The failed censure of Stacey Plaskett didn’t feel like vindication; it felt like a warning. She walked away wounded but standing, held up by colleagues who looked less convinced of her innocence than terrified of precedent.

If one member could be ruined by association and implication, then no one who had brushed against Jeffrey Epstein’s world—however briefly, however innocently claimed—could feel safe. The chamber’s narrow vote exposed not just partisan fracture, but shared vulnerability.

As calls to “release all the files” echoed from both parties, the rhetoric rang hollow. Transparency was no longer a virtue; it was a shield. Donald Trump’s demands to open everything, and Chuck Schumer’s attempts to steer the blast elsewhere, carried the same desperate edge: control the explosion before it controls you. When the full ledger of Epstein’s contacts, favors, and late-night confidences finally emerges, it will not simply end careers. It will rewrite trust itself in American power.