their decision to break from the caucus after Democrats stuck together for over a month.

Democratic State Assemblymember Selena La Rue Hatch said she’s heard from many constituents in her swing district in Washoe County, which encompasses Reno, over their “concern about whether we are actually putting the brakes on a reckless authoritarian administration.”

“I have heard overwhelming shock and dismay and concern that we have now given up the fight, and what are we getting out of it?” she said.

A Democratic state party strategist, granted anonymity to speak freely, called the agreement with Republicans to vote on extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits at the heart of Democrats’ shutdown negotiations a bonus.

“At the end of the day it isn’t focused on political tactics, it’s focused on ending this pain,” the strategist said.

The tourism-dependent state experienced the nation’s highest unemployment rates during the 2008 recession and 2020 pandemic shutdown, after it had become one of the fastest-growing economies in the nation from 1970 to 2008.

Trump’s 2015 ascent came just in time to exploit Nevadans’ lingering pessimism, said Andrew Woods, the director of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Center for Business and Economic Research. Then, when Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak shut down Nevada’s casinos for 78 days during the 2020 pandemic, the state’s unemployment rate ballooned again, reaching 28 percent in April 2020.

“That sense of security was taken away,” Woods said. “It made the state purple.”

Republicans are making a big play in Nevada in next year’s midterms, hoping to flip three seats including the one held by Democrat Susie Lee, who represents many workers on the Las Vegas strip.

But Trump’s Nevada victory was fueled by economic dissatisfaction, and recent polling suggests Nevadans aren’t much more satisfied now. In an October poll from Noble Predictive Insights, 50 percent of respondents said the state is worse now than it was four years ago, and just 24 percent said it is better. Their top issues were affordable housing and inflation.

“The electorate is definitely more driven by economic anxiety than ideology these days,” said Mike Noble, the pollster.

​Politics

Democrats are trying to blunt the Republican advantage on the widely popular no-tax-on-tips policy as both parties look to strengthen their appeal to the working class ahead of the midterms.

The most intense of these battles is unfolding in Nevada, where five percent of workers earn tips, about double the national rate. Republicans are looking to flip three of the state’s four congressional districts — which include some regions where the tourism and gambling economy dominates. They have already spent millions on ads targeting Nevada Democrats for voting against the GOP megabill that included the tax deduction for tipped workers, which was pushed by President Donald Trump.

“Everyone knows that that was a massively influential message by the president,” said Robert Uithoven, a GOP strategist who is running the campaign of Lydia Dominguez, one of the Republicans vying for the party’s nomination to take on Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.). Uithoven noted that Trump won Lee’s district — which he said includes a large number of workers employed on the Vegas Strip — and carried the state.

Democrats, meanwhile, have blitzed through Las Vegas, Reno and the state’s other tourist hotspots, proclaiming that Republicans generated no such boon for tipped workers there.

“They’re going to see it, they’re going to feel it. They’re already feeling it,” Lee said in an interview with POLITICO. “It’s a raw deal for tipped earners, because it’s not permanent, and it’s so much smaller than what the wealthiest Americans got out of that bill.”

The skirmishing comes as both parties look to control the narrative on the affordability of groceries, housing and other staples, along with the state of household incomes — issues expected to have outsized influence on next year’s midterms.

Moreover, Republicans are trying to better market the omnibus legislation they passed this summer, which hasn’t proven as popular as they hoped. They are zeroing in on individual portions of the megabill that are broadly appealing to working-class voters, and deductions for tipped workers could score the party much-needed political gains after a crushing off-year election defeat last week.

“Nevadans know who put more money back in their pockets, and it wasn’t the Democrat frauds who are trying to claim credit,” said Christian Martinez, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP’s campaign arm. “Out of touch Democrats Steven Horsford, Dina Titus and Susie Lee can’t lie their way out of this one.”

Nevada Democrats bristle at Republicans’ characterization of them as followers — not leaders — on tax breaks for tipped workers. They note that the idea was a seminal part of their 2024 campaigns, and chastised their opponents for failing to back an alternative measure, which they said would have offered tipped workers more meaningful breaks, and the elimination of subminimum wages.

The bill fizzled out in Congress, which — according to Horsford, who drew up the measure — indicates the GOP’s efforts are disingenuous.

“My bill, the TIPS Act, does all the things that the tipped workers asked for because I asked them what they wanted included in the bill as I worked on it. That’s where the Republicans got their bill wrong from the beginning. They listened to one person, Donald Trump, and not the workers,” he said.

