A place were I can write...

My simple blog of pictures of travel, friends, activities and the Universe we live in as we go slowly around the Sun.



July 16, 2025

The stupid in control means nothing works...

RFK Jr. fires top aides in HHS shakeup

By Adam Cancryn

US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fired two of his top aides in an abrupt shakeup of the leadership at the nation’s sprawling health department, two people familiar with the matter told CNN.

Kennedy this week ousted chief of staff Heather Flick Melanson and deputy chief of staff for policy Hannah Anderson, dismissing them after only a handful of months on the job.

The decision came after Kennedy lost confidence in them as part of his leadership team, one of the people familiar with the matter said, although it was unclear whether there was a single triggering event that prompted the firings.

In a statement, an HHS spokesman confirmed the moves and said the department’s White House liaison, Matt Buckham, would serve as acting chief of staff.

“He brings valuable experience in personnel strategy and organizational management to this new role,” the spokesman said. “Secretary Kennedy thanks the outgoing leadership for their service and looks forward to working closely with Mr. Buckham as the Department continues advancing its mission to Make America Healthy Again.”

Kennedy has not yet decided on permanent replacements for Flick and Anderson, the people familiar said.

The move leaves Kennedy needing to fill key senior positions at HHS just months into his tenure, and at a moment when the department has come under growing scrutiny over its efforts to overhaul the nation’s vaccine policies and advance a range of major health and food priorities.

Flick was among Kennedy’s most experienced Washington hands, having served at HHS during President Donald Trump’s first term, first as its acting general counsel and then as acting secretary for administration and a senior adviser to then-HHS Secretary Alex Azar.

Anderson joined HHS after stints on Capitol Hill as a GOP staffer, including as health policy adviser to Republicans on the Senate’s main health committee. She had most recently headed up health care issues at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute think tank.

Such a weak and pathetic little turd...

Trump lashes out at ‘weaklings’ who believe Epstein ‘bullshit’ amid building GOP pressure to release documents

By Kevin Liptak and Sarah Ferris

President Donald Trump is accusing some of his onetime supporters of being “weaklings” who are falling prey to Democratic “bullshit” about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — concluding that he no longer wants their support.

The message was the clearest sign yet of the cracks emerging in the president’s coalition, many of whom are loudly demanding more information about the disgraced financier, who has been subject to myriad conspiracies since his death by suicide in 2019. And some of his allies don’t appear to be listening, with Republicans in Congress taking steps Wednesday morning to potentially force the Justice Department to release more documents.

Declaring that Democrats had struck “pay dirt” in the Epstein scandal, Trump said his political opponents were using the issue to attack him.

“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker,” Trump wrote in a missive on Truth Social. “They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years.”

Trump said the Epstein controversy — roiling now for more than a week after his Justice Department announced in a memo that there was no Epstein “client list” and it didn’t plan to release any more documents in the investigation — was distracting from the successes of his presidency.

“I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,” he wrote. “Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!”

The angry message was Trump’s strongest rebuke of his own supporters, many of whom have been vocally furious about his administration’s handling of the Epstein matter.

While Trump has dismissed the controversy as sordid and uninteresting, before his post on Tuesday he hadn’t gone as far as disavowing some of his staunchest allies who continue to press for more information.

As of Tuesday, those allies notably included House Speaker Mike Johnson, who in an interview with right-wing influencer Benny Johnson called for more transparency in the matter. And GOP Reps. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado have called on Congress to take further action, like subpoenaing the Justice Department for the documents or appointing a special counsel.

“It’s a very delicate subject. We should put everything out there and let the people decide it,” Johnson said.

And there are signs the drama in the House is escalating even further. Greene is now working to force a vote on the floor that would require the Justice Department to release all Epstein-related documents.

She has joined Rep. Thomas Massie — a fellow Republican hardliner and a frequent Trump agitator — on the push, which will use a congressional workaround known as a discharge petition to try to defy party leaders and force a vote with Democrats’ help. That would require at least 218 signatures from House lawmakers to move forward. (Another Trump friend-turned-foe, Elon Musk, gave a thumbs-up to the effort on Wednesday.)

It won’t be immediate, however. The actual vote isn’t expected to take place until members return in September from their summer recess. And Massie and Greene face a seven-legislative-day delay before they can even start collecting signatures.

Others in Congress have issued calls for public testimony from Ghislaine Maxwell, the onetime Epstein associate who is serving a 20-year prison sentence in Florida for conspiring to sexually abuse minors.

The pressure to release more information has mostly fallen on Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said earlier this year she had a list of Epstein’s clients sitting on her desk, but whose department later said in its memo no such list existed. Bondi said last week she was referring to other documents at the time.

Trump has enthusiastically backed up Bondi, saying she’s handled the matter well. But he also appeared open Tuesday to allowing more information to come out, at Bondi’s discretion, though he suggested any additional details might not be legitimate.

“I would like to see that also,” the president said, in an apparent reference to calls for more transparency. “But I think the attorney general — the credibility is very important, and you want credible evidence for something like that, and I think the attorney general’s handled it very well.”

A few hours later, Bondi swatted away the possibility that she could release more case files, suggesting instead that last week’s memo declining to release files on Epstein “speaks for itself” and rejecting questions about making more documents public.

NGC 2237


Would the Rosette Nebula by any other name look as sweet? The bland New General Catalog designation of NGC 2237 doesn't appear to diminish the appearance of this flowery emission nebula, as captured by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Blanco 4-meter telescope at the NSF's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Inside the nebula lies an open cluster of bright young stars designated NGC 2244. These stars formed about four million years ago from the nebular material and their stellar winds are clearing a hole in the nebula's center, insulated by a layer of dust and hot gas. Ultraviolet light from the hot cluster stars causes the surrounding nebula to glow. The Rosette Nebula spans about 100 light-years across, lies about 5000 light-years away, and can be seen with a small telescope towards the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros).

She's a cunt....

The MAGA blowup over Pam Bondi has been a long time coming

The Jeffrey Epstein kerfuffle is the culmination of deep-seated skepticism from the far right about the attorney general.

By Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein and Hailey Fuchs

Pam Bondi’s political crisis over the Jeffrey Epstein saga is the latest, most acute expression of a persistent problem she has with the MAGA base.

