August 2025 couldn’t come sooner. It’s been one of the craziest, most combative six months Washington may have ever seen, and yet it’s also been one of the most productive. Now, as Congress heads home with the country’s economic future still uncertain, both parties have steep hills to climb ahead of them.

For Democrats, it’s a time to regroup and rethink what they stand for while they search for a reason for being. For Republicans, it’s also a critical time to fine-tune an effective economic message and sell the president’s “big, beautiful bill.” 

Meanwhile, the media is focused not on the issue that will decide next year’s congressional elections — the economy — but on the Epstein scandal, which has bizarrely reemerged to dominate political coverage over the past month. 

Some Republicans have been demanding that Trump’s DOJ release all relevant Epstein documents, stepping on their own economic messaging. Across the aisle, Democrats, having no real agenda, have jumped on the Epstein bandwagon, hoping to tie Trump to the sleazy scandal as a substitute for ideas in next year’s elections. 

Neither is a strategy to win over voters, but it gets the attention of much of the media, which too often judges the value of a news story not by its substance or importance but by its ability to get eyeballs and views. 

This is a lesson celebrity politicians and pundits have learned. The more outrageous their statements, the more media attention they get — and the more money they can raise. 

Which question is more likely catnip for today’s media? “Another politician caught in the Epstein scandal?” or the admittedly drier, but far more important, “Did the personal consumption expenditures price (PCE) index........

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