Titus, who has introduced legislation on the issue that would also raise the regular minimum wage, said: “Exempting tips from income taxes is only part of the solution to increasing the wages of tipped workers.”

The Democrats’ counteroffensive is part of a larger portrait Democrats have spent months drawing up in hopes of demonstrating that the GOP’s promise of beefier refund checks next filing season will be moot for the working class. They’ve pointed to several statistics: Over a third of tipped workersdo not make enough money to pay federal income taxes. Two in five tipped workersrely on Medicaid and other public assistance that the GOP has slashed or could let expire.

And they note that the tax break will lapse in three years unless Congress extends it, while the cuts to public benefits would be permanent.

“D.C. Republicans are giving temporary crumbs to working families,” said Lindsay Reilly, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s House campaign arm. “Meanwhile, millions of families are at risk of losing their health care, hundreds of hospitals could close, and countless Americans could lose their jobs — all to pay for permanent tax cuts for billionaires.”

Nevada Democrats also say Trump’s coarse diplomatic relations with Canada have eroded the state’s tourism economy, which is heavily dependent on Canadian visitation, and squandered any windfalls the GOP tax deduction on tips could generate.

“When you have less tourism there, there’s less cars to park, there’s less rooms to clean, there’s less tables to serve,” said Lee, who represents Nevada’s third district, which includes southern Las Vegas. “That’s less tipped income.”

There’s perhaps no group more important for the parties to win over on the issue in Nevada than Culinary Workers Union Local 226, which represents the state’s hospitality workers. But in the union’s eyes, both sides are flailing.

In late October, the union sent a letter to Treasury and the IRS rebuking the limitations of the tax cut in the GOP megabill and asking for the same things Democrats have pushed for: a permanent extension of the tip tax deduction that would also cover automatic gratuities and eliminate the subminimum wage. Neither the agencies nor congressional Republicans have indicated they’re willing to offer concessions since then, to the union’s frustration, said Ted Pappageorge, its secretary-treasurer.

But that shouldn’t serve as a reprieve for House Democrats, even if they earned the union’s endorsement last year, he continued.

“There has to be a real fight with the Democratic Party about a message that is very clear that we are going to tackle the cost of living and support working class, kitchen table voters,” Pappageorge said. “We’ve been very clear, we’re going to talk to Republicans, Democrats and independents, and we’re going to run our own members because we don’t see Democrats focusing on working class issues in a way that is going to win in the midterms.”

Samuel Benson contributed to this report.

​Politics

When the NFL in September 2025 announced that Bad Bunny would headline the next Super Bowl halftime show, it took only hours for the political outrage machine to roar to life.

The Puerto Rican performer, known for mixing pop stardom with outspoken politics, was swiftly recast by conservative influencers as the latest symbol of America’s “woke” decline.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joined the critics on conservative commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast.

“Well, they suck, and we’ll win,” she said, speaking of the NFL’s choice. “And they’re so weak, we’ll fix it.”

President Donald Trump called Bad Bunny’s selection “absolutely ridiculous” on the right-wing media outlet Newsmax. And far-right radio host and prominent conspiracy theorist Alex Jones fanned the flames of anti-NFL sentiment online. Hashtags like #BoycottBadBunny spread on the social platform X, where the performer was branded a “demonic Marxist” by right-wing influencers.

Then it was Bad Bunny’s turn. Hosting “Saturday Night Live,” he embraced the controversy, defending his heritage and answering his critics in Spanish before declaring, “If you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn.”

By the time NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell addressed the backlash, the outrage had already served its purpose. The story had become another front in the culture war between left and right, complete with nationalism, identity politics, media spectacle and performative anger.

As a researcher of propaganda, I’ve spent the past three years tracking these cycles of outrage across social platforms and partisan media, studying how they hijack the national conversation and spill into local politics. My recent book, ““Populism, Propaganda, and Political Extremism,” is guided by a single question: How much of our political outrage is really our own?

Outrage before the event

Culture wars have long shaped American politics, from battles over gun rights to disputes over prayer in schools, book bans and historical monuments.

Sociologist James Davison Hunter coined the term “culture wars” to describe a recurring struggle, not just over social issues but over “the meaning of America.” These battles once arose from spontaneous events that struck a cultural nerve. An American flag is set ablaze, and citizens quickly take sides as the political world responds in kind.

