Before we argue about strategy, politics, or who’s winning, we should know who’s paying the price.

I opened the show with the faces of the Americans killed in the Iran war—the 18 service members President Trump has pointed to as evidence that the war hasn’t been costly. But if that’s true, why did the Pentagon change the official casualty count on its website from 18 to 14?

I sat down with former Navy pilot Ken Harbaugh to discuss what those changing numbers mean, how casualty reporting shapes the public’s understanding of war, and why transparency matters when lives are on the line.

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This conversation actually made me feel hopeful.

It’s not about what’s broken. It’s about recognizing how much power we still have.

It’s a blueprint for taking that power back.

We spend so much time talking about what’s broken—corruption, power grabs, the erosion of democratic institutions—that it’s easy to believe nothing can be done.

That’s why I wanted to sit down with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Julia Angwin to discuss her new book, On Courage: How to Be a Dissident in the Age of Fear.

Based on hundreds of interviews with dissidents around the world, Angwin argues that authoritarianism isn't inevitable. She shows how ordinary people have successfully pushed back throughout history and what we can learn from them today.

Angwin told me writing the book was a form of "therapy," and she came away convinced there is more reason for hope than we think. Her research shows that authoritarianism succeeds when people comply—and that ordinary people have repeatedly stopped it by refusing to do so. It’s called "collective stubbornness."

She also explains why supporting independent journalism isn’t just about staying informed, it’s one of the most effective ways to resist authoritarianism. In any democracy, the media, the courts, and the military serve as the referees. But the media is often the first to fall, pressured by advertising dollars and a system that rewards access.

“It’s really important to support independent, fearless media,” she said. “Someone who’s supported by their readers, because that’s a funding source they can’t take away from you.”

If you believe accountability journalism matters—and if you're able to support my work—I hope you'll become a paid subscriber.

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If you've read my exclusive reporting here, on the closed-door showdown between Todd Blanche and the Epstein survivors — this is the companion conversation. I explain how I reported the closed-door meeting, what stood out to me, and answer your questions about what happened.

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Welcome back to The Red Letter.

On July 7 of 2025, Pam Bondi declared that the Jeffrey Epstein case was closed.

Survivors of his crimes disagreed—and they wanted to talk to the Justice Department about that disagreement.

It would take a while for the conversation to happen.

In fact, if you were counting—and the survivors were—it took 374 days for the federal law enforcement agency to process the request.

On Thursday afternoon, approximately seven of Jeffrey Epstein's survivors, along with Virginia Giuffre's brother, Sky Roberts, and sister-in-law, Amanda Roberts, arrived at Justice Department headquarters in Washington. They spent 90 minutes inside.

They came carrying stories that they say demonstrate why the case Bondi declared closed is anything but. They posed their questions directly to Todd Blanche, Bondi's successor, whose confirmation hearing had concluded just hours earlier and who still needed the support of the Senate Judiciary Committee before his nomination could advance to the full Senate.

They left DOJ headquarters with little new information and what they viewed as the burden of making their case all over again—this time to the FBI, the very agency they say failed them in the first place.

“It was patronizing,” survivor Jess Michaels, who was in the room, told me. “He would dispute everything. He would say ‘that’s not true or I never said that.’”

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This morning, senators from both parties questioned President Trump’s former defense attorney Todd Blanche about his handling of the Epstein files, a controversy that has dogged his tenure as Deputy Attorney General, alongside the now-defunct $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund.

The first part of the hearing was notable not just for what Blanche was asked, but for what he wasn’t.

During the hearing, I texted with an Epstein survivor who said it was painful to hear Blanche testify that a female prosecutor in his office would meet with victims as long as they had counsel. They have counsel—and have repeatedly sought meetings with the Justice Department without success. This survivor also said they want to meet with the person ultimately responsible for the department’s handling of the Epstein files: Todd Blanche himself. Jane Doe 1 sat quietly in the hearing room in protest.

For all the political attention surrounding the Epstein files, the questioning itself was surprisingly restrained. Republicans appeared intent on acknowledging the issue without dwelling on it—a sign that the Epstein controversy has become politically unavoidable, even if few senators wanted to press Blanche aggressively.

There were also questions I wish had been asked, including about Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s reporting in Regime Change that Blanche discussed the possibility of a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell if she publicly cleared Trump’s name.

Blanche also offered a personal narrative, describing his “American dream” — working as a paralegal to becoming one of the country’s highest-profile defense attorneys. What went unmentioned was that Trump’s Save America PAC paid Blanche’s law firm nearly $10 million between March 2024 and December 2024 to represent the president in his criminal cases.

Watch my full breakdown for what happened inside the hearing room, survivor reactions, and the questions never answered.

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Graham Platner's collapse raises a bigger question: Why do our political parties keep rewarding the same kind of candidates? And would more women in leadership change that?

and I dive into that and more:

• E. Jean Carroll’s victory over Trump—and what comes next.

• Where is Mitch McConnell?

• Trump’s Qatar Force One embarrassment.

• Stewart Stevens on what Democrats must do now.

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Graham Platner’s political career is on life support.

The Democratic Senate nominee in Maine who built a national profile on his image as a tattooed oyster farmer and Marine—an unconventional brand that helped make him a Democratic darling— has canceled all of his campaign events while he weighs his next move. Meanwhile, everyone from Hasan Piker to Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer has called on him to drop out.

The Democratic National Committee has stopped running digital ads on his behalf. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is reportedly threatening to withhold funding if he stays in the race. The Maine Democratic Party has urged him to step aside. And Troy Jackson, the former president of the Maine Senate who recently lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary, has already filed exploratory paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run in his place.

In today’s video, I break down how the Democratic Party got here, how political parties navigate allegations of abuse against their own candidates, and why I believed there were deeper problems from the moment the first allegations surfaced.

If you’d like to read what I’ve previously written on this developing check out:

• Why the Graham Platner Allegations Didn’t Surprise Me

• What Happened When I Asked About Graham Platner

This edition of The Red Letter is free thanks to our sponsor Ground News.

One thing I love about Ground News is that it helps me challenge my own assumptions. As a journalist, I’m constantly asking whether I’m missing part of the story, and Ground News lets me compare how different outlets cover the exact same news side by side. It helps me spot blind spots in my own media diet and see perspectives I might not otherwise encounter.

Take California’s proposed billionaire tax—a measure that’s so controversial that even some Democrats, including Governor Gavin Newsom, oppose it. On Ground News, I can instantly compare how outlets across the political spectrum frame the debate, along with each publication’s political leaning, factuality rating, and ownership information. The New York Post describes it as a “raid on the rich,” while SFist focuses on the campaign to put the measure before voters. Same story. Two very different narratives.

That’s exactly why Ground News fits with what I’m trying to build here at The Red Letter. My mission isn’t to tell you what to think—it’s to give you the information and context to make up your own mind. Understanding not just what is being reported, but how it’s being reported, is part of becoming a more informed news consumer.

If you want to break out of your usual media bubble, compare coverage for yourself, and better understand the forces shaping the news you read every day, subscribe to Ground News using the link below and see the difference for yourself.

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The first time I reported on sexual assault, no one would put their name on the record.

It was 2013, and I was twenty-five years old, sitting in the midtown headquarters of the New York Post. I didn’t become a journalist to write about celebrity feuds or who was seen leaving which restaurant, and after two years in the gossip mine of Page Six, I had finally worked my way up to the Metro desk where I hoped to pursue stories of real consequence. I was fascinated by the newsroom legends who exposed abuses of power that everyone else either ignored or accepted. They called those reporters muckrakers, a term I loved and aspired to.

One afternoon I received a call from a lawyer named Stanley Arkin, someone I’d met during my Page Six days.

He wanted to discuss something serious. His friend’s daughter believed she had been raped at Columbia University. But this wasn’t a simple crime story. What Stanley was tipping me off to was a complex tale about a system. Stanley told me that his friend's daughter had accused a fellow Columbia student of rape. Two other students had made similar allegations against the same young man, and the families believed the university had failed them.