The attorney general has long tried to establish herself as one of Donald Trump’s most faithful allies: She was part of his defense team during his first impeachment, she helped him challenge his 2020 election loss and she stood by his side during his New York hush money trial.

But many of Trump’s very online MAGA supporters have always distrusted Bondi. Far-right influencers haven’t forgotten that she did not vocally defend the people who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. They view her career in Florida politics as tainted by her links to the GOP establishment, especially the state’s former governor, Jeb Bush. As a private lawyer, she even represented Pfizer, a company that some elements of Trump’s base view with suspicion due to its Covid-19 vaccine.

Now, the simmering tension has come to a full boil as the Trump administration takes friendly fire from MAGA allies furious over the Justice Department and FBI’s decision to withhold files related to Epstein, the disgraced mega-financier who pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution and was facing a slew of federal sex-trafficking charges when he killed himself in jail in 2019.

“She’s been in Florida … Do you think she really gets MAGA? I don’t think so,” said Megyn Kelly, a former Fox News star who has become an influential pro-Trump podcaster, at a recent conference of young Trump supporters. “She wouldn’t behave this way if she did.”

For now, Bondi’s job appears to be safe. Over the weekend, the president publicly supported the embattled attorney general, telling his “‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals’” to go easier on her. And on Tuesday, he said she’s “really done a very good job.”

But it’s unclear if Trump’s assurances can mollify his base, which has spent years propagating conspiracy theories about Washington power brokers being implicated in Epstein’s crimes. The irony, of course, is that Bondi — not to mention Trump himself — helped stoke those theories.

Now that she’s attorney general, Bondi’s handling of the issue has been widely seen as a flub. In February, she released binders of documents and boasted that she was “lifting the veil on the disgusting actions of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators.” But MAGA influencers quickly realized that most of the documents were already public.

Bondi also claimed in February that an Epstein “client list” was sitting on her desk.

But last week, in an unsigned memo, the Justice Department and the FBI said no further records would be released, rumors about a list of Epstein’s elite clientele were false and theories that he was murdered in jail were wrong.

During a press conference Tuesday on efforts to crack down on fentanyl, Bondi indicated she had no plans to leave her post despite those calling for a change. “I’m going to be here for as long as the president wants me here, and I believe he’s made that crystal clear: It’s four years,” she said.

Bondi initially tried to deflect reporters’ questions about Epstein. “I’m not going to talk about Epstein,” she said.

However, pressed further, the attorney general had little to add to a suggestion Tuesday from Trump that more Epstein-related documents could be made public.

“Today our memo speaks for itself. We’ll get back to you on anything else,” Bondi said.

A second-choice pick, viewed with suspicion

Bondi, who served eight years as Florida’s attorney general, was not Trump’s first choice to lead the Justice Department in his second term. He initially wanted former Rep. Matt Gaetz, a MAGA favorite, but settled on Bondi when Gaetz’ nomination quickly collapsed.

Some vocal Trump allies were immediately skeptical of her. Even though Bondi had supported Trump in sowing doubts about the 2020 election, she was silent about the Jan. 6 riot. That silence spoke volumes for MAGA world, where support for Jan. 6 defendants is a virtual litmus test.

In her six months as attorney general, Bondi has presided over a breathtaking revamp of the Justice Department. The department has taken increasingly aggressive positions in court to implement Trump’s agenda. It has targeted blue states and cities. It has purged prosecutors who are seen as not sufficiently pro-Trump.

But many of Trump’s conservative allies are clamoring for more. They want a more thorough evisceration of Biden-era holdovers at DOJ, and they want more investigations — and prosecutions — of Democratic politicians as well as Trump’s adversaries and investigators.

Throughout Bondi’s tenure, pro-Trump influencer Laura Loomer has criticized Bondi. Loomer cited Bondi’s ties to former Florida governor Jeb Bush, as well as her lobbying for Qatar prior to joining the Trump administration. Now, Loomer — whose counsel Trump has repeatedly sought — is leading the drive to push Bondi out over the Epstein kerfuffle.

“Some White House staff literally called me begging me to stop attacking her back in February and March. But, I’m not getting any calls to stop this week. Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?” Loomer wondered in a recent post.

Other prominent figures in MAGA world are sharpening their knives, too. Trump’s former national security adviser Mike Flynn admonished Trump that the fallout of the Epstein saga would not go away anytime soon. Like Loomer and Kelly, pro-Trump commentator Glenn Beck suggested Bondi’s standing is on the ropes with Trump’s base and that she might have to go.

“Pam Bondi has created so much DOUBT and CHAOS in this whole thing. There’s no reason for all of this. either it’s a MASSIVE COVER-UP or she’s just FOULED IT UP,” he said in a video posted on social media.

Trump comes to Bondi’s defense

Privately, people close to Trump are irritated by the anti-Bondi crowd, even though some of the most prominent critics have long been key characters in Trump’s movement. Trump’s inner circle sees the attacks as ankle-biting by online influencers who have spent years capitalizing on the Epstein saga, and the White House believes the anger over the issue will blow over, according to a person close to the White House who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.

Trump’s repeated endorsements of Bondi in recent days have been accompanied by a round of wagon-circling by DOJ brass, who pooh-poohed reports that FBI leaders Kash Patel and Dan Bongino were furious at Bondi over her handling of the Epstein files. On Monday, the White House downplayed the drama, describing Bondi, Patel and Bongino as “heroes of our law enforcement community” who “are dedicated to executing President Trump’s agenda.”

“This work will continue in lockstep and with unprecedented success,” said White House spokesperson Harrison Fields.

Bondi said Tuesday that officials “are committed to working together now to make America safe again,” seemingly acknowledging internal tensions while seeking to move past them. She said she was working closely with Patel, but she declined to address Bongino’s future. “I’m not going to talk about personnel matters,” she said.

Trump’s Capitol Hill allies treaded carefully around the fight, suggesting they want answers about the Epstein saga but deferring to Trump on Bondi’s future.

“The president seems happy with her. He’s the one who ultimately has to make that decision,” Senate GOP Leader John Thune told POLITICO. “My assumption is she’s making the best out of a situation that has been hanging around for a long time.”

