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At least 16 Jeffrey Epstein–related files abruptly disappeared from the Justice Department’s public website within a day of their release. The unexplained missing files, including an image with a photo of President Donald Trump, fuelled speculation online about what was taken down and why the public was not notified. 

Issued on: 21/12/2025 – Modified: 21/12/2025 – France24.com

By: FRANCE 24

At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein – including a photograph showing President Donald Trump – less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.

The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell. 

The Justice Department didn’t answer questions Saturday about why the files disappeared but said in a post on X that “photos and other materials will continue being reviewed and redacted consistent with the law in an abundance of caution as we receive additional information”.

Read moreKey takeaways from the Justice Department release of thousands of Epstein files

Online, the unexplained missing files fueled speculation about what was taken down and why the public was not notified, compounding long-standing intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”

Senator Dick Durbin said last summer that Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi had “pressured the FBI to put approximately 1,000 personnel” on 24-shifts “to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records” ahead of their release.

“My office was told that these personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned,” Durbin wrote in a July letter to Bondi.  

Gaps

The episode deepened concerns that had already emerged from the Justice Department’s much-anticipated document release. The tens of thousands of pages made public offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years, while omitting some of the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions.

Some of the most consequential records expected about Epstein are nowhere to be found in the Justice Department’s initial disclosures, which span tens of thousands of pages.

Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions – records that could have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge.

The gaps go further. 

The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, hardly reference several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former prince, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, renewing questions about who was scrutinized, who was not, and how much the disclosures truly advance public accountability

Among the fresh nuggets: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to abandon an investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, which enabled him to plead guilty to that state-level charge, and a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children.

The releases so far have been heavy on images of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the US Virgin Islands, with some photos of celebrities and politicians.

There was a series of never-before-seen photos of former president Bill Clinton but fleetingly few of Trump. Both have been associated with Epstein, but both have since disowned those friendships. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and there was no indication the photos played a role in the criminal cases brought against him.

Despite a Friday deadline set by Congress to make everything public, the Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.

‘Justice system is failing us’

That approach angered some Epstein accusers and members of Congress who fought to pass the law forced the department to act. Instead of marking the end of a yearslong battle for transparency, the document release Friday was merely the beginning of an indefinite wait for a complete picture of Epstein’s crimes and the steps taken to investigate them.

“I feel like again the DOJ, the justice system is failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who alleges Epstein started sexually abusing her at his New York City mansion when she was 14.

Federal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.

The documents just made public were a sliver of potentially millions of pages records in the department’s possession. In one example, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, though many duplicated material already turned over by the FBI.

Many of the records released so far had been made public in court filings, congressional releases or freedom of information requests, though, for the first time, they were all in one place and available for the public to search for free.

Ones that were new were often lacking necessary context or heavily blacked out. A 119-page document marked “Grand Jury-NY,” likely from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the charges against Epstein in 2019 or Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out.

Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and even Epstein with TV newscaster Walter Cronkite. But none of the photos had captions and was no explanation given for why any of them were together.

Read moreInside the Epstein files: Famous faces, blacked-out pages

The meatiest records released so far showed that federal prosecutors had what appeared to be a strong case against Epstein in 2007 yet never charged him.

Transcripts of grand jury proceedings, released publicly for the first time, included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest was 14 and in ninth grade.

One had told investigators about being sexually assaulted by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.

Another, then 21, testified before the grand jury about how Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and how she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.

“For every girl that I brought to the table he would give me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said. “I also told them that if they are under age, just lie about it and tell him that you are 18.”

The documents also contain a transcript of an interview Justice Department lawyers did more than a decade later with the US attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his ultimate decision not to bring federal charges.

Acosta, who was labor secretary during Trump’s first term, cited concerns about whether a jury would believe Epstein’s accusers.

He also said the Justice Department might have been more reluctant to make a federal prosecution out of a case that straddled the legal border between sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution, something more commonly handled by state prosecutors.

“I’m not saying it was the right view,” Acosta added. He also said that the public today would likely view the survivors differently.

“There’s been a lot of changes in victim shaming,” Acosta said.

Jennifer Freeman, an attorney representing Epstein accuser Maria Farmer and other survivors, said Saturday that her client feels vindicated after the document release. Farmer sought for years documents backing up her claim that Epstein and Maxwell were in possession of child sexual abuse images.

“It’s a triumph and a tragedy,” she said. “It looks like the government did absolutely nothing. Horrible things have happened and if they investigated in even the smallest way, they could have stopped him.”

