Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-07-18 Friday

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

Headlines for July 18, 2025; “Stunning Reversal”: Trump Stonewalls on Epstein Files After Campaigning on Full Transparency; Epstein Survivor Calls for Accountability: Release the Files, End Impunity for Rich & Powerful Abusers; Rep. Ro Khanna Pushes to Release All Epstein Files, Calls Gutting of Public Media “Devastating Blow”; Trump Cuts to Public Media Threaten Native Stations That Protect Culture & Public Health, Issue Alerts

From New York, this is Democracy Now! On this vote, the yeas are 216. The nays are 213. The resolution is adopted. Without objection, a motion to reconsider is laid on the table. In an early morning vote, the Republican-controlled House passed President Trump's rescission package. In a major blow to public media and local news, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will be defunded for the first time since it was established more than half a century ago. We'll speak to the president of

Native Public Media. But first, the Epstein files, in a growing political storm in his own MAGA movement. Some Democrats have joined President Trump's base in demanding more disclosures. We'll speak with Congressman Ro Khanna of California. Mr. Speaker, I introduce today an amendment demanding the full release of the Epstein files. The Speaker's Rules Committee should demand a vote tomorrow of every member of Congress. But where are the voices of the victims? We'll talk to Teresa Helm. She says, I'm a Jeffrey Epstein survivor.

The documents are an opportunity. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. The House of Representatives voted 216 to 213 early this morning in favor of President Trump's rescissions package, clawing back $9 billion in already approved funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting. Only two Republicans oppose the measure, which now heads to Trump's desk for a signature.

The legislation codifies Trump's cuts to foreign assistance through the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the British medical journal The Lancet reports could result in 14 million additional deaths globally by 2030. Catherine Maher, head of NPR, blasted the, quote, unwarranted dismantling of beloved local civic institutions by an act of Congress that disregards the public will," unquote. We'll have more on this later in the broadcast with Loris Taylor, president of Native Public Media and congressmember Rokana.

In the Gaza Strip, an Israeli strike today killed five displaced Palestinians sheltering in tents in Al Mawasi, an area designated as a safe zone by Israel's military. The attacks sparked a major fire. Infants were among the dead. Separately, Israeli attacks killed seven more hungry Palestinians as they searched for parcels of humanitarian aid. Medical workers report Israeli attacks have killed at least 30 Palestinians since dawn today.

This follows an Israeli airstrike Tuesday on a home in Gaza City's Al-Tufa neighborhood that killed 14 members of the Arafat family, including seven children. Video shows 35-year-old Hala Arafat trapped under the rubble of her home, crying out for help. Rescue crews attempting to approach the site over the next eight hours were reportedly fired on by Israeli drones. During that time, Hala and other members of her family fell silent and died. This comes as the United Nations Children's Fund warns 21 months of Israeli attacks have killed more than 17,000 children

in Gaza, with another 33,000 injured. UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell testified to the U.N. Security Council Wednesday. An average of 28 children have been killed each day, the equivalent of an entire classroom. Consider that for a moment. A whole classroom of children killed every day for nearly two years. These children are not combatants. They are being killed and maimed as they line up for lifesaving food and medicine. Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, Christian leaders have accused Israeli settlers of attacking religious sites, including an

arson attack on a cemetery in a fifth-century church in the Christian town of Taipei. The Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilus III, told reporters, quote, "...we call for an immediate and transparent investigation on why the Israeli police did not respond to emergency calls from the local community and why these abhorrent actions continue to go unpunished," unquote. In southern Syria, heavy fighting has once again erupted between Druze fighters and Bedouin armed groups just hours after Syrian government forces withdrew from the province of Soweta as part of a ceasefire deal. A spokesman for Syria's interior ministry is denying reports Syrian forces are being

redeployed to the region. The U.N. Human Rights Office reports all factions fighting in Soweta have committed widespread rights violations, including summary executions, arbitrary killings, kidnappings and looting. President Trump says he's directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to release grand jury testimony from federal investigations into the dead serial sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. But Trump's announcement failed to quench a revolt among his MAGA supporters, who are continuing to demand this Justice Department release all files related to Epstein. On Thursday, the White House ruled out having Trump name a special prosecutor to look into

the case. Meanwhile, Republicans on the House Rules Committee adopted a nonbinding resolution calling for the release of files on Epstein. Separately Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported Trump sent a lewd letter to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 wishing him a happy 50th birthday. It concludes, Happy Birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret. We'll have more on this story after headlines, including speaking with a Jeffrey Epstein survivor. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to advance the nomination of controversial Justice Department official Emil Bovi to a lifetime appointment on a federal

court. The vote came despite vocal objections from Democrats after committee chair Chuck Grassley shut off debate on Boevey's nomination. All Democrats on the panel walked out of the vote in protest. Earlier this week, over 75 former federal and state judges sent a bipartisan letter urging the Judiciary Committee to reject Boevey's nomination. Separately, more than 900 former Justice Department attorneys issued a similar plea. Boevi has been called an extreme ideologue and has allegedly directed Justice Department lawyers to ignore judicial orders that undermine Trump's agenda.