This was six years after the Duke Lacrosse scandal and six years before #MeToo. Bill Cosby had just hosted a Comedy Central special. Survivors alleging rape rarely became the subject of national media attention because their stories were often considered impossible to report. Few were willing to identify themselves publicly.

I hung up with Stanley and walked up to my editor’s desk. I remember almost pleading for permission to pursue the story. I knew it would be difficult. I wasn’t sure anyone would ever agree to speak publicly. But I also knew this was exactly the kind of reporting I wanted to do.

I secretly hoped the Harvard-Columbia rivalry might tip the scales in my favor. The editor-in-chief was a Harvard grad.

And I did it. The Post published the investigation. The headline read: “Columbia drops ball on jock ‘rapist’ probe: students.”

Not one victim was quoted by name.

I still remember the anxiety of walking onto Columbia’s campus to knock on doors and confront the young man accused in the complaints.

That was part of the job.

Journalism meant going to uncomfortable places and asking uncomfortable questions.

The following year, after the university declined to expel the student she accused of assaults, one of the anonymous women I had spoken to for my investigation decided to identify herself publicly.

Her name: Emma Sulkowicz.

She carried her dorm mattress across Columbia’s campus.

It was an act of protest. It was also a cultural and political event with ripple effects that reverberate still. Overnight, she became a national symbol of female courage.

She had been brave when I spoke with her on background.

She was even braver when she chose to go on the record.

Over the next decade, I would devote much of my time listening to the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and reporting on the powerful systems and people who conspired with or otherwise enabled him.

Since then many of my nights were spent seated across tables from women who cried as they told me pieces of their past. Many of my days were spent fielding calls and absorbing their rightful anger.

Weeks later, they would call again and ask if they could take everything back.

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Some ultimately went public.

Many never did.

What most people don’t appreciate is that silence is usually the beginning of these stories — not the end.

The public often imagines that if something truly terrible happened, someone would immediately report it to police, tell their family, call a reporter, or speak publicly.

My experience has taught me almost the opposite. Many survivors spend years trying to convince themselves nothing happened.

They minimize what occurred.

They rationalize it.

They wonder if they’ll be blamed. They worry about destroying their careers, disappointing their families, becoming known forever as “the woman who accused someone.”

That’s another way to say a woman who causes trouble.

The fear isn’t always that people won’t believe them.

Sometimes the fear is that they will.

Because once the story becomes public, there is no going back to the life they had before.

Over the years, I came to understand something that changed not just my reporting, but me.

After years of covering survivors, I realized there were aspects of this psychology I understood not just as a reporter, but as a person with my own perspective and experiences.

That realization didn’t make me less objective. If anything, it made me more patient, more careful, and more aware of how long it can take someone to find the words for what happened to them.

I also came to understand why hearing another survivor describe the exact same abuse can be so powerful. It validates that what happened was, in fact, abuse. For many survivors, years of manipulation and degradation leave them questioning their own memories, their own judgment—even wondering whether they somehow deserved it or brought it on themselves.

Before I sat across from survivors of Epstein, I thought the hardest part of my job would be uncovering evidence or persuading editors to publish difficult stories.

I was wrong.

The hardest part was earning trust.

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It meant spending months—sometimes years—listening to people who weren’t sure they ever wanted their names in print. It meant asking questions no decent person wants to ask another human being, knowing they could end the interview at any moment.

It meant understanding that someone might tell you ninety percent of their story and never be ready to tell the remaining ten.

And you have to respect that.

Not because the story isn’t important. Because the person is.

Over time, I began to notice patterns.

People who abuse power often behave in patterns.

Victims do too.

Predators frequently repeat their conduct. Victims frequently remain silent, compartmentalize what happened, and spend years trying to convince themselves it wasn’t what they feared it was.

I’ve watched women who have never met each other describe remarkably similar experiences with the same man. I’ve watched survivors leave out names, incidents, or details they simply weren’t ready to say aloud. Sometimes they returned months later. Sometimes years later. Sometimes never.

That is why, when another allegation surfaces after an initial story, my first instinct isn’t surprise.

It’s curiosity.

That’s why reporting these stories is unlike any other kind of journalism I’ve done.

Political reporting is adversarial. Investigative reporting on corruption is painstaking.

Reporting on sexual violence requires something else entirely: patience.

You prepare yourself for the possibility that someone you’ve spent months interviewing may decide, at the last minute, they simply cannot bear to relive the experience publicly.

And you respect that decision.

Not because the story isn’t important. Because the person is.

Years later, I would travel around the country with Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers. By then, much of the public knew her name. I knew the quieter moments—the conversations away from the cameras, the weight she carried every time she chose to revisit the most painful parts of her life so strangers could judge whether they believed her.

People often imagine that once someone goes public, the hardest part is over. It isn’t.

For many survivors, telling the story once is only the beginning. Every interview requires reopening wounds. Every headline invites a new round of scrutiny. Every inconsistency, every forgotten detail, every decision they made in the aftermath becomes evidence for people determined to discredit them.

Watching that process up close changed me. It reinforced something I’d first learned as a young Metro reporter at the New York Post: silence isn’t evidence that nothing happened. More often, it’s evidence of how difficult it is to tell the truth when the person you’re accusing has power.

President Trump’s reelection underscored a difficult reality: public accusations against powerful men do not necessarily end their careers. For many survivors, that can reinforce the fear that coming forward may cost them far more than it costs the person they’re accusing.

Which brings me to the recent allegations involving the Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine Graham Platner.

When the initial New York Times reporting appeared, many people viewed two of the three accounts as isolated incidents of troubling behavior involving alcohol. Others dismissed the credibility of the third woman, who alleged physical abuse, because she was a Republican political activist.

Then one of the three women came forward to POLITICO and explained that she hadn’t initially told the full story. Only after seeing another accuser publicly attacked did she decide to disclose Monday that she alleged he had forcibly had sex with her.

“I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” Jenny Racicot told Politico. “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’”

When I read that, I wasn’t surprised. Not because I know how every story ends.

I don’t. But I know how hard it is to get one victim on the record. Last month, when I expressed my concerns about Platner, I faced intense backlash.

On Monday evening, Graham announced that he was canceling future events while he takes "time to reflect on the best path forward."

Every allegation deserves scrutiny. Every accused person deserves fairness. Journalism demands evidence, skepticism, and verification.

But after eighteen years reporting on people who wield power—and after spending years sitting across from survivors trying to decide whether they could bear to tell the truth publicly—I’ve learned something that has shaped every investigation I’ve pursued.

The first version of a story is rarely the whole story.

Sometimes there is less than initially appears.

Sometimes there is far more.

Either way, my job isn’t to decide outcomes before the facts are known.

My job is to keep reporting long after everyone else has moved on.

That’s the journalism I believe in.

And it’s the journalism I hope you’ll continue to support.

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Welcome back to The Red Letter.

This is the Postscript—where I offer insight into my reporting and explain the editorial decisions that shape the journalism you read and watch here.

Recently, both Republicans and Democrats have asked me to change stories after publication. For very different reasons, which I’ll explain below, but from a similar belief that the press should work for politicians, rather than for the same public those politicians serve.

The first request came after my conversation with Congresswoman Kat Cammack on June 19. Her team began critiquing the interview as soon as we wrapped, and once I hit publish, they were joined by right-wing activists. The latest request followed my interview with Stacey Abrams. The interview had been “good,” her team told me, but they took issue with a word I selected for my headline.

In both instances, these politicians weren’t challenging the reporting.

They were challenging the editorial decision.

That’s exactly why I started The Red Letter.

After 18 years in legacy media, I wanted to create a newsroom where editorial decisions answered to one group: you, the audience.

That’s not because reporters inside major news organizations lack integrity. I worked with some of the best journalists in the business. But I also saw how editorial decisions can become tangled with competing pressures—access, legal concerns, advertisers, ownership, political backlash, and increasingly, government pressure on the press itself.

Independent journalism doesn’t eliminate difficult decisions. It simply removes as many competing incentives as possible.