(FRANCE 24 with AP)

Published: December 18, 2025 (TheOnion.com)

WASHINGTON—Praising the recipients for their acts of true American cowardice, President Donald Trump proudly announced a new “Dodger Dividend” on Wednesday night for anyone who successfully avoided military service. “Today, we celebrate the millions of patriots willing to step up and do whatever it takes to avoid being shipped off to war and getting themselves killed,” Trump said in a primetime televised address, claiming that the $1,776 payments were the least he could do for those willing to risk everything by faking a medical condition, falsifying a student deferment, or forging National Guard reserve-duty papers on behalf of the nation. “Whether their wealthy father paid a doctor to claim they had bone spurs, or they got drunk and shot a bullet straight through their foot, or they spent an entire week soiling their pants before visiting the draft office, these Americans deserve every penny. To those who claimed family hardship after backing their car over their grandmother in the driveway, we salute you. You’ve earned it.” Trump added that he would also be awarding a “Deserter Dividend” to anyone who willfully abandoned their post or went AWOL while serving.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi testifies before a Senate committee on June 25, 2025 in Washington, DC. 

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“What else is being covered up?”

Brett Wilkins

Dec 20, 2025 (CommonDreams.org)

Congressional Democrats on Saturday pressed US Attorney General Pam Bondi for answers regarding the apparent removal of a photo showing President Donald Trump surrounded by young female models from Friday’s Department of Justice release of files related to the late convicted child sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

Amid the heavily redacted documents in Friday’s DOJ release was a photo of a desk with an open drawer containing multiple photos of Trump, including one of him with Epstein and convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and another of him with the models.

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However, the photo—labeled EFTA00000468 in the DOJ’s Epstein Library—was no longer on the site as of Saturday morning.

“This photo, file 468, from the Epstein files that includes Donald Trump, has apparently now been removed from the DOJ release,” Democrats on the House Oversight Committee noted in a Bluesky post. “AG Bondi, is this true? What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”

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Numerous critics have accused the Trump administration of a cover-up due to the DOJ’s failure to meet a Friday deadline to release all Epstein-related documents and heavy redactions—including documents of 100 pages or more that are completely blacked out—to many of the files.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche responded to the criticism by claiming that “the only redactions being applied to the documents are those required by law—full stop.”

“Consistent with the statute and applicable laws, we are not redacting the names of individuals or politicians unless they are a victim,” he added.

Earlier this year, officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation reportedly redacted Trump’s name from its file on Epstein, who was the president’s longtime former friend and who died in 2019 in a New York City jail cell under mysterious circumstances officially called suicide while facing federal child sex trafficking and conspiracy charges.

Trump has not been accused of any crimes in connection with Epstein.

House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said during a Friday CNN interview that the DOJ only released about 10% of the full Epstein files.

“The DOJ has had months and hundreds of agents to put these files together, and yet entire documents are redacted—from the first word to the last,” Garcia said on X. “What are they hiding? The American public deserves transparency. Release all the files now!”

In a joint statement Friday, Garcia and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said, “We are now examining all legal options in the face of this violation of federal law.”

“The survivors of this nightmare deserve justice, the co-conspirators must be held accountable, and the American people deserve complete transparency from DOJ,” they added.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.)—who along with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law by Trump last month and required the release of all Epstein materials by December 19—said in a video published after Friday’s document dump that he and Massie “are exploring all options” to hold administration officials accountable.

“It can be the impeachment of people at Justice, inherent contempt, or referring for prosecution those who are obstructing justice,” he added.

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Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

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A long line of Waymo autonomous taxis compounds San Francisco traffic gridlock caused by a Pacific Gas & Electric blackout on December 20, 2025.

 (Photo by @AnnTrades/X)

“During a disaster… Waymos would be blocking evacuation routes. Hard to believe no one asked these questions, until you realize that good governance is suspended when billionaires knock on the door,” said one observer.

Brett Wilkins

Dec 21, 2025

A citywide Pacific Gas & Electric power outage Saturday in San Francisco paralyzed Waymo autonomous taxis, exacerbating traffic chaos and prompting a fleet-wide shutdown—and calls for more robust robotaxi regulation.

Around 130,000 San Francisco homes and businesses went dark due to an afternoon fire at a PG&E substation in the city’s South of Market neighborhood. While most PG&E customers had their electricity restored by around 9:00 pm, more than 20,000 rate-payers remained without power on Sunday morning, according to the San Francisco Standard.

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The blackout left traffic lights inoperable, rendering much of Waymo’s fleet of around 300 robotaxis “stuck and confused,” as one local resident put it, as cascading failures left groups of as many as half a dozen of the robotaxis immobile. In some cases, the stopped vehicles nearly caused collisions.