This is Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. As to Emil Boevi, let me start with this nominee having told a room full of Department of Justice lawyers that if the federal courts didn't back off on restricting unlawful deportations, they would have to tell courts, F you. Democrats also accuse Boevi of being involved in a Justice Department decision not to release the Epstein files. Emil Boevi is the former personal attorney of Donald Trump. As the Trump administration ramps up nationwide raids and deportations, Immigration and Customs

Enforcement ICE will be given access to the personal data of the nation's nearly 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including their home address, Social Security number, ethnicity and race. The new agreement was first reported by the Associated Press, and Trump officials have not publicly announced it. Undocumented immigrants are already banned from Medicaid benefits. But federal law requires all states to offer emergency Medicaid, which offers nearly free coverage for lifesaving

care at hospitals, regardless of a person's immigration status. This comes as a coalition of immigrant rights groups are suing the Trump administration over the arrest of potentially thousands of people at immigration courts nationwide in recent months. The class action lawsuit seeks to end ongoing collaboration between the Homeland Security and Justice Departments, which has led to ICE agents swarming courthouses across the country ambushing immigrants during routine hearings. The group said the policy, quote, intentionally stripped people of basic due process rights

in order to place them in expedited removal proceedings and deport them without hearings, the group said. A truth-out investigation warns of intensifying police and ICE raids at massage parlors nationwide, targeting and disappearing hundreds of immigrant sex workers, including here in New York. Advocates have criticized the lack of resources supporting immigrant sex workers, including here in New York. Advocates have criticized the lack of resources supporting immigrant sex workers, who've long been vulnerable to harassment and arrest by federal immigration agents, often abandoned in detention to face deportation without legal help. A human rights group in El Salvador reports at least 427 people have died in Salvador

in prison since President Naib Bukele imposed a state of emergency in March 2022. The following year, Bukele's government authorized mass trials with people accused of crime systematically, denied due process under the guise of combating gangs. There have been numerous reports of abuse and torture in El Salvador's prisons. In related news, the longstanding anti-corruption watchdog Christosal says it has evacuated its staff from El Salvador amid Spichelli's crackdown on dissent. Authorities arrested prominent Christosal lawyer Ruth Lopez in May. She remains in detention.

This is Christosal's executive director, Noah Bullock. You know, we persisted through espionage, monitoring, legal, administrative harassment, defamation. But when it became clear that the government was prepared to persecute us criminally and that there's no possibility of defense or an impartial trial, that makes it unviable to take those risks anymore. French troops completed their withdrawal from Senegal Thursday, the last West African country in former colony where France maintained a permanent military presence. Senegal has said it will continue collaborating with France, in contrast with the military governments of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, which ousted French forces in recent years.

The U.S. Justice Department has asked a federal judge to sentence a former Louisville, Kentucky police officer convicted of violating the civil rights of Breonna Taylor to one day in prison. Last year, a federal jury convicted Brett Hankison of using excessive force as he discharged several gunshots through Taylor's apartment window during a botched raid that killed Breonna Taylor inside her own home in 2020. Taylor was a black 26-year-old emergency room technician whose killings sparked nationwide racial justice protests. A judge has lifted all domestic travel restrictions on Columbia University Palestinian activist

Mohsen Madawi. Madawi was arrested by federal immigration agents in April and detained in Vermont for over two weeks. He graduated from Columbia University a month ago. And CBS has announced it's canceling the long-running late show with Stephen Colbert. The network called it purely a financial decision, despite the show being consistently the highest rated among its late-night competitors. Trump has previously called Colbert, who frequently skewers the president on air, a complete and

total loser. The news came amidst Paramount's impending and controversial merger with Skydance, and just three days after Colbert called out Paramount for paying—agreeing to pay Donald Trump $16 million to settle Trump's lawsuit against CBS's 60 Minutes. … someone who has always been a proud employee of this network. I am offended. And I don't know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company. But just taking a stab at it, I'd say $16 million would help. CBS's The Late Show has been on the air since 1993, with Stephen Colbert taking the