“I think more information needs to be released,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. “I think more information needs to come out … but I’m not criticizing [Bondi].”

House Speaker Mike Johnson also called for further information to be released and suggested that, despite Trump’s attempt to move on, he does not consider the issue closed.

“I’m for transparency,” Johnson said Tuesday. “We should put everything out there and let the people decide. Pam Bondi needs to come forward and explain it to the American people. Let’s get this thing resolved.”

Asked whether Bondi should continue in her role, Sen. John Kennedy quipped: “That’s a killer question, but it’ll probably be ruled a suicide.”

“I think the Justice Department is going to have to provide more information,” he added.

There were other signs of a detente emerging. Charlie Kirk, head of the pro-Trump Turning Point USA, said Monday he was not going to continue piling on the administration despite his concerns about the handling of the Epstein case.

“I’m gonna trust my friends Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, my friend Pam Bondi,” he said.

Notably, neither Patel nor Bongino has spoken publicly about Bondi or the Epstein episode since it erupted, and a series of reports have described Bongino, in particular, as irate over the episode. The deputy FBI director, who once promoted fringe theories about Epstein’s death, angered some far-right allies in May when he told Fox News that Epstein took his own life. But Trump voices in conservative media began reporting Monday that Bongino had returned to work and seemed more upbeat than he did right after the Epstein saga erupted.

Bondi tries to save face

Bondi, meanwhile, has launched a conspicuous raft of MAGA-friendly maneuvers that seem aimed at shoring up her standing with the base. First, she announced the dismissal of charges against a doctor accused of destroying Covid vaccines — making sure to heap praise on Greene, a favorite of Trump’s base, for her advocacy. News stories over the weekend suggested DOJ had launched an investigation into some of Trump’s adversaries involved in investigating his links to Russia during the 2016 election. On Monday, she continued by announcing guidance to enforce Trump’s executive order declaring English the official language of the United States.

She also joined Trump at a FIFA Club World Cup championship game in New Jersey. Even a thumbs up Trump flashed at Bondi was deemed worthy of note.

In recent days, some figures seen as surrogates for the administration began offering more detailed defenses of Bondi, Patel and Bongino than they have offered publicly. Former Senate Judiciary Committee lawyer Mike Davis released a point-by-point description of legal hurdles and fairness considerations that could justify withholding further Epstein documents.

Epstein-related litigation continues

As Bondi fights off MAGA critiques, her Justice Department won’t escape Epstein any time soon. Litigation related to the saga continues to make its way through the courts.

The conservative group Judicial Watch sued in federal court in Washington last week seeking to force the FBI to release its records on Virginia Giuffre, an outspoken Epstein victim who died by suicide in April. The records at issue in that case likely encompass only a portion of the full universe of Epstein-related files held by the U.S. government.

The celebrity and entertainment news website Radar Online sued under the Freedom of Information Act in 2017 seeking the FBI’s files on its investigation of Epstein up to that point. More than 11,000 pages of records were processed in that case, but most of the information was withheld on various grounds, primarily the ongoing criminal case against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s onetime girlfriend.

In 2021, a federal jury in Manhattan found Maxwell guilty on five of six felony charges related to Epstein’s sexual exploitation of young girls. A judge tossed out two of those counts but sentenced Maxwell to 20 years in prison.

Last year, U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe, a George W. Bush appointee, upheld the FBI’s denial of access to the bulk of the records. The judge’s ruling rested largely on a formal declaration from a federal prosecutor deeply involved in the Epstein and Maxwell prosecutions: Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey. She argued that disclosure of the investigative records was likely to interfere with the appeal in Maxwell’s case.

Radar Online appealed to the 2nd Circuit, which put the appeal on hold for about six months at both sides’ request because of Maxwell’s pending appeal in her criminal case, which the 2nd Circuit denied in September. Additional briefs in the freedom-of-information appeal are due later this year. The appeals court has not yet scheduled an argument.

Powerful protecting the powerful

'The powerful protecting the powerful': Democrats see an opening on Epstein

Internal polling suggests that there's a window for Democrats to use the controversy over the so-called "Epstein list" — and more than a dozen strategists, elected officials and aides are urging them to take it.

By Elena Schneider and Nicholas Wu

Democrats are stoking the online flames of the Jeffrey Epstein controversy. Internal memos and polling suggest the issue is breaking through to voters.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) accused President Donald Trump of “hiding the Epstein list” in a post on X. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries insisted at a press conference Americans “deserve to know the truth.” The Democratic National Committee last week launched an X bot that posts daily, “Has Trump released the Epstein files? No,” and House Majority PAC rolled out a “simp target list” of “complicit” GOP members. And on Tuesday, Democrats attempted to cast a procedural vote as a referendum to compel the release of more Epstein-related material.

It’s a trollish, conspiratorial-minded response to Republican infighting that Democrats haven’t traditionally engaged in, particularly around Epstein, the accused sex trafficker whose 2019 death in prison was ruled a suicide. Just six years ago, the DNC lambasted “baseless conspiracy theories.” But now, as the Trump administration has tied itself in knots over the Epstein case, Democratic leaders have stopped holding back as they work to capitalize on fissures threatening Trump’s relationship to his MAGA base.

“I just want to remind the American people that in February of this year, Attorney General Pam Bondi acknowledged the existence of Jeffrey Epstein’s client list. In fact, she said that Jeffrey Epstein’s client list is ‘sitting on my desk right now.’ Where is that client list? What is Attorney General Bondi hiding?” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) told reporters on Tuesday. “This is the case of the powerful protecting the powerful. We need to have those files released.”

Interviews with a dozen Democratic elected officials, strategists and aides cast the controversy as helpful not only in dividing Trump’s base but also illustrating the president’s flip-flopping tendencies, even on his core campaign issues. Democrats argued they can tie the episode into a larger narrative about Trump’s other broken campaign promises, said Pat Dennis, president of American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC that specializes in opposition research.

“It’s an interesting foot in the door to the overall case that he doesn’t have your back on Medicare, on health care, on veterans,” Dennis said. “It’s a way to get into, ‘maybe this guy doesn’t have your back,’ and that’s been one of the hardest things for Democrats to do.”