On a walk across San Francisco on Saturday night prior to the fleet grounding at around 7:00 pm, this reporter saw numerous Waymos stuck on streets or in intersections, while others seemed to surrender, pulling or even backing out of intersections and parking themselves where they could.

Bad look for Waymo. Lots of reports out of SF where the power outage caused its robotaxis to stop in traffic, causing jams.

On the other side, the Tesla robotaxi fleet (& personal FSD users) continued the service without hiccups.

Not clear if Waymo vehicles themselves are… pic.twitter.com/DexuAh0Bpt

— Jaan of the EVwire.com ⚡ (@TheEVuniverse) December 21, 2025

“There are a lot of unique road scenarios on the roads I can see being hard to anticipate and you just hope your software can manage it. ‘What if we lose contact with all our cars due to a power outage’ is something you should have a meeting and a plan about ahead of time,” Fast Company digital editor Morgan Clendaniel—a self-described “big Waymo guy”—said Sunday on Bluesky.

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Clendaniel called the blackout “a predictable scenario [Waymo] should have planned for, when clearly they had no plan, because ‘they all just stop’ is not a plan and is not viable for city roads in an emergency.”

Waymo—which is owned by Alphabet, the parent company of Google—said it is “focused on keeping our riders safe and ensuring emergency personnel have the clear access they need to do their work.”

Oakland Observer founder and publisher Jaime Omar Yassin said on X, “as others have noted, during a disaster with a consequent power outage, Waymos would be blocking evacuation routes. Hard to believe no one asked these questions, until you realize that good governance is suspended when billionaires knock on the door.”

“Waymo’s problems are known to anyone paying attention,” he added. “At a recent anti-[Department of Homeland Security] protest that occurred coincidentally not far from a Waymo depot, vehicles simply left [the] depot and jammed [the] street behind a police van far from [the] protest that wasn’t blocking traffic.”

Waymo came to dominate the San Francisco robotaxi market after the California Public Utilities Commission suspended the permit of leading competitor Cruise to operate driverless taxis over public safety concerns following an October 2023 incident in which a pedestrian was critically injured when a Cruise car dragged her 20 feet after she was struck by a human-driven vehicle. The CPUC accused Cruise of covering up the details of the accident.

Some California officials have called for more robust regulation of robotaxis like Waymo. But last year, a bill introduced by state Sen. Dave Cortese (D-15) that would have empowered county and municipal governments “to protect the public through local governance of autonomous vehicles” failed to pass after it was watered down amid pressure from industry lobbyists.

In San Francisco, progressive District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder said during a press conference last month after a Waymo ran over and killed a beloved Mission District bodega cat named KitKat that while Waymo “may treat our communities as laboratories and human beings and our animals as data points, we in the Mission do not.”

Waymo claimed that KitKat “darted” under its car, but security camera video footage corroborated witness claims to Mission Local that the cat had been sitting in front of the vehicle for as long as eight seconds before it was crushed.

Fielder lamented that “the fate of autonomous vehicles has been decided behind closed doors in Sacramento, largely by politicians in the pocket of big tech and tech billionaires.”

The first-term supervisor—San Francisco’s title for city council members—is circulating a petition “calling on the California State Legislature and [Gov. Gavin Newsom] to give counties the right to vote on whether autonomous vehicles can operate in their areas.”

“This would let local communities make decisions that reflect their needs and safety concerns, while also addressing state worries about intercity consistency,” Fielder wrote.

Other local progressives pointed to the citywide blackout as more proof that PG&E—whose reputation has been battered by incidents like the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people in Butte County and led to the company pleading guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter—should be publicly run, as progressive advocacy groups have urged for years.

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“Sacramento and Palo Alto don’t have PG&E, they have public power,” progressive Democratic congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti said Sunday on X. “They pay about half as much as us in utility bills and do not have weekend-long power outages. We could have that in San Francisco.”

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Known for targeting celebrities like Ms. Rachel, the pro-Israel blacklist also goes after private individuals who post in solidarity with Palestine.

Jonah Valdez

December 20 2025 (TheIntercept.com)

StopAntisemitism executive director Liora Reznichenko testifies before the House Committee on Small Business hearing on rising crime at Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 11, 2024. Photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP

When Oregon music teacher Susan Lewis logged onto a Zoom meeting with her boss one afternoon in August 2024, she thought she would be preparing for a sixth year teaching at Valley Catholic School. Instead, she lost her job.

