The Trump administration is on a pro-Confederacy roll, with two monuments brought back in 24 hours.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday that a Confederate memorial would be reinstalled in Arlington Cemetery after the statue’s removal in 2023 by Hegseth’s predecessor, Lloyd Austin, the country’s first Black defense secretary.

“Moses Ezekiel’s beautiful and historic sculpture—often referred to as ‘The Reconciliation Monument’—will be rightfully be returned to Arlington National Cemetery near his burial site,” Hegseth wrote on X.

The statue is likely more often referred to by the name it’s had since its construction in 1914: the Confederate Memorial.

“It never should have been taken down by woke lemmings. Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history—we honor it,” Hegseth continued.

The memorial featured a “nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy” and included “highly sanitized depictions of slavery,” according to Arlington Cemetery’s website. The statue also had a Latin inscription that characterizes the South’s secession as a “noble ‘Lost Cause.’”

The Confederate Memorial is the second monument honoring the pro-slavery South that the Trump administration has recently resurrected. The National Park Service announced Monday that it would restore and reinstall the statue of Confederate General Albert Pike that was toppled during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

NPS describes the statue as a tribute to “Pike’s leadership in Freemasonry,” leaving out his Confederate background. The move is part of Trump’s “Executive Order on Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

It’s yet another instance in which the Trump administration is actively revising the past. Whether scrubbing mentions of queer and transgender Americans from the Stonewall website or quietly removing references to Trump’s impeachments from a Smithsonian exhibit (which the museum now says will be restored “in the coming weeks”), it’s clear that the administration is committed to promoting its version of the nation’s history—“truth” and “sanity” notwithstanding.

The Trump administration is contorting itself in order to not release the Epstein files.

Senior administration officials are expected to meet Wednesday night at the vice president’s residence to discuss their available options for the Epstein files—one of which reportedly includes having deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche go on Joe Rogan’s podcast to discuss the scandal, according to CNN.

The meeting will include Blanche as well as White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and FBI Director Kash Patel.

“Sources say that there have also been internal discussions about what exactly Blanche’s next step could be, including holding a press conference or doing a high-profile interview, possibly with someone like Joe Rogan,” reported CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Tuesday night.

Blanche met with Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell for multiple days last month, spurring concern that the White House was considering a pardon for the convicted sex trafficker.

Another option reportedly discussed among the senior officials includes releasing the transcript or audio of Maxwell’s interview with Blanche.

The Trump administration has been in a tailspin over the case files since the beginning of July, when the Justice Department directly contradicted Bondi on the existence of Epstein’s “client list,” eliciting surprise and upset from the deepest pockets of the MAGA leader’s base.

But rather than release the Epstein files and provide the transparency so demanded by his supporters, Donald Trump decided to go in a different direction and accrue a new list of Epstein’s clients from Maxwell. Maxwell, in turn, directly appealed to the president and the Supreme Court in pursuit of a pardon.

A senior Trump administration official told CNN Thursday that Trump was not considering clemency for the convicted sex trafficker, though Trump underscored to reporters just days prior that he was “allowed” to give her one.

Meanwhile, Americans are increasingly disturbed by Trump’s handling of the entire fiasco. A poll published by Emerson College Polling in July found that just 16 percent of Americans approved of the way Trump was managing the Epstein scandal, while more than half of polled Americans—51 percent—disapproved.

Some defenders of Texas Republicans’ plan to rejigger the state’s congressional districts at the behest of President Trump might be inclined to suggest there’s some fair rationale for the move.

Not state Representative Mitch Little, a Texas Republican who explained brazenly to CNN Tuesday that it’s a Machiavellian partisan maneuver.

CNN’s Brianna Keilar asked her guest why the Texas GOP is attempting to redistrict now when it just did so four years earlier after the last U.S. census.

Little put it plainly: “Because we can. We have the votes. It’s legal for us to do so. It’s legal for us to draw the lines based on political performance. We have three Hispanic-predominated districts in south Texas that we believe that we can carve out for Republican leadership in the United States Congress,” he said—which, he claimed, will “be a good thing for Texas.”

“Because you can,” Keilar repeated. “Why should you, though?”

Little replied: “Because it’s good for our party, it’s good for our........

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