Welcome back to The Red Letter.

I asked Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche a question he didn’t like. The conversation ended quickly. In a town obsessed with security, he was just as quick to lean on his detail to shut it down.

It was a brief exchange—but a revealing one, offering a glimpse into how the country’s top law enforcement official understands both power and policing, at a moment when his “interim” status is beginning to look less temporary.

It was Wednesday evening in Washington, D.C. At the bar of a private event to which I had been invited, I posed a few questions to Blanche, another guest who had accepted an invitation just like I had.

“Mr. Blanche, are you concerned about a potential conflict of interest between US Attorney Jay Clayton at the Southern District of New York and Leon Black, who has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault?” I asked. “Clayton was appointed by Black to chairman of Apollo when he was pushed out.”

Blanche didn’t hesitate.

“That’s not what happened,” he said.

I provided some context he seemed to lack:

“It’s an established fact that Clayton took a top position at a company founded by Black, who is mentioned in the Epstein files and has faced multiple accusations of sexual assault,” I said.

Black appointed Clayton to his role as chairman when he had to step down from Apollo Global Management for paying Epstein $150 million for accounting and estate planning. Clayton had more than $1.5 million in holdings from the private equity firm Black founded before he left for the DOJ in 2025, according to his financial disclosure. This is a glaring conflict of interest that I’ve reported on in The Red Letter but that the mainstream media hasn’t picked up. To me, it may explain why Black and so many other powerful men who have been accused by survivors under oath have not been prosecuted.

“No, you’re wrong, it was something else,” Blanche said.

I calmly pushed back: “Black announced it himself in a statement that Clayton would be replacing him as chairman and Black is accused by many women in the files of sexual assault.” (Black denies this.)

This was the moment that our exchange became less cordial.

“How can you say that? What files are you referring to?” Blanche said.

“The Epstein files. The FBI’s own materials reference Black as a potential co-conspirator,” I said. “There’s a presentation that names him.”

“You shouldn’t be talking about things you don’t understand,” he shot back. “I’ve seen the files. You haven’t. You can’t just make things up.”

“Everyone has seen the Epstein files. They’re public,” I said.

As acting Attorney General, Blanche was primed to have special insight about my areas of inquiry. As a former prosecutor in New York and personal attorney for President Trump, my areas of inquiry would be particularly familiar.

Blanche made like his name in response. While standing under purple lights at the terrace bar, his wife dressed head to toe in black with her blonde hair pulled back said to me, “You’ve ruined our beautiful night.”

Before I could explain, a member of his security detail moved between us and said if I didn’t move away, he would remove me for trespassing.

I had not arrived at the French Ambassador’s residence with explicit plans to learn more about the Justice Department. I was there for the Amethyst Ball, a glitzy confab hosted by members of the Washington perma-class: Steve Clemons, Heather Podesta, Kellyanne Conway, and Ambassador Laurent Bili. The event, nominally an annual celebration of the French-American alliance, was attended by other members of the media as well as officials from the Trump administration and various Beltway creatures.

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When Blanche showcased his ideas about American policing by allowing his private security to get between him and questions he didn’t like, he technically did so on French soil.

The Zyn-sponsored lounge hummed with operatives and donors. Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw milled about. Mehmet Oz, the surgeon-turned-celebrity-turned-social-services-administrator, had his very own receiving line. Various other faceless, but influential, Trump officials milled around, seeming to be grateful to get fresh air outside of the grey buildings like the Office of Management and Budget. Men in Revolutionary war costumes handed out champagne while standing in life-sized boxes. Guests noshed on fries and sweet and savory crepes but I struggled to eat, it all made me feel uneasy.

Since Pam Bondi was ousted from her post earlier this month, Blanche has served as her interim replacement, and statements from President Trump and reporting in the New York Times and elsewhere suggests his interim service will become official—an outcome Blanche seems likely to secure thanks to his shrewd understanding of what makes Trump happy. He has renewed focus within the Justice Department on the matter of the president’s spate of hyper-fixations related to injuries to his pride, with investigations active or promised on targets that the rest of the country—consumed by war, inflation, and Epstein Files—had long ago forgotten, such as key players from his impeachments and the investigations that drained the energies of his first administration.

Prior to his stint at the DOJ, Blanche served as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, with extensive experience in financial and securities fraud, public corruption, and organized crime—along with a reputation for controlling the narrative early and shutting down lines of questioning that introduce doubt. Then he found his way to Trump’s legal team, where he managed his defense into defeat in one of his three criminal trials, securing his status as a felon–and an underdog, thus paradoxically securing, at least in the mythic narrative, Trump’s improbable reelection to the presidency. Having stared down the tough odds in and outside the courtroom, Blanche knows what makes his client happy, and there is little indication that his operating procedure will change even if his client, by dint of the oath he will take if confirmed as attorney general, is the United States itself and not the inhabitant of its highest elected office.