reins in 2015. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. In President Trump's latest threat to journalists covering his administration and related scandals, he's threatening to sue The Wall Street Journal after an article was published late Thursday that alleges Trump contributed a sketched drawing of a naked woman to a birthday album for serial sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday, compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell, now in prison

for about 20 years. The paper did not publish the sketch, but described it as an outline of a naked woman with Trump's signature scribbled below her waist in a way to mimic pubic hair. The sketch came with a typewritten note the Wall Street Journal called an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein written in the third person. This is the note, quote, "'Voice over. There must be more to life than having everything,' the note began. Donald, yes, there is, but I won't tell you what it is.

Jeffrey, nor will I, since I also know what it is. Donald, we have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Jeffrey, yes, we do come to think of it. Donald, enigmas never age. Have you noticed that? Jeffrey, as a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you. Donald, a pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret."

Unquote. President Trump has denied he authored the message and is now calling the case the quote Epstein hoax. But amidst growing outrage among his MAGA base over the new allegations and their calls for the Department of Justice to release more Epstein files, President Trump said he's directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the release of grand jury testimony, which a judge would have to approve and would likely have little new information, as only a partial set of pages from the massive amount of files that are called the Epstein files.

On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt was asked if Trump would appoint a special prosecutor in the Epstein case. Well, the idea was floated from someone in the media to the president. The president would not recommend a special prosecutor in the Epstein case. That's how he feels. And as for his discussions with the attorney general, I'm not sure. This comes after the Trump administration said Wednesday it had fired longtime U.S. attorney Maureen Comey, who helped lead the successful prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and his former girlfriend

and accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. Maureen Comey is also the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, who became a prominent critic of the president after Trump fired him in 2017. Trump on Wednesday dismissed the Epstein story as boring, but said he backed the release of any credible documents. He later lashed out against members of his MAGA movement over demands he release the Epstein files, calling his own supporters weaklings. For more, we're joined by Aswin Soobsang, senior political reporter at Rolling Stone covering

the modern American conservative movement and GOP. His newest pieces are headlined, Team Trump Was on F-ing Warpath to Kill Story About Salacious Letter to Epstein and Inside Trump's Frantic Failing Mission to Crush the Epstein-MAGA Rebellion. Welcome to Democracy Now, Swin. and inside Trump's frantic, failing mission to crush the Epstein-MAGA rebellion. Welcome to Democracy Now! Swin. It's great to have you with us from Cincinnati. Can you start off by explaining to people why the Epstein files have been so critical

to the growth of the MAGA movement, have been so much a part of it, you know, along—maybe as important as Trump's allegation that the 2020 election was stolen. Well, since you mentioned his lies about the 2020 presidential election, isn't it funny which conspiracy theories, rabid right-wing, modified theories in which lies from Donald Trump end up getting cemented into official federal government policy and Republican Party doctrine, and which ones are set aside as soon as they become sort of inconvenient for the dear leader.

When it comes to his anti-democratic authoritarian lies about elections and the 2020 election across the federal government and different departments. It's just being cemented into actually policy and practice, the lie that the election was stolen from Donald Trump in 2020 and therefore something has to be done about it and there are all these different crackdowns going on. Now when it comes to the far-right conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein, suddenly Donald Trump

and his government, after saying for months that to their supporters, not the American people specifically, but to their most modified, extremely online supporters, we're going to get this done. We're going to do something about it. Suddenly, they're taking on a completely across the board, full court press, nothing to see here folks attitude. It's a stunning reversal because for years,

some of the most prominent figures in the MAGA and also mainstream conservative movement, including some of the most senior appointees in Donald Trump's second term, like Dan Bongino and Cash Patel at the FBI, have been fostering these MAGA conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein, saying that his death behind bars in 2019 was likely a murder that was committed to cover up the alleged sins and crimes of a sort of pedophile, democratic party run cabal that helps run the so-called deep state, and that these enemies of Donald Trump and MAGA

were bumping off Jeffrey Epstein because they were afraid his testimony or the files or what he had to say or his alleged blackmail operations would implicate them. What I just described to you is what I would describe a borderline piece of holy grit and religious understanding within the MAGA movement. This isn't a small thing or conspiracy theory that they adopt or ban the about just because they want to work for fun among so much of the so-called MAGA grassroots. This is taken as almost a level of religious principle for them.

