Republican Hopes Rest on the Epstein Class

Welcome to Radio Free America, Aaron Kleinman’s take on stories that matter in state politics but aren't getting enough attention. 

The 2025 elections were a win across the board for Democrats. They performed better than they did in 2024 pretty much everywhere, rural, suburban and urban. They improved with almost everyone; White, Black, Latino, Asian, male, female, college-educated and non-college educated. The exception, it appears, was with the very richest voters.

It’s hard to track how the richest people are voting because, well, there aren’t very many of them. But they do tend to cluster in certain areas, and 2025 election results indicate that they were the lone group of voters that Republicans improved among. For example, the one part of New York City that voted more Republican than in 2024 was the richest part of Manhattan. In New Jersey, the towns that were more Republican in 2025 than 2024 tended to be the state’s wealthiest. In Los Angeles, the voters seemed to support Prop 50 pretty much everywhere except for Beverly Hills. Even in Virginia, where Abigail Spanberger won in a blowout, some of her smallest gains over Harris came around wealthy Great Falls. 

And it makes sense from a material perspective — if you’re rich then Donald Trump’s been great for you! Especially if you’re willing to bribe him! On the other hand, consumer sentiment, especially among the less well off, has cratered. So, the few gains Republicans are making are among a tiny subset of the population that tends to be concentrated. Great news for Democrats, right?

Haha, just kidding, this is America, baby. Money is speech! And it looks like the Supreme Court will tilt the scales even more in favor of big money at some point this spring. Trump is flush with cash and the DNC is broke. Moreover, there are two emerging industries (crypto and AI) where federal regulation is basically an existential risk so are willing to spend previously unthinkable sums to back (usually right wing) candidates, accelerating a worrying trend. Republicans are losing voters, but they’re winning lots and lots of special interest cash.

Thankfully, hope is not lost here. As 2024 showed us, outspending your opponents on political ads is helpful but not decisive. And Democrats seem to have found their voice recently with Sen. Jon Ossoff outlining how it’s the Epstein Class running this country. It’s the right framing because that’s exactly who Republicans are courting right now; they lost voters, and they’re trying to make it up with donors. If Democrats want to win in 2026, they need to turn that into a liability.

Reading this in a forward? Click below to get the newsletter directly in your inbox.

If you’re anything like me, your childhood was spent mostly watching wrestling and reading The Far Side, which is why I love that photo of Sting reading one of the many collections of Gary Larson’s work. And thankfully, Far Side superfan Cow Tools Daily has taken it upon themself to find out which comic was causing him to crack up so much. They’ve narrowed it down to four, and I think the bottom left one would make him chuckle because it would remind him of the fake Sting.

There are some unsettling parallels between our current moment and Argentina after its 1976 military coup. The era was marked by the government kidnapping its political opponents off the streets, torturing them and eventually throwing them out of airplanes over the ocean. Many of those thousands of political opponents were pregnant or the mothers of young children and the regime offered those babies up for adoption. They were then lost to their families until DNA testing technology made reunion possible.

A Flower Traveled in My Blood is the story of the grandmothers of those children, the Abuelas De Plaza De Mayo and their fight for justice, to reknit the torn threads of their families back together. As we get new reports every day about ICE destroying families, this book doesn’t just contain lessons on collective action and how to make moral appeals, but deeper insights into what it really means to put a family back together. Because some day, we’ll have to figure out how to do justice for the Liams of the world.

I feel like I’ve heard 1-877-KARS-4-KIDS so much that it’s faded into the background. But that’s not the case for all of you, as you really think it’s the worst commercial music of all time. All I have to add is that not only are the ads annoying but also deceptive.

As for this week, I figured I’d put Sting to a vote.

Like my newsletter? Click the button below to forward it to a friend.