I wanted to alert you of something we’re on today. Among other things, it’s the kind of off-the-beaten-path reporting your membership dollars pay for. We sent David Kurtz to Nashville today for a hearing in the Abrego Garcia case. Since we’re a number of ICE murders and false imprisonments down the line at this point, remember that the Justice Department conceded that Abrego Garcia had been erroneously included among those sent last spring to the bespoke dungeon facility in El Salvador. He was brought back to the U.S. only after he was hit with a new indictment. His lawyers have argued to the judge in the case that the charges should be dismissed because this is a case of vindictive prosecution. Normally this is an extremely high bar for the defense to clear. But in this case, the judge replied by saying that he’s inclined to think that the defense is right. Today’s hearing was scheduled to give the government the opportunity to prove that the defense and (mostly) the judge are wrong.

You’ve probably seen some hints of it. But I wanted to focus your attention on a genuine piece of news out of the Epstein Files, even weeks after their original release. In 2019, a woman came forward and spoke to the FBI claiming that Donald Trump had assaulted her in the early 1980s. In her allegations, Jeffrey Epstein essentially provided her to Trump. Other files in the Epstein trove say that the FBI conducted four interviews with the woman. But only one of them was released in the larger trove — one that detailed her accusations against Epstein. Meanwhile, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, says he went to view the unredacted version of the files that members of Congress can access and the missing interviews aren’t there either.

There have been other accusations against Trump in the files. But this one appears to be more specific and detailed. And there are various signs and reasons that the FBI took the allegations seriously: those reasons and details about the accusations are discussed in this NPR article once you get past the first few paragraphs. The accuser, according to one FBI note contained in the files, eventually refused to cooperate with the investigation.

I had some additional thoughts I wanted to share about last night’s speech.

The first seems unsurprising to me. A snap CNN poll last night found that this was the weakest reaction to a State of the Union as any president’s this century. Since presidents generally did better (less divided audience) in the past, it was probably the weakest ever. It was weaker than any of Trump’s State of the Unions. So people weren’t wowed. And remember that a State of the Union is disproportionately watched by the presidential speaker’s own partisans.

This matches my impressions. It seemed tired like Trump seems tired, literally and figuratively. It had some of the feel of a nostalgia act to me. No new material and not a lot of energy or interest in doing something new. Which, again, is really where Trump and the administration itself seems to be. It fits.

The first half of the speech was very low energy. Trump didn’t seem to have his heart in it. He roused to talk about tariffs and then gruesome murders by undocumented immigrants. American Carnage, Part II, basically. My overall sense is still that it was generally shambling and scattered, which is to say more or less like the administration itself at the moment. The non-standing and non-clapping by Democrats really seemed to get to him. It was kind of remarkable how much it seemed to get to him. Like, they’re the opposition. They’re really against him. Did it surprise him? On tariffs, what did he say exactly? The vibe seemed to be that they’ll continue? Or in spirit? What? I see nothing here that changes a bit of the current political trajectory. The speech writers don’t seem to have had much idea of how that could happen. It’s still full speed ahead with the same program until November, perhaps slightly warmed over. The collision is inevitable.

10:21 p.m.: I’m amazed how much the non-clapping and non-standing seems to get to Trump. Like really get to him. It keeps coming out more and more.

10:14 p.m.: The no clapping thing is really starting to get to him.

10:11 p.m.: There’s a weird fuzziness on the front of Trump’s pompadour. I’m wondering if there’s something fuzzy sprayed on it. Because something is different. Don’t pretend you don’t see this. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

10:08 p.m.: This is really giving me flashbacks of my earlier life as an avid Wally George watcher/ironic fan.

10: 05 p.m.: The through-line generally is clear: very, very low energy until he got to tariffs and graphic descriptions of murders by undocumented immigrants.

10:02 p.m.: The whole “angel mom,” “angel families” thing is simply the most disgusting and malevolent thing imaginable. Imagine any other group singled out like this. Hideous gutter politics from white nationalist degenerates.