Donald Trump in trying to tell a lot of his supporters to move on finally from this issue might as well be telling his evangelical supporters, by the way, adultery isn't a sin. You read that wrong in the Bible. That part of scripture doesn't exist. So for days now, going on nearly two weeks, as we've been reporting out at Rolling Stone, a very fundamental and sort of perversely fascinating aspect about the story is that President Trump and other senior lieutenants in his administration in the White House and elsewhere have

been throwing a ton of time and resources at trying to mitigate the damage they've done to themselves, both within the federal apparatus and also outside among the broader, shall we call it, the MAGA sphere and among President Trump's supporters. They've been doing a ton of damage control and a bunch of outreach efforts, including to top MAGA influencers who Trump himself has been personally beseeching, trying to

get them to lay off of him and just drop this whole Epstein kerfuffle. What we've been picking up on in our days reporting on this is a level of operation that you typically see from administrations and White Houses when they're trying to pass major pieces of legislation on Capitol Hill, not when you're trying to get the Charlie Kirks of the world to lay off of Pan-Bondi when it

comes to the famous pet file. So there's a lot of layers to this, a lot of rifts and backlash that's going on throughout the Mowgli world, not just in influencer communities, but even within the vast federal apparatus and within the very tippy top levels of federal law enforcement itself. And these are having dramatic consequences for Donald Trump right now in a way that currently has no end in sight. And again, this is all over conspiracy theories that his people long nurtured for years and years.

It's absolutely fascinating. So, if you can talk about Dan Bongino, number two, at the FBI, as it's been described, a former Epstein obsessive, also Cash Patel, head of the FBI. Is this a true rift between them and Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and Trump, Trump who just talked about speaking with Dan Bongino and that he's doing fine. And then, what more do you have on the divisions within the Trump administration around this? For example, JD Vance doing damage control and more. And how damaging is this, that Trump is telling his own supporters he doesn't care about

them anymore, insulting them by calling them weaklings, saying this is a Democratic plot, when in fact it's come up a groundswell from within the MAGA movement? Right. Well, when you talk to people close to Donald Trump, whether it's those who work in the upper echelons of his second administration or other Trump advisors, or just people in his broader social and political orbit, one recurring element that they'll tell you in recent days is,

look, the way Donald Trump is conducting himself publicly and the way he keeps talking about this and trying to post through it online. It is making it exceedingly difficult for some of his biggest supporters and boosters to not start at least suspecting that he has something to hide or maybe even that, well, he's kind of acting like someone who is in the so-called Epstein files in some sort of embarrassing or nefarious way, whether he is or isn't,

that's an issue for transparency that Trump and the federal government have the power to follow through on. They're just absolutely refusing to right now and playing all of these different bait and switch games. So like anybody who follows the MAGA fever swans, even casually can see that this isn't something that's not going away anytime soon and that this is something that as much as they would like to say over and over and over again, Donald Trump is promulgating these ridiculous

conspiracy theories that, oh, Obama and Hillary Clinton wrote the Epstein files in part maybe to try to get Trump. That's something that just does not scan for people who adore Donald Trump, generally speaking, because that's a conspiracy theory that was just invented out of thin cloth by Donald Trump, and is just not anywhere in the MAGA lore about what these Epstein files may or may not say.

And to your other question about what is going on within the actual federal government, not just in far-right influencer communities or whatever, something we flicked at in our reporting over the past nine days or so at Rolling Stone is an element which actually hasn't really permeated that much in national political media for going on for quite a while, at least several months.

Attorney General Panvani and other officials in Trump's appointed federal law enforcement like Trump hyper loyalist Cash Patel, who is of course now director of the FBI, they do not like each other. There's been petty feuds and long-simmering tension between them for personal tension between the two of them for quite some time. And this whole Epstein debacle has only exacerbated that and brought that back to the fore.

And also, even more so than that, it's definitely no secret nowadays that the number two at the FBI, Dan Bongino and Pam Bondi, are incredibly distrustful of each other, especially with this whole Epstein mess, and really, really do not like each other to the point where anybody of any level of influence you talk to in Trump land or within the federal government right now will tell you that Dan Bongino has basically torched his reputation or standing as it were with other senior lieutenants in the Trump administration and that no matter how long he officially stays on

the job right now, his days are numbered both because of his own antiquity for this situation and the bridges that he has just burned completely into the seat of this matter. So all of this, it's not hyperbole at all to say that the Epstein affair as it is right now has kind of set the Trump administration at its very highest levels on fire and has threatened to tear it apart in the form of, we don't know what in the next week or two necessarily the makeup of the leadership of federal law