But today that order has reversed. Culture wars now begin in the political sector, where professional partisans introduce them into the public discourse, then watch them take hold. They’re marketed to media audiences as storylines, designed to spark outrage and turn disengaged voters into angry ones.

One clear sign that outrage is being manufactured is when the backlash begins long before the designated “controversial event” even occurs.

In 2022, American audiences were urged by conservative influencers to condemn Pixar’s film “Lightyear” months before it reached theaters. A same-sex kiss turned the film into a vessel for accusations of Hollywood’s “culture agenda.” Driven by partisan efforts, the outrage spread online, mixing with darker elements and eventually culminating in neo-Nazi protests outside Disney World.

This primed outrage appears across the political spectrum.

Last spring, when President Donald Trump announced a military parade in Washington, leading Democrats quickly framed it as an unmistakable show of authoritarianism. By the time the parade arrived months later, it was met with dueling “No Kings” demonstrations across the country.

And when HBO host Bill Maher said in March that he would be dining with Trump, the comedian faced a preemptive backlash, which escalated into vocal criticism from the political left before either of the men raised a fork.

Today, few things are marketed as aggressively as political anger, as seen in the recent firestorm against Bad Bunny. It’s promoted daily through podcasts, hashtags, memes and merchandise.

Increasingly, these fiery narratives originate not in politics but in popular culture, providing an enticing hook for stories about the left’s control over culture or the right’s claims to real America.

In recent months alone, outrage among America’s polarized political bases has flared over a Cracker Barrel logo change, “woke Superman,” Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle ad and, with Bad Bunny, the NFL’s Super Bowl performer.

Platforms like X and TikTok deliver the next diatribes, amplified by partisan influencers and spread by algorithms. From there, they become national stories, often marked by headlines promising the latest “liberal meltdown” or “MAGA tantrum.”

But manufactured outrage doesn’t stop at the national level. It surfaces in local politics, where these stories play out in protests and town halls.

The local echo

I wanted to understand how these narratives reach communities and how politically active citizens see themselves within this cycle. Over the past year, I interviewed liberal and conservative activists, beginning in my hometown, where opposing protesters have faced off every Saturday for two decades.

Their signs echo the same narratives that dominate national politics: warnings about the left’s “woke agenda” and charges of “Trump fascism.” When asked about the opposition, protesters reached for familiar caricatures. Conservatives often described the left as “radical” and “socialist,” while those on the left saw the right as “cultlike” and “extremist.”

Yet beneath the anger, both sides recognized something larger at play – the sense that outrage itself is being engineered. “The media constantly fan the flames of division for more views,” one protester said. Across the street, his counterpart agreed: “Politics is being pushed into previously nonpolitical areas.”

Both camps pointed to the media as the primary culprit, the force that “causes and benefits from the outrage.” A liberal activist observed, “Media tend to focus on whoever shouts the loudest.” A conservative demonstrator agreed: “I feel like the media promotes extreme idealists. The loudest voice gets the most coverage.”

“It’s been a crazy few years, moving further to the extremes, and tensions are always rising,” one protester reflected. “But I think people are realizing that now.”

Across the divide, protesters understood that they were participants in something larger than their weekly standoffs, a system that converts every political difference into a national spectacle. They saw it, resented it and yet couldn’t escape it.

That brings us back to Bad Bunny. The anger that Americans are encouraged to feel over his selection – or in defense of it – keeps the country locked in its corners. Studies show that as a result of these cycles, Americans on the left and right have developed an exaggerated sense of the other side’s hostility, exactly as some political demagogues intend.

It has created a split screen of the country, literally in the case of Bad Bunny. On Super Bowl night, there will be dueling halftime shows. On one screen, Bad Bunny will perform for approving viewers. On the other, the conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA will host its “All-American Halftime Show” for those intent on tuning Bad Bunny out.

Two screens. Two Americas.

Adam G. Klein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Protesters and UN security clash at climate summit in Brazil

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​Politics

House lawmakers released more than 20,000 pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein on Wednesday — and they include communications between the convicted sex offender and high-profile individuals in politics, media, Hollywood and foreign affairs.

One email shows Epstein communicating with a former White House counsel. Some showed offensive emails between Epstein and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Another offers insight into Epstein’s offer to help Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon.

The documents, a small batch released by Democrats and a larger one released by Republicans, also shed light on the disgraced financier’s private musings about Trump and to what extent Trump may have known about his criminal conduct.