9:56 p.m.: By my read, Trump’s energy level has risen a bit approaching the second hour.

9:49 p.m.: Trump seems to be saying he has an Obamacare replacement? But of course he doesn’t. We had a debate here at TPM about what what he was saying about Tariffs. He seemed to be saying that the foreign countries are so happy they’ll just voluntarily keep paying the tariffs. The whole logic of it seems to be that the tariffs will continue. In any case one of my colleagues suggested that he was talking about the “deals”, i.e., this or that country agreeing to invest a trillion or a gazillion dollars in the U.S. I’m not really clear.

9:43 p.m.: Tariffs seemed to be the first time he really got his energy back. But it seems to be subsiding.

9:28 p.m.: I get the sense that they knew this was turning out to be a total snoozer so they’re just going to do the rest about the hockey team.

9:16 p.m.: Still seems super low energy. (Don’t try to do this kind of commentary at home.)

9:13 p.m.: Honestly this seems a bit low energy. Not just the content but the energy in the room? Curious what people in the hall are seeing. But he also has that kind of sullen low energy thing.

With Trump’s first official State of the Union of his second term upon us, I wanted to share a few previewing thoughts. First, who knows the particulars we’re going to see in this speech. We start with the degenerate unpredictability of Trump and added to it we have whatever mix of senescence or loosening we’ve seen so clearly in the last year. And there I am really open to either possibility. I think sometimes that in term two he has kind of maxed out on all his desires for power, for adulation. And getting everything we want has a way of undoing many people, at least putting a lot of slack in the inner chords that give us quickness and alacrity. In any case, we start with Trump and all the additional feralness and distention we have in this second term. So who the eff knows what to expect.

But this is the prism I think we should be looking at the speech through.

A culture of impunity or at least a culture of elite impunity is now so widely discussed that it has become almost a cliché of American political discourse. But clichés and caricatures have power when they contain a strong or recognizable element of truth. And we are in the midst of a kind of performance of impunity which is revealing and bracing to behold. A few days ago, the former Prince Andrew, now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, was arrested and questioned in an investigation of alleged crimes tied to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew is the first prince to be arrested in 400 years. (Technically, he’s the first British prince ever to be arrested. The last example, Charles I, was king of England. This was before the Union Treaty of 1707 which created Great Britain. Charles was tried and executed.) Today, police in the United Kingdom arrested Peter Mandelson, now a Labour party elder (he made his name under Tony Blair) who was until September the British ambassador to the United States. The investigation that led to his arrest was spurred by the release of the Epstein Files. His earlier resignation as ambassador was also tied to his relationship with Epstein.

A funny thing happened today. I made one of my infrequent forays into Facebook and an acquaintance noted in a post her brief mention in the Epstein files. These weren’t incriminating in any way. Something she wrote was briefly mentioned in passing by people who didn’t appear even to know her. Then another friend chimed into the thread noting how he’d similarly been mentioned in an offhand and fortuitous and not incriminating way. So I thought: Am I in the Epstein Files?

Almost every article on today’s tariff decision includes, somewhere two or three paragraphs down, a note which explains that it’s unclear how or whether the federal government will issue refunds for illegally collected tariffs. The Court’s decision doesn’t address this. I’m not sure why it would really need to address this. The tariffs were illegal. The government had no legal authority to collect them. So it should be a simple matter for importers to go to court and compel the government to refund their money. But set all that aside. Is it really so uncertain? I’ll bet the White House is going to find a way to issue those refunds. Why? Because Trump insiders, especially the family of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, have reportedly made huge, huge bets on the tariffs being tossed. They and their clients now, per a July report that prompted a Senate investigation, stand to make tens or even hundreds of billions on those refunds. Given that Lutnick is a primary player in White House tariff policy, I’m pretty confident that they’re going to find a way to issue those refunds.