The question I try to answer is straightforward:

Is it true? By true, I mean factually accurate. Is it fair? By fair, I mean the information was obtained and would be published lawfully and morally. Is it newsworthy? By newsworthy, I mean the information is something the public should know about

On June 21, I published a conversation with pro-life Republican Rep. Kat Cammack. She opened up about her ectopic pregnancy and about what it was like to almost die while medical professionals debated whether to administer a life-saving abortion.

Cammack asked me not to air part of the interview about her emergency abortion, which she had spoken about previously with the Wall Street Journal. She had not hesitated to answer my question in real time on camera. Only after the interview concluded did she express hesitation, saying that her family was facing death threats.

I chose to publish the full conversation because I believed it was an important, on-the-record account of how abortion laws affect women during a medical emergency.

On June 30, I published a conversation with Stacey Abrams, the voting rights activist and two-time gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, under the headline: “Stacey Abrams: Supreme Court’s Rulings Are a ‘Failure for Democracy’—And Why She Still Won’t Concede.”

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Almost immediately, a member of her team argued that the headline should be changed.

This week, that standard was tested when her team took issue with the word concede, a word she used, not me, saying in a text message to my producer: “this is a sticking point for us and has been for a long time.”

But during our interview, Abrams told me: “I acknowledged the certified winner. I actually congratulated him. But I also said I would not concede that the system used to elect him was right.”

That distinction was the very point of our conversation.

After the insurrection, the Democratic Party thought the integrity of the democratic process itself was the issue on which to win federal elections. In the 2024 campaign, Joe Biden made democracy his central argument for his second term in office. I asked Abrams whether Democrats still had a responsibility to demonstrate faith in elections. It was an important question for Abrams specifically, since she’s one of the country’s most prominent voting-rights advocates, yet after she lost the Georgia gubernatorial election in 2018 by just 1.7 points, she challenged the results. She has gone so far as to decline to refer to the victor, Brian Kemp, as “legitimate” – allowing only that he is governor as a “legal” distinction. Since then, Abrams has remained powerful on the ground and as part of the national political conversation.

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I thought her answer was thoughtful. I thought it added nuance. And I thought it was newsworthy.

That’s why the headline stayed.

This wasn’t a judgment about Stacey Abrams. It wasn’t about Stacey Abrams at all. It was an editorial judgment about what my readers would find most important in the interview.

That’s the difference.

Politicians are supposed to advocate for themselves. Their teams are supposed to protect their brands. That’s their job.

My job is different.

My responsibility is to decide what is most newsworthy—not what is most politically convenient. The same principle applies no matter who’s sitting across from me.

In the span of one two weeks, I was pressured by both sides to change my content. But neither criticism changes the standard. One week Republicans are angry with me. The next week Democrats are. If both sides occasionally think I’m being unfair to them, that probably means I’m asking the questions they don’t want asked.

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That’s not because I enjoy controversy but because I don’t think politicians—of either party—should get editorial control over journalism. I ask these questions for us.

Independent journalism only works if readers trust that the standards remain the same regardless of whose ox is being gored.

That doesn’t mean I’ll never make mistakes. I will. When I do, I’ll correct them. But I won’t change accurate reporting because someone powerful would prefer a different version of the story.

That’s the promise I made when I started this company.

It’s the promise I intend to keep.

If you’ve chosen to support The Red Letter, you’re not just paying for reporting. You’re investing in a newsroom where editorial decisions aren’t negotiated behind closed doors, where you get to see not only the finished story but the thinking behind it. Your support has allowed me to build a team with the same values.

That’s the kind of journalism I want to build.

Thank you for making it possible.

— Tara

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The Supreme Court made a flurry of decisions that impacted both sides of the aisle, some wins and some losses for both Republicans and Democrats. I sat down with to break down what it all means—not just for Democrats, but for American democracy.

Abrams called parts of today’s rulings “a failure for democracy,” arguing that decisions on campaign finance, voting rights, and executive power are reshaping the balance between citizens and government.

We also dug into the political implications heading into the 2026 midterms, including:

• Why she believes today’s campaign finance ruling gives billionaires even more influence.

• Whether Democrats should embrace mail voting as a winning strategy.

• The SAVE Act and who she says could lose access to the ballot.

• What she’s looking for in the next generation of Democratic leaders.

And I asked her something that’s followed her since 2018:

Abrams drew a distinction between accepting a certified election result and conceding that the system itself was fair—a conversation that’s become even more relevant as both parties continue to debate faith in American elections.

Whether you agree with her or not, it’s one of the most revealing interviews she’s given on democracy, voting rights, and where the Democratic Party goes next.

Watch the full conversation and let me know what you think in the comments. Which of today’s Supreme Court rulings do you believe will have the biggest impact on the country?

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Welcome back to The Red Letter.

The politics around Israel are shifting so quickly that it’s becoming difficult to tell where symbolism ends and substance begins.

That’s why I wanted to interview Rep. Marlin Stutzman, one of Congress’s most pro-Israel Republicans, after he introduced a memorandum of understanding that would phase out the $3.8 billion the United States sends Israel each year in military aid.

On its face, that’s a remarkable shift.

But is it actually ending military aid? Or is it simply changing the way the relationship is financed?

The memorandum leaves open significant questions about joint defense cooperation, co-production of weapons, and whether American taxpayers could still be footing much of the bill—just through channels that are less visible to Congress and the public.

At a moment when support for foreign aid is eroding across the political spectrum—and particularly among the younger, America First wing of the Republican Party that helped propel President Trump back to the White House—the idea of ending military aid to Israel has gone from politically untouchable to politically viable.

Many Democrats have also become more critical of unconditional aid to Israel, particularly as the war in Gaza has dragged on. Add to that a $39 trillion national debt and it’s not difficult to understand why this conversation is happening now.

But there’s another force pulling in the opposite direction.

Antisemitism is rising in the United States and around the world. Hamas’ October 7 attack fundamentally reshaped how many Americans view Israel’s security needs, while also exposing deep political divisions over the country’s aggressive military response. For many Republicans, continued support for Israel remains both a strategic and moral imperative.

That is what makes Stutzman’s proposal so fascinating. This isn’t coming from one of Israel’s critics.

It’s coming from one of its allies.

Even more surprising, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he wants the same thing. He actually sent a letter to Stutzman on June 1, 2026, two days before the resolution was introduced, calling it “my plan.”

“I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have,” Netanyahu told CBS’s Major Garrett. “I think that it’s time that we weaned ourselves from the remaining military support.”

Netanyahu’s argument is straightforward: Israel’s economy is approaching $1 trillion in GDP, it has become one of the world’s leading innovation hubs, and mature allies shouldn’t depend indefinitely on American taxpayers.

Stutzman echoed that argument when I sat down with him this week. It’s an argument that will resonate with many fiscal conservatives.

But reading Netanyahu’s letter and Marlin’s resolution, I found myself different questions.

Should foreign leaders be dictating legislation to American politicians?

Is America actually ending military support for Israel? Or is it simply changing where that support lives?

The language in the proposal calls for expanded joint defense cooperation, co-development, and mutual investment. “joint defense cooperation,” “co-development,” and “mutual investment” in defense technologies.

Those phrases sound innocuous. They’re also incredibly broad.

When I pressed Stutzman on what “co-production of weapons” actually means, he pointed to existing collaborations like Iron Dome and argued that countries routinely develop defense technology together. He rejected suggestions that the proposal was designed to hide military assistance inside the Pentagon.

But the question remains.

If direct State Department military aid disappears only to be replaced with Pentagon-funded joint weapons development, how much has actually changed?

How much of that research and development would still be financed by American taxpayers?

How much congressional oversight would exist if funding moved into classified defense programs rather than traditional foreign assistance?

This debate also intersects with another proposal making its way through Congress: the United States-Israel FUTURES Act, legislation designed to deepen U.S.-Israeli defense technology cooperation. It was not introduced as a bill on its own, but an element of the act, the United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative, was folded into the National Defense Authorization Act. The House Armed Services committee “Defending Israel” fact sheet called "it "unprecedented levels of support for the security of Israel."

That raises uncomfortable questions about where the relationship goes next.