Lewis was shocked, she recalled in an interview with The Intercept, as were her colleagues and students. The school did not give any explanation for why they did not renew her contract. Unbeknownst to Lewis, the pro-Israel blacklist organization StopAntisemitism had recently launched an online campaign against her, framing her social media posts about the genocide in Gaza as “using her platform to spread vile antisemitic hate online.”

Lewis is one of at least 400 people StopAntisemitism has taken credit for getting ousted from their jobs in its online crusade, which has drawn widespread attention for targeting more prominent figures — including right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson, progressive actor-turned-activist Cynthia Nixon, and the popular children’s educator Rachel Accurso, known by her stage name Ms. Rachel. Lewis, without her own platform or mass audience, is one of only two recent StopAntisemitism targets pursuing active federal lawsuits against the blacklist organization.

“I really thought we had free speech and this wouldn’t be a problem — that’s what social media is for, is that you can vent,” Lewis told The Intercept. “It wasn’t like I was saying anything above and beyond what other critics of Israel were saying.”

She sued StopAntisemitism for defamation in an Oregon state court over the summer, and the case was elevated to federal court last month. Her suit faces long odds, legal experts told The Intercept, but serves as a rare chance to register public dissent in the courts against the group’s targeting.

Founded in 2018 by social media influencer Liora Reznichenko and funded by the California-based real estate millionaire Adam Milstein’s foundation, StopAntisemitism targets public figures and private individuals over their criticism of Israel or advocacy for Palestinian human rights — forming a single-issue Rolodex similar to Canary Mission. The blacklists supplement the fierce crackdowns and censorship against Palestine solidarity activism increasingly seen at schools across the U.S. since the outbreak of Israel’s war on Gaza.

StopAntisemitism elevated its own profile by targeting Accurso, who has used her platform to advocate for Palestinian children who have been killed, wounded, or starved by the Israeli military in Gaza, especially after she posted videos with a Palestinian 3-year-old who had lost her leg. In April, StopAntisemitism requested that the Department of Justice investigate her for alleged ties to Hamas, despite no evidence of such connections, and this month named her a finalist for “Antisemite of the Year,” on a list that also included Carlson and Nixon.

Accurso has faced an increase in online harassment, including physical threatening letters to her and her family members, she said in an Instagram post after StopAntisemitism released the “Antisemite” list. Her audience of nearly 5 million on Instagram and more than 18 million on YouTube has largely rallied around her — offering backing that hundreds of people like Lewis don’t have.

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Reznichenko said that since October 7, 2023, her group has profiled 1,000 employees and students, often sharing their work or school information, encouraging their followers to contact their employers and at times calling for their firing, according to an October interview with the right-leaning Zionist media outlet Jewish News Syndicate.

When StopAntisemitism shared screenshots from Lewis’s personal Facebook page last August, it amplified the posts to a far larger audience than Lewis’s 2,000 Facebook friends. Lewis had criticized Israel’s apartheid rule over Palestinians, its genocide in Gaza, and Western support for the war. StopAntisemitism listed an email address for Valley Catholic School and encouraged its followers, who currently number more than 300,000 on X, to contact Lewis’s employer. “Warning to parents of students in Beaverton,” the post read. “Students at [Valley Catholic] are in grave danger under Sue Lewis.”

What followed was a flood of messages demanding her firing and a slew of personal attacks. “Their phones are ringing off the hook,” one user commented below the post, sharing the school’s phone number and listing school administrators’ names. “Keep trying.”

In one post highlighted by StopAntisemitism, Lewis reshared a statement pointing out the false reports of “babies beheaded” by Hamas and exaggerated claims of systemic rape to “mobilize Western support for the Palestinian genocide.” She had quipped in a separate post that Hamas would “wipe out Israel with their homemade bombs, small arms, hang gliders, grenades and sling shots,” and later clarified the post was sarcastic, given Israel’s clear military advantage thanks to billions of dollars’ worth of military aid each year from the U.S. and allied nations.

The following month, StopAntisemitism posted again: “Update: antisemite Sue Lewis is thankfully no longer teaching at Valley Catholic High School.”

In her lawsuit, Lewis is alleging that StopAntisemitism and Reznichenko defamed her, invaded her privacy, interfered with her work contract, and inflicted emotional distress.

Valley Catholic School did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

In court filings seeking an immediate dismissal, the organization has claimed its statements are true and protected by the First Amendment as opinion.

Groups like StopAntisemitism have free speech rights too, said Aaron Terr, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, “even when it’s harsh, unfair, or deeply offensive.”

StopAntisemitism declined to comment on Lewis’s lawsuit and instead doubled down on its criticism of Accurso.