“He’s been unleashed,” Trump said at a recent event, according to the Times. “All I know is this man now is doing a fantastic, he’s doing a great job always, but he’s doing a great job as the attorney general.”

Moments like what happened between Blanche and me rarely make it into official accounts of Washington life. They don’t appear in transcripts or readouts. But they reveal something essential about how power operates—not in hearings or press conferences, but in the informal spaces where relationships are maintained and boundaries are enforced.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner weekend is, in theory, a celebration of the press. In practice, it operates as a carefully choreographed ecosystem of access—where journalists, officials, lobbyists, and executives move through the same rooms, bound as much by social contracts as professional ones. Todd Blanche attended multiple events over the course of the weekend, ostensibly in honor of the press, before taking his seat at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner as a guest of CBS, alongside the network’s editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss.

This party was ruled by Chatham House rules, a frequently used contract in that ecosystem. You can report on the substance of what was said, just not identify the speaker or their affiliation. These rules are designed to encourage candor, allowing people to speak freely without fear that their words will be publicly attributed to them.

Often they serve that purpose. But they also create a different kind of tension: between the protection of private conversation and the public’s interest in how power behaves when it is questioned.

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Chatham House Rule is not a law or industry standard. It is a social contract. After serious consideration—relying on input from colleagues in the press as well as a First Amendment attorney—I have decided to risk violating it. For what it’s worth, whether or not reporting this information with names attached amounts to a violation is unclear; the invitation states, “We respectfully ask that you honor the Chatham House Rule during your attendance.” Arguably, by allowing his security detail into our interaction, Blanche transformed the exchange from casual and social to fraught—and fraught with implication. His security raised the prospect of penalizing me and citing a violation of the law in order to do so— fraudulently.

What the acting attorney general revealed through his words and actions is important information that serves the public interest, and if the consequence for me is that after reporting on it, I won’t be invited to another party at an embassy, I don’t care. That’s not a good reason to neglect my responsibilities as a reporter.

What happened in that moment on Wednesday evening wasn’t just a private exchange of views between two equals. It was a demonstration of something more structural—how quickly a line can be drawn, and by whom, when a conversation moves in an uncomfortable direction.

No one invoked the rules explicitly.

They didn’t have to.

In Washington, everyone in the room already understands them. Unfortunately for Blanche, I understand them well enough to recognize that in this case, they don’t matter.

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Welcome back to The Red Letter. As you know, I passed on a ticket to this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner to attend the memorial for Virginia Giuffre. But my reporter, , was inside the Washington Hilton as events unfolded in real time. This account is based on her firsthand reporting and has been edited by me for clarity and tone.

The first sign something was wrong wasn’t the sound, it was the movement.

Four Secret Service agents, carrying long guns, sprinted past me toward the escalator inside the Washington Hilton. Conversations stopped mid-sentence. Phones came out. Within seconds, the room understood: something had gone very wrong.

This was supposed to be one of the most secure buildings in Washington. That night, it didn’t feel like it.

At the entrance I used, there were no ID checks, no automated or digital ticketing like you’d expect at most major venues. The system relied largely on paper.

I didn’t have a dinner ticket, just an invite to a pre-party, so I flashed my phone at security, pulling up the email invitation. There was no barcode to scan, no list to check—just an email for a network news reception that could have been forwarded by anyone. At the party I was invited to, no one asked for ID, only my name. At others, just feet from the ballroom, I walked in without being stopped.

Inside, a line of damp ballgowns and tuxedos snaked through the lobby, guests slightly undone by the storm rolling over the city. But once you were in, the distinction between dinner guests, carrying paper tickets, and those invited to the surrounding receptions quickly dissolved. There was no clear separation, no consistent enforcement, just a crowded hotel and a loose understanding of who belonged.

It was hard to tell who was actually invited and who was simply moving through the ecosystem. In a room like that, it didn’t matter. As long as you looked the part, you blended in, and in Washington, looking the part doesn’t necessarily mean you have power.

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I wasn’t in the ballroom when the shots were fired. I was one floor above, finishing dinner at the hotel bar, recapping the weekend and watching the room. I had just come from the FOX News reception. No one questioned me as I walked through the open door, where House Speaker Mike Johnson was standing, almost like a guest greeter, smiling for selfies. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was nearby with Katie Miller. Across the bar stood Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

“It almost felt like a mini convention,” former Trump policy advisor Kamran Daravi told me.