Trump told Fox News in a June 2024 interview “I guess I would” release the Epstein files.

But the opening may be short-lived. Democratic strategists said they do not expect Epstein-related conspiracies to show up in their TV ads or dominate the party’s midterm messaging, with the GOP megabill likely to take center stage.

“I’m focused on the damage that the one big bad bill is doing, and I’m going to stay focused on that,” said Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition. “And if the president’s covering up something, I’ll let him deal with that.”

There’s internal evidence that the very online dustup may still have legs for now.

Internal Democratic polling, obtained first by POLITICO, found that 70 percent of voters said law enforcement is withholding information about powerful people connected to Epstein, including 61 percent of Trump voters, according to an online survey of more than 10,000 people conducted by Blue Rose Research from July 8 to 11. A majority believe that the “authorities are keeping secret” Epstein’s client list to “protect powerful people like Donald Trump,” including a third of Trump voters.

Two-thirds of voters said the case is important because it’s about “government transparency and holding powerful people accountable.” When asked if Trump was or may be involved in the cover up, 58 percent of voters said he maybe was or definitely was.

Another memo from Future Forward, the biggest Democratic super PAC in 2024, outlined the Epstein case’s broad, if shallow, reach among voters. The memo, shared on Thursday with party insiders and obtained by POLITICO, highlighted several viral videos on the scandal, including a Jon Stewart segment that attracted 1.4 million views on TikTok and creator Philip DeFranco’s video calling Trump “not a happy boy” when being questioned about Epstein, racking up 1.6 million views on TikTok.

Even so, the memo warned that it’s “too early to say whether this will be of meaningful political consequence to Trump.”

“This subject is not as effective at moving Trump disapproval (or 2026 vote choice) as some of the more direct criticisms of” Trump’s megabill, the memo continued. “However, a moderately persuasive message that gets lots of views because it is timely and addresses the conversation people are having anyway is impactful.”

Republican operatives insist they’re not sweating it and believe the Epstein story will quiet within weeks. Like Democrats, they don’t think it will resonate much in next year’s midterms.

A Republican campaign strategist, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly, echoed it “will not be a driving issue for voters the way the economy, taxes and immigration will be.” But they advised that the “administration can address these concerns by putting out more information, explaining it more, providing more answers — all of those are very fixable solutions.”

“In the short term, Democrats might score points for hitting it, but Democrats don’t have any credibility on this issue,” this person added.

There are signs the fury among Republicans has quieted, though the issue is still simmering below the surface. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) backed an ultimately doomed Democratic-led amendment in the Rules Committee to compel the release of more Epstein-related files. Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk said he was “done talking about Epstein” and he is going “to trust my friends in [the] Trump administration to handle Epstein files.” Other Republicans derided it as a distraction.

On Tuesday, Trump reiterated his support for Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has come under the greatest scrutiny for her handling of the case, and suggested the controversy was manufactured by Democrats.

Democrats have their own vulnerabilities on this subject. Former President Bill Clinton has acknowledged associating with Epstein, though he has vigorously denied any knowledge of his crimes.

But on Capitol Hill, Democrats made clear they’re going to try to yolk their GOP rivals to Epstein.

“They said they were going to do something after stoking up all of this conspiracy themselves … [now], they’re in the position where they can be transparent and share with all the inquiring minds, and they won’t do it,” said Lori Trahan (D-Mass.). “And so it just begs the question, you know what, why not?”

Democrats are looking to pump that narrative back into the digital ecosystem. Dennis confirmed that American Bridge is working with influencers “to make sure that everybody in our ecosystem has the background info they need to hit these folks as hard as possible.”

Still, not all of the hits might land. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) attracted some eye rolls on social media for posting a song about releasing the “Epstein files.”

They are Stupid, They are Morrones, They are Stupid Morrones......

3 Scenarios That Explain the Epstein Debacle

All reflect poorly on the Department of Justice.

By Ankush Khardori

he Justice Department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case appears to constitute the rare controversy in which there are no innocuous explanations for what has unfolded. The possibilities range from bad to worse for everyone involved.

Let’s take them one by one.

The first possibility is that the most senior officials in the Trump administration — including President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel — exploited a terrible child sex trafficking tragedy for their personal political and financial gain. Some of these officials, perhaps all of them, knew that there was no elaborate government conspiracy or cover-up surrounding Epstein’s crimes or his death, but they intentionally misled millions of Americans for years to make money, get Trump back in the White House or both. And now that they’re in office, they’re dealing with the mess they made.

A second possibility is that the Justice Department’s review of the evidence in the Epstein case turned up references to Trump — on something akin to a “client list” or otherwise — and that the government is now engaged in a cover-up to protect the president. This cannot be ruled out given Trump’s social history with Epstein prior to Epstein’s arrest; Trump has previously been referenced in public documents released in court cases surrounding Epstein, though Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the matter. Also potentially notable is Trump’s hyper-defensive attempt to turn the page at a Cabinet meeting last week by claiming that the public needed to ignore the conspiracy theories and move on — a striking position for a man who is famous for his own conspiracy theories and never moving on from things.

Still a third possibility is that the administration has been telling the truth from the start — that officials believed the conspiracy theories they had fueled and are only now discovering there is no Epstein “client list” and no evidence that Epstein blackmailed anyone. In this scenario, Trump and everyone else were all just as surprised by these revelations as many of Trump’s supporters are, and now they’re struggling with the fallout.

The first scenario would be shameful and inexcusable. The second would be an unprecedented and historic political and legal scandal. The third option may be the least nefarious, but even if we assume that is what we are dealing with, what we have seen lately is disturbing for entirely different reasons.

What we’ve seen: The most senior law enforcement officials in the country have been evasive, defensive and intemperate.

Bondi has struggled to defend her public comments, including her suggestion on Fox News in February that an Epstein client list was “sitting on my desk.” Her conduct and judgment were also called into question after her decision to invite conservative social media influencers to the White House to pick up and theatrically brandish binders containing secret-seeming documents that were in fact largely already public.

Patel, who helped spread Epstein theories for years, has suddenly become declarative and incurious — recently telling the people who were misled by him and others that the “conspiracy theories just aren’t true” and “never have been.”