“Regarding Ms. Rachel, it is disturbing that the media continues to pretend she merely advocates for Palestinian children,” Reznichenko said in a statement to The Intercept, claiming that she attempted “to pass off pictures of children with birth defects as victims of Israeli aggression” and had inspired “an army of antisemitic lunatics” to make threats against the group.

A spokesperson for Accurso called Reznichenko’s accusations false and dangerous. In a statement, Accurso said that her “compassion and care for children doesn’t stop at any border” and that her advocacy for children in Gaza is no exception.

“I want every child to be fed, safe and able to attend school,” Accurso said. “I know that everyone benefits when we help children reach their full potential and grow into thriving, healthy adults. I also know that it’s not right for children to suffer like they are currently in Gaza, Sudan, the Congo and beyond.”

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While her project’s main currency lies in the mass ire of social media, Reznichenko has also been a recurring guest on broadcast TV, including Jake Tapper’s CNN show, Fox News, and NewsNation. In a recent segment on Fox, she blamed the recent Bondi Beach mass shooting on the Palestinian liberation movement, calling for the deportation of “radicals” who want to “globalize the intifada,” a historical reference to Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation, often framed by pro-Israel advocates as a call for violence against Jews.

The Encino, California-based nonprofit Merona Leadership Foundation, of which Adam Milstein is president, paid Reznichenko $142,722 in 2023 while she worked for StopAntisemitism, according to the group’s tax filing. The foundation, which helps cover StopAntisemitism’s operating costs, serves as one vehicle for Milstein to support efforts to crush Palestinian solidarity work, as first reported by the Washington Post.

The Milstein Family Foundation, which Milstein operates with his wife Gila, helps fund the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and its offshoot, Democratic Majority for Israel, as well as the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation. Milstein, who pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 2008, has also been tied to blacklist group Canary Mission and has praised their work, but rejected claims that he funds the group. StopAntisemitism, however, is listed as among the Milstein foundation’s supported groups.

The Milsteins sit on the board of Impact Forum Foundation, a network of dozens of pro-Israel philanthropists who support nonprofits that include StopAntisemitism. The supported companies include media organizations such as Jewish News Syndicate, pro-Israel think tanks like Middle East Forum and Jewish Institute for National Security of America, and advocacy groups such as Students Supporting Israel, Parents Defending Education, and ELNET, which has described itself as the AIPAC of Europe. The network’s website said the coalition’s aims are to “fight antisemitism, strengthen the State of Israel, and advance the U.S. – Israel alliance.”

The Milsteins did not respond to a request for comment.

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Lewis’s lawsuit against StopAntisemitism represents a rare legal challenge against pro-Israel doxxing groups, and it faces long odds because of First Amendment protections. Former Cabrini University professor Kareem Tannous, a Palestinian American who lost his job in 2022 after StopAntisemitism blacklisted him over social media posts critical of Israel, sued the group for defamation but had his case dismissed when a federal judge in Pennsylvania found that StopAntisemitism’s statements were protected opinion.

A federal judge in Michigan made a similar free speech ruling in a lawsuit filed against StopAntisemitism in 2024 by a former University of Michigan hockey player, John Druskinis, who the group had falsely accused of painting a swastika on the sidewalk in front of the Jewish Resource Center when he had instead painted a male genitalia and a homophobic slur. Although the court upheld Druskinis’s defamation claim, he dropped his suit earlier this year.

Aside from Lewis’s suit, the only other active lawsuit against StopAntisemitism was filed by Abeer AbouYabis, a physician and former professor at Emory’s medical school, who was fired after the group doxxed her over a social media post expressing “hope” in a free Palestine and praising the “glory” of Palestinian “resistance fighters” on October 7.

Unlike previous lawsuits, AbouYabis, who is an Arab Palestinian and Muslim, alleges discrimination based on race, religion, and nationality, as well as retaliation allegations under the American Disabilities Act. In a 213-page complaint, AbouYabis alleged Emory fired her while she was on medical leave for post-traumatic stress disorder after 37 members of her family were killed in the first month of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. The suit, originally filed in May, names the school, the Milsteins, StopAntisemitism, and Canary Mission, accusing Emory of collaborating with the latter two to silence AbouYabis’s protected speech. In a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, attorneys for the Milsteins did not deny its financial support for StopAntisemitism, but said the couple cannot be held liable “for the acts of these third party websites.”

Central to Lewis’s complaint against StopAntisemitism is the group’s email campaign against Lewis as part of a series targeting educators called “Corrupting the Classroom,” in which they labeled her “a raging antisemite.” A link on the campaign’s site, which remains active, leads directly to a pre-written email message addressed to Valley Catholic School’s principal. The email calls Lewis “a grave threat to the safety and well-being of your students” whose “presence in the classroom cannot be tolerated” and called on the principal “to take immediate and decisive action to address this situation.” Lewis’s lawsuit frames the campaign’s message as “false and malicious statements” about her personal views on the Israeli government’s policies. The campaign, the suit alleges, is full of “mischaracterizations and distortions” of her social media posts.

