Swamp Getting Down to Business? Nope, It’s Emails from the Dead 24/7. Healthcare Debate Could Be Golden Opportunity. Gender War Prophet.

Great. The shutdown is over. Now the wise men and women of the nation’s capital can get down to important business. Who are you fooling? I nominate this passage for Quote of the Day:

Could there be a better example of Congressional dysfunction than that its first pressing business after the government reopens is . . . the return of the Jeffrey Epstein follies? This is exactly what the American people weren’t waiting for.

— Editorial in the Wall Street Journal headlined “The Epstein Follies Return”

Yep, that’s contemporary Washington for you.  Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York captures the mood of the most important city on earth:

The fever swamps have become so excited about the Epstein emails that we need someone to come up with a new grand unified theory to fit the tidbits. Trump, as president, spending holidays with Epstein! Trump, as president, meeting Epstein in Europe! Epstein giving Putin blackmail dirt on Trump! Michael Wolff masterminding the whole thing!

Indeed the chattering classes are chattering about the antics of Trump-obsessed journalist (is this description redundant?) Michael Wolff, who buddied up to the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, advising him how to be “the bullet” that ended candidate Donald Trump’s campaign. Four Republicans—including shy Reps. Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace, and Marjorie Taylor Greene—joined Dems in voting to force release of Epstein files. More on the battle of the email releases.

Hapless former Harvard President Larry Summers, who emailed Epstein that he thought women were less intelligent than men, got caught in the web. The best—and most honest—take on the Epstein files comes this morning from USA TODAY’s Nicole Russell, whose column is headlined “I Didn’t Vote for Trump for his Character. But We Deserve the Truth about His Past.” Russell writes:

I voted for President Donald Trump, and I support a lot of his policies and politics: Lowering taxes, brokering peace deals and ordering strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites.

I’ve never supported Trump because he had stellar character ….

Let me be clear on this: If Trump has a sordid past that includes knowing about a child sex trafficking ring, as a mother and a Republican, I want to know about it. I have a right to know, and so does every other American.

I’d like to know when Democrats became aware of these emails linking Epstein and Trump. If these are so damning − and they might be − why haven’t they been mentioned sooner for justice to be done?

The reviews of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s performance in handling the shutdown are in, writes Matthew Continetti, and they aren’t good. Continetti is brutal:

Now disgruntled Democrats are acknowledging what Republicans have known for years: Mr. Schumer puts his own interests ahead of the institution—and of everyone else. The 74-year-old five-term senator exemplifies a brittle establishment terrified of the growing socialist movement in the Democratic Party….

Senate Democrats begin the 2026 election cycle with an unfavorable map, a disgruntled base and a weak and selfish leader. One half of the country finally understands what the other half has known all along: Nobody likes a Schumer.

The Shutdown Party. Congressional Democrats are throwing a tantrum over the seven Dems and one independent who voted to end the shutdown, while Democratic National Committee staffers find calls to end remote work and return to the office “callous.” Former Biden adviser Neera Tanden responded to the shenanigans:   

“If you think democracy is on the line – working in the office is not a big ask,” Tanden wrote in a post on X. “And there are plenty of other people willing to step up. Get yourselves together people.”

The shutdown ended without the Dems getting enhanced subsidies to disguise the Affordable Care Act’s unaffordability. But they did bargain to get a debate over health care. Rich Lowry’s New York Post column is headlined “How the GOP Can Push True Health Care ‘Affordability’ — and Win.” Lowry writes:

Obamacare taxes should be repealed, the law should allow for genuine bare-bones “catastrophic plans” for those who want them, and states should be given as much leeway to innovate as possible. 

Republicans would also be smart to build on a Trump administration rule from the first term that allowed employers to fund accounts — Health Reimbursement Accounts, or HRAs — for employees to buy their own individual coverage. 

None of these ideas will make the case for themselves.

Republicans have to introduce them to the public and explain them, even if it makes them uncomfortable and even if they’d prefer to talk about something else.

Real Clear Politics on Sirius FM Radio asks if President Trump can “flip the script” on health care.

Long before the Biden administration went giddy supporting mutilation of small children—which it dubbed “gender affirming care”—Dr. Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins University was a hero of sexual sanity. We’re proud that Independent Women had Dr. McHugh speak at an Independent Women event back when the issue was just a shadow on the horizon. Sohrab Ahmari has a highly recommended (by me) Unherd piece on Dr. McHugh’s work. I can’t resist going long and quoting the beginning of Ahmari’s piece—it shows the incipient insanity Dr. McHugh spotted earlier than most:

At one point in 1991’s Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter (played by Anthony Hopkins) tells detective Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) that “there are three major centers for transsexual surgery: Johns Hopkins, University of Minnesota, and Columbus Medical Center.” Buffalo Bill, the woman-skinning serial killer Starling is pursuing, probably “applied for sex reassignment at one or all of them,” only to be rejected. 

That bit about Bill’s rejection — the killer merely thinks he’s trans — is a relic from an earlier, hard-to-imagine age, when patients’ claims of belonging to the opposite sex were apparently subjected to rigorous scrutiny, rather than being readily affirmed. Yet the film’s dialogue fails the test of verisimilitude in one respect. By the time the events in Silence of the Lambs take place, in the 1980s, Johns Hopkins University’s sex-change clinic had been closed down.

Dr. Paul McHugh, then head of psychiatry at the Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, made the decision to shutter it in 1979. …

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was the brainchild of Senator Elizabeth Warren. A cynic might say that the CFPB was designed to keep ordinary people from making choices their betters disdain. Now progressives are rallying around the CFPB again—and they should have checked their facts first:

Progressives are trumpeting a report that consumers’ financial data may be less secure following Trump administration efforts to shrink the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

But in their eagerness to attack Trump, attention is refocusing on a massive scandal that plagued the “consumer watchdog” agency under Joe Biden– one that left over 250,000 people’s data exposed.

Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters—a top MAGA foe— blasted Trump’s efforts to downsize the CFPB, claiming staffing and contractor cuts put Americans’ data at risk….

But critics say that in blasting current Bureau chief, MAGA favorite Russ Vought, progressives like Waters are forgetting about the biggest threat to consumer data security in recent years: A massive data leak that occurred under the previous Biden administration, under the leadership of leftist favorite, former CFPB head Rohit Chopra. And by attacking Trump now, they are merely serving to highlight the leak and the huge risks of the agency having such expansive power and authority.

In other news, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s “image is stained” (per the New York Times) by a corruption inquiry that involves his inner circle. … The Trump administration is preparing tariff exemptions on certain foods … to which the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board responds, “Yes, We Want No Banana Tariffs.” … And “Climate Reality Hits Nantucket” details the tony island’s worst crisis of conscience since the islanders were forced—forced, I say—to drive away unwanted illegal immigrants….

… The American Spectator argues that 50-year mortgages are “the worst idea since New Coke.” I’d amend: worst idea since college loans. … People who drive big trucks should be able to read road signs—latest outrageous Trump demand. … What keeps Ms. Must up at night (thanks for asking)? When somebody as serious as Joel Kotkin argues that the U.S. could go communist. Please read Kotkin’s “The Specter of Communism Haunts the West — Mamdani Is Only the Beginning.”