More Epstein files may be on the way, but in the meantime, the reverberations of the House Oversight Committee’s data drop of more than 20,000 of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails and other documents continue to be felt. Donald Trump, who is mentioned many times in the messages, is scrambling in the aftermath amid some MAGA pushback and a bipartisan demand for more files. Larry Summers is facing renewed ire over his extensive correspondence with Epstein. Younger Americans are getting an opportunity to learn who “Bubba” is. And the commentary about what it all means is still coming. Below is a look at some of the takeaways from our writers and others across the web.

The New Yorker’s Jessica Winter sums up an ugly truth:

As is the case with the Epstein birthday book, these documents run an enervating gamut from the inane to the depraved. Not one of these people can do evil banter; it’s incredible that so much of their lives revolves around networking and socializing. The most amusing aspect of the correspondence, given the figure at its center, is its streak of censoriousness, as when the publicist Peggy Siegal disparaged a socialite in their orbit as “a fat drunk with no money and a bad marriage.”

The darkest thread, meanwhile, is the obsequious reverence for Epstein. In a 2015 exchange, Landon Thomas Jr., then a financial reporter for the Times, encouraged Epstein to “show the world that you are no longer that guy. You have made changes — and that this is the past.” Two years later, Thomas, ever the supportive friend, e-mailed Epstein to warn that the investigative journalist John Connolly, the co-author of the Epstein exposé “Filthy Rich,” was “digging around again.” In a letter of recommendation, the linguist Noam Chomsky contended that “Jeffrey constantly raises searching questions and puts forth provocative ideas, which have repeatedly led me to rethink crucial issues.” Such assertions sit uneasily beside Epstein’s notes to self (e.g., “beards and long hair , are meant to catch and hold smells. ?” and “does the eye tranmsit information.”), or his orthographically complex lists of names, which read like a blackout-drunk attempt to update “We Didn’t Start the Fire” in time for karaoke on Little St. James: “bill clinton. hamad bun jasem. donalad trup. gov mapp. governoe young. governoe king. . woody allen . morgain fairchild.”

So writes Matt Ford at The New Republic:

It would be tempting to dismiss the Epstein scandals as a purely elite phenomenon. But this is the society for which the American people have voted. The 2016 election could once be dismissed as a constitutional fluke since most Americans voted for Trump’s opponent. The 2024 election is more definitional. This country had nearly a decade of experience with Trump in power — the corruption, the lies, the bigotry and misogyny and abuse and violence — and welcomed more of it …

In Trump’s America, all of us are not created equal. There is a hierarchy atop which the Lutnicks and Kennedys and Thiels and Musks of the world can prosper, free from government regulation or union negotiations or press scrutiny or law-enforcement investigations. Everyone else is part of a underclass whom the wealthy can abuse and immiserate at their own discretion. The Epstein emails give the rest of us a glimpse into this world, where even the most grotesque crimes can be forgiven or ignored out of a sense of elite solidarity — at least until they become too publicly awkward to privately sustain — and where amorality is required to participate.

The Founders were not without their own sins, of course, but at least they had higher aspirations for their new nation. “Avarice, ambition, revenge, and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net,” Adams once wrote to another friend. “Our Constitution was made only for a [moral] people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” So far, Americans are failing that test — and the republic itself.

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch certainly hopes so:

[O]n some level, Trump’s White House must also realize that the Epstein file is the Jenga piece that brings the whole thing crashing down — the end of America, or, more to the point, the version of America getting financially drained, sexually abused, and basically ruined by all the people getting emails from jeevacation@gmail.com.

The timing couldn’t be better, or worse,........

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