In a motion to dismiss Lewis’s case, attorneys for the Reznichenko and the organization defended the “Corrupting the Classroom” campaign as having used Lewis’s own “quotes and screenshots from Plaintiff’s publicly available social media profile,” arguing that the group “simply framed them as an example of dangerous antisemitism, a conclusion StopAntisemitism is entitled to reach and express under the First Amendment” and Oregon law.

FIRE’s Terr, who is familiar with cases involving StopAntisemitism, said he agreed with the court’s previous decisions in other cases where judges ruled to protect StopAntisemitism’s free speech rights, even if he disagreed with the group’s tactics. It would be worse, he said, if the government could decide what speech is or is not acceptable.

The second Trump administration, however, has tested the limits of such constitutional protections by passing executive orders inspired by the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther, which aims to target the pro-Palestinian movement by accusing them of being Hamas supporters. The orders have only emboldened groups like StopAntisemitism.

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The Far-Right Group Building a List of Pro-Palestine Activists to Deport

Earlier this year, the administration began detaining and attempting to deport high profile pro-Palestinian activists Mohsen Mahdawi, Rümeysa Öztürk, and Mahmoud Khalil — the latter of whom Reznichenko regularly attacks online. The right-wing Zionist group Betar has openly collaborated with the Trump administration, providing lists of pro-Palestine activists in the U.S. for deportation. StopAntisemitism has cheered on such deportation efforts. A Palestinian woman who joined a pro-Palestine protest in New York, Leqaa Kordia, has been in immigration detention since early March despite a judge twice ordering her release. The Trump administration and groups like StopAntisemitism have accused her of being a “pro-Hamas extremist” while failing to present evidence.

While Terr said StopAntisemitism is protected by the First Amendment, he criticized blacklist groups like StopAntisemitism for punishing people who say things the group disagrees with by “trying to inflict devastating consequences on people, like depriving them of their livelihoods,” which he said chills further speech.

“When an organization like Stop Anti-Semitism not only amplifies someone else’s social media posts to criticize their views, but also organizes a campaign to get them fired, it’s right to call that out as illiberal,” Terr said.

Calling out StopAntisemitism is perhaps the best recourse people have in seeking accountability, said Dylan Saba, an attorney at Palestine Legal, which has supported students and faculty who have been censored by schools due to their advocacy for Palestine.

“Because the speech protections are so strong, it’s really a situation in which sunlight is the best disinfectant,” Saba said. “The more that people understand who and what these organizations are, that there is this mass campaign to propagate smears and to stamp out any criticism of Zionism or criticism of U.S. support for Israel, the less effective those smears will be — especially as more people are becoming familiar with the issue of Palestine.”

“The more people understand that there is this mass campaign to propagate smears and to stamp out any criticism of Zionism or criticism of U.S. support for Israel, the less effective those smears will be.”

Hundreds of comments by supporters of StopAntisemitism were leveled at Lewis, some of which her attorney described as as “violent and threatening” in court filings. They ranged from misogynist attacks to others calling for her to get a pager, referencing an attack in Lebanon in which the Israeli military detonated thousands of pagers and handheld walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members, killing 42 people, including 12 civilians, and injuring more than 4,000 others. Another user suggested Lewis should be “teached” by Mossad, according to a police report she filed with the Portland Police Department last year, a reference to Israel’s intelligence agency, which has a long history of assassinating its political enemies.

Lewis said the attacks strained her marriage and her livelihood. She said she has retained some of her students for private lessons, teaching from her home studio, but she misses the camaraderie with her co-workers and helping build the school’s music program.

Lewis, who is self-funding her case through her savings and a GoFundMe, said she is motivated by the many students who have been blacklisted by the group and whose lives have been interrupted because of StopAntisemitism’s blacklist.

“I’m a teacher, that’s what I do — I try to help my students reach their full potential,” she said. “Their whole career could be just snuffed out, you know? They may never be able to work in their chosen field. They got student loan debt, they got to pay the rent.”Share

Contact the author:

Jonah Valdezjonah.valdez@theintercept.com@jonahmv.05on Signal@jonahmvon X

Mitt Romney, then a Republican US senator from Utah, rode the chamber’s subway in the Capitol in Washington, DC on May 21, 2024.