Meanwhile FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino refused to show up for work one day last week, as if he is a victim in this debacle rather than one of the central figures who brought it about in the first place.

The Department of Justice didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The resulting finger-pointing and fracturing of the MAGA coalition have obscured two facts that make all of this even more embarrassing.

The first is that this blunder was entirely self-inflicted: Trump and his officials brought this upon themselves by fanning the flames around the Epstein case — both before and after Trump returned to office — and raising expectations among their supporters about bombshell revelations that would stun them.

The second is that the administration’s public rollout concluding their inquiry was entirely within their control: Trump and his officials determined both the timing and the substance of the disclosures, yet they appear to have been blindsided by the blowback and are still struggling to contain it.

All of this raises a serious question: What happens if there is a law enforcement crisis that they didn’t create themselves? A terrorist attack at home or abroad, for instance, or a cyber-attack that seriously affects the nation’s technological infrastructure.

The attorney general and FBI leadership occupy positions that require people who can speak clearly, confidently and, above all, accurately in times of national crisis. Their credibility — their ability to command the nation’s trust — directly impacts the nation’s response to criminal threats both inside and outside the country’s borders, as well as the public’s confidence in the criminal justice system more broadly.

The recent events concerning the Epstein investigation, however, suggest the disturbing possibility that Trump’s current leadership team lacks the skills and credibility necessary to lead federal law enforcement when it will matter most.

The most obvious way to address the situation would have been for Bondi, Patel or both of them to give a detailed public address explaining what they did to investigate the Epstein case further; outlining what they found in their review; and — crucially — acknowledging that they had taken public positions that turned out to be seriously wrong. They appear to have been either unwilling to do that or incapable of doing it.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s explanation for why it cannot publicly disclose more information — beyond a terse and unsigned joint DOJ-FBI memo — makes little sense under the circumstances.

The memo claims that much of the underlying investigative material “is subject to court-ordered sealing,” but that is not true of all of it. And in any event, Epstein is dead, so the department has a very obvious argument available to go to the court and request that the material be unsealed — namely, that the defendant will not (literally cannot) be prejudiced, and that there is an overriding public interest in making some of the material available to the public.

The Trump administration’s claim that it is somehow prevented from doing more by legal constraints is hard to take seriously. After all, this is an administration that has chosen to openly disregard laws passed by Congress.

Bondi herself has been firing prosecutors and support staff in recent days in apparent violation of civil service laws. Earlier this year, she told tech companies that they can violate Congress’ ban on TikTok because the president decided they can under his “national security and foreign affairs powers” and because the attorney general has “plenary authority over all [federal] litigation, civil and criminal.” The idea that a court sealing order is somehow holding them back is not persuasive.

The long-term fallout remains to be seen, but in the near term, the suggestion among some Trump supporters that Bondi should be replaced does not make much political sense for Trump. The next attorney general would face even more questions on the Epstein investigation and the expectations for public disclosure would only grow, so replacing Bondi is not likely to provide Trump with much relief.

Steve Bannon has suggested that Trump should appoint a special prosecutor to probe the Epstein matter and the “deep state” further, but the proposal makes little sense as a legal or political matter.

Typically, a special counsel is named when the president or attorney general faces a serious conflict of interest, or at least the appearance of one. Epstein is dead and poses no electoral risk or conflict for Trump or Bondi. It is true that Bondi can be fired by Trump at any time, but Trump has already made clear that he is also willing to fire a special counsel that threatens him and his allies, so that person would be no more insulated and no more reliable than Bondi is.

In fact, Bondi is just as well-positioned to investigate Epstein and the “deep state” as a special counsel. She did not work in the federal government before becoming attorney general and has no reason to put a thumb on the scale for anyone in the government except Trump himself. Another layer of bureaucracy and investigation would simply prolong the story and the controversy over Epstein’s dealings, provide more for Epstein conspiracists to fixate over and string people along even further, potentially for years to come.

For someone like Bannon, that may not be an accident: His proposal provides a convenient short-term political escape hatch for Trump that would allow him to sidestep the sharp questions that some of his most ardent supporters are currently directing toward him and his appointees.

The simple truth of the matter is that there is no quick-fix solution here. Perhaps Trump’s DOJ and FBI leadership can tamp down the controversy with a more credible and comprehensive account of what they did and what they found, though frankly that seems doubtful at this point. Perhaps they can all simply weather the storm and hope people move on from this controversy to the next inevitable one.

Regardless, this was the first public test of Trump’s DOJ and FBI leadership in something approximating a crisis, even if it was one of their own making. It does not bode well for the future.

Making it a nightmare...

Susan Collins finally got her dream job. Fellow Republicans are making it a nightmare.

The Senate Appropriations chair insists she's running for a sixth term as the bipartisanship she treasures crumbles around her.

By Jordain Carney, Jennifer Scholtes and Katherine Tully-McManus

To protect their majority, Senate Republicans are praying Susan Collins decides to seek a sixth term next year. But they aren’t making her life easy right now.

Earlier this month, GOP leaders pushed through President Donald Trump’s megabill while ignoring most of her concerns about safety-net cutbacks that the Maine Republican warned will be “harmful” to her state.

Now, they are barreling forward with Trump’s effort to claw back $9 billion in spending she played a key role in approving. Democrats and even some Republicans warn the maneuver could upend the bipartisan government funding process she now oversees.

Collins mounted a protest Tuesday night, joining two other Republicans in voting to block the Trump administration’s spending clawbacks. Afterward, she said in an interview her vote was in keeping with her longstanding approach to legislating.

“I vote according to what I assess to be in the best interests of my constituents and my country — and I do that regardless of who’s in control of the Senate and who is president,” Collins, 72, said.

Pressed on the recent difficulties her fellow Republicans have given her, she said, “They’re doing what they think is right. I’m doing what I think is right.”

All in all, it has been a disappointing start to the dream job Collins spent decades striving for — chair of the historically powerful Appropriations Committee — and now her power is at risk of being further eroded.

Democrats, mad as hell about the funding clawback, are threatening to withdraw from government funding talks; top Trump administration officials would love to sidestep Congress altogether on spending cuts; and there are few reasons to hope lawmakers are heading toward anything other than a spending patch — or worse, a shutdown — when the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

Still, Collins confirmed Tuesday she is still planning on running again, though she has yet to formally launch a campaign. She said she was “pleased” with the strong fundraising she reported this week, collecting $2.4 million in the second quarter of the year and having $5.25 million on hand as of June 30.

