Tough On Crime (Unless She Worked With Jeffrey Epstein Or Stormed The Capitol) August 13, 2025 Ghislaine Maxwell’s new Texas prison is no country club, but a lot nicer than where she was before. And wait — could this be true? Ghislaine Maxwell cleared to leave prison on work release. . . . Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) . . . demanded to know if Maxwell received special treatment after meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney. Isn’t having the Deputy Attorney General of the United States come visit you in prison “special treatment” on its face? I wonder what could possibly be motivating all this? (On a related note, I can’t recommend too often that you listen to E. Jean Carroll’s Not My Type. If you had any doubt that Trump lies and lies and lies about everything — just bald-faced lies — that doubt will totally vanish once you do.) Trump Is Right That D.C. Has a Serious Crime Problem. “But he has the wrong answer for how to fix it,” writes Charles Fain Lehman in this thoughtful piece. Trump’s D.C. Takeover Uses Classic Strongman Tactics, writes Ruth Ben-Ghiat: “Inventing a crisis; delegitimizing democratic authorities; making cities into laboratories of repression.” US deficit grows to $291 billion in July despite tariff revenue surge. Trump is exploding the deficit and National Debt even as he cuts essential aid to hungry children, cripples the Social Security Administration, weakens the dollar, cancels crucial medical research that could have saved your life — or your child’s — and cuts taxes for billionaires. Is this really what most people want? It’s just fun to be rich, isn’t it? (10 seconds). DREADING FRIDAY’S SUMMIT Maybe Trump will finally stand up to Putin but “Nerves are on a knife-edge ahead of the Trump-Putin summit.” VERU This is the one with a drug that, if approved by the FDA, would be desired by anyone taking Wegovy, Ozempic, Mounjaro or one of the others because it preserves muscle mass as you lose weight. I hope you didn’t buy shares when I first suggested it at 52 cents (which is to say $5.20, adjusted for this week’s 1-for-10 reverse split), because it’s steadily fallen — most sharply yesterday in the wake of it’s quarterly earnings call. Naturally (surely you know me by now), I bought more. At a $50 million market cap, I find the speculation irresistible. Yes, they could run out of money and disappear. But they could also make a deal with Novo Nordisk or Lilly, each with a market cap of more than $500 billion . . . for whom $1 billion to acquire this potential competitive advantage would be peanuts. (Only with money you can truly afford to lose.)