Blog

David Brooks Said ‘Count Me Out’ Of Epstein Story, Then Wound Up In Epstein Photos

A few weeks ago, New York Times columnist David Brooks urged people to move on from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal already.

“The Epstein Story? Count Me Out,” reads the title of his Nov. 21 op-ed. In it, he laments that America’s political class has spent months trying to get a clearer picture of the late convicted sex offender’s ties to President Donald Trump and other powerful people, and what they may have known about Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring.

There are much more pressing issues facing the country, Brooks argued, and the real reason people are so focused on the Epstein scandal is because “the QAnon mentality has taken over America,” a reference to a far-right political conspiracy theory centered on a deep-state cabal of elite liberal pedophiles.

It’s also not fair to lump all wealthy and well-connected people into the category of “the Epstein class,” he argued. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) has been using this phrase, something he’s said he picked up from voters who have asked him if he’s on the side of “forgotten Americans” or “the Epstein class.”

“I know a thing or two about the American elite, ahem, and if you’ve read my work, you may be sick of my assaults on the educated elites for being insular, self-indulgent and smug,” Brooks wrote. “But the phrase ‘the Epstein class’ is inaccurate, unfair and irresponsible. Say what you will about our financial, educational, nonprofit and political elites, but they are not mass rapists.”

The longtime New York Times columnist may have wanted to turn away from the Epstein scandal, but it found him on Thursday, when Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released more photos provided by Epstein’s estate ― and Brooks was in them.

He appears in four of these photos, all of which seem to be from the same event. One shows Brooks smiling for the camera, and another shows him seated at a table near Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Two more images show Brooks in the background, apparently holding a glass of wine, and then again, talking to Brin.

Epstein doesn’t appear in any of the pictures with Brooks, but is in two separate photos that seem to be from the same event.

The pictures don’t show Brooks doing anything weird or wrong. He was just hanging out with a group of rich and famous powerful men, one of whom happened to be a registered sex offender who’d pleaded guilty three years earlier to state charges for procurement of minors to engage in prostitution.

Asked for comment about Brooks appearing in the latest Epstein photo dump, The New York Times responded almost immediately.

“As a journalist, David Brooks regularly attends events to speak with noted and important business leaders to inform his columns, which is exactly what happened at this 2011 event. Mr. Brooks had no contact with him before or after this single attendance at a widely-attended dinner,” Danielle Rhoades Ha, senior vice president of communications at The New York Times, told HuffPost in an emailed statement.

Keep reading

Epstein, Israel, and the CIA: How The Iran–Contra Planes Landed at Les Wexner’s Base 

When a Southern Air Transport plane was shot down over Nicaragua in October 1986, the world got a rare window into U.S. government covert activity. Southern Air Transport was founded as a small cargo airline in 1947, the same year the Office of Strategic Services evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency as the U.S. pivoted to its Cold War posture. The agency owned the airline outright from 1960 until 1973, at which point it was sold to the same man, Stanley Williams, who had run the company since the Kennedy administration. 

The downing of the plane and the testimony of its lone survivor, Eugene Hasenfus, pulled a string that eventually unraveled the scandal known as Iran–Contra. Using Southern Air Transport planes, the CIA was shipping weapons to Iran, using Israel as a middleman, and deploying the profits to arm the Contras against the leftist Nicaraguan government. 

None of it was legal, and Southern Air Transport was getting too hot. In 1995, the company relocated its headquarters from Miami, Florida, to Columbus, Ohio. The company rebranded by flying imported shipments of clothing from China. But for three years in Columbus, the airline was dogged by rumors it had been—or was still—involved in drug smuggling. 

According to the veteran Columbus journalist Bob Fitrakis, who provided his historical reporting on the topic to Drop Site and The American Conservative, investigators in both the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office and Ohio’s Office of Inspector General were looking into Southern Air Transport amid ongoing public scrutiny of the Iran–Contra affair—and sources in both offices identified Jeffrey Epstein as having a pivotal role in relocating the planes. 

At the time, Epstein was a relatively obscure financier managing the money and real estate investments of the Ohio-based fashion and retail mogul Leslie Wexner. Under his stewardship of the Wexner empire, the planes that previously carried arms to Iran and Nicaragua were repurposed to deliver clothes to feed Wexner’s network of retail chains, including Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch. 

