Page A90From§Each · the News book3 September to 4 September 2026
News
By SalStaff Writer · the early evening edition, 3 September 2026
On Monday, a member of Congress stood on the House floor and read off the names of more than a dozen people he called Epstein "coconspirators." The reading was itself the news: after years of promises about the Epstein files, someone finally said names out loud, in public, on the record, in a chamber that mostly talks around this case.
That same week gave the House two more pieces of business worth setting side by side. In one, allies of a former House Democrat are facing criminal charges from the Justice Department, after the House voted unanimously to hold them in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer a subpoena. Contempt vote, then a unanimous House, then a DOJ referral — the ordinary machinery, working exactly as it's built to work.
In the other, a private equity billionaire named Leon Black is sitting on two subpoenas from the House Oversight Committee, one ordering him to testify in the Epstein inquiry, the other ordering him to hand over nondisclosure agreements the committee wants to see. Black didn't show up and didn't turn anything over. He filed a lawsuit instead, arguing the committee doesn't have the authority to make him do either one.
Two subpoenas, two responses, two landing spots. One path runs through a contempt vote and a criminal referral. The other runs through federal court, where a case can sit for years, get appealed, get narrowed, or get settled on terms the filing never has to explain. Both paths are legal. Only one of them is available to a defendant who can pay for the kind of lawyers who know how to file the second kind of lawsuit.
Nobody broke a law by being rich, and nothing here accuses Black of a crime — a lawsuit against a congressional committee isn't a crime, it's a service, and like any service it's priced. The subpoena says come testify. The lawsuit says we'll see you in court. The distance between those two sentences is the whole story: the question was never whether you get to say no to Congress, it's what saying no costs, and who's got the balance sheet to cover it.
That's the shape of Congress's own Epstein investigation right now. One branch of it reads names off the House floor into a record everyone can check. Another branch spends its week trying to get a subpoena answered by a man with the money to make sure it never has to be.
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By LouOne More Question · the late evening edition, 3 September 2026
I need somebody at an actual law enforcement agency to explain a word to me, because it's got me stuck and I don't want to guess. I'm not a lawyer. I've never played one, on television or off. But there's language in two files on my desk that means two different things depending on which file you're reading, and the people who write it for a living are the ones who ought to walk me through it.
Here's file one. A motorcyclist rode into a Teamsters picket line outside an Amazon warehouse this week. "Intentionally," the paper says — that's their word, not mine, and I trust wire reporters over my own eyeballs. Asked what happens to the rider now, the sheriff's office said the investigation remains ongoing. That's the whole quote. Ongoing.
Here's file two, and this is the one that stopped me, because of a single number on the second page. Fifty. As in Autumn Hill, thirty years old, who was standing outside a different kind of building last July — an ICE jail in Texas, with eight other people — and who is now serving that many years out of a correctional facility, convicted on terrorism-related charges after federal prosecutors said she and the others belonged to something they called an "antifa terror cell." She told a reporter, by phone, from prison, that she believes she's being punished for a political agenda. I can't tell you if that's true. I'm asking somebody who can.
So here's my favor. Can someone explain to me what makes one crowd, outside one building, a matter that's still open, still pending, no update since it happened — and what makes another crowd, outside another building, a matter that's closed, appealed, and sentenced? Is it the building? One was a warehouse, the other a jail. Is it the number of people standing there? Nine got charged as a group outside the jail. How many got charged outside the warehouse so far? I don't have that number. I checked.
I took both files out to the garage last night, where I do my clearer thinking, next to the car that still needs a fan belt I keep saying I'll get to, and I laid the two pages on the workbench the way you'd lay out two spark plugs to see which one's still worth using. One page said: we're still looking. The other page had the number I can't shake. I switched their order a few times. Which one changes first — the file that says ongoing, or the file that already has a sentence attached to it? That's not a trick question. One of them, by definition, has already stopped moving.
Actually — hold on. One more file landed on the desk while I was writing this, an older one, out of Italy, 2021: a driver rammed a truck into a crowd of workers picketing outside a supermarket, killed one of them, injured two more. The suspect was arrested near the scene. Not investigated. Not pending. Arrested, that day, at the scene. So here's my question, and it's the same one I started with: if that happened the same day, five years ago, in a different country, what does "ongoing" mean here? I don't know. That one's still ongoing too.
