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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, a newsletter that never once had lunch on Jeffrey Epstein’s island. [Epstein file comes out.] Oh, come on, that was a brunch.
We’ve got it all this week: Epstein. The Kennedys. Bridge scandals involving new bridges and rival bridge owners. Democratic mega-gerrymanders. TARIFF VOTES.
But the concept of this edition—in the Sgt. Pepper’s sense of a “concept,” in that it ends after a couple of tracks—is the audience of one, and how some Trump administration appointees will almost intentionally do their jobs badly to stay in the boss’s good graces. Unusual dynamic. Cheers!
1.
Jeanine Pirro
Getting no-hit by a federal grand jury.
On Tuesday, prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in the District of Columbia, led by Jeanine Pirro, sought and failed to indict six Democratic lawmakers—four House members and two senators—who recorded a social media video last year in which they reminded service members of their obligation to refuse illegal orders. What were the exact charges? Who knows. Whatever they were, the grand jury in D.C. didn’t just reject them as a body. As NBC News reported, zero members of the grand jury found the charges up to snuff. Separately, a judge this week smacked down Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s attempt to punish Sen. Mark Kelly, a veteran and one of the six who made the video, saying that Hegseth’s targeting of Kelly had “trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms.”
Why would Pirro and Hegseth subject themselves to such total humiliation and stark legal rebuke? Don’t they realize that a neutral observer would consider them historically bad at their jobs? Their audience of one, though, is not a neutral observer. The November video that those six Democrats released incensed Donald Trump, who posted on social media at the time that it was “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL” and “punishable by DEATH!” There seems to be an understanding among Trump’s political appointees now that not doing the illegal action—refusing an illegal order, as one might put it—isn’t an option. Instead, it’s better to humor him by pursuing it and letting some element of the legal system—a judge, a grand jury—do the dirty work of keeping the rule of law at least somewhat intact. And while it’s nice when the legal system does its job, the Surge still believes that the best course of action is for government officials not to violate the constitutional rights of Trump’s enemies in the first place.
2.
Pam Bondi
No law when the stock market’s good.
We must still allow ourselves to be shocked from time to time, and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s performance before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday ably did the job. She shouted and yelled and acted as if she were the one who was being shouted and yelled at, responded to various questions from Democratic members with unrelated oppo her staff had googled about them, suggested that members needed to apologize to Trump for having impeached him, and otherwise made a fool of herself. After Rep. Jerry Nadler asked how many Epstein co-conspirators she had indicted, she went on a rant about how great the stock market is doing under Trump. She called the Democratic ranking member of the committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, a “washed-up loser lawyer!” (Raskin, in a fortunate bit of scheduling, was able to discuss his day with Bondi later that evening at a live taping of Slate’s Political Gabfest.)
Is there one person to whom this deeply embarrassing performance would have appealed? Someone who thinks talking about stock-market gains under Trump in response to unrelated questions is a winning strategy, who believes that those asking difficult questions suffer from “Trump derangement syndrome,” who thinks lawmakers should apologize to Donald Trump for having investigated and impeached him? Exactly. This was the most degrading congressional performance for the audience of one in recent memory. “AG Pam Bondi, under intense fire from the Trump Deranged Radical Left Lunatics, was fantastic at yesterday’s Hearing,” Trump posted Thursday. Bondi had been successful in saving her job, at great expense to her personal and our national dignity, for another few days.
3.
Mike Johnson
Finally, some votes on Trump’s tariffs.
Speaker Mike Johnson, at the White House’s request, tried to pass a rule this week preventing Democrats from forcing votes to repeal Trump’s tariffs. Republicans had been successful in passing such rules last year, and the vote this week was to extend the blockade through the summer. This time, however, it didn’t work: The rule vote failed, 217–214, as three Republicans joined all Democrats in voting against it. It’s now open season on Trump’s tariffs, as House Democrats will repeatedly force their GOP counterparts to choose between a president who expects loyalty and bad policy (and politics). Within a day of the failed rule vote, the House voted to nix Trump’s Canada tariffs.
Like clockwork, Trump issued a threat, warning that “any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!” But what does this pocket of members voting against tariffs care? Nebraska GOP Rep. Don Bacon, a regularly targeted swing-district member, is retiring this cycle. He voted against the rule, then left the premises so leaders couldn’t twist his arm. So, too, did California Rep. Kevin Kiley, who’s been redistricted off the planet in the Redistricting Wars (that Trump started). The last GOP member to vote against the rule was Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, who’s solidly in Trump enemy territory at this point. The House GOP’s margin is tight enough that it takes only a couple of House members to upend Johnson’s, and the White House’s, plans. And the ranks of GOP defectors may swell once primary season is over too.
