Blanche clears path to nomination after performative meeting with Epstein survivors

Blanche has been described by many in Congress as the central figure in what is being described as the largest government cover-up in recent history.

Jul 17, 2026

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After no consequences for January Killings, ICE agents open fire in Texas and Maine

Immigration officers shot and killed individuals in Texas and Maine earlier this month, but lawmakers have noted a troubling difference from the extrajudicial killings by ICE agents earlier this year: no one recorded the attacks.

Graphic footage from the murders of Renee Goode and Alex Pretti in Minnesota earlier this year set off a wave of nationwide protests against ICE, forcing the Trump administration to reign in some of the more violent protocols it had previously encouraged among law enforcement. Recordings from multiple angles — taken by bystanders, ICE agents, and Pretti himself — were seen by millions, and the widespread videos of unprovoked aggression are seen as a major factor in public sentiment turning against the Trump administration’s anti-immigration efforts.

No such footage exists of the deaths of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Sebastian Guerrero. The officers were not wearing body cameras, no bystanders have come forward with recordings, and video from nearby security cameras is indiscernible. And no footage has been released of a third ICE-related death that occurred the same week, when a man in Florida was struck by oncoming traffic while attempting to flee an immigration traffic stop. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said the lack of consequences for officers involved in earlier shootings has emboldened agents and created a chilling effect among witnesses.

“People are scared to death to take out their phone and record ICE. Why? Because there are no consequences, and because the last person that did it — Alex Pretti — was murdered for taking out his phone to video an interaction with ICE. This is part of their strategy: to have people too scared to hold them accountable,” said Frost. “The fact that we don’t have that kind of video for the last three incidents just shows that their strategy, unfortunately, is working, and it’s scaring people.”

The Trump administration confirmed as much, when White House official Tom Homan blamed the murders on those exercising their First Amendment rights by recording law enforcement and informing immigrants about their legal protections.

“It all goes back to the Dems, who want to continue to attack ICE, and tell people to evade ‘em, tell people, ‘don’t comply,’ tell people to resist, and tell people ICE isn’t a real law enforcement agency,” Homan told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. “You and I talked about this a year and a half ago, Laura. I said, ‘If the hateful rhetoric didn’t stop, there will be bloodshed,’ and I’m saying it right now: there’s still gonna be more bloodshed unless they shut their mouth and let ICE enforce the laws.”

The administration has gone to great lengths to protect its immigration officers from consequences — both legally and socially. DHS agents regularly use unmarked vehicles, cover their badges, mask their faces, and refuse to identify themselves to the public. Vice President JD Vance at one point offered offending agents “absolute immunity,” and the White House has responded to each killing by defending the shooter and attacking the deceased.

Rep. Christian Menefee (D-TX), whose hometown of Houston has been devastated and enraged by the death of Salgado Araujo, believes the Trump administration has corrupted DHS beyond repair and that ICE must be abolished entirely in order for the federal government to mend its lethal approach to immigration.

“President Trump, Kristi Noem, and the current head of DHS — they have radicalized that agency. They now view themselves as a military force that is able to go throughout the country, through President Trump’s enhanced ICE enforcement operations, and target people. We saw what they did to Keith Porter, we saw what they did to Alex Pretti, to Renee Goode, and they now act like a radicalized military police force,” said Menefee. “It’s horrific, and it just shows that that agency needs to be ripped down to the studs.”

While abolishing ICE has gained support in recent years, the effort would be an uphill battle that could take years before meaningful change is realized. As a more immediate step, Frost has introduced the Right to Record Act, a bill that would immediately strengthen First Amendment protections and create financial consequences for law enforcement officers who violate them.

Law enforcement officers are currently protected from civil lawsuits by the doctrine off qualified immunity, which generally shields them from personal liability for actions taken in their official capacity. Some states have taken those protections a step further and codified them into law. In Arizona, voters approved a 2024 ballot proposition that grants what the vice president might describe as absolute immunity to any officer who violates someone’s rights while enforcing immigration laws.

The Right to Record Act would supersede qualified immunity in any form and allow anyone whose “right to record, observe, or peacefully protest law enforcement activities” has been violated to sue both the federal government and the offending agent for $25,000 per violation, with up to an additional $100,000 per violation in punitive damages.

“In a just world, these people would — number one, be off the job, and they would be held accountable in a court of law,” Frost said. “But I don’t really believe in the agency itself being the be-all and end-all of deciding what consequences their own people face. It needs to be done in a court of law and these people need to be held criminally liable. This is part of the problem with our system of law enforcement in this country — we shield people from personal accountability. And I think that’s a problem. You’re more likely to make a mistake, or to do something that could end in the loss of life, if there are no consequences. There is no other job in this country where you’re empowered to do something like that. There needs to be a heightened level of scrutiny.”

Frost said that ICE’s growing lethality has generated increased interest in his bill, as lawmakers watch the Trump administration do little to rein in its violent offenders. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) signed on as a cosponsor two days after Salgado Araujo was killed, and Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Rand Paul (R-KY) have said the continued shootings represent a failure on the part of the administration.

Menefee, who seemed supportive of the bill but has not yet signed on as a co-sponsor, said every effort should be made to right the wrongs committed by DHS, from holding agents accountable to transforming the agency itself.

“We should use every single tool in the toolbox. That means strongly pushing to reform the agency, but it also means holding individual agents accountable when they break the law,” Menefee said. “They should be treated the same way that someone who’s not in law enforcement is treated when they kill somebody. If President Trump and the head of DHS were so proud of what ICE agents are doing, why are they hiding their identities? To me, accountability looks like — at a macro level, taking on the agency; at a micro level, addressing the investigation and holding the individual agents accountable.”

