Today is Tuesday, November 18, 2025. Today was supposed to be a none-too-exciting day, with Elliot undergoing Mohs surgery on his scalp at 10 a.m., but who would have thought that both the House and Senate would deliver surgical strikes against this unfit president in their voting to release the Epstein files. This was done on the same day – right after the House almost unanimously approved legislation that would force those documents into the open. Hours after the House overwhelmingly passed a bill to force the exposure of the Justice Department’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the Senate moved to approve the legislation by unanimous consent – sending a clear message to the buffoon in chief that his party has abandoned him in his hour of need. This measure is covered in an online MSNBC article by Kevin Frey entitled “Senate suddenly passes the Epstein bill just hours after it cleared the House.”

“Speaking on the Senate floor shortly after 5 p.m., Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) pushed through the Epstein Files Transparency Act using unanimous consent, a maneuver that allows the chamber to bypass normal procedural hurdles.”

Schumer thundered, “Donald Trump has tried to cover up for Jeffrey Epstein long enough,” before asking to pass the bill. “It’s time that the Senate finished the job to finally compel the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files.”

The move was so swift that the Senate hadn’t even formally received the bill from the House. Schumer asked that once it arrives, it be automatically “deemed as passed” – an unusual step underscoring the urgency and political momentum behind the contentious issue.

This quick passage is sure to anger MAGA Johnson, the unqualified Speaker of the House, and many House repugnicans. But fuck them! We all know these repugnicans spent months denying Democrats a vote on the bill and Johnson, the pusillanimous Clark Kent of the House, was forced to give the legislation a vote only after four intrepid repugnicans joined all Democrats on a discharge petition.

Following the near-unanimous vote in the House, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) signaled that his chamber might move quickly, without changing the bill. And, boy, did it!

Thune countered, “I’m not sure there’s going to be a need for or desire for an amendment process over here,” which bristled the House Speaker to no end.

Schumer also stated for the record, “This isn’t about Democrats versus Republicans or about Congress versus the president. This is about giving the American people the transparency they’ve been crying for.” Schumer added, “This is about holding accountable all the people in Jeffrey Epstein’s circle who raped, groomed, targeted and enabled the abuse of hundreds of girls for years and years. The American people have waited long enough.” Amen, Minority Leader Schumer.

Now that the Senate has passed the bill, it will soon be on the president’s desk. It will be difficult for Donald Dump to not sign the bill, particularly after the House passed the measure 427-1, and the Senate passed it with unanimous consent.

That doesn’t mean that the Chump administration could not hold back information in the files, however. The bimbo Attorney General has broad authority to withhold information that could imperil future investigations – as the Justice Department has recently announced that it will open some phony investigations into some Democrats mentioned in the files – note how only Democrats are being investigated by this con artist.

So could the American people receive the full look into these documents that lawmakers have intended? If it’s obvious that the Dump regime is still obfuscating the truth, this will gloriously backfire on the clueless president and harm him for years to come!

In the meantime, the crude and vulgar president rebuked a female reporter who questioned him about the Epstein files, calling her “Piggy” as she pressed him on his past relationship with the late convicted sex offender.

What a fucking low life in the White House, folks! This boor told the reporter, “Quiet. Quiet. Piggy.” Talk about the pot calling the kettle black in this instance, where the fat pig was actually sitting on Air Force One! An even braver female reporter pressed the fat pig over his embrace of the Saudi prince who had journalist Jamal Khashoggi murdered while at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. This president had the gall to say “Things happen” when confronted with his death at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. What a jerk! And he’s president of the United States?

Today, then, was a sweet victory for hundreds of Epstein survivors who pushed and pushed this country to this day. This country owes them a debt of gratitude.

By the way, Elliot did well today with his Mohs surgery which ended after a few minutes. We actually sat far longer in the waiting room with many other bandaged patients to wait for biopsy results of Elliot’s procedure which came back negative, thank God. Elliot still has a white bandage on his head, which he can take off tomorrow at some point. There was a woman, most probably in her seventies, who reminded me of the comedian Elaine May. She began talking to me as I tried to read one of the books I brought with me to the doctor’s office. She asked how long would the wait be; I answered that I couldn’t tell her. I was not a patient here. I then returned to reading Disorderly Men, my gay men’s reading selection for this month.

I think we were finished a little after 11, so we walked to York Avenue and 86th Street to have breakfast at a diner called The Mansion. We woke up today at 7:30 a.m. and left the apartment at 8:45. We got down to 86th Street close to 9:30, so we darted into Paris Baguette for a coffee. For me, of course.

After breakfast, we parted ways. Elliot went home, while I took the crosstown bus to Broadway where I searched for the Westsider Rare & Used Books store, located on 80th Street and Broadway. Since I sold a few books the other day at this bookstore in the Village called Codex, I justified buying one book called Hollywood’s Eve about Eve Babitz, who was a cultural icon of the scene in 1960s and 1970s Los Angeles. She has quite the biography, it seems. She is the goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky and a graduate of Hollywood High. She posed in 1963, at age 20, playing chess with the French artist Marcel Duchamp. She was nude; he was not. She designed album covers for Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds. She has seduced prominent men like Jim Morrison and Harrison Ford. At the age of 30, she was discovered as a writer – by no other than Joan Didion, the chronicler of her time. She would go on to publish seven books, usually billed as novels or short story collections. They were always more autobiographical in nature and definitely more confessional. I was then drawn to this personage’s colorful life, so that’s why I bought the book.

Tomorrow is the meeting of Forest Hills Indivisible at this nearby church, so I don’t know if I’ll be here. You’ll see me or you won’t. That’s all I can say.

Have a good Wednesday then.

And so it went!

This is my new addition to my ever-expanding library.