Southern Air Transport abruptly declared bankruptcy on October 1, 1998—exactly one week before the CIA Inspector General released its official findings on the Iran–Contra affair, linking the airline to allegations of Contra cocaine trafficking from Nicaragua. Per Fitrakis, under pressure from the governor’s office, Ohio officials dropped their inquiries, meaning that Epstein’s role never became public.

How did Epstein end up moving the former Contra planes to Columbus? Answering that question—or at least getting close—requires a closer look at the men behind the scandal that defined the second half of the Reagan administration and gave the public the clearest look inside the U.S. government’s clandestine global operations in a generation or more. Like a spy-service Forrest Gump, Jeffrey Epstein can be found there every leg of the way.

Keep reading

Microdosing Cannabis Pauses Alzheimer’s Decline in Unprecedented Trial

As the world’s population ages, the number of people living with dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease increases.

Given the lack of curative treatments and the limited effectiveness of available medications, interest in new therapeutic approaches is growing. Among them are cannabinoids from the cannabis plant.

A small new Brazilian study published in the international Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease investigated the effects of microdoses of cannabis extract on patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease. The results found positive effects, without the associated “high” of cannabis.

The logic of microdoses

The study, led by Professor Francisney Nascimento and colleagues at the Federal University of Latin American Integration (UNILA), recruited 24 elderly patients (60-80 years) diagnosed with mild Alzheimer’s.

It evaluated the effects of daily use of an oil prepared from cannabis extract containing THC and CBD in similar proportions and extremely low concentrations (0.3 mg of each cannabinoid). These sub-psychoactive doses do not cause the “high” associated with recreational use of the plant.

The extract used was donated by ABRACE, Brazil’s biggest patient association, and had no contribution from cannabis companies or other funding sources.

“Microdosing” is a term usually associated with recreational use of psychedelics. Given the size of the dose, it would be easy to question whether it could have any effect at all.

Doses below 1 mg of the cannabinoid compounds are not frequently reported in the literature of clinical practice. However, the researchers’ decision to use microdosing did not come out of nowhere.

In 2017, the group led by Andreas Zimmer and Andras Bilkei-Gorzo had already demonstrated that very low doses of THC restored cognition in elderly mice, reversing gene expression patterns and brain synapse density in the hippocampus to levels similar to those of young animals.

Keep reading

Trump’s Designation of Fentanyl As a ‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’ Is a Drug-Fueled Delusion

Although President Donald Trump frequently decries the threat that fentanyl poses to Americans, his comments about the drug reveal several misconceptions about it. He thinks Canada is an important source of illicit fentanyl, which it isn’t. He thinks the boats targeted by his deadly military campaign against suspected cocaine couriers in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific are carrying fentanyl, which they aren’t. Even if they were, his oft-repeated claim that he saves “25,000 American lives” each time he blows up one of those boats—which implies that he has already prevented nine times more drug-related deaths than were recorded in the United States last year—would be patently preposterous.

Trump’s fentanyl fantasies reached a new level of absurdity this week, when he issued an executive order “designating fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.” As relevant here, federal law defines a “weapon of mass destruction” (WMD) to include “any weapon that is designed or intended to cause death or serious bodily injury through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals.”

The fentanyl implicated in U.S. drug deaths is not a “weapon.” It is a psychoactive substance that Americans voluntarily consume, either knowingly or because they thought they were buying a different drug. Nor is that fentanyl “designed or intended” to “cause death or serious bodily injury.” It is designed or intended to get people high, and to make drug traffickers rich in the process.

Trump nevertheless claims “illicit fentanyl is closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic.” How so? “Two milligrams, an almost undetectable trace amount equivalent to 10 to 15 grains of table salt, constitutes a lethal dose,” he says. But that observation also applies to licit fentanyl, which medical practitioners routinely and safely use as an analgesic or sedative.

Dentists, for example, frequently use fentanyl combined with a benzodiazepine such as diazepam (Valium) or midazolam (Versed) for “conscious sedation.” On a couple of occasions, I have received that combo during dental surgery. I was not at all worried that I would die of a drug overdose, and I certainly did not think my dental surgeon was attacking me with a weapon, let alone a weapon of mass destruction.