4.
Howard Lutnick
Ah, yes, forgot about that time he took his family to Epstein’s island.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Jeffrey Epstein were next-door neighbors on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. According to Lutnick, though, they barely knew each other. In a story Lutnick told on a podcast last year, he and his wife went in Epstein’s house once in 2005, got a house tour, and “decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again,” adding, “I was never in the room with him socially, for business or even philanthropy.” As the Epstein files revealed, though, that wasn’t true. Lutnick and his family visited Epstein on his island in 2012, and the two were in business and otherwise corresponding sporadically over the years; at least one email suggests they had scheduled drinks.
So does “lying about having not been to the Epstein island” constitute a firing from Trump’s Cabinet? Not as of yet. Trump likes having Good-Time Howie around, for one, and if he starts doling out consequences to people for their associations with Epstein, well, that would put Trump himself in quite a corner. That Lutnick’s future in the Cabinet has been a live question all week speaks mostly to the number of enemies he’s made in Congress and the administration for his sycophancy on behalf of Trump’s worst impulses.
5.
Louise Lucas
No room for tears in the redistricting wars.
Virginia state Democrats’ proposed mid-decade gerrymander of their state is an assault on the eyes. The new map—if it skirts legal challenges and is approved by voters in an April referendum—could net Democrats four new congressional seats this year, converting its current delegation, six Democrats and five Republicans, into a 10–1 split. It achieves this in part by divvying up the trove of Democratic votes in dense Northern Virginia suburbs across the state, with narrow arms slinking south and west to rural communities that have very little in common with Arlington or Fairfax County. It’s some filthy, filthy stuff that will make for incoherent districts and stifle Republican congressional representation in a merely lean-blue state.
All of which is to say: womp—and again, womp. The move was a political necessity for Democrats, and the great many Virginia-based Republican operatives and pundits grousing about it should blame their president. Trump made a conscious move to kick off the mid-decade redistricting fight by urging Texas, Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, and anywhere else where Republicans could squeeze out a seat or five to redraw their maps. Retaliation happens. The Surge is all for a federal remedy, or a network of interstate compacts, to address this absurd trend of hyper-gerrymandering everywhere, but until then: no crying. As Virginia state Sen. Pro Tempore Louise Lucas, a fascinating 82-year-old edgelord who pushed for the new maps, replied to a griping Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, “You all started it and we fucking finished it.” (Although, honestly, the Supreme Court may be the ones who fucking finish it, sooner or later.)
6.
Matthew Moroun
A bridge scandal? Sure, why not.
On Monday, Trump posted that he would block the opening of a new U.S.–Canada bridge between Detroit and Windsor “until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them.” All right. He’s still mad at Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney for cutting a trade deal with China and for generally—here we go, we’re going to deploy this stupid word and see what happens—mogging him at Davos. So he won’t let Canada open a bridge that would ease congestion at a major international commercial crossing, which speaks to Carney’s general point about how the United States has become too irrational an actor to lead the global order.
But there’s more! Matthew Moroun, the billionaire owner of an existing, rival bridge—the Ambassador Bridge—has for years fought against the creation of the new bridge. And as the New York Times reported, Moroun met with the one and only Howard Lutnick on Monday, hours before Trump’s post, after which Lutnick spoke to Trump by phone. Trump’s post came after that telephone conversation. And with that, another episode’s worth of major investigation that would’ve done meaningful damage to any previous administration is added to the mountainous pile.
7.
Jack Schlossberg
A major, out-of-nowhere endorsement.
One of the most coveted congressional seats in the country is up for grabs now that longtime Rep. Jerry Nadler is retiring. New York’s 12th Congressional District covers the heart of Manhattan, and there’s an unsurprisingly long list of candidates. There’s Micah Lasher, a New York state Assembly member and former aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Nadler, who has endorsed him. There’s Alex Bores, another Assembly member who’s being targeted by corporate A.I. money after supporting an A.I. safety bill. There is George Conway, the conservative lawyer turned anti-Trumper and #Resistance celebrity. And many more.
And then there is Jack Schlossberg, JFK’s 33-year-old grandkid who didn’t do much of anything until he started posting weird stuff online a few years ago and briefly pretended to work as a reporter in 2024, deciding he’d like a congressional seat. It wasn’t taken all that seriously. And then, this week, he earned the endorsement of none other than former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in what the Times described as “the most high-profile endorsement so far, of any candidate.” In a statement, Pelosi said, “This moment calls for leaders who understand the stakes and how to deliver for the people they serve.” And that’s … Jack Schlossberg, is it? Huh. The Kennedy mystique is strong in this one.
