The Trump administration was hit Thursday with a new lawsuit from survivors of Jeffrey Epstein over what they say was a “deliberate” oversight from the Justice Department (DOJ).
“The United States, acting through the DOJ, made a deliberate policy choice to prioritize rapid, large-volume disclosure over protection of Epstein survivors’ privacy,” the plaintiffs in the lawsuit said, according to a report from NBC Los Angeles.
“[The DOJ] outed approximately 100 survivors of the convicted sexual predator, publishing their private information and identifying them to the world. Survivors now face renewed trauma. Strangers call them, email them, threaten their physical safety, and accuse them of conspiring with Epstein when they are, in reality, Epstein’s victims.”
In its recent release of millions of Epstein-related documents, the DOJ accidentally exposed the identities of several victims, redacting the material only after discovering the errors. The oversight stands in direct violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which mandates victim-identifying information be redacted.
The plaintiffs are seeking from the Trump administration a minimum of $1,000 in damages per survivor, and have also named Google in their lawsuit for allegedly “refusing victims’ pleas to take down” search results that reveal victims’ personal information.
“No survivor of sexual abuse should have to live in fear that a stranger can type their name into a search bar and instantly find out about their worst trauma,” said Julie Erickson, an attorney for the plaintiffs, in a statement last week, per NBC Los Angeles. “Yet that’s exactly what happened here.”
The pedophile- protecting rats should be facing criminal charges for doing this to keep victims from coming forward -- and that's exactly what these bastards intended.
... The war is at a critical point. If there is no deal between the Americans and the Iranians, Trump has very few choices. He could declare victory, saying America has destroyed Iran's military, therefore it is mission accomplished, and that opening the Strait of Hormuz is not his responsibility. That could melt down world financial markets and horrify his already disgruntled allies in Europe, Asia and the Gulf. A wounded, angry Iranian regime would have plenty of scope to put more pressure on the world economy.
More likely, Trump would decide to escalate the war. The Americans have more than 4,000 US Marines on ships heading to the Gulf, paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne on standby and are discussing further reinforcements.
No-one is talking about a full-scale invasion of Iran, but it is possible the Americans will try to capture islands in the Gulf, including Kharg island, Iran's main oil terminal. That would involve a series of challenging and dangerous amphibious landings. That might even suit Iran, which wants to drag the Americans into a longer war of attrition. Iran calculates that the regime's capacity for pain is greater than Trump's.
Trump has found in Iran that he is coming up against the limits of his power. The Iranian regime has a different definition of victory and defeat than he does. For them, mere survival is victory.
But now they are hoping for more, believing that control of the Strait of Hormuz gives them new leverage to make demands, perhaps even to make strategic gains. The Iranians have demanded, among other things, a promise not to be attacked in future and recognition of their control of the Strait of Hormuz as a price for opening it to all shipping. [snip]
The longer the war continues, the greater the consequences for the region and for the wider world. One leading Iran analyst, Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group told me they could be "catastrophic".
In 1956 the United Kingdom and France went to war alongside Israel after the Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, a global waterway that was as significant a chokepoint for the world economy as the Strait of Hormuz is now. They attained all their military objectives but were forced to withdraw by President Eisenhower of the United States.
For the British, it was the beginning of the end of their imperial domination of the Middle East.
America is faced by the rise of China. When the history is written of their competition to be the world's strongest power, Trump's badly planned war against Iran might be seen as a turning point, a waystation of decline, as Suez was for the United Kingdom.
Our kakistocracy comes through again. Here's another opinion on why the "excursion" is likely to be an operational success, but a strategic failure.
Architects are warning that President Donald Trump’s ballroom vanity project has disastrous design flaws.
The National Capital Planning Commission, which Trump has stacked with loyalists, is expected to take a final vote on the ballroom on April 2. But the president has already entirely demolished the East Wing to make way for the new event space.
Ahead of the vote, the New York Times published a piece on Sunday by a trained architect, fine arts expert, and urban planning writer who warned about serious flaws in the ballroom mockups.
The authors warned that the ballroom has “fake windows on the north side,” columns that “block interior ballroom view,” and an “unnecessarily big” rooftop area.
The Times story also warned about “its stairs lead nowhere,” as several of the staircases from the ground appear not to be connected to a way into the ballroom.
The ballroom, as it stands, is set to be more than three times the size of the White House, which will disrupt the historic property’s symmetry, the experts also noted.
“The hurried reviews, with construction cranes already swiveling above the White House grounds, are an abrupt departure from how new monuments, museums and even modest renovations have been designed and refined in the capital for decades,” the Times wrote. “And the ballroom will be worse off for it, architects warn.”
The scale and scope of the project have changed since the Trump administration first demolished the East Wing, once home to the Office of the First Lady and her staff. The White House has maintained that the new ballroom’s $300 to $400 million price tag will be “privately funded.”
The president’s vanity project has been met with immense public pushback. Around 98 percent of 32,000 public comments are against the construction of the ballroom, according to a review by the Times...
Stairs that lead to nowhere, fake windows, a giant blob attached to the White House. It all sounds like a metaphor, doesn't it? More here.
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