Donald Trump seems determined to keep on practicing a radical regime of mental hygiene when it comes to the Epstein-files controversy, as he goes on pretending that not a single fact about the months-long scandal has yet lodged in his brain. Asked yesterday whether he would consider pardoning Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell—who has been publicly petitioning him for a pardon for months—Trump acted like the idea had never even occurred to him. But he didn’t rule it out. “I will speak to the DOJ. I wouldn’t consider it or not consider—I don’t know anything about it,” he told reporters. “I’ll look at it.”

“But she was convicted of child sex trafficking,” the reporter pressed him. “Yeah, I mean, I’m going to have to take a look at it,” the president replied. Happy Tuesday.

Second Verse, Same as the First

by Will Saletan

In the fight over the government shutdown, Republicans are testing an insidious political strategy: Can they get a majority of voters to oppose programs that clearly benefit American citizens, on the grounds that a tiny fraction of the money might also end up—through some inadvertent channel—helping illegal immigrants?

That’s the message Republicans have repeated throughout the shutdown. They claim, falsely, that the Democratic position—that expanded Obamacare subsidies should be renewed and that the Republican cuts to Medicaid passed this year should be repealed—is really a demand to provide “free healthcare for illegals.”

The GOP’s argument is dishonest in many ways, as The Bulwark’s Jonathan Cohn has explained. But it should also worry us for a reason that goes well beyond the shutdown: If it succeeds, it will become a template for self-destructive nativist populism. It will prove that Americans care more about choking off aid to undocumented immigrants—even where the aid is already prohibited—than we do about helping fellow Americans.

This isn’t the first time Republicans have played the “free healthcare for illegals” card. Remember when Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted “You lie” during Barack Obama’s speech to Congress in 2009? Wilson was objecting to Obama’s assurance—which was true—that the subsidies in the Affordable Care Act “would not apply to those who are here illegally.”

The ACA’s section on subsidies explicitly stated: “Nothing in this subtitle or the amendments made by this subtitle allows Federal payments, credits, or cost-sharing reductions for individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.” But Republicans said the mechanisms to enforce that exclusion weren’t good enough and that the bill therefore subsidized illegal immigrants.

In 2006, when George W. Bush was pushing for reforms to immigration and Social Security, Republicans accused Democrats of using the retirement program to provide “benefits for illegals.” In 2009, Republicans played the same card as Congress moved to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. From 2021 to 2024, they played it against the American Rescue Plan. Last year, some Republicans used it to rail on a proposed expansion of the Child Tax Credit.

The history of these attacks is instructive. It shows that no matter what lawmakers do to exclude illegal immigrants from a program, the GOP will find a way to claim that some of the money will go to these immigrants. Republicans propose hair-splitting amendments to tighten the rules until they come up with an amendment Democrats will vote against. Then they use that vote—and ignore the Democrats’ other votes to explicitly bar undocumented immigrants from receiving benefits—to accuse Democrats of opening the federal spigot to illegal aliens.

If a bill’s exclusion of illegal immigrants is airtight, Republicans say the enforcement mechanisms are inadequate. They do so even if they previously expressed no objection to the same enforcement mechanisms or if they voted for essentially identical language in Republican legislation.

Many of these tricks are being played again in the shutdown fight. No matter how many times Democrats repeat that they’re not proposing to change federal laws against public funding of healthcare for illegal immigrants, Republicans insist that they are, or that the enforcement mechanisms aren’t good enough.

So far, the GOP isn’t winning that debate. In a CBS News poll taken from Wednesday to Friday, when Americans were asked what the shutdown standoff was ab