The Read | The Press Decides Who Gets Named
Plus: Two Texas incumbents lose their seats, Trump's redistricting push hits two losses in 24 hours, and Garden Grove finally goes home.
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Let’s get into it.
In Today’s Read
OPM proposed a five-year NDA for every federal worker, covering “any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material.” That phrase covers the whole federal email system.
Sarah Kellen named three Epstein abusers in closed-door testimony. CNN ran the names. Most legacy outlets buried them.
Treasury subpoenaed Hasan Piker over his March Cuba trip. On a Sunday Twitch stream, with no prompting, he named CCP-tied tycoon Neville Roy Singham as his funder. About 40 Americans are in the probe.
Plus: Paxton beat Cornyn in the Texas runoff, Al Green lost his Houston primary, a third firearms incident near Trump, and Garden Grove evacuations lifted.
A Five-Year NDA for Every Federal Worker
The Story
Office of Personnel Management (OPM) posted a draft government-wide non-disclosure agreement to the Federal Register on Tuesday, May 26. The rule would bar federal workers from sharing "confidential government information," including "internal agency operations, personnel matters, procurement processes, or any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material." The term is five years post-employment, retroactive to current hires. The draft text says the NDA does not override the Whistleblower Protection Act. Disclosures of fraud, waste, abuse, corruption, and retaliation to inspectors general, the Office of Special Counsel, or Congress stay protected. Disclosures to the press are not carved out. OPM cited recent press leaks as the trigger, naming the January Venezuela raid and ongoing immigration-enforcement leaks. AFGE, the largest federal union, says agencies will push the form on existing employees and fire those who refuse to sign. Per Bloomberg Law, the proposed rule went up for a 60-day public comment window before any final adoption. WaPo, CNN, and NPR ran identical timelines.
The Left’s read. WaPo, CNN, NPR, and PBS frame this as a press-freedom crackdown and a chilling effect on whistleblowers. Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Lauren Harper said the proposal from “the ‘most transparent administration in history’ that millions of federal employees sign a blanket NDA is not just absurd, it’s unnecessary and dangerously secretive.” Coverage emphasizes the breadth of “pre-decisional” as a category and the retroactive application to current hires.
The Right’s read. Sparse to nonexistent. The right-of-center outlets that covered the story framed it as leak-plumbing. The Venezuela raid is the working example, the IRGC retaliation risk if the leak had landed early enough. Most conservative coverage skipped the rule entirely.
What both sides are skipping. OPM itself admits the NDA "does not create new substantive restrictions on employee speech or disclosure rights." The Espionage Act already criminalizes leaks of classified information. Disclosure of personal information is covered by the Privacy Act of 1974. Federal employees are already barred from disclosing or using nonpublic information for personal benefit under the 1993 Standards of Ethical Conduct. So if the substantive obligations already exist, what's actually new? Contractual enforcement. A signed contract every federal worker has to actively acknowledge. A breach-of-contract claim agencies can pursue without filing a criminal case. A firing pathway that doesn't require an Espionage Act prosecution. Left coverage has gestured at this. Right coverage has skipped it. Neither has led with the OPM admission.
Leaking has always been a problem inside the federal government, and it’s escalated significantly since Trump entered politics. The Venezuela raid is the cleanest example. American operators were in the field. A legacy outlet held the leak only after the White House made the case that publishing would risk service members in action. Leaking is a real issue and a real national security risk. But what happens when competing priorities collide? When is it about national security, and when is it about politics?
The wording matters. “Any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material” is the whole federal email system. Every draft memo, every personnel discussion, every agency back-and-forth before a final decision. That is the entire record. A five-year gag on every federal employee, retroactive to current hires, is extensive. And while the rule keeps IG, OSC, and Congress open as channels, it forecloses the one channel that has actually moved the needle when those failed: the press.
“So is the carve-out out of principle, or out of requirement? I think we can guess.”
The carve-outs are there because legislation requires them. Without those carve-outs, the rule would be challenged and shut down fast. So is the carve-out out of principle, or out of requirement? I think we can guess. By foreclosing the press route, federal whistleblowers’ only formal options become IG, OSC, and Congress. IG complaints often take many months to move. OSC has its own backlog. The press call lands a story in a day. Think of the cases that have kept the government accountable when the internal channels failed. Dr. Sam Foote spent 24 years at the Phoenix VA before taking the secret-wait-list deaths to CNN in 2014, after years of internal complaints went nowhere. Forty veterans had died waiting for care. Secretary Shinseki resigned within weeks. The story moved because the formal channels had stalled.