It was my first White House Correspondents’ Dinner weekend. Within minutes, the distance between observer and participant collapsed.

The agents disappeared down the escalator. About twenty people bolted from the bar to follow after them. They didn’t go all the way down, just hovered at the top of the escalator, trying to catch a glimpse

At the bar, a woman wearing a FOX News producer lanyard placed a frantic call, “we have to go,” she said, and then bolted, grabbing a man with her. The TV’s streaming CNN briefly flickered to black. People began refreshing news feeds that weren’t updating fast enough. Some guests rushed toward the exits. Others stayed planted, trying to make sense of what they were seeing. Some started live-streaming, reporting in real time. A few, noticeably, didn’t seem to register it at all.

Inside the ballroom, the scene was more chaotic. One reporter told me that the glasses shattered and guests dove under tables after hearing what sounded like multiple shots. Others described Secret Service agents flooding the room and escorting key officials out.

Back upstairs, information lagged behind reality. In the dining room, guests grabbed bottles and clustered around anyone with a video. Mentalist Oz Pearlman gave guests a play-by-play, walking them through clips on his phone.

I made my way over to the lobby, where the scale of the response came into view. Ambulances and police cars lined the entrance. Helicopters circled overhead. Guests clustered in hallways, still holding drinks, unsure whether to leave or stay. I watched Blanche rush out. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin followed. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser arrived shortly after.

Every few minutes, I asked officers for updates. One told me to watch the president’s press conference.

What became clear, quickly, was how easy it had been to get inside in the first place. To enter the hotel, I had only shown a screenshot of an invitation to a reception. There were magnetometers to enter the ballroom, but not for the wider hotel, which was hosting multiple events at once, including the FOX News reception that seemed to let everyone in, despite the fact that the third in line to succession, Johnson, was milling about. Several attendees I spoke with raised the same concern: once inside, movement was largely unrestricted.

Before the attack, I watched Leavitt and her team slip past a curtain rather than go through a formal checkpoint. Anyone could have followed.

As the night wore on, a strange calm began to settle.

Former Republican Congressman Dan Burton regrouped with his wife at the bar. “Whenever the president or the vice president is speaking to a large group,” he told me. “They should have a bulletproof glass shield in front of them.. If anybody at Secret Service is watching this, pay attention.”

Dr. Michael Jenkins, president of The Washington Times and a frequent attendee, called it “shocking,” the first time in the dinner’s history that it had effectively been shut down.

Even then, the instinct in Washington wasn’t to stop. The president initially signaled he wanted the program to continue.

The shock of what had happened—violence breaking out during one of the city’s most choreographed nights—collided with something else: a kind of practiced detachment. People ordered drinks. They took photos. They compared versions of events, some more dramatic than others.

Eventually, guests were bused to afterparties, where security was, ironically, tighter than it had been at the Hilton. People reunited, hugged, and kept going.

By morning, Washington had already begun to reset. There was lingering shock, yes. But there were also brunches. Outfits to wear. Rooms to work.

In this city, even a night like that folds quickly into the next day’s schedule.

In Washington, “the show must go on.”

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Welcome back to The Red Letter. While I skipped the White House Correspondents’ Dinner to attend Virginia Giuffre’s memorial, our intrepid reporter was just outside the ballroom, catching attendees as they left and getting their unfiltered reactions.

Here’s what Abi heard.

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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Welcome back to The Red Letter.

I just returned from the memorial for my friend, Virginia Giuffre.

Covering Jeffrey Epstein changed my career, but knowing Virginia changed me.

Before I started reporting Broken: Jeffrey Epstein, I had this growing feeling that something about the way the story was being told was wrong. It had become a story about powerful men, about sex, about systems, about wealth but somewhere along the way, it was losing the people at the center of it.

The survivors.

Around that time, I had stepped away from my job as a White House correspondent for ABC News, without a clear plan just a sense that I needed to do something different. I went out to Joshua Tree National Park and remember looking up at the sky and asking what I was supposed to do next and how to do it in a way that actually mattered.

Not long after, I got a call asking if I wanted to host and report a podcast on Epstein. I said yes but only if it was rooted in the stories of the survivors. Not as supporting characters. As the story itself.

That decision is what led me to Virginia.

She refused to be ignored. She refused to let people look away. And she told the truth even when it cost her, because it did cost her.

I saw, up close, how heavy that truth was when we traveled around the country trying to find people who would corroborate her horrific story of abuse. The delays. The disbelief. The relentless efforts to discredit her. The doors that opened just enough to shut again. There was a constant tension between what she knew and what the world was willing to acknowledge.

And still, she had light.

