Last month, the House of Representatives went into recess early; this month, Donald Trump launched a crime crackdown in D.C. What did both moves have in common? They were intended in part to take attention off the administration’s woeful handling of the Epstein files. Now, though, that story may be inching forward again: On Friday, the Justice Department is expected to begin turning over Epstein records to the House Oversight Committee, which voted to subpoena them over the objections of chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) last month.

“There are many records in DOJ’s custody, and it will take the Department time to produce all the records and ensure the identification of victims and any child sexual abuse material are redacted,” Comer said in a statement this week. “I appreciate the Trump Administration’s commitment to transparency and efforts to provide the American people with information about this matter.” Happy Wednesday.

Gavin Newsom, Shitposter

by Hannah Yoest

Why is Gavin Newsom tweeting like Donald Trump?

Last week, the California governor’s press office embarked on a satiric journey on X. What began as a way to needle the Trump administration about its support for an off-cycle gerrymander in Texas soon became a drawn-out and divisive bit.

To the delight of some and the horror of others, Newsom’s team engaged caps lock and let it rip:

DONALD TRUMP, IF YOU DO NOT STAND DOWN, WE WILL BE FORCED TO LEAD AN EFFORT TO REDRAW THE MAPS IN CA TO OFFSET THE RIGGING OF MAPS IN RED STATES. BUT IF THE OTHER STATES CALL OFF THEIR REDISTRICTING EFFORTS, WE WILL DO THE SAME. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!

The ploy worked in at least one sense: It went viral. As the week went on, the governor’s team leaned into the Trumpian style. Each all-caps, self-aggrandizing, free-wheeling post full of threats, nicknames, and parentheticals seemed to perform better than the last, spurring praise from jaded libs and rage from MAGA diehards not in on the joke. The mimicry did not stop at the rhetorical level but mined all aspects of the paranoid-social-media style popularized by our Dear Leader, including the gratuitous use of hagiographic AI-generated images of Newsom added to Mount Rushmore and being blessed in prayer by Tucker Carlson and an angel Hulk Hogan.

But the real magic was happening in the replies: There’s no better word to describe the reactions of Tomi Lahren and other right-wing flying monkeys than “triggered.”

“Ah, so this is why conservatives love Trump,” wrote one popular left-leaning account paired with a picture of Danny DeVito captioned “I get it now.” “I cannot believe this bit is beginning to work on me,” wrote another, quote-tweeting a post mock-defending the strategy after a Fox News host called it “childish.”¹

“I hope it’s a wake-up call for the president. I’m just following his example.” Newsom said in response to questions about the tweets. “If you have issues with what I’m putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns with what he’s putting out as president.”

Some of the posts are funny. But that’s not the point. The point is to show how deranged this style of communication really is; we’ve all just been conditioned into accepting Trump’s defining deviancy down.

With so many people missing the point, do we really gotta hand it to Newsom?

The stunt has invited the left to go low, with only the thinnest cover of ironic distance. With their new permission to shitpost for the greater good, a chorus of accounts gleefully took to sharing ever-more-inflammatory memes. The most common they-go-low-we-go-almost-as-low tactic was to compare Newsom’s and Vice President JD Vance’s physical appearances, financial pasts, and ethnicities.

One account posted photos comparing Newsom’s very white family with Vance’s family wearing Indian flower garlands, with the caption “which way america?”² The “which way” caption template was reiterated by other accounts with even more starkly contrasting photos of Newsom and Vance.

“We are reaching levels of dark woke never thought possible,” wrote the executive director of Project Liberal in a quote tweet.

“The right is so culturally dominant that left-wing influencers are now making physiognomy posts,” wrote another progressive account about a post with high school headshots of the two men captioned “Chad Newsom > Chud Vance.” By this point, the ironic distance inherent in the humor was starting to disappear.