Comey’s 2017 memo leak is the counter-example. The memos reached the public through the press and got used to push the now-discredited Russiagate framing for three years. Leaks can be politically weaponized when press bias and source motivation align. The First Amendment doesn’t sort which.
It’s a challenge to balance all of the priorities and still protect the freedom of the press. Which is the entire point of the Bill of Rights.
Watch the 60-day comment-period close date. Watch which agency adopts the form first. Watch the First Amendment challenge that’s coming. The test will be whether courts force a carve-out for the press the same way the Whistleblower Protection Act forced one for IG, OSC, and Congress.
CNN Ran the Epstein Names. Most Outlets Buried Them
The Story
Sarah Kellen, Epstein’s longtime assistant who pleaded the Fifth roughly 700 times in civil depositions over the years, sat for closed-door testimony before the House Oversight Committee on Thursday, May 21. Chairman James Comer called it “by far the most substantive and productive interview” the panel has conducted on Epstein.
CNN reported Friday that Kellen named three additional alleged abusers in Epstein’s orbit: celebrity hairstylist Frédéric Fekkai (who denies it), former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine (who says he met Epstein “only a few times”), and fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier (who died in 2022). Kellen also told the committee she was sexually and psychologically abused by Epstein on a weekly basis for over a decade. Comer now considers her a victim, not a co-conspirator. Bondi testifies on the Epstein files Friday, May 29.
The Left’s read. CNN ran the names. That’s the exception, not the norm. Most other mainstream-left coverage led with procedure (“closed-door testimony,” “victim status determined”) and walked the three names down the page or omitted them. NYT, WaPo, and NPR did not lead with the names. PBS covered the testimony without naming Levine or Fekkai in the headline or first three paragraphs.
The Right’s read. ABC News led with the names. The Gateway Pundit, Just the News, and the Free Press treated the names as the lede. The framing inside that ecosystem: legacy press won’t run the names because two of the three named are Democrat-adjacent or Manhattan-society-adjacent, and the press protects its own.
What both sides are skipping. Kellen's contested status. Multiple Epstein accusers have positioned her as the operations role for years. Virginia Giuffre's 2015 sworn declaration in the Maxwell case: Kellen "kept a list of girls" and "lined up the massages," and was "often the one who brought the girls upstairs" before Epstein entered the room. A 2008 Florida lawsuit by a Jane Doe plaintiff: Kellen gathered the victim's name and phone number, then walked her up a flight of stairs to a bedroom with a massage table. In 2013, a separate lawsuit called Kellen a "lieutenant" in Epstein's organization, "who served as both his scheduler and a recruiter/procurer of the girls." The 2007 federal non-prosecution agreement named her as one of four "potential co-conspirators." Never charged. Comer's "she's a victim now" call is a political determination from an Oversight chair, not a court finding. Both can be true. She could have been abused for a decade and run the logistics of other girls' abuse. The framing on both sides treats it as binary. It isn't.
I can’t imagine the toll a decade of sexual and psychological abuse by a man like Epstein takes on a person. If half of what’s in Kellen’s sworn statement to the committee is true, the harm she carries is real. I understand the legal calculus too. All of her prior depositions where she pled the Fifth happened while Epstein was alive and before Maxwell went to prison. Pleading the Fifth when you’d otherwise be staring down a co-conspirator charge is not silence. It’s competent legal advice.
The opposite can also be true. She had enough sense to take the Fifth when the prosecutor’s view of her was lieutenant, scheduler, recruiter. Now that Epstein is dead, Maxwell is in prison, and the narrative has settled on monster, she can step in as victim. Timing is the question. A witness with this much legal exposure pleads the Fifth across roughly seven hundred questions in a 2016 deposition and then opens the door in May 2026, because the door is finally safest to open. Naming three new abusers strengthens the victim posture and pulls focus from the operations role Giuffre’s 2015 sworn declaration and the 2007 federal non-prosecution agreement put her in. Both motivations can coexist.
“That headline framed the namer as the problem. Not the named.”
Which brings us to the press. They are all too happy to run some names and not others. Three months ago, on February 11, 2026, Rep. Ro Khanna stood on the House floor and read out six redacted names from the Epstein files: an American billionaire (Wexner), a Dubai logistics CEO (bin Sulayem), a former European Parliament member (Caputo), and three names that read Italian, Georgian, and Russian (Nuara, Mikeladze, Leonov). DOJ pushed back within days: Deputy AG Todd Blanche said some of the men were “completely random people selected years ago for an FBI lineup,” with no actual connection to Epstein. Lineup photos are filler the FBI uses so victims aren’t identifying the only person shown to them. The mainstream press ran the names anyway. CNN had Khanna on Anderson Cooper. PBS NewsHour and The Hill put the names in their headlines. WaPo’s response was an opinion column titled “How Ro Khanna turned Epstein sex trafficking case into campaign stunt.” That headline framed the namer as the problem. Not the named. The names ran because they served the narrative. Foreign nationals and lineup-photo fillers handed the press a clean way to swing at the Trump DOJ with low political and litigation risk. Nobody had to pressure-test. They printed.