But Democrats are holding out hope that the deteriorating environment for bipartisanship on Capitol Hill might cause her to reconsider. More than any other personnel decision, a Collins retirement could upend the 2026 Senate map.

Democrats have a steep road back to the majority, needing to flip an unlikely four seats while also holding onto their own swing seats in Georgia and Michigan. But they view Maine as a top pick-up opportunity, and they would unquestionably have an easier time without Collins on the ballot, potentially allowing them to pour more resources into tougher races.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who recently announced he would retire from his own swing seat, said Collins has a “thankless job” as chair of the Appropriations Committee but also noted the obvious political reality: Without her, Republicans would lose the seat.

“The one thing I am certain of is if Susan Collins is not running for re-election, then that state is even more at risk than North Carolina,” he said.

Maine Democrats are already mobilizing to run against Collins, linking her to the “big, beautiful bill” by calling her the “deciding vote” in the legislation coming up for debate on the Senate floor, even though she ultimately voted against it on final passage. (The vote to start debate was 51-49, so even if Collins had voted no, Vice President JD Vance would have broken the tie.)

“At the end of the day, Donald Trump and Washington Republicans know Susan Collins will have their back,” Tommy Garcia, a Maine Democratic Party spokesperson, said in a statement.

They have taken heart from recent polling showing deteriorating home-state support for Collins, including a Morning Consult survey from April that found 51 percent of Maine voters disapproving of her performance. Separately, 71 percent of respondents to a University of New Hampshire April poll in Maine said that Collins did not deserve to be re-elected, including a majority of Republican respondents.

But Collins, the only Senate Republican from a state won by Kamala Harris, is helped by an obvious rule of political life: You can’t beat somebody with nobody, and so far Democrats have struggled to recruit a big name to challenge her. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other party leaders are still making overtures to Gov. Janet Mills, who has largely left the field frozen while the party awaits her final decision.

There’s also little expectation Collins would flinch from the political challenge. Her Senate career was all but written off by many political observers in 2020, when polls showed her constantly trailing Democratic rival Sara Gideon. She went on to win by roughly 9 points.

Many in the GOP share Tillis’ view that Collins is about the only Republican who can win a Senate seat in Maine, and she has gotten a wide berth to break with her party because of that. Trump hasn’t lashed out at Collins for opposing the megabill — unlike with Tillis and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

“Everybody cuts her a lot of slack,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on Tuesday night. “She represents … a very blue state. She has to run for reelection this year. She’s the only Republican that can win. And so, you know, she sees the world through a different lens, and she’s always very upfront about what she’s going to do.”

GOP colleagues, he added, “are encouraging her and urging her, doing everything we can to help her to make sure she runs. … She’s got a different calculus, probably than some do in our conference. But there is nobody in our conference who represents a state like hers.”

Democrats’ bet is that Collins concludes that spending another six years in a legislative body whose governing norms have eroded — and a party whose principles she is increasingly out of step with — simply isn’t worth it.

One fellow GOP senator, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said Trump isn’t happy with Collins and might not keep quiet indefinitely.

“He’s very irritated at Susan — very, I can tell,” the GOP senator said of Trump. “But she doesn’t care, because the more Trump gets irritated with her, the better it is for her politics back home.”

Collins “is in an awkward spot” and “gets a pass on a lot of the things that she has to do,” the senator said. But nobody believes Collins’ happy talk about getting government funding back on track, the GOP lawmaker added.

Thune, for his part, said it is his “intention” to “see if there’s a path forward to doing appropriation bills around here.”

“I know Senator Collins ... is very interested in a normal appropriations process, and I’m hopeful we can get that back on track,” he said.

But with a 53-seat majority, Senate GOP leaders have already shown their willingness to sidestep Collins. Early in the megabill negotiations she detailed to White House officials, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, what changes she would need to vote for the bill, but leaders didn’t bend the legislation in her direction — and didn’t need to. As with the Trump spending clawback, they calculated they could afford to lose Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), her close ally and friend, by catering to holdouts on the right.

Collins and Murkowski opposed proceeding with the rescissions package Tuesday, emerging unmoved from a last-ditch lunch pitch from White House budget director Russ Vought, who has sought to placate Collins along with other administration officials. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former GOP leader, joined them in opposition.

Republicans acknowledge privately that any turbulence in the appropriations process doesn’t help Collins, who has made her gavel and seniority a key part of her home-state image. Just last week, GOP senators had to hit pause on one of the 12 annual funding bills because of a partisan fight over the Trump administration’s plans to relocate FBI headquarters — the sort of dispute the typically bipartisan Appropriations Committee usually expertly resolves.

But they remain confident she’s running and can win despite forcing her to run against large parts of her own party’s agenda. She recently held a campaign event at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, according to one colleague who attended, who described it as a “lobster roll event.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said he wasn’t worried about Collins, calling her “the greatest politician.”

“She wins by as large a margin as a lot of people in red states,” he said. “She knows her state. She knows how to navigate. I don’t worry about it.”

Try to clean up their mess...

Senate votes to move ahead on funding clawback package

It's still not clear Republicans have to vote for final passage, however.

By Katherine Tully-McManus and Jordain Carney

The Senate is one step closer to approving a request from President Donald Trump to cancel roughly $9 billion in foreign aid and public media funding.

Senators narrowly voted 51-50 on two procedural hurdles the package needed to overcome. GOP Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine voted against the moves Tuesday night, forcing Republicans to lean on Vice President JD Vance to break a two consecutive 50-50 ties to clear the initial roadblocks.

Even though Senate Republicans were able to start debate on the bill and leadership is feeling increasingly confident, a handful of GOP senators have yet to say if they will vote to pass it in the coming days, leaving the final outcome in flux. The chief complaint of Republican senators is that the White House refuses to give an account-by-account rundown of what funding would be nixed once Congress clears the package.

