Raw Story

The top Democrat in the Senate has directly responded to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche after he said that "thousands" of Jeffrey Epstein files would be withheld by the Department of Justice despite a law requiring "all" documents to be released by Friday.

"I expect that we're going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks. So today, several hundred thousand. And then over the next couple weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more," Blanche told Fox News on Friday.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer responded by indicating that Democrats would not stand for the Trump DOJ flouting the law.

"The law Congress passed and President Trump signed was clear as can be - the Trump administration had 30 days to release ALL the Epstein files, not just some. Failing to do so is breaking the law. This just shows the Department of Justice, Donald Trump, and Pam Bondi are hellbent on hiding the truth," Schumer insisted. "Senate Democrats are working closely with attorneys for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and with outside legal experts to assess what documents are being withheld and what is being covered up by Pam Bondi. We will not stop until the whole truth comes out."

"People want the truth and continue to demand the immediate release of all the Epstein files. This is nothing more than a cover up to protect Donald Trump from his ugly past," he added.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) suggested that Bondi would be "prosecuted" if the DOJ does not release the full Epstein files on Friday.

Two American university professors Friday warned the "noxious" Supreme Court can no longer be saved.

Harvard law professor Ryan Doerfler and Yale law professor Samuel Moyn wrote an opinion piece published by The Guardian about how the high court's legitimacy has been increasingly damaged under President Donald Trump's second term. Conservative justices have handed Trump and the MAGA movement a number of wins, including overturning of Roe v. Wade, "what remains of the Voting Rights Act," and losing its "nonpartisan image."

The role of the court has shifted and with the conservative majority, the liberal justices had previously "proceeded as if their conservative peers would continue to take their own institution’s legitimacy seriously."

But over the last several months, that has also changed.

"Yet with the conservative justices shattering the Supreme Court’s non-partisan image during Trump’s second term, liberals are not adjusting much," Doerfler and Moyn wrote. "The liberal justices – Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor – have become much more aggressive in their dissents. But they disagree with one another about how far to concede that their conservative colleagues have given up any concern for institutional legitimacy. Encouragingly, Jackson pivoted to 'warning the public that the boat is sinking' – as journalist Jodi Kantor put it in a much-noticed reported piece. Jackson’s fellow liberals, though, did not follow her in this regard, worrying her strategy of pulling the 'fire alarm' was 'diluting' their collective 'impact.'"

By now, Trump has used a "shadow docket" of emergency orders to his advantage and to advance his policies.

"Similarly, many liberal lawyers have focused their criticism on the manner in which the Supreme Court has advanced its noxious agenda – issuing major rulings via the 'shadow' docket, without full-dress lawyering, and leaving out reasoning in support of its decisions," according to the writers.

Critics have argued that the conservative-majority Supreme Court, including Trump's appointees, has used the shadow docket to issue consequential rulings on controversial issues like abortion, voting rights, and immigration with minimal explanation or public deliberation, effectively allowing the court to reshape law through expedited procedures that bypass traditional briefing and oral argument requirements.

Now, "progressives are increasingly converging on the idea of both expanding and 'disempowering' federal courts and looking to see how to shake up the status quo."

"Rather than adhere to the same institutionalist strategies that helped our current crisis, reformers must insist on remaking institutions like the US supreme court so that Americans don’t have to suffer future decades of oligarchy-facilitating rule that makes a parody of the democracy they were promised," Doerfler and Moyn wrote.

"In Trump’s second term, the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court has brought their institution to the brink of illegitimacy. Far from pulling it back from the edge, our goal has to be to push it off," the writers added.

Conservative political strategist Rick Wilson, one of President Donald Trump’s most vocal critics, urged his readers on Friday to “be of good cheer,” saying he believes the Trump administration is nearing collapse after what he described as a particularly difficult week for the White House.

“His reign will end. His power will wane. You could feel it this week. You watched that frantic disaster of a speech, the one where he fired off one deranged idea after another like a malfunctioning nail gun, and the teleprompter looked like it had been set to ‘cocaine binge,’" Wilson wrote in an analysis published Friday on his Substack “Against All Enemies.”

“The lies didn’t hit the same. The dread didn’t land the way it used to. The spell was ragged and ineffective. And for a lot of families, that’s not an abstract political observation. That’s relief.”

