Trump AG's Ridiculous Excuse For Not Releasing the Epstein Files
DOGE gutted USAID because they thought it only "did abortions," ICE detained an 86-year-old woman who moved to the US to marry her 1950s sweetheart, and DoorDash Grandma was outed as a GOP plant
Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.
The acting attorney general says there’s nothing left to see in the Epstein files. A whistleblower’s new book reveals that the people who gutted USAID thought it “just did abortions.” ICE handcuffed an 86-year-old French grandmother two months after her American husband died. And the White House’s DoorDash delivery was not, it turns out, a spontaneous moment of democracy in action.
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Now, let’s dive in.
Trump’s Acting A.G. Refuses to Release Even One More Epstein File
Todd Blanche became acting attorney general eleven days ago, after Trump fired Pam Bondi twelve days before she was scheduled to be deposed by Congress about the Epstein files.
Blanche celebrated his first hours as the nation’s top law enforcement officer by going on Fox News to claim that there are no remaining unreleased Epstein files and actually everyone should stop thinking about them.
“We are not sitting on a single piece of paper,” Blanche told Fox News Tuesday.
Congress set a December 19 deadline for the full release. The DOJ missed it by months. When some files did come out, the law was clear: redact victim names, but not the names of powerful people connected to Epstein. The DOJ managed to get this backwards by leaving some survivors unredacted while the men who abused them stayed hidden.
Meanwhile, Senator Ron Wyden revealed that Blanche had personally intervened to block the DEA from releasing an unredacted 69-page document related to a secret investigation into drug trafficking and prostitution connected to Epstein and several associates. Blanche claims there’s nothing left to release.
The House Oversight Committee, which had subpoenaed Bondi to testify, is now quietly exploring whether that subpoena applies to Blanche instead. Chairman James Comer announced he would be conferring with colleagues on next steps, which is the congressional equivalent of saying you’ll circle back on an email you have no intention of answering.
DOGE Thought USAID Only ‘Did Abortions’ When Gutting It
A whistleblower memoir is offering the most detailed account yet of what actually happened inside USAID in the days after the Trump administration arrived to dismantle it. The short version: the people making life-and-death decisions about global health programs didn’t know what global health programs were.
Nicholas Enrich, then-USAID’s acting assistant administrator for global health, recounted a February 2025 meeting in which newly installed Trump officials sat down to learn about the agency they were already in the process of destroying.
USAID chief of staff Joel Borkert reportedly told Enrich: “As a Republican, when I think of what USAID does in global health, I assumed it was just, you know, abortions.”
USAID, for the record, ran tuberculosis prevention programs, childhood disease initiatives, malaria treatment, and HIV response across dozens of countries. When Enrich explained that interrupting drug-resistant TB trials could produce untreatable new strains, a White House liaison suggested preparing “Barney-style” slides for leadership.
Yes, referring to the purple dinosaur. He also recommended calling it “Super TB” instead to hold their attention.
After leaving the meeting, Enrich and his colleagues felt the officials were “not real policymakers, but impostors sitting in big chairs and pretending to grapple with complex issues.” Enrich was placed on administrative leave after releasing whistleblower memos.
The title of Enrich’s book? Into the Wood Chipper. That’s putting it mildly.
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ICE Arrested an 86-Year-Old French Grandmother. Her Crime Was Being a Widow.
Marie-Thérèse was 86 years old and living in Alabama. She had a lawyer. She had a hearing scheduled. ICE arrested her the day before.
She and Billy had met over sixty years ago in France, when he was an American soldier stationed at a NATO base. They lost touch when he was sent home in 1966, each went on to marry other people and have children, and reconnected decades later. Both were widowed by 2022. They married in 2025, and Marie-Thérèse moved to Alabama.
Then Billy died suddenly in January. Billy’s son from his previous marriage then reportedly threatened Marie-Thérèse, as well as cut off her water, internet, and electricity. A dispute over the inheritance followed. She hired a lawyer and was awaiting a green card when ICE arrived and arrested her the day before her scheduled hearing.
Marie-Thérèse was handcuffed at the hands and feet, despite having heart and back problems. Her son said that her health and the horrid state of ICE facilities could be fatal, warning, “She won’t last a month in such conditions.”
The French foreign ministry has gotten involved. Her son described the whole thing as “a bad American film. Every morning I wake up and tell myself none of it is true.”
This is not a failure of the system. This is the system working exactly as designed.
The DoorDash Grandma Was a Paid GOP Operative, and Not Even a Covert One
Yesterday, a grandmother named Sharon Simmons knocked on the door of the Oval Office and handed Trump two bags of McDonald’s. The White House filmed it. The message was: look at this ordinary American worker benefiting from the No Tax on Tips policy.
Trump acknowledged the optics himself, joking to reporters as Simmons arrived: “This doesn’t look staged, does it?” DoorDash confirmed that the delivery was arranged to commemorate the first anniversary of the policy.
It was also not Simmons’ first rodeo.
Republican Rep. David Kustoff previously posted in July 2025 about hearing testimony from Simmons at a Ways and Means Committee field hearing in Nevada. She claimed at the time that the One Big Beautiful Bill would “make a real difference in her life.” She also appeared in a promotional video for the policy posted by the chair of the Ways and Means Committee.
To be clear: Simmons is a real person, a real DoorDash driver, and by all accounts a woman genuinely managing hard circumstances. The White House still presented a pre-selected, pre-testified, corporate-sponsored delivery driver as a spontaneous citizen encounter.
A final unfriendly reminder: DoorDash was a megadonor to Trump’s 2025 inauguration.
Nothing To See Here (We Disagree)
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