‘They’re Delusional If They Think This Is Going to Go Away’

Jeffrey Epstein’s victims began the day believing they might finally get something they’d been requesting for years: a direct conversation with the nation’s top law-enforcement official before the Justice Department made public a full trove of long-buried documents and photos. The release of the Epstein files, as the department’s hundreds of thousands of investigative materials have come to be known, might finally provide clarity on what the government knew about Epstein’s sex-trafficking scheme and when it knew it. The victims sat by their phones waiting anxiously—but also, they told me,…

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This politician is still going strong at 75 years old

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) could be called a renaissance man of Congress. He’s been a successful businessman, ambassador, philanthropist, civic booster and elected official at the state and tfederal levels. A life-long learner, he’s also been a regular guest on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin, and joined Tom for a final interview. Interview transcript: Tom Temin Congressman Beyer, good to have you back. Don Beyer Thank you, Tom, very much. And I get a lot of lifelong learning on your show. Tom Temin Well, I appreciate that very much.…

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What Going ‘Wild on Health’ Looks Like

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the bear-fondling, gravel-voiced Camelot scion, is President-Elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, where presumably he will “go wild on health,” to quote Trump. His nomination has raised concerns among public-health experts because many of Kennedy’s views on health are, well, wild. To be sure, among Kennedy’s battier ideas are a few reasonable ones, such as reducing obesity and cracking down on direct-to-consumer drug commercials and conflicts of interest among researchers. But these are eclipsed by some troubling ones, such…

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‘She’s Going to Be Famous for a Long Time’

For many judicial nominees, a Senate confirmation hearing is one of life’s most grueling experiences—an hours-long job interview led by lawmakers who are trying to get them to face-plant on national television. Not for Aileen Cannon. When the federal judge who will oversee former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial testified in 2020, the Senate Judiciary Committee didn’t go easy on her so much as they ignored her. Cannon, then a 39-year-old prosecutor, appeared on Zoom alongside four other nominees, her face framed by a wall of diplomas on one side…

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What’s Really Going On With the Crime Rate?

Turn on a television in any state with a competitive Senate or gubernatorial race, and you’ll see that the criminal-justice reform agenda is under constant attack. Republicans are pinning higher crime rates on Democrats who have expressed sympathy for almost any aspect of the movement to confront racial inequities in the criminal-justice system. In New York, a conservative super PAC opposing Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul is slamming her for defending “the state’s disastrous cashless bail experiment” and refusing to “remove liberal prosecutors, like [Manhattan’s] Alvin Bragg, who too often downgrade…

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