Contrary to what Trump implies, the danger posed by fentanyl in illicit drug markets is only partly a function of its potency. The core problem is that the introduction of fentanyl—initially as a heroin booster or replacement, later as an adulterant in stimulants or as pills passed off as legally produced pharmaceuticals—made potency, which was already highly variable, even harder to predict. It therefore compounded a perennial problem with black-market drugs: Consumers generally don’t know exactly what they are getting.

That is not true in legal drug markets, whether you are buying booze at a liquor store or taking narcotic pain relievers prescribed by your doctor. The difference was dramatically illustrated by what happened after the government responded to rising opioid-related deaths by discouraging and restricting opioid prescriptions. Although those prescriptions fell dramatically, the upward trend in opioid-related deaths not only continued but accelerated. That result was not surprising, since the crackdown predictably pushed nonmedical users toward black-market substitutes that were much more dangerous because their composition was uncertain and unpredictable.

The concomitant rise of illicit fentanyl compounded that hazard, and that development likewise was driven by the prohibition policy that Trump is so keen to enforce. Prohibition favors especially potent drugs, which are easier to conceal and smuggle. Stepped-up enforcement of prohibition tends to magnify that effect. From the perspective of traffickers, fentanyl had additional advantages: As a synthetic drug, it did not require growing and processing of crops, making its production less conspicuous and much cheaper.

Keep reading

Blanche says DOJ won’t release full Epstein files by Friday deadline

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Department of Justice (DOJ) would not be releasing the full Epstein files on Friday as required under new legislation, instead sending over a partial batch.

Blanche told Fox News the Justice Department would release “several hundred thousand” documents on Friday, “and then over the next couple weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more.”

Blanche attributed the delay to the need to redact any names or identifying information about witnesses, but failing to turn over the full unclassified files could run afoul of the law, which gave the department 30 days to publicly share the documents.

“So today is the 30 days when I expect that we’re going to release several hundred thousand documents today. And those documents will come in in all different forms, photographs and other materials associated with, with all of the investigations into, into Mr. Epstein,” Blanche said.

“What we’re doing is we are looking at every single piece of paper that we are going to produce, making sure that every victim, their name, their identity, their story, to the extent it needs to be protected, is completely protected. And so I expect that we’re going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks.”

DOJ was compelled to turn over the files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein by a bill that got near-unanimous support in Congress, signed into law after President Trump reversed his earlier stance opposing their release.

While the bill does allow for redactions related to victims and for DOJ to withhold some information about the investigation, it does not provide a rolling deadline to turn over the documents.

Under the law, the DOJ has 15 days to turn over its rationale for any documents withheld.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said not releasing the required files in full amounts to breaking the law.

Keep reading

UFO Swarms Puzzle Wyoming County Officials

Mysterious swarms of UFOs have been appearing over a Wyoming county for over a year, leaving officials scratching their heads and searching for answers. According to a local media report, the curious clusters were first spotted in December of 2025 in the skies above the Jim Bridger Power Plant and the Red Desert in Sweetwater County. Although thought to be drones, the exact nature of illuminated aerial objects remains uncertain to authorities despite their best efforts to get to the bottom of the odd mystery.

“We’ve done everything we can to figure out what they are,” Jason Mower of the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s office explained, “and nobody wants to give us any answers.” Remarkably, he indicated that the once-astonishing UFOs have now become so commonplace that residents no longer even report seeing them to police. “It’s like the new normal,” Mower mused, noting that, despite being something of an unnerving presence in the sky, the objects have posed no danger to the public nor done anything to necessitate police action. Should that change, Mower stressed, “we’ll certainly act accordingly.”

It would appear that the situation in Sweetwater County is not an isolated phenomenon, as law enforcement officials in another part of the state also reported seeing similar recurring UFO swarms beginning in late 2024 and into the first quarter of 2025 until they suddenly stopped visiting. The subject even came up during a state legislature meeting wherein Wyoming National Guard leader Greg Porter was reportedly asked about “any incidents of UAPs over your airspace,” to which he replied “no.” That said, he interestingly added that he knew of cases “near some other federal facilities,” but that he could not publicly discuss them.

