The Department of Justice revealed Monday that it has only released less than 1 percent of the documents related to the investigations into Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged child trafficking.

In a letter sent Monday to Manhattan-based District Judge Paul Engelmayer, Attorney General Pam Bondi and deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche laid bare just how little had been done to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act since it was passed in November.

“To date, the Department has now posted to the DOJ Epstein Library webpage approximately 12,285 documents (comprising approximately 125,575 pages) in response to the Act, and there are more than 2 million documents potentially responsive to the Act that are in various phases of review,” the letter stated.

That means that everything that has been released so far—including such tidbits as a government lawyer saying that Trump had traveled on Epstein’s plane “many more times than previously has been reported”—is just the tip of the iceberg.

The letter also stated that initial reviews of a recent batch of more than one million documents received by the DOJ in December revealed that a “meaningful portion” of those documents were “copies of (or largely duplicative of) documents that had already been collected” by the agency.

More than 400 lawyers, including 125 from the Southern District of New York, would continue to review the more than two million documents that remained, the letter stated, for the purpose of de-duplicating them and making efforts to protect victim privacy.

Multiple survivors have criticized the Trump administration’s most recent document dump for failing to redact “numerous victim identities” while also making “abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation.”

The letter included a lengthy list of ways that the DOJ intended to amend its process for ensuring victim privacy. It claimed that the department would modify the process for responding to survivor’s requests, improve the process of handling duplicative materials, run additional electronic quality control, and “refine” internal guidance for reviewers.

“First day, big problems here.”

That was anchor Tony Dokoupil during his difficult-to-watch debut as the fresh face of CBS Evening News.

During his first foray into evening news Monday, Dokoupil face-planted while transitioning out of a story on Venezuela while Bari Weiss, the right-wing shill tapped to become editor in chief of CBS News, reportedly looked on from the control room.

“To Governor Walz—no. We’re gonna do Mark Kelly,” Dokoupil joked, as graphics of the Arizona senator floated on the screen. “First day—first day, big problems here.”

“Are we going to Kelly here? Or are we gonna go to Jonah Kaplan?” Dokoupil asked producers. There was a long on-air silence, before he finally continued. “We’re doing Mark Kelly, possibly demoted from his retired rank of captain in the Navy.”

CBS’ new guy. I think we’re good here. pic.twitter.com/EIssvBwrzM

While transitioning out of Kelly, Dokoupil made yet another gaffe as he referred to Minnesota as the “Great Lake State,” which it is not. Minnesota is known as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” while the “Great Lakes State,” referring to multiple lakes, is Michigan.

Dokoupil, who previously co-hosted CBS’s morning news show, was tapped by Weiss last month to refresh the network’s evening news program previously helmed by news giants such as Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather.

Dokoupil actually promised to be “more accountable” than Cronkite, whatever the hell that means. And yet, his awkward flubs were removed from subsequent streaming and the show’s West Coast broadcast, according to Entertainment Weekly.

The 44-year-old journalist reportedly caught Weiss’s eye after his wildly unprofessional attempt to interview author Ta-Nehisi Coates last year, which Dokoupil turned into a diatribe defending Israel and accusing the author of antisemitism. CBS staffers were reportedly not impressed by Weiss’s uninspired pick of a “mediocre white man.”

Ahead of his debut, Dokoupil previewed his show with a MAGA-coded video posted to social media railing against the “elites” and “legacy media,” complaining about coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop, Hillary Clinton’s emails, and the president’s fitness for office (not naming names) as examples of journalistic missteps—that were all copy-pasted right-wing talking points.

Dokoupil’s appointment seemingly aligns with Weiss’s journalistic North Star: staying on the Trump administration’s good side, and pulling the national discourse to an invented center that is both unrigorous and uninteresting.

Forget a conservative majority—Donald Trump personally needs Republicans to win big in the coming midterms.

The president tossed aside the significance of his allies’ local elections while speaking at the GOP retreat Tuesday, telling lawmakers that he needs the party to maintain control of the federal government in order to avoid a Democrat-led impeachment effort.

“You gotta win the midterms,” Trump said. “Because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be—I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”

Republicans have had a trifecta in Washington since Trump returned to office, white-knuckling every branch of the federal government. If history is any indicator, that won’t bode well for the party come this fall: In a typical midterm cycle, the presidential party loses grounds via........

© New Republic