“OMB is the problem. They won’t tell us how they’re going to apply the cut,” McConnell said in a brief interview Tuesday night. “I want to make it clear I don’t have any problem with reducing spending. … They would like a blank check is what they would like, and I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

Congress has until Friday to get the bill to Trump’s desk, and the House is expected to need to vote a second time to greenlight changes. If Republicans don’t meet the midnight deadline on Friday, the White House must spend the funds they are trying to cancel.

“I don’t know. I think that there are members that are trying to get assurances on specific programs,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), asked if he thought the package had the votes to pass.

Some GOP senators plan to vote for the package based on verbal assurances from the White House. But if Trump administration officials “betray the trust” by going back on those commitments, Tillis warned, “it may be the first and only rescissions package that they get and they should weigh that.”

Senate GOP leadership and the White House have been locked in a sprint of eleventh-hour negotiations to firm up the votes. As part of those discussions, they are expected to strip out of the package a proposed $400 million cut to global AIDS-prevention funding, known as PEPFAR, bringing the total amount of clawbacks from $9.4 billion to $9 billion.

“There was a lot of interest among members on doing something on the PEPFAR issue,” Thune said. “We hope that if we can get this across the finish line in the Senate, the House would accept that one small modification.”

In addition to removing the PEPFAR funding, Republicans are expected to include new language to “protect” programs related to maternal health, malaria, tuberculosis and nutrition. The substitute amendment containing this language is being spearheaded by Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), who is leading the recissions effort in the Senate, and it will also explicitly state that food aid will not be touched as part of the package.

The two provisions will not change the new $9 billion topline that has been agreed to, said a person granted anonymity to disclose private negotiations.

White House budget director Russ Vought also offered reassurances to Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) that the administration would move funding around internally to help boost rural public stations that might otherwise be adversely affected by the funding cuts to PBS and NPR.

Still, Thune can only afford to lose three GOP senators and still have Vance break a tie to deliver a successful outcome later this week — and Republicans expect they will lose at least three colleagues on the final vote.

McConnell was not committal on how he’d vote on final passage.

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) vocally criticized the package during a GOP’s weekly closed-door lunch on Tuesday, leaving senators skeptical she will ultimately be able to get to “yes.”

Collins after the lunch called the commitment to protect PEPFAR “progress” and said that she was “looking at” the changes Schmitt put forward. But she has not said if the changes will be enough to win her support.

She is also still unsatisfied with the level of specificity the administration is willing to provide lawmakers on specific accounts and dollar amounts. She brought a visual aid to show reporters: the Clinton administration’s 1992 rescissions request with more details.

Underscoring how widely that frustration is held within the conference, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said shortly before the vote on Tuesday night that he would vote yes, but that GOP senators told the administration in conversations earlier in the day “next time give us the specific information.”

Democrats have been warning for weeks that the White House is not offering specifics because the administration intends to cut funding lawmakers from both parties support.

“They have been asked by Republicans for the specifics, and now they are saying they’re out of time,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said in a brief interview Tuesday afternoon, of administration officials.

“Hope springs eternal that they’re going to realize how damaging this is to their branch of government,” Schatz said about his Republican counterparts. “Why run for office and then outsource all the decisions to someone who was never elected, and won’t even tell you what he’s doing?”

Meanwhile, across the Capitol, some conservative House Republicans are warning that the Senate’s proposed changes could endanger the entire package.

“If they’re watering down too much, I’m not sure it moves,” said Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy. “But if you get any of the rescissions that survive, they are still rescissions. But we’ll see what the Senate does.”

Brace for impact....

 US businesses brace for impact of all-out trade war

Countries are preparing to respond in-kind if Trump follows through on his latest threats. Domestic industries fear the worst.

By Daniel Desrochers

President Donald Trump’s flurry of tariff letters to more two dozen countries has triggered new threats of retaliation. Key U.S. industries are increasingly worried they are going to be collateral damage.

The European Union on Monday released a targeted list of $88 billion worth of U.S. goods it plans to tariff if it doesn’t make more progress in trade talks with Trump. Brazil, staring down a 50 percent duty on its exports to the U.S. over Trump’s frustration with their domestic politics, has given its president more leeway to impose unilateral tariffs on the U.S., should the Trump administration follow through on the prohibitive levies.

Other countries have also reacted to Trump’s latest trade threats with anger — and talk of a more aggressive response. While the hardening battle lines in the negotiations could be part of each sides’ effort to force more concessions, domestic business groups aren’t counting on it. Instead, they are mobilizing to try and convince both the Trump administration and foreign governments that it would be a mistake to target their industries.

“We know [foreign governments are] getting a lot of domestic pressure to do something” to respond to Trump, said Jason Bernstein, the director of global affairs for the American Chemistry Council, saying that even though the ACC has convinced some countries to pull back from retaliating against certain imports, “we don’t know how long it’s going to last.”

The U.S. chemical and plastics industry exports around $164 billion worth of goods a year and is listed as the country’s second largest exporting sector. That market is growing in key countries like Brazil, the EU and even China, as the industry has become dominant in producing high quality chemicals used in everything from semiconductor production to the flame retardants in batteries.

“I’ll be honest with you, we may be more of a model of ‘America First’ trade policy than you might think,” Bernstein said, referring to Trump’s desire to make more things in America to sell abroad. “When we hear about energy dominance, yeah, we’re in.”

But that dominance — and other countries’ reliance on chemicals for their own domestic industries — may not be enough to insulate it from retaliation, as countries look for areas to exert pain on U.S. exports. The EU specifically listed chemicals and plastics on the retaliation list it released Monday night, and the industry is concerned it might also be a target for Brazil, as well, after Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva threatened to impose a 50 percent tariff on U.S. goods in response to any tariffs the U.S. levies on Aug. 1.

Trump has continued to warn countries against retaliation, including a line in the letters he sent last week to 25 countries warning that if they “decide to raise your Tariffs and retaliate, then, whatever number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto” their existing tariffs.
But on Tuesday, the president struck a slightly less confrontational tone, dismissing the idea that the EU may go through with their proposed retaliatory tariffs. That’s a much different reaction than when he threatened to put a 200 percent tariff on European wine and spirits in March.

“Well, I don’t know how they can retaliate,” Trump told reporters at the White House, when asked about the EU’s new trade war preparations. “You know, they’ve made a lot of money. They’ve treated us very badly, but now they’re treating us very nicely, and I think we’ll end up, I think everybody’s going to be happy with the EU.”