Keep reading

A War No American Needs: Confrontation with Venezuela Brings Neither Security nor Benefit

The United States finds itself at a moment when the gap between power and prudence has rarely been more visible. As American society grapples with structural inflation, deep social fragmentation, a crisis of institutional credibility, and the steady erosion of public trust, renewed talk of military confrontation with Venezuela is once again circulating within Washington’s political and security circles. In recent months, this rhetoric has intensified, driven in part by President Donald Trump and influential figures around him – most notably Senator Marco Rubio – who have pushed an increasingly confrontational line toward Caracas, bringing the country closer to the threshold of conflict. These developments are not the product of a genuine threat, but rather reflect a dangerous habit in U.S. foreign policy: transforming domestic deadlock into external military adventure. The central question is both simple and decisive: who exactly is this war for, and what purpose is it meant to serve?

The first reality that must be acknowledged is that Venezuela, despite its profound economic, political, and governance crises, does not constitute an imminent or existential threat to U.S. national security. Neither its military capabilities nor its regional position – and not even its relations with America’s strategic rivals – place it in the same category as real systemic challenges such as China, or even complex transnational threats like cyber warfare and the collapse of global supply chains. Venezuela is neither capable of striking the U.S. homeland nor of disrupting the global balance of power. The inflation of the Venezuelan threat rests less on sober security analysis than on Washington’s recurring political need to manufacture a “manageable enemy.”

Within this framework, a war with Venezuela offers no direct benefit to American citizens. It does not enhance job security for workers, reduce healthcare costs, rebuild decaying infrastructure, or provide lasting stabilization to domestic energy prices. The experiences of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria demonstrate that early promises of “economic gain” or “market stability” tend to be short-lived illusions, quickly replaced by prolonged instability, rising public debt, and the erosion of social capital. At best, the American public becomes a spectator to a war that yields no dividends; at worst, it becomes the entity that pays for it.

The costs of such a war, by contrast, would be immediate and tangible. Direct military expenditures – at a time when the U.S. defense budget already exceeds the combined military spending of several major powers – would mean funneling tens of billions of additional dollars into an industry that thrives on conflict, not peace. Beyond this, potential shocks to global energy markets, particularly in oil and gas, would translate directly into higher fuel and consumer prices at home. Despite reduced production capacity, Venezuela remains a consequential actor in energy geopolitics, and any significant instability there would reverberate across global markets. The result would be renewed economic pressure on American households still struggling to recover from previous crises.

Migration represents another cost routinely underestimated in early calculations. Any escalation of violence or security collapse in Venezuela would generate new waves of displacement across Latin America and eventually toward the U.S. southern border. This would not only produce humanitarian and ethical challenges, but also inflame domestic political tensions and deepen partisan divides. A war launched under the banner of “threat control” could, in practice, import instability directly into the United States.

If this war is neither about security nor public welfare, where do its real motivations lie? The answer must be found in the intersection of politics, power projection, and the satisfaction of security elites. In a system where foreign policy is heavily shaped by the military–industrial complex and entrenched security networks, war is not an anomaly but a tool for sustaining the existing power cycle. Confrontation with Venezuela – precisely because of the country’s relative weakness – offers the opportunity for a low-risk display of force, one that may benefit politicians, generals, and defense contractors even as it imposes costs on society at large. The recent advocacy by Trump-aligned hawks, including Rubio, fits squarely within this pattern.

This logic is fundamentally diversionary. When governments fail to resolve structural domestic problems, the temptation grows to mobilize public opinion around an external threat, redirecting attention away from internal crises. In this narrative, Venezuela is not treated as a country with real people and complex realities, but as a simplified symbol of “the enemy” – one that appears easy to defeat and whose human costs are often erased from political calculations.

Keep reading

Trump, Netanyahu ‘quietly planned’ Iran war since February: Report

US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu jointly coordinated the June war against Iran months prior, while organizing a deception campaign in the media aimed at presenting Washington as opposed to Tel Aviv’s plans against Tehran, sources told the Washington Poston 17 December. 