When things got overwhelming, she would blast “Let It Go” in the car and sing it on the top of her lungs with me. It was her way of pushing back against everything that tried to define her by what had been done to her.

Somewhere along the way, she stopped being a source and became a friend. I trusted her. I confided in her. And even with everything she was carrying, she still showed up for the people around her, including me.

She was one of the bravest people I’ve ever known. Not just because of what she endured, but because of what she chose to do afterward: to speak, to insist, to keep going when it would have been easier not to.

I wish I could have done more for her the last time we spoke.

At her memorial, what stayed with me wasn’t just the loss, it was the scale of what she set in motion. Her story didn’t end. It expanded. It lives on in the people she helped empower, in the voices she made harder to ignore.

Virginia used to say that one day the burden of telling these stories wouldn’t fall so heavily on survivors, that it would shift back to where it belongs.

It’s been a year since her death, and she’s been immortalized in ways she might never have imagined. That day isn’t here yet. But because of her, it feels closer.

She was a light. And she still is.

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Welcome back to The Red Letter from Washington.

Over the next few days, I’ll be attending a number of White House Correspondents’ Dinner events and I’ll be reporting from inside them here.

But I won’t be at the dinner itself.

I turned down a generous invitation this year. It didn’t feel right.

Not in a moment when the president has escalated attacks on the press. Not in a room designed to celebrate journalism while those same institutions are being undermined in real time.

One of the advantages of being independent is that I don’t have to sit there for anyone else. I don’t have a corporate parent. I don’t have bosses who expect me at a table.

I work for you.

Instead, I’ll be attending the memorial service for Virginia Giuffre.

I remember the moment I learned she had died last year. It was the night before the Correspondents’ Dinner. I was at a party when I saw the news—my stomach dropped. I walked out. A friend stopped me to check in, but I went home.

The next day, I wrote a tribute to her.
(You can read it here.)

If you believe in this kind of independent journalism—reporting that isn’t shaped by access, advertisers, or institutional pressure—consider becoming a paid subscriber. It’s what allows me to do this work without fear or favor.

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In the lead-up to this weekend, I reported a piece for Vanity Fair on something that felt, at first glance, like a party story but turned out to be something more revealing about Washington itself.

Grindr is making its formal debut in Washington during a Republican administration, with GOP control of both the House and Senate, in a political culture still shaped by the language of evangelical conservatism and, increasingly, an explicit push by figures like Pete Hegseth for the re-Christianization of public institutions.

It is not, on paper, an environment designed to welcome a West Hollywood–born hookup app.

President Donald Trump has already disrupted global HIV programs, authorizing hundreds of millions in cuts to PEPFAR before partially reversing course. At the same time, voices openly critical of LGBTQ+ inclusion in the military have been elevated within the administration.

This is not the era of effortless corporate Pride messaging.

Which may be precisely why Grindr has chosen this moment to arrive, fully dressed for the room, and determined to be taken seriously.

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For years, Grindr existed in Washington the way many things do here: ubiquitous, quietly influential, and rarely acknowledged in the open.

In 2010, as the debate over Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was reaching its final stretch, I was a young reporter at the Washington Examiner. I made a video walking around the Capitol, the White House, and the Pentagon with the app open, watching it light up with nearby users.

The point wasn’t to out anyone.

It was to document what many in Washington already knew but rarely said aloud: there were gay politicians, political appointees, and civil servants using this new app called Grindr, which had launched just a year earlier.

Depending on who you asked, it was either a hookup app for Washington’s discreet gay underground—or a kind of unofficial floor plan of power, quietly mapping who was where, and when, inside the institutions shaping national policy.

Grindr didn’t just reflect a social network.

It exposed one of Washington’s oldest tells: the distance between how the city presents itself—and how it actually behaves after hours.

For years, Grindr thrived in that gap.

Now, it’s trying something more ambitious: translating cultural saturation into political legitimacy.

You can read my full piece in Vanity Fair here.

And I’ll be reporting from inside this weekend’s events—what’s happening, who’s showing up, and what it all says about power, access, and the stories Washington tells itself.

Stay tuned.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent his life writing himself into history.

Not just in public speeches or political campaigns but in private diaries, where he catalogued his impulses, his obsessions, and his belief that he was destined for something bigger. Power. Legacy. The presidency.

I sat down with my former colleague and veteran reporter Isabel Vincent, who obtained and pored over those diaries for her new book RFK Jr: The Fall and Rise, and what emerges isn’t just a scandal-plagued political figure. It’s something more revealing and more dangerous. A man who sees himself as both the protagonist and the victim, someone who can rationalize almost anything as part of a larger mission.

Now, he’s no longer on the outside looking in. He’s inside the government, shaping policy, building influence and, according to people who know him, still thinking about what comes next.