Some EU countries, however, are not in the mood to make nice after Trump once again upended the negotiations, sending a blunt weekend letter saying he planned to raise tariffs on the bloc to 30 percent.

“We are partners, and we must reach an agreement,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said at a Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels Tuesday. “The European Union is the United States’ largest trading partner, but it is not destined to become a vassal of the United States.”

The letter also outraged some in Japan, which has not, to this point, threatened any retaliation to Trump’s tariffs. “We may have to rethink whether being nice, polite, diplomatic, is something that would move President Trump,” a former Japanese official said last week. “It appears that leverage is the only language that will be understood by the White House.”

Domestic companies fear the increasingly harsh rhetoric could escalate into soaring tit-for-tat tariffs next month, which is especially alarming for those that have been in the cross-hairs of a Trump trade war before.

Despite months of lobbying from Ireland and France, the EU included bourbon among its tariff targets, in a repeat of Europe’s tariff strategy during Trump’s first administration.

The previous retaliatory tariffs, aimed at the signature industry of then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), caused American whiskey exports to Europe to drop by 20 percent between 2018 and 2021, according to the Distilled Spirits Council, a trade group representing the liquor industry.

“This is devastating for the bourbon industry,” said Rep. Morgan McGarvey (D-Ky.). “We don’t have to guess, we can just look at what happened last time.”

This time, the bourbon industry has also taken a hit in Canada, where the government-controlled liquor stores have pulled “Made in the USA” products like bourbon from the shelves in response to Trump’s threats to make Canada the 51st state.

It’s a dynamic that can be just as threatening as retaliatory tariffs for some of the signature, American-made products that tend to be targeted in trade wars — like Levi’s jeans.

“That ‘Made in USA’ dynamic has very, very strong appeal overseas, in Europe, in Canada — well, had been in Canada — in key Asian markets, Middle East markets as well,” said Stephen Lamar, the president and CEO of the American Apparel and Footwear Association, which represents brands like Levi Strauss and Nike. “And so to the extent we see either retaliation in the form of tariffs or retaliation in the form of, say, consumer boycott, which is also something we’ve seen in Canada, that begins to hurt the ability of companies in the U.S. to dig down and do more ‘Made in America.”

The more developed markets that are more capable of retaliating against the U.S. tariffs — like the EU, China and Canada — are also the markets where apparel companies sell U.S.-made products. Lamar said that, if companies expect the tariffs to stay on for a long time, they may even consider producing more abroad and relying less on the Made in USA tag to carry sales overseas.

“Bracing for it is a good word,” Lamar said. “We’re expecting it. It’s something that we’re hoping doesn’t occur.”

July 15, 2025

Professor killed

UC Berkeley marketing professor killed by gunman in Greece in broad daylight

By Elinda Labropoulou and Lauren Kent

Police in Greece are searching for the killer of a University of California Berkeley professor who was shot dead on July 4 while visiting Athens to see his children and attend a family custody hearing.

Przemyslaw Jeziorski, 43, an economist and professor of marketing at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, was shot multiple times at close range in a residential suburb of Athens and died at the scene, according to police.

A masked gunman “approached the victim on foot and opened fire from close range” at about 4:15 p.m., hitting the victim in the neck and chest, according to police spokesperson Konstantina Dimoglidou. Seven bullet casings from a 9mm caliber firearm were found at the scene, police said.

A murder investigation is underway. With the suspect still at large more than a week later, his family and friends are demanding police intensify their efforts.

The shooting happened near the home of Jeziorski’s ex-wife in the suburb of Agia Paraskevi, one day after the father-of-two attended a custody court hearing, police said.

CNN has reached out to Jeziorski’s ex-wife for comment.

A senior police source, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly, told CNN that “all scenarios are being examined including close family members,” but did not elaborate further.

The police source said the murder “bore signs of a contract killing,” so links to organized crime are also being investigated.

Police said Jeziorski had no criminal record in Greece.

Eyewitnesses described seeing a masked man in black who approached the victim on foot, with one telling local media that she heard about six shots and saw the perpetrator run from the scene.

“There was no silencer on the gun, it was very loud. It was like an explosion,” another eyewitness who saw the attack told CNN affiliate CNN Greece.

‘Our family is heartbroken’

Jeziorski’s family is raising money to repatriate his remains to his native Poland, and to pay for legal representation in Greece “to pursue legal action and support ongoing investigations.”

“Our family is heartbroken, and we are doing everything we can to ensure that justice is served,” his brother Łukasz Jeziorski wrote on the online fundraising page.

UC Berkeley said in a statement that Jeziorski “had a passion for teaching” and during his 13 years there taught data analytics skills to more than 1,500 graduate and PhD students. He was described by friends and coworkers as “an amazing person, friend, and colleague” as well as “exceptionally gifted and hard-working.”

“I am heartbroken by news of the tragic and sudden death of Professor Przemyslaw Jeziorski, a beloved member of our marketing faculty and Haas community,” said Jenny Chatman, dean of UC Berkeley’s business school, in the statement. “While authorities are investigating what happened, our focus is on supporting our community during this difficult period. My heart goes out to Przemek’s family and loved ones. We will miss him.”

The highly acclaimed economist created a popular MBA marketing analytics course and “became a leading expert in quantitative marketing, industrial organization, and the economics of digital markets,” according to Berkeley.

His research on subsistence-level entrepreneurs and financial inclusion and training took him around the world, with one colleague describing him as “truly adventurous.”

“He was a loving father of two young children and always there if someone needed help,” Berkeley Professor Zsolt Katona said in the statement. “He had great influence on the marketing field not only through his research but through his energetic presence and optimism combined with a healthy dose of skepticism.”

Before joining the staff at Berkeley, Jeziorski worked as an assistant professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University and a visiting scholar at Microsoft. He obtained his PhD in economic analysis from Stanford and earned master’s degrees from the University of Arizona and the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland.

Jeziorski had been published in multiple top-tier academic journals, including the American Economic Journal and the RAND Journal of Economics. He was also the co-founder of a start-up called Keybee, a short-term rental property management platform.