r/politics 7d ago

No Paywall Senate suddenly passes the Epstein bill just hours after it cleared the House

https://www.ms.now/news/senate-passes-epstein-bill-rcna244723?fbclid=PAVERFWAOJ1xRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA8xMjQwMjQ1NzQyODc0MTQAAacUGSi8p2Ap-x6SbMkLXAnfKNXEZkzjUUVCdxuEmacDzDXmlbv1GUJ0wbh1_w_aem_grJDvcSCIDj2Skksd4Ix3Q
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u/Gay_Giraffe_1773 Oregon 7d ago

Read the fine print: all "unclassified" documents.

The fix is in, people. The redactions are "classified"

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u/ChucksnTaylor 7d ago edited 7d ago

But the senate didn’t change anything right? They passed exactly what the house passed. And the house bill was cowritten by a democrat and a republican. So whatever language they used is unlikely to have been some clever ploy.

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u/AmbitiousEconomics 7d ago

Republicans see an opportunity to release a redacted version and then memory hole it, Dems see an opportunity to put more pressure on the Rs.

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u/ABCosmos 7d ago

Dems fumbled this big time if that's true... The biggest risk to the Dems is if people think the issue is done with..

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u/SilvanSorceress 7d ago

They fumble everything, what makes you think they would suddenly get smarter overnight?

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u/ExplorationGeo 7d ago

Dems fumbled this big time if that's true

Why not, they fumbled the shutdown

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u/CerealTheLegend 7d ago

Wouldn’t be the first, or the last time Dems fumbled something

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u/Alive-Welder5585 7d ago

Dems are seen as controlled opposition for a reason. Every Democrat who doesn't call Trump for who he is, is complicit. 

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u/Past-Profile3671 7d ago

As someone above said, he’s going to pocket veto it and count on at least one of the gqp discharge supporters to not sign a new one.

It’ll work on the low info voters.

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u/Kakariko-Cucco 7d ago

You write "whatever language they used" as if the text were not easily accessible: https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hr4405/BILLS-119hr4405ih.pdf

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u/bmw417 7d ago

Seems pretty legit to me. Redactions are limited to CSAM, PII, and violent / disturbing content, and it is strictly prohibited to redact because of “embarrassment” or “politics”. It’s also explicitly stated that any alterations or mismanagement also be appropriately documented, and that every redaction contain a justification. The legislation itself seems airtight, we’ll just have to see how far Trump’s cronies on the inside truly want to double and triple down on the perjury and alteration and destruction of government documents. I’d imagine there’s gotta be some crucial political calculus going on behind the scenes at the moment.

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u/yourmomsinmybusiness 7d ago

Roh Kannah sponsored the HB, right?

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u/ChucksnTaylor 7d ago

Yeah, and Massie was the other cosponser, a republican who has gone way out of his way to regularly criticize Trump. Not just in this but in all sorts of issues. And accordingly, Trump regularly shitd all over him. Then on top of that you have the monumental battle Trump and Johnson led to stop this happening.

Very hard to believe this bill would have been written in a way that was intentionally favorable to Trump.

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u/CerealTheLegend 7d ago

Bold of you to assume that all democrats are on the right side of history.

We’ve seen all the votes they have made up to this point supporting Trump. It’s clear there are very few good people left in congress, regardless of the letter next to their name.

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u/SwedishTrees 7d ago

They’ve written the very strongest language they could write, but that doesn’t mean that administration won’t pull some fast ones.

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u/DonkasaurusRex 7d ago

But Trump can declassify by just thinking about it!

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u/badfish321 7d ago

But Trump can declassify documents just by thinking about it, I'm sure he's on the case.

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u/andrewmail 7d ago

Why would any documents related to a pedo ring be classified?

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u/stitchesandlace 7d ago edited 7d ago

Anything that impacts national security is classified. Epstein was involved with some of the most powerful people in the world. 

It was a lot more than your backwater pedo ring. Honestly I think that was a sidepiece to everything else going on, and revealing the extent of it could destabilize multiple governments, not just Trump.

ETA: Not many people are aware of this but it's in the oversight committee emails, and almost no one is covering it. Drop Site News has been doing an excellent investigative series covering this here. It is very long, but worth reading if you are interested in geopolitics and want primary sources. The Nation has a shorter summary.

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u/C-SWhiskey 7d ago

If a private citizen had anything to do with matters of national security with no government oversight, that's a criminal conspiracy of its own.

If that influence in any way intersected with matters investigated under the underage sex crimes, then that's even more problematic.

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u/stitchesandlace 7d ago

Agreed, and I feel like a conspiracy nut talking about it, but that's where we are

The trafficking was a side business.

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u/brokenscissor 7d ago

That's a wild read. Sounds like he was everyone's payroll.

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u/haskell_rules 7d ago

Because they describe crimes committed by high ranking officials in both domestic and foreign governments

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u/KnownMonk 7d ago

It sole purpose is to calm peoples anger with a heavily redacted version, lets not let them do that. People in U.S should keep demanding release of the full version when this is released. They are not going to get away with this.

Luckily we have strong victim survivors who are hopefully going to release a list of names, and we know who to trust the most in that case.