enforcement is going to be. I also think it is not an exaggeration at all to say that over this issue within the past less than two weeks, President Trump has managed to sustain more political damage and self-inflicted blowback on himself than he did when he literally bombed Iran last month. That is a wild—that is an objectively wild thought to consider or to fathom. But if you know anything about how the MAGA grassroots function, it is weirdly expected

with how this administration has been going lately. Swin Supseng, I want to thank you so much for being with us, senior political reporter at Rolling Stone. We will link to your articles inside Trump's frantic failing mission to crush the Epstein-Magger rebellion and blaming Obama, Crooked Hillary, Trump's Epstein memo meltdown gets even worse. Next up, we go to a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein. We turn to Teresa Helm. Stay with us. Why are you afraid of me?

I am the fruit of something that has no name. The mistake that man never makes. I'm the one who's never made a mistake Why are you afraid of me? Why are you afraid of me? If I'm made to be regretful And my story has run out of life Temes, by Ile, performing in our Democracy Now! studio. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.

I'm Amy Goodman. Missing in much of the mag of frenzy over the Jeffrey Epstein files are the voices of survivors of the sexual abuse he perpetrated against them. Many like our next guest have joined the call for transparency and for the Trump administration to release the files as promised. This comes as Virginia Jufri, an outspoken survivor of sex trafficking by Jeffrey Epstein, died apparently by suicide at age 41 in April. She was the first survivor to come out publicly against Epstein and his co-conspirator, Ghislaine

Maxwell, who remains in prison. She also sued Prince Andrew for sexually assaulting her when she was 17. The disgraced prince was forced to step away from his royal duties and settle with Jewfree in 2022. Her family said in a statement, quote, "'Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She was the light that lifted so many survivors," unquote. Just last week, when the FBI and Department of Justice announced there was, quote, no

incriminating client list, it also said Epstein harmed over 1,000 victims over two decades, far more than previously known. For more, we're joined by Teresa Helm, who is a survivor of sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein, facilitated by Ghislaine Maxwell. She was assaulted by Epstein in the early 2000s. She now works as the Survivor Services Coordinator for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. Her 2024 piece for Newsweek is headlined, I'm a Jeffrey Epstein Survivor. The documents are an opportunity. Thank you so much for joining us.

You, Teresa Holm, have talked about the dangers of grooming. As you see all of this taking place, the uprising within the MAGA movement, lost are what sexual violence survivors go through. Talk about how you first met Jeffrey Epstein, how you were brought to him, how you were groomed. Well, hello. Good morning. I can certainly talk to that. So I was attending college out in California at the time and was a full-time student and

a full-time employee there. And so that began the process of recruitment to grooming passed along the line from various people as far as this is an opportunity that I'd like for you to see if you're interested in and go talk to this person. So after speaking with a couple young women about an opportunity that I thought I was being blessed with at the time, I eventually met with Ghislaine Maxwell, who really, what she did was pretty astounding in the fact that within a day, I was convinced that I was in a safe, healthy,

wonderful environment, blessed with an opportunity to pursue a career that I could have only dreamed of having. In fact, that was my dream to do what she had stated I would do alongside her, working for her. She was very polite and kind. She built trust and a very, you know, within hours, I thought that I had really landed the opportunity of a lifetime. My family was very pleased that I was there interviewing with her, which is what the

intention, that's what I thought I was there for, was an interview. And things went so amazingly well. therefore was an interview and things went so amazingly well. And then she was so successful in all of that very, I would call it, you know, master manipulation. She was very calculated in her craft and did it very well. I was very young. I mean, I was an adult, 22 years old. However, I had such big dreams and aspirations and determination and really wanted to make the most of this opportunity that I thought that I was getting to the point where at the end of my time with Gieland Maxwell,

although I hadn't known that there was a partner, as she referred to him, that I would be meeting at the end of my time with her. I hadn't heard Jeffrey or any other person's name the entire time from beginning sitting behind the desk at work in California at the college to meeting Sarah Cullen at the beach, who then introduced me to Gielin.

I had no idea that there was a final person that I was going to go meet. And once I learned of him by the name of Jeffrey, I did not. I paused and thought about some things, waved any kind of red flag in my mind, because again, she was so, uh, Gielin was so, um, so good at what she had done and built that trust, um, in me. And so then I walked, I walked, uh, myself to Jeffrey's home later that day to what I thought was to interview with him without without

really a lot of question actually being quite excited because I thought well if I was so successful here with Gielin which has really made me believe that I have been now I get the opportunity to go complete this like a second round of the interview and that was really I walked myself into tragedy. I had no idea. I could, I actually should, and I will reframe that. I didn't walk myself into tragedy. I was lured there.