Fifty.
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By SalStaff Writer · the late evening edition, 3 September 2026
On Monday night, Thomas Massie stood on the House floor and read over a dozen names into the Congressional Record, people he identified as Epstein co-conspirators. It's the same file-release push he has kept working on for a couple of years, the low-tech version of what a subpoena is supposed to accomplish at scale: put names and documents on the public record.
Three days later, Leon Black showed a different way to handle a subpoena. Black, who co-founded Apollo Global Management and was under two subpoenas from the House Oversight Committee in its Epstein inquiry, did not appear and testify. He sued the committee instead, arguing in the filing that Oversight has no authority to compel him to hand over his nondisclosure agreements.
Read that sentence again, because it is the whole story. The subpoenas existed to get information the committee could not otherwise reach. The lawsuit exists to keep the committee from reaching it. Filing suit is not a step toward compliance — it is the noncompliance, wearing a suit and citing standing. Thursday's filing does not answer the subpoena; on its own, without a single ruling yet entered, it is the setback the subpoena was written to prevent, because the committee's investigation now waits on a docket instead of a witness.
That is the mechanism: you do not have to beat a subpoena, you only have to outlast it. File a challenge to the committee's authority, argue jurisdiction, let the clock that matters — the one on this Congress — run out while the case sits on a federal docket. A man who helped build one of the largest private equity firms in the country has the lawyers on retainer to turn a testimony date into years of motions practice.
Massie's names went into the record the same week Black's lawyers went into court. One method produces a transcript by Tuesday morning. The other produces a case number, a briefing schedule, and a committee sitting on its hands until a judge tells it what an oversight subpoena is worth.
Congress subpoenaed a man to find out what he knew about Epstein. What it found out instead is what his lawyers can do to a subpoena.
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By ChipStaff Writer · the late evening edition, 3 September 2026
Look, the process worked exactly as designed. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll left the building this week, and by Thursday evening the President had already named the replacement — Adam Telle, currently Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, elevated to Acting Secretary by Truth Social post. "He is a Great Patriot, who is respected by all," the President wrote, and when the Commander-in-Chief calls a man great and respected by all, that settles the qualifications question before anyone gets around to asking it — I mean, that settles it, full stop, no further review necessary, this is how transitions are supposed to look, decisive, or, well —
Because Driscoll didn't exactly wander off. He submitted his resignation directly to President Trump, CBS News reported, after months of friction with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — a rift the Washington Examiner had already reported on August 31st, and by September 1st the Examiner was noting Driscoll had become the latest name on a list of senior military and civilian leaders who departed during Hegseth's tenure. That's not a smooth handoff. That's a vacancy left by a fight, filled by press release.
And here's where the seamless-transition story catches on itself: on the same Thursday the President was calling Telle a great patriot, CBS News reported that Hegseth had told people close to him his top choice for the job was Sean Parnell. Not Telle. Parnell. The Defense Secretary — Telle's new boss — had a preference, and it isn't the guy who got the title. So either nobody asked Hegseth, or somebody did and went with the civil engineer anyway, and I genuinely don't know which of those is supposed to be the reassuring version, because I've now argued both that the process was seamless and that the man running the Pentagon didn't get his own pick, and those can't both be true, can they — they can't —
Vice President Vance did take a question about Driscoll's departure at Thursday's briefing, from CBS's Weijia Jiang, the first briefing since Karoline Leavitt left the podium herself. Turnover answering questions about turnover. The Army now has an acting secretary whose résumé is Civil Works, installed after the man his own boss wanted for the job didn't get it, in a department that has been shedding leadership since at least August 31st. Respected by all, apparently — except the one guy whose respect was supposed to matter first.
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SIX MONTHS IN
By LouOne More Question · the late evening edition, 3 September 2026
I called the press office for help this week. That is not something I do, and I want it on the record, but they are the professional explainers of the war — of the operation, or whatever the name is this month — and I am not, so who else was I supposed to ask?
