Last night, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top-ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said he will “be asking Chairman [Jim] Jordan [R-OH] to call for a hearing where we subpoena the Attorney General and Dan Bongino and [FBI Director] Kash Patel to come in and tell us everything that we know” about the Jeffrey Epstein files, “because this thing is really spinning out of control at this point and there’s one way to put it to rest, which is to come clean, as President Trump promised he would during the campaign.”
Just before 10:00 this morning, Trump lashed out in what seemed to be an attempt to regain control of the narrative, hitting as many MAGA talking points as he could with an attack on comedian and talk show host Rosie O’Donnell, who has relocated from her native U.S.—she was born in New York—to Ireland out of concern for her family in Trump’s America. “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship. She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
The president’s suggestion that he has the power to revoke the citizenship of a natural-born American—he does not—escalates his authoritarian claims.
O’Donnell responded on Instagram:
“hey donald—
you’re rattled again?
18 years later and I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours.
you call me a threat to humanity—
but I’m everything you fear:
a loud woman
a queer woman
a mother who tells the truth
an american who got out of the country b4 you set it ablaze
you build walls—
I build a life for my autistic kid in a country where decency still exists
you crave loyalty—
I teach my children to question power
you sell fear on golf courses
I make art about surviving trauma
You lie, you steal, you degrade—
I nurture, I create, I persist
you are everything that is wrong with america—
and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it
you want to revoke my citizenship?
go ahead and try, king joffrey* with a tangerine spray tan
i’m not yours to silence
i never was”
*Joffrey is a monstrous, stupid, vicious king in Game of Thrones.
-Heather Cox Richardson: July 12, 2025