I was coaxed there, coerced there under false and fraudulent, you know, conditions and expectations. And it was there— That's how it happened. It was then that Jeffrey Epstein assaulted you? That's right. There in his very big, beautiful home there in Manhattan, you know, the home that Gielin was raving about after I had been complimenting her on

her home and speaking about the different various buildings and the architecture and how much I enjoyed it and comparing different cities to New York. And then she raved about his, if I thought hers was great, wait till I see his. Yeah, so it was there. So you have joined the call for the Epstein files to be released. Can you explain why you of this is in, you know, utter solidarity with survivors of this entire nightmare that's just been going on, you know, ongoing for decades with these people that have gotten away with so much for so long. You know, whether it was a failure of the system back in the 90s, whether failure of the system again in the early 2000s. There are so many women and

at the time even children that have been harmed by these people. I really urge everyone to focus the commitment, the attention, all this time, effort, and energy onto bringing to light what needs to bring to light for these survivors and their healing and less about political weaponization of anything. Because at the end of the day, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about people's lives, and it should not be weaponized either way in any administration, no matter who's in control at the time,

who did what when, who's doing what now. Transparency is key because we cannot move forward as a society and as a culture without these fundamental changes Transparency is key because we cannot move forward as a society and as a culture without these fundamental changes of doing the right thing and holding people accountable because we can't continue to have systems of power that just get away or people, whether it's a system or a person, we cannot continue to have these people or systems continue to get away with anything that they can get

away with because they're not, they're skating through, they're dodging accountability, there's too much money involved. So people silence through money. We have got to change that. It's degrading our society to continue to allow these predators and perpetrators to get away with harming so many people, those that harm and exploit. They have to be silenced, not the survivors continuing to be silenced. Because when you don't have accountability, you don't have justice, we are so far out of balance with justice.

It's almost like Lady Liberty, she can take a small step to the ground because we're so uneven where survivors are holding on, clinging on to the hope, which tends to be, you know, one thing that you can't take away from a survivor is how we get here. We survive through it because we have so much hope. But hope tends to get shattered often. We have, and it's like, it's the onus is on us to pick up the pieces and try to get louder and louder. You know, our silence is not, it's very loud within us. have to then you know we're tasked with rising back up fighting bigger fighting louder you know screaming from the mountaintops like who is going to do something because we are setting

horrible horrible influences to our children and to our youth of what you can and can't get away with depending on who you are what position you are in And as I said, I just feel like, you know, oftentimes we have these huge profile cases where people are harming others and there's just such a big, you know, did this really happen to you? Well, if it did, what about the, we have to get to the point where we can't just let it go. And then we have to get to the point where we can't just let it go. And then we have to get to the point where we can't just let it go. harming others and there's just such a big, you know, did this really happen to you? Well, if it did, what about that?

We have to get to the point where we are survivor focused in the justice system because we're such a huge part of it that we have to stop politicizing everything and listen to the survivors, listen to the ones that have the lived experience. You cannot take this experience. People can say there's nothing there. You cannot take the lived experience away from us. Not that we wanted it in the first place, but here it is. It lives with us. It remains with us. We're fighting for justice. You cannot take away our lived experience. Well, Teresa Holm, I want to thank you so much for being with us. We're going to link to your piece.

I'm a Jeffrey Epstein survivor. The documents are an opportunity. When we come back, we're going to go to Ro Khanna in the Capitol, who is introducing a bill to deal with the Epstein files, to have them released. Stay with us. I can't breathe. No, it ain't your hands choking me. It's history. I don't have a police. Situation's critical. You agree, yeah.

Hey, you'd agree They kill children in a bar Murder youth unarmed They stand on the corner Claiming space last hours Hey, they kill children in a bar Garner Poem by Morning of Black Star in our Democracy Now! studio Thursday marked the 11th anniversary of the police killing of Eric Garner poem by Mourning a Black Star in our Democracy Now! studio Thursday marked the eleventh anniversary of the police killing of Eric Garner, who died after a New York police officer held him in a chokehold. Eric Garner's pleas of I Can't Breathe, captured on video by a witness, became a global

rallying cry against police brutality. The now-ex-MYPD officer, Daniel Pantaleo, remains a free man after a jury in the Justice Department declined to charge him for the killing of Eric Garner. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I'm Amy Goodman. In a growing political storm for President Trump, some Democrats have joined his MAGA base in pressuring President Trump for more disclosures of the Epstein files.

Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna introduced a measure with Republican Congressmember Thomas Massey of Kentucky. At least nine Republicans signed on to the so-called discharge petition, which requires 218 signatures to bypass House leadership and force a vote. Congressmember Ro Khanna joins us now from Capitol Hill. Congressmember Ro Khanna, can you lay out what you're calling for and where it stands now? It's pretty straightforward.

We're calling for the full release of the Epstein files while protecting, of course, victims' identity and making sure no child pornography is released. The bill that Thomas Massey and I have introduced has every Democrat backing it and nine Republicans. That means that when we can have the discharge petition, we will be able to get a vote on it. Unfortunately, the Republicans blocked us from getting a vote last night. They could have just had the vote last night. We have to wait until the August recess is over to be able to do the discharge petition. But as soon as we come back after Labor Day, we will be able to vote on this and we will

pass it. How do you respond to President Trump saying he wants to release the grand jury testimony. This is a tiny fraction of the documents. And, of course, though, it's the only set of documents that would have to be approved by a judge. Well, he's doing that in response to Massey and my bill. I mean, he is—it's not a coincidence that he announced that last night before the bill was allowed to be voted on in the House.

He was trying to ward off the Republicans from allowing a vote on Massey and my bill. But as you pointed out, the grand jury testimony and grand jury files largely concern Epstein and Maxwell. They're the ones who were prosecuted. It will not have the witness interviews that really implicate the rich and powerful men who were potentially engaged in sex trafficking. It will not have a lot of the emails and the texts.

And as you pointed out, it requires a court order to unseal those files. Typically courts are reluctant to do that. They may in this case. But there is a lot within the Justice Department that the Justice Department could release, and they can do so while protecting victims' identity. I wanted to switch gears and ask you about the massive blow to public media and local news.

The House gave final approval to the rescission package that strips $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds over 1,500 NPR and PBS stations across the country. Recission has not been used for more than a quarter of a century. It allows for the president to request Congress to claw back funds already allocated using a simple majority. White House Budget Director Russell Vogt praised the rescission vote. It indicated it would come into more frequent use. He spoke to reporters yesterday.

We're looking forward to the House blessing the Senate package. I'm not worried about it. We need to get it done and get it across the finish line. But a very historic moment, the return of using rescissions, getting the muscle memory for that back into the system. We've talked about defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for decades. President Trump's the first one to be able to do it. He had, you know, a lot of enthusiasm for this package, and we're just thrilled that

we were made it through that critical juncture last night. Before joining the administration, Vote was policy director at the Heritage Foundation, author of Project 2025, that called for ending funding for public media. The federal government has been supporting public media for more than half a century. Congressmember Ro Khanna, can you talk about this campaign against public media and how the entire funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was just clawed back? Well, it's a devastating blow to the education of our children in America and to our democracy.

Let me put this in perspective. They got cut the public broadcasting funding, which is about $1 billion. At the same time, just last week, they voted for tax breaks for billionaires that added to the deficit $3.8 trillion. That means 3,800 times more than the cuts to public broadcasting where the tax breaks to billionaires adding to the deficit. So it's just not true that this has anything to do with fiscal responsibility. What it will do is deprive our children of things like Daniel Tiger, educational programming. Private corporations don't do that because they don't have the money to invest in social and emotional research.

I highly recommend your viewers watch Fred Rogers' testimony explaining why we need public educational programming. What it will do is cut NPR and PBS that invest money in sending journalists to places where people don't have healthcare, to places where there's poverty, where there's low wage, things that broadcast television, that paid television, don't want to cover. And so, it is a devastating blow to our robust democracy and education. Congressmember Ro Khanna, I want to thank you for being with us, Democratic congressmember from Silicon Valley, vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

As we stay on this issue of defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which will impact the entire public media ecosystem built up over decades. But some local stations and communities depend more on CPB funding than others. For more, we're joined now by Loris Taylor. She's the president and CEO of Native Public Media, a member of the Hopi Nation. Her recent article is headlined, When a Station Goes Dark, We Lose. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Loris Taylor. I want to thank you for being with us.