One example is Pegasus, the sophisticated spyware developed by the Israeli company NSO Group. Pegasus can infiltrate smartphones without the user clicking a link or downloading malware. It has reportedly been used against journalists, dissidents and political opponents around the world. The FBI tested Pegasus but ultimately decided not to deploy it operationally amid concerns over security and civil liberties.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) has been among the lawmakers warning that Congress should exercise far greater oversight over emerging surveillance technologies and U.S.-Israeli technology cooperation, arguing that democratic allies should not be exempt from scrutiny simply because they are allies. He called it a “fusion” of the two militaries that prevents oversight.

To be clear, Stutzman told me Pegasus has nothing to do with his memorandum and dismissed suggestions that the proposal is intended to integrate the two militaries or conceal aid.

“I think that, you know, too many times people are looking for a conspiracy somehow that we’re going to integrate the military, that’s ridiculous,” he said.

He described the framework as a high-level vision that would require substantial negotiation before any details were finalized.

“It’s a broad language and so there will be more details to be worked out. Okay,” he said. “But there are countries that we do work with that you know we do co-investment on projects.”

Perhaps that’s true.

But broad frameworks have a way of becoming very specific once appropriators, defense contractors, intelligence agencies and foreign governments begin filling in the blanks.

That’s why I wanted to have this conversation now.

Ending aid to Israel sounds simple.

If military assistance is simply folded into Pentagon spending through joint defense programs or weapons co-development, what happens to congressional oversight? How do lawmakers—and taxpayers—know how much is being spent, where it's going, and what leverage Congress retains if that funding is no longer appropriated as traditional foreign aid?

Watch my full conversation with Congressman Stutzman above, and let me know what you think.

Is this genuine fiscal restraint?

Or is it simply military assistance by another name?

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Leon Black—one of Jeffrey Epstein’s biggest financial backers, mentioned more than 8,000 times in the Epstein files, and a man accused of sexual assault by multiple women whose allegations also appear in court filings—stormed out of a congressional hearing room today.

Indignant and unwilling to answer serious questions about the nondisclosure agreements he has signed with women, the billionaire Apollo founder walked out alongside his attorneys, refusing to answer questions from the press.

Today marked a turning point. House Republicans finally subpoenaed Black. He is expected to return next month to testify under oath for the first time.

See shout questions at Black.

Until now, these congressional interviews have too often served as opportunities for Epstein associates and alleged accomplices like Lesley Groff, Ghislaine Maxwell, Bill Gates and others to rehabilitate their public image—to insist they knew nothing about Epstein’s crimes after his conviction as a sex offender, or to dismiss the sworn testimony of women who say they were abused.

Black did the same today with this opening statement to the committee: “I want to state clearly that I did not know about this nefarious activity until Epstein was charged with trafficking in July 2019. I did know that Epstein pleaded guilty in June 2008 to state charges relating to prostitution involving a minor. Epstein told me that it was an isolated incident resulting from a fake ID. Five years after his conviction, I gave Epstein a second chance, as did many others. I wish I had not.”

For the first time, Congress may finally be positioned to test those claims under oath.

I’ve long been frustrated that Black appears to have escaped meaningful scrutiny from the Justice Department. In this highly redacted 2019 memo by then-U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, prosecutors reference multiple Jane Does who accused Black of sexual abuse. Here is one passage:

And another:

These excerpts come from sworn testimony. Yet the 86-page memo largely focused on prosecuting the women around Epstein rather than investigating the powerful men they accused. That imbalance helps explain why we’re still here today.

As I’ve reported before, Jay Clayton—who served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York after being appointed by President Trump—also succeeded Black as chairman of Apollo, the private equity firm Black founded. According to his financial disclosures, Clayton earned at least $1.5 million in that role. It raises an obvious question: would someone in that position aggressively pursue a criminal investigation of Black, who remains embroiled in civil litigation with a woman accusing him of sexual abuse?

When I asked Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche about that relationship at the French Ambassador’s residence, he rejected the premise of my question and directed his security to remove me from the event for trespassing, even though I was an invited guest on French soil.

These are the smaller decisions that accumulate into a much larger failure: decades after Epstein’s crimes came to light, no one besides Maxwell has been criminally held accountable.

After the hearing, I spoke with Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), who was in the room as Black walked out. Her account of what happened was remarkable.

Take a listen above. And if you’re new to The Red Letter, I’d be grateful if you’d subscribe.

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Here’s the original interview and my response for those of you who have not seen or read it yet.

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Welcome back to The Red Letter.

And welcome to Postscript, where I reveal the story behind our stories—the reporting, the conversations, and the careful editorial deliberations required to publish news and insight when the stakes are so high and the pressure not to publish can be even higher.

After my interview with pro-life Congresswoman Kat Cammack (R-FL) about her life-threatening pregnancy emergency—which required an abortion procedure—was viewed more than six million times, she publicly alleged that she had asked me only to delay publication of that portion of the interview until the man she says has threatened her was “located,” after which I would have been free to publish it.

That is not what happened.

Because the circumstances surrounding publication have themselves become part of this story, I believe it’s important to document what occurred accurately, according to my contemporaneous notes.

The interview

• On June 19 at 11:00 a.m., following a June 3 request from her office, I interviewed Cammack for The Tara Palmeri Show on camera.

• The interview covered sexual harassment on Capitol Hill, abuse of power, transparency around sex crimes, and reproductive rights within the Republican Party.

• During that conversation, Cammack discussed the ectopic pregnancy she had first publicly described in an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal in 2025. She recounted how, while suffering a life-threatening medical emergency, treatment was delayed because hospital staff feared violating Florida’s six-week heartbeat law. She described contacting Governor Ron DeSantis’ office for legal advice while hemorrhaging.

• This portion of the interview was given on the record. No conditions regarding publication were discussed before or during the interview.

The immediate aftermath

• Shortly after the recording concluded, my producer, , was contacted by her public relations advisor Aaron Evans, who raised several concerns.

• Among them were that the interview had gone longer than expected, that certain questions had not been discussed beforehand, and that the congresswoman had not anticipated being asked about the circumstances surrounding her previously public account of her pregnancy.

• Later that afternoon, at 2:21 p.m., Evans connected Cammack and me directly by phone. It is this conversation that has now become the subject of public disagreement.

What I was asked

• Congresswoman Cammack expressed concern about ongoing threats against her safety and explained that she feared publication would intensify those threats. I took those concerns seriously. As someone who has also received threats because of my reporting, I told her I understood why she was frightened.

• My contemporaneous notes from that conversation do not reflect a proposal to delay publication until a suspect was apprehended and then proceed with publication. Instead, my notes reflect a request that the interview not be published because of ongoing safety concerns, together with a discussion about the possibility of sitting down again in the future after she had completed additional work in what she described as “the women’s healthcare space.” That distinction matters because it informed the editorial decision I ultimately had to make.

“I really don’t want to try to highlight, bring that situation back into the center for us,” Cammack said during our call following the interview. “So if there’s a way where we could not air that portion and it’s not that I’m not ever going to talk about it. I would be fine talking talking about that situation at a later time probably wrapping it up with work I’m doing in the women’s healthcare space but I just I have some real concerns.”

• She added that there was an unnamed celebrity that had come forward to her office that would be involved in the future legislation and it would be a better time to discuss it after they put forward legislation.

• Half way through the interview, she pivoted to say that she did not want the story released because it would be aired in an interview that also touched on Jeffrey Epstein.

“I don’t personally feel very good about it being presented in the same situation as Epstein to be candid,” she said. “Like I said while my family is going through this now it’s not something that we want to be talking about we are still dealing with the fallout from the Wall Street Journal.”

• She also started to express concern about general threats from the left, not the specific case with the man who is at-large.

Why I published

I did not question that Cammack was genuinely concerned for her safety.

The question before me was different.

It was whether an on-the-record interview with a sitting member of Congress discussing a matter she had already chosen to make public—and one that bears directly on a major public policy debate—should be withheld after the interview had concluded.

I concluded that it should not.