 (Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

“When Romney had real power,” noted journalist David Sirota, “he fortified the rigged tax system that he’s only now criticizing from the sidelines.”

Jessica Corbett

Dec 19, 2025 (CommonDreams.org)

In a leaked fundraiser footage from the 2012 US presidential campaign, Republican candidate Mitt Romney infamously claimed that 47% of Americans are people “who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you name it.” On Friday, the former US senator from Utah published a New York Times opinion piece titled, “Tax the Rich, Like Me.”

“In 2012, political ads suggested that some of my policy proposals, if enacted, would amount to pushing grandma off a cliff. Actually, my proposals were intended to prevent that very thing from happening,” Romney began the article, which was met with a range of reactions. “Today, all of us, including our grandmas, truly are headed for a cliff: If, as projected, the Social Security Trust Fund runs out in the 2034 fiscal year, benefits will be cut by about 23%.”

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“Typically, Democrats insist on higher taxes, and Republicans insist on lower spending. But given the magnitude of our national debt as well as the proximity of the cliff, both are necessary,” he argued. “On the spending-cut front… Social Security and Medicare benefits for future retirees should be means-tested—need-based, that is to say—and the starting age for entitlement payments should be linked to American life expectancy.”

“And on the tax front, it’s time for rich people like me to pay more,” wrote Romney, whose estimated net worth last year, when he announced his January 2025 retirement from the Senate, was $235 million. “I long opposed increasing the income level on which FICA employment taxes are applied (this year, the cap is $176,100). No longer; the consequences of the cliff have changed my mind.”

https://x.com/alivitali/status/2002036989965857036?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2002036989965857036%7Ctwgr%5Eee47020dd9a98aeca06b1a7427b2ae9b220a0830%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fmitt-romney

“The largest source of additional tax revenues is also probably the most compelling for fairness and social stability. Some call it closing tax code loopholes, but the term ‘loopholes’ grossly understates their scale. ‘Caverns’ or ‘caves’ would be more fitting,” he continued, calling for rewriting capital gains tax treatment rules for “mega-estates over $100 million.”

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“Sealing the real estate caverns would also raise more revenue,” Romney noted. “There are more loopholes and caverns to be explored and sealed for the very wealthy, including state and local tax deductions, the tax rate on carried interest, and charity limits on the largest estates at death.”

Some welcomed or even praised Romney’s piece. Iowa state Rep. JD Scholten (D-1), a progressive who has previously run for both chambers of Congress, declared on social media: “Tax the rich! Welcome to the coalition, Mitt!”

Me and my old rival Mitt Romney finally agree on something — it's time to close the loophole that lets the ultra-wealthy use death to cheat taxes. pic.twitter.com/liXeqUbAdJ

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) December 19, 2025

US House Committee on the Budget Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), who is part of the New Democrat Coalition, said: “I welcome this op-ed by Mitt Romney and encourage people to read it. As the next chair of the House Budget Committee, increasing revenue by closing loopholes exploited by the wealthiest Americans will be a top priority.”

Progressive Saikat Chakrabarti, who is reportedly worth at least $167 million and is one of the candidates running to replace retiring former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), responded: “Even Mitt Romney now agrees that we need to tax the wealthiest. I call for a wealth tax on our billionaires and centimillionaires.”

Michael Linden, a senior policy fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, said: “Kudos to Mitt Romney for changing his mind and calling for higher taxes on the rich. I’m not going to nitpick his op-ed (though there are a few things I disagree with), because the gist of it is right: We need real tax reform to make the rich pay more.”

https://x.com/JordanWoodME/status/2002042438634881294?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2002042438634881294%7Ctwgr%5Eee47020dd9a98aeca06b1a7427b2ae9b220a0830%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fmitt-romney

Others pointed to Romney’s record, including the impactful 47% remarks. The Lever‘s David Sirota wondered, “Why is it that powerful people typically wait until they have no power to take the right position and effectively admit they were wrong when they had more power to do something about it?”

According to Sirota:

The obvious news of the op-ed is that we’ve reached a point in which even American politics’ very own Gordon Gekko—a private equity mogul-turned-Republican politician—is now admitting the tax system has been rigged for his fellow oligarchs.

And, hey, that’s good. I believe in the politics of addition. I believe in welcoming converts to good causes in the spirit of “better late than never.” I believe there should be space for people to change their views for the better. And I appreciate Romney offering at least some pro forma explanation about what allegedly changed his thinking (sidenote: I say “allegedly” because it’s not like Romney only just now learned that the tax system was rigged—he was literally a co-founder of Bain Capital!).

