The Week Magazine August 8, 2025

It’s a fierce competition, with no winners and only losers: Which of the unqualified kooks and fawning toadies working for Donald Trump is the most incompetent? Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel are currently the most visible contenders, thanks to their tragicomic bungling of the Jeffrey Epstein debacle. They promised the MAGA base the release of the full “Epstein files,” even though their boss was the sex trafficker’s buddy for more than a decade and noted during that time that Jeff liked women “on the younger side.” Ha, ha! When Bondi and Patel discovered with cold fear that Trump’s name appeared multiple times in the voluminous records, they announced, “Nothing to see here, case closed!” Now they’ve saddled the president with a festering scandal that won’t easily…

What happened Imprisoned Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell offered to testify to Congress in exchange for immunity and other conditions this week, as her lawyer appealed to President Trump for a pardon. The offer came two days after Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche made the unusual move of traveling to Florida to personally interview Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking minors. The pair discussed about “100 different people,” said Maxwell attorney David Markus, adding that his client“didn’t hold anything back.” Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney, made the trip to meet Maxwell as the administration faced growing pressure from MAGA influencers and GOP lawmakers to release all investigative files on Epstein, a well-connected financier and convicted pedophile who died in jail by suicide in 2019. Trump, a…

The sought-after “Epstein files” include a vast trove of data and physical evidence collected by federal law enforcement over “multiple investigations” into the financier, said James Hill and Peter Charalambous in ABCNews.com. A three-page document released by the Justice Department in February offers “a road map.” It lists seized evidence such as photographs, logs of who potentially visited Epstein’s private island, financial documents, and records of a wiretap of Maxwell’s phone. There are 40 computers and electronic devices, 26 storage drives, and six recording devices holding more than 300 gigabytes of data. The files, if ever released, could resolve “unanswered questions” about the case, said Barry Levine in The New York Times. Among them: Where did Epstein derive his $600 million fortune? How did he fund “such a complex trafficking…

What happened As evidence mounted of widespread famine conditions in Gaza, President Trump this week demanded that Israel allow “every ounce of food” into the enclave, blaming Israel’s blockade for triggering “real starvation.” Israel blocked all supplies to Gaza for nearly three months starting in March, when it ended a cease-fire. It then took over the task of food distribution from the U.N. in May, but it set up just four distribution sites for 2.2 million people. “The worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip,” the U.N.-backed hunger authority Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said this week, with one-third of Gaza’s population going without food for days and health-care workers fainting from hunger on the job. More than 20,000 children have been hospitalized for acute…

■ The Reiff family was devastated when Rufus, their beloved 16-year-old rat terrier–Chihuahua mix, died suddenly. In a San Francisco shelter, they discovered Ziggy—a dog bearing an eerie resemblance to Rufus—whom they soon adopted. Ziggy even behaved like Rufus. Curious the Reiffs sent in Ziggy’s DNA and discovered he was Rufus’ father, with six to 12 months between them in age. “It’s more than a good ending,” said Jillian Reiff. “It’s the craziest ending you could possibly script.” ■ In June, landscaper Kyle Lukowski woke up to find his trailer, with $10,000 worth of tools and a ride-on mower, had been stolen. The 32-year-old disabled Orlando resident had built a successful landscaping business to support himself, so initially he borrowed a push mower and attempted to service his 13 clients.…

President Trump is getting results from his “Hulkamania” approach to international trade, said John Authers in Bloomberg. At his golf course in Scotland this week, Trump sealed what he modestly called “the greatest deal of all time” with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Under that agreement, most EU imports to the U.S. will face a 15% tariff—down from Trump’s threatened 30%—while the bloc will impose zero tariffs on many American exports. The EU is just the latest trading partner to cave to Trump’s bullying rather than punch back with retaliatory tariffs: Japan made a one-sided 15% deal last week, while Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines have agreed to tariffs of about 20%. Trump’s “hard-power” tactics are a welcome change of pace, said Walter Russell Mead in The Wall…