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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Welcome back to The Red Letter.

This piece was reported by Abi Baker and edited by me. I’m excited to be working with new talent as we expand our reporting. We’re making it free but if you want more reporting like this, you know what to do.

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The Democratic Party isn’t losing elections. It’s losing the culture.

And culture, not policy, is what’s driving the next generation of voters. While Democrats refine talking points and wait for the political pendulum to swing back, the right has built a sprawling media ecosystem designed to shape how young people think, talk, and vote. Now, a 28-year-old influencer thinks he knows how to fight back.

Carlos Calzadilla-Palacio is trying to build something Democrats don’t really have: a cultural machine.

His project, Disrupt PAC, is pitched as a post-partisan, grassroots counterweight to the right’s youth ecosystem—something akin to Turning Point USA. Targeting college campuses much like Charlie Kirk did, he staged an “Epstein Egg Hunt” at Washington Square Park near New York University this month, sending participants on a $200 scavenger hunt to “uncover who in NYC needs to be held accountable for their part in the Epstein files.”

It resulted in a police summons. But it’s exactly the kind of edgy, viral political theater he’s using to lure students back to a party that’s come to feel less like a movement and more like the hall monitor.

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A former president of the Young Brooklyn Dems and onetime staffer to New York State Sen. Andrew Gounardes, Calzadilla-Palacio now hosts a podcast and crisscrosses the country showing up at ICE protests in Los Angeles and speaking on conservative campuses like Arizona State.

“The problem isn’t that Democrats need better messaging,” he told me. “It’s that the message itself doesn’t resonate.”

That diagnosis leads somewhere uncomfortable. Calzadilla-Palacio doesn’t believe voters disillusioned with Trump are naturally drifting left. If anything, he worries they’re drifting further right, into a fragmented but increasingly radicalized ecosystem already competing to define the future of conservatism.

“There’s no guarantee people turned off by Trump on the right, just go left,” he said. “They could go further right.”

Instead, he sees the right splintering into competing factions—America First versus MAGA, populists versus nihilists, establishment conservatives versus a more online, more extreme right.

And while that battle plays out in real time, Democrats are still searching for a coherent response.

“We could get Tucker Carlson as the next president,” he warned. “Nick Fuentes could be the natural next leader of the Republican Party.”

That’s not just alarmism, it’s a reflection of how he sees the right evolving faster than the left can react.

He believes Turning Point’s evolution from a youth-driven grassroots movement into something more tightly aligned with Trump’s political machine has created an opening. The organization’s growing proximity to power, and its enforcement of ideological purity, risks alienating younger voters.

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But Calzadilla-Palacio’s critique of the right quickly turns inward. He argues Democrats fundamentally misunderstand loyalty and it’s costing them.

“There is a huge problem in politics where political parties think voters need to be loyal to them,” he said. “Young people didn’t want to vote for the Democratic party, because the brand was so bad.”

So why can’t they win them back?

“People notice that they have to toe these rhetorical lines on positions that make no sense to the average person,” he said.

That frustration leads to an even harsher conclusion: what, exactly, are Democrats offering right now?

“Nothing,” he said flatly.

He also believes the party failed a basic political test after losing in 2024—learning from defeat.

“After Kamala [Harris] lost, I really humbled myself,” he said. “And surprisingly, a lot of people did not humble themselves,”

In his framing, the difference between the two parties isn’t just ideological, it’s cultural.

“The right is always looking for converts,” he said. “The left is always looking for traitors.”

That instinct, he argues, shrank the Democratic coalition at precisely the moment it needed to expand.

His answer is Disrupt Politics, built around three deliberately broad pillars: restoring freedom, making life affordable, and ending corporate control. The vagueness isn’t accidental—it’s designed to function as a cultural umbrella, not a rigid policy platform.

So far, the group has raised about $400,000, with an average donation of $17—roughly 16,000 small donors across all 50 states. He contrasts that with what he sees as billionaire-backed influence operations on the right like Turning Point.

But when it comes to leadership, his answers are less concrete.

He points to figures like Ro Khanna, Jon Ossoff, and James Talarico as Democrats who “get it.” But he’s far more comfortable talking about culture than candidates.

Asked about polarizing figures like streamer Hasan Piker, who has become toxic among some Democrats, he shrugs.

“Hasan is a streamer,” he said. “He makes culture.” That distinction matters.

Calzadilla-Palacio believes Democrats are losing not because they lack policies, but because they’ve failed to produce singular cultural figures who can compete with Carlson, Joe Rogan, Megyn Kelly, and Candace Owens.

“You don’t build a cultural movement by focusing on politics first,” he said.