The congresswoman had every opportunity during our interview to decline to answer any question. She did so when I asked why Trump didn’t want the Epstein files released. Instead, she answered these questions candidly and emotionally.

Her account was newsworthy not because it was private, but because she had already made it part of the public debate over abortion policy. Her additional reflections provided important context about how the law operated in practice and how she believed it affected her own medical care.

I believed then, and continue to believe now, that those comments were in the public interest.

Her experience taught me something I didn't know, and I believed it was critical for other women to hear it as well. Ultimately, I believed publishing it could save lives.

None of that diminishes my sympathy for what Congresswoman Cammack experienced. Her pregnancy emergency was harrowing, and I do not question the fear she described—for her health or for her safety. Those concerns were real. My editorial judgment was simply that they did not outweigh the public interest in publishing an on-the-record interview with a sitting member of Congress.

Access and editorial independence

During our conversation, the possibility of another interview was discussed.

At the conclusion of the call, I also understood comments made by her communications team as a warning that my decision could affect future access to Republican lawmakers.

“Every Republican member of congress will know this is how you handle this type of situation,” Evans warned me.

Journalists encounter those pressures regularly.

My responsibility was not to preserve access. It was to make an independent editorial judgment based on what was in the public interest.

Reasonable people may disagree with that judgment.

What should not be rewritten, however, is the sequence of events that led to it.

This account is based on my contemporaneous notes and the communications surrounding the interview.

What The Red Letter Stands For

I started reporting in 2009. In the years since, I have been threatened and harassed by powerful people seeking to prevent the publication of information they later wished they hadn’t disclosed, whether it emerged during on-the-record interviews or through investigative reporting.

Those moments are never easy. They require balancing empathy with a journalist’s obligation to the public. But if the standard becomes that public officials can retroactively withdraw on-the-record statements because the political consequences become uncomfortable, journalism cannot fulfill its purpose.

I launched The Red Letter because I had grown tired of watching access shape editorial decisions. Too often, important stories are softened, delayed, or abandoned altogether because someone fears losing the next interview or the next source.

That doesn’t mean I don’t care about the people I interview. I do. I cared deeply about Congresswoman Cammack’s experience and about the threats she described. I took those concerns seriously. But empathy cannot become a substitute for editorial judgment.

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During our conversation, the possibility of another interview was raised. I understood that to be an opportunity to revisit the subject at a later date. I also understood that choosing not to publish could preserve a valuable relationship. Every political reporter recognizes that dynamic. Access is often offered implicitly, and sometimes withheld implicitly.

But if Cammack did in fact sit down for that interview it would have been on her terms, with ample time to craft a politically correct answer on an issue that remains deeply contested in her home state. It was her raw and human response that taught me something and what made it so profound and frankly newsworthy.

The law we were discussing—the six-week abortion ban—came close to being overturned on November 5, 2024. Florida’s Amendment 4, which would have established a constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability (generally around 23 to 24 weeks) and effectively nullified the state’s six-week ban, fell just three percentage points short of the 60% threshold required to pass. The debate over the law that Congresswoman Cammack’s party supports remains politically contested in Florida.

My responsibility, however, is not to maximize access or help politicians in thorny political situations. It is to tell readers what happened as faithfully and honestly as I can. That is the promise I made when I started The Red Letter, and it remains the standard I intend to keep.

Thank you all for supporting me along the way.

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I thought I knew where this interview was going.

Kat Cammack, a Republican congresswoman from Florida’s 3rd District who proudly displayed a red MAGA hat during our interview, had reached out weeks earlier through her staff to talk about sexual misconduct in Congress on The Tara Palmeri Show. It was a topic I was eager to dig into with a GOP lawmaker who has championed accountability on Capitol Hill while continuing to support President Trump, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 26 women.

But before we sat down, my producer sent me an article about something else entirely: a pregnancy complication that had nearly killed her.

After getting through out questions about corruption in Congress, I asked about it, expecting a polished political answer.

Instead, I watched a member of Congress break-down crying as she described what it felt like to sit in a hospital bed, fearing she might die while nurses, doctors, and administrators debated whether they could treat her.

By the end of the conversation, I found myself thinking differently about the issue.

Then, after we stopped recording, she asked me not to air it.

I had read about Cammack’s experience before. It wasn’t new information. She had spoken publicly about it. There were news stories. Political arguments. Opinion articles. The usual outrage from both sides.

But hearing her tell the story herself moved me.

For the first time, I wasn’t hearing a debate about abortion policy. I was hearing a woman describe what it felt like to believe she might die. A woman with incredible power, helpless on a hospital bed.

And selfishly, perhaps, I thought about myself.

At 38, Cammack and I are the same age. If I decide to have children, I could face many of the same risks and complications that come with pregnancy later in life. Suddenly this wasn't a theoretical debate anymore. It was one I could imagine living through myself.

She talked about hemorrhaging. About being told her pregnancy was ectopic and potentially fatal. About sitting in a hospital room while medical professionals debated whether they could provide treatment because they feared the legal consequences.

She knew the law. She’s a member of Congress. She knew Florida’s six-week abortion heartbeat law contained exceptions for the life of the mother.

And yet there she was, reading the law herself to hospital staff while asking her husband to Google how long it takes to die from internal bleeding.

I found that remarkable.

What struck me most was that we came away from the same story with very different conclusions.

Cammack believes the problem was misinformation. She told me a nurse showed her an advertisement claiming doctors and nurses could face legal consequences for treating women experiencing miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies. In her view, activists and advocacy groups had created fear where none should have existed.

She saw liberal actors exploiting fear.

I saw a law that created the conditions for that fear to flourish.

Because if the law was so clear, why was there confusion at all?

Why were doctors consulting administrators?

Why were administrators reviewing policies?

Why was a woman facing a life-threatening medical emergency waiting while people sorted through legal questions?

Those questions stayed with me long after the interview ended.

I told her during our conversation that after hearing her story, I would be nervous about being pregnant in Florida.

Like a good politician, she pushed back.

Florida is a great state, she told me. The real problem is America’s broken healthcare system.

Maybe she’s right.

Certainly the healthcare system deserves scrutiny.

But I couldn’t shake the larger question.

If a member of Congress with access to doctors, lawyers, and political connections found herself in that situation, what happens to the woman who doesn’t? In the middle of the emergency, she called the Governor’s office to request a lawyer.

But what happens to the woman who doesn’t know the law?

What happens to the woman who doesn’t have the confidence to challenge the people treating her?

What happens to the woman who simply assumes the people in charge know what they’re doing?

After the interview ended, I thanked Cammack for sharing her story.

Then she asked me not to publish it.

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She told me she had already spoken publicly about the experience and worried that airing the interview would generate renewed attention and fresh threats against her family.

I took that request seriously.

I spend much of my career dealing with sensitive subjects and vulnerable people. Protecting sources matters. Context matters. Humanity matters.

But Congresswoman Cammack is not a private citizen.

She’s a public official. The interview was on the record. And more importantly, I believed the conversation was in the public interest.

Not because it settled the debate. It didn’t.

If anything, it highlighted just how differently reasonable people can interpret the same experience.

But it forced me to think about the distance between a law written on paper and how that law is experienced in real life.

It forced me to think about bureaucracy.

About fear.

About confusion.

About how quickly medical emergencies can become political ones.

Most of all, it reminded me that behind every policy debate is a human being.

That’s why I decided to publish it.

I’m curious to hear what you think.

Here’s our conversation.

TARA PALMERI: I do want to talk about something that you’ve spoken publicly about. It’s an extremely vulnerable moment in your life, and I applaud you for doing that because I know it’s not easy, but you know, you suffered a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, and you had to make a decision to terminate that pregnancy to save your own life. What was that like?

REP. KAT CAMMACK: Oh, awful, heartbreaking. I mean, there was no heartbeat. The doctors told me, it took about 10 days to actually figure out really what was going on. At first, they thought that I was just miscarrying because I was hemorrhaging so much. So literally within the first minute of finding out I was pregnant, I immediately thought I was miscarrying.

The doctors, when I went in and they said, ‘Well, there’s really nothing you can do, you’ve probably miscarried.’ ‘So just you’re going to have to go on about your day.’ And I mean that to me was just — holy [expletive].

