| Hello and happy Monday. |
| Pigs are flying and Satan has on a puffer jacket. I know these things because the impossible is happening — I am writing about why Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert are right. |
| And why California's Republican congressional representatives should be ashamed and shamed. |
| You may know these women as beacons of the far right, maybe even the fringe-right, in Congress. Hailing from Georgia, South Carolina and Colorado, respectively, they have dabbled in QAnon conspiracy theories, including about sex trafficking and powerful pedophiles, among other questionable actions. |
| But I'll say this for the trio — they've stayed true to their beliefs, even under direct pressure from the White House. So a (limited) shout-out to Greene, Mace and Boebert. |
| |
| What am I talking about? Jeffrey Edward Epstein, of course (I think he committed enough crimes to earn his middle name included, serial killer style). |
| Boebert, Mace and Greene are three of only four Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives who have signed a discharge petition (a kind of work-around to bypass leadership) to release the full Epstein files, supposedly containing a trove of information on men who bought and sold sex with teenage girls. |
| "These are some of the richest, most powerful people in the world that could sue these women into poverty and homelessness," Greene said at a recent news conference with some of the victims. "Yeah, it's a scary thing to name names, but I will tell you, I'm not afraid to name names, and so if they want to give me a list, I will walk in that Capitol on the House floor, and I'll say every damn name that abused these women. I can do that for them." |
| And, to my immense shock at having something in common with Greene, I say — that is how it's done, lady. You go. |
| Not a single Republican House member from California has backed releasing the Epstein files. Every California Democratic representative has signed. So let's talk about that. |
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I am sick of Epstein. Why are you writing this? |
| Like most of you, I too am tired of hearing endless political chatter about Epstein. |
| For the blessedly uniformed among you, Epstein was an extremely rich dude. No one is quite sure where all that money came from, but he apparently used a great deal of it to buy influence with powerful men, and sex traffic underage girls — allegedly children as young as 11 . |
| He died by suicide while in jail in 2019 (lots of conspiracy theories on whether it was in fact suicide) but in 2021 his paramour-partner Ghislaine Noelle Maxwell was also convicted of child sex trafficking and other offenses. |
| Epstein and Maxwell have ties to Donald Trump, including a much-discussed "birthday book" that honestly I do not care about other than to say, "Ick." That has made the whole thing an endless political brouhaha. |
| But many of the many victims of Epstein and Maxwell have called for their information to be released by the Justice Department, which holds more than 100,000 pages of the investigation. They, like survivors of sexual assault everywhere, want accountability, if justice remains elusive. They want names named. They want to stop being afraid, stop being stuck by their pain and their past, and allow the world to decide, if courts won't, just how much truth they are telling. |
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| These are brave women who were brutalized as children for the pleasure of men with money. They have a right to have their stories known if that's what they choose. |
| This is not politics. This is decency. |
The California problem |
| Like Greene, I'm willing to name some names. Here they are — California's GOP representatives in the House: |
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| Releasing the Epstein files requires only one of them to sign the discharge petition. Just one of these fine representatives from the Golden State could do the right thing, stand for a bipartisan value that Californians of both parties hold — sex trafficking is bad — and show what real leadership looks like. |
| Anyone? Anyone? |
| "If Epstein survivors want this information released, it should be released. These women have had the courage to speak out and it's infuriating that Congress would block release of information — they'd rather help with a cover-up than stand with survivors," state Assemblymember Maggy Krell (D-Sacramento) told me. |
| She's a former state Justice Department prosecutor who specialized in trafficking, and has worked on controversial bipartisan legislation at the Capitol with Republican Sen. Shannon Grove of Bakersfield. That legislation earned her the ire of her own party, but on an issue this important, she did what she believed was right over what was easy. |
| "Protecting kids and standing up for survivors of human trafficking should not be a partisan issue and in California, we've shown it doesn't have to be," Krell said. |
| In fact, the discharge petition in the House is a bipartisan effort — introduced by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and our own Ro Khanna of California, a Democrat. |
| In particular, I'd like to call out Kiley for his hypocrisy. Recently, he introduced a bipartisan sex trafficking bill in Congress that's a smart idea — the National Human Trafficking Database Act, which would create a database at the Department of Justice that tracks cases across the country. He did it with Reps. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo) and Hank Johnson (D-Ga). Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) are carrying the bill in the Senate. |
| "We must do everything we can to prevent human trafficking and having the necessary tools at our disposal will bring us closer to stopping this awful crime," Kiley said in a press release. |
| Huh. |
| Seems like Kiley gets the issue. Seems like he's saying the right things. And for a guy about to be gerrymandered out of his own district — with his own party not seeming to care — he doesn't have much to lose by doing the right thing and signing the discharge petition. My email to his office on the topic remains unanswered. |
| Liz Stein, an Epstein and Maxwell survivor who spoke at the news conference, said (as reported by the 19th News) that her life has never been the same since the abuse started. Since then, it has "felt like someone shut off the lights to my soul." |
| There. Is. No. Excuse. |
| "This is not a partisan issue, but an American issue," New Mexico Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, chair of the Democratic Women's Caucus, said in a press release. "To my Republican colleagues, if these heartbreaking stories aren't enough, sign the petition for your daughters and for all the women in your lives that you would want protected from pedophiles. Because it's not just about Epstein, but about all the women and children who are trafficked, abused, sexually assaulted, and ignored in their pain. The survivors today told their stories to not only push for the Epstein files to be released, but for a better future where women and girls are believed and supported, and abusers are held accountable." |
| I can't say it any more directly. Hiding behind politics on this one is the act of a coward. |
| If you won't stand up against the rape of children, what do you stand for? |
What else you should be reading: |
| The must-read: L.A. fires burned their block. For each, the disaster was just beginning.
The what happened: Lawyers fear 1,000 children from Central America, dozens in California, are at risk of being deported
The L.A. Times special: What the writings on the bullet casings from Charlie Kirk's killer might mean |
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