According to the sources, Netanyahu met Trump in February and gave him four options for how an attack on Iran could happen.

“The Israeli prime minister first showed Trump what the operation would look like if Israel attacked alone. The second option was for Israel to take the lead, with minimal US support. The third was full collaboration between the two allies. The last option was for the US to take the lead,” the report said. 

“Months of stealthy, intensive strategic planning commenced. Trump wanted to give nuclear diplomacy with Iran a chance, but he continued intelligence-sharing and operational planning with Israel,” it added. “The thinking was, if talks fail, we are ready to go.”

Trump said one day before the war started that the US could potentially strike Iran, but that he preferred a diplomatic solution. 

“He and Netanyahu maneuvered to keep the Iranians unprepared for what would happen next,” the sources went on to say. 

Tel Aviv leaked information that Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister, Ron Dermer, and Mossad chief, David Barnea, would soon meet with US envoy Steve Witkoff.

A round of US–Iran nuclear talks had been scheduled for 15 June. However, Israel launched pre-emptive strikes on military and nuclear facilities in Iran on 13 June, triggering the war.

“Israel had decided to strike, as the US well knew. The planned diplomacy was a ruse, and officials from both countries encouraged media reports of a US–Israeli rift. All the reports that were written about Bibi not being on the same page with Witkoff or Trump were not true. But it was good that this was the general perception, it helped to move on with the planning without many people noticing it,” the sources said. 

Keep reading

Senate Armed Services chair sees ‘no evidence of war crimes’ after inquiry into boat strikes

Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said on Thursday that he has seen “no evidence of war crimes” committed during the U.S. military’s Sept. 2 strikes against an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean, and he indicated that his panel does not plan to further probe the controversial operation. 

“I have seen no evidence of war crimes. The fact is that our military is asked to make incredibly difficult decisions. Service members must do so based on the best available information and often under very tight timelines,” Wicker said in a lengthy statement. 

Wicker said he is “satisfied” with all of the information the committee has received regarding the Sept. 2 attack, where two survivors were killed in a strike authorized by Navy Adm. Frank Bradley. Wicker said the strikes against “narco-terrorists” in the U.S. Southern Command area are based on “sound legal advice.” 

“When reports first surfaced about a secondary strike, my office immediately directed inquiries to the department to ascertain the veracity of these reports. I promised that SASC would take this matter seriously and conduct thorough oversight. We have done so,” the Mississippi senator said. “Both military and civilian Pentagon leaders have worked in good faith to provide answers to us without any delays.” 

Wicker’s panel said it would investigate the Sept. 2 operation, during which the U.S. military conducted four strikes against the purported drug-trafficking vessel in the Caribbean, shortly after The Washington Post revealed a second strike, ordered by Bradley, took place during the mission.

Keep reading

‘Crucial witness’ in investigation into Sarajevo ‘human safaris’ where tourists paid to kill civilians dies suddenly despite being in good health weeks ago

A key witness at the centre of an investigation into whether wealthy tourists paid thousands to kill unarmed civilians in Sarajevo during the city’s siege in the 1990s has died unexpectedly. 

Slavko Aleksic, a Bosnian former militia leader, died in the city of Trebinje, despite having been in good health, The Times reports. 

His sudden death comes after an investigation was launched last month in Italy following allegations of ‘human safari’ sniper trips during the Balkan wars – a bloody conflict that left more than 11,000 civilians dead. 

Aleksic, 69, commandeered a Jewish cemetery above Sarajevo used by snipers, and according to Serbian lawyer Cedomir Stojkovic, ‘he would have been a crucial witness’ because ‘he could have said who did the shooting and who organised it’.

Croatian investigative journalist Domagoj Margetic added: ‘In November, Aleksic was apparently in good health — and now he has suddenly, and very conveniently, died.’

Last month, Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic was accused of being involved in Sarajevo’s ‘human safari’ sniper trips, an allegation he denies.

On November 24, Aleksic gave an interview on Serbian television and insisted the president had had no involvement in sniper activity. 

 ‘Aleksic was alive and well then, did not announce a fatal illness and, on the contrary, said he would testify in favour of Vucic,’ Margetic said. 

Keep reading