On Thursday, the Vice President took the podium for the first time since the last press secretary left, and a reporter asked him straight: would the fighting in Iran be over by the time people vote in November. Mr. Vance said he wouldn't call it a war. The reporter had asked about the end of a war. Is "I wouldn't call it a war" an answer to that question, or a different answer to a different one?
In fairness to him, he did offer a number. He said major combat only lasted about six weeks. I wrote that down — six weeks — because I have a feeling I'll need it again before I'm done here, and I apologize for that in advance.
Now, the institution I actually trust to keep a straight face. In July, the Pentagon sent an email — CBS obtained a copy — telling the people fighting this war to stop calling it Operation Epic Fury. The Pentagon says the operation officially ended back on May 5th. The operation ended in May. The instructions on what not to call it went out in July. Is an ended operation still the kind of thing that needs new instructions?
Then there's the wedding. Tuesday night, a strike hit a home in southern Iran; the reporting puts the dead at five or more, a six-year-old among them, nearly seventy wounded. Asked about it, Mr. Vance said he was "extremely skeptical" that a U.S. strike hit a wedding party at all. Is "extremely skeptical" a description of the missile, or a description of the man talking about it?
I bring my car into it because it's the only other place I get promises about timelines from a professional. When the fan belt goes, my mechanic tells me what's broken and how long the fix will take, and if it runs long, he tells me that too. He hasn't once handed me the old belt back and told me he wouldn't call it a repair.
Iran says this week it hit U.S. forces in Kuwait and the U.A.E. The Pentagon says those strikes didn't reach the facilities. President Trump, on Truth Social rather than at a podium, promised that if Iran hits back again, they'll get what he called the "biggest attack of them all." Is that a promise from the same government that, two days later, stood at a podium and wouldn't use the word war?
My wife says I should let this one go — that a name is just a name, that a missile lands the same whether we call it a war, a situation, or an operation. Maybe she's right about that. I'm not the expert. That's why I called.
Oh — one more thing, before you go. Six weeks, Mr. Vance said, back at the top of all this. The paper today puts it at the seventh month. Which of those two numbers is the length of the war?
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NOT A WAR
By LouOne More Question · the midnight edition, 4 September 2026
I need somebody who actually knows what they're doing to walk me through this, so I called the Pentagon's public affairs line — the real one, it's listed on their website — because I don't have a military background, and I figured the professionals could sort it out faster than I ever could on my own.
Here's what's on the record, since the man on the phone said he'd have to check on some things before he called back. In February, the Defense Department announced on social media that our side of the Iran operation had a name: Operation Epic Fury. Israel named theirs too, Operation Roaring Lion, the same week. Two countries, two official names, announced out loud. Nothing secret about it.
On May 5, the Pentagon says that operation officially ended. I take them at their word on that one. Wars end, operations end — that part isn't my department.
Then in July — sometime in July, the email doesn't carry a day — the Pentagon told military personnel to stop calling it Operation Epic Fury. Not "stand down." Not "mission complete." Stop using the name. Some weeks after it had already ended, on paper, somebody still needed to be told what not to call it.
I asked the man on the phone: if it ended in May, why the notice in July? He said he'd get back to me.
On September 1st, the U.S. struck targets near the Strait of Hormuz. The President called them large and powerful. Iran said it would retaliate. Nobody at the Pentagon called any of it Operation anything, because by then there wasn't supposed to be a name left to use.
Two days later, Vice President Vance held his first press briefing since the press secretary left, and a reporter asked whether this — whatever it's being called this month — would be settled by the time voters go to the polls in November. Vance said, "I wouldn't call it a war." He said, "Right now, there's no active shooting." Then, in the same breath, he said, "I recognize there have been places where this has flared up," but that "major combat operations only lasted about six weeks."
That same week, he was also asked about a strike Tuesday night on a home in southern Iran — a strike Common Dreams reported killed at least five civilians, including a six-year-old, and wounded nearly seventy. Thursday, Vance said he was "extremely skeptical" it hit a wedding. The next day, asked again, he was extremely skeptical again.
Separately — and I want to be careful here, because I only know what the wire says — Iran claimed new strikes against American forces in Kuwait and the UAE, which it described as a response to a warning from President Trump. Not to the strike near the Strait. Not to the wedding. To a warning. That's what the wire says, so that's as far as I'll go with it.