Nearly 60 tribal stations are a part of native public media. Almost 36 of those stations have CPB, community service funding. Can you talk about what this means for the country, this complete ending of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? Well, this news has been really devastating to Indian country. We have tribes in Arizona, Navajo, Hopi, the Tohono, White Mountain Apache, the Alaska Natives in Alaska, and our relatives in the Midwest who are impacted by this decision. These stations provide news, emergency communications, educational content, and other information to really fulfill the information needs of tribal citizens and

to have a sweeping decision that's this profound and this impactful is going to really hurt Native communities. And can you talk about what exactly these stations provide for their communities, for example, early warning systems? Well, let me talk about the alerting system capability of stations. Our stations are able to send out emergency alerts over the radio and television. They're able to connect to the wireless emergency alert system as well. And one of the things that's going to be impacted in this case is the new

Missing and Endangered Persons alert that was just approved by the FCC on August 7, 2024. It's scheduled to go live September 7th, 2025. And to have 36 stations taken out of the system is going to be a hit. As you know, Native Americans suffer, you know, twice as much to violence. And there are a lot of missing and murdered women and indigenous persons cases, over 10,000 right at this time. You wrote a letter to the South Dakota Republican Senator Mike Rounds urging him not to vote for the rescission package. Senator Rounds did vote in favor of the package, but in a statement wrote, In order for me to support this legislation, we have to find a way to continue support

for these radio stations, which offer potentially life-saving information in some of the most rural parts of our nation. These stations play a vital role in South Dakota, delivering critical emergency alerts and public safety information. They need to be protected. I worked with the Trump administration to find unused climate change money that will be reallocated to continue grants to tribal radio stations. I'm pleased we secured $9.4 million to make certain the dozens of tribal radio stations

receiving CPB community service grants across 11 states can continue operating without interruption. Can you talk about the significance of this? How you responded to this? Well, first of all, I want to acknowledge I'm thankful to Senator Rounds for placing tribal stations on the national agenda. But here's the deal. We've heard about this deal after it was posted on X.

I'm not a subscriber of X, so it came to me through other means. We have not spoken with Senator Rounds. I did write a letter expressing my concern that Green New Deal monies are climate and energy dollars. And it's a visionary framework that has no funding ability that I know of. And it does not authorize funding for public broadcasting. So I want it to know, how is this going to work? As you know, CPB is explicitly designed to manage appropriations from Congress on behalf

of the 1,500 stations across the country. There are mechanisms that are already in place. There are compliance requirements that we have to abide by. So my question was, give me details. How is this going to be accessible? Does it need congressional authority? Are there other legislative measures that need to be taken? I don't have any answers to this day. LORIS TALLER, M.D.

LARSON, M.D. LARSON, M.D. LARSON, M.D. LARSON, M.D. LARSON, M.D. LARSON, M.D. LARSON, M.D. LARSON, M.D. LARSON, M.D. LARSON, M.D. Loris Taylor, can you talk about the importance of Native public media during the height of the COVID pandemic? Native public media was called into action during COVID.

And if there's any time or crisis that has demonstrated the need for local information systems, it was COVID-19. COVID-19 hit Native American communities. We were devastated by hundreds of individuals died across nearly every single tribe. Some tribes were hit so much that they worried that they would become extinct.

And so what we learned was that people want to be informed in real time when a crisis hits. During COVID, they wanted to know about hospital protocols, where to find equipment or PEP safety gear, where to find food, whether or not there were roadblocks. And so there was a lot of information and as you may recall, this information need was really fast moving. And so we learned from COVID-19 that our stations are there, there are safety hubs, they're about our public health

and they're also about our civic health. And now to have that stripped away, I'm afraid that with the climate crisis increasing that we are going to be operating on the margins of information and are not going to have real-life saving information available to our citizens when they need it most. And that's the story.

And finally, we just have 20 seconds, but the preservation of Indigenous languages spoken on your stations? Well, that along language speaking programs by Navajo, Hopi, and all the tribes that were once stakeholders in public media may go silent. And I just want to say that public media is for everyone. But I'm not going to let this moment silence Native American voices. We're going to move into recovery and see what we can do to stabilize the system. LORIS TAYLOR, NATIVE PUBLIC MEDIA, A MEMBER OF THE HOPE-Y NATION, JOINING US FROM FLAG STAFF ARIZONA. WANT TO END TODAY'S SHOW?

CONGRATULATING OUR PRODUCER HANI MASOOD AND HIS WIFE AISHA ON THE BIRTH OF THEIR DAUGHTER. Want to end today's show? Congratulating our producer, Hani Massoud and his wife Aisha, on the birth of their daughter. Welcome to the world, Safa. And a fond farewell to Tammy Warnoff, who's worked with us as a producer since 2018 as part of our amazing headlines team. We wish you all the very best. You are now a part of our DNA. That's Democracy Now!

alumni. We are hiring for multiple positions. Find out more at democracynow.org slash jobs. That does it for our show. I'm Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org.