Since day one of Trump’s political career, people have desperately attempted to normalize his absurd abuses of power and blatant corruption – and 10 years later, much of corporate media remains a victim of their own attempts to return to a sense of normalcy.

It’s time to stop sane-washing the insanity.

What Happened

Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche met with victims of Jeffrey Epstein on Thursday afternoon after two senators told him he was required to do so in order to keep his nomination on track.

The meeting ended a yearlong stalemate between the DOJ and survivors, who say the Trump administration refused to speak with them about Epstein’s criminal network. But the change in course was not due to a change of heart; Blanche was told during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that his nomination for attorney general would not advance if he continued to evade Epstein’s victims.

“I can’t understand how this attorney general could find 48 hours to visit with Ghislaine Maxwell, who has been prosecuted for sex trafficking, and can’t find 30 minutes to meet with the survivors,” ranking committee member Dick Durbin (D-Il) told survivor Dani Bensky during the hearing. “I don’t think his name should be called on the floor of the United States Senate until he meets with you. It’s not too much to ask.”

Durbin’s demand later received bipartisan backing from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who told Blanche he would need to meet with survivors in order to earn his support. With his job on the line, Blanche conceded and spent an hour at the Justice Department headquarters with a handful of women whose personal information had not been redacted from the DOJ’s initial publication of its Epstein Library, which contains a partial release of the government’s case files on Epstein.

But those in attendance described the meeting as more akin to checking a box than a meaningful conversation. Blanche gave noncommittal responses when offered leads on potential Epstein clients and accomplices of, offered unsatisfactory answers about transferring one of their abusers, Ghislaine Maxwell, to a minimum-security prison, and provided no additional details regarding the redactions in the Epstein Files that left survivors exposed, while seemingly protecting those implicated in crimes.

“I don’t think that we had high expectations going into this meeting. I certainly did not. But I didn’t expect to walk out of the meeting feeling the way that we feel right now. It was demoralizing, to say the very least,” Liz Stein, a survivor in attendance, told MSNOW. “It felt like more political posturing and using survivors the way that we’ve been used as political pawns.”

Blanche told reporters he did not intend for the meeting to be anything more than a listening session and encouraged survivors to share any information they have with federal investigators. The hands-off approach failed to win survivors’ support. After the meeting, they urged senators to reject his nomination.

Despite that reaction, Tillis signaled his support and commended Blanche for meeting with survivors, praising him for “doing what all his predecessors over the last two decades never did: meet with the victims of Jeffery [sic] Epstein’s horrific crimes.”

The encounter capped a tense, two-day confirmation hearing in which Blanche’s handling of the Epstein investigation was a focal point for senators. Blanche offered little, repeating his defense that redaction errors were a result of the “Herculean task” of complying with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which his department has so far failed to do. He also defended the FBI’s conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to investigate anyone else involved in Epstein’s criminal network, despite documents that appear to identify co-conspirators and seized messages to Epstein that seem to incriminate the senders, whose names remain redacted and hidden from public view.

Internal communications between federal agents have also revealed that the DOJ’s decision to close the case was based on a rushed review of less than 7% of the 6 million documents contained within the Epstein Files, and agents did not take financial documents, personal communications, or the majority of witness testimony into consideration when closing the case.

Blanche has been described by many in Congress — and by Bondi, his former boss at the DOJ — as wholly responsible for the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein investigation. Decisions to close the investigation, grant leniency to the only person convicted, and withhold information that the law requires to be made public have made Blanche the center figure in what is being described as the largest government cover-up in recent history.

“He’s at the center of the cover-up of the Epstein Files,” said Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ). “When we spoke to Pam Bondi, in her transcribed interview, she mentioned Todd Blanche over 30 times, saying that the Epstein Files cover-up was entirely under his purview.”

Attempts to Sanewash

Far-Right Spin

It’s easy for individual members of Congress to get overlooked by national outlets as they quietly skate to reelection again, and again, and again. The following is an overview of different congressional representatives you may not have heard of, with fun facts about their origin stories they’ve tried to keep out of the public narrative.

US Rep. Brian Babin, Texas’ 36th Congressional District

Since taking office in 2015, Rep. Babin has:

Seen his net worth increase from roughly $2.5 million to over $3.5 million, with a brief spike to $6.2 million in 2021
Sponsored 99 bills
Authored one bill that has been signed into law, to rename a post office
Proudly documented his misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia
Begged Trump to pardon convicted war criminals
Attempted to end birthright citizenship
Been investigated by his peers for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results
Championed the failed SCOTUSCare Act, which would have required US Supreme Court justices to obtain health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace
Attempted to stop refugee programs during the 2015 European migrant crisis, which had been partially caused by US-funded proxy wars in the Middle East

Fun Facts

Babin began his professional journey by enlisting in the US Air Force in 1975. He left after only four years, saying he felt “demoralized” by his commander-in-chief, President Jimmy Carter. He left the service and went to work on Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign.

He took the lessons of success he learned from Reagan back home to Texas, where he was elected mayor of Woodville. His political rise was undercut by his bigotry, however, during his failed 1998 congressional campaign. An outspoken opponent of LGBTQ rights, Babin had hired an openly gay campaign manager, who quit without warning a few months before the general election.

“Babin abhors homosexuality. I am a homosexual,” Jon-Marc McDonald said in his resignation statement. “Therefore, I can no longer work for someone who thinks that my sexuality is a disease, a sin and unnatural.”

McDonald later alleged that Babin told staff that “homosexuals should be shot,” and went on to become a successful New York playwright. Babin was given a series of consolation-prize positions in state government by former Governors George W. Bush and Rick Perry until he saw an opportunity to snag a safe Republican seat in the US House in 2015.

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