“And yet, these kinds of reversals (without explicit apologies, of course) often come off as both long overdue but also vaguely inauthentic, or at least not as courageous and principled as they seem,” Sirota continued, stressing that “when Romney had real power, he fortified the rigged tax system that he’s only now criticizing from the sidelines.”

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Jessica Corbett

Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

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Martin Kerr Nov 22, 2023 EDMONTON God Rest Ye Merry Billionaires is out now Stream: https://martinkerr.ffm.to/godrestyeme…

(Contributed by Gwyllm Llwydd)

In response to the newly renamed “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts”

The newly added lettering for President Donald Trump’s name is displayed at the facade of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a day after its board announced it would rename the institution The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 19, 2025. Credit: Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (August 4,1792 – July 8, 1822) was an English writer who is considered one of the major English Romantic poets. Wikipedia

1819 portrait

(larryhparker.com)

(Image from morellilaw.com)

It’s hard to imagine America without cars. Today, almost every family has one. Things as simple as going to the store, going to school, and commuting to work are all but impossible without a car in many places. But about 100 years ago, cars were a rarity.

Prior to the 1920s, streets were considered public spaces. Vendors hawked their wares in them from tables and carts, horse-drawn vehicles clopped up and down them, and pedestrians milled about freely. As cars began to make their appearance on city streets, it was generally understood that it was their responsibility to watch out for pedestrians, not the other way around.

When an automobile hit a pedestrian—as often happened in those early days—the public response was outrage. Cars were seen as interlopers in streets that were considered the domain of pedestrians, and newspapers typically put the blame on drivers when reporting on pedestrian injuries and deaths. Anti-car groups advocated for governors that would limit the speed of automobiles to help make streets safer. The city of Cincinnati OH even attempted a ballot initiative to ban cars without governors from the city.

Auto industry groups responded with a campaign to legally redefine the streets, giving cars the right of way and restricting pedestrians. They offered a service that provided local newspapers with prewritten accounts of traffic accidents, which painted pedestrians as the ones in the wrong. They staged safety campaigns teaching children to stay out of the streets, and they lobbied for cities to pass new laws to control pedestrians.

Los Angeles adopted strict traffic laws for pedestrians in 1925, and these laws were used as the basis of the federal government’s 1928 Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance. This ordinance said pedestrians could only cross the street at crosswalks and at right angles.

In order to train the public to comply with this new way of seeing the streets, auto industry groups relied heavily on public shaming. Tactics included mounting safety campaigns with unruly pedestrians dressed as clowns, encouraging police to whistle and shout at pedestrians, and carrying women back to the sidewalk if they stepped into the street.

The very name “jaywalking” was part of this campaign of shame. During the 1920s, a “jay” was a rube or a hick. So when auto groups called pedestrians who strayed from sidewalks “jaywalkers,” it was quite insulting.

Today, pedestrian accidents are still greeted with outrage in many cases, especially considering that many pedestrian accidents are caused by inattentive drivers. However, we now recognize that pedestrians can be to blame for accidents as well—particularly when they violate the rules of the road and commit the offense of jaywalking, as established way back in the 1920s by those auto industry groups.

Author Paul Holden also talks to Mehdi about the secret projects Starmer’s now chief of staff and his colleagues were involved in to demonetize left-wing media outlets they considered a threat.

Team Zeteo and Mehdi Hasan Dec 18∙Preview

Video: https://zeteo.com/p/the-fraud-paul-holden?r=e0iq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&timestamp=12.2&showWelcomeOnShare=false

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s approval ratings are in the gutter and critics point to him having abandoned many of the traditional Labour Party policies, and moving his party to the right, as prime reasons for his deep unpopularity.

Now, a new book is uncovering how a faction of pro-Israel, corporate-aligned centrists took over the left-leaning Labour Party to bring Starmer into power. It’s called The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney, and the Crisis of British Democracy.

During a wide-ranging interview with Mehdi, the book’s author, Paul Holden, breaks down the key players involved in the conspiracy to take over the Labour Party “to make sure you could never have another moment where a left-wing leader like Jeremy Corbyn was elected again.”

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“This is a politician who has adopted, alongside his political allies, a[n] explicit political strategy of misdirection and dishonesty in order to win political power,” Holden tells Mehdi.

Holden adds that, “Fundamentally, the ‘antisemitism crisis’ was used by a political faction in order to win a battle for the control of the Labour Party.”

Paid subscribers can watch the full conversation above to hear Holden discuss how the “antisemitism crisis” paved the way for the Starmer government to continue facilitating Israel’s genocide in Gaza, how Holden was targeted for investigating those involved in this conspiracy, and whether Starmer will leave office following the May 2026 local elections.