They kept doing the blood tests to try to figure out what was going on. And they finally with some ultrasounds were able to figure out that it was an ectopic pregnancy, a corneal, which is one of the rarest that you can have and one of the most dangerous.

Like I said, it was about 5 weeks along. They couldn’t detect a heartbeat. And they said that given where it was, because the the hCG levels were continuing to rise, it would eventually rupture and it would cause internal bleeding and there was a very real risk of dying.

And so that’s when they told me like, you have to go now. You got to go to the ER. And they gave me two options. They said you can either do the surgery which because of where this ectopic is you will likely lose your uterus or you can do a shot of methotrexate which is a cancer drug. And the whole deal with methotrexate was it stops the chemical from continuing to produce.

I go into the ER, and they bring me back, and then all of a sudden it was like, “Wait, we have questions.”

And I’m like, “Oh boy.”

That started me down a path of really understanding, one, how broken the system is and, two, how politics has really really endangered a lot of women’s lives in very vulnerable moments.

Florida has the heart heartbeat protection act law. Cannot get an abortion after six weeks. No medical abortions that are sent in the mail. If your doctor wants to get you a medical abortion, they can. But it has to be life because you know threatening to your life essentially. That’s why you need it. And you can get an abortion up to 15 weeks, which is about well whatever four months in in cases of rape, incest or human trafficking. But again, you have to provide documentation like a restraining order or a police report, which a lot of women don’t obviously feel comfortable doing, especially in cases of incest, rape, um, and trafficking, which would endanger their lives in some cases.

I mean, when you met that resistance with doctors, did you think to yourself, ‘we got to change this law?’ You’re an educated, eloquent congresswoman.

Imagine if you didn’t know the law. you were just a regular person perhaps for coming from a disadvantaged background, you get the same sort of diagnosis. How do you convince your doctors that it’s worth the penalty? I mean, they could be fined, $5,000, they can lose their medical license, that it’s worth it to risk their professions to save your life.

CAMMACK: So, in my case, and I know there’s been a lot of different circumstances that women have faced on this, the entire time, from the minute I took that pregnancy test to the minute I found myself in the ER, I kept telling my husband: “What about the women who don’t have a doctor? What about the women who don’t have a car to get to the ER?”

I must have asked him that question 30 times.

As I was in the ER, the nurse who was um taking care of us, she was, you know, very kind and she said, “Listen, there there’s going to be a bit of a delay. There’s some stuff that admin has to figure out.” And I said, “What’s going on?” And she said, “Well, um, according to the law, if we give you a shot of methotrexate, we are going to be held liable, and the doctor is very concerned.”

And I said, “I’m well, one, I’m 5 weeks. The law says six, and I’m 5 weeks, there is no heartbeat, and this is very clearly a, you know, danger to the life of the mother situation.” And she said, “Oh, no, no, I know that.”

But she turned and then she takes her phone and she shows me an advertisement um that was from a group that said that any nurse, technician, doctor um that had helped any woman who was miscarrying or having a topic um that they would go to jail. And it was an advertisement that she had screenshotted. And I sat there in disbelief.

My husband saw it, and I said, “You’ve got to be effing kidding me.” And I looked at the group, and it was a pro-abortion group that was against the Florida law. And come to find out, I didn’t know this then. I found out, you know, weeks later that they had been geofencing around hospitals and um any system that um they could to scare doctors and nurses away from providing care for women in crisis. And um it got so bad that many many months down the road um the state of Florida actually threatened to sue the group in order to get the the ads taken down. Um, and it was a multi-million dollar buy that they spent in digital advertisements, geo fencing around these hospitals and these clinics and um, trying to scare people.

Now, in that case, I’m sitting there thinking, what in the heck is like the law is very clear. I actually pulled up my phone. And I was reading the law to one of the hospital administrators and the nurse and the doctor right there in the room and they said we understand but we’ve got to do some checking before we do anything.

And I’m like if I bleed out like how long – I asked my husband like please Google how long does it take to die if you have internal bleeding? And that was a very very stressful situation and at that point I’m just like what in the heck?

Now I have been mercilessly attacked. To the point of multiple I’m I’m talking dozens and dozens of death threats from people around the country because I’ve told this story. Um you know, everyone says I called the governor and got an exception.

Total [expletive]. That’s such a lie. It’s 11:30 at night. I called the governor’s office, not the governor, the governor’s office to try to get legal counsel from their office on the phone because there was no one else I could call to have them explain to the doctors, to the hospital administrators that the law in fact said one, life of the mother, rape, incest, and this was clearly life of the mother situation.

Two, there was no heartbeat. My baby had died. I had no chance of this being a viable pregnancy. Um, and after I told this story, I cannot tell you how many people came out and like I said, mercilessly, horrifically attacked me to this day. I mean, I get it from people all over because they don’t know the facts and they don’t want to know the facts.

They are either pro-life or pro-choice. Um, one of the things that was really frustrating to me was, people thought it was the pro-life community that was attacking me. It actually was the pro-choice community that came out and said, “This is this is what happens. You know, you should have died. You should have bled out. You should have done all these things.

They’ve um, you know, threatened my daughter, you know, and it’s just it’s a really sad situation because the entire time I was going through that, I kept asking, “What about the women who don’t have doctors? What about the women who don’t have resources?

It was very clear in that moment that whether you’re pro-life or you’re pro-choice, the politics around this issue are hurting women. I don’t care what side you find yourself on, the politics around this are hurting women.

And it was something that put me down a path of I literally rent went and read all 50 states’ laws that are on the books, and not one says that you cannot help a woman in the case of life of the mother in jeopardy. And that to me is something that has gotten lost in translation in the politics.

First of all, that is a horrible situation and I really I can only imagine what that was like. So, I’m so sorry you went through that. But I just want to pull back a little bit, from there.

Yes. I think the disinformation campaign is horrible, right? It’s obviously intended to confuse, create chaos, and show the weakness in the law, right? Or at least the impression that these laws haven’t been properly communicated to hospitals. the people who are in charge of this have not been you know trained they haven’t received you know they don’t have awareness from even the government the administrators and why do you have to go through an administrative process before in a life-threatening situation like I’m pretty sure if I showed up in the ER with you know a heart attack nobody’s going to have to like check the law to make sure they have to they can you know put you I don’t know what you do exactly to save someone from a heart attack but the point is to go into life-saving mode.

So clearly there are some flaws in this law, but I mean you have to understand that a law that has a penalty like that is going to breed disinformation, whether it’s accurate or not. And so I mean do does it make you at least want to rethink these abortion laws in some way? I mean the fact that they can be so easily manipulated.

CAMMACK: Yeah, I mean I think um there’s a couple of things here. um after that experience, but then of course I’ll get emotional here. Give me a second.

It’s okay. You went through something that I hope most women never face; it’s a horrible experience.

CAMMACK: Oh, you got me good on this one.

After that. After our rainbow baby, Auggie after she was born. I mean talking about how I look at the situation. Protecting life is it is the realest issue for me. I think that situation and the birth of my daughter definitely has made me more of an advocate for life.

I do think, and this is beyond this issue. Women’s health care has been reduced to this issue and maybe one or two others. And it is a horrible disservice to women because there are so many things that are unique to women and women’s healthcare that don’t get addressed because of some reason or another. And in talking about the way that these are written and these are communicated, we absolutely have to do a better job, and we have to understand the danger of playing politics with issues like this because it’s real people’s lives.

You know, the fact that I have to have a deputy parked in my driveway 24/7 because I was willing to share my story is ridiculous. I know that there are women who have gone through similar situations in different parts of the country that had a different outcome, they had a different set of circumstances.

And we should be willing to talk about the situations and these circumstances and these experiences without fear of someone threatening your life.

The issue it’s really tough. It is a tough issue. I would say that there is a way that we as women, um, and I think it’s it has to be women because we are uniquely, we are uniquely positioned to talk about this, can come together and talk about ways that we can protect women and we can protect kids.

