The News You Need on Thursday, May 21, 2026.
Female bodies are turned into objects in what is a tragic echo of Epstein’s own abuses, why Barney Frank mattered, Trump eyes Cuba invasion after setting up $1.8 billion white grievance fund.
The Epstein Files Tell A Story of Justice Denied
The Economist
Scott: Is the United States a nation controlled by a conspiracy of white male billionaire pedophiles? That sounds like a nutty conspiracy theory worthy of QAnon.
But since Donald Trump came to power, the conduct of his Department of Justice under Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche tallies perfectly with this assertion. The DOJ insists there is no crime to be found in those files.
Police and prosecutors outside the United States have already opened eleven prosecutions targeting individuals based on crimes that are documented in part by the DOJ files, with significant elements of the crimes—including the sexual abuse of minors, acts of torture, assault, the misuse of official information and espionage—occurring inside the United States.
Seemingly at Trump’s order, the US authorities are systematically refusing cooperation with the foreign prosecutions, even though they are conducted by close US allies with criminal justice systems that meet the highest standards. If America’s justice authorities continue to behave as they are now, belief in this conspiracy theory will solidify.
Indeed, it no longer seems objectively appropriate to call it a conspiracy theory.
This Economist essay was published earlier in the year, but developments in the past week—especially the sworn evidence of Howard Lutnick and the Palm Beach victims’ hearing—shows that its conclusions are correct.
Jeffrey Epstein appears to have been careful about mixing his prolific sexual abuse with his broad network of influence-peddling. We scored each of the 1.4 million emails by how relevant it was to his crimes. Around 1,500 threads belong to the most severe category—where, for instance, a correspondent made light of abusing Epstein’s “littlest girl”.
Nearly 60% of the emails were to people Epstein paid to make his life easier. Some handled the bureaucratic complications from his record as a sex offender. Others scrubbed the web of references to his plea bargain over child prostitution and soliciting in 2008. Because of this concealment, a number of Epstein’s social contacts who today protest that they did not grasp the extent of his crimes may be telling the truth.
The rest of the emails depict an astonishing network of influence—and favour—trading. Of the messages to his 500 main correspondents, excluding his own staff and business partners, almost 20% involve financiers; 10% scientists or doctors; 8% media, entertainment and public relations; and 6% each lawyers, politicians, academics and businesspeople. Although some of his contacts were from countries like Britain and Norway, the vast majority were American.
In the worst cases, some members of those networks appear to be implicated in sex trafficking. Others, such as the physicist Lawrence Krauss, may not be criminals, but deserve opprobrium for their moral failure. Still others, like the commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, have lied about relatively minor dealings with Epstein—even if no more damning evidence turns up, they should answer for their dishonesty. Some, such as the author J.K. Rowling, have been pilloried despite the evidence being that the contact was one-sided and came from him.
The files tend to mash these different categories together. That is partly because when Epstein makes allegations it is hard to know if he is lying. It is also because the DOJ’s haphazard redactions have shielded criminal abusers, revealed those who briefly came into Epstein’s orbit and too often exposed the identity of victims.
Redactions are essential to protect innocent victims. But blacked out faces and names of women and girls inadvertently exacerbate how these vast files, detailing the routine abuse of over 1,000 victims, tend to make the story all about the men. Female bodies are turned into objects in what is a tragic echo of Epstein’s own abuses.
The duty to those women and girls is to bring their abusers to justice without delay. It is reprehensible—and, indeed, hard to understand—why the DOJ has made so little progress filing charges over the past seven years. The delay is as baffling as the leniency of Epstein’s original plea bargain 18 years ago.
“Are you gay?” the reporter asked Barney Frank.
“Yeah, so what?” the Congressman replied
The New York Times
Charles: Barney Frank was brilliant, funny, scathing; the second openly gay man in Congress, and my good friend and comrade-in-arms for four decades. He was closer even longer to my brother Bob Kaiser.
He died in home hospice on Tuesday at the age of 86.
Joe and I cherished our lunches with him every summer in Ogunquit where he retired to live with his husband Jim Ready after serving 32 years in the House.
To me he was a hero of our movement because he was regularly voted the smartest AND the funniest member of Congress by its staff.
In The New York Times, Kit Seelye did a fine job of highlighting his many virtues:
A Harvard-trained lawyer, Mr. Frank bristled with intellectual firepower, acidic turns of phrase and a zest for verbal combat.
Referring to the Moral Majority, the conservative Christian organization that opposed abortion but also opposed child nutrition programs and day care, Mr. Frank said in 1981: “From their perspective, life begins at conception and ends at birth.” Of the flawed intelligence behind the US-led invasion of Iraq that led to nearly a decade of combat, he said the problem “is not so much the intelligence as the stupidity.”
In Washingtonian magazine’s annual poll of Capitol Hill staffers, he was frequently voted the “brainiest,” “funniest” and “most eloquent” member of the House.
Despite his abrasive manner and his inability to suffer fools, he served the purposes of Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, who appointed him as the Democrats’ chief negotiator with the Bush administration to address the crises in the banking and auto industries.
“The quarterback for us is Barney,” Ms. Pelosi told Jeffrey Toobin for a 2009 New Yorker profile of Mr. Frank. “He’s solution-oriented, respectful of different perspectives and brilliant. And it’s brilliance that saves time, because he simplifies the complex for us. He is an enormously valuable intellectual resource for the Congress.”