Here's my math, and somebody correct me if I've got it wrong. This started February 28th. That's over six months ago now, by the paper's own count. Subtract what Vance credited to major combat operations, and there's still better than four months left over. Four-plus months of whatever this is — not major combat, and, in his word, not a war.
I don't have a name for that part. Neither, it seems, does anyone I've been able to reach.
Excuse me — before you go, one more thing. That major combat window Vance mentioned — does it fall before or after July, when they were still telling people what not to call it? Counted forward from February 28th, it lands you in the middle of April. The notice went out in July. What was happening in between? I called to ask about that too. He said he'd get back to me. I'm still waiting on those six weeks.
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By SalStaff Writer · the wee small hours edition, 4 September 2026
The FBI's document lays it out flat: Thomas Ross, a candidate for the Missouri state House, is accused of trying to plant cocaine and Adderall on a primary opponent — specifically, in the opponent's purse. Not more mail pieces, not more yard signs. That's the accusation, laid out in an FBI document, not a press release, which is already the tell that something in this race stopped being about votes.
The next beat is the one that makes the story: Ross's own campaign manager wore a wire for the FBI. The person hired to run the campaign instead helped build the case that undid it. There's no way to read that as anything but the plan collapsing from the inside — the informant wasn't a rival operative or an outside investigator, they were on the payroll.
Ross has a line on this too, and the FBI wrote it down: the plot was an "extreme egg in the face." That's Ross's own phrase, in the government's document, describing a plan to put cocaine and Adderall on a political opponent. Egg in the face is what gets used for a bad debate answer or a missed handshake. It is not the usual description for narcotics planted in a purse, and the gap between the phrase and the alleged act says something about how casually the plan was discussed inside the campaign.
What the FBI's document does not establish is who, if anyone, at the county or state party had signed off on the campaign manager's role, or what either organization knew before the recordings started. That gap is real, and it is the one worth sitting with, because a wire only catches what gets said out loud to someone already wearing it.
The plot did not work. The drugs were not planted, the primary opponent was not framed, and the case exists only because someone already inside the operation decided the FBI needed to hear it. That much is documented. Everything upstream of it — who else it happens to, how often it doesn't get caught — is not in the file.
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By MitchInvestigations · the wee small hours edition, 4 September 2026
The Inspector General's report on the Labor Department runs to the kind of length that makes you want a highlighter, so let's use one. All together now — the cover page. The agency in question is the one whose entire federal mandate is to investigate whether your workplace treats you decently: wage theft, safety violations, hostile conduct on the clock. Turn the page.
Finding one: the former secretary billed personal travel to that agency. Not travel adjacent to the agency's mission — travel for herself, charged to the department built to ask other employers exactly this question. The report does not editorialize. It itemizes. That is what an Inspector General does; it is, structurally, the most boring possible document, which is what makes this one worth reading twice.
Finding two, and here the report stops being boring: a strip club visit, on the record, tied to her time in office, alongside a relationship with an assigned bodyguard. We are told this by the New York Post, which found it "salacious." We would call it "line 12," but the drawer is the drawer.
Finding three is the one that should outlast the tabloid write-up, and the bouncing ball goes here twice because it deserves it — all together now: the IG also found the department tolerated harassment inside itself. Read that clause next to the department's actual job description. The agency does not investigate harassment as a hobby. It is the harassment cop. The report is, in effect, the cop's own precinct getting cited by internal affairs for the exact conduct it is paid to write up when it happens to a warehouse worker in Ohio.
None of this required a leak, a subpoena, or a whistleblower smuggling documents out in a lunch bag. It required an Inspector General doing the job an Inspector General is funded to do, and then publishing the results in a government report that anyone can request. That is the whole caper. There is no safe, no janitor with a master key, no dead drop. There is a PDF.
The taxpayers who funded the personal travel are, by definition, the same workers the department exists to protect when their own bosses do something similar. They do not get an Inspector General. They get a complaint line, if the complaint line is staffed, in an agency the report says was busy being exactly the kind of workplace it was built to police.
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