Three months later, Kellen testifies behind closed doors. The Republican-led House Oversight panel hands the names of Fekkai, Levine, and Demarchelier to the press. CNN runs them. NYT, WaPo, NPR bury them in paragraph nine. Same outlets, different volume. The Epstein test runs both ways. Either you name the named, or you don’t.
Bondi testifies on the Epstein files Friday. The Kellen names pre-load the questions Garcia and Mace will ask. Watch which networks cover the Bondi hearing live and which ones run summary clips after. Watch whether NYT and WaPo lead with Levine’s name once Bondi gets asked about him under oath. Watch whether the WaPo opinion section runs a “Comer turns Epstein files into political stunt” version of the Khanna column from February. The asymmetric naming pattern will repeat.
IKYMI
Ever Heard of Neville Roy Singham? Hasan Piker Just Named Him
The Story
Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control subpoenaed Twitch streamer Hasan Piker in May over his March trip to Cuba, which he took alongside Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin. About 40 Americans are reportedly in the probe; Ilhan Omar’s daughter Isra Hirsi is in the broader scope.
On a Sunday Twitch stream, with no prompting, Piker named CCP-tied tycoon Neville Roy Singham as the financier behind the Cuba trip and as the funder behind the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), the ANSWER Coalition, and Code Pink.
Independent journalist Asra Nomani has tied Singham to a $278 million network of nonprofits seeding U.S. political activism through layered LLCs and 501(c)s. Older Piker clips also surfaced this week showing him acknowledging the Cuban government provided his streaming infrastructure during a prior visit.
The Left’s read. Largely silent. NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, and Politico did not lead with the Piker admission and, in most cases, did not mention the Singham name. Where left coverage exists, the frame is OFAC overreach and the chilling effect on political speech.
The Right’s read. The Post Millennial, Fox, RedState, and the Free Press treated the admission as the lede. The frame: a left-wing influencer with a multi-million-dollar Twitch contract just confirmed on his own broadcast what right-of-center reporters have been chasing for years. Foreign money, layered LLCs, and ostensibly grassroots protest groups.
What both sides are skipping. The legal mechanism. OFAC subpoenas are administrative. They’re not indictments, and they’re not jury-protected. The First Amendment concern is real if Piker is being targeted as a journalist. He’s also not a journalist by his own description. He’s a streamer who took a trip to a sanctioned country with Medea Benjamin and used hardware allegedly provided by the Cuban government. That’s a different category. Both sides are running their pre-set frame on the press question and skipping the actual scope question. What is the $278 million network actually paying for?
Most readers have never heard of Neville Roy Singham. Until Sunday, a lot of the political class hadn’t either. If Piker hadn’t been talking himself in circles on his own stream, the name would still be where Singham wanted it: out of sight. He doesn’t carry the public profile of a George Soros. No press secretary, no foundation everyone recognizes, no name on the side of a building. That opacity is the point. Singham is arguably worse than Soros. Soros funds progressive causes domestically through Open Society. Singham operates a $278 million network with documented ties to the Chinese Communist Party and a clear Marxist ideological project, channeled through layered LLCs and U.S. 501(c) nonprofits. One is an American political movement. The other is a foreign-aligned ideological project running under American activist branding.
The most-watched left-wing streamer on Twitch named his own funder on stream. The Treasury subpoena did in two months what every right-of-center investigative reporter has been chasing for the last five years.
“Piker streams from a million-dollar mansion, pontificating (if you can call it that) on communism and revolution he would never actually participate in.”
Where is the NYT investigative piece? Where is WaPo’s deep-dive on Singham’s $278 million network? The Asra Nomani receipts have been public for years. Stu Smith’s X thread compiled Singham’s own ideological supercut. The clip of Piker acknowledging the Cuban government provided his streaming hardware is on X. None of this is hidden. It just isn’t being covered by the outlets that have spent the last decade hunting for foreign influence in American politics. Except when the foreign hand is Russian, apparently.