He was slower than some in advocating for marriage equality. But as its chief advocate Evan Wolfson wrote on Facebook yesterday, “he was a giant, a pioneer, and a hero.” And he was great: “Brilliant, skillful, courageous, and, of course, endlessly witty. My favorite personal moment with Barney was when he confessed to me, years down the road, that in our fight to win the freedom to marry, over which we had tussled, he had been ‘under-optimistic.’ Congress needs the likes of him. And I will miss him.”
Some people attacked Frank for comparing the delay gay people accepted before marriage equality became the law of the land to the patience he thought trans people should have before insisting on the rights of trans women to compete in all college sports.
Imogen, our editor, says that Frank’s comparison misrepresents the issue, which was itself created as a political wedge: Trans women have been able to compete in women’s sports for decades. Renée Richards first played in the women’s US Open in 1977 and Meghan Cortez-Fields, a college student from New Jersey, swam on an NCAA women’s team in 2024. But Cortez-Fields became one of the last to do so after the NCAA banned trans women from competing in Feb. 2025.
At least one prominent trans activist I spoke to last night was more sympathetic to Frank. “It’s been too easy for our opponents to weaponize what they think is common sense about ‘fairness’ in sports. By ignoring the data and research and science about biological diversity across athletes, our opponents create a huge barrier to progress. We are not wrong about sports—we have the morally right and logically right position—but that doesn’t mean we are winning in the court of public opinion yet.”
In a profile of him in The Washington Post after Frank announced he was retiring from Congress, my brother Bob wrote Frank had learned the game of politics first by running the office of Boston Mayor Kevin White in his first term. “He learned how to make things happen before he held an elected office or had a formal responsibility. This gave him an appreciation for accomplishing things… But he was also an accomplished legislator, a congressman who made a difference. He was usually the smartest man in the room, and the funniest.”
His co-authorship of the Dodd–Frank Act was his biggest legislative accomplishment.
He couldn’t prevent the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, which prevented the Federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. But he did have the best line about it: “If gay marriage becomes legal, are all these guys going to wake up the next morning and say, “Wow, I could have married a man!?’
Trump Corruption Watch
With the War on Iran on Hold, Trump Prepares His Next Invasion
Der Spiegel
Scott: “Cuba’s next” says Trump. With the war on Iran on temporary hold, the Trump administration is seized with a strange fixation on Cuba, the next big move.
Marco Antonio Rubio, born in South Florida to two Cuban émigrés who never became US citizens, is the presumed coordinator of the operation, though CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and others have all made plays for the lead.
What emerges now is a likely replay of the Venezuela operation of which Trump is immensely proud: The Department of Justice has secured an indictment of Raúl Castro; the indictment of other Cuban leaders may follow. US special forces will then be tasked to seize them and bring them back to the US to face trial. In the penumbra of these operations, the CIA and State Department will attempt a regime change operation.
In the meantime, outspoken opposition to US maneuvers has come from the other prominent American on the world stage, Pope Leo XIV, who calls it unwise, immoral and disrespectful of the Cuban people.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio promised the Cuban population $100 million in humanitarian aid in a video message. At the same time, he blamed the leadership in Havana: They were the reason for the current supply crisis in Cuba, Rubio said in Spanish.
Rubio published the video message on the X platform for Cuban Independence Day. Regarding the help offered, he said that the money had to be distributed by the Catholic Church “or other trustworthy aid organizations.” He didn’t get any more specific.
The Cuban embassy in the US strongly rejected Rubio’s criticism of Havana. The minister repeatedly and unscrupulously lies to justify the cruel and ruthless aggression against the Cuban people, the representation also said on X. The embassy did not comment on the aid deliveries offered.
Washington is pursuing a strategy of carrot and stick with regard to Cuba: While Rubio is holding out the prospect of help, it is currently expected that the US government will bring charges against former Cuban President Raúl Castro. This is said to refer to an incident in 1996 in which Cuban fighter jets are said to have shot down planes belonging to a group of Cuban exiles, reports the Reuters news agency, citing sources from the US Department of Justice.
Trump Just Created A White Grievance Reparation Fund
The Nation
Charles: On Monday, the Department of Justice said it was creating a $1.8 billion slush fund to compensate Donald Trump supporters who have been “mistreated” by previous Democratic administrations.
The fund is the first time the Justice Department has tried to pay off convicted felons simply because they are supporters of the president—the Jan. 6 insurrectionists who have already been pardoned by Trump.
Elie Mystal explains it all in The Nation:
The program amounts to a white grievance fund paid for with money stolen from the public.
The fund was announced as part of a “deal” Trump made to dismiss his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. Trump had accused the IRS of illegally leaking his tax returns. The Trump administration seems to want people to report these two events as if they are linked—the DOJ has framed the slush fund as a way to “hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare”—but, in reality, they are connected only by the fact that they are both ways for Trump to try to steal money from the government.
The IRS lawsuit would have been thrown out of court if Trump had not dismissed the case. Trump controls the IRS and the Treasury Department. To the extent that the IRS did anything wrong (and the IRS didn’t do anything wrong), Trump’s case against it should have been moot, as he now oversees the agency. There cannot be a “case or controversy” for the courts to adjudicate when one party controls both sides of the litigation. “Trump v. Trump” is not a case. Trump was just trying to extort the government he now runs for $10 billion.
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Scott: I quickly came across Charles Kaiser as someone who thought about things almost exactly the same way I did. We have a kindred spirit and perspective that we share up until this day.
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