The Trump administration pushed back on allegations of wrongdoing Wednesday, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt alleging Democrats “selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.” Trump, in a social media post, also accused Democrats of “trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects.”

Here are some of the most stunning revelations from the latest trove of documents.

Epstein and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers

Epstein’s inbox features several appearances by Larry Summers, a prominent economist who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations.

In one exchange, Summers shares snippets from a 2017 trip to Saudi Arabia, including a quip that the “general view” among Saudi officials was that “Donald is a clown, increasingly dangerous on foreign policy.”

In another email, Summers remarks that “I observed that half of the IQ In world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”

“I’m trying to figure why American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard, but hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank,” Summers added before directing Epstein: “DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”

Summers has attracted scrutiny for his rhetoric about women in the past, including a 2005 speech in which he cited a controversial theory that has been used to suppose that men are more prone to extremely high or low IQs than women as one reason women are underrepresented in science and engineering. The backlash generated by the speech contributed to Summers’ decision to step down as president of Harvard University in 2006.

A representative for Summers did not respond to a request for comment about the exchange.

Michael Wolff’s advice

In a series of emails dating back 10 years, Epstein discussed his predicament and his ties to Trump with author and journalist Michael Wolff.

Wolff on several occasions offered advice to Epstein regarding how he might best publicly navigate his relationship with Trump, who at the time was in the midst of his 2016 presidential campaign

In a 2015 email, Wolff offers advice on what to do if Trump was asked about his relationship with Epstein. Specifically, Epstein asked Wolff how Trump would respond to such a question.

“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff wrote of Trump in a 2015 email. “If [Trump] says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency.”

In a 2019 email to Wolff, Epstein wrote that “Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever. [O]f course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

The message appears to reference Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted Epstein co-conspirator currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for crimes connected to Epstein.

The following year, Epstein and several associates received word that Reuters was readying a story about a lawsuit filed against the disgraced financier and Trump over an alleged sexual assault from 1994.

“Well, I guess if there’s anybody who can wave thus [sic] away, it’s Donald,” Wolff wrote. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

Wolff’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Epstein and former White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler

Epstein’s inbox also features repeated appearances by another member of the Obama administration: former White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler.

In a 2018 exchange, Ruemmler — then a partner at law firm Latham & Watkins — discusses the criminal case against former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who admitted to conspiring with Trump to pay porn star Stormy Daniels hush money during a New York criminal investigation.

In one of the messages, Epstein exclaims: “you see, i know how dirty donald is. my guess is that non lawyers ny biz people have no idea. what it means to have your fixer flip.”

In a separate exchange, Ruemmler shared her apparent disdain for the people of New Jersey during an email about a planned road trip to New York.

“Think I am going to drive,” she wrote. “I will then stop to pee and get gas at a rest stop on the New Jersey turnpike, will observe all of the people there who are at least 100 pounds overweight, will have a mild panic attack as a result of the observation, and will then decide that I am not eating another bite of food for the rest of my life out of fear that I will end up like one of these people.”

Ruemmler did not respond to a request for comment. She is now the chief legal officer at Goldman Sachs, which declined to comment.

Epstein and Peter Thiel

In one 2018 exchange, Epstein asks PayPal founder Peter Thiel — an ally of Vice President JD Vance — if he was enjoying Los Angeles. Epstein also complimented Thiel on his “trump exaggerations, not lies.”

“Can’t complain thus far…,” Thiel answered, to which Epstein replied, “Dec visit me Caribbean.”

Epstein’s private island near St. Thomas in the Caribbean has long been the subject of speculation about which possible conspirators may have visited the island, which Epstein allegedly used to conceal his criminal behavior.

A spokesperson for Thiel said he never visited the island.

Epstein and Steve Bannon

In several of Epstein’s exchanges with business associates and friends, he boasts of his relationships to powerful figures in media, technology and foreign affairs.

In a 2018 exchange with Bannon, Epstein says “there are many leaders of countries we can organize for you to have one on ones” with if Bannon agreed to spend eight to 10 days in Europe.

“If you are going to play here, you’ll have to spend time, europe by remote doesn’t work,” Epstein wrote.

A representative for Bannon declined to comment.

Epstein and the Kremlin

Epstein apparently leaned on his foreign policy connections in at least one instance: in the lead-up to Trump’s 2018 bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Epstein suggested that Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s longtime foreign minister, seek his insights on Trump.