Trump’s waning control over the Republican Party has been on full display in recent weeks; Indiana Republicans rejected the president’s push for them to redraw their congressional maps; the GOP-controlled House blocked Trump’s attempt to strip federal workers of bargaining rights; and 12 House Republicans broke with Trump in supporting an extension to health care subsidies.

As for Trump’s cabinet members, it didn’t fare any better, Wilson argued.

“Even now, you can see it from the inside. They leak. They bicker. They climb over each other for attention like raccoons fighting over a moldy hamburger bun in a Denny’s dumpster,” Wilson wrote.

“And yes, it is harder to be a comic-book villain when you’ve surrounded yourself with morons. That’s not hope-as-a-hallucination. That’s how cults and con jobs end: not with a thunderclap, but with a long, humiliating whimper as people realize they bought the ticket to the comet, and all they got were matching track suits and Nikes.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office is openly ridiculing a White House update after confirmation that President Donald Trump personally wrote some of the new presidential portrait plaques, including one declaring that he “saved America.” Trump-era additions reportedly reference his own reelection and attack former President Joe Biden, while even plaques for past presidents mention Trump. Newsom’s press office fired back with a viral mock plaque parodying Trump’s tone and obsessions, drawing laughs — and fresh criticism — as commentators questioned why the president is spending time rewriting history in bronze amid rising economic anxiety.

Watch the video below.

Gavin Newsom mocks Trump after White House adds self-written boast to portrait plaques

NASCAR driver Greg Biffle, his wife, Cristina, and their children were killed in a plane crash on Thursday in North Carolina.

Biffle and his family were on board a private jet when the plane crashed and burst into flames at an airport in Statesville, North Carolina, at about 10:20 a.m. ET, where low clouds, rain and poor visibility were reported.

Rep. Richard Hudson announced their deaths in a post on X:

"I am devastated by the loss of Greg, Cristina, and their children, and my heart is with all who loved them. They were friends who lived their lives focused on helping others. Greg was a great NASCAR champion who thrilled millions of fans. But he was an extraordinary person as well, and will be remembered for his service to others as much as for his fearlessness on the track. The Biffles flew hundreds of rescue missions in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. The last time I spoke with Cristina, just a couple of weeks ago, she reached out to ask how she could help with relief efforts in Jamaica. That’s who the Biffles were. Our prayers are with their family, friends, and everyone grieving this unimaginable loss."

It's unclear what caused the crash. The investigation was ongoing.

Biffle was nominated for the NASCAR Hall of Fame this year. He raced 14 full-time seasons, collecting 19 wins in over 500 starts, and was a perennial playoff contender. Biffle finished in the top 10 in the standings six times, including a runner-up finish in 2005.

The Hall of Fame called Biffle one of NASCAR’s 75 "greatest drivers."

Republicans were shocked by President Donald Trump's finger-pointing and have questioned what's next after his lackluster primetime speech.

White House insiders and GOP lawmakers were reacting to responses to Trump's speech, CNN senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes told viewers Thursday.

"Look, they're all watching everything closely, and they've seen how it's been reviewed. I will say one thing. The White House worked together as a team, as they often do the inner circle to craft this speech. And they needed a speech in which President Trump would stay on message, that was short, that addressed the economy," Holmes said.

Trump blamed former President Joe Biden, a common move he's made in the past — something his team has begged him to stop doing — and tried to say the economy was better than before.

"Now, whether or not you think his message was true, we obviously know that there were numbers that were inflated or just plain wrong. Or if you think that he went off topic, airing his grievances, he did talk about the economy more than we've ever we've seen him in the last several months," Holmes said. "And that is what the White House was intending to do, to try and get the message across that he is aware that things are not in the place that they need to be, and that they are working on it as an administration."

That message did not land well, she said. And Republicans outside the White House had a different response to what the White House had aimed for, "which is try and alleviate people's fears."

Instead, it only ramped up people's worries, especially ahead of the midterms.

"Republicans came out of that speech more anxious that the messaging around the economy was not where it should be going into 2026, and that the party as a whole was not really solidified in that messaging about the economy, especially when it came to all of this blame on the previous administration," Holmes said.

Trump's former campaign advisers have claimed that the president has previously made gains in convincing people he has an understanding of improving the economy. But now things have changed.

"The other thing they said was that it was a lot easier to run when President Trump himself wasn't in power. When you are running against something, you were saying, you can change something," she added. "Now he is facing the same exact circumstances that President Biden was facing at the time, and handling it the exact same way, which, of course, is raising a lot of questions as to where Republicans are going to go from here."