Instead, he argues, the right invests in its ecosystem, while the left exhausts its own.

“The right nurtures its young people,” he said. “The left burns them out.”

That dynamic, he believes, explains why Trump can still be perceived as “honest” by voters—even when he isn’t.

“Trump isn’t honest on the facts,” he said. “But he’s honest with his feelings.”

In a political environment where authenticity often outweighs accuracy, that distinction has proven powerful.

He points to Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign as a missed opportunity—one that began with more populist, culturally resonant messaging around affordability and corporate power, before softening over time.

In his view, donor pressure and a lagging approach to new media pulled it back toward the familiar.

By the time Democrats fully embraced podcasts and online platforms, he said, they were a decade late.

Now, as Democrats search for a path forward, Calzadilla-Palacio sees a narrow but real opening.

The right may be ascendant culturally, but it’s also fracturing internally, pulled between competing visions of power and identity.

Meanwhile, Trump is governing under the weight of the Epstein files, an escalating conflict with Iran, and declining public support, with approval ratings dipping into the 30s.

Whether Disrupt can capitalize on that moment is far from certain.

But in Calzadilla-Palacio’s view, the opportunity is already there.

“If you want to install an authoritarian dictatorship,” he said, “you don’t blink.”

“And he blinked.”

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Welcome back to The Red Letter.

Washington doesn’t operate like a normal workplace. It’s more like a campus for the powerful—one where the rules are looser, the stakes are higher, and the consequences are optional, at best.

Members of Congress live apart from their families, spend their nights at fundraisers fueled by alcohol and access, and move through a world of fawning staffers, ambitious operatives, and lobbyists whose careers hinge on proximity to them. It’s a system that doesn’t just concentrate power—it distorts it.

And when that power is abused, the system isn’t built to expose it, it’s actually built to absorb it.

The disturbing allegations made against Eric Swalwell, the accusations made against Sen. Ruben Gallego, and the Cory Mills scandal have once again raised questions about behavior on Capitol Hill and what, if anything, leadership knows or chooses to ignore.

“It’s a culture of silence,” former congresswoman Carolyn Maloney told me. “Everybody in the Democratic party knew about it.”

Maloney said it’s hard to believe leadership was unaware of Swalwell’s reputation after his close relationship with a Chinese spy was revealed in 2020.

“He should have been thrown out of Congress then,” she added. But confronting those issues is another matter entirely.

Several former aides, from both sides of the aisle, described Capitol Hill as a kind of extended adolescence with group houses, late nights, heavy drinking, and a constant churn of young staffers trying to climb the ladder.

“These guys and gals are away from their spouses, doing late-night fundraisers, hanging out with sycophants and lobbyists who are trying to curry favor and access,” said a former senior Republican aide turned lobbyist. “They’re all liquored up, and they start to become reckless. They start to buy their own bullshit.”

🔒 🔒 Subscribe to The Red Letter for the full story on what insiders say really happens behind closed doors on Capitol Hill and why even when everyone “knows,” almost nothing changes.

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The fallout around Eric Swalwell isn’t just political—it’s financial.

Swalwell’s billionaire Beverly Hills donor Stephen Cloobeck has announced he is suing to recover the $1 million he donated to the campaign, after housing the candidate while allegations were emerging. When we spoke on Tuesday week, he said he was in shock, particularly as I told him that Swalwell’s reputation for philandering was, in many circles, one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington.

But according to multiple sources, Cloobeck is not alone in wanting distance, he’s just the most visible.

Behind the scenes, others are taking a quieter approach: calling fundraisers and campaign intermediaries to ask whether their money can be returned.

“They don’t want to be associated with this, they want to be able to say they asked for their money back,” said one Democratic donor advisor who has been fielding those calls.

That distinction matters because campaign contributions are public. And for some donors, the reputational risk isn’t just what they gave, it’s what those donations might now be seen to support.

“They don’t want the next filing to show they backed him,” the advisor added. “They want it to show it was refunded.”

The anger among donors is palpable and widespread. They’re angry, they’re fed up, and many want their money back.

Some donors aren’t necessarily demanding refunds outright, but they are trying to control where their money goes.

🔒 Subscribe to The Red Letter to read more about how donors are trying to claw back contributions and why there are questions surrounding whether leadership knew about Swalwell.

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We were scheduled to interview Amanda Ungaro live this morning. But after communicating with her through her representative at length, it became clear that what she is alleging deserves more than a rapid-fire segment—it requires careful reporting.

Ungaro describes a modeling ecosystem that, she says, overlapped with Jeffrey Epstein and involved figures including Paolo Zampolli.She also makes claims about her own experiences as a young model navigating that world and how she came to know Melania Trump at a young age.

