Morning Brief: Epstein Threatens To Derail Bondi, SCOTUS Hands Trump A Win. Meanwhile, In Mexico …

Questions mount over the DOJ and FBI’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, fueling public suspicion, the Supreme Court clears the way for Trump’s mass government layoffs, and a deadly “screwworm” is spreading through cattle in Mexico.

It’s Thursday, July 10, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.

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The Curious Case Of Jeffrey Epstein

Topline: Days after the Trump administration declared the Epstein investigation closed, public outrage continues to grow. Now, some Republicans are calling for the removal of Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The Trump administration released a now-infamous memo Sunday night saying the Jeffry Epstein case was closed, but that is clearly not what many in the GOP base wanted to hear. Some conservative radio hosts and influencers, as well as lawmakers on Capitol Hill, have made clear they don’t believe the official story.

According to their memo, the Department of Justice determined that Epstein’s death was a suicide after reviewing the existing evidence in the FBI’s possession — critics want to know why they didn’t seek to gather more evidence. 

“I’m not surprised to hear that within the existing case files, they didn’t find anything,” Mike Howell, President of the Oversight Project, told The Daily Wire. “The FBI didn’t fulsomely investigate the Epstein [case] … They should have investigated with this new leadership … You had the richest and most powerful people in the world descending on an island where a known massive sex trafficker was. This goes out to the nature of the global elites and their relationship with the intelligence community and law enforcement, which appears to be very preferential. These are massive questions about the functioning of our country and the rule of law, not only the safety of young women.”

For years, the president and his allies have vowed to present evidence on this case to the American people. Both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, for example, said on the campaign trail that they would declassify the “Epstein Files.” FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino also vowed to prioritize transparency on the case. 

But perhaps the most vocal of all was Attorney General Pam Bondi, who made public statements claiming that there were “tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn” as well as other co-conspirators in the case whose names would be made public. In an interview with Fox News earlier this year, Bondi went so far as to claim that she had a list of Epstein’s clients “on my desk” – the DOJ now claims that document does not exist.

SCOTUS Sides With Trump Administration, Permits Mass Layoffs

Topline: The Supreme Court this week cleared the way for President Trump to move forward with plans to shrink the federal bureaucracy.

In February, shortly after taking office, President Trump ordered federal agencies to develop plans to implement the recommendations of the DOGE to reduce the size of the federal workforce. Several federal employee unions and activist groups sued, arguing that the executive did not have the authority to restructure the federal workforce without congressional approval. In May, Judge Susan Illston of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California issued a nationwide injunction, pausing the Trump administration’s plans.

In an unsigned opinion, the Supreme Court stayed the injunction, while it did not preclude future court cases challenging the legality of specific layoffs. The court’s ruling will allow the Trump administration to implement its proposed workforce reductions.

“There are [going] to be more lawsuits, but I do think [Trump’s] got enough running room to really start going forward with this,”  Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Wire. “What people ought to realize is how stupid so many of these lawsuits are. Reductions in force … Almost every president has done that. Heck, Obama did it. And nobody thought it was some kind of legal issue or problem until now, when folks are raving about it and saying that President Trump is somehow doing something wrong.”

Interestingly, the stay appears to have divided the court’s liberal members. While her reasoning differed from the majority decision, Justice Sonya Sotomayor signed a concurrence in favor of it. The court’s most junior member, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, signed a pointed dissent calling the majority decision “not only truly unfortunate but also hubristic and senseless.”

“Brown Jackson is really at the far end of the spectrum and that the other justices are getting tired of her,” von Spakovsky said. “I disagree often with what Justice Kagan and Sotomayor put in their decisions, but they at least try to have a legal basis for what they’re saying … she just doesn’t have the legal acumen to be on the court.”

Flesh-Eating Maggots Threaten Livestock

Topline: A flesh-eating maggot has appeared in Mexico, with outbreaks within 700 miles of the United States’ southern border. The pests are spiking fears about potential devastation to U.S. cattle and other livestock. 

A species of parasitic fly, the New World screwworm, spread to Mexico late last year after decades of efforts by the United States to keep the pest out of North America. The adult screwworm lays its eggs in the wounds or other openings (eyes, nostrils, etc) of warm-blooded animals like cattle, other livestock, and sometimes even humans, and consumes their flesh, leading to severe tissue damage or even death – the most recent Mexican outbreak has seen at least eight cases of human infections. They wreak havoc on livestock, in particular – a screwworm infestation can kill a cow in a matter of days. 

On May 11, immediately after the outbreaks were detected, the Department of Agriculture suspended live cattle, horse, and bison imports through America’s ports of entry along the southern border with Mexico. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has repeatedly said the screwworm poses a serious threat “to our livestock industry, our economy, and our food supply chain.” 

After implementing those restrictions, the Department of Agriculture announced its next step to eradicate the screwworm: breed billions of flies, sterilize them, and release them into Mexico and southern Texas. Female screwworms only mate once, so flooding an area with sterilized males is an effective way to prevent wild flies from reproducing. The United States has already done this once – the New World screwworm’s historic range extended into much of North America before it was systematically eradicated decades ago – and this method is said to be much safer, more effective, and more environmentally friendly than spraying the pests. 

The Department of Agriculture is also monitoring Mexico’s animal health controls and improving surveillance and detection of screwworm, including providing traps, lures, and technical expertise to Mexico, among other measures.  In a press release issued on June 30, the department said it’s now consistently conducting sterile fly dispersal, releasing more than 100 million flies each week. They also have teams working with Mexico to observe this and say they’ve not seen “a notable increase in reported screwworm cases in Mexico, nor any northward movement of the pest over the past eight weeks.” 

However, 19 different cattle groups sent a letter to Rollins, urging the USDA to keep the ban on Mexican imports in place, as they claim this risk still persists.