JD Vance Abused Power to Raise River Levels for Family Kayaking Trip

Vice President JD Vance made the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, or USACE, raise the water level in a river to make it easier for his family to go kayaking in Ohio.

The Guardian reported that Vance requested that the engineers change the output of the Little Miami River at Caesar Creek Lake, a task that is usually reserved only for public events and emergency first responder training. But to do it at the personal request of the vice president and his family—while not illegal—is a blatant exploitation of the privileges that Vance’s office gives him. The Guardian noted that Vance’s request wasn’t just to aid the Secret Service but to create “ideal kayaking conditions” for Vance and his family.

USACE data confirms a significant increase and then decrease in the river’s water levels corresponding with Vance’s arrival and departure from his family river excursion earlier this month.

It’s especially twisted for Vance to burn up public labor and resources for his family’s own leisure while his administration makes massive cuts to the National Park Service, which made his little river day possible in the first place.

“Those cuts are directly impacting middle-class families’ vacations,” former Bush administration ethics lawyer Richard Painter told The Guardian. “Whether they are doing it for the Secret Service or for him I think is splitting hairs. What he ought to be doing is choosing another place.”

The NPS has had more than a quarter of its workforce slashed since President Trump took office.

“When I was President Obama’s ethics czar in the White House I got a lot of unusual requests, but I never got one to increase the outflow of a waterway as part of a government official going kayaking,” former White House special counsel Norm Eisen said. “I never would have permitted this kind of a thing because whether it technically violates the rules or not, it creates the appearance that the vice-president of the United States is getting special treatment that’s not available to the average person who wants to utilise that body of water for recreational purposes.… While there may well be security-related explanations or justifications that come into the analysis, my reaction is: I don’t care. We shouldn’t be utilising government resources in this way. I never would have allowed it.”

Vance’s office has yet to comment.

A resurfaced line from a 2007 New York Post report has called into question whether Donald Trump actually booted Jeffrey Epstein from Mar-a-Lago when he said he did.

The president has claimed that his long friendship with the pedophilic socialite corroded after Trump learned that Epstein was abducting his underage female employees at Mar-a-Lago. Reporting from The Wall Street Journal and the Miami Herald has indicated that Trump remained connected to Epstein until at least October 2007, when Epstein acted inappropriately toward a Mar-a-Lago club member’s daughter. That same month, Epstein’s account was listed as “closed” in Mar-a-Lago’s books.

But a nixed membership didn’t mean that Epstein stopped visiting Mar-a-Lago, the sex trafficker told the Post.

“Epstein denies he is banned from Mar-a-Lago and says, in fact, he was recently invited to an event there,” the Post reported at the time, in a line recently dredged up by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger.

Whether Epstein actually attended an event after his membership account was closed has not been confirmed.

That exchange with the Post would have taken place seven years after Epstein’s most prominent accuser, Virginia Giuffre, said she was kidnapped from Trump’s Florida resort by Ghislaine Maxwell.

Trump made international headlines last month when he admitted to reporters aboard Air Force One that he knew Epstein had “stolen” underage girls on his payroll at Mar-a-Lago, including Giuffre.

Two years after Giuffre was abducted, Trump told New York magazine that he had known Epstein for 15 years and referred to him as a “terrific guy.”

“It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump said at the time.

In 2003, Trump participated in a 50th birthday book for Epstein at the request of Maxwell, penning a letter to Epstein in which he referred to the disgraced financier as his “pal” and waxed poetic about their shared “secret.”

In 2005, police opened a criminal investigation into Epstein after reports emerged that he had paid a 14-year-old girl for a massage at his Palm Beach residence, a strategy that Epstein and Maxwell’s victims said was often the beginning of their sexual abuse.

Epstein pleaded guilty to prostituting minors in June 2008.

Elected Republicans these days seem to view the gravity of their office with naked contempt—but this Wisconsin representative took it to a whole new level.

Republican Representative Derrick Van Orden tweeted out a picture of a nude dude with a ski mask, tagging his Democratic peer: This you?

It’s the latest incident in a long line of political beef between Van Orden and Democratic Representative Mark Pocan, both congressmen from Wisconsin. Van Orden wrote in the post, “Looks like @MarkPocan is taking a little European VaCa after his long series of struggle sessions. Enjoy your time, Mark, wear sunscreen.”

Pocan responded to the photo (which was not of him) saying, “KKKlassy, Derrick, KKKlassy.”

Van Orden, a MAGA Republican who has spouted the kind of racist America First rhetoric common on the right, then doubled down in his response, saying: “So you running around flashing your naked self in Europe with a sex toy taped to a stick makes me a white supremacist? Do you have any idea how ugly this makes you look?”

Pocan retorted, accusing Van Orden of being drunk—a favorite attack of the Democratic congressman who, during an argument live on TV, said to Van Orden, “Are you drinking right now?”