I think that can happen, but we have to be willing to stop immediately assuming that the headline tells the whole story.

I came forward to tell my story because I wanted one woman, if just even one woman felt a little bit less alone. It would have been worth it.

But I found that there’s a reason why women don’t tell their stories. I mean, this is an existential crisis that we’re going through right now for a lot of people. And I wish it wasn’t this way.

I think when you’re fighting for women, whether you like the term or not, I would put you in the feminist bucket

CAMMACK: I don’t think the feminist movement would appreciate that.

Well, I appreciate your honesty. I’m sure you know, everyone is going to have a different take on your experience. I’m sorry that you faced violence because of that and threats. There’s no excuse for that in public discourse. And I’m really happy though that you have a daughter now and you have a great family and I’m really excited to see what you do in Washington cleaning it up. See how it goes. I hope there’s political will behind it.

CAMMACK: I think there is the political will to clean it up. I really do. I think that there is a tide that is turning where people are starting to see in many ways less of the political labels and more of the ‘hey I feel like this is the right thing to do’ so we need to do this because it is something that transcends politics and whether we’re talking about women and women’s healthcare or we’re talking about getting the creeps out of Congress I think that you’ll find that to be true.

I will say that after hearing your story, it would terrify me to have a child in Florida. I hate to say it.

CAMMACK: It shouldn’t. It shouldn’t. Florida’s a great place.

I know. Hearing that I’m just like, wait, what? It would really, really, really terrify me.

CAMMACK: No, I don’t think so. I mean like I said that situation that I faced was that was a very deliberate campaign that was they intended to inspire fear and they achieved it, they achieved their goal.

Like I said, it blows my mind to this day that we can’t even have a conversation about what I mean and and I’ll even say I mean treatment for miscarriages and ectopics and again I continually get attacked for this but you know follow the science you know it’s not classified as abortion and you know that’s another thing is you conflate terms people they continue to conflate terms and, you know, use misinformation and disinformation and it’s deliberate. And who gets hurt in the end? It’s it’s women. It’s women. It’s kids. And I think when um when we’re talking about how do we protect people?

It’s just look at the facts. Just look at the facts. And in the case of Florida, the facts were there.

Whatever the time is for the admin, who knows? I mean, there everyone’s been in a situation in life where admin in a hospital in a medical situation just takes a long time whether you’re in the waiting room or you’re trying to get your referral or you’re waiting but imagining that sort of admin whether it’s over disinformation or it’s getting the checks or looking at the law like that would just like scare me. I I have to admit it, like that would terrify me that I would have to go through that process.

CAMMACK: I’ll tell you, the health care system should scare everyone because it is completely fundamentally broken. And I know that’s a topic for another day, but I mean, you could take this issue, you could take a million different issues.

We don’t have a health care system in the country. We’ve got a sick care system. And that is one thing that I know Republicans and Democrats and independents, we all agree that the system is broken. And it should terrify every single one of us. Um, how bad it has gotten. So, I’ll say the health care system should scare you, not Florida.

Yeah, the health care system is pretty terrifying everywhere.

CAMMACK: It is. It is.

But add in some laws on top of the bureaucracy and I’m just like — but I appreciate your candor and I appreciate your honesty and I’m really I’m sorry you had to go through that. You know, it takes a lot of bravery to tell your story. So, thank you for telling it.

CAMMACK: Well, I appreciate the time. Thank you.

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There may be no more adaptable politician in Washington than JD Vance.

In just a few years, he’s gone from Never Trump author to Trump heir apparent to the guy defending what Republicans are already calling the “Vance Peace Deal.”

Good luck with that.

For years, Vance built his political brand attacking forever wars, nation-building fantasies and Washington’s habit of promising that this time things would be different.

Now he’s on television asking Americans to trust a deal with Iran.

By one count, the Trump administration was on the verge of peace at least 38 times before finally announcing an agreement.

Maybe 39th’s the charm.

The White House insists this is a major victory. But listen carefully to what they’ve actually secured.

Iran promises not to pursue a nuclear weapon.

Iran promises not to interfere with shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

That’s basically it.

Oh, and after 60 days, Iran can begin charging ships for passage through a waterway that was previously free.

In return, Iran gets sanctions relief, reconstruction money and as much as $300 billion in new investment and infrastructure funding—depending on which administration official you ask.

Vance appeared to acknowledge substantial reconstruction funding during an interview with CBS News.

Trump promptly jumped on Truth Social to deny it.

“The story that the U.S. is paying Iran 300 million [sic] Dollars is Fake News, put out by the Dumocrats!!!”

So to recap: the vice president says one thing, the president says another, and we’re all supposed to trust that Iran will uphold its end of the bargain.

Clear as mud.

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Everything about this deal comes with an asterisk.

Iran gets benefits if it complies. Shipping stays open if Iran complies. Regional stability improves if Iran complies.

The problem, of course, is that every Iran deal is built on the assumption that Iran will comply.

That’s not exactly a reassuring foundation.

And despite what administration officials keep saying, the war didn’t suddenly end because everyone woke up and decided to be friends.

The pressure to find an off-ramp was becoming enormous.

Oil markets were rattled. Americans were souring on another Middle East conflict. Trump campaigned on ending wars, not owning one. The economy needed this to end.

So did the White House.

What makes this politically fascinating is what happens next.

Trump has already joked about blaming Vance if the deal blows up.

Normally I’d dismiss that as Trump being Trump. But Trump jokes about things that are already rattling around in his head.

Meanwhile, some Republicans who don’t want to attack Trump directly have already started attaching Vance’s name to the agreement.

Which means the vice president now owns something attached to a war he didn’t initiate and probably doesn’t fully control.

If the deal holds (unlikely), Vance gets to say he helped prevent another forever war.

If it collapses, if Iran cheats, if shipping through Hormuz becomes a problem again, if the administration ends up bombing Iran six months from now, Republicans will suddenly discover that this wasn’t Trump’s deal at all.

It was JD’s.

And the funniest part is that the America First movement spent years arguing that these kinds of arrangements never work.

Now one of its leading voices is responsible for convincing everyone that this one will.

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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I’m used to the gaslighting and spin that comes from the Trump administration. But I was particularly enraged watching JD Vance defend President Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein on The View and attempt to recast Trump as some kind of hero in the scandal.

Vance, a remarkably smooth political operator, cloaks himself in the legitimacy of New York Times reporting, sprinkling his arguments with enough facts to create the appearance of transparency while obscuring the larger truth. The strategy isn’t disclosure. It’s overload. Flood the zone with fragments and half-context until no one knows what matters.

After all, Vance is thinking about 2028. He understands that positioning himself as an Epstein “conspiracy theorist”—whatever that term is supposed to mean—plays well with parts of the Republican base.

But there were so many falsehoods, omissions, and contradictions in his defense of Trump that I couldn’t let them pass. I’ve spent years reporting on Epstein, reviewing thousands of pages of records, interviewing victims, witnesses, lawyers, investigators, and lawmakers. I’ve also spoken with a member of Congress who was permitted to review the redacted email titled “Trump” inside the Department of Justice—a document that sheds significant light on whether Trump actually threw Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago.

So I’m going to break down, one by one, the claims Vance is making and compare them against the public record.

Because what I’m witnessing is an active whitewashing of this scandal. Whether it’s bro-casters debating whether the victims were really underage, semantic arguments over the definition of pedophilia, or administration officials trying to rewrite Trump’s role in the story, the effect is the same: the historical record is being distorted.

I will not accept a narrative in which Trump emerges as the hero of the Epstein saga. The evidence shows something far more complicated—and far less flattering. At various points, he was a friend, an associate, a beneficiary of silence, and ultimately an enabler of a system that operated in plain sight for years and possibly even worse.

This analysis is based on my original reporting, court records, FBI documents, congressional testimony, and the Epstein files themselves.

LIE: Donald Trump reported Epstein to the police.

TRUTH: Trump did, in fact, make a phone call to Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter, but that call came in July 2006—more than a year after the investigation had already been launched in March 2005. Palm Beach police had received reports concerning Epstein even earlier. As far back as 2001, authorities were hearing allegations that Ghislaine Maxwell was recruiting young girls. During that period, Trump and Epstein remained close.

