Epstein/Trump. What is Trump up to now? Will the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein finally see the public reckoning they have demanded for the men in the Epstein files—including the President of the United States? Given his track record on the subject, President Trump’s about-face on the congressional vote to release of the Epstein files cannot be trusted. Of course, he doesn’t need Congress to release a single page of those files. He’s the president; he could order it now. Instead—he’s ordered this new “investigation” of Democrats who have ties to Epstein. My prediction: Trump/Bondi will hide behind that politically motivated stunt, and Trump will claim he did everything he could. Whatever damages Democrats will leak, and Trump’s involvement will be covered up.

The rot spreads. With the indictments—and not guilty pleas—of two pitchers for the Cleveland Guardians, Congress is deepening its scrutiny of the world of sports betting. Members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Congress sent a letter to Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred on Friday, asking for answers: “The integrity of the game is paramount,” the letter from Republicans and Democrats on the committee said. “MLB has every interest in ensuring baseball is free from influence and manipulation. ... But in light of these recent developments, MLB must clearly demonstrate how it is meeting its responsibility to safeguard America’s pastime.” We are at the beginning of what I expect will be a giant scandal that will touch most sports. The human toll inside and outside sports is staggering. Watch this excellent piece by Will Reeve, my former colleague at ABC News; it tells the story of one college basketball player, who is banned for life from the NCAA because he needed money to care for his newborn baby. I’ve said it before: The legalization of gambling almost everywhere and all the time in America is a cancer, a grievous policy mistake that is hurting our country in many, many ways. We have a low-life politics in part because we have embraced the fast-buck, sleazy morality of big-time gambling.

China-Japan tensions. Japan’s hardline conservative prime minister, Takaichi Sanae, has been in office less than a month and is already making her mark on geopolitics. We are living in a new era of confrontation with China—an era that began before Trump’s second term, but has accelerated sharply—and Takaichi has issued a new policy that China hates. She declared earlier this month that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could, in the worst-case scenario, “constitute a survival-threatening situation” for Japan. Under Japanese law, that is the language used to describe the circumstances under which a prime minister could authorize the deployment of troops to protect the Japanese homeland. In response, Beijing issued a formal protest, Chinese state media went rabid on Takaichi, and the Chinese consul general in Osaka issued a barely veiled threat on the Japanese prime minister’s life: “That filthy neck that barged in on its own—I’ve got no choice but to cut it off without a moment’s hesitation.” Now China has made threatening moves in the East China Sea and warned its citizens against traveling to Japan. This flare-up of tensions is likely to recede, but look for the new government in Japan to continue its steady pushback against Beijing and remilitarization programs. The tensions and the stakes in the Western Pacific are rising by the month.

The decline of the DOJ. I’m a bit late to the party on this one, but a new book out this months tells the grim story of what’s gone wrong at the Department of Justice, under both President Trump and President Joe Biden. Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department, is written by Carol Leonning and Aaron C. Davis, two Pulitzer Prize winners who covered DOJ for The Washington Post for years (though Leonning has left the paper). This is one of the most important stories in the Trump era, and fixing the broken DOJ will be a high priority when (if) we emerge from these troubled times. An essential account.