These are serious allegations. At this stage, we are in the process of corroborating details and seeking responses from those named before presenting them in full.

Please stay tuned and as always you can become a paid subscriber to support this kind of independent journalism.

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The latest inflation report is out—and if you’re a “hardworking American,” as Robert Wolf put it, “you didn’t like what you saw.”

Prices rose again in March. Growth is slowing. And yet, if you listen to the administration, everything is under control.

So which is it?

In this conversation, I sit down with financier and former Obama advisor to break down what’s actually happening behind the numbers—and why the story being told in Washington doesn’t match what people are feeling in their everyday lives.

Because here’s the truth: inflation slowing doesn’t mean prices are going down. And once prices rise, they tend to stick.

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Something is breaking inside the system and it’s not subtle anymore. The Justice Department is supposed to project independence, but instead it’s becoming harder to separate law enforcement from politics. As the Department of Justice blocks Pam Bondi’s deposition and President Trump’s allies close ranks, the question isn’t just what’s being hidden, it’s what happens when the public stops trusting the system entirely.

I’m joined by CBS’s longtime Justice Department reporter, now independent journalist to unpack what this moment actually means. From the Epstein files to a DOJ losing credibility in courtrooms, the consequences go far beyond Washington. When jurors, judges, and even civil servants begin to doubt the integrity of the system, it doesn’t just impact politics, it affects whether justice can function at all.

“If jurors stop trusting the Justice Department, the whole system breaks,” MacFarlane said.

And this isn’t happening in isolation. From RFK Jr.’s growing influence over public health to a foreign policy framed in increasingly ideological terms, the pressure is building across every pillar of power. Meanwhile, even in deep-red districts like Marjorie Taylor Greene’s former GA-14 district, we’re seeing signs of movement that polls haven’t fully captured yet. Tonight, we break down what’s really shifting and what comes next.

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I’ve recently become the black sheep of my family and it’s not just because I’m childless, work in media, live in big cities, and am inching toward 40.

It’s because I question Trump.

With a few exceptions—my grandmother, who survived a concentration camp in Hamburg, and my swing-voter mother, who became a citizen to vote for George W. Bush but somehow voted for Hillary, Trump, and then Kamala—I’m one of the only people in my family who isn’t MAGA. Even my nurse practitioner aunt is MAHA-curious. (To be fair, after living in Europe, I understand the concerns about food and pharmaceutical standards.)

My father is the most extreme. He raised me on talk radio like Rush Limbaugh, Hannity & Colmes. He hasn’t turned on Fox News since they called the election for Biden. In fact, he barely watches TV anymore, just YouTube, which feeds him Bill O’Reilly and an endless stream of fringe commentary. They’re evangelicals, after all.

My brother wept when Charlie Kirk died and somehow managed to pin it on me. My cousins and aunts and uncles love Trump too, each for reasons that are hard to fully explain.

For years, I’ve been outnumbered. For every one person in my family who questions Trump, there are four who support him. I’ve done the math.

And they didn’t just support him, they defended him. At Christmas, they were still arguing for him. Still convinced he would end the wars, fix the economy, and make life better for their kids. My family isn’t the fringe of Trump’s coalition—they are the base. Evangelical, loyal, plugged into the same media ecosystem that built him.

But something strange happened this Easter. Everything changed.

Subscribe to read the full story:

• Why Trump’s core voters are starting to question him and what it means for this war

• What happens when certainty inside MAGA gives way to doubt

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As Women’s History Month quietly closed out, a different story started to take shape—one that feels less like progress and more like erasure. In Trump’s world, a growing list of loyal, high-profile women are being sidelined, replaced, or stripped of real authority. And the pattern is getting harder to ignore. As put it t…

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After Attorney General Pam Bondi’s ouster, questions are mounting about whether Trump is systematically sidelining some of the most loyal women in his orbit. Sources say he’s already seen how quickly he can reshuffle power from replacing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to sidelining Elise Stefanik’s nomination for U.N. ambassador.

Now, with reports he’s considering firing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard after she contradicted him in testimony—saying Iran is still roughly a decade away from an intercontinental nuclear weapon—the question is whether this is more than routine personnel churn, and whether women in his orbit are uniquely vulnerable.

After all, the women who remain appear increasingly constrained: Education Secretary Linda McMahon is tasked with dismantling her own department, while Kari Lake, now at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, was given a similar mandate.

Plus: new reporting on how Epstein survivors were left behind after Bondi canceled meetings and failed to follow through leaving victims feeling abandoned by the very system meant to protect them.

“The Dow wishes her well,” survivor Marijke Chartouni quipped to me about Bondi’s departure after she refused to acknowledge the victims behind her during her disastrous hearing.