Piker streams from a million-dollar mansion, pontificating (if you can call it that) on communism and revolution he would never actually participate in. The moment things get challenging, he flips and rats. This is a weak man, and the progressive Democrats see him as a symbol of the future. That should tell you a lot about them.
The mock defense will be: “You’re cheering Treasury subpoenas of left-wing voices.” No. I’m noticing that the only mechanism that finally got the foreign-funding network named on the record was Treasury, because the press class that’s supposed to do this kind of reporting hasn’t.
He named his own funder on stream. Believe him.
Watch which legacy outlet runs the Singham name in a headline this week. Watch whether NYT files anything on the $278 million network now that Piker has confirmed the wiring on his own broadcast. Watch what happens to the framing if Isra Hirsi’s name turning up in the broader scope draws formal notice and a sitting member of Congress’s adult child gets pulled in.
Paxton wins the Texas Senate runoff. Texas AG Ken Paxton defeated four-term Sen. John Cornyn in Tuesday's Republican primary runoff. The Associated Press called the race shortly after 8 p.m., roughly an hour after most polls closed. Trump's eleventh-hour endorsement, landed seven days before the runoff, did the work. Paxton will face Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in November. Cornyn's three-decade Senate run is over. Texas Tribune
Al Green loses TX-18 to Christian Menefee. Houston Democrat Al Green, a two-decade incumbent and Trump's most aggressive impeachment antagonist, lost the TX-18 Democratic primary runoff Tuesday to fellow Rep. Christian Menefee. Final count: Menefee 68.6%, Green 31.4%. The incumbent-on-incumbent matchup was forced by GOP-led redistricting that put the two members in the same Houston district. Green introduced articles of impeachment against Trump in both terms and was censured by the House last year for disrupting Trump's joint-session speech. Even Houston Democrats appear to be done with the shenanigans. Texas Tribune
Trump’s redistricting push hits two losses in 24 hours. A three-judge federal panel ruled Tuesday, May 26, that Alabama’s 2023 congressional map intentionally discriminated by race. The state must use the two-majority-Black-district map for the 2026 midterms while AG Steve Marshall appeals to SCOTUS. The same day, the GOP-led South Carolina Senate voted to reject Trump’s redrawn map that would have eliminated Rep. Jim Clyburn’s district. Several Republicans broke with the White House, citing primary-cycle timing. CBS on Alabama | CBS on South Carolina
Third firearms incident near Trump in a month. On Saturday, May 23, around 6 p.m., a 21-year-old man named Nasire Best from Dundalk, MD pulled a gun at the Secret Service checkpoint at 17th and Pennsylvania and opened fire. Best died at the hospital. The wounded bystander is in serious but stable condition after successful surgery. Best had three prior Secret Service encounters in 2025. He blocked a White House entry lane in June, claiming to be Jesus Christ. He was detained on June 26 for making threats and again on July 10 for entering a restricted area. Third firearms incident near Trump in roughly a month, after the WHCD shooter (April 25) and the Washington Monument incident (May 4). Per CBS News
Garden Grove evacuations lifted. All evacuation orders related to the GKN Aerospace chemical incident were lifted Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. The final 16,000 displaced Orange County residents are home. Unified Command (fire, law enforcement, EPA, county health) confirmed no active leak, no fire risk, and no threat to the public. The 34,000-gallon methyl methacrylate tank that off-gassed Thursday May 21 has cooled after a crack let pressure release safely. A limited road closure remains near the GKN site, and the OC DA's probe into the cause is ongoing. ABC7 LA
Vance announces $22B in fraud referrals. On Tuesday, May 26, VP JD Vance posted that the administration’s Anti-Fraud Task Force has clawed back billions and referred roughly $22 billion in fraudulent small-business assistance claims to DOJ in its first two months. The task force was set up earlier this year following Medicaid-fraud audit findings. No formal DOJ filing has been announced yet.
Pentagon vs. DNC over Memorial Day post. The DNC published a Memorial Day post naming 13 U.S. service members killed during the recent Iran operation. The Pentagon called the post “classless,” arguing the political framing politicized the soldiers’ deaths. Pushback from Gold Star families and bipartisan veterans groups followed within hours.
UFC octagon rises on the White House South Lawn. Construction is underway for UFC Freedom 250, the Octagon-on-the-lawn event scheduled for Sunday, June 14. The date is both Flag Day and Trump's 80th birthday. The card headlines Ilia Topuria vs. Justin Gaethje for the unified UFC Lightweight Championship. Capacity: 5,000 invited guests on the lawn, with another 100,000 expected on screens nearby. UFC and TKO Group are covering the $60 million construction tab. The White House covers staffing and security.
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