Pocan, a progressive voice in Congress, has been a member of the House since 2012 when he ran for now-Senator Tammy Baldwin’s old seat. Van Orden was first elected in 2022 after a failed run in 2020 endorsed by Donald Trump. The two congressmen first exchanged verbal blows in 2021 during Van Orden’s reelection campaign, over Van Orden’s presence at the rally turned insurrection on January 6, 2021, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Former Republican Representative Reid Ribble, who considers himself a friend to both men, seemed a bit tired of the back-and-forth.

“It’s all just nonsense,” he told the Journal Sentinel. “But they can’t seem to let go of it.”

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance flatly denied reports that they planned to hold a strategy meeting about the government’s next steps in quelling the outrage over Jeffrey Epstein. 

During a press conference in the Oval Office Wednesday, Trump was asked whether Vance had dinner plans with a number of top administration officials to strategize about the Epstein case. 

“I don’t know, I could ask you that,” Trump replied, motioning for Vance to jump in.  

“I saw it reported today, and it’s completely fake news,” Vance said. “We’re not meeting to talk about the Epstein situation, and I think the reporter who reported it needs to get better sources.”

“The whole thing is a hoax,” Trump continued. “It’s put out by the Democrats because we’ve had the most successful six months in the history of our country, and that’s just a way of trying to divert attention to something that’s total bullshit.”

Three sources familiar with the meeting had told CNN that White House officials would meet Wednesday night to discuss a unified response to the ongoing turmoil over the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files. The meeting would include Vance and the slate of officials that sources said were behind the White House’s ongoing strategy: Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. 

The White House was reportedly “floored” that information about the meeting leaked to the public, according to CNN host Kasie Hunt. “But now, after significant news coverage of this scheduled meeting, sources say it may be moved, rescheduled, or canceled entirely,” Hunt said Wednesday night, after Trump and Vance rejected the reports altogether. 

The public is clamoring for more transparency around Epstein, especially after the Department of Justice clawed back the release of the convicted sex offender’s so-called “client list,” claiming that—contrary to prior statements—such a thing didn’t exist. 

Earlier this week, the government conducted a lengthy interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime confidante of Epstein’s—over the requests of his accusers—who may angle for a presidential pardon in exchange for exonerating Trump in the face of the ever-emerging ties to his former neighbor and friend.

Officials in the Trump administration appear to be advancing their own agendas without informing the president.

Speaking with reporters at the White House Wednesday, Donald Trump revealed that he was not aware that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had announced a $500 million divestment from mRNA vaccine research.

“You were the driving force behind Operation Warp Speed, these mRNA vaccines that are the gold standard,” a reporter asked. “Now your health secretary is pulling back all the funding for research. He’s saying that the risks outweigh the benefits, which puts him at odds with the entire medical community and with you. What is going on?”

“Research on what?” Trump asked.

“Into mRNA vaccines,” the reporter clarified.

“Well we’re going to look at that. We’re talking about it, and they’re doing a very good job, and you know that is a pass,” Trump said. “Operation Warp Speed was—whether you’re Republican or Democrat—was considered one of the most incredible things ever done in this country.”

Trump then patted himself on his back for how his first administration reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic, fast-tracking research and access to mRNA technology that ultimately provided Americans with a vaccine in record time. (This was, of course, after Trump had downplayed the effects of the virus, pushed back against medically backed health and safety precautions, and encouraged people to inject bleach into their veins.)

“That was now a long time ago, and we’re on to other things. But we are speaking about it, we have meetings about it tomorrow, tomorrow at 12 o’clock,” Trump said. “We’re looking for other answers to other problems, to other sicknesses and diseases.”

But Kennedy also pulled the federal funding for treatments to other sicknesses and diseases, nixing 22 mRNA studies because “the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.”

Instead, Kennedy said that his agency would shift the funding toward “safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate.”

The problem with that is twofold in the face of superior technology: It will result in a sacrifice of time and money. Traditional vaccines injected a weakened or dead version of a virus, triggering the body’s immune response and the development of antibodies. Researching and developing these vaccines is a “lengthy and costly” process that becomes further complicated when researchers have to respond to mutations in the virus, according to Penn Medicine.

MRNA technology, meanwhile, employs a synthetic genetic code that instructs the body to produce proteins akin to the viral protein, training the body’s immune system without ever actually exposing the individual to the disease. Once the response is initiated, the synthetic genetic sequence breaks down in the body, according to Medline Plus. The result is a “plug-and-play” vaccine technology that offers rapid development times at a lower cost to traditional vaccines.

In the years since mRNA technology debuted on the U.S. market, biomedical researchers have framed mRNA as a potential cancer treatment. But its sudden emergence in the United States prompted suspicion from anti-vaxxers, including Kennedy.

Since Kennedy took the reins at HHS, he has removed independent medical experts on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel and replaced them with vaccine skeptics. He warned against the use of the MMR vaccine during Texas’s historic measles outbreak, recommending that suffering patients instead take vitamins. And he founded his new directive for America’s health policy—the “Make America Healthy Again” report—on studies generated by AI that never existed in the real world.