A bronze-painted statue titled “Best Friends Forever, ”depicting Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands on October 2, 2025, in Washington, DC.(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)
The scandal around Jeffrey Epstein, who trafficked and abused children and died in a prison cell in 2019, has never gone away. It continues to explode now that House Democrats have released thousands of e-mails from Epstein and his cronies. But while the political class and mainstream media are understandably focused on the sex scandal, another dimension of the scandal goes uncovered except by independent media outlets such as Drop Site: Epstein’s deep ties to the national security state. I talked to international relations scholar Van Jackson about this crucial part of the story.
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Donald Trump is practicing crony capitalism on an unprecedented scale, with the government greenlighting major mergers that benefit the president’s friends (most notably the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger). I spoke to Zephyr Teachout, who teaches constitutional law at Fordham, about this worrying development. We take up the long history of anti-monopoly politics going back to the American revolution and the trust battles of the late 19th century as well as the possibility state governments can fight the new wave of consolidation. Zephyr has often written on his subject for The Nation, notably in two recent articles.
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