Activism / This Week

Summer of Epstein

Sami Sage.

In the Summer of 1977, I was a young illustrator, living in the East Village in NY. I would get around town a great deal and wherever I went, working, dating, going to films, dinner, it’s all you heard people talking about: the crazy guy who was shooting people parked in their cars. Strangers in coffee shops would see the Daily News on a table and talk. Jimmy Breslin. There was also an awful blackout. And the Yankees were on their way to the World Series, with TV coverage of the games showing shots of the Bronx burning in the night. It all felt like one single humid, hot, static, lousy thing. But a thing that we all shared. In 1999 Spike Lee made film called, the Summer of Sam.

This is the week this became, for me, the Summer of Epstein. The Congress shut down, the Supreme Court is, though officially in recess, in a faster rate of self- cancellation than the Congress. Likewise the media. The United States is under attack in every conceivable way. They are building concentration camps. We are funding a genocide in Gaza. We are left with a damaged and deranged Trump, making a new spectacular tabloid headline every hour, each more absurd than the last, while the economy sinks, the Earth burns, and AI prepares to destroy whatever Trump doesn’t. Enter the “Epstein.” This dead monster suddenly reaches back through the years to pay Trump back in full. And Trump, for once, can’t dodge the bullets. Like with the Son of Sam. 

And we sit and talk, in the heat. Until, perhaps, the weather breaks.

Also, under the Friday image please add the support link for this young man.

Fund for Turcios

Steve Brodner

Steve Brodner is an award-winning graphic artist/journalist and the winner of the 2024 Herb Block Prize for editorial cartooning.

More from The Nation

Marjorie Taylor Greene at a Capitol Hill press conference on November 18, 2025

The Revolt of the Republican Women The Revolt of the Republican Women

Speaker Mike Johnson’s sexism is fueling an unexpected uprising within the GOP caucus.

Jeet Heer

Look Up!

Look Up! Look Up!

Our addiction to cell phones is distracting from the world around us.

OppArt / Peter Kuper

Cori Bush, left; Kat Abughazaleh, right.

Can These Politician Activists Make it to Congress? Can These Politician Activists Make it to Congress?

Cori Bush and Kat Abughazaleh discuss how to win in politics without selling out.

Q&A / Laura Flanders

Does Dementia Have You?

Does Dementia Have You? Does Dementia Have You?

Take this simple test.

OppArt / Ruben Bolling

Donald Trump during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025.

A Desperate Trump Is Stirring Up Race Hatred A Desperate Trump Is Stirring Up Race Hatred

A barrage of bad economic news has spurred Trump to unleash his hate-infested id on any nonwhite target that flits through his overtaxed brainpan.

Chris Lehmann

Woman, Life, Freedom

Woman, Life, Freedom Woman, Life, Freedom

Posters in support of the people of Iran displayed at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, France.

OppArt / Andrea Arroyo