“I think you might suggest to putin that lavrov can get insight on talking to me,” Epstein wrote in an email to Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway who was leading the Council of Europe at the time.

During the exchange, Epstein said he had already spoken with Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, about Trump before Churkin died in 2017.

“Churkin was great,” Epstein wrote. “He understood trump after our conversations. it is not complex. he must be seen to get something its that simple.”

The Russian embassy did not respond to a request for comment.

Epstein and celebrities

The rotating cast of characters Epstein turned to for advice apparently also included the family of disgraced filmmaker Woody Allen.

In one email, Epstein shared a news article about James Woolsey, who led the CIA during the Clinton administration, joining Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign as an adviser with Soon-Yi Previn — Allen’s wife and the adopted daughter of actress Mia Farrow, whom Allen had a relationship with.

Previn replied that “Woody said it didn’t mean anything.”

Previn and Allen could not be reached for comment about the exchange.

Epstein and a well-known publicist

In 2011, Epstein wrote to Peggy Siegal, a prominent publicist who has worked in elite New York and Hollywood circles, with an ask: Could she reach out to media mogul Ariana Huffington to enlist her help in clearing his name?

In the exchange, Epstein and Siegal discuss “the girl who accused Prince Andrew” — an apparent reference to the late Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers who sued Prince Andrew in 2021 alleging he sexually assaulted her on several occasions. The prince was stripped of his titles and is now identified as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. He has long denied any accusations of sexual wrongdoing.

In one message, Epstein writes that Huffington — the co-founder of the Huffington Post, now HuffPost — “should champion the dangers of false allegations” and “send a reporter or reporters to investigate” Giuffre.

Epstein wrote of the idea: “the palace would love it, the girl in the photo, was nothing more than a telephone answerer,, she was never 15, according to her version she worked for trump, first at that age, at MAra lago.”

Siegal offered to send the message to Huffington on her own behalf if Epstein fixed the grammar in his message, although Huffington, who left HuffPost in 2016, told POLITICO she “was never contacted and never sent a reporter.”

A spokesperson for HuffPost also said that “After reaching out to current and former staff, to the best of our knowledge, no talk of this coverage ever made it to HuffPost.”

Siegal could not be reached for comment.

Epstein and controversial artist Andres Serrano

While several of the emails released Wednesday call attention to Epstein’s apparent ties to Trump, in one conversation, he appears to express doubt about supporting the then-candidate’s presidential campaign.

In the exchange from October 2016, Epstein discusses the election with artist Andres Serrano, whose controversial 1987 photograph “Piss Christ” — depicting a crucifix submerged in urine — attracted widespread condemnation.

Epstein wrote to Serrano that there was “no good choice” in the electi

on, to which Serrano replied “I was prepared to vote against Trump for all the right reasons but I’m so disgusted by the outrage over ‘grab them by the pussy’ that I may give him my sympathy vote.” Serrano was referencing the widely known Access Hollywood tape of Trump bragging about sexually abusing women.

“I’m sure Bill C said things, too,” Serrano added, in an apparent reference to former President Bill Clinton.

Serrano did not respond to a request for comment about the emails. Clinton has previously denied having a close relationship with Epstein and through spokespeople said he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.

Gregory Svirnovskiy, Cheyanne M. Daniels, Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein and Erica Orden contributed to this report.

CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to reflect that Mia Farrow and Woody Allen were not officially married.

​Politics

Rahm Emanuel believes Americans are being presented a “binary choice” between “defund the police” and President Donald Trump’s National Guard push.

So he’s offering an alternative.

As Democrats grapple with how to cut into one of Republicans’ core issues in the midterm elections next year, the former Chicago mayor plans to lay out his own approach to public safety at an event with police leaders in Washington on Wednesday. He plans to call for pairing community policing methods with tough-on-major-crime tactics and youth interventions. He said his strategy can be a model for cities and for fellow Democrats to combat the electoral narrative that they are weak on crime.

“Democrats a) should not be scared of it and b) should be proactive about what their agenda is,” Emanuel said in an interview Monday previewing his remarks.

A political operative who’s served three presidents and across levels of government, Emanuel is attempting to position himself at the forefront of his party’s conversation on how to tackle public safety as he weighs a White House bid in 2028. He told POLITICO he doesn’t have a “hard timeline” for that decision.

Emanuel will present his strategy at the University of Chicago Crime Lab’s Policing Leadership Academy event honoring graduates on Wednesday.