In 2002, Trump famously told New York Magazine that Epstein was a “terrific guy” and noted that they both enjoyed beautiful women.

So Trump did not initiate the investigation. He called after Epstein had become his enemy. By that point, their friendship had already collapsed following a bidding war over a waterfront mansion known as the House of Friendship in 2005. Epstein drove up the price, and Trump ultimately purchased the property for $41.35 million before selling it three years later for $95 million to a Russian oligarch.

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Only after the relationship soured did Trump begin speaking out.

According to an FBI memorandum memorializing a 2020 interview with Reiter, Trump told him during the July 2006 call: “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this.”

Trump also claimed he had thrown Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago and said that “people in New York knew he was disgusting.” Reiter further recalled Trump describing Ghislaine Maxwell as Epstein’s “operative” and urging investigators to focus on her because “she is evil.”

The timeline matters. Trump did not sound the alarm when Epstein was his friend. He spoke up after the friendship ended.

And years later, when Epstein was arrested again in 2019, Trump told reporters: “No, I had no idea. I had no idea. I haven’t spoken to him in many, many years.”

Trump has also dramatically changed his public posture toward Maxwell. After her arrest in 2020, he repeatedly wished her well. He has remained reluctant to rule out a pardon or commutation, even as Maxwell serves a federal prison sentence for helping Epstein abuse underage girls.

Vance wants you to focus on one line in the FBI memo: that Trump was “one of the very first people to call when people found out that they were investigating EPSTEIN.”

But the rest of the memo is harder to explain away.

According to Reiter’s account, Trump said “everyone has known he’s been doing this.” He described Maxwell as Epstein’s “operative.” He said people in New York knew Epstein was “disgusting.”

Those statements are difficult to reconcile with Trump’s later claim that he had “no idea.”

The phone call may help Trump’s defenders argue that he cooperated with investigators. It does not transform him into the whistleblower Vance now portrays.

If anything, it raises a more uncomfortable question: if Trump believed “everyone” knew what Epstein was doing, why did he later insist that he knew nothing at all?

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LIE: Trump threw Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago.

TRUTH: The evidence on this point is far murkier than Vance suggests.

There are conflicting accounts about whether Epstein was ever a member of Mar-a-Lago. There is no dispute, however, that Epstein spent time there. Video footage and photographs show him socializing with Trump at the club.

It’s possible Epstein attended as Trump’s guest, or as the guest of another member, rather than as a member himself. That distinction matters because if Epstein was never a member, Trump could not literally have expelled him as a member.

The most significant evidence I’ve seen comes from Democratic Congresswoman Madeleine Dean, who was permitted to review a redacted 2009 email with the subject line “Trump” inside the Department of Justice. She could only read the highly redacted document while being watched by government minders while taking notes.

Paid subscribers of The Red Letter can support independent journalism and read:

• The contents of the “Trump” email reviewed inside the Department of Justice.

• What it says about Mar-a-Lago, Epstein’s plane, and Trump’s knowledge of the allegations.

• Why Trump’s lawyer was communicating with Epstein’s lawyer in 2009.

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While much of the conversation around UFC Freedom 250 has centered on politics and conflicts of interest, I wanted to know what the event actually felt like on the ground. So I sent my producer and reporter, , to the White House Ellipse and asked her to write a first-person dispatch about the atmosphere, the fans, and the collision of patriotism, sports, and commerce that defined the night.

It felt like Coachella crashed into a crypto conference and landed on the White House lawn. It was Sunday night. The air was thick with humidity, money, and testosterone.

Except this was the White House Ellipse, and it had disappeared beneath towering stages, massive LED screens, and sponsor tents. Meta was ready to turn your face into a personalized fight poster. Bud Light promoters taught lessons on how to throw a punch. Monster Energy stationed racy “octagon” girls for photo ops with over-eager men who waited in lines stretching dozens deep. Ram trucks gleamed under the Washington sun. Crypto.com logos beamed off massive balloons. Paramount+ branding covered nearly every corner.

It was impossible to tell where the patriotism ended and the advertising began.

The festivities were not part of the official nonpartisan America 250 organization, and as the night went on, the lines became increasingly blurred between what the weekend was actually honoring: Americans or America’s corporation. Even the closed-captioning was sponsored by Trump’s own World Liberty Financial crypto venture.

The event wasn’t just a celebration—it was a business venture.

TKO President Mark Shapiro openly described UFC Freedom 250 as “a strategic investment to drive subscriber acquisition at Paramount+.” While UFC executives acknowledged they expected to lose money on the reported $60 million production, they were betting on long-term growth through subscriptions, advertising and brand exposure. Viewers who wanted to watch from home had to pay $8.99 for a Paramount+ subscription.

President Trump also stood to benefit financially. Financial disclosures show he increased his holdings earlier this year in both TKO Group, the UFC’s parent company, and Paramount, the media giant whose streaming service exclusively carried the event. The official line from the White House is “President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told The Red Letter.

But the optics remain striking: a White House event serving as a marketing vehicle for companies in which the president has invested. Even if the financial payoff comes months or years later through higher stock prices or subscriber growth, the spectacle functioned as a massive promotional campaign that could ultimately benefit both corporate sponsors and the president’s own portfolio.

Yet when I talked to fans, almost none of that seemed to matter.

Attendees had traveled from California, Tennessee, Ohio and New Jersey. Many had never been to Washington before. Several told me they weren’t particularly interested in politics at all. They were there because they loved UFC.

Among them was Gavin Ellis, a 23-year-old from Chattanooga, Tennessee, who described himself as “completely politically homeless right now.”

“My biggest pet peeve right now is how people are making this political,” he told me. “This isn’t political.”

Then he offered what may have been the most revealing observation of the weekend:

“One of the coolest things you can experience as an American is watching two dudes beat the hell out of each other on the White House lawn. There’s nothing more American than that.”

Ellis fit a demographic that has become central to Trump’s coalition: young men who consume sports, podcasts and UFC culture but increasingly describe themselves as politically unmoored.

He told me he once supported Trump but now feels disillusioned.

“I used to believe that [Trump] wanted to make America great again,” he told me “This is an amazing event that has nothing to do with his policies. I do not agree with any events going on in Iran. I feel lied to.”

That disconnect was perhaps the most striking part of the weekend’s events.

Inside the Beltway, the conversation centered on conflicts of interest, sponsorship deals and Trump’s financial relationships with companies connected to the event. Outside the Beltway, attendees saw something entirely different: a free UFC show on the White House grounds and a chance to witness what they believed was a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle.

Jason, who flew in from California but would not give me his name, wasn’t there because of Trump either.

“I like fights. It’s like a car crash—you can’t look away.”

The event’s supporters argue that this is simply modern America: sports, entertainment and politics converging in one massive cultural moment. And there is truth to that. The atmosphere genuinely produced camaraderie among strangers. Fans cheered together, traded merchandise and traveled across the country to participate in something unprecedented.

But the commercialization was impossible to separate from the spectacle itself.

Every emotional high point seemed to be followed immediately by another reminder to subscribe, scan a QR code, or buy into a cryptocurrency venture. It felt like late-stage capitalism wrapped in patriotism. Consumerism hadn’t been replaced—it had simply found a new flag to wave.

The White House has hosted concerts, Easter Egg Rolls and Fourth of July celebrations before. But this felt different—less like a public gathering than a branded experience that happened to take place at the symbolic center of American democracy.

Perhaps that is what made the weekend so fascinating. Washington saw conflicts of interest and corporate influence. The fans saw the event of a lifetime.

Maybe that tonal confusion is precisely what defines this political era. Not that politics and commerce exist side by side, but that they’ve become nearly impossible to distinguish.

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Welcome back to The Red Letter.

In the past 48 hours, I’ve been accused of taking money from AIPAC, running a Swift Boat campaign, serving up propaganda, accepting money from foreign governments, and—my personal favorite—being compared to “a walking mortadella.” (Ironically, my dog’s name is Pancetta.)

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