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With Graham Platner out, the battle for Maine's Senate seat just moved behind closed doors.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s meeting with several Epstein survivors was a major bust. The Thursday meeting was an obvious gambit for Senate support for Blanche’s potential promotion to permanent attorney general. The encounter was arranged hours after Republican Senator Thom Tillis said that his vote for Blanche’s confirmation would be predicated on whether the acting attorney general met with Jeffrey Epstein’s victims.During the second day of Blanche’s committee confirmation hearing, Epstein victim Dani Bensky warned the Senate Judiciary Committee that Blanche had dodged her and other victims for months, yet showed a sudden willingness to talk shop once he needed them to advance his Senate confirmation.By 4 p.m., the meeting was a go, as several survivors were spotted filing into the Justice Department. Two hours later, however, they reappeared outside the building, looking “distraught and emotional,” according to MS NOW. Sky Roberts, the brother of the late Virginia Giuffre, informed reporters outside the Justice Department: “I think we have a little ways to go here.”“It had absolutely nothing to do with us, and it had everything to do with Blanche checking a box so that he can get a promotion,” Epstein victim and anti–human trafficking educator Elizabeth Stein told the network. “I don’t think that we had high expectations going into this meeting. I certainly did not. But I didn’t expect to walk out of the meeting feeling the way that we feel right now.” “It was demoralizing, to say the very least,” she added.Stein recalled that Blanche was completely unwilling to provide the group with anything substantial, actively dodging questions and refusing to provide assurances that his department would follow up on potential investigative leads. She noted that he could not provide a concrete explanation for Ghislaine Maxwell’s cushy prison transfer to a low-security prison camp, and wouldn’t clarify the improper redactions rampant throughout the released Epstein files.“It just felt like more political posturing and using survivors the way that we’ve been used as political pawns,” Stein continued. “We’re victims of the crime of sex trafficking. And the fact that our Department of Justice will not take that seriously is beyond concerning, not just to us, but should be concerning to Americans all across this country.”Epstein survivor Annie Farmer told ABC News she is “even more confident in urging senators to vote against his confirmation as the United States Attorney General” after finally meeting Blanche face to face.“I found him abrasive, condescending, and intentionally noncommittal to survivors—a marked contrast to his public testimony during his confirmation hearing,” said Farmer, who served as a key witness for the government during Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal trial.Tillis did not feel the same way: The North Carolina senator indicated over social media Thursday evening that he was satisfied by Blanche’s efforts. “I commend Todd Blanche for doing what all his predecessors over the last two decades never did: meet with the victims of Jeffery Epstein’s horrific crimes,” Tillis wrote. “I appreciate his willingness to directly engage and listen to them.”

As the world races to reduce its dependence on China, African governments have rare leverage. The challenge is turning that bargaining power into lasting industry.

A former Indian foreign secretary’s new book looks at case studies of Beijing’s aggressive actions that fall deliberately short of war.

Donald Trump promised “really big news” in his primetime address on election integrity on Thursday night but failed to deliver any. Instead, he recited a laundry list of disinformation and misinformation but provided no evidence votes were changed or voting systems manipulated in the election he lost six years ago. Election experts called it “shockingly […]

Three people familiar with internal party deliberations told Semafor she indicated as much to the White House on Thursday.

Republicans in Congress are reportedly souring on Vice President JD Vance, feeling abandoned as he’s put media appearances before his duty to help resolve the intraparty strife bogging down the GOP’s agenda.With midterms fast approaching and divisions in the ranks of a thin majority stymieing Republican legislative priorities, many in the party have hoped for Vance to step up, leveraging his position as president of the Senate to be a liaison between Congress and the White House.Instead, “lawmakers can count on a few fingers the times … Vance has set foot in the Capitol,” Kimberley Ann Strassel writes in a reported column for The Wall Street Journal. The vice president has jilted members of Congress for podcasters and talk-show hosts, appearing on programs such as Real Time With Bill Maher and The View, in no small part to promote his new spiritual memoir. Most recently, Vance flaked on a meeting scheduled Tuesday with House Republicans to appear on The Joe Rogan Experience.And remarks Vance has made during his absence have only been salt in Republicans’ wounds. In his public comments, the vice president has been perceived as “bashing his own party to win praise from online influencers” and positioning himself as “scolder of the body over which he constitutionally presides, rather than showing up for the work,” Strassel writes.In his recent media hits, for example, Vance has called those who oppose eliminating the filibuster as “married” to “weird Senate procedural bullshit,” and angered some conservatives by touting an interventionist “Christian” organization of the economy over laissez-faire economics.One GOP senator told Strassel, “As we approach incredibly consequential midterms for this nation and this presidency, Senate Republicans are pretty confused as to why the president of the Senate is actively criticizing the GOP, while also being absent from his Senate duties.”In the past, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has reportedly provided a line of communication between GOP lawmakers and the White House, but she’s now being treated for breast cancer. And while lawmakers reportedly “appreciate” appearances Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have made on Capitol Hill, they have only made Vance’s “lack of interest” all the more clear.