His approach includes combining more training in community policing with “tough action against hardened criminals and gang members,” as well as with youth programs like the mentoring initiatives he undertook as mayor. He also wants more enforcement of gun laws and efforts to intensify them.

He distilled his public-safety pitch into a slogan that harkens back to his time leading Chicago: “More cops on the beat, and getting kids, guns and gangs off the street.”

As mayor, Emanuel grappled with a surge in homicides and shootings, with the city reporting its deadliest year in two decades in 2016. Crime rates across major categories — murders, shootings, robberies and burglaries — declined over the next two years, which the city’s police department attributed to strengthened community partnerships and technological investments. And Emanuel poured millions in expanding youth mentoring and summer job programs to keep kids off the streets, initiatives that remain a point of pride.

He was also besieged by backlash to his handling of the 2014 murder of a Black teenager by a white cop — criticism that continued as he embarked on reforming Chicago’s police department and has persisted in his political career.

Emanuel drew national headlines for tangling with Trump over crime and immigration during the president’s first term. He would face stiff competition in that lane if he ran for the White House in 2028 — Democratic governors like Illinois’ JB Pritzker are fighting Trump’s National Guard incursions into their major cities.

Emanuel expressed opposition to Trump’s efforts to flood blue bastions with Guard troops and federal immigration officers, part of a two-pronged crackdown the president is pushing to boost Republicans in the midterms. Trump claims it has reduced crime. Several states and cities have sued over his Guard deployments to some success, with Illinois and Chicago currently battling the Trump administration before the Supreme Court.

Asked if there was anything effective about Trump’s strategy, Emanuel pointed to a “thread of positive” — that concentrating troops in one area of a city could give local law enforcement the ability to focus elsewhere.

But he stressed he was “not endorsing” that use of the Guard. “It’s a horrible idea to parachute in 100 to 200 people for a short duration of time who have no sense of a community or no sense of what policing is,” he said. “All the money you’re spending on the National Guard could be used to train 500 [local] officers.”

As Trump works to exploit public safety concerns in the midterms, Emanuel said Democrats have to get “comfortable” talking about crime. Democrats are broadly urging their party to go on the offense on the issue, bolstered by private polling that shows a mix of attacks on Republicans and showing steps Democrats are taking to reduce crime can swing voters in their direction.

Emanuel said Democrats should stop crouching behind falling crime statistics that don’t match voters’ perceptions. “Nobody can be complacent or comforted by a statistic,” he added.

He also repeatedly derided the “defund” slogan that criminal justice reformers and progressives popularized in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd but that Democrats have since abandoned. The rallying cry for police reform quickly became an anchor for the party as the GOP successfully argued against its absolutism. Since then, Democrats have worked to distance themselves from it, with Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed scrubbing his social media of mentions of it and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani backing away from his past embrace of it.

Republicans are nevertheless seizing on it as they work to make Mamdani their midterms foil and hammer Democrats as soft on crime. But Emanuel argued they won’t be able to make the association stick to candidates broadly after Mamdani moved away from the mantra.

Emanuel will have to contend with his own past on public safety as he contemplates a political comeback, a record that includes helping pass Clinton’s controversial 1994 crime bill and his bungled handling of Laquan McDonald’s murder in 2014.

Emanuel said he bears “responsibility” for how he handled McDonald’s case. He has forged a “very strong relationship” with McDonald’s great uncle, Chicago pastor Marvin Hunter, who supported Emanuel as ambassador to Japan during the Biden administration. The two keep in regular contact.

He also pointed to his 2021 Senate confirmation hearing, when he acknowledged he had underestimated the “distrust” of law enforcement among Black Chicagoans and failed to do enough to address it.

“The problems were deeper, farther and more ingrained than I fully appreciated. That’s on me,” Emanuel said Monday. “But I was determined to make the changes.”

​Politics

After years of steady decline in the number of people executed in the United States, there has been a sharp reversal in 2025.

So far this year, 41 people have been killed in 11 states, with five more executions scheduled before the end of the year.

If all the scheduled executions are carried out, that would make 2025 the year with the most executions since 2010, when 46 inmates were put to death. That year, Texas led the way with 17 executions, while Florida carried out only one.