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The message from Trump was simple: things are under control.

But according to a former Navy mission commander who’s operated over the Strait of Hormuz, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

In this conversation, Ken Harbaugh of warns that the U.S. may be walking into a conflict it doesn’t fully understand—where cheap drones can outmatch billion-dollar defenses, where the Strait can’t just be “reopened,” and where the enemy—not Washington—gets the final say.

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It’s already happening — just not evenly.

Gas prices have jumped. Food costs are creeping higher. Mortgage rates, which briefly dipped below 6 percent, are climbing again. And beneath it all, the job market has quietly stalled out, with no meaningful gains since last year.

For many Americans, the “war economy” isn’t some future scenario — it’s already showing up at the kitchen table.

But what comes next is where things get more uncertain and potentially more painful.

In this conversation, former UBS chairman and Obama advisor lays out how a conflict thousands of miles away begins to ripple through everything from commodities to credit cards. Oil is just the start. Fertilizer, shipping costs, and global supply chains are all being squeezed and those costs don’t stay overseas. They move, slowly but inevitably, into the U.S. economy.

The real risk isn’t just higher prices. It’s the combination: rising costs, slowing growth, and a fragile job market. Economists have a word for that, “stagflation” and while it’s not here yet, the odds are rising if this war drags on.

And then there’s the question no one can answer: timing.

Some Americans are already feeling it. But how long before it spreads? Weeks? Months? By the time it’s obvious, it may already be too late to avoid the worst of it.

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On this episode, I dig into why Michael Cohen and Michael Wolff have a problem with me because all I’m doing is asking what they know about Jeffrey Epstein.

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Welcome back to The Red Letter.

There is a particular kind of frustration that comes through when Ambassador John Bolton talks about President Donald Trump.

Bolton doesn’t take issue with the premise of the war in Iran, he’s been calling for strikes or regime change. His problem is simpler: no one seems to know what Trump is trying to do — not even Trump.

“Well, it’s not entirely clear what his objectives are,” he told me on The Tara Palmeri Show. “That makes it difficult to judge what he’s getting right and getting wrong.”

Bolton says part of the problem is instinct. Just months ago, Trump declared victory after the “12-day war,” claiming the U.S. had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program.

“Trump’s a winner…the world’s divided into winners and losers,” he said. “He just doesn’t restrain himself. And obviously, we didn’t obliterate the nuclear program.”

Now, the U.S. is back in conflict and public patience is slipping. A new Fox News poll shows 64% disapprove of Trump’s handling of Iran, with his approval rating at 41%.

Bolton also concedes the nuclear threat was not imminent. But, he argues, that doesn’t mean it isn’t real, especially if Iran can acquire a weapon elsewhere.

“When people ask how soon Iran could get nuclear weapons, the real answer is 72 hours,” he said.

“They wire North Korea, load devices onto a plane, and they show up in Tehran. I don’t know that they’ve done it, but that possibility exists.”

Regime Change — or Just “Mowing the Lawn”?

Bolton has argued for decades that the only real solution is regime change. Negotiations, he says, have always failed.

“If you don’t want to come back every couple of years, you have to change the regime,” he said.

Trump still “talks like it’s regime change,” Bolton told me. But none of the groundwork is there — no effort with Congress, no case to the public, no real coordination with allies, no visible support for internal opposition.

Instead, the U.S. is doing something else.

“We’re just mowing the lawn.”

Bomb the facilities. Kill commanders. Degrade capabilities. But if the regime stays, the threat does too.

“You’ll have to come back and mow it again.”

Trump has suggested otherwise — pointing to leadership changes as proof of success. Bolton dismisses that.

“This is not one person,” he said. “This is an entire constitutional structure.”

In other words: this isn’t over. And it may not be winnable on the current terms.

Bolton doesn’t believe the U.S. can stop now either. Leaving, he says, would mean facing a “wounded beast” later — damaged, but still in power.

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The $5 Question

Trump also hasn’t sold the war. Even without ground troops, Americans are feeling it, especially at the pump.

The president has tried to steady things, announcing pauses in strikes on Iranian infrastructure. Markets haven’t bought it.

And abroad, Bolton says, it sends the wrong signal.

“If I were in Tehran watching this,” he said, “including Trump claiming he gave an extension because the Iranians asked for it — when mediators say they didn’t — that’s weakness.”

“Trump gave it to them. That’s a sign of weakness.”

The result: a war without a clear objective, and no obvious end. Trump wants the credit for winning — without the burden of finishing it.

Bolton’s warning is simpler than his reputation suggests: You can start a war without a plan. You just can’t end one that way.

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