How does the old Nat King Cole song go? “Roll out those lazy, hazy crazy days of summer …” And that’s been about the thick of it here in a hot and steamy Washington, D.C., lately obsessed with the so-called “Epstein Files”—the longrunning conspiracy theory that disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in prison in 2019, kept a list of names of powerful people in finance and politics who committed depraved, criminal sexual acts with him. We know Epstein deserved to have the book thrown at him. But is there really a list? Does it include President Donald Trump? Well, it’s hazy.
In the interim, The Dispatch has tried to focus on political and policy developments that are less so.
On Thursday, reporter Charles Hilu graced our website with a look at a budding bipartisan effort in Congress to reform aspects of U.S. immigration law. Prospects for passage are slim. But it’s always interesting (these days) when members of the Supreme Branch actually try to do their jobs by tackling thorny issues with legislation. Also Thursday, senior editor John McCormack offers a deeply reported piece on Baltimore’s effort to reduce the murder rate. So far, it’s working—the number of murders in one of America’s most dangerous cities is at a 50-year low. McCormack has the details on the secret to Charm City’s success.
Earlier this week, senior editor Michael Warren delivered some smart analysis on claims by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard that senior officials in President Barack Obama’s administration, led by the 44th president himself, engaged in a far-reaching conspiracy to derail Trump after he won the White House in 2016. Except, as Warren points out: 1) There’s no evidence of “there,” there, and 2) Gabbard has a history of embracing factually challenged, alternative “revisionist" histories.” Check it out for yourself, feel free to disagree, of course.
Finally, if you’ve got some spare time, are waiting for a flight to board, or are spending a lazy summer day on the beach, check out my deep dive on the Republican Jewish Coalition, how the group became one of the most influential and important political organizations in American politics.
—David
Top Stories From the Dispatch Politics Team
The morning after Speaker Mike Johnson won the gavel and took the reins of the House of Representatives in October 2023, the Louisiana Republican found himself in a new office in the Capitol, attempting furiously to get up to speed. “One of the people that came in was Byron Donalds who is a good, close friend and ally and he came in and said: ‘You need to go to Las Vegas.’ And I laughed, and thought it was a joke, and he said: ‘No, RJC is meeting right now, it would be such a big, impactful thing,’” Johnson recalled in a telephone interview with The Dispatch earlier this year. Despite an avalanche of new responsibilities and suddenly impossible scheduling demands, the speaker quickly concluded Donalds was right. “I don’t have time to do that, but I’ve got to make the time.”
One of President Donald Trump’s key campaign promises leading up to the 2024 election was to crack down on illegal immigration via mass deportations, so a bill that would allow many undocumented immigrants to stay in the country would seem to go against the current zeitgeist. But this month, Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar, a third-term congresswoman who represents part of Miami, introduced legislation that would tie border security and immigration enforcement measures to protections from deportation for certain immigrants who came to the U.S. unlawfully. The Dignity Act has backing from 10 additional Republicans and 11 Democrats.
If you work for Donald Trump and fall out of the president’s good graces, there’s one surefire way to get back in his favor: Make a big stink about how he’s been treated unfairly, preferably by rehashing one of his favorite theories of persecution. That’s exactly what Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence who’s been in the doghouse for weeks, did on Friday. A July 18 press release concluded that “President Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.”
And now, for some good news: In the first half of 2025, the number of murders in Baltimore—one of America’s most violent cities—has fallen to a 50-year low. Why did this happen? And what, if anything, does it portend for crime nationwide? There are a couple of different theories to answer that first question. In a viral post on social media, Judd Legum of Popular Information claimed that Baltimore achieved this historic drop in homicides because the city “adopted a comprehensive set of ‘woke’ policies, treating violence as a public health issue.” Perhaps, though, it has more to do with a new prosecutor who has focused efforts on repeat offenders.
Speaker Mike Johnson planned to vote on and pass three cryptocurrency bills ast week. The GENIUS Act, already passed by the Senate, creates a regulatory framework for a digital stablecoin. The CLARITY Act would set up a market structure for regulating crypto. And the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act would prohibit the Federal Reserve from creating a digital currency. The first two enjoyed bipartisan support, and Republicans were united in their backing of the third, so the expectation was that they would all pass smoothly. But the House Freedom Caucus of fiscal hardliners on Tuesday derailed a procedural vote that would have set up passage of the three bills.
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