Caution: File Hazard 🔥

Donald Trump's attempt to bury evidence related to Jeffrey Epstein just collided with a powerful political force: Epstein's victims.

• You know things are bad for MAGA when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) turns against President Donald Trump. In a break from her usual rabid loyalty, the Georgia firebrand stood outside the Capitol today and claimed that Trump’s Department of Justice “holds the truth” about who was involved with deceased child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

• Greene was flanked by powerful backup: Several survivors of Epstein’s abuse, who staged an emotional press event in Washington, D.C. to call for the release of the DOJ’s files on Epstein. Those are the very files Trump has been trying, with all his might, to keep secret. With their appearance, this group of women emerged as a new group of power players on Capitol Hill.

• “We are going to fight like hell for these women,” Greene said. “We have to fight like hell for those that are enduring sexual abuse and are living in a prison of shame.” Most Republicans don’t seem to feel the same way: A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is trying to force a vote on calling for the DOJ to release all Epstein files. But so far, not enough Republicans have signed on.

• The White House has harshly criticized this effort as “a very hostile act.” But the survivors and their lawyer, Bradley Edwards, are increasing the pressure. During the press conference, Edwards described how helpful Trump was when the pair spoke about Epstein in 2009. Then, something changed.

• “He was helping us. He didn’t treat this as a hoax,” Edwards said. “This about-face that occurred, none of us understand it…. It seems like, all of the sudden, somebody’s in his ear.”

Survivors are now compiling their own “Epstein list” of people involved with the financier, in a move designed to go around Trump’s do-nothing DOJ.

• Several of the survivors are reaching out to other victims to compile their own index of his co-conspirators, survivor Lisa Phillips told the crowd. “We know the names. Many of us were abused by them,” she added, saying that the public should “stay tuned for more details.”

• Trump sneered when asked about today’s press conference. “They’re trying to get people to talk about something that is totally irrelevant to the success that we’re having as a nation,” he said, during a meeting with Poland’s president in the White House. The Epstein debacle, he said, is a “Democratic hoax that never ends.”

• The survivors beg to differ. “Mr. President Donald J. Trump, I am a registered Republican — not that that matters, because this is not political,” survivor Haley Robson said. “However, I cordially invite you to the Capitol to meet me in person so you can understand this is not a hoax. We are real human beings. This is real trauma.”

Trump will have a tougher time making the Epstein drama go away now that these survivors have teamed up with one of MAGA’s most prominent firebreathers to confront him.

IMMORTAL KOMBAT

Donald Trump isn’t the only authoritarian with questions of mortality on his mind. His buddies in Russia, China and North Korea are gabbing about science-fiction-style ways to achieve ways to defeat death itself.

A rare discussion caught on a hot mic raises questions about whether those dictators might be pondering novel ways to extend human life. Maybe even ways to prolong their regimes past the normal boundaries of human existence? Is this what strongmen chat about behind closed doors?

The dialogue took place while China’s President Xi Jinping strolled alongside Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in Beijing, while attending a military parade.

“Biotechnology is continuously developing,” Putin’s translator was heard saying in Chinese, in audio caught by the state broadcaster. “Human organs can be continuously transplanted. The longer you live, the younger you become, and [you can] even achieve immortality.”

Xi’s response: “Some predict that in this century humans may live to 150 years old.”

Kim looked on with a toothy grin. Perhaps the 41-year-old was musing on how he might, just possibly, find a way to rule the Hermit Kingdom for another 109 years?

Or maybe not. After all, he brought his daughter — a 12-year-old girl believed to be named Ju Ae — with him to the event in Beijing. The move prompted speculation that Kim has begun preparing for her to take over from him.

I mean, perhaps *checks notes*... in the year 2134.

WHAT ELSE?

Florida will get rid of all vaccine mandates, Surgeon General Joseph Lapado announced. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” he said today. Around the same time, California, Oregon and Washington announced a “health alliance” to coordinate vaccine recommendations amid HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s attacks on vaccines. This is giving East Coast vs. West Coast rap beef.

On that note, more than 1,000 current and former HHS employees are calling on Kennedy to resign. “Kennedy's actions are compromising the health of this nation,” they wrote in a letter. The protest comes one day after the brainworm survivor penned an op-ed claiming that he’s restoring public trust in the CDC. (You’re better off reading this op-ed by Debra Houry, the CDC’s chief medical officer who resigned last week over Kennedy shenanigans.)

Can Trump stop Zohran Mamdani from becoming New York City’s mayor? Trump advisers have privately talked about giving Mayor Eric Adams and Republican challenger Curtis Sliwa positions in the administration to lower the democratic socialist’s chances against Andrew Cuomo. Not sure Trump’s blessing would help Cuomo, but the former governor sure is thirsty for it.

FBI Director Kash Patel argued that his recent $50,000 investment in Krispy Kreme stock raises “no current conflict.” But Patel bought the stock in May, shortly before the FBI indicated that it’s investigating a ransomware group that took credit for hacking the donut company. “His Krispy Kreme stock purchase came on a day the stock closed at $3.17 a share, one of its lowest points this decade,” NOTUS writes. There are way too many (donut) holes in this story, Kash!

Newsmax is suing Fox News, accusing the right-leaning outlet of suppressing other right-leaning outlets. Oh no, the girls are fighting!!!

Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar praised the Trump administration’s deadly strike on a Venezuelan drug boat. “I have no sympathy for traffickers; the U.S. military should kill them all violently,” she said. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the drugs may have been headed to that country.

Light at the End of the Email…

A grand jury refused to indict two more people, in another stunning rebuke of the Department of Justice’s crackdown in Washington, D.C. In the past week, grand juries have refused to indict people on at least four occasions: “Not only have I never heard of this happening, I’ve never heard of a prosecutor who’s heard of this happening,” former federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou said.

Paintings are popping up around D.C. depicting Trump officials being hit by a sandwich, in reference to the infamous Sandwich Slinger who threw a Subway footlong at a federal agent. I never thought I could get so much joy out of a Stephen Miller painting.

A federal appeals court shot down Trump’s attempts to deport Venezuelan migrants under the centuries-old Alien Enemies Act. Turns out you can’t use obscure wartime powers to deport innocent people!

The judicial slapdowns keep comin’! Another federal appeals court rejected Trump’s bid to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission who was appointed under the Biden administration. Turns out Trump can’t fire some people just because he doesn’t like them!

Hundreds of Indonesian women took to the streets of Jakarta to protest lawmakers’ benefits and police brutality in the country. They brandished brooms, which one group said symbolized the need to “sweep [away] the state’s dirt ... and the repressiveness of security forces.”

A sumo wrestler hoisted Eric Trump into the air and carried outside the ring, after the scrawny blonde New York City boy miserably failed to budge the nearly nude man. Is this what rich people do for fun?