After Graham Platner secured the Democratic nomination for Senate in Maine, his first ad of the general election didn’t mention his opponent, Sen. Susan Collins, or the Republican Party. It focused on the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and who he called the “Epstein class” of elites in both parties.
“Some of the most powerful Democrats and Republicans in the country were on Epstein island,” Platner said in the ad, referring to Epstein’s former residence in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Platner, whose economic-populist campaign combined with controversial online statements and a since-removed tattoo of a Nazi symbol have drawn national attention, framed himself in opposition to this elite class.
“It seems the only thing the party establishments can agree on is a love of Jeffrey Epstein, and a hatred of me,” he said. “I’m Graham Platner, and I approve this message because together, we will take back our government from the Epstein class.”
It’s not just Platner: In midterm races from Texas to Maine, Democrats and at least one Republican are running against Epstein and “the Epstein class,” a term Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California first used last year to describe the men among the economic and cultural elite who traveled in Epstein’s social circles and helped rehabilitate his reputation after the multimillionaire ex-financier became a convicted sex offender in 2008 for soliciting prostitution of a minor.
“I’ll give the survivors credit, but I did coin the phrase ‘Epstein class’ because they’re a group of rich and powerful people who are not playing by the rules, and it offends the sense that we have one tier of justice,” Khanna told The 19th.
The number of candidates highlighting Epstein in their campaign messaging, Khanna argued, “shows what a powerful issue this is to win the midterms and win back the trust of the American public.”
In two of the most competitive races to determine control of the U.S. Senate, Platner and Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, who is running for reelection, have castigated the “Epstein class” and what they say is elite corruption in their ads and messaging. In Texas, Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico has criticized his opponent, Trump-endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, for approving what critics have called an overly lenient, “Epstein-style” plea deal for a defendant charged with sexually abusing a child. And in Ohio’s Senate race, both Republican Sen. Jon Husted and his Democratic opponent, former Sen. Sherrod Brown, have run television ads attacking each other by singling out campaign donations from those in Epstein’s orbit.
Last year, Epstein’s survivors fueled a bipartisan push in Congress led by Khanna and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie to compel the Justice Department to release over 3.5 million files from its investigation into Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. The release of the files, following months of resistance from President Donald Trump and the White House, provided a rare look into how the wealthy and powerful operate behind closed doors.
Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide, but it’s continued to drive scrutiny, skepticism and conspiracy theories in the years since. During the 2024 election, top Trump allies, some of whom ended up in his administration, pledged to release the Epstein files. The Trump administration’s reluctance to do so frustrated and splintered the MAGA base, resulting in a rare rebuke of the administration by Congress. Republicans who bucked Trump by pushing for the release of the files have also faced political consequences: In May, a Trump-backed primary challenger ousted Massie from his seat in Congress.
Americans across the political spectrum have continued to ask about the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s connections among the political elite. (Angela Weiss/AFP)
“I think the single most bipartisan issue in the country is the Epstein files investigation,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee who has spearheaded Congress’ investigation into the Epstein case, told reporters this month. “And so I think we’re going to talk about it a lot.”
No one other than co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, currently serving out a prison sentence for sex trafficking, has been prosecuted in connection to Epstein’s crimes in the United States. But Epstein courted influence and rubbed shoulders with prominent individuals associated with both parties in his efforts to rehabilitate his reputation.
Republicans have seized on Epstein’s ties to figures including former President Bill Clinton, who sat for a congressional deposition along with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman, who has expressed regret for associating with Epstein, to accuse Democrats of hypocrisy. It’s also provided some Democratic candidates with a way to hit on what they cast as corruption in both parties.
The revelations from the files further fueled the widespread, bipartisan exasperation among voters with the wealthiest elites. The Epstein issue, two Democratic pollsters told The 19th, is rare for its high salience and far reach even among less politically engaged voters — and for the high levels of bipartisan agreement on the need for more action.
Surveys released this year from Democratic-aligned firm Navigator Research and progressive pollster Data for Progress back that argument up. In both polls, majorities of voters, including a majority of Republicans, believe there hasn’t been enough accountability connected to Epstein’s crimes and want to see more arrests and prosecutions. In a Navigator poll released in March, the share of Americans who said they believed Trump administration officials should resign over the Epstein matter increased when they were informed about officials in other countries being arrested, fired or forced to resign over Epstein ties.
“What has happened with the Epstein files is such a clear distillation of the frustration that Americans across different partisan ideologies, even Republicans, even MAGA Republicans, and certainly independents, feel that there’s a different set of rules — or that really no rules at all — for the elite who just seem to get ahead,” said Melissa Toufanian, managing director at Navigator.
In the Navigator survey, half of Americans, including two-thirds of Democrats and 58 percent of independents, said they believed the government was “definitely” covering up additional wrongdoing by Epstein. Seventy-two percent of Americans, including 70 percent of independents, 67 percent of non-MAGA Republicans and 57 percent of respondents identified as MAGA Republicans, said there should be more arrests and prosecutions related to Epstein. Sixty-four percent of respondents, including two-thirds of independents and half of Republicans, said they believed Epstein’s crimes were “unsurprising and the result of a broader problem.”
“It really cuts across every political divide in a way that we almost never see on other issues,” Toufanian said.
The number of red state candidates running on Epstein and the “Epstein class” demonstrates this. In addition to Talarico and Brown, Noah Taylor, an Army veteran running as a Democrat for the Senate in Kansas, and Dan Osborn, an independent Senate candidate in Nebraska, have also framed their campaigns as opposing the “Epstein class.”
Osborn, who is challenging Sen. Pete Ricketts, issued a news release pointing to a campaign rally in which Ricketts and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas appeared together, calling them “birds of a feather who are content to carry out the agenda of the billionaire Epstein class.”
Research from Data for Progress found that voters were not only highly aware of the Epstein files issue but named specific figures, including Trump, who they believed to be part of the Epstein class. In a Data for Progress poll released in March, a plurality of likely voters said they didn’t expect to see additional arrests connected to Epstein, and majorities of voters said they held both the Trump and Biden administrations accountable for a lack of action.
“What we found there is that people are immediately able to attach this to wealthy elites and corruption and people that are rigging the system in their own interests, and then finally, that voters find those messages to be pretty convincing,” said Ryan O’Donnell, Data for Progress’ executive director.
Inflation and the high cost of living consistently rank among voters’ top concerns ahead of the midterms, an advantage for Democrats aiming to win back control of Congress. Still, O’Donnell said, surveys show that Democrats have little trust advantage on which party voters trust more to tackle corruption. Candidates’ focus on “the Epstein class,” he said, aligns with that broader anti-corruption and anti-elite messaging push many Democratic candidates are centering in 2026.
“I think it directly fits in with voters’ top concern of cost of living right now,” O’Donnell said. “Broadly, Democrats, if they want to fight their way out of this, have to show that they’re actually willing to take on corruption in that way, and I do think that the Epstein class language is one way to do that.”
Why Democrats Are Running Against the ‘Epstein Class’ was originally published by The 19th and is republished with permission.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.