But this year, the Sunshine State is leading the charge. Florida has executed 15 prisoners in 2025 – the most ever in a single year since 1976, when a brief national moratorium on the death penalty was lifted. Two of the five remaining executions scheduled for 2025 are set to happen in Florida. Texas and Alabama are tied for a distant second, with five executions each.

As someone who has studied the death penalty for decades, what is happening in Florida right now seems to me to be especially important. While in some ways the state is distinctive, in many others it is a microcosm of America’s death penalty system.

The history of the death penalty in Florida

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Florida carried out its first execution in 1827, 18 years before it became a state.

Almost 100 years later, in 1923, Florida replaced hanging with the electric chair as its method of execution. After a brief pause in the use of capital punishment in the 1970s, it was one of the first states to get back in the death penalty business.

In the 1990s, the state had several gruesome botched electrocutions. In three cases, the condemned man caught on fire before dying in the chair. To this day, the electric chair remains legal in Florida, though in 2000 the state Legislature enacted a law whereby prisoners may choose between the electric chair and lethal injection.

Over the years, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken the state to task for various constitutional defects in its death penalty laws and practices. In its 1982 decision in Enmund v. Florida, the court ruled that Florida could not use the death penalty to punish people who were minor participants in a crime that led to a murder. And in 2014, the Supreme Court found that Florida was unconstitutionally denying the kind of intellectual disability claims by people with low IQ scores that made them ineligible to be given death sentences.

But these rulings have not stopped the state from continuing to go its own way in death penalty cases. In 2020, the Florida Supreme Court ended the practice of having a court review capital sentences. This review was meant to ensure that those sentences met the U.S. Constitution’s requirements that they be meted out only in cases that truly warrant them and that they be proportional. To determine proportionality, the court undertaking such a review would compare the case in front of them with similar cases in the same jurisdiction in which the death penalty had been imposed.

Then in 2023, Florida enacted legislation ending the requirement of jury unanimity in death cases. Now, it takes only eight out of 12 jurors to send someone to death row. Only three other death penalty states do not require jury unanimity. In Missouri and Indiana, a judge may decide if the jury’s decision isn’t unanimous, and in Alabama, a 10-2 decision is sufficient.

Racial inequality on death row

As in the rest of the country, racial discrimination has long been a feature of Florida’s death penalty system.

Thirty-five percent of the 278 people currently on Florida’s death row are Black. But Black people make up only about 17% of Florida’s overall population.

This is actually lower than the approximately 40% of inmates on death row who are Black nationwide, despite the fact that Black people make up just 14% of the U.S. population.

Across the nation, 13 of the 41 inmates executed so far in 2025 have been Black or Latino men.

Florida leads the nation in the number of people – 30 – who have been sentenced to death only to be exonerated later. Of those, 57% were Black.

A record-setting year

Today, Florida has the second-largest death row population in the United States, with 256 inmates awaiting executions. Only California has more, with 580 inmates on death row, but it has had a moratorium on executions since 2006.

As Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis is responsible for issuing death warrants. In 2025, he has signed a record-setting 15 so far. That’s the most death warrants in the state in a single year since 2014, when Gov. Rick Scott signed off on putting eight people to death.

Though he is Catholic, DeSantis does not subscribe to the church’s staunch opposition to the death penalty. The Florida Catholic Conference of Bishops has been outspoken in taking him to task for his position on capital punishment and for presiding over an execution spree. But that has not stopped him.

Indeed, on Nov. 3, 2025, the governor said that capital punishment is “an appropriate punishment for the worst offenders.” He added that it could be a “strong deterrent” if the state carried out executions more quickly.

DeSantis has served as governor since 2019, and prior to 2025, he had signed nine death warrants. He says that he was focused on other priorities early in his term and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The governor, who is term limited, is in his second and last term. DeSantis’ critics allege that the recent uptick in executions is an attempt to garner attention and prove his tough-on-crime bona fides to a national audience.

Florida: Setting the trend, or bucking it?

The total number of executions in the U.S. went from a high of 98 executions in 1999 to a low of 11 in 2021. But that number has increased every year since.

While only one state, Indiana, has resumed executions after a long hiatus, no other state has increased its use of the death penalty as quickly as Florida has. Elsewhere, the common pattern of allowing people to languish on death row for decades, and in some states seemingly permanently, has held.

And although the problems that have long plagued Florida’s death penalty system remain unaddressed, it now stands alone in dramatically escalating its own pace of executions and is leading America to its own 2025 execution revival.

Read more